"You sick, Mist Mayer?" he said.

The strained tension snapped. With an eye if steel-cold fury on the servant the man broke into a low, almost whispered, cursing. The words ran out of his mouth, fluent, rapid, in an unpremeditated rush. They were as picturesque and malignantly savage as those with which he had cursed the tules; and suddenly they stopped, checked by the Chinaman's expression. It was neither angry or alarmed, but intently observant, the eyes unblinking--an imperturbable, sphinx-like face against which the flood of rage broke, leaving no mark.

Mayer took up the half-filled gla.s.s and drained it, the servant watching him with the same quiet scrutiny. He longed to plant his fist in the middle of that unrevealing mask, but instead tried to laugh, muttered an explanation about feeling ill, and slid a five-dollar gold piece across the table.

To his intense relief Fong picked it up, dropped it into the pocket of his blouse, and without a word turned and left the room.

No one had noticed the little scene. When Mayer came back the group was on its feet, Mark having made a move to go.

There were handshakes and good-nights, and Burrage and Lorry moved forward up the long room. Aunt Ellen took the opportunity of slipping through a side door that led to the hall, and Chrystie and her lover faced each other among the empty chairs.

With his eye on the receding backs of the other couple, Mayer said, hardly moving his lips:

"When can I see you again? Tomorrow at the Greek Church at four?"

She demurred as she constantly did. At each station in the clandestine courtship he had the same struggle with the same faltering uncertainty.

But, after tonight, the time for humoring her moods was past. What he had endured during the last hour showed in a haggard intensity of expression, a subdued, fierce urgence of manner. Chrystie looked at him and looked away, almost afraid of him. He was staring at her with an avid waiting as if ready to drag the answer out of her lips. She fluttered like a bird under the snake's hypnotic eye.

"I can't," she whispered; "I'm going out with Lorry."

"Then when?'

"Oh, Boye, I don't know--I have so many things to do."

He had difficulty in pinning her down to a date, but finally succeeded five days off. In his low-toned insistence he used a lover's language, terms of endearment, tender phrases, but her timorous reluctance roused a pa.s.sion of rage in him. He would have liked to shake her; he would have liked to swear at her as he had at Fong.

CHAPTER XXI

A WOMAN SCORNED

After the conversation with Crowder, Pancha was very quiet for several days. She spoke only the necessary word, came and went with feline softness, performed her duties with the precision of a mechanism. Her stillness had a curious quality of detachment; she seemed held in a spell, her eye, suddenly encountered, blank and vacant; even her voice was toneless. She reacted to nothing that went on around her.

All her vitality had withdrawn to feed the inner flame. Under that dead exterior fires blazed so high and hot that the sh.e.l.l containing them was empty of all else. They had burned away pride and reason and conscience; they were burning to explosive outbreak. The girl had no consciousness of it; she only felt their torment and with the last remnant of her will tried to hide her anguish. Then came a day when the sh.e.l.l cracked and the fires burst through.

Unable to bear her own thoughts, weakened by two sleepless nights, she telephoned to the Argonaut Hotel and said she wanted to speak to Mr.

Mayer. The switchboard girl answered that he was in and asked for her name. On Pancha's refusal to give it, the girl had crisply replied that Mr. Mayer had left orders no one was to speak with him unless he knew the name. Pancha gave it and waited. Presently the answer came--"Very sorry, Mr. Mayer doesn't seem to be there--thought he was in, but I guess I was wrong."

This falsehood, contemptuously transparent, act of final dismissal, was the blow that broke the sh.e.l.l and let the fire loose. Such shreds of pride and self-respect as remained to the wretched girl were shriveled.

She put on her hat and coat, and tying a thick veil over her face, went across town to the Argonaut Hotel.

It was the day after Mayer had met Mark at the Alstons'. He too had not slept, had had a horrible, hara.s.sing night. All day he had sat in his rooms going over the scene, recalling the young man's face, a.s.suring himself of its unconsciousness. But he was upset, jarred, his security gone. Luxury had corroded his already wasted and overdrawn forces; the habits of idleness weakened his power to resist. One fact stood out in his mind--he must carry the courtship with Chrystie to its conclusion, and arrange for their elopement. Sprawled in the armchair or pacing off the s.p.a.ce from the bedroom door to the window he planned it. One or two more interviews with her would bring her to the point of consent, then they would slip away to Nevada; he would marry her there and they would go on to New York. It ought not to take more than a week, at the longest ten days. If he had had any other woman to deal with--not this spiritless fool of a girl--he could manage it in a much shorter time. All he had to do was to make a last trip to Sacramento and get what was left of the money and that could be done in a day.

A knock at the door made him start. Any sound would have made him start in the state he was in, and a knock called up nightmare visions of Burrage, police officers, Lorry Alston--there was no end to his alarms.

Then he rea.s.sured himself--a package or the room boy with towels--and called out "Come in."

At the first glance he did not know who it was. Like a woman in a novel a female, closely veiled, entered without greeting and closed the door.

When she raised the veil and he saw it was Pancha Lopez he was at once relieved and exasperated. Her manner did not tend to remove his irritation. Leaning against the table, her face very white, she looked at him without speaking. Had not the sight of her just then been extremely unwelcome, the melodrama of the whole thing--the veil, the pallid face, the dramatic silence--would have amused him. As it was he looked anything but amused, rising from the armchair, his brows drawn together in an ugly frown.

"What on earth brings you here?" was his greeting.

"You," she answered.

Her voice, husky and breathless, matched the rest of the crazy performance. He saw an impending scene, and under his anger had a feeling of grievance. This was more than he deserved. He gave her an ironical bow.

"That's very flattering, I'm sure, and I'm highly honored. But, my dear Pancha, pardon me if I say I don't like it. It's not my custom to see ladies up here."

"Don't talk like that to me, Boye," she said, the huskiness of her tone deepening. "Don't put on style and act like you didn't know me. We're past that."

He shrugged.

"Answer for yourself, Pancha. Believe me, I'm not at all past conforming to the usages of civilized people." He had moved back to the fireplace, and leaning against the mantel waited for her to reply. As she did not do so, he said, "Let me repeat, I don't like your coming here."

Her eyes, level and fixed, were disconcerting. To avoid them he turned to the mantel and took up a cigarette and matches lying there.

"Then why don't you come to see me?" she said.

"Teh--Teh!" He put the cigarette between his teeth and struck the match on the shelf. "Haven't I told you I'm busy?"

"Yes, you've _told_ me that."

"Well?"

"You've told me lies."

"Thank you." He was occupied lighting the cigarette.

"Why, when I telephoned an hour ago and gave my name, did you say you were out?"

He affected an air of forbearance.

"Because I happened to be out."

"Boye, that's another lie."

He threw the match into the fireplace and turned his eyes on her full of a steely dislike.

"Look here, Pancha. You've bothered me a lot lately, calling me up, nagging at me about things I couldn't help. I'm not the kind of man that likes that; I'm not the kind that stands it. I've been a friend of yours and hope to stay so, but--"

She cut him off, her voice trembling with pa.s.sion.

"_Friend_--you a friend! _You_ who do nothing but put me off with lies--who are trying to shake me, throw me away like an old shoe!"

Her restraint was gone. With her shoulders raised and her chin thrust forward, the thing she had been, and still was--child of the lower depths, bred in its ways--was revealed to him. It made him afraid of her, seeing possibilities he had not grasped before. What he had thought to be harmless and powerless might become one more menacing element in the dangers that surrounded him. His natural caution put a check upon his anger. He tried to speak with a soothing good humor.