"'No, thank ye,' says Bob, 'but I won't never forgit ye if ye can git me four boxes of matches.' Bob said she was gone a minute and when she came back she had the matches for him under her ap.r.o.n. 'Good luck to ye, Bob,' she says--her cheeks red, and her mouth trembling. It was Myra Hathaway--he'd known her since she was a little girl. 'Bob, for G.o.d's sake go,' she begged--'there's trouble coming from the village.'

"It wasn't long before Bob crossed Alder Brook about forty rods this side of the Gull Rock. They saw his tracks where he crossed the next day, but Bob had the matches, and the sheriff and about forty that went out to get him came back that night looking kind of down in the mouth. There wasn't a sign of him after he crossed Alder Brook. He knew those woods like a partridge. When he got through telling how he got the square meal at Lower Saranac, Ed said to him:

"'Bob, you're welcome to what I've got,' and I told him, 'What I've got is yours, and you know it.'

"He tried to say a little something, but he choked up, then he said: 'Boys, I'm sick of bein' hounded. There's been nights and days when I've most died; if I can only get into Canady there won't none of 'em git me.'

"Ed and I had about eleven dollars between us. 'That will get you there, Bob,' I said, 'if you look sharp and don't take risks and keep to the timber.' We gave him the eleven dollars and what cartridges and matches we could spare, and what was left of the deer. I never saw a fellow so grateful; he didn't say anything, but I saw his old grit come back to him. That was Monday night, and about nine o'clock we turned in. Before daylight I woke up to attend to the fire and saw he was gone."

The men drew a deep breath. Keene and the actor looked blankly at each other. Compared to the tale just ended, their own stories seemed but a reflex of utterly selfish lives. Even the Emperor experienced a strange thrill--possibly the first real sensation he had known since he was a boy. As to Thayor--he had hung on every word that fell from Holcomb's lips.

"And what motive had Dinsmore in killing Bailey?" asked Thayor, nervously, when the others had gone to the hall for their coffee and liqueurs. "I asked your father but he did not answer me, and yet he must have known."

"Oh, yes, he knew, Mr. Thayor. Everybody knows, our way, but it's one of those things we don't talk about--but I'll tell you. It was about his wife."

Thayor folded his napkin in an absent way, laid it carefully beside his plate, unfolded it again and tossed it in a heap upon the table, and said with a certain tenderness in his tone:

"And did he get away to Canada, Holcomb?"

"No, sir; his little girl fell ill, and he wouldn't leave her."

"And the woman, Holcomb--was she worth it?" continued Thayor. There was a strange tremor in his voice now--so much so that the young man fastened his eyes on the banker's, wondering at the cause.

"She was worth a lot to Bob, sir," replied Holcomb slowly. "They had grown up together."

CHAPTER TWO

That same afternoon the banker pa.s.sed through the polished steel grille of his new home by means of a flat key attached to a plain gold chain.

The house, like its owner, had a certain personality of its own, although it lacked his simplicity; its square ma.s.s being so richly carved that it seemed as if the faintest stroke of the architect's soft pencil had made a dollar mark. So vast, too, was its baronial hall and sweeping stairway in pale rose marble, that its owner might have entered it unnoticed, had not Blakeman, the butler, busying himself with the final touches to a dinner table of twenty covers, heard his master's alert step in the hall and hurried to relieve him of his coat and hat. Before, however, the man could reach him, Thayor had thrown both aside, and had stepped to a carved oak table on which were carefully arranged ten miniature envelopes. He bent over them for a moment and then turning to the butler asked in an impatient tone:

"How many people are coming to dinner, Blakeman?"

"Twenty, sir," answered Blakeman, his face preserving its habitual Sphinx-like immobility.

"Um!" muttered Thayor.

"Can, I get you anything, sir?"

"No, thank you, Blakeman. I have just left the Club."

