Part 12 (1/2)

”She may have it--on those terms. I'll have no business dealings with women of the Polly Roberts sort. That would be the last I'd ever see of the twenty thousand--”

”I never thought you were stingy!”

Ruyler, in spite of his tearing anxiety, laughed outright. ”Is that your idea of how the indulgent American husband becomes rich?”

”Oh--of course I wouldn't have you lose such a sum. I really have learned the value of money in the abstract, although I can't care for it as much as men do.”

”I have no great love of money, but there is a certain difference between a miser and a levelheaded business man--”

”Price, I must have that money. Polly--oh, I am afraid she will kill herself!”

”Not she. A more selfish little beast never breathed. She'll squeeze the money out of some one, never fear! But I think I'll lock up your jewels in case you are tempted to raise money on them for her--Darling!”

Helene, without a sound, had fainted.

CHAPTER IX

They had intended to go to the theater but Ruyler put her to bed at once. He offered to read to her, but she turned her back on him with cold disdain, and he went to the little invisible cupboard where she kept her own jewels and took out the heavy gold box which had been the wedding present of one of his California business friends who owned a quartz mine.

”I shall put this in the safe,” he said incisively, ”for, while I admire your stanchness in friends.h.i.+p, even for such an unworthy object as Polly Roberts, I do not propose that my wife shall be selling or p.a.w.ning her jewels for any reason whatever. Think over the proposal I made downstairs. If Polly is willing I'll lend Roberts the money to-morrow.”

She had thrown an arm over her face and she made no reply. He went down stairs and put the box in the safe. It occurred to him that she had watched him open and close the safe several times but she certainly never had written the combination down, and it had taken him a long while to commit it to memory himself.

He had glanced over the contents of the box before he locked it in. The jewels were all there, the string of pearls that he had given her on their marriage day, a few wedding presents, and several rings and trinkets he had bought for her since. The value was perhaps twenty thousand dollars, for he had told her that she must wait several years before he could give her the jewels of a great lady. When she was thirty, and really needed them to make up for fading charms--it had been one of their pleasant little jokes.

As Ruyler set the combination he sighed and wondered whether their days of joking were over. Their life had suddenly shot out of focus and it would require all his ingenuity and patience, aided by friendly circ.u.mstance, to swing it into line again. He did not believe a word of the necklace story. Somebody was blackmailing the poor child. If he could only find out who! He made up his mind suddenly to put this problem also in the hands of Spaulding for solution. The question of his mother-in-law's antecedents was important enough, but that of his wife's happiness and his own was paramount.

He decided to go to the theater himself, for he was in no condition for sleep or the society of men at the club, nor could any book hold his attention. He prayed that the play would be reasonably diverting.

He walked down town and as he entered the lobby of the Columbia at the close of the first act he saw 'Gene Bisbee and D.V. Bimmer, who was now managing a hotel in San Francisco, standing together. He also saw Bisbee nudge Bimmer, and they both stared at him openly, the famous hotel man with some sympathy in his wise secretive eyes, the reformed peer of the underworld with a certain speculative contempt.

Ruyler, to his intense irritation, felt himself flus.h.i.+ng, and wondered if the man's regard might be translated: ”Just how much shall I be able to touch him for?” He wished he would show his hand and dissipate the d.a.m.nable web of mystery which Fate seemed weaving hourly out of her bloated pouch, but he doubted if Bisbee, or whoever it was that tormented his wife, would approach him save as a last resource. They were clever enough to know that her keenest desire would be to keep the disgraceful past from the knowledge of her husband, rather than from a society seasoned these many years to erubescent pasts.

Moreover it is always easier to blackmail a woman than a man, and Price Ruyler could not have looked an easy mark to the most optimistic of social brigands.

He found it impossible to fix his mind on the play; the cues of the first act eluded him, and the characters and dialogue were too commonplace to make the story negligible.

At the end of the second act Ruyler made up his mind to go home and try to coax his wife back into her customary good temper, pet her and make her forget her little tragedy. He still hesitated to broach the subject to her directly, but it was possible that by some diplomatically a.n.a.logous tale he could surprise her into telling him the truth.

During the long drive he turned over in his mind the data Spaulding had placed before him during the afternoon. He rejected the theory that Madame Delano was Mrs. Lawton as utterly fantastic, but admitted a connection. Helene had spoken more than once of Mrs. Lawton's kindness to ”maman” when her baby was born during her ”enforced stay in San Francisco,” and it was quite possible that the two had been friends, and that the young mother had adopted the name of Dubois when calling upon the nuns of the convent at St. Peter, either because it would naturally occur to her, or from some deeper design which, he could not fathom....

Yes, the connection with Mrs. Lawton was indisputable and it remained for him to ”figger out” as Spaulding would say, which of these women, the gambler's wife, the notorious ”Madam,” Gabrielle, the briefly coruscating Pauline Marie, or the Englishman's mistress, a woman of Mrs. Lawton's position would be most likely to befriend.

The first three might be dismissed without argument. She had been no frequenter of ”gambling joints” whatever her peccadilloes; Gabrielle, he happened to know, had died some eight or ten years ago, and Mademoiselle Pauline Marie, if she had had a child, which was extremely doubtful, was the sort that sends unwelcome offspring post haste to the foundling asylum.

There remained only the spurious Mrs. Medford, and she was the probability on all counts. What more likely than that she and Mrs. Lawton had met at one of the great winter hotels in Southern California, and foregathered? Certainly they would be congenial spirits.