Part 17 (2/2)

”ONE WHO KNOWS”

Norvin Blake dined at his club that evening, returning to his office at about half-past seven. He was relieved to find the place deserted, for he desired an opportunity to think undisturbed. Although this unforeseen twist of events had seemed remarkable, at first, he began to feel that he had been unconsciously waiting for this very hour.

Something had always forewarned him that a time would come when he would be forced to take a hand once more in that old affair. Nor was he so much disturbed by the knowledge that Narcone, the butcher, was here in New Orleans as by the memories and regrets which the news aroused.

Entering his private office, he lit the gas, and flinging himself into an easy-chair, gave himself over to recollections of all that the last four years had brought forth. It seemed only yesterday that he had returned from Italy, hot upon the scent which Colonel Neri had uncovered for him. He had been confident, eager, hopeful, yet he had failed, signally, unaccountably. He had combed New York City for a trace of Margherita Ginini with a thoroughness that left no possible means untried. As he looked back upon it now, he wondered if he could ever summon sufficient enthusiasm to attack any other project with a similar determination. He doubted it. Later experience had bred in him a peculiar caution, a shrinking hesitancy at exposing his true feelings, due, no doubt, to that ever-present necessity of watching himself.

Margherita had never written him after her first disappearance; his own letters had been returned from Sicily; the police of New York had failed as those of Rome and Naples and other cities had failed. He had wasted a small fortune in the hire of private detectives. At last, when it was too late to profit him, he had learned that the three women had been in New York at the time of his arrival, but evidently they had become alarmed at his pursuit and fled. It was this which had forced him to give up--the certainty that Margherita knew the motive of his search and resented it. He had never quite recovered from the sting of that discovery, for he was proud, but he had grown too wise to cherish unjust resentment. It merely struck him as a great pity that their lives had fallen out in such unhappy fas.h.i.+on. He never tried to deceive himself into believing that he could forget her, become a new man, and banish the joy and the pain of his past, impartially. There were other women, it is true, who attracted him strongly, aroused his tenderness and appealed to his manhood--and among them Myra Nell Warren. His power of feeling had not been atrophied, rather it had become deeper. Yet his loyalty was never really impaired. In the bottom of his heart he knew that that tawny, slumbrous yet pa.s.sionate Sicilian girl was his first and his most sacred love.

As he sat alone now, with the evidences of his accomplishment about him, he realized that in spite of his material success, life, so far, at least, had been just as stale and flat as it had promised to be on that night when he and Martel had ridden away from the feast at Terranova. He had made good, to his own satisfaction, in all respects save one, and even in that he had gained the form if not the substance, for the world regarded him as a man of proven courage. It seemed to him a grim and hideous joke, and he wondered what his friends would think if they knew that the very commonplace adventure planned for this evening filled him with a cringing horror. The prospect of this trip into the Italian quarter with the probability of encountering Narcone turned him cold and sick. His hands were like ice and the muscles of his back were twitching nervously; he could feel his heart pound as he let his thoughts have free play. But these symptoms were only too familiar; he had conquered them too many times to think of weakening.

After five years of intimate self-study he was still at a loss to account for his phenomenal cowardice. He wondered again to-night if it might not be the result of a too powerful imagination. Donnelly had no imagination whatever, and the same seemed true of others whom he had studied. As for himself, his fancies took alarm at the slightest hint and went careering off into all the dark byways of supposition, encountering impossible shapes and improbable dangers. Whatever the cause, he had long since given up hope of ever winning a permanent victory over himself and had learned that each trial meant a fresh battle.

When he saw by the clock that the hour of his appointment had come, he arose, although his body seemed to belong to some one else and his spirit was crying out a mad, panicky warning. He opened the drawer of his desk and, extracting a revolver, raised it at arm's-length. He drew it down before his eye until the sights crept into alignment, and held it there for a throbbing second. Then he smiled mirthlessly, for his hand had not shown the slightest tremor.

Donnelly was waiting as Blake walked into headquarters, and, exhuming a box of cigars from the remotest depths of a desk drawer, he offered them, saying:

”I've sent O'Connell over to reconnoiter. There's no use of our starting out until he locates Sabella. You needn't be so suspicious of those perfectos; they won't bite you.”

”The last one you gave me did precisely that.”

”Must have been one of my cooking cigars. I keep two kinds, one for callers and one for friends.”

”Then if this is a Flor de Friends.h.i.+p I'll accept,” Blake said with a laugh.

”I see Mr. Dreux didn't change his mind and decide to join us.”

”No, this is a little too rough for Bernie. He very cheerfully acknowledged that he was afraid Narcone might recognize me and make trouble.”

”I thought of that,” Donnelly acknowledged. ”Is there any chance?”

In the depths of Blake's consciousness something cried out fearfully in the affirmative, but he replied: ”Hardly. He never saw me except indistinctly, and that was nearly five years ago. He might recall my name, but I dare say not without an introduction, which isn't necessary.”

”Do you think you will know him?”

”I-I have reason to think I will.”

The Chief grunted with satisfaction.

”A funny little fellow, that Dreux!” he remarked. ”Wasn't it his father who fought a duel with Colonel Hammond from Baton Rouge?”

”The same. They used shotguns at forty yards. Colonel Hammond was killed.”

”Humph! And he was afraid to go with us to-night?”

”Oh, he makes no secret of his cowardice.”

”Well, a mule is a mule, a coward is a coward, and a gambler is a-- son-of-a-gun,” paraphrased the Chief. ”If he hasn't any courage he can't force it into himself.”

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