Francis away. That's all there is to it. I'll buy her farm, or a dozen farms, if she's got them, if she'll agree to keep quiet. But if she says she will, can I trust her, Gordon?"

Gordon nodded a.s.sent. "Absolutely," he answered. "If she agrees to anything at all, she'll stick to what she says. You needn't worry about that. She's the soul of honor."

Palmer rose abruptly. "I must get back home," he said, more in his usual manner. "I look like the very devil. Ring her up, Gordon, and have her come down here and get the thing settled up, that's a good fellow. I'm half wrong in my head myself over the thing. Get it settled right, Gordon, and I'll never forget it." He hesitated a moment, and then continued awkwardly. "And I'm devilish sorry, Gordon; I really am. And I wish you'd tell the girl so when you see her. I hope you won't lay this up against me. I never meant to do it, and I never would have done it if I hadn't lost my head altogether. I'm sorry. That's all I can say."

Gordon held out his hand. "Harry," he said, "you've done an awful thing, but G.o.d forbid that one man should sit in judgment on another.

A higher power than ourselves must do that. As far as I'm concerned, I forgive you the wrong you've done, and I'll do all in my power to help you."

Palmer eagerly took the proffered hand. "Gordon, you're a brick!" he said gratefully. "I wish to G.o.d I were half as good a chap as you are." And, turning on his heel, he left the office.

CHAPTER IX

PALMER HAS A VISITOR

Eight--nine--ten--eleven-- The little clock on the mantel chimed the hour musically and significantly, and Palmer jumped quickly to his feet, pulling out his watch as he did so for confirmation. Then, with a laugh and a shake of his head, he thrust it back into his pocket again.

"No use, May," he said; "I've lost track of an hour somewhere, and it doesn't seem to be the clock's fault. I suppose I'll have to blame you instead."

May Sinclair smiled. "I find, Harry," she said slowly, "that being engaged makes awfully irresponsible creatures of us. You wouldn't think that it would change people who ought to have arrived at years of discretion so that they act and talk and feel in a way their common sense tells them is ridiculous, and yet a way so pleasant that they wouldn't have it different if they could. I find my most settled tastes, habits, plans, everything, all completely changed. And I guess, Harry, you find it a good deal the same way, too."

She had risen as she spoke, and stood beside him, slender, delicate, womanly, altogether charming. With no a.s.sumption of coquetry, she laid a detaining hand on his arm, and raised her brown eyes wistfully to his.

"I don't want you to go yet," she whispered. "You can stay till half-past eleven, Harry. Honestly, I'm not a bit tired to-night."

Palmer stooped and kissed her. "Mustn't try to tempt me, May," he answered, "after you've got doctor's orders to take things easy and have plenty of rest. If you'd only give up your beloved settlement work, then it would be a different thing altogether. You wait till we're married, and I'll make you give it up, whether or no. You'll find I'm enough to reform, without your having to bother your head with those b.u.ms from the slums. Gad, May, how's that? One of these regular eppy--what-you-may-call-'ems--b.u.ms from the slums; really, now, I call that rather clever."

The girl shook with laughter. "Oh, Harry, Harry," she cried, "your sense of humor will certainly kill me some day. It's so very--well, obvious--to say the least. But--" and she drew closer to him--"I love you, dear, in spite of it."

Palmer slipped his arm around the girl's slender waist, and kissed her again and again. "You don't know, May," he whispered, "what it means to me to hear you say that. It makes me feel awfully proud, and yet at the same time, you know, it makes me feel awfully ashamed of myself, too. I never ought to have dared to ask you to marry me in the first place, May. That's the whole trouble. You're a million times too good for me. Sometimes, you know, I get to thinking lately I'm a deuced poor sort of a chap, after all."

The girl laid a protesting finger on his lips. "Stop!" she commanded; "I can find fault with you all I please, but I'm the only one. You're not to say a word against yourself, because I won't let you. I wouldn't want you to be any different, my dear, in any possible way--if only you wouldn't make fun of the settlement. That really makes me discouraged, Harry."

Palmer raised his right hand. "I solemnly swear," he cried, with mock seriousness, "that if it bothers you, May, I'll never make fun of it again. Only--and I'm really in earnest about this--I always have believed that there's trouble enough coming every one's way before they've finished the game to keep them busy, and yet here you deliberately go out hunting for it. That's what I can't get through my head."

