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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 56945 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
++-------------------------------------------------+
+|Transcriber's note:                              |
+|                                                 |
+|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.  |
+|                                                 |
++-------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+THE YELLOW TYPHOON
+
+[Illustration: Decoration]
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS BY HAROLD MACGRATH
+
+
+     THE YELLOW TYPHOON
+
+     THE PRIVATE WIRE TO WASHINGTON
+
+     THE LUCK OF THE IRISH
+
+     THE GIRL IN HIS HOUSE
+
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK [ESTABLISHED 1817]
+
+
+[Illustration: "No. The same girl in every port, in the fire, in the
+moon mist."]
+
+
+
+
+The Yellow Typhoon
+
+BY
+HAROLD MACGRATH
+
+AUTHOR OF
+"THE GIRL IN HIS HOUSE" "THE PRIVATE
+WIRE TO WASHINGTON" ETC.
+
+_Illustrated by_
+WILL GREFÉ
+
+[Illustration: Logo]
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+THE YELLOW TYPHOON
+
+Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers
+Printed in the United States of America
+Published October, 1919
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+     "NO. THE SAME GIRL IN EVERY PORT, IN THE
+     FIRE, IN THE MOON-MISTS"      _Frontispiece_
+
+     HILDA WAS STANDING IN THE DOORWAY, STRUCK
+     BY THAT HYPNOSIS WITH WHICH SUDDEN TRAGEDY
+     ALWAYS BENUMBS US            _Facing p. 292_
+
+
+
+
+THE YELLOW TYPHOON
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+A naval officer, trig in his white twill, strode along the Escolta,
+Manila's leading thoroughfare. There was something in his stride that
+suggested anger; and the settled grimness of his lips, visible between
+his mustache and short beard, and the hard brightness of his blue eyes
+emphasized this suggestion. He was angry, but it was a cold anger, a
+kind of clear-minded fury which often makes calculation terrible. He had
+been carrying this anger in his heart for six bitter years. It was
+something like glacial ice; it moved always, but never seemed to lose
+either hardness or configuration. To-day it had the effect of the north
+wind--that almost forgotten north wind of his native land--in that it
+winnowed all the chaff from his mind and left one clear thought. He
+would settle the matter once and for all time. The face and form of an
+angel, and the heart of a Messalina!
+
+He had known all along that some day she would turn up in Manila. It was
+impossible for them to resist the temptation to view their handiwork.
+Tigers, they always return to the kill. But he had her now, had her in
+the hollow of his hand. All the fear of her was gone. This afternoon he
+would teach her what the word meant. Civilians were lucky. These sordid
+things could pop up into their lives, even get into the papers, and
+shortly be forgotten. But in the navy it was the knell of advancement.
+It never mattered if the wrong was wholly on the other side; the result
+was the same. But he had her, thank God! The world would never know what
+had turned Bob Hallowell into a misanthrope. The tentacles of the
+octopus had been lopped off, as by a miracle. He was a free man.
+
+Never would he forget the shame and misery, the horror of that night in
+the Grand Hotel in Yokohama. The brazenness of that confession--on the
+first night of his honeymoon! He was free, yes, but he would never be
+able to blot out that infernal night. Well, he had her. She should leave
+Manila on the first ship that left port; it did not matter whether it
+went north or east. If she proved obdurate, he would have her arrested.
+He would fight her tooth and nail. The world had changed since that
+night. The old order had gone to smash since August, 1914. Traditions
+had been badly mauled by necessities. Such a scandal, in which he had
+been merely the dupe, would scarcely leave a ripple in passing. Who
+would care, these tremendous times?
+
+He stopped abruptly. His thoughts had almost carried him past the hotel,
+one of those second-rate establishments which you find in all Oriental
+cities that are seaports, hotels full of tragic and sordid histories. He
+entered, ran up the first flight of stairs, scrutinized the numbers on
+two doors, and paused before the third. He raised his hand and struck
+the panel. A touch of vertigo seized him. Supposing his love for the
+Jezebel was still a living thing and needed only the sight of the woman
+to revive it?
+
+"Come in!"
+
+He opened the door and closed it behind him, standing with his back to
+it. He did not take off his hat. A cold little shudder ran over him. She
+was more beautiful than ever.
+
+She rose from a dilapidated corduroy divan, pressed the coal of a
+cigarette into the ash-tray, and faced him, her air one of hesitance and
+timidity. What she saw was a squat muscular body, a beautiful head with
+a rugged, kindly face. She noted the hair, shot with silver. That was
+always a good sign. Still, there was something in the elevation of his
+jaw and the set of his powerful shoulders she did not like.
+
+What he saw was a woman of medium height, slender but perfectly molded,
+young, beautiful, exquisite. Her hair was the color of spun molasses,
+lustrous because the color was genuine. Her eyes were velvety purple.
+The skin was milk-white, with a hint of peachblow under the eyes and
+temples. The marvel of her lay in the fact that she never had to make
+up. The devil had given her all those effectives for which most women
+strive in vain. Innocence! She might have stepped out of one of
+Bouguereau's masterpieces. At one corner of her mouth was the most
+charming mole imaginable. You might look at her nose, her eyes, the
+curve of her chin, but invariably your glance returned to the mole. The
+devil's finishing-touch; it permitted you to see the mouth indirectly,
+and you lost the salient--a certain grim, cruel hardness.
+
+He waited with an ironical twist to one corner of his mouth. But in his
+heart there was great rejoicing. Aside from the initial chill--nothing,
+not a thrill, not a tingle at the roots of his hair. He could look upon
+her beauty without a single extra heartbeat. He was free, spiritually as
+well as legally.
+
+"Well?" he said.
+
+"I came to Manila, to you, because I am tired and repentant and want a
+home. I am growing old."
+
+He laughed and rested his shoulders against the door. There was a
+repressed volcanic flash in her eyes. That laugh did not presage well.
+
+"Is it so hard to forgive?" Vocal honey.
+
+"What is it you really want?" he asked, perfectly willing to see the
+comedy to its end.
+
+"A home ... with you. I know, Robert, that I was a wretch in those
+days. But the world over here ... men ... the temptation ... the
+primordial instinct of woman to fight man with any weapon she can lay a
+hand to!... Won't you take me back and forgive?"
+
+"Take care, Berta! Don't waste those tears! In your eyes they are pearls
+without price. Don't waste them on me."
+
+"Then you won't forgive?"
+
+"Forgive? What manner of fool have you written me down? Forgive! I gave
+you an honest man's love ... and you picked my pockets! I would not give
+two coppers to place on your dead eyes. Take you home? Innocent child!"
+
+"Ah! Then it is war?"
+
+"War to the end, pretty cobra! You don't suppose I came here with any
+other idea?"
+
+How she hated this man! Hated him because she had never beaten him,
+never seen him cringe nor heard him plead. She, too, would remember that
+night in Yokohama, six years gone. After the blow, silence, not a word
+or a look. Stonily he had packed up his belongings and gone to the
+Yokohama Club, whence he had gone aboard a cruiser in the morning.
+Since that moment until this she had never laid eyes on him. Every six
+months a check came; but even that lacked his signature--a draft from
+Cook's. War! So be it. He would learn when she began to turn the screws.
+
+"You will take me home and acknowledge me," she whipped back at him.
+
+"Acknowledge you ... what?"
+
+"As your wife!" stormily.
+
+Again he laughed. "You are not my wife, and never have been."
+
+"And how will you prove it?"
+
+"That will be easy. Curious old world, isn't it? I thought, when I
+received your note, that nothing would satisfy me but to wring your
+neck. And all I want is a kiss ... because I'm sure it would poison you!
+I know. You have in that head of yours schemes for my humiliation,
+scandal, and all that. A woman, known as The Yellow Typhoon, claiming to
+be the wife of one Robert Hallowell, rampaging the office, storming the
+villa gate, getting interviewed. No, Berta, it isn't going to happen at
+all. On the contrary, you will leave Manila on the first ship out."
+
+"And if I refuse?"
+
+"Bilibid prison. While we are very busy militarily, our civil courts
+have plenty of time to try a prime case of bigamy. War? You will jolly
+well find out!"
+
+"Bigamy!"
+
+"Sure. Lieutenant Graham is dead, and I had charge of his effects. I
+found some interesting letters. These led me to the Protestant Episcopal
+cathedral, where your name and his were neatly inscribed on the register
+... six months before you laid your trap for me. You found, after you
+had married him, that he wasn't the Graham who had inherited a fortune.
+Marriage! It seems to be a mania with you. How many of us poor devils
+have you rooked with your infernal beauty? What's God's idea, anyhow? Or
+is it the devil himself who fits you out, covers your black heart with
+alluring flesh? No matter. The first ship out or Bilibid. I have warned
+you."
+
+Then he did something that he afterward regretted. But malice burned so
+hotly in his veins that he could not resist the impulse. He walked over
+to her and, before she could comprehend his purpose, swept her into his
+arms, held her tightly for a moment, and kissed her, her eyes, her
+lips, her throat. Then he flung her roughly back upon the divan, stalked
+from the room, and closed the door with an emphasis which proclaimed
+that it was to stand between them eternally. Once he reached the street,
+he spat and rubbed his lips energetically.
+
+He had been a fool to do that. He had slipped down to her level. But,
+hang it! it was the only way he could make her feel anything, the viper!
+
+A fool indeed; for later that act was going to cost him dearly.
+
+He left behind a tableau. Not until his footsteps died away did the
+woman stir. Then she sprang to her feet, a fury. She swept her hand
+savagely across her mouth. She, too, spat.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, through her teeth, in a kind of animal roar. She seized
+the divan pillow, tore at it, and sent it hurtling across the room.
+"Oh!"
+
+"There, there! Enough of that, Berta!"
+
+A man stepped from behind the screen. He was notable for three things,
+his bulk, his straw-colored hair, and the pleasant expression of his
+smooth, ruddy face. The ensemble was particularly agreeable. But in
+detail, somehow, the man lost out. There wasn't enough skull at the back
+of his head, his eyes were too shallow, there was a bad droop to his
+nether lip. For all these defects, everything about the man suggested
+power--power never wastefully applied.
+
+The woman whirled upon him. "But you!" her voice thick with passion.
+"You saw what he did?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you let him go?"
+
+"I have told you. If there is one man in Manila I do not care to meet,
+it's the captain."
+
+"I despise you all!" She flew about the room, gesticulating.
+
+"You will die of apoplexy some day, if you ever have the misfortune to
+grow fat. Enough of that nonsense. That goose is dead; but there are
+others, and larger golden eggs."
+
+"But I hate him! I want him broken, disgraced! Didn't you hear him order
+me out of Manila?"
+
+"Don't let that worry you. You'll stay here until I'm ready to leave.
+I'll hide you over in the Tondo."
+
+"What! Among the natives?"
+
+The man crossed the room and caught hold of her. "Be sensible. The
+captain will do exactly as he threatens. It's Bilibid if I don't hide
+you at once. You couldn't walk five blocks up the Escolta without
+running into some one who knows you. You left a trail across these
+diggings, my tiger-kitten. They don't call you The Yellow Typhoon for
+nothing. You've got to keep under cover, since we can't get you into
+that villa of his. These are war-times and I've big work to do. You'll
+go to Tondo because it is my will. I've let you play your game; now
+you'll help me play mine. When this job is done we'll return to the
+States and live like nabobs. I tell you, Berta, there's a fortune for
+the picking. Risks, yes; but not any more dangerous than we've been
+accustomed to. These American swine--"
+
+"Hush!"
+
+"All right." The man switched into Danish. "These American swine don't
+shoot spies; they arrest them and let them out on bail. Ye gods! But I
+say, I've got a little surprise for you. Remember those sables I
+smuggled in last spring? Well, Wu Fang is making them into a coat that
+will be worth seven thousand in the States."
+
+"Manchurian!" disdainfully.
+
+"Real Russian." He smoothed her hair; but it was some time before she
+began to purr. "No nonsense. We'll clear out of here at once. I'll take
+you to the Tondo and you can rig up in that Chinese costume of yours.
+You can ride after sundown, and I'll be out frequently. I'll fix you up
+like the Sultan's favorite. You can wear a cap outside of doors. Inside,
+it won't matter if the natives see your hair."
+
+"For how long?"
+
+"Perhaps two weeks."
+
+"Something of naval importance," she mused.
+
+"So big that the fatherland will pay a million. One of the biggest
+things in the world, here in Manila; and it's packed away in the brain
+of that experimental husband of yours. That's why I wanted you out
+there. There is a blue-print at that villa. If I can't land the big
+goose, I can land that. If we can't apply the principle, we can learn
+what it is."
+
+"And if he loses it, it will break him?"
+
+"Something like that."
+
+"Then I'll go peacefully into the Tondo. The thought of his being
+broken will keep me alive. Make him pay for those kisses!"
+
+The man held her off at arm's-length. "You're a queer hawk. I don't
+suppose there's a man on earth you really care for. You're afraid of me;
+that's my hold."
+
+"Afraid of you? No. You are generally sensible and necessary. And I
+happen to be your wife. You're a port in the storm."
+
+"There seems to be only one idea in your head--to break men, twist their
+hearts and empty their pockets."
+
+"I hate them. I have always hated them. As a child I fought the boys
+when they tried to kiss me. I was born that way. Analyze it? I've never
+tried to. Perhaps I am Nemesis for all the wrongs mankind has done
+womankind. I hate them. They never kiss me--even you--that I don't want
+to strike and cut."
+
+"And you've been successful for one reason only."
+
+"And what is that?"
+
+"Naval officers, English and American, proud and inherently afraid of
+scandal. You may thank God you never tried your game on a man of my
+kidney. Your pretty neck would have twisted long ago. Mark me, Berta,
+you are mine. Never try to play any of those tricks on me. If you do
+I'll kill you with bare hands. To you I am a reliable business partner;
+to me you're the one woman. Remember that. You hold me because you are
+always a bit of mystery. What's behind that day in San Francisco when
+you decided to cast your lot with mine? More than seven years gone, and
+I've never found out. Some man, and because he did not give you a square
+deal--all these wrecks."
+
+"Do you want the truth? You are the first man who ever laid his hand on
+me. I ran away from a humdrum world. I wanted adventure, swift,
+red-blooded. I'm a viking's daughter."
+
+"I can believe that. You don't care for money or jewels. It's the game,
+the sport. Typhoons! that's you. You come and go across men's lives
+exactly like a typhoon. Wherever you pass--wreckage. But our captain
+seems to have escaped."
+
+"I have your promise in regard to him."
+
+The man laughed. "That's one of your charms--you stick it out. What are
+you--German, Dane, Finn? To this day I don't know. But always keep in
+your pretty head that you are mine. Marry them, kiss them, and say
+good-by; but always recollect that I'm under the latticed window. After
+all, it's just as well that you didn't go out to San Miguel. The captain
+has a partner. He'd have been too much for you."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"Your way. Handsomest man in the Asiatic fleet, and rich. He's to be
+transferred shortly to the Atlantic. And if I've got the right of it,
+you and I are going to be very much interested in his journey."
+
+"Rich and handsome," she said, ruminatingly.
+
+The man smiled ironically. "An officer who has never had an affair; ice,
+where women are concerned. I dig up their histories; part of my game.
+You would have about as much chance with him as I would in a sampan in
+the middle of one of your happy-go-lucky typhoons. A handsome, vigorous
+young man, who carries a Rajputana parrakeet with him when he travels, a
+talking parrakeet. Everybody in Manila has heard about that bird."
+
+"A handsome young man with money and a talking parrakeet!" The woman
+began to laugh. "I never heard anything like that before. I am
+interested. What's he look like?"
+
+The man took out a wallet from which he drew a newspaper clipping.
+"That's a good likeness."
+
+"He is handsome!... Good Heavens!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"But this isn't his photograph. It's a crook's--'Black' Ellison, wanted
+for diamond robbery and assault in San Francisco."
+
+"The two look enough alike to be useful ... maybe. Not a physical
+likeness; it's merely photographic. I never overlook anything. If he
+takes the journey I have in mind, it may be of use. Photographically,
+they look enough alike to be twins."
+
+The woman returned the clipping, her eyes somber. She walked slowly over
+to a window and stared down into the street--without seeing anything of
+the busy life below.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Out San Miguel way there are many two-storied brick villas with
+Spanish-red tiles. Sometimes there are three or four almost neighborly,
+then one aloof and alone. In Manila most white folk live up-stairs, the
+servants down. It permits white folk to talk over their affairs without
+listeners--and the servants to run away to cock-fights as often as they
+dare.
+
+One of these isolated villas was walled in, except on the river side, by
+a wall of rubble coated with whitewash. Rising above the _chevaux de
+frise_ of broken bottles was a fringe of feathery bamboo. There was an
+alley of these trees from the gate to the door. There was also a garden;
+but the precise formality with which it had been laid out was a mute
+testimony of the absence of womankind.
+
+Two Americans lived there--bachelors. One of them lived there
+continuously; the other, whenever his ship was in port. They were
+officers in the United States navy. An odd pair, agreed official and
+social Manila; and after futile efforts to make friends with them,
+dismissed them. Odd, because bachelor officers who have incomes outside
+their pay are generally gay sailormen. Off duty, these two formed an
+association of hermits. They never went anywhere except officially, and
+avoided women as other men avoided the plague. One of them was
+woman-shy; the other hated them, it was said.
+
+Captain Hallowell of the staff would in all probability never go to sea
+again, actively. An experiment had severely injured one of his eyes,
+though the defect was not noticeable.
+
+Lieutenant-Commander Mathison was an officer of the line--a fighting
+sailor. They were as unlike physically as it is possible for two men to
+be.
+
+Hallowell was the dreamer, the thinker. He was short, thick, rugged, and
+a trifle gray. His head and short beard were shot with silver, though
+his mustache was still black. There was something about him that
+reminded you of the gorilla. You were likely to carry this idea in your
+head until you knew him; then you understood that he was in the same
+category as the St. Bernard--the gentlest and friendliest dog in the
+world until thoroughly aroused. They called him a woman-hater with some
+justice, though no one in official Manila ever learned the true facts,
+not even Mathison, who surmised that Hallowell had run afoul some
+worthless woman and had got past the reefs by a hair.
+
+Mathison was the man of action. He was tall, slender, and handsome, with
+a smooth olive skin. This deep color gave conspicuity to his gray eyes,
+the whites of which were dazzling. Every line and turn of his face gave
+you the impression that by nature he was amiable in the extreme. Given
+cause, he could be as savage and relentless as the gorilla his friend
+resembled.
+
+Woman-shy, they called him, because they could find no other suitable
+name for the puzzle. He was always courteous when, by those accidents of
+chance called official receptions, he found himself among women. But
+there was always a cold reserve the brightest eyes could not batter
+down. Rest assured, there were many feminine campaigns. He was the
+combination of two things women prize highly, greedily or
+sentimentally--money and good looks.
+
+What had the aspect of shyness was merely an idea, held to with
+surpassing resolution. I shall tell you about this idea later on. There
+are, here and there across this world, men like Mathison, who are
+neither mollycoddles nor sanctimonious nincompoops. They are not
+gregarious--the type from which explorers come, men who know how to live
+alone, to whom the most necessary and alluring thing in life is to
+overcome obstacles.
+
+This resolution had toughened Mathison, morally and physically. Packed
+away in that lithe body of his was tremendous vitality. He was perfectly
+willing to be called woman-shy. Such a reputation was a considerable
+barricade. He was content to rest behind it. There had been battles,
+bitter conflicts. There are certain fires which hypnotize; one _must_
+reach out and touch them. I might say that this idea of his was always
+in a state of siege.
+
+After this exposition, it sounds odd to remark that Mathison was as full
+of romance as a Chinese water-chestnut is of starch; that his
+day-dreams were peopled with lovely women. He never saw a beautiful
+woman that he did not immediately clothe her in his colorful
+imagination. He rescued her from Chinese pirates, he was shipwrecked and
+cast away on a desert island with her, he tore her from the hands of
+brigands or the latticed window of some rajah's haremlik; and he always
+married her in the end. Everything in him inclined toward the
+companionship of women, and he had built a Chinese wall around this
+inclination.
+
+Among men, however, he was companionable, witty, humorous, and full of
+sound common sense. But no one ever called him Jack, not even Hallowell,
+the best friend he had. He was always John or Mathison to his equals and
+superiors, and "sir" to his subordinates. Hallowell, however, had
+compromised on "Mat." And yet Mathison bubbled with personal magnetism.
+
+You never get deeply into a naval officer's character by rubbing elbows
+with him in wardrooms or officers' clubs. If you want to know the real
+man, go down into the boiler-rooms, the gun-rooms, anywhere but the
+quarter-deck. The rough-necks will tell you. They sometimes weigh you
+with a glance. Two things they require of you--absolute justice and
+firmness. That was Mathison to his men; and he always backed these
+attributes with a smiling eye. There was something in the snap of his
+voice that inclined men to obey him at once, without question; not that
+they were afraid of him, but that they knew he was right. In the
+navy--in all navies--there are underground wireless stations. A man's
+reputation travels from ship to ship, and when an officer is transferred
+the men try him out just to see if his crown is of tinsel or of gold.
+
+A fighting-sailor with red blood, with a born gambler's interest in
+chance, winning or losing with a smile, as you shall see; thirty years
+of age, and no anchor to windward.
+
+He never forgot anything. They said of him that he could hide his
+collar-button during a dream and go directly to it in the morning.
+Hallowell, however, was very absent-minded. Often he would go about the
+living-room in search of his pipe, in the end to find it dangling in his
+teeth. Or he would wash his face with his spectacles on and wonder what
+in thunderation ailed his sound eye.
+
+Hallowell he, too, was full of romance--miracles in steel, visions
+which cast into shape huge fighting-machines, tremendous guns, flying
+torpedoes. He was, aside from his official duties, a successful
+inventor. Few of the grim floating forts of the navy were without
+certain devices of his. He had just completed plans which eventually
+were going to cause the German Admiralty a good deal of anxiety.
+
+There were still two or three points he had not cleared up to his own
+satisfaction. The plans were absolutely complete as they stood; and he
+believed he saw a chance to reduce the complexity of certain phases; and
+he was hammering away at this problem after hours, often far into the
+night.