"A dinner of twenty, eh?" continued Thayor, as Blakeman disappeared with his coat and hat--"our fourth dinner party this week, and Alice never said a word to me about it." Again he glanced at the names of the men upon the ten diminutive envelopes, written in an angular feminine hand; most of them those of men he rarely saw save at his own dinners. Suddenly his eye caught the name upon the third envelope from the end of the orderly row.

"Dr. Sperry again!" he exclaimed, half aloud. He opened it and his lips closed tight. The crested card bore the name of his wife. As he dropped it back in its place his ear caught the sound of a familiar figure descending the stairway--the figure of a woman of perhaps thirty-five, thoroughly conscious of her beauty, whose white arms flashed as she moved from beneath the flowing sleeves of a silk tea-gown that reached to her tiny satin slippers.

She had gained the hall now, and noticing her husband came slowly toward him.

"Where's Margaret?" Thayor asked, after a short pause during which neither had spoken.

The shoulders beneath the rose tea-gown shrugged with a gesture of impatience.

"In the library, I suppose," she returned. Then, with a woman's intuition, she noticed that the third envelope had been touched. Her lips tightened. "Get dressed, Sam, or you will be late, as usual."

Thayor raised his head and looked at her.

"You never told me, Alice, that you were giving a dinner to-night--I never knew, in fact, until I found these."

"And having found them you pawed them over." There was a subtle, almost malicious defiance in her tone. "Go on--what else? Come--be quick! I must look at my table." One of her hands, glittering with the rings he had given her, was now on the portiere, screening the dining room from out which came faintly the clink of silver. She stopped, her slippered foot tapping the marble floor impatiently. "Well!" she demanded, her impatience increasing, "what is it?"

"Nothing," he replied slowly--"nothing that you can understand," and he strode past her up the sweeping stairs.

Margaret was in the biggest chair in the long library, sitting curled up between its generous arms when he entered. At the moment she was absorbed in following a hero through the pages of a small volume bound in red morocco. Thayor watched her for a moment, all his love for her in his eyes.

"Oh, daddy!" she cried. Her arms were about his neck now, the brown eyes looking into his own. "Oh, daddy! Oh! I'm so glad you've come.

I've had such a dandy ride to-day!" She paused, and taking his two hands into her own looked up at him saucily. "You know you promised me a new pony. I really must have one. Ethel says my Brandy is really out of fashion, and I've seen such a beauty with four ducky little white feet."

"Where, Puss?" He stroked her soft hair as he spoke, his fingers lingering among the tresses.

"Oh, at the new stable. Ethel and I have been looking him over; she says he's cheap at seven hundred. May I have him daddy? It looks so poverty-stricken to be dependent on one mount."

Suddenly she stopped. "Why, daddy! What's the matter? You look half ill," she said faintly.

Thayor caught his breath and straightened.

"Nothing, Puss," he answered, regaining for the moment something of his jaunty manner. "Nothing, dearie. I must go and dress, or I shall be late for our guests."

"But my pony, daddy?" pleaded Margaret.

Thayor bent and kissed her fresh cheek.

"There--I knew you would!" she cried, clapping her hands in sheer delight.

Half an hour later, when the two walked down the sweeping stairs, her soft hand about his neck, the other firmly in his own, they found the mother, now radiant in white lace and jewels, standing before the white chimney piece, one slippered foot resting upon the low bra.s.s fender. Only when the m.u.f.fled slam of a coupe door awoke her to consciousness did she turn and speak to them, and only then with one of those perfunctory remarks indulged in by some hostesses when their guests are within ear-shot.

In the midst of the comedy, to which neither made reply, the heavy portieres were suddenly drawn aside and Blakeman's trained voice rang out:

"Dr. Sperry!"

A tall, wiry man with a dark complexion, alluring black eyes and black moustache curled up at the ends, entered hastily, tucking the third envelope in the pocket of his pique waistcoat.

A peculiar expression flashed subtly from Alice's dark eyes as she smiled and put forth her hand. "I'm so glad you could come," she murmured. "I was afraid you would be sent for by somebody at the last moment."

"And I am more than happy, I a.s.sure you, dear lady," he laughed back, as he bent and kissed the tips of her fingers.