"You need me yet, little lady. Don't quench my enthusiasms too roughly or I might take up some other pretty little girl as my medium of expression. There are lots and lots of pretties born every minute, but it takes years to make a director like me."

And she knew that this was true.

"I was only fooling," she said. "Don't be mad at me. You can kiss me if you want to."

"I don't want to," he said, as hurt as an overgrown boy or a prima donna.

The door opened, and a wave of light swept into the room. A voice followed it.

"Is Miss Adair in there?"

"Yes," Kedzie answered, in confusion.

"Gent'man to see you."

It was Jim Dyckman. He followed closely and entered the room just as Ferriday found the electric b.u.t.ton and switched on the light.

Kedzie and Ferriday were both encouraged when they saw a look of jealous suspicion cross his face. Ferriday hastened to explain:

"We've been editing Miss Adair's new film. Like to see an advance edition of it?"

"Love to," said Dyckman.

"Oh, Simpson, run that last picture through again," Ferriday called through a little hole in the wall.

A faint "All right, sir" responded.

Kedzie led Dyckman to a chair and took the next one to it.

Ferriday beamed on them and switched on the dark. Then, as if by a divine miracle, the screen at the end of the room became a world of life and light. People were there, and places. Mountains were swung into view and removed. Palaces were decreed and annulled. Fields blossomed with flowers; ballrooms swirled; streets seethed.

Anita Adair was created luminous, seraphic, composed of light and emotion. She came so near and so large that her very thoughts seemed to be photographed. She drifted away; she smiled, danced, wept, and made her human appeal with angelic eloquence.

Dyckman groaned with the very affliction of her charm. She pleased him so fiercely that he swore about it. He cried out in the dark that she was the blank-blankest little witch in the world. Then he groveled in apology, as if his profanity had not been the ultimate gallantry.

When the picture was finished he turned to Kedzie and said, "My G.o.d, you're great!" He turned to Ferriday. "Isn't she, Mr.--Fenimore?"

"I think so," said Ferriday; "and the world will think so soon."

Kedzie shook her head. "I'm only a beginner. I don't know anything at all."

"Why, you're a genius!" Dyckman exploded. "You're simply great. You know everything; you--"

Ferriday touched him on the arm. "We mustn't spoil her. There is a charm and meekness about her that we must not lose."

Dyckman swallowed his other great's and after profound thought said, "Let's lunch somewhere."

Ferriday excused himself, but said that the air would be good for Miss Adair. She was working too hard.

So she took the air.

Dyckman had come to the studio with Charity's business as an excuse. He had forgotten to give the excuse, and now he had forgotten the business.

He did not know that he was now Kedzie Thropp's business. And she was minding her own business.

CHAPTER XIX

Peter Cheever was going to dictagraph to his wife. The quaint charm of the dictagram is that the sender does not know he is sending it. It is a good deal like an astral something or other.

Peter had often telegraphed his wife, telephoned her, and wirelessed her. Sometimes what he had sent her was not the truth. But now she was going to hear from him straight. She would have all the advantages of the invisible cloak and the ring of Gyges--eavesdropping made easy and brought to a science, a combination of perfect alibi with intimate propinquity.

Small wonder that the device which justice has made such use of should be speedily seized upon by other interests. Everything, indeed, that helps virtue helps evil, too. And love and hate find speedy employment for all the conquests that science can make upon the physical forces of the universe.

How Charity's motives stood in heaven there is no telling. It is safe to say that they were the usual human mixture of selfish and altruistic, wise and foolish, honorable and impudent, profitable and ruinous. She came by the dictagraphic idea very gradually. She had plentiful leisure since she had taken a distaste for good works. She had been so roughly handled by the world she was toiling for that she decided to let it get along for a while without her.

It was a benumbing shock to learn definitely that her husband was in liaison with a definite person, and to be confronted in shabby clothes with that person all dressed up. When she hurried to the Church for mercy it was desolation to learn from the pulpit that her heart clamor for divorce was not a cleanly and aseptic impulse, but an impious contribution to the filthy social condition of the United States.

Charity had no one to confide in, and she had no new grievance to air. Everybody else had evidently been long a.s.sured of her husband's profligacy. For her to wake up to it only now and run bruiting the stale information would be a ridiculous nuisance--a newsgirl howling yesterday's extra to to-day's busy crowd.