+
+Mathison, Hallowell and Company (the Company being the Rajputana
+parrakeet); an odd pair of men, rather misunderstood, with few
+intimates, sharing a deep, abiding love, never spoken of, but tacitly
+understood. They were jocularly known as "The Two Orphans" and the villa
+as "The Orphanage," as both men were without immediate family ties.
+
+Lately Hallowell had formed the habit of going to the Botanical Gardens
+for a half-hour's ramble, between four and five. He had discovered that
+this mild exercise cleared his mind of all routine and left it free to
+creative musings. He tramped about the paths at a moderate gait, his
+hands behind his back, the tip of his short, gray-peppered beard
+projecting like a bowsprit over his collar. I doubt if during these
+pleasant peregrinations he ever saw anything but the white markings on
+blue-prints. Half an hour to the minute, then he would shake off the
+spell, set his shoulders, and hurry away for the trolley to San Miguel.
+
+Having delivered his ultimatum to the woman known as The Yellow Typhoon
+and having learned, on the following day, that she had left the hotel in
+the Escolta, all thought of her went out of his mind completely. It was
+an unhappy page turned down for good. But to-day, one week later, as he
+came out of his day-dreams, she popped into his head.
+
+A wave of shame ran over him. He would never forgive himself for that
+violence. Not that he felt any pity toward the woman. The act had
+lowered himself eternally in his own eyes; the luster was gone from his
+self-esteem. He had kissed another man's wife, not his own. And what
+was worse, she might interpret the act as a sign that he still cared for
+her and try to re-enter his life at some later day. Fool! A mad impulse
+to hurt her, and he had hurt only himself. Well, the damage was done;
+berating his folly would not wipe it off the slate.
+
+Suddenly his sound eye lost its introspective look and became alert.
+Coming down the path toward him was a woman. She was dressed in pongee,
+a _sola-topee_ on her head. Round this sun-helmet ran the folds of a
+gray veil which could be lowered or raised at will. At this moment the
+woman's face was clear. It was young and vividly beautiful. Her hair was
+a ruddy gold, like the tips of ripe wheat after rain. The sun, directly
+behind her, cast a golden nimbus on each side of her head. Her eyes were
+purple-blue, like wood-violets, and her skin was the tint of pale amber.
+She walked with a free stride of one who loved the air and sunshine. She
+saw Hallowell only after he had deliberately stepped in front of her,
+blocking the way.
+
+Her mouth opened slightly and a vague bewilderment took the zest out of
+her face.
+
+"Still in town, then?"
+
+"Sir ...!"
+
+He interrupted with a laugh. "You're magnificent; I'll always grant you
+that. You should have gone on the stage. But I'm no longer to be fooled.
+The pearl is gone from the oyster, the juice from the orange; so why
+tarry, pretty blackmailer? I warned you to clear out, and I thought
+you'd have sense enough to do so. To-morrow morning I'll hunt for you;
+and if I find you I'll have you locked up. God knows how you women do
+it! Here you are straight out of perdition, with more beauty than ever.
+And innocence! That's the pitfall; your look of innocence. That's what
+draws us poor, trusting fools. Well, the night to clear out in. If I
+find you to-morrow I'll stamp on you as I would a cobra. The Yellow
+Typhoon! Some poor devil named you well. But you'll never break another
+white man, not in these parts. I apologize for those kisses. I forgot
+you weren't my wife. I'm giving you until morning."
+
+Insolently he swung on his heel and marched down the path.
+
+The woman remained exactly where he had left her, in the center of the
+path. Have you ever seen a clean, upstanding flower suddenly beaten
+down by a squall of rain? Her bodily attitude resembled that, at least
+for a space. One hand went slowly to her eyes, then fell limply to her
+side. But soon she stiffened, and there were volcanic flashes in her
+eyes. As Hallowell vanished behind the clove-trees she turned. Near by
+she saw a marine and he was eying her curiously. Evidently he had
+witnessed the scene. She approached him.
+
+What followed, the marine himself recounted at mess that night.
+
+"I was amblin' along at a safe distance. My orders were t' keep ol' Pop
+Hallowell under eye s' long as he was in th' Gardens. Hennessy picks him
+up outside an' follows him until he gits safe on th' trolley. Well, he
+was goin' along, when down the path comes a lady. She walked as if she
+didn't know where she was goin', either. An' out steps Pop in front of
+her, like he was a gay bird with the ladies. Th' dame gives him th'
+haughty. But he comes back. Her mouth opens a little, but she don't make
+no move. I couldn't hear nothin', but Pop was layin' down some law or
+other, which he winds up with a bang on his palm, an' marches off, with
+the lady starin' after him like I'd stare if I saw a flyin'-fish come
+int' th' mess port an' ask for whitebait.
+
+"I kind o' thought I'd move on, when she pipes me an' comes over.
+
+"'Who was that officer?' she asks me. Bo, believe me, she had all the
+little Marys an' Normas an' Paulines in th' movies laid away with the
+long-cruise eggs. Gee! You'll gimme th' ha-ha, but I on'y needed a look
+t' tell that she was _straight_.
+
+"'Well,' I says, 'that's Captain Hallowell, miss,' I says.
+
+"'Captain Hallowell,' she repeats after me. 'Where does he live?'
+
+"'He has a villa out in San Miguel, on th' Pasig,' I says. 'He an'
+Lieutenant-Commander Mathison live there together.'
+
+"'He's not married, then?'
+
+"I laughs. 'No, lady. Both of 'em are gun-shy.' She looks puzzled an' I
+adds, 'They don't have nothin' t' do with the ladies, miss.'
+
+"'Oh! Then he's th' inventor?'
+
+"'That's him, miss.' Then I freezes up a bit, rememberin' orders. I'm t'
+report anybody who asks questions about ol' Pop. But I tumbles that she
+ain't no officer's wife or nothin', an' I asks what he'd said to her.
+
+"'He mistook me for some one else,' she says. So help me, if there's two
+like that in Manila, th' place is due t' go on th' blink in a week. Then
+she lowers th' veil an' goes off toward th' exit, me trailin'. Had t'
+find out where she was puttin' up. An' hang me if she doesn't go plump
+into that joint in th' Escolta where Murphy an' me was thrown out last
+month an' just missed restin' up in th' brig. Which shows that you can't
+dope a woman out by her looks."
+
+
+The young woman--she was possibly twenty-six--eventually reached her
+room. Her maid welcomed her effusively.
+
+"Sarah we must leave here at once. Pack."
+
+"Another hotel before we sail?" cried the astonished maid.
+
+"Yes. And until I give you further orders never speak my name. Always
+call me madame. Be on your guard about this. I'm very fond of you, and
+I've let you have your way often. It may be a matter of life and death.
+We shall dine here in the room. Have a carriage at the curb at
+six-thirty. Fortunately our heavy luggage went on. When you pack the
+steamer-trunk, lay all the darker and heavier things on top. And the box
+of make-up where I can reach it handily. I have decided to grow old
+quickly. I understand, Sarah. You are becoming bewildered. No less so am
+I."
+
+"Madame's nerves...."
+
+"They happen to be steel now. Don't worry about me. Only, be sure always
+to obey me ... if you love me!"
+
+"If I love you! Oh, madame, a mother could not love her daughter more
+than I love you! You left America so gaily and happily to see this
+Orient. The sea voyage built you up. And then, that dreadful night in
+Shanghai. You came and woke me and clung to me all night, and you would
+not speak. And then it began. We move from one place to another, not
+like persons touring--like people who have done something wrong. And I
+know that you have done nothing wrong. Ah, madame, what is happening to
+us?"
+
+"So strange a thing, Sarah, that your poor brain would not accept the
+facts if I told them. Be patient with me."
+
+"Oh, madame, who would not be patient with you? I am French; we know
+what the word gratitude means. Command me; I obey. But yes! Here is a
+cable for you, madame. I will go order the dinner and the carriage."
+
+Her mistress took the cablegram absently. She was not at all excited
+over the receipt of it, for the simple reason she knew exactly what it
+would contain--a single word. _Hurry_. Once a week, often twice, this
+same distracted word. _Hurry_. It was always at Cook's or at the
+American Express. The poor man! He would soon be pulling his hair. When
+she heard the door close behind the maid, instinctively she picked out a
+channel 'twixt the bed and chairs and proceeded to navigate it back and
+forth.
+
+The Yellow Typhoon! They called her that, strange men, in Yokohama,
+Tokio, Hong-Kong, Shanghai; and always with that air men use toward
+women of a certain type. Everything in her called out wildly for
+vengeance, reprisal; and she was bound tragically, inconceivably, like a
+dreamer in the mesh of some monstrous nightmare.... To stamp on her as
+he would a cobra, if he found her! Helpless; all she could do to defend
+herself would be to move on, hide. That was what galled her; she could
+not retaliate. But one thing she could do--forestall, anticipate,
+nullify. And oh! she would do that with all the strength and cunning she
+possessed.
+
+Horrible as it was, that meeting in the Gardens was fortunate. She now
+possessed hand hold. Hallowell, a naval inventor, living in a villa out
+in San Miguel, on the Pasig. Blue-prints. There was sense to all those
+broken sentences which had come through yonder door a few days gone.
+Danish words--her own blood-tongue! She had not seen the man, so she
+could not describe him. But his companion!
+
+She stopped before the mirror and studied her face carefully. What an
+incredible thing it was! Mirrors, once so pleasant to gaze into, had now
+become chambers of horror. She no longer saw herself--she saw a grave
+open and the dead arise. After eight years! And to stumble upon the
+truth through the agency of strange men addressing her familiarly! The
+Yellow Typhoon! Drawn by instinct, repelled by intellect and breeding,
+she felt as if invisible wild horses were rending her.
+
+In that room there, within reach of her voice and hand! Whither had she
+gone, this ghost? Terror and cowardly fear had held her back from making
+her own presence known; and now it was too late. She had fallen asleep
+somewhere, back there in China, and hadn't yet waked up. That _must_ be
+it! The Yellow Typhoon! And _she_ had stumbled across the wrecks
+innocently--across an open grave which had never been filled! Berta, in
+the next room! Who, then, was in the grave in Greenwood? The malicious
+cruelty of it!
+
+Very well. She would telephone this Captain Hallowell. She would warn
+him.
+
+She became conscious of the unopened cablegram. She tore off the edge of
+the envelope. For a moment she thought there must be some mistake.
+Jargon. Then she awoke.
+
+"Oh!" she cried. She ran over to her steamer-trunk and things flew about
+for a space. The result was a diary-book from the rear pages of which
+she took a folded square of tissue-paper. She sat down, cross-legged,
+and laid this square carefully upon a knee. Ten minutes later she had
+the message decoded.
+
+
+     Mathison. Hallowell's blue-prints. _Nippon Maru_. He may be
+     followed. Sail with him. Keep in touch with Washington wireless.
+     This is your chance.
+
+
+She sprang up, found a match, and applied it to the cablegram, powdering
+the ashes. Alive! She was alive again. What she had stumbled upon
+disconnectedly was now made clear. Her chance! She had a great debt to
+pay, and here was the opportunity to pay it. Pay it she would, through
+fire and water. She would show them that there was one who could be
+grateful. Fame and riches and honor, she owed for these. She would pay
+the debt.
+
+Singular thing! In these months of wandering in this bewildering maze of
+dark and yellow peoples no one had ever recognized her. And yet it
+wasn't so singular, if one thought it out. Her world was at home, busy
+with war.
+
+She would telephone Hallowell at once and warn him that he was in
+danger. And the thought of him brought back the thought of Berta. The
+colossal irony! So be it. If Berta stood in her way, she would crush
+her, relentlessly, inexorably. And what was Berta? Only a wandering
+ghost, a lie. A phantom men called The Yellow Typhoon.
+
+Her telephone call, however, was not answered. There was no one,
+apparently, at the villa in San Miguel. She would have to drive out and
+leave a note. Either the captain or Mathison, his friend, would find it
+when he returned. She found a Tagalog boy with a tough Manchurian pony,
+and she went clattering away into the night. The dry monsoon carried the
+dust along with them.
+
+Just about this time a man in civilian clothes, but with authority
+written distinctly on his tanned face, entered the hotel in the Escolta.
+The proprietor began obsequiously to dry-wash his hands.
+
+"The Señor Morgan!"
+
+"Where's Berta Nordstrom, the woman known as The Yellow Typhoon?"
+
+"She?" A gesture. "She went away a week ago, señor."
+
+"She is here now. She was seen to enter here a little after five."
+
+"That is impossible."
+
+"I say she did. Bring her down. She wore pongee and a white pith
+helmet."
+
+"She? Oh, that was not the Nordstrom woman. No one here has seen this
+woman's face. She wears a veil always, and dines in her room."
+
+"Bring her down."
+
+"But, señor, she left at six-thirty."
+
+"What? Where did she go?"
+
+"That I don't know."
+
+"The devil! Any man with her?"
+
+"No, señor. Shall I take you to her room?"
+
+"No. She fooled you."
+
+"That is not possible, for the two women were here at the same time. I
+can prove that, señor."
+
+"I have seen the Nordstrom woman. The description of the woman in the
+pith helmet agrees absolutely."
+
+"I cannot help that, señor. They were here at the same time, though they
+did not meet."
+
+"All right. If I find you haven't told me the truth, we'll lock up the
+place. You are not very good Americans around here. Good night." Outside
+in the street Morgan of the Intelligence--who switched from uniform to
+mufti frequently--pushed back his hat, perplexed. "Two? Impossible! A
+trick. I'll set a man to watch. I'll quiz that marine again. If he
+didn't describe the Nordstrom woman, I'll eat my hat!"
+
+Could he have peered into one of the thousand huts of bamboo and nipa
+palm, in the Tondo, he might have been convinced of one thing--that
+there was still a thrill left in the dizzy old world for men even as
+_blasé_ as himself. A woman, wearing the gay little costume of a
+high-caste Chinese woman, sat on a cushion, her legs curled under her.
+She was smoking a cigarette. From a brass bowl at one side of her rose
+faint spirals of smoke. Into this bowl she flicked the ash. There was a
+smile, inscrutable, on her lips--the smile particular to one god and one
+woman, Buddha and Mona Lisa. By and by she picked up a fresh cigarette;
+but she did not light it. She broke it in two. In fancy it was a man.
+
+The little Tagalog serving-girl, squatting on the floor and blowing
+chaff from rice, could not keep her wondering gaze off this exquisite
+creature whose hair shone like the gold bangles on the ankles of the
+dancing-girls. There would be a good deal of chaff in that rice when the
+time came to cook it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Immediately after "chow" that night Mathison and Hallowell entered the
+living-room, filling their pipes. They were both smiling, each with the
+idea that he was bucking up the other. For they were at the parting of
+the ways, these two, and they might never meet again. At dinner they had
+talked of everything but that which was uppermost in their thoughts. In
+the center of the living-room was a long trencher-table--a slab of
+wonderful mahogany propped by enormous boles of Calcutta bamboo. One end
+was stacked with books and magazines. The blank space at the other end
+was Hallowell's pet abiding-place. Here, after the day's work was done,
+he would wrestle with his mechanical problems.
+
+Hallowell fired his pipe and held out the flaming match toward Mathison,
+who managed to catch the last flicker.
+
+They waited until Paolo, the Spanish servant, went below with the
+dishes. Of late they had become a little suspicious of the Spaniard. He
+loitered in the dining-room when there was no legitimate excuse.
+
+"Well, you lucky son-of-a-gun," said Hallowell, "in a few weeks you'll
+be rampaging up the Main, with proper sea-boots on your feet and a drab
+terrier under them. Lord! how I wish I were thirty instead of
+forty-five! But I've walked my last bridge. This is my chart-room. Of
+course, if I wanted to pull a wire or two, I could get to Washington.
+But I've certain ideas about the navy, and I don't want them actually
+touched. In Washington a chap sees the seams of the service, wires,
+timeserving, and all that. But out here it's the fighting-machine. We
+can't all go potting subs, but some of us can make the potting easier."
+
+Mathison put his hands on the other's shoulders. "Bob, you're the most
+lovable man God ever gave to another for a comrade. And I'm going to
+miss you like the devil. And more, I'm going to worry over you, you're
+such an infernally absent-minded dub."
+
+"That's a gift, that. We absent-minded dubs are always too busy to
+waste time wailing. Lord! but this coming and going of yours has been
+pleasant to me! I know, sometimes I have been moody and grumpy; but I
+believe you always understood."
+
+"Yes. A woman somewhere who wasn't worth it."
+
+Hallowell nodded.
+
+"And she's gone, vanished," went on Mathison.
+
+"How do you figure that out?" asked Hallowell, curiously.
+
+"For some days now you have been going about with a tune on your
+lips--airs from old light operas we went to in the happy days. I've
+never asked questions; I'm not going to now."
+
+"A nightmare, and I've just waked up," said Hallowell, staring at the
+coal in his pipe. "It wasn't natural for me to gloom. I'm cheerful by
+nature, the same as you. I'd tell you the whole story if I thought it
+worth while. Women are all right. It was my misfortune to become
+interested in the wrong one. I wonder if Cunningham would come up and
+share the place with me?"
+
+"That's odd! This very day I tapped him on the subject and he's crazy
+to get out here."
+
+"That's fine! Two years, and they've been the happiest I've ever known."
+
+"God bless you, Bob! Remember, I made no pull for this."
+
+"You poor lubber! The whole lot of us have been watching you eat your
+heart out. You had to go. And they had to send you. Saturday. It's a
+great adventure; an adventure the moment you step on board the _Nippon
+Maru_ until you march up Fifth Avenue in the Peace Parade! Funny thing.
+You'll get through. Feel it; one of those old wives' hunches. Made all
+your plans?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How are you going to carry them?"
+
+Mathison laughed. "Not even to you, Bob. But these little blue-prints of
+yours are going to Washington. Fire and water and poison gas won't stop
+me. This is going to be rather an unusual stunt. The moment I land in
+San Francisco I shall be under the friendly shadow of the greatest
+organization of its kind in the world--the Secret Service. When I step
+from the ship I shall wear a little green ribbon; from train to train I
+shall wear it. I sha'n't know anything about it, but those boys will
+have their eyes upon me. Simple; can't fail. At any time, if I'm in
+trouble, all I've got to do is to set up a yodel and the trouble is
+eliminated. On the other hand, I'm going to stay snug in my cabin. I'm
+not going to stick my head out until I step from one train to another.
+On board the _Maru_, however, I've got to depend upon myself. The thing
+has got about, Bob. I don't mean my end of it. It's got about that
+you've done a big thing. I've a strong idea that I'm being watched."
+
+"No doubt of it. You're the only intimate friend I have. Those damned
+Germans! They're as thick as flies in this town. And how the devil is a
+man to know? Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Finns--Teutonic, all of them.
+But so long as their papers are correct we can't lay a hand on them."
+
+"When will you have the extra stuff ready?"
+
+"To-night. I'll have it all out on old No. 9 print. And you'll carry
+that along with you."
+
+"Honestly, Bob, I'm worried about that print being here in the house. I
+don't trust Paolo. He's Spanish; and while the European Spaniard has
+forgotten, the Philippine Spaniard still covertly hates us."
+
+"Nonsense! No. 9 is utterly worthless without the key-print. But if
+anything _should_ happen to me before you go, don't forget that little
+red book in the wall safe. Morgan of the Intelligence gave me those
+names. They'll be worth looking at. Suspects, too clever to handle."
+
+"To hell with the Ki!" came raucously from the darkened dining-room.
+
+The two men laughed.
+
+"You'll be taking Malachi along with you?" asked Hallowell.
+
+"Would you like him?"
+
+"Like him? Why, God bless you, I'd be having you to talk to, with that
+bird around. He's a wonder. The way he picks up things is uncanny."
+
+"He's yours."
+
+"Honestly? Well, by George! That's mighty fine of you."
+
+"He's served his turn. He amused me when I hadn't any one to talk to.
+He's yours as much as mine, anyhow. He talks for you as much as he does
+for me. Besides, the poor little beggar hates the sea. If I took him
+aboard the destroyer he'd break his neck trying to keep on his perch."
+
+"That bucks me up a lot, Mat. I'm very fond of that parrakeet. Going
+out?"
+
+"Tailor. I'm buying a cits. Best for me to travel incog. if I can. Last
+fitting. I'll be back."
+
+"Fire and water and poison gas; you'll pull through."
+
+"You bet I will! Think of the yarn-spinning when I'm off duty! I can
+tell the wondering gunners that I saw the beginning of the idea, that I
+know the old son-of-a-gun who invented it. Nine o'clock."
+
+"I'll be here," replied Hallowell, "waiting for you. Though I may turn
+in any time later than nine. So long."
+
+Mathison went down the path. Half-way to the gate he turned and stared
+at the lighted windows. He could see the shadow of Hallowell's huge
+shoulders on the curtain. The dear old stick-in-the-mud! What would he
+do without some one to watch over him? He strode on, closing the gate
+behind him with a musical clang.
+
+His tailoring required more time than he had made allowance for; the
+Chinaman hadn't made the coat-sleeves quite short enough. Thus, when he
+stepped off the trolley-car which bisected the street less than a
+quarter of a mile from the villa--a five minutes' walk, tonicky on
+glorious nights like this--it was nine-twenty by his wrist-watch.
+
+He swung along with a jaunty stride, whistling the latest tune that had
+"come out," "Oh, boy, where do we go from here?" He felt like a
+butterfly that had just cut through its cocoon and found the world a
+pretty good place to live in. In two months' time he would have his drab
+little terrier under his sea-boots. But for the thought of leaving Bob
+behind, he would have been the happiest man on earth.
+
+These cogitations came to an abrupt end. He stopped. A picture had
+flashed into range. A carriage, driven like mad, had swooped under an
+arc-light; and the vehicle was coming in his direction. A golden fog of
+dust rose up under the lamp. As there was another arc-light opposite to
+where he stood, Mathison decided to wait.
+
+The carriage came thundering on. The driver was standing up. As it
+rattled past--on the two port wheels--Mathison had a glimpse of the
+passenger. A woman! And she was holding on for dear life. He gathered
+one vague impression--that she was young.
+
+"What the dickens is her hurry?" He drew his hand across his chin. "No
+boat or train at this hour. Drunken Tagalog, probably. Too late for me
+to do anything."
+
+He continued on. He began whistling another tune. "Where's the girl for
+me?"
