I1EU FACE AMID TUB FLAMES SHADOWS LIKE A WHITE ENCHANTED FLOWER. Page 364 THE FLAME DANCER FRANCES AYMAR MATHEWS Author of "MY LADY PEGGY GOES TO TOWN," "A LITTLE TRAGEDY AT TIEN-TSIN.' "/ have starved every impulse, every power in me, but one. I have subjugated all the passions, hungers, thirsts, desires of man which /, too, was endowed with, so that I might concentrate everything in one thing, my will. I have succeeded. J may have lost all the so-called pleasures of life, but I have obtained the supreme. I can control men, whether they are far or near to me." Illustrations by C. F. NEAGLE G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK Copyright, 1908, by G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY Stage Rights Reserved by FRANCES AYMAR MATHEWS ' The Flame Dancer CONTENTS CHAPTER I. REGINALD MAKES HIS PROPOSAL ... 7 II. THE SHADOW OF THE FUTURE .... 26 III. MASTER AND SLAVE ...... 42 IV. THE ONE WOMAN ...... 54 V. THE CALL OF THE MAGIC HARP ... 70 VI. THE GHOST AT THE BALL ..... 86 VII. THE POWER AGAINST WHICH TO STRUGGLE IS USELESS ....... IIO VIII. WHAT REGGIE SAW ...... 121 IX. THE MAN FROM HEADQUARTERS . . .131 X. "WILT THOU TAKE THIS MAN?" "NO" . 145 XL THE FIFTH WHEEL OF THE COACH . . . 1 54 XII. THE FLIGHT IN THE NIGHT . . . . l68 XIII. BERTHA'S LUCK ....... 173 XIV. JAFFRAY'S CONFLICT ...... 191 XV. DETECTIVE AND LOVER ..... 197 XVI. ON THE TRAIL ....... 213 XVII. THE REACH OF THE HUMAN SOUL . . .224 XVIII. No. 6072 AND No. 89116 ..... 239 XIX. ACROSS THE CONTINENT ..... 253 XX. THE VANISHING PLACE , 260 XXI. FORTY FEET UNDER THE GROUND . . . 273 XXII. WEAVING A HUMAN NET ..... 288 XXIII. THE FIFTH WHEEL OF THE COACH . . .302 XXIV. THE WOMAN IN ROOM No. 40 . . . .308 XXV. THE BATTLE OF THE SOULS . . . .320 XXVI. THE THIEF ........ 33^ XXVII. THE FLAME DANCE ...... 35 8 2137252 ILLUSTRATIONS FAOS His eyes were weaving about her a web of irresistible fiber . . 45 "I will not permit the indignity of a search" .... 141 "Yes, she is here" ........ 289 Her face amid the flames shadows like a white enchanted flower . 364 THE FLAME DANCER. REGINALD MAKES HIS PROPOSAL ^ ^ ^v UT, Reggie, now come, what better can you O do? The eyebrows of the man addressed lifted slowly and ironically; the woman who had ad- dressed him, by whom he sat on a delightful little tete-a-tete in the coziest and most secluded corner of her brother's apartment on Central Park West, ob- served the irony of her companion's eyebrows, but, like most of her sex once embarked on the enticing sea of match-making, Mrs. De Forrest Austin never cast anchor until port was made and the knot safely tied. "Isn't Bertha a perfect dear?" she inquired viva- ciously. Reginald Stevens nodded slowly, and looking down a bit at her, smiled as he said: "My dear Betty, you are all dears." THE FL'AME DANCER "Hush !" she pouted. "Since Forrie and I hit it off twelve years ago, think of it, twelve years! I never can rest without trying to provide some one's hap- piness." "Count me out, like an angel," the man exclaimed. " Ton honor, Betty, I don't want to marry even your dearest friend. Don't want to marry anybody." He stood up for a moment, and then reseated himself astride of a light straight chair, in front of Mrs. Aus- tin. He was a big chap, good to look at, clean, whole- some, fine, strong: that was the outer man. What primal passions and elementary urgings and spur- rings and law-defying instincts there might be beneath, belonging to the soul of him, it would have taken much more than a cursory glance to discover. "I say!" he continued, noting Mrs. Austin's ex- pression of momentary dismay, "I'm not a marrying chap at all. One should have the longing for a home, an anchorage, a perpetuity, a sort of end-of-the- chapter attitude, shouldn't one now, before one asks a girl to be one's wife?" "'End of the chapter!'" repeated Betty Austin, in mirthful amazement. "I like that. I rather think it's found oftenest to be the beginning of many chap- ters." "I know, I know," he responded hastily, "that it 8 THE FLAME DANCER ought to be that maybe it is, in cases like yours and Forrie's, but I'm speaking of the dull and deadly aver- age: I belong to the dull and deadly average, and, hang it! Bettty, I'm not ready yet to exchange what I have for, what I haven't!" "But Bertha ?" exclaimed the matron, in a tone that would seem to admit of no appeal. "Bertha!" reiterated Mr. Stevens, in a possibly brutal tone. "What of her? What about her?" "She likes you," said Mrs. Austin, with a fine and artful hesitation. "Well, what of it? She likes dozens of men, no doubt. Why am I picked out by you to convert her into a married woman? Choose some one else. Choose well, there's Tommy Partley, a lovely chap." "Is he?" responded Mrs. Austin, in a careful tone, as her eyes and Mr. Stevens' both wandered out of their cozy corner in Doctor Warren's library to the drawing-room where a birthday-party for Jean Aus- tin, Mrs. Austin's daughter, was in progress, and in the midst of which entertainment the aforesaid Part- ley was exploiting himself. "Isn't he?" retorted Reginald Stevens. Mr. Partley, at this particular juncture, was en- gaged in playing "Oats, peas, beans and barley grows," with all the spirit of an extreme and volatile 9 THE FLAME DANCER juvenility he was, in fact, but twenty-two, very short, near-sighted, adorably unconscious of himself and keen for any sort of activity. "He is in love with Primrose Palmer." "'Love!'" ejaculated Mr. Stevens, in a curiously chilling and supercilious way. "Yes, love," returned Mrs. Austin firmly. "And," she resumed with concentration and in a much low- ered key, "Bertha Wilmerding loves you." Stevens did not move a muscle; he also remained silent for a full minute ; then he said : "Betty, that isn't like you. If it's fiction you shouldn't indulge in that brand; if it's fact, for the girl's sake you should have been fair and kept her secret." He rose. " 'Secret !' " cried Betty Austin suavely, "there's no secret about it, and Forrie and I, and the whole of our set, every one of us is just sitting up primed, waiting for you to do it!" "Don't be absurd, please," Reginald remarked, while out in the drawing-room the host's newest pal, a Chinese professor, was blandly condescending to amuse the Christian children with some curious feats of hypnotic legerdemain from the land of little shoes. " 'Absurd !' " again echoed Mrs. Betty. "Why, see 10 THE FLAME DANCER here, Reggie, you don't mean to say you're not going to marry Bertha?" Her voice was very serious. Reggie's eyes at this moment were fixed upon the young woman in question. She was a big girl, with an every-day face and smile, a figure promising all kinds of early redundancy, and a lot of lovely black hair, which was marcelled into stupid smoothness by; her apt maid every day. She wore very expensive and very smart clothes ; she seemed to be all there and yet not to be quite balanced; she was one of thou- sands of girls in New York who are physically com- plete, but to an exceptional observer merely galvan- ized puppets parading about in the mirthful society of thousands upon thousands of counterparts. "Most certainly not," he finally replied. "But, Reggie!" Betty Austin's voice sank. Ste- vens looked at her squarely. "Sit down here again beside me, won't you?" He sat down beside her, of course. She leaned near to him and went on in a whisper. "Reggie, the girl is dying for you." "Hush!" he cried, springing up. "It is not wom- anly, or fair, or true to your friend to say such things." His voice was harsh and untempered. "It is," she cried impetuously. "It is, because I know that she would make you happy." Mr. Stevens contemplated Mrs. Austin with an amused antago- ii THE FLAME DANCER nism, and yet, too, there was in his face the warning hint of a coming surrender; as if some unmanageable cloud were smothering him to its whim. "Happy?" he managed to speak. "What do you know about what would make me happy?" He spoke slowly; while he spoke, his gaze was not on his com- panion, or yet on Miss Bertha Wilmerding, but it was irrelevantly enough fixed upon the Chinese professor who was now spinning twenty-six tops in the air, apparently unsupported by anything more material than his own Chinese will. "I know you so well, Reggie. You've been a bit wild of course " Mr. Stevens' gaze quitted the Chinese professor and alighted on Betty's countenance. He himself was just then back in the African jungle, lying in the shade of luxuriant foliage at noonday, panting with the intolerable heat; sweet fruits between his lips, sweet, dissonant voices near him: then the sun sank and the cool night wind crept up from the sea, and with it came the thirst for the struggle and the grip of the darkness; the star-time, when men start out in those lands to use their nerves and muscles, to sat- isfy their hungers, quench their thirsts; to combat with lithe beasts and lither men, to kiss their women, and to fall asleep from sheer exhaustion when their 12 THE FLAME DANCER battles are fought and won. His memory slipped half- way across the world to North China, to the narrow, dark valley between the narrow, arid mountains, where some years before he had spent time surveying for the great trans-continental railway, buying tracts of land to meet the future demands of the traffic he foresaw for Reginald Stevens was the alert, keen man of to-day, and the millions he had were no rea- son to him for not acquiring as many more. He remembered, as it is possible for the mind to hold a hundred things at once, the sacred tomb and shrine of the Flame Dancers, as they called themselves; that he had bought it in defiance of the princely chief of the sect, who had come to him veiled in mysterious flames to warn him of his vandalism and to tell him that the opals which were hidden in the shrine would yet be gotten back by their rightful owners Stevens remembered all this as his eyes were fixed on Struh- La, and then he smiled as he recalled how much a woman like Bertha would enjoy those opals, and that he had promised Betty Austin she should wear them at this ball of hers next week. Yes, Betty Austin was to wear on her fatuous brow the glorious, flaming talisman of the Eastern men. The little words, and the little voice, and the little soul of this human be- ing, Betty, who sat on the velvet sofa and thus piped 13 THE FL'AME DANCER unto him, struck him as so ludicrous, in the teeth of his well-recollected and many pasts, that he would have laughed in her face, but that the monarch who rules this kind of man, as well as any other kind, forbade; he doffed his smiles to Convention, and, bending nearer to Mrs. Austin, remarked: "A bit wild, you say?" She nodded. "Well, now, upon the whole, I rather think I'm wilder at this mo- ment, in this day and year of grace, than I ever was before." She laughed because she fancied it was an appro- priate moment for it. She had no sort of idea what Mr. Stevens was talking about; so she said: "Well, that's just it, and Bertha would tame you." "Oh!" he exclaimed incredulously. Just then he beheld Bertha's foot; it was large, ugly, and ex- quisitely shod. He abominated a large and ugly foot for a woman. "Yes," pursued the matron blithely. "You've had your fling, Reggie, dear boy. I know." She shook a pretty ringer at him, and at those many imaginary things already easily and specifically classed as "the past." Then she resumed : "But a man of your name and fortune must think; you owe it to your name to marry; you owe it to Bertha Wilmerding to marry her." 14 THE FLAME DANCER "Why?" he asked harshly. "Because can I tell you the truth?" "Why not!" "Because for all last summer, and all this winter up in town, every one has coupled her name and yours." "Why did they do that?" he inquired, in a matter- of-fact way. "You have been very attentive to the girl; flowers, drives, bonbons, dinners, theater-parties " "Well I " as his companion's breath alone; gave out. "Well!" she ejaculated impatiently. "What did you do it all for, and mislead her and us, if not to end up by a proposal, eh?" "I did it," he answered slowly, "because her mother, who is an invalid, as you know, and at the sanitarium at Saratoga, asked me to help make the girl's winter pleasant for her. I've never given her a glance or a word other than the most commonplace." "But she thinks you have. She has written her mother so; they expect it; they regard it as your in- honor-bound duty." "What?" he cried, with a gasp. "They certainly do. Now, Reggie, dear, Bertha is charming ; she will preside with grace, I am sure, over your town house and the places at Long Island and 15 THE FLAME DANCER in the Adirondacks; the world expects it of you, the girl loves you. What more do you want, anyway?" she concluded irritably. "Less," he responded, with a grim smile. "Well, are you going to propose to her?" He stood up quite still and rather white. A lot more of that multifarious proposition, his past, arose before him. This time it dealt, not with African jungles and women with the tigress' touch, but rather with those dreams, hopes splendid, formless but inspiring plans which he had had for a beautiful, strong, and glorious future. It was bitter to push away the untasted cup of all these capacities which he knew he possessed and to possess in their mag- nificent stead Miss Bertha Wilmerding and her ex- cruciatingly ugly feet, and her all too promising fig- ure! that's just exactly what he thought. He said to Mrs. Austin, for of such material is made that thing which men call their honor: "Well, Betty, since it's as you say, I suppose I'll have to suc- cumb!" "That's a dear," she rewarded. "Do it to-night. Bertha has been expecting it ever since that Peter Pan party, when you had to fetch her home without a chaperon because I was taken ill and Mrs. Spencer was hateful." 16 THE FL'AME D'ANCER "Has she?" he said; then he crossed over toward Bertha, being introduced on the way to the Chinese professor, whose name was Struh-La. Even as the introduction was taking place, before he actually had reached Miss Wilmerding's side, the faint, persistent wraith of his fantasy for what a woman he might love should be, arose before him, hovering just between him and the Oriental man. Yes, that was it; Reggie had unconsciously, it is true, groped almost all over the world looking for his woman, and now to sit down with Bertha Wilmer- ding! Well, it did seem a bit crushing. He did not, however, sit down with her just yet. Leopold Warren, the host of the occasion, Jean's un- cle and godfather, Betty Austin's brother, nodded beckoningly to him en route, from one of the adjoin- ing rooms, and Mr. Stevens responded with alacrity; he would have done so to almost any one who had called him away from Bertha Wilmerding. Doctor Warren didn't want to say anything especially, unless it might have been to emphasize the man from the Orient to his American friend. "He's no end of a wonder, Reggie, old man ; really a scientist and a student, bound to make a big mark in the world. I knew him in Paris, and over there 17 THE FLAME DANCER Betty caught the Oriental cult from him, I do believe. He fascinates the women." "Yes?" Stevens responded courteously, now look- ing the Mongolian over for the first time. "A per- sonality, I should say, one could never forget alto- gether." He surveyed the professor, who just then was making great entertainment at blind man's buff for the group of children; not that he was blind- folded, by any means. Tommy Partley was doing that stunt, while the Chinese, by a series of the clev- erest sort of muscular maneuvers, kept Mr. Partley at bay, his countenance remaining as immovable as the sphinx. "He has extraordinary eyes," observed Stevens. "He has the brain of a Schopenhauer or a Kant," returned the physician. "I have given him the en- tree at the hospitals, and with my best friends; put him up at my clubs, and as to my sister! she really seems interested in his philosophy, and that for Betty; is well, you know Betty !" Betty's brother laughed. "I see !" Stevens laughed, too. "You don't fancy him, Reggie ?" with irritation. "Don't know him, old man. Wait a bit." "I suppose you're so taken up with er Bertha you haven't much thought for any one else just now ?" Doctor Warren smiled. 18 THE FLAME DANCER "I say! now, what do you mean?" Stevens asked the question quietly enough. "Well, I mean that Betty says you've compromised yourself in that quarter, and I take it you're not the chap to compromise yourself without meaning that you want the girl to marry you." "I don't, though," retorted the other calmly. "I've been nice to Miss Wilmerding because her sick mother begged me to be; because she was not too attractive to other men; because she was not an heiress; be- cause she seemed to me dull and utterly stupid." Warren regarded his friend with a placid stupefac- tion. "She isn't, though." "Isn't what?" "Oh, she is poor, but she isn't stupid. She plays cards," added Warren, with a smile. "Bridge, for money?" "Yes. She does that, and wins, too; but I meant another sort." "What sort?" "Wedding-cards," succinctly. "You don't mean " "But I do. Betty rather roped me into believing the girl was ingenuous and all that, but I doubt it; rather think, old man, that the mother and the girl and my blessed sister have done you up." 19 THE FLAME DANCER "I think not/' Stevens answered through his shut teeth. "Too bad, Reggie. Reckon you'll have to marry; her, honor bound." Stevens now looked up quickly. "You think that, Leo?" "Yes, I do." "Urn." "Any other girl?" "No." "Well, then, what's the row? Marriage, dear old chap, is only an episode. What difference, now, really, need it make in your life if there is a Mrs. Stevens living in your town house, or down in the country, or traveling across the pond every season to the Riviera, or down to Florida, or wherever else! You needn't be with her, and, after all, it's the propet caper to marry, have a wife, and all that sort of thing.' "Is it?" "I suppose so. They tell me I must do it, or abanr don living by my profession." "And you'll do it on those grounds?" "Shouldn't wonder." "Marry Bertha Wilmerding, then." "Can't afford it ; she's too poor. Besides, she wot ships you, and I reckon I'll hold out until I encounter a girl who cares for me." 20 THE FLAME DANCER "Look here," Reginald Stevens said bluntly, "don't talk like a fool or a knave; you're neither one. I'm damned if I don't believe marriage is a holy thing, if anything is holy at all in this rotten world." "It ought to be," answered the other man, soberly enough, "only it isn't, that's all. Why in^ " he paused, "thunder have you behaved so to this girl unless you did intend to marry her?" "I've told you the truth." "You've made her the talk of the town, at least of her set, and if you don't marry her she'll be the laugh- ing-stock of 'em all; much my sister's fault, I admit." Stevens looked over at Miss Wilderming; her black eyes met his. That strange thing which men call honor again jumped promptly to the front. He actu- ally thought it honor to propose marriage to this girl, and that to marry her with a soul in revolt at her mere presence, no dishonor at all either to himself or to her. Now, that is strange, is it not? But it is the foundation-stone of many weddings, many divorces, many lives spent in wrangling and distorted agony. However, Mr. Stevens just now turned on his heel; the words "talk of the town" and "laughing-stock" stinging his ears and smiting his brain most bitterly; that he should cause this to any woman! it could not be; it must not be. She was a woman; she must be 21 THE FLAME DANCER spared. After all, marriage need be but an incident", as Warren had said, and by this time Bertha had met him half-way across the small drawing-room and was saying : "I am really tired out with these games. Can't I sit down somewhere quietly with you for a while?" "Certainly," he answered, following her lead back to the cozy corner in the empty library which Mrs, Austin had recently vacated. "Warm, isn't it?" she said, sinking into the seat with a luxurious pose and slowly waving her fan back and forth. "Is it?" he remarked, taking the fan from her and using it for her. He was actually wondering how to do what he must do, and, somewhat versed as he was in the lore most pleasing to women, he was non- plussed. "Never mind fanning me, you're tired. I can see it in your eyes." "Not a bit of it." He fanned on vigorously. "But I know; I have studied your face and your moods so much that I am posted." She looked up languishingly, but his gray eyes did not meet hers. "Are you, now? 'Well then, if that's the case, can't we hit it off together for the rest of our lives?" "I think so," she answered very joyfully, almost 22 THE FL'AME DANCER triumphantly, and her hand went out toward him. His did not reach for hers. "It will be satisfactory to you?" he went on, in an even voice. "Oh," she cried, under her breath, " 'satisfactory' isn't the word. I I " She glanced up at his face with a very good assumption of shyness, but finding no answering glance she leaned away from him back among the cushions, where she knew she made at least an effective picture. Stevens smiled a bit. "Oh, eome now," he said, "you and I are not going in for the romantic and that sort of thing. We're just two sensible people who have determined to marry each other without any sentimental nonsense." Bertha Wilmerding regarded her companion with a sort of stupid amazement. She had heard a vast deal, thought she knew a vast deal more about the emotions of men, and this crisis did not fulfil her expectations. She sighed as she laid her hand on Reggie's arm and said: "I love you, Reggie." Reggie laughed really a bit nervously. "That's un- commonly nice of you, Bertha, of course. I'm afraid I'm not the sort of a chap who can comprehend that kind of thing. Let it go at that, if you will be so good," he added as he rose; then he turned back to 23 THE FL'AME DANCER her and supplemented: "I'll send you a ring from Tiffany's to-morrow. What kind would you like?" But her soul did not revolt; not a bit of it. She answered, while her heart beat tremendously under her pink satin bodice: "Diamonds; they're so pure and exquisite." "Very well," he returned, "a cluster or a solitaire ?" "I adore cluster rings," she exclaimed. "Then that it shall be." He smiled and indicated that she had better rise and go into the drawing- room. "You don't mind, I'm sure, if I disappear in the doctor's den for a bit and have a smoke, do you?" "Oh, no!" she cried, nodding as he left her near Mrs. Austin and went away. She did not care too much. Her ambition was gratified to its height; as to the rest of it, love, well, she set her teeth together and felt within her soul and body that he was hers, and that no other woman could call him husband. That is a sublime solace to some feminine natures for even the hell of being the wife of an unloving man. Miss Wilmerding radiated happiness; Mrs. Austin saw it. She said to her friend: "Has he done it?" Bertha nodded. "Really spoken those words we have been waiting and hoping for for months?" Miss Wilmerding again inclined her head, and neither of 24 THE FLAME D'ANCER tHem had the least perception that she was vulgar, despicable, and unwomanly. They thought all women like themselves, and knew no more of the status and existence even of the woman who has to be sought, than they did of Hindostanee. THE FLAME DANCER CHAPTER II THE SHADOW OF THE FUTURE f f p I 'ELL me all about it, dear," cooed Betty Aus- tin. "Come sit down in here again." She led the way once more to the cozy corner. "He did it here," observed Miss Wilmerding, laughingly. "Oh, you dear old thing, isn't it just too lovely for any sort of sense?" "Of course it is. I was dreadfully afraid you wouldn't land him; Reggie is so difficult; but you have?" The matron regarded the maid with a slant eye. "You're sure?" "I should say!" responded Bertha. "I'm not ma- king any mistakes, my love. He's going to send me a cluster from Tiffany's to-morrow, and I'm just crazy until I can get home and send mother a tele- gram." "She will be pleased," remarked Betty. "Yes, indeed," assented the girl, "she has counted on it ever since she asked him to be nice to me at Saratoga last summer, on account of my father and his father having been college boys together." 26 THE FLAME DANCER "I know. Well now, love, no more anxieties, in this world at least, about dressmakers' and milliners' bills, boxes at the opera, automobiles, trips to the Riviera and all that. You'll be presented at court, of course. Reggie is persona grata with His Majesty and used to be at Sandringham quite some. When are you to be tied up, dear?" "Oh," smiled the fiancee, "we haven't got quite as far as that yet we've only been engaged about ten minutes." Mrs. Austin laughed. "To be sure ; well, don't dally too long; men are so fickle. And now may I an- nounce it?" "Yes," answered Miss Wilmerding, decisively, "I wish you would." "I am glad you have no silly objections, dear, be- cause, really you know yourself, every one in our crowd has been expecting it for ever so long." "I know, I know, and I did think, Bet, at one time, that Reggie was fighting shy and would bolt, but he's come up to time like a man." Her thin red lips nar- rowed into a threadlike line, her eyes were alight with the conquests of the things in store for her, and she added with a perfect inflection, for her voice had been successfully curried into fluent softness by gover- nesses of English birth : "I'll wager you a five-pound 27 THE FL"AME DANCER box of Huyler's I'll make Reggie pay Louise's bill for those four hats before he's a month older than he is !" "But, my love," exclaimed Mrs. Austin, "now, don't, don't get married privately and cheat us all out of the spectacle; for Heaven's sake don't do it in a month, Bertha." "Not I!" responded the younger woman. "What do you think I'm made of? Do myself out of that triumphant march up and down St. Thomas'? Not much." "But " Mrs. Austin actually hesitated and eyed her friend a trifle askance. "You dear old silly, do you suppose there aren't ways to work on a fiance's feelings so that he will just send you up a check for the beast of a modiste who makes you cry such pretty tears for him?" "You minx !" laughed Betty. "I guess you can take care of yourself." She gazed admiringly at Bertha. "I didn't dream it was in you." "I don't intend to take care of myself, Betty love. Reggie shall do that, and I'll take care of him !" She was radiant with the radiance of success; it lent bril- liancy to her eyes, her cheeks, her speech, even her brain scintillated a little under this intoxicating in- fluence. 28 THE FLAME DANCER Mrs. Austin again regarded her. She said : "You'd better, for Reggie is not only a handsome man, but attractive." "Of course he is!" said the bride-elect. "Now then, darling, I must tell Forrie first; he'll be so glad." She found Forrie smoking in the long little hall, way at its far end, and quite alone. "Reggie has done it at last!" "Done what?" the husband inquired in a bored way. "Proposed to Bertha Wilmerding!" "Proposed what to her?" He stopped smoking, which he had never done before for his wife. "Marriage, of course." There was a pause. Mr. De Forrest Austin lighted a fresh cigarette. "I didn't suppose he was such an infernal fool!" "And is a man an infernal fool because he is going to marry a nice girl?" asked the wife, tartly. "Or is it because Bertha is poor?" " 'Nice girl,' " repeated Mr. Austin. "Betty, don't." "Well," she exclaimed, "she's as nice as any of them." "God help them all! I hope he'll talce her out of America on a perpetual honeymoon. Give her up, Betty. I don't like that sort of girl. Why do you like her? Eh?" 29 THE FLAME DANCER "She's so comfy and nice, Forrie; we have a lot in common, although I will admit Bertha is rather " "What?" "I don't know." "I do." "What is it?" "Well, the whole set of us, men and women, are bad enough, Bet; I'm no better than the rest; but that girl would sell her soul, if she had such a thing, for a mess of pottage, and a few of the others wouldn't. Drop her for a pal just to please me. I say, I've not asked you to please me for ever so long." He spoke a bit wistfully; it sounded so, at all events. "I know; but, listen, dear, really it's impossible. Bertha marries Reggie; they will have a house in London for the season, in a few years certainly, if not at once. Jean was eleven to-day. Forrie, we must think of our daughter, for Jean to be asked over for a London June, to be presented! and perhaps, for she is already very pretty, to marry a peer think of it!" "Rather not ! We have not enough to buy Jean any such expensive toy as a peer." "I have." Austin winced a bit. "He will love her. No, I can't give Bertha up; it's impossible; one must 30 THE FL"AME DX'NCER look ahead; besides, Bertha's no worse why, Forrie, after all, she's no worse than I am." "Isn't she?" he queried. "Perhaps not, but at all events I think she is, and I think you are vastly su- perior." Mr. Austin bent his rather magnetic eyes upon his wife. Betty looked up into his face sharply, and yet there was that resignation in her attitude and tone as she spoke which betokened the woman who cares for the man despite whatever he may be. "Well, what do you want?" Mrs. Austin asked bluntly, and yet with that caress in her eyes which this type of woman really can experience in her heart for a man whom she half-way despises. "Only a hundred, dear." He said it in a depreca- tory way, said it with a charming emphasis. "But I gave you a cheque for three hundred yes- terday, Forrie." "I know it. What am I to do? I owed that to Stevens; owed it for a year." "Reggie never asked you for it!" the wife ex- claimed tartly. "No; but, hang it! Betty, a man wants to pay his debts." The situation actually struck her for perhaps the first time in all its true lights. It was a queer moment, and a possibly inopportune place, but she let it lead, and surveying her husband a bit curiously she said: "Look here; I am not made of money; even my income isn't too much in New York at our pace and with our tastes. Suppose you go to work, and help out a bit, just enough, say, to pay for your own clothes and cigars?" "I do! I do!" he responded amiably enough. "I made ten dollars a week in commissions on that Barbe Bleu brand of cigars, that the Baron de Chevalle is trying to force." "Did you now, really? Ten dollars a week! How magnificent! And you spend, how much?" "Oh, come, I say, now, Betty, don't be hard on me." "I'm tired of doing all," she pouted. "You don't do all," he answered seriously, his handsome eyes fixed upon her face. "I think you should go into Wall Street, or get a position, or make them give you a foreign con- sulate or something," she pursued, irrelevantly to his last remark. "Look here," Austin said, his eyes now becoming sullen. "You don't do it all, I tell you. I give you an equivalent. It's time for this rot you and your family talk to stop. You knew when you married 32 THE FLAME DANCER me that I hadn't a cent; I'm not a lucky man, I can't earn money. You have it; what's yours is mine, you said." Her eyes flashed angrily; she remembered saying just that. "Now, my name, my presence, my escort, my being your husband, I consider an equiva- lent for all the mere money you may hand over to me. I keep my part of the bargain and I expect you to keep yours!" "Bargain!" she reiterated after him with ready scorn, surveying him. "You weren't a bargain at all. You were very, very expensive and not worth your price." "Thanks awfully." He was used to her tirades, as he called them, and didn't mind a bit. He was really, convinced of the justice and equity of his principles of life; as to manliness, that didn't oppress him, save among men and the women who didn't know where his spending-money came from. "But you'll let me have the hundred?" He laid his hand on her bare shoulder. "Yes," was her answer, and she made it good. He did not kiss his wife, but his lips touched hers. They then started into the drawing-room together, but neither was interested in the juvenile entertain- ment in progress there. If they had realized that it was their own child who was at the moment the lead- 33 THE FLAME DANCER ing figure in it, they might have lingered to observe what she was doing, and possibly they would have been shocked, for whatever else may be said or thought of them, Mr. and Mrs. Austin were human. They were not, however, human enough to linger for long enough to see what was going on, but went their separate ways, Forrie to a room where he could smoke, and his wife into the dining-room, where several of her set were having punch. Little Jean Austin, in whose honor the party was given, was being led around close to the walls of the room by Professor Struh-La. "Where do you now promenade, mademoiselle?" he asked in capital English. "In a garden," answered the child. "Tell to me the names of the flowers, and their colors ?" "Red roses, yellow chrysanthemums, violets " "Your eyes are closed, and yet you see?" "My eyes are open. I hear birds singing, too, and music, and some one who is fine and good is leading me." The child's voice was plaintive, her attitude, as she fumbled against the walls, was almost piteous. "I want to gather the flowers and catch the birds to give to the one who leads me." So appealing was her 34 THE FL'AME DANCER aspect that no one there even smiled, and they were a merry lot. Some one exclaimed: "Hypnotism!" Struh-La said: "No! Absurd! Hypnotism? No, I not lend myself to that. I do not experiment with such a weapon even if I possess it. I do not possess it. This is one thing of great simplicity and in fre- quent custom in the remote northern provinces of my country among the teachers of the young. We call it See-foo-tee; that is to say, the spirit of sweet- ness which any one who is so disposed can com-' municate to another's mentality. For example, one thinks as I have, of flowers, birds, perfumes, and the mere wish infuses the identical thought into the brain of the one who touches my hand. Did I attempt to transfer to them evil ideas, the purity of their minds would repudiate all such. It is a very small phe- nomenon, hardly that, a gentle little lesson in the art of giving pleasure that is all." Struh-La smiled, and proceeded: "I will now take the little lady out of the garden." He reached up and with his free long hand attempted to move Jean Austin's fingers from the wall where she had all this time been gathering imaginary blossoms and holding them to her lips and breast; but he could not do it; the child shrieked when he touched her even lightly 35 THE FLAME DANCER now, and the other children looked on open-mouthed, while some of the grown people were plainly aghast. Professor Struh-La drew back with folded arms and surveyed his little experiment in See-foo-tee. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and nodded compla- cently ; he was an arch-hypocrite, perhaps ; at any rate, he did not in the least mind the piteous wailing of this little enchained girl. Reggie, smoking in the doc- tor's office, heard it ; it struck in well with his own mood; he observed it as having to do with himself, that it was the requiem over his plunge in connection with Bertha Wilmerding; so he did not stir. Meantime, the professor said, especially directing his remark to one of the guests who had openly de- rided See-foo-tee as mere nonsense which any one could do: "Now it is your privilege to remove the little girl from the garden of flowers, monsieur." The young man who had expressed derision tried to pull Jean Austin out of the garden, but could not ; various other men and women essayed the same task with the same result. All the children tried, yet from the professor's garden the little girl was not to be lured. She was now silent, tearless, but felt along the wall and kissed it and purred to it as children will to things they love. Doctor Warren was called to a patient in his office. 36 THE FLAME DANCER He found Stevens there. He said : "Go into the par- lor and try your hand at waking Jean out of a state into which Struh-La has put her. Go! It's an inno- cent experiment, or he wouldn't have done it> but it's interesting." "Yes," Reginald said, threw his cigar in the fire, and walked to the other room. He entered and was beside the child with his extended hand almost upon her shoulder; her eyelids twitched, her little fingers relaxed a bit from the wall, when Struh-La made a spring, laughed as he did so, put himself between the child and the other man, exclaimed: "No, if you please, it is impossible, for one who does not comprehend the principles, to waken the sub- ject. Permit me, sir." He had Reginald Stevens by the hand, his right hand enclosing the right hand of Stevens ; with his left he touched the child, murmuring a few words in Chinese; she shuddered and clung the more only to the wall; Struh-La then dropped Ste- vens' hand and touched Jean with his own right hand ; she smiled, grew lax, opened her eyes, and re- garded them all with unaffected curiosity. It had happened in a few seconds, so few that Stevens had no time to speak, but he had felt the issue from him through his finger-tips to the Oriental of some un- known spiritual essence. At the same moment he ex- 37 THE FLAME DANCER perienced a repulsion that was ridiculous in connec- tion with the agreeable and tactful Mongolian and the charm which he exercised over all those present. Jean alone looked at Struh-La, a bit askance ; her eyes wandered, found Stevens, rested on him, and she sat quietly down near him on a hassock; Bertha Wil- merding, coming in from the dining-room where she, Primrose Palmer, and Tommy Partley had been toning up with three or four glasses of punch apiece, found her there, displaced her, and seated herself, as it were, almost at her newly acquired fiance's feet. There was something aggressive in Miss Wilmerding's motion; it rather took away the breath of the grown-up people in the room, except Professor Sruth-La's he was so deeply occupied in playing with a very small boy that he did not seem to note anything else. One of the women nodded to Mrs. Austin express- ively ; Betty nodded back. "Really?" the woman said, rising and approaching Miss Wilmerding. Mr. Stevens rose. "Is it so, dear Bertha?" Bertha nodded; her face was flushed with punch. She did not look pretty, her hair was awry notwithstanding the marcel treatment; she glanced up at Reggie and said: "Yes, we're engaged." All the women crowded around and congratulated 38 THE FLAME DANCER them both. Bertha didn't rise from the Turkish has- sock; she had a fantastic idea that she looked pic- turesque sitting on it, and receiving the pleasant speeches of her friends. Reggie did not look at her; he received what was said to him with proper de- corum, but presently he got away into the hall by himself. It came time to go. Mrs. Austin hurried off, as she was due at a dance at ten o'clock. "You fetch Jean home, Forrie, and then come on to the Graf tons', won't you?" "Jean's gone home with the Howards in their om- nibus," sang out Mr. Austin. "Very well; you bring Bertha and Reggie along then with you, I must be there on time." "Very well." Every one was going, many had gone. Miss Wil- merding stood in the hall, her wrap over her arm. She had declined the maid's offer to put it on her and awaited the service at the possibly yearning hands of Mr. Stevens. Finally he turned up, put on the cloak, escorted her to the carriage, De Forrest Austin judiciously holding back to allow him so to do; then when Austin said: "Get in, Stevens, get in!" Reggie said: "No, thanks. If you will permit me, Miss Wilmerding, I will join you later on. I haven't 39 THE FL'AM'E DANCER had my usual amount of cigar to-night, and I really should prove a bear without it, so for your own sake," he smiled his rare smile, bowed, shut the door, and, lighting his cigar, sauntered across alongside the Park, bareheaded, and meaning to rejoin Doctor Warren in a few moments. Doctor Warren was called to a patient a few doors away; he saw Reggie under the trees and whistled to him shrilly. Reggie turned. "What's up?" "You're coming back?" Stevens said. "Yes, shortly. See here!" the physician crossed the avenue, joined his friend, and said in an anxious yet half-laughing fashion: "You didn't go on to the dance, or whatever the function was, with " "Miss Wilmerding?" finished Stevens. The doctor nodded. "No. I'm returning to your place for, not only my hat and topcoat, but a chat or a half-hour's si- lence, if you don't mind?" "Old man! 'Mind?' Hardly. Go back. I'll be with you in twenty minutes. By the way, my French teacher will probably turn up before I do ; a charming young person." "Don't care to meet him to-night." "It's a woman, a girl," Warren said. "A girl at this time of night?" in surprise. 40 THE FL r AME D'ANCER "Why not? She's a very sensible, admirable girl, who is good enough to come to me whenever I say, and whenever my profession will allow. She lives in the top apartment of my house." Reggie surveyed his friend. He did not smile. "I see," he ejaculated in a curt way. "No, you don't, dear old boy. Luliani de Fontanges is not quite any sort, I think, you've ever met. No," he answered confidently to the other man's flash of the eyes. "And I'd like you to meet her; and my sis- ter, Mrs. Austin, has just engaged her as a resident governess at the house down on Seventy-second Street for my niece, Jean. She's partly Oriental by birth, and so falls in line with Betty's latest fad." The two men shook hands. Neither said anything further, but separated, the physician going to his pa- tient, Stevens turning toward the doctor's apartment. Just about as he reached the corner the bell of Doctor Warren's apartment rang sharply; the maid answered it, smiling as she beheld the young woman who stood there. "Doctor's out, mam'selle, but he left word he'd be back in a few minutes. Will you step in? We've been having a children's party here and the place isn't redd up yet." XHE FL'AME D'ANCER CHAPTER III MASTER AND SLAVE THE young woman stepped in and the maid left her, after turning on some more light, closing the door that led into the hall as she went. She was a very striking-looking young woman, pic- turesque, magnetic, unusual ; not too tall, very slender, well rounded with an exquisitely fine and symmetrical figure, a perfect throat, slim arms, dainty, incom- parable feet; none of these points, unduly accentuated or revealed by either too short sleeves, short skirts, a Dutch neck, or an unlined corsage. The glow from the electrics caught on her hair and showed it to be ftronze brown; her eyebrows black, level, her eyes large, blue, and easily dilating and contracting with her moods; her skin was clear with red blood, vivid, and rushing to her curving lips and girlish cheeks; hands strong, supple; queenly in their gestures and probably absolute in their grace of giving when the time might come. She inclined her head as the maid left her, looked in a bit at the debris of the juvenile party, cast upward glances at the many Chinese lan- 42 THE FLAME DANCER terns, took off her coat and gloves, laid a parcel of books and papers she had fetched on a table, and stood before the mirror in the pier surveying herself. The reflection did not please her; she beheld herself overshadowed, as it were, by a large Chinese flag, the black dragon with his red claws on the yellow ground seemed to be actually touching her head. Doctor Warren had so arranged the emblem above the mirror in honor of Professor Struh-La and as a part of the Oriental decorations for Jean's birth- day-party. With a quick, impetuous movement she raised her hand to draw aside the Chinese flag; the bell rang, her hand fell, otherwise she did not move. She knew it could not be Doctor Warren, as he habitually used a latch-key ; she supposed it to be some patient who might or might not be shown into the parlor rather than the office. She faced the mirror, and in it could see reflected the short L of the hall and the front door, while herself invisible to the visitor. The maid opened the door. Professor Struh- La, hat in hand, said: "I ask pardon; I have left my cane, a gold-headed one, in the drawing-room, I think; I used it in the play for the children to guide the little miss into the garden." 43 THE FLAME DANCER The maid said: "Yes, sir; sure, sir; I'll look for: it." "Don't trouble yourself. I myself will search for it, thank you." He gave her a quarter, and she curtsied. Luliani de Fontanges saw all this before her in the mirror. Some of the blood forsook her face, her eyes dilated and narrowed, and her hands caught- at her heart side; then she stood erect and her head lifted defiantly. "No trouble at all, sir; sure it's myself will find the cane for you. It must be there." Struh-La now saw Miss de Fontanges. He an- swered the maid: "I see my cane there in the corner. I will not trouble you. I will go in and wait for the doctor since he is out?" "Yes, sir, he is that, but he left word he'd be back in twinty minutes." "Very nice, thank you." He dismissed her with ease. She went into the kitchen and he into the parlor. Miss de Fontanges did not turn her head, but in the looking-glass her eyes met his. "Go away from me," she said in a low voice. "No," returned the professor, "hardly, now that I have found you, mademoiselle." He came quite close 44 W "EKE WEAVING ABuUT HER A WEB OF IRRESISTIBLE FIBER. Page 45. THE FLAME DANCER to her, behind her, but imprisoning her glance firmly; by way of the- looking-glass. Then there was a pause; each of these two people heard distinctly, it seemed to them, the soft but pal- pable breathing of a third person very near them; each glanced around, the Oriental suspiciously, the half Oriental girl, for such she was, as if looking for harbor. There was no visible third there, and each instantly resumed the first pose. "I tell you," Luliani de Fontanges said slowly, "you must leave my presence at once." Struh-La smiled. "No," he remarked in a soothing fashion. "You are too beautiful to leave; be- sides " The girl turned now from the mirror and raised her arm. Struh-La looked at her; her arm fell at her side. i "Don't!" she cried out piteously. "Don't not that!" "Just that, unless you listen to reason." His eyes were on her, weaving about her a web of irresistible fibre. "We have but a few minutes to talk," he said firmly. "What you have done with yourself since you managed to slip my leash, just as I was on the verge of obtaining possession of the jewels and the 45 THE FL'AME DANCER talisman of the Flame Dancers, I don't know; I spent time and money in trying to trace you. I could not. But I felt sure that my good time would arrive. It has." Miss de Fontanges stood as if rooted to the floor. Not an eyelash quivered, not one fine muscle relaxed. "I obtained another tool," pursued the Chinaman, ."but she was not so useful as you. I let her go in Naples. I am come to America, for here the jewels are and here you will assist me." "Never!" the girl whispered. "Oh, yes," Struh-La responded, fixing his own eyes upon her pleading ones. "What are you doing, here, for instance," he questioned, "in the apartment of my bachelor friend, my very intimate friend, Doctor Warren, at this hour, without what is called the chaperon?" The girl, making a most tremendous effort, shook herself free of his gaze, and, pointing to the door, she said : "Go" in a tone of such disdain as must have quelled any man but this particular one. "It is stay," he whispered, approaching her very closely and now picking up in his her beautiful hand. Beneath those Eastern eyes she was limp once more; beneath that touch she was now not even objecting. "What is the position you occupy?" 46 THE FL'AME DANCER She was silent; her will had at least retained so much hold as that upon her organs. "Tell me," the Chinese commanded, pressing her fingers. The girl shuddered, while her great eyes dilated. "What are you here?" "A teacher of French," she answered. "Bah ! the truth !" he smiled. "Give it to me." She nodded. "That is the truth, Seng Chang." "Do not call me so. I am Struh-La, the student, the scientist." Miss de Fontanges inclined her head. "This doctor, Warren, loves you?" "No." "What else do you do?" "Other lessons every day and evening." "With whom do you live?" "Up-stairs on the top, with a family of honest peo- ple." "And you intend to keep on teaching ?" "Yes, always." "Children? Perhaps in the houses of the wealthy? You have an access to these houses?" She hesitated, as if fighting against the force that was overmastering her. "Go on," said the Chinese, now taking up her other hand and piercing her forehead with his glance. 