"This powder is an opiate and will act to produce sound sleep, which is very essential to counter the shock your nervous system has received," said the doctor, as he laid out the potion. "Take it, after getting into bed."

"Thank you," and Sam fingered the powder gingerly. "Good night, Doctor."

"Good night, sir."

As Mr. Harris and the doctor left the room Sam stood for a moment in deep thought, then muttered to himself: "That fellow out there near midnight. No lights or gong on his machine. Deliberately ran me down--and Virginia about! Did he know she was to be there?" He shook his head--"It looks queer." And then he lifted his eyes in a quick, resolute way.

"I'll be back in the park at dawn--I guess so!"

With that he flipped the opiate out of the window.

CHAPTER IX.

It was in the gray of the dawn when Sam alighted from the first outbound car at the junction of Twenty-third and Washington streets and immediately struck out for the City park.

He was desirous of being the first visitor there, and he was inordinately curious to examine by the light of day the ground he had traversed a few hours previous, and particularly the spot where Virginia had met the mysterious stranger, as also the tangle of vines in which he was satisfied had lurked most deadly danger.

He had been urged on by an indefinable something, a sort of presentiment that quickened to impatience, his desire for an early trip to the park, and pursuing his way steadily along, afraid of no ambush now, for he was armed, he at length arrived at the spot which he recognized by the clump of firs close to the row of the esplanade benches. He examined the ground as carefully as the uncertain light would permit. Discovering nothing unusual, he was about to abandon the search and make his way over to the tangle of vines, when on second thought he decided to wait awhile for stronger light. Producing a cigar, he contentedly sat on a bench--the very same Virginia had occupied--near a tree.

Sam was not of a romantic turn of mind, yet his attention was arrested by the sublime grandeur of the scene confronting him. The morning was emerging from the deep darkness of night, mild, clean and fresh. The base of the distant eastern hills was yet shrouded in inky blackness--a blackness intensified by a vast superimposed floating ma.s.s of thin fog, seemingly motionless in the noticeably still air.

The billowy crest of this fleecy, semi-transparent ma.s.s of vapor reflected a mellow chast.i.ty, while the irregular points of the rugged mountain tops were sharply defined against the soft emerald, golden-pink light that streaked and ma.s.sed the sky in the advance of a promising Autumn morn.

The huge, glistening white peaks of Hood and Adams and St. Helens, towered in lofty majesty, clear and individually distinct above the high alt.i.tudes of the range that encompa.s.sed them, and even as he looked, a soft, rose-red tinge tipped the apex of Mount Hood, which appeared unusually close, and crept softly down the glacis of its snow-covered, precipitous sides.

And nearer, at his feet, in a basin--the city spread out far and wide.

The silvery green waters of the Willamette River, cutting through the city's center, silently glided along its sinuous course to the Columbia; while patches of thin mist flitted timidly about on its placid surface, to vanish like tardy spirits of a departing night.

The grand panorama gave his usually buoyant spirits pause.

Gradually the light of his eyes changed from absorbing admiration to a reflective mood, in which the strange behavior of Virginia Thorpe was the predominating subject.

That money, possibly blackmail, was the object of the stranger--scoundrel. Sam could think of him in no other light after the night's experience. There was no doubt, for he had plainly heard her say in a loud, surprised tone, "Twenty thousand dollars."

Suddenly the hoa.r.s.e whistle of a far-off industrial establishment vibrated the air and aroused him from his deep reverie. The morning was well advanced.

As the light in his eyes quickened from a pensive stare at the ground a few paces from his feet, he perceived a shred of red peeping between the blades of short gra.s.s. He picked it up. It was a narrow piece of soiled and worn ribbon, but attached to it was an old oxidized bronze medal, about the size of a silver quarter-dollar. The inscription upon its rim was in Latin, but Sam clearly made out one word, "Garibaldi,"

from which he concluded its late owner must be an Italian.

From the smooth condition of the medal, and unweathered appearance of the ribbon, he judged it must have been recently lost.

"What if it had been accidentally dropped by the man talking to Virginia last night?" The idea was fraught with great possibilities.

"A clue! A sure clue, as I live," and Sam's enthusiasm soared with the recollection of seeing the man thrust his hand into the inside breast of his coat to show the knife, when it was quite possible the medal either became unfastened from its clasp, or being loose in his pocket, had been drawn out with the knife and slipped noiselessly to the ground.

Somehow Sam's thoughts flew back to the night of his uncle's reception, and connected the old Italian beggar loitering about the grounds with the medal.

"Was he the owner of the medal? And, if so, was he the same party that met Virginia, and whom he had followed last night?"

