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Out of the Primitive

by Robert Ames Bennet · English · Gutenberg #6116 · 505,048 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Out of the Primitive

Author: Robert Ames Bennet


        
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6116]
                Most recently updated: January 18, 2013

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUT OF THE PRIMITIVE ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.










[Illustration: Lord James dropped without a groan. "You coward!--you
murderer!" she gasped.     Chapter XXX]





OUT OF THE PRIMITIVE

BY ROBERT AMES BENNET

Author of "Into the Primitive," etc.

WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLORS BY ALLEN T. TRUE


1911





TO MY FRIEND JAMES COLLIER





CHAPTER I

THE CASTAWAYS


The second night north of the Zambezi, as well as the first, the little
tramp rescue steamer had run out many miles into the offing and laid-to
during the hours of darkness. The vicinity of the coral reefs that
fringe the southeast coast of Africa is decidedly undesirable on
moonless nights.

When the Right Honorable the Earl of Avondale came out of his close,
hot stateroom into the refreshing coolness that preceded the dawn, the
position of the Southern Cross, scintillating in the blue-black sky to
port, told him that the steamer was headed in for the coast. The black
surface of the quiet sea crinkled with lines of phosphorescent light
under the ruffling of the faint breeze, which crept offshore heavy with
the stench of rotting vegetation. It was evident that the ship was
already close in again to the Mozambique swamps.

Lord James sniffed the rank odor, and hastened to make his way forward
to the bridge. As he neared the foot of the ladder, his resilient step
and the snowy whiteness of his linen suit attracted the attention of
the watcher above on the bridge.

"Good-morning, m' lord," the officer called down in a bluff but
respectful tone. "You're on deck early."

"Hullo, Meggs! That you?" replied his lordship, mounting the steps with
youthful agility. "It seems you're still earlier."

"Knowing your lordship's anxiety, I decided to run in, so that we could
renew the search with the first glimmer of daylight," explained the
skipper. "We're now barely under headway. According to the smell, we're
as near those reefs as I care to venture in the dark."

"Right-o! We'll lose no time," approved the young earl. "D'you still
think to-day is apt to tell the tale, one way or the other?"

"Aye, your lordship. I may be mistaken; but, as I told you, reckoning
together all the probabilities, we should to-day cover the spot where
the _Impala_ must have been driven on the coral--that is, unless she
foundered in deep water."

"But, man, you said that was not probable."

"A new boat should be able to stand the racking of half a dozen
cyclones, m' lord, without straining a bottom plate. No; it's far more
probable she shook off her screw, or something went wrong with the
steering gear or in the engine room. I've recharted her probable course
and that of the cyclone. It was as well for us to begin our search at
the Zambezi, as I told your lordship. But if to-day we fail to find
where she piled her bones on the coral, it's odds we'll not to-morrow.
On beyond, at Port Mozambique, we got only the north rim of the storm.
I put in there for shelter when the barometer dropped."

"That was on your run south. Glad I had the luck to chance on a man who
knows the coast as you do," remarked Lord James. "Look at those
steamers Mr. Leslie chartered by cable--a good week the start of us,
and still beating the coverts down there along Sofala! Wasting time! If
only I'd not gone off on that shunt to India--And they six weeks in
these damnable swamps--if they won ashore at all! You still believe
they had a chance of that?"

"Aye. As I explained to your lordship, if the _Impala_ hadn't lost all
her boats before she struck, there's a fair probability that the water
inside the reefs--"

"Yes, yes, to be sure! If there was the slightest chance for any one
aboard--Lady Bayrose, Miss Leslie and their maids, the only women
passengers, and a British ship! Everything must have been done to save
them. While Tom--he'd be sure to make the shore, if that was within the
bounds of possibility. Yet even if they were cast up alive--six weeks
on the vilest stretch of coast between Zanzibar and the Zambezi! They
may be dying of the fever now--this very hour! Deuce take it, man!
d'you wonder I'm impatient?"

"Aye, m'lord! But here's the dawn, and McPhee is keeping up a full head
of steam. We'll soon be doing seven knots."

As he spoke, the skipper turned to step into the pilot house. Lord
James faced about to the eastern sky, where the gray dawn was beginning
to lessen the star-gemmed blackness above the watery horizon. Swiftly
the faint glow brightened and became tinged with pink. The day was
approaching with the suddenness of the tropical sunrise. In quick
succession, the pink shaded to rose, the rose to crimson and scarlet
splendor; and then the sun came leaping above the horizon, to flood sea
and sky with its dazzling effulgence.

Captain Meggs had entered the pilot house in the blackness of night. He
came out in the full glare of day. Lord James had turned his back to
the sun. He was staring at the bank of white mist that, less than two
miles to westward, shrouded the swampy coast. Meggs had brought out two
pairs of binoculars, one of which he handed to his charterer.

"Your lordship sees," he remarked. "We're none too far out from the
reefs."

"Beastly mist!" complained Lord James, his handsome high-bred face
creased with impatience and anxiety. "D'you fancy we're anywhere near
the islet from which we put off last evening?"

"I've tried to hold our position, m'lord. But these Mozambique Channel
currents are so strong, and shift so with the tides, we may have been
either set back or ahead."

Already the bank of morning mist was beginning to break up and melt
away under the fervent rays of the sun. The young earl raised his
glasses and gazed southwards along the face of the dissolving curtain.
Through and between the ghostly wreaths and wisps of vapor he could see
the winged habitants of the swamps--flamingoes, cranes, pelicans,
ibises, storks, geese, all the countless tropical waterfowl--swimming
and wading about the reedy lagoons or circling up to fly to other
feeding grounds. Opposite the steamer the glasses showed with startling
distinctness a number of hideous crocodiles crawling out on a slimy
mudbank to bask in the sunshine. But nowhere could the searcher discern
a trace of man or of man's habitation.

"Gad! not a sign! Rotten luck!" he muttered.

He turned and swept the four-mile curve of coast around to the
north-northeast. Suddenly he stiffened and held the glasses fixed.

"Look!" he cried. "Off there to the northwards--cliffs!"

"Cliffs? Aye, a headland," confirmed the skipper.

"Put about for it immediately," directed Lord James. "If they were cast
up here, they'd not have lingered in these vile bogs--would have made
for the high ground."

Meggs nodded, and called the order to the steersman. The ship's bows
swung around, and the little steamer was soon scuttling upcoast towards
the headland, along the outer line of reefs, at a speed of seven knots.

From the first, Lord James held his glasses fixed on the barren
guano-whitened ledges of the headland. But though he could discern with
quickly increasing distinctness the seabirds that soared about the
cliff crest and nested in its crevices, he perceived no sign of any
signal such as castaways might be expected to place on so prominent a
height.

When, after a full half-hour's run, the steamer skirted along the edge
of the reefs, close in under the seaward face of the headland, the
searcher at last lowered his binoculars, bitterly disappointed.

"Not a trace--not a trace!" he complained. "If they've been here,
they've either gone inland or--we're too late! Six
weeks--starvation--fever!"

Meggs shook his head reassuringly. "The top of the headland may be
inaccessible, m'lord. We may find that they--Heh! what's that?"

He leaned forward to peer through his glasses at a second headland that
was swinging into view around the corner of the cliffs.

"_Smoke!_" he cried. "_Smoke!--and a flag!_"

"Gad!" murmured Lord James, hastily bringing his own glasses to bear.

The second headland was about five miles away. The thin column of smoke
that was ascending from its crest near the outer end, could plainly be
seen with the naked eye. But a sunlit cloud beyond necessitated the
full magnifying power of the binoculars to disclose the white signal
flag that flapped lazily on a slender staff near the beacon.

Lord James drew in a deep breath, and his gray eyes glowed with hope.
Here was evidence that not all aboard the wrecked or foundered _Impala_
had been lost.

"Meggs," he cried, "you're the one and only skipper! It must be their
signal--it _is_ their signal! But which of them?--who went under and
who escaped!--Miss Genevieve? Tom?"

"This Mr. Blake?" ventured Meggs. "I take it, he's some relation to
your lordship."

"No; chum--American engineer. Gad! if he went down! But it's
impossible--Most resourceful man I ever knew. He must have won ashore
with the others. And the women--a British captain! It must be we'll
find crew and all safe!"

"Not on this coast," replied Meggs. "They'd have lost most their boats
before the _Impala_ struck."

"In that event--Deuce take it! will we never get there? If I had my
motor-boat now! By Jove, this stretch here between the headlands is not
swamp. It's dry plain--and black. Been burnt over. There's a
place--tree-trunks still smouldering. The grass has been fired within
the last day or two."

"No one in sight as yet, on the cliffs," said the skipper, who had
continued to scrutinize the northern headland. "No watch above; no sign
of any one or any camp below. Must all be around on the far side. We'll
clear the point, and run in through the first break in the reefs."

"If they fail to show up on this side," qualified Lord James, slowly
sweeping the cliffs from foot to crest and inland along the dry
fire-blackened plain.

About half a mile from the beach the wall of rock was cleft by a wooded
ravine that ran up through the cliff ridge. At its foot was a grove of
trees whose bright green foliage seemed to indicate an abundance of
water. Above, a gigantic baobab tree towered out of the cleft and
upreared its enormous cabbage-shaped crown high over the crest of the
ridge.

In the midst of the general barrenness and aridity, the verdant oasis
of the ravine appeared to be the most certain place to look for the
castaways. Lord James fancied that he could discern a slight haze of
smoke rising out of the cleft beneath the baobab. But if there was a
camp in the cleft bottom, it was hidden from view by the trees and
cliff walls. The only certain sign of man within sight was the signal
flag and the smoke of the smouldering fire in the midst of the seabird
colony near the outer end of the cliff crest.

The steamer was gliding along, with slackened headway, close in under
the headland, when a breath of air opened out the folds of the tattered
white flag. Meggs had been watching it through his binoculars. He
lowered the glasses, and remarked knowingly: "Thought so. That's no
ship's canvas. It's linen or duck--A woman's skirt ripped open."

"What! Then at least one of the women got ashore!"

"Aye. But d' you make out how that cloth is lashed to the bamboo? It
was knotted on by a landsman. We'll find neither officers nor crew
among the survivors."

The steamer was now opposite the face of the headland, Meggs sprang
into the pilot house. Within the next few moments the speed of the
vessel fell off to less than a knot. Slowly the old steamer swung her
bows around towards the shore and began feeling her way into a narrow
gap through the half hidden barrier of the reefs, which here were
merged into a single line.

For the time being all the attention of Meggs was concentrated upon the
safe conning of his ship through the dangerous passage. It was
otherwise with Lord James. The last two shiplengths before the turn had
opened up the view around the north corner of the headland. From the
flank of the cliff ridge a wedge of brush-dotted plain extended a
quarter-mile or so to a dense high jungle bordering a small river. The
first glance had shown his lordship that it was of no use to look
beyond the river. The coast trended away northwards in another vast
stretch of fetid swamps and slimy lagoons.

With almost feverish eagerness, he turned to scan the little plain.
First to catch his eye were a dozen or more graceful animals dashing
away from the shore in panic-stricken flight. He turned his glasses
upon them and saw that they were antelope. This was not encouraging.
That the timid animals had been feeding in the vicinity of a human
habitation a full hour after dawn was not probable. Nor did a careful
search of the plain through the glasses disclose any sign of a hut or
tent or the smoke of a camp-fire.

An order from Meggs preparatory for letting go anchor roused Lord James
from his momentary pause. He faced the skipper, who was leaning from a
window of the pilot house.

"Sound your siren, man!" he exclaimed. "There's no camp in sight. Yet
they must be within hearing."

Meggs nodded, called an order for the lowering of a boat, and drew back
into the pilot house. As he reappeared in the doorway, to step out on
the bridge, the tramp's siren shrilled a blast loud enough to carry for
miles. It echoed and re-echoed along the cliff walls, and was flung
back upon the little steamer in a deafening blare.

Lord James turned to sweep the border of the river jungle with his
glasses. A herd of fat ungainly hippopotami, on the bar out beyond the
mangroves of the river mouth, fixed his gaze. But a moment afterwards
one of the sailors in the bows pointed upwards and yelled excitedly:
"Hi! hi!--there aloft! Lookut th' bloomin' mad 'un!"

At last--one of the castaways! High above, on the very brink of the
precipice, near the outer end of the headland, a man stood waving down
to the ship in wild excitement.

Lord James hastily focussed his glasses upon the beckoner. Seen through
their powerful lenses, he seemed to leap to within a few feet--so near
that Lord James could see the heaving of his broad chest under the
tattered flannel shirt as he flung his arms about his head and bellowed
down at the steamer in half frantic joy.

The looker wasted no second glance on the rude trousers of spotted
hyena skin or the big lean body of the castaway. Neither the wild
whirling of the sun-blackened arms nor the bristly stubble of a six
weeks' growth of beard could prevent him from instantly recognizing the
face of his friend.

"Tom!--Tom!" he hailed. "Hullo! hullo, old man! Come down!"

Even as he cried out he realized that he could neither be heard nor
recognized at so great a distance. Though the binoculars enabled him to
see his friend with such wonderful distinctness, the deep shouts that
the other was uttering were hardly audible above the clatter aboard the
steamer. But now the ship's siren began to answer the hails of the
castaway with a succession of joyous shrieks.

In the same moment Lord James perceived that a second castaway--a
woman--was running forward along the crest of the headland. Fearlessly
she came darting down the broken ledges, to stand on the cliff edge
close beside the man. Lord James stared wonderingly at her dainty
girlish form, clad in a barbaric costume of leopard skin. Her bare
arms, slender from privation and burned brown by the sun, were upraised
in graceful greeting above the sensitive high-bred face and its crown
of soft brown hair.

"Genevieve!" murmured the earl. "What luck! Gad! what luck! Even if
Hawkins went to the bottom and took the jewels with him! She's
safe--both of 'em safe! Hey! what's that? Signalling towards the far
side--There he bolts, and she after him! Couldn't run that way if they
had the fever!"

He whirled about and sprang to descend the ladder, but paused to direct
the skipper. "I'll command the boat. Men are not to land. D'you take
me? There's at least one of the ladies here. Have a sling ready, and
tell the stewardess her services will soon be required."

Before Meggs could reply, he was down the ladder and darting across to
the side. But there he turned and ran aft to the cabin. The stewardess,
a buxom Englishwoman, stood at the head of the companionway, gazing
towards the cliff top. At his order, she followed him below. After
several minutes he reappeared with a lady's dust-coat folded over his
arm. The boat was already lowered and manned. He swung himself outboard
and went down the tackle hand under hand.

As he dropped lightly into the sternsheets beside the cockswain he
signed the men to thrust off. The boat shot out across the still water,
and headed shorewards on a slant for the south corner of the headland.
Urged on by their impatient passenger, the rowers bent to their oars
with a will, despite the broiling heat of the sun in the dead calm air
under the lee of the cliffs.

They were well in to the shore before the cockswain discovered a
submerged ledge that ran out athwart their course almost to the coral
reefs. This compelled them to put about and follow the ledge until they
could round its outer end. As the boat at last cleared the obstruction
and headed in again for the shore, the south flank of the cliffs came
into view.

A short distance inland, the two castaways that had appeared on the
cliff top were running towards the beach, the girl clinging to the hand
of the man.

"Give way! give way, men!" urged Lord James. "At least let's not keep
them waiting!"




CHAPTER II

TWO--AND ONE


Spurred to their utmost, the oarsmen drove the boat shorewards so
swiftly that it was less than thirty yards out when the castaways came
flying out the rocky slope of the cliff foot and scrambled down to the
water's edge.

Lord James sprang up and waved his yachting cap.

"Miss Leslie!--Tom, old man!" he joyously hailed them. "You're
safe!--both safe!"

"Good Lord! That you, Jimmy?" shouted back the man, "Well, of all
the--Hey! down brakes! 'Ware rocks!"

At the warning, the boat's crew backed water and came on inshore with
more caution. Without stopping to ask her permission, the man caught up
the panting, excited girl in his arms, and waded out to meet the boat.

"That's near enough. Swing round," he ordered.

The boat came about and backed in a length, to where he stood
thigh-deep in the still water, with the blushing girl upraised on his
broad shoulder. Lord James again lifted his cap. His bow could not have
been more formal and respectful had the meeting occurred in the queen's
drawing-room.

"Miss Leslie! This is a very great pleasure, 'pon my word! But you've
overheated yourself. You should not have run," he remonstrated. As
Blake lifted her in over the stern, he deftly unfolded the silk
dustcoat and held it open for her. "Permit me--No need of such haste,
y'know. I assure you, we're not so strict as to our hour of sailing."

"I--I--Of course we--" stammered the girl.

"To be sure! Ah, no hat! I should have foreseen. Very stupid of me not
to've brought a hat or parasol. But I dare say you'll make out till we
get back aboard ship."

His conventional manner and quiet conversational tone alike tended to
ease her of her embarrassment. By the time she had slipped on the coat
and seated herself, the crimson blushes that had flooded her tanned
cheeks were fast subsiding, and she was able to respond with a fair
degree of composure: "That was extremely thoughtful of you, Lord
Avondale!"

"Not at all, not at all," he disclaimed. "Cocks'n, if you'll be so kind
as to go forward, I'll take the tiller. Tom, old man! don't stand there
all day. You'll get your feet damp. Climb in!"

"No; pull out," replied Blake, his eyes hardening with sudden resolve.
"I forgot something. Got to go back to the cleft. You take Jen--Miss
Leslie aboard at once."

"Oh, no, Tom!" hastily protested the girl. "We'll wait here for you."

"Here?" he demanded. "And without your hat?"

Miss Leslie put her scarred and begrimed little hands to her
dishevelled hair.

Blake went on in an authoritative tone: "It won't do for you to get a
sunstroke now--after all these weeks. Jimmy, take her straight aboard.
I've got to go back, I tell you. We didn't stop for anything. There's a
jarful of mud and so forth that we sure can't leave to the hyenas." He
met the girl's appealing glance with firm decision. "You must get
aboard, out of this sun, fast as they can take you."

"Yes, of course, if you think it best--Tom," she acquiesced.

Her ready docility would of itself have been sufficient to surprise
Lord James. But, in addition, there was a soft note in her voice and a
glow in her beautiful hazel eyes that caused him to glance quickly from
her to his friend. Blake was already turning about to wade ashore. From
what little could be seen of his bristly face, its expression was
stern, almost morose. The powerful jaw was clenched.

Though puzzled and a trifle discomposed, Lord James quietly seated
himself beside the girl, and signing the men to give way, took the
tiller.

"My dear Miss Leslie," he murmured, "if you but knew my delight over
having found both you and Tom safe and well!"

"Then you really know him?" she replied. "Yes, to be sure; he called
you by your first name. Wait! I remember now. One day soon after we
were cast ashore--the second day, when we were thinking how to get
fire, to drive away the leopard--"

"Leopard? I say! So that's where you got this odd gown?"

"No--the mother leopard and the cubs. I was going to say, Tom remarked
that James Scarbridge had been his chum."

"Had been? He meant _is!_"

"Then it's true! Oh, isn't it strange and--and splendid? You know, I
did not connect the remark with you, Lord James. He had told me to try
to think how we were to find food for the next meal. His reference to
you was made quite casually in his talk with Winthrope."

"Winthrope!" exclaimed Lord James. "Then he, too, reached shore? Yet if
so--"

The girl put her hand before her eyes, as if to shut out some terrible
sight. Her voice sank to a whisper: "He--he was killed in the second
cyclone--a few days ago."

"Ah!" muttered the young earl. After a pause, he asked in a tone of
profound sympathy, "And the others--Lady Bayrose?"

"Don't ask! don't ask!" she cried, shuddering and trembling.

But quickly she regained her composure and looked up at him with a calm
unwavering gaze that told him how much she had undergone and the
strength of character she had gained during the fearful weeks that she
had been marooned on this savage and desolate coast.

"How foolish of me to give way!" she reproached herself. "It is what
you might have expected of me before--before I had been through all
this, with his example to uplift me out of my helplessness and
inefficiency. Believe me, Lord Avondale, I am a very different young
woman from the shallow, frivolous girl you knew during those days on
the Mediterranean."

"Shallow! frivolous!" he protested. "Anything but that, Miss Genevieve!
You must have known how vastly different were my--er--impressions. If
Lady Bayrose hadn't so suddenly shunted you off at Aden to the Cape
boat--Took me quite by surprise, I assure you. Had you kept on to
India, I had hoped to--er--"

She gave him a glance that checked his fast-mounting ardor.

"I--I beg pardon!" he apologized. "This of course is hardly the
time--About the others, if I may ask--that is, if it's not too painful
for you. I infer that Lady Bayrose--that she did not--reach the shore."

The girl's thorn-scarred, sun-blistered hands clasped together almost
convulsively. But she met his look of concern with unflinching
braveness.

"Poor dear Lady Bayrose!" she murmured. "They had put her and the maids
into one of the boats--there at the first, when the ship crashed on the
reef. They ran back to fetch me, but before they could rush me across,
a wave more terrible than all the others swept the ship. It tore loose
the boat and whirled them away, over and over!"

"Gad!" he exclaimed.

"It also carried away the captain and most of the crew. Between the
breakers, Winthrope and Tom and I were flung into the one remaining
boat. Winthrope cut the rope before the sailors could follow, and
then--then the steamer slipped back off the reef and went down."

"I say! Only the three of you left! The boat brought you safe ashore?"

"No, we were overturned in the breakers, but were washed up--flung
up--how, I cannot tell. The wind was frightful. It must have blown us
out of the surf and along with the water that was being driven up and
over into the lagoon. The first I knew, I was behind a little knoll
with Winthrope. Tom was near--in a pool. He--he crawled out. It was
nearly dark. We were all so beaten and exhausted that we slept until
morning. When we awoke, there was no sign of--of any one else, or of
the boat--nothing; only the top of the highest mast sticking up above
the water, out beside the reef. Tom swam out to it; but he couldn't get
anything--even he couldn't."

"Swam out, you say? These waters swarm with sharks. They're keen to nip
a swimmer!"

The girl's eyes flashed. "Do you believe he'd fear them?--that he'd
fear anything?"

"Not he! I fancy I ought to know, if any one. Knocked about with him,
half 'round the world. I dare say he's told you."

"Would it be like him to claim the credit of your friendship? No!
Before, on the steamer, we had mistaken him to be--to be what he
appears to strangers--rough, almost uncouth. Yet even that frightful
morning--it was among the swamps, ten miles or more up the coast. He
carried us safe out of them, me nearly all the way--out of the bog and
water, safe to the palms; and he as much tortured with thirst as were
we!"