Besides, she had in her time known how uninteresting and unwelcome is the celebrant of one's own misfortunes. Husbands and wives who tell of their bad luck are entertaining only so long as they are spicy and sportsmanlike. When they ask for a solution they are embarra.s.sing, since advice is impossible for moral people. The truly good must advise him or her either to keep quiet or to quit. But to say "Keep quiet!" is to say "Don't disturb the adultery," while to say "Quit!" is to say "Commit divorce!" which is far worse, according to the best people.

We have always had adultery and got along beautifully, while divorce is new and American and intolerable. Of course, one can and sometimes does advise a legal separation, but that comes hard to minds that face facts, since separation is only a license to--well, we all know what separation amounts to; it really cannot be prettily described.

Charity, left alone at the three-forked road of divorce, complacency, or separation, sank down and waited in dull misery for help or solution, as do most of the poor wayfarers who come upon such a break in their path of matrimony. She imagined Cheever with Zada and wondered what peculiar incantations Zada used to hold him so long. She wished that she had positive evidence against him--not for public use, but as a weapon of self-defense. She felt that from his pulpit Doctor Mosely had challenged her to a spiritual duel in that sermon against divorce and remarriage of either guilty or innocent.

Also she began to want to get evidence to silence her own soul with.

She wanted to get over loving Cheever. To want to be cured of such an ailment is already the beginning of cure.

Abruptly the idea came to her to put a detective on the track of Zada and Cheever. She had no acquaintance in that field, and it was a matter of importance that she should not put herself in the hands of an indelicate detective. She ought to have consulted a lawyer first, but her soul preferred the risk of disaster to the shame of asking counsel.

She consulted the newspapers and found a number of advertis.e.m.e.nts, some of them a little too mysterious, a little too promiseful. But she took a chance on the Hodshon & Hindley Bureau, especially as it advertised a night telephone, and it was night when she reached her decision.

She surprised Mr. Hodshon in the bosom of his family. He was dandling a new baby in the air and trying not to step on the penultimate child, who was treating one of his legs as a tree. When the telephone rang he tossed the latest edition to its mother and hobbled to the table, trying to tear loose the clinger, for it does not sound well to hear a child gurgling at a detective's elbow.

When Charity told Hodshon who she was his eyes popped and he was greatly excited. When she asked Mr. Hodshon to call at once he looked at his family and his slippers and said he didn't see how he could till the next day. Charity did not want to go to a detective's office in broad daylight or to have anybody see a detective coming to her house. She had an idea that a detective could be recognized at once by his disguise. He probably could be if he wore one; and he usually can be, anyway, if any one is looking for him. But she could not get Hodshon till she threatened to telephone elsewhere. At that, he said he would postpone his other engagement and come right up.

Charity was disappointed in Mr. Hodshon. He looked so ordinary, and yet he must know such terrible things about people. We always expect doctors, lawyers, priests, and detectives to show the scars of the searing things they know. As if we did not all of us know enough about ourselves and others to eat our eyes out, if knowledge were corrosive!

Charity was further disappointed in Hodshon's lack of picturesqueness.

He was like no detective she had read about between Sherlock Holmes and Philo Gubb. He was like no detective at all. It was almost impossible to accept him as her agent.

He seemed eager to help, however, and when she told him that she suspected her husband of being overly friendly with an insect named Zada L'Etoile, and that she wanted them shadowed, he betrayed a proper agitation.

Now, of course, women's scandals are no more of a luxury to a detective than their legs were to the bus-driver of tradition or to any one in knee-skirted 1916. Mr. Hodshon was a good man as good men go, though he was capable of the little dishonesties and compromises with truth that characterize every profession. A man simply cannot succeed as a teacher, lawyer, doctor, merchant, thief, author, scientist, or anything else if he blurts out everything he knows or believes. No preacher could occupy a pulpit for two Sundays who told just what he actually thought or knew or could find out. The detective is equally compelled to manipulate the truth.

Hodshon gave his soul to Charity's cause. He outlined the various ways of establishing Cheever's guilt and promised that the agency would keep him shadowed and make a record of all his hours.