"It'll take some time to get the goods on 'em good," he explained, "but there's ways we got. When we learn what we got to know we'll arrange it and tip you off. Then you and me will go to the door and break in on the parties at the right moment, and--"

"No, Thank You!" said Charity, with a firm pressure on each word.

"You better get some friend to go with us, for a detective needs c'roboration, you know. The courts won't accept a detective's uns'ported testimony. And if you could know what some of these crooks are capable of you wouldn't wonder. Is that all right? We get the goods on 'em and you have a friend ready, and we'll bust in on the parties, and--"

"No, thank you!" said Charity, with undiminished enthusiasm.

This stumped Mr. Hodshon. She amazed him further. "I don't intend to bring this case into court. I don't want to satisfy any judge but myself."

But what he had said about the credibility of the unsupported detective had set Charity to thinking. It would be folly to pay these curious persons to collect evidence that was worthless when collected. She mused aloud:

"Would it be possible--of course it wouldn't--but if it were, what I should like would be to be able to see my hu--Mr. Ch--those two persons without their knowing about it at all. Of course that's impossible, isn't it?"

"Well, it was a few years ago, but we can do wonders nowadays. There's the little dictagraph. We could string one up for you and give you the usual stenographic report--or you could go and listen in yourself."

"Could I really?" Charity gasped, and she began to shiver with the frightfulness of the opportunity.

"Surest thing you know," said Hodshon.

"But how could you install a dictagraph without their finding it out?"

"Easiest thing you know. We'll probably have to rent an apartment in the same building or another one near-by, and--one of the hall-boys there may be workin' for us now. If not, we can usually bring him in. There's a hundred ways to get into a house and put the little dictor behind a picture or somewheres and lead the wire out to us."

"But can you really hear--if they talk low?" Charity mumbled, with dread.

"Let 'em whisper!" said Hodshon. "The little fellow just eats a whisper.

Leave it to us, madam, and we'll surprise you."

The compact was made. Charity suggested an advance payment as a retainer, and Hodshon permitted her to write a check and hand it to him before he a.s.sured her that it wasn't necessary.

He went away and left Charity in a state of nerves. Her curiosity was a mania, but she feared that a.s.suaging it might leave her in a worse plight. She hated herself for her enterprise and was tempted to cancel it. But when she heard Cheever come home at midnight and go to his room without speaking to her she felt a grim resentment toward him that was like a young hate with a big future.

Every night Charity received a typewritten doc.u.ment describing Cheever's itinerary for the day. The mute, inglorious Boswell took him up at the front steps, heeled him to his office, out to lunch, back to the office, thence to wherever he went.

The name of Zada did not appear in the first report at all, but on the second day she met Cheever at luncheon, and he went shopping with her.

Charity, reading, flushed to learn that he bought her neither jewelry nor hats, but household supplies and delicacies. He went with her to her apartment and thence with her to dinner and the theater and then back, and thence again after an hour to his home.

The minute chronicle of his outdoor doings, intercalated with the maddening bafflement of his life in that impenetrable apartment, made such dramatic reading as Charity had never known. She grew haggard with waiting for the arrival of her little private daily newspaper. When she saw Cheever she could hardly keep from screaming at him what she knew.

His every entrance into the house became a hideous insult. She felt that it was herself who was the kept woman and not the other.

She longed to take the doc.u.ments and visit the Reverend Doctor Mosely with them, make him read them and tell her if he still thought it was her duty to endure such infamy. She felt that the good doctor would advise her to lay them before Cheever and confound him with guilt, bring him to what the preachers call "a realizing sense" of it and win him home.

She was tempted to try the imaginary advice on Cheever, but something held her back. She wondered what it was, till suddenly she came to a realizing sense of one fearful bit of news: her soul had so changed toward him, her love had turned to such disgust, that she was afraid he might come back to her! He might cast off his discovered partner in guilt and renew his old claim to Charity's soul and body. That would be degradation indeed!

Now she was convinced that her love had starved even unto death, that it was a corpse in her home, corrupted the air and must be removed.

CHAPTER XX

Kedzie lay extended on her _chaise longue_, looking as much unlike Madame Recamier as one could look who was so pretty a woman. A Sunday supplement dropped from her hand and joined the heap of papers on the floor. Kedzie was tired of looking at pictures of herself.

She had had to look over all the papers, since she was in them all. At least her other self, Anita Adair, was in them.

In every paper there was a large advertis.e.m.e.nt with a large picture of her and the names of the theaters at which she would appear simultaneously in her new film. In the critical pages devoted to the moving-picture world there were also pictures of her and at least a little text.

In two or three of the papers there were interviews with the new comet; in others were articles by her. These entertained her at first, because she had never seen the interviewers or the articles. She had not thought many of the thoughts attached to her name. The press agent of the Hyperfilm Company had written everything. He reveled in his new star, for the editors were cordial toward her "press stuff." They "ate it up,"

"gave it spread."

This was the less surprising since the advertising-man of the Hyperfilm Company was so lavish with purchase of s.p.a.ce that the publishers could well afford to throw in a little free reading matter--especially since it did not cost them a cent for the copy.

The press agent unaided has a hard life, but when the advertising-man gives him his arm he is welcome to the most select columns.

In some of the interviews Kedzie gave opinions she had never held on themes she had never heard of. When she read that her favorite poet was Rabindranath Tagore she wondered who that "gink" was. When she read that she owed her figure to certain strenuous flexion exercises she decided that they might be worth trying some day. Her advice to beginners in the motion-picture field proved very interesting. She wondered how she had ever got along without it.

She was greatly excited by an article of hers in which she told of the terrific adventures she had had in and out of the studio; there was one time when an angry tiger would have torn her to pieces if she had not had the presence of mind to play dead. She read of another occasion when she had either to spoil a good film or endanger her existence as the automobile she was steering refused to answer the brake and plunged over a cliff. Of course she would not ruin the film. By some miracle she escaped with only a few broken bones, and after a week in the hospital returned to the interrupted picture. These old stories were told with such simple sincerity that she almost believed them. But she tossed them aside and sneered:

"Bunc!"

She yawned over her own published portraits--and to be able to do that is to be surfeited indeed.

Suddenly Kedzie stopped purring, thought fiercely, whirled to her flank; her hands went among the papers. She remembered something, found it at last, an article she had glanced at and forgotten for the moment.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and read. It discussed the earning powers of several film queens. It credited them with salaries ten or twenty times as much as hers. Two or three of them had companies of their own with their names at the head of their films.

Kedzie groaned. She rose and paced the floor, shamed, trapped, humbled.

The misers of the Hyperfilm Company paid her a beggarly hundred dollars a week! merely featured her among other stars of greater magnitude, while certain women had two thousand a week and were "incorporated,"

whatever that was!

Kedzie longed to get at Ferriday and tell him what a sneak he was to lure her into such a web and tie her up with such cheap ropes. She would break her bonds and fling them in his face.

She slid abruptly to the floor and began to go over the film pages again, comparing her portraits with the portraits of those higher-paid creatures. She hated vanity and could not endure it in other women; it was a mere observation of a self-evident fact that she was prettier than all the other film queens put together. She sat there sneering at the presumptuousness of screen idols whom she had almost literally worshiped a year before.

Then something gave her pause. The celluloid-queens had certain pages allotted to them, the actresses certain pages.

But there was another realm where women were portrayed in fashionable gowns--debutantes, brides, matrons. And their realm was called "The Social World." These women toiled not, earned not; they only spent money and time as they pleased. They were in "society," and she was out of it.

They were ladies and she was a working-woman.

Now Kedzie's cake was dough indeed. Now her pride was shame. She did not want to be a film queen. She did not want to work for any sum a week.

She wanted to be a debutante and a bride and a matron.

She had never had a coming-out party, and never would have. She studied the aristocrats, put their portraits on her dressing-table and tried to copy their simple grandeur in her mirror. But she lacked a certain something. She didn't know a human being who was swell to use as a model.

Oh yes, she did--one--Jim Dyckman.

A dark design came to her to dally with him no longer. He had dragged her out of that pool at Newport; now he must drag her into the swim.

The telephone-bell rang. The hall-boy said: