thought I would settle it, one way or the other. It was hell to go along the way I had been doing. And - there’s no doubt about it, Rich. It’s the same chain.”
We walked along in silence until we caught the car back to town.
“Well,” he said finally, “you know the girl, of course, and I don’t. But if you like her - and I think myself you’re rather hard hit, old man - I wouldn’t give a whoop about the chain in the gold purse. It’s just one of the little coincidences that hang people now and then. And as for last night - if she’s the kind of a girl you say she is, and you think she had anything to do with that, you - you’re addled, that’s all. You can depend on it, the lady of the empty house last week is the lady of last night. And yet your train acquaintance was in Altoona at that time.”
Just before we got off the car, I reverted to the subject again. It was never far back in my mind.
“About the - young lady of the train, Rich,” I said, with what I suppose was elaborate carelessness, “I don’t want you to get a wrong impression. I am rather unlikely to see her again, but even if I do, I - I believe she is already ‘bespoke,’ or next thing to it.”
He made no reply, but as I opened the door with my latchkey he stood looking up at me from the pavement with his quizzical smile.
“Love is like the measles,” he orated. “The older you get it, the worse the attack.”
Johnson did not appear again that day. A small man in a raincoat took his place. The next morning I made my initial trip to the office, the raincoat still on hand. I had a short conference with Miller, the district attorney, at eleven. Bronson was under surveillance, he said, and any attempt to sell the notes to him would probably result in their recovery. In the meantime, as I knew, the Commonwealth had continued the case, in hope of such contingency.
At noon I left the office and took a veterinarian to see Candida, the injured pony. By one o’clock my first day’s duties were performed, and a long Sahara of hot afternoon stretched ahead. McKnight, always glad to escape from the grind, suggested a vaudeville, and in sheer ennui I consented. I could neither ride, drive nor golf, and my own company bored me to distraction.
“Coolest place in town these days,” he declared. “Electric fans, breezy songs, airy costumes. And there’s Johnson just behind - the coldest proposition in Washington.”
He gravely bought three tickets and presented the detective with one. Then we went in. Having lived a normal, busy life, the theater in the afternoon is to me about on a par with ice-cream for breakfast. Up on the stage a very stout woman in short pink skirts, with a smile that McKnight declared looked like a slash in a roll of butter, was singing nasally, with a laborious kick at the end of each verse. Johnson, two rows ahead, went to sleep. McKnight prodded me with his elbow.
“Look at the first box to the right,” he said, in a stage whisper. “I want you to come over at the end of this act.”
It was the first time I had seen her since I put her in the cab at Baltimore. Outwardly I presume I was calm, for no one turned to stare at me, but every atom of me cried out at the sight of her. She was leaning, bent forward, lips slightly parted, gazing raptly at the Japanese conjurer who had replaced what McKnight disrespectfully called the Columns of Hercules. Compared with the draggled lady of the farmhouse, she was radiant.
For that first moment there was nothing but joy at the sight of her. McKnight’s touch on my arm brought me back to reality.
“Come over and meet them,” he said. “That’s the cousin Miss West is visiting, Mrs. Dallas.”
But I would not go. After he went I sat there alone, painfully conscious that I was being pointed out and stared at from the box. The abominable Japanese gave way to yet more atrocious performing dogs.
“How many offers of marriage will the young lady in the box have?” The dog stopped sagely at ‘none,’ and then pulled out a card that said eight. Wild shouts of glee by the audience. “The fools,” I muttered.
After a little I glanced over. Mrs. Dallas was talking to McKnight, but She was looking straight at me. She was flushed, but more calm than I, and she did not bow. I fumbled for my hat, but the next moment I saw that they were going, and I sat still. When McKnight came back he was triumphant.
“I’ve made an engagement for you,” he said. “Mrs. Dallas asked me to bring you to dinner to-night, and I said I knew you would fall all over yourself to go. You are requested to bring along the broken arm, and any other souvenirs of the wreck that you may possess.
“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” I declared, struggling against my inclination. “I can’t even tie my necktie, and I have to have my food cut for me.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he said easily. “I’ll send Stogie over to fix you up, and Mrs. Dal knows all about the arm. I told her.”
(Stogie is his Japanese factotum, so called because he is lean, a yellowish brown in color, and because he claims to have been shipped into this country in a box.)
The Cinematograph was finishing the program. The house was dark and the music had stopped, as it does in the circus just before somebody risks his neck at so much a neck in the Dip of Death, or the hundred-foot dive. Then, with a sort of shock, I saw on the white curtain the announcement:
THE NEXT PICTURE
IS THE DOOMED WASHINGTON FLIER, TAKEN A SHORT DISTANCE FROM THE SCENE OF THE WRECK ON THE FATAL MORNING OF SEPTEMBER TENTH. TWO MILES FARTHER ON IT MET WITH ALMOST COMPLETE ANNIHILATION.
I confess to a return of some of the sickening sensations of the wreck; people around me were leaning forward with tense faces. Then the letters were gone, and I saw a long level stretch of track, even the broken stone between the ties standing out distinctly. Far off under a cloud of smoke a small object was rushing toward us and growing larger as it came.
Now it was on us, a mammoth in size, with huge drivers and a colossal tender. The engine leaped aside, as if just in time to save us from destruction, with a glimpse of a stooping fireman and a grimy engineer. The long train of sleepers followed. From a forward vestibule a porter in a white coat waved his hand. The rest of the cars seemed still wrapped in slumber. With mixed sensations I saw my own car, Ontario, fly past, and then I rose to my feet and gripped McKnight’s shoulder.