"Fancy! No joke about that--thirst!"

"Yet it was only the beginning of what he did for us. Starvation and
wild beasts and snakes and the fever--he saved us from all. Yet he had
nothing to begin with--no tools or weapons, only his burning glass. Can
you wonder that I--that I--"

She stopped and looked down, the color mounting swiftly under the dark
coat of tan that covered the exquisite complexion he remembered so
pleasantly.

"My word!" he remonstrated, amazed and disquieted. "Surely not that!
It's--it's impossible! It can't be possible!"

"Do you think so?" she whispered. "If you but knew the half--the
tenth--of what he has done!"

The rusty side of the tramp loomed up above them. The boat crew flung
up their oars, and Lord James steered in alongside, under the sling
that was being lowered for the rescued lady. She pointed up at it, and
met the reproachful, half-dazed glance of her companion with a look of
compassionate regret for his disappointment. Yet she made no effort to
conceal the love for his friend and rival that shone with tender
radiance from her candid eyes.

"You should know him--his true, his real self!" she said. "Hasten back.
Do not delay to come aboard with me. Hasten ashore and to the cleft.
See for yourself."

She caught the descending sling with a dexterity that astonished him,
and seated herself in it before he could rise to assist her.

"Haul away," she called in a clear voice that held no note of timidity.
Those above at the tackle hastened to obey. As she was swung upwards,
she looked down at the earl and waved him to put off.

"Hasten!" she urged. "Do not wait. I am all right now. Even if he is
returning, go to the cleft and see."

He shook his head, and waited until she had been hauled up the ship's
side. But as her little moccasined feet cleared the bulwarks and Meggs
himself leaned out to draw her inboard, he signed the oarsmen to thrust
off again.

Knowing the course, they made direct for the end of the sunken ledge.
Blake had not returned, nor was he anywhere in sight. They skirted in
along the rocky slope of the cliff foot to where it curved away into
the sand beach of the plain. Lord James sprang ashore alone and
hastened inland along the base of the cliffs.

A brisk walk of ten minutes over the sandy plain brought him to the
grove at the foot of the cleft. In the midst of the trees was a pool,
half choked with the dried mud and rubbish of a recent flood from the
ravine. The wash had obliterated all tracks below; but there were
traces of a trail leading up the ravine over a four-foot ledge. He took
the rock at a bound, and hastened on upwards between the lofty walled
sides of the cleft.

At the first turn he was brought to an abrupt halt. From side to side,
between two outjutting corners of rock, the ravine had been barricaded
with a twelve-foot _boma_ of thorn scrub. It was a fence high enough
and strong enough to stop even a hungry lion. In the centre was a low
opening, partly masked by the dry spiky fronds of a small date palm.

"Gad!" murmured the Englishman. "Some of Tom's engineering! And she
said he started without weapons or tools--on this coast! . . . Yet for
him to have won her--No, no, it's impossible! impossible! American or
not, she's a lady--thoroughbred! He's a true stone, but in the
rough--uncut, unpolished! A girl of her breeding--He's worth it, 'pon
my word, he is; though I never would have fancied that she, of all
girls--She's so different. No! it's impossible! it can't be! Must be
pure fancy on her part--gratitude. It can't be anything more!"

A heavy step sounded on the far side of the barrier, and a deep voice
called out to him: "Hello, there! That you, Jimmy? Thought it about
time you were due. What you doing?--telling yourself how to climb over?
Abase yeh noble knee to the dust and crawl through, me lud."

Without pausing to reply, Lord James stooped and crept through the
narrow passage under the thorny wall. As he straightened up on the
inner side, Blake caught and gripped his hand in a big calloused palm.

"Jimmy!" he exclaimed, his pale blue eyes glistening with the soft
light of deep friendship. "Jimmy boy! to think you beat 'em to it! I
figured ten to one odds that it was a tramp chartered by Papa
Leslie--And then to see you pop up in the sternsheets, spic and span as
a laundry ad! When you sang out--Lord!"

"Ring off, bo! Those're my fingers you're mashing!" objected the victim.

As Blake released him, he stepped aside and ran his eye up and down the
sinewy rag-and-skin-clad form of the engineer. He nodded approvingly.

"Lean, hard as nails, no sign of fever--and after six weeks on this
beastly coast! How'd you do it, old man? You're fit--deuced fit!"

"Fit to give pointers to the Wild Man from Borneo," chuckled Blake. He
drew out a silver cigarette case and snapped open the lid. "See those
little beauties?--No! hands off! Good Lord! those're my arrow tips,
soaking in snake poison! A scratch would do for you as sure as a drink
of cyanide. Brought down an eland with one of those little
points--antelope big as a steer."

"Poison! fancy now!" exclaimed Lord James.

"Yes; from a puff adder that almost got Miss Jenny--fellow big as my
leg. Struck at her as she bent to pick an amaryllis. If it had so much
as grazed her hand or arm--God!"

He looked away, his teeth clenched together and the sweat starting out
on his broad forehead. What he thought of Genevieve Leslie was plainly
evident in his convulsed face and dilated eyes. If he could be so
overwrought by the mere remembrance of a danger that she had escaped,
he must love her, not as most men love, but with all the depth and
strength of his powerful nature. Lord James's lips pressed together and
his gray eyes clouded with pain.

"Close shave, heh?" he muttered.

"Yes," replied Blake. He drew in a deep breath, and added, "Not the
first, though, nor the last. But a miss is as good as a mile, hey,
Jimmy boy?"

"Gad, old man, that sounds natural! Can't say you look it, though--not
altogether. Must get you aboard and into another style of fine raiment.
Fur trousers not good form in this climate, y'know. You picked up that
shirt at a remnant counter, I take it. Come aboard. Must mow that
alfalfa patch before any one suspects you're trying to raise a beard."

The friendly banter seemed to have the contrary effect from that
intended. Blake's face darkened.

"Good Lord, no!" he rumbled. "Go aboard with her? What d'you take me
for?"

"Give you my word, I don't take you at all," replied the puzzled
Englishman.

"What! Hasn't she told you? But of course she wouldn't--unless she saw
you alone," muttered Blake. "Come on up the canon. I've thought it all
out--just what must be done. But it'll take some time to explain. Wait!
Did you come alone?--any one follow you?"

"No. Told 'em to stay near the boat."

"Just the same, I'll make sure," said Blake. He dived into the
barricade passage, and quickly reappeared, dragging at the butt of the
date palm. "There, me lud; the door is shut. Nobody is going to walk in
on our private conference now. Come on."




CHAPTER III

LORD AND MAN


Blake turned about and swung away up the ravine. Lord James followed in
the half-obliterated path, which led along the edge of a tiny spring
rill. The cleft was here closed in on each side with sheer walls of
rock from twenty to thirty feet high. At the point where this small box
canon intersected the middle of the cliff ridge, the gigantic baobab
that Lord James had seen from the steamer, towered skyward, its huge
trunk filling a good third of the width of the gorge. Across from it
and nearer at hand was a thicket of bamboos, around which the spring
rill trickled from a natural basin in the rock.

But the visitor gave scant heed to the natural features of the place.
His glance passed from a great antelope hide, drying on a frame, to the
bamboo racks on which sun-seared strips of flesh were curing over a
smudge fire. Looking to his left, he saw a hut hardly larger than a dog
kennel but ingeniously thatched with bamboo leaves. Then his glance was
caught and held by a curious contrivance of interwoven thorn branches
and creepers, fitted into a high narrow opening in the trunk of the
baobab.

"What's that?--hollow tree?" he asked.

"Yes," answered Blake, without turning. "Sixteen-foot room inside.
That's where the she-leopard and the cubs were smothered. Fired the
gully to drive out the family. All stayed at home and got smothered
'cept old Mr. Leopard. He ran the gantlet. Lord, how he squalled, poor
brute! But they'd have eaten us if we hadn't eaten them. He landed in
the pool, too scorched to see. Settled him with my club."

"Clubbed him?--a leopard! I say now! A bit different, that, to snipe
shooting."

"Well, yes, a trifle different, Jeems--a trifle," conceded Blake.

"My word! What haven't you been through!" burst out the Englishman.
"And to think she, too, went through it all--six weeks of it!"

"That's it!" enthused Blake. "She's the truest, grittiest little girl
the sun ever had the good luck to shine on! If she thinks now I can't
realize--that I'm not going to do the square thing by her! I've been
thinking it all over, Jimmy. I've got it all mapped out what I'm going
to do. Wait, though!"

He sprang ahead and pulled at the thorny contrivance that stopped the
opening in the baobab trunk. It was balanced midway up, on a crossbar.
Almost at a touch, the lower part swung up and outward and the upper
half down and inward. He stepped in under it, hesitated a moment, and
went on into the hollow, with an exclamation of relief: "No, 't isn't
her room any more, thank God!"

Lord James stared. Well as he knew the sterling qualities of his
friend, he had never suspected him of such delicacy. He gazed curiously
around at the unshapely but flawless sand-glazed earthenware set on a
bamboo rack beside the open stone fireplace, at the rough-woven but
strong baskets piled together near the foot of the baobab, at the pouch
of antelope skin, the grass sombreros, the bamboo spits and forks and
spoons--all the many useful utensils that told of the ingenuity and
resourcefulness of his friend.

But, most of all, he was interested in the weighty hardwood club
leaning against the tree trunk and the great bamboo bow hanging above
in a skin sheath beside a quiver full of long feather-tipped arrows. He
was balancing the club when Blake came out of the tree-cave, carrying a
young cocoanut in one hand, and in the other a small pot seemingly full
of dried mud. Lord James replaced the club, and waved his hand around
at the camp.

"'Pon my word, Tom," he commented, "you've out-Crusoed old Robinson!"

"Sure!" agreed Blake. "He had a whole shipful of stuff as a starter,
while we didn't have anything except my magnifying glass and Win's
penknife and keys."

He pulled out a curious sheath-knife made of a narrow ribbon of steel
set in a bone back. "How's that for a blade? Big flat British
keys--good steel. I welded 'em together, end to end."

"Gad! the pater's private keys!" gasped Lord James. "You don't tell me
the rascal was imbecile enough to keep those keys in his
pocket?--certain means of identification if he'd been searched!"

"What!" shouted Blake. "Then the duke he cleaned out was your dad.
_Whew!_"

He whirled the mud-stoppered jug overhead and dashed it down at his
feet. From amidst the shattered fragments he caught up a dirty cloth
that was quilted across in small squares. He held it out to Lord James.

"There you are, Jimmy--my compliments and more or less of your family
heirlooms."

"My word!" murmured the earl, catching eagerly at the cloth. "You got
the loot from him? That's like you, Tom!"

"Look out!" cautioned Blake. "I opened one square to see what it was he
had hidden. You'll find he hadn't been too daffy to melt the
settings--keys or no keys. Say, but it's luck to learn they're yours!
Hope they're all there."

"All the good ones will be. He couldn't have sold or pawned any of the
best stones after we cabled. Gad! won't the pater be tickled! Ah!"

From the open square of which Blake had spoken, his lordship drew out a
resplendent ruby. "Centre stone of Lady Anne's brooch!"

He ran his immaculate finger-tips over the many squares in the cloth.
"A stone in every one--must be all of the really valuable loot! The
settings were out of date--small value. How'd you get it from him, Tom?"

Blake hesitated, and answered in a low tone: "He got hurt the night of
the second cyclone. But he wasn't responsible--poor devil! He must have
been dotty all along. It didn't show much before--but I felt uneasy.
That's why I built that thorn door--so she could bar herself in."

Lord James stared in horrified surprise. "You really do not mean--?"

"Yes--and it almost happened! God!" Again Blake clenched his teeth and
the cold sweat burst out on his forehead.

"My word! That's worse than the snake!" murmured Lord James.

"She--she'd left the door up--heat was stifling," explained Blake. "I
had gone off north, exploring. The beast was crawling in--But I've got
to remember he wasn't responsible--a paranoiac!"

"Ah, yes. And then?" questioned the Englishman, tugging nervously at
the tip of his little blond mustache.

"Then--then--" muttered Blake. "He got what was coming to him. Cyclone
struck like a tornado. Door whirled down and knocked him out of the
opening--smashed him!"

"The end he had earned!"

"Yes--even if he wasn't responsible, he had become just that--a beast.
She had saved his life, too--night I ran down to the beach after eating
a poison fish. Barricade hadn't been finished. He was down with the
fever. They were attacked--jackals, hyenas. She got him safe inside the
tree, with the yelling curs jumping at her."

"My word! she did that?--she? Of all the young ladies I've ever known,
she was the very last I should have expected--"

"What! you've met her before?" demanded Blake.

"Then she hasn't told you?" replied his friend. "Lady Bayrose was one
of my old friends, y'know. Met 'em aboard ship--sailed on the same
steamer, after my run home."

"You did?" muttered Blake, in blank astonishment. "You know her?"

"You must have heard me sing out to her from the boat. Yes, I--er--had
the voyage with her through the Mediterranean and down the Red Sea. But
Lady Bayrose got tiffed at me, and at Aden shifted to a Cape boat. I
had to go on to India alone."

"India?" queried Blake.

"Trailing Hawkins. He first went to India. But he doubled back and
'round to Cape Colony."

"So that's why you didn't get here sooner," said Blake.

"Yes. Didn't notice that the _Impala_ was posted. Didn't know either
you or Miss Leslie was aboard her until after I learned you'd thrown up
the management of that Rand mine. Traced you to Cape Town. Odd that you
and she and Hawkins should all have booked on the same steamer!"

"Think so?" said Blake. "I don't. Winthrope--Hawkins, that is--was
smooth enough to know he'd not be suspected if travelling as a member
of Lady Bayrose's party. He had already wormed himself into her favor.
As for me--well, they had come to look at the mine, and I had shown
Jenny through the workings. Does that make it clear why I threw up the
job and followed them to Cape Town?"

"She had not given you any reason to--surely, not any encouragement?
No, I can't believe it!"

"Course not, you British doughhead! It was all the other way 'round.
Think I didn't realize? She, a lady, and me--what I am! But I couldn't
help it--I just couldn't help myself, Jimmy. Knew her father, too--all
about his millions and how he made them! He did me--twice. You'd think
the very name would have turned me. Yet the minute I set eyes on
her--say!"

"You're certainly hard hit!" murmured the young earl. He flushed, bit
his lip, hesitated, and burst out with impulsive generosity: "Gad, old
man! If it's true--if she really--er--has come to love you, I own that
you've won her fair and square--all this, y'know." He waved his hand
around in a sweeping gesture. "Saved her from all this. Yes--if it's
really true!"

Blake looked away, and spoke in a hushed voice: "It's--it's true,
Jimmy! Only a little while ago, there on the cliff edge when we saw
your steamer, she--she told me. It started yesterday after I bluffed
off the lion. You see, she--"

"Lion?" ejaculated Lord James.

"Yes." Blake flung up his head in an impatient gesture. "The beast
tried to stalk us. Jumped back into the grass when I circled out at
him. I got the grass fired before he screwed up courage to tackle
me.--Don't cut in!--It was then that Jenny--she--she tried to say
something. But I streaked for home. This morning, though, when I saw we
were safe, I was weak enough to let her--speak out."

Lord James hesitated just perceptibly, and then caught his friend's
big, ill-used hand in a cordial clasp. "So--you're engaged!
Congratulations!"

"If only it was just that!" cried Blake. He flushed red under his thick
coat of tan. "I--I suppose I've got to tell you, Jimmy--I must. I need
your help to carry out my plan."

"Your plan?" repeated the Englishman wonderingly.

"To save her from--from committing herself. It isn't fair to her to let
her do it now. She ought to wait till she gets back home, among her own
people. You see she wants to--She--she says that ship captains can--"
He caught his breath, and bent nearer, but with his face half averted.
His voice sank to an almost inaudible murmur--"that ship captains can
marry people."

"Ah!" gasped Lord James. But he recovered on the instant. "Gad! that
_is_ a surprise, old man. Always the lady's privilege, though, to name
the day, y'know. I shipped a stewardess to wait on the women--had hoped
they would all have been saved. She'll do for lady's maid. Also brought
along some women's togs, in case of emergencies. As for yourself,
between mine and Megg's and his own wardrobes, my man can rig you up a
presentable outfit. Clever chap, that Wilton."

"You've gone back to a valet again!" reproached Blake, momentarily
diverted. Then his fists clenched and his brows met in a frown of
self-disgust. "Lord! for me to forget for a second! Look here, Jimmy,
you're clean off. You don't savvy a little bit. Don't you see the
point? I can't let her commit herself now--here! You know I can't. It
wouldn't be fair to her, and you know it."

Lord James met his look with a clear and unfaltering gaze, and answered
steadily: "That all depends on one thing, Tom. If she really loves
you--"

"D'you think she's the kind to do it, if she didn't?" demanded Blake.
"No, that's not the point, at all. I've tried to be square, so far. She
saw what I'm like when I cut loose--there on the ship. I was two-thirds
drunk when the cyclone flung us ashore. No excuse--except that all of
them had turned me down from the first--there at Cape Town. Yes, she
knows just what I'm like when the craving is on me. Yesterday, down
there at the south headland, before the lion came around, I gave her
some idea of what I've done--all that."

"You've lived a cleaner life than most who're considered eligible!"
exclaimed Lord James. "I know that with respect to women, you're the
cleanest--"

"Eligible!" broke in Blake. "No man is that, far as she's concerned,
unless it's you, Jimmy."

"Chuck it! You're always knocking yourself. But about this plan that's
bothering you? Out with it."

"That's talking! All right, here it is, straight--I want you to get
back aboard and steam away, fast as you can hike. You can run into Port
Mozambique, if you're going north, and arrange for a boat to call by
for me."

"You're daft!" cried Lord James. "Daft! Mad as a hatter! Can you fancy
for a moment I'd go off and leave you here?"

"Guess you can't help yourself, Jimmy. The most you can do is force me
to take to the jungle. You can't get me aboard. I tell you, I've
figured it all out. I won't go aboard and let her do--what she's
planning to do. You ought to know. Jimmy, that when I say a thing, I
mean it. She's not going to set eyes on me again until after she's back
in America. Is that plain?"

"Tom--old man! that's like you!" cried the Englishman, and again he
gripped the other's rough hand. "I see now what you're driving at. It's
a thing few men would have the bigness to do. You're giving up a
certainty, because your love for her is great enough, unselfish enough
to consider only her good. D'you fancy I could do such a thing? You're
risking everything. Shows you're fit, even for her!"

"It's little enough--for her!" put in Blake.

"That's like you to say it," rejoined his friend. "See here, old man.
You've made a clean breast of it all. I should be no less candid. You
know now that I met her before--was all those weeks with her aboard
ship. Need I tell you that I, too, love her?"

"You?" growled Blake. "But of course! I don't blame you. You couldn't
help it."

"It's been an odd shuffling of the cards," remarked his friend. "What
if--Aren't you afraid there may be a new deal, Tom? If you don't come
aboard, she and I will be together at least as far as Zanzibar, and
probably all the way to Aden, before I can find some one else to take
her on to England."

"What of that?" rejoined Blake. "Think I don't know you're square,
after the months we roughed-it together?"

"Then--But I can't leave you here in this hell-hole! You've no right to
ask me to do that, Tom. If I could bring my guns ashore and stay with
you--But she'll never be more in need of some one, if you insist upon
your plan. I say! I have it--We'll slip you aboard after dark. You can
lie in covert till we reach Port Mozambique. I trust I'm clever enough
to keep her diverted that long. Can put it that you're outfitting--all
that, y' know."

"Say, that's not so bad," admitted Blake, half persuaded. "I could slip
ashore, soon as we ran into harbor, leaving her a note to tell her why."

"Right-o, Tammas! But wait. I'll go you one better. You can write your
note and give it out that you've shifted to another ship. But you'll
stay aboard with us, under cover. Of all the steamers that touch at
Aden, one will soon come along with parties whom either she or I know.
Then off she goes to the tight little island, and we follow after in
our little tramp or on another liner. Hey, Tammas?"

"Well, I don't know," hesitated Blake. "It sounds all right."

"It _is_ all right," insisted the younger man. "You'll be aboard the
same steamer with her as far as Aden, to keep an eye on me, y'know."

"On you?"

"You'd better. My word, Tom! don't you realize? If you--er--put it off,
I'm bound to try for myself. Can't help it!"

"Think you've got a show, do you?" rallied Blake.

"I fancied I had as much chance as any one, before all this occurred. I
at least should have been in the running, had it not been for the
wreck--and you."

Blake stood for several moments, with his head down-bent and eyes fixed
upon the ground. When he looked up and spoke, his face was grave and
his voice deep and low.

"It's all of a piece, Jimmy. I don't blame you. Fact is, it's all the
better. I've had all the advantage here. She and I've been living in
the Cave Age, and I've proved myself an A-1 cave-man, if I do say it
myself. It may be hard for her to get the right perspective of things,
even after she's back in her own environment. Understand?"

"I take it, you mean she has seen the display of your strongest and
best qualities, in circumstances that did not call for such
non-essentials as mere polish--drawing room culture."

"You mean, for all that counts most with ninety-nine per cent of your
class and hers," rejoined Blake. "And there's the craving, too. I'll
have to fight that out before I'll be fit to let her do anything. Think
I don't know the difference between us? No! I'm going to go the limit,
Jimmy. I can't do less, and be square to her. So I give you full leave.
You're free to play your hand for all there is in it. I'll stay here--"

"No--no! I'll not hear of it, Tom!"

"Yes, you will. I'll stay here, and you'll see her clear through to
America--to Chicago--right to her papa's house and in through the door.
Understand? I don't make a single condition. You're to try your best to
win; and if you do, why--don't you see?--it'll show that this which she
thinks is the real thing is all a mistake."

"My word, old man! you'd not give her up without a fight? That wouldn't
be like you!"

"It all depends. I won't if it's true she loves me--God! no! I'd go
through hell-fire for her!"

"If I know you, Tom, you'll suffer that and more, should the event
prove she is mistaken as to the nature of her present feeling."

"What of it?" muttered Blake, with a look that told the other the
uselessness of persuasion. "Think I'd let her marry me, long as there's
a shadow of a chance of her being mistaken?"

"Very well, then," replied his friend. "You've said your say. Now I'll
say mine. I can ease the tedium of Miss Leslie's trip up the coast; and
I stand ready to do so--on two conditions. In the first place; you're
to come aboard and stay aboard. After I find a chaperon for her at
Aden, you're to go on home with me, to visit at Ruthby."

