She thrust her hand into her belt, drew out a folded paper and handed it to him.

"_That._ I found it when I came back from the opera."

He recognized the writing at once, and before he was halfway through his rage against Pancha was boiling. When he had finished he could not trust his voice, and staring at the paper, he heard her say:

"I've known for some time Chrystie was troubled and not herself, and this afternoon when I saw her go I _knew_ something was wrong. She looked ill; she could hardly speak to me. And then _that_ came, and I telephoned to the Barlows'--the place she was going. She wasn't there, they'd never asked her, never expected her. She's gone somewhere--disappeared." She raised her voice, hard, threatening, her face angrily accusing, "Where is she, Mr. Mayer? Where is she?"

He knew it all now, and his knowledge made him master.

"Miss Alston, I'm very sorry about this--"

"Oh. don't talk that way!" she cried, pointing at the letter. "What does _that_ mean?"

"I think I can explain. You've given yourself a lot of unnecessary trouble and taken this thing," he scornfully dropped the letter on the table, "altogether too seriously. Sit down and let me straighten it out."

He pointed to the rocker, but she did not move, keeping her eyes with their fierce steadiness on his face.

"How _could_ I take it too seriously?" she said.

"Why"--he smiled in good-natured derision--"what is it? An anonymous letter, evidently by the wording and the writing the work of an uneducated person. It's perfectly true that I've seen your sister several times on the streets, and once I _did_ happen upon her when she was taking a walk in the plaza by the Greek Church. But there's nothing unusual about that--I've met and talked with many other ladies in the same way. The writer of that rubbish evidently saw us in the plaza and decided--to use his own language--that he'd have some fun with us, or rather with me. The whole thing--the expression, the tone--indicates a vulgar, malicious mind. Don't give it another thought, it's unworthy of your consideration."

He saw he had made an impression. Her eyes left him and she stood gazing fixedly into s.p.a.ce, evidently pondering his explanation. In a pleasantly persuasive tone he added:

"You know that I've not been a constant visitor at your house. You've seen my att.i.tude to your sister."

She made no reply to that, muttering low as if to herself:

"Why should anyone write such a letter without a reason?"

"Ah, my dear lady, why are there mischief makers in the world? I'm awfully sorry; I feel responsible, for the person who'd do such a thing is more likely to be known by me than by you. It's probably some servant I've forgotten to tip or by accident given a plugged quarter."

There was a pause, then she turned to him and said:

"But where's Chrystie?"

He came closer, comforting, very friendly:

"Since you ask me I'd set this down as a prank. She's full of high spirits--only a child yet. She's gone somewhere, to some friend's house, is playing a joke on you. Isn't that possible?"

"Yes, possible." She had already found this straw herself, but grasped it anew, pushed forward by him.

He went on, his words sounding the note of masculine reason and rea.s.surance.

"You'll probably hear from her tomorrow, and you'll laugh together over your fears of tonight. But if you take my advice, don't say anything outside, don't tell anyone. You're liable to set the gossips talking, and you never know when they'll stop. They might make it very unpleasant for you both. Miss Chrystie doesn't want her schoolgirl tricks magnified into scandals."

She nodded, brows drawn low, her teeth set on her underlip. If he had convinced her of his innocence he saw he had not killed her anxieties.

"Is there any way I can help you?" he hazarded.

She shook her head. She had the appearance of having suddenly become oblivious to him--not finding him a culprit, she had brushed him aside as negligible.

"Then you'll go home and give up troubling about it?"

"I'll go home," she said, and with a deep sigh seemed to come back to the moment and his presence. Moving to the table she picked up the letter.

Now that he was at ease, her face in its hara.s.sed care touched a vulnerable spot. He was sorry for her.

"Don't take it so to heart, Miss Alston. I'm convinced it's going to turn out all right."

She gave him a sharp, startled look.

"Of course it is. If I thought it wasn't would I be standing here doing nothing?"

She walked to the door, the small punctilio of good-bys ignored as she had ignored all thought of strangeness in being in that place at that hour.

"I wish I could do something to ease your mind," he said, watching her receding back.

"You can't," she answered and opened the door.

"Have you a trap--something to take you home?"

She pa.s.sed through the doorway, throwing over her shoulder:

"Yes, I've a cab--it's been waiting."

In spite of his success he had, for a moment, a crestfallen sense of feeling small and contemptible. He watched her walk down the hall and then went to the window and saw her emerge from the street door, and enter the cab waiting at the curb.