+
+
+     "She may pass me by and never know
+       She was the girl for me!"
+
+
+When he reached the villa gate he looked up inquiringly. The
+incandescent lamp projecting from the keystone was out. Usually this
+burned until dawn. Mathison gave it a passing thought--wires burned out,
+probably--unlocked the gate and marched down the bamboo-lined path to
+the villa door. Here again he paused. No lights.
+
+"I see. Beggar's gone to bed, and that rogue Paolo has sneaked off to a
+cock-fight. Bob ought to give him the boot."
+
+He climbed the stairs silently and went to his room. He did not cross
+the center of the house to accomplish this; he merely followed the
+veranda corridor. He tossed his cap on the bureau, yawned luxuriously,
+for he was tired, and sat down on the edge of the bed to take off his
+shoes; but he immediately ceased all movement. The parrakeet was
+talking--vulgar Hindustani and equally vulgar English.
+
+"Mat, you lubber, where's my tobacco? _Chup!_" Which is Hindustani for
+"Stop your noise!"
+
+Mathison stared, his expression one of puzzlement. Malachi never made a
+racket at night unless he was profoundly disturbed. What ailed the bird?
+And where the devil was Bob? He decided to investigate.
+
+"Mat!... _Bahadur Sahib!_ ... _Chota Malachi!_ ... Bounder, take that
+ace out of your sleeve!... To hell with the Ki!... Mathison, Hallowell,
+and Company, and be damned to you!... Malachi!" in a singular kind of
+wail.
+
+A word about this parrakeet. He was well known in Manila, at least among
+the younger officers in the navy and the army stationed there. Certain
+parrots and parrakeets talk fluently. The brain, about the size of your
+finger-tip, is memory in the concrete. Men of science are still pulling
+their beards over the talking parrot, but their phrases haven't fooled
+anybody; they are just as much in the dark as you and I. The birds are
+childlike in some respects. You teach the feathered emeralds this or
+that; and then, some day, in trying to show them off, they confound you
+(and regale your company) by rattling the family skeleton. Like
+children, they store away a good many things not intended for their
+ears.
+
+Malachi--I believe they named him after Mulvaney's elephant--had been
+taught many phrases which pass in wardrooms but are taboo in parlors.
+Only, Malachi did not know it. Why men teach birds to swear I don't
+know, unless it be that a ribald oath uttered by innocence in the
+absolute is a man's idea of humor. Malachi's masters had taught him to
+memorize the names of a few cronies who occasionally dropped in for
+poker or bridge: and there was always a hilarious uproar when the bird
+gravely and unexpectedly demanded that So-and-so drop the ace he was
+hiding in his sleeve.
+
+But he had the habit of all talking parrots, big or little, of shutting
+up shop for hours at a stretch and not even a plantain or a plump
+mangosteen would tempt him to break his silence. A truculent little
+green bird, no bigger than a robin, but with the spirit of a disgruntled
+Bayard.
+
+There were no doors up-stairs except to the cement shower. All the
+other doorways were hung with bead-and-bamboo curtains. Mathison parted
+the one which fell between the corridor and the dining-room. It tinkled
+mysteriously as it dropped behind him. Where was Bob? He listened. He
+could hear the parrakeet moving about in his cage. When agitated,
+Malachi had a way of pulling himself up to the swing and solemnly
+clambering down to the perch, repeating the maneuver over and over.
+
+Mathison's glance trailed to the curtain between the dining-room and the
+living-room. A broad band of moonshine entered through one of the
+windows, broke against objects, splashed the lower fringe of the
+curtain, and ended in a magic pool on the grass matting.
+
+It seemed to him as if every nerve and muscle in his body winced and
+pressed back. It was almost like a physical blow. It took a full minute
+for the vertigo to pass, and when it passed it left his tongue and lips
+dry, his throat hot.
+
+In the center of that magic pool of moonshine was a hand, sinisterly
+inert.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Mathison fought nausea, terror; fought the paralysis gathering in his
+legs, and pushed through the curtain, feeling along the wall for the
+key-button to all the lights. He blinked a moment in the glare that
+followed. Then, whichever way he looked--havoc!
+
+The long table, the stands and chairs overturned, the phonograph-record
+files empty and flung about, the glass in the bookcases shattered and
+the books in a helter-skelter, the top of the piano swept clear of
+Hallowell's antique bronzes, drawers out, papers and blue-prints
+scattered everywhere--and the quiet form of his friend on the floor!
+
+"Bob?" cried Mathison, the anguish of that moment the greatest he had
+ever known. "Bob?... God in heaven!"
+
+He knelt. Dead. The body was still warm. Fifteen or twenty minutes ago
+Hallowell had been alive.... The length of a pair of coat-sleeves--an
+infinitesimal thing like that! Mathison strangled the great, heaving
+sob. A pair of coat-sleeves.... The irony of it! But for a trifle like
+that he would have been home in time, and this would never have
+happened.... Bob!
+
+Slowly Mathison rose. The anguish, the tenderness, slowly left his
+handsome face. It became hard, a little older, and there flashed from
+his eyes a relentless fury. He neither cursed nor gesticulated; all his
+subsequent acts were quiet ones. He prowled about the room, his scrutiny
+that of a man who knew how to hunt for little things; but he found
+nothing which would indicate the identity of the assailants.
+
+A foot or so beyond the Bokhara lay a small bronze elephant, one of
+Hallowell's paper-weights. Mathison did not touch it; he would never be
+able to touch that again.
+
+Bob Hallowell, matey, straight and loyal and brave!--done to death in
+this fashion! Mathison leaned against the jamb of the door, his face in
+the crook of his elbow. The one human being he had loved in years--as
+men sometimes love each other! And while _he_ had been fussing over the
+sleeves of a civilian's coat, Bob had sobbed out his life on the floor
+there! It was not the end itself, it was the manner of the end that was
+so horrible. Bob, who had always prayed that he might die at sea!
+
+Mathison flung his arm from his eyes. The woman in the white pith
+helmet! But immediately he dismissed this idea. There had been no woman
+here. Only three men or more could have beaten down Hallowell, who was
+tremendously strong and active. God, what a fight it had been! and in
+the end--probably as he was getting the best of it--some one had struck
+him down from behind. And he had crawled toward the dining-room; for
+there was a sinister trail across the grass matting. Dying, he had
+crawled toward the dining-room. Why?
+
+In God's name why had he not let them search? The uselessness of it! He
+had thrown away his life to justify an instinct--the active resentment
+of a brave man against permitting alien hands to meddle with his
+belongings. Bob had always been without guile, moral resiliency; like a
+bulldog, he had never retreated, stepped back.
+
+"Mat, you lubber, where's my tobacco?... Malachi!" Once more that
+singular wail.
+
+Mathison shuddered. It was horrible to hear the bird scream these
+familiar words. All at once he was struck by an oddity. Malachi had
+never wailed his name like that before; whenever he uttered it he did so
+briskly and cockily. The sight of a blue-print, however, caused
+Mathison's thought to switch instantly into another channel.
+
+No. 9! Now he understood why Bob had fought. Swiftly Mathison sifted the
+prints--old ones Hallowell had probably been mulling over. No. 9 was not
+among them. Still, to make sure, he opened the wall safe behind the
+piano. This was empty except for a small red book such as men use to
+carry addresses in. He restored the prints to their hiding-place, but he
+retained the book. No. 9, with all Hallowell's new annotations and
+computations, in the hands of the enemy! What if they had no key-print?
+What mattered it if they could not apply the principle, so long as they
+understood that this menace existed, of what it comprised?
+
+"Damn them all into the blackest depth of hell--the low, murderous
+sneaks!"
+
+Once more the militant sailor, he stepped to the telephone which was
+attached to the wall and took down the receiver. He stared blankly into
+the black cup of the transmitter and slowly replaced the receiver on the
+hook. Wires cut, outside somewhere, and all official Manila to be
+notified at once of the double catastrophe! He would be obliged at once
+to run down to the governor's bungalow.
+
+A sickening weakness swept over him again. He reached blindly around for
+a chair, righted it and sat down, with his head in his hands. He would
+have to get a good grip on himself before starting out. After a while he
+raised his head and kept his gaze upon the walls of the room, with
+strange detachment noted many of the curiosities which sailors pick up
+in Oriental ports, not for their intrinsic value, but for their
+associations. A good deal of it was junk, from a collector's point of
+view; but Mathison knew that there was not money enough in the world to
+buy a single blade, pistol, bird wing, butterfly, claw. He would keep
+them always.
+
+It was dreadful to sit there, blinking and choking and trying _not_ to
+look. It was almost as if the body cried out: "Look at me! Look at me!"
+A terribly compelling attraction! Damn them! They had ransacked the
+room while Bob lay there sobbing out his life.
+
+Air! The room was stifling him. He staggered out to the east veranda.
+Here he fell to pacing and gradually his strength returned.
+
+"Malachi!" cried the parrakeet, but briskly now. The sound of one of his
+masters moving about reassured him; for these odd little ringnecks
+recognize their friends even as dogs recognize theirs.
+
+But the living master no longer heeded. Up and down the veranda Mathison
+strode, his step now springy and noiseless. He was in full command of
+his faculties. From time to time he made gestures; they were catlike. To
+tear, bruise, rend! A cold berserker rage had taken possession of him,
+one of those upheavals of hate which, instead of blinding, clarify, the
+fires of which burn steadily until the end is attained. Only strong
+natures are capable of sustaining it. Mathison saw the future with
+astonishing clearness. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!
+
+"Mat, you lubber, where's my tobacco?" called Malachi.
+
+This time Mathison heard with comprehension. He paused, struck by a
+singularly bizarre thought. Malachi! Supposing that was it? Supposing
+Hallowell had called out to Malachi the name of the man? A chance shot
+in the dark that the bird might remember and repeat it?
+
+This trend of cogitation was interrupted by a furious ringing of the
+gate bell.
+
+The visitor proved to be Morgan of the Intelligence. He was out of
+breath from running.
+
+"Anything wrong in these diggings?"
+
+"Hallowell is dead," said Mathison, gravely.
+
+"The devil! Murdered?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I knew it! I felt it in my bones. Always something on this order when
+she passes. And like a yokel, I let her slip through my fingers!...
+Hell!"
+
+"No woman did this."
+
+"Actually, no; potentially, yes."
+
+"How did you learn anything was wrong? The telephone wire has been cut."
+
+"She came along in a carriage. Stopped just as I was about to enter the
+governor's bungalow. Said she'd seen men fighting here--shadows on the
+curtain. And I let her get away!"
+
+"In a white pith helmet?" asked Mathison, with the first sign of
+eagerness he had shown.
+
+"Yes. Been hunting all over town for her. You saw her, then?"
+
+"Just as I left the trolley."
+
+"Get a good look?"
+
+"No. Light clothes and pith helmet gave me the impression that she might
+be young."
+
+"Young," mused the Intelligence man, ironically. "Well, yes; young and
+beautiful and the innocent expression of a child, with the heart of a
+hell-cat. I pick up lots of odds and ends in my business, unofficial
+stuff. This female once tried to wreck Hallowell; and she never forgave
+him for having a spine."
+
+"She?"
+
+"Yes. Ever heard of a woman called The Yellow Typhoon?"
+
+"No," said Mathison, after a moment.
+
+"Well, perhaps a man like you wouldn't. But ask the gay lads from
+Yokohama to Shanghai, and they'll tell you Typhoon is a happy choice....
+God's name, look at this room! What a fight!... And I stood yawping
+while she ran away again! Well, she sha'n't get outside the Bay. You may
+lay to that. Now then, anything missing?"
+
+"A blue-print, relative to the U-boat business."
+
+"But I thought that completed and out of the way!"
+
+"It is; but Bob had some ends to tighten up.... My God, Morgan, they
+struck him from behind! He was beating them off, and they struck him
+from behind!"
+
+"Buck up, Mathison! You mustn't let this get you. There's a whale of a
+man's job in front of you. Uncle Sam's depending on you to get to
+Washington. Don't let this get to your nerves.... Old Bob Hallowell!
+I'll round up the suspects. I'll crucify them, but some one will speak.
+How valuable was the print?"
+
+"It will give them an idea of what they'll be up against, and that will
+rob the thing of fifty per cent. of its value. The surprise will be
+gone."
+
+"I see. Bad business. They'll try to get East; Mexican wireless. Well,
+it will take a clever man or woman to slip through my net; and I'll
+settle it inside an hour. I suppose they came by the river. We'll take
+a look-see there later. Remember this is ordinary burglary with murder.
+It won't do to let the public know that anything serious has happened to
+our war plans."
+
+"My friend!... And he was so happy to have done something for his
+country!"
+
+"But keep hold of yourself. Don't let this break you down. It's up to
+you to make Hallowell's plans good. Keep that in your head."
+
+"'The Yellow Typhoon.'"
+
+"That's the name. I'll describe her later. Where's your servant?"
+
+"Out.... An eye for an eye!"
+
+"That's the way to talk!" said Morgan, patting Mathison on the shoulder.
+"And nothing will hurt the Hun so much as your safe arrival in
+Washington.... Poor devil!" he added, under his breath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mathison, his pipe dead in his teeth, leaned against the starboard rail
+and stared with unseeing eyes. It was Sunday, the first day out of
+Manila. The northeast trade was blowing briskly and the blue Pacific
+flashed and tumbled.
+
+Loneliness. Never had he known anything like this before. A sudden
+inexplicable craving for crowds, talk, laughter ... women! With Bob at
+his elbow, night after night, he hadn't been conscious of a void in his
+life. Woman. No doubt he was a madman, a kind of super-madman, to have
+held out as long as he had. Nerves. It was quite possible that the
+craving would subside and he would become normal, once his raw nerves
+had steadied down.
+
+His errand was in jeopardy. He would soon need all of his cunning, all
+his strength, to pull through. He had set for himself something more
+than the mere rôle of a secret messenger. He had buckled on the sword
+of Nemesis. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. He was letting his
+grief dig in too deeply. He must find some diversion shortly or he was
+done for.
+
+He had had to fight Morgan bitterly to win his point. Morgan maintained
+that the arrival of the blue-print in Washington would be vengeance
+enough for any reasonable man. In the end, however, he had surrendered,
+reluctantly agreed not to disturb the passengers beyond careful scrutiny
+of their passports. But why had the taciturn Morgan chuckled, thwacked
+him jovially on the shoulder, and continued chuckling as he went down
+the gang-plank just before it was hauled aboard? Mathison was still
+mystified over this peculiar conduct.
+
+Anyhow, one thing was off his mind. That long, thick manila envelope was
+in the purser's safe. It did not matter that the purser might still be
+cudgeling his brains as to the why and wherefore of the remarkable
+decorations on the face of that envelope for which the owner had not
+required a receipt of deposit.
+
+There were twenty-one first-class passengers and eighty steerage.
+Mathison had applied himself intensively to the memorization of the
+twelve descriptions in that little red book of Hallowell's. None of the
+first-class passengers tallied. It was conceivable that his enemies
+would keep under cover until they were ready to strike; and nowhere
+could they keep hidden so well as in the steerage, among the Chinese,
+Japanese, Filipinos, and Russians.
+
+They had found Paolo in the Pasig River, a hundred gold in his pocket,
+conclusive evidence of two things--that the servant had betrayed his
+master and had known too much for the safety of the men who had bribed
+him.
+
+
+Mathison knocked the dottle from his pipe, turned toward the
+smoking-room, when he saw a book coming along the deck, flopping and
+bumping like a gull with a broken wing. He recovered it. Probably it
+belonged to some passenger aft the smoke-room. _The Life of the Bee_:
+Maeterlinck. There was nothing on the fly-leaf to indicate the
+ownership, however. He tucked it under his arm and walked aft.
+
+In a steamer-chair between the port and starboard projections of the
+deck-house was a woman. He recognized her as the old lady who occupied
+the cabin opposite to his on the main deck. A gray cashmere shawl was
+wrapped about her head and shoulders. The rest of her body was snug in
+the folds of a plaid rug. A wisp of gray hair, the sport of the wind,
+was fluttering, now across her forehead, now above the edge of the
+shawl. She wore a pair of mandarin spectacles with amber lenses.
+Mathison could not tell whether she was asleep or awake. Nevertheless he
+approached. The craving for companionship was not to be denied.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he began, "but perhaps this book is yours. It came
+galloping around to starboard from this direction."
+
+"Thank you. I saw it start on its journey, but I was too lazy to go
+after it." She held out her hand--concealed in a gray cotton glove--and
+he laid the book on it.
+
+It did not occur to him then, but it did later, that the voice was
+singularly rich and full for one who appeared to be well along in the
+'sixties. But he was not unaware of the fact that breeding and education
+may preserve the tonal quality of a voice through life.
+
+"You ought to have a chair in a more comfortable place," he suggested;
+"out where the sun is."
+
+"That's just my difficulty. The sun bothers my eyes, and I'm obliged to
+find nooks where it cannot reach me. We old folks have to be careful.
+Won't you sit down?"
+
+He opened a chair and sat on the foot-rest, conscious of a vague
+exhilaration; it was the human look of her and the human sound of her
+voice.
+
+"My name is Mathison."
+
+"And mine is Chester--Mrs. Hattie M. Chester. My cabin is opposite
+yours. If a submarine should pop up, you'll promise to come for me?"
+
+"I promise. But there won't be any subs over here except in dreams."
+
+"Something to scare naughty children with. I see."
+
+The hint of raillery convinced Mathison that there was a vigorous,
+fearless personality under the shawl and the rug. What a curious spot to
+select! Swinging gray shadows that passed and repassed, baffling
+scrutiny in a most amazing manner.
+
+The conversation turned upon the war, and here again she surprised him
+by her clear understanding of what was happening to the world.
+
+"You've a son over in France?" he ventured.
+
+"No, unfortunately. But if I had a thousand sons, I'd disown them one
+and all if they weren't over there. Once upon a time white men worshiped
+many gods. To-day where are they? To-morrow we shall laugh when one
+speaks of kings. The Teuton idea did not invade Belgium so much as it
+dug its own grave.... Oh, if I were a man!"
+
+Mathison smiled--something he hadn't expected ever to do again! He asked
+her what she was doing alone in this part of the world. She had had a
+nervous breakdown in the spring, and her doctor had advised her to take
+a long sea voyage.
+
+"And where else could I take a sea voyage? I always wanted to see India,
+China, Japan. I suppose you are going back to enlist?"
+
+"No, I am going home to fight. I am already in the service."
+
+"What arm?"
+
+"The navy. I have been transferred to the Atlantic," he admitted,
+frankly. "I'm to command a destroyer in British waters."
+
+"Splendid! And you are traveling in mufti?"
+
+"A special dispensation." He sought a safer channel. "You are rather
+brave, to tour this part of the world these days."
+
+"Gray hairs go safely anywhere. Besides, I've a French maid who is
+something of a grenadier. I am not afraid of anything ... except
+ghosts!"
+
+This time Mathison laughed. He was positively enjoying himself. Then he
+recollected that he hadn't fed Malachi. He rose.
+
+"I've a little parrakeet in the cabin, and I've forgotten to feed him."
+
+"Does he talk?"
+
+"In three languages--Hindustani, Spanish, and Yankee."
+
+"Bring him up. One like those I saw in Agra, flying about in the ruined
+fort?"
+
+"Yes; green, with a lemon collar. I'll bring him up this afternoon at
+tea."
+
+"To-morrow morning. The sun is in this corner in the afternoon."
+
+"You ought to walk."
+
+"I shall ... at night."
+
+"I'll bring the bird up to-morrow, then."
+
+"And thanks for returning the book."
+
+This was the beginning of what may be written down as one of the most
+amazing situations ever devised by Fate. The woman behind those amber
+spectacles was young, and it was the youth of her that drew Mathison,
+though he was utterly unconscious of this fact--drew him morning after
+morning as the magnetic pole draws the needle of the compass.
+
+By the time the ship reached Honolulu and went on his depression was a
+thing of memory; his nerves became normal; he was more alive than he had
+been in years. With all the cunning of her superb art she made her lure
+one of motherhood, so irresistible that he no longer bothered his head
+over her avoidance of sunlight or the fact that if he saw her at night
+it was by the port rail, her back to the moonshine. There was one clear
+thought regarding her: what a comrade she must have been to the man she
+once called husband! Whimsical, deeply learned, sound in philosophy,
+humorous, and unafraid: she made him think of his mother; and all the
+tenderness he had bottled up in his lonely heart these fourteen years
+went out to her. Lightly he fell into the habit of calling her Mother,
+and in her turn she called him Boy.
+
+For all the pleasure and satisfaction he found in this companionship,
+there was a line and he never crossed it. Of his own affairs he was
+remarkably reserved. Several times--merely as a test--she laid traps for
+him, but each time he evaded them. Morgan--to whom she had gone sensibly
+with a frank confession--had summed up this odd handsome young man: "He
+is likely to fool you. Under that amiable exterior there is a lot of
+blood and iron stuff. Always keep that in mind. Just now he is in a bad
+shape. Get him out of it. He's a bit of a mollycoddle where women are
+concerned, but among men he is an ace."
+
+Had Mathison been of her world--a world to which she was returning
+gladly, though she had left it indifferently enough--he would soon have
+seen through her art, clever and vigilant as it was. She could not
+disguise the slender youthfulness of her foot. No hand sixty-odd years
+old could be so firmly fleshed. The gray glove hid nothing. But his
+guilelessness served to carry her over a rather shaky bridge.
+
+On the third night out of Honolulu--it was near eleven--Mathison stood
+in the little shelter between one of the life-boats and the rail, whence
+he could look down into the waist, at the recumbent forms of the
+steerage passengers who were sleeping on deck. Night after night he had
+watched from this lookout; but moonlight and starlight had a way of
+dissolving and blotting out salients.
+
+To-night, however, his persistence was rewarded. From the black
+rectangle of the companion door a Chinese woman, apparently of high
+caste, stepped forth. She stood poised for a moment, then trotted across
+to starboard and laid her arms on the broad teak rail. She wore a
+radiant jacket, full of gold thread which caught the moonshine and threw
+it back--a spider-web hung with dew. She was smoking a cigarette.
+
+He knew China; and suddenly he sensed something wrong, and discovered
+the flaw. No Chinese woman, high or low, ever wore such a thing on her
+head. Mathison couldn't have named it; but a white woman would have had
+no difficulty. It was a dainty boudoir cap.