"Excuse _me!_" said Blake. "I can see myself parading around your
ancestral stone-heap with your ducal dad!"

"You not only can, but will," rejoined the earl. "Come now. You'll be
allowed to write that note at Port Mozambique, and keep in covert till
Miss Leslie is safe off the ship. But you'll do the rest--you'll not
stay here. Another thing--you have my word for it now--I shall endeavor
no more than yourself to win her, until after she has returned to her
home in the States."

"Lord, Jimmy! that's square--to me, I mean. But how about her?"

"No fear," reassured the Englishman. "She's received everywhere. She's
been presented--at Court, y'know. If she stays over on this side a bit,
there'll be dozens of 'em dancing attendance on her. Come, now; it's
all settled."

"Well, I don't know," hesitated Blake.

"I tell you, you'll sail with us, else I shall leave her at Port
Mozambique and come back for you."

"Um-m--if you take it that hard! But are you sure you can keep her
satisfied till we put in there?"

"Trust me for that. If she becomes apprehensive, I'll put it that you'd
rather be married in port, by the American consul."

"That's no lie. Say, what's the use of waiting till dark? You said
there's a stewardess aboard. Jenny will sure be below with her
until--until she's ready for the ceremony."

"Quite true, yes. Then it's all settled. At Port Mozambique, your note;
you bunk forward, under cover, till Aden; then home with me for a
visit; neither of us see her beyond Aden until we follow her to the
States."

"Since you insist--yes, it's a go, Jimmy!" agreed Blake. He turned to
hasten away along the gorge, past the baobab. "I'll be back soon. Got
to pull down that flag."

Lord James followed, and saw him ascend to the cliff crest on the
right, up a withered, leafless tree. The trunk had been burned through
at the base in such manner that the top had fallen over against the
edge of the rocky wall. A pile of stones offered an easy means of
reaching the lower branches. The earl climbed up into the top, and
watched his friend run forward over the broken ledges of the ridge.

The bamboo flagstaff was wrenched from its supports and lowered amidst
a wild commotion of the nesting sea birds. Blake came back at a
jog-trot, regardless of the fierce heat of the sun. In his arms were
gathered the tattered folds of the signal flag.

"That's one thing I'm going to take away," he said, in response to the
other's look of inquiry. "She sewed that leopard-skin dress all by
herself, with a thorn for needle, so we could have her skirt for the
flag."

"Fancy!" murmured the Englishman. "With a thorn, you say!"

Blake nodded, and followed him down the tree-ladder and back along the
cleft to the baobab. There he paused to take down his archery outfit.

"Guess I'll keep these, too, as souvenirs," he remarked. He pointed to
the blackened strips of flesh on the curing racks. "May I ask Lord
Avondale to stay to dinner?"

"Very kind, I'm sure. But I've a previous engagement," declined his
lordship.

"Now, now, Jeems. Needn't turn up your aristocratic nose at first-class
jerked antelope. Ought to 've been with us the first three days. Great
_menu_--raw fish, cocoanuts, more cocoanuts, and then, just when we
were whetting our teeth for a nice fat snake or an _entree_ of
caterpillars, I landed that old papa leopard. Managed to haggle some of
the india rubber off his bones. Tough!--but it was filling. All the
same, we didn't wear out any more teeth on him after we got up the
cleft and found the cubs. They were tender as spring lambs."

"And Miss Genevieve went through all that!"

"Yes. Told you she's the grittiest little girl ever--and a lady! My
God, when I think of it all! . . . Well, she's come through it alive.
What's more, she's not going to suffer any bad consequences from it,
not if I can help it! Come on. Got your heirloom rag?"

"Safe--inside pocket."

"All right, then. Come on. You don't think I'm aching to hang 'round
this cursed hole, do you?--now that she's gone!"

He flung his bow and quiver over his shoulder, thrust the signal flag
into the skin pouch, and turned to go.

Lord James stepped before him, with hand outstretched.

"One moment, Tom! Here's for home and America--a fair field, and best
man wins!"

"It's a go!" cried Blake, gripping the proffered hand. "May she get the
one that'll make her happiest!"




CHAPTER IV

THE EARL AND THE OTHERS


Miss Dolores Gantry shook the snow from her furs, and with the graceful
assurance of a yacht running aslant a craft-swarming harbor, cut into
the crowd that surged through the Union Station. She brought up in an
empty corner of the iron fence, close beside the exit gate through
which passengers were hurrying from the last train that had arrived.
Her velvety black eyes flashed an eager glance at the out-pouring
stream, perceived a Mackinaw jacket, and turned to make swift
comparison of the depot clock and the tiny bracelet watch on her
slender wrist.

As she again looked up she met the ardent gaze and ingratiating smile
of an elegant young man who was sauntering up the train-platform to the
exit gate, fastidiously apart from his fellow passengers. He raised his
hat, and at the girl's curt nod of recognition, hastened through the
gate for a more intimate greeting.

"My dear Dodie!" he exclaimed, reaching for her hand. "This is a most
delightful surprise."

"My dear Laffie!" she mocked, deftly slipping both slender hands into
her muff. "I quite agree as to it's being a surprise."

"Then you didn't come down to meet me?"

"You?" she asked, with an irony too fine drawn for his conceit. "Come
to meet you?"

"Yes. Didn't you get my note saying that all work on my bridge was
stopped by the cold and that I would run down to see you?"

"To see me--plus the world, the flesh, and the devil!"

"Now, Dodie!" he protested, with a smirk on his handsome, richly
colored face.

The girl's eyes hardened into black diamonds as she met his assured
gaze. "Mr. Brice-Ashton, you will hereafter kindly address me as 'Miss
Gantry.' You must be aware that I am now _out_."

"Oh, I've no objections, just so _we're_ not out," he punned.

She gave him her shoulder, and peered eagerly through the pickets of
the iron fence at a train that was backing into the station. Ashton
shrugged, lighted a gilt-tipped cigarette, and asked: "Permit me to
inquire, Miss Gon-tray, if I'm not the happy man for whom you wait, who
is?"

She replied without turning: "How can I tell until I see him? I think
it will be the hero. If not, it will be the earl."

"Hero?--earl?" repeated Ashton.

"Yes, whichever one Vievie leaves for me."

"What! Genevieve? Miss Leslie? She's not--Is she really coming home so
soon?--when she had such a chance for a gay season in London?"

"Don't give yourself away. The London season is in summer."

"You don't say! Well, in England, then. Why didn't you write me?"

"I'm not running a correspondence-school or news agency, Mr.
Brice-Ashton."

"Oh, cut it, Dodie! Post me up, that's a good girl! What I've heard has
been so muddled. This hero business, for a starter--what about it? I
thought it was an English duke that chartered the steamer to rescue
Genevieve."

"No, only the son of a duke,--James Scarbridge, the Right Honorable the
Earl of Avondale."

"My ante!"

"It's in the jack-pot, and as good as lost. What chance have you now to
win Genevieve,--with a real earl and a real hero in the field?"

"Earl _and_ hero? I thought he was the hero."

"That's one of the jokes on mamma. Earl Jimmy had nothing to do with
the rescue ships that Uncle Herbert cabled to search the Mozambique
coast. No; Jeems chartered a tramp steamer on his own account, to look
for friend Tommy. He found the heroic Thomas and, incidentally, the
fair Genevieve--who wasn't so _very_ fair after weeks of broiling in
that East African sun."

"It's wonderful--wonderful! To think that she alone of all aboard her
steamer should have survived shipwreck on that savage coast!"

"She didn't survive alone--she couldn't have. That's where Tommy came
in. There was another man, but he didn't count for much, I guess.
Vievie merely wrote that he died during the second cyclone."

"What an experience!--and for a girl like Genevieve!"

"She, of all girls!" chimed in Dolores enviously. "You remember she
never went in for sports of any kind, not even riding. And for her to
be flung out that way into the tropical jungles, among lions and
crocodiles and snakes and things! Why can't I ever have romantic
adventures?"

"You wouldn't give the man a chance to prove himself a hero," objected
Ashton. "You'd shoot the lions yourself."

"I _am_ good at archery. A bow and arrows, you know, were all that Mr.
Blake had."

"Blake?" repeated Ashton in rather a peculiar tone.

"Yes, Tommy the hero, otherwise Mr. Thomas Blake."

"Blake--Thomas Blake?" echoed Ashton.

"I--rather odd--I once--seems to me I once knew a man of that name. You
don't happen to know if he's a--that is, what his occupation is, do
you?"

Ashton was not the kind of man from whom is expected hesitancy of
speech. The girl spared him a swift glance from the out-flocking stream
of passengers. His fixed gaze and slack lower jaw betrayed even more
uneasiness than had his voice.

"Don't be afraid," she mocked. "He's not a minister; so he couldn't
marry her without help, and he's not done it since the rescue."

"Not done it?" repeated Ashton vaguely.

"No. According to mamma's letter, Earl Jimmy outgeneraled the
low-browed hero. At Aden he put Vievie on a P. and O. steamer, in the
charge of Lady Chetwynd. He and the hero followed in the tramp steamer
to England, where he kept friend Thomas at his daddy's ducal castle
until Vievie made mamma start home with her. You know mamma streaked it
for London, at Uncle Herbert's expense, the moment Vievie cabled from
Port Mozambique that she was safe. Uncle Herbert would have sent me,
too, but mamma wouldn't have it. Just like her! It was her first chance
to do England and crowd in on Vievie's noble friends. She said I might
spoil the good impression she hoped to make, because I'm too much of a
tomboy."

"But if it's your mother and Genevieve you're waiting for--I understood
you to say the earl and that man Blake."

"Oh, they followed on the next steamer. Mamma wired that they are all
coming on together from New York."

"Where's Mr. Leslie? Did he go to meet them?"

"He? You should know how busy Uncle Herbert always is. I called by his
office for him. He sent out word to go on. He would follow."

"What! after all Genevieve went through, all those hardships and
dangers? You'd think that even he--"

"Look I oh, look I there she is now!" cried the girl, pressing close
against the fence and waving her handkerchief between the pickets.

"Where? Yes, I see! beside your mother!" exclaimed Ashton, and he
lifted his hat on his cane.

The signals won them recognition from the approaching ladies, the
younger of whom responded with a quietly upraised hand. Beside her
walked a rosy-cheeked blonde young Englishman, while in front a big
square-built man thrust the crowd forward ahead of them. They were
followed by two maids, a valet, and two porters, with hand luggage.

As the party emerged from the gateway the younger lady leaned forward
and spoke in a clear soft voice: "Turn to the left, Tom."

The big man in the lead swerved out of the crowd and across the corner
past Miss Gantry, who was advancing with outstretched arms, her eyes
sparkling with joyous excitement.

"Vievie!" she half shrieked.

Blake glanced over his shoulder and stopped short at sight of the girls
locked in each other's arms. After a moment's fervent embrace, Dolores
thrust her cousin out at arm's-length and surveyed her from top to toe
with radiant eyes.

"Vievie! Vievie! I really can't believe it! To think you're home
again--when we never expected to see you--and you've got almost all the
tan off already!"

Genevieve looked up into the vivacious face of the younger girl with an
affectionate smile on her delicately curved lips and tears of joy in
her hazel eyes.

"It _is_ good to be home again, dear!" she murmured. She drew Dolores
about to face the big man, who stood looking on with rather a surly
expression, in his pale blue eyes. "Tom," she said, "this is my cousin,
Miss Gantry. Dolores, Mr. Blake."

"The hee-row!" sighed Dolores, clasping a hand dramatically on her
heart.

Blake's strong face lighted with a humorous smile. "Guess I've got to
own up to it, Miss Dolores. Anything Jenny--Miss Leslie--says goes."

As he spoke he raised his English steamer cap slightly and extended a
square powerful hand. Dolores entrusted her slender fingers to the
calloused palm, which closed upon them with utmost gentleness.

"Really, Mr. Blake!" she exclaimed, "I mean it. You _are_ a hero."

Blake's smile broadened, and as he released her hand, he glanced at her
mother, who had drawn a little apart with the Englishman. "Don't let me
shut out your mamma and Jimmy."

"Oh, mamma believes that any display of family affection is immodest,"
she replied. "But duty, you know--duty!"

She whirled about and impressed a loud salute upon the drooping jowl of
the stately Mrs. Gantry.

"Dolores!" admonished the dame. "When _will_ you remember you're no
longer a hoyden? Such impetuosity--and before his lordship!"

"Goodness! Is he really?" panted her daughter, surveying the Englishman
with candid curiosity.

"Is he really!" Mrs. Gantry was profoundly shocked. "If you weren't
out, I'd see that you had at least two more years in a finishing
school."

"Horrors! that certainly would finish me. But you forget yourself,
mamma. You keep his earlship waiting for his introduction."

The Englishman shot a humorous glance at Blake, and drew out his
monocle. He screwed it into his eye and stared blandly at the
irrepressible Miss Gantry, while her mother, with some effort, regained
a degree of composure. She bowed in a most formal manner.

"The Right Honorable the Earl of Avondale: I present my daughter."

The earl dropped his monocle, raised his cap, and bowed with unaffected
grace. Dolores nodded and caught his hand in her vigorous clasp.

"Glad to meet you," she said. "It's rare we meet a real live earl in
Chicago. Most of 'em are caught in New York, soon as they land."

"It's good of you to say it, Miss Gantry," he replied, tugging at the
tip of his little mustache. "I've been over before, you know. Came in
disguise. This time I was able to march through New York with colors
flying, thanks to your mother and Miss Leslie."

Dolores sent her glance flashing after his, and saw Genevieve
responding coldly to the effusive greeting of Ashton. The young man was
edging towards the earl. But Genevieve turned to introduce him first to
her companion.

"Mr. Blake, Mr. Brice-Ashton."

"I'm sure I'm--pleased to meet you, Mr. Blake," murmured Ashton, his
voice breaking slightly as Blake grasped his gloved hand in the bare
calloused palm.

"Any friend of Miss Jenny's!" responded Blake with hearty cordiality.
But as he released the other's hand, he muttered half to himself,
"Ashton?--Ashton? Haven't I met you before, somewhere?"

As Ashton hesitated over his reply, Genevieve spoke for him: "No doubt
it's the familiarity of the name, Tom. Mr. Brice-Ashton's father is Mr.
George Ashton, the financier."

"What! him?" exclaimed Blake. "But no. It's his face. I remember now.
Met him in your father's office."

"In father's office?"

"When I was acting as secretary for your father, Miss Genevieve,"
Ashton hastened to explain. "You remember, I was in your father's
office for a year. That was before I succeeded with my--plans for the
Michamac cantilever bridge and went to take charge of the construction
as resident engineer."

"Your plans?" muttered Blake incredulously.

"To be sure. I remember now," said Genevieve absently, and she turned
to look about, with a perplexed uptilting of her arched brows. "But,
Dolores, where is papa?"

"Coming--coming, Viviekins," reassured her cousin, breaking short an
animated conversation with the earl. "Don't worry, dear. He'll be along
in a few minutes."

Genevieve stepped forward beside Blake to peer at the crowd. Dolores
took pity on Ashton, who had edged around, eager for an introduction to
the titled stranger.

"Oh, your earlship," she remarked, "this, by the way, is Mr. Laffie
Brice-Ashton. I'd like to present him to you, but I'm afraid your Right
Honorableness wouldn't take him even as a gift if you knew him as well
as I do."

"Oh, now, Do--Miss Gon-tray!" protested Ashton.

The Englishman bowed formally and adjusted his monocle, oblivious of
the hand that Ashton had stripped of its glove.

"Your--your grace--I should say, your lordship," stammered Ashton,
hastily dropping his hand, "I'm extremely delighted--honored, I
mean--at the unexpected pleasure of meeting your lordship."

"Ah, really?" murmured his lordship.

"Mr. Brice-Ashton's father is one of our most eminent financiers,"
interposed Mrs. Gantry.

"Ah, really? What luck!" politely exclaimed the Englishman. He stepped
past the son of the eminent financier, to address Genevieve in an
impulsive, boyish tone, "I say, Miss Leslie, hop up on a suitcase
between Tom and me. You'll see over their heads."

"Hold on," said Blake, who was staring towards the outer door. "He's
coming now."

"Where? Are you sure, Tom?" asked Genevieve, here eyes radiant.

"Sure, I'm sure," said Blake. "Met your father _once_. That was enough
for me."

"Tom! You'll not-?"

"Enough for me to remember him," he explained with grim humor. "Don't
worry. I don't want a row any more than you do."

"Or than he will! He'll not forget that had it not been for you--"

"And Jimmy!"

"Chuck it, old man," put in Lord James. "Miss Leslie knows as well as
you do that one or more of the steamers chartered by her father must
certainly have sighted your signal flag within a fortnight. I merely
had the luck to be first."

"A lot of things can happen inside two weeks, down on the Mozambique
coast. Eh, Miss Jenny?" said Blake.

For the moment, forgetful even of her father, Genevieve clasped her
gloved hands and gazed upwards over the heads of the rushing multitude
at a vision of swampy lagoons, of palm clumps and tangled jungles, of
towering cliffs, and hot sand beaches, all aglare with the fierce
downbeat of the tropical sun.




CHAPTER V

A REFRACTORY HERO


A short, stout, gray-haired man burst out of the crowd, jerked off his
hat to Mrs. Gantry, and hastened forward, his gray-brown eyes fixed
hungrily upon Genevieve. A moment later he had her in his arms. She
returned his embrace with fervor yet with a well-bred quietness that
drew a nod of approval from Mrs. Gantry.

"So! you're home--at last--my dear!" commented Mr. Leslie, patting his
daughter's back with a sallow, vein-corded hand.

"At last, papa! I should have hurried to you at once, in spite of your
cables, if you hadn't said you were starting for Arizona."

"Couldn't tell how long I'd be on that trip. Wanted you to enjoy the
month in England, since Lady Chetwynd had asked you. But come now. I
must see you started home. Cut short one Board meeting. Must be at
another within half an hour."

He stepped apart from her and jerked out his watch.

"Yes, papa, only--" She paused and looked at him earnestly. "Did you
not receive my telegram, that we had met Mr. Blake and Lord James in
New York, and that they were to come on with us?"

"Hey?" snapped Mr. Leslie, his eyes glinting keen and cold below their
shaggy brows. First to be transfixed by their glance was young Ashton,
who stood toying with the fringe of Dolores' muff. "What's this, sir?
What you doing here?"

Ashton gave back a trifle before the older man's irascibility, but
answered with easy assurance: "I thought it would do no harm to run
down for a few days. All work at Michamac is stopped--frozen up tight."

"It's not the way your father got his start in life--frivolity! Stick
to your work all the time--stick!" rejoined Mr. Leslie. He turned and
met the monocled stare of the earl. "H'm. This, I suppose, is the
gentleman who--"

"My dear Herbert, permit me," interposed Mrs. Gantry. "Ah--the Right
Honorable the Earl of Avondale: I have the honor to present--"

"Glad to meet you, sir!" broke in Mr. Leslie, clutching the
Englishman's hand in a nervous grip. "Glad of the chance to thank you
in person!"

"But, I say, I'm not the right man, y' know," protested Lord James.
"The small part I had in it is not worth mentioning." He laid a hand on
Blake's broad shoulder. "It's my friend Thomas Blake you should thank."

Mr. Leslie stepped back and eyed Blake's impassive face with marked
coldness. "Your friend Blake?" he repeated.

"Old friend--camp-mate, chum--all over Western America and South
Africa. It's he who's entitled to the credit for the rescue of Miss
Leslie."

"We'll talk about your part later. You'll, of course, call on us," said
Mr. Leslie. He fixed his narrowing eyes on Blake. "H'm. So you're Tom
Blake--the same one."

"That's no lie," replied Blake dryly.

"You heard me say I'm busy. Have no time to-day. I'll give you an
appointment for to-morrow, at my office, ten A. M. sharp."

"Thanks. But you're a bit too previous," said Blake. "I haven't asked
for any appointment with you that I know of."

"But, Tom!" exclaimed Genevieve, astonished at the hostility in his
tone, "of course you'll go. Papa wishes to thank you for--for all
you've done. To-day, you see, he's so very busy."

Blake's hard eyes softened before her appealing glance, only to stare
back sullenly at her father.

"I'm not asking any thanks from him, Miss Jenny," he replied.

The girl caught the arm of her father, who stood glowering irritably at
Blake. "Papa, I--I don't understand why you and Tom--Couldn't
you--won't you please be a little more cordial? Wait! I have it!" She
flashed an eager glance at Blake. "Tom, you'll dine with us this
evening."

He looked at Lord James, and replied steadily: "Sorry, Miss Jenny. You
know I'd like to come. But I've got a previous engagement."

"If I ask you to break it, Tom?"

"Can't do it. I've given my word--worse luck!"

"But I do so wish you and papa to come to an understanding."

"Guess I understand him already; so it's no use to--There now, don't
worry. Long as you want me to, I'll accept his polite invitation for
to-morrow."

"Ten A.M. sharp!" rasped Mr. Leslie. He drew Genevieve about, and
rushed her off, with a curt call to Mrs. Gantry: "Come, Amice. Dolores
brought the coupe. I'll put you in. The maids and baggage can follow in
my car. Hurry up."

Genevieve was whirled away into the thick of the crowd, with scarcely
time for a parting glance at Blake and Lord James. Mrs. Gantry lingered
an instant to address the young Englishman:

"Pray do not forget, earl, you are to dine with me."

As Lord James bowed in polite agreement, Ashton, who had been
scribbling on one of his cards, held it out. "Pardon me, your lordship.
Here's a list of my favorite clubs. Look me up. I'll steer you to all
the gay spots in little old Chi."

"Mr. Brice-Ashton is one of our hustling young grain speculators,"
explained Dolores. "Before he went to Michamac he almost cornered the
market in wild oats."

"Now, Miss Dodie!" smirked Ashton. "Wait! I'll do your elbowing."

But the girl was already plunging into the crowd, in the wake of her
mother, the maids, and the porters. Ashton hastened after, in a vain
attempt to overtake her. Crowds part easier before a pretty, smiling,
fashionably dressed girl than before a foppish young man who affects
the French mode.

The card with the list of clubs fell from the hand that Lord James
raised to screw in his monocle.

"Stow it, Jimmy," growled Blake. "I feel just prime for smashing that
fool window."

Lord James slipped the monocle into his pocket, and twisted at the end
of his short mustache.

"Don't blame you, old man," he remarked. "Her guv'nor _was_ a bit
crusty. Quite a clever girl that--the cousin--eh?"

"Miss Dolores? She sure is a hummer. Doesn't take after her mother; so
she's all right," assented Blake. He added eagerly, "Say, Jimmy, she's
just the one for you. You're so blondy blonde you need a real brunette
to set off your charms."

"Sorry, Tom. Saw too much of some one else coming up to Aden--and
before. Shouldn't have to remind you of that."

"Damn the luck!" swore Blake. "Well, we've come to the show-down. She's
home now; agreement's off."

"To-morrow," corrected his friend.

"Lord! If only you weren't you! I'd knock you clean out of the running!"

"Rotten luck!" murmured Lord James sympathetically. "Had it been any
other girl, now! But having met her before you did--Deuce take it, old
man, how could I help it?"

"'T ain't your fault, Jimmy. You know I don't blame you. I don't forget
you began to play fair just as soon as you got next to how matters
stood between.--how they stood with me."

"Couldn't play the cad, you know. I say, though, it's time we talked it
all over again. Give me your trunk check. I'll have my man send your
luggage to my hotel. You're to keep on bunking with me."

"No," replied Blake. "It was all right, long as we were travelling. Now
I've got to hunt a hallroom and begin scratching gravel."

"But at least until you find a position."

"No. I'm sure of something first pop, if old Grif is in town. You
remember, I once told you all about him--M. F. Griffith, my old
engineer--man who boosted me from a bum to a transitman. Whitest man
that ever was! Last I heard, he'd located here in Chicago as a
consulting engineer. He'll give me work, or find it for me; and
Mollie--that's Mrs. Grif--she'll board me, if she has to set up a bed
in her parlor to do it."

"Oh, if you're set on chucking me," murmured Lord James. "But I'll stay
by you till you've looked around. If you don't find your friend, you're
to come with me."

"Must think I need a chaperon," rallied Blake in a fond growl. "Well,
signal your Man Friday, and we'll run a line to the nearest directory."

Lord James signed to his valet, who stood near, discreetly observant.
On the instant the man stepped forward with his master's hand luggage,
and reached down to grasp Blake's suitcase, which had been left by one
of the porters. But Blake was too quick for him. Catching up the
suitcase himself, he swung away through the crowd and up the broad
stairway, to the Bureau of Information.

Two minutes later he was copying an address from the city business
directory.

"Got his office O.K.," he informed his friend. "Over on Dearborn
Street. Next thing's to see if he's in town. Shunt your
collar-buttoner, and come on. We can walk over inside ten minutes."

Lord James instructed his valet to take a taxicab to the hotel. He
himself proceeded to button up his overcoat from top to bottom and turn
up the collar.

"Your balmy native clime!" he gibed, staring ruefully through the depot
windows at the whirling snowstorm without. "If I freeze my Grecian
nose, you'll have to buy me a wax one."

Blake chuckled. "Remember that night up in the Kootenay when the
blizzard struck us and we lost the road?"

"Pleasant time to recall it!" rejoined Lord James, with a shiver. "But
come on. I'm keen to meet your Mr. Griffith."




CHAPTER VI

THREE OF A KIND


They reached the great office building on Dearborn Street, red-faced
and tingling from the whirling drive of the powdery snow. It was so dry
with frost that scarcely a flake clung to their coats when they pushed
in through the storm doors. The elevator shot them up to the top floor
of the building before they could catch their breath in the close,
steam-heated atmosphere.

"_Whew!_" said Blake, stepping out and dropping his suitcase, to shed
his English raincoat. "Talk about Mozambique! Guess you know now you're
in Hammurica, me lud. All the way from the Pole to Panama in one swing
of the street door."

"What was your friend's number?" asked Lord James, eying the doors
across the corridor.

"Seventeen-fifteen. Must be down this way," answered Blake.

Catching up his suitcase, he led around to the rear corner of the
building. At the end of the side hall they came to a door marked "No.
1715." On the frosted glass below the number there was painted in plain
black letters a modest sign:

M. F. GRIFFITH, C. E. CONSULTING ENGINEER

Blake led the way in and across to the plain table-desk where a young
clerk was checking up a surveyor's field book.

"Hello," said Blake. "Mr. Griffith in?"

"Why, yes, he's in. But I think he's busy," replied the clerk, starting
to rise. "I'll see. What business?"

"Don't bother, sonny," said Blake. "We'll just step in and sit down."

The clerk stared, but resumed his seat, while Blake crossed to the door
marked "Private," and motioned Lord James to follow him in. When they
entered, a lank, gray-haired man sat facing them at a table-desk as
plain as the clerk's. It was covered with drawings, over which the
veteran engineer was poring with such intentness that he failed to
perceive his callers.

"Hello! What's up now?" asked Blake in a casual tone. "Going to bridge
Behring Straits?"

"Hey?" demanded the worker, glancing up with an abstracted look.

His dark eyes narrowed as he took in the trim figure of the earl and
Blake's English cap and tweeds. But at sight of Blake's face he shoved
back his chair and came hurrying around the end of the desk, his thin
dry face lighted by a rare smile of friendship. He warily caught the
tip of Blake's thick fingers in his bony clasp.

"Well! I'll be--switched!" he croaked. "What you doing here, Tommy?
Thought we'd got rid of you for good."

"Guess you'll have to lump it," rejoined Blake. "I'm here with both
feet, and I want a job--P-D-Q. First, though, I want you to shake hands
with my friend, Jimmy Scarbridge--Hold on! Wait a second."

He drew himself up pompously, and bowed to Lord James in burlesque
mimicry of Mrs. Gantry. "Aw, beg pawdon, m'lud. Er--the--aw--Right
Hon'able the--aw--Earl of Avondale: I present--aw--Mistah Griffith."

"Chuck it! The original's enough and to spare," cut in his lordship. He
turned to Griffith with unaffected cordiality. "Glad to meet one of
Tom's other friends, Mr. Griffith."

"The only other," added Blake.

"Then I'm still gladder!" said Lord James, gripping the bony hand of
Griffith. "Don't let Tom chaff you. My name's just Scarbridge--James
Scarbridge."

"Owh, me lud! Himpossible!" gasped Blake. "And your papa a juke!"

At sight of Griffith's upcurving eyebrows, Lord James smiled resignedly
and explained: "Quite true--as to His Grace, y'know. But I assure you
that even in England I am legally only a commoner. It's only by
courtesy--custom, you know--that I'm given my father's second title."

"That's all right, Mr. Scarbridge," assured Griffith, in turn. "Glad to
meet you. Have a seat."

While the callers drew up chairs for themselves, he returned to his
seat and hauled out a box of good cigars. Blake helped himself and
passed the box to Lord James. Griffith took out an old pipe and
proceeded to load it with rank Durham.

"Well?" he croaked, as he handed over a match-box. "What's the good
word, Tommy?"

"Haven't you heard?" replied Blake. "I'm a hero, the real live
article,--T. Blake, C. E. H. E., R. O.--Oh!"

"No joshing, you Injin," admonished Griffith, pausing with a lighted
match above the bowl of his pipe.

Lord James gazed reproachfully at the grinning Blake. "He tries to
belittle it, Mr. Griffith, but it's quite true. Haven't you seen about
it in the press?"

"Too busy over this Arizona dam," said Griffith, jerking his pipe
towards the drawings on his desk.

"What dam?" demanded Blake, bending forward, keenly alert.

"Zariba--big Arizona irrigation project. Simple as A, B, C, except the
dam itself. That has stumped half a dozen of the best men. Promoters
are giving me a try at it now. But I'm beginning to think I've bitten
off more 'n I can chew."

"You?" said Blake incredulously.

"Yes, me. When it comes to applying what's in the books, I'm not so
worse. You know that, Tommy. But this proposition--Only available dam
site is across a stretch of bottomless bog, yet it's got to hold a
sixty-five foot head of water."

"Je-ru-salem!" whistled Blake. "Say, you've sure got to give me a shy
at that, Grif. It can't be worked out--that's a cinch. Just the same,
I'd like to fool with the proposition."

Griffith squinted at the younger engineer through his pipe smoke, and
grunted: "Guess I'll _have_ to let you try, if you're set on it." He
nodded to Lord James. "You know how much use it is bucking against
Tommy. The boys used to call him a mule. They were half wrong. That
half is bulldog."

"Aw, come off!" put in Blake. "You know it's just because I hate to
quit."

"That's straight. You're no quitter. Shouldn't wonder if you held on to
this dam problem till you swallowed it."

"Stow the kidding," said Blake, embarrassed.

"I'm giving it to you straight. This dam has made a lot of good ones
quit. I'm about ready to quit, myself. But I'll be--switched if I don't
think you'll make a go of it, Tommy."

"In your eye!"

"No." Griffith took out his pipe and fixed an earnest gaze on Blake.
"I'm not one to slop over. You know that. I can put it all over you in
mathematics--in everything that's in the books. So can a hundred or
more men in this country. Just the same, there's something--you've got
something in you that ain't in the books."

"Whiskey?" suggested Blake, with bitter self-derision.

"Tom!" protested Lord James.

"What's the use of lying about it?" muttered Blake.

"You've no whiskey in you now," rejoined Griffith. "I'm talking about
what you are now,--what you've got in your head. It's brains."

"Pickled in alcohol!" added Blake, more bitterly than before.

"That's a lie, and you know it, Tommy. You're not yet on the shelf--not
by a long sight."

Blake grinned sardonically at Lord James. "Hear that, Jimmy? Never take
the guess of an engineer. They're no good at guessing. It's not in the
business."

"Chuck it. You know you've got something worth fighting for now."

"Lots of chance I'll have to win out against you!" Blake's teeth ground
together on his unlighted cigar. He jerked it from his mouth and flung
it savagely into the wastebasket. But the violent movement discharged
the tension of his black humor.

"Lord! what a grouch I am!" he mumbled. "Guess I'm in for a go at the
same old thing."

Griffith and Lord James exchanged a quick glance, and the former
hastened to reply: "Don't you believe it, Tommy. Don't talk about _my_
guessing. You're steady as a rock, and you're going to keep steady.
You're on the Zariba Dam now,--understand?"

"It's a go!" cried Blake, his eyes glowing. "That fixes me. You know my
old rule: Not a drop of anything when I'm on a job. Only one thing
more, and I'm ready to pitch in. I must get Mollie to put me up."

Griffith looked down, his teeth clenching on the pipe stem. There was a
moment's pause. Then he replied in a tone more than ever dry and
emotionless: "Guess my last letter didn't reach you. I lost her, a year
ago--typhoid."

"God!" murmured Blake. He bent forward and gripped his friend's
listless hand.

Griffith winced under the sympathetic clasp, turned his face away,
coughed, and rasped out: "Work's the one thing in the world, Tommy.
Always believed it. I've proved it this year. Work! Beats whiskey any
day for making you forget ... I've got rooms here. You'll bunk with me.
Pretty fair restaurant down around the corner."

"It's a go," said Blake. He nodded to Lord James. "That lets you out,
Jimmy."

"Out in the cold," complained his lordship.

"What! With Mamma Gantry waiting to present you to the upper crust?--I
mean, present the crust to you."

"Best part of the pie is under the crust."

"Now, now, none of that, Jimmy boy. You're not the sort to take in the
town with a made-in-France thing like that young Ashton."

"Ashton?" queried Griffith. "You don't mean Laffie Ashton?"

"He was down at the depot to give our party the glad hand."

"Your party?" repeated Griffith. He saw Blake wink at Lord James, and
thought he understood. "I see. He knows Mr. Scarbridge, eh? It's like
him, dropping his work and running down here, when he ought to stick by
his bridge."

"His bridge?" asked Blake. "Say, he did blow about having landed the
Michamac Bridge. But of course that's all hot air. He didn't even take
part in the competition. Besides, you needn't tell me he's anything
more than a joke as an engineer."

"Isn't he, though? After you pulled out the last time--after the
competition,--he put in plans and got the Michamac Bridge."

"You're joking!" cried Blake. "He got it?--that _gent!_"

"You'll remember that all who took part in the competition failed on
the long central span," said Griffith.

"No!" contradicted Blake. "_I_ didn't. I tell you, it was just as I
wrote you I'd do. I worked out a new truss modification. I'd have sworn
my cantilever was the only one that could span Michamac Strait."

"And then to have your plans lost!" put in Griffith with keen sympathy
beneath his dry croak. "Hell! That bridge would have landed you at the
top of the ladder in one jump."

"Losing those plans landed me on a brake-beam, after my worst spree
ever," muttered Blake.

"Don't wonder," said Griffith. "What gets me, though, is the way this
young Ashton, this lily-white lallapaloozer of a kid-glove C. E., came
slipping in with his plans less than a month after the contest. I
looked up the records."

"What were you doing, digging into that proposition?" demanded Blake.

"What d' you suppose? Ashton was slick enough to get an ironclad
contract as Resident Engineer. His bridge plans are a wonder, but he's
proved himself N. G. on construction work. Has to be told how to build
his own bridge. I'm on as Consulting Engineer."

"You?" growled Blake. "You, working again for H. V. Leslie!"

"Give the devil his due, Tommy. He's sharp as tacks, but if you've got
his name to a straightforward contract--"

"After he threw us down on the Q. T. survey?"

Griffith coughed and hesitated. "Well--now--look here, Tommy, you're
not the kind to hold a grudge. Anyway, the bridge was turned over to
the Coville Construction Company." He turned quickly to Lord James.
"Say, what's that about his being in the papers? If it's anything to
his credit, put me next, won't you? I couldn't pry it out of him with a
crow-bar."

"So you're going to use a Jimmy instead, eh?" countered Blake.

"Right-o, Tammas," said Lord James. "We're going to open up the
incident out of hand."

"Lord!" groaned Blake. He rose, flushing with embarrassment, and swung
across, to stare at a blueprint in the far corner of the room.

Lord James flicked the ash from his cigar with his little finger, and
smiled at Griffith.

"Tom and I had been knocking around quite a bit, you know," he began.
"Fetched up in South Africa. American engineers in demand on the Rand.
Tom was asked to manage a mine."

"He could do it," commented Griffith. "Was two years on a low-grade
proposition in Colorado--made it pay dividends. Didn't he suit the Rand
people?"

"Better than they suited him, I take it. I left for a run home. Week
before I arrived a servant looted the family jewels--heirlooms, all
that, you know--chap named Hawkins. Thought I'd play Sherlock Holmes.
Learned that my man had booked passage for India. Traced him to
Calcutta. Lost two months; found he'd doubled back and gone to the
Cape. Cape Town, found he'd booked passage for England under his last
alias--Winthrope. Steamer list also showed names of my friend Lady
Bayrose, Miss Leslie, and Tom."

"Hey?" ejaculated Griffith, opening his narrowed eyes a line.

"Same time, learned the steamer had been posted as lost, somewhere
between Port Natal and Zanzibar."

"Crickey!" gasped Griffith. "Then it was Tom who pulled H. V.'s
daughter--Miss Leslie--through that deal! Heard all about it from H. V.
himself, when he took me out to Arizona to look over this Zariba Dam
proposition. But he didn't name the man. Well, I'll be--switched! Tommy
sure did land in High Society that time!"

"They landed in the primitive, so to speak,--he and Miss Leslie and
Hawkins,--when the cyclone flung them ashore in the swamps."

"Hawkins? Didn't you just say--"

"Rather a grim joke, was it not? Every soul aboard drowned except those
three--Tom and Miss Leslie and Hawkins, of all men!"

"Bet Tommy shook your family jewels out of his pockets mighty sudden."

Lord James lost his smile. "He got them, later on, when the
fellow--died."

"Died? How?"

"Fever--another cyclone."

"Eh? Well, God's country is good enough for me. Those tropical holes
sure are hell. Tommy once wrote me about one of the Central American
ports. You. don't ever catch me south of the U. S. This East African
proposition, now? Must have been a tough deal even for Tommy."

"They were doing well enough when I found him, both he and Miss
Leslie,--skin clothes, poisoned arrows, house in a tree hollow--all
that, y'know."

"Well, I'll be--! But that's Tommy, for sure. He's got the kind of
brains that get there. If he can't buck through a proposition, he'll
triangulate around it. Go on."

"There's not much to tell, I fancy, now that you know he was the man.
You're aware that, had it not been for his resourcefulness and courage,
Miss Leslie would have perished in that savage land of wild beasts and
fever. Yet there _is_ something more than you could have heard from her
father, something I'm not free to tell about. Wish I was, 'pon my word,
I do! Finest thing he ever did,--something even _we_ would not have
expected of him."

"Dunno 'bout that," qualified Griffith. "There's mighty little I don't
expect of him--if only he can cut out the lushing."

Lord James twisted his mustache. "Ever think of him as wearing a dress
suit, Mr. Griffith?"

Griffith looked blank. "Tommy?--in a dress suit!"

"There's one in his box. When we landed in England I took him down to
Ruthby. Kept him there a month. You'd have been jolly well pleased to
see the way he and the guv'nor hit it off."

"Governor?"

"Yes, my pater--father, y' know."

"So he's a governor? Then Tommy was stringing me about the earl and
duke business."

"Oh, no, no, indeed, no. The pater is the Duke of Ruthby, seventh in
the line, and twenty-first Earl of Avondale; but he's a crack-up jolly
old chap, I assure you. Not all our titled people are of the kind you
see most of over here in the States."

"But--hold on--if your father is a real duke, then you're not Mr.--"

"Yes, I must insist upon that. Even in England I am only Mr.
Scarbridge--legally, y' know. Hope you'll do me the favor of
remembering I prefer it that way."

"I'd do a whole lot for any man _he_ calls his friend," said Griffith,
gazing across at Blake's broad back. Lord James glanced at his watch,
and rose. "Sorry. Must go."

"Well, if you must," said Griffith. "You know the way here now. Drop in
any time you feel like it. Rooms are always open. If I'm busy, I've got
a pretty good technical library--if you're interested in
engineering,--and some photographs of scenery and construction work.
Took 'em myself."

"Thanks. I'll come," responded Lord James. He nodded cordially, and
turned to call slangily to Blake: "S' long, bo. I'm on my way."

Blake wheeled about from the wall. "What's this? Not going already?"

"Ah, to be sure. Pressing engagement. Must give Wilton time to attire
me--those studied effects--last artistic touches, don't y' know,"
chaffed the Englishman.

But his banter won no responsive smile from his friend. Blake's face
darkened.

"You're not going to see her to-day," he muttered.

"How could you think it, Tom?" reproached the younger man, flushing
hotly. "I have it! We'll extend the agreement until noon to-morrow. You
have that appointment with her father in the morning."

"That's square! Just like you, Jimmy. Course I knew you'd play
fair--It's only my grouch. I remember now. Madam G. gave you a bid to
dine with her."

Lord James drew out his monocle, replaced it, and smiled. "Er--quite
true; but possibly the daughter may be a compensation."

"Sure," assented Blake, a trifle too eagerly, "You're bound to like
Miss Dolores. I sized her up for a mighty fine girl. Not at all like
her mamma--handsome, lively young lady--just your style, Jimmy."

"Can't see it, old man. Sorry!" replied his lordship. "Good-day.
Good-day, Mr. Griffith."




CHAPTER VII

THE HERO EXPLAINS


For half a minute after his titled friend had bowed himself out, Blake
stood glowering at the door. The sharp crackle of a blueprint under the
thrumming fingers of Griffith caused him to start from his abstraction
and cross to the desk, where he dropped heavily into his former seat.

"Well?" demanded Griffith. "Out with it."

"With what?"

"You called him your friend. He's a likely-looking youngster, even if
he _is_ the son of a duke. Same time, there's something in the wind.
Cough it up. Haven't happened to smash any heads or windows, have you,
while you were--"

"No!" broke in Blake harshly. "It's worse than that, ten times worse!
It's--it's Jenny--Miss Leslie!"

Griffith's thin lips puckered in a soundless whistle. "Well, I'll be--!
Don't tell me you've gone and--Why, you never cared a rap for girls."

"No, but this time, Grif--It began when I showed her through that Rand
mine. Jimmy has told you what followed."

Griffith blinked, and discreetly said nothing as to what lie had heard
from Miss Leslie's father. "H'm. I'd like to hear it all, straight from
you."

"Can't now. Too long a yarn. I want to tell you about the results.
Couldn't do it to any one else," explained Blake, blushing darkly under
his thick layer of tropical tan. He sought to beat around the bush.
"Well, I proved myself fit to survive in that environment, tough as it
was--sort of cave-man's hell. Queer thing, though, Jenny--Miss
Leslie--proved fit, too; that is, she did after right at the start.
She's got a headpiece, and _grit!_"

"Takes after her dad," suggested Griffith.

"Him!"

"As to the brains and grit."

"Not in anything else, though. They're no more alike than garlic and
roses."

"Getting poetic, eh?" cackled Griffith.

"Don't laugh, Grif. It's too serious a matter. I'd do anything in the
world for her. She's the truest, grittiest girl alive. She told me
straight out, there at the last, that she--she loved me."

"Crickey!" ejaculated Griffith. "She told you that?--she?--Miss--"

"Hush! not so loud!" cautioned Blake. Again the color deepened in his
bronzed cheeks. His pale eyes shone very blue and soft. "It was when we
heard the siren of Jimmy's steamer. She--You'll forget this, Grif?
Never whisper a hint of it?"

"Sure! What you take me for?"

"Well, she wouldn't agree to wait. Wanted to be married as soon as we
got aboard ship."

"She--!" Griffith lacked breath even for an expletive.

"I agreed. Couldn't help it, with her looking at me that way. Then we
went down around through the cleft to the shore, where the boat was
pulling in. Well, there was Jimmy in the sternsheets, in a white
yachting suit--Me with my hyena pants, and Jenny in her leopard-skin
dress!"

"Say, you _were_ doing the Crusoe business!" cackled Griffith.

"It shook me out of my dream all right, soon as I set eyes on Jimmy. I
waded out with--Miss Leslie, and put her into the boat. Told him to
hurry her aboard. I cut back to the cleft--the place where we'd been
staying."

"Off your head, eh?"

"No. Don't you see? I had to save Jenny. I had proved myself a pretty
good cave-man, and she had been living so close to that sort of thing
that she had lost her perspective. Wasn't fair to her to let her tie
herself up to me till she'd first had a chance to size me up with the
men of her class."

"You mean to say you passed up your chance?"

"I'd have been a blackguard to 've let her marry me then!" cried Blake,
his eyes flashing angrily. He checked himself, and went on in a
monotone: "I waited till Jimmy came back to fetch me. Course I had to
explain the situation. Asked him to pull out without me, and send down
a boat from Port Mozambique. No go. Finally we fixed it up for me to
slip aboard into the forecastle."