47 THE FLAME D'ANCER "I am to be the governess for the little niece of Doctor Warren." "For Jean Austin! the child of the woman whose brother, Reginald Stevens, acquired, by means of his purchases for his railway in our country, the sacred opals, the talisman also of our tribe?" Struh-La's pale lips grew ruddy, his peculiar eyes danced as he spoke. Luliani nodded. "How often are these lessons to be?" "I am to live there," she replied. "When do you go?" His words came tersely, as if time were too precious to waste in the teeth of such discoveries as he was making. "Next Monday." "That is to say, in four days?" "Yes." "And next month there is to be the great mas- querade ball there. I believe all these jewels will be in evidence. Mrs. Austin will borrow them to wear. You will take them from Mrs. Austin if she wears them." His mouth was close to her ear, his hands over hers, his voice the film of sound, but it reached to her immortal soul and devoured it. "Eh?" he touched her. "Speak." "Yes," she articulated. "Urn. I thought so. Not for nothing I meet you 48 THE FL'AME DANCER r i here tonight and not " Again that mysterious breathing near these two people made the Oriental halt, gave the girl a resumption of self. She broke away from him, and fled across the room, crying out: "Get away quickly. I will kill you if you don't leave me." He stood still and moved his arms a little hover- ingly toward her; she drew near to him. "Look here," he said. "Now it is even different than in Paris, because, now that I see you, I love you and want you as well for myself as for my work, you hear, my absolute duty. For which I have trav- eled the whole world over, searching for Stevens and the opals he has." She shook herself and broke again; she turned her back to him and said: "You stole me from my temple; you took me to the East school; I had no mother, no father, no one cared. I was forgotten. I did your work. Now I swear to you if you don't leave me alone I will tell my friends here you are the man for whom all the police of Europe are hunting." "No, you will not; for even in your waking mo- ments you know that I am not a thief. That I mean to take certain sacred things which others have stolen 49 THE FLAME DANCER from me is true. We have been separated for so long, you and I, that you have forgotten, and confuse the nature of my quest with what it would appear to be to ordinary eyes. Now we are starting afresh ; this thing which we are to do together is a deed of daring sacrifice in behalf of the faith of my ancestors and some of yours. I am known as Struh-La, but I am the chief of the Flame Dancers; and it is my am- bition to restore to its shrine the wonderful jewels which were ravished from it three years ago by this iconoclastic Stevens. Why should I travel about the world and submit to the forms of a civilization which are repugnant to me when my wealth enables me to live in the utmost luxury in the country that is mine? Why should I, with my mystic power, subject myself to the perils that attach to robbery? None, Luliani, but we resort to the form of robbery in order to ob- tain the flames of stone, for the dance you used to dance, Luliani, can never be complete without them. You remember all this now, and believe, do you not?" His voice had the sweetness of the harp he knew how to play upon. Miss de Fontanges listened as one in a dream, her eyes intent upon Struh-La, and when he made hisr direct question, looking even more persistently at her, she inclined her head slowly. Struh-La went on: 50 THE FLAME DANCER "The stars brought you to me, Luliani, for it would be profane to attribute it to coincidence. Remove from your mind all repugnance to doing my will. I remind you that in Europe, working together, you as the instrument, we recovered a small quantity of the Flame Dancers' treasure which had been obtained by various individuals. Luliani, there is only one more series to recover. They are those which may be worn by Mrs. Austin at her ball. And the wonderful talis- man is among them. "You will remember this when you are awake, al- though I do not make you sleep I only make you active. Listen, if you resist you could not harm me; here there are those whose opinion you value, and to them, unless you hold our work inviolable, I will prove that you are the cleverest thief, the police say, in Europe." "Tell them!" she cried in a louder tone, "tell them anything you please ; it will be better than " Here the girl's voice sank, as Struh-La approached her, al- ways from behind, but imprisoning her glance with his by means of the mirror which they both faced. Struh-La came much closer than before; his hands were on her slim shoulders, and while she shuddered a peculiar smile passed over her scarlet lips; his fin- gers crept up to her white throat, and the ten met T.HE FLAME DANCER around its loveliness, still her eyes held captive by his in the looking-glass ; his clutch grew gradually tighter and tighter, yet it did not destroy the smile which seemed frozen on her mouth, her lids fluttered, her breath came pantingly, she trembled in every nerve, the red blood in her cheeks and lips was turning purple as the grasp of the Eastern man closed closer. "I could kill you as easily as not," he whispered, "but I am not doing such foolish things. You promise that you will be guided by me in these matters as in the past and all will go well. It is best for you to acquiesce quietly, because, whether you do or not, I will conquer you." Miss de Fontanges sank upon her knees, the Ori- ental bent with her, still clasping her throat, still hold- ing her glance. "I do not intend to take you for myself," he whis- pered. "I intend that you shall eventually give your- self to me freely. As soon as we accomplish this affair of the Stevens gems, we will go to San Fran- cisco and I will enthrone you in a palace." His in- describable lips touched her ear, his words pierced to her very soul; with a tremulous gasp, she fell forward, and, had the man not upheld her, she would have struck the floor with her face. A latch-key was fitted in the outer door. Struh-La 52 THE FL'AME DANCER withdrew from Miss de Fontanges after he had seated her on a lounge. "Be quiet," he said in a commanding way, "come to your every-day self. I will see you to-morrow, assuredly." He slipped through the curtained arch- way to the L of the hall; there he halted a moment to permit the newcomer, whom he could not discern, to go where he wished; this was into the doctor's office next to the front door; then Struh-La slid along the passageway and out into the fresh air, took a car at the corner, and presently was eating chop-suey in the midst of a gay crowd of his own and our country- men and women. The change from what he had just left, to the garishness of this next entourage whetted this intellect of his, which was a most ex- traordinary and brilliant one. 53 tZH FLAME DANCER CHAPTER IV THE ONE WOMAN MEANTIME, on the couch, Miss de Fon- tanges sat recovering her lost equilibrium. She shivered, laughed, grew cold, warm, wept, and in an agony of tears buried her face in the pillows, while the newcomer slowly came down the hall and walked into the room. She heard the foot- steps, supposed it to be a patient for Doctor Warren, and looked up. Waving her hand, she said: "The office is the door next the front door. The doctor will be in in a few moments now." She could not control the convulsive sob which shook her voice. The newcomer advanced toward her, saying: "I know he will. He told me to come in, and that I should find his French teacher here. Are you the French teacher?" "Yes," she answered simply. "I am." Reginald Stevens looked at her. By the light of the candles in the Chinese lanterns strung around the room he beheld the most beautiful, seductive, and sad woman he had ever encountered and his en- counters with women had not been few. 54 THE FLAME DANCER "You will pardon me," he ejaculated. "What has occurred? Can I do anything for you? Has any- thing frightened you here?" He looked around the place, and found it just as he had left it a half-hour before. "Thank you," she answered. "You can do noth- ing for me." An impetuous sob choked her, and she put her face down once more in the cushions. "Oh!" he cried under his breath. He approached her, he knelt by the couch, he looked at her bent head, the long fine curve of her throat and shoulders, her back, to the small foot that was clear of petticoats and plain to be seen. "But I must be able to do some- thing. I am Reginald Stevens, a friend of Doctor Warren's. It's sometimes a relief to tell even a per- fect stranger, when one's in trouble. Won't you tell me?" He longed with a curious impulse to lay his hand upon her glorious hair, to beg for her confidence, to compel her to raise her head and give him her eyes ; in short, without wasting one more word, this man loved this woman then and there, and for a few sec- onds there seethed in him the fundamental instinct to take her to himself and tell her why afterward. But the twentieth century and New York had him so far in leash that he did not follow primeval leads ; instead, he picked up a fold of her gown and pressed it to his lips. 55 THE FL'AME DANCER Did she feel this touch? A thrill of hitherto unknown rapture swept through her being; with it came into her brain the supreme exaltation of caring for. She cared, cared to be thought well of, to be good, to have this human being beside her know that the life she had lived had been mostly a compulsory lie; cared to be once more the child she had been when the Oriental had taken her from her French convent at Passy back to her Eastern birthplace and compelled her to become the chief flame dancer; cared to struggle for all the best within her. It was like awaking to a new life and world; and all this with remorse and dread of the past and the future, as planned for her but now by Struh-La: all this toward a man whose face she had not yet seen. She sighed. Stevens said gently, still holding the bit of her frock between his fingers: "Please let us become a bit ac- quainted, won't you?" At this instant he experienced a peculiar dread lest Warren should get back before he had seen her face to face, and had her see him. His voice was pleading: "Please?" "Oh," she answered. "I think not. You had better go away and come to see the doctor when I ana not here. After this week, I shall not Be here." 56 THE FL'AME D'ANCER "You are going away? Where?" His question was not only impetuous, but imperative; it delighted her ; their eyes met. There was silence between them ; each was absorbing the complete fact of the other's existence. He was still on his knees beside her; she saw that he was; it made her happy. In one wild moment she thought to confess her all to him, and thus escape forever from danger into the country of an eternal peace; but balance and realities rushed in and prevented her doing anything as wise as this would have been. She looked into his eyes, sighed, and withdrew herself, rose, walked away to the win- dow, and glanced out. He followed her quickly. "Tell me where you are going, I beg of you?" he asked. She laughed a bit recklessly, but not mirthfully. "Why," she exclaimed, "you don't even know my name, it seems, and ask where I am going!" "No, I don't know your name; Warren did not mention it. What is it?" "Luliani de Fontanges." "Luliani." He repeated it after her with a caress- ing cadence and a trifle of interrogation. "It is French?" he suggested. "Not altogether," she responded, smiling in recog- 57 THE FLAME DANCER nition of his persistence and taking no offense at it. "I was born in the Orient, although I lived there but a few years." "Abroad?" he said eagerly. "Yes, abroad: in England for four years, in the East for ten, in France for ten, here for two." "Twenty-six," he said. "I am thirty-nine." She said nothing. "And you are a teacher of French?" "Yes." "Now, where are you going?" He laughed a bit down at her, his insatiable expression as keen as be- fore. "To be resident governess to little Miss Austin, Doctor Warren's niece." "Oh, Jean!" "Yes, Jean is her name." "Then you are not going away !" he said joyously. "You are to be right here in New York, where I live, too." "Yes," she replied. "I am glad we have met." Reggie spoke very low. "I never dreamed of meeting you." "How could you! What do you mean?" "I mean I never believed I should meet a woman such as you." 58 THE FLAME DANCER "What do you know of me?" She said it almost harshly. "I know that you are the best and truest, the purest and noblest " "Hush," she cried, putting up her hands before her face. "Hush ! One cannot know another in a quarter of an hour." "But one can," he asserted hotly, and again primal forces rushed to the fore, and he was minded to take this strange woman, crush her to his heart, bind her to him with all the words and oaths he knew, and make her his in the sight of God and man as soon as he could. He did not touch so much as her hand, but yet she too felt the rush of primal things, the ele- mentary woman going out palpitating to meet his de- manding arms. For a second, just so long as it takes the clock to make one tick, she was near to granting what he asked ; then they both heard that odd breathing which had twice arrested Struh-La's movements earlier in the evening. Their glances met, she withdrawing a bit; each questioned the other; the girl startled but not afraid. "There is some one here besides ourselves!" he ex- claimed, turning sharply and searching behind por- tieres, doors, and the piano. 59 THE FLAME DANCER "No!" answered Miss de Fontanges. "I am sure not. One has delusions, and twice before this eve- ning I was positive I heard breathing very near me." "Well!" Stevens now laughed as he held up and aside the draperies which swathed Warren's piano. "Look! You certainly had no delusion. Jean!" Miss de Fontanges sprang forward, to behold the little Austin girl drowsily wakening, curled up on the floor behind the piano and hidden by the cloth which each one who had passed that way had dragged a bit more and more over her with the touch of fabric to fabric. "Jean!" Miss de Fontanges stooped and moved her prospective pupil gently. "How odd no one should have missed the child?" She looked at Ste- yens. "Isn't it?" "Rather, and yet, no. Her mother went away early to some function or other; her father left a little later for a club meeting. I suppose each fancied the other had charge of Jean." Jean, now quite awake, laughed as she looked out on the deserted parlor and heard herself and her sit- uation portrayed by Stevens. "You're right, Mr. Stevens, I imagine," she said. She had much aplomb and was quite fit in many ways to take her glace in society at that very moment, 60 THE FLAME DANCER .which she easily demonstrated by adding, as she rather affectionately took Miss de Fontanges' hand: "This is Miss de Fontanges, Mr. Stevens. Mr. Stevens, Miss de Fontanges, who is to be my governess begin- ning next week." The inflection of difference of posi- tion, if not quite of caste, in the juvenile voice was admirable, and her nicety in presenting the woman to the man under these social conditions was not unob- served by either of them. It made Stevens wince; it made Miss de Fontanges smile. As she made an inclination toward the man, she as gently indicated to the child that she had better rise from the floor, which she did. Miss de Fontanges sat down on the couch at one end, Stevens promptly seated himself at the other. "They will be coming for you soon, Miss Jean, I 'fancy," the governess said. "If they don't, Mr. Stevens will have to take me home in his machine; will you?" she asked. He in- clined his head. She smiled a little in a girlish way, surveying the space between them on the lounge. "Is there room for me there?" "Certainly," the man answered. Luliani held out her hand; the little girl sat down, and, keeping Luliani's hand in hers, she laid her head On the governess' shoulder; then the telephone-bell 61 THE FLAME DA.NCER rang violently in the doctor's office. Stevens rose to answer it; presently he came back. "They want to know if you are here," he laughed toward the child. "I told them." He sat down again. There was potent charm to him in sitting there with Luliani, and the little girl between them. "Who wanted to know?" Jean asked. "Your mother." "Mother never speaks over the phone if she can help it," exclaimed Jean. "She detests it." "She did not speak," Stevens said. "Oh, one of the servants?" "No; it was Miss Wilmerding." "Oh!" Jean with wide eyes regarded Mr. Stevens. Her mother had always talked in her presence quite as if Jean had not been gifted with ears. Stevens felt annoyed, and, to counteract this, for he had, up to the telephone moment, entirely forgotten even the existence of such a person as Bertha Wilmerding, he drew nearer to Jean, thus to Miss de Fontanges, on the couch, and laid his hand on the little girl's head, which still reposed on Luliani's shoulder. Jean laughed merrily as she inquired: "Mr. Ste- vens, did Miss Bertha recognize your voice over the wire?" "I think so," he replied, stroking her hair. 62 THE FL'AME D'ANCER "Then," cried the child, "bet you a pound of ler's to a box of cigars, clear Havanas, too, Miss Ber- tha'll be here after me!" "Done!" he laughed, leaning nearer now toward the child and the woman, who alone of the trio had heard the bell sound, an entering footstep, a swish ofj silks along the hall, as Miss Wilmerding, ushered by the maid, appeared in the entrance arch. "Well!" exclaimed the newly arrived young wom- an, in a rather warm tone, as she surveyed the verjf picturesque group. It was a curious situation; for a second or two no one said anything; then Jean cried out, laughing: "I say, I'm in a pound of Huyler's, Miss Bertha, and Mr. Stevens is out." Stevens then moved a chair an inch as he looked at the girl he was engaged to. Miss de Fontanges was silent. "This is my new governess, Miss Bertha; Miss de Fontanges, Miss Wilmerding." Luliani bowed. Miss Wilmerding said : "Ah," with a nod, and turning to Stevens added: "I'll not sit down, thank you; hardly; I came in Mrs. Austin's place she was too worried to stir to fetch Jean home." Her tone was a bit severe, not only distinct 63 THE FLAME DANCER disapproval, as was quite natural, but also decided imputation. "It was unnecessary, as I tried to tell you over the wire; I was going to take Jean home quite safely. You should not have troubled yourself." Stevens spoke with the suavity which had caused so many hapless women to fancy he cared for them. "I thought," stammered Bertha, "that Doctor War- ren was certainly here, or I should not have come." "I told you or tried to," smiled Reggie imper- turbably, "that he was not got back from a call down the street." At that moment Doctor Warren's key sounded in the latch. "Pshaw!" the physician cried outside cheerily, "no, Austin, the child isn't here at all ; she went home with her mother and Bertha." Jean danced up and down with joy at the excite- ment she was creating. "I tell you," replied De Forrest Austin hotly, "she is here. Reggie told Bertha over the phone, and Bertha must be here, too !" "I say!" Warren exclaimed, as he and Austin came into the drawing-room and Jean pirouetted up to her father. "Well, well, well, permit me to present you to Miss de Fontanges, Mr. Reginald Stevens, Miss Wilmerding, Miss de Fontanges." 64 THE FL'AME D'A'NCER Bertha said stoically: "Jean has already presented her governess to me." In the click of an eye both De Forrest Austin and Leopold Warren felt the situation. Into it Jean's fa- ther darted as he came out of his surprise at behold- ing Luliani de Fontanges. He had never seen her before. "What have I done, doc, that I should not be pre- sented also to my Jean's governess?" Warren cried out, glad of an interruption to the cloudy atmosphere: "Mr. Austin, Miss de Fontanges Miss de Fontanges, Mr. Austin," and then Luliani rose. "I am most happy" she spoke with dignity and a thorough valuation of her position "to be presented to my future employer, the father of my little pupil." She was holding the child's hand, for Jean had gone back to her after rallying around her father for a mo- ment or two only. Austin bowed: he knew he had never in his life met a woman like this one before: it came to him rather as a shock, and yet he plunged into futurity with her at once. Forrie had had so many pasts that he was hardly to be blamed for being always on the lookout for a future; besides, he had capacity, which neither his wife nor any one else had ever put into 65 THE ELAME DANCER commission, and he knew it. Luliani turned now to Doctor Warren, dismissing the little girl with a ges- ture, to seek her coat. "Will you take your lesson to-night, Doctor War- ren? Is it not too late and your guests?" Miss de iFontanges defined herself completely. Stevens looked at her in breathless delight; every second she satis- fied him the more ; as opportunities occurred, she filled them exquisitely; as awkwardnesses arrived, she turned them into easy paths: she was to be admired, and that is a vast deal. "Oh," Bertha said, actually looking at the other girl; "so you give Doctor Warren lessons, do you?" She did try, under fire of Stevens' eyes, to speak civilly. "Yes," Luliani volunteered, "in French twice a week." "I see. Trench!' But you are not French, or are you?" essaying the easy conversational tone, while Jean came to her governess to have her coat buttoned. "No, I am not. I am of Eastern birth. I have lived in several countries." "You look so. Come here, Jean love ; let me tie your hood for you." "No," said Jean. "Not much!" "Jean!" cried the father remonstratingly. 66 THE FL'AME D'ANCER "Why should I?" inquired Jean pertly. "When I asked Miss Bertha to do my sash for me this evening, she was alone in uncle's office, and she said she wouldn't do it ; now when you're all here, all you men, I mean, she wants to appear nice and sweet ! Tie my hood; no, sir!" Jean stamped off; she was what is called a spoiled child; her parent laughed. Bertha tried to. Warren said: "Miss de Fontanges, please, I certainly do want my lesson this evening, if it's not too late for you?" "No, not at all." The doctor went into the hall with Mr. Austin and Jean, who had made their good-bys. Stevens, Bertha, and Miss de Fontanges remained in the drawing-room. There was a halt; none of them spoke for a half- minute, perhaps, which the governess occupied in seat- ing herself with her back quite to the other two, taking up her books and pencil, and evidently absorb- ing herself in her profession. Miss Wilmerding looked at her new fiance ; her new fiance stood at attention by the door. "Are you coming with me?" she asked, for his hat and coat still lay upon a chair. "I hadn't thought of it," was the reply. "Suppose you do think of it, then." She laughed uneasily as she laid a possessive hand upon his arm. 67 THE FLAME DANCER "Where are you going?" he asked, to gain time, for he knew well enough. "Why, back home to the Austins' for supper, you know; come." Bertha was making a season's visit to Betty. "I'm not a bit fit to-night," he replied. "Austin will take you home. I should spoil everything. I'm out of sorts." "Nonsense!" she cried under her breath. Then she pulled him by the sleeve out into the hall to the L, which broke her voice and view from the other woman. "Tell me, what is this de Fontanges woman to you, eh? I have a right to know. You have given me the right. I insist upon knowing." Stevens laughed in a lazy fashion. "My dear Ber- tha," he answered, in his soul a reverent care for the other woman, "I never saw Miss de Fontanges before in my life. Don't be quite a fool, and remember that she is a lady ; you who are so clever at denoting social lines should have been able to see so much. Mrs. Austin is fortunate in having secured such a governess for Jean." "Is she ? You're not coming home with me, though, are you?" she asked succinctly. "No," he said, "if you will pardon me, I am not." 68 THE FLAME DANCER "Good night." She rather held up her mouth to receive his first kiss. "Good night," he echoed pleasantly, looking at her with quiet eyes. "Come along, Bertha!" sang out Mr. Austin, "un- less you and Reggie are going to say good-by all night. Isn't he coming, too, though? I forgot" "No, he isn't." Bertha jumped into the car. "Not to-night; thanks, old man." Reggie spoke for himself as he placed the robe over his fiancee. "Give my best to Betty, and," this to Miss Wilmer- ding, but with unlowered voice, "I'll ring you up in the morning, Bertha, and find out how you and Bettyj are." The auto buzzed, whizzed, and went away. 69 XHE. F.LAME DANCER CHAPTER V THE CALL OF THE MAGIC HARP IT was already the post-Easter season, and the prin- cipal topic of conversation in certain sets in town / was Mrs. Austin's costume ball, which was to come off on the second Wednesday after Easter, about three months later than the little party which Doctor Warren had given for his goddaughter Jean. Jean and her governess had been getting on famously, and the child, as her mother remarked, seemed to be clearly fonder of Miss de Fontanges than she had ever been of any one before: the teacher and the pupil were more constantly together than is usually the case. Miss de Fontanges did not want those afternoons for outings that all Miss Jean's previous preceptresses had yearned for, and had. This latest one never went out of the house alone under any pretext, and when cir- cumstances pointed that she should, she invariably found a pretext to stay at home. She drove in the park or rode, for she was, it proved, a fair horse- woman, with her young charge and a groom every Sday. Occasionally Mr. Austin joined them there j 70 THE FLAME DANCER twice Mr. Stevens had done the same thing; but neither one received encouragement from Miss de Fontanges. She was constantly asked by Mrs. Austin, in the nicest sort of a way, too, to come down for various functions, and she had poured tea once ; taken a small part in private theatricals when Primrose Palmer had fallen ill with mumps; filled up a lacking bridge table, and twice sat out dinners. She had been at all the opera matinees with Jean, and here Stevens had seen her; but as soon as she had learned of his engagement she had no conversation with him beyond the most formal. Yet she clung to him in her mind. Equally the professor clung to her with the tenacity of his race, added to the peculiar tenacity of this par- ticular man. Struh-La had succeeded in ingratiating himself thoroughly into the Austin household, no mem- ber of which said him nay save only Jean. She said, notwithstanding rebukes: "He makes me shudder. I don't see how mother can look at him so very sweetly and listen to his music." Struh-La knew it, but he was uncaring. His plans were work- ing to their climax, and while he did not obtrude him- self upon Luliani de Fontanges, he contrived to keep her aware both of his designs and his peculiar ad- miration. Luliani shunned him as much as she could, but the strange oriental spirit held its sway over her THE FL'AME DANCER sensitized soul. Apparently she might have told all and held good her position ; might have revealed every- thing to either De Forrest Austin or Reginald Stevens, and the Chinese must have come to a degree of grief; but Struh-La so thralled her that her free agency was problematic. Just at seven o'clock of the ball night, after an atrociously early dinner, a group of people attired in all the splendor of the days of the various Louis were rehearsing the quadrille of honor in the ballroom of the Austins' house, under the supervision of Signor Maretti, who had been engaged to coach them; the photographer was waiting with his flash-lights to make their pictures; Tommy Partley and Primrose Palmer were in the highest spirits; so was every one. Jean and her governess were seated in the little gal- lery built out from the first landing of the grand stair- case, comfortably screened by the rich dark curtains. This tiny alcove had been a whim of Betty Austin's when she was a girl; for the house was hers, of course ; her husband had never owned anything in his life, except his clothes and the jewelry his wife had lavished upon him. The little gallery, then, had been Betty's whim, built by an overindulgent father to meet the demands of a daughter who liked a romantic spot in which "to let men propose to her!" as she put it. 72 The gallery was built for two, cushioned and car- peted, hung and dimly lighted for two, and once in it, as everybody who has been in it knows, one was com- pletely hidden from everybody in the ballroom, the drawing-room, or the musicians' gallery at the other end of the suite. "Now," said Jean, "just look at those women, will you, Miss de Fontanges ? Frumps ! The idea ! Over a hundred and fifty pounds, aged over forty-five, get- ting themselves up as Marie Antoinettes, shepherd- esses, and nymphs, and naiads and sylphs and Queen Louises." Luliani laughed. "I tell you! Mother and Miss Bertha are wise; they're not getting photoed in any groups; but I sup- pose that crowd," Jean indicated contempt by her juvenile lip, "are just delighted to get themselves into a paper to-morrow morning." "They must be used to it by this time, don't you think?" "Yes, one would think," replied the precocious child; "but getting into print, with our set, is like eating one's breakfast; they like it every morning of their lives." "Miss Palmer looks very pretty, I'm sure," said the governess. 73 THE FL'AME DANCER "Yes, Tommy Partley thinks so, anyway. Hello!" Jean looked out from her unsuspected perch and fired a rose at Mr. Partley's helmet; he was endeavoring to represent a Suisse. "I say!" cried the young fellow, as the child drew back into ambush. "Fire away; roses don't often come my way." "Thorns do, I suppose," exclaimed Primrose Palmer. "Do say something, Tommy. You look so empty." "The boys say I'm generally full, however." "Hush!" "Fact." Then some one back of the chattering, rehearsing crowd began to snap the strings of a harp : a few chords only, and all the crowd of revelers were hushed, as this weird music sounded out from 'way back of the screens in the last room of the long, splendid row. Miss de Fontanges quivered in every nerve, her eye- lids fluttered, her fingers grew tense ; notwithstanding, she rose, and with a motion that was more like float- ing than walking, she was quitting her pupil, when the little girl, herself with keenly overwrought nerves, seized her governess by the two arms and pulled her down into her seat. "You mustn't go ! you must stog 74 THE FLAME DANCER and hear it. Such music! It's it's well, it isn't divine" Jean Austin laughed "but it's the kind of music I guess the devil's musicians play to him down in hell it's beautiful and awful. Miss de Fon- tanges, look! It's Professor Struh-La playing moth- er's harp. Look! Mother's going up close to him. She looks bewitched, doesn't she? Her eyes look queer." Some one had moved the screens aside, and there sat Struh-La, playing on Mrs. Austin's harp as no earthly harp had ever been played on before. He looked through and beyond the gasping crowd of the rehearsing guests to the little alcove on the staircase landing, and Luliani de Fontanges' eyes met and were drunk up by the glance of his : and Betty Austin flut- tered near him in an odd way, too. "Ugh!" shuddered Jean, "but he has power. Come, let us go away. You don't care to stop, do you, dear Miss de Fontanges? We'll have our own good time up in the study, and mother says " But the music went on, and Jean felt her governess slipping from her grasp to the floor. She was a grown-up, worldly-wise child, and she sprang out of the little alcove to get help. At the threshold she encountered Reginald Stevens ; he was in a costume of the Louis XIV. time; an unlighted cigar was in his 75 THE FLAME DANCER hand; he was on his way down to the billiard-room to join Austin and a lot of other men for a game of poker before the ball began. "Mr. Stevens, come in here, please," Jean whis- pered. "Something's up with Miss de Fontanges, and you can help me a bit if you will." Reggie dropped his cigar. Jean drew the curtains close and pointed to Luliani upon the floor with her head resting on the cushions of the tiny sofa. "She's fainted, I guess. I don't want to make a row. Can you carry her up to the study one flight, and there's no one about just now?" "Can I!" Stevens knelt and chafed her hands and head. Jean held the curtains. "I'm coming," broke from Miss de Fontanges' lips. "She has not fainted," Reggie said, raising her a bit "I do believe it's that Chinese man's music that's affected her," cried the little girl. "Just hear it!" Stevens paused with her exquisite weight resting upon his knee and arms. It was most positively un- like him to pause at any such time for any such cause, or for any cause at all, but the insidious suggestive- ness, the liquid compulsion of the music made even him halt. Only for a second. Then he bent above her and spoke: "There, there, you're a bit overdone; it's 76 THE FLAME DANCER so warm in this little place. Let me and Jean help you up to the fresh air." "Yes," said the child at the same time, "that's just what I think fresh air." She took her governess by; the hand, but Luliani's hand fell limp. "She has fainted, too!" cried Jean. "I'll run up for smelling- salts, and you fetch her as fast as you can." Jean ran off, and the Chinese, able perhaps to see between the breeze-blown curtains, played on. The girl's eyes were wide open, but the look they gave was hardly normal. "I'm going to carry you up-stairs." "Oh!" she whispered. "Take me away safe some- where, anywhere, safe." "My dear, my dear," he murmured in a rapture above her. Then Jean got back and said : "Here's the vinaigrette and the camphor and the ammonia, and I didn't tell any one, because mother's so nervous, and Miss Bertha's so pussy-cat oh, beg your pardon, I forgot she was your fiancee; of course she's a lovely girl, Mr. Stevens, and mother expects her to ask me to London when I'm grown up and to introduce me to a duke." Jean laughed, while Mr. Stevens carried Miss de Fontanges up the stair- case, meeting only four imperturbable footmen on his way, Jean holding the vinaigrette and other things. 77 THE FL'AME DANCER \ v "In here," Jean said; "you know the study, Mr. Stevens?" "Of course I do." He laid his burden down on the reed couch and pushed a pillow under her head. "Think I'd better phone for a doctor or call uncle up?" asked the child. . "I don't know." He stood beside her. "Luliani!" ' She opened her eyes again. "Do you know where you are ?" he asked of her. "Yes. I know all that you and Jean have done for me. I I have these semi-unconscious turns once in a great while. It is absolutely nothing." "It was that witch fairy harp-playing!" cried the child. "It always makes mother kind of forget things, too." Stevens said : "If you will permit me, I'll phone for Warren now; he hasn't come yet." "No, I assure you, Mr. Stevens." Luliani sat up and began, with reddening cheeks, to pin up her half- fallen hair. "I am quite ashamed of myself, and I thank you. And you must not stop here; they will be expecting you down-stairs." Jean was too palpably present. Reggie bowed and left; then Jean said, laughing: "He didn't want to leave you one bit. Oh, I know things when I see 78 THE 'FL'AME DANCER \ \ them. Reggie Stevens doesn't love Bertha Wilmer- ding just one little bit, and he does love you!" "Jean! if you want to hurt me you will think such things as that. They are not nice ; they are unworthy of you. Jean, please " "Well," consented the child, "I know that the truth is not to be spoken at all times. I'm glad, anyway, that you can't hear Professor Struth-La's music up here." "Yes," assented the governess; adding, for she wished to be alone: "Have you seen your mother in her ball gown, Jean?" "No, I haven't, and if you're sure you feel quite all right I'll just run over and size her up as the Em- press Josephine." The governess smiled, and the little pupil left her to herself. As the Empress Josephine, Mrs. De Forrest Aus- tin was an overwhelming success; at least, so she thought, and so both her maid and her "dearest," i. e., Bertha Wilmerding, assured her. Jean glanced her maternal parent over appraisingly. "Mother!" exclaimed the child, with her round eyes beholding for the first time the flame opals gleaming on Betty's head, neck, and arms. "Are those Mr. Stevens' Eastern opals? Is that?" she came close to 79 THE FLAME DANCER her mother and laid a finger-tip on it "is that the wonderful talisman, the thing that's worth half a mil- lion?" Betty said: "Yes, child." Jean drew back. "It gleams like Professor Struh- La's eyes; it looks like his music sounds; it" she touched the flashing and angry-hearted gem again = "feels cruel. Mother take it off! take them all off > all those flame-stones your own things are enough." Betty laughed. "Anyway," Jean cried out a bit discomfited, "mother, you don't match!" "What does that child mean?" inquired Bertha, poking her head out of the dressing-room, where she was putting the finishing touches to her own toilette as Cleopatra. "I mean that mother and the costume of an Em- press don't agree ; that's what I mean ; mother's O. K. in a Felix gown or a yachting suit; or a cutaway and a perky hat; but she's not in it in that!" Miss Jean contemptuously indicated her mama's imperial robes. "How about me, little Miss Impudence?" sang out Bertha. "You, Miss Bertha? You're Cleopatra, aren't you?" Miss Wilmerding nodded. She had had vague 80 THE TL'AME D'ANCER ideas about subjugating Mr. Stevens by way of the costume of the Egyptian syren, and she felt that any man, Antony or another, must be charmed with as pretty a woman as she was, in such an arrangement of folds and tissues. Jean walked around and around her mother's chum ; then she sighed. "Well," she finally said, "I've been doing Shake- speare with Miss de Fontanges a lot lately, and all I've got to say is, if Cleopatra looked as you do, Miss Bertha, and wore her clothes in the way you do, Antony and those other chaps hadn't much taste. You'd better label yourself, because any one would mistake you for a chorus girl out of a musical com- edy at the Casino! Now, Miss de Fontanges, she could do the Cleopatra stunt, but you " Jean kissed her finger-tips and waltzed across to the door. She knew what was coming. It came. "Jean, leave the room!" said her mother; while Bertha, dismissing her maid, as Mrs. Austin had al- ready done by hers, joined her hostess before the fire- place, where the logs were blazing against the chilly; April air. "Jean is so impossible," sighed Mrs. Austin. "She's clever, all the same," remarked Miss Wil- merding. 81 THE FLAME DANCER "Yes," hesitated the mother. "I hope she will prove it. Cleverness is such a help." "I say, Betty." Bertha Wilmerding looked hard at her friend. "What do you think really of this new governess you've got for your daughter?" "Think she's quite right. Jean likes her. Forrie likes her. She makes no trouble, obliterates herself. What about her, eh?" Mrs. Austin was quite far from being stupid. She knew pretty well that it had to come, and might as well come now in this hour before her ball should begin as at any other time. "What about her!" echoed Bertha. "Just this: Reggie admires her tremendously." "Does he now?" with ingenuous surprise. Miss Wilmerding nodded slowly. "Well, what of it?" "Don't be a fool, Bet," the girl said angrily. "Give me some advice. What'll I do ? You ought to know ; you married Forrie Austin." "You see," Betty answered slowly, "Mr. Austin made me believe that he loved me." "And I suppose you think Reggie doesn't love me?" "You say he admires my governess tremendously. My dear girl, a man who is in love does not admire anything on earth or in heaven except the woman he loves." "Thanks awfully." Bertha bit her lip and her black 82 THE FLAME DANCER eyes flashed dangerously. "I suppose we're friends, you and I, aren't we?" she asked. "Rather." Mrs. Austin spoke reproachfully. "Will you dismiss this girl if I ask you to?" "My dear Bertha! Jean would break her heart. Jean is progressing so well. Pshaw! you magnify. My dear, men will amuse themselves with a pretty governess, who happens in their way, and have no more serious thoughts about it than we have about one man more or less kissing our hand and telling us how adorable we are. Don't be silly." "I'm not silly!" flung back the younger woman. She rose, and stood leaning against the mantel. "Betty," she went on, "Reginald Stevens has never even given me an engagement-ring!" "But that big ruby and diamond thing on your fin- ger?" cried the matron, indicating what she mentioned. "A bluff," returned the girl. "Borrowed it from a chap I know, so as to have people not know how Reggie was behaving." "Dreadful. Why, what's the matter with men, anyway! Reggie, with millions upon millions. You simply stun me!" "Fact. I made him pay Louise's bill, though." She smiled triumphantly. "How?" Mrs. Austin was curious and evinced it. 83 THE FLAME DANCER "Simple enough. Asked him to loan me the amount. He wouldn't give me a cheque, but sent me up the bank-notes." "How much?" "Four hats, a hundred and sixty dollars." " 'A hundred and sixty,' " cried Betty. "Forty dollars apiece! Bertha Wilmerding, you're not pay- ing that for your hats, I know." "I doubled it up," the girl said, with a toss of her head. "You don't suppose I'm letting Reggie think I'm the sort to wear twenty-dollar hats, do you? I've got more foresight than that. He'd be expecting me never to exceed that sum. My dear, I know something about men." "Not Reggie," responded Betty. "He'd never think anything too expensive for his wife." "Maybe not, if she happened to be your governess, for example!" Bertha now began to cry. "What do you mean?" Mrs. Austin was by this really concerned. "My dearest girl, you don't sup- pose for one second now, do you, that Reggie is going to throw you over and marry Miss de Fontanges? Why! he's an honorable man. He has asked you to marry him and there you are!" "But," sobbed the fiancee, "he avoids being alone with me, and he never asks me to go anywhere ex- 84 cept in a crowd of us; and that de Fontanges girl is always in his eyes. I can feel her!" "Well ! Bertha ? you, poetic !" Mrs. Austin laughed aloud. "That's too good. Listen here, child. Forrie did love me, it's true, when we were married ; at least, he made a good show if it was all make-believe; but lots of men don't. You're not alone in your boat, Bertha. You just hurry the wedding and have the bishop turn you into Mrs. Reginald Stevens, and don't bother about the rest. You're pretty, and you can amuse yourself just as well with six millions per an- num as on nothing." Miss Wilmerding dried her eyes. "Have some spirit," suggested the matron, "Heav- ens above! Give him something to be jealous about. Show him you're not to be treated this way. I tell you, my dear girl, when one of us women marries a man that isn't just mad about us, we have to do a lot of er well little things that help along, don't you know! I'll send Jean and Miss de Fontanges to the Long Island place for a month or so, for change of air, eh?" "Oh, will you? Will you, Betty? It's horrible to have to say it, but I loathe her; she's so mystical, and Reggie just eats her up whenever she's about, looking at her." 85 THE FLAME DANCER CHAPTER VI THE GHOST AT THE BALL 44X TONSENSE, my " A footman appeared \| with a telegram for Mrs. Austin, which she took and read. Her eyebrows contracted; she glanced at the clock. It was at eight-thirty only. She dismissed the man with a glance, bidding him close the two doors of the room before he went, and to wait until called. Then Mrs. De Forrest Austin's color rose under the suspicion of rouge which she sometimes wore. "What is it?" Bertha asked, because she knew her friend pretty well and she felt that something was amiss. Mrs. Austin scanned her companion's face and then handed her the despatch. Bertha read it to herself first, then began aloud; but Betty hushed her at once with a warning hand, and the girl was silenced, but sat in wonder as her friend took back the scrap of yellow paper. "Why couldn't he have waited just a few hours?" murmured Mrs. Austin; and then Bertha laughed in pure nervousness. 86 THE FLAME DANCER "How can you laugh? How can you be so heart- less?" "I'm not," asseverated Bertha, "but if you could see your face, it is so wobegone, and I know so well you didn't care a pin about your father-in-law, Betty." "Heavens! that isn't it, you goose. It's that I'll have to shut up the house at once and have no ball, and waste this gown on the wardrobe, that's what it is!" And now Mrs. Austin's tears began to flow. "And not wear Reggie's marvelous flame opals or the coronet or necklace or anything!" "I see!" Miss Wilmerding, with her visions of Cleopatra's execution to be done on her recalcitrant fiance, looked solemn, too. She took the telegram from Betty's lap. "It says it he, I mean will ar- rive here at about midnight." "That's four hours off." Mrs. Austin rose. "Ber- tha, you'll never tell? Not even by and by in years to come, when we quarrel, as we will? Women al- ways do sooner or later. Sure?" "I'll never tell, Betty. But what is it I'm not to tell, eh?" "Well, I'm not going to give up this function and wearing the Eastern jewels, which have already given two continents something to talk about, because For- rie's father has had the bad taste to die in western 87 THE FLAME DANCER New York. They say they wired this morning. How lucky we didn't get it! How fortunate they wired to me. I was born under a good star, after all!" "But," said the girl, "how and what are you going to do, my dear?" "Jaffray!" ejaculated the hostess, as she touched the bell-button. "The detective ?" in astonishment. Betty nodded as the footman responded to her call. She said to him: "Jaffray is here, Jamieson, is he not?" "Yes, madam, ever since the messengers from the bank vaults arrived with the jewels, Mrs. Austin." "Send Jaffray to me at once, please." "Yes, madam." Jamieson went away. "Betty!" exclaimed Bertha Wilmerding under her breath. "Whatever are you going to do. What would Forrie say?" "'Forrie!'" repeated Forrie's wife energetically. "My dear child, when a woman is the keeper of a man's pocketbook, when she is the dollars-and-cents end of the affair, the man has nothing to say that matters!" added Mrs. Austin, with a smile. "Be- sides, he need never know." Jaffray, a superb specimen of a man, in faultless evening dress, was now ushered into his employer's 88 THE FLAME DANCER presence by Jamieson. With the wonderful eyes that had placed him where he was on the force, in one flashing glance he had inventoried, the mass of mag- nificent gems, including, of course, Stevens' loan, which adorned Mrs. Austin. From crown to heel she blazed and sparkled. They were all there, consequent- ly the man knew at once that nothing serious had as yet occurred, whatever suspicions might exist in his patroness's mind. He closed the door after the footman, and then he said: "What is the trouble, Mrs. Austin?" "Nothing exactly in your line, Jaffray; but I think you're the person to help me, if you will." Jaffray, as has been said, was a superb-looking man. Such are seldom, if ever, insensible to the ap- peals of even passable-looking women. The detective bowed low. "Whatever I can do to serve you, madam, will be done with pleasure and to the very best of my ability." "From eleven-thirty to about twelve, I suppose, say an hour at the outside, I want you to leave me to take care of all these" she indicated the treasures "and attend to something very different." "Do you think, Mrs. Austin," replied the man from headquarters, "that you are quite wise in a move like 89 THE FLAME DANCER that?" He surveyed the ropes of flame opals, the rubies, diamonds, and sapphires which, together with the unparalleled talisman, were twisted around Betty's white throat and fell in glistening showers far below her trim little waist, sparkled on her head, ears, and arms. "But they're all on me, Jaffray," she answered, "and certainly while I retain my senses no one can take them off without my knowing it and stopping the thief!" Mrs. Austin and Miss Wilmerding both laughed a bit in derision of the detective's serious aspect. "Very true; but if I'm to be off duty I cannot an- swer, Mrs. Austin, for who might enter the house and what they might not plan. All New York every crook in the Tenderloin knows that to-night Mr. Stevens' and Mrs. Austin's jewels are in commis- sion. I don't like to trust them out of my sight. Could not some other man be assigned to the other job?" Betty shook her head. Bertha said: "Could not some other man, Betty, take Mr. Jaffray's place?" Jaffray shook his head, and, making bold to reply for Mrs. Austin, he kept his eyes fixed frankly on those of Miss Wilmerding. 90 THE FLAME DANCER "No, there isn't a man disengaged this evening who is fit or able to take charge of these." And he nodded toward the princely jewels. "I'll risk it, Jaffray," Mrs. Austin said. "I insist there is no one else I can trust with this other er . matter." Betty actually did halt a trifle here, while Bertha discreetly walked over to a window and looked out. "Very well, madam," was the reply. "Just as you say. May I ask what the job is?" "It's a death," said Mrs. Austin bluntly. The man to whom she spoke made no motion, even of further inquiry, than his attitude had expressed before she had replied to his last question. The woman pulled herself together, possibly assisted by the sudden outpouring of the Hungarian orchestra below and by a tap at her door. First she crossed to the door, motioning the detective into her dressing-room as she went. She opened the door. Her husband stood there. "Hello, Bet," he exclaimed in a jolly way. "But we are fine to-night! Stevens' opals 'pon my honor, they're a blaze!" Making to enter, she barred him out. "Not ready yet? People coming now. Better hurry down. Why can't I come in?" "Bertha's here," was the low-toned response. THE FLAME DANCER "Oh, I see ! and she's not ready, eh that it ? Reg- gie's here," he laughed. "Oh, I say, Jaffray's no- where about, and perhaps you'd best not come down until I look him up." "Pshaw ! nonsense. Jaffray is here !" retorted Mrs. Austin, with a singular adherence to exact truth. "Don't worry about him. Don't be silly. Run along." "Very well, very well. How do I look, eh?" "Like a dear, of course. Charles the Second's things are just your style, wig and all." He went, and she closed the door. Jaffray came out of her dressing-room. She went up to him, while Bertha Wilmerding went into her own room, leaving the door open, however, between. "It's this, Jaffray. Mr. Austin's father has died, up the State. The first telegrams announcing it not having reached, Mr. Austin does not know it. This wire," she handed the lately received telegram to the detective, "has just come. It explains the situation. You understand. I cannot give up this ball." The detective read the despatch. For a second he hesitated as to whether he should leave her to outline the action she desired, or if he should do it hjmself. He chose the latter. She was very pretty and exceed- ingly rich. He liked character-study at short range 92 THE FLAME DANCER Betty interested him. He had not always been a de- tective; he was college bred, and born as well as the wen an whose unique proposition now confronted him. "Due at midnight?" Jaffray remarked, scanning the scrap of paper. "Yes." Then he looked at his watch. "It's almost nine now." Mrs. Austin nodded. "It will arrive about the time that the seated supper will be served?" Betty again inclined her head. "The dining-room windows give on the stable courtyard?" "Yes, they do, but " With mental joy she added : "Every one of those seven windows is stained glass, you remember, Jaffray? The shades are heav- ily embroidered lace, the curtains are unlooped and of lined brocade." The detective bowed, handed back the telegram, took out his watch once more. "Mrs. Austin, I shall have to go back to my room, and get a different make-up. That will take fifteen minutes, making it, say, from nine-five until nine- twenty-five that the gems will be un watched." Betty tossed her head. "No danger in the least." "From nine-twenty-five," resumed Jaffray, "until eleven-forty-five I can watch you. At that hour I 93 THE FL'AME 'DANCER shall disappear again, get into my other togs, mount guard at the curb, stop the vehicle that fetches Mr. Austin's father here, guide it into the stable court- yard, have it placed safely, where it will await your orders until morning, I presume?" Betty heaved a sigh of relief. "Splendid!" she exclaimed. Then, as an after- thought: "But the grooms and coachmen?" "I will take care of them." "And, dear me! Jaffray, how are you to get it him decently into the house to-morrow? I never thought of that!" "Leave it all to me," the man replied, with just a suspicion of amusement at the corners of his mouth. Mrs. Austin didn't see that, however. "It shall be done decently," he added. Jaffray bowed and left the room. Bertha reentered. "Well?" she said. "You heard it all, I suppose?" "Yes. It's sort of weird, though." "Nonsense. What a stroke that I remembered Jaf- fray! After all, it'll be just the same as if we hadn't had the wire until to-morrow. Jaff ray's a dear: he and Leo were college chums, you know." "Yes?" remarked Miss Wilmerding. "I wouldn't 94 THE FLAME DANCER Have had this ball given up for all the world ! People are arriving, Bet. We'd better get down. Jaffray's handsome, isn't he?" "Yes. No such hurry; the women'll spend fifteen minutes at least powdering, and the men taking final whiffs at cigars!" She regarded herself in the long mirror. "Jaffray actually made me a bit nervous about the jewels when he said if he has to be off duty he couldn't answer for them!" "Bah !" cried the girl. "I fancy you're not going to be robbed with your eyes open, and six hundred peo- ple surrounding you. I'll risk it when those" she indicated the flame opals "become mine!" "You don't mind my wearing them this once, do you?" "No," Bertha said. "Have you seen Reggie yet to-night?" asked Mrs. Austin. "No." The monosyllable came curtly. "I phoned him to fetch me some flowers. He phoned back he'd send them." "Did he?" "Yes; there they are." She flung back her eyes to a big bunch of American beauties in the adjoining room. "I told him I'd be down at nine; it's quarter past." 95 THE FLAME DANCER "So it is. Well, never mind. He's on deck ; Forrie said so. Be thankful he didn't beg off." "I suppose so. Shall we go down now?" "Yes; come along." She rang for the maids to hold up their trains, and down they went. A lot of women had arrived, and quite a bunch of men. Reginald Stevens stood among these, a very goodly figure to look upon, gallant from top to toe, and wearing his satins and laces with as fine a grace as ever a king could muster. Bertha made no demur. She went up to him. He darted to her, for instinc- tively he would have spared any woman the humilia- tion of seeking a man. "The roses were lovely," she said, leading him to- ward the conservatory. "Glad they suited," he answered. She glanced down at the suggestive splendors of her attire, then up into his face. He understood the look and made his reply to it. "Magnificent costume! Who got it up?" "I thought it out myself. Do you like it?" "Gorgeous! Cleopatra, isn't it?" "Yes. I wish now you had chosen Antony." "Why?" They had reached the conservatory, where the languorous scents were exquisitely sweet and 96 THE FLAME DANCER soothing. Her hand on his arm now traveled to his hand, and her eyes were raised to his. "'Why?'" she echoed. "I don't quite know: be- cause they belonged to each other, Antony and Cleo- patra." She sank into a seat; he stood up, his hand upon the hilt of his rapier, his plumed hat under his arm. "But we don't belong to each other," he said in a commonplace way. "No," she responded; "not yet." "We never will. I say, Bertha, we've made a big mistake, little woman. Suppose we rectify it. I'll cut off to Europe, Asia, any old place, and you tell the world you've broken it off, and broken my heart, too, eh?" "What do you mean?" she asked. "Why, you care nothing for me." "I do! I do!" "Well, I don't think so. And I " He crossed the little place and came back again. She was stand- ing up then, too. "You what?" Her black eyes blazed. "I find I'm not the marrying sort of a chap at all. I'd never make you happy. Let's call it off, my dear girl, and continue to be the very best chums in the world. Won't we?" 97 THE FLAME D'ANCER "Certainly not," was the girl's answer. "Come now, I know how you feel about it; that you've given your word and all that sort of thing, honor bound and so forth, but I'm sure you'll be sensible. Such a lot of chaps on your string, and I, I don't really want to marry at all." "Yes, you do." Her voice was low, but there was an ominous note in it. He regarded her curiously. His attitude of mind was, barring some other things, almost identical with that of the detective during his late conversation with Mrs. Austin he was lost in amazement at this par- ticular type of woman. "You do want to marry that governess girl, Luliani de Fontanges. Do you think I'm an idiot?. Not a bit of it. I saw it all, all, the first night you ever saw her, when I came back for Jean and found the child sitting between you two on the couch." She looked bluntly at him. "Well?" she pursued. "Aren't you going to speak?" He bowed. "You have the floor." "Yes, I have," her temper commanded her, "and I'm going to keep it, and I'm going to keep you to your word, too." He bent a little nearer to her, for her voice was rising in that unaccountable way that so many human 98 THE FLAM'E DANCER voices will rise to the exact height of their emotions. His voice was very low as he spoke: "Miss Wilmerding, you are not quite yourself. I made my offer, such as it was, to you under a mis- apprehension, because I was told that I had com- promised you, and that I must do what was expected of me. I have since learned You will not force me to tell you what I have since learned I am sure? You will permit me to leave the country with a broken heart, as I volunteered a moment ago, and when I return I shall hope to find you married to some nice chap whom you love and who loves you." "Quite like a goody-goody story-book, that," she exclaimed, "only with this difference I'm going to marry you, and no one else!" "I think not," he said, with blood surging to his face for both her and himself. "Do you refuse to carry out our engagement?" "I refuse." "Why?" "Must I tell you?" "Yes, you must." "Because, in the first place, there is no love between us " "Why didn't you think of that before you pro- posed?" she interrupted sagaciously. 