"Is Miss Gravely in?"

"Just gone out. Only round the corner. Back in a few minutes. Say, sister, I'm her stepfather, and 'll take the message."

"Tell her to come right over to the Excelsior Studio. Castin'

director's got a part for her. Real part. Small but a stunner. Outcast girl. I s'pose she's got some old duds to dress it in?"

"Sure thing!"

"Well, tell her to bring 'em along. And say, listen! I don't mind pa.s.sing you the tip that the castin' director has his eye on that girl for doin' the pathetic stunt; so see she ain't late."

"Y'betcha."

That an ambitious man, growing anxious about his future, was thus placed in a trying situation will be seen at once. The chance of a lifetime was there and he was unable to seize it. Everyone knew that by these small condensations of nebular promise stars were eventually evolved, and to have at his disposal the earnings of a star....

It seemed providential then that on dropping into the bas.e.m.e.nt eating place at which he had begun to take his breakfasts he should fall in with Gorry Larrabin. They were not friends, or rather they were better than friends; they were enemies who found each other useful. Mutually antipathetic, they quarrelled, but could not afford to quarrel long. A few days or a few weeks having gone by, they met with a nod, as if no hot words had been pa.s.sed.

It was such an occasion now. Ten days earlier Judson had called Gorry to his teeth "no detective, but a hired sneak." Gorry had retorted that, hired sneak as he was, he would have Judson Flack "in the jug"

as a promoter of faked companies before the year was out. One word had led to another, and only the intervention of friends to both parties had kept the high-spirited fellows from exchanging blows. But the moment had come round again when each had an axe to grind, so that as Judson hung up his hat near the table at which Gorry, having finished his breakfast, was smoking and picking his teeth, the nod of reconciliation was given and returned.

"Say, why don't you sit down here?"

Politely Gorry indicated the unoccupied side of his own table. It was a small table covered with a white oil-cloth, and tolerably clean.

"Don't mind if I do," was the other's return of courtesy, friendly relations being thus re-established.

Having given his order to a stunted Hebrew maid of Polish culture, Judson Flack launched at once into the subject of Letty. He did this for a two-fold reason. First, his grievance made the expression of itself imperative, and next, Gorry being a hanger-on of that profession which lives by knowing what other people don't might be in a position to throw light on Letty's disappearance. If he was he gave no sign of it. As a matter of fact he was not, but he meant to be. He remembered the girl; had admired her; had pointed out to several of his friends that she had only to doll herself up in order to knock spots out of a lot of good lookers of recognized supremacy.

Odette Coucoul's description of him as "most ver' beautiful fella"

was not without some justification. Regular, clean-cut features, long and thin, were the complement of a slight well-knit figure, of which the only criticism one could make was that it looked slippery.

Slipperiness was perhaps his ruling characteristic, a softness of movement suggesting a cat, and a habit of putting out and drawing back a long, supple, snake-like hand which made you think of a pickpocket.

Eyes that looked at you steadily enough impressed you as untrustworthy chiefly because of a dropping of the pupil of the left, through muscular inability.

"Awful sorry, Judson," was his summing up of sympathy with his companion's narrative. "Any dope I get I'll pa.s.s along to you."

Between gentlemen, however, there are understandings which need not be put into words, the principle of nothing for nothing being one of them. The conversation had not progressed much further before Gorry felt at liberty to say:

"Now, about this North Dakota Oil, Judson. I'd like awful well to get in on the ground floor of that. I've got a little something to blow in; and there's a lot of suckers ready to snap up that stock before you print the certificates."

Diplomacy being necessary here Judson practiced it. Gorry might indeed be seeking a way of turning an honest penny; but then again he might mean to sell out the whole show. On the one hand you couldn't trust him, and on the other it wouldn't do to offend him so long as there was a chance of his getting news of the girl. Judson could only temporize, pleading his lack of influence with the bunch who were getting up the company. At the same time he would do his utmost to work Gorry in, on the tacit understanding that nothing would be done for nothing.

Allerton too had breakfasted late, at the New Netherlands Club, and was now with Miss Barbara Walbrook, who received him in the same room, and wearing the same hydrangea-colored robe, as on the previous morning. He had called her up from the Club, asking to be allowed to come once more at this unconventional hour in order to communicate good news.

"She's willing to do anything," he stated at once, making the announcement with the glee of evident relief. "In fact, it was by pure main force that I kept her from running away from the house this morning."

He was dashed that she did not take these tidings with his own buoyancy. "What made you stop her?" she asked, in some wonder. "Sit down, Rash. Tell me the whole thing."

Though she took a chair he was unable to do so. His excitement now was over the ease with which the difficulty was going to be met. He could only talk about it in a standing position, leaning on the mantelpiece, or stroking the head of the Manship terra cotta child, while she gazed up at him, nervously beating her left palm with the black and gold fringe of her girdle.

"I stopped her because--well, because it wouldn't have done."

"Why wouldn't it have done? I should think that it's just what would have done."

"Let her slip away penniless, and--and without friends?"

"She'd be no more penniless and without friends than she was when--when you--" she sought for the right word--"when you picked her up."

"No, of course not; only now the--the situation is different."

"I don't see that it is--much. Besides, if you were to let her run away first, so that you get--whatever the law wants you to get, you could see that she wasn't penniless and without friends afterwards.

Most likely that's what she was expecting."

His countenance fell. "I--I don't think so."

"Oh, you wouldn't think so as long as she could bamboozle you. I was simply thinking of your getting what she probably wants to give you--for a price."

"I don't think you do her justice, Barbe. If you'd seen her----"

"Very well; I shall see her. But seeing her won't make any difference in my opinion."

"She'll not strike you as anything wonderful of course; but I know she's as straight as they make 'em. And so long as she is----"

"Well, what then?"

"Why, then, it seems to me, we must be straight on our side."

"We'll be straight enough if we pay her her price."

"There's more to it than that."

"Oh, there is? Then how much more?"

"I don't know that I can explain it." He lifted one of the Stiegel candlesticks and put it back in its place. "I simply feel that we can't--that we can't let all the magnanimity be on her side. If she plays high, we've got to play higher."

"I see. So she's got you there, has she?"

"I wish you wouldn't be disagreeable about it, Barbe."

"My dear Rash," she expostulated, "it isn't being disagreeable to have common sense. It's all the more necessary for me not to abnegate that, for the simple reason that you do."

He hurled himself to the other end of the mantelpiece, picking up the second candlestick and putting it down with force. "It's surely not abnegating common sense just to--to recognize honesty."

"Please don't fiddle with those candlesticks. They're the rarest American workmanship, and if you were to break one of them Aunt Marion would kill me. I'll feel safer about you if you sit down."

"All right. I'll sit down." He drew to him a small frail chair, sitting astride on it. "Only please don't fidget me."

"Would you mind taking _that_ chair?" She pointed to something solid and masculine by Phyffe. "That little thing is one of Aunt Marion's pet pieces of old Dutch colonial. If anything were to happen to it--But you were talking about recognizing honesty," she continued, as he moved obediently. "That's exactly what I should like you to do, Rash, dear--with your eyes open. If I'm not looking anyone can pull the wool over them, whether it's this girl or someone else."