"Well, I'll be--switched!" croaked Griffith. "You did that, to escape
marrying the daughter of a multi-millionaire!"

"It would have been the same if she'd been poor, Grif. She's a lady,
through and through, and I--I love her! God! how I love her!"

"Guess that's no lie," commented Griffith in his dryest tone.

Blake relaxed the grip that seemed to be crushing the arms of his chair.

"Well, I went aboard and kept under cover. Jimmy managed to keep her
diverted till we put into Port Mozambique. There I sent a note aft to
her, letting on that I had already landed, and swearing that I was
going to steer clear of her until after she got back to her father. But
I kept aboard, in the forecastle, as Jimmy had made me promise to do.
At Aden, Jimmy put her on a P. and O. liner in the care of a friend of
his, Lady Chetwynd, who was on her way home to England from India."

"He went along, too; leaving you to shift for yourself, eh?"

"Don't you think it! He had been spending half the time forward with me
in that stew-hole of a forecastle. Soon as she was safe, I hiked aft
and bunked with him. No; Jimmy's as square as they make 'em. To prove
it--he had met Jenny before; greatly taken with her. There on the
steamer was the very chance he had been after. But he played fair;
didn't try to win her. Told me all about it, right at the first, and we
came to an agreement. We were both to steer clear of her over on that
side. That's why we stuck close to Ruthby Castle till Jenny sailed for
home. No; Jimmy is white. He had invitations to more than one
house-party where she was visiting around with Lady Chetwynd and Madam
Gantry."

"So neither of you have seen her since there at Aden?"

"Yes, we have. Came on from New York with her and her aunt. They had
stopped over when they landed, and we blundered into them before we
could dodge."

"And Miss Leslie? You look glum. Guess you got what was coming to you,
eh?"

Blake's face clouded. "Haven't seen her apart from her aunt yet. She
has been kind but--mighty reserved. I'd give a lot to know whether--"
He paused, gripping his chair convulsively. "Just the same, I haven't
quit. The agreement with Jimmy is off to-morrow afternoon. She's had
plenty of time for comparisons. I'll make my try then."

"Don't fash yourself, Tom. If she's the sort you say, and went as far
as you say, she's not likely to throw you over now."

"You don't savvy!" exclaimed Blake. "There on that infernal coast I was
the real thing--and the only one, at that. Here I'm just T. Blake,
ex-bum, periodic drunkard, all around--"

"Stow that drivel!" ordered Griffith. "What if you were a kid hobo?
What are you now?--one of the best engineers in the country; one that's
going to make the top in short order. I tell you, you're going to
succeed. What's more, Mollie said--"

"Mollie!" repeated Blake softly. "Say, but wasn't she a booster! Had
even you beat, hands down. Good Lord, to think that she, of all the
little women--! Only thing, typhoid isn't so bad as some things. They
don't suffer so much."

"Yes," assented Griffith. "That helps--some--when I get to thinking of
it. She went out quietly--wasn't thinking of herself."

"She never did!" put in Blake, "Say, but can't a woman make a heap of
difference--when she's the right sort!"

"There was a message for you. She said, almost the last thing: 'Tell
Tom not to give up the fight. Tell him,' she said, 'he'll win out, I
know he'll win out in the end.'"

"God!" whispered Blake. "She said that?" He bent over and covered his
eyes with his hand.

Griffith averted his head and peered at the blueprints on the nearest
wall with unseeing eyes. A full minute passed. Keeping his face still
averted, he began to tap out the ash and half-smoked tobacco from his
pipe.

"H'm--guess you'd better work in a room apart," he remarked in a
matter-of-fact tone. "Too much running in and out here. D' you want to
start right off?"

"No," muttered Blake. He paused and then straightened to face his
friend. His eyes were blood-shot but resolute, his face impassive. "No.
I'll wait till after to-morrow. Big order on for to-morrow morning.
Appointment to meet H. V."

"Hey?"

"He was down at the depot. You can imagine how effusive he wasn't over
my saving his daughter. Curse the luck! If only she had had any one
else for a father!"

"Now, now, Tommy, don't fly off the handle. You know there are lots of
'em worse than H. V."

"None I'm in so hard with. First place, there's that Q. T. survey."

"That's all smoothed over. He came around all right. Just ask for your
pay-check. He'll shell out."

"I'll ask for interest. Ought to have a hundred per cent. I needed the
money then mighty bad."

"We all did. Let it slide. He's her father. You can't afford to buck
his game."

"I'd do it quick enough if it wasn't for her," rejoined Blake. "That's
where he's got me. Lord! if only he and she weren't--!" Blake's teeth
clenched on the end of the sentence.

"Now look here, Tommy," protested Griffith. "This isn't like you to
hold a grudge. It's true H. V. did us dirt on the survey pay. But he
gave in, soon as I got a chance to talk it over with him."

"'Cause he had to have you on the Michamac Bridge, eh?" demanded Blake,
his face darkening.

"Stow it! That may be true, but--didn't I tell you he turned the bridge
over to the Coville Company?"

"Afraid he'd be found out, eh?"

"Found out? What do you mean?"

"Mean!" repeated Blake, his voice hoarse with passion. He brought his
big fist down upon the desk with the thud of a maul. "Mean? Listen
here! I didn't write it to you--I couldn't believe it then, even of
him. But answer me this, if you can. I was fool enough not to send my
plans for the bridge competition to him by registered mail; I was fool
enough to hand them in to his secretary without asking a receipt. After
the contest, I called for my plans. Clerk told me he couldn't find
them; couldn't find any record that they'd been received. I tell you my
plans solved that central span problem. Who was it could use my
plans?--who were they worth a mint of money to?"

Griffith stared at his friend, his forehead furrowed with an anxious
frown. "See here, Tom--this tropical roughing--it must be mighty
overtaxing on a man. You didn't happen to have a sunstroke or--"

Blake's scowl relaxed in an ironical grin. "All right, take it that
way, if you want to. He let on he thought I was trying to blackmail
him."

"Crickey! You don't mean to say you--"

"Didn't get a chance to see him that time. Just sent in a polite note
asking for my plans. He sent out word by his private-detective
office-boy that if I called again he'd have me run in."

"And now you come back with this dotty pipe-dream that he knows what
became of your plans! Take my advice. Think it all you want, if that
does you any good; but keep your head closed--keep it closed! First
thing he'd do would be to look up the phone number of the nearest
asylum."

"I'd like to see him do it," replied Blake. He shook his head
dubiously. "That's straight, Grif. I'd like to see him do it. I can't
forget he's her father. If only I could be sure he hadn't a finger in
the disappearance of those plans--Well, you can guess how I feel about
it."

"You're dotty to think it a minute. He's a money-grubber--as sharp as
some others. But he wouldn't do a thing like that. Don't you believe
it!"

"Wish I'd never thought of it--he's her father. But it's been growing
on me. I handed them in to his secretary, that young dude, Ashton."

"Ashton? There you've hit on a probability," argued Griffith. "Of all
the heedless, inefficient papa's boys, he takes the cake! He wasn't H.
V.'s secretary except in name. Wine, women, sports, and
gambling--nothing else under his hat. Always had a mess on his desk.
Ten to one, he got your package mixed in the litter, and shoved all
together into his wastebasket."

"I'll put it up to him!" growled Blake.

"What's the use? He couldn't remember a matter of business over night,
to save him."

"Lord! I sweat blood over those plans! It was hard enough to enter a
competition put up by H. V., but it was the chance of a lifetime for
me. Why, if only I'd known in time that they were lost, I'd have put in
my scratch drawings and won on _them_. I tell you, Grif, that truss was
something new."

"Oh, no, there's no inventiveness, no brains in your head, oh, no!"
rallied Griffith. "Wait till you make good on this Zariba Dam."

"You just bet I'll make a stagger at it!" cried Blake. His eyes shone
bright with the joy of work,--and as suddenly clouded with renewed
moroseness.

"I'll be working for you, though," he qualified. "I don't take any jobs
from H. V. Leslie--not until that matter of the bridge plans is cleared
up."




CHAPTER VIII

FLINT AND STEEL


At three minutes to ten the following morning Blake entered the doorway
of the mammoth International Industrial Company Building. At one minute
to ten he was facing the outermost of the guards who fenced in the
private office of H. V. Leslie, capitalist.

"Your business, sir? Mr. Leslie is very busy, sir."

"He told me to call this morning," explained Blake.

"Step in, sir, please."

Blake entered, and found himself in a well-remembered waiting-room, in
company with a dozen or more visitors. He swung leisurely across to the
second uniformed doorkeeper.

"Business?" demanded this attendant with a brusqueness due perhaps to
his closer proximity to the great man.

Blake answered without the flicker of a smile: "I'm a civil engineer,
if you want to know."

"Your business here?"

"None that concerns you," rejoined Blake.

His eyes fixed upon the man with a cold steely glint that visibly
disconcerted him. But the fellow had been in training for years. He
replied promptly, though in a more civil tone: "If you do not wish to
state your business to me, sir, you'll have to wait until--"

"No, I won't have to wait until," put in Blake. "Your boss told me to
call at ten sharp."

"In that case, of course--Your name, please."

"Blake."

The man slipped inside, closing the door behind him. He was gone
perhaps a quarter of a minute. When he reappeared, he held the door
half open for Blake.

"Step in, sir," he said. "Mr. Leslie can spare you fifteen minutes."

Blake looked the man up and down coolly. "See here," he replied, "just
you trot back and tell Mr. H. V. Leslie I'm much obliged for his
favoring me with an appointment, but long as he's so rushed, I'll make
him a present of his blessed quarter-hour."

"My land, sir!" gasped the doorkeeper. "I can't take such a message to
_him_!"

"Suit yourself," said Blake, deliberately drawing a cigar from his vest
pocket and biting off the tip.

This time the man was gone a full half-minute. He eyed Blake with
respectful curiosity as he swung the door wide open and announced: "Mr.
Leslie asks you to come in, sir."

As the door closed softly behind him, Blake stared around the bare
little room into which he had been shown. He was looking for the third
guardian of the sanctum,--the great man's private secretary. But the
room was empty. Without pausing, he crossed to the door in the side
wall and walked aggressively into the private office of Genevieve's
father.

Mr. Leslie sat at a neat little desk, hurriedly mumbling into the
trumpet of a small phonograph.

"Moment!" he flung out sideways, and went on with his mumbling.

Blake swung around one of the heavy leather-seated chairs with a twist
of his wrist, and drew out a silver matchsafe. As he took out a match,
Mr. Leslie touched a spring that stopped the whirring mechanism of the
phonograph, and wheeled around in his swivel desk-chair.

"Dictate on wax," he explained. "Cuts out stenographer. Any clerk can
typewrite. No mislaid stenographer's notes; no mistakes. Well, you're
nearly on time."

"Sharp at the door, according to your waiting-room clock," said Blake,
striking the match on his heel.

"Good--punctuality. First point you score. Now, what do you expect to
get out of me?"

Blake held the match to his cigar with deliberate care, blew it out,
and flipped it into the wastebasket, with the terse answer: "Just
_that_ much."

The other's bushy eyebrows came down over the keen eyes. For a full
minute the two stared, the man of business seeking to pierce with his
narrowed glance Blake's hard, open gaze. The failure of his attempt
perhaps irritated him beyond discretion. At any rate, his silent
antagonism burst out in an explosion of irascibility.

"Needn't tell me your game, young man," he rasped. "You think, because
you were alone with my daughter, you can force me to pay hush money."

Blake rose to his feet with a look in his eyes before which Mr. Leslie
shrank back and cringed.

"Wait! Sit down! sit down! I--I didn't mean that!" he exclaimed.

Blake drew in a deep breath and slowly sat down again. He said nothing,
but puffed hard at his cigar.

Mr. Leslie rebounded from panic to renewed irascibility. "H'm! So
you're one of that sort. I might have foreseen it."

Blake looked his indifference. "All right. That's the safety-valve.
Blow off all the steam you want to through it. Only don't try the other
again. You're her father, and that gives you a big vantage. Any one
else have said what you did, he wouldn't have had the chance to take it
back."

"Do you mean to threaten me?"

"I've smashed men for less."

"You look the part."

"It's not the part of a lickspittle."

"Look here, young man. As the man who happened to save the life of my
daughter--"

"Suppose we leave her out of this palaver," suggested Blake.

"Unfortunately, that is impossible. It is solely owing to the
obligations under which your service to her have put me that I--"

"That you're willing to let me come in here and listen to your pleasant
conversation," broke in Blake ironically. "Well, let me tell you, I'm
some busy myself these days. Just now I'm out collecting one of your
past-due obligations, I've heard you admit you owe for that first Q. T.
Railroad survey."

"There was no legal claim on me. I conceded the point at the request of
Mr. Griffith."

"Had to hire him, eh? Best consulting engineer in the city. And he held
out for a settlement," rallied Blake.

"You were one of the party?"

"Transitman."

"Then apply to my auditor. He has your pay-check waiting for you."

"How about interest? It's two years over-due."

"I never allow interest on such accounts."

Blake took out his cigar and looked at his antagonist, his jaw
out-thrust. "If I had a million, I wouldn't mind spending it to make
you pay that interest."

"You could spend twice that, and then not get it," snapped Mr. Leslie.
"You'll soon find out I can't be driven, young man. On the other
hand--how big a position do you think you could fill?"

"Quien sabe?"

"See here. You've put me under obligations. I'd rather it had been any
other man than you--"

"Ditto on you!" rejoined Blake.

The blow struck a shower of flinty sparks from Mr. Leslie's narrowed
eyes.

"You'll do well to be more conciliatory, young man," he warned.

"Conciliatory? _Bah!_"

"Didn't take you for a fool."

"Well, you won't take me in for one," countered Blake.

"You seem determined to hurt your own interests. Unfortunately you've
put me in your debt--an obligation I must pay in full."

"Why not get a receiver appointed, and reorganize?" gibed Blake.
"That's one of the ways you dodge obligations, isn't it?"

Mr. Leslie's wrinkled face quickly turned red, and from red to purple.
He thrust a quivering finger against a push-button. Blake grinned
exultantly and picked up his hat.

"Don't bother your bouncer," he remarked in a cheerful tone. "I don't
need any invitation to leave."

The tall doorkeeper stepped alertly into the room, but turned back on
the instant at sight of his master's repellent gesture.

"Mistake," snapped Mr. Leslie, and as the man disappeared, he turned to
Blake. "Wait! Don't go yet."

Blake was rising to his feet. He paused, considered, and resumed his
seat. Mr. Leslie had regained his normal color and his composure. He
put his finger-tips together, and jerked out in his usual incisive
tone: "I propose to liquidate this obligation to you without delay.
Would you prefer a cash payment?"

"No." Again Blake set his jaw. "You couldn't settle with me for cash,
not even if you overdrew your bank account."

"Nonsense!" snapped Mr. Leslie. He studied the young man's resolute
face, and asked impatiently, "Well--what?"

"Can't you get it into your head?" rejoined Blake. "I'm not asking for
any pay for what I did."

"What, then? If not a money reward--I see. You're perhaps ambitious.
You want to make a name in your profession."

"Ever know an engineer that didn't?"

"I see. I'll arrange to give you a position that--"

"Thanks," broke in Blake dryly. "Wait till I ask you for a job."

"What are you going to do?--loaf?"

"That's my business."

Mr. Leslie again studied Blake's face. Though accustomed to read men at
a glance, he was baffled by the engineer's inscrutable calm.

"You nearly always win at poker," he stated.

"Used to," confirmed Blake. "Cut it out, though. A gambler is a fool.
More fun in a nickel earned than a dollar made at play or speculating."

"So! You're one of these socialist cranks."

Blake laughed outright. "It's the cranks that make the world go 'round!
No; I've been too busy boosting for Number One--like you--to let myself
think of the other fellow. The trouble with that crazy outfit is they
want to set you to working for the people, instead of working the
people. No; I've steered clear of them. 'Fraid I might get infected
with altruism. Like you, I'm a born anarchist--excuse
me!--individualist. What would become of those who have the big
interests of the country at heart if they didn't have the big interests
in hand?"

Mr. Leslie ignored the sarcasm. "Either you're a fool, or you're
playing a deep game. It occurs to me you may have heard that my
daughter has money in her own right."

"Three million, she said," assented Blake.

"She told you!"

"Guess she told me more than she seems to have told you."

"About what?"

"Ask her."

Mr. Leslie's eyes narrowed to thin slits. "Her aunt wrote me that she
suspected you had the effrontery to--aspire to my daughter's hand. I
couldn't believe it possible."

"That so?" said Blake with calm indifference.

Mr. Leslie started as though stung. "It's true, then! You--you!--" He
choked with rage.

"I thought that would reach you," commented Blake.

"You rascal! you blackguard!" spluttered Mr. Leslie. "So that's your
game? You know she's an heiress! Think you have the whip-handle--bleed
me or force her to marry you!--Alone with her after the other man--!
You--you scoundrel! you blackguard! I'll--"

"Shut up!" commanded Blake, his voice low-pitched and hoarse, his face
white to the lips. For the second time during the interview Mr. Leslie
cringed before his look. His pale eyes were like balls of white-hot
steel.

Slowly the glare faded from Blake's eyes, and the color returned to his
bronzed face. He relaxed his fists.

"God!" he whispered huskily. "God! ... But you're her father!"

Something in his tone compelled conviction, despite Mr. Leslie's bitter
prejudice. He jerked out reluctantly: "I'm not so sure--perhaps I spoke
too--too hastily. But--the indications--"

"Needn't try to apologize," growled Blake.

"I'll not--in words. How about a twenty-five-thousand-dollar position?"

"What?" demanded Blake, astonished.

"That, as a beginning. If you prove yourself the kind of man I think
you are,--the kind that can learn to run a railroad system,--I'll push
you up the line to a hundred thousand, besides chances to come in on
stock deals with George Ashton and myself."

"But if you think I'm a--"

"You're the only man that ever outfaced me in my own office. I'll
chance the rest,--though I had your record looked up as soon as your
name was cabled to me. I know not only who you are but _what_ you are."

Blake bent forward, frowning. "I've stood about enough of this."

"Wait," said Mr. Leslie. "I'm not going to drag that in. I mention it
only that you will understand without argument why my offer is based on
the condition that you at once and for all time give over your
ridiculous idea of becoming my son-in-law."

"You--mean--that--?"

"That I'd rather see my daughter in her grave than married to you. Is
that plain enough? You're a good engineer--when you're not a
_drunkard_."

For a moment Blake sat tense and silent. Then he replied steadily: "I
haven't touched a drop of drink since that steamer piled up on that
coral reef."

"Three months, at the outside," rejoined Mr. Leslie. "You've been known
to go half a year. But always--"

"Yes, always before this try," said Blake. "It's different, though,
now, with the backing of two such--ladies!"

"Two?" queried Mr. Leslie sharply.

"One's dead," replied Blake with simple gravity.

"H'm. I--it's possible I've misjudged you in some things. But this
question of drink--I'll risk backing you in a business way, if it costs
me a million. I owe you that much. But I won't risk my daughter's
happiness--supposing you had so much as a shadow of a chance of winning
her. No! You saved her life. You shall have no chance whatever to make
her miserable. But I'll give you opportunities--I'll put you on the
road to making your own millions."

Blake raised his cigar and flecked off the ash. "_That_ for your damned
millions!" he swore.

Mr. Leslie stared and muttered to himself: "Might have known it! Man of
that kind. Crazy fool!"

"Fool?" repeated Blake contemptuously. "Just because money is _your_
god, you needn't think it's everybody else's. You--money--hog! You
think I'd sell out my chance of winning _her!_"

"You have no chance, sir! The thought of such a thing is
absurd--ridiculous!"

"Well, then, why don't you laugh? No; you hear me. If I knew I didn't
have one chance in a million, I'd tell you to take your offer and--"

"Now, now! make no rash statements. I'm offering you, to begin with, a
twenty-five-thousand-dollar position, and your chance to acquire a
fortune, if you--"

Blake's smouldering anger flared out in white heat. "Think you can
bribe me, do you? Well, you can just take your positions and your
dollars, and go clean, plumb to hell!"

"That will do, sir!--that will do!" gasped Mr. Leslie, shocked almost
beyond speech.

"No, it won't do, Mr. H. V. Leslie!" retorted Blake. "I'm not one of
your employees, to throw a fit when you put on the heavy pedal, and I'm
not one of the lickspittles that are always _baa-ing_ around the Golden
Calf. You've had your say. Now I'll have mine. To begin with, let me
tell you, I don't need your positions or your money. Griffith has given
me work. I'm working for him, not you. Understand?"

"You are? He's my consulting engineer."

"That cuts no ice. I'm doing some work for him--for _him_; understand?
It's not for you. He gave me the job--not you. After what you've said
to me here, I wouldn't take a _hundred_-thousand-dollar job from you,
not if I was walking around on my uppers. Understand?"

"But--but-"

Blake's anger burst out in volcanic rage. "That's it, straight! I don't
want your jobs or your money. They're dirty! You've looked up my
record, have you? How about your own? How about the Michamac Bridge?
Griffith says the Coville Company has taken it over; but you started
it--you called for plans--you advertised a competition. Where are my
plans?--you!"

Mr. Leslie shrank back before the enraged engineer.

"Calm yourself, Mr. Blake!" he soothed in a quavering voice. "Calm
yourself! This illusion of yours about lost plans--"

"Illusion?" cried Blake. "When I handed them in myself to your
secretary--that dude, Ashton."

Mr. Leslie sat up, keenly alert. "To him? You say you handed in a set
of bridge plans to my former secretary?"

"He wasn't a _former_ secretary then."

"To young Ashton, at that time my secretary. Where was it?"

"In there," muttered Blake, jerking his thumb towards the empty
anteroom. "I had to butt in to get even that far."

"Why didn't you show your receipt when you applied for your plans?"

"Hadn't a receipt."

"You didn't take a receipt?"

"And after that Q. T. survey, too!" thrust Blake. "I sure did play the
fool, didn't I? But I was all up in the air over the way I had worked
out that central span, and didn't think of anything but the committee
you'd appointed to pass on the competing plans. Those judges were all
right. I knew they'd be square."

"Sure you had any plans? Where's your proof?" demanded Mr. Leslie with
a shrewdness that won a sarcastic grin from Blake.

"Don't fash yourself," he jeered. "You're safe--legally. Of course my
scratch copy of them went down in the steamer. The fact I wrote
Griffith about them before the contest wouldn't cut any ice--with your
lawyers across the table from any I could afford to hire."

"Griffith knows about your plans?"