Alone, faced by this new complication, the sting of her disparaging indifference was forgotten. There was no sleep for him that night, and lighting a cigarette he paced the room. He would have to let the gambling debt go; there could be no delay now. By the afternoon of the next day Lorry would be in a state where one could not tell what she might do. He would have to leave on the morning train, call up Chrystie at seven, go out and change the tickets, and meet her at Oakland. In the sudden concentrating of perils, the elopement was gradually losing its surrept.i.tious character and becoming an affair openly conducted under the public eye. But there was no other course. Even if they were seen on the train they would reach Reno without interference, and once there he would find a clergyman and have the marriage ceremony performed at once.

After that it didn't matter--he trusted in his power over Chrystie. In the back of his mind rose a discomforting thought of an eventual "squaring things" with Lorry, but he pushed it aside. Future difficulties had no place in the present and its desperate urgencies. The thought of Pancha also intruded, and on that he hung, for a moment, his face evil with a thwarted rage, his hands instinctively bent into talons. Had he dared he would like to have gone to her and--but he pushed that aside too and went back to his plans and his pacings.

Lorry went home convinced of Mayer's ignorance. Finding him at the hotel had done half, his arguments and manner the rest. And during the drive back his explanation of Chrystie's disappearance had retained a consoling plausibility. She held to it fiercely, conned it over, tried to force herself to see the girl impishly bent on a foolish practical joke.

But when she was in her own room, the blank silence of the house about her, it fell from her and left her defenseless against growing fears. It was impossible to believe it--utterly foreign to Chrystie's temperament.

She racked her memory for occasions in the past when her sister had indulged in such cruel teasing and not one came to her mind. No--she wouldn't have done it, she couldn't--something more than a joke had made Chrystie lie to her. A sumptuous figure in her glistening dress, she moved about, rose and sat, jerked back the curtains, picked up and dropped the silver ornaments on the bureau. Her lips were dry, her heart contracted with a sickening dread; never in all the calls made upon her had there been anything like this; finding her without resources, reducing her to an anguished helplessness.

If in the morning there was no word from Chrystie she would have to do something and she could not think what this should be. Mayer had not needed to warn her against giving her sister up to the tongue of gossip.

The most guileless of girls living in San Francisco would learn that lesson early. But what could she do? To whom could she go for help and advice? She thought of her mother's friends, the guardians of the estate, and repudiated them with a smothered sound of scorn. They wouldn't care; would let it get into the papers; would probably suggest the police. And would she not herself--if Chrystie did not come back or write--have to go to the police?

That brought her to a standstill, and with both hands she pressed on her forehead pushing back her hair, sending tormented looks about her. If there was only someone who would understand, someone she could trust, someone--she dropped her hands, her eyes widening, fixed and startled, as a name rose to her lips and fell whispered on the stillness. It came without search or expectation, seemed impelled from her by her inward stress, found utterance before she knew she had thought of him. A deep breath heaved her chest, her head drooped backward, her eyelids closing in a relief as intense, as ineffably comforting, as the cessation of an unbearable pain.

She stood rigid, the light falling bright on her upturned face, still as a marble mask. For a moment she felt bodiless, her containing sh.e.l.l dissolved, nothing left of her but her longing for him. Like an audible cry or the grasp of her hand drawing him to her, it went out from her, imperious, an appeal and a summons. Again she whispered his name; but she heard it only as the repet.i.tion of a solace and a solution, was not aware of forces tapped in lower wells of being.

After that she felt curiously calmed, her wild restlessness gone, her nightmare terrors a.s.suaged. If she did not hear from Chrystie by midday she would call him up at his office and ask him to come to her. She seemed to have found in the thought of him not only a staff to uphold, but wisdom to guide.

She drew the curtains and saw the first thin glimmering of dawn, pearl-faint in the sky, pearl-pale on the garden. The crystal tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of her bodice gave a responsive gleam, and looking down she was aware of her gala array. She slipped out of it, put on a morning dress, and denuded her hair of its shining ornament. It seemed long ago, in another life, that she had sat in Mrs. Kirkham's box, rejoicing in her costly trappings, glad to be admired.

Then she pulled a chair to the window and sat there waiting for the light to come. It crept ghostly over the garden, trees and plants taking form, the walks and lawns, a vagueness of dark patches and lighter windings, emerging in gradual definiteness. The sky above the next house grew a lucid gray, then a luminous mother-of-pearl. She could see the glistening of dew, its beaded h.o.a.r upon cobwebs and gra.s.sy borders. There was no footstep here to disturb the silence; the dawn stole into being in a deep and breathless quietude.