"Heavens! Could he have kidnapped Dorothy?" A train of thought had been started and rushed through Sam's brain with prodigious alacrity.

"Was the twenty thousand dollars he had heard Virginia mention with surprise, a ransom?"

"If Virginia knew that Dorothy was in the hands of the Dago, why did she keep it secret? And what business had Beauchamp out on the Barnes road last night?" Sam derided the idea of him being out there alone, for a spin.

With these thoughts, and others, pregnant with momentous possibilities, he continued the search. Finding nothing more, he sprang onto the path that led to the tangle of vines. There was the very spot. No mistaking it. Along that fence he had crept in the darkness of night. Those the leaves he had touched with his hands, and he thrust his stout cane among them, but no hiss, or rattle, or glitter of something sinister, greeted his probing now.

Into the gloomy recess of the jungle he made his way, derisively fearless of any possible lurking danger.

He parted the overhanging foliage to let in more light. Ah, it was all plain now.

There close to his elbow was the artfully concealed exit through the foliage, and the pickets loose at the bottom. There the man had stood--not more than a foot of s.p.a.ce separating them when Sam's hand touched the leaves, and the glitter--well, it was the vicious glint of an ugly knife. Of that Sam now felt perfectly satisfied.

Pushing the leaves further apart to enlarge the opening overhead, so as to admit more light, he discovered several strands of hair of a brownish color clinging to the end of a broken twig in the cavity of the tangle, which he at once conjectured had been torn from the man's false beard. These strands of hair Sam carefully gathered and placed between the leaves of his notebook. "Maybe, maybe they'll be useful some day. I guess so," he muttered.

He resumed the search, but with the exception of a few indistinct shoeprints on the soft soil, found nothing more to interest him, and squeezing himself through the aperture in the fence, he quickly emerged on the Barnes road, well satisfied with his morning's work.

One hour later, with his hat jauntily set on the side of his head, effectually concealing the wound, Sam was walking on Third street, in front of the "Plaza" blocks, where several vegetable vendors rendezvous preparatory for their morning's work. Several bustling women, hotel stewards and others were out early, marketing. As he wended his way through the bargain-driving throng, the loud voice of an olive-skinned huckster standing on the rear footboard of his heavily-laden wagon, attracted his attention. It was a covered, one-horse express wagon, common on the city streets, and contained a motley a.s.sortment of oranges, bruised bananas, melons and the like.

He was putting in a paper bag some bananas he had sold to a woman, who stood by, at the same time talking volubly--evidently in an effort to fend off her too curiously searching eyes from the over-ripe fruit.

"Eesa good-a da lady. Nice-a da ripe-a."

"Oh, they are too ripe! Put in those other ones, they don't look so soft."

"Eesa note-a da soft-a; only a da black-a da skin. Look-a," and he peeled a diminutive banana.

"How nice and clean those are in that wagon over there. I think I'll buy some of them. You needn't mind putting those up for me."

"Sacre, Tar-rah-rah! Eesa beg-a da pardon, good-a da lady. Take eem all for a ten-a da cent-a," and he thrust the bag of fruit into her hands. "Eesa 'c.h.i.n.k' wagon. Show all-a da good-a side, hide-a da rotten side. Da morrow, Eesa sell-a da turnoppsis, carrottsis, cababages, every kind-a da veg-a-ta-bles. Some-a time Eesa black-a da boots. Saw da ood. Do anyting gett-a da mon. Go back-a da sunny Italy."

He was so insistent, with fear of being made a subject for coa.r.s.e remonstrance, she paid him his price and departed. Whereupon he again began to bawl out in his peculiar Dago dialect: "Or-ran-ges! Ba-nans!

Nice-a da ripe-a banans. Ten-a cents-a doz-z. Me-lo-nas!

War-ter-me-lo-nas! Nice-a da ripe-a Musha Me-lonas!" and he suddenly lowered his voice on observing Sam halt in front of him.

"Eesa tenna cent-a da one. Nice-a da ripe-a, my friend. Take-a eem a da home, two for-a da fifteen-a da centa." And he handled a couple of small melons.

"Sacre, da d.a.m.n," and his voice again rose to a high pitch, as he shouted: "Me-lo-nas! Ba-nans! Nice-a da ripe-a da Ba-nans. Tenn-a cents-a doz!"

The peculiar idioms of the fellow, and his manner of delivery seemed strangely familiar, and as Sam moved along slowly, a pace or two, rumaging his brain for identification, he suddenly remembered the old cripple at his uncle's reception, and also, only last night, the mysterious stranger in the park.