XV
"Sweet Fortune's Minion"
It was late dinner-time when Smith closed the big roll-top desk in thenew private suite in the Kinzie Building offices and went across thestreet to the hotel. A little farther along, as he was coming down fromhis rooms to go to dinner, he saw Starbuck in the lobby talking toWilliams; but since they did not see him, he passed on without stopping.
The great dining-room of the Hophra House was on the ground floor; astucco-pillared immensity with scenic mural decorations after Bierstadtand a ceiling over which fat cupids and the classical nude in goddessesrioted in the soft radiance of the shaded electrics. The room was wellfilled, but the head waiter found Smith a small table in the shelter ofone of the pillars and brought him an evening paper.
Smith gave his dinner order and began to glance through the paper. Thesubdued chatter and clamor of the big room dinned pleasantly in hisears, and the disturbing thought of peril imminent was losing itskeenest cutting edge when suddenly the solid earth yawned and theheavens fell. Half absently he realized that the head waiter was seatingsome one at the place opposite his own; then the faint odor of violets,instantly reminiscent, came to his nostrils. He knew instinctively, andbefore he could put the newspaper aside, what had happened. Hence theshock, when he found himself face to face with Verda Richlander, was notso completely paralyzing as it might have been. She was looking acrossat him with a lazy smile in the glorious brown eyes, and the surprisewas quite evidently no surprise for her.
"I told the waiter to bring me over here," she explained; and then,quite pleasantly: "It is an exceedingly little world, isn't it,Montague?"
He nodded gloomily.
"Much too little for a man to hide in," he agreed; adding: "But I thinkI have known that, all along; known, at least, that it would be only aquestion of time."
The waiter had come to take Miss Richlander's dinner order, and the talkpaused. After the man had gone she began again.
"Why did you run away?" she asked.
Smith shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
"What else was there for me to do. Besides, I believed, at the time,that I had killed Dunham. I could have sworn he was dead when I lefthim."
She was toying idly with the salad-fork. "Sometimes I am almost sorrythat he wasn't," she offered.
"Which is merely another way of saying that you were unforgiving enoughto wish to see me hanged?" he suggested, with a sour smile.
"It wasn't altogether that; no." There was a pause and then she went on:"I suppose you know what has been happening since you ran away--what hasbeen done in Lawrenceville, I mean?"
"I know that I have been indicted by the grand jury and that there is areward out for me. It's two thousand dollars, isn't it?"
She let the exact figure of the reward go unconfirmed.
"And still you are going about in public as if all the hue and cry meantnothing to you? The beard is an improvement--it makes you look older andmore determined--but it doesn't disguise you. I should have known youanywhere, and other people will."
Again his shoulders went up.
"What's the use?" he said. "I couldn't dig deep enough nor fly highenough to dodge everybody. You have found me, and if you hadn't,somebody else would have. It would have been the same any time andanywhere."
"You knew we were here?" she inquired.
He made the sign of assent.
"And yet you didn't think it worth while to take your meals somewhereelse?"
He made a virtue of necessity. "I should certainly have taken the smallprecaution you suggest if the clerk hadn't told me that your father hadgone up to the Gloria district. I took it for granted that you had gonewith him."
The lazy smile came again in the brown eyes, and it irritated him.
"I am going to believe that you wouldn't have tried to hide from me,"she said slowly. "You'll give my conceit that much to live on, won'tyou?"
"You mean that I ought to have been willing to trust you? Perhaps I was.But I could hardly think of you as apart from your father. I knew verywell what he would do."
"I was intending to go on up to the mines with him," she said evenly."But last evening, while I was waiting for him to finish his talk withsome mining men, I was standing in the mezzanine, looking down into thelobby. I saw you go to the desk and leave your key; I was sure Icouldn't be mistaken; so I told father that I had changed my mind aboutgoing out to the mines and he seemed greatly relieved. He had beentrying to persuade me that I would be much more comfortable if I shouldwait for him here."
It was no stirring of belated sentiment that made Smith say: "You--youcared enough to wish to see me?"
"Naturally," she replied. "Some people forget easily: others don't. Isuppose I am one of the others."
Smith remembered the proverb about a woman scorned and saw a menace moreto be feared than all the terrors of the law lurking in the even-tonedrejoinder. It was with some foolish idea of thrusting the menace asideat any cost that he said: "You have only to send a ten-word telegram toSheriff Macauley, you know. I'm not sure that it isn't your duty to doso."
"Why should I telegraph Barton Macauley?" she asked placidly. "I'm notone of his deputies."
"But you believe me guilty, don't you?"
The handsome shoulders twitched in the barest hint of indifference. "AsI have said, I am not in Bart Macauley's employ--nor in Mr. WatrousDunham's. Neither am I the judge and jury to put you in the prisoner'sbox and try you. I suppose you knew what you were doing, and why you didit. But I do think you might have written me a line, Montague. Thatwould have been the least you could have done."
The serving of the salad course broke in just here, and for some timeafterward the talk was not resumed. Miss Richlander was apparentlyenjoying her dinner. Smith was not enjoying his, but he ate as atroubled man often will; mechanically and as a matter of routine. It wasnot until the dessert had been served that the young woman took up thethread of the conversation precisely as if it had never been dropped.
"I think you know that you have no reason to be afraid of me, Montague;but I can't say as much for father. He will be back in a few days, andwhen he comes it will be prudent for you to vanish. That is a future,however."
Smith's laugh was brittle.
"We'll leave it a future, if you like. 'Sufficient unto the day is theevil thereof.'"
"Oh; so you class me as an evil, do you?"
"No; you know I didn't mean that; I merely mean that it's no usecrossing the bridges before we come to them. I've been living from dayto day so long now, that I am becoming hardened to it."
Again there was a pause, and again it was Miss Richlander who broke it.
"You don't want to go back to Lawrenceville?" she suggested.
"Hardly--in the circumstances."
"What will you do?--go away from Brewster and stay until father hasfinished buying his mine?"
"No; I can't very well go away--for business reasons."
The slow smile was dimpling again at the corners of the perfect mouth.
"You are going to need a little help, Montague--my help--aren't you? Itoccurs to me that you can well afford to show me some little friendlyattention while I am Robinson-Crusoed here waiting for father to comeback."
"Let me understand," he broke in, frowning across the table at her. "Youare willing to ignore what has happened--to that extent? You are notforgetting that in the eyes of the law I am a criminal?"
She made a faint little gesture of impatience.
"Why do you persist in dragging that in? I am not supposed to knowanything about your business affairs, with Watrous Dunham or anybodyelse. Besides, no one knows me here, and no one cares. Besides, again, Iam a stranger in a strange city and we are--or we used to be--oldfriends."
Her half-cynical tone made him frown again, thoughtfully, this time.
"Women are curious creatures," he commented. "I used to think I knew alittle something about them, but I guess it was a mistake. What do youwant me to do?"
"Oh, anythi
ng you like; anything that will keep me from being bored todeath."
Smith laid his napkin aside and glanced at his watch.
"There is a play of some kind on at the opera-house, I believe," hesaid, rising and going around to draw her chair aside. "If you'd care togo, I'll see if I can't hold somebody up for a couple of seats."
"That is more like it. I used to be afraid that you hadn't a drop ofsporting blood in you, Montague, and I am glad to learn, even at thislate day, that I was mistaken. Take me up-stairs, and we'll go to theplay."
They left the dining-room together, and there was more than one pair ofeyes to follow them in frank admiration. "What a strikingly handsomecouple," said a bejewelled lady who sat at the table nearest the door;and her companion, a gentleman with restless eyes and thin lips and arather wicked jaw, said: "Yes; I don't know the woman, but the man isColonel Baldwin's new financier; the fellow who calls himself 'JohnSmith.'"
The bediamonded lady smiled dryly. "You say that as if you had a mortalquarrel with his name, Crawford. If I were the girl, _I_ shouldn't findfault with the name. You say you don't know her?"
Stanton had pushed his chair back and was rising. "Take your time withthe ice-cream, and I'll join you later up-stairs. I'm going to find outwho the girl is, since you want to know."
On the progress through the lobby to the elevators there were others tomake remarks upon the handsome pair; among them the ex-cowboy mine ownerwhose name was still "Billy" Starbuck to everybody in the Timanyoniregion.
"Say! wouldn't that jar you, now?" he muttered to himself. And again:"This John Smith fellow sure does need a guardian--and for just thisone time I reckon I might as well butt in and be it. If he's fixing toshake that little Corona girl he's sure going to earn what's coming tohim. That's my ante."
The Real Man Page 15