We were silent while the few sounds of the village street droned in.

He rose and paced the floor to shake off his mood, and when he sat down he seemed in better spirits.

"Holbrook will undoubtedly return," I said.

"Yes; there's no manner of doubt about that!"

"And then there will be more trouble."

"Of course."

"But I suppose there's no guessing when he will come back."

"He will come back as soon as he's spent his money."

I felt a delicacy about referring to that transaction on the pier. It was a wretched business, and I now realized that the shame of it was not lost on Gillespie.

"How does Henry come to have that Italian scoundrel with him?" I asked after a pause.

"He's the skipper of the _Stiletto_," Gillespie replied readily.

"He's a long way from tide-water," I remarked. "A blackguard of just his sort once sailed me around the Italian peninsula in a felucca, and saved me from drowning on the way. His heroism was not, however, wholly disinterested. When we got back to Naples he robbed me of my watch and money-belt and I profited by the transaction, having intended to give him double their value. But there are plenty of farm-boys around the lake who could handle the _Stiletto_. Henry didn't need a dago expert."

The mention of the Italian clearly troubled Gillespie. After a moment he said:

"He may be holding on to Henry instead of Henry's holding on to him.

Do you see?"

"No; I don't."

"Well, I have an idea that the dago knows something that's valuable.

Last summer Henry went cruising in the Sound with a pretty rotten crowd, poker being the chief diversion. A man died on the boat before they got back to New York. The report was that he fell down a hatchway when he was drunk, but there were some ugly stories in the papers about it. That Italian sailor was one of the crew."

"Where is he now?"

"Over at Battle Orchard. He knows his man and knows he'll be back.

I'm waiting for Henry, too. Helen gave him twenty thousand dollars.

The way the market is running he's likely to go broke any day. He plays stocks like a crazy man, and after he's busted he'll be back on our hands."

"It's hard on Miss Pat."

"And it's harder on Helen. She's in terror all the time for fear her father will go up against the law and bring further disgrace on the family. There's her Uncle Arthur, a wanderer on the face of the earth for his sins. That was bad enough without the rest of it."

"That was greed, too, wasn't it?"

"No, just general cussedness. He blew in the Holbrook bank and skipped."

These facts I had gathered before, but they seemed of darker significance now, as we spoke of them in the dimly lighted room of the squalid inn. I recalled a circ.u.mstance that had bothered me earlier, but which I had never satisfactorily explained, and I determined to sound Gillespie in regard to it.

"You told me that Henry Holbrook found his way here ahead of you. How do you account for that?"

He looked at me quickly, and rose, again pacing the narrow room.

"I don't! I wish I could!"

"It's about the last place in the world to attract him. Port Annandale is a quiet resort frequented by western people only. There's neither hunting nor fishing worth mentioning; and a man doesn't come from New York to Indiana to sail a boat on a thimbleful of water like this lake."

"You are quite right."

"If Helen Holbrook gave him warning that they were coming here--"

He wheeled on me fiercely, and laid his hand roughly on my shoulder.

"Don't you dare say it! She couldn't have done it! She wouldn't have done it! I tell you I know, independently of her, that he was here before Father Stoddard ever suggested this place to Miss Pat."

"Well, you needn't get so hot about it."

"And you needn't insinuate that she is not acting honorably in this affair! I should think that after making love to her, as you have been doing, and playing the role of comforter to Miss Pat, you would have the decency not to accuse her of connivance with Henry Holbrook."

"You let your jealousy get the better of your good sense. I have not been making love to Miss Holbrook!" I declared angrily and knew in my heart that I lied.

"Well, Irishman," he exclaimed with entire good humor; "let us not bring up mine host to find us locked in mortal combat."

"What the devil _did_ you bring me up here for?" I demanded.

"Oh, just to enjoy your society. I get lonesome sometimes. I tell you a man does get lonesome in this world, when he has nothing to lean on but a blooming b.u.t.ton factory and a stepmother who flits among the world's expensive sanatoria. I know you have never had 'b.u.t.ton, b.u.t.ton, who's got the b.u.t.ton?' chanted in your ears, but may I ask whether you have ever known the joy of a stepmother? I can see that your answer will be an unregretful negative."

He was quite the fool again, and stared at me vacuously.

"My stepmother is not the common type of juvenile fiction. She has never attempted during her widowhood to rob the orphan or to poison him. Bless your Irish heart, no! She's a good woman, and rich in her own right, but I couldn't stand her dietary. She's afraid I'm going to die, Donovan! She thinks everybody's going to die. Father died of pneumonia and she said ice-water in the finger-bowl did it, and she wanted to have the butler arrested for murder. She had a new disease for me every morning. It was worse than being left with a b.u.t.ton-works to draw a stepmother like that. She ate nothing but hot water and zweibach herself, and shuddered when I demanded sausage and buckwheat cakes every day. She wept and talked of the duty she owed to my poor dead father; she had promised him, she said, to safeguard my health; and there I was, as strong as an infant industry, weighed a hundred and seventy-six pounds when I was eighteen, and had broken all the prep school records. She made me so nervous talking about her symptoms, and mine--that I didn't have!--that I began taking my real meals in the gardener's house. But to save her feelings I munched a little toast with her. She caught me one day clearing up a couple of chickens and a mug of ba.s.s with the gardener, and it was all over. She had noticed, she said, that I had been coughing of late--I was doing a few cigarettes too many, that was all--and wired to New York for doctors.

She had all sorts, Donovan--alienists and pneumogastric specialists and lung experts.

"The people on Strawberry Hill thought there was a medical convention in town. I was kidnapped on the golf course, where I was about to win the eastern Connecticut long-drive cup, and locked up in a dark room at home for two days while they tested me. They made all the known tests, Donovan. They tested me for diseases that haven't been discovered yet, and for some that have been extinct since the days of Noah. You can see where that put me. I was afraid to fight or sulk for fear the alienists would send me to the madhouse. I was afraid to eat for fear they would think _that_ was a symptom, and every time I asked for food the tape-worm man looked intelligent and began prescribing, while the rest of them were terribly chagrined because they hadn't scored first.

The only joy I got out of the rumpus was in hitting one of those alienists a d.a.m.ned hard clip in the ribs, and I'm glad I did it. He was feeling my medulla oblongata at the moment, and as I resent being man-handled I pasted him one--he was a young chap, and fair game--I pasted him one, and then grabbed a suit-case and slid. I stole away in a clam-boat for New Haven, and kept right on up into northern Maine, where I stayed with the Indians until my father's relict went off broken-hearted to Bad Neuheim to drink the waters. And here I am, by the grace of G.o.d, in perfect health and in full control of the b.u.t.ton market of the world."

"You have undoubtedly been sorely tried," I said as he broke off mournfully. In spite of myself I had been entertained. He was undeniably a fellow of curious humor and with unusual experience of life. He followed me to the street, and as I rode away he called me back as though to impart something of moment.

"Did you ever meet Charles Darwin?"

"He didn't need me for proof, b.u.t.tons."

"I wish I might have had one word with him. It's on my mind that he put the monkeys back too far. I should be happier if he had brought them a little nearer up to date. I should feel less lonesome, Irishman."

He stopped me again.

"Once I had an ambition to find an honest man, Donovan, but I gave it up--it's easier to be an honest man than to find one. I give you peace!"

I had learned some things from the young b.u.t.ton king, but much was still opaque in the affairs of the Holbrooks. The Italian's presence a.s.sumed a new significance from Gillespie's story. He had been party to a conspiracy to kill Holbrook, _alias_ Hartridge, on the night of my adventure at the house-boat, and I fell to wondering who had been the shadowy director of that enterprise--the coward who had hung off in the creek, and waited for the evil deed to be done.