99 THE FLAME DANCER He looked fully into her face. "Because then I knew nothing about the possibili- ties of such a thing." "And now you do?" she blurted out. "Now I do." "I thought it was the governess. Well, what's the rest of it?" "You force me?" He gave her unlimited chance to behave decently. "Go on," she said fiercely. "You were marrying me for money." "What of it?" He turned from her. "Do you think I'm giving up four establishments, a yacht, and six millions per annum, just because you've happened to encounter a little French teacher? Oh, no!" He stood still. She was impossible, but still had to be dealt with. He had his own methods. He was silent. "Speak," she commanded vehemently. "Nothing to say." "Do you refuse to marry me?" "I do refuse to marry you. Shall I take you back into the ballroom?" "Yes, you shall." 100 They went back together. He took her to Betty, at her request, and then left her ad went down-stairs to smoke. As soon as he was out of sight, Bertha Wilmer- ding said sweetly to her hostess : "Where's your pretty little governess to-night, dear not in evidence?" "No!" replied Mrs. Austin, "hardly. I suppose she's up in the study. Forrie just told me that he went in to speak to Jean and found the child in bed and asleep. Why do you ask?" "No reason in the world." "Have you seen Reggie ?" sharply. "Certainly. We've been in the conservatory. What a crush you've got to-night. One of my shoes hurts me. I must go up and change it. Just look at that Mrs. Mallory, will you?" Bertha went up-stairs to the study. She tapped at the door, but did not wait for an answer; she opened and walked into the semi-darkness, where in a moment she caught sight of Luliani de Fontanges sitting for- lornly in a stiff chair in the circle of light from a single bulb. Miss de Fontanges rose. "There is no one here but me, Miss Wilmerding." "I'm glad of that," replied the visitor, regarding the other girl with no nonplussed air, but rather one 101 THE FLAME DANCER of appraisal. "I don't quite see what it is in you, Miss de Fontanges, that is so attractive to the men." Bertha's gaze was flaming with all the untamed pas- sions to the fore which yield their lawless harvest in the characters of those whose parents have brought them up on the easy principle of giving them what they screamed for from birth onward. Heredity counts for a cypher beside the beastly results of this not uncommon method of upbringing, and it is safe to say that more crimes are committed as the outcome of the motherhood that does not know how to say no than to any other cause the daughter of the mother who can't say no generally doesn't know how to say no, either. Bertha didn't know how to say no to herself, or to her inclinations and precipitancies. Luliani looked at her visitor clearly from head to foot. Then she said : "I don't understand you, Miss Wilmerding. I don't care to have you explain yourself. I prefer that you should leave me." She walked toward the door and put out her hand to open it. Bertha jumped between Luliani and the door. "But I shall explain myself," she cried, "and you've got to listen to me. You're occult, that's what you are uncanny. Forrie Austin's in love with you," she pursued. "Every one knows it." 102 THE FLAME DANCER "Silence!" said the other girl. "You have got to go, if I have to force you." "You dare to touch me!" cried Miss Wilmerding. "I repeat, every one can see that Forrie Austin's gone on you; even his wife must know it, but she doesn't care." Miss de Fontanges walked to the other end of the room, where a door gave upon the narrow enclosed staircase in use for the servants. "No, you don't!" Bertha exclaimed, running and preventing her exit. "I didn't leave the dancing to come up here and talk to you about your employer; but I did come to speak to you about Mr. Stevens." She paused as if this were a thunderbolt likely to cause something unusual. Miss de Fontanges was silent. "I am engaged to Mr. Stevens!" Bertha continued. "I am aware of it." "I know you are. And if you've got a grain of common sense you'll give him up." Luliani lifted her eyebrows and smiled contemptu- ously. "Don't you dare to smile that way at me. Don't you suppose I know what sort of an affair a man like Reginald Stevens carries on with a woman in your position?" The sneer was on her lips, but it evoked 103 THE FL'AME DANCER no response. Bertha went on : "No one else may have guessed it. I have. I don't blame him; men are built that way. I know they must be amused, but I tell you plainly the time has come now for you to get away; if you don't, I'll tell Mrs. Austin and have you put out. Will you go to-night yes or no?" The two women were in the shadow at the far end of the study near the door; the only light in the room was that from the single green bulb at the near end over a reading chair. Luliani said : "No," and her face was terrified, yet proud. As she spoke the door at the near end opened. Reginald Stevens and Doctor Warren came in to- gether at that same second. What met their gaze was Bertha Wilmerding raising her right hand and stri- king Luliani de Fontanges in the face. She had al- ways been used as a child to striking at people and things that displeased her, to the admiration of her mother. Both men sprang forward. Warren seized Bertha by both arms; Stevens caught Miss de Fontanges as she staggered under the blow, the mark of which was plain upon her cheek and temple. Luliani was the first to speak. She said to Doctor Warren : "I think Miss Wilmerding has, temporarily, doubtless, lost her mind." 104 THE FLAME DANCER "I should think so," murmured Stevens, as Luliani disengaged herself from his support. The physician was silent, but he held Bertha in a vise. She screamed at the very moment that Reggie spoke. Warren put his hand over her mouth. "You stop!" she cried through his fingers. "I'm not out of my senses in the least. I came up here to tell this girl a few truths. I've told them. Now I'm going." Warren took his hand from her mouth and said quietly : "You'd better come to my sister's room and let me give you something to compose your nerves first. You are not behaving wisely, Miss Bertha. You will regret this; be advised." "Look at her!" she cried, pointing at Luliani. "Standing there shamelessly with the man who is en- gaged to me, me! beside her." Reginald Stevens said, partly addressing himself to Miss de Fontanges: "I am not engaged to Miss Wilmerding, Miss de Fontanges. We have mutually agreed to cancel the engagement that did exist be- tween us for a few weeks." "No, we haven't!" Bertha exclaimed, waving aside 105 THE FL'AME DANCER Doctor Warren's hand. "It takes two to make a bar- gain, Reggie, and I don't give you up to a passing folly like this ! I will stick to you and wait until you get tired of your toy. I care enough to make allow- ances for all your little foibles." With which, in her Cleopatra attire, Miss Wilmerding turned and swept from the study, accompanied by the physician. At the threshold they encountered Professor Struh- La, who was in the magnificent costume of a first-class mandarin. He was using his fan smilingly, and also his eyes, with which he beheld through the open door both Luliani and Stevens standing together within. Perhaps in the brief moment during which that door stood open, allowing these other two to pass out, Miss de Fontanges felt his gaze upon her, for she trembled now as she had not done before. The Chinese exchanged gracious salutations with the doctor and Miss Wilmerding; the former closed the study door and all three went their ways. Reggie turned to Luliani. "My dear, my dear!" he whispered. "No," she whispered. "You must not, you must not!" "Why not?" She drew away, rose, and sighed. What so bitter 106 THE FLAME DANCER as for a woman to feel that she has even sinlessly had an inexplicable past? "Just go away and forget me, that is all," she an- swered. He sprang to her. "No !" he cried. "That is not all. I love you, love you, want you for my wife. Is it not possible that you may love me just a little? I will be satisfied to wait for much; it would come, I know. Luliani, my girl, look at me!" She glanced into his beseeching eyes, her own de- mure, yet yearning to surrender. "Now," he went on, "you know as well as I do that we belong to each other. I am yours, have been since the first night I met you. Speak the truth, my sweet- heart. You care a bit about me, eh?" "Yes," she faltered, and then shuddered in his em- brace, because she felt through the walls and doors and curtains the arrow of the Chinese man's will sticking into her soul. "You're unnerved, and no wonder," he murmured over her. "In a few days you shall tell me all Miss Wilmerding said to you." His lips rested on the bruise on the girl's face. "Brute!" he cried out in anguish at the shameful hurt to her whom he loved. Luliani laid her finger on his lips. 107 "Don't call any woman that!" she spoke softly. "Why not?" he demanded roughly. "There are such women; they are beasts of prey; they cause men of a normal type to shudder. To think that such a fiend struck you!" He folded her to him; then laid her gently out of his arms, drew back, and stood look- ing at her. "You are too exquisite for me to touch, yet. I must get a bit used to my happiness. I must pull myself together and plan things at once to have you leave here." She smiled forlornly, for the dragon of China and his claws dangled before her and wrestled with her spirit. "You must go away now," she said, pushing him tenderly toward the door. "They will be missing you. I want to go to sleep. Good night." He did not speak, but kissed a fold of her dress and left her. He heard her lock the door after him, and remembered that the governess' own rooms opened from the study. Luliani stood close to the door she had just locked. Her hands were crossed upon her breast; her mind was a delirium of memories, hopes, but above every- thing else stalked fear consuming her, eating up her powers, and enslaving her capacities. This fear 108 THE FLAME DANCER was her master. Insensibly her hand stretched out to unlock the door she had but just barred against its intrusion. Then she started back with a little laugh of sumptuous comfort at the memory of Regi- nald Stevens' love. She turned away from this door and faced the one at the opposite end of the study. She ran to lock it also, but as she reached it it opened. Struh-La entered, closing it behind him, and turning this key, too, in its lock. 109 THE FLAME DANCER CHAPTER VII THE POWER AGAINST WHICH TO STRUGGLE IS USELESS HER hands fell, her eyelids quivered; she tried to see Reggie's face before her, but the occult eyes were there instead. "How do you do?" said Struh-La. "How do you do?" she repeated perfunctorily. "Well. To-night is the night when you are to aid me." "No!" she uttered the word with a force and pre- cision new to him in his dealings with her. "Yes," he responded softly. She sprang to the main door and her hands were on the knob and key; then they fell listlessly and her head turned back to the Chinese man. Their eyes met. She made a brave fight every muscle in her was at cracking tension, every fibre thrilled, every power of soul and mind stood up for rebellion, if rebellion even should cost her her life; but it was of no use. Struh-La prevailed. He spoke gently, and said: "There is absolutely no danger; the detective who has no THE FLAME DANCER been on duty over the jewels is off on other business ; there is nothing very much easier than this piece of work. It will be much more facile than even was the appropriation of the flame stones which Madame la Countesse de Chailly had acquired you remember?" She inclined her head. "And at this point it is my intention to divide circumstances so that maybe your activity may not be really required only your passive obedience." She then stood differently from the cowering pose his presence always caused her to assume, and said : "I will not obey you! You may kill me, but I will not steal for you again. You are the thief!" "No, no," he replied soothingly. "Now, Luliani, that is not true. I am not a thief. I have regained my own. I may employ you to work for me, as an amanuensis is employed. Is it not so? Now," he went on, "don't think because you are so much liked loved you call it by this man Stevens that that can keep you from obeying me. I tell you, no. Never. Your soul is my property, and both he and you may fight all you choose; I win. I intend to marry you myself, quite legally, presently, and then, we shall see!" His eyes fastened themselves upon the spiritual purity of her face as if they would de- vour it. in THE FLAME DANCER She stood rigid, paralyzed, it would seem, by his supremacy over her. "It will be San Francisco; then Europe; then the far, far East, where you and I were both born, and you shall bathe in the dust of diamonds; you shall be clothed in stringing pearls. You shall tread upon sapphires, rubies, emeralds; the flame opals shall glis- ten on you all but the talisman and you shall be- long to me, and not to Mr. Stevens. Do you under- stand?" She inclined her head. "Sit down," he said with authority. She sat down. "Now, wait until I call for you ; then come out and do as you are guided." He laid his hands upon her head for a moment, gathered his gorgeous mandarin robes about him, waved his fan, listened at the rear door after unlock- ing the main one; opened the rear one and left her. No sooner had he quitted the room than, with a hasty tap, Mr. Austin came in and walked straight up to Luliani de Fontanges. He said: "Miss de Fontanges, my brother-in-law has just told me of the indignity you have suffered at the hands, literally, of one of the guests beneath my roof." It wasn't Forrie's roof, not a tile or a nail 112 THE FLAME DANCER of it, but he always spoke in a lordly way of his wife's real estate; and just now he was more terribly in earnest than he had ever been in his somewhat speculative and wholly roving existence. "It's a wretched grief to me to think that a blow could be struck by any woman I knovr, and to a woman!" Miss de Fontanges put up her hand and touched the blazing spot on her cheek and temple, but said nothing. "I've told Mrs. Austin that Miss Wilmerding must leave here to-morrow." Luliani shook her head. "But she must," he persisted. "I would not permit any one to stop with us who could be guilty of such a thing, and when it comes to its being you whom she struck" Forrie sat down by his daughter's gov- erness "that's rather a stroke beyond." He looked at her; her eyes responded clearly to his; he leaned a bit nearer to her; she did not move. "Don't you know?" Austin said in a low, quick way. She shook her head. "I love you." She remained expressionless, silent. "I've said those words to a lot of women before in my time," Forrie said concisely, "but I never knew what I was saying. No, I didn't. I suppose you're "3 THE FLAME DANCER thinking that I'm a married man and all that sort of thing?" He looked at her again. She inclined her head, as if it were a physical combat with inertia to do so. "Yes, I know, of course. But unluckily, or luckily, which is it, I wonder? men and women who have made mistaken marriages go right on loving the right people when they meet them just as if the wedding ceremony had never been performed." Luliani tried to rise, but she could not. "I tell you!" Forrie went on, occupied with his own novel feelings, "you're the one woman in the world I'd give up everything I have for. Yes, I would. You just say the word, and I'll run out to Dakota, establish a residence, and in a year we could be married." Still she did not speak. She realized what he was saying, but she was unable to articulate or move. She knew she could do neither until her soul should be at liberty. "Shall I do it?" Austin spoke with infinite pur- pose. He took her hand ; it was cold, limp ; he sprang up. "I say!" he exclaimed, "I am a brute, I suppose; all men are, more or less; but if you could care a bit about me it would make a man of me, perhaps." She now tried very hard to look at him, and the effort 114 THE FLAME DANCER was possibly apparent, for, reassured, he reseated him- self. "It's only fair you should know it all." Her eyelids fell and rose; with a subliminal sense she actually felt the keen humor of the situation. In the midst of the web which the Mongolian was weaving around her, she yet had the super faculties to recog- nize the transcendent foolery of this man's talking to her in this way. Since Reginald Stevens' love, must not any other man's confession sound dull, or, at any rate, somewhat absurd? But De Forrest Austin was not taking himself seri- ously for the first time in his thirty-eight years for nothing. He continued: "I married Betty Warren for her money, for the many millions which her ma- ternal grandmother left to her. I'd knocked about the world a good bit; I'd worked and slaved hard; I couldn't succeed. I wanted rest and comfort, and ease of mind and body. Ease of mind," he said, in a parenthetical way, "isn't just what a chap finds in this kind of wedded life; still I chanced it, and I got all I was looking for. Betty and I pulled together fairly well for a time. She was under the delusion most women hug, that a man who asks them to marry him must love them; I didn't. I wanted to be taken care of, and Betty has done it. I was a cad, of course. I haven't been a whole man since the hour that made "5 T.HE FLAME DANCER me her husband. At first I didn't realize it ; then I did realize it and didn't care; then I lived along, saying: 'What's the use?' then I took to amusing myself with other women. Oh, she knew it ; she didn't care. Then I met you, and humiliation overtook me. I know as well as you can tell me that I'll never be a whole man until I walk out of Betty's house without a cent of her money in my pocket, get a position on any sort of a salary, hire a hall bedroom and live in it. What I need is the tonic of self-dependence, and, by God! if you'll only tell me to hope, I'll quit this very day." He got up, pushing back the point-lace ruffles from his velvet cuffs and the long curls of the Stuart wig he wore framing his earnest, flushed face. "Luliani de Fontanges!" He whispered her name. 'Tm true with you, aboveboard. If you turn me down I'll keep on eating the bread she provides, wear- ing the duds she pays for, riding and driving her horses; lying from year's end to year's end. The whole business is a ghastly, cheap lie that deceives no one except perhaps the woman; but if you'll give me a hope, I'll cut it all, go out there, take a job as a car conductor, and work it up until I have a little home for you. I'd be free in a twelvemonth. You're thinking of Betty?" for the girl was silent. "No need; Betty's got her fortune. Men are very 116 THE FLAME DANCER plenty in the world of a woman with an income, and the biggest mistake any chap can make is to suppose his wife will be inconsolable if she loses him by way of a divorce any more than by death. Pure fiction. We're not necessary to any one, dearly as we love to believe it." There was something so peculiarly passive in the hand within his that Austin stared. Her eyes were closed; she breathed with the even regularity of a child; she was, he supposed, asleep. While he looked at her with fond, devouring eyes he beheld, with a more painful distinctness, the mark of Bertha Wil- merding's blow branding her skin. He glanced around, bent, and with the intense, best feeling of his whole vapid life he laid his warm lips full upon that scarlet scar. She did not stir. Austin slowly crossed the room to the main door, and went away; reaching the hall, he paused at one of the large windows which gave upon the stable yard; he pushed aside the curtains and slipped into the space of the bow ; he glanced out ; he was thinking of his own wreckage of his own life, wondering if at last he would be helped to throw off the chains that had made a serf of him for twelve long years; wondering if the girl whose cruel experi- ence with Bertha Wilmerding had caused her to fall 117 THE FLAME DANCER asleep in his presence would be the one to lead him to a recovery of his lost manhood. Austin knew him- self pretty well. He glanced down into the stable yard, attracted by the gleam of two lanterns and the opening of the heavy doors from the porte-cochere; a long black wagon with a black horse was driven in; a man on the box got down, a tall man in a gray mackintosh, and cap, with a full reddish beard and moustache; the breeze blew aside his mackintosh and Austin saw that he was in evening dress under it; another man alighted from the black wagon, a short, thick-set man, and he walked to the rear of the wagon and let down the backboard. The taller man glanced up at the window where Austin stood, and walked quickly to the wagon, turned up the backboard, spoke to the short man, gave him a cigar, and they both began to smoke. Austin did not give them much thought. "Caterers," was his impression. His own father's lifeless body lay inside that black wagon, and as he looked unconsciously down at it the son experienced perhaps the noblest aspirations of which he was capable. It is, however, only just to a large proportion of the world to allow that it would characterize Mr. De Forrest Austin's projected di- vorce scheme, remarriage, and especially his giving up of the peaceful sharing of an immense income, a 118 THE FLAME DANCER gross abandonment of duty spelled with the largest sort of a "D." It is so easy to make duty and com- fort meet and kiss each other when responsibility and hard work are on the other side of the medal. Jaffray, as soon as Mr. Austin left the hall window, was about to give his directions to the undertaker, when, for the second time, his operations were inter- rupted, and with a nod he again stopped the moving of De Forrest Austin's father's corpse from the black wagon to the harness-room. This stay of proceedings was caused by no less a personage than Struh-La, although he had thrown a satin domino over his man- darin costume before venturing near the window from which he peered behind the well-drawn crimson-lined hood of his latest disguise. The professor, having noted, as he did most things, that the detective was absent from his post, under- took to discover the whereabouts of the missing man, for, like all self-centered persons, he associated any- thing unusual with himself and his movements. His acute ear had noticed the sound of arriving wheels in the stable yard. He did not hesitate at combining this sound with Jaffray's absence, and the two with his own plans. He sought the dining-room, having se- cured from the men's dressing-room the domino with which he had taken care to provide himself in case 119 THE FL'AME DANCER of many necessities he could foresee. Thus clad, he had threaded the throng of eaters and drinkers, made his way to the window, enveloped himself in the heavy curtains, and taken in the wagon and the de- tective whose beard and Inverness proved no armor against his eyes. 120 THE 'FLAME DANCER CHAPTER VIII WHAT REGGIE SAW STRUH-LA no sooner beheld Jaffray, and saw that J affray's movements were arrested by sight of him, than he withdrew like a shot from his coign of vantage and emerged into the dining-room, drawing off as he did so the domino and leaving it lying in a heap in a corner. He accepted a plate of food, drank a cup of punch, sauntered toward the picture-gallery. It was deserted, not a soul there ; all the brilliant throng were compressed into the dining and billiard-rooms where the seated supper was being served by every servant in the house excepting the maids in the ladies' dressing-room and the butler at the front door. The Chinese sauntered back again whence he had come, his hands clasped about his fan and umbrella. He perceived Betty progressing mer- rily from table to table, a laugh here, a jest there, a few words to each quartet; there was such a jam of people that really one's hostess, or what she did, or left undone, would not count for much with the horde until the next day when they might be "talking it 121 THE FL'AME DANCER over." So when Mrs. Austin glided away from her gay groups of friends, with a pink cake in her fin- gers, and, as if with no particular intent, went through the first and second drawing-rooms and thence into the vacant gallery, no one realized her de- parture. She made a picturesque figure as she walked along, with downcast eyelids, the pink cake still fanci- fully poised between her right finger and thumb her magnificent train of gold brocade trailing a couple of yards behind her, its rose-colored ostrich border fringing and sweeping the polished floor; the match- less flame jewels shimmering and scintillating about her throat, ears, arms, waist, while the glow of the electrics seemed to touch the talisman on her head into a rainbow of glory. Betty walked to the farthest end of the place, to the Flemish fireplace, above which was hung a wonderful Greuze head. On this picture and on the mistress of the house both, the fitful radi- ance of the soft-coal fire leaped and ruddied. Me- chanically, it seemed, Mrs. Austin, still balancing the ridiculous little pink cake, rolled one of the big Flem- ish armchairs up in front of the fire. She sat down in it, her lids flickered a bit, but did not close ; she leaned back, her muscles relaxed, one of her hands fell list- lessly at her side, but the other remained in rigid tribute to the little pink cake. 122 THE FL'AME DANCER This was less than ten minutes from the time when Strtih-La quitted the study, leaving Luliani asleep. The door to the private stairs in the study opened and little Jean came in. She was in her nightgown, as wide awake as a child could be, for her eyes were large and staring one might have said with a mix- ture of fright and amusement, if such a combination can be conceived. "I heard everything," she said at once. Then the fright that seemed to lie behind her staring glance became the dominant emotion, for her governess sat still and made no answer. The child went up to her and laid a hand upon her shoulder. "Miss de Fontanges, what is the matter?" cried Jean. "I tell you I heard everything. Can't you hear? Oh, dear, what has happened?" Jean drew away in doubt and alarm. "What's the matter?" she repeated, this time to herself, although her eyes sought every corner of the room, as if from somewhere an answer might come to her anxious question. "It's Struh-La," she whis- pered. "I feel Struh-La somewhere near me." She shuddered; there was an impulse to find her mother. She looked down at her nightgown. It would not Ho. She disappeared through the private doorway and was absent a minute. When she returned she 123 THE FLAME DANCER wore a big loose kimona belonging to Luliani, which she held from the floor so that the skirts should not drag and trip her. "Miss de Fontanges!" she cried once more, before she left the room, but still the governess sat silent. "I borrowed your kimona. I'm going to mother. I must. I can't help it." Jean hurried into the hall and down the stairs. She paused in the balcony unoccupied and looked the ballroom over. It was empty; the child gasped with a little trepidation at the thought of invading the dining-room to find her mother. No other per- son would do. She went quickly on down-stairs, looking about her as she went, and so in a moment came to the entrance to the picture-gallery and saw her mother sitting be- fore the fireplace. Jean went into the gallery. So much is certain, for a moment later, just how much later nobody can say, Stevens met her at the foot of the stairs, her face turned upward. The child was evidently in deep dis- tress ; therefore, she attracted the man's attention. Ordinarily he might have smiled merely and passed on with the thought that it was natural for a little girl to get out of bed on the occasion of a fancy ball in her own home, for the sake of seeing the gaily 124 THE FLAME DANCER dressed crowd. It happened that Stevens himself had found the atmosphere of the dining-room intolerable. He was solitary in the crush of humanity about him. His heart and his thoughts were elsewhere, and the impulse which stirred him was to go back to the study. He came to the foot of the stairs and saw Jean. "What is the matter, little one?" he asked. She stopped abruptly, holding the kimona up be- fore her, a deep fold depending from her hands. Her eyes were wild and her lips widely parted. She tried to speak, but could not. "Jean," said Stevens, "are you frightened?" She choked, broke into a quivering sob, hastened blunderingly up the stairs, holding that deep fold tightly in her grasp. Stevens watched her curiously for a moment and then a smile broke upon him. "Poor kid," said he, "she has disobeyed orders, been reprimanded, her little heart is breaking. Con- found it, I'd give her the pleasure of seeing an affair like this!" He heard the door of the study open, and this sound determined his course he would not return to Luliani. Stevens went back to the supper-room, but he was Mneasy there; he wanted to be alone. The conserva- 125 THE FLAME DANCER tory? No, probably two people at least there, some man and some woman. The big drawing-rooms ? He glanced at their stupid spaciousness, all arranged for the after-supper cotillion which, by the way, he him- self was to lead; no. The picture-gallery? To be sure, the very spot. He walked quickly along the hall to the first entrance arch, and his eyes met the seated figure of his hostess. Reggie smiled at the complacent ingenuity which had bade adieu to seven hundred people at the height of a crush ball, and amusedly speculated as to whom the man might be for whose sake Betty Austin was sitting things out on this especial occasion. He looked about there was no apparent man. And yet he felt assured that Betty was awaiting some one. Stevens had no mind to spy: he was the man who could and did turn his back and his memory on any fact inauspicious to another. Ordinarily he would have gotten away from Betty, under these conditions, as fast as possible; this time he stood there in the arched passageway, which was one of three giving on the picture-gallery of the Austin house. He stood a bit to one side, leaning unconsciously against the col- umn; his eyes were fascinated by Betty's pink cake so carefully poised in her well-gloved right hand. He was subliminally conscious, if one chooses so to 126 THE FLAME DANCER regard it, of another presence nearer to him than Mrs. Austin's, when suddenly into this negative atmos- phere surrounding him there flashed a vivid sense of something different. There was a fragrance, a hush as before the dawn, a sound as of the wings of birds brushing aside cool branches, a sweep of breeze-laden with auroral freshness. His heart beat to bursting. Then he saw her coming down the hall, her blue eyes looking straight before her, her lips a little apart, as he loved to see them. She even brushed past him, unheeding, and he shrank and panted, watching her as she went. For Luliani went on with the mystical gait of one completely absorbed in accomplishment. There was nothing purposeless about her. Stevens had never seen her so energized. She approached Betty Austin, her gray gown trailing a little after her. To be sure, she had come on some urgent message to the mother from the child Jean. Stevens watched it all without a thought. To watch Luliani de Fontanges that night was much the same to him as breathing; both were necessary to the fact of living on. No : she did not speak, nor did Betty. Betty sat still in her Flemish chair, the pink cake poised in her fingers ready to be eaten; the music crashed out its 127 THE FLAME DANCER luscious rhythm from the balcony; the voices of the revelers sounded afar; the clink of crystal and the jingle of silver and china was audible; and yet this was a spot where silence reigned to the point of suf- focation. Neither of the two women spoke: one of them did not move a muscle: the other one leaned above the back of the Flemish chair for a second, then she sprang away as if governed by some newer but irre- sistible influence, reaching out her arms; her lips parted, but there was no cry. Betty moved her head a trifle; Luliani glided to the electric board and touched a button. As she did so Stevens, with the impulse of any manly man, got away as fast as he could. Luliani, of course, was executing Betty's orders, he under- stood that, and was chagrined if not surprised. He went into the dining-room. Some one gave him a glass of champagne. He took it; then recognized from whose hand he had accepted it. Bertha's. He had been raising it to his lips, but, with a decided emphasis, he gave it untouched to a passing footman. Miss Wilmerding was nothing if not adventurous and persevering. "Pshaw, Reggie!" she whispered. "Don't be quite 128 THE FLAME DANCER an idiot because a girl cares enough about you to strike another girl on your account." Stevens looked her full in her black eyes; all he thought was what a misplacement Providence had perpetrated when it put Miss Wilmerding where she was instead of on the lower east side of town. As soon as the governess had done as she had been bidden as soon as Reggie Stevens reached the sup- per-room, in fact by the dim light from the other rooms Luliani could have been seen retracing her steps, hurrying up the stairs, evidently bent on the schoolroom. But at the first landing giving on the little balcony she halted, sank upon the step, and her breath came pantingly. She leaned there for possibly three minutes by the clock. She heard not only the far-off revelry of the feast, but nearer, two voices. They spoke swiftly in whispers: then there was si- lence; and as Luliani rose she recognized the peculiar low laugh of Struh-La. She heard a soft, quick footfall ascending ; when she looked over her shoulder she beheld Miss Wilmerding, who was coming up to the dressing-room, no doubt for a fresh dose of pow- der. Their eyes met; Bertha passed on, the gov- erness went into the study and shut the door. Pres- ently, below, Betty's pink cake dropped to the polished floor with a disastrous rattle; she laughed, tried to 129 THE FLAME DANCER see around; the darkness and the sudden sense of being alone for alone she now was alarmed her, in a way. She looked out to the supper-room. She saw Struh-La just threading his way in and becoming absorbed in conversation with Doctor Warren. She saw Stevens not far from the Chinaman; she even heard what was being said. She was about to cry gaily out and scold about the lights having gone out, when some one said, as she gained the supper- room: "Why, Mrs. Austin, where are your jewels?" And instantly the consternation of one became the consternation of all. 130 THE FLAME DANCER CHAPTER IX THE MAN FROM HEADQUARTERS FRRIE rushed to his wife. "Where's Jaffray?" he demanded in a fren- zied way. "Here, Mr. Austin." Jaffray had joined the group about Mrs. Austin before her husband reached it, but Forrie, in his excitement, had not seen the detective. Betty Austin laughed hysterically. There was an entire silence in the big rooms; one could have heard the traditional pin drop; one did hear the swish of Struh-La's fan. "Jaffray, what is the meaning of this?" asked the master of the house, in no restrained tone. "Have you had your eyes on the jewels, or have you not, this evening?" "I have not not all the evening, Mr. Austin," was the deferential reply. "Why not?" thundered Austin. "How did you presume to absent yourself; how did you dare, eh?, Answer me, with jewels of the value of over two millions in your keeping?" THE FLAME DANCER iThe man from headquarters was silent; he did not even glance at Betty Austin, although he had a for- lorn hope that she might come in some fashion to his rescue. She didn't. She began to cry, to scream, to bemoan her lost treasures, while the women crowded around "her, and many of the men, too; Struh-La, on the outer fringe of the buzzing group, still fanning himself. Jaffray at once ordered every door in the house guarded, and forbade the footmen to allow any one, no matter who, to go in or out. Then he asked Mrs. Austin to tell him how the gems had been stolen. "As if I knew!" cried Betty, and her eyes invol- untarily flashed over at Struh-La. "But you must know!" exclaimed her astounded husband. "They were on you, Betty. No human being could have taken them off without your being aware of it." "Were you drugged, do you think?" inquired Stevens. "No!" she answered, and her voice was gentle and she almost smiled. "Were you seized, held, tied down, blinded, choked, gagged? Try, Mrs. Austin, to remember. Please try to collect yourself," the detective spoke soothingly. "Nothing of the sort!" she answered. "I remem- 132 THE FLAME DANCER ber: I was eating a cake; I came into the gallery for something or other " She hesitated, and again her wandering eyes went over Struh-La, and Jaf- fray's eyes followed hers. "Alone, Mrs. Austin?" asked the detective. "I don't know. Yes, yes, alone, of course." Mrs. Austin's manner was awkward and hesitant. Jaffray noted it and instantly jumped to conclu- sions. "And how long did you stop in the picture-gal- lery?" he asked next. "I don't know, I don't know." Betty shivered. "It's a curious business." The detective drew back, taking Austin with him. He was telling Betty's husband that every guest in the house, every servant, every employe of any kind must be searched thor- oughly and at once. At this moment Bertha Wilmerding came rustling in, very much in evidence. "What is it?" she cried, as she beheld her friend shorn of her jewels. The Chinese said, still fanning himself: "A great robbery. All the jewels all!" "Who took them?" she said, a strange light darting into her black, brilliant eyes. "No one knows," answered Mrs. Brockton. 133 T.HE FLAME DANCER r / "Betty, what's the matter with you?" cried Bertha, shaking her hostess violently, at which Betty laughed a bit incoherently. "Who stole them? Tell us; you must know! You're not a baby or an idiot to have Reggie's ropes of flame opals and your own pearls and diamonds and things stripped off of you without knowing it! Why, your earrings are gone, too; your bracelets! Where's Mr. Jaffray?" "I am here, Miss Wilmerding." The detective stepped up close to her. Something in her attitude demanded him; he came. He continued in a very much lowered tone: "You are so intimate with Mrs. Austin, tell me in confidence: does she take drugs?" "Never." Bertha looked the man in the eyes, then she lowered her lids and shrugged her shoulders. Jaffray laid his hand on this girl's arm and drew; "her aside from the crowd. "You suspect some one?" he asked. "I do." "Who is it?" She shook her head. ** "Miss Wilmerding, no matter whom you suspect, it is your bounden duty to tell me. We can submit it to Mr. and Mrs. Austin, and, if they refuse their sanction, of course I am powerless; but they will 134 THE FLAME DANCER hardly do so to a loss of seven hundred thousand dollars, excluding Mr. Stevens' opals." Bertha still shrugged her shoulders and bit her lips. "Man or woman?" urged Jaffray. Bertha hesitated; then ejaculated: "Woman." "Guest?" pursued the detective. Miss Wilmerding shook her head. "Servant?" Again a silent negative. "Member of the family?" Jaffray went on in an even, businesslike tone. Bertha vouchsafed a nondescript motion with her head and made to break away. "No," said the detective, now bringing his unde- niably handsome eyes to his aid. This girl appealed to this man: she was the first woman who ever had. "Now, I am sure, Miss Wilmerding, you will tell me" his emphasis was on the two pronouns "what I wish to know; sure that you will help me won't you?" "Well," she flung back, enjoying the glance of his brown eyes as she smiled, "find out who, that lives in the house, was not invited to the ball in any capacity whatever, was seen going up the stairs when I went up to get some powder!" "How long ago?" he begged eagerly. 135 THE FL'AME DANCER "About ten minutes, I should say." "Before I had returned from the outside job?" he said quickly. She nodded. "You saw her?" Bertha glanced up at him affirmatively. "I know the personnel of the household thoroughly. There is only one grown person out of commission to-night. Miss Wilmerding, was the governess behind or in front of you?" "Ahead of me." Bertha almost laughed. "Where did she go?" The detective's gaze was steady. "Straight into the schoolroom and shut the door." "She carried?" His lips contracted, and he had the air of a man coercing himself into an intolerable action. "Nothing visible." "Had on?" "No cloak or wrap of any sort." "She must come down." He stared piercingly at Bertha and noted her look of smiling approval. He quitted Bertha and walked up-stairs to the study door, tapped lightly, and entered. The one bulb was still shedding its circle of light. Luliani, still dressed in the gray gown she had worn all day, knelt by the couch where she had lately sat with Reginald Ste- 136 THE FLAME D'ANCER vens. She did not move when the detective came in and up to her. She heard him, but did not know who he was, nor did she care. She did not lift her head: she was praying. He felt this, and, had he obeyed his impulse, would have withdrawn. Instead, he approached, touched her on the shoul- der. She glanced up, but did not rise. "What is it?" she asked dully. "Where are the jewels?" the detective said in a matter-of-fact way. "I don't know," she answered, still in the dull voice. "Come down-stairs with me," he said in a forced tone. "Certainly," she replied, rising; "but first tell me, please, what for?" "No matter about that," he said, assisting her, from which she withdrew haughtily. They started together. Half-way down, at the little alcove Betty had had built before her marriage, they met Stevens coming up. He barred their way. He said: "Miss de Fontanges, what brings you down here now?" "I do," was the detective's reply; while Luliani, now growing full of courage, broke from Jaffray's side, darted toward Stevens, and began to speak. "I W ant " 137 THE FL'AME DANCER A footstep stopped her; Struh-La, coming up, wav- ing his fan. He gave one supercilious glance at the girl and said to the trio, who had perforce stopped short and were regarding him : "I ask a thousand pardons. I await Mr. Jaffray's discoveries with so very much interest and impatience, as all Mrs. Austin's guests. Must I descend?" He salaamed and turned down-stairs. "Go on, Luliani; speak, dear," Reggie whispered to her, but she only surveyed him in a stupid way and looked at the de- tective rather helplessly. Then Stevens looked at the girl with a fierce im- petuosity. He made to stop and take her back. She stood still. "Pardon me, but I can't allow even you to stop Miss de Fontanges at this point," Jaffray said. "She must go down to the picture-gallery with me." They went down. All the guests, fired by Miss Wilmerding's innuendoes, were gathered as by a com- mon impulse in the gallery, where, in the weird tu- mult, the lights had not yet been turned up. They felt sure the thief was to be unmasked at once, and they were eager for exposure and consumed with wonder as well. De Forrest Austin was the first person to descry the detective, his charge, and the man who followed them. 138 THE FLAME DANCER "Pshaw!" the master of the house said in his wife's ear, "what's that fool of a Jaffray doing bringing the governess here?" "Turn up the lights, please, some one," Betty cried in irrelevant reply to her lord's remark. The Chinese in his mandarin's robes touched the button, and the place was a flood of brilliancy. It seemed to some of the lookers-on, mostly imaginative women, that the whole electric force concentrated it- self upon the pale face of the slight girl near whom Jaffray and Stevens both stood. Jaffray opened his lips possibly he did enunciate a word or two. No one heard it if he did, because Bertha Wilmerding darted to Luliani, plucking from the frail ruche at the governess' sleeve one of the long opal pendants belonging to Betty Austin's earrings. She did not disengage it at once, but, with a poignant grip, she held up arm, sleeve, niching, and jewel to the gaze of those present. Nobody spoke; nobody even took breath. Then some of the older men shook their heads dis- mally among them Struh-La; the younger men turned away or looked at their own shoes. At last a dowager put up her glass and whispered to her neighbor: "Who is she?" and the ice was broken. 139 THE FLAME DANCER "Tell me where they are!" exclaimed Betty, as if some one were goading her. "Only tell me, give them back, and you may go free. I'll never prosecute you. I'll give you money and send you back to the Orient or Europe. I'll do anything for you only give them back without my having to make you." Miss de Fontanges shook her head. Jaffray whis- pered a word to her. Stevens stepped in between the man and the woman, but the woman stepped away from them both, with an exquisitely dignified expres- sion on her face. Struh-La was near her. His eyes were fixed upon her; he was fanning himself with a certain non- chalance; the perfume from his sandalwood fan came to her. De Forrest Austin came to her; she did not even look at him. She was exerting every ounce of her flesh, brain, and soul to overcome now, here, once for all, cost her what it might; she was vibrating with the triumph of at last being able to dash a cup of torment forever from her. She thrilled with power; she felt, in those brief seconds, that Stevens was im- parting to her the strength to throw off bonds, break chains ; she gloried in owing her freedom to him ; she even had the mad thought that she was glad to have been a slave so that this man should set her at liberty. All this rushed through her brain while Bertha upheld 140 'I WILL NOT PERMIT THE INDIGNITY OP A SEARCH. Page 141. THE FLAME DANCER her arm, while Stevens stepped nearer to her, while Struh-La waved his fan. But then she was silent. "Where are the jewels?" Betty now said to her, and with a mysterious, unconscious little smile Betty, also glanced in a covertly languishing way; at Struh-La. "I do not know," was her answer. "They can't be far; have her searched." Bertha nodded to Jaffray. "Have every one leave the room, please, except Mr. Jaffray." Bertha would not have dared this proposition had not Betty behaved in a stupid and silly fashion. "No, you don't," exclaimed De Forrest Austin, ta- king Bertha by the arm. "You'll get away out of this room and house as soon as you can. Hush," he whispered to her as she rebelled a little. "Any woman, that will strike another woman must expect just this sort of treatment." While Austin was marching Miss Wilmerding across to the door, Stevens was at Luliani's side. A motion of his uplifted hand arrested not only the de- parture of the guests, but also stopped Austin and Bertha at the exit. "Miss de Fontanges cannot be searched. I will not permit the indignity of a search to be put upon any, 141 THE FL'AME DANCER .woman whom I hold in the respect and esteem in which I hold Miss de Fontanges. She has not been arrested; she shall not be arrested. These jewels of Mrs. Austin's are valued at not to exceed seven hun- dred thousand dollars. I will hand Mrs. Austin my cheque for that amount before I leave her house. My own gems that I loaned her are worth much more. When her jewels are found, restored to her as I in- tend they shall be, if I spend every dollar I own to do it then Mrs. Austin can repay me." Mrs. Austin had gone closer and closer to him as he spoke. He turned to her, and said in a lower tone: "Betty, I'm good for it, and you can trust me to find the jewels, can't you?" "Oh," she cried sobbingly, "Reggie! Reggie! Yes, yes, yes." Stevens went on, very quietly, in restrained voice: "Miss de Fontanges is engaged to marry me. She has done me the honor to accept me. It is too pre- posterous for utterance that she should have theft fastened upon her, even for a second; and ridiculous for the thief, whoever he was, to have tried to so fasten it by the clumsy trick of attaching to her sleeve the pendant which Miss Wilmerding discovered. However, the finding of that pendant is important as a clue. I have to thank Miss Wilmerding for it. I do 142 THE FLAME DANCER not intend to rest until I find its mate and all the rest of Mrs. Austin's treasures and my own Oriental trinkets." Throughout this Jaffray stood silent, it being his part, from a professional point of. view, to let excite- ment work itself out. He was a bit staggered by Stevens' offer to pay for Mrs. Austin's entire loss and Mrs. Austin's acceptance of that offer. He was her employe, her friend; he was not there as an of- ficer of the law, and if she should forbid him to make any further search it was a question whether he would have a right to do so. But there was much more than any doubt as to his professional relation to the affair to disturb him. Already the natural man within him was at variance with the detective. Already he had the keenest personal as well as professional de- sire to locate the missing jewels. And for once that desire was not inspired by pride in his calling. Jaffray was at the threshold of the severest strug- gle he had ever yet experienced. There was scarcely a woman who did not agree that a girl affianced to Reginald Stevens would not be stealing; hardly a man who believed a girl with this girl's face capable of stealing, anyway; and then the entirely unexpected delights of discussing Bertha's broken engagement and Reginald Stevens' new love! 143 THE FLAME DANCER Altogether, such a ball had never been given in New York before, even omitting from its list of novelties the unsuspected and unbidden guest who was awaiting its end in the harness-room of the coach-house. Stevens took the pendant from Luliani's sleeve; he put it in his pocket. He said to her, because now they were quite alone in the big room and the mu- sicians were doing their utmost to reassert the pur- pose of the function, while the servants resumed trot- ting about with trays and platters : "Come over there and sit down a minute. I want to say something to you." 144 THE FL'AME D'ANCER CHAPTER X "WILT THOU TAKE THIS MAN?" "NO." SHE went, because he led her, to an alcove. "The bishop is here to-night, did you know it?" he asked, sitting down by her and taking her hands between his. She answered: "I believe I heard Mrs. Austin say he was asked." "Yes, he's here. I am going to have him come in here and marry us." "Now !" Her eyes shone upon him with a delight, a trust so absolute, that every nerve of his body quiv- ered. "Yes, now. I will have Austin and his wife and Doctor Warren for our witnesses. We will be mar- ried then I can take care of you. I will take you to my house to-night and leave you there with my housekeeper for a month; I will go to the St. Regis and come and see you every day. Then when you have had time to make your arrangements, your trous- seau, isn't that what it's called ?" he smiled a little * "we will go away to Europe, anywhere, everywhere in the wide world you want to." 145 THE FLAME DANCER She sighed, and leaned a very little nearer to him. She wished to speak then and tell him it all. She meant not to marry him until he should know her life. She began to speak ; he stopped her. "Not now; there is no time; no matter. I don't care to know anything on earth or in heaven except to be sure that you are mine, that my name and I belong to you. Sit still. I will go and fetch the bishop and the others. No one else need know it until they read it in the papers." "But I must, Mr. Stevens! You can't go until I tell you." He looked down at her, and said with an infinite and determined purpose: "I love you, and I know all that there is to know at present." He went for the bishop, who agreed to perform the ceremony, after a few words from the intending bridegroom. In that year of grace there was no law to compel the contracting parties to take out a license. Stevens found De Forrest Austin and asked him to come. Forrie said : "Can't do it." "Why not?" the other man inquired. Austin frowned, sullenly. "Why not?" reiterated Stevens, persistently. "Well," returned Austin, "since you will have it, 146 THE FL'AME DANCER the fact is I love Luliani de Fontanges myself. I asked her, I mean I told her " "Stop!" Reginald uttered the word imperatively and turned on his heel. He found Betty, and she easily came with him, un- dismayed and keen for a novel excitement. She did inquire, though, relevantly enough : "What about Ber- tha?" "Miss Wilmerdiing broke our little arrangement up some days ago." "Did she now? the little fox! Well, we women are paradoxes." Warren came quietly enough. He was a man who admired Miss de Fontanges, too not outspokenly, but with a peculiar taciturnity. He was not exactly grieved to see her becoming the wife of a man like Reginald Stevens. He was content in a certain fash- ion to worship her from afar, without hope. She represented religion to him: and a man does not as- pire to marry his religion. {The bishop stood with Luliani in the picture-gallery when the other three came in. Stevens took his place at her side before the prelate, Betty stood near her daughter's whilom governess, Leo Warren was at Reginald's left hand. The bishop began: "Dearly- beloved," and proceeded to the end of "Hold his 147 THE FLAME DANCER peace." While he spoke in a low, clear, impressive way, the music from the Hungarian orchestra sounded over to them; even the whirr of the dancers' feet and the froufrou of silks and satins, the laughter and mirth easily renewed after the bit of tragedy to which they had all been treated. Then the bishop went on, looking steadfastly at the two in front of him: "I require and charge you," down to: "Is not lawful." Again a pause, and he fixed his keen, earnest eyes on the bridegroom he had known Reggie Stevens ever since he was a boy as he said: "Reginald, wilt thou," and so forth. Reggie answered distinctly, almost triumphantly, it seemed to Doctor Warren: "I will." And then the old priest turned to the bride. They all looked at her, each of the four, and to each, accord- ing to his or her method of expressing it, there seemed to be surrounding this girl a species of curious halo, a disk that was scarcely significant, yet of a palpable, luminous quality; an irridescence, a something unakin and other than was customary. "Luliani" the bishop went on very gently with his address "wilt thou," and so forth and so forth, "so long as ye both shall live?" There was then a pause. Warren thought he perceived a film of violet light 148 THE FLAME DANCER no broader than his finger striking down as if from somewhere on the little balcony straight upon Miss de Fontanges' face. He looked up ; there was no bulb there; the curtains were closed, and, if they did stir, it was with the breeze from the many open windows above. Reggie touched her arm, glanced at the bishop, smiled to her. She responded to his eyes with a look of profound, dull non-comprehension; otherwise, she was motionless. The bishop reassuringly spoke, for he was not amazed at her nervousness : "So long as ye both shall live?" Luliani lifted her head and said: "No." Betty's brother took Betty away. The bishop went to fetch some wine. Reginald lifted Luliani in his arms to a sofa; he called the doctor back. "I can do nothing, old man," Warren said to his friend, after examining her pulse, her heart, which she allowed him to do passively. "The blow on her head was one shock, the jewel business another; she is weak, unnerved; nothing alarming, nothing dan- gerous. To-morrow, after a night's sleep, she will be quite herself." "To-morrow," ejaculated Luliani faintly. "To-morrow," said Reginald, kneeling beside her, 149 all the buoyant triumph in him keyed down to the bend of her whim. "I'll go up-stairs," she said presently. He went with her. It did not come to him to argue, to question, or remonstrate. There was a something about her which forbade inquiry, chiding, or expres- sion, quite as potently as the sphinx forbids them. It seemed hopeless as to the present time, but he meant to make her his wife to-morrow. Yes, unquestion- ably. So he helped her up the stairs, pausing just a second for her to rest, on the first landing, where the balcony was built out. She shuddered. He said: "You are cold, my dearest?" .The girl answered: "No, I am warm," but she hur- ried on, and at the door she said: "Good night," in a perfunctory way. He bent and kissed her lightly, as one might kiss a child, but he whispered in her ear: "We are half married, you know. I am married to you, Luliani, and to-morrow you will be married to me?" Then something struck at his heart, and he added with an ungovernable anxiety: "Will you not?" "To-morrow," she replied, with a smile. "Kiss me," he demanded roughly. "I cannot," she said hopelessly; and then, with a 150 THE FLAME DANCER little cry of great bitterness, she broke from him, darted into the study, shut and locked the door. Stevens went down-stairs. He was a man at once quick and slow. Not afraid of initiative, but not averse either to following another's lead, or to sha- king intimate hands with any chance that presented itself to him as apposite to his own plans or wishes. He had no specified lines of action yet formed in his mind as to the recovery of his own and Betty Austin's jewels, which he would not for a moment believe to be in Luliani's possession. Jaffray was clever, and Jaffray had assumed that Luliani was guilty of the theft. Would Jaffray have ventured to assume so much upon his information, whatever that was, or however gotten, had the sus- pect been other than a dependent in the house? What had given Jaffray a clue ? He could have seen nothing, otherwise he would at once have proclaimed a clear case. But the pendant to the earring! Yes. But Jaffray did not see that until the decisive step of bringing Miss de Fontanges down-stairs and virtually accusing her of the crime had been taken. Should he employ Jaffray, or should he go in for it alone? He was keen, apt; he would prefer to T.HE FL r AME DANCER fathom the mystery unaided, but the question was, could he do this, and keep near Luliani, his wife? He had thought this just as he reached the smoking- room, which was in the basement of the Austin house. He heard a good deal of talking going on in there and the clink of glasses; even a scrap of a jolly old song. At the entrance he encountered the detective. Jafffay had perhaps his own ideas as to the theft; in any event, the Austin jewels had been stolen while he was supposed to have them in keeping, and, not- withstanding Mr. Stevens' cheque and the rest of it, the man from headquarters had not relinquished either his right to, or his intention of, unearthing both the jewels and the mystery surrounding their disappear- ance. There was something very like resentment or jeal- ousy in his attitude as Stevens appeared, but Stevens almost instantaneously disarmed this by his own sud- den determination. As soon as he met Jaffray, he recognized that Jaffray was the one man whose as- sistance he should probably need. Jaffray felt this atmosphere of geniality in the other man, and his own personality jumped to respond to it. He forgot and forgave the setback which had been inflicted upon his professional skill and merely smiled at the young clubman in a good-humored way. He felt positive 152 THE FL'AME D'ANCER that he knew who had taken the jewels; he was rely- ing on that seventh sense of his which had never yet played him false; but he felt as positive that the thief had been dominated by some one else, and that, in discovering the real actionary, he should only clear a certain woman in his own eyes, if not in the eyes of those who had been present at the painful occurrences of a memorable night. This is what Jaffray would have spoken aloud had any one put questions to him; as to what he thought in the inmost recesses of his soul, that is something else. He named no name even to himself but his anxiety was cruel as to the girl he had so suddenly; become infatuated with. 153 HE FL'AME 'D'ANCER CHAPTER XI THE FIFTH WHEEL OF THE COACH 4 4 1 REGRET very sincerely, Mr. Stevens" be- gan the detective. "You were quite right from your standpoint and with your premises," interrupted Reginald. "See here" with his eyes he indicated an alcove at the quieter end of the room, and to it both men went and sat down. A servant fetched cigars, but both de- clined anything to drink, and presently they were practically alone. The man from headquarters did not speak; he was one of those rare chaps who know exactly when to be silent. Stevens was another ; but it was his play in the game, and he went on. He said : "You heard what I told them up-stairs just now?" The detective nodded thoughtfully. "I had rather a fancy for knocking the bottom out of this robbery mystery all by myself, but I rather think, if you don't mind, that I'll join forces with you." Jaffray looked keenly at his companion, but said nothing. Stevens waited a moment; their eyes met. 154 THE FLAME DANCER "Well?" said the rich man, expectantly and some- what impatiently. Still Jaffray did not say anything. He was won- dering if Reginald Stevens thought that he could be bought over to hush forever on the subject of the jewels and any connection with them the future Mrs. Stevens might possibly have; wondering if Stevens fancied that he, Jaffray, would ever let up in his chase to nail the person who had been so exquisitely clever as to have found out that the detective was to be absent from the charge, and to accomplish in that circumscribed time what had been accomplished. Stevens regarded Jaffray, and the truth flashed upon him. "I say!" he exclaimed, while his lips thinned and he struck down his plumed velvet hat on a chair next his with vehemence. "Don't go making mistakes, man. What I want is to employ you as a detective on this case in which my wife, my future wife, has been cruelly involved. Do you under- stand?" "I do." "Well, well, do you want the job?" "Yes, I do; but, frankly, whether employed by you or not I should pursue it." "When you could, you mean, between your other matters?" 155 THE FL'AUE DANCER "No. I should give up everything for this." "You would ? Well, that's what I want to pay you to do give up everything for this. Is it a go ?" "It is." "Good." Stevens now picked up his hat and sat more at ease in his seat. "Have you any theory at short range, or will it take you a day or two to get one?" "I have one," was the detective's reply. "Well?" said Stevens deliberately. If he was going to implicate Luliani he wanted him to fire the gun at once and give him chance to parry. "Mr. Stevens," said the detective, "perhaps I was foolhardy just now in accepting the case. There are things to say, to be talked of, perhaps to be done, where we won't tally. If I can't handle the job my way I can't handle it at all." "Go on," was the other man's sole answer. Jaffray glanced quickly at him, and he knew he could obey. "You recall meeting Miss de Fontanges on the stairs with me when I was fetching her down?" "Yes." "I had had a short conversation alone with her of course, in the course of which she had said, in reply 156 THE FL'AME DANCER to my question: 'Where are the jewels?' 'I don't know.' " Stevens breathed hard, a deep breath of joy. Al- though he had been sure, he was now surer. He nodded to Jaffray. "I believe, notwithstanding the finding of the pendant on her sleeve, that Miss de Fontanges did not know where the jewels were." Mr. Stevens remained silent. "Now" the detective paused a moment "how did Miss de Fontanges come by that red scar on her cheek and temple?" "She was struck." "When?" "Early this evening/* "Where?"' "In the schoolroom." "You saw it?" "Yes." "By whom?" Jaffray put his questions in a mat- ter-of-fact, monotonous fashion, rather disinterestedly; it might have sounded to an outsider. "A woman." "The weapon?" inquired the detective, whose voice and attitude suffered no slightest accession as his in- formation increased. 157 THE FL'AME DANCER "The woman's hand." "Who was the woman her name?" "Miss Wilmerding." Reginald Stevens looked off into vacancy. It seemed to him a dastardly thing to name any woman as the dealer of a physical blow, save it should be in self-defense. Jaffray gave no sign of surprise. He was con- founded but he loved the girl who had struck the blow. "When you came up the stairs to see Miss de Fon- tanges and found me with her, did you meet any one on the way?" "No." "Going down?" "Struh-La. You met him also. No one else." "Yes. Where had you last seen Miss de Fontanges before that time?" "I really couldn't tell you." Stevens spoke quietly. "It doesn't matter very much." "Any more questions?" "No, Mr. Stevens, I think not. Not now." "Where were you when the jewels were taken?" Reginald asked this quickly; he had tugging at his heart the suspicion that perhaps Jaffray had seen what he had; he wished to be sure. He was bound to pro- 158 THE FL'AME DANCER tect Liiliani and Betty, and, if necessary, her in- amorato must be protected, too. "Outside of the house, attending to an outside job," Jaffray answered promptly. "Ah!" His tone was one of relief which he did not see fit to disguise. "Now, Jaffray, you admitted that you had a theory?" "Yes, Mr. Stevens." "Do you think you know who took Mrs. Austin's and my jewels?" Jaffray inclined his head. "Do you think you know who has the jewels?" "Yes some of them, anyway." "So do I. Who?" Jaffray said nothing, but he took from his pocket and unfolded a long strip of paper, on which was typed a complete and correct list of all Mrs. Austin's guests on the night of the famous costume ball ; also, a list of all the servants and employees of the house; all the florists, caterers, musicians, decorators, cos- turners who might probably have access to the house that evening; a list, likewise, of all the tradesmen, dressmakers, and the like who might be likely to be admitted to the house on that particular evening. He handed this long screed to Stevens, as he said : "Have you any theory, Mr. Stevens?" 159 THE FLAME DANCER "Yes," Reginald Stevens answered, running his eyes down the columns of names. "Settled on a person?" "Yes. My choice is the fourteenth from the top of the third column," was the reply. Jaffray looked at the name indicated ; then he said : "He is a dangerously fascinating man to most women, and I dare say to Mrs. Austin." They exchanged glances. Stevens smiled and went on: "Now, Jaffray, if you could restore the jewels, could you be content to forget the fixing of the responsi- bility, and so forth? Could you stop at that and let the er culprit, we will call him, go unpunished and unexposed ?" "Yes, sir, under certain circumstances, I could." "What circumstances, Jaffray?" "As to that, I, as a private detective, am not an officer of the law. That means that I should be ab- solved from an obligation to the community at large." "That's the case, isn't it?" "It is." "Then, if that's the case, Jaffray, we should have no difficulty in coming to terms. I do not want to be sensational. I've done one sensational thing to-night 160 THE PL'AME DANCER < given Mrs. Austin seven hundred thousand dollars, to be retained by her unless I succeed in restoring her part of the jewels. You know my financial position. As to terms, without further preface, I will give you a half-million in cash for those jewels." Schooled as he was to repress emotion, the detective could not hide a start of astonishment at this. Half a million! A fee such as no detective, so far as he knew, had ever hoped to earn in a single case; and this man could pay it. That was as certain as that they sat there in De Forrest Austin's smoking-room, discussing a robbery that was yet hardly an hour old. What might not be accomplished with a half-million? At that moment there flashed upon the man who still suffered beneath the mask of the detective a dream which uplifted his soul and stimulated him to unpar- alleled exertion. "Mr. Stevens," he said, his voice vibrating with emotion, not eagerness, "I accept your proposition, but let us absolutely understand each other. The one thing you want is the restoration of those jewels with- out the exposure of the person who took them." "That is it, exactly," said Stevens, "and I want to do everything in my power to help you in your inves- tigation." "Well, then," said Jaffray, "that is my own position 161 T.HE FLAME DANCER also; we tally, and we now go at it. But even with this great fee, I must insist upon handling the job in my own way." "Go on," was the other's slow answer. "That means, Mr. Stevens, that I want you to tell me every circumstance which gives light upon the matter." "Yes." Jaffray then waited a moment, but Stevens volun- teered no information. From his point of view, his relations to the detective had already reached a crisis. He had undertaken to employ him for the main pur- pose of protecting Betty Austin and Luliani, who was, he believed, in her employer's confidence. He, there- fore, had no intention of reporting the scene, the be- ginning of which he had witnessed in the picture- gallery, between the two women, as the one lowered the lights to further the whim of the other. "I quite understand," said Jaffray, breaking the si- lence that had fallen between them, "that one who is not a detective cannot perceive just what items of information would help to solve a problem, so I shall try to draw from you what I need by questions. Now, the extraordinary fact is that these jewels were taken from a woman as she sat in a chair, with hundreds of her friends within call, and manifestly she was un- 162 conscious of what occurred. Does that suggest any- thing to you?" "Drugs," said Stevens succinctly. Jaffray shook his head. "It suggests something quite different to me." Of a sudden Stevens started. "By Jove!" he ex- claimed, in a breath, "there is a new light! There, indeed, I think I can help you." "Well?" "Why not hypnotism mental supremacy! What- ever they call it!" Jaffray nodded. Stevens continued : "Jaffray, with- out any suspicion that this person is guilty, I saw some one, now in this house, subjected to a hypnotic spell which made her entirely obedient to the will of the hypnotist a few weeks only ago." "Better speak plainly, Mr. Stevens. Who was she, and who was the hypnotist?" "Struh-La, and little Jean Austin." Jaffray's eyes opened. "Not Mrs. Austin?" he asked. "No!" Stevens thereupon described the scene at Jean's birthday-party in Doctor Warren's apartment. "That is very good," said Jaffray, at the conclu- sion. "We have, then, here in the house, the hyp- notist who could have contrived the matter, who could 163 THE FLAME DANCER have controlled Mrs. Austin to go into the picture- gallery and remain unconscious for from five to ten minutes, and who could have commanded this little girl to take the jewels, and who could have taken them from the little girl and have hidden them in the folds of his mandarin costume. Is it your idea that Struh-La should be searched?" "I am not so sure about that," replied Stevens; "for, much as I should rejoice in seeing this thing fastened where it belongs, I am pretty certain that if he is behind the matter, as we both seem to think, he has been clever enough long before this to place the jewels where they cannot readily be found. At all events, if we were to subject him to a search it would put him upon his guard in such a way as to prejudice further investigation, and" he hesitated "our bar- gain is that the thief shall be immune." "Can you throw any further light along that line ?" Jaffray asked, mentally noting the rebuff. "Yes, and here I come to this : Just about the time when Mrs. Austin sat in the picture-gallery, I met Jean coming from that room. She had on a gown much too large for her, and she held it from her feet, a deep fold depending from her hands. You see, Jaf- ray, no end of things could have been carried in that fold. I had not thought of it until this moment ! But 164 THE FLAME DANCER more singular still was the child's manner. Her eyes were staring. She choked and could not answer when I spoke to her. She seemed to be wanting to do one thing but compelled to do another. Do you see the distinction? She wanted to answer me. It seems, now that I look back upon it, as if she were dominated by some force utterly foreign to both of us. Any- how, she sobbed and stumbled up the stairs." "What did you do?" "Nothing. I had no suspicion at the moment of anything wrong. I thought the kid had been re- proved for coming down to the ball when she ought to have been in bed, and dismissed her from my mind. It never would have occurred to me again but for this wretched affair." Jaffray was much more deeply impressed and more disturbed by what Stevens had told him about Struh- La's occult power than he cared to confess. Again the man within him, the human being who lived and loved as other men, was violently at war with his profession. But his profession was at work, and his thoughts flew quickly to a conclusion, and that was what he expressed when he next spoke. "You have thrown an invaluable light upon the matter, Mr. Stevens, and I now know how to go to work. There is no need of disturbing little Jean. 165 THE FLAME DANCER Perhaps she took the jewels. If she did, she has not got them and will never remember what happened. It would be folly to put Struh-La on his guard. On the contrary, let him go freely " "But you will keep your eyes on him? The jewels are what I want, not the man." Jaffray said: "I shall not let him get away with the plunder without every effort that human ingenu- ity can devise to prevent him. He should be allowed to leave this house to-night totally undisturbed." At this point Stevens arose, as if the conversation were concluded. He said: "You will report to me?" "Surely. And, Mr. Stevens, you will give me any further information that comes your way, I suppose?" There was a tang of doubt in the detective's question. Stevens sat down again. "Jaffray," he said, in his concise way, "look here. My jewels and Mrs. Aus- tin's have disappeared. They may have been stolen; they may have been given ! Do you understand now ? There are some people who may have stolen them under coercion, or free will. Miss Wilmerding is one." Jaffray's very soul winced within him. "Lu- liani de Fontanges is a second, Jean Austin a third, Struh-La is the fourth. There is a fifth element. Betty may have given them to the man she may care for or who may have occultly influenced her. There is 166 THE FLAME DANCER your coach with its five wheels. You have my word for half a million for the return of the gems, but the women, not any one of them, must be implicated, to the outside world. Not a dollar of my earnings goes to cast a shadow on any woman's name or fame. But the jewels I will have. You understand? With you, if it is possible. Without you, if it isn't." Jaffray, with a suppressed sigh of relief, said: "Yes, Mr. Stevens." 167 THE FLAME DANCER CHAPTER XII THE FLIGHT IN THE NIGHT AS soon as Reggie got home from Betty's ball that night he wrote Luliani a letter, to be de- livered the next day at eight, called his house- keeper from her righteous slumber and gave his orders regarding the home-coming on the morrow of the future Mrs. Stevens; got out of his Louis XlVth costume into his pajamas and tried to sleep. It was not to be had. After turning in at two-thirty, he turned out at six and instinctively went to the tele- phone. But no, not quite so early; that would hardly do. So he waited until seven he remembered that Jean and her governess always rose at seven. He took down the receiver, then hung it up again. Seven o'clock! Preposterous! Perhaps Luliani was not even yet awake. He paced up and down the whole floor, with its open doors, for an hour, thinking planning joys, surprises, pleasures, journeys, homes, gaieties, revels, peace for her. His great festal thought was that this day, now already dawned, would completely make her his wife: render all the sweet 168 THE FLAME DANCER mysteries in her not the less mysterious but the more and more enchantingly to be puzzled over. He thought of her as the one woman he had ever seen who most exquisitely rendered the fineness and lov- ableness of the unfamiliar into the warp and woof of daily life. He knew that no matter were he to live with Luliani de Fontanges for fifty years, she would still preserve and reserve to herself the riddle and the blessedness of the unfamiliar; that she never could or would become completely an open, read, and fin- ished book to him; that there would forever and for- ever be delicious, unturned pages in her soul he could not fathom, and depths of arbitrary, tempting igno- rance or was it wisdom? which he could surmise, attack, surprise, but never quite lay bare to plan and rule. In his thoughts of her, and for her, he. let the hour run away with him; it was eight o'clock. Now he would ring her up. He did so. "Luliani?" "No. I'm Jean." "Ask Miss de Fontanges to come to the phone, please, Jean?" "Miss de Fontanges isn't here." "I'll hold the wire while you get her." "She isn't in the house." "Where is she?" 169 XHE FVAME DAKCER "We don't know." "What do you mean ?" "I don't k^ow. She's gone. Her things are all here, except her brown hat and coat and gloves, and there's a scrap of paper on my desk, I mean on the floor near my desk, with just 'San Francisco' written on it." He heard the little girl sob. "Good-by," Reginald Stevens said to the child, and in five minutes he was defying law and order by the pace of his machine to the Austin's house. When he came away from there he had the scrap of paper in his possession. He had stared at it until his eyes refused to look any longer, and what was to be made of it, after all? "San Francisco." When he reached the Austins' Betty was still, of course, in bed; also Bertha, at least invisible. The servants were stupid, sleepy. Forrie Austin and the child alone were alert, keen, determined to find out, to remember. All to no purpose. An hour so spent was merely, Stevens argued, just so much lost time. He could not talk with De Forrest Austin about Lu- liani ; De Forrest Austin did not want to talk to him ; the little girl kept it possible by her chatter and actu- ally by her tears. "I loved her," she sobbed. "Pshaw! Yes, I did. 170 THE FLAME DANCER} I never believed much in love, but I loved did you, father, I know! and so does Mr. Stevens. I don't wonder at it. She was the sort to make people love her. And now she's gone. Where? Where? Where?" Jean stamped up and down angrily. "I don't think much of either of you men and your love if you could let her get away by herself like this. If I'd been awake and up I'd have known how to keep her." The two men stood still; the eyes of each eagerly scrutinizing every inch of the study and the open- doored rooms giving upon it for some hint of the fugitive. There was nothing. Austin had heard his child, and he now came up to her as Stevens went toward the door. He put his hand upon her head. "Don't touch me one little bit," she cried out an- grily. "I know! I know! I see now! It is because of you, being a married man and telling Miss de Fon- tanges you loved her that's made her run away. I know!" "Hush!" the father said as he turned off. "I won't, either. I don't blame you for loving her, but you might have kept it to yourself or told me!" Her young eyes blazed and she flounced out of the room. 171 THE FLAME DANCER "Does Jean know about her mother's jewels ?" Ste- vens asked. "No," was the short reply. "Will you allow me to borrow your wire?" "Go ahead!" jerked out the other man, a bit re- proachfully, as he quitted the room and shut the door. Reginald called Jaffray's office up and asked to have the detective meet him at once at his house. Then he went down and got in the machine. 172 THE FLAME DANCER CHAPTER XIII BERTHA'S LUCK WHILE Jean Austin had been speaking to her father and to Reginald Stevens, Jean's mother had been peacefully sleeping, despite lost jewels, strange half-marriages, and all other things that had come her way. Not even the dead body of the old man, her father-in-law, lying out in the carriage-house had any influence toward waking her earlier than the hour she had named to her maid, ten o'clock. Reginald's cheque lay under her pillow. She slept soundly. Bertha, in the neighboring room, had not slept soundly, although she had lain very still. Myriads of thoughts had crowded through this girl's brain since the moment when Stevens had, in the face of their world, made it impossible for her to cling to him any further. She had been, up to that moment, one of those who drift, slip, skate along through life, content to take, with open hands, it is true, whatever good things any one offered her, and sure to turn a deaf ear, a cold shoulder, and a handsome back to all 173 THE FL'AME DANCER the painful, beseeching things of which the world is full. She had never been too definite about any- thing, rather inconsequent if one must except her love for Stevens, and that, far from glorifying or elevating her, had seemed to degrade her unutterably. Possibly she had only regarded him as a means to an end, a man to be married because his bank-account could not be attached by any other measures. It would have been quite difficult to determine just at that juncture in Bertha Wilmerding's career whether she was one of those women without a heart, or one of those women who had the ability to submerge her feelings when she found no method of gratifying them. She lay on her bed revolving many things; she seemed calmer than usual ; she had no tears in her eyes to weep over the loss of either Reginald or the safe and luxurious shelter of De Forrest Austin's home, or, rather, of his wife's home because Bertha knew that Bettty would succumb, however ungracious- ly, to her husband's demand, and that she (Bertha)] could not stop where she was any longer. She heard outside the sound of a shrill whistle. After a short pause, it was repeated a little nearer. Morning had come, and the postman was making- his early round. Bertha waited until she was certain that he had been at the Austin house. Then she got up, 174 THE FL'AME DANCER put on a loose gown of pink stuff and a pair of satin- wadded shoes, and softly opened her door. Appar- ently nobody was stirring in the house. Leaving her door ajar, lest the sound of closing it should attract attention, she slipped swiftly down the stairs to the vestibule, where on a tray lay the letters just left by the postman. She took them all up, glancing hurriedly at the addresses, shuffled them together, and closed the door. Then she entered the library, closing that door after her carefully. In five minutes she emerged and went up to her own room and presently tapped lightly at Betty's connecting door, did not await a re- ply, went in, and waked her hostess with a push on her shoulder. "Good morning," she said, with a kind of deter- mined cheerfulness. "Let me come in here, won't you, and ring for chocolate, and let's talk; thresh it all out?" "Oh, dear," cried Mrs. Austin; "what time is it?" "Nine." "You wretch! I told Philine ten." "Did you?" turning on the steam and touching the bell-button. "Well, I made bold to take an hour's start, because I'm leaving you to-day, and " "What for?" with astonishment. "Your charming husband ordered me out last 175 THE FLAME DANCER night," adding to the maid who had answered the bell: "Chocolate, Philine, please, and sweet rolls for me; French rolls for Mrs. Austin." The servant went away. "Why?" now gasped Betty. ! "Well, because I struck his lady-love a smart blow in the face." "Who's his lady-love?" inquired the wife inter- estedly. "Dear little Innocence, doesn't it know?" Mrs. Austin shook her head. "The governess." "And you struck her?" Betty said, with a certain disgust. "Yes, I struck her. Pshaw! I only did what many, women in my place would have liked to do. What's the odds?" "Heavy ones, I should say." Betty turned over and yawned. "I've got to go." "I suppose you have. You'd hardly care to stop, after being ordered out, as you express it, would you?" "Under certain circumstances, I might. As it is, I don't care a jot." The maid entered with the tray, on which was a 176 THE FL'AME DANCER pile of letters. Bertha laid upon them an almost greedy and a certainly rapid hand. "I'll sort these." "Ten for madam," said Philine. "Four for mad- emoiselle." She arranged the cups and plates for her mistress and then left. "Yes; ten? let me see ten for you and four for me." Bertha carefully held her own four apart from Mrs. Austin's gaze. "I'm too tired and have too much on my mind to bother with correspondence this morning," said the hostess, as she threw her mail one side. Bertha had walked away from the bed to a win- dow and was staring at all her letters. "I wonder," she said dubiously, "who this can be from." "Open it and find out," suggested Betty, with a slight laugh. "Best way in these cases." "I suppose so. Somehow, I hate to open it. It seems as if it contained bad news." "Nonsense," cried the other woman. "Give it to me; I'll cut it for you." But as Bertha made no motion toward accepting the offer, Bettty added: "Where's it postmarked from?" "I don't know." She was perhaps making up her mind whether to tell Betty where it was posted 177 THE FLAME DANCER from. Then she looked at the envelope scrutinizingly, and said: "Oh, it's from San Francisco." "For Heaven's sake, open the thing, Bertha; you make me fairly nervous." "I'm nervous, too," returned Miss Wilmerding in a steady voice, cutting open the envelope, as Betty watched her, for she did watch her friend, ill-bred as she knew it to be. Bertha's expression altered from curiosity to interest, from interest and a certain re- lief to surprise, condolence, and a species of satis- faction. "Well?" exclaimed Betty. "A family affair," replied the girl deliberately. "It's about that uncle of mine, who died some months ago in California." "Oh!" Betty now sighed; "that reminds me of my poor father-in-law! Goodness me! Jaffray will be here soon to to " "Finish up his job?" concluded the brunette girl good-humoredly. "Aren't you ashamed?" Trying to be shocked. "No. I merely put your thought into words. Why not?" "Well, what about the uncle?" "Why, not much. This is from his lawyers." 178 THE FLAME DANCER "Well, he left you something, if I remember rightly. A thousand dollars, wasn't it?" Bertha sat on the arm of a Morris chair and swung her foot negligently back and forth. There was an odd gleam in her eyes. "He did. I haven't forgotten how quickly it went, have you?" She laughed. "I remember feeling cross because he didn't leave you more," was Betty's answer. "Well, he left the bulk of his fortune to an aunt I never saw. It seems that there was a clause in the will making me a" Bertha consulted her letter "a residuary legatee, I think it is. Anyhow, it means that in the event of my aunt's death before my marriage, the whole fortune comes to me." "And your aunt?" cried Betty. "Has had the good taste to die." "How much ?" sitting up straight. "How provoking you are." "Three hundred and fifty thousand, they say." "And you come in for all of it?" "The whole of it." "Bertha!" The chocolate cup came down on the tray. Bertha laughed a bit. "Not really?" Bertha nodded contentedly. "Funny, isn't it," she 179 FL'AME D'ANCER went on, "to lose Reggie last night and fall heir to a small fortune this morning." "Yes. I'm glad for you " "Thank you," interrupted Miss Wilmerding appre- ciatively. "But," continued Mrs. Austin, "I do wish Reggie had behaved better!" Bertha shrugged her shoulders as she replied: "I should really think, dear, you'd be obliged to him for taking Miss What's-her-name, the governess, out of your husband's reach." "Now, sweetheart," laughed the married woman, "don't be nasty. Forrie may have his little penchants if he wants to. Miss de Fontanges is probably the safest of the lot, because she is a nice girl. I know women, dear, quite well; and poor Forrie knows where the money comes from." She laughed as she poured herself another cup of chocolate. "'Nice girl!'" repeated Bertha in a whimsical, mocking way. " 'Nice girl !' who stole and lied " "Nonsense ! Luliani de Fontanges never took them. It may have looked so, but " Betty Austin hesi- tated and her cheeks flushed. "Who did, then?" asked the other sharply, eying her. "Give it up." 180 THE FL'AME DANCER "But the earring pendant?" "Put there by whoever did take them," Betty said glibly. "You're cool about it, I must say, anyway. If I'd lost them I'd not have slept a wink, and I wouldn't laugh for a whole year." "Pshaw! Yes, you would, if you were I. In the first place, I can afford to lose them " "True," interposed the girl on the arm of the Morris chair. "Second, I may get them back; third, I have Regi- nald Stevens' cheque, which I didn't care about taking in the least, and only did take because I realized, in even that horrid first moment, what that girl under suspicion was to him. I couldn't have felt meanly to any man with that look on his face." "What look?" asked Bertha Wilmerding. "The look of a real love. Ah there's one man in the world who might " Betty stopped short again. Bertha stared, and said: "Bah!" Betty smiled. "Dearie, we'd any of us, the shal- lowest of the whole lot, give our souls to see that look for us on the face of a strong man. I'm nothing but a butterfly, hovering around the candles of pleas- ure, but I do know that there's a bigger light than 181 THE FLAME DANCER candle flame; I do know there is a sun in the sky, even if I shut it out and prefer to live by electric bulbs instead." "How eloquent!" satirically. "Thanks," succinctly. "Why on earth did she say *no ? in the middle of that excruciatingly funny marriage ceremony, I won- der?" remarked Miss Wilmerding, ruminatingly. "Heaven knows!" was the rejoinder. "One of us would never have been such an idiot, would we?" Bertha laughed. "I tell you, Bertha, such girls as the governess know their power, and one of the causes of their power, I begin to believe, is, that they allow the men a chance to run after them. We don't." "The men won't do it unless we have fortunes." "We never give them an opportunity. We are born, brought up, brought out, trotted about with marriage as the sole end in view." "Well," querulously, "what other end is there, pray?" Betty laughed. "Ask Miss de Fontanges ; possibly she knows better than I do." Bertha sat still a minute ; then she said : "When are you going to tell Forrie about his father?" "Goodness me! I forgot again. Do tell Philine 182 THE FLAME DANCER to ring Jaffray up for me, won't you! 6666 Bryant, that's a dear." When Bertha came into the room again, she said : "I suppose you'll have to go into mourning?" "Yes, certainly; three months, at least. It's too provoking." "Yes, just when one is wanting to go about a bit." "One can always go abroad and do as one likes and be amused on the Continent; not in England, of course." "Shall you go?" Miss Wilmerding inquired. "I must go somewhere. I can't stop here. One never does after a family affliction." "No." "Yes, I'll sail next week. What is it, Philine?" as the maid entered. "I cannot get Mr. Jaffray, madam; he is not in." "Very well; tell them to send him the moment he returns." "Yes, madam." Philine went away. "I shall send Jean and her governess oh, no, what am I talking about Miss de Fontanges is to finish being- married to your late fiance to-day, isn't she?" "Yes." "How provoking. I had forgotten she was so necessary to me and to Jean. Now I shall have to 183 THE FL r AME D'ANCER take Jean, which, after all, would be simply impossi- ble; she is so observant, and an observant child on the Continent is a bore." "Leave her with her father," suggested Miss Wil- merding. "Forrie'll have to go with me; it's his father who died, you know. Of course we can choose different places once we're over there. No, I'll send Jean down on Long Island, as I promised you," she laughed, "with some one I'll find." "Yes." Bertha seemed lost in reflection. Then she brightened up and spoke. "I shall have to go to San Francisco." "'San Francisco!'" cried the other woman in a stupefied way. "Yes, of course, I suppose you will. Shall you put on mourning?" "Yes," she answered quietly and as if she had thought it out. "Will your mother have to go, too?" "Impossible. She is too much of an invalid for any such journey." "To be sure. You've never been West, have you ?" "No, have you?" "No. I say!" Mrs. Austin's eyes sparkled. "What's the matter with our going out there with our grief instead of to Europe ?" 184 THE FL'AME D'ANCER Bertfia nodded thoughtfully. "Mr. Austin might not care to go where I am going." "Nonsense! We shall go to San Francisco." "You had better not tell him that I am going there, then." "Don't be a little fool. Why, you don't suppose I'm going to lose sight of you now, do you, Bertha? You're most interesting now, with Reggie for a back- ground and your uncle's little fortune to play with. Forrie can't rob me of my friends; I don't interfere with his." "Come on!" ejaculated Miss Wilmerding jocularly. "Just now I am going to pack. I've got to leave here as soon as I can." "For San Francisco?" "Oh, I'll run up to Saratoga and see mother first for a couple of days ; but I'm principally leaving you because your husband told me to go." "I see, yes; that blow; you'd better get away. It might be awkward for you to meet the future Mrs. Reggie on the staircase, say, or on " Jean came in then quite unceremoniously; she had heard her mother's last remark, and she said, in her clear treble voice: "You'll not meet her anywhere; she's gone." THE FL"AME DANCER "Gone? What do you mean, Jean?" asked the mother. "She's gone away. She took nothing but her brown costume and hat and veil and gloves " "And the famous jewels, my dear!" Bertha laughed nervously. "You hush! You are the devil! Yes, you are; I hate you! She did not take the jewels. Philine has told me all about it." "Does your father know?" asked the mother of her daughter. "Yes. Mr. Stevens knows, too. He was here, and he's gone away to meet Mr. Jaffray." "Didn't she leave any word?" asked Mrs. Austin., "Two words on a piece of paper. Mr. Stevens has them." "What were they?" asked Miss Wilmerding sharply. "San Francisco," said the child clearly. There was a queer pause; neither woman could have told then and there why she held her breath for that odd moment, although perhaps one of them would have been able to do so. "San Francisco?" reiterated Betty. "A good safe spot, I suppose, my dear, to make off to with the jewels," exclaimed Bertha ; "for, of course, 186 THE FLAME DANCER her flight fixes the theft unquestionably upon this unhappy girl." " 'Unhappy,' fiddlesticks!" muttered little Jean. "I fancy Mr. Stevens and Mr. Jaffray will be able to find her and the real thief, too." "Jean, hush." "Probably she isn't going to San Francisco at all," said Bertha. "Most likely it's only a thief's way of misleading people." "You!" Jean rushed over to Bertha and seized her with vehemence. "You call my Miss de Fontanges a thief just once more and I'll pound you." "Jean!" cried her distressed mother, through an amused smile, however. "I will," asseverated the child. "She struck Miss 'de Fontanges; I'll strike her. As father said, you'd better pack your trunks and go. I'll give you all the spending-money I have if you will." Miss Wilmerding retreated to her room, laughing, got out her treasures, her clothes, and packed her trunks. "It's too trying!" murmured Mrs. Austin. "What?" queried the child. "Give me a hand-glass." Jean gave it. "Horrors! I sha'n't have a square inch of good complexion left, and, there! there are two lines at the outside corners 187 THE FL'AME V'ANCER s of my eyes. Hand me the cola cream, dear." She administered the soothing stuff liberally. "Now, I do hope I'll be permitted to be quiet, and get those wrinkles smoothed out." "Mother." Jean drew near to the bed and regarded her parent. "Well, what is it?" peevishly. "Peters, the head groom, who always is wanting to go to mass, you know?" "Yes, yes; let him go to mass or anywhere else!" "He doesn't want to go to-day, but he told Philine at breakfast this morning you know he's gone on Philine completely that there was a strange, terrible something out in the carriage-house. Don't you think father ought to see to it, mother? What can it be?" "Merciful heavens, it's your grandfather! Now! Are you satisfied?" asked the mother angrily. "He came last night, but, having this ball on, I had to do something with him!" Jean stood still. "Don't stand and stare at me like that." "Shall I go and tell father?" the little girl asked. "No, you won't. Never do you mention the sub- ject to your father as long as you live." "Is my grandfather crazy, or what?" 188 THE FL'AME DANCER "No," brutally, "he's dead." "Oh!" Jean cried and sobbed. "Oh!" "Do be quiet; you make my head ache. As if I hadn't enough to try me without your nonsense. Go away. I declare! what I've gone through in the past twenty-four hours would provoke a saint." The little girl went away quite by herself to look out of the rear windows. She saw a man in an Inverness and with a dark- red beard, below; he was with four other men and he shut the stable-yard doors carefully after him; they went into the carriage-house, and presently they came out carrying a large packing-box. Jean knew that her grandfather was inside of it. They bore it across the courtyard and into the house. Jaffray had assured himself that Mr. Austin had gone to his club before embarking on the remainder of his job. The child heard the heavy, measured tread of five men with their burden crawling up the private stair- case. She knew that must be their route. She ran to the schoolroom, and over to the door at the far end which gave on this staircase. She opened it. {They had almost reached it, but the sudden accession o'f light on their path made them stop. As there was fco sound Jaffray signaled them to go on, and in an- 189 THE FLAME DANCER other moment they and their burden were in face of the little girl. The man with the red beard was more taken aback than perhaps he had ever been in his whole life, at sight of this little girl. He had thought that all his arrangements, made with Mrs. Austin's assent and knowledge, were secure from interruption or inspec- tion other than the inevitable gossip and truth-telling of servants they being factors not to be controlled by either mistresses, masters, detectives, or any one else. But this child ! The procession halted. It was Jean who spoke. "Bring him in here,'" she said. "I know; he is my grandfather. Put him down on there," she indicated the square schoolroom piano. "If I had known he arrived last night I would have had him taken into my own room." She was tearless and fearless, and Jaffray quite worshiped her as he stood there in his disguise, carrying out her mother's bidding. They obeyed her and left her beside the coffin, which they had unboxed. 190 THE FLAME D'ANCER CHAPTER XIV JAFFRAY'S CONFLICT OF all the persons concerned in the Austin ball drama, the one who slept least was the de- tective. Hitherto, Jaffray had been undeviat- ing and exclusive in his devotion to the exposure of the criminal. Here he was committed to a bargain that did violence to his sense of right, for did it not command him to shield the thief? This in itself would have disturbed his tranquillity, but Jaffray's situation was far worse than that, and in his solitude he blinked no fact. First and foremost was his sudden, overmastering love for Bertha Wil- merding, a woman to whom he never had had a for- mal introduction. He loved this woman, superficially hopeless though it was. But was it hopeless? If he could gain that half-million offered by Stevens, might he not seek and win her? Surely. Jaffray repeated the word "Surely" aloud, and smiled as he realized the strange complication in which he was a central figure. For he believed that Bertha Wilmerding was guiltily implicated in the 191 THE FLAME DANCER theft. Did he, in that case, then, want her? Reason said no, but his tugging heart clung to that pungent, unmistakable something that had come into his life before he had occasion to think Bertha Wilmerding other than a true and womanly woman. Why did he think otherwise now? To understand this question and the tremendous significance it had for Jaffray, it must be remembered that he had so often jumped to correct conclusions that now his subconscious trust in his first impressions was difficult to overcome. It was impossible for him, as a detective, to forget the feeling with which he had seen Bertha Wilmer- ding and Struh-La enter the balcony on the stairway. As soon as he knew that there had been a robbery, his mind had flown to that episode. If Bertha Wil- merding had been nothing to him he would have di- rected his investigation straight to her from the word go. Could he have told you why her meeting with the Oriental then and there impressed him as sug- gestive of guilt? Perhaps not, but it did so. It was like a death-blow struck at his heart, but it was there, and however he might deal with it in talking with others, he could not minimize its significance to him- self. Jaffray, the man, fought against the impressions of 192 THE FL'AME VASTER Jaffray, the detective. Despite a cynical conviction that all human beings are capable of crime, given the right incentive, he clung to the idol that had been so swiftly formed in his heart, and stubbornly told him- self that Bertha Wilmerding was the woman he wanted for a wife. For that very reason she must be worthy of him. If she had taken the jewels, there must have been some powerful incentive which, if understood, would exculpate her completely. That exculpation must be his quest quite as much as the jewels themselves. Therefore, how singularly for- tunate it was that suspicion pointed with equal force in other directions! He must win that half-million. He must get the jewels away from Bertha Wilmer- ding, granting that she had taken them, and from her accomplice, for it was in that light that he viewed Struh-La. Meantime, he must protect her, and, to that end, win her. "I don't know," he said half aloud, "I don't know what to think of that governess. There is something strange there, but all I can say now is that it is rare good luck that the man who loves her evidently fears that she is involved. For while I am working out my own end I'.can use Miss de Fontanges as a foil, and, if she is innocent, nothing I do can react against her.'* It was in this frame of mind that Jaffray went early 193 THE FLAME DANCER to the Austin house to conclude the gruesome outside job which Betty had set him. As soon as the coffin containing the body of De Forrest Austin's father had been placed in the house, Jaffray returned to his own quarters and there found the message from Stevens. He responded to it at once, sending word by telephone that he was on the way. Shortly, therefore, he was in the library of the beautiful house in which Reginald had hoped by this hour to have installed Luliani de Fontanges as his wife. Jaffray, as he entered, said: "Congratulations, Mr. Stevens. I suppose the cere- mony has been concluded." He was ceremonious and smiling. "No. Miss de Fontanges has left the Austins with- out their knowledge. Brown costume, hat, coat, veil, and bag, and nothing else." Jaffray was startled; he was pleased; the flight of Miss de Fontanges must keep suspicion upon her and 'divert its falling upon Miss Wilmerding. "Who saw her go?" he asked quickly. "No one. I have questioned every servant in the house. All slept heavily, of course, after the func- tion last night." "That little girl?" "Heartbroken, but knows nothing." 194 THE FL'AME DANCER "No note? No word?" "This." He held up the bit of paper before Jaf- f ray's eyes with the words "San Francisco" on it; he did not want any one to touch it but himself. The detective understood this; he was fine and subtle. He did not offer to take it, but he said : "Hold it smoothly out, please, steadily as you can." Stevens did so. "It's a scrap of paper torn from a letter, I should say. You see the pen and ink scratches on this edge?) parts of other words?" "Yes." "Written in haste; the hand has not trembled, but neither has it moved freely; it's written under sur- yeillance. Some one has been with her whom she feared when she wrote it. Where was it found?" "In the schoolroom, near Jean's desk." "By whom?" "Jean." "Have you seen Jean?" "Yes." The detective scrutinized the bit of paper. "She has, after all, perhaps been alone; yes, she has been alone; she has intended to write more. See here the tracing of a capital *M'? She has tried to." "Yes, I do see it." 195 THE FLAME DANCER "Then she has been broken in upon," the man from headquarters went on. "I tell you, Mr. Stevens, the person or persons we're after are damned clever, and they have power! power of some sort over Miss de Fontanges." Stevens said: "I intend to leave for San Francisco at once." "Wait three hours. I'll put ten men on within ten minutes, to find out, if they can, if she really has left New York, and then start if they are unsuccessful." "You?" "I'm going to see some of the present inmates of the Austin place." "What shall I do during your three hours?" For the first time since he had been a. man, Stevens asked some one what he should do. He was a bit dazed; the love pf her was so devouring; terror, solicitude for her loneliness, her probable danger so keen and poignant that he was unmanned. The detective said: "Go with Jermyn; Jermyn is my right-hand man." "Ring him up, then," Reggie said sharply. 196 THE FLAME DANCER CHAPTER XV DETECTIVE AND LOVER WHEN Jaffray arrived at Austin's house, an express wagon stood before it, into which trunks were being piled. His sharp eyes observed the initials B. W. on the trunks, and he wondered with a throb of apprehension. It was evi- dent enough that Bertha Wilmerding was about to go away, and he sent his name to her instead of to Mrs. Austin when the butler admitted him. The detective was shown into the library on the ground floor. The room was pervaded by the faint, subtle perfume which Jaffray already associated with this woman's pres- ence he knew Miss Wilmerding had been there. On the heels of this came a sense of amusement at him- self. "On my word," his thoughts ran, "I am as bad as any schoolboy. Whatever I do I find her, real or im- plied, in my way." He dropped into a chair by the table. His eyes lighted on the waste-paper basket, and on top was an envelope addressed to her. This time it was the 197 THE FLAME D'ANCER impulse of the lover, not the sagacity of the detective, that made him stoop and pick up that envelope. It was empty, but it bore her name, and, with full recog- nition of the folly, he started to put it in his pocket. His eye was attracted by the postmark, "San Fran- cisco." He held it closer. But only for an instant, for he heard her step. He hastily put the bit of pa- per into his pocket and greeted Miss Wilmerding. He was a very attractive man, and Bertha recalled perfectly, as she beheld him, the delightful way in which he had emphasized pronouns and used his eyes only last night for her benefit, but yet she ,was startled and a bit defiant as she held out her hand. "Miss Wilmerding, I beg your pardon. You are one of several people whom I want to consult about the jewels." Then Bertha perhaps remembered that this man was only a detective, and her eyes grew cool. "I am sure," pursued Jaffray, quite undismayed, but not at all unobservant of her changed attitude, "that you will help me out a bit?" - "Really," she responded icily. "I am just starting for Saratoga to see my mother. Besides, I am en- tirely unwilling to say one word further that might implicate the unfortunate girl who has fled, I suppose, 'from justice." 198 "Fled?" repeated Jaffray in a tone of excellent] amazement. "Has she run away?" Bertha nodded. "Didn't you know? Hadn't you heard?" "I've just come," he answered in a perturbed way. "Oh, I beg of you, don't quite turn me down. You can help me so much if you only will." His tone was personal and his glance was in hers. "What can I do ?" she said coldly. "Much." "Really?" "Assuredly. Won't you wait just for ten minutes and permit me to ask you one or two " "Oh," interrupted Miss Wilmerding hastily, "I couldn't possibly stop in this house another second." "Why not?" His voice was up in arms, the ready defending tone of a man for a woman who is possi- bly alone and defenseless. Bertha had never before heard this particular in- tonation from man to woman, save on the stage when the matinee idol had addressed similar sentiments to the heroine. It was a new sensation to her, and it had the attraction of the pole for the needle. She replied this way: "Mr. Austin ordered me out." How much she yearned for more sympathy even this shrewd man did not guess. It had never occurred to her before 199 THE FL'AME DANCER to crave it, because no least suspicion of sentimental interest had ever been evoked by her in any man, and the novelty of it at once created in her the appetite for more. She cast her eyes on the floor. It did not matter to her one particle that she was talking to a person whose occupation was out of her class; she keenly relished her first taste of unmistakable admira- tion, and would have stopped there an hour if J affray had willed. The detective said in a low tone: "Why did Mr. Austin do that?" "It's a long story." The girl fetched a sigh. "Brute !" he ejaculated. The word thrilled Bertha with its delicious accent of resentment in her behalf. She smiled, put up a deprecating hand, and then said : "I must really go." "I am stupid to keep you here, Miss Wilmerding, I know, but you can aid me so much in unearthing this mystery of the robbery that I am going to be very venturesome." He paused. "How?" she inquired. Bertha liked to hear that any one was going to be venturesome with her about anything: no one ever had been yet. . "I am aware that I am only a detective, out of your class entirely, but my father was president of the largest bank in St. Louis, and I am a Harvard man. 200 THE FLAME DANCER I rather went into this sort of work at first as a lark." This man was actually giving her a bit of confi- dence ; he was the first man who ever had. She raised her eyes to his, and found in them the quality of ap- proval which she, in common with many others of her sex, always craves. She had never found it any- where before. She answered quickly : "I am sure you are a gentle- man, no matter what you do." "I thank you." He paused a moment in honest doubt as to what course to pursue, for her departure from the Austins' house was against all his prear- ranged devices. "You said you were going away?" he ventured, to gain time. "Yes, I am going to San Francisco." "Indeed!" Jaffray could hardly restrain his emo- tion. "I have had a bit of good fortune, Mr. Jaffray. You must rejoice with me. Last night I was the poor- est of the poor." "Not poor," he interposed. "Not you?" "As a church mouse, Mr. Jaffray. Didn't you know I was penniless, or comparatively so?" "I did not." His heart leaped. Here was an equal- ity he had not dreamed of. 20 1 T.HE FL'AME DANCER "And this morning I am, if you please, an heiress." "I congratulate you." "Thank you. I have just had a letter from San Francisco informing me that I must go there to col- lect $350,000 left by an uncle." Jaffray bowed. It was not in him to offer more congratulations, and yet, $350,000 was not equal to a half-million. "You have just heard of it?" he asked. And that which sprang into being in his brain was very strange. "This very morning. The letter was left in the first delivery. Indeed, I was here in this room early before you came, answering it, telling my lawyer that I should go to San Francisco as soon as I had paid a brief visit to my mother. She is in Saratoga, and I go there by the next train." "And I am detaining you?" he exclaimed, rising. "You see," she added irrelevantly, "there is really nothing I can do for you. Good-by, Mr. Jaffray," holding out her hand. "Good-by, Miss Wilmerding," he responded, and there was that in his glance that made Bertha drop her eyes, made her heart throb. She left the room and the house. Jaffray was again alone in the library. He had not asked her the question which it had been in his mind to ask. He had not 202 made progress either as man or sleuth. He stood for some moments in silence, only half conscious that it was his business to send for Mrs. Aus- tin, or the servants, and interrogate them now as to Miss de Fontanges. He did nothing of the sort. In- stead, reluctantly he took her envelope from his pocket. The lover had impelled him to appropriate it. The lover now commanded him to tear it to pieces, to burn it. The detective said, examine it, and the detective had his way. He drew from another pocket a magnify ing-glass, through which he verified the impression that his un- aided sight had gained when he first glanced at the postmark : the original stamp had been tampered with. The letter had been mailed in San Francisco, dis- tinctly, but the date had been changed to one five days before. Under the magnify ing-glass the strokes of a pen were plain, showing that the original date had been something else. Not only the figures, but the name of the month itself had been altered. Circumstantial evidence. But that is always and first the basis upon which a detective works: he pieces together inconsequential details and forges a chain of evidence that convicts. In spite of his infatuation, the habit of his mind made him deduce a theory from that empty envelope. Why 203 THE FL'AME DANCER should she go to San Francisco ? Well, in that distant city jewels from New York might be disposed of without arousing suspicion or so an amateur thief might think. This $350,000 figure just half the value of the Austin jewels. Half? Certainly. Was there not an accomplice? Had not Jaff ray's quick perception leaped as straight to Struh-La as to Miss Wilmerding? Accomplices share equally? Then this legacy of $350,000 would account for Miss Wilmer- ding's sudden rise to the position of so great a fortune. Could it be possible that this woman not only had stolen, but had planned this device for covering her steps? It was clumsily done, to be sure, and yet it was safe to say that no one but a detective ever would have noticed the change. So here was evidence of deliberate plan. Here was an added goad for him to save her from herself and maybe from Struh-La. Could he let Miss Wilmerding leave New York? A thousand times no! She must be detained, even if he had to crush his own heart and submit her to the ignominy of arrest and search. The jewels, a part of them, might be, must be, with her at this moment. What was he thinking of, he a man known and suc- cessful in the capitals of the world, to permit a thief to walk out from the house under his very eyes with the booty in her possession? 204 THE FLAME DANCER The lover had been to the fore long enough. It was now the turn of the detective to be dominant. With- out sending his name to anybody else in the house, JafFray went abruptly to the door. The butler was there. "Miss Wilmerding has gone, I suppose?" said Jaf- fray. "Yes, sir; just five minutes ago," was the reply. In another five minutes Jaffray was at the Grand Central, and he found Bertha in the waiting-room. She saw him as soon as he saw her. Perhaps she was startled, but the ready smile that some women can summon was upon her lips, and to him there was in the brightness of her eyes a little pleasure at seeing him again. With an astonished sense of his own weakness, he found that he could not hold himself toward her as toward an ordinary suspect. What he had prearranged to say to her fled, and the usually cold-blooded investigator of mysteries found himself actually stammering. "Miss Wilmerding," he managed to say, "I really hope you will pardon me, but there are questions which I find I shall have to ask you and I didn't ask one of them at the house. So I followed you." She looked at him inquiringly, but without speak- ing. He said simply: "Do you remember Struh-La?" 205 THE FL'AME DANCER "Yes." Bertha Wilmerding seemed to turn into stone as she stood there answering this man; she was deadly pale. "He has hypnotic power, hasn't he?" Jaffray went on. "Yes." "You have witnessed some exhibition of it? You see, Miss Wilmerding, I think it possible that this man is behind the theft. I can be confidential with you because you are going away. Struh-La may have controlled the actual thief, who therefore would not be morally guilty, and, I think, not legally." "Do you think the governess was Struh-La's sub- ject?" asked Bertha. "I can't admit as much as that, Miss Wilmerding; but if she or another were his subject, I, as a de- tective, would do all possible to shield her. You know she, that is, the person who took the jewels, will have great difficulty in disposing of them for money. They are very valuable, and Mr. Stevens' opals are cele- brated. Connoisseurs in all parts of the world know about them, and in all probability it is only a con- noisseur who would venture to buy Ihem at anything like their value." He knew that what he said he meant as a warning and a protective to the woman whom he addressed. 206 THE FLAME DANCER "What puzzles a detective has to solve, to be sure," Bertha said, a smile at last reaching her lips. "I wish I could help you, Mr. Jaffray, but I really fear that my train is ready and I ought to go." "You have your seat engaged?" he asked. "Yes." "Pardon me a moment; I will go and see." In less than half a minute he was back. "Fifteen minutes yet before your train. I must try and make that fifteen minutes valuable, please. Tell me what you have seen Struh-La do." Bertha looked him full in the face, and his brown eyes softened. "See here," she said, now laughing, "do you believe the governess took the things, or don't you? Because there's no use in my talking about the girl to you unless it is to shed light on your path." "It's this way," he replied. "A suspect must al- ways be given the benefit of the doubt by law. I dare not say I believe this or that. It is my duty to discover. You can shed light on the character of the person whom I suspect. Will you do it ?" "Of course I will," she answered. "I met her at Doctor Warren's, at a birthday-party he gave for Jean, his niece." "Was she at the party?" 207 THE FLAME DANCER "Hardly. She was only Doctor Warren's French] teacher then. The party was over and " "Who was there, do you remember?" "Lots of children. Mr. and Mrs. Austin, some of the other parents, and Professor Struh-La." "Aha!" "He did some tricks," Bertha continued. "Oh, legerdemain?" Jaffray ejaculated quietly. "No, no; See-foo-tee, he called it." "What's that?" "Magnetism, I should say, or hypnotism, but the professor said it had nothing to do with anything of that kind, and was used in the schools in China." "What was it like?" "I don't quite know, Mr. Jaffray." She thus found herself addressing him as "Mr." Jaffray; she also found herself picturing him as a not improbable suitor for the hand left vacant by Reginald Stevens' defalcation. She was unimaginative, but when a woman of this build wishes to be loved, the intricacies of her thought are unfathomable. "No matter, then," he exclaimed indifferently. He had found indifference such a pass-key to so many kinds of information. "Of course I want to tell you anything you want to know. Let me see, the Chinese are to me such an un- 208 THE FL'AME DANCER interesting lot. I think," she proceeded ruminatingly, "that he took Jean Austin I believe it was Jean. However, that doesn't matter, does it?" "Not in the least." "It was Jean! Yes, I am sure now, because her mother and father were there, and I heard some one say they would not have cared to have had Struh-La experimenting with any child of theirs." "It was an experiment, then?" The detective was rather at high tension just then, but Bertha only remarked to herself the shapely white- ness of his fingers. Her emotions were of that qual- ity which rapaciously demanded an outlet at hand. The remote did not satisfy, however much it might possess and harass her: for she did recall Reggie. "Yes, I suppose so. He led her around the room, and she described to him a garden, the flowers, colors, perfumes, all that." "Hypnotism!" said Jaffray carelessly, while his breath came quickly. Reggie's description had been vague beside this, and the details only served to con- vince him of Struh-La's hand in the theft. "No! he called it anything but that. No one could waken her, either." "Were her eyes closed?" "No! wide open." 209 THE FLAME DANCER The detective fairly held his breath. "Every one tried to waken or rouse her, or what- ever you may call it." "Did you?" "I! Dear, no; I mean several people." "The governess, perhaps?" "She wasn't there then. Some one wanted to try, but Struh-La wouldn't allow it. Finally the Chinese man roused her himself." "Precisely! Do you mind telling me about your first encounter with Miss de Fontanges?" "Not at all. Everybody had left, as was supposed, except Mr. Stevens. Mrs. Austin thought Jean had gone home with her father; Mr. Austin thought the child was with her mother and me. Instead, she had fallen asleep under a table or somewhere. Mrs. Aus- tin was in a state. I phoned ; Reggie answered. Mrs. Austin asked me to go and fetch the child. I went back to the doctor's ; he had been called to a patient. I found Jean sitting between Mr. Stevens and Miss de Fontanges, an arm around each." Jaffray's eyebrows lifted. "Ah," he exclaimed sympathetically. "She had been Doctor Warren's French teacher for six months; it was he who induced his sister, Mrs. Austin, to engage her as governess for Jean." 210 THE FLAME DANCER "To be sure." The girl beside the detective now glanced into his face with an air of undisguised expectancy. He was aware of it; he let it increase until it overflowed into speech. "Well?" she said interrogatively. "Well?" he repeated thoughtfully, fixing his eyes upon her foot the shoe encasing it was remarkably chic. "What do you think ?" Bertha was at high tension. "You are so good as to forget my calling," he re- plied humbly. "My calling forbids me to think aloud. Tell me" and his voice lowered very per- ceptibly "what do you think?" "About what?" "The jewels." She laughed in a slow fashion. "Gone to San Francisco or some other place with the governess." "You really believe that?" His tone was deep and earnest; his eyes were full on hers. "You women have such wonderful intuitions. Women like you can be a great help to a man do you know that?" "Can we? Can I?" she asked. "Yes," he said in a final way. "You have given me an important clue to the robbery." "Oh !" She said it with a shudder. 211 "And," he went on, "you have given me one of the most peculiarly delightful hours I ever spent in myj life." There was a rising storm of passionate feeling in Jaffray's voice. She felt it he wished her to feel it. He escorted her to her chair in the train. The girl said, half blindly, and yet in answer to the call of his tone : "When shall I see you again ?" "When do you start West?" was his impetuous answer. "For San Francisco?" "Yes, for San Francisco?" "Probably in three days." "I will follow you." His eyes drank in the flash of hers. "You will follow me?" she cried out under her breath, while the dark blood surged up into her face. "Yes," he replied, "to the ends of the earth." He raised her hand to his lips and was gone. She opened one of the magazines wide to hold be- fore her face, and then she laughed with exultant joy, as she whispered to herself: "He loves me; at last a man loves me, loves me, loves me." The train started. Then she remembered that Jaf- frav was a detective. 212 CHAPTER XVI ON THE TRAIL Jaffray left the Grand Central fie went in an electric straight to Doctor Warren's apartment. Bridget answered the bell. "No, sir, the doctor isn't in; he's afther going on a hurry call to the hospital, sir. Would yez wait in the office?" Jaffray would wait ; he would like a pencil. Bridget searched for one. While she was searching, he said: "You have a nice place here?" "That I have, sir." "Lived with the doctor a long time, I suppose?" opening and shutting a book as he paced up and down the room. "Six months, sir." "No matter about that pencil. I believe I won't write a note. You're a clever g'irl and can tell me all I want to know just as well as the doctor." Bridget halted in her rummaging over the office 'desk. "Me, is it, sir?" 213 THE FLAME DANCER "Yes. I want the address of Professor Struh-La. [You must know where he lives." "Sthrewler, sir," murmured Bridget, shaking her head ruefully. "Yes, Struh-La, a Chinese gentleman." "Oh, the Chinese gintleman, is it ! Yes, indeed, sir, that I do; it's myself that often takes messages to him from the doctor." "Ah, I thought you'd know." The detective took out his note-book and a half a dollar from his pocket; the latter he gave to Bridget. "Too much ! not at all. You've saved me time; and time is money. Now, the number?" "Sure it's thankful I'm to you, sir, and yerself a real gintleman!" Bridget was not long from Ireland, and she courtsied down to the ground. "The Chinese gintleman lives at 564 West iO5th Street, sir, ;:<. Jlji "Hold on!" said the man from headquarters sud- denly, "perhaps Doctor Warren has two Chinese friends?" Bridget was suddenly appalled and silent over this unforeseen difficulty. "I mean the one," Jaffray went on, "who was here at Miss Jean's birthday-party a few months since." 214 THE FLAME DANCER "Sure that's the very one I mane, sir; him a pale- looking, straight-sized person, sir." "Well," said Jaffray, "yes, I suppose so, this one did some tricks, you remember? Put Miss Jean Aus- tin asleep, and so on?" "Did he that, sir?" Bridget became wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Evidently she had not been a wit- ness to the professor's exhibition of See-foo-tee. "Yes, and don't you remember he was here when Miss Wilmerding came back for Miss Jean, and found her with Mr. Stevens and Miss er the governess?" "Miss de Fontanges, is it?" "Yes, that's the name, I believe." "Oh, sure the Chinese gintleman, sir, wasn't here when Miss Wilmerding came back. He left before she came." "Oh, now did he? Why, I thought he went away when all the others did." "Sure he did that same, sir; but myself was just afther letting in Miss de Fontanges ; come to give the doctor his Frinch lesson after the party was over, and her a-lookin' at herself in the glass, when the bell rang, and him back again." "Who back again?" said the man from headquar- ters in a succinctly tense way, but avoiding Bridget with his eyes lest she should lose her way. 215 THE FLAME DANCER "The Chinese gintleman, sir. Excuse me axin' you, sir, but is it him the one you're lookin' for?" Jaffray nodded as he nonchalantly lighted a cigar and wrote down the number in his note-book. "Great friend of Miss de Fontanges, too, I sup- pose ?" he said carelessly. "Who, sir?" "The Chinese." "Sure'n no, sir, not to my knowledge. He was back lookin' for his cane, and whin I tould him I'd find it for him, he wint into the parlor quite bold like, and her there waiting for the doctor." "I see ! Still I guess they were old friends." Bridget shook her head. "Twicet, sir, I slipped out of the kitchen from Annie she's the cook, sir me having warnings, sir, that I should see to thim two." "Is that so?" The detective leaned negligently against the mantelpiece while he smoked. "The nuns, sir, in the convent in Ballygrad where I was raised, sir, always bade me pay attintion to my warnings." "Well, the nuns are all right. What did you hear?" He flicked the ash from his Havana and smiled in a leisurely way. "I niver liked the looks of thim Chinese min, sir, 216 THE FLAME DANCER and I thought the world of Miss de Fontanges, and it's not the likes of me, sir, as'd listen to anybody's talk and couldn't repate a word of it, sir; but I heard cryin' and sobbin' from her, sir, that I did." Jaffray drew in his breath and his lips. "Too bad," he ejaculated. "Did he go away then?" "He did that, sir, and me just peeking from the kitchen door seeing him sawin' the air like with the hands of him and stopping beyant there at the turn of the hall whin Mr. Stevens come in." "To be sure. Well, I must get along now and see Professor Struh-La myself. Tell the doctor I couldn't wait, won't you?" "It's meself 11 do that same, sir, and I hope you'll not think me a busybody talkin' about my betters to you, sir?" "Not a bit of it. I thank you a thousand times for talking to me, and for letting me talk to you. I'm quite sure there never came a prettier pair of blue eyes out of old Ireland than yours. Here's the other half of that dollar for you to buy a ribbon with. Good-by." "Oh, good-by, sir. Gracious! sir, one'd take you for a gintleman from Cork wid your ilegant spache, and good luck to you." The detective sprang into his cab. 217 THE FLAME DANCER "Number 564 West iO5th Street," he said, and was there in no time. Jaffray had instinctively taken for granted that he would pull up before an apartment- house or hotel, and was momentarily nonplused when he looked out and found number 564 to be a four- story brownstone front with the typical atmosphere of a boarding-house abounding in the small tables visible at the basement windows. He did not alight, but, lifting the lid of his hansom, told the man to take him to his own modest East Side flat. Once there, he dismissed the electric and went in. Not more than ten minutes had elapsed when from the flat-house emerged a rather spick-looking chap with blond curly hair, a bronzed complexion, attired in clothes, the cut of which was unmistakably and im- pressively English; he wore a monocle, and had the somewhat bewildered but always supercilious air of the Briton who has newly arrived in the States. He appeared to be looking vaguely for something up and down the crowded and noisy street; the spectator would have said he wished to hail a two-wheeler and expected them to be standing about to be hailed as they did at home. However that may have been, a hansom did bowl up just then, and the young blond man beckoned and got into it. He said to the driver, in a pronounced but far from aggressive drawl : 218 THE FLAME DANCER "Number er 564, ic>5th Street, West, if you please." The doors snapped, and in a brief time the man from headquarters was for the second time within a half-hour set down before the tall boarding-house where dwelt Professor Struh-La. He sprang out of the hansom, ran up the steps, rang and inquired for the mistress of the house. She came, a plump and not displeasing person with a lace shirt-waist, a large veiled pink bow, a black skirt, a jeweled chain, dia- mond earrings, and an indiscreetly blonded head. Jaffray said, after a profound and telling bow, that he was looking for rooms and that friends had com- mended this lady to him. The lady said she had no rooms. Jaffray responded that he then would like to have meals. The lady haughtily returned that she did not serve meals to outside persons. Jaffray, in a dulcet but persuasive tone, ventured to inquire if some one of the lady's guests was not go- ing to leave, and he might then have a room, and would be happy to pay for the same a week in ad- vance. The lady, mollified apparently by this strictly com- mercial view of the situation, paused, said: "Well," and then suddenly brightened up as she exclaimed: 219 THE FLAME DANCER "Why, how stupid I am! The professor's room will be vacant to-morrow the second floor front, with dressing-room if you could wait, and I wouldn't mind giving you your meals just for a day, if you would please not mention it ?" Jaffray vowed he would not mention it, paid the price, and remarked: "Did you say the professor, madam? May I ask if he is a professor of music? I am so interested in music." The lady shook her embarrassed-looking locks, and answered: "Oh, dear, no; a wealthy Oriental gentle- man, very distinguished; he's professor of science I think." She hesitated a bit, and Jaffray helped her deftly over the bridge of her ignorance by exclaim- ing: "How interesting! I am so sorry he is leaving you. For China, I suppose?" All this time he was engaged in folding up his wad of bills and replacing his foreign-looking purse and wallet, also bestowing upon the lady of the doubtful tresses many covert but assuredly admiring glances. "Oh, no, he's going to Europe ; he sails to-morrow ; I mean he goes on board to-morrow night on the Konigen Luise." Jaffray nodded as if a bit bored, and asked : "Could I see the room?" "I daren't show it to you, but it's just over this; 220 THE FLAME DANCER elegantly furnished, too, with a folding bed that cost me a hundred and fifty dollars, and a cheffoneyar from Paris and real lace curtains." "I say!" cried Jaffray ecstatically. "That will be quite what I want, I'm sure, and you will permit me to have dinner here to-night with you; and break- fast and luncheon, perhaps, to-morrow?" The lady, whose pale but nevertheless heavily ac- centuated eyes had long before this moment learned to regard her new guest with favor, now absorbed his beseeching glance, and she replied: "Oh, I suppose I must; you English gentlemen have such a way with you." "Thank you, thank you awfully. I say now, though, I think you American ladies have a way with you that's positively well, don't you know fetch- ing!" And in happy concert Jaffray and the lady with the golden touch-up, about the distribution of which she had been a trifle uneven, both laughed long and pleasantly. Then he asked the dinner-hour, and she said it was seven, and he left his topcoat with her and went off, promising to be back on time quite for the evening meal. He then paid his cabman, dismissed him, and, taking a car, returned to his flat. In fifteen minutes he emerged quite as himself, and going into a tele- 221 THE FLAME DANCER phone-booth that was really private he rang up Regi- nald Stevens. "This is I. Yes. What have you learned ? That's bad, but I hardly supposed you would accomplish anything. Yes, I have. When did you get back? I am lucky to catch you, then. I have picked up the first link in the chain. Yes. Will be with you inside of ten minutes. Good-by." He rushed to the Subway and was very soon witH Stevens in his library. He said first: "I have just told Jermyn and my* other men over the wire, caught him at headquarters, to go to all the different railway-stations to find out, if possible, if Miss de Fontanges has left the city." Stevens was walking the floor, very nearly dis- tracted, but cool and calm to outside appearance. "What have you found out ? What is the first link in the chain?" he asked impatiently. "Struh-La is still in New York." "Well, well?" "Miss de Fontanges is in New York." "Then you connect the two ?" Stevens said. "I must. Listen." The detective recounted his in- terview with Bridget, and even then Reggie could not bring himself to tell Jaffray the one fact in his own knowledge that suggested Luliani's complicity. But he was forced to acknowledge to himself now 222 THE 'FL'AME 'DANCER that Luliani and the Oriental had had a past to- gether. What might that past not have been? He did not know, save that it could never have been to her disadvantage, and to tell the truth he did not care. All he cared for was to reach her. Jaffray told him of his plan of espionage over the Chinese until he should sail, and said he thought there was a possibility that Miss de Fontanges might sail with Struh-La. Stevens answered: "No." He sat down and rose up ; he said to the other man, in a savage way : "Send me twenty detectives, the best you've got, Pinkerton men; I can't sit still here, not an hour; I must cover every boat, train, hotel in town. Go on with your scheme, go on; it's all right, I suppose; but find her, find her, cost what it may, and let all the rest of it go to hell." 223 THE FLAME DANCER CHAPTER XVII THE REACH OF THE HUMAN SOUL IN the early gray morning of the day after Mrs. Austin's famous ball, Luliani de Fontanges had, with a certain measuredness in all her movements, changed her gown, put on her hat, coat, and veil, and started from the study. To any one watching her there would have been an almost unnatural calm in her movements a formalism which argued no anx- iety toward departure. She went down the broad stairs slowly, crossed to the front door, slipped off the chain-bolts, turned the knob, pushed back the glass outer doors, and, closing them, stepped out on the stoop. For a second she stood still, then went down the steps; again she stood still, while the fresh air of the early morning touched her face and blew her veil out behind her. She stood expectantly, as one who awaits the coming of the other one, and as her eyes moved right and left it became unmistakable that whoever the girl waited for would be the person to determine her path. In a few moments, the street being silent, empty, the figure of a man in an Inver- 224 THE FLAME DANCER ness, with turned-up collar, and his hat knocked far down over his eyes, staggered up, it would seem, from one of the near-by areas. He walked as a man walks who has taken a great deal too much wine. He did not look toward Luliani de Fontanges, even as he passed her by, but with composure and a certain sort of expectedness in her air, she immediately followed him the length of the block westward to Sixth Ave- nue. They met no one. At the corner an L train was thundering overhead and two trolley-cars were passing; the man turned northward and entered a liquor-saloon. Miss de Fontanges paused and glanced about her in a rather listless fashion. A cab drawn by, a fine black horse and driven by a negro came sharply around the northerly corner. The figure of the man in the Inverness could be seen standing within the saloon; his hand was on the button of the half door, which he held open. Luliani looked at him much as one looks at the person who is a guide; then she walked to the cab, which had pulled up at the curb. Some one, a woman from the dress, and heavily veiled, opened the cab door, made room for her, and she got in. The man in the Inverness came out of the drink-shop and stood for a moment idly staring at the cab as it was driven away. It rattled down-town ; at the corner of Doyers 225 THE FLAME DANCER and Pell Streets it stopped, and presently the man in the Inverness appeared, this time with his hat rather up and his cape rather down. It was Struh-La. He opened the cab door. Miss de Fontanges and her companion, a Chinese woman, it now was apparent, and of middle age, both alighted. Struh-La said to Luliani : "You are going to San Francisco with this wom- an; her name is Woo Fong; she speaks English and comprehends entirely exactly how to travel, to pay out money, to take care of you. She obeys my in- structions always. You will do as she says." Miss de Fontanges lifted her head; her eyes met those of the Chinese, a little in attempted defiance. Struh-La shrugged his shoulders in the manner of the French. "It is useless for you," he remarked pleasantly. "I follow you on a separate train, it is true, but at Chicago I shall be on the same one with you. Woo Fong has money in abundance; you must have whatever you wish; she has clothes also and other necessaries. Good-by; that's all." The Chinaman's eyes did not, however, quit the girl's face, nor did he move a muscle of his implacable body toward or away from her. She stood on the 'dirty sidewalk, the Chinese woman near her, while the cab went away. There was then no sound to be 226 THE FL'AME DANCER heard save the slip-slap of a single blind in the tall tenement before which these three people stood; a little flame, three fingers broad perhaps, shot between the shutters; it died, and was succeeded by a long trail of blue smoke blown out by the smoker within; a lean cat crossed the pavement, searching for scraps in the pails and boxes; it mewed , angrily in defeated hunger. Its snarl roused the white girl an instant from her apparent stupefaction, and she made a pitia- ble dart toward freedom. The yellow woman put out both hands to grasp her, but Struh-La shook his head and the Oriental woman dropped back. The China- man, with the intensity of his eyes alone, called a halt on Luliani's movement ; she stood arrested merely by the power of his will. She was wholly conscious. It is perhaps only a person who has been under this species of thraldom who can comprehend that it is a wholly conscious thraldom, that the mind works as freely against it as if it were not in supremacy over the mind and the body; it is a fact that a human being so enthralled is so despite himself, and not at all because intelligence is not in commission. Luliani de Fontanges was rea- soning out her position for herself just as capably, standing there on the Doyers Street pavement, in- capacitated from getting away from Struh-La, as if 227 T.HE F.LAME DANCER she had never met him. As she stood, a slip of the first sunshine of that new day crept around the cor- ner and struck upon her face. She felt the light, if not the heat of it, and suddenly something within her snapped for gladness. She recognized the tran- scendent glory of defeat. It is a great soul only that can acknowledge this in even normal conditions. Here the conditions were abnormal and illucid to a painful degree, but she was triumphantly glad. Within the space of those few moments, there at bay before her Chinese tyrant, she experienced the keenest joy that had yet come into her life, because she realized the indisputable fact that in a case like hers she could not be worthy of the man she loved unless she could be able, alone, unaided by him or any other, to break the strange bonds that bound her. She was glad that she had not been married to Reggie Stevens ; she was glad, since Struh-La still possessed the power over her, that Struh-La had fetched her out of the Aus- tins' house down here to the Chinese quarter. She could not as yet break from him possibly she never could? Well, then, she never could be worthy of Reginald Stevens, but she felt, some way, in behind the iron of her spiritual bars, that the day would come when she and she alone could burst them and bid the Oriental a supreme and final defiance. She 228 THE FLAME DANCER was made of the fibre that heroines are and yet she swayed to the will of this man as the lily sways to the wind that bends, but may not break it. Her thoughts took only a very few minutes. Struh-La, satisfied with his achievement, walked away. Woo Fong pulled her charge into the tenement. They had breakfast, waited on by two, who also watched. Then a carriage came and trunks were put 'on it, the women were assisted in, and, directed by Woo Fong, Luliani said: "To the Grand Central Station." "No! No! I forget no! no!" cried the Chinese woman. "It is Pennsylvania Station." To the Pennsylvania they were taken. The cab dismissed, tickets were bought to Washington. -The baggage was chequed suddenly to be unchequed, an- other carriage called, and trunks and women driven to the Grand Central, whence they shortly started for Chicago, it now being about three o'clock in the afternoon. Reginald Stevens and two Pinkerton men were covering the Grand Central at precisely the time when Miss de Fontanges was leaving. He himself had been standing for above twenty minutes at one of the doors giving upon the train platforms. He turned away to cross to another, wearied and irritated with the seem- ing hopelessness of his task. Since neither of his em- 229 THE FLAME DANCER ployes knew Miss de Fontanges by sight, the pursuit had its futile aspect, so far as the Pinkerton men were concerned. As he joined one of these at one door, Miss de Fontanges, covered by the Oriental wrap and a long thick veil which the Chinese woman had put upon her in the tenement in Doyers Street, and Woo Fong passsed to their train by the very portal he had just quitted. His men having nothing to tell him, he retraced his steps before going to the other railway- stations where he had ordered men to watch. He crossed back mechanically. Had he been asked for a reason he could not have given one. The gateman was already, of course, in his pay; Reggie looked at him half inquiringly. "Not a soul, sir, that could possibly be the young lady. No woman under forty, I should say, has gone through here since you left me, unless it might be one of the two Chinese that " "Chinese !" Stevens repeated in a quick, tense voice ; adding harshly and interrogatively: "A Chinese man?" "No, sir; no, sir." Stevens took breath. "Two women one of them fat and likely old; the other slimmer, but both so done up in their heathen duds you couldn't see much of their faces." Stevens was turning a deaf ear by this to the gate- 230 THE FLAME DANCER man's remarks, also turning on his heel, when the employe added : "If it's a Chinese man you're looking for, sir, there's one over there. He was close by when his two countrywomen went to their train. See him, there?" Reginald looked across, and beheld Struh-La in the very acute angle of a characteristic dispersal of him- self among the crowd now surging up to the doors for local trains. But the instant that the professor caught sight of Stevens he abandoned his scheme of losing himself and slipped up to the American, put- ting out a friendly hand as he did so. "How do you do, Mr. Stevens?" "How are you?" returned Reggie, not seeing the groffered hand. "You are by this time married ?" said the Oriental sedately. "Perhaps I interrupt you departing on your honeymoon?" He smiled a little. "Not at all," said Stevens. "Where are you bound 'for?" "I am here just now seeing two Chinese ladies of my acquaintance off to San Francisco." Stevens gasped a bit as the yellow man glibly uttered the name of the Calif ornian city. "Yes? You're not going across yourself, then?" 231 THE FL'AME DANCER "Yes, across to Paris. I sail to-morrow, but I go on board this evening the Konigin Luise. I am ask- ing all my friends, my best friends, I mean, to come down, drink some champagne, and bid me bon voyage. Possibly if you had nothing better to do, and madam also, you would both join my little group? It would make me very much happiness if you would." "Would it?" replied Stevens laconically. Just for ten seconds, attribute it to what force one will, he forgot that he was in deadly haste to be off, to phone to the other detectives, to ring up Jaffray or to find him somewhere just for ten seconds, not long, but still a portion of time. Then he said, shifting a bit uneasily: "Thank you; good-by; a smooth voyage to you." Struh-La watched him leave the station and get into an electric. Then the Chinese went out and got into an electric, too; and he laughed, as the tigers may laugh among themselves when the jungle is hot and moist, and when theif fangs are fastened in the flesh they love. Reginald reached his men one by one, but none of them had a solitary item to give nor any glimpse of hope or shadow of identification. Miss de Fontanges was not stopping at any hotel in New York; she had not left by any boat or train. He then tried, at first 232 THE FLAME DANCER vainly, to get Jaffray. At last he reached him over the wire at his own flat. " 'No news' ?" Reggie said. "No, I didn't suppose you had. I met the Chinese. What's that? Where?, Grand Central. What's that ? 'Come to you at once ?' Why, yes, if you wish it. Coming. Good-by." He went, and found Jaffray getting himself up in his English disguise, also laying out on his sofa a com- plete outfit for a Roman Catholic priest, including a jet-black wig and a box of make-up with a mirror top. "Pardon me, Mr. Stevens, if I go on with my toilet and so forth, for there is no time for me to lose." "Go on, go on, of course. But what do you want to see me for?" "You say you met Struh-La at the Grand Central ? I thought I was covering him myself and I put no one else on him. What was he doing there, could you make out?" "Well, one of the doormen told me that not a woman under forty had passed through unless it might be two Chinese women who had gone for a train, and " Jaffray dropped his blond make-up stick with a snap into the tin box; his light eyes flashed. "And " the detective repeated, leaning over to- ward his employer eagerly, and at the same time re- 233 THE FL'AME DANCER garding him as one man of action and wit regards another of the same calibre who appears to have temporarily lost his hold upon cause and effect, or upon his own reasoning powers. "And " repeated the millionaire in a curious tone, passing his hand across his forehead as he spoke the detective's eyes still riveted on his face, now in a frankly stupefied amazement. "Yes" Stevens now spoke abruptly, rising and pacing up and down the tiny room in an impatient way, as one does when one is nettled and embarrassed "yes, the gateman told me that er in fact, Struh- La himself told me he was there to see two of his countrywomen off to " He hesitated. "To where?" asked the detective in a tense, undefer- ential voice. "San Francisco," returned the other, as he stopped short before his interlocutor as if suddenly brought to bay. "Gad!" Jaffray sprang to his feet. "Man alive!" he exclaimed, "one of those two Chinese women was Miss de Fontanges, I'll wager my life." Stevens stared at the detective; then he glanced around the room. Jaffray understood. He quickly fetched a flask of whisky and a glass, and the water-bottle. 234 THE FLAME DANCER Reggie shook himself and ejaculated: "Give it to me raw." Then he drained the tumbler. "I'm a fool," he said, "I'm knocked up I " He poured out more rye and swallowed it. The detective regarded him carefully; then he spoke in a low, even tone. "Mr. Stevens, they've got at least one uour's start of us, and you must " Reginald set down the empty glass and laughed. "See here, Jaffray," he said, "you're a mighty clever fellow, and you know that in a certain fashion I have felt the influence of that Chinese. I see and feel his eyes as she must see and feel them, gnawing into her soul, her flesh. There is something occult damna- ble. I individually would not be subject to it I am subject to it through her." Jaffray nodded. "I am conscious of it," Stevens continued. "I know as well as you do that I am standing talking here, wasting the minutes that I should be using to start after her. God/* He whis- pered the word as he sank upon a chair. "I feel it, as she is feeling it, in my hands, my feet, my brain, my soul. It is the writhe and wring of crucifixion." He shuddered. He was a very ruddy, powerful man, and one who never before in his life had voiced an emotion. Jaffray watched him. He did not speak any more *35 THE FLAME DANCER or touch his companion, but went quietly to his own affairs, only pausing to go to the phone and summon Jermyn at once. Stevens sat still for perhaps five minutes, his head leaning down in his hands; then he glanced up, and all the good red blood in his big body seemed to be in his face, the veins in his throat stood out like blue cords and his eyes swam in the intensity of an effort that was superhuman. It was the fight between two souls, the yellow and the white. It was fought in the air, and the blades of the combatants were sharp with the sweetness of the prize for which they struggled, parried, thrust, and cut. One heard nothing save the breathing of the white man but the white man felt in every sinew and bone the splendid agony of a mortal contest. Yet he sat still, with folded arms and eyes fixed on the cherry mantelpiece of the little flat parlor while his soul and the yellow man's soul and the soul of the woman all struggled there in the inevitable triangle together. And the other man went on with his preparations. St. George's bells struck out the hour. Stevens got up. The detective looked at him. "Going?" asked Jaffray in a matter-of-fact fashion, as Stevens laid his hand on the knob. 236 THE FLAME DANCER "Yes." He took a deep breath. "I am going to San Francisco now." "Yes," replied Jaffray. "J ust as soon ^ I see Struh-La I'll follow you." The bell rang. "Ha, that's Jermyn. I sent for him. Will you take him with you?" Reggie said: "Yes," as Jaffray admitted the third man. "You are to go to San Francisco with Mr. Stevens," he said to the newcomer, who asked: "When?" "Now," answered Reginald, as he went out of the open door. "Wire me at each town en route, Jaf- fray. I'll wire you which route I take as soon as I have seen that gateman." He inclined his head. Jer- myn followed Stevens to the electric. They were whirling up to the Grand Central; in five minutes they had ascertained that the Chinese women were go- ing to Chicago, had boarded a westbound express, and Reginald Stevens was speculating on the proba- bilities of his overtaking Luliani de Fontanges and wresting her from the power of the yellow woman. At least Struh-La was still in New York, and Jaffray would not lose sight of him. Amid all this confusion of intricacies pro and con there reigned in his mind a magnificent joy as he realized that for ten minutes 237 THE FL"AME DANCER * if that only he had suffered with her, through 1 her, for her, the torture of the yellow man's domina- tion, and now he was free of it, but equipped with the knowledge, the experience of this occult power, and, therefore, he fancied able to fight and overcome it. He telephoned to Jaffray's flat from a little town, tell- ing him his primary destination. 238 THE FLAME DANCER CHAPTER XVIII NO. 6072 AND NO. 89116 J AFFRAY'S young man, who had charge of the flat in the detective's absences, at once went up to the io5th Street boarding-house, where he found the "Honorable Percy Cyril Saunders" (for so was he known to the lady of the vacillating locks)' in the parlor awaiting the dinner-bell, and, secondarily, the departure of Professor Struh-La from the room which he had so promptly paid in advance to secure. The lady hovered hard by, slipping easily in and out through the half-open folding doors which separated her own sanctum from the parlor. But to her credit be it said, she went down-stairs as soon as she had inspected the Hon. Percy's guest. Thomas Upson was not one to engage a lady's fancy. "Mr. Stevens has taken the Northern route, sir." "Good." "The wire was from Chillingville." "Yes." "Excuse me, sir, but couldn't you wire Chicago to arrest the two women as soon as they reached there?" inquired the unprepossessing Thomas. 239 THE FLAME DANCER "On what grounds?" "I don't know" baffled. "Neither do I, Upson." "Might they not be detained?" "For what cause?" "Abduction of the younger by the older kidnap- ing," was Upson's answer. He was a sharp youth, alert for getting onto anything so as to make himself felt and worth. "I had thought of it," returned the man from head- quarters, "but it's no use in this case. Impossible. The young woman is apparently going of her own free will. See? We're out on that." "I see. Any further orders, sir?" "None. You know when and where you are to meet me to-night. Don't forget the box and the case." "No, sir. You think he won't sail?" "Sure of it." The variegated brow of the susceptible landlady now appeared between the folding doors and then withdrew with a little girlish startled : "Excuse me, I'd no idea " She hadn't many of them. Upson left, and presently the dinner-bell rang and Mrs. Montmorency, the landlady, then had the pleas- 240 THE FLAME DANCER lire of taking the Hon. Percy down into the basement dining-room and of presenting him wholesalely to her guests, among whom were several young and mar- riageable ladies, who viewed him with appraising joy. She, however, introduced him in the retail fashion to Professor Struh-La, who was as pleased as human beings usually are when singled out by one of their kind for elevation of never so slight a degree beyond the level of their human surroundings. Struh-La rose, bowed, put out his hand, and expressed much delight at making the acquaintance of the young Englishman. Talk drifted easily into congenial topics: education, psychology, reminiscences on both sides of foreign lands; anecdotes; a profound interest on the part of the Hon. Percy in the Orient, its women, literature, art, music. "Ah," Struh-La sighed. "There we as a nation have no recognition from the other nations, in music." "But have you music?" inquired the Hon. Percy. "I see," returned the Oriental. "You think of us only as beaters of drums and triangles; but could you sail with me down one of our amber rivers, under our yellow stars, with our winds perfumed from the small red roses ; and the large yellow peaches bursting open from their wealthy juice could you then listen to the boatmen singing the soft songs of the Yangst- 241 THE FLAME DANCER Tehee; could you hear the little yellow girls answer- ing with their flute voices from the dark-green, shady shores; could you detect the muffled drums beaten by the silken-tipped sticks, the triangles fine as silver struck by silver; the reed pipes; the wind-violins, the zitherns fingered by hands as tender as almond blos- soms; the harps " The Hon. Percy said: "I hear them all now, Pro- fessor Struh-La ; your description brings them to me." Jaffa-ay felt, in an outside fashion, the wonderful power of the man at his side; the insidious, exquisite mentality sensuous, keen, overmastering. "I myself play a little the harp." "I am sure of it," returned the supposed English- man; "no one could speak of music as you do and not be a musician." Mrs. Montmorency and the three marriageable but quite unattached ladies exchanged glances of lan- guishing delight. Each of the three saw herself a possible Hon. Mrs. Percy, etc., etc. "You are so good, sir," Struh-La said. "Far from it. My only regret is that you are to leave this country, where I am but just arrived, so soon." "I am sorry, for we are interested in the same sub- jects," Struh-La said with easy fluency. 242 "That is very true," returned the detective heartily. "And you really do sail to-morrow, professor?" Struh-La inclined his head. "In fact, I go on board the ship just now, after the dinner. I have some excellent friends coming to see me off. Perhaps you know them, too, and you will also come?" Jaffray had never believed as firmly in psychologic forces as at that particular moment, for the Oriental was doing precisely what he most wanted him to do. "Delighted!" he exclaimed. "Which boat?" "The Konigin Luise." "Ah," doubtfully. Jaffray now played in thought and tone for a yet higher stake one mischievously intellectual and not necessary to his scheme. He was succeeding well enough to allow himself a bit of amusement. He added: "I know so little of New York; only a day here, you see. Where does your boat sail from? Near the Cunarder, perhaps?" "Pardon me, as a stranger, but if you will be so condescending and go down with me in the cab, I shall be most happy?" Struh-La spoke with admirable grace. As an adventurous intellect of the first class it also entertained him quite a little to thus become intimate in the presence of all these other persons with the little lion from Britain and bear him off to the ship. 243 XHE FLAME DANCER The detective answered with earnest effusion. "You are much too kind, I say! I shall be charmed. It's not every newly landed chap that can boast of an invitation from a man like you." The Oriental bowed. "There are spirits that are kindred," he said, taking up his coffee-cup. "Indeed there are," answered Jaffray, draining his and nearly choking with the humor of his little side- show. All three of the marriageable young ladies had sighed acquiescence when the words kindred spirits had fallen from the professor's lips. Jaffray be- stowed a ravishing glance along the line, they were all opposite to him, bringing up with the remainders for Mrs. Montmorency at the head of the table, dis- pensing ice-cream with so liberal a spoon to him that there was none left on the dish for the young gentle- man occupying the middle room on the top floor; but to this that young gentleman was well accustomed. Before the others had finished, the professor and the Hon. Percy were compelled to leave, as the cab arrived. The professor's trunks, two very large and heavy ones, also much light luggage, were put on and in. Adieus were spoken ; the detective got in first, urged by the professor; then the professor got in, and they sat comfortably together side by side in the 244 THE FL'AME DANCER brougham and were driven, amid much conversation, agreeable, if irrelevant to the plans and thoughts of each, to the pier of the German liner, where, owing to a string of carriages and cabs, theirs was obliged to wait a bit. Another electric brougham drew up beside the Chinaman's. In it sat Upson. He had a suit-case and a large tin box with him. Jaffray saw Upson; Upson saw Jaffray. "Aha!" exclaimed the Chinese. "I see some of my friends Doctor Warren, a great scientist; Mr. Part- ley, Miss Palmer, Mrs. Brockton yes, yes. I had also wanted to have my most dear friend, Reginald Stevens, the great millionaire " "They have so many millionaires here," laughed the Englishman. "Yes, but you will learn this one is many, many times over that. Also you will meet, from your high position, my other dear friends, the Austins. They could not come ; they mourn the sudden demise of the father of Mr. Austin." The detective sighed in propriety, also to cloak his private recollections of how he had helped to carry the remains of Mr. Austin Senior up into his little granddaughter's study, not so very long ago. "Such is this life," pursued the professor. "Now we alight. So." They got out, and in a few mo- 245 ments, while stewards were depositing the professor's light luggage in his stateroom, the jolly crowd who had come to bid him bon voyage were taking their champagne in the saloon. The detective was presented to them all. Primrose Palmer immediately made eyes at him, considering him a handsome and likely godsend wherewith to drive poor Tommy iPartley into still deeper distraction. Warren took to the young Englishman at once; re- gretted that his sister, Mrs. Austin, was just thrown into mourning and that he could not, therefore, present him to her now, but hoped to in the future, when she got back. "Madam Austin goes to Europe, also, then?" asked Struh-La. "It is always the custom of the Americans in grief." "Not to Europe," replied Warren. "They are go- ing to San Francisco." Curiously enough, just at that moment there had come a lull in the fire of nonsense and laughter in the professor's group; the words "San Francisco" sounded out clear, sharp, purposeful; neither the Chinese nor the detective made any sign, but there was an actual gap. Primrose Palmer's merry little voice stopped it up in staccato fashion; she said: "Yes, San Francisco. 246 THE FLAME D'ANCER Wish I could go there on a wedding tour," with a tender glance at her supposed young Englishman and a side shot at poor Tommy. "Seems to me every one I know is going to San Francisco," exclaimed Mrs. Brockton. "I had a note from Bertha Wilmerding this morning" the de- tective bent a vacuous but closely deferential face to- ward the matronly speaker "and she's going to San Francisco, too!" "What for?" inquired Primrose. "About a fortune she's inherited, I understand," was the answer. "Lucky girl," sighed Primrose. "Lose a lover, gain the gold!" "Miss Wilmerding is a very charming young lady," remarked Struh-La. "I am very happy she has good luck." The eyes of the Hon. Percy stole a glance at the Oriental, but the yellow man's face was as imperturb- able as the dragon on his nation's flag. It would soon be time to go ashore. The bells rang, the officers were bustling about, there were leave-takings, sad and merry; Struh-La's friends drank a bumper, and Primrose Palmer and the Hon. Percy had really quite an affecting little scene all to themselves, with a promise to call the next day on his 247 THE FL'AME DANCER side, and a vast deal of pretty language of the eyes on hers. They had left their extra wraps in the pro- f esssor's stateroom ; they now ran there to fetch them. The detective was active in assisting Miss Primrose to put on her cloak. Then he sought his own In- verness, for he was, of course, in evening dress; it could not be found, neither high nor low. The host was distressed; he was sure no one had been in the stateroom except himself! Where could it be? It was mortifying. "Nonsense," returned the Hon. Percy, who felt sure that he would behold his Inverness before too long. "Nonsense, professor; some thievish steward with a fancy for clothes. I don't blame the rascal. My In- verness came from Poole and was quite fit. Don't, I beg, think of it again. The night is warm ; I will take a cab." "The night is chilly," exclaimed the professor. "You must take one of my coats ; but I insist ; this one from Paris is not bad ; keep it as a souvenir of Struh- La until we meet again." The Hon. Percy invested himself in the top coat of the Oriental man, his whole brain laughing with the tang of the situation. There was much hand-shaking, laughter, the jostle of a big, merry crowd; then they all trooped over the 248 THE FLAME DANCER gangplank. Struh-La stood at the rail, waving his adieus; he was full in the flare of the bulbs on the dock; he saw the Englishman jump into an electric brougham which, immediately he spoke to the chauf- feur, turned like a flash and spun furiously up the dock. Then as the last of his whilom guests got out of sight, Struh-La turned, not waiting to see that brougham return, and, twisting his way lithely through the surging crowd of passengers, he darted to the saloon, with a swift glance taking in the fact that there was no one there but a sick child and its anxious mother; crossed to his stateroom, unlocked a small trunk, took from it a bag of black buckskin which he tied around his waist; also Jaffray's In- verness, which he put on; also a wig of light-colored hair and a pair of gold eye-glasses. He pinned a scrap of paper on the pillow, threw a hat and coat out the port-hole, taking care to leave a necktie caught in the fastening, and then went serenely on deck and down the plank. Two cabs were on the end of the dock. The one he had ordered, and another of which the curtains were down, at least the curtain on this side was down. A young man whose name chanced to be Upson was standing near this cab, speaking to the chauffeur. Up- son regarded Struh-La carelessly. He saw Jaffray's 249 THE FL r AME VANCER blue Inverness; he knew a wig when he saw that, too. Struh-La paid little attention to this gawky-looking young man, and nimbly sprang into his electric and was promptly whirled away without a word, showing that his chauffeur was up in his part. What Upson had said to his chauffeur was this: "Have you got the number down fine?" "Yes, sir. 6072, N. Y." "Right. Don't lose sight of him, and I'll pay you whatever you ask." "All right, sir. Depend on me." Upson got in. It was at this instant that Struh-La also had entered his cab. No sooner was 6072 off than 89116 started, too. Inside No. 6072 Struh-La held the black skin bag and drew the detective's Inverness up about his ears. Inside No. 89116, Jaffray said: "I thought he would not sail." He opened the tin box, set up the two tiny candles, lighted them, supported the box on his knees, jerked down the second curtain of the cab, took off his blond wig, wiped his face free of the light-haired Englishman's make-up, and proceeded to transform himself into a swarthy, middle-aged man while the vehicle, meantime, bumped along across town. "What if he had stopped aboard, sir?" asked Up- son, steadying the box with one hand and with the 250 THE FL'AME DANCER other taking from the suit-case a jet-black wig worth; a small fortune for its extreme naturalness. "I would have been aboard, too a belated pas- senger." "But he would have seen you." "Would he? I think not," retorted Jaffray. "I had my hand on this grip and this box, my boy; I was watching him as a cat does a mouse, and I saw 'him skip as soon as his friends were on land. Then, if he had not returned, I would have boarded the boat." "Suppose he had stopped right there until she pulled off," persisted the younger man. "There are such things, lad, as money, limitless money, and tugs; you've heard of 'em, haven't you? how they occasionally run down the bay after ships with belated passengers?" "Yes," admitted Upson; "beg pardon, sir, had you a tug in commission?" "Yes, certainly. There!" The detective adjusted the black wig and then very deftly got out of the Poole-made garments of the Hon. Percy and into the contents of the suit-case, which proved to be nothing less than the full regalia of a Roman Catholic priest. Upson stuffed the London clothes and the blond wig into the suit-case, locked the make-up box, took 251 THE FLAME DANCER a rosary and breviary and prayer-book from his own pocket and put them in the detective's pocket. "What's your name, sir?" he now asked respect- fully. "Father Decker, Father Thomas Decker. I'll take you for a god-parent, Upson. Keep the ticker busy now. So-long. I'll drop you here." They were at the 5th Avenue Hotel, and he motioned the chauffeur to stop. Upson jumped out with the suit-case, and Father Thomas Decker proceeded on his way, his man on the box keeping No. 6072 well in sight. 6072 did not halt, but went direct to 42nd Street, through to the Grand Central, pulled up, and Struh-La, in his rather thin but adequate disguise, alighted. 89116 pulled up there, too, just behind the trap it had so successfully pursued. Jaffray handed his man a fifty- dollar note. "Too much !" said the chauffeur. "Not a bit of it, my friend. Get away now; good luck to you!" The Oriental passed in, bought a ticket and berth; the priest did the same, minus the berth; and when the train started he occupied the front seat in the day coach just behind the sleeper in which Struh-La had his accommodations. 252 THE FL'AME DANCER CHAPTER XIX ACROSS THE CONTINENT REGGIE'S ride over the Rockies, the plains, the desert, was a dismal experience. At Denver he got a wire from Jaffray, stating that the Chinese man had not sailed; at the little town of Pueblo Maria, farther on, he got another, stating that both Struh-La and the detective were hurrying West as fast as wheels could fetch them. The next morn- ing, at Salt Lake, he opened a paper to read among the head-lines this: "Suicide aboard the Konigin Luise. Professor Struh-La, famous Orientalist and scientist of Peking and Paris, throws himself over- board while the ship lies at her dock on the eve of sailing-day, and after entertaining his friends jovially. Note pinned to his stateroom pillow ascribes rash act to disheartening failure of scientific experiments." "Why had not Jaffray wired that Struh-La was dead?" Jermyn ventured to propound this to his em- ployer. "Probably because Struh-La is alive," was the la- conic answer. "He had to account for himself to the 253 THE FLAME DANCER steamship people in some way, and suicide was the easiest and most acceptable." "I see !" returned the other man. Struh-La was, indeed, very much alive. He had told Luliani that he would join her at Chicago, but he made no effort to do so. Instead, he frequently de- layed his progress across the continent by leaving his train, wandering about any city where he chose to halt for a few hours, and then proceeding westward, some- times by a tedious accommodation, sometimes by the swiftest express. One day he sat midway in a day coach, the place beside him vacant. Jaffray decided to try his own nerve. He waited until the train was going at top speed, then walked down the aisle and stopped with a lurch, his hand coming down so heavily on Struh-La's shoulder that the Oriental did glance up. Otherwise he was imperturbable. Jaffray smiled good-humoredly. "I beg your pardon!" he exclaimed, his eyes noting the empty seat at the professor's side. "Seat en- gaged?" Struh-La shook his head and the priest sat himself down comfortably. "Seems as if we were intended to be near each other; wonderful are the ways of Providence!" re- marked the priest, in a suitable tone. 254 THE FLAME DANCER The other made an assenting sound. "Don't you understand English, sir?" "I am some English !" was the half-indignant reply. "Is that so? Well, now, you have the look to me of the far East I'm Irish." "I lived in the East for many years, so many I came to be regarded as a native," returned the Oriental in a taciturn way. "Easily, easily," said Father Decker. "Will you look at a paper?" "No, I thank you, I don't read these American newspapers." Jaffray unfolded the damp journal, and as his eyes fell upon the identical account of Struh-La's suicide which Reggie Stevens was to read some hours later they danced beneath the brim of his priestly hat, and, spreading the sheet directly and widely open across Struh-La's knees, he exclaimed : "Look at that, now ! How do you, sir, being, I take it, a man of brains, account for another man of brains taking his own life?" "Life, what is it?" answered the man of the Orient, glancing curiously at the paper. "What we make it. I knew of this gentleman, sir," tapping the name of Struh-La in its five-inch letters 255 at the top of the page still lying across Struh-La's own knees. "Yes?" he said blandly. "Did you never hear of him?" Struh-La shook his head. He was nettled, angry, fierce. When an Oriental is in this mood he is as if made of knives with their sharp edges turned out- ward and willing to act. His was a nature, too, of a most exquisite fineness, which vibrated to a zephyr, and the reckless daring of the other man no doubt subtly communicated itself to him. He was, more- over, a brave personality, not at all a coward. He was one to grasp the blade without counting the cost. Struh-La, at this juncture, turned his head and shot a glance of incisive reminiscence clearly up into the face of the detective. "You remind me of some one," he said, after a pause;; "yes, sir, you do." "Of whom, may I ask?" was the rejoinder; and, if the pulses of the Oriental beat a quick tune, those of the Saxon beat a quicker. Each of his kind felt danger and relished the taste of it. "Of a young English gentleman. Your face is very like his in the outline. A much younger man. His name is Percy Saunders, the Hon. Percy Saun- ders." Struh-La spoke with deliberation. 256 THE FLAME DANCER The priest laughed aloud, long and heartily in fact, laughter broke loose all through his reply to his traveling companion. "That's my nephew, sir! Sure! Do you think he resembles me ? My own sister's son. She married an English gentleman, and he's just arrived from the old country in New York. I've been there now to bid him welcome." "I see! I see!" Struh-La let the newspaper fall to the floor; neither one picked it up. "A very much fine young man." "I think so, sir, I think so. Perhaps I ought not but since you endorse Percy! Well, well!" The de- tective here burst into a positive guffaw of delight. "No wonder you said I seemed familiar to you. May I inquire where you met my nephew, sir?" "I met your most agreeable nephew in New York." "I am Thomas Decker, at your service, sir; I'm a priest of the Catholic Church." "I know, I know." Struh-La regarded the clerical garments with recognition and also the missal sticking out of the reverend man's pocket. "Do you go far- ther than Salt Lake, Mr. Decker?" Struh-La made the inquiry in a casual way, as his eye appeared to light for the first time on the Salt Lake ticket sticking in the religious gentleman's hat-band. 257 THE. FLAME DAN.CER "You'll lose me at Salt Lake." He knew he should have to change his disguise again to pay for his en- tertainment. "Your charge is there, then?" "Yes, it is." The priest inclined his head, adding: "Do you go on?" "A few miles, to a ranch I own." "Yes, yes, a fine thing, a ranch," and he took out his missal and bent his gaze upon the Latin words, of which he understood, notwithstanding his Harvard, but a very few. At Salt Lake there was a stop of an hour. Struh- La spent that hour without being watched by the detective, returning to the station just in time to re- instate himself in the Pullman and thence to crane his neck from the window and watch for a priest. He could not tell just why, but the sense of possible dis- covery and danger was never absent from him long just as a detective is always on the scent, this one felt watchfulness to be a second and an overmastering nature. Struh-La saw no priest get on. He saw many other people. Among them was one whom he did not at all remark a large, middle-aged, whole-souled, shrewd, self-made man of the West. Dozens of them yvere stirring about in and out of the Salt Lake Depot, 258 THE FLAME DANCER and it was not at all remarkable that Professor Struh- La should not have singled out this especial member for observation. He was a trifle taller than most of them, his cheeks were a deeper bronze perhaps, and his moustache and pointed beard were a little more grizzled. When it came to clothes, his did not fit him even as well as those of most of his type; trousers, frock coat, and vest hung loosely and unacquaintedly over his big body; he had on a pink shirt, a black string tie, no cuffs, a diamond shirt pin, of course, and he carried a new, large grip. He was a fair ex- emplification of a good-hearted mining man, probably on his way to San Francisco to spend or to invest his latest pile. Struh-La did not even see him. 259 T.HE. F.LAME DANCER R CHAPTER XX THE VANISHING PLACE EGINALD STEVENS reached San Francisco between two and three o'clock in the morning. He learned without much trouble that two Chinese women answering the description he was able to give had come in on a train ten minutes ahead of him. He ordered Jermyn into one cab and to take a certain route to Chinatown; getting into another himself and telling his man it would be worth any sum he chose to name if he succeeded in getting him also to Chinatown by another route, in time to catch up with a cab containing two women in Chinese garb. Like a smaller Paris, San Francisco never goes to bed; the saloons were every one open. As the cab rushed past their glare and clink, the passenger's face was wan, haggard, drawn. Would or would he not attain her before she should be enmeshed in the in- calculable labyrinth called Chinatown? He had Jaf- f ray's last despatch in his pocket. It read: "I have my man in sight." That was all, and he was left to wonder whether the detective, or Struh-La, or both, 260 THE FLAME DANCER had arrived, or would arrive about now. With the glitter of the streets and the chatter of the people just now he was rattling past the "Golden Dog" there came, smiting him softly, the mist from the untamed, the mysterious Pacific : to his ear the chimes from the Mission Dolores, to his eye the wooden cross against the opal bosom of the sky; yonder, be- low the shoulder of |the hill, the magic bay, the Golden Gate that harbored in its tantalizing reach strange craft from nearly the whole world. He saw them with straining eyes, creeping through the haze : brigs with their cargos of copra, the fanlike sails o the junks; old whalers shining with oil; weather- stained windjammers back from the Horn; the lateen rigs of the Neapolitan fishermen, the pleasure-craft of the rich; saw, nearer, the old Plaza., about which the original first city had been built. Then, with a dash, he knew, he had been this way before that he was nearing his goal, for here was the "Barbary Coast," that scrap torn from Hell and patched on one side of the old Plaza, with the Latin and Chinese quarters on the other. The blocks were solid flare for the delectation of the Jackies of every land. At that hour, ten minutes after three, the blaze was as brilliant as midday in July; the doors with their modifying screens stood open, the music, tempestuous, with pulse 261 XHE FLAME DANCER and rhythm rang out; there was flutter of skirts, feet, arms, women; silence of men; gaiety of youth and sin; swish of the barkeeper's liquid; laughter, oaths, quarrels, dancing, kisses, fights. Hark! a pistol-shot, a scream of terror, a shriek of death; one door where the lights went out, and whence a dark form shuffled and sprang red-handed into the swallow of the gray- green fog of the sea. Reggie's cab, at its mad pace, dashed after the shuffling form into Dupont Street, into Chinatown. The driver lifted the lid above his passenger's head. "I think that's them, sir," he said. A cab was ahead of them, a hansom also, and from the side there hung out, between the join of the door, a bit of blue cloth the blue that Oriental women wear. " Go on," said Stevens, and the block that separated the two vehicles was nearly covered when the hansom ahead stopped suddenly; the doors lapped back; a woman, a large, stout woman, got out. Stevens leaped to the pavement two hundred feet from the object of his pursuit and ran covertly, with the fog painting his presence out; ran as the living run when fire trips their heels. He saw the younger woman alight; yes, now he was within a few steps of her; the wind, up-blown from the sea, took back the veils 262 THE FLAME DANCER from her face, the flicker of the lamps shone on its exquisite outlines ; the Chinese woman grasped her by; the arms and thrust her under a huddling balcony; he sprang out of the mists to reach her; a sharp cry; rang, the like of which he had never heard; in the flash of an eye a seething mass bubbled up from the alleys, the passageways, the gutters, the windows, doors coolies chattering like enraged monkeys and into this whirlpool of living beings she was sucked. But Reggie stumbled on amid the army of lean, yel- low arms that delayed, but forbore to touch him. He still beheld Luliani in front of him. There! in a second more he must reach her. The lanterns showed him to her just on the edge of this swarming horde of saffron serpents. Why could he not make headway? He would. With a lunge he broke the brood, and, sweeping over them as they scattered, some* of them under his very feet, his eyes met hers, his hand was on her garment, when both she and the old Chinese woman vanished into the bosom of the earth. And all the yellow shoal slunk back into their nest; and the gaudy lanterns swung in the breeze of the dawn, and the gray-green mists of the magical ocean lifted into the sunrise; the matting doors closed; and the bamboo shutters drew in; and the chickens began 263 THE FL'AME DANCER to run about and the roosters to crow as Stevens turned back to the hansom. He had seen her, touched her raiment; he was a man of great strength, deter- mination, and character, with much money at com- mand; he loved her as, he thought, man had never loved woman before; he could do nothing. Law is a curious thing easily broken so often, entirely un- breakable at other times. He stood impotent, the law not on his side. The facts were on his side, but facts as against law do not count. Beyond all there stared the insistent fact that Luliani had not responded to his attempt at her rescue. In her meeting of his eyes no sense of recognition or gladness, merely passivity. But she was drugged by the occult power of Struh- La. Where was Struh-La? Could he at a great dis- tance thus mold her to his will? But was he at a great distance? Where might he not be at this mo- ment? In San Francisco itself. He was standing in hesitation on the narrow sidewalk when Jermyn came briskly toward him. He had left his cab around the corner, and now motioned Mr. Stevens to send his there, too, which was done. "Any news, sir?" asked Jermyn. Stevens told him. "Bad," he assented; "that place is like a bees' nest on the crater of a volcano nothing's ever taken out 264 THE FLAME DANCER of it, and many things and people dropped in. There's a chance for us, if you'll wait a few minutes, sir?" "I'll wait. What's the chance?" "A tourist-party coming through now; there they are!" as several omnibuses, full mostly of women, with a sprinkling of elderly men, halted, and the oc- cupants descended to the street under the supervision of a guide to the quarter. "We can easily join it." "Very well." Jermyn went and spoke to the guide. It was quickly settled with a little money. There were perhaps fifty in the party, and among them there chanced to be the Western miner whom Struh-La had not noticed on the station platform at Salt Lake. His adroit eyes seemed to fall upon Stevens and Jermyn by instinct. As they stepped up to join the group of sightseers, this man advanced to meet them. They both re- garded him with indifference and were mingling with the string of people, responsive to the guide's loud- voiced marshaling, when the miner said in a low tone to both men: "Get out of here quick and hide your faces as you go, if you can." "Who the devil are you?" Stevens asked, in an abrupt, irritated way. The miner spoke in his ear. 265 THE FLAME DANCER Stevens answered him, motioned to Jermyn, and they both dropped out of the party to see Chinatown, pulled their hats over their faces, and got back to their waiting cabs, thence to the Palace Hotel. It was indeed amazing with what apparent willingness Stevens obeyed any one's lead. The man who had all his life been a dictator now appeared to be only a follower. "That was Jaffray," he told Jermyn. "He says Struh-La is coming here. I told him Miss de Fontanges was there. He says to leave it to him now. So go away. Do what you like." Stevens read the newspaper. He took a Turkish, smoked, ate. Engaged a suite of rooms. Accident- ally heard that the Austins had wired for accommoda- tions at the same house. Bought a novel and threw it aside. He thought only of Struh-La. He did find a lawyer. Consulted him, only to learn that he could not in any way obtain the girl, save by strategy. Then he walked to the shore, hired a boat, and rowed himself out upon the bosom of the emerald-soft sea, worked at the oars until the sweat stood on his face, until his hands were sore, until his bones ached. When he pulled in to land, the boatman compassion- ated him, and said: "Will I call a carriage for you, sir?" "No. Let me lie down on the floor of your boat- 266 THE FL~AME D'ANCER shed, will you?" He gave the man money, and he saw only in his mind the face of Struh-La. "Yes, of course, as long as you like, sir; but it's hard." "I want it hard." "Something to eat, sir?" "No." "Drink?" "No." The boatman crossed to his own shanty; but every now and then he looked over at the boat-house, and between the stacks of his fish-poles he could see the prostrate form lying on the floor. This was while the man from headquarters was forming one of the tourist-party to see the far-famed Chinatown of San Francisco. The mining man seemed to take it in with the zest of youthful curiosity; he jested with all the ladies, and had not only an inexhaustible fund of good humor, but an equally large stock of good cigars, which he distributed with a lavish hand among his fellow travelers and all the Chinese he encountered. His head was always on the alert, this way and that, back of him and forward. Presently he saw Struh- La entering the precinct. The party had not come far, for they had lingered in the little alleys where 267 THE FLAME DANCER the slave-girls bobbed in their bamboo balconies in the make-believe Chinatown that the Chinese long ago learned to prepare for the white- face tourists the real Chinatown lay somewhere else. It was to this real Chinatown that Jaffray meant to penetrate, if he could. He inquired of the guide, who pooh-poohed the existence of any Chinatown more extraordinary than the one he led his clients through. Struh-La came trotting along just at the moment, and the de- tective stepped in front of him with a breezy swing of his brawny, uncuffed hand. Take any man's hand and rob it of its cuff, and it looks a bit unrecognizable. The Chinese stopped short and looked up. "Pard!" exclaimed the detective. "Saw you on the cyars 'long back. Knew you for a high class. Want to know now if you can't let me see a little of your real thing; none of this!" He cast a disdainful eye at the slave ladies basketed in their bamboo cages. Struh-La shook his head and shrugged his shoul- ders quite in the European way. "Pshaw, now; yes, you do!" persisted the miner. "You're the genuine article, you are, pard; and so am I! I'm from Arizona, I am. Got spondulicks to burn and want to see things." Still Struh-La was silent as they paced on. "Speak up," urged the miner, who by this time 268 THE FL'AME DANCER found himself rather alone with the professor, as tfie guide, disgusted by the digression of this particular tourist, had conveyed his band swiftly farther up one of the darkest alleys of the place. "Speak up. I'm a decent sort of a feller. Want you to dine with me to-day at the Palace. Taken a fancy to you; but I've got my price, like every other man I want to win a bet." The miner laughed heartily, and the Chinese man stood stock-still. "Yep. I bet I'd get into Simon-pure Chinatown down, down." He pointed to the ground beneath their feet with his index-finger. "There's no such place, my friend," said Struh-La, with a smile. "No?" ejaculated the miner. "Hev I lost one thou- sand dollars on the blamed thing?" Struh-La took a few steps toward a bit of pavement that had already attracted the attention of the man from headquarters. It was a square of fawn-colored mosaic work of a most labyrinthine pattern, like all the pavement of the court in which they stood. It was also dirty, and scattered over with scraps of the burnt paper prayers blown from the open door of the joss-house at one side, but differing from the rest of the pavement a little in color. It also bore another distinction : about the edges of its square it had the appearance of hav- 269 THE FLAME DANCER ing been lately moved. As the lynx eye of Jaffray Could perceive no marks of repair work, nor any ap- parent cause for its having been stirred, he reached conclusions at once. "Well, I swear! You're talkin' straight now, ain't you?" The Chinese nodded. "You're high class, ain't you? Traveled East, I reckon? Been educated? Shouldn't wonder 'f you was a missionary among your own people, eh?" Struh-La bowed in seeming meekness. "Say now, come and eat dinner with me, will you? I've taken a shine to you. My name's Jim McAlpin. I hold out at the Palace, and I can pay for all you can eat and drink. Shake!" He put out his hand. Struh-La took it. "Never met a real high-class Oriental before, pard, and you must excuse me if I'm suddint; always been so sence I was born suddint Well, it's a bargain? To-night, at six, eh?" "I thank you very much; if it's possible, I come. I have very much business." "Savin' souls?" The miner laughed. "Come on and save mine! Well, so-long, pard. I say, now, what's your name?" He stopped, as at this juncture 270 THE FLAME DANCER Stnih-La stood exactly in the middle of the mosaic block. "Ah Fong," replied the Chinaman quickly. "I come. Goo-by." "Good-by, pard." The detective squared around, decidedly turning his back upon the Chinese, and walked toward the street. There was not a sound in the place save a slight rumble as if from below in the earth. With the alert- ness of a tiger, McAlpin now turned his head. He beheld a little cloud of dust and the top of Struh-La's cap vanishing beneath the disturbed block of mosaic; the head of the Chinese once out of sight, the stone quickly revolved into its place again, with no sign save a thicker rim of dust about its edges where they dovetailed into their neighbors. The detective now retraced his steps, as if he had lost something, searching the ground for the benefit of such watchful eyes as might be reconnoitering from the little balconies. He went back as far as the fawn mosaic square carefully, but not apparently, marking its exact location. Then he seemed to find a silver pencil on the ground and rejoined the tourist-party. He stayed with them for a time, and then he went to the Palace, where Stevens was putting up, as he supposed. Jermyn met him down-stairs. Jaffray sent 271 T.HE FLAME DANCER Jermyn on a private errand; it had to do with a woman; the woman was Bertha Wilmerding. He had not been able to get her out of his mind in even the most exciting moments of his transcontinental trip. He was possessed with a very great longing to see this girl again. He knew she was due in San Francisco, and he did not resist the impulse which had him in its grip to find out where she was stopping, if she had come. This, then, as he had nothing else for him to do, was the business upon which Jaffray sent Jer- myn out that night. Then he went up to Stevens' rooms, but Stevens was, of course, not there. CHAPTER XXI FORTY FEET UNDER THE GROUND WHEN the fawn-colored mosaic turned in obe- dience to the will of Struh-La, it revealed a yawning chasm, lighted dully; steps cut in the solid rock, down which the Chinaman crouched as the mechanical device that governed the stone re- fixed it in its position. The moment his head had disappeared from Jaffray's view, the moment the mo- saic stone was back in its wonted place, the dull light grew brilliant. One could see the exquisite spiral stairway cut out of the rock, its rail of iron and bam- boo, its lanterns, gleaming electricity jeweled into sapphires, rubies, emeralds by the stain of the glass. The Chinaman slipped down the first flight, ten feet, to a large platform hewn, too, from the rock, and spread with mattings; from this platform six alley- ways diverged ; literally streets, with huddling houses, jutting verandas, projecting windows, quaint signs; bloused and trousered women pattering back and forth; restaurants, joss-houses, a theater, bazaars, fish-markets, all the teeming antlike life of the Ori- 273 THE FLAME DANCER entals, whose nature it is to burrow when they inhabit the white man's land. Struh-La paused at this first landing, then resumed his downward path, for the spiral staircase wound on to lower and yet lower depths, beneath the Chinatown of guides and tourists, to the actual place where men of Asia live their own lives without dread of the upper world. Arrived at the second landing, twelve feet farther down, the same arrangement of six spreading passageways was apparent, with the dif- ference that the mattings, lanterns, signs, architecture were all of a better grade; the curtains at these case- ments were fine silk, the flowers in the jars were real flowers; the cats were sleek as they slept in the cor- ners; the tortoises were fat as they crawled. The women wore expensive jewels and embroidered sacques ; airs of bustling prosperity reigned here ; bro- cade-clad merchants hurried about in their distinctive skull-caps; coolies swarmed, their baskets hanging on poles, their hand-carts and blue bags filled with mer- chandise. There was chatter, glitter, the vivid life of a real street in a real city. Struh-La nodded to some man whom he encoun- tered on the plaza; then pursued his way down the last flight, fourteen feet more of the beautiful cork- screw staircase cut out of the rock, and arrived at the 274 THE FL'AME D'ANCER third open place. It was broader than the other two, the lanterns shed a mellower radiance, the six alleys wound away, dreamy, fantasmic honeycombs, with the golden light tempered as if the wonderful gray- green mists of the Pacific had been sucked into this bosom of the earth to cast their strange alluring halo. There were no bazaars here, no markets; white par- oquets shrieked in gilded cages, coolies cooked dainty messes on braziers. Women were everywhere em- broidering; playing dominoes; playing with children; squatting on mats at their doorways and oiling their hair; painting their cheeks and lips and eyes and fin- gers; eating; listening to the beat of drums, the striking of cymbals, and the twang of stringed, bar- baric instruments. From the latticed windows of a joss-house came the tinkle of bells musical as living waters rushing to the sea; curling clouds of blue in- cense smoke; the ashes of the paper prayers. There were but few men to be seen. Struh-La stood still and breathed with delight To him, with all his veneer of white civilization, white learning, and white dissipation, this alone gave enjoy- ment; the mystery and the safety of it, forty feet un- derground; this acme of the burrowing instinct was delectable. There was no change of expression on his face, but presently he turned into one of the alley- 275 THE FLAME DANCER ways and traversed its length. This was six blocks, the extent of both the upper and under Chinatown of San Francisco. At the end he scratched with his finger-nails on a certain door; it was opened by Woo Fong. Struh-La wasted no remark upon this woman, but walked into the courtyard, which was charmingly pretty, with birds hopping about as far as the silken cords tied to their legs would allow them; one of these had choked itself with its skein in an endeavor, perhaps, to be free! Struh-La stopped to kick it out of his path and to point it out with a frown to Woo Fong. She picked it up, terrified, and hid it in her sacque. There were flowers, a fountain with gold- fishes, from without one heard the strike of cymbals and the throb of lutes. Struh-La said to the old woman: "Bring her to me." Woo Fong went away and came back. "She will not come." Struh-La said: "Bring me the harp." The Chinese woman brought it. She had forgotten the dead bird in the sling of her sacque. The harp was heavy, the bird fell at Struh-La's feet. He re- ceived the harp, and this time indicating the choked bird with his foot, he also touched Woo Fong as she stooped to pick it up. She went away, and her master 276 THE FLAME DANCER sat on the edge of the fountain basin and played on his harp just as he had played on Betty Austin's harp. Struh-La had learned how to play in Berlin, at a great conservatory, where the teachers all said he had fin- gers fit for any sort of delicate manipulation. In any event, he now drew from the strings of the harp a strange and compelling melody; not at all like any- thing Western, nor yet those airs of Asia, Africa, which we know and succumb to, some of us; but a rarer thing, a music with, so to speak, a brain to it thought, not sense; mind as well as heart. The music of the Orient, rarely if ever heard by alien ears, is a music possessing the intellectual quality which is not inherent in music anywhere else al- though it is true some people claim it for some of the white people's composers. Struh-La played on, his slant eyes fixed upon one of the bamboo screens which led into an adjoining apartment. The little birds hopped up close to his feet to listen, the golden fishes in the pool ceased from darting about ; the gray mon- keys in their wicker cage remained motionless and solemn; the patter of footsteps and the sound of voices without in the alleyway ceased; people were listening. Then the bamboo screen trembled, was moved aside, and Luliani walked in. She was dressed in the Chinese fashion in trousers, blouse, and a long outer 277 sacque of pale pink silk, embroidered with peacock's feathers of gold thread, and dragons of blue. Her bearing was not unconscious, but proud; quite fear- less. The harp spoke, said: "Nearer." Struh-La uttered no sound. She came close up to him, and said : "Well?" "You are not afraid?" he asked. "No." "Woo Fong has been good to you?" "Yes." "I am patient." She glanced at him inquiringly. "I wait for you to say you are ready to be my wife. Then, as I told you in New York, we will have it performed by the ministers of your religion, safely." Still the girl said nothing. "I arrived only to-day," he pursued. "I have not been followed; in fact, I killed myself, committed suicide on board the ship I was supposed to be sailing on. Some of the jewels are here." He stopped playing now, and, lifting his coat, he untied from his waist a black buckskin bag, loosened the string. "Sit down," he said to her. She sat down on the stone ledge of the fountain basin, and he emptied the contents of the black buck- 278 THE FL'AME D'ANCER skin bag in her lap. It contained many of the Aus- tin and Stevens jewels. Struh-La hung the strings and chains of gems around her neck, he pinned the brooches in her sacque ; he stuck the ornaments in the braids of her hair, clasped the bracelets on her arms, set the tiara on her brow. Then he said : "Her hair is blacker than any deep part of the dark- est night; her eyes shine with the luster of the moon's beams; her lips are like the petals of the poppy- flower; her breath like the opium which steals man and carries him to Elysium." The girl made no reply. Struh-La leaned nearer to her, the peculiar light in his eyes which women and men alike had felt and succumbed to. Then she spoke. "There were more?" Her voice sounded weary. Struh-La nodded. "Yes, there were, of course, more. But all these you are to keep; they are yours." She shook her head, shuddered a little, and moved uneasily on the stone ledge. "Let me go, let me go !" she pleaded, gathering the jewels from her head, arms, and neck and casting them to him. She suddenly felt strong, capable; she was sure he could not have fur- ther dominion over her. Was it because at this 279 THE FLAME DANCER moment Struh-La's whole soul was centered upon Reginald Stevens' subjection? Presently he fastened his eyes upon her forehead, his hands making rectangular motions before her; he lulled her will once more into acquiescence. She gathered the jewels back into her keeping and listened while he talked on; she looked with intelligence and interest. This pleased him. Her intellect was what he controlled, and any indication of it suited and in- toxicated him. "I have all the money we can need." "Yes," she assented, "of course, and you have the jewels, too." Struh-La responded: "Listen to me. You are my- self; to you I can say almost all things. I have one part of the jewels only." Luliani looked at him quickly. "Did I not take them all?" She rose and her tone was one of pro- found surprise. Struh-La shook his head and smiled. "Did I not take them I?" she cried out, inspired by a peculiar expression on his face, and her voice was full of joy and relief. Struh-La again shook his head slowly, as if per- haps to please her. "Who took them?" Luliani gasped. 280 THE FLAME DANCER Struh-La answered: "No one took them." He laughed then, and the girl turned away, disheartened at what she considered his levity. "But they are all gone from Mrs. Austin?" she exclaimed. "Yes," he replied quietly. "Where" she hesitated an instant "are the flame stones ?" Struh-La grasped her sacque, and in a tone as sweet as the throb of his harp answered: "The flame opals are in my reach. Stevens and his detective Jaffray will never recover them. Some one is keeping them for me until the right moment. Stevens expected to give them to you. They will be yours, all but one that goes back to the East, but Stevens will never see them again; he will never see you again, Luliani; you are my woman, never his." She swayed a little on her stone seat. She was perfectly conscious ; her mind was on Regi- nald Stevens love, honesty, womanliness but she swayed to this man and could not regrasp her own mentality, the mystery perhaps of the fourth dimension held her in its bondage. "By and by we will sail for Honolulu, Woo Fong and you* I will follow on another ship. Do not rebel, it is useless. Besides, take pleasure in this; it is a 281 THE FLAME DANCER magnificent delight to have more wit than others and to use it. I could not live without the supremacy of my will. Come now and eat. We require much fine food and drink." He clapped his hands, and Woo Fong fetched food. Struh-La ate with voracity and yet with a certain daintiness. He said to the girl: "Eat you also, although you do not need it as much as I do. Passivity does not require too much fuel; it is I who do. I am now controlling more people than ever before in my experience." His slant and alluring eyes were fixed upon Luliani's face. "I am controlling Reginald Stevens; he is inert, listless; al- though he is here, he does not look for you with his own activity." Miss de Fontanges made no reply. Presently Struh-La went away out into the alleys up one story to play fan-tan. Later on he recalled the whimsical invitation to dine at the Palace Hotel from the Colorado mining man. Meanwhile the Colorado mining man had secured a small room in a lodging-house in Third Street, very much out of the way, but admirable for his purposes of varying personality. He had also established re- lations with police headquarters, and knew he could obtain aid at any hour of the day or night. To this small room, overlooking Merchant Street and the wa- 282 THE FLAME DANCER ter-front, Jaffray went, after despatching Jermyn on his quest for Bertha's whereabouts. Taking off his disguise as Jim McAlpin, the man from headquar- ters invested himself once more in the garments of Father Decker; so arranged, he went back to the Palace Hotel. Jermyn awaited him in the office, but would not recognize his superior until Jaffray gave him the tip; this once done, the subordinate approached his chief; they sat together for a few minutes, having met as old parishioner and priest, each surprised at encoun- tering the other. While Jermyn held a paper before his face, he said: "The lady is here; she got in to-day." "Good," was the reply; "where is she?" "At a little private hotel on Sutter Street, not far away; it's called the Alexandra." "I know it diagonal corner from the Stafford House, next door to a concert-hall," said the priest. "Precisely, sir." "Get away now. Keep in call, though, right here." "Yes, sir. Nothing to be done just now, then?" "No, not just now. Has Mr. Stevens come in yet ?" "No, sir. Yes, there he is !" as Stevens entered the reading-room. "As soon as you can, let him know that I am going 283 THE FL'AME DANCER up to his rooms and waiting there to see him." The priest rose, put out his hand in parochial fashion to the facile Jermyn, then walked away to one of the corridors, his prayer-book in his grasp. It did not take Jermyn any longer to acquaint Reggie with Jaffray's message than it took Jaffray to reach Stevens' rooms; the two men met at the thresh- old savage inquiry in the face of the millionaire man, blankness on the other until the door was shut. Then Jaffray spoke. "Mr. Stevens, I think I see daylight." Reggie did not speak; he was dulled by his sleep in the boatman's hut, perhaps. "I've been talking with Struh-La." He rehearsed to Stevens the gist of his experiences as Jim McAlpin in Chinatown. "Now," he added, "I'm going to get into those infernal depths, I'll bet my life on that, and fetch Miss de Fontanges out; but I can't do it to- day, nor to-morrow, either; it'll take time." "How is it to be done?" Stevens as yet spoke quietly. "I'm counting on the Chinese man's turning up here at six." "He won't come !" said Reggie. "Yes, he will. Remember, he's got a living identity to keep a decent record of. He's dead, maybe, so far 284 THE FLAME DANCER as Struh-La's concerned, but on this side of the world he is a merchant; he is known to 'Father Decker'; he left me at Salt Lake and has no notion of my turning up in San Francisco. I intend to have him meet me in this guise to-day." Reggie did not move. "You will excite his sus- picions." "Just what I wish to do," returned the detective. "I want him to see you, too; not with me, of course." "What are you giving him this advantage for?" demanded Stevens. "I want him," returned Jaffray, "to get it firmly fixed in his head that he is being watched." Stevens said : "Ah!" As one wakens from a stupid nap, he felt his own disadvantage. He tried to get back his balance; tried and failed. All he could do was to listen carefully and with an effort, to speak. "Would it not be better to keep the whip in the stock, and not handicap my cause by letting him in on the ground floor?" he added, after thinking a minute. "You're right, Mr. Stevens, in general; the excep- tion proves the rule. So long as this fellow goes along without anything to trouble him, he may keep Miss de Fontanges in hiding for years. You and I are powerless. He's got to be waked up to a sense of danger. Security with him spells inactivity, so 285 THE FLAME DANCER 'far as our purposes are concerned ; the minute I breed suspicion in him I create action, and that's what I want!" The eyes of the detective flashed. Stevens rose and paced up and down the floor. The detective went on: "The minute Struh-La thinks he is being watched his first thought will be of the jewels " "Why not of Miss de Fontanges?" interrupted Stevens dully. "Because there is no danger to him in his retention of Miss de Fontanges. Miss de Fontanges crossed the continent, unaccompanied by this man. She did not escape, or refuse, so far as any one knows, to go ; she is here of her own apparent free will. We've got to remember that Struh-La has every apparent right, so far as Miss de Fontanges is concerned, on his side ; we may know that there is a great power of occultism in commission, but the law and public opin- ion don't recognize that force. The factor we have to work with in regaining Miss de Fontanges is the theft of the jewels Mrs. Austin wore. The moment I arouse the Chinaman's suspicions, that moment I set him to work putting those jewels out of his pos- session. No one can take Miss de Fontanges from him as long as she seems to wish to stop, but the instant we can fasten enough upon him to warrant 286 THE FL'AME 'D'ANCER arrest we get him, and so we reach Miss de Fon- tanges see?" "I hear," was the short reply. "Struh-La will, unless I am mightily mistaken, take measures to put those jewels in some one else's keep- ing very shortly after he has seen you and Father Decker!" "Whose?" Stevens asked. The detective hesitated a second, then said: "Some woman. Now, will you, Mr. Stevens, go down in the office and Struh-La will turn up. At any rate, I will, in a few minutes." Reggie nodded. "All I am after is that he shall know that you are in San Francisco." Jaffray smiled as he spoke. Stevens did not smile. He left the room and went down-stairs. He moved mechanically. Was it Struh- La who once again had dominion over him ? Who can say? 287 XHE FLAME DANCER CHAPTER XXII WEAVING A HUMAN NET AS Father Decker had predicted, the Oriental entered the lobby of the Palace Hotel that evening at the appointed time. He advanced with the direct gait that was characteristic of him, to the desk, and inquired for Mr. Jim McAlpin. At the counter he saw Reginald Stevens, but this did not deflect him from his course. Stevens looked at Struh-La and nodded. The professor, leaving the counter, came up to Stevens. "I see, you see also by the papers, those miraculous journals in yellow of your country, that I make suicide!" the man from the Orient laughed. "I did." "It was ridiculous. Every one knew better. I was called by the illness of my best friend here. He re- covers so soon. I go away." Struh-La looked at Stevens ; his extraordinary eyes seemed to bite into the eyes of the Western man. Stevens felt them; even jerked himself away a bit; then came closer to Struh- La than before. There was defiance in his atmosphere. 288 TES, SHE IS HERE. 1 Page 289. THE FL'AME DANCER Struh-La smiled. Stevens perforce smiled bade. There was such idiosyncrasy in their attitudes that the men near them halted in their chat and stared a little. The Oriental smiled on, the man of the West re- treated, backed down as it were, and leaned in a lazy fashion against the bar. Struh-La said in his perfect way, as a Parisian would say it: "And madam is here also?" It was a daring thing to have said. He liked risk; he was risking his life just then with this man in front of him, and all the group felt it. Every man of them knew that these two men were righting for "madam," whoever she was ! And each of them would have bet on a sure battle to be fought then and there. But although Stevens did make a slight motion, after all it seemed a futile one. Then he pulled him- self together and said, with coolness and meaning: "Yes, she is here." Struh-La's eyes flashed. He felt danger near, but not upon him as yet. Stevens turned his back and went away. But as the Oriental regarded him, so did the others; they all noted that he went reluctantly, indirectly; and Struh-La presently resumed his in- quiries for Mr. McAlpin. "No such person here; not on the register, sir," 289 T.HE FLAME DANCER was the rejoinder, as the clerk turned the leaves of his book. The Oriental made answer : "But I think some mis- take is made. Large, fine-looking gentleman from Colorado." The clerk shook his head. "Plenty of fine-looking men here, sir, but none by the name of McAlpin," was the smiling response. Struh-La did not smile back; he felt baffled; and just then he beheld Father Decker approaching with a letter, which he dropped in the mail-box. The sight of the priest whom he had left behind him at Salt Lake did not reassure Struh-La. The fact was, seeing this man here at this time was dis- agreeable. However, it looked as if it were equally so to the priest, for, on beholding Struh-La, he made a palpable move toward getting out of range as quickly as he could. The bait took; the Oriental, convinced now that the presence of this priest in San Francisco in some way had to do with him and his affairs, in- stantly decided to do as he usually did, take the bull by the horns. He went after the priest, and was obliged to walk very fast indeed to keep him in sight, as the reverend gentleman sought the street and crossed over the way. 290 THE FL'AME DANCER Struh-La finally brought up a block from the Palace Hotel. The detective turned sharply, with an expression of ill-disguised annoyance, as of one who is recognized against his will. He said: "Well, sir?" in a brusque way. "How do you do?" exclaimed the Oriental, rooted now in the belief that Father Decker was just what he was, a detective, but he did not think of Jaffray or any New York man. "A mistake, I think," remarked the priest, disen- gaging himself and making to go on his way. "No," said Struh-La; "don't you remember me, in the train coming West a few days ago ? We separated at Salt Lake. You are Father Thomas Decker, aren't you?" "True for you!" exclaimed the priest. "You've got the advantage of me, though. Who are you?" "Don't you remember?" The Oriental regarded his companion with curiosity. He was wondering if it could be true that this man had no recollection of him. The priest shook his head. They had been, guided by the inclination of the detective, walking along toward Sutter Street as they talked. "It's too bad, sir. That's the worst of me; I've 291 , THE FLAME DANCER a poor head for remembering anything but the blessed mass." The Chinese smiled. "I will not then refresh your memory, sir." "You're an Oriental man, sir; that's enough for me." Struh-La glanced up in surprise. "I'm sent out here by the head of our order, the Jesuits, you know, to study your people." Struh-La shook his head. His instincts told him to stick to Bombay with this man, although he might be wise to do even that tacitly. "You mean to say you're not a Chinese?" Father Decker spoke incredulously. "I am more often than not taken for one, and I am much interested in those people of the East." "Are you now? Well, so am I. I was in the Palace just now when you were asking for Jim Mc- Alpin." "Yes," said Struh-La; "were you?" And he felt that he would like to strangle this priest, and yet, too, he patted himself and said: "You are a fool," in his own mind. "I met him only to-day, and he invited me to dine with him. I came, to find no such person!" "That's like him!" exclaimed the priest. 202 THE FLAME D'ANCER "Do you know him?" asked Struh-La. "Indeed and I do !" heartily ; "the best fellow in the world, only he will take too much whisky, and when that's on board, Jimmie loses his senses." "Is he not, then, stopping at the Palace?" Father Decker hesitated before he answered. He was calculating whether Struh-La was or was not sufficiently put on guard. "Well, now that I can't say ; but as Jimmie's a friend of mine, and he's cheat- ing you out of a dinner, I insist on your dining with me; but I do!" "Pardon me, I cannot; very much obliged, I can- not." "I won't take no for an answer," was the priest's reply. "Come on in somewhere here!" He glanced around. They were in front of the Hotel Alexandra, and Jaffray's heart beat double-quick as he thought that it was here that Bertha Wilmerding was stop- ping. Should he enter and run the risk of her seeing him disguised? Why not? She would never recognize him, and he might have the delight of feasting his eyes upon her. "This is a nice little place, I've heard," he persisted, leading Struh-La into the modest entrance hall. "But, sir " 293 THE FLAME DANCER "Ah, surely now, I'll be believing it's because I can't recall your name, sir, that you're angry at the poor old priest and won't break bread with him." Struh-La was cut in two with opinions. One way he believed the priest a detective in Reginald Stevens' pay; the other he found Father Decker just what his name and garb proclaimed him. "No, no, no," said the Chinese, as he actually found himself in the pretty dining-room, seated a short dis- tance from the door. The detective had chosen this table with a purpose. He longed to see Bertha, to hear her voice; he knew that if she came down to dinner, it must be probably while he should be there ; she would have to pass that table; she might very likely see Struh-La. Would she speak with him? She would be so close that he could detect the fragrance of her ribbons, and he had never felt to any woman as he felt to this one. He had indeed wilfully fetched his man to the Hotel Alexandra. They seated themselves, Father Decker facing the entrance. Struh-La's back to it. "Sure, there now, it's for poor Jimmie I'm doing- this, sir. Ah, many's the scrape I've helped that man out of." He pushed a menu across to his guest and 294 THE FLAME DANCER proceeded to mark another, making liberal concessions to the wine-cellar of the house. "You have known him long?" inquired Struh-La. "Boys together, sir; grew up like brothers." "Aha, very nice. But now I ask of you to remem- ber my name, can you not? It is awkward to be the guest of one who does not recall one's name." Father Decker put his hand to his forehead thoughtfully. Meantime, the raw impulse of the Ori- ental was to get up and run. He didn't do any such thing, however; and while he sat there, quivering, he enjoyed his situation. The man's mentality was as powerful as it was extraordinary, and it was equally well balanced. While he watched the priest Bertha Wilmerding came in ; the sight of her caused the detective a thrill- ing delight. She was beautifully gowned in some filmy pink stuff, with a lot of yellowish lace. Her black eyes sparkled, and her atmosphere was one of a radiant prosperity, a bit daring, possibly, but to this man she was then and there the one woman in the world whom he most wished to see. As she came toward their table, passing it very closely, to her own seat, ,she did see the back of Struh-La's head. As she turned to sit down in her chair, which was on the upper side of a table rather higher in the room than 295 THE FL'AME DANCER Jaffray's, she recognized Struh-La, and, not having fairly sat down, with a not ungraceful motion she came toward him a step, a curious anxiety and an equal daring in her expression. Struh-La instantly rose. The priest, following the usual impulse, was about to rise also, but instead he sat still and looked on. "Professor Struh-La! how do you do? I am glad to see a familiar face!" "Thank you, mademoiselle. It is agreeable to see you. You are here a long time?" Miss Wilmerding laughed. "I've only just ar- rived, and you?" "To-day I come." "I heard you had committed suicide," exclaimed the girl. "Oh, that was what you call a fake story of your newspapers." Bertha, with a slight glance toward Father Decker, began to move away. Struh-La ac- companied her, exchanging a few words, and then returned to his host. "Pardon me for not introducing you, Father Decker, but I fancy the priest does not care too much for these ladies of society." Struh-La smiled amiably as he spoke. The priest inclined his head. "The lady gave me 296 THE FLAME DANCER fyour name, 'Struh-La,' but even now, for the life of me, I don't recall your telling that to me when we first met." "No?" was the retort. "One encounters so many; people." "A very interesting young lady, that," pursued the reverend gentleman, glancing over at Bertha. Struh-La shrugged his shoulders. He was now sure that Father Decker was a detective. As he sat there he determined exactly what he would do and how he would do it. He did not intend to lose any time, and he did intend to take advantage of every possible circumstance which fate had thrown in his way. He reconnoitered the hotel in all its bearings while he discussed the dinner with his genial host. Jaffray noted his preoccupation, excellently as it was cloaked, and arrived at his deductions also. Bertha finished her dinner before the two men. As she passed their table she swept a pretty glance, and, a few steps nearer the door, she had the ill luck to drop her tortoiseshell fan. Struh-La, who was glancing over his shoulder at her, sprang and picked up the fragments. Miss Wilmerding was profuse in her thanks; the professor accompanied her gallantly to the lift, speak- ing a little to her on the way. When he turned, after 297 31HE FL'AME VA'NCER seeing her safely on her upward journey, Father Decker was at his side. Struh-La almost started, not quite. Jaffray said: "I was afraid you were running away from me; that the dinner was so bad or the company so poor?" "My dear and reverend sir!" exclaimed Struh-La reproachfully, as he linked his arm in the detective's, "I went to the assistance of that young lady. I knew her a little in New York. She is here without friends, she tells me, looking after a legacy, something like that. What a fine country that the women can so voyage about it fearlessly!" They sat down again to their dessert, and amid pleasant conversation shaped by the detective to meet the end of frightening his guest and biased by the guest in such fashion as he imagined would best serve his own ends. In another half -hour they parted. Struh-La said he was going to the Chinese quarter. Jaffray cast little doubt on this statement, but, never- theless, as soon as the Oriental had disappeared, he rang Jermyn up at the Palace, and told him to shadow the suspect, giving him the fact that Struh-La had just that moment gone out into Sutter Street. Father Decker then returned to the Palace, entered a 298 THE FLAME DANCER telephone-booth, rang up the Alexandra, and asked to be given Miss Bertha Wilmerding. In another moment he heard her voice, and it thrilled him as woman's voice never had before in two different ways. She said: "Who is it?" "This is I. Don't you know my voice?" "No," hesitatingly. "I think I recognize it, but I don't dare to assume." "Please assume. It will afford me pleasure if you will." "Well, I think I last saw you at the Grand Central when I was leaving New York for Saratoga." "Correct." "Is it really you, Mr. Jaffray?" "It is really I. Did I not tell you I would follow you to the ends of the earth?" "Yes," very softly. "Well then, here I am." "Just to see me I mean is there no other reason professional, maybe, you know?" Her tone was hesi- tant. "I am here just because you are here." She made no reply, but he could hear her breath coming quickly in delight. He then said : "When can I see you now?" 299 THE FLAME DANCER "Oh, no, not just now." Her voice was a trifle agitated. "This afternoon?" he pleaded. "Impossible!" Bertha spoke hurriedly. "I have an important engagement. I am sorry." "Another man?" Jaffray exclaimed reproachfully. "If you say so!" She laughed with amused pleasure. "Then it can be this evening, can it?" "Yes, this evening. I shall be so glad." "I will be with you at eight-thirty. I shall send you some flowers as an avant courier." Jaffray heard her small sigh of superb satisfaction, and it caused him delight. He hastened to add, in a soft and more intimate tone: "Might I be allowed to come up unannounced to your parlor?" "I suppose so," the girl answered, in pleased hesita- tion : the whole utterly chaperonless situation charmed and yet frightened her. Jaffray went on : "Will you give me the number of your parlor, then? These people are so stupid. I am terribly pressed for time, and, to be candid" he spoke rather desperately "I am in a fever to see - you." The reply came quickly: he almost saw the blush that came with it. 300 "The number of my little parlor is forty. Good-by until " "Until eight-thirty." He went back to Sutter Street and sent her a box of roses from the smartest flower-shop in the town. 301 THE FLAME DANCER CHAPTER XXIII THE FIFTH WHEEL OF THE COACH WHEN Stevens quitted the wine-room, his gait was a little undertermined, even after he had gotten beyond range of the Oriental man's eyes. He took the lift and went up; as he left it, crossing the corridor to his rooms, Jean Austin came running after him. "Oh, Mr. Stevens! Mr. Stevens!" The child in her mourning made a pathetic little figure. "We are here! We've just come. Come in; mother will be so glad to see you. It's not the jewels at all. I don't mean that; the wires from you have told us all that. But have you found her?" Reginald was in Betty's parlor by this time and had shaken hands with both Jean's parents. "Have you found her?" the child reiterated, and her father's eager eyes put the same tense question. He shook his head. De Forrest Austin turned and left the room. "Don't you know where she is yet?" cried Jean in a stupefied way. "No." 302 THE FL'AME DANCER "I thought you would be sure to find her right off." "Hush, Jean; it takes time to do things," Betty exclaimed. "Yes," Stevens said in a vacuous way. He seemed suddenly to recollect Struh-La's eyes and he became inert, careless. "Aren't you going to do anything?" persisted Jean. "Yes! yes! of course," Reggie said, and then he got up from his chair and went to the window. Be- hind his back Mrs. Austin motioned Jean to leave, and Jean obeyed, remarking at the door: "Well, all I've got to say is I have no use for the men we know, mother; they're a lot of first-class cads!" Betty laughed. "Children don't understand," she exclaimed. "They fancy miracles can be worked in a minute." "No," was the answer, "they don't understand; no, of course not. It's a blooming shame about your gewgaws, Betty." "Pshaw!" she cried. "Think of your own, worth ten times what mine were. Tell me, is there no trace or clue yet ?" "Oh, yes; some. I'm on the track, I think." "And has Jaffray done nothing at all, either?" 303 THE FLAME DANCER "He's working." Stevens felt uncomfortable at the mention of Jaffray's name. He felt more awake. He forgot Struh-La. Betty Austin regarded him curiously. The blood rushed up to her face scarlet. She made to speak, then stopped; so noticeably that Reginald smiled and said : "Well, what is it?" "Have you seen any one I know here, any of the old set, that's all?" She crossed the room and ar- ranged some flowers in a vase. "No. Why?" "Nothing." "I've seen one man we know. Struh-La's here." Betty stooped to pick up something which had never fallen, and all the red blood forsook her face. Stevens saw it; he went over to her. "Look here, Betty !" he cried out. "It isn't possible that that man is anything in your thoughts, is he ?" She shrank away a little, laughed, and said: "I think him fascinating." "All the women do, I believe." Reggie fell back. "Not all ; but to me there was an appeal in his nature and his music !" Mrs. Austin put up her eyes and hands. "That was divine." "Well," Reggie stared at her. He recalled the five-wheeled coach he had started Jaffray off on in 304 THE FL'AME DANCER New York ; and then he added : "You realize that he is probably the man who took your jewels and mine?" "No. I am sure it was not he." Mrs. Austin's manner was dreamy. "Who do you think it was, then?" he asked, much in her identical mood dreamily. "I don't think I I well " Betty Austin sat down by the fire, and it struck Stevens sharply that her attitude was precisely the one she had had in the picture-gallery at the time that he had seen Luliani de Fontanges approach her and lower the lights. He sprang up, took her by the shoulders, and shook her a little, staring at her upraised hand and her open eyes. "Yes," she said. "Coming." Then Jean burst back into the room. "Miss Bertha's down-stairs, mother!" she cried out, and Betty rose and laughed. She said to Stevens : "You know Bertha is in San Francisco, too?" "No, I didn't." "Yes," put in Jean; "but father won't let her visit mother if he knows it." Mrs. Austin smiled. "You treated the poor girl shamefully, Reggie. She's come into quite a bit of money." "Has she?" 305 "Yes. She's entertaining, amusing, and Forrie can't make me give up my friends. She's coming to dinner this very evening. Won't you?" Stevens said : "Thank you, maybe I will." "It would be such a lark!" "Yes, it might." Stevens made his adieus and Jean went with him as far as his door. "I'm sorry," the child whispered, "I spoke that horrid way but honestly, now that we're alone to- gether, aren't you doing anything to find my Miss de Fontanges ?" When Reginald reached his rooms he found Jermyn there. Jermyn informed him that Jaffray was now onto the most important deal of the whole job, and that he would fetch Miss de Fontanges out before five o'clock to-morrow morning. Stevens said: "Will he?" "Any orders, sir?" inquired Jermyn. "No." Jermyn left. Jean's question echoed over and over again in his ears: "Isn't any one going to do anything?" What- ever was being done, the man from headquarters was doing it; he himself stood and waited. In a flash Stevens seemed to realize that he had sat around half listlessly all the time he had been in San 306 THE FLAME DANCER Francisco; the realization came upon him as a revela- tion; he was astounded at himself. He walked about his rooms; there seemed to be new life in his veins; ability and strength went swinging through his blood. What had dominated him and kept him inert all this time? Jaffray? No. Although a jealousy of Jaf- fray suddenly leaped into existence. What in the name of all sacred things had forced him, Reginald Stevens, under, and made of him a laggard and a mere spectator? Reggie was a downright chap, not over- gifted with imagination, and he put these questions to himself in a very matter-of-fact, if a very bewildered, way. The answer came direct and unhesitating: "Struh- La," and in a second he grasped the full extent of his supineness and its cause. Struh-La had dominated him ! Struh-La had been able to keep him half asleep. Now he awoke, and, with a cruel sense of the time he had lost and a strange sense of recovered power, Ste- vens laid his plan in two seconds. It was very sim- ple and just what he would have done the hour he arrived in the California city, had not the will of Struh-La dictated otherwise. It was to go down into the lowest depth of the Chinese quarter and fetch Luliani out, if she were there, or die in the try. 307 FLAME DANCER M CHAPTER XXIV THE WOMAN IN ROOM NO. 40 EANTIME, less than an hour after his talk with Bertha over the phone, the presumably; sobered-up Mr. Jim McAlpin drove up to the Alexandra Hotel, jumped out quickly, came in, and registered. "I've been stopping over at that house on the cor- ner there; too much racket for me." "No racket here, sir." "I'm superstitious, too, I am. I've had an odd number over there. Want an even-numbered room if possible. Got, say well, forty?" "No, sir; forty's occupied by a lady; quiet as a mouse, too a lady from New York. Room next her's forty-two is vacant to-day. Lady in the other side of that, too lady from San Jose. How's that?" Mr. McAlpin hesitated, apparently, and then, with a show of reluctance, said: "Well r reckon that'll do. Try it, anyhow!" 308 THE FL'AME D'ANCER "You'll find 42 quiet enough here, sir; a lady on each side of you. Front! Show the gentleman up to 42." 42 proved to be a square room, with two windows on Sutter Street. It was nicely furnished; logs were on the hearth ready to light; there was a closet, which the page boy pointed out with becoming pride, and wherein he deposited the new guest's valise, topcoat, and umbrella. There was a little Waterbury clock on the mantel and it sang out the half-hour just as the boy left. McAlpin promptly turned the key; then closed the blinds, shutting out every ray of light ; took the towels and pinned them deftly over the transom, and went in the closet. He tapped the wall very gently. It resounded thinly, for it was of lath. On the other side it did not form another closet, but was a pro- jection. A picture hung upon it in this adjoining room, and it thus made an unnoticeable portion of the walls to any occupant. As he stood there Jaffray despised himself. Eaves- dropping, no matter in what cause, is a despicable business; but the memory of a girl's face spurred him out of his self-abasement, and he at once plunged all his faculties into the actual occasion. He could hear, in his neighbor's room, the froufrou of a wom- 309 THE FLAME DANCER an's clothes, showing that this one wore a trained gown, lined with silk; he heard the dressing-table drawers open and shut; he detected a faint and subtle perfume; he heard her pull down the shades and ar- range the blinds, doubtless toward the attainment of a becoming light therefore, she was expecting, as he had told her, a man. He knew who this man would be. What if he should be mistaken? He never had been mistaken in the five years he had been pur- suing this sort of thing but this case, he admitted to himself, was a different proposition from any he had ever handled. There had been strange subtleties in it. It was the Occident, with its directness mapped against the indirection of the Orient ; it was a maze of conflicting and contending forces. Hitherto he had had one man or woman to deal with in this matter he was grappling with several. It was a struggle with the unknown, the immeasurable. Above all else, it was the mad struggle of his love for a woman whom he suspected whom he was sure was involved ; for Jaffray felt positive that the woman in number 40 was the woman to whom Struh-La would entrust the Austin jewels. He felt positive that Struh-La would come to Bertha with the jewels before an hour should elapse. Upon what did he build his assumption? Was it that keen sixth sense wherewith detectives and 310 THE FLAME DANCER women are sometimes endowed? No, it was not this with Jaffray. It was as much a mathematical accom- plishment in his mind as that two and two make four ; he could not bring himself into line for figuring it any other way. The telephone-bell rang in number 40. The woman went over to the instrument "Hello. Yes. Very well, show the visitor up." Every nerve in the detective tingled. Would or would not this visitor be Struh-La? A knock came at the door of 40. The woman did not speak, but opened, and some one came in. There were no words on either side. The page boy doubtless went, the door closed; pres- ently Jaffray heard the key turn very slowly, very cautiously in his neighbor's lock. He smiled, but he was on the rack. He was not yet sure. He had not heard the visitor's voice. Then the woman said: "Is that necessary?" There was a pause. Jaffray leaned his ear against the partition, straining in all his nerves. Finally it was indeed Struh-La who replied: "Yes, very necessary. There is danger for us." The woman answered: "There is no danger for me." The man from headquarters took breath; he drew THE FLAME DANCER his hand across his forehead. The drops there were big. He heard the Oriental say: "You are too beautiful and too intelligent to talk such nonsense. There is the utmost danger for you, unless you do just as I say." "It seems to me," the woman's voice replied, "that it's the other way you've got to do as I say." She spoke with a triumphant note. The Chinaman answered patiently, but with per- haps a reserve of solid irony: "How so? Explain to me?" "Didn't I find you with Mr. Stevens' and Mrs. Aus- tin's jewels tumbling out of your pockets and sleeve?" There was in response a sound of assent without irrita- bility. "Did you not offer me one-half of the gems as the price of my silence?" Jaffray heard a second sound, in no wise more perturbed than its predecessor. "Had you not the coolness to make me promise silence, even in the few minutes at your command, and that you would turn this theft against me unless I obeyed?" Struh-La vouchsafed a third assent. "Did you not promise to turn these things into money for me? Did you not paint for me the splen- dors and luxuries $350,000 could give me? Did you not enthral me to your will, and make me" her voice 312 THE FL'AME D'ANCER broke, and Jaff ray's heart beat to exultant bursting; hers had not been the initiative! "make me do what I did?" Struh-La answered gently: "But, mademoiselle, previously to that night when I obtained what be- longs " The man from the Eastern land stopped short, and the detective knew that he, too, was listen- ing; that Struh-La, with his marvelous nerves and supersensitive insight, felt the proximity of some one. Jaffray heard his soft footfall across the carpet a pause. Then Struh-La resumed : "Previously to that night, mademoiselle, you had told me of your crav- ings for money and what money buys. So, naturally, when I found myself in a certain sense in your power, I used the arguments incident to the occasion." Bertha did not answer immediately. When she did, this is what she said, in an eager, curious tone : "Who took them?" Jaffray crouched closer to the thin wall dividing them, to hear that answer. It was this spoken in an even, soft voice, ex- quisitely modulated: "No one took them, mademoi- selle." There was again a little pause, when the Oriental man added : "I am glad you also came here ; but why 'did you come, mademoiselle ?" 313 THE FL'AME 'DANCER "I followed you to San Francisco for money." And the man from headquarters heard that note of bitter starvation in this woman's voice which he had heard often before in other women's voices -but never so ravenous. It was unparalleled. Jaffray had lis- tened to the wail of women wanting money, wanting luxury, fine food, fine wines, even wanting something they called love pitiful cries out of the hell of lost lives but he had never heard anything to equal the pity of the cry of this woman in number 40. That was because he loved her, The Chinese made no answer that the detective could hear ; but presently he did hear Bertha exclaim : "Don't think you can hypnotize me as you did before, because you can't do it now." "There is no such thing as hypnotism. It is the unknown force." "Well, no matter about all the ifs and ands. I want money. I can't sell these things. You must." "No." "What!" Struh-La said calmly enough : "Here are two thou- sand dollars, if you want them." "No. Go away. I want nothing. Here are the jewels, and go away." THE FLAME D'ANCER Jaffray's breath came in a gasp of relieved thank- fulness.. "I think," returned the Chinese, with deliberation, "you want money. Take it. There is no time to waste. Take this money, and also the care of these other jewels, my half L -" "What!" she cried, in amazement and terror. "In these two buckskin bags," Struh-La went on. "I am watched; if not, I may be. I intend to make myself immune. No one will watch you. You will keep these in safety about you, in your trunks or boxes." "I won't do anything of the kind," she said proudly. "I think so," returned the Oriental. "I think so, because if you don't agree to do this, you get no money at all. And, I have informed myself, you owe your bill here; you owe already at some shops; you are really without necessary funds. Besides," Struh- La's tone fell so low that the one who listened could scarcely make out what he said, yet he caught these words : "Mademoiselle will do as I wish. Yes, oh, yes, mademoiselle is but one of many instruments which Strufi-La uses to attain the right." "'The right/" Jaffray heard the girl repeat in a lamentable tone, a tone as of the intelligence striving 315 THE FLAME DANCER to assert itself in the face of some overmastering soporific. "Yes, the Right, the True. Ah, mademoiselle, it is a fact that the jewels of Mrs. Austin are not what I want. Not at all. They came with the rest." ' 'Came/ " Bertha exclaimed, still in the same dazed voice. "Yes," Struh-La answered gently, "came. Since they came, I use them also, principally to keep you quiet and now, likewise, to attach you to me" the detective's big fist clenched as he heard this "because you are a very opportune tool. I can entrust you with the whole, everything, knowing that you will not be suspected or watched; knowing that if you should be tempted to speak, the entire theft can be turned upon you alone since you will possess all." "I will not!" To Jaffray's fancy, Bertha must have risen and stood at bay. Her tone was a kind of forlorn defiance which evidently met its Waterloo in Struh-La's laugh. "Oh, yes, you will, mademoiselle. Here tfiey are. Where do you keep the other portion of them?" "In that," Bertha said. "Get them all together," commanded the Chinese. Then there was no sound, save the tinkle of chains, 316 THE FLAME DANCER pins, bracelets, the soft rustle of tissue-paper, the closing of box or bag. "What will I do with it?" the girl asked, still in a dazed fashion. "Let it stand just there. What is obvious, made- moiselle, is never suspected. Only hidden things are watched and sought for." "You you trust me?" she inquired in a pitiable tone. "Undoubtedly. You are helpless." Jaffray almost sprang through the partition. It was hard to stand still and listen to this, when he loved this girl as he "Mademoiselle," continued Struh-La, "I entrust my plans to no speech. Speech is not necessary with me, except occasionally. People whom I select do my silent bidding. When the moment arrives that I want these jewels I will cause you to give them to me. iYou will not retain one of them. I will keep what I should ; the rest well, perhaps they might find their way back to your friend Mrs. Austin. Meantime, mademoiselle, you will always do my bidding." "No," she sobbed, "no. I will not. If you leave those things here I will give them back to Mr. Stevens and Mrs. Austin to-day. I will ! I have been more than a thief a thief's partner. I will not I ^-" 317 THE FLAME DANCER Jaffray's shoulder was against the partition. Just here he remembered Luliani and called a halt on him- self. "Mademoiselle," Struh-La went on, "you will do those things which fate determines for you; and, per- haps, it is not beneath your womanhood to render as- sistance to a cause as remarkable as mine." There was no reply, save a slight sob the sob of a human being in subjection, the inarticulate vocal tribute of the one who obeys to the other one who dictates. "Do not sob ; it is not worth while," Struh-La went on in an even, low tone. "Let me see. Mademoiselle, I will seal this box, if you will permit me." Jaffray then knew that the treasure was contained in a box. Presently he heard a match, smelled sealing-wax, the pungent perfume coming through the partition to him ; and Struh-La continued: "You perceive, mademoi- selle, so I seal it. It is not usual for a thief that is what you called me just now to leave footprints behind him, but I leave mine ; and, mademoiselle, I am no thief. So, now you may move, if you choose. I go away. By and by I come. No one is stronger than I am, and one must be that to cross my will. Goo'-by." Jaffray heard the key turn slowly, the door open THE FLAME D'ANCER and close, the patter of Struh-La's feet on the marble corridor, and the slam of the lift door. He darted to the window in time to see Struh-La come out of the hotel and walk away. He wondered what the footprints were that the Oriental man said he had left behind him. At least, to see Struh-La actually seemed to put a necessary touch of life to what he had overheard. He crossed back to the little closet; he heard her sobbing convulsively; he caught words fall- ing from her lips. What were they? What did Bertha Wilmerding say ? This is all that the detective heard; it came weakly, as from one waking out of sleep, brokenly, between tears: "You said no one is stronger than you are, but < love is." And Jim McAlpin put number 42 in proper shape and left the Alexandra; but he left his best with the sobbing woman in Room Number 40. 319 T.HE FLAME DANCER CHAPTER XXV THE BATTLE OF THE SOULS AT a quarter past eight, in her parlor at the Alexandra, Bertha Wilmerding was antici- pating Jaffray's visit with a strange mixture of delight and solicitude. She had never before found herself in any position of this kind, odd as it may appear for a woman, not without her attractions, by any means, and of twenty-six years of age. Still, the fact remains, as has before been intimated, Bertha had not had an episode of love. At last it had come, and her features -wore a marvelously softened ex- pression; her eyes shone, not only with the anxieties of a passionate and yearning nature, but with the craving most women have for the tenderness and care of man. If Bertha Wilmerding was ever to be called a pretty woman it must be to-day. She was beautifully gowned, and she stood, now at the window, now near the beautiful flowers Jaffray had sent her, her pulses throbbing, her temples ach- ing, not only with anticipation, but with the weird memory of Struh-La's visit. It was impossible for 320 THE FLAME 'DA'NCER her to shake off entirely, it seemed, the spell of his Oriental presence. Do what she would, Struh-La dominated Bertha Wilmerding; and, instead of put- ting the box of jewels out of her sight, she found herself compelled, as it were, to keep it in sight. There was a knock, she opened, and he was with her. Miss Wilmerding had taken her position by its reins, and, whip in hand, had stepped out from the long ranks of to-be chaperoned girls into the frank file of those who consider themselves old enough quite "to go it alone," as Bertha herself called it. She had fetched letters to the proprietor of the Alexandra from friends of his in Saratoga, which established her status, and there was no question at all about Miss Wilmerding in the place where she had seen fit to pitch her temporary tent. Jaffray took the two hands extended to him in both of his. He said nothing at first, but stood look- ing long and earnestly down into Bertha's face. She, in turn, was looking at him. He was good to look at handsome, clean-cut, square of jaw, sweet of smile; eyes capable of deep tenderness, yet of steely implacability. "Oh !" whispered the girl, at last, not drawing away from his grasp. "It is so nice to see you again!" 321 THE FLAME DANCER "Is it really?" he answered, much more in his tone than his words. "Yes." He led her to the sofa and seated her, piling- up the cushions at her back and for her arms to rest upon, and throwing a big one down for her feet; then he drew up an armchair and sat down close in front of her. She pointed to the flowers in a big pitcher on the centre-table. The man from headquarters smiled. "You were kind to keep them all day." "Oh!" she exclaimed. "I shall keep one or two of them, always." "No !" he laughed. "They're not worth it." "But the sender is." "Thank you." His glance met hers. Then she said suddenly: "Tell me, how did you Know? I mean, how did you find out I was here at this house?" She regarded him curiously for a minute. Jaffray smiled a bit deprecatorily. "You forget that I am a detective. Detectives always can find out where people are." "Oh!" she laughed uneasily, if good-humoredly. "I see!" 322 THE FLAME DANCER "You had forgotten my er profession, I believe, they like to call it, hadn't you?" he asked in a low tone. "Yes, entirely," was the reply. "Why should I be remembering it? I know you as yourself, and I don't care a bit whether you are a detective or a " "Or a gentleman!" he finished for her, with a little laugh. "I was not going to say that," she cried out eagerly. "No, but you thought it." His voice held a pained consciousness in it of the facts of their differing social conditions. "No, no, no !" she went on vehemently, "nothing of the sort. You are a gentleman, and as to the rest of it if you drove a cab, or were a motorman, I should not care!" It was true. Shallow, unscrupulous as she had been up to now, the fact of this man's caring for her had set Bertha a new and wholesomer pace. 'As he talked, she loathed her past. As her eyes fell upon the sealed box, a great anguished wave swept over her and, riding on its crest, she still beheld Struh-La's eyes. Jaffray answered Bertha this way: "Would you?" His tone was soft, insistent. "Yes," the girl said, and her hand lay near to his. 323 THE FLAME DANCER His fingers closed over hers, as he said : "I dare not believe that." She laid her other hand in his timidly ; he held them both, stroking them a little as he spoke. "Tell me, how did you get on coming across the continent?" "Nicely, no trouble at all. I was thinking each day that I would meet you here." "Is that all you thought of ?" "Not quite," she smiled. "Your affairs of course you thought of them?" She nodded. "Are you having any difficulty about your legacy, was it not?" Bertha got up and crossed the room; then she said, almost as if defying some unseen per- son: "My uncle left me just $2,000, Mr. Jaffray. The other was a mistake, and " She hesitated and stopped. "Tell me about it; that is, if you care to." "I care to, but you would not be interested." "In anything that concerns you," he replied, with profound meaning. "Allow me!" he sprang up and drew down the shade, as he noted the sun shining directly in her eyes. When he returned, he stood before her as if eagerly waiting for something he dared not put into words. "Do you mean that?" Bertha asked earnestly. 324 THE FLAME DANCER "I do," was his response. "I never meant anything more in my life!" He began to walk up and down the room, his eyes traveling away from her, here, there, everywhere about her belongings. His air and manner were those of a man under deep emotion and as deep a restraint. Then his searching glance found the box. It was an ordinary tin box, with a double padlock, it is true, and the padlock was sealed with blue wax from Miss Wilmerding's tray on the desk, and the detective's piercing eyes beheld the dragon of Struh-La's watch-fob on the seal. To see is a splendid confirmation of to hear. All the instincts of his work rushed to the front as he saw that box and realized its contents. But the woman? Just now she was paramount with Jaffray. Just how would he become possessed of that box? Would she confide it to him? Could it be possible that in her desire to do right and to repair wrong she would hand over to the detective in the case the wonderful Stevens- Austin jewels? How should he take them? Because Jaffray's mind was made up not to leave number 42 without taking the box that Struh-La had sealed with him, and he also intended to follow Stevens' instructions to the letter and "im- plicate no woman." He glanced at Bertha. Her eyes were down, her hands were clasped and moving un- 325 ZHE FLAME DANCER easily in her lap; she breathed heavily, as if she strug- gled for air enough. In a flash Jaffray recalled the words of the man from the Orient: "Mademoiselle, you will always do my bidding;" in the same flash Bertha thought she heard those same words in her ears. Jaffray sprang to her side and said: "If it is true that the inferiority of my social position is a matter of indifference to you, why don't you make me be- lieve it?" "How can I?" she exclaimed, in a wistful, dazed way. "You have no confidence in me," he retorted. "But I have, I have." He said rather sadly: "I understand. I suppose now, if there were things to be attended to in your business matters, say, you would not permit me to do anything to serve you, as you would doubtless al- low the other men you know, to do?" There was a gravity in his voice which smote her, and yet it was with a very apparent effort that she replied : [i "But I would; indeed I would!" adding: "'Other men?' There are none!" But her eyes went straight to the tin box, and there Struh-La's soft eyes seemed I to her to meet and vanquish her endeavors. 