The girl in her turn grew suddenly grave. "Oh, but Harry," she protested, "we don't have any real troubles, you and I. If you could know some of the things we come across there at the settlement. Just think, last night I heard about the little O'Brien girl, the brightest, prettiest little thing in the whole club; she isn't a day over seventeen, and some brute of a man got her to go off with him in an automobile, and there was wine, of course, and now--now the poor thing's in trouble. Just think of it, Harry. You can't imagine the temptation and all that part of it for girls that haven't good homes.

And most men are such beasts. Oh, I've thanked G.o.d, Harry, more times than you've ever guessed, that I'm to marry a man that's big and strong and clean and honest. I'm so proud of you, Harry, you don't know how proud."

Fortunately for both, the dim light masked the expression on Palmer's face, and the girl did not mark the sudden spasm of pain that contracted it. Somewhat hastily, it seemed to her, he stooped and kissed her again.

"I'm a brute myself," he said with a faint attempt at humor, "keeping you up till almost midnight. To-morrow night, dear. No, don't come down. Good-night, May, good-night."

Once outside the Sinclairs' home, Palmer strode away down the street, for the first time in his life, perhaps, in an agony of self-abas.e.m.e.nt. Up to now, his fears and worries had been purely selfish ones. He had done something of which he was ashamed, and in which he did not wish to be found out, and in spite of the payment of hush money and solemn protestations of secrecy in return, he had felt that he was treading on the edge of a slumbering volcano. Now, however, May Sinclair's parting words had for once awakened his dormant moral sense, and he flushed hotly at the thought that the kisses he had given the pure girl who believed him all that was true had been but a short twenty-four hours before lavished in a mad burst of pa.s.sion upon another.

With all his faults, Palmer was kind. Horses and dogs were his friends. Small children, oftentimes to his great embarra.s.sment, made much over him. Kind--and weak, he was never cast to play the villain in life's drama; betrayals of friendship, premeditated deception, even injury to the feelings of another, none of these things was natural to him, and his love for May Sinclair, all unknown to him, was working and striving to rouse the finer sense sleeping within him far beneath the crust of ignorance and selfishness and sloth.

Thus, in repentant, self-contemptuous mood, he reached the entrance of his big house on the avenue, and in moody silence unlocked the door and entered the quiet hall. At once, to his surprise, a silent figure came forward to meet him, and, peering through the half-light, he recognized the figure of his secretary.

"Hullo, Morton," he exclaimed in surprise, "what's the trouble now?"

The secretary advanced with an air of caution. "There's a young woman waiting in the reception-room to see you, sir," he said in a low tone.

"She's been here since ten o'clock, and she seems to be an uncommonly determined sort of person. In fact, she was too much for me, altogether. I couldn't get rid of her. She insists she's got to see you."

Palmer frowned, possibly with well-merited apprehension, for a girl to see him might mean any one of half-a-dozen disagreeable alternatives.

With a sigh he drew back the portiere and entered, closing the door after him as he did so.

The girl who rose to meet him was fashionably, even expensively gowned in a closely fitting black walking dress, cunningly designed to display to the best advantage the obvious attractions of her figure.

Her face was so heavily veiled that her features were hardly to be distinguished, but to Palmer's relief, she was evidently an utter stranger to him. The lateness of the hour and the fact that she was alone did not seem to disturb her self-possession in the least; in fact, she even seemed faintly amused at Palmer's scrutiny.

"No," she said, as if in answer to his unspoken question, "you don't know me, Mr. Palmer. I don't think you've ever laid eyes on me before."

Palmer bowed courteously. "Then you will pardon me for saying that this is a rather unusual time for a visit," he rejoined. "Perhaps I may venture to ask your name and business."

The girl, without waiting for Palmer's invitation to do so, had resumed her seat. "You certainly may," she answered. "You're really very good not to throw me out through the window. I suppose I deserve it. My name is Annie Holton; my profession perhaps you can guess without my shocking you; my special business with you is that I've tumbled to something that ought to interest you a lot."

Palmer looked at her with the closest scrutiny. "Perhaps," he suggested, "if this is very important, you could call at ten o'clock to-morrow morning. I shall be at leisure then."

The girl laughed. "You probably think I'm crazy, or else that I'm an anarchist or something like that," she rejoined good-humoredly. "I'm sure I don't blame you a bit. But I'm neither one nor the other, and I can a.s.sure you I wouldn't be here at this hour if it wasn't worth it--for both of us, I hope. In the first place, I know about the little difficulty you're in."

Palmer shook his head. "I'm afraid there's some mistake," he said blandly. "You'll excuse me for reminding you--"

The girl cut him short with an impatient gesture. "Don't bluff!" she cried. "You ought to be able to see I'm no fool. I'm giving this to you straight, and you might as well go straight with me, too. I know half the story, to start with, and there's another quarter that's not very hard to guess, and you can fill in what's left, if you feel like it. Does that sound right?"

Palmer frowned. To him it sounded as if the pledge of secrecy had been violated almost as soon as made. "All right," he rejoined resignedly, "fire away!"

The girl hesitated a moment, then began, speaking slowly and with care.

"Well, here's the story," she said. "There's a man that you know named Gordon, who seems to be a pretty smooth proposition. He's been doing the Jekyll and Hyde act for two or three years now, and n.o.body's ever got on to him so far. Now, for some reason that I don't know, he's got it in for you, and puts up a game on you. It's all done very smooth, indeed. Two women--same profession as myself--are worked into it, one to play Miss Innocence, 'Her golden hair was hanging down her back,'

part, you know, and the other to be the loving mother. Then there's--"

Palmer raised a protesting hand. "You can stop right there," he cried.

"This is nothing but foolishness, and waste of time. I don't know who's been telling you all this rot, or what his object was, but one thing I do know, and that is that you've been most completely taken in. The only thing you've happened to get right is that I know a man named Gordon, and it also happens that he's one of the best friends I've got in the world. So any stories you're bringing me about him are just waste of breath."

The girl gave an impatient little sigh. "My dear Mr. Palmer," she said, "there's no use in our going on at cross purposes like this. I tell you once more I'm not easy to fool. I've seen my bit of the world, and I wouldn't be here wasting my time and yours if I didn't know what I was about. I don't ask much. Just give me five minutes to tell my story without interruption, and then, if you don't believe it, I'll go like a lamb, and leave you to be buncoed in peace, if you really enjoy that sort of thing. Isn't that fair?"

Palmer leaned back in his chair with an air of resignation, pulling out his watch as he did so. "Pardon my rudeness," he said ironically.

"I'm unfortunate enough to be feeling a little tired. You may have your five minutes, free from interruption, and then I fear we shall have to say good night."

The girl nodded. "Thanks," she said briefly, "that's all I wanted. And I guess I won't waste any time, either. Now, as I was telling you, this Gordon is a pretty smooth kind of a guy. He goes into this thing right, from the breakaway. Stage setting, lights turned down, soft music, the whole show. Now, the play is to get you compromised with this girl, and then bleed you for all they think you'll stand for, so they get you off on an island somewhere alone with this girl--I don't know if it's really an island, or whether that's just a name they've got for it. Gordon's out there now, I believe; but, anyway, they get you there alone with the girl. Well, I suppose there's no need to go into details. I take it, though, that there's some play with knockout drops, or something of the sort. That's only a guess, though; you know what happened better than I do. Anyway, the point is that between them they got you dead to rights, and now they've started to bleed you.

What they want, or how much they've got you for, I don't know, but it must be good and plenty, because the woman who played the smallest part of all flashes a roll as big as your arm, and, if a super gets that, what do the star and the leading lady get? I don't know, but I guess you do, all right.

"Now, they're two things more. One, how do I know all this? Because the woman who did the loving mother is a friend of mine, and she gets full up at my house last night, and tells me the whole yarn, or mostly the whole of it; enough so I can see you're being done for fair. Two, why do I come to you about it, instead of holding them up for money?

Because I hate Gordon and his crowd, and I want to see you get back at them, and because if you can make them give back what they've stuck you for, it's worth your while to pay me well for putting you on.

That's business, isn't it? There, I guess that covers it, and I guess I'm within my five minutes. So what do you say now? Is it 'Good night,' or is it 'Won't you stay a little longer'? Is it go or stay?"

Palmer's air of bored indifference had long since vanished. Now he sat silent, motionless, while the ticking of the clock was the only sound to be heard in the room. A minute pa.s.sed, two, three. Then, with a quick intake of his breath, he leaned forward in his chair.