"Didn't get a chance to show them to him. All he knows is I wrote him I
was drawing them to compete for the bridge--which of course was part of
my plan to blackmail you," gibed Blake. He rose, with a look that was
almost good-humored. "Well, guess we're through swapping compliments. I
won't take up any of your valuable time discussing the weather."

With shrewd eyes blinking uneasily under their shaggy brows, Mr. Leslie
watched his visitor cross towards the door. The engineer walked firmly
and resolutely, with his head well up, yet without any trace of swagger
or bravado.

As he reached for the doorknob, Mr. Leslie bent forward and called in
an irritable tone: "Wait! I want to tell you--"

"Excuse _me!_ My time's too valuable," rejoined Blake, and he swung out
of the room.

Mr. Leslie sat for a few moments with his forehead creased in intent
thought. He roused, to touch a button with an incisive thrust of his
finger. To the clerk who came hastening in he ordered tersely: "Phone
Griffith--appointment nine-fifteen to-morrow. Important."




CHAPTER IX

PLAYS FOR POSITION


About three o'clock of the same day a smart electric _coupe_ whirled up
Lake Shore Drive under a rattling fusillade of sleet from over the
lake. At the entrance of the grounds of the Leslie mansion it curved
around and shot in under the _porte cochere._

A footman in the quiet dark green and black of the Leslie livery sprang
out to open the _coupe_ door, while the footman with the _coupe_, whose
livery was not so quiet, swung down to hand out the occupants. Before
the servant could offer his services, Dolores Gantry darted out past
him and in through the welcome doorway of the side entrance. Her mother
followed with stately leisure, regardless of a wind-flung dash of sleet
on her sealskins.

Having been relieved of their furs, the callers were shown to the
drawing-room. As the footman glided away to inform his mistress of
their arrival, Dolores danced across to the door of the rear
drawing-room and called in a clear, full-throated, contralto voice:
"Ho, Vievie! Vievie! You in here? Hurry up! There's something I do so
want to tell you."

Mrs. Gantry paused in the act of seating herself. "Dolores! Why must
you shriek out like a magpie? Will you never forget you're a tomboy?"

"I'm not, mamma. I'm simply acting as if I were one. You forget I'm a
full-blown _debutante_. Vievie has already promised me a ball."

"Behave yourself, if you wish to attend it."

Dolores jumped to a chair and sank into it with an air of elegant
languor. "Yes, mamma. This--ah--driving in moist weather is so
fatiguing, don't you find it?"

Mrs. Gantry disposed herself upon the comfortable seat that she had
selected, and raised her gold lorgnette. "Do not forget that the ball
Genevieve has so generously promised you is to be honored by the
presence--"

"Of a real live earl and a real hero, with Laffie Ashton thrown in for
good--I mean, bad--measure!" cut in Dolores with enthusiasm. "You know,
I asked Vievie to 'put him on her list, else he never may be kissed!'"

Again Mrs. Gantry raised her lorgnette to transfix her daughter with
her cold stare. "_You_ asked her to invite Lafayette Ashton? And you
know his reputation!"

"Of course. But you mustn't ask for the details, mamma," reproved the
girl. "It's best that you should not become aware of such things, my
dear. Only, you know, 'boys will be boys,' and we must not lose sight
of the fact that poor dear Laffie will be worth twenty millions some
day--if his papa doesn't make a will. Besides, he dances divinely. Of
course Earl Jimmy's mustache is simply too cute for anything, but,
alas! unless Vievie clings to her heroic Tommy--"

"Tommyrot!" sniffed Mrs. Gantry. "The presumption of that low fellow!
To think of his following her to America!"

"You should have forewarned the authorities at Ellis Island, and had
him excluded as dangerous--to your plans."

"No more of this frivolity! I've confided to you that that man is
dangerous to Genevieve's happiness. I'll not permit it. What a
fortunate chance that the earl came with him! I shall see to it that
Genevieve becomes a countess."

Dolores pulled a mock-tragic face. "Oh, mamma," she implored, "why
don't you root for me, instead? I'm sure a coronet would fit me to
perfection, and his mustache is _so_ cute!"

To judge by Mrs. Gantry's expression, it was fortunate for her daughter
that Genevieve came in upon them. Dolores divined this last from the
sudden mellowing of her mother's face. She whirled up out of her chair
and around, with a cry of joyous escape: "Oh, Vievie! You're just in
time to save me!"

"From what, dear?" asked Genevieve, smilingly permitting herself to be
crumpled in an impetuous embrace.

"Mamma was just going to run the steam-roller over me, simply because I
said Jimmy's mustache is cute. It _is_ cute, isn't it?"

"'Jimmy'?" inquired Genevieve, moving to a chair beside Mrs. Gantry.

"His honorable earlship, then--since mamma is with us."

"You may leave the room," said her mother.

"I may," repeated the girl. She pirouetted up the room and stopped to
look at a painting of a desolate tropical coast.

"It's such a dreadful day out, Aunt Amice," said Genevieve. "And you
can't be rested from the trip."

"Quite true, my dear," agreed Mrs. Gantry. "But I had to see you--to
talk matters over with you. I did not wish to break in on your
enjoyment of those delightful English house parties; and crossing over,
you know, I was too wretchedly ill to think of anything. Can I never
get accustomed to the sea!"

"It's so unfortunate," condoled Genevieve. "I believe I'm a born
sailor."

"You proved it, starting off with that globe-trotting Lady Bayrose."

"Poor Lady Bayrose! To think that she--" The girl pressed her hands to
her eyes. "The way that frightful breaker whirled the boat loose and
over and over!--and the water swarming with sharks!"

"Do not think of it, my dear! Really, you must not think of it!" urged
Mrs. Gantry. "Be thankful it happened before the sailors had time to
put you in the same boat. Better still, my dear, do not permit yourself
to think of it at all. Put all that dreadful experience out of your
mind."

"But you do not understand, Aunt Amice. I fear you never will. Except
for that--for poor Lady Bayrose--I've told you, I do not wish to forget
it."

"My dear!" protested Mrs. Gantry, "cannot you realize how very
improper--? That man! What if he should talk?"

"Is there anything to be concealed?" asked Genevieve, with quiet
dignity.

"You know how people misconstrue things," insisted her aunt. "That
newspaper notoriety was quite sufficiently--It's most fortunate that
Lord Avondale is not affected. I must admit, his attitude towards that
man puzzles me."

"I can understand it very well," replied Genevieve, firmly.

"You both insist that the fellow is--is not absolutely unspeakable! I
should never have thought it of you, Genevieve, nor of such a thorough
gentleman as Lord Avondale--gentleman in _our_ sense of the
term,--refined, cultured, and _clean_. Were he one of the gentry who
have reasons for leaving England,--who go West and consort with
ruffians--remittance men--But no. Lady Chetwynd assured me he has been
presented at Court, and you know the strictness of Queen Mary."

"You admit that Lord Avondale is, shall I say--perfect. Yet--"

"He is irreproachable, my dear, except as regards his extraordinary
insistence upon an intimate friendship with that man."

"That is what confirms my good opinion of him, Aunt Amice."

"That!"

"It proves he is himself manly and sincere."

Mrs. Gantry raised a plump hand, palm outward. "Between the two of
you--"

"We know Mr. Blake--the real man. You do not."

"I never shall. I will not receive him--never. He is impossible!"

"What! never?--the man who saved me from starvation, fever, wild
beasts, from all the horrors of that savage coast?--the intimate friend
of the Earl of Avondale?"

"Does he paint, Vievie?" called Dolores. "Is this a picture of your
Crusoe coast?"

"No, dear. I bought that in New York. But it is very like the place
where Tom--"

"'Tom'!" reproached Mrs. Gantry. She looked around at her daughter.
"Dolores, I presumed you left us when I ordered you."

"Oh, no, not 'ordered,' mamma. You said 'may,' not 'must.'"

"Leave the room!"

The girl sauntered down towards the arched opening into the rear
drawing-room. As she passed the others, she paused to pat her cousin's
soft brown hair.

"I do believe the sun has burnt it a shade lighter, Vievie," she
remarked. "What fun it must have been! When _are_ you going to show me
that leopard-skin gown?"

"Leave the room this instant!" commanded Mrs. Gantry.

Dolores crossed her hands on her bosom and crept out with an air of
martyred innocence. Her mother turned to Genevieve for sympathy. "That
girl! I don't know what ever I shall do with her--absolutely
irrepressible! These titled Englishmen are so particular--she is your
cousin."

Genevieve colored slightly. "You should know Lord Avondale better. If
he is at all interested--"

"He is, most decidedly. He dined with us last evening. Laffie Ashton
called; so I succeeded in getting the earl away from Dolores. We had a
most satisfying little _tete-a-tete_. I led him into explaining
everything."

"Everything?" queried Genevieve.

"Yes, everything, my dear. His aloofness since you reached Aden has
been due merely to his high sense of honor,--to an absurd but
chivalrous agreement with that fellow to not press his suit until after
your arrival home. At Aden he had given the man his word--"

"At Aden?" interrupted Genevieve. "How could that be, when Tom left the
ship at Port Mozambique?"

"He didn't. It seems that the fellow was aboard all the time, hiding in
the steerage or stoke-hole, or somewhere--no doubt to spy on you and
Lord Avondale."

Genevieve averted her head and murmured in a half whisper: "He was
aboard all that time, and never came up for a breath of air all those
smothering days! I remember Lord James speaking of how hot and vile it
was down in the forecastle. This explains why he went forward so much!"

"It explains why he did not book passage with you from Aden--why he did
not hasten to you at Lady Chetwynd's--all because of his chivalrous but
mistaken sense of loyalty to that low fellow."

"If you please, Aunt Amice," said Genevieve, in a tone as incisive as
it was quiet, "you will remember that I esteem Mr. Blake."

Mrs. Gantry stared over her half-raised lorgnette. She had never before
known her niece to be other than the very pattern of docility.

"Well!" she remarked, and, after a little pause; "Fortunately, that
absurd agreement is now at an end. The earl intimated that he would
call on you this afternoon. I am sure, my dear--"

Of what the lady was sure was left to conjecture. The footman appeared
in the hall entrance and announced: "Mr. Brice-Ashton."

Ashton came in, effusive and eager. "My dear Miss Genevieve! I--ah,
Mrs. Gantry! Didn't expect to meet you here, such a day as this. Most
unexpected--ah--pleasure! _N'est-ce pas?_--No, no! my dear Miss Leslie;
keep your seat!"

Genevieve had seemed about to rise, but he quite deftly drew a chair
around and sat down close before her. "I simply couldn't wait any
longer. I felt I must call to congratulate you over that marvellous
escape. It must have been terrible--terrible!"

Genevieve replied with perceptible coldness: "Thank you, Mr. Ashton. I
had not expected a call from you."

"'Mr.' Ashton!" he echoed. "Has it come to that?--when we used to make
mudpies together! Dolores said that you--"

"Not so fast, Laffie!" called the girl, as she came dancing into the
room in her most animated manner. "Don't forget I'm Miss Gantry now."

Ashton continued to address Genevieve, without turning: "I came all the
way down from Michamac just to congratulate you--left my bridge!"

"You're too sudden with your congratulations, Laffie," mocked Dolores.
"Genevieve hasn't yet decided whether it's to be the hero or the earl."

"Dolores," admonished her mother. "I told you to leave the room."

"Yes, and forgot to tell me to stay out. It's no use now, is it? Unless
you wish me to drag out Laffie for a little _tete-a-tete_ in the
conservatory."

"Sit down, dear," said Genevieve.

Mrs. Gantry turned to Ashton with a sudden unbending from hauteur. "My
dear Lafayette, I observed your manner yesterday towards that--towards
Mr. Blake. Am I right in surmising that you know something with regard
to his past?"

"About Blake?" replied Ashton, his usually wide and ardent eyes
shifting their glance uneasily from his questioner to Genevieve and
towards the outer door.

"About my friend Mr. Blake," said Genevieve.

"You call him a friend?--a fellow like that!" Ashton rashly exclaimed.

"He has proved himself a disinterested friend,--which I cannot say of
all with whom I am acquainted."

"Oh, of course, if you feel that way."

"My other friends will remember that he saved my life."

"If only he had been a gentleman!" sighed Mrs. Gantry.

"Yes, Vievie," added Dolores. "Next time any one goes to save you, shoo
him off unless he first offers his card."

"Mr. Blake is what many a seeming gentleman is not," said Genevieve,
her levelled glance fixed upon Ashton. "Tom Blake is a man, a strong,
courageous man!"

"We quite agree with you," ventured Ashton. "He is a man of the type
one so frequently sees among firemen and the police."

Mrs. Gantry intervened with quick tact: "Mr. Blake is quite an eminent
civil engineer, we understand. As a fellow engineer, you have met him,
I dare say--have had dealings with him."

"I?--with him? No--that is--" Ashton stammered and shifted about
uneasily under Genevieve's level gaze. "It was only when I was acting
as Mr. Leslie's secretary. Blake handed me the bridge plans that he
afterwards claimed were lost. I tell you, I had nothing to do with
them--nothing! I merely received them from him. That was all. I went
away the very next day--resigned my position. I don't know what became
of his plans,--nothing whatever! I tell you, the Michamac Bridge--"

"Why, Lame!" giggled Dolores. "What makes you squirm so? You're
twitching all over. I thought you'd had enough of the simple life at
Michamac to recover from the effects of that corner in oats. You
haven't started another corner already, have you?"

"No, I have--I mean, yes--just a few cocktails at the club--yes, that's
it. So bitter cold, this sleet! You'll understand, Mrs. Gantry--perhaps
one too much. Haven't had any since I went back to the bridge last
time."

"Then up at Michamac you take it straight?" asked Dolores.

Ashton forced a nervous laugh. "Keep it up, Dodie! You'll make a wit
yet." He bent towards Genevieve. "You'll pardon me, won't you,
Genevieve?"

The girl raised her fine brows ever so slightly. "'Miss Leslie,' if you
please."

"Of course--of course! Just another slip--that last cocktail and the
sleet. Wet cold always sends it to my head. That about Blake, too--I
oughtn't to 've spoken of it after you said he was your friend. It's,
of course, your father's affair."

"Then you need say no more about it," said Genevieve with ironical
graciousness. He shifted about in his chair, and she caught him deftly.
"Must you be going?--really! Good-day."

He rose uncertainly to his feet, his handsome face flushed, and his
full red lower lip twitching.

"I--I had not intended--" he began.

"Good-day!" said Mrs. Gantry with significant emphasis.

"So sorry you must rush off so soon, Laffie," mocked Dolores.

Social training has its value. Ashton pulled himself together, bowed
gracefully, and started up the room with easy assurance.

As he neared the doorway, the footman appeared and announced with
unction: "The Right Honorable, the Earl of Avondale."

Ashton stopped short, and when the Englishman entered, met him with an
effusive greeting: "_Mon Dieu!_ Such a fortunate chance, your lordship!
So glad to meet you again,--and here, of all places! Don't forget to
look me up at my clubs."

"Hearts are trumps, Laffie--not clubs," called Dolores, as Lord James
passed him by with a vague nod.




CHAPTER X

THE SHADOW OF DOUBT


Before the earl had reached them Mrs. Gantry was rising.

Genevieve rose to protest. "You're not going so soon, Aunt Amice?
You'll stay for a cup of tea?"

"Not to-day, my dear. Ah, earl! you're just in time to relieve
Genevieve from the ennui of a solitary afternoon. I regret so much that
we cannot stay with you. Come, Dolores."

Dolores settled back comfortably on her chair. "Go right on, mamma.
Don't wait for me. I'll stay and help Vievie entertain Lord Avondale."

"Come--at once."

"Oh, fudge! Well, start on. I'll catch you."

Mrs. Gantry stepped past Lord James. Genevieve met his eager glance,
and hastened to overtake her aunt. "Really, won't you stay, Aunt Amice?
I'll have tea brought in at once."

"So sorry, my dear," replied Mrs. Gantry, placidly sailing on towards
the reception hall.

Dolores simulated a yawn. "O-o-ho! I'm _so_ tired. Will nobody help me
get up?"

With a boyish twinkle in his gray eyes but profound gravity In his
manner, Lord James offered her his hand. She placed her fingers in his
palm and sprang up beside him. The others were still moving up the
room. She surprised him by meeting his amused gaze with an angry flash
of her big black eyes.

"Shame!" she flung at him. "You, his friend, and would take her from
him!"

He stared blankly. The girl whirled away from him with a swish of
silken skirts and fled past her mother, all her anger lost in wild
panic.

"Dolores! Whatever can--" cried Mrs. Gantry. But Dolores had vanished.
"Really, Genevieve, that madcap girl--! About yourself, my dear.
Promise me now, if you cannot say 'yes,' at least you'll not make it a
final 'no.'"

"But, Aunt Amice, unless I feel--"

"Promise me! You must give yourself time to make sure. He will wait. I
am certain he will wait until you have found out--"

"I cannot promise anything now," replied Genevieve.

Mrs. Gantry did not press the point. It was the second time during the
call that her niece had proved herself less docile than she had
expected. As she left the room, Genevieve returned to Lord James
without any outward sign of hesitancy. She seated herself and smiled
composedly at her caller, who still stood in the daze into which
Dolores's outburst had thrown him.

"Won't you sit down?" she invited. "How is Mr. Blake?"

[Illustration: "Shame!" she flung at him. "You, his friend, and would
take her from him!"]

With rather an abstracted air, Lord James sank down on the chair
opposite her and began fiddling with the cord of his monocle.

"Haven't seen him since yesterday," he replied, "Left him at the office
of a Mr. Griffith--engineer--old friend. Gave him work
immediately--something big, I take it. Asked Tom to bunk with him."

"It's so good to hear he has work already--and to stay with a friend!
You mean, live with him?"

"Yes."

"He--the friend--seems desirable?"

"Decidedly so, I should say. Engineer who first started him on his
career, if I remember aright what Tom once told me of his early life."

"Oh, that is such good news! But have you seen him since--since this
morning? He had that appointment with papa, you know."

"No, I regret to say I haven't; and I fear I cannot reassure you as to
the outcome. You know Tom's way; and your father, I take it, is
rather--It would seem that they had a disagreement before Tom went West
the last time."

"Yes. He once referred to it. Some misunderstanding with regard to the
payment of a railway survey. I asked papa about it last evening, and he
told me that it had been made all right--that Tom would get his pay for
his share in the survey."

"Little enough, in the circumstances," remarked Lord James.

"That was not all. Papa promised to give him a very good position. He
had intended to offer money. But I explained to him that, of course,
Tom would not accept money."

"Very true. I doubt if he would have accepted it even had it not been
for his hope that--" Lord James paused and stared glumly at his
finger-tips. "Bally mess, deuce take it! He and your father at outs,
and he and I--"

"You have not quarrelled? You're still friends?" exclaimed Genevieve.

"Quarrelled? No, I assure you, no! Yet am I his friend? Permit me to be
candid, Miss Leslie. I'm in a deuce of a quandary. On the trip up to
Aden, you'll remember, I told you something of the way he and I had
knocked about together."

"Yes. Frankly, it added not a little to my esteem for you that you had
learned to value his sterling worth."

"I did not tell you how it started. It was in the Kootenay
country--British Columbia, you know. Bunch of sharpers set about to
rook me on a frame-up--a bunco game. Tom tipped me off, though I had
snubbed him, like the egregious ass I was. I paid no heed; blundered
into the trap. Wouldn't have minded losing the thousand pounds they
wanted, but they brought a woman into the affair--made it appear as if
I were a cad--or worse."

"Surely not that, Lord James. No one could believe that of you."

"You don't know the beastly cleverness of those bunco chaps. They had
me in a nasty hole, when Tom stepped in and showed them up. Seems he
knew more about the woman and two of the men than they cared to have
published. They decamped."

"That was so like Tom!" murmured Genevieve.

"Claimed he did it because of an old grudge against the parties. Had to
force my thanks on him. Told you how we'd chummed together since. Deuce
take it! why should it have been you on that steamer--with him?"

"Why?" echoed Genevieve, gazing down at her clasped hands, which still
showed a trace of tropical tan.

"You know it--it puts me in rather a nasty box," went on Lord James.
"Had I not met you before he did, it is possible that I could have
avoided--You see my predicament. He and I've been together so much, I
can foresee the effect on him of--er--of a great disappointment."

Genevieve gazed up at him with startled eyes. "Lord James, you must
explain that; you must be explicit."

"I--I did not intend to so much as mention it," stammered the young
Englishman, bitterly chagrined at himself. "It was only--pray, do not
ask me, Miss Leslie!"

"You referred, of course, to his drinking," said Genevieve, in a tone
as tense as it was quiet. "Do not reproach yourself. When we were cast
ashore together, he was--not himself. But when I remember all those
weeks that followed--! You cannot imagine how brave and resolute, how
truly courageous he was!--and under that outward roughness, how kind
and gentle!"

"I too know him. That's what makes it so hard. The thought that I may
possibly cause him a disappointment that may result in--" Lord James
came to a stop, tugging at his mustache.

Genevieve was again staring at the slender little hands, from which the
most expert manicuring had not yet entirely removed all traces of rough
usage.

"He told me something of--of what he had to fight," she murmured in a
troubled voice. "But I feel that--that if something came into his
life--" She blushed, but went on bravely--"something to take him out of
what he calls the grind--"

Lord James had instantly averted his gaze from her crimsoning face.

"That's the worst of it!" he burst out. "If only I could feel sure that
he--I've seen him fight--Gad! how he has fought--time and again. Yet
sooner or later, always the inevitable defeat!"

"I cannot believe it! I cannot!" insisted Genevieve. "With his
strength, his courage! It's only been the circumstances; that he has
had nobody to--I--I beg your pardon! Of course you--What I mean is
somebody who--" She buried her face in her hands, blushing more vividly
than before.

The Englishman's face lightened. "Then you've not let my deplorable
blunder alter your attitude towards him?"

"Not in the slightest."

He leaned forward. "Then--I can wait no longer! You must know how
greatly I--All those days coming up to Aden I could say nothing. Before
coming aboard, he had told me why he could not permit you to--to commit
yourself irrevocably."

He paused. Genevieve bent over lower. She did not speak.

He went on steadily: "It was then I realized fully his innate fineness.
I own it astonished me, well as I thought I knew him. With his brains,
his 'grit,' and _that_, I'd say he could become anything he
wished--were it not for his--for the one weakness."

Genevieve flung up her head, to gaze at him in indignant protest.
"Weakness! How can you say that? He is so strong--so strong!"

"In all else than that," insisted Lord James. "You must face the hard
fact. Gad! this is far worse than I thought it would be. But I knew you
before he did, and I've played fair with him. It was not easy to say
nothing those days before we reached Aden, or to stay away from you
after I reached home. Even he could not have found it so hard. He has
all that stubborn power of endurance; while I--"

"You have no cause to reproach yourself. I cannot say how greatly it
pleased me that you took him to Ruthby Castle."

"Could you but have been there, too! He and the pater hit it off out of
hand. Jolly sensible chap, the pater--quiet, bookish--long head."

"He must be!"

"Not strange about Tom, though. It's odd how his bigness makes itself
felt--to those who've any sense of judgment. And yet it's not so odd,
when you come to think. My word! if only it were not for his--Forgive
me, Miss Genevieve! I've the right to consider what it might mean to
you. It gives me the right to speak for myself. He himself insisted
that, in justice to you, I should not withdraw."

"Lord James!"

"Pray, do not misunderstand, Miss Genevieve. He knew what it meant to
me. But our first thought was for you. He wished you to have the full
contrast of your own proper environment, that you might regain your
perspective--the point of view natural to one of your position."

"He could think I'd go back to the shams and conventions, after those
weeks of _real_ life!"

"Sometimes life is a bit too real in the most conventional of
surroundings," said his lordship, with a rueful smile. "No. He saw that
you had no right to commit yourself then; that you should reconsider
matters in the environment in which you belong and for which he is not
now fitted--whatever may be the outcome of his efforts to make himself
fit."

"He will succeed!"

"He may succeed. I should not have the slightest hesitancy in saying
that success would be certain, were it not for that one flaw. It's not
to be held against him--an inherited weakness."

"Do you not believe we can overcome heredity?"

"In some cases, I daresay. But with him--You must bear in mind I've
seen the futility of his struggle. All his resolution and courage and
endurance seem to count for nothing. But it's too painful! Can't we
leave him out of this? You are aware that I missed my opportunity when
Lady Bayrose changed her plans and rushed you off on the other ship.
After that you may imagine how difficult I found it to say nothing, do
nothing, coming up to Aden."

"Please, please say no more!" begged Genevieve, her eyes bright with
tears of distress. "I regard you too highly. You have my utmost esteem,
my respect and friendship, my--you see he has taught me to be
sincere--you have my affection. Dear friend, I shall be perfectly
candid. I was a silly girl. I had never sensed the realities of life. I
had a young girl's covetousness of a coronet--of a title. Yet that was
not all. I felt a warm regard for you. Had you spoken before I met him,
before I learned to know him--"

"Before you knew him? Then you still--? The contrast of
civilization--of your own environment--has made no difference?"

"I do not say that. Yet it is not in the manner you suppose." She
looked away, with a piteous attempt to smile. "It's strange how much
pain can be caused by the slightest shadow of a doubt."

"Miss Genevieve! I--I shall never be able to forgive myself! For me to
have said a word--it was despicable!"

"No, do not say it. Can you think me capable of misunderstanding? Dear
friend, I esteem you all the more for what I know it must have cost
you. But no; what I spoke of was something that was already in my own
mind."

"Ah--then you, too--Miss Genevieve, it's been so good of you. Let me
beg that you do not consider this as final."

"But I can promise you nothing. It would not be right to you."

"I ask only that you do not consider this final. You have admitted a
shadow of a doubt. With your permission, I propose to wait until you
have solved that doubt. You have given me cause to hope that, were it
not for him--"

"It is not right for me to give you the slightest hope."

"But I take it. Meantime, no more annoyance to you. We'll be jolly good
friends, no more. You take me?"

"I'll ring for tea. You deserve it."

"No objections, I assure you. I'll serve as stopgap till Tom turns up."

Genevieve rose quickly, her color deepening. "He is coming?--this
afternoon!"

"I should not have been surprised had I found him here. And now--" He
glanced at his watch. "It's already half after four."

"Oh, and papa said he'd be home early to-day!--though his custom is to
come barely in time to dress for dinner."

"Hope Tom hit it off with him this morning--but--" Lord James shook his
head dubiously--"I fear he was not in a conciliatory mood."




CHAPTER XI

REBELLION


Genevieve rang for tea, and changed the conversation to impersonal
topics. A footman brought in a Russian samovar and a service of
eggshell china. They sipped their tea and chatted lightly about English
acquaintances, but with frequent glances towards the hall entrance.
Each was wondering which one would be first to come, Blake or Mr.
Leslie.

The conversation had languished to a mere pretext when Blake was
announced. The engineer entered slowly, his face red and moist from the
fierce drive of the sleet off the lake. He had come afoot.

Genevieve placed a trembling hand on the cover of her samovar, and
called to him gayly: "Hurry here at once and have a good hot cup of
tea. You must be frozen."

Blake came to them across the waxed floor with an ease and assurance of
step in part due to his visit to Ruthby Castle and in part to his walk
over the sleet-coated pavements.

"No tea for me, Miss Jenny," he replied with cheerful heartiness.
"Thanks, just the same. But I'm warm as toast--look it, too, eh?"

"Then take it to cool you off," suggested Lord James. "That's the
Russian plan. When you're cold, hot tea to warm you; when you're hot,
hot tea to cool you."

"Not when water tastes good to me," replied Blake with a significance
that did not escape his friend. "Well, Jimmy, so you beat me to it."

"Waited till after three," said Lord James.

"Thought you'd hang back to give me the start? Went you one better,
eh?" replied Blake. He stared fixedly into the handsome high-bred face
of his friend and then at Genevieve's down-bent head. "Well? What's the
good word? Is it--congratulations?"

"Not this time, old man," answered the Englishman lightly. He rose.
"Take my seat. Must be going."

Blake's eyes glowed. "You're the gamest ever, Jimmy boy."

"Don't crow till you're out of the woods," laughed his friend. "Can't
wish you success, y'know. But it's to continue the same between us as
it has been, if you're willing."

"That's like you, Jimmy!"

"To be sure. But I really must be going. Good-day, Miss Genevieve."

The girl looked up without attempting to conceal her affection and
sympathy for him.

"Dear friend," she said, "before you go, I wish to tell you how highly
I value and appreciate--"

"No more, no more, I beg of you," he protested, with genial insistence.
"Tom, I'll be dropping in on you at your office."

He bowed to Genevieve, and still cloaking his hurt with a cheerful
smile, started to leave them. At the same moment Mr. Leslie came
hurrying into the room. The sight of Lord James brought him to a stand.

"H'm!" he coughed. "So it's you, Lord Avondale? Hodges said--" His keen
eyes glanced past the Englishman to the big form across the corner of
the table from Genevieve. "What! Right, was he?--Genevieve."

"Yes, papa?" replied the girl, looking at Blake with a startled gaze.
She was very pale, but her delicately curved lips straightened with
quiet determination. She did not rise.

"Er--glad to meet you again so soon, Mr. Leslie," said Lord James,
deftly placing himself so that the other could not avoid his proffered
hand without marked discourtesy. Mr. Leslie held out his flaccid
fingers. They were caught fast and retained during a cordial and
prolonged handshake.

"When we first met," went on his lordship suavely, "time was lacking
for me to congratulate you on the fact that your daughter came through
her terrible experience so well. She has assured me that she feels all
the better for it. Only one, like myself, accustomed to knocking about
the tropics, can fully realize the extraordinary resourcefulness and
courage of the man who had the good fortune to bring her through it all
safely and, as she says, bettered."

"Yes, yes, we all know that, and admit it," replied the captive,
attempting to free his hand.

Lord James gave it a final wring. "To be sure! You, of all men, will
bear in mind what he accomplished. Yet I must insist that my own
appreciation is no less keen. It is the greatest satisfaction to me
that I am privileged to call Thomas Blake my friend."

"Your friend has put me under obligations," answered Mr. Leslie. "I
have acknowledged to him that I owe him a heavy debt for what he has
done. I stand ready to pay him for his services, whenever he is ready
to accept payment."

"Ah, indeed," murmured Lord James. "'Pon my word, now, that's what I
call deuced generous."

"No; that's not the question at all. It's merely a matter of a business
settlement for services rendered," replied Mr. Leslie.

"Yet one does not--er--value gratitude in pounds and dollars, y' know."

"No, no, of course you do not, papa!" exclaimed Genevieve. "Please
remember--please try to consider--"

She would better have remained silent. Her evident concern alarmed her
father to the point of exasperation.

"I am considering how this friend of Lord Avondale's bore himself
towards me, in my office, this morning," he interrupted her. He turned
again to Lord James. "I should not need to tell you, sir, that the
manner of expressing gratitude depends altogether on the circumstances.
We are now, however, considering another matter. You were about to
leave--You will always be welcome to my house, Lord Avondale, and so
will be your friends, _when they come and go with you._"

"Father!" protested Genevieve, rising to face him.

"My mistake, Miss Jenny," said Blake, coolly drawing himself up beside
her. "I thought it was _your_ house."

He swung about to Mr. Leslie, and said, with unexpected mildness:
"Don't worry; I'm going. We don't want to fuss here, do we?--to make it
any harder for her. But first, there's one thing. You're her father--I
want to say I'm sorry I cut loose this morning."

"What! you apologize?"

"As to what I said about my bridge plans--yes. If you had left out
about--If you hadn't rubbed it in so hard about me and--You know what I
mean. It made me red-hot. I couldn't help cutting loose. But, just the
same, I oughtn't to've said that about the plans, because--well,
because, you see, I don't believe it."

"You don't? Then why--?"

"I did believe it before. I believed it this morning, when I was mad.
But I've had time to cool off and think it over. Queer thing--all the
evidence and probabilities are there, just the same; but somehow I
can't believe it of you any longer--simply can't. You're her father."

"H'm--this puts a different face on the matter," admitted Mr. Leslie.
"I begin to think that I may have been rather too hasty. Had you been
more conciliatory, less--h'm--positive, I'm inclined to believe that
we--"

"I don't care what _you_ believe," was Blake's brusque rejoinder. "I'm
not trying to curry favor with you. Understand? Come on, Jimmy."

But Genevieve was at his elbow, between him and the door.

"You are not going now, Tom," she said.

"Genevieve," reproved her father. "This is most unlike you."

"Unlike my former frivolous, pampered self!" cried the girl. "I'm no
longer a silly debutante, papa. I've lived the grim hard realities of
life--there on that dreadful coast--with him. I'm a woman."

"You child! You're not even twenty-one."

"I am old--older than the centuries, papa--old enough to know my own
mind." She turned to Blake. "You were right, Tom. This is my
home--legally mine. You are welcome to stay."

"Mr. Leslie!" interposed Lord James, before her father could reply.
"One moment, if you please. I have told you that Mr. Blake and I are
friends. More than that, we are intimate friends--chums. I wish to
impress on you the very high esteem in which I hold him, the more than
admiration--"

"Chuck it, Jimmy," put in Blake.

Lord James concluded in a tone of polite frigidity. "And since you
place conditions on his welcome to your house, permit me to remark that
I prefer his acquaintance to yours." He bowed with utmost formality.

"H'm!" rasped Mr. Leslie. "You should understand, sir. Had you not
interrupted me--" He abruptly faced Blake. "You, at least, will
understand my position--that I have some reason--It is not that I wish
to appear discourteous, even after this morning. You've apologized; I
cannot ask you to go--I do not ask you to go. Yet--"

"If you please, papa," said Genevieve with entrancing sweetness.

"Well?"

"Isn't it time for you to dress?"

"No--came home early," replied Mr. Leslie, jerking out his watch. He
searched his daughter's face with an apprehensive glance, and again
addressed Blake. "Too early. There's time for a run out to George
Ashton's. Want to see him on a matter of business. Valuable
acquaintance for you to make. Jump into the runabout with me, and I'll
introduce you to him."

"Thanks," said Blake dryly. "Not to-day."

"Mr. Blake has just come, papa," said Genevieve. "You would not deprive
us of the pleasure of a little visit."

"H'm. By cutting it close, I can wait a few minutes."

"You need not trouble to wait, papa. You can introduce him to Mr.
Ashton some other time."

"May I offer myself as a substitute?" put in Lord James. "Mrs. Gantry
has told me so much about the elder Mr. Ashton. Quite curious to meet
him."

Blandly taking Mr. Leslie's assent as a matter of course, he started
toward the door. "Good-day, Miss Leslie. Ah--do we go out this way?
Can't tell you how I value the opportunity. Very good of you, very!"

"Wait," said Mr. Leslie. "Genevieve, haven't you an engagement out,
this afternoon?"

"If I had a dozen, papa, I should not deprive Mr. Blake of his call."

"Mr. Blake is welcome to his call. But--since you force me to say it--I
must expressly tell you, it is my wish that you should not see him
alone."

"I'm very sorry, papa, that you should forbid me," said Genevieve with
a quiet tensity that should have forewarned him.

"Sorry?"

"Yes, papa, because, if you insist, I shall have to disobey you."

"You will?"

He stared at her, astounded, and she sustained his gaze with a
steadiness that he perceived could not be shaken.

Lord James again interposed. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Leslie, if I may
seem to interfere. But as he is my friend, I, too, request you--"

"You?" exclaimed Mr. Leslie, with fresh astonishment. "You also side
with him?--when my sister-in-law tells me--"

"That is all by-the-bye, I assure you, sir. The least I can do for the
man who saved her life is to play fair. Permit me to say that you can
do no less."

Mr. Leslie looked at Genevieve with a troubled frown.

"At least, my dear, I hope you'll remember who you are," he said.

She made no reply, but stood white-faced and resolute until he went
from the room. Lord James followed close after him.

Blake and Genevieve were left alone.




CHAPTER XII

THE DEEPENING OF DOUBT


Blake stood as motionless as a carved figure, his eyes glowing upon the
girl, blue and radiant with tenderness and compassion and profound love.

The clang of a heavy door told her that her father had left the house.
On the instant all her firmness left her. She hid her face in her hands
and sank into the nearest chair, quivering and weeping, in silent
anguish.

Blake came near and stood over her. He spoke to her in a voice that was
deep and low and very soft: "There, there, little girl, don't you mind!
Just cry it out. It'll do you good. You know I understand. Have a good
cry!"

The sympathetic urging to give way freely to her weeping almost
immediately soothed her grief and checked the flow of tears. She rose
uncertainly, dabbing at her eyes.

"I--I couldn't help it, Tom. It's the fi-first time papa's ever been so
cross with me!"

"My fault, I guess. Rubbed his fur the wrong way this morning pretty
hard. But don't you fret, girlie. It'll be all right. Only we mustn't
blame him. Think of what it means to him. You're all he has, and if he
thinks you're--if he thinks he's going to lose you--"

"But it was so cruel!--so unjust!--the way he treated you!"

"Oh, that's all right, little woman. I don't mind that. We'll all
forget it by to-morrow. He didn't mean half he said. It was just the
thought that I--that somebody might take you away from him. Jenny!" His
eyes glowed upon her blue as sapphires. "You're home now."

He held his arms open for her to come to him. She swayed forward as if
to give herself into the clasp of those strong arms, but instantly
checked the movement and shrank back a little way.

"Wait, Tom," she murmured hesitatingly. "We must first--"

"Wait longer, Jenny?" he exclaimed, his deep voice vibrant with the
intensity of his feeling. "No, I must say it! I've waited all these
weeks--good Lord!--when maybe you've thought it was because I didn't
want to--to do as you asked!"

"It's not that, Tom, truly it's not that. I was hurt and--shamed. But
even then I divined why you had done it and realized the nobility of
your motive."

"Nobility? That's a good joke! You know I was only trying to do the
square thing. Any man would have done the same."

"Any _man_ would. I'm not so certain as to some who call themselves
gentlemen."

"There're some who're real gentlemen--worse luck to me--Jimmy, for one.
I can never catch up with him in that line, girlie, but I can make a
stagger at it."

"You can become anything you will, Tom," she said with calm conviction.

"Maybe," he replied. "But, Jenny, I can't wait for that. Wish I could.
I'm still only--what you know. Same time, you're back home now, and
you've been visiting with your titled friends. Also you've seen how
your father looks at it, and how--"

"What does all that amount to--even papa's anger? If only that were
all!"

"Jenny! then you still--?" His voice quivered with passion. "My little
girl!--how I love you! God I how I love you! I never thought much of
girls, but I loved you the first time I ever set eyes on you, there in
the Transvaal. That's why I threw up the management of the mine. I knew
who your father was; I knew I hadn't a ghost of a show. But I followed
you to Cape Town--couldn't help it!"

"You--you old silly!" she murmured, half frightened by the greatness of
his passion. "You should have known I was only a shallow society girl!"

"Shallow?--you? You're deep as blue water!"

"The ocean is fickle."

"You're not; you're true! You've _lived!_ I've seen you face with a
smile what many a man would have run from."

"Because with me was one who would have died sooner than that harm
should come to me! Those weeks, those wonderful weeks that we lived, so
close to primitive, savage Nature--bloody fanged Nature!--those weeks
that I stood by your side and saw her paint for us her beautiful,
terrible pictures of Life, pictures whose blue was the storm-wave and
the sky veiled with fever-haze, whose white was the roaring surf and
the glare of thunderbolts, whose red was fire and blood! And you saved
me from all--all! I had never even dreamt that a man could be so
courageous, so enduring, so strong!"

His face clouded, and he gave back before her radiant look.

"Strong?" he muttered. "That's the question. Am I?"

"Of course you are! I'm sure you are. You _must_ be. It was that which
compelled my--which made me--" She paused, and a swift blush swept over
her face from forehead to throat--"made me propose to you, there on the
cliff, when the steamer came."

"That a lady should have loved me like that!" he murmured. "I still
can't believe it was true! My little girl, it's not possible--not
possible!"

"You say 'loved,'" she whispered. Her eyelids fluttered and drooped
before his ardent gaze; her scarlet face bent downward; she held out
her hands to him in timid surrender.

He caught them between his big palms, but not to draw her to him. A
jagged mark on her round wrist caught his eye. It was the scar of a
vicious thorn. The last time he had seen it was on the cliff top,--that
other time when she put out her arms to him. He bent over and kissed
the red scar.

"Jenny," he replied in bitter self-reproach, "here's another time I've
proved I'm not in your class--not a gentleman. You've raised a
point--the real point. Am I what you think me? You think I'm at least a
man. Am I?"

She looked up at him, her face suddenly gone white again. "Tom! You
don't mean--?"

"About my being strong. All that you've seen so far are my leading
suits. There's that other to be reckoned with yet. I told your father I
hadn't touched a drop since the wreck. But you know how it was before."

"Yes, dear, but that _was_ before!"

"I know. Things are different now. I've something at stake that'll help
me fight. You can't guess, though, how that craving--Lucky I'll have
Jimmy, as well, to back me up. He's great when it comes to jollying a
fellow over the bumps. He'll help."

"It's little enough, after all you've done for him! He told me."

"Just like him. But let's not get sidetracked. What I wanted to make
clear is that I'm not so everlastingly strong as you seem to think."

"Tom, you'll not give way! You'll fight!"

"Yes, I'll fight," he responded soberly.

"And you'll win!"

"I hope so, girlie. I've fought it before, and it has downed me, time
and again. But now it's different--unless you've found you were
mistaken. But if you still feel as when you--as you did there on the
cliff that morning--Good God! how _could_ I lose out, with you backing
me up?"

She looked at him with a quick recurrence of doubt. "You ask help of
me?"

"If you care enough, Jenny. It's not going to be a joke. I've tried
before, and gone under so many times that some people would say I've no
show left. But let me tell you, girlie, I'm going to fight this time
for all I'm worth. I'm going to break this curse if I can. It _is_ a
curse, you'll remember. I told you about my mother."

"You should not think of that. What does heredity count as against
environment!"

"Environment?--heredity? By all accounts, my father was the man you've
thought me, and a lot more--railroad engineer; nerviest man ever ran an
engine out of Chicago on the Pennsylvania Line; American stock from way
back--Scotch-Irish; sober as a church, steady, strong as a bull. Never
an accident all the years he pulled the fast express till the one that
smashed him. Could have jumped and saved himself--stayed by his
throttle, and saved the train. They brought him home--what was left of
him. Papers headlined him; you know how they do it. That was my father."

"Oh, Tom! and with such a father!"

"Wait a minute. You spoke of heredity and environment. I'm giving you
all sides, except anything more about my mother. Her father was a
cranky inventor ... Well, inside six months we were living in a
tenement. I was a little shaver of six. The younger of my sisters was a
baby. Talk about environment! Wasn't many years before I was known as
the toughest kid in Rat Alley."

"Don't dwell on that, Tom. Don't even speak of it," begged Genevieve.

He shook his head. "I want you to know just what I've been. It's your
right to know. I wasn't one of the nasty kind and I wasn't a sneak. But
I was the leader of my gang. Maybe you know what that means. Of course
the police got it in for me. Finally they made it so hot I had to get
out of Chicago. I took to the road--became a bum."

"Not that!--surely not that!"

"Well, no, only a kid hobo. But I'd have slid on down if I hadn't
dropped into a camp of surveyors who were heading off into the
mountains and had need of another man. Griffith, the engineer in
charge, talked me into joining the party as axman. I took a fancy to
him. He proved himself the first real friend I'd ever had--or was to
have till I met Jimmy Scarbridge."

"A man's worth is measured by the friends he makes," she observed.

"Not always. Well, Griffith got me interested. I joined the party.
_Whew!_--seven months in the mountains, and not a saloon within fifty
miles any of the time. But I stuck it out. Nobody ever called me a
quitter."

"And now, Tom, you'll not quit! You'll win!"

"I'll try--for you, girlie! You can't guess how that braces me--the
thought that it's for you! You see, I'm beginning to count on things
now. I'm not even afraid of your money now. Good old Grif--Griffith,
you know--has given me a shy at a peach of a proposition--toughest
problem I was ever up against. It's a big irrigation dam that has
feazed half a dozen good engineers."

"But you'll solve the problem! You can do anything!"

"I'm not so sure, Jenny. I've only begun to dig into the field books.
Even if I do make a go of it in the end, chances are I'll have to work
like--like blazes to get there. But that'll help me on this other
fight--help choke down the craving when it comes. A whole lot turns on
that dam. If I make good on it, I'm made myself. Tack up my ad. as
consulting engineer, and I'll have all the work I want. Won't be
ashamed to look your three millions in the face."

"My money! Can you still believe that counts with me? Money! It is what
we are ourselves that counts. If you acquired all the money in the
world, yes, and all the fame, but failed to master yourself, you'd not
be the man I thought you--the man whom I--whom I said I loved."

"Jenny! Then it's gone--you no longer care?"

"You have no right to ask anything of me until you've--"

"I'm not, Jenny! Don't think it for a moment. I'm not asking anything
now. I wanted to wait. It's only that I want you to know how I love
you. I wouldn't dream of asking you to--to marry me now--no, not till
I've won out, made good. Understand? All I want is for you to wait for
me till I've made my name as an A-1 engineer and until I've downed that
cursed craving for drink."

"You will, Tom--you _must!_"

"With you to back me, little woman! Yes, I guess I can make it this
time, with you waiting for me!"

Genevieve met his smile and enthused gaze with a look of firm decision.
Her doubt and hesitancy had at last crystallized into a set purpose.
She replied in a tone that rang with a hardness new to him: "No. It
must be more than that."

"More?" he asked, surprised.

"More, much more. That morning, after I so shamelessly forced you to
listen to me, nothing could have altered my purpose had you come aboard
the steamer with me."

"But I couldn't then. 'T wouldn't have been fair to you."

"Yet it might have been wise. Who knows? At the least, the question
would have been settled 'for better or for worse.' It is easier to face
the trouble which one cannot escape than deliberately to make choice of
entering into the state that may or may not bring about the dreaded
misfortune. Had you married me then, Tom, I would surely have been
happy for a time. But now--you have made me believe that you were
right."

Blake drew back from her, his head downbent in sudden despondency. "So
you've found out you don't feel the same?"

Her eyes dimmed with tears of compassion for him, but her voice was as
firm as before. "I loved Tom Blake because he was so manly, so strong!
I still love that Tom Blake. You are not sure that you are strong."

"But if I knew I had your love back of me, Jenny!"

"That's it--you wish to lean on me! It's weak; it's not like you. You
won my love by your courage, your resolution, your strength! All my
love for you is based on your strength. If that fails--if you prove
weak--how am I to tell whether my love will endure?"

"I'll win out. I know I can win out if I have you to fight for."

"If you have me to _lean_ on! No; you must prove yourself stronger than
that. I had no doubts then. I urged you to marry me--flung myself at
you. But now, after what I've been forced to realize since then--"

She stopped short, leaving him to infer the rest. He took it at the
worst. He replied despairingly yet without a trace of bitterness: "Yes,
you'd better take Jimmy. He's your kind."

"Tom! How can you? I've a great esteem for Lord James, I like him very
much, but--"

"He's the right sort. You could count on being happy with him," stated
Blake, in seeming resignation. She looked at him, puzzled and hurt by
his calmness. The look fired him to a passionate outburst. "Don't you
think it, though! He's not going to have you! I can't give you up! I'm
going to win you. My God! I love you so much I'd try to win you--I'd
have to win you, even if I thought you'd be unhappy!"

Her voice softened with responsive tenderness. "Oh, Tom, if only I knew
we would have--would have and keep that great love that covers all
things! I'd rather be miserable with you than happy without you!"

"Jenny! you do love me!" he cried, advancing with outstretched arms.

She drew back from him. "Not now--not now, Tom!"

He smiled, only slightly dashed. "Not now, but when I've made good.
You'll wait for me! I can count on that!"

"No," she answered with utmost firmness.

"Jenny!"

"I'll make no promise--not even a conditional one. You must make this
fight without leaning on any one. I _must_ know whether you are strong,
whether you are the real Tom Blake I love."

"But I'm not asking anything--only in case I make good."

"No; I'll not bind myself in any way. I'll not promise to marry you
even if you should win. It was you who made me wait, and now I shall
make sure. Unless I feel certain that we would be bound together for
all time by the deepest, truest love, I know it would be a mistake. If
I were certain, right now, that you lack the strength to conquer
yourself for the sake of your own manhood, I would accept Lord James."

Whether or not the girl was capable of such an act, there could be no
doubt that she meant what she said, and her tone carried conviction to
Blake. He was silent for a long moment. When he replied, it was in a
voice dull and heavy with despondency. "You don't realize what you're
putting me up against."

"I realize that you must clear away all my doubt of your strength," she
rejoined, with no lessening of her firmness. "You were strong there on
that savage coast, in the primitive. But you must prove yourself strong
enough to rise _out_ of the primitive--to rise to your true, your
higher self."

He bent as if he were being crushed under a ponderous weight. His voice
dulled to a half articulate murmur. "You--won't--help--me?"

"I cannot--I dare not!" she insisted almost fiercely. "If I did I
should doubt. This dreadful fear! You _must_ prove you're strong! You
_must_ master yourself for the sake of your own manhood!"

At last he was forced to realize that it was necessity, not desire,
that impelled her to thrust him from her. He must fight his hard battle
alone--he must fight without even the thought that he had her sympathy.

He should have divined that she would be secretly hoping, perhaps
praying for him, striving for him in spirit with all the might of her
true love. But by her insistence she had at last compelled him to doubt
her love.

He thought of the many times that he had gone down in disgraceful
defeat, and black despair fell upon him. His broad shoulders stooped
yet more.

"What's the use?" he muttered thickly.

But the question itself served as the goad to quicken all his immense
reserve of endurance. He looked up at Genevieve, heavy-eyed but grim
with determination.

"You don't know what you've put me up against," he said. "But I'll not
lay down yet. Nobody ever called me a quitter. You've a right to ask me
to make good. I'll make a stagger at it. Good-bye!"

He turned from her and walked up the room with the steady deliberation
of one who bears a heavy burden.

It was almost more than she could endure. She started to dart after
him, and her lips parted to utter an entreaty for him to come back to
her. But her spirit had been tempered in that fierce struggle for life
on the savage coast of Mozambique.

She checked herself, and waited until, without a backward glance, he
had passed out through the curtained doorway. Then, and not until then,
she sank down in her chair and gave way to the anguish of her love and
doubt and dread.




CHAPTER XIII

PLANS AND OTHER PLANS


A quarter after nine the next morning found Griffith at the door of Mr.
Leslie's sanctum. He stuffed his gauntlet gloves into a pocket of his
old fur coat, and entered the office, his worn, dark eyes vague with
habitual abstraction.

Mr. Leslie was in the midst of his phonographic dictation. He abruptly
stopped the machine and whirled about in his swivel-chair to face the
engineer.

"Sit down," he said. "How's the Zariba Dam?"

"No progress," answered Griffith with terse precision. He sat down with
an air of complete absorption in the act, drew out an old knife and his
pipe, and observed: "You didn't send for me for that."

"How's the bridge?"

"Same," croaked the engineer, beginning to scrape out the bowl of his
pipe with the one unbroken blade of his knife.

"That young fool still running around town?"

"Can't say. It'd be a good thing to have him do it all the time if work
was going on. Had a letter from McGraw, that man I put in as general
foreman. He says everything is frozen up tight; may keep so for two
weeks or more."

"You've laid off most the force?"

"No, not even the Slovaks."

Mr. Leslie frowned. "Two or three weeks at full pay, and no work?
That's an item."

"Hard enough to hold together a competent force on such winter work as
that," rejoined Griffith. "Almost impossible with your kid-glove
Resident Engineer. I've said nothing all this time; but he's made some
of my best men quit--bridge workers that've stayed by me for years.
Said they couldn't stand for his damned swell-headedness, not even to
oblige me."

"Well, well, I leave it to you. Do the best you can. It's a bad
bargain, but we've got to go through with it. Only time the young fool
ever showed a glimmer of sense was when he had his father's lawyers
drew his contract with me. My lawyers can't find a flaw in it."

"Not even diamond cut diamond, eh?" cackled Griffith. He ceased
scraping at his pipe to peer inquisitively into the bowl. "What I've
never been able to figure out is how he happened to solve the problem
of that central span. Don't think you've ever realized what a wonderful
piece of work that was. It's something new. Must have been a happy
accident--must have come to him in what I'd call a flash of intuition
or genius. He sure hadn't it in him to work such a thing out in cold
blood."

"Genius?--_pah!_" scoffed Mr. Leslie.

"Hey?" queried Griffith, glancing up sharply. "What else, then?"

"I've recently been given reason to suspect--" began Mr. Leslie. He
paused, hesitated, and refrained. "But we'll talk of that later. First,
my reason for sending for you. I understand that you know this man
Blake, who, unfortunately, was the person that saved my daughter."

Griffith replied with rather more than his usual dryness. "If I've got
a correct estimate of what Miss Leslie had to be pulled through, it's
lucky that Tom Blake was the man."

"You've a higher opinion of him than I have."

"We've worked together."

"He's in your office now," snapped Mr. Leslie.

"Yes, and he stays there long as he wants," rejoined Griffith in a
quiet matter-of-fact tone. "It's your privilege to hire another
consulting engineer."

Mr. Leslie brought his shaggy eyebrows together in a perplexed frown.
"Must say, I can't understand how the fellow makes such friends. Your
case is hardly less puzzling than that of the Earl of Avondale."

"Hey? Oh, you mean young Scarbridge. He seems to be one of the right
sort--even if he _is_ the son of a duke. But if Tommy hadn't introduced
him as a friend--"

"We're talking about Blake," interrupted Mr. Leslie. "I want your help."

"Well?" asked Griffith warily.

"He has put me under obligations, and refuses to accept any reward from
me. It's intolerable!"

"Won't accept anything, eh? Well, if he says he won't, he won't. No use
butting your head against a concrete wall."

"He's a fool!"

"I'd hardly agree as to that. He doesn't always do as people expect him
to. Same time, he usually has a reason."

"But for him to refuse to take either cash or a position!"

"I notice, though, he drew his pay-check for the Q. T. survey. No;
Tommy isn't altogether a fool--not altogether."

"Twenty-five-thousand-dollar position!" rasped Mr. Leslie.

"Hey?"

"Offered him that, and--"

"You offered him--?" echoed Griffith, his lean, creased face almost
grotesque with astonishment.

"Think I don't value my daughter's life?" snapped Mr. Leslie. "I was
ready to do that and far more for him. He refused--not only refused but
insulted me."

Griffith peered intently into the angry face of his employer. "Insulted
you, eh? Guess you prodded him up first."

"I admit I had rather misjudged him in some respects."

"So you gave him the gaff, eh?--and got it back harder!" cackled
Griffith.

"He shall be compelled to accept what I owe him, indirectly, if not
directly. You have given him work?"

"Yes."

"You've, of course, told him that I'm the Coville Construction Company."

"Not yet."

"What! You're certain of that?"

Griffith nodded. "He sailed into me, first thing, for taking work from
you. To ease him off, I said the Coville Company had taken over the
bridge from you. The matter hasn't happened to come up again since."

"You're certain he doesn't know I'm interested in the company?"

"Not unless somebody else has told him."

"Then--let's see-- We'll appoint him Assistant Resident Engineer on
the bridge."

"He'll not take it under young Ashton."

"Not if his salary is put at twenty-five thousand?"

"As Assistant Engineer?" said Griffith, incredulous.

"You'll be too busy with my other projects to keep up these visits to
Michamac. Besides, you said the bridge is coming to the crucial point
of construction."

"That central span," confirmed Griffith.

"If you consider Blake sufficiently reliable, you can give him detailed
instructions and send him up to take charge."

"How about Ashton's contract?"

"He'll be satisfied with the glory. Reports will continue to name him
as Resident Engineer. If he won't listen to reason, I'll ask his father
to drop him a line. The young fool has had his allowance cut twice
already. He'd consider his pay as engineer a bare pittance."

"Heir to the Ashton millions, eh?" croaked Griffith.

"If I know George Ashton, he has a good safe will drawn, providing that
his fortune is to be held in trust. That fool boy won't have any chance
to squander more than his allowance,--and he won't keep me now from
paying off this obligation to Blake."

"Perhaps not. I'm not so sure, though, that Tom will--One thing's
certain. He won't go up to Michamac right away."

"He won't? Why not? It's just the time for him to get the run of
things, now while there's no work going on."

"He'd catch on quick enough. It's not that. Fact is, he's got hold of
something a lot bigger, and I know he'll not quit till he has either
won out or it has downed him. Never knew of but one thing that ever
downed him."

Mr. Leslie glared at the engineer, his face reddening with rage.

"Something bigger!" he repeated. "So the fellow has bragged about it!"

Griffith stared back, perplexed by the other's sudden heat. "Guess
we've got our wires crossed," he said. "I told him, of course. He
didn't know anything about it."

"What you talking about?" demanded Mr. Leslie, puzzled in turn.

"The Zariba Dam."

"That!" exclaimed Mr. Leslie, and his face cleared. "H'm,--what about
the dam?"

"I had about thrown it up. I'm giving Tom a go at it."

Mr. Leslie's eyebrows bristled in high curves.

"What! wasting time with a man like that? If _you've_ given it up,
we'll try England or Europe."

"No use. Plenty of good men over there. They can give us pointers on
some things. But if they've ever done anything just like this Zariba
Dam, they've kept it out of print."

"But an unknown second-rate engineer!"

"That's what's said of every first-rater till he gets his chance."

"You're serious?"

"I don't guarantee he can do it. I do say, I won't be any too surprised
if he pulls it off. It's a thing that calls for invention. He'll swear
he hasn't an ounce of it in him--says he just happens to blunder on
things, or applies what he has picked up. All gas! He once showed me
some musty old drawings that made it look like one of his grandfathers
ought to be credited with the basic inventions of a dozen machines that
to-day are making the owners of the patent-rights rich. Guess some of
that grandfather's bump can be located on Tom's head."

"Inventor--h'm--inventor!" muttered Mr. Leslie half to himself. "That
puts rather a different face on that bridge matter."

"As how?" casually asked Griffith, beginning to scrape afresh at his
pipe-bowl.

Mr. Leslie considered, and replied with another question: "At the time
of the competition in plans for the bridge, did you know that Blake was
to be a contestant?"

"He writes letters about as often as a hen gets a tooth pulled. But I
got a letter the time you mention,--a dozen lines or so, with another
added, saying that he was in for a whirl at the Michamac cantilever."

"You've shown him Ashton's bridge plans?"

"Not yet. He's been too busy on the Zariba field books."

"You've seen his own plans for the bridge?"

"No. They were lost."

"The originals, I mean--his preliminary copy. He must have kept
something."

"Yes. But I guess they're pretty wet by now," replied Griffith, his
face crackling with dry humor. "They're aboard that steamer, down on
the African coast. If you want to see them, you might finance a
wrecking expedition. But Tom says she went down mast-under, and there
are plenty of sharks nosing along the coral reef."

Mr. Leslie winced at the word _sharks_, and reluctantly admitted: "I've
had a long talk with my daughter. He played the part of a man. I
acknowledge that I've held a strong prejudice against him. It seems,
however, that in part I've been mistaken."

"Now you're talking, Mr. Leslie!"

"Only in part, I say--about his lost bridge plans. I had thought he was
trying to blackmail me."

"More apt to be a black eye, if you let him know you thought that," was
Griffith's dry comment.

"He came near to resorting to violence. As I look at it now, I can't
say I blame him. Those bridge plans, though--Knowing this about his
inventiveness, has it not occurred to you that his plans may not have
been lost, after all?"

"Look here, Mr. Leslie," said Griffith, rising with the angularity of a
jumping-jack, "we've rubbed along pretty smooth since we got together
last year; but Tom Blake is my friend."

"Sit down! _sit_ down!" insisted Mr. Leslie. "You ought to see by this
time that I'm trying to prove myself anything but an enemy to him."

Griffith sat down and began mechanically to load his pipe with the
formidable Durham. Mr. Leslie put the tips of his fingers together,
coughed, and went on in a lowered tone. "Those plans disappeared. His
charge was preposterous, ridiculous--_as against me_. Yet if the plans
were not lost, what became of them? He told me yesterday that he
himself handed them to the person who was at that time acting as my
secretary. You catch the point?"

"Um-m," grunted Griffith, his face as emotionless as a piece of
crackled wood.

"Young Ashton was my secretary. He resigned the next day. Said he had
been secretly working on plans for the Michamac cantilever; thought he
had solved the problem of the central span; might go ahead and put in
his plans if none of the competitors were awarded the bridge. Within a
month he did put in plans."

"Well?" queried Griffith.

"Don't you make the connection?" demanded Mr. Leslie. "Blake handed his
plans to Ashton, and took no receipt. The plans disappeared. Ashton
leaves; comes back in a month with plans that he hasn't the skill to
apply in the construction of the bridge--plans include an entirely new
modification of bridge trusses--stroke of inventive genius, you called
it."

Griffith's lean jaw dropped. "You--you don't mean to say he--the son of
George Ashton--that he could--God A'mighty, he's heir to twenty
millions!"

"You don't believe it? Suppose you knew he was about to be cut off
without a cent? George had stood about all he could from the young
fool. Those bridge plans came in just in time to prevent the drawing of
a new will."

The hand in which Griffith held his pipe shook as if he had been seized
with a fever chill, but his voice was dry and emotionless. "That
accounts for those queer slips and errors in the plans. He couldn't
even make an accurate copy, and was too much afraid of being found out
to take time to check Tom's drawings. Jammed them into his fireplace
soon's he'd finished. The thief!--the infernal thief!--the--!" Griffith
spat out a curse that made even Mr. Leslie start.

"Good Lord, Griffith," he remonstrated. "That's the first time I ever
heard you swear."

"I keep it for _dirt_! ... Well, what you going to do about it?"

"I am going to have you show Ashton's plans to Blake. If he recognizes
them as a copy of his own--"

"Better get ready to ship Laffie out of the country. Once saw Tom
manhandle a brute who was beating his wife--one of those husky saloon
bouncers. The wife had a month's nursing to do. Tom will pound
that--that sneak to pulp."

"Show him the plans. If he recognizes them, I'll let the thief know he
has been found out. He'll run, and we'll be rid of him without any
scandal. We'll arrange for Blake to get the credit for the bridge,
after a time. George Ashton and I are rather close together. I don't
want him to be hit harder than's necessary."

"Say, Mr. Leslie, I don't mind admitting you _are_ square!" exclaimed
Griffith. "You don't like Tom, and you know he hasn't a line of proof.
It would be only his word against Laffie's. Unknown engineer trying to
blackmail the son of George Ashton. You know what would be said."

"I told you, I owe him a debt. I intend to pay it in full."

"One thing though," cautioned Griffith. "Even a cornered rat will
fight. There's the chance that Laffie may not run. He'd be a drivelling
idiot if he did, with his father's millions at stake. Don't forget
we've no proof. It won't look even possible to outsiders. Suppose I
hold off showing Tom those plans till we see if he can make it on the
Zariba Dam? If he pulls that off, no engineer in the U. S. will doubt
his claims to the bridge."

"That means a delay," said Mr. Leslie irritably. "My first plan was to
send Blake to Michamac at once."

"Lord! With one cantilever finished and the other out to the central
span--if it's Tom's bridge, he'd recognize it as quick as his plans.
And if he did--well, I'd not answer for what would happen to that damn
thief."

"H'm--perhaps you're right," considered Mr. Leslie. He thought a
moment, and added with quick decision, "Very well. Keep him on at the
dam. What are you paying him?"

"Two hundred."

"Double it."

"No go. He'd suspect something."

"Suspect, would he? H'm--several expert engineers have failed on that
dam. If it can be put through, the project will net me a half-million.
Ten per cent of my profits might stimulate you engineers. I offer fifty
thousand dollars as reward to the man who solves the problem of the
Zariba Dam."

"Say, that's going some!" commented Griffith.

"Plain business proposition. If I can't get it done for wages, it is
cheaper to pay a bonus than to have the project fail."

"Good way to put it," admitted Griffith. "Don't just know, though, what
I'll do with all that money."

"You? Thought you said that Blake--"

"D'you suppose he'd take a cent of it? He's working for me."

"But if he does the work?"

"He might accept the credit. The cash would come to me, if he had to
cram it down my throat. He won't touch your money."

"Crazy fool!" rasped Mr. Leslie. Again he paused to consider, and again
he spoke with quick decision. "The Coville Company takes over the
project. I don't believe the dam can be built; I'm tired of the whole
thing. So I unload on the Coville Company. You see? The company offers
the fifty thousand bonus as a last hope. It hires Blake direct on some
of its routine work. You insist that he try for the dam, between times."

"That's the ticket!" said Griffith. "We'll try it on him."

"Then call by the Coville office. I'll phone over for them to have the
transfer made and a letter waiting for you," said Mr. Leslie, and he
jerked out his watch.

Griffith rose at the signal. He fumbled for a moment with his hat and
gloves, and spoke with a queer catch in his voice. "I'd like to--let
you know how I--appreciate--"

"No call for it! no call for it!" broke in Mr. Leslie. "Good-day!"

He whirled about to his desk and caught up the receiver of one of his
private-line telephones.




CHAPTER XIV

BETWEEN FRIENDS


Lord James sauntered into the office of Griffiths, C.E., and inquired
for Mr. Blake. The cleric stared in vague recognition, and answered
that Mr. Blake was busy. Nothing daunted, the visitor crossed to the
door toward which the clerk had glanced.

When he entered, he found Blake in his shirtsleeves, humped over a
small desk. He was intently absorbed in comparing the figures of two
field books and in making little pencil diagrams.

"Hello, old man. What's the good word?" sang out his lordship.

Blake nodded absently, and went on with his last diagram. When he had
finished it, he looked up and perceived his friend standing graceful
and debonair in the centre of the room.

"Why, hello, Jimmy," he said, as if only just aware of the other's
presence. "Can't you find a chair?"

"How's the dam?"

"Dam 'fi 'no," punned Blake. He slapped his pencil down on the desk,
and flung up his arms to stretch his cramped body.

"You need a breather," advised Lord James.

"Young Ashton came 'round to my hotel last evening. Wanted me to go to
some bally musical comedy--little supper afterward with two of the
show-girls--all that. I had another engagement. He then asked me to
drop around this morning and take my pick of his stable. Wants me to
ride one of his mounts while I'm here, you know. Suppose you come
up-town with me and help me pick out a beast."

"No," said Blake. "Less I see of that papa's boy the better I'll like
him."

"Oh, but as a fellow-engineer, y'know," minced Lord James.

"You love him 'bout as much as I do."

Lord James adjusted the pink carnation in his lapel, and casually
remarked: "You'll be calling at the Leslies' this afternoon, I daresay."

"No," said Blake.

"Indeed?" exclaimed the younger man. He flushed and gazed confusedly at
Blake, pleased on his own account, yet none the less distressed for his
friend.

Blake explained the situation with sober friendliness. "It's all up in
the air, Jimmy. I've got to make good, and she won't promise anything
even if I succe

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