326 THE FL'AME DANCER "Dare I believe that?" Jaffray knelt beside the sofa where she sat. The girl put out her arms with an impulsive move- ment. "Don't you believe it now?" she whispered, while within her waged the war between truth and the living a lie, between her soul and the soul of the man from the Chinese mountains. Jaffray forgot Struh-La, he forgot the box, the jewels, as he spoke, drawing away a bit: "I don't [forget Stevens." The blood rushed tingling through all her veins ; he was jealous, the most exquisite triumph of a fine man's or a fine woman's love, and also the most rel- ished desire of the lowest feeling that goes by the same name. "But," she whispered, bending above him, "I did not love him." "You were going to marry him for money, then?" was the rejoinder, and it was a bit savage. Jaffray was merciless and exacting and bound to succeed with a perfect security. She took his hands and held them to her heart. He trembled. "I feel it; but I feel that you don't trust me." She said in a low voice: "I do trust you in every way." 327 THE FL'AME DANCER I r\ "You do? You believe that I would not betray your trust? Take care how you answer; remember I am a detective," he looked at her, "as well as the man who loves you." She drew back a little ; she could not have told why, but it seemed as if some unseen person were pulling her back from the edge of a precipice. Then she asked : "Did you really come here to be near me ?" "I did." "For no other reason? Not to look after whoever stole the Austin jewels?" "Primarily to be near you, as near as I dared and could. Secondarily I was employed to " He stopped short, and, thrusting his hands in his pockets, strode away from the sofa. "Pshaw!" he added, "what do you care about my intimate personal matters?" "You are mistaken. All that interests you interests me. Won't you tell me?" pleadingly, and walking over to him. "What?" "About your other errand over here in California? It's your work, so I care to hear it." "Do you?" he exclaimed in a rejoiced way. "Well, Stevens employed me to try to find Miss de Fon- tanges." 328 THE FLAME DANCER "Oh, and the jewels?" she inquired. "The jewels," he repeated meditatively. "Well, yes, of course. You see, I tell you things I would not tell to any other human being, since you care " "Oh, so much!" Her arm rested on his as she spoke and her eyes shone with excitement and the tension of her feelings. "Do you care?" the man from headquarters ejac- ulated tensely. He had no wish to touch her; he had only the fighting instinct aroused in him; he was con- scious that the combat was on between his love and Struh-La's will, and, at the same time, he knew that the girl herself alone could decide. "The jewels are what I'm after, too; at least, in a certain sense," he went on, because Bertha was silent. "We are trying to locate the jewels, as that is the surest, in fact, perhaps the only way to locate Miss de Fontanges, and Miss de Fontanges is what Stevens wants." "But," she panted, creeping closer to him, "she did not take them; she hasn't got them." Then Bertha stopped short and laughed aloud. "Of course," she added, "no one knows who has them." JafTray watched her intensely; his hand lay on the tin box, upon the dragon seal itself. Bertha's glance 329 T.HE 'FL'A'MEJD'A'NCER *&>- traveled there, too; she tried to pull herself together; she even rose and went close to the box and Jaff ray ; then she finally spoke, rather hesitatingly: "Do you suspect any one of having them?" "Yes," he answered. "Who?" she inquired, almost wrenching the word from her shut lips. "To tell you would be a breach of professional faith, it would be to break my word; it might lead to disaster." "Betty Austin is my dearest friend." The girl spoke irrelevantly, as if some force had deflected her from another purpose. "I know that. The Austins are here." "I know they are." "You do? I fancied you would not, because of [Mr. Austin?" "Forrie doesn't count with his wife very much. She phoned over this morning and asked me for idinner this evening." "Are you going?" His tone was quick, almost sharp. She looked at him. "I told Betty I'd go, but I'll not go if you don't wish me to." He hesitated an instant, and said : "I think I do wish you to." 330 THE FL'AME DANCER "Then I'll go. You see I am ready to do anything 1 'for you that I can." "It's that I wish to serve and do for you." She seemed to regard him carefully. Even the in- tense fascination which he possessed for her, his beauty, his mentality, his strength all went for little or nothing. She longed to creep close to him and tell him her all, but she was powerless to do it; powerless to hand him the tin box utterly. "Do you?" she at last said. "Yes," emphatically. "Is there nothing that I can do for you, spare you? Prove to me that you really have some regard for me by trusting me to take care of you." His gentleness was unmistakable. Then there came a pause. "There is something," she ejaculated, going across the room unsteadily, her gaze wavering and her hands twisting uneasily together, just as little Jean Austin's hands had twisted the night that Struh-La had led her through his imaginary flower-garden. Jaffray's eyes were fixed upon her, the blood was deep in his face, he stood stolidly motionless, watching her. Once at the table, she tried to raise her hands, but could not; she looked around helplessly, but the de- tective did not stir. What he did was done in a sense along the lines of the man he was fighting, the strange, 331 (THE FLAME DANCER illimitable lines of the human mind. Bertha fell upon her knees; her head struck the edge of the table, but not to bruise; her eyes were on a level with the tin box. Again she essayed to touch it; again she failed, and sank back hopelessly. "Help me !" she cried out piteously. "I am helping you, dear," Jaffray answered, with- out stirring. "I love you." Then Bertha, with a supreme effort, rose from her knees, reached out, and took up the tin box and held it toward the detective. "It's this," she said. "It is locked." "Yes," was his reply, "and what can I do about it for you? You have lost your keys and think a de- tective," he smiled a bit, "is just the man to force it open for you. Is that it?" "No!" Putting her hand in her pocket she drew out two keys tied together. "I want you to take care of it; will you?" There was a pause; then the man from headquar- ters said : "Yes, I will take care of it." "You see," she went on, "it is so heavy." "Yes," he answered, with his eyes fastened upon her face. "I am going home, now, to my mother," Bertha said. 332 THE FLAME DANCER The quick rejoinder was: "I am going East, too, to-morrow." "Are you?" "Yes." "Why?" She looked down and she was shivering. "Because there will be no occasion for me to stop here after you leave." "Oh!" She did not even smile. "That box was a burden to me. I am afraid something will happen to it. You understand how having charge of the box weighed upon me, don't you?" The great appeal was no greater than the answering throb to it in his heart. "I do," he said. "I am afraid of that tin box!" Miss Wilmerding spoke hurriedly. Even as she uttered the words she laid her hands upon it, and, moving as if guided by some external force, she tried to lift it; she sighed, shrank from it, and again attempted to carry the box away. Jaffray watched her, and then he cried out, lifting it from her. "This is in my care now, Bertha." "I know," she answered. "I will leave here to- morrow for New York." "I will leave here when you do," was Jaffray's an- swer. "I will start in a train right after yours." 333 THE FLAME DANCER "And there's more." She hesitated painfully. "Tell it me," he responded gently; then he fixed his eyes on her face. "Tell me all there is to tell, can't you? Won't you?" There was a peculiarly dominant note in his voice. Bertha stared at him, and her lips parted, quivered, but no sound came from them. "Try, dear." Jaffray set down the box and made to put his arms around her. Instantly the girl darted from him and seized the box. "I must!" she whispered, "I must, I must do as I am told." Then she fell to crying. Jaffray by sheer force wrested the tin box from her and took her in his arms. "You must not," he mur- mured. "My dear, my dear, wake up. I am with you; you are safe and free. No one can coerce you. I " He held her face up to the strong light and looked into her eyes. "I understand. Can't you trust me?" "Yes. I do." But she shuddered even as she drew closer in his embrace. Then Jaffray laid her down among the cushions of the so^a and kissed her. He had the tin box in his hands as he bent above her. "Bertha," he said very gravely. "I am taking this and all your other troubles away with me. You are 334 THE FL'AME DANCER going to the Austins' to dine; I shall be there later. .We shall see each other again, therefore, before very long. Rest now and think no more about" he paused "any one but me." He was out of the door. She sprang after him into the corridor with an almost savage desperation, her hands out to recover Struh- La's treasures, her soul still at the beck of Struh-La's will; but Jaffray, as he got into the lift, merely laughed a little as he touched his hat, and Bertha retreated to her parlor. She stood still. As the dying are said to behold in a flash the whole of their lives, this girl beheld hers. Gradually the psychic clutch loosened from her; she was presently on her knees praying, and Bertha Wilmerding had not prayed be- fore in many years. T.HE FLAME DANCER CHAPTER XXVI THE THIEF. AS soon as Jaffray left Miss Wilmerding, he went directly to his room down by the river on Merchant Street, having first called up Jer- myn and a local detective on the phone at the corner drug-store. When Jermyn came he sent him at once to China- town to find Stevens. He, Jaffray, said: "When you reach Mr. Stevens, ask him from me to be at Mrs. Austin's rooms at the Palace this eve- ning by eight-thirty." "All right, sir. Where shall I report after finding Mr. Stevens and delivering your message?" "At the Palace." "Yes, sir." Jaffray went away. To the other detective Jaffray said: "You come with me, and remember your work to-night is to be my shadow, to protect me and whatever I have about me. Watch out now, no matter where we go, and if you see the hint of a threat, act. I'm usually able to take care of myself, but the time has come when I'm not." 336 THE FL'AME DANCER "O. K., Mr. Jaffray. Any other name for you, sir?" "No, I'm myself this evening." "Shall I carry that, sir?" "No. Now, the last word. If you see any one making for that, shoot low." Jaffray indicated the box. "Man or woman, sir?" "Man." "No women in this deal, sir?" "No." "All right, Mr. Jaffray." "We'll get into a cab and drive around. Had your supper?" "No, sir." "Well, then, we'll stop at Tate's; get out and eat what you want." "You, sir?" "I'll sit in the cab with this." It was about eight o'clock when the detective's elec- tric slowed up before the Palace grill door, but neither of the occupants got out. Orders were given to the chauffeur and he kept his vehicle moving slowly around in and out of a radius of a couple of blocks. Meantime, Bertha Wilmerding, pallid and trem- bling with strange, new joys and stranger anxieties, 337 had been dining with the Austins; that is to say, she had been dining with Betty and little Jean. De For- rest Austin, as soon as he found out that she abso- lutely was to dine with his wife, took up his hat. "Going out, Forrie? It's nearly dinner-time." "Aware of it, but I think I told you I would not stand for Miss Wilmerding." "But, Forrie, I'm fond of Bertha." "Sorry for you!" "So am I, mother." Jean took her father's hand. Betty said : "Hush, Jean." Mr. Austin said "Good evening" to his wife. "Where are you going, father?" the child asked. "Chinatown. I've not seen that sight yet. Good- by, little girl." "Father," whispered the child, "that's where my Miss de Fontanges is. Couldn't you try to find her?" "Maybe." He stooped and kissed his daughter's cheek, then made off. "I suppose Forrie'll never speak to me again?" Miss Wilmerding remarked, as, having dined below in the dazzle of the big room, where the crowd had failed to exhilarate her, they now sat together in the Aus- tins' parlor. "Oh, yes, he will, dear; Forrie's not a bad sort, after all." 338 THE FL'AME D'ANCER Then Bertha said in a low tone: "How about the governess ?" Betty shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. Reggie's here, bound to find her, but he doesn't seem to make much headway." "And the jewels?" Bertha's breath came so that she almost choked as she asked. "My dear, I cried my eyes out about them it wasn't mal apropos; you know every one thought I was shedding tears about my poor father-in-law, so it happened quite nicely." "Yes, to be sure. How did you manage that?" "Why, Jaffray had it in charge. He always man- ages everything he undertakes, you know." Miss Wilmerding smiled. "Yes," she replied, "I think he does." "Well, dearest, in justice to Jaffray, I sent him out- side about Mr. Austin, you know, and so I can't blame him, no matter how much my husband does." "You never told Forrie, then?" Bertha asked. "Hardly." "I did," remarked Jean quietly, looking up from her food. "What did you do that for?*' inquired the mother in shocked amazement. 339 THE FLAME DANCER "Because I like Jaffray. He's a trump, and I wouldn't sit there and hear father abusing him." "Indeed!" Betty Austin was angry. Bertha said in a quiet way : "Thank you, Jean." Betty said: "What for?" "Mr. Jaffray is a gentleman," Bertha retorted. "Yes, by birth and education; college-bred Harvard man. He's here, you know? Reggie sent him here to discover Miss de Fontanges. Did you know he was here?" Betty stared; so did Jean. "I have seen him." Bertha spoke so gently that Mrs. Austin was more and more astounded. "What do you mean? Bertha Wilmerding, tell me." Betty now scintillated with excited curiosity. "Nothing." "Yes, you do! Bertha, not really engaged?" "So he says." "But when did he ever get to see you?" Betty's surprise grew. "Some men decide some things very quickly." "My dear, and you just come into your nice little fortune and this, too!" Bertha winced. She prayed that Jaffray would soon come. She felt the need of him, and her won- der was intense as to the box. 340 THE FL'AME DANCER "His mother was a Peyton-Berkely of Virginia," Betty continued. "Certainly she was." "It's so surprising. I fancied you'd always go in for money, Bertha dear, but of course you've got enough for two." Bertha got up and crossed the room to the window, glancing nervously out as she spoke. "The man who lets a wife support him is just about one-half a man. The minute her hand goes out to give, and his to re- ceive, good-by to the real relations that ought to exist between husband and wife." "Bertha! You talk like books." Betty laughed and stared at her friend. The child said, looking up from hers : "Miss Bertha talks the truth. I never supposed she had so much grit. When I get grown up and marry, I'd rather marry a stone-cutter and have him bring me home his wages for us to live on than be a great heiress and deal out money to my husband. Father says he wishes he had been a stone-cutter, too!" There was a little silence between the two women, when the telephone-bell rang and Jean sprang to an- swer it. Childlike, she was fond of talking by wire. "Yes," she said, and by common consent the two grown people ceased their chat; perhaps each found 341 T.HE FLAME DANCER a diversion rather convenient. Jean addressed her mother, but she glanced at Miss Wilmerding. "Mr.. Jaffray wishes to know if he can see you alone for a few moments, mother?" "Yes," hesitating and looking at the other woman. "Well, mother?" the child now asked impatiently. "Is Mr. Jaffray to come up or isn't he?" "Yes! yes! he's to come up, of course." "Show Mr. Jaffray up, please," she called down. Bertha instantly rose. She had regained her out- ward poise, although her heart throbbed to suffoca- tion. She felt an impending crisis; it almost touched her on the shoulder; she had one impulse to run, to escape off into the unknown, to lose herself in the wide world somewhere and never again to look into the face of the man she loved. All the best, the purest in her, all the long dormant and submerged elements of a real womanhood flooded to the fore, and her shame and humiliation were incalculable. Betty said: "Nonsense, dear, don't leave the room. Mr. Jaffray can have nothing to say to me that he would not wish you to hear." "I'd rather go," Bertha answered, opening the door that led into an adjoining room of the suite. "Bertha Wilmerding!" Betty Austin ran over to her friend and laid both hands on her shoulders. 342 THE FL'AME DANCER "You're so changed; you're quite another girl. \Vhat's come over you?" A knock at the other door came, as Bertha replied in a low voice, while she shook visibly: "Yes, I am changed," and disappeared. Jean, at a sign from her mother, also left the room, following Miss Wilmer- ding, and Betty herself opened the door for Jaffray. He was alone ; he had the tin box in his hands, and he said: "Mrs. Austin, Mr. Stevens is here?" "No," was the reply, "I don't know where Mr. Stevens is, but of course you know." Jaffray looked up keenly. "No, I do not know." "Perhaps he's playing billiards." The detective muttered an offhand "Pshaw!" And Betty inquired: "Have you found any trace of Mademoiselle de Fontanges?" "No. I have found the jewels ; here they are," He held the box toward her, "all of them, both Mr. Ste- vens' and your own. Take them, don't you under- stand ?" He stared at her in some surprise. For Betty's hands did not go out to receive her lost treasures. There was no particular change of ex- pression on her face, no smile or astonishment, cu- riosity or gladness. She stood still, and her eyes were down ; she said nothing. 343 THE FL'AME DANCER With an instinct of alarm, the detective sprang to the door, opened it, ran along the private corridor of the suite, opened the outer door, and looked. The only person visible was his own man, who nodded assuringly to him, and he retraced his steps. Mrs. Austin stood where he had left her, but now there was a smile on her lips and her hand was ex- tended as if in welcome, or as if holding something in it in fact, although Jaffray did not know it, Betty's attitude was identically the one she had pre- sented when Reggie Stevens had beheld her alone in the picture-gallery on the night the jewels disap- peared. The detective glanced around ; then he spoke, some- what incisively : "Mrs. Austin, will you open the box ? Or shall I?" Betty seemed to hesitate before she said : "Not now, thank you," but she did not stir from her peculiar pose. Jaffray stared at her ; then he took hold of her arms and said: "Mrs. Austin, rouse yourself. Where is Mr. Austin? Where is little Jean?" Betty nodded toward the other room and said : "Mr. Austin is out; he has gone to look for Miss de Fon- tanges, I think." Jaffray then touched her arm, the uplifted one. It 344 THE FLAME DANCER was rigid. With all his mighty strength he could not move it, nor did she offer the least resentment at his touch. "Mrs. Austin!" he cried out, "let us open the box, the jewels! don't you comprehend, are here? I have recovered them !" Jaffray had for a second thought of Struh-La, only to dismiss him and his See-foo-tee with a smile. This woman was simply paralyzed with the joy of getting back her most prized possessions; he must startle her out of her stupefaction. He made to break the seals on the tin box, and then Betty Austin exclaimed: "No, please, don't do that." "Why not?" he asked sharply. Mrs. Austin laughed a little; then she nodded to the other room and added : "I prefer to be alone now, and there's some one in there whom you will be glad to see. Go in; don't knock, just go in!" "Who is in there?" He looked at Betty earnestly. He had laid the tin box on the center-table. Again the remembrance of Struh-La flashed across him, and the query as to the Oriental's power seemed to render other matters in his mind somewhat insignificant. For instance, he forgot to go out and warn his man still further about not admitting any one to Mrs. Aus- tin's apartments without his own permission ; he forgot 345 THE FL'AME DANCER that it might be unwise to leave Betty alone with the tin box; he forgot that the rational thing to do would be to call up the house physician to see Mrs. Austin and pronounce upon the rigidity of her right arm, for Betty still kept her unalterable pose. He forgot most things, for the first time in his life, and, follow- ing the lead of Mrs. Austin's eyes, Jaffray walked to the opposite door, opened it, and was with Bertha. Jean had proceeded to her own room long since. Betty stood still. She did not move a muscle; her face was placid, almost expressionless; her glance wandered over to her harp and she recollected the music Struh-La used to make so distinctly that it ap- peared to her that she saw him seated there sweeping the gilded strings with his strong, capable hands. To be sure, she did hear his music ; yet it sounded far off, and, what nonsense ! he was not here, the harp leaned against the wall in its case. That tin box on the table? To be sure, Jaffray, the detective, had fetched that in and said what had Jaffray said? Betty could not just then recall very clearly what he had said, and she did not care. Her ear was caught now by the sound of the opening and closing of two doors; the subtle perfume of some strange flower or essence greeted her; a wave of warmth enveloped her as might have the folds of some downy mantle; and 346 THE FLAME DANCER Struh-La stood before her. She smiled as she looked at him, and she said : "You have come?" He inclined his head. Bettty glanced over at the harp. Struh-La said : "Oh, no, not at this time." "Very well." "You are alone?" he asked quietly. She nodded. "Where are the people, then?" Mrs. Austin stared dully and was silent, her hand still uplifted in its rigid position. Struh-La regarded her ; then he took her hand, and his mere touch seemed to release it from its bondage. She sighed. "Now," he went on, without hurry and with per- fect calmness. "Where is your husband?" Betty's eyes closed heavily and her head turned a trifle as if she were seeking something. "He is wan- dering about in the Chinese quarter, far away." "And Jean?" "Jean is in her room with her maid." "And Mr. Stevens, where is he?" Struh-La bent a trifle nearer to her as he asked his whole being eager for the answer, but no muscle quivered, no physical attribute betrayed his anxiety. 347 THE FLAME DANCER Betty shook her head. "You must," Struh-La whispered. "I can't," she pleaded; "it's too far, too hard; I lose my way." "Find it," he urged, touching her forehead this time with the tips of his magical fingers. "You have found the path! now, where is he?" "In the Chinese city, down, down; far down; three times down." "No!" ejaculated Struh-La. "Yes," Betty said. "He is seeking some one; he comes very near to her." Struh-La's eyes were fastened upon Betty Aus- tin's face. At this point he seized her hands in his and pressed them with an intensity that should have pained, against his forehead. "Lead him away," he whispered. "Lead him away! Take hold of him and guide him up, up; do as I say, lead him up; tell him she is above, not below." In the voice of the man from the Orient there was the des- peration of one who fought his last fight with his last ounce of ammunition. "Does he go with you? Does he come up again?" Betty inclined her head slowly. "He comes up again, into the other city, the city we live in." Struh-La released his hold upon her, and the weary 348 THE FLAME DANCER sigh that Betty gave was echoed by him as a sound of profound relief. "Now," he went on, "tell me where the detective is." Betty Austin looked at the opposite door as she replied : "He is in there." Struh-La retreated with a bound. It was the back- ward spring of the king of the jungle before he makes the death-leap on his prey. The red rushed to his cheeks, for it could ; he was a Lolos man, the white man of North China, who disdains his yellower broth- ers; and the fire in his tilted eyes flamed up as the mystical light flames in the heart of the opal stones. Every drop of blood in him sang rejoicingly at this moment; the man in him was glad with an exceeding gladness that this other man was only divided from him by a bit of painted wood. He had hoped it would be just as it was. "Alone?" he inquired softly. "No." "Who is with him?" "Bertha Wilmerding." Struh-La smiled; it was but an accentuation of his pleasure. In the air, with his forefinger, he traced a triangle; Betty, Bertha, Jaffray, at its points in his imagery; he himself in the middle of it, able to lay 349 THE FLAME DANCER a hand on either extremity, and able, he believed, to control all three. It was to him the apex of his climb of life: he stood at the top, looking down; every op- posing element within his "control and Luliani safe in the heart of his mysterious home; he breathed big, deep, and full, and he remembered the creed of his people, that a whole man who makes use of his whole endowments is a small piece of the Infinite. "Tell them to come in here," Struh-La said gently, glancing toward the other room. Betty went slowly across and opened the door. "Come in here," she said, in a perfunctory way. It is not improbable that they had for a few mo- ments forgotten her very existence, but they came in. Struh-La stood near the table on which the tin box lay; in fact, his hand, finger-tips down, rested on the table itself. He bowed to them both. Bertha returned it nervously, the detective, whatever his sen- sations may have been, was not taken off his guard for a single second. With perfect self-possession Jaffray went directly over to the table, his quick eye having immediately discerned that the seals had not been even tampered with, and he instantly said : "Mr. Struh-La, I am glad to see you here. I have just fetched to Mrs. Austin the recovered jewels, all of them." The detective's manner was emphatic, dis- 350 THE 'FL'AM'E 'D'ANCER missing, as it were, from the start, any demurrer to his side of a possible argument. "Mrs. Austin has doubtless told you, and you will be as glad as any of us to know that the treasure is found." Bertha's breath came quickly; but, notwithstanding the ordeal of her position, she fixed her eyes in a su- preme confidence on Jaffray's face. Their fifteen min- utes alone together had drawn them very near to one another. Struh-La replied with a slow shake of the head, while he looked steadily at Betty. "No, Monsieur Jaffray, Mrs. Austin has not told to me anything; there you are incorrect. I am glad that the jewels, all of them, are where they are." The gaze of the Ori- ental man now rested upon the detective's face. Jaf- fray's eyes in turn were riveted on Struh-La. Again for the space of a few seconds it was a strange, silent struggle, the wordless encounter of two human wills. Struh-La broke it by asking: "Where, then, are the jewels, monsieur?" Betty Austin merely stood quietly looking on; her demeanor was so absolutely negative that neither the detective nor Bertha observed her just then. Jaffray answered, placing his hand on the tin box: "They are here." The color flooded Bertha's face; she feared all the 351 THE FLAME DANCER things that might come, but her faith was pinned on the man she loved, and she stood stanch, ready to bear whatever might arrive. "Are you then sure of what you say?" Struh-La regarded Jaffray with a piercing glance. The answer came at once : "Yes, I am positive." Struh-La took Jaffray's hand between his fore- finger and thumb and lifted it from the tin box with the precision and coolness of a scientist handling a subjective specimen. The detective shook him off and sprang to the door, opened it, looked all along the corridor. His man was not even in sight; he came back. Struh-La smiled a little. "You see, Monsieur Jaffray, when there is a game there are always two who play you and your op- ponent. When your aide-de-camp saw me enter here where he knew you to be, he fancied me safe in your hands and went away. He was right. I am safe in your hands. You have wished to arrest me for many weeks. You think you can do so now. Well, I think not." Jaffray seized the tin box in his arms. Struh-La shook his head, and, with a deft motion, he also grasped the box. "Let go !" Jaffray said fiercely, under his breath. The Oriental man smiled. 352 THE FL'AME DANCER "Monsieur, no. I will not let go." "You shall!" The detective loosened his grasp of the tin box as he made a dart at the Chinese man's throat. By a twist as audacious as it was remarkable, Struh- La, gripping the cord with which the box was tied between his teeth, landed Jaffray across the room on a spin. Bertha rushed to him: he waved her away. "No, mademoiselle, this is no place for you," Struh- La spoke, and then he took the box in his hands and turned to Jaffray. "If, monsieur, as you say, this contains the jewels of Mrs. Austin, and if to her you have restored them, then it is for Mrs. Austin to say; .what shall be done with them, eh? Is it not?" Jaffray made a dart for the phone. Struh-La proceeded: "It is useless. If you call up here the whole force of the city police, you cannot open this box unless I say so, unless Madam Austin says so, and," he added, "you know it." Jaffray fell back: even Bertha was amazed that he should do so, and all the while Betty had not spoken. Now Bertha noticed that. "These seals are my seals," the man from China went on. "You see? Compare them; come nearer," he invited Jaffray, holding up to his gaze both his own seal at his fob and the impressions on the box. 353 T.HE. FLAME D'ANCER The detective looked, and then he did lose guard, for his eyes inadvertently turned to Bertha. Struh-La's followed, and he remarked, in a casual tone: "Mademoiselle Wilmerding also can see." Suddenly Jaffray recovered himself; with a visible effort he came closer to the Chinese man, and said quickly: "Don't presume to address Miss Wilmer- ding. She has nothing whatever to do or to say in this matter. The jewels were stolen. I was em- ployed to recover them. I have done so. If you do not give them up at once, I will call, or, rather, I will settle the affair with you myself." "I will not give them up to you," Struh-La spoke quietly. And Jaffray, with a desperately apparent effort, made his second dash at his antagonist. His mighty arm was up to strike, when Struh-La smiled, and Bertha beheld her lover slowly backing away from the Chinese. Struh-La regarded the Western man with attention. He said: "You are interesting, very; you are a fine specimen of your race. I like your audacity and your pluck much ; but you see you make the mis- take always of not counting on having an opponent who is also audacious. Monsieur, you have no actual knowledge of what this box contains. You have never seen it open, you never saw anything put into or taken 354 THE TL'AM'E DANCER out of it; in short, in the legal aspect of the situation, I find you possessed of, and giving to a woman, a piece of my property, marked with my seals, entrusted by me to a woman from whom you have obtained it. Is not this a truthful presentation of the case?" Jaf- fray winced. "You cannot say or swear to the contrary of my assertions, can you?" Struh-La added rather loudly, .with emphasis and decision. The detective pulled himself together again with evident exertion, and answered : "I cannot deny your declarations, but, nevertheless," he muttered sullenly, "you took the jewels." Struh-La shook his head. "No one took them." He inclined his head toward Betty, who at once ap- proached him. Without a word, she took up her scis- sors and cut the cord and the seals; she opened the box, and began to take out the treasure. Struh-La stood looking at her. Bertha's eyes were on her, so were Jaffray's. She gathered them all together, one by one, and put them on carefully and with accuracy all, that is, of her own; the coronet, the necklace, bracelets, chains, pins, brooches, while they watched her in a kind of fascinated astonishment. Once they were all on, Betty turned and lifted her arm up in the identical pose which Reggie had 355 THE FLAME DANCER seen the night of the robbery, and then she cautiously removed the trinkets and heaped them up in Struh- La's hands. "You see," he remarked, "they were not taken, but given, and he laid them on the table. Jaffray trembled from head to foot. He moved with an effort ; he whispered to Bertha: "Go away, and take her with you. Go!" Bertha went to Betty, and gently essayed to lead her. "Take her away!" thundered Jaffray, but he did not himself move from where he stood. Neither did Betty, until Struh-La, gathering the Austin jewels in his hands, gave them to her, and said to Bertha Wilmerding : "Yes, take her away." The two women left the room. "Now!" the detective exclaimed, his breatH com- ing thick and heavily. "Now?" reiterated Struh-La interrogatively, as he began to close the box. "No, you don't!" Jaffray darted clumsily between the Chinese man and the exit. All his motions were clogged and unconvincing. His fight against some in- evitable inertia was more than apparent. 356 THE FLAME DANCER Struh-La said nothing, but his eyes were on the detective. "See here !" The sweat stood big on Jaffray's face, there were tears in his eyes, he shivered. "See here !" he repeated, "can't you be a man, and stand up equal, and fight me with your fists, and drop your devil's power just for once? I acknowledge it you hold a weapon stronger than any I know of. I bend under it ; but by , even with it, you shall not get away with Stevens' loot." With one mighty effort, he tried to throw himself upon the Oriental. It was unavailing; the inexpli- cable force still rendered his huge muscles useless. With a perfect composure, Struh-La paused, re- opened the box, took up from its depths the shining heap of Reggie Stevens' marvelous Oriental flame stones, the mystical, translucent opals that glimmered like molten moonlight on the bosom of a fiery sea; he took them all up, and let them slowly fall jingling and tinkling back into their resting-place. He ejaculated: "Stevens' loot, yes," and then he closed the box, took it up under his arm, and, with a slight salutation to his companion, Struh-La walked away. 357 THE FLAME DAN.C.ER CHAPTER XXVII THE FLAME DANCE TE moment after Jermyn had left Reggie, Stev- ens jumped into a cab, and directed : "Police headquarters." Five minutes after he reached, he had engaged and started off a dozen plain-clothes men, with explicit in- structions to join any of the many tourist-parties for the Chinese quarter; to rendezvous at or near the mo- saic stone, and to await there his signal. Stevens for years had been well used to commanding bodies of men, and accustomed to planning small campaigns against Oriental foes ; he knew precisely the wily, sub- tle nature of the people he had to deal with; knew their causes of alarm, their weak and their strong points both. He felt, too, the old-time vigor and thirst for encounter that had been his in his struggling days in the East; felt the same thrill of assured suc- cess that he had experienced when he was acquiring the lands, and tombs, and the temples, and the flame jewels of the men of North China: not only was he eager for the rescue of the woman he loved, but every 358 THE FLAME DANCER ounce of his flesh hungered for the lunge and thrust, the give and take, the final conquering of a fight. As he was leaving headquarters, the chief said: "Don't forget, sir, that once you do get down, the area is as big as it is above, and honeycombed like a bee's hive." "I know." "You think you will find the lady?" "Yes." "They'll set upon you, a swarm of wasps." "Let them." The millionaire man drove off, and he was not long in attaining the mosaic stone ; there was a flood of light shining there from the windows of a gay little restaurant. All the pretty bamboo blinds were blinking and twinkling with the brightened eyes and reddened mouths of the slave girls ; there was the chatter of Eastern tongues, too, the babble of laugh- ter, the patter of tiny feet on the pavements, while clocks, one of the few Western inventions which the Oriental loves, chimed out the hour. In the narrow slit of sky between the tall, irregular buildings of the precinct, one could see the curving sickle of the new moon, its silvery lustre dimming as the golden dawn gave hint of riding up and up the sky. Small wagons were rattling in the wider streets, off to the outside markets. Then there came a strange dull 359 THE FL'AME DANCER hush, and out of the bosom of this moment of preter- natural pause there issued a strain of melody that quivered and swept through Reginald Stevens' very soul. Down below, in the depths to which the fawn-col- ored mosaic stone was one of the few keys of en- trance, Struh-La stood in the little paved court, where the birds hopped about with their legs tied with silken threads, and where the monkeys whistled; where the lights were never put out; where the gold-fish flopped in the fountain, where Luliani de Fontanges stood, too. In this place the night was day; in fact, no one seemed to sleep there at all. Struh-La was touching his harp. Its first notes had smote not only Stevens' ears, but those of many other men; below there had been the same hush as above, j^st before he had first touched the strings, and below could be heard the soft, compact sound, like the rush of waters, of myriads of sandaled feet. Struh-La stopped, and immediately the hundreds of feet ceased to patter. The place was still, save for the fountain's tinkle and the little twitter of the captive birds. He turned to Luliani, and said : "Go and put on the flame jewels, all of them. You are to dance the flame dance for me to-night. I have told the people they 360 THE FLAME DANCER may come in and see you; it has never been done in this land. I want you to do it here before we go away." Her eyes flashed as she glanced questioningly at him. "Yes," he went on, "we go away, to Honolulu, first, where you were born, thence to China, back to the mountains of the Lolos men ; but before we go we will be married, according to your adopted religion. I make no objection, one form is to me the same as the other." "I will not," the girl said. "Oh, yes," he responded. "It is true that Stevens is planning, trying to attain you; he cannot. No one can thwart me. See here !" Struh-La walked not to- ward, but away from Luliani de Fontanges, and his voice assumed the downright hardness of the West. "I have starved every impulse, every power in me, but one. I have subjugated all the passions, hungers, thirsts, desires of man which I, too, was endowed with, so that I might concentrate everything in one thing, my will. I have succeeded. I may have lost all the so-called pleasures of life, but I have obtained the supreme. I can control men, whether they are far or near to me. You understand. I have you. You are mine, or you will be. I love as other men 361 THE FL'AME DANCER love. I have smothered, restrained, and kept it in close bondage, but the day is arriving when I can re- enter into my heritage and let go of all the rest. The talisman of the flame jewels is here in the pocket next my heart, and you are here, and Stevens is not near you." He turned away farther from her, and then, glancing over his shoulder, he added : "Go and put on your opals and your tissues ; the fires are lighted and the curtains are waving, and my friends are on the way. You know the dance ; do it just as you did it in the temple under the dome, when you were a little child. Remember, your mother was of my tribe, al- though your father was of France." Luliani left him. When she had gone, he drew his hands across his forehead and shook them out, the sweat was dropping from them; he sighed, and then resumed the harp. The footsteps recommenced outside, above, to east, west, north, south of the little magical underground city, hurrying, gentle, approaching myriads, while Struh-La played. The curtains swayed back and forth across the arch; mellow lights that flickered as they were born began to illumine the place; yellow faces began to appear at the lattices, at the tiny windows, above, below, everywhere; eyes peering, shining, in- quiring, but not a voice was raised. Struh-La played 362 THE FLAME DANCER on, and his music, even the faint echo which Stevens heard far up above, recalled not only to him, but to the waiting throng below, a mirage of the country of the far East, the land where the chrysanthemums blossom in the fields, where the rice-swamps breed their fevers, where the tea-flowers bloom, where millions starve; where life is crueler far than any manner of death, where Struh-La was born; where the temples stood, and where the mystical talisman, the great firestone opal, once hung on the altar. Each pair of ratlike eyes peeping through the lattices remembered some- thing of all this as they awaited the flame dancer. Reggie Stevens, somewhere above, with the lure of Struh-La's harp in his ears, beheld the picture of the places he had known as clearly as if painted on a canvas before him. Louder and clearer, more clearly still, its vibrations seeming to smite and cut his ears, he heard the echoing tinkle of Struh-La's strings. He glanced around; he stood at the edge of the mosaic stone; he knew that his men were near, waiting; there was no one to be seen. He raised his hand, and made the motion agreed upon. Silently, noiselessly, swiftly as the wind, Regi- nald's dozen sprang out of the unseen places, and, before there was time to think, the mosaic stone swung on its pivot, and Reggie started down. 363 At every square of the lattices, far up at the roof, far down at the floor, eyes peered. Struh-La played no more, but from within there now came strains of a weirder Oriental music, the beat of drums muf- fled and subdued, the clash of cymbals, the sweetness of the lutes and viols of the Chinese; the bamboo screens were swept apart, and the flare of great flames burst upon the place the red and yellow and blue tongues darting, thrusting in mazes of color all about her as she came. Luliani, in a cloud of shimmering tissues, her face amid the flames' shadows like a white enchanted flower, glided into the place. On her shone the firestones, the heart of each a piece, it seemed, of the sheet of living flame that appeared to surround and to envelope her. They gleamed on her neck, her arms, her girdle, her fingers, her ears, and as she pursued the rhythmical measures of the dance she looked a part of the flames themselves. It was a curious dance: it is never danced twice alike, because it is a dance of suggestion. The girl who dances derives her inspiration at the moment from those who watch her and from the music she hears. Luliani began gently, with the curving grace of a rainbow; she scarcely moved, and it was but to sway a little, as the bamboo screens swayed in the breeze; 364 THE FLAME DANCER then she made more motion, and more, vivid, tense, agile motion. No longer the languorous measures of the Orient, but the spasmodic and vigilant circles and steps of the West. No longer the indirection of her mother's country, but the seductive and positive move- ments of her father's. Her thought was of Reginald Stevens. Amid all the ancient surroundings, breathing the at- mosphere that was archaic, she yet was the exponent then and there of the most intense modernism. Struh-La watched her, and he comprehended it in a degree. He was aware that her thought was not of him; he even supposed it was of Stevens. But what did it matter, after all? Very little, or nothing. Suddenly she stopped; the music stopped. Struh- La, with a word, sent all his guests away, and the lattices were cleared, and only the retreating patter of the cloth-clad feet was to be heard ; the flames, fanned by the breeze, still rose high and cast their radiance from the gilded braziers outside the court ; the bamboo screens swayed back and forth. Woo Fong slept at her post within. Struh-La said: "Now finish the dance for me alone." Luliani shook her head. "No," she answered; "I will not." 365 THE FL'AME DANCER "Come to me!" he exclaimed. She approached him. "I wish now, for the first time, to give you some- thing," he whispered to her. "Do you not guess what it must be?" Luliani did not speak at once; she was listening. It seemed to her supersensitive hearing that she detected Stevens' footstep, that presently he would be there, that at last she should regain her own soul, her own freedom, and that it mattered meantime very little what she said to this man beside her. So she said: "I can't imagine." Struh-La took the talisman, the great flame opal, from his pocket, and laid it on the cushion, away from him a little, and he himself drew much nearer to Luliani. There was in his eyes, had she but noted it, an appeal that was new, indeed, to them; it was the plea of the lover who is also glad to be the slave, as he replied: "Guess." But Luliani did not see it, and she, therefore, said, glancing at the talisman : "I suppose you wish to give me this, also?" She even touched the great stone with her finger. He rose up from his cushion and stared at her; all the appeal was gone from his face; it was livid; his eyes burned as fiercely as the flames in Woo Fong's 366 THE FL'AME DANCER neglected braziers, or those in the heart of the won- derful bauble on its cushion. "Oh, you woman with the blood of the Western man in your veins: without reverence, without faith, steeped in vanity and fair as those who walk in heaven! Could you not have spared this one jewel from the store for the sake of my faith? When you know how I have toiled to regain it, when you know that I have risked life itself to restore it, you think to add it to your adornment ; you think that I would place it on you, thus robbing the sacred place. No! I would not give you this. It was the touch of my lips that I longed to give you, but you, insatiable in your greed and lust of fineries, luxuries, splendors; you woman of the Western world, you want life, love, blood, brains, gems, stuffs, animals, boats, houses, all that your men toil and sweat to give you. And then you would cry out for still more. You would rob the gods. I adore you; I love you; I want you in- finitely," Struh-La's voice sank to a mere whisper, "but I am not yet mad, nor will I ever be so. The man of the East is sane; you want the man who is not sane." She made no answer, no remonstrance. As the rainbow fires leaped up their highest, being near their end, Struh-La crossed over through them, 367 THE FLAME 'DANCER unscathed, and snatched Luliani to his heart, his strong arms enclosed her, his lips were on hers, the flames were wrapped around them, the magical flames the Orientals can evoke, but she felt more the scorch of his kiss than the touch of the fiery tongues. "Oh," he whispered, "you are mine. Do you hear ? Mine! No man can take you from me. I could kill you, bite you with my teeth, strike you with my hands, pound you under my feet. You are mine. There shall be no marriage, as you call it, between us. There is no creed. You belong to me now." Luliani's eyes were imprisoned in Struh-La's gaze; she neither shrank nor retreated; she looked at him with the frankness of a child as she spoke. "Yes, you are right, there shall be no marriage be- tween us." Struh-La would have drawn her nearer to him, but something now restrained him. He had never felt a restraint other than that imposed by his own will be- fore, and he was silent. Luliani went on : "I have been your slave ; I knew that the day would come when you would be mine." Struh-La's arms dropped away from her. "I have been patient. I believed that when I was worthy I would be free!" The Oriental man laughed a little. He shook him- 368 THE FLAME DANCER self in an endeavor to recover his powers. "You think Stevens is on the way to you!" he cried. The girl drew herself up. "And even if he were, I will owe nothing to him. I will owe it to myself. Through all my years of subjection to you, I have foreseen my hour of release. I have known it must come by the faith and force of my own soul. Struh- La, it has been your soul that has held me in bondage, it is now my soul that says to you obey. And you will obey me because I am now the stronger soul. I owe my freedom to no man the soul must work its own salvation. You cannot even touch me. I have no fear of you or of anything." Struh-La stood looking at her, and as he looked the fabric of his actual physique seemed to crumble; he approached her, it is true, but humbly, even rever- ently, and the light in his mystical eyes flickered as the dying candle flickers. He whispered to her: "Luliani, how is it, why is it, what is the reason?'* His intellect was alert and keen even in this strange and sudden crisis. "The reason," she answered slowly, "is love. When one loves enough one can overcome even one's self, and all one's weaknesses so as to be worthy." With the writhing effort of a wounded panther, the man from the Orient gathered his strength as if for 369 THE F^L'AME DANCER qne last struggle. The savage in him sprang to the fore. "Worthy of Stevens, I suppose you mean?" under his breath. "Yes," she said simply, "that's what I mean." Struh-La lifted his arm to strike, but Reggie had gained Struh-La's home, and one plunge put him be- tween the man and the woman. Luliani turned from Stevens, she even pushed him gently aside. She stood up straight and fearless, and Struh-La stared at her. His arm fell; he saluted Stevens in a manner that was both pathetic and proud. He smiled at her as he said: "Here is your man!" To Stevens: "Take her, she is your blood and breed. I give her to you. I give you also all the jewels she wears. You stole them from me years ago. I am the man who came and begged you not to rob the sacred temple of my ancestors. You laughed. I told you I would regain them. I have. I wanted the woman. I attained her. I no longer want her. But this one thing," he looked down at the talisman in his hand, "I keep. I go back to the East. Take the woman and her jewels, and go away from here in peace." He crossed away from her very erectly, but he had lost all the vivid directness of his usual motions; he stood quietly and watched the other two. 370 THE FLAME DANCER Stevens took from his pocket the pendant that Bertha Wilmerding had appeared to find on Luliani's sleeve that night so long ago; and laid it on the cushion. Luliani took every jewel off and Stevens laid them also carefully beside the rest. Then the two who loved each other walked away together hand in hand through the thick perfumed smoke from the dying brazier fires, and Struh-La was alone. The only sound they heard as they climbed up was the bitter cry of a soul defeated and in anguish but they did not care. Love does not care for the other man. THE END. 371 A 000 125 536 3