+
+One of the recumbent forms on the deck rose slowly. A big man, with
+blouse, boots, and cap of the Russian soldier; the peak of the cap was
+drawn well down. He lounged over to the Chinese woman, and the two began
+to talk. Presently Mathison heard the woman laugh. It was unmistakably
+Occidental laughter.
+
+So! For a long time Mathison stared, but he was too far away to gather
+an impression such as might count in the future. Sooner or later he
+would see the face of this Chinese woman who laughed--white. He would
+never forget Morgan's description of the woman called The Yellow Typhoon
+... the woman who had tried to break Bob Hallowell and might have been
+one of the contributing causes of his death. Old Bob! An eye for an eye,
+a tooth for a tooth! Let them begin the play. He was ready.
+
+He had reasoned, and with sound logic, that his enemies might not strike
+at all while crossing, to lull him into a false sense of security, so
+that once they stepped ashore they might find he had grown careless,
+overconfident. One thing, they would never be able to get into his cabin
+when he was out of it. The night and day stewards--dependable Japs--had
+been liberally subsidized. One or the other was invariably on guard up
+to the hour Mathison turned in for the night. With the Manila envelope
+in the purser's safe, the human wall around his cabin, an attack would
+have small chance of success. No doubt they were already aware of his
+precautions.
+
+On the night before making San Francisco, however, he was given an
+insight as to the patience and Machiavellian range of the Teuton forces
+opposing him. It was twelve when he turned in--an hour later than usual.
+As he came abreast his cabin companionway, he stopped, rocked to the
+bottom of his soul. The Japanese steward was plunging toward him at top
+speed. Mathison spread out his arms, but the little brown man dipped,
+eluded him, and flashed up the main companion.
+
+Against the opposite side of the cabin companionway stood the gray lady
+... Malachi's cage hugged tightly to her bosom!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+With the blood pounding in his throat, Mathison rushed to her side. He
+saw that the lights were on in his cabin.
+
+"Just a moment ... until I get my breath!"
+
+"The steward...?"
+
+"No, no! Ran out to identify the man, if possible. I'm afraid there's
+something deadly in your room."
+
+"But Malachi!" The bird was huddled on the bottom of his cage, a bad
+sign.
+
+Mathison dashed into the cabin, inhaled sharply, and his inhalation
+thrilled him. An unknown but pleasant odor tingled his nostrils. His
+glance roved quickly. On the floor, under the port, was a brown box,
+perforated. He seized it and tossed it through the port-hole, beyond the
+rail, into the sea. Then he stepped out into the companion.
+
+"Come!... Outside, where the air moves.... Malachi!" Mathison's voice
+broke. "Hurry!"
+
+She followed him, still clutching the cage and wondering if he would
+remark her eyes, now without the baffling spectacles. He led her to a
+spot where the rail opened, took the cage from her, and set it on the
+deck. He sat down beside it, and she imitated him.
+
+"The poor little bird!" she murmured. Was the wig on straight? She dared
+not put up her hand to feel.
+
+Mathison stared at Malachi. He should have taken a cabin in the lower
+deck. Still, he couldn't understand how the port had been opened. He had
+kept it locked, despite the stuffiness. No matter. Inspection would
+solve that. Thought he had turned in. He had, until to-night, gone to
+the cabin regularly at eleven; and they had planned the stroke
+accordingly. Their only hope of entering the cabin was after midnight,
+when he was in it. He had liberally subsidized the two Jap stewards. Day
+and night the companion was guarded. But after midnight the companion
+was empty.
+
+Clever. To stupefy him, to send him into a deep, artificial slumber,
+force his door and ransack his belongings leisurely. He was confident
+the fume was innocuous beyond the sleep-producing effect. But Malachi
+... it would have been the death of Malachi.
+
+He still clung to that idea. He had read of such things, but until now
+had never considered them in the light of facts. If Hallowell had called
+to Malachi, the little bird knew. But would he ever speak? Had he
+understood that one of his masters had been trying to tell him
+something?
+
+Every morning for an hour Mathison had worked patiently to get the bird
+to speak; but, aside from grumbling in parrakeetese, Malachi refused to
+utter a word. All this confusion annoyed him. There was a strange swing
+to the world, now up, now down, now from side to side. It kept his
+temper, normally irascible, in a state of feverish vindictiveness. True,
+he would climb up Mathison's arm, nip his master's ear gently--the only
+way he had of expressing affection; but he was generally unhappy.
+
+"I don't know why," said the gray lady, when Mathison's silence began to
+get upon her nerves, "but my first thought was of Malachi. I ... you
+have told me so often how much you loved him."
+
+"And you have probably saved him. In ten minutes he would have been
+dead."
+
+Malachi turned slowly head-on to the wind. The beak was closed. This was
+a good sign.
+
+"Malachi, old boy?"
+
+The woman stifled the sob that rose in her throat. A strong, vigorous
+man, young, handsome beyond ordinary, all alone but for the little green
+bird. Why? What was the meaning of this self-imposed isolation? "A
+mollycoddle so far as women were concerned." Why, there was nothing
+about him to suggest bashfulness. She had not studied him through all
+these hours without learning that fundamentally he was light-hearted in
+temperament and tremendously interested in living. No woman in the
+background, for he was not cynical. And here he was, his sole companion
+a Hindustani parrakeet.
+
+Mathison thrust a finger into the cage, and Malachi struck at it
+drunkenly.
+
+"He'll come around. I can't thank you; I haven't the words. But it would
+have broken my heart if anything had happened to him. Won't you please
+tell me exactly what happened?"
+
+She did not begin at once. She had to weigh her words. She must never
+let him suspect that, night after night, she never went to bed until she
+heard him enter his cabin. What a coil! He would never know who she was!
+To-morrow, after landing, the gray lady would vanish forever. Only a few
+months gone her existence had been joyous, if strenuous; and now there
+would be always at her side a shadow and a fear. She had stepped upon a
+whirligig, and perspectives were no longer clear. The horizon of the
+future was dark with complications. She dreaded New York, and she was
+honor-bound to return. Berta in New York? The kite in the dove-cote?
+Escapades which would become the talk of the town and which the public
+would naturally lay at _her_ door. She shivered.
+
+Yes, to-morrow she must vanish completely, even though she would always
+be close at hand, all the way across the continent. The Yellow Typhoon!
+Her heart swelled in bitterness. He would never know. Filled with the
+grim business of war, he would be rushing in and about Washington or the
+great naval yards. He would spend his leave in activities which
+concerned his future. There would be only one chance in a thousand of
+his stumbling upon the truth and finding her. Ah, but if he should!
+
+"I could not sleep," she began. "I left my door open and knelt on the
+lounge to watch the sea. I don't know how long I remained in that
+position. Suddenly I observed a man stealing along the rail. His face
+was in a complete shadow. I watched him. He stopped in front of your
+port-hole, then approached it. This looked so suspicious that I stepped
+into the companion. Your door was open the width of the hook, and I
+could see the port-hole clearly. I saw the glass swing inward. There was
+plenty of moonshine. I saw an arm reach into the port-hole and something
+was dangling at the end of the shadowy hand. Quickly I threw up the
+hook, opened your door, and turned on the lights. Saki, the steward,
+came running up. In a word I told him what had happened. There was a
+peculiar odor in the air. I caught up the cage and rushed out ... just
+as you appeared."
+
+"All my life I shall be grateful. I can't explain anything to you, much
+as I'd like to. You will never realize what your companionship has done
+to buck me up. I came aboard very nearly a broken man."
+
+"Boy, you don't have to confide." She laid a hand on his arm.
+
+"I'm an odd duffer. They used to call me mollycoddle, back at Annapolis,
+until I had whipped half the class. And all the while I've been just as
+normal as the average man." There was a pause. "You know Kipling?"
+
+"His books? Yes."
+
+"Then you remember that yarn called 'Love o' Women'? My father ... he
+was like that. Handsome and lovable and weak in fiber. He was also in
+the navy. For a hundred years we Mathisons have been in the army or
+navy. We had money. We were soldiers and sailors from choice. My father
+died when I was sixteen. He died terribly. He broke my mother's heart.
+But I knew nothing of that until after his burial. Then one day she
+called me to her.... I wish you could have seen and heard her. Tender
+and plucky and beautiful ... and unafraid. She talked to me as fathers
+always should talk to their sons. Frankly and truthfully she drew life.
+I had the example of my father. She told me that somewhere in the world
+there was a mate for me. Should I take her a clean heart or a muddy one?
+Should I know real happiness or should I choose a bed like my father's?
+I listened, dulled and appalled. Then she asked me to promise to go
+clean. There's a point. We Mathisons always keep our promises. It is the
+motto on the shield. But we never give our promises hastily. My mother
+knew that. My father had never made her any promises of reformation. He
+knew he would have kept them. She told me to fight it out, then come and
+tell her what I had chosen to do with my soul and body."
+
+"And you promised!"
+
+"Yes. And I've kept it. She died shortly after. The wild streak was in
+my blood. I've had to fight. I have sown my wild oats in work and
+adventure. This took away a good deal of the gregarious instinct. I have
+fought wild beasts on foot; I have explored poisonous swamps; I have
+climbed precipices--and always the thing tugged at me."
+
+"And the dream-woman?"
+
+"I'm afraid she's been a little too long in coming."
+
+"But how would you know?"
+
+"I'd know. I can't tell you how or why. Only, I shall know. Something
+will tell me. I wonder, am I a mollycoddle?"
+
+"Boy," she said, pressing his arm, for she hadn't taken her hand away,
+"I did not believe that there was such a man in all this world. Why, you
+have won your Marne!... And she will come, this mate, for God is just.
+If I had a son, I'd want him like you. All mothers long for sons like
+you.... She will come!"
+
+"She'll have to hurry," he replied, lightly. "I'm heading into the war
+zone. I may never come back." He laid his free hand on hers. "I wonder
+if I can make you understand what your kindness has done for me? When I
+came on board I was all but done for. I had just lost the one human
+being I loved. May I come and see you in New York?"
+
+"I shall be waiting for you. You have my address."
+
+Later, in her cabin, while sleepy Sarah brushed and aired the wavy coils
+of hair which had been confined all day beneath the hot wig, she turned
+with shining eyes--eyes like purple grapes in the rain.
+
+"Sarah, am I beautiful?"
+
+"Ah, madame, all the world...."
+
+"Bother the world. What do _you_ think?"
+
+"I? Madame is more than beautiful. She is famous. She is good. She is
+worthy of a good man, of many healthy children."
+
+Her mistress laughed. "Thanks, Sarah. That is all I wished to know."
+
+"Will madame continue wearing this make-up?"
+
+"I shall change it for another in the cab that takes us from the dock to
+the train to-morrow."
+
+
+When the ship lay alongside her pier the following afternoon Mathison
+put in his buttonhole the bit of green ribbon. Then he rang for the
+steward, assigned the cage and one of the two kit-bags to his care, took
+the other himself, and went up on deck to bid Mrs. Chester good-by.
+
+"Good-by," she said from behind a heavy veil. "You will not forget me?"
+
+"Never in this world! I have your address. I'll dig up New York from one
+end to the other but I'll find you, little mother!"
+
+"Take care of yourself. And please come and find me!" But she went down
+the gang-plank with a queer, empty feeling in her heart. He might find
+_her_, but the gray lady would shortly vanish forever.
+
+Had she been mothering him? Or had she been attracted from another
+angle? She had never met a man like this before, worldly in his
+understanding, handsome, virile, a man's man, but an utter child in the
+presence of a woman. Perhaps the attraction was its novelty. Hitherto
+she had looked upon men cynically. She was like one who had been chasing
+a mirage across the desert, to find a water-hole unexpectedly.
+
+It had been so easy to deceive him. Her voice, the roundness of her
+body, the firmness of her hand and foot, these hadn't told him anything.
+How many times had she almost reached out to rumple his hair? Why hadn't
+she? Why did she want to? She carried this riddle with her for many
+days.
+
+
+Mathison walked down the gang-plank into the vast shed. Almost at once a
+man approached him and handed him an envelope. He made off without a
+word. Mathison, without glancing at the envelope, stuffed it in his
+pocket and proceeded toward the customs barrier. He passed this with
+little or no delay, got into a taxicab and was driven to the ferry. Over
+in Oakland he found the train made up, so he went into his compartment
+immediately. He put away the green ribbon and rang for the porter.
+
+"Screens in the window," he said.
+
+"Yes, suh."
+
+"I shall ring for you whenever I need you. Knock three times shortly on
+the door when you answer."
+
+"Yes, suh."
+
+"I shall have my meals in here. Always bring the waiter to the door
+yourself."
+
+"Yes, suh," said the porter, the whites of his eyes growing.
+
+"Follow these instructions and you will be ten dollars richer when we
+draw into Omaha. That will be all."
+
+Mathison left the door wide open until the arrival of the conductor,
+when he produced the envelope he had so mysteriously received. It
+contained his tickets. After surrendering these, he closed and locked
+the door and took inventory. Imitation mahogany--steel. Above the little
+door in the lavatory was an electric fan. He discovered that one of the
+windows went up easily. When his bunk was made up he would be able to
+reach the light and fan buttons without difficulty.
+
+"Well, Malachi, old scout, this is America. How do you like it?"
+
+Malachi teetered on his perch grouchily.
+
+"I'm beginning to think that you're Irish--a Sinn-Feiner. You don't like
+anybody, anything, or anywhere. Poor little beggar! I wonder if you'll
+ever chatter again. I suppose I'd better break the news to you. When we
+get to New York I'm going to give you away. Yes, sir. To the dearest old
+lady a chap ever had the good fortune to meet. To have met a woman like
+that ... when she was _young_! My luck! They call us idiotic Yankees,
+these Huns, Malachi; but we're going to fool them. Ever see a spider
+weave his web--and then wait for the fly to walk in? Wait and see!"
+
+Mathison turned slowly and faced the rear partition. He stretched out
+his arms and curled his fingers sinisterly, his jaws set, a savage
+luster in his eyes.
+
+"With these two hands, by God!... All right, Bob. Trust me to see it
+through."
+
+But how was he going to secure that blue-print--No. 9? He possessed the
+power to search every human being on this train. That would, if used,
+serve to recover the print; but it would set Messrs. the Flies winging
+to parts unknown the moment they suspected what was on foot. The long
+arm of the Secret Service at his beck and call, and he would not dare to
+use it! Beyond identifying himself to the watching agents by the display
+of the green ribbon, he would never dare call for help. His enemies
+would be in this train, probably in this very car: they would be on the
+same trains all the way to New York, whither he must draw them. Once
+there, he would not have much difficulty in recovering No. 9. But if
+they mailed it! If it entered their calculations to mail it!
+
+How many against him? He would never know until the end. The Yellow
+Typhoon? Let the vipers beware! Morgan had described her minutely, but
+Mathison doubted he would recognize her unless she entered some
+extraordinary situation.
+
+To live in this infernal bulkhead for days, eating, sleeping,
+reading--that would be the supreme test, that would prove whether the
+metal in him was iron-casting or forged steel. Never to question the
+porters, to confuse his enemies by a grim silence, to force them into
+offensives out of sheer curiosity.
+
+"We idiotic Yankees!"
+
+That night as he lay in his berth--it was after one o'clock--solving
+mathematical problems which had to do with jumps between trains, he
+became conscious of a pleasant odor. He recognized it. Instantly he sat
+up and hauled away at the window. Next he brought over Malachi and
+lowered the covering of the cage. The cold night air came in at the rate
+of a gale. Then he remembered the fan. He groped for the button, and the
+fan began to hum. Still he could smell the fumes. Suddenly he laughed.
+It was the cold, tranquil laughter of a man who had lived among men. He
+pressed the porter's bell. If there was any one waiting in the corridor,
+he would have to move on. But if the porter did not arrive!
+
+The porter, however, came almost at once. Mathison, holding his
+automatic behind his back, opened the door full wide.
+
+"Any way of getting a cup of coffee?"
+
+"No, suh."
+
+"Sorry to have bothered you, then."
+
+All Mathison wanted was an open door for a minute or two--a clearing
+draught. When he shut the door there was only a vague taint. Clever
+work. Not a lethal fume; neither his heart nor his lungs were troubled
+in the least. A sleep fume. There had been an almost irresistible desire
+to curl up and let the world go hang.
+
+Malachi's feathers were ruffled, but he clung to his perch, his eyes
+beaming with their usual malignancy.
+
+How had they gotten the fumes into the compartment? Forward there was no
+danger, as he was occupying No. 1. He went over every square inch of the
+base of the rear partition. In the corner under the berth--a difficult
+spot to get to--he found an oily thimbleful of steel filings. He
+drenched a towel and dammed the aperture. Compressed air had forced the
+fumes into the compartment. Evidently they were going to keep him awake
+nights!
+
+So his friends were next door! Something to find that out. But what was
+the idea? They could not force that door without dynamite. Had they
+speculated upon his running out into the corridor? Or was this the
+beginning of a series of night attacks to break him down physically and
+mentally?... To keep him awake until he threw caution to the winds!
+There were big storms forward; there would be delays. Very well; he
+would sleep afternoons and stand watch through the night. A man's job.
+
+The next offensive came while they were crossing the Rockies. It had
+caliber. It convinced Mathison that he was dealing with a man of brains,
+a man who was not untrained in psycho-analysis. They ran afoul a
+tremendous storm in the mountains and became stalled for several hours
+because of a fallen snow-shed. It was near eleven o'clock when the
+porter came along and announced what had happened.
+
+Though Mathison was sleeping as much as he could through the day, he
+undressed at night, propped himself up under the reading globe and
+studied navigation peculiar these days to British waters. Round about
+midnight he heard a pistol-shot, another, then a fusillade from opposite
+directions. He jumped out of his berth and got into some of his
+clothes--and sat down suddenly, grinning. Had he been dressed they
+would have got him! What would be surer to call forth a fighting-man
+than the sound of shots in the night? They were going to keep him
+thinking fast. They wanted him out in the open.
+
+Before the train reached Omaha--a day and a half late--Mathison began to
+feel the strain. Sleep in the afternoon is never energy-producing; a
+number of minutes pass into oblivion, that is all; body and brain stand
+still; they do not recuperate. Mathison, upon coming out of these naps,
+felt as if he had been playing cards for hours. He had to apply cold
+water to shake off the lethargy. He was full of confidence, however.
+
+There wasn't any doubt at all that they were after his nerves. The
+door-knob rattled mysteriously during the small hours of the night.
+Whenever the train stopped there was clicking on the window-pane. But he
+never opened the door nor raised the window-curtain. The vantage was
+still on his side of the net. While he knew what they were attempting to
+do, they hadn't the least idea where their endeavors were getting them.
+
+At Omaha passengers for Chicago would be transferred to another train.
+Mathison was last to leave. He put the green ribbon in his buttonhole,
+picked up the kit-bag which contained the manila envelope, and sauntered
+forth. The freshness of the winter air and the joy of swinging his arms
+and legs freely!
+
+The porter preceded him with the bag and Malachi. He did not hurry. He
+was among a dozen or so moving in the same direction. As he reached the
+platform of the new car two men broke away from the group and hurried
+off toward the gates. Negligible and unnoticed, unless you knew what it
+signified. On the lounge in his compartment--which was still No. 1--he
+discovered some novels and a bundle of the latest magazines. A present
+from the Secret Service. He would look through them all with particular
+care. There might be a message.
+
+A point in passing. If Mathison was confusing his enemies he was also
+confusing the various chiefs of the Secret Service along the route.
+Here, the latter reasoned, was a man who temporarily possessed colossal
+power. Orders had come from Washington to obey him absolutely. He could
+commandeer a car for himself, a diner, put operatives in the cars fore
+and aft, order the arrests of suspects, knock railway schedules
+galley-west; and to date he had issued but two orders--to engage No. 1
+compartment on all trains and to have three taxicabs at the station in
+Chicago. And these orders had come from mid-Pacific by wireless. On the
+other hand, they appreciated the fact that if Mathison could make it on
+his own, so much the better. Still, they were puzzled.
+
+There were three novels. As Mathison idly riffled the pages of one he
+saw a word underscored. He followed this clue, and at length came upon
+the message: "You understand your powers? Car straight to Washington if
+you order it." Mathison chuckled. If the Secret Service was baffled,
+what was going on in the minds of the men following him? He had
+determined from the start to send no wires. The green ribbon must
+suffice. Telegrams passing to and fro might create confusion, alarm the
+quarry.
+
+There were two empty compartments on this car--4 and 5. Mathison had No.
+1. No. 2 was occupied by a man with straw-colored hair and a ruddy
+complexion and a woman with a charming mole at one corner of her mouth.
+In No. 3 were two men, playing canfield. In No. 6 there were two women.
+
+Both women had entered the car heavily veiled--the woman in 6 and the
+woman in 2. Neither removed the veil until the conductor passed. From
+San Francisco to Omaha, all on the same car; and they would be on the
+same car from Omaha to Chicago. Mathison nor the woman in 2 had stepped
+outside their compartments until this transfer from one car to the
+other. But the woman in 6 walked the corridor at all hours of the day
+and night, her face hidden behind a thick gray veil. Her maid, however,
+brought all the meals to the compartment.
+
+The blond man stood up and put a cigar between his teeth.
+
+"Well, once more luck is with us. And yet I am vaguely puzzled."
+
+"Over what?" snapped the woman with the mole, irritably.
+
+"It is almost too easy"--scowling.
+
+"The stupid Yankee pigs!"
+
+"Not this one, Berta. We haven't got him clear in the open yet."
+
+"Ah! Then you are beginning to doubt that superior efficiency of
+yours?... I'm tired. To keep me cooped up like this!"
+
+"You may open your wings as wide as you please, once we are in New
+York."
+
+"But if he goes on this way?"
+
+"I have still some traps. There will be a little journey in Chicago
+between one station and the other. Who knows what may happen?"
+
+"But why coop me up?"
+
+"The hour may come when I shall need you. If he saw you it would not be
+possible. Did Hallowell have a photograph of you?"
+
+"In his watch-case. But he destroyed it the night he left me." She
+frowned.
+
+"Nevertheless, he must never see you. On board the ship it was your
+impatience that caused me to fail. We merely put him on his guard. The
+blue-prints were in the purser's safe, and his signature was _not_ in
+the receipt-book. Have patience. No man is perfect. Patience often
+overcomes skill. Sooner or later the skilful man grows careless, or he
+forgets, or he comes to believe he is a godson of luck. And then, there
+is the lack of sleep. Somewhere along the route I'll find a weak spot."
+
+"I hate all Yankees!"
+
+"So do I, Berta. I hate them because some of them are not boasters. Have
+patience. A small city east of Chicago, a chief of police who likes
+newspaper notoriety. A couple of hours; we sha'n't need any more than
+that. New York!" jovially.
+
+"Champagne and beefsteak!" she retorted, contemptuously.
+
+"Well, and why not? Haven't I promised you all the dresses you can pack
+in two trunks? I haven't had a decent meal or a good cup of coffee since
+the war began."
+
+"New York!... after all these years!"
+
+"Bah! Who in the world will recognize you? We are a good many miles away
+from that gambling-house in the Honan Road. You're moody. You've missed
+the parade for nearly five weeks. You'd be all right if you could walk
+through the cars to the diner and have them gape in wonder at you.
+Somewhere between Chicago and Buffalo we'll use that crook scheme. Now
+I'm going in next door for a few rubbers at bridge."
+
+She did not reply. She turned her face toward the window and stared out
+into the night. New York! What was the matter with her that she did not
+blaze with pleasure at the thought of New York? Fifth Avenue, Broadway,
+the theaters, the brilliant restaurants, the shops--why did the thought
+of New York set a little chill in her heart? Were _they_ alive or dead?
+In all these years she had not made the least effort to find out. New
+York ... youth that had known nothing but poverty! With a repellent
+gesture she cast out these thoughts and picked up a fashion magazine.
+
+In compartment 6, the young woman read a manuscript, while the elderly
+maid with the broad, stolid countenance of the Breton peasant, brushed
+the golden hair tenderly. By and by the manuscript fluttered to the
+floor. She knew it so absolutely, even after these months. She stared at
+the partition. She saw in fancy a window-curtain, forms swaying back and
+forth, then darkness. She would never be able to identify the men. She
+had cried and shaken the iron bars of the gate until her palms had
+peeled.
+
+"Sarah, dear, am I tiring you out?"
+
+"I love to brush your hair, madame."
+
+"I mean the slaving I've set you to."
+
+"No, madame. The only happiness I know rests in serving madame
+faithfully. Besides, madame has told me that all this is for France; and
+that is enough for me, who am Breton."
+
+"Then I am still beautiful to you?"
+
+The maid smiled. "Madame, that handsome young man with the little green
+bird...."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Madame is not offended?"
+
+"No, Sarah. Speak on."
+
+"Well, it would appear that madame--and madame knows that I am
+observing--no longer despises mankind."
+
+"Oh, but _he_ isn't a man, Sarah!"
+
+"But yes, madame!"
+
+"No. He is an anachronism--a half-god who has lost the way to Olympus."
+
+"Ah! If madame is not interested?"--with a sigh of relief.
+
+"Men! How well I know men! The sameness of them! What do they offer me?
+Orchids, hothouse grapes, jewels that I return. Never a flower that is
+free and wild. What is it I want, Sarah? Romance! A whirlwind, an
+avalanche, to sweep me up, to carry me off--berserker love! A man who'll
+take me if I'm what he wants, without pursuing me in circles. I am a
+viking's daughter! This man?... We shall wait and see. Get me to bed. I
+am weary."
+
+Meanwhile Mathison went through his magazines, taking in the pictures
+first. Then he fell upon a good story. It was illustrated by
+photographs, and one of the photographs made him forget the story. What
+was it? What was it that stirred in the back of his head at the sight of
+this bit of dramatized photography? He studied it near and afar, from
+this angle and that, but the lure remained tantalizingly beyond reach.
+
+Fate never hurries. She takes time in writing her human scenarios; she
+can afford to. She knows that inexorably they will be enacted, without
+deviation. She had chosen this moment to place before Mathison's eye the
+photograph of a beautiful young woman.
+
+
+The train from Omaha arrived in Chicago exactly twenty-four hours late.
+Great storms were raging across the land.
+
+As Mathison was passing through the gate--the green ribbon in his
+buttonhole--a man approached him covertly and thrust an envelope into
+his hand. More tickets. Mathison did not accelerate his stride in the
+least. He knew that everything was prepared for him. Upon reaching the
+cab-stand he stopped. At once three taxis rolled up. Mathison bundled
+his luggage into the middle cab, rested Malachi's cage on his knees,
+shouted an order, and the three cabs started off rapidly.
+
+The snow was coming down in thick sheets. A blizzard was in the offing.
+
+Just outside the regular cab-stand stood a private car, a heavy,
+powerful limousine. As the three taxis rolled away into the storm a man
+dashed up to the limousine, jumped in and called to the chauffeur:
+
+"The middle car; follow that. Smash it or tip it over. In a storm like
+this accidents will happen."
+
+The limousine shot forward. The going was heavy. The man in the
+limousine saw the three taxis string out a little as they went on. What
+he did not see was the fourth taxi which followed him.
+
+Almost in a kind of military maneuver the three taxis forward veered
+together suddenly and shot down a side-street. It took the limousine two
+minutes to pick them up again. There were plenty of arc-lights, and by
+the aid of these the pursuer saw that he had gained a little. They were
+strung out again, about fifteen feet apart. They held this formation for
+several blocks.
+
+To the occupant of the limousine this was baffling as well as maddening.
+He saw that until they separated it would be impossible to ram the
+middle taxi. He decided to draw up broadside.
+
+The woman in the fourth taxi laughed.
+
+"Sarah, that young man knows how to take care of himself. If I should
+happen to fire a pistol, you promise not to scream?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+The young woman laughed again. "Oh, this is glorious! I feel all my
+youth coming back. I'm alive! alive! alive! The fates have appointed me
+his godmother, Sarah. My duty is to watch over him until ... he grows
+up!"
+
+The maid smiled in the dark.
+
+Presently the man in the limousine cried out joyfully. The forward cab
+swooped north, the rear one south, while the middle car continued east
+toward the railway station.
+
+"Now! Beat into it! Anything to stop it!"
+
+A block farther on the private car and the taxi collided. The latter
+reeled toward the curb and stopped.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+As the man in the limousine jumped out his chauffeur pointed his hand
+menacingly at the chauffeur on the taxicab seat. That individual raised
+his arms without resistance. He could not see the gun, but he knew it
+was there.
+
+The man with the straw-colored hair swung open the door of the taxicab
+ferociously--to find the cab empty. He whirled back into the limousine,
+which was already moving. The right mud-guard was badly crumpled.
+
+"Station--all the power you've got!"
+
+Tricked. He understood what had happened. When the taxis had maneuvered
+into the side-street the original middle car had gone either to the
+front or to the rear. There was nothing for it but to play his last
+card--mistaken identity. To get Mathison away from his luggage for an
+hour or two.
+
+The occupant of the fourth taxi, also comprehending what had taken
+place, picked up the speaking-tube and ordered full speed ahead.
+
+"Sarah, this young man will bear watching. He has ideas. I doubt if I
+shall be necessary to him at all."
+
+"If madame should be hurt...."
+
+"No bridges until we come to them. Keep your veil down. He might be
+watching from his car-window when we arrive. He must never see you."
+
+
+Mathison was extremely pleased with the result of his exploit. To have
+thought out all these moves in mid-Pacific, and to find them moving
+without a hitch! He closed the door of his compartment and drew the
+window-curtains. He pulled down the covering of Malachi's cage.
+
+"Malachi, you're likely to think cross-eyed all the rest of your days.
+But to-morrow night at this time you'll have peace and quiet."
+
+Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a bit of paper come jerkily
+under the door. He pounced upon it.
+
+
+     All compartments 2 on train bought out in advance; unknown persons.
+     Want anything done about it? Answer window.
+
+
+After a minute's wait Mathison raised the curtain a little and gave a
+negative sign with his hand. Then he dropped upon the lounge. So that's
+how it had happened! Luck and accident in San Francisco because travel
+East had been light, but a matter of foresight and calculation in Omaha
+and Chicago. Confident that he would always occupy No. 1, that he would
+travel a given route as rapidly as transportation facilities permitted,
+they had bought out No. 2 compartments on both trains.
+
+There would be real action from now on. They would begin to realize that
+they hadn't any time to lose. Very well; they would find him ready. He
+smiled. The Secret Service agents were beginning to fidget, the best
+possible proof that his plans were moving forward like clockwork.
+To-morrow night the climax! Only a few more strands and the web would be
+complete.
+
+"We idiotic Yankees!"
+
+He went to bed early. He was confident that there would be no more gas.
+He was dead for the need of a few hours of recuperative sleep. The
+jolting ride across town had helped to dissipate most of the bodily
+numbness; but now his brain was crying out for oblivion. He fell asleep
+almost instantly.
+
+And yet a cessation of movement brought him out of this profound
+slumber. It was as if his subconsciousness had stood on guard. He peered
+out from the side of the curtain. They were in a railway yard somewhere.
+Stalled. Freights were all about and yard engines puffing and whistling.
+He looked at his watch. Two. He had slept four hours. He resisted the
+intense craving to bury his head in the pillow again. No doubt he had
+been refreshed actually, but he was still drunk for the want of sleep.
+He slipped out of his berth, drenched a towel and slapped it over his
+face. Then he turned on the lights and dressed. When the right time came
+he would sleep forty hours.
+
+The train went on at four. At dawn it came to a standstill again and did
+not stir until nine. They were on a side-track, and along the main line
+freight was roaring and thundering. What was happening to the world? A
+limited, one of the fastest known, side-tracked for freight! From six
+until nine the freight rolled by.
+
+A newspaper! It was almost unbelievable. He felt rather stunned. He
+hadn't held a newspaper in his hands since leaving Honolulu! He did not
+actually know whether the Germans were in Paris or the Allies in Berlin.
+So held by the chase across the continent, giving his every thought to
+the affair, he had forgotten that the world was going on outside this
+particular orbit and great events were toward.
+
+Twice again that day there were long delays at sidings, east of towns
+barely mentioned on the map. All the freight in America seemed to be
+moving east. On schedule time the train should be passing through
+central New York; and here they were, miles and miles west of Buffalo,
+the next real stop. The reporter brought him a sporting page from one
+Chicago newspaper and the editorial page from another. He was vaguely
+able to learn that nothing new had happened Over There, and that there
+was a coal famine and a great congestion at ports for lack of ships.
+
+He began to fuss and fume and fret. He endeavored a thousand times to
+find a fresh angle for his weary shoulders. It couldn't be done.
+Pullmans were built for dividends, not comfort.
+
+He wore a gray traveling-suit and a cap to match. The suit, though new,
+was in an astonishingly disreputable state. The solution is apparent; it
+does not signify carelessness. The fact is that you cannot loll and
+twist and curl up and at the same time keep the warp and woof of Scotch
+worsteds shipshape.
+
+He yawned, stretched his arms until the sockets cracked, turned
+wrathfully and struck the top of the seat--that rolling lopover which is
+still one of the mysteries of modern times. Perhaps, in making the
+original car there had been a few yards of plush and excelsior left
+over. Splendid! Just enough for a pillow on the top of the seat-back,
+where no human head might reach it reposefully.
+
+Mathison jumped to his feet and went through a bit of setting-up
+exercise. It was wasted effort. When a man is bored to the point where
+his soul aches along with his body, what he needs is a mental jolt, not
+a quickening of his respiratory organs. Nothing except that which
+attacks the eye surprisingly will serve to pull a man out of the bog of
+such lethargy.
+
+Within the compartment, a pressed-steel imitation red mahogany, green
+plush, and a bluish haze which was the essence of many incinerated
+cigars and consumed pipes; outside, snow, thick and dusty and
+impenetrable. A great rimless, earthless, skyless world. But for the
+clatter of wheel upon rail, the train might have been speeding through
+the clouds; the illusion was almost perfect. Darkness was falling.
+Winter! After all these years of tropical climes!
+
+The confinement was really heartbreaking. Never had he been shut up like
+this. And the craving for sleep was becoming a menace. It wouldn't have
+been so bad had he dared move about freely, eat his meals in the diner,
+and smoke his cigar or pipe among men.
+
+On the opposite seat were the magazines which had been given him in
+Omaha. He reached for one of them. He had long since read all the
+stories and advertisements. Whenever monotony reached that point where
+it threatened to become insupportable he dove for these magazines. He
+could keep himself awake with them.
+
+Odd, but he was always returning to that posed photograph. It haunted
+him: a wonderful bit of photography. Rembrandt in tone. It was a
+restaurant scene. The woman's arms and shoulders were lovely, but her
+face was a leaden silhouette, tantalizing, until you chanced to look
+into the wall mirror at the far side of her. Even this reflection was
+dim; but you caught the beauty of the outline, the quiet strength of the
+nose and chin; a rare face, not only beautiful, but intellectual. For a
+long time Mathison stared at it; and then he discovered something he had
+missed in previous scrutinies. In the lower right-hand corner, in very
+small type, he read, "Posed by Norma Farrington." Some new actress. As
+for that, many new ones had come and gone since he had visited New York.
+He tore out the picture. He couldn't have told why. Norma Farrington. He
+smiled.
+
+An idea had come to him, a charming idea such as often tickles the
+imagination of young men when they see the portrait of a beautiful
+woman. The more he mulled over the idea the more fascinating it became.
+Certainly she would not have him arrested for wanting to meet her. He
+folded the picture and put it away. Supposing he really started out upon
+such an adventure in earnest, not in imagination? Danger? Scarcely,
+with the little time he had at his disposal. Soon he would be in the
+waters that were full of slinking death. And it was this fact that let
+down the bars to the spirit of recklessness. A few hours of sport before
+the death grapple. _Why not? Why not? Why not?_ pulsed his father's
+blood. No. He was John Mathison's master. Wild blood he might have in
+his veins, but it was also the blood of unbroken promises.
+
+What had started this rather sinister idea in his mind, or rather
+reawakened it? The photograph of the actress? No. The gray lady. The
+charm of her companionship, the hint of the things he had missed. Queer
+things, human beings!
+
+No, he would not bother Norma Farrington. He would build one of his
+exciting romances around her and let it go at that. But he would hunt up
+Mrs. Chester before his leave was over, have tea with her, present her
+with Malachi, and tell her the story in detail.
+
+Another human inconsistency. Hallowell had become strangely remote. As
+though the thing had happened months instead of days ago. And yet every
+move he made was in the service of Bob--to bring his great dream to
+fulfilment and confusion to his enemies.
+
+He heard some one knocking on the door. He rose quickly and stood
+listening. Two taps, a pause, followed by two more taps. Mathison
+released the lock, and with his foot ready and his shoulders hunched he
+drew back the door about an inch. He saw the shining black face of the
+porter.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Bad news, suh."
+
+"Come along inside." The porter slipped through the opening, and he
+winced as he heard the door close and the lock snap. "What's the
+trouble?"
+
+"Dey's a big freight wreck beyon' de nex' town, an' we'se t' be stalled
+ontil mo'nin', suh."
+
+"What!" explosively.
+
+"Yes, suh. Freight ovah de passenjah rails. An' den dey's dat new
+rule--coal an' freight fust. We can't get by dat wreck onless dey
+side-tracks de freight; an' de freight goes whoozin' by while we twiddle
+thumbs. It's dat Gahfield awdah; an' dey ain't no use buckin' ag'in' it,
+wah-times. Dey takes the diner off, too. No fish. So yo' will haff t'
+eat in de station aw go t' one o' de hotels in town."
+
+"How big a town is this?"
+
+"Middlin'; but dey's got a fine hotel called de Watkins, jus' a little
+ways f'm de station. Bath in all de rooms, suh."
+
+"Bath in all the rooms," repeated Mathison, meditatively.
+
+"I can bring yo' sumpin' in," suggested the porter, but without much
+enthusiasm. "Dey won't be no trimmin's like yo'd get at de hotel."
+
+"How long will we be stalled?"
+
+"Dey calc'lates ontil nine in de mo'nin', suh."
+
+"What are the other passengers going to do?"
+
+"Dey's all climbin' out fo' dinnuh."
+
+Mathison pulled at his lip. His decision came in a flash, one of that
+caliber which only true adventurers dare make. The blind Madonna of the
+Pagan, Chance! With a wave of the hand, to consign the burden to her!
+Perhaps it was the green plush, the red paint on the four steel walls;
+anyhow, he decided to spend the night at the hotel. He would immediately
+deposit the manila envelope and the little red book--Hallowell's--in
+the hotel safe and advise New York by wire his positive whereabouts. If
+anything happened to him, they would know where to find his personal
+effects. There would be no Secret Service operatives at his beck and
+call here; he would be on his own.
+
+This decision reacted upon him mentally and physically like champagne.
+All his craving for sleep, all his depression, went by the board
+magically. He began to thrill and bubble with gaiety. And there would be
+Malachi. In the quiet of the hotel room he might be inveigled into
+talking.
+
+"All right, George; I'll climb out, too. The Lord help me, but I can't
+stand this damned green plush any longer! I'll spend the night at your
+Watkins. Now listen. When the train stops wait half an hour before you
+come for my kit-bags. Engage a taxi. If you can get me into that taxi
+without being observed, there'll be a five-spot for you. You didn't tell
+the waiter this morning about knocking. When I finally got the meal it
+was cold."
+
+"I done fo'got. I sure is busy dis trip."
+
+"Will you be aboard all night?"
+
+"Yes, suh. I ain't allowed to leave in a case like dis. Dey won't
+nobody see yo' in all dis rampagin' snow. All right; thutty minutes
+aftuh de train stops."
+
+The porter backed out. Almost instantly he heard the lock snap into the
+socket. He scratched his woolly poll ruminatingly.
+
+"Well, suttinly dis niggah nevah struck a bunch like dis befo'. Two
+women hidin' behin' veils w'en I makes up de beds--like dey jes' got
+ovah smallpox. An' dis chap makin' me signal on de do', an' totin' a
+parrot! Well, politeness is mah middle name. I'se goin' t' do jes' es
+dey tells me. W'en I gits t' New York I'll buy dat Ford Lizzie."
+
+In the fourth compartment sat three men, playing cutthroat auction. One
+of them had just bid "two without" when the porter knocked.
+
+"Come in!" shouted the blond man. "Ah, George, what's the news?"
+
+The porter became a very mysterious individual. He shut the door softly
+and leaned toward the blond man's ear.
+
+"He's goin' int' town, suh."
+
+"Going to take his things with him?"
+
+"Yes, suh. I'm t' call fo' him thutty minutes aftuh de train stops.
+Dey's sumpin' I fo'got t' tell yo', suh. It's de way I has t' knock on
+his do' befo' I can git in. I hits two times, den I waits a moment, den
+I hits two times mo'."
+
+One of the men started to say something angrily, but the blond man
+silenced him with a gesture.
+
+"You should have told me that before, George," reproachfully.
+
+"I know, suh; but I done fo'got."
+
+"Remember my instructions. A misstep on your part and you land in jail."
+
+"Yes, suh." For George knew these men to be Secret Service men. He had
+seen the magic shields. "Dey sure fools yo' sometimes, don't dey? He
+don't look it."
+
+"That's why I'm taking all these precautions. I can't arrest him until
+we cross the New York state line. The less they look like it the more
+dangerous they are. Always remember that, George. He hasn't ordered
+anything to drink, has he?"
+
+"No, suh; nuthin' but watah an' coffee."
+
+"He hasn't sent or received any telegrams?"
+
+"No, suh."
+
+"What made him decide to risk leaving the car?"
+
+George thought for a moment. "I reckons it was de green plush. He said
+he couldn't stand it any longer."
+
+The blond man laughed. "Plush! Well, I'd risk it myself if I were in his
+boots. That's all, George."
+
+The porter bobbed and went away. The moment the door closed the blond
+man got up.
+
+"Out in the open at last! All things come to him who waits. Sleep.
+That's what he is after. Since the fumes I'll wager he has kept an eye
+open every night; and it's beginning to tell on him. Everything is
+turning out beautifully: the wreck, the storm, his restlessness."
+
+"If that black fool had only told us about that knocking!"
+
+"Never mind the spilled milk. We all know what to do; let us see that we
+do it. I'll notify the local police at once. This may be the end of the
+chase. This porter is telling us the truth. I believe now that the other
+porter told the truth. Mathison isn't relying upon anybody to help him
+out. He hasn't sent any telegrams or received any. At least, not from
+his own car. It may be.... No; he never leaves the compartment. Yet
+there's those three taxis. How could these turn up if he hadn't
+telegraphed? Never mind. Here is where we shall trip him up. I'll go and
+tell Berta."
+
+Shortly after he rapped on the door of the second compartment. The door
+was opened cautiously.
+
+"Oh!" said the woman with the mole.
+
+The blond man stepped inside. "Good news! He's going into this town for
+the night. There's a wreck ahead, and we'll be stalled all night. He's
+going to risk it in the open at last. Sleep. He's going to pieces for
+the want of it. Out in the open!"
+
+"It is time. I am dead. I'll never get the cramp out of my poor body.
+Nearly three thousand miles cooped up like this! You were free. I had to
+stay packed away in this suffocating box." She stooped and peered out of
+the window. The suburb lights were flashing by. "A horrible night!"
+
+"On the contrary, I should call it beautiful. We are and have been
+perfectly prepared against a move like this. He carries two things I
+must have."
+
+"I shall be glad when it's over."
+
+"To-night. It will depend upon you. Be careful. He is very strong and
+clever. I thought the chase would be over in Chicago last night. He
+tricked me neatly. But green plush!" The blond man laughed quietly.
+
+"What are you laughing at?"
+
+"He's going into this town, he's going to trust to his luck, because he
+can't stand the sight of green plush any longer. It's acting upon him
+psychologically, like red upon the fighting toro. On the other hand, he
+will not act impulsively again."
+
+"He hasn't gone yet."
+
+"A fig for that! He'll go with the police, then. His way or mine; he'll
+go into town to-night. Dress warmly but elegantly. Look the part."
+
+Mathison put on a fresh collar and brushed himself carefully. He packed
+his kit-bags and patted them affectionately, as a hunter might have
+patted his faithful hounds. A real dinner, lights, cheerfulness, pretty
+women; a room big enough to turn around in, a bed big enough to turn
+over in, and a bathroom with a tub of hot water; a theater, perhaps,
+drama, opera, burlesque, whatever the town had to offer. He would play
+the game to the hilt. His danger would be maximum, whether he stayed in
+the hotel or walked abroad. So he might as well get all the fun out of
+it possible.
+
+He lifted the cotton-flannel bag. "Malachi, we'll both have a bath
+to-night. Only, we're probably doing a fool thing. There won't be any
+one to watch over us; we'll have to go it on our own. But I'm done. I've
+_got_ to get outside. You poor little beggar! Are you ever going to talk
+again? Malachi!"
+
+A pair of yellow eyes flashed belligerently, but immediately the lids
+dropped.
+
+Perhaps if the bird had the run of a room where everything was silent
+and motionless, he might find his tongue. For days he had known nothing
+but the strange swing of the sea and the rattle of steel. A quiet room
+in which he could wander about and claw up the curtains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+At precisely six-thirty the porter returned. He announced his arrival in
+the peculiar manner previously described.
+
+"De taxi is waitin' fo' yo', suh," he whispered.
+
+"Good for you, George. Some snowstorm!"
+
+"It sure is. Yo' can't see yo' hand befo' yo' face. I tol' de cabby t'
+take yo' straight t' de Watkins. On'y a sho't ways. De Watkins is
+fash'nable an' has a cobbyray--leastwise dey did befo' we got int' dis
+wah. Anyhow, dey'll give yo' all de comfo'ts o' home, an' I reckon dey's
+whut's achin' yo'."
+
+"The nail on the head, George. But I mustn't miss this train. Remember
+that."
+
+"I'll telephone, suh, ef dey makes up any time."
+
+Passenger and porter hurried from the car to the station platform,
+crossed two tracks, passed through the waiting-room, thence to the
+street, which you could not see across for the curtain of driving snow.
+There was a line of taxis at the curb. It appeared that everybody had
+deserted the train.
+
+Mathison knew that he had committed a blunder. There was even now a
+chance to run back; but stubbornly he faced the direction toward which
+he had set his foot. A blunder which, before the night was over, might
+become a catastrophe. Well, one thing was certain: they should never lay
+hands upon that manila envelope. He would deposit it in the hotel safe.
+Once that was done, they could come at him from all directions, if they
+cared to. He knew exactly every move he was going to make.
+
+"Boss, I wish I was whah dese bags come f'm. Pineapples an' melons; oh,
+boy! Say, I ain't nachelly inquis'tive, but what's in dat cage?"
+
+"A ghost, George, by the name of _Palæornis torquatus_."
+
+"I pass!"
+
+Mathison laughed. "It's a parrakeet, a hop-o'-my-thumb of a bird."
+
+"Talk?"
+
+"Almost as much as you do, George."
+
+The porter grinned and helped stow the luggage inside the cab. Mathison
+climbed in and slammed the door. The porter watched the taxicab until
+the gray, swirling pall swallowed it up. He pocketed the bill.
+
+"Dey ain't no reason why, but I sure hates t' take dat young man's
+money," he mused, remorsefully. "De undah dawg; I s'pose dat's it. W'en
+dey don't look like it dey is. What's he done, I wonduh? A parrot! Fust
+time I ev' seen a white man tote a parrot. An' he don't look like a
+henpeck, neither."
+
+He turned and jogged back to the train.
+
+The taxicabs began to straggle along. The streets were full of ruts and
+drifts, and the vehicles looked like giant beetles scurrying.
+
+Gloomy town, thought Mathison, as he peered first from one window then
+from the other. Not a cheery, winking electric sign anywhere. Then he
+recalled the reason, as explained by the porter. A coal famine had
+forced a temporary abandonment of this wonder of American cities.
+
+It was stinging cold, somewhere around zero. He threw the lap-robe over
+the cage. Malachi wasn't used to the cold. The shop-windows gleamed like
+beaten gold, so thick were they with frost. The cab lurched, staggered,
+and skidded.
+
+"Lord! but the smell of clean snow!" He dipped his chin into his collar.
+He had been away from this kind of weather so long that it bit in.
+
+Cabs in front and cabs behind. Were they following him? Likely enough.
+They would be fools if they didn't. A hot bath and a bed for himself and
+a room to rove about in for Malachi. The thing was written, anyhow; and
+deep down in his soul he knew that he was going to pull through. Fire,
+water, and poison gas.
+
+In about ten minutes the cab came to a halt. The door was opened and a
+bellboy grinned hopefully and hospitably. Mathison stepped down from the
+cab, gave a dollar to the driver, and reached for Malachi and one of the
+kit-bags, leaving the other for the boy. He sprang up the hotel steps,
+keenly exhilarated. He felt alive for the first time in days. He swept
+on to the desk, planted the kit-bag strategically and ordered a room
+with a bath. But as the clerk offered the pen Mathison frowned. He
+hadn't planned against the contingency of signing his name to hotel
+registers. His slight hesitancy was not noticed by the clerk. Mathison
+was not without a fund of dry humor, and a flash of it swept over him at
+this moment.
+
+He wrote "Richard Whittington, London." He chuckled inwardly. The name
+had popped into his head with one of those freakish rallies of memory;
+but presently he was going to regret it.
+
+"Room with bath; number three hundred and twenty. Here, boy! How long do
+you expect to be with us, sir?" asked the clerk, perfunctorily.
+
+"Until morning. Train stalled on account of wreck. You have a good
+safe?"
+
+"Strong as a bank's."
+
+"Very good. I'll be down shortly with some valuables."
+
+"Bird?"
+
+"A parrakeet."
+
+"That'll be all right. We bar dogs and cats."
+
+The door of the elevator had scarcely closed behind Mathison when a man
+walked leisurely over to the desk and inspected the freshly written
+signature. He seemed startled for a moment; then he laughed.
+
+"A room, sir?"
+
+"No. I was looking to see if a friend of mine had arrived. He hasn't."
+
+The stranger walked away; he strolled into the bar, looked into the
+restaurant, mounted the first flight of stairs and wandered into the
+parlor, which was empty and chilly. Next he hailed an elevator and asked
+to be let out on the third floor. Here he walked to the end of the
+corridor and returned, took the next car down, and went directly into
+the street. At the north side of the hotel was an alley. The man stared
+speculatively into this, jumped into a waiting taxicab and made off.
+
+Half an hour later a woman entered the hotel parlor, selected a chair by
+the corridor wall, and sat down. You might have gone into the parlor and
+departed without noticing her.
+
+Meanwhile Mathison set the cage by the radiator, went into the bathroom,
+came back and felt of the bed, and smiled at the bellboy.
+
+"This will do nicely. How big a town is this?"
+
+"About seventy thousand, sir."
+
+"What's the name of it?"
+
+The boy grinned. Here was one of those "fresh guys" who were always
+springing wheezes like this because they thought the "hops" expected it.
+
+"Petrograd."
+
+Mathison caught the point immediately. "Boy, on my word, I haven't the
+least idea what the name of this town is. I'm off the stalled flyer, and
+I forgot to ask the porter. I wanted a bed instead of a bunk. Now
+shoot."
+
+The boy named the town.
+
+"What have you got in the line of theaters?"
+
+"This is Tuesday," answered the boy.
+
+"I know that. Is there a comic opera or a good burlesque?"
+
+"Are you guying me? Where'd juh come from?"
+
+"The other side of the world."
+
+"I guess that's right. Why, this is showless Tuesday, all east of the
+Mississippi. Even little Mary Pickford ain't working to-day. New York,
+Boston--it's all the same. Nothing doing. The new law; all the theaters,
+movies, billiard-parlors, and bowling-alleys dark."
+
+"Well, I'll be hanged!"
+
+"It's the war, sir," said the boy, soberly. "I'm in the next draft. I
+don't want to kill anybody; but if I've got to do it I'm going to learn
+how."
+
+Mathison held out his hand. "That's the kind of talk. It's bad, bloody
+work, but it's got to be done. Here's a telegram I want sent. Don't
+bother bringing back the change. But don't fail to have this wire sent."
+
+"I won't fail, sir."
+
+"Now, I want you to give this order to the waiter."
+
+After a word or two the boy interrupted Mathison. "No meat. Fish,
+lobster, oysters, chicken."
+
+"All right; make it chicken, then. And tell him to bring a banana and
+some almonds. And mind this particularly. Tell the waiter to knock once
+loudly. Make no mistake about that."
+
+"Yes, sir"; but the boy's eyes began to widen perceptibly. Here was a
+queer bird.
+
+After the boy had departed Mathison double-locked the door. Then he
+liberated Malachi. The bird came out and stood before the door of his
+cage indecisively. Then he reached down and whetted his beak on the
+carpet.
+
+"_Chup!_" he muttered.
+
+"You little son-of-a-gun!" cried Mathison, delighted. It was the first
+time Malachi had spoken since leaving Manila. Mathison stooped and
+extended his index finger. By aid of claw and beak, the bird mounted the
+living perch and slowly worked his way up the arm. "The little
+son-of-a-gun, he's alive again! Malachi, are you cold?"
+
+Malachi grumbled in his own tongue. Mathison approached a curtain, and
+the bird at once transferred himself to that, clawing his way up to the
+pole, where he began to preen himself. His master watched him for a few
+minutes contentedly. Then he looked out of the window. He saw the dim
+outlines of a fire-escape. He could also see a cross-section of the
+street beyond the alley: clouds of snow, spouts, whirlwinds.
+
+He turned from the window swiftly and tiptoed to the door. Some one had
+turned the knob cautiously. Mathison waited patiently, but the knob did
+not turn again. Door-knobs--they had a mysterious way of turning in the
+night.
+
+There would be no going out this night; so he might as well make
+himself comfortable. He turned to the kit-bags. He opened them both,
+took a pair of slippers from the top of one and a dressing-gown and
+toilet articles from the top of the other. The general contents of both
+bags were as neatly and as compactly arranged as a drummer's case; but
+always on top there would be pick-ups. By the time he had bathed,
+changed, put on the slippers and gown--a heavenly blue silk-brocade such
+as aristocratic Chinese wear--the waiter arrived with the dinner. He
+announced his arrival by a single knock.
+
+The door was opened in a singular fashion. Mathison kept totally behind
+it. An Oriental trick; it gave one the opportunity to strike first, if
+it were necessary to strike; moreover, it prevented any one in the hall
+or corridor observing the occupant of the room. The moment the waiter
+stepped inside the door was closed and double-locked again.
+
+"I shall require no service, waiter. Here's a bill; keep the change for
+your tip."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+The lock and the latch were released simultaneously. So adroitly was
+this accomplished that the waiter never suspected that he had been
+locked in or that he was immediately going to be locked out.
+
+Mathison crossed over to the table, peeled a banana, lopped off a bit,
+and jabbed the fork into it. This he took to the parrakeet. Malachi
+sidled along the pole solemnly and reached down a coral-red claw.
+
+On going back to the table Mathison felt top-hole in spirit. The
+telegram was off. If anything happened they would know where to find
+him. After he had finished his dinner he would find a hiding-place for
+that manila envelope.
+
+Suddenly he became seized by an ironic whimsy, an impulse which in
+normal times he would have analyzed as idiotic. Nevertheless, he
+proceeded to materialize it. He searched in his coat-pocket for the
+picture of the actress, sliced off the non-essentials, and propped it
+against the water carafe. With his hand on his heart he bowed.
+
+"Paper lady, I am at once gratified and deeply chagrined to offer you a
+repast so poor. I had planned a club steak; I've been planning it for
+six long years, and patriotism compels me to eat chicken--which I
+abominate! You are disappointed? I'm sorry. You won't look at me? Very
+well. That's not your fault; it's the fault of the fool photographer,
+the way he posed you. Crazy? Well, perhaps. But, Lord's truth, I wish I
+did know somebody like you. I'm the lonesomest duffer in all this
+Godforsaken world!"
+
+So, while he munched his chicken and Malachi his banana, the clerk at
+the desk was having his worries.
+
+"A queer bunch got off that stalled train," he said to the manager.
+
+"What's the trouble?"
+
+"First a tanned chap with two bags and a parrot signs his name and beats
+it for the elevator as if he were afraid the room would vanish before he
+got to it. Another man comes up and looks the book over. He laughs. Then
+he walks off. Right away comes a veiled woman who does the same thing.
+Only she signs. A coat that would pay next year's taxes, but no hat. She
+wants room two hundred and twenty. I ask where her luggage is, and she
+says she left it on the train. But she hands me a twenty. I let her have
+the key. Then up comes Sanford, of _The Courier_. When he pipes those
+two names he yells."
+
+"What's the matter with them?" asked the manager. He was not
+particularly interested.
+
+"Why, look at this. Richard Whittington, London. Sanford says there was
+only one man ever had that name, and he was Lord Mayor of London five
+hundred years ago."
+
+"Oh, pshaw!"
+
+"Wait a minute. Here's the name the woman wrote. Manon Roland. Sanford
+says her head was cut off in the French Revolution in 1793. One alone,
+all right; but two!"
+
+"So long as they pay the bill and behave themselves there's nothing for
+us to do. Perhaps they are celebrities and don't want to be bothered by
+reporters."
+
+"A new brand, then. I never saw this kind before. Anyhow, I thought I'd
+put you wise."
+
+
+From afar Mathison heard the shrill, prolonged blast of a railway
+whistle. Then a rush of cold air struck him. The paper lady rose
+suddenly and began a series of violent spiral whirls toward the door.
+Mathison sprang to his feet, turning, his automatic ready. He
+remembered now that he had forgotten to examine the window lock.
+
+Through this window came a woman. She stumbled and fell to her knees,
+but she got up instantly. She wore no hat. Her hair, like Roman gold,
+sparkled with melting snow-flakes. Under this hair was a face which had
+the exquisite pallor of Carrara marble. Her eyes were as purple as
+Manila Bay after the sunset gun. From her shoulders hung a sable coat
+worth a king's ransom.
+
+Mathison's heart gave a great bound; then his brain cleared and his
+thoughts became cold and precise. He knew who she was. Beautiful beyond
+anything his fertile imagination had conceived of her: warm and fragrant
+as a Persian rose. Small wonder that poor old Bob Hallowell had gone to
+smash over her. But what did The Yellow Typhoon want of John Mathison?
+
+"You are John Mathison?" she asked, her voice scarcely audible. "Richard
+Whittington?"
+
+"Yes." His eyes still marveling over the beauty of her. It was
+unbelievable. A wave of poignant regret went over him. The tender
+loveliness of a Bouguereau housing the soul of a Salome!
+
+"Then take heed. You are in grave danger. You carry something certain
+men want desperately. Don't go into the hall; don't leave your room
+under any circumstances to-night. The hall is watched. I dared not come
+to your door. They must never know that I have aided you. I had to climb
+the fire-escape. I dared not trust the telephone. Hide whatever you have
+and hide it well."
+
+It is possible that Mathison presented a unique picture to the woman.
+The blue robe fluttered, bulged, and collapsed in the wind. It fell to
+his feet, shimmering. But for the color of it--had it been
+yellow--Mathison might have posed as a priest of Buddha. His handsome,
+bronzed face, the cold impassivity of his eyes and mouth, might have
+passed inspection on the platform of the Shwe Dagon pagoda in
+Rangoon--if one overlooked the healthy thatch of hair on his head.
+
+She broke the tableau by taking from the pocket of her gray coat a gray
+veil which she wound about her head, turban-wise, dropping the edge just
+above her lips.
+
+"One word more. I am a creature of impulse. I may regret this whim
+shortly. I may even return. I don't know. But if I do, watch out!...
+Beware of me!"
+
+She backed to the window, stepped through to the fire-escape and
+vanished into the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+For a space Mathison did not stir. There was something hypnotic in this
+singular visitation, but it was physical rather than mental. He stared
+at the blank square of the window as Medusa's victims must have stared
+at her--stonily. Morgan had described the woman minutely, and out of
+these substances and delineations Mathison had created a blonde Judith,
+something at once beautiful and terrifying. And yet he recognized the
+woman almost immediately.
+
+The mind often acts inconsequently in crises. At the back of his brain
+something was clamoring for recognition. He was conscious of the call,
+but there seemed to be a blank wall in between. It was conceivable that
+the sheer loveliness of the woman dazed him. On his guard, yes, alert
+and watchful, but otherwise nonplussed. His confusion was doubtless due
+to the fact that he could not put the two salients together. It was
+utterly illogical that any woman so tenderly beautiful should be called
+The Yellow Typhoon.
+
+He recalled Morgan's description. "A passionless, merciless leopardess.
+She would have curled Saint Anthony's beard and taken Michael's flaming
+sword away from him. A destroyer. Don't get the impression that she is
+what we call on the loose. That's the most singular part of it. Her
+reputation isn't along that line. Breaks men for the pure deviltry of
+it; honorable men, men too proud to fight back. Understand? Always the
+poor devil who has something or everything to lose. A bigamist, because
+that seemed to be the most exciting game she could apply her arts to.
+And always just beyond the reach of the law. I don't suppose there's a
+court in the world that could convict her of bigamy. So, keep your eyes
+open and your guard up. Remember, I wanted to ransack the ship."
+
+And what kind of a game was she about to spring? She had warned him. But
+she had added that she might return; and in that event, let him beware.
+He thought keenly for a moment, and presently he saw a way out of the
+labyrinth. Very clever! His enemies were in the adjoining rooms,
+watching him from some peephole or other. A trick to make him take the
+manila envelope out of his kit-bag and hide it anew--where they could
+find it when they wanted it. He had made his first mistake. He should
+have deposited the envelope in the safe before coming up. The hesitance
+over inscribing his name--any name--on the register had befogged him
+temporarily. His whole carefully built campaign depended upon getting
+that manila envelope to New York.
+
+What followed was a revelation in clear thinking, acted upon swiftly.
+
+He pulled down the window, locked it, and drew the shade. He got into
+his clothes again, dropped the automatic into the right pocket of his
+coat, all the while taking inventory of his surroundings in panoramic
+glances. Not a step wasted, not a thought that needed readjusting. Under
+the telephone was a waste-basket. In this there was a discarded
+newspaper. He crossed the room and turned off the lights. What he did
+now was done in the dark. From one of the kit-bags he procured the
+manila envelope and the little red book, which he strapped together with
+a rubber band. He tiptoed over to the waste-basket and slipped his
+precious packet into the folds of the newspaper, which he returned to
+the basket. He turned on the lights and took down the telephone.
+
+"Hello!" he called, softly. "This is room three hundred and twenty. Will
+you kindly ascertain for me if rooms three eighteen and three twenty-two
+are occupied by passengers from the stalled flier from Chicago?... Yes,
+I'll hold the wire." Two minutes passed. "They are not? Thank you. No;
+nothing of importance. Didn't know but they might be friends from the
+train." So there was nothing to fear from the adjoining rooms. That was
+a weight off his mind.
+
+But it was also a new angle to the puzzle. Had the woman really tried to
+do him a service? Was it inspired by some vague regret for Hallowell?
+Out of one labyrinth, but into another. He ran to the windows and threw
+up the shades. The fire-escape was empty. He went back to the telephone.
+It was barely possible that she had come up from the room below. That
+would be 220.
+
+"Is the lady still in room two twenty?... Oh, never mind the name. Is
+she still there?... She isn't? Gave up the key a moment ago?... No,
+there isn't any trouble. She came from the stalled train.... She said
+she would not return? Thanks."
+
+A blind alley. He couldn't solve the riddle at all. And because he
+couldn't solve it he sensed danger, a danger which ran around him in a
+circle.
+
+He glanced up at the bird on the curtain-pole. Malachi had finished his
+dinner and was polishing his beak.
+
+"Malachi, they've got me guessing!"
+
+"_Chup!_" said the little green bird, spreading out his clipped wing. It
+was warm and cozy up there near the ceiling. He loved window-curtain
+poles. "Mat, you lubber, where's my tobacco?"
+
+That phrase! It seemed to Mathison that a hand had reached out and
+caught him by the throat. Bob! The dear, absent-minded Hallowell! How
+often had he teased him by putting his tobacco-canister on the other end
+of the table! Bob, blind if you stirred anything on his end of the table
+from its accustomed place, would start hunting about the room, swearing
+good-naturedly.
+
+Mathison began to pace the room. The infernal beauty of her! Negative
+for good and positive for evil; somehow it hurt him. He felt outraged
+that God should give all these lovely attributes to a daughter of
+Beelzebub.
+
+Down-stairs, the clerk went into the manager's office.
+
+"I tell you something queer is going on in this hotel."
+
+"What now?"
+
+"The Lord Mayor of London makes waiters signal on his door before he'll
+let them in. Then he begins asking questions about the people on either
+side of him. To cap the climax, he asked about the woman who had her
+head cut off in 1793."
+
+"What? Oh yes, I see; those names on the register. Well?"
+
+"Something fishy. The woman just surrendered her key and waltzed out."
+
+"Gone?"
+
+"With last year's cabbages."
+
+"Maybe it's an elopement," suggested the manager, hopefully. Elopements
+were first-rate advertisements.
+
+"Nix on the elopement. The real article gets married before they come to
+a hotel like the Watkins. She went up to the room I gave her and came
+down again. No complaints. Just surrendered the key and faded."
+
+"Didn't ask any questions about the man?"
+
+"Nope. There's where the mystery comes in. Mind, we'll have a robbery or
+a murder on our hands before morning."
+
+"Piffle! If the woman is gone for good we can't risk meddling with this
+Lord Mayor chap. I'm not courting suits for damages these days; not me.
+You've been going to the movies too much. Anyhow, she paid five for the
+room. It's none of our business if she doesn't sleep in it."
+
+"All right. Only, don't jump on me if anything happens."
+
+"Tell your troubles to the house detective. That's what he's here for."
+
+The clerk acted on this advice at once. "Michaels," he said, "you take
+this key and look around room two twenty. See if the woman took or left
+anything. There's a queer game going on here to-night."
+
+The house detective returned shortly. He doubted if any one had been in
+room 220 at all.
+
+"Better stick around, anyhow."
+
+"All right."
+
+At the police-station the night captain rocked in his swivel-chair and
+chewed his cigar. There had recurred to his mind an old phrase, which
+applied to the crook as well as to the honest man, "He travels fastest
+who travels alone." Well, so long as it was fish to his net, he had no
+right to complain. On his desk lay a stack of those sinister handbills
+which the police send hither and thither across the continent under the
+caption "Wanted." From time to time he referred to a letter which he had
+just received by messenger. A fall-down on the divvy, and the pal blows
+the game. But a thousand dollars, a real bank-roll, was worth trying for
+these hard times. All he had to do was to call up the Watkins. If there
+was anything to the information, the hotel clerk would be able to tell.
+He drew the telephone toward him.
+
+"This the Watkins?... Police-station talking. Man by the name of Richard
+Whittington registered?... He is? Good! Listen to me. Describe him." The
+captain smoothed out a handbill and kept his eye on it obliquely. "All
+right. Tall, very dark, good-looking, blue eyes, smooth, no beard. Yes,
+that sounds like him.... 'Black' Ellison, wanted in San Francisco for
+diamond robbery and assault.... There was a woman? Gone? That's tough.
+She may have taken the swag. Well, it can't be helped. Get the man
+down-stairs to the private office. I'll send Murphy over in fifteen
+minutes. Better call in a patrolman. This man Ellison is a strong-arm,
+for all his good looks."
+
+Up in room 320 Mathison found it impossible to keep that lovely face out
+of his thoughts. Something was wrong with the world. If ever he had
+looked into a countenance upon which was written honesty....
+
+"The voice!" he cried, stopping suddenly. "The voice! That's the thing
+that's been hammering in the back of my head. I've heard that voice
+before. Where? How?" He rumpled his hair. "Where have I heard her
+voice?"
+
+He had heard her laugh that night when she had come on deck in the
+Chinese costume. But the speaking voice! Where had he heard that?
+
+Malachi, sensing his master's agitation, sidled back and forth along the
+curtain-pole, grumbling as his feet came into contact with the cold
+brass rings.
+
+By and by Mathison saw the paper lady on the floor; saw it with eyes
+busy with introspection. He stooped; the act was purely mechanical. He
+went on with his pacing. He folded and refolded the slip of paper many
+times and at length stowed it away in a pocket, without having glanced
+at it once, without recalling his desire to meet her, if she happened to
+be in New York when he arrived there.
+
+He heard a sound. It came from the window. He wheeled quickly, his hand
+going into his pocket as he turned. He had almost forgotten!
+
+Tap-tap-tap!
+
+Dimly he saw a woman's face against the pane. She had come back! The
+monumental nerve of her! On the way to the window he formed his plan of
+action. He would give her all the rope she wanted; he would act as if he
+had never seen her before, play her as a fisherman plays a trout. She
+had warned him, and he would not ignore her warning. He ran to the
+window, unlocked it, and threw it up.
+
+The woman stumbled into the room, the expression on her face one of
+great terror. Hair like spun molasses, sparkling with melting
+snowflakes, skin like Carrara marble, with an odd little mole at the
+corner of her mouth, and eyes as purple as Manila Bay at sunset. From
+her shoulders hung a sable coat worth a king's ransom. Mathison raised
+her to her feet. "What is it? What's the trouble?" he asked, pulling
+forward a chair. Terrified. Had they discovered what she had done and
+had she flown to him for protection? "Beware of me!" she had said.
+
+She sank into the chair and covered her face with her ungloved hands,
+rocking her body and moaning slightly.
+
+"What's the trouble?" It took some effort to keep the ironical out of
+his voice. What a queer little mole! he thought. He hadn't noticed it
+before.
+
+She let her hands fall. "I'm in the most horribly embarrassing
+situation," she panted. She clasped her hands on her knees and the
+fingers began to snarl and twist, as they will when a body is under
+great mental stress. "You won't mind if I stay here a few minutes?"
+
+"Not in the least, provided you give me an idea what's happened to
+drive you into this room." Mathison put both hands into the side-pockets
+of his coat.
+
+"Couldn't it be possible to stay without explaining?" she pleaded.
+
+Not a sign that she had been in this room less than half an hour gone.
+What was her game? Mathison, from the ironical spirit, passed into one
+of bewilderment. Her voice wasn't quite the same, either; it was higher,
+thinner. He was giving her rope, but so far she wasn't making any
+especial effort to gather it in. Very well; he would continue to play up
+to her lead and see where it led. But stretch his imagination to its
+fullest, he could not figure out what her game was.
+
+He answered her query. "Supposing you were found here? I don't object,
+mind you; only, I'd like to know how to act should occasion arise."
+
+"I ... I don't know how to begin! It will sound so silly and futile!"
+she faltered. Her gaze roved rather wildly about. "My husband ... he has
+the most violent temper and is most insanely jealous. Somehow he learned
+I was here--in the restaurant. I saw him as he entered the main
+entrance. I tried to slip out at the side ... but I was not quick
+enough. By this time he will have had the whole hotel by the ears. Oh,
+it is degrading--shameful!" The woman turned her head against her
+shoulder and closed her eyes. Mathison noted the plain gold band among
+the gems on her fingers. "I haven't done anything wrong. I like
+amusement; I like clothes.... I can't stand it much longer!... He keeps
+me shut up all the time. What's the good of clothes if you can't wear
+them? I can't go anywhere, I can't do anything! I wish I were dead!"
+
+Maddening! He wanted to take hold of her and shake her. But he said,
+soothingly: "You don't wish that. You ought not to have run away."
+
+"I know, but I couldn't stand a scene among all those people. I see now
+I've only made it worse by running!... I got into the parlor somehow.
+Then I saw the fire-escape. I stepped out and closed the window, but I
+found I didn't dare drop twelve feet or more to the sidewalk."
+
+Mathison nodded. There was nothing else to do.
+
+"And I made the fire-escape just in time. He came storming into the
+parlor, followed by a clerk and a bellboy. The shame of it! None of them
+thought to look out. I'd have been frozen but for this coat. Then it
+came to me--I was so desperate!--that I might find a window open if I
+climbed up.... And I saw you. I sha'n't bother you more than ten
+minutes.... Just enough time to get my nerves steadied. If he doesn't
+find me soon he'll go home. I can stand a scene there."
+
+"Where's the other man? A fine chap, to leave you in the lurch like
+this!" cried Mathison, indignantly.
+
+Her eyes opened; they expressed dismay. "Oh, but I wasn't with any one!"
+
+"Alone? Good Lord! why did you run away?"
+
+"He would have made a scene just the same. He would always swear that
+there was another man somewhere. I suppose he'll kill me some day. I
+ought not to have run; but I simply could not stand a scene in the
+restaurant!" She hunted about for a handkerchief, found one, and rubbed
+her cold little nose with it. "It sounds so silly, doesn't it? I don't
+know what to do!"
+
+"Stay as long as you like. Shall I send for a cup of coffee? You must
+be frozen."
+
+"No, no! You mustn't take the least trouble. I'm sorry. I just opened
+the window and stepped inside. I really had only one idea--to escape."
+
+"Suppose you describe your husband. I'll call up the office and see if
+he has gone."
+
+"Good Heavens, no!" her terror returning. "I am really lost if it should
+become known that I had taken a risk such as this. Besides, it might get
+you into trouble. Please no! Just a few minutes--ten--fifteen. He'll go
+when he can't find me. I'll return to the parlor by the way I came."
+
+Why didn't she take out a revolver, cover him in the conventional style,
+and open the door for her friends in the hall? Or had she noticed that
+his right hand was still in the pocket of his coat? As a test he
+withdrew the hand. She did not appear to observe the movement. The word
+"baffled" had always appealed to him as blood-and-thunder stuff; but now
+he began to understand that it was a serious and substantial condition
+of the mind.
+
+"You're welcome, any way you desire it. I'll tell you what. I'll write a
+letter I had in mind. It will serve to relieve you of your
+embarrassment. It certainly will relieve mine."
+
+He opened one of the kit-bags and dug out his letter-portfolio. He
+cleared a space on the table and sat down, facing the young woman,
+though apparently giving her no more attention. He started the letter,
+paused, tore up what he had written, and tossed the bits to the floor.
+The next attempt seemed to be successful, for he wrote several pages,
+finally sealing it in an envelope. Had the woman been able to read the
+contents of this letter she would have been profoundly astonished. It
+was a minute description of her, from the tortoise-shell comb in her
+hair to the white sandals on her feet.
+
+He re-read the document; and as he came to the end of it he missed
+something, an essential which impressed him previously. Covertly he ran
+his glance over her again. Something was gone, but he could not tell
+what it was.
+
+For all that she did not appear to be doing so, he knew that not a
+single move he made escaped her. Often he gazed at the kit-bags, but
+never did he let his glance stray anywhere near the waste-basket.
+
+He wondered. Supposing the two visitations, the second ignoring the
+first as though it had never happened--supposing they had been launched
+for the express purpose of baffling and bewildering him, eventually
+causing him to lower his guard? Here at last was a solution that had a
+grain of sense.
+
+Mathison rose and filled his pipe.
+
+"You won't mind if I smoke and jog about a bit? I'm restless. I've had a
+long attack of insomnia."
+
+"Please pay no attention to me."
+
+After a glance at his watch he fell to pacing once more. But he paced in
+a peculiar manner--up and down the corridor wall. That is to say, he had
+the window and The Yellow Typhoon always under covert observation.
+
+As for the woman, she now relaxed. Her lovely hands lay limply on her
+knees and her eyes were closed--or seemed to be. But each time the
+elevator door slammed she started nervously. Good acting, Mathison
+admitted. The jealous husband! He fought the desire to walk over to her,
+to smother her with the storm of words burning his tongue. There must be
+an overt act on her part first. The infernal beauty of her!
+
+"Mat, you lubber!"
+
+Even Mathison received a shock. He had forgotten Malachi. The woman
+sprang to her feet and whirled about, expecting to see some one behind
+her chair. She saw nothing. Bewildered, her gaze came back to Mathison,
+who pointed to the curtain-pole.
+
+"A little parrot!" She sank back into the chair weakly. "I thought some
+one was behind me!"
+
+"I had forgotten him."
+
+"_Chup! Chota Malachi!_"
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"That's Hindustani. He's telling me to be still and that he is a little
+bird."
+
+"A Hindu parrot!" The woman gazed at the bird, frankly interested. "What
+a funny little bird! You have traveled far?"
+
+"Half-way around the world. My train was stalled to-night; so Malachi
+and I concluded to spend the night in peace and quiet. I rather wanted
+to hear him talk. Boats and trains bother him, and he hasn't spoken for
+days."
+
+"A parrot!"
+
+"A parrakeet," he corrected.
+
+"I never knew that men carried them about. I thought it was always
+fussy old maids."
+
+"I'm a deep-sea sailor; and we sailors are always lugging around pets
+for mascots. I have lived in the Orient for six years." He spoke with
+engaging frankness. Why not? Was there anything concerning John Mathison
+that she did not know?
+
+"What do you call him?"
+
+"Malachi."
+
+"What does that mean?"
+
+"You have me there. It was the name of an elephant in one of Kipling's
+yarns."
+
+"I see.... What's that?" she broke off.
+
+Mathison stood perfectly still, chin up, eyes alert. The elevator door
+had slammed with unusual violence. This sound was followed by
+another--hurrying feet. Then came a blow of a fist on the panel of the
+door.
+
+"What's wanted?" demanded Mathison, coldly.
+
+"Open the door!"
+
+"Who is it and what is wanted?"
+
+"Open, or we'll break in!"
+
+The woman flew to the window. While she was lifting it Mathison spoke to
+her.
+
+"You are leaving?" broadly ironical.
+
+"My husband!... He will kill me!"
+
+"Which husband? Hallowell, Graham, Morris?"
+
+She sent him a glance that radiated venom. It was almost as if she had
+suddenly poisoned the air.
+
+"The Yellow Typhoon! And you supposed I would not recognize you, never
+having seen you? I don't know what your game was in warning me. No
+matter. Morgan was right. He said you were a beautiful mirage at the
+mouth of hell."
+
+"Open the door!" came from the hall.
+
+The woman stepped through the window, sent it rattling to the sill; and
+that was the last Mathison saw of her for many hours. He walked to the
+door.
+
+"I will open the door only upon one condition--that you inform me who it
+is and what is wanted of me," he declared, still in level tones.
+
+"It's the house detective, and you're wanted, me Lord Mayor of London!"
+
+Mathison thought rapidly. He attacked the affair from all angles. The
+house detective!
+
+Against the door came the thud of a human body.
+
+"Never mind breaking in the door," Mathison called. "I'll open it."
+
+He did so; and four men came rushing in--the house detective, the
+manager, the inquisitive clerk, and a policeman.
+
+"The Lord Mayor of London, huh?" bellowed the house detective. He
+carried a revolver. "Put up your hands!" Mathison obeyed promptly.
+Michaels ran his hand over Mathison's pockets and gave a cry of delight
+as he brought forth the heavy Colt automatic. "A gat! I thought I'd find
+one."
+
+"Now then," said Mathison, still able to hold his rage in check, "be so
+good as to explain what the devil all this means?"
+
+"We'll explain that in the office."
+
+"We'll explain it here and now, or you'll have to carry me. And in that
+event I can promise you some excitement."
+
+"All right, me lud. Word comes from the police headquarters to hold you
+and hold you good. You're 'Black' Ellison, and there's a thousand iron
+boys waiting to be paid over on your delivery. We'll carry you, if you
+say so."
+
+So that was it! Mathison saw the whole thing in a flash. Clever, clever
+beyond anything he had imagined. To get him out of the room in a
+perfectly logical way, and then search it. He saw clearly that his own
+mysterious actions would be held against him. Caught! He couldn't help
+admiring the method. The woman to keep him interested and puzzled until
+they were ready to fire the train.
+
+"Is there any reason why we can't remain here? You've got to prove that
+I'm the man you want."
+
+"Orders are to take you down to the private office," said the policeman.
+
+"No objection to my taking my things along?"
+
+"Your things, bo, will stay right where they are until Murphy looks them
+over."
+
+"How am I to know that no one will enter this room while I'm
+down-stairs?"
+
+"I can promise you that," said the manager.
+
+"Don't open the window. There's a little bird up there on the
+curtain-pole; and he might fly out or try to."
+
+The visitors stared at Malachi interestedly.
+
+"He sha'n't be touched," declared the manager, a fit of trembling
+seizing him. If this turned out wrong and the victim came back with a
+suit of damages! "It's no fault of the hotel, sir. The order comes from
+the police."
+
+A few words, the exhibition of a paper or two, and Mathison knew that
+the tide would have turned immediately in his favor. But this step he
+stubbornly refused to take. The spirit of the gambler who scorns to
+hedge. Upon leaving the security of the train he had laid his offerings
+at the feet of Chance. He would follow through. At any rate, he
+determined not to disclose his identity until he had to.
+
+"Very well; I'll go with you. But I'll put the bird back in his cage if
+you don't mind."
+
+After a bit of coaxing Malachi came down from his perch and Mathison
+bundled him into the cage, which he set beside the radiator. He then
+stepped into the corridor. But he waited to see if the manager locked
+the door. The manager did more than that. He gave the key to Mathison,
+who marched over to the elevator and pressed the button.
+
+"A cool one," whispered the excited clerk. "Didn't I tell you there was
+something off-color?"
+
+The manager made a gesture. He wasn't at all happy. People would have
+smiled over an elopement; but the arrest of a dangerous criminal always
+reacted against the hotel. "You need not worry about your belongings,
+sir," he said to Mathison.
+
+"I'm not worrying. I'm going to leave that for you to do."
+
+"Bluff won't get you anywhere," growled the house detective.
+
+"It seems to have landed you a soft job," countered Mathison, smiling as
+he entered the elevator.
+
+The clerk grinned. He and the house detective were not exactly friendly.
+
+Once in the manager's private office, Mathison coolly appropriated the
+managerial chair. He kept his eye on the desk clock and appeared
+oblivious to the low murmurings behind his back. Five
+minutes--ten--fifteen; he could feel the sweat rising at the roots of
+his hair. Trapped! They had come at him from an original angle, and the
+only counter for it was the disclosure of his hand. No doubt the woman
+was already at work. If they took him to the police-station for the
+night; if the maid cleaned out the room thoroughly in the morning!
+
+"Got him, I see!" cried a cheery voice from the doorway.
+
+Mathison turned. He saw a small, brisk Irishman, with a humorous mouth
+and a pair of keenly intelligent eyes. He gave a sigh of relief. Here
+was some one who looked as if he had the gift of reason. Pray God that
+he had!
+
+"Stand up!"
+
+Mathison obeyed.
+
+"Humph! Got anything to say?"
+
+"No; except if you'll come to the room with me I'll give you the stuff.
+I know when I'm beaten."
+
+"Who's this woman, Manon Roland?"
+
+"Roland? Don't know anybody by that name."
+
+"The woman you were asking questions about over the 'phone."
+
+"So her name was Roland!"
+
+"All right; we'll come back to her again. You used to travel alone. Why
+did you hook up? Pals always blow."
+
+"No man is perfect. Come to my room and I'll turn the stuff over to
+you." Mathison wondered what it was he had stolen. "You'll never find it
+without my help. You and I alone. Is it a bargain?"
+
+"I'll look you over first."
+
+"Here's his gat, Murphy," said the house detective.
+
+Murphy thrust the automatic in his pocket without comment. He ran his
+keen glance over the prisoner. "Hold out your hands, fingers spread; I
+want to look at them. That's the way. Now turn your face toward the
+light. Uh-huh. You admit you are 'Black' Ellison?"
+
+"Yes." Anything to get back into the room!
+
+"All right. I'll go up with you for the swag. But walk carefully. I'm
+excitable by nature."
+
+"Better take me along," urged the house detective. He was anxious to be
+in the newspapers on the morrow.
+
+"You folks stay right where you are, I'm running this. Step along, Mr.
+Ellison."
+
+Murphy pushed Mathison toward the door. The two crossed the lobby to the
+elevator and were shot up to the third floor.
+
+"I'll be right at your elbow, so play it straight. There's something
+about your hurry that interests me, bo."
+
+Mathison rushed to the door, unlocked it and pushed it in violently. He
+sent a lightning glance about the room and leaned dizzily against the
+door-jamb.
+
+"For the love o' Mike, they never told me you'd put up a scrap like
+this!"
+
+"I didn't put up any scrap," said Mathison, dully.
+
+"What's hit this room, then--an earthquake?"
+
+"A typhoon."
+
+Malachi was all right, but the waste-basket was empty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Mathison accepted the blow quietly. He had the air of a spent athlete,
+but that was all. He was a good loser. To have rushed about, sending out
+alarms, advising the Secret Service, all would have been a waste of
+time. The damage was complete, irremediable. Beaten--that was the word;
+he knew it.
+
+Havoc! The bedding was strewn across the floor, mattress and bolster;
+the pillows had been shaken from their cases. All the drawers in the
+bureau and commode had been pulled out and their paper linings tossed
+about. The two kit-bags had been slashed completely across and their
+entire contents scattered. Even the pockets of the coats and trousers
+had been turned inside out. Nothing had escaped.
+
+Beaten! Until to-night he had had a perfect defense. He tried to reach
+back to analyze the cause which had emboldened him to leave the
+security of the car, but it wasn't reachable. The want of sleep? The
+craving for exercise? Mere bewilderment? He couldn't solve it; just one
+of those moves which continue to render human beings fallible. Why
+hadn't he left the envelope in the safe? What idiocy had inveigled him
+to carry it to his room? A lone hand. He had tried the superhuman. One
+trained mind against three or four trained minds, and the odds had been
+too great. He had left the realm of absolute mathematics for the
+impositive, chance, with this tragic result.
+
+With infinite care he had contrived a web; so had they. They had broken
+through his, and now he found himself in theirs. Flight. They would be
+gone like the winds. They had done something more than beaten him at the
+game; they had shattered his self-confidence. Doubt; all his future
+moves would be under the shadow of doubt. Should he do this, or should
+he do that, or should he ask advice? The commander of a destroyer should
+have supreme confidence in himself; and at present it did not look as if
+John Mathison would go abroad with that. He might re-establish this
+quality, but only by passing successfully through some vital conflict.
+
+Hallowell! Old Bob Hallowell! It was as if he had broken faith with his
+friend.
+
+"Mat!... Malachi!"
+
+Thunderstruck, Mathison jumped to his feet, while Murphy, the detective,
+looked wildly about for the third man. Mathison seized him by the arm.
+
+"For God's sake, hush! Be still! It's that little green bird."
+
+"Mat!... Malachi!" It was the same wailing accent of that dreadful night
+in Manila. It was Hallowell himself speaking!
+
+Malachi, tremendously agitated, was climbing up to his swing and down to
+his perch. The incredible had happened. Suggestion. Once before the bird
+had witnessed a confusion in the making, something like this.
+
+"Mat!... Malachi!" he wailed.
+
+Then came a jumble of phrases in polyglot, sailors' oaths, scraps of
+Hindustani and Spanish. But after a few minutes he began to mutter in
+parrakeetese. That peculiar cell in Malachi's head had closed up again.
+Mathison urged and coaxed in vain. Malachi rolled his yellow eyes and
+continued to mutter. The irony of it lay in the fact that his fear had
+subsided. Wasn't this his master?
+
+"Well, I--be--damn!" exploded Murphy. "A talking parrot!
+Say"--wrathfully--"why did you give me that bunk about being Ellison?"
+
+"Quickest way I could get back to this room. All this was accomplished
+while they were holding me down-stairs."
+
+"A frame-up! I knew the moment you held out your hands that you weren't
+Ellison. The forefinger of his right hand is missing. Look at those
+grips! Bo, what did you have?"
+
+"They got it."
+
+"All right. Come on. I'll send out a general alarm. We'll run a comb
+over the town. Off your train, too, I'll gamble. Get a move on!"
+
+"Thanks, Mr. Murphy; but it wouldn't do a bit of good. The damage is
+done. And ten to one they've already boarded a freight."
+
+"Going to let 'em put it over without a kick?"
+
+"The thing they took was valuable only so long as it remained in my
+possession. The Chinese have a saying--you can't pour water into a
+shattered jar."
+
+"Are you trying to get my goat?"
+
+"No. I'm stating bald facts."
+
+"You're a queer kind of a guy. What was it, a diamond toothpick?" Murphy
+began to wander around the room. "A frame-up, and a bully one. The only
+way they could get you out of this room for a while until your identity
+was established. Why didn't you set up a holler?"
+
+Mathison shook his head and sat down. "Am I your prisoner?"
+
+"Prisoner my eye! Only, I'm naturally a curious cuss. Crook stuff?"
+
+"Not in the sense you mean."
+
+"Would it do any good to arrest them?"
+
+"You couldn't arrest them."
+
+"The hell I couldn't! What are they, pro-Germans from that dear
+Chicago?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I'll nose about."
+
+"It won't do you any good."
+
+"You don't know this Roland woman?"
+
+"Never saw her before in my life."
+
+"Then you saw her?" quickly.
+
+"Go ahead and see what you can find," said Mathison, curtly.
+
+The infernal beauty of her! It would haunt him as long as he lived. The
+strength of those beautiful hands! This havoc all inside of an hour!
+Mathison lighted his pipe.
+
+Murphy did not touch anything. He seemed to be thinking rather than
+observing. By and by he went to the window, opened it, and stepped
+outside. He was absent perhaps ten minutes. He came back, stamped the
+snow from his shoes, and put away the pocket-lamp.
+
+"Find anything?"
+
+"You're not much on the gab-fest, are you?" said Murphy, amiably. "Two
+women! One of 'em wore arctics and the other sandals; and the one with
+the sandals wrecked the place! Bo, was it love-letters--divorce stuff?
+Good-lookers?"
+
+"There was only one woman," wearily.
+
+"Two. My job is noticing things. When I say that two women went up and
+down that fire-escape I know what I'm talking about."
+
+Mathison shrugged. It wasn't worth while arguing.
+
+"The woman with the arctics came first, then the woman with the sandals.
+While the latter was in the room tidying up things the other was hiding
+behind the fire-escape stairs. Easy on a night like this with the snow
+high on the steps. All in the tracks as plain as the nose on your face.
+Arctics came from the room below; sandals got out of the parlor."
+
+Mathison listened politely. "Very interesting; all in the tracks." He
+had determined not to dissent. The man had a right to his theories; but
+it happened that John Mathison knew all the facts.
+
+"Bo, this is queer business," said the detective. "What you've lost
+don't seem to curl your hair any. Love-letters! The fool woman is always
+writing them and then bawling to heaven to get them back.... For the
+love o' Mike, what's this? Is this coat yours?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are an officer in the United States navy?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"Well, well! Now there's some reason to all these fireworks. War stuff!"
+
+"You might call it that."
+
+"Need any help?"
+
+"You might tell them in the office to send up two pairs of shoe-strings
+and a leather-punch. I'll have to patch up those bags."
+
+Murphy pushed back his hat. "Well, I'll be tinker-dammed!" Then he
+laughed. "I'd like to play poker with you. Two pairs of shoe-strings!
+That'll kill 'em cold in the office. They'll think I've forgotten my
+handcuffs. War stuff! No use asking you what it was the woman took."
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, it's your funeral."
+
+"Exactly. And when you order the shoe-strings you might send out for an
+oak wreath with a purple ribbon."
+
+"Glad you struck the town. There wasn't even a movie to-night. Bo, I'll
+give you all the help I can without asking questions. I know a
+fighting-man when I see him. A fighting-sailor with a talking parrot!
+Well, I'll shoot that order for the shoe-strings. And when the bird
+began to talk I thought there was some one else in the room!"
+
+"There was," said Mathison, in an odd voice.
+
+"Huh? Spirits? You don't look like a man who would waste any time with
+the ouija-board. Well, here's for the shoe-strings and the punch."
+
+When the clerk received the order he made the sender repeat it.
+
+"Shoe-strings!" he yelled.
+
+"What now?" demanded the house detective, surlily.
+
+"Murphy wants two pairs of shoe-strings and a leather-punch! I tell you,
+the whole house has gone bug. You run up. Murphy's been hypnotized or he
+has had a punch of dope. Here, boy; run down to the Macedonian shoeblack
+and get two pairs of shoe-strings and a punch. Hustle!"
+
+"Shoe-strings!" Michaels the house detective ran for the elevator. But
+when he reached room 320 he was told emphatically--through the door--to
+take his bonehead down-stairs again. "Cahoots!" he murmured. And all the
+rest of his life he was going to hold to the belief that Ellison and
+Murphy had divided up the loot.
+
+At eleven o'clock Mathison and Detective Murphy came down into the
+lobby. Murphy carried the parrot-cage. There was a grin on his face as
+he left the elevator, but it vanished as he neared the desk.
+
+"My bill," said Mathison. He had decided to return to the train.
+
+"What?" The poor clerk stared at Murphy for the key to this riddle.
+
+"The bill, the bill! Give the gentleman his bill, you dub!"
+
+In turning, the clerk knocked over the desk-telephone. As he stooped to
+recover it he bumped his head against the corner of the cashier's cage.
+When he finally presented the bill he was a total wreck.
+
+"Was it ...?" he faltered.
+
+"No, it wasn't," snapped Murphy. "We've all been flimflammed."
+
+"But those names!"
+
+"Can't you recognize Jack Barrymore when you see him? He's traveling
+incog."
+
+"But he _said_ he was the other fellow!"
+
+"Well, Jack likes his joke."
+
+"I wanted to get back to my room," interposed Mathison, taking pity on
+the clerk's bewilderment. "There's been a misunderstanding all round.
+Keep the change and buy yourself some cigars with it."
+
+As Mathison and the detective disappeared through the revolving doors
+the clerk turned to the cashier. "Keep your eye on things for a while.
+I'm going out and root up a drink. I might understand something of this
+if I was full of hootch."
+
+When Mathison and the detective entered the car George the porter was
+moving about sleepily. "What's de mattah wid dat hotel?" he demanded,
+reproachfully.
+
+"Too much excelsior, George, and not enough feathers."
+
+"Well, I had de bed made up, case yo' did come back.... Lan' sakes,
+what's happened t' dem satchels?"
+
+"The chef ran amuck with the cleaver," explained Murphy, owlishly. He
+turned to Mathison. "Here's that cannon of yours. Take care of yourself.
+Gee! if you were a crook and I was chasing you, what a lot of fun we'd
+have!"
+
+"Thanks for the compliment. Truthfully, I had expected to spend the
+night in jail."
+
+The porter's ears twitched.
+
+The two men shook hands, and Mathison vanished behind the door of his
+compartment. George eyed the door speculatively. Jail. He tiptoed to No.
+2 and knocked.
+
+"What is it?" came through the crack.
+
+"He's come back!" George whispered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Mathison undressed slowly. He was still hypnotized to a certain extent
+by the several amazing events of the night. From the shadowy corners of
+the compartment the woman's face persisted in appearing, now in all its
+warm loveliness, now in terror, and again like chiseled marble. It would
+be a long time before he would be able to stamp out completely the
+impression. It did not seem possible that any woman could be so lovely
+outside and so ugly within. The venom in her glance, just before she
+stepped out of the window!
+
+The thought of Hallowell hurt more than anything else. Unavenged! Bob
+would lie in his island grave unavenged. But before God, he, John
+Mathison, would take a double tithe from the Hun. No mercy. Never would
+he hear the word _Kamerad_. Soon the number on his free-board would
+spell _Terror_.
+
+He uncovered Malachi and knelt beside the cage. "Mat!... Malachi!" he
+said. "Mat!... Malachi!" But the only sign from the bird was a ruffling
+of the neck and topknot feathers, a quick dilation of his yellow eyes.
+Two or three minutes earlier in getting into that room, while the bird's
+fright was at full! No way to make him understand; he was only a
+parrakeet, an echo. "Mat!... Malachi!" It was Bob calling; the little
+bird was only an echo.
+
+Suddenly Mathison stood up, his face eager. A real idea! And it never
+would have entered his head but for the startling revelation of what
+suggestion might accomplish. If the woman's tempestuous actions had
+awakened the bird's recollection, what might a reconstruction of the
+crime do? Men apparently in desperate conflict, tables and chairs
+threshed about, tumult, cries! How would these react upon Malachi's
+memory?
+
+Of course no jury would convict a man of a crime upon evidence furnished
+by a talking parrakeet; but if, by reconstructing the tragedy, Malachi
+could be made to repeat the name Hallowell had called out, it would
+serve to give the authorities a handhold. Trust them to dig up the truth
+eventually. For Mathison was obsessed with the idea that Hallowell had
+spoken a name for Malachi to repeat.
+
+Sleep--the lack of sleep. They never would have gotten to him but for
+the craving to sleep. He had gone into the town feeling as keen mentally
+as ever, and his keenness had been only superficial. He had sought the
+open without any definite campaign. Want of sleep. His flesh and bones
+had been crying out for sleep, and his brain stifling the call.
+Patience. They had had a little more than John Mathison.
+
+To-night, however, he would satisfy the craving. There would be no more
+sleep-fumes or pistol-shots or turning door-knobs.
+
+By one o'clock the car Mercutio was as silent as the tomb of Romeo's
+friend.
+
+Tap, tap; pause; tap, tap.
+
+Mathison was asleep, but as yet he had not conquered that subconscious
+alertness of the mind. The sound, light as it was, awoke him. The
+porter's signal. Mathison buried his head deeper into the pillow.
+
+Tap, tap; pause; tap, tap.
+
+"What's wanted?" he called, irritably.
+
+There was no answer. The tapping was not repeated.
+
+He was too drunk with sleep to get the real significance. He turned over
+and fell asleep again instantly. He came out of this leaden slumber at
+seven. The train was moving, having made up two hours in the makeshift
+schedule. The storm outside had lost but little of its vigor. He bathed
+and dressed and rang for the porter.
+
+"Have the waiter bring me grape-fruit, oatmeal, and coffee."
+
+"Yes, suh."
+
+"What time will we make New York, if this keeps up?"
+
+"About six-thutty."
+
+"Did you rap about one o'clock?"
+
+"No, suh."
+
+"You didn't?"
+
+"No, suh. What's de matter wid dat hotel? Dey all comes rampagin' back
+befo' yo' did."
+
+"Passengers in number two?"
+
+"Yes, suh."
+
+"_All_ the passengers returned?"
+
+"On de Mercutio; yes, suh." The whites of George's eyes began to show.
+
+As for that, so did Mathison's. On board, when, logically, they should
+be miles and miles away by this hour, by any means of locomotion they
+could obtain! Here was a thundering mystery.
+
+"George, is there a lady next door?"
+
+"Yes, suh."
+
+"Beautiful, with blonde hair?"
+
+"Hain't seen de lady's face, suh."
+
+"Sable coat?"
+
+George nodded. He pushed back his cap. "Boss, I oughtn't t' tell yo';
+but de man in two is a Secret Service man, an' he's goin' t' jump yo' de
+minute we gits int' New York State. 'Tain't none o' my business whut yo'
+done, but I'd kind o' like to give yo' a chance t' beat it. Ef yo' say
+so, I can open de trap befo' we gits int' Buffalo an' slip yo' out."
+
+"George, you're a top-hole! But how did you learn that this man is a
+Secret Service agent?"
+
+"He done show me de ca'd signed by Flynn."
+
+"Describe him."
+
+"Big, hair pale yelluh, nice-lookin' an' friendly."
+
+Mathison wondered if he wasn't asleep. With the manila envelope and the
+red book in their possession, they were still on the train! What had
+happened?
+
+"The man has been asking you questions about me?"
+
+"Yes, suh. Count o' dat ca'd I had t' ansuh."
+
+"How does he spend his time?"
+
+"Playin' auction wid two friends. Dey's Secret Service, too," George
+added, gloomily.
+
+Four of them. And the three men had taken turns, all the way across the
+continent, in keeping him awake; bribed this porter, too, to keep tabs
+and report. Until his encounter with The Yellow Typhoon, Mathison had
+had no real idea of the number or the descriptions of his pursuers. But
+still on board! That was confounding. It wasn't logical.... He
+stiffened. To kill him, now that he could identify the woman? To swing
+him off into the dark before he could get his forces together. There was
+logic in that. He smiled at the porter.
+
+"George, I've an idea there must be a case of mistaken identity in all
+this. They mistook me at the hotel last night. There was a row, and I
+came back."
+
+George shifted his cap to his right ear and stared briefly at the
+slashed kit-bags.
+
+"If I'd have been the man they thought I was I wouldn't be here."
+
+George straightened his cap. There was something in this explanation
+that pleased him.
+
+"Has the Secret Service man asked my name?"
+
+"No, suh."
+
+"Just as I thought. He's sure I'm the man; just as they were sure at the
+hotel. Well, I sha'n't worry. Everything will be explained when I reach
+the Waldorf. You might drop him the hint I'm going there. It will save a
+lot of trouble. But of course it wouldn't be wise for him to know I told
+you to tell him."
+
+"I undahstan', suh."
+
+"Then I'll have my breakfast."
+
+
+On the wall-hook in compartment 6 hung a beautiful rose-kimono. There
+are thousands upon thousands of these lovely robes. They look exactly
+alike until you examine them, and then you note that they differ as
+roses themselves differ.
+
+In compartment 2 there was also a rose-kimono. It was wrapped about the
+graceful body of The Yellow Typhoon. She wound a veil about her head,
+dropping it to the tip of her nose. Then she picked up her dress, her
+toilet-bag, and started off for the ladies' dressing-room. There wasn't
+room to dress in the compartment, as the berths had not been made up.
+She had slept through the major part of the day. She floated past
+compartment 6, the door of which was slightly ajar. It had been slightly
+ajar ever since the departure from Chicago.
+
+Fifteen minutes later George, the porter, heard the buzzer. Passenger in
+6 was calling. He hurried off. It was George's trysting-hour. Tips.
+
+"The luggage to the trap, please. We wish to leave instantly the train
+stops at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street."
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"I note that you wear a Liberty Bond button."
+
+"Yes'm. Got two."
+
+"Then you are a good American?"
+
+"I sho' is, ma'am."
+
+"Very well, then. Here is a box. After the train leaves One Hundred and
+Twenty-fifth Street, you will give this box to the gentleman in
+compartment one. I am trusting you because I have to. It is military.
+If you fail to deliver it you betray your country, and in that case woe
+to you! He will ask you who gave it to you. You will tell him the lady
+in compartment two."
+
+"Yes'm!" George's tongue had grown suddenly and mysteriously thick and
+dry.
+
+"And here is something for your trouble."
+
+It was a gold note for fifty dollars. George's brain became nearly as
+dry as his tongue. Even as he folded the bill and tucked it into a
+pocket the train began to slow down. He swooped up the luggage and
+staggered out into the corridor, where he was obliged to hug the
+partition to permit the lady coming out of the dressing-room to pass.
+The train stopped. He helped the two women to alight, dumped the
+luggage, and jumped aboard, dropping the trap and running back to the
+vacant compartment for the mysterious box. Military! His brain was as
+full of kinks as his wool. But there was one clear idea in his
+head--nothing could prevent him delivering this box to the man in
+compartment 1.
+
+"Fo' de lan' sakes!" he murmured. "Ef dat lady 'ain't went an' fo'got de
+kimono!"
+
+With the mysterious box under one arm and the rose-kimono under the
+other, he sallied forth.
+
+Meanwhile, on the platform of the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street
+station, there was enacted a scene of tenderness and animation. The
+woman who had forgotten her kimono rushed into the arms of another
+woman, statuesque, white-haired. Her face, alight with joy, was
+beautiful; but there was a subtle hint that in repose it would be
+tragic.
+
+"My Hilda! My Hilda!" She spoke in an alien tongue.
+
+"Darling mother!" in the same tongue.
+
+A dapper little man with a Semitic cast of countenance began to dance
+about the two.
+
+"Here, here. Stop that lingo! It sounds too much like German, and we'll
+be held up. Mother Nordstrom, you _must_ remember!"
+
+"Nonsense, Sammy!" cried the daughter. "You're always such a fussy old
+dear! Glad to see me?"
+
+"I should say yes! But come along. We've no time to waste."
+
+The quartet--which included the Breton maid--were soon in the
+comfortable limousine below.
+
+"My!" said the dapper little man. "You're big medicine to these eyes!
+Always Johnny on the spot. You're the only woman of the kind."
+
+"It was a narrow squeak this time. Wrecks, delays, snow, and all that."
+
+"How do you feel?" anxiously.
+
+"Splendid!"
+
+"Letter-perfect?"
+
+"Never doubt it!... New York!... Home! The glorious noise of it! The
+magnificent hurry!... Where are we going to eat?"
+
+"Theater. Everything's ready in the office. You'll have half an hour to
+doze in. No new people to confuse you; old cast complete. House sold out
+week in advance. The whole town is on its toes to see you. I am a brute
+to force you on to-night, without any rest; but you were due three days
+ago. And say! when I got that cable I swore. Never heard of such a
+thing. And it turned out to be the most original stunt of the winter.
+The town swept clean of your photographs and lithos, the papers agreeing
+not to run Sunday cuts; not even a tintype in the lobby. And the whole
+town is crazy to know why. Some little advertising stunt, believe me!
+Nothing in town but your name on three-sheets and small bills. Hereafter
+you boss your own publicity campaigns."
+
+A dry little smile stirred the lips of the actress.
+
+"Sarah," said the mother to the Breton maid, "have you taken good care
+of my Hilda?"
+
+"She's been a trump, mother!" interrupted the daughter.
+
+"But she looks as if she had been ill."
+
+"No, madame ... the journey...." Two faces, thought the maid, so alike
+that only the good God Himself might distinguish one from the other!
+
+Her mistress leaned back and closed her eyes. The train would be in the
+tunnel now and the box in Mathison's hands. What would be his wonder?
+She could only imagine. But she knew that to him she was The Yellow
+Typhoon, the Snow-leopard, the gambling woman of the Honan Road.
+
+In a little while all these momentous events would become a vague memory
+to him. He would shortly be busy with the problems of active warfare.
+He would never know that a guardian-angel had been at his elbow for
+days. How easy it was to visualize him!--sitting on the deck beside her
+chair, that funny little green bird clinging to his shoulder! And then
+that night, when he told her of his promise to his mother.... The
+tenderness of his voice! "Am I a mollycoddle?" He had asked her that in
+all seriousness.... Boy!
+
+His puzzlement would be large for a while; and out of the chaff of
+speculation he would find the grain of fact: The Yellow Typhoon, to save
+herself, had betrayed her companions. Thus Berta would escape prison,
+perhaps death.
+
+Irony! The same ancient story--Hilda, sacrificing herself for Berta, now
+as always; throwing away what might have been happiness to prevent the
+ghost from re-entering the life of the white-haired woman at her side.
+And she was practically turning Berta loose in New York, where she would
+be likely to draw a stain across a stainless life. Berta, free, there
+would soon be strange tales afloat, and each and every one of them would
+be credited to Norma Farrington. No matter, so long as the truth could
+be kept from the mother. The mockery of the grave in Greenwood!
+
+An infinitesimal clue: she had left that because she would not have been
+human else. There would be one chance in a million of his understanding.
+A little green feather--Malachi's--which she had picked off the deck one
+morning. She had hidden it in the little red book. He would find it, but
+he would not understand. A miracle, nothing short of that; and this was
+not the day of miracles.... Good-by!
+
+
+As the train drew out of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street station the
+blond man returned to No. 2, where he found his companion completely
+dressed and waiting. She was heavily veiled.
+
+"Where's the keys?"
+
+"Your keys? Oh, there they are, on the berth."
+
+"What was it you wanted?"
+
+"Wanted?" The woman raised the veil above her lips. "I haven't wanted
+anything."
+
+"But you came and got my keys!"
+
+"I ... what? I don't know what you are talking about. I went directly
+to the dressing-room and came straight back."
+
+"Berta, what nonsense is this? You came for the keys and I gave them to
+you. Wittel and Franz saw you."
+
+"Karl, you certainly did _not_!" alarmed.
+
+The man stared at her for a space. Then swiftly he knelt before his
+kit-bag, opened it and rammed his hand to the bottom, plowing about.
+
+"_Gott!_" he whispered, his color fading.
+
+"What has happened?"
+
+"Gone!... You devil, what game are you up to?" he cried, springing up.
+"I warned you once never to play with me. Where is it?"
+
+"Are you mad or am I?... I haven't touched that bag.... I will kill you
+if you lay a hand on me! Some one has tricked you. Call the porter."
+
+"Furies of hell! I _saw_ you! The rose-kimono; it was _you_!"
+
+"Karl, I tell you it was not I! We have been tricked. Call the porter."
+
+The man opened the door furiously and bumped into George, who was
+sailing airily along the corridor.
+
+"Come in here!"
+
+George did not like the tone, but he obeyed.
+
+"What's that under your arm?" demanded the woman.
+
+"Kimono. Lady in number six done got off an' fo'got it."
+
+The woman seized it. "Karl, don't you see? It is so nearly like mine it
+would fool any one!... Porter, what was this woman like?"
+
+"Can't say, ma'am. Always wo' a veil. Boss, dat young man nex' do' is
+goin' t' de Waldorf. I'll be back in a minute fo' de grips an' de
+kimono."
+
+George backed out diplomatically. He did not like the flavor of the
+atmosphere; too electrical. Besides, he had a box to deliver. He was
+plumb in the middle of the war.
+
+"Berta, I don't understand this. I saw _you_! Franz and Wittel will back
+me!"
+
+With the kimono spread over her knees, The Yellow Typhoon frowned into
+space.
+
+"Some spy. Saw me somewhere, perhaps back in that hotel. You were
+playing cards; your scrutiny wouldn't be keen. A bit of court-plaster, a
+veil, and this kimono...."
+
+"The full face, Berta.... _Yours!_" ominously.
+
+Mathison had donned his uniform, his greatcoat, packed his kit-bags,
+and drawn the cotton-flannel bag over Malachi's cage. On his breast was
+pinned the bit of green ribbon. Presently he heard the signal on the
+door. George came in.
+
+"A box fo' yo', suh.... My lan'!" he broke off.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Mathison, eying the box curiously.
+
+"Dem regimentals! Is yo' an officer in de _navy_?"
+
+"Yes, George. What's this box? Where did you get it?"
+
+George jerked his thumb toward the partition.
+
+"The woman next door?"
+
+"Yes, suh!"
+
+"She gave it to you for _me_?" astonished beyond measure.
+
+"Yes, suh."
+
+Mathison rubbed his chin. It might be some infernal-machine. Still, it
+had to be opened. With the lightest touch he untied the string. With a
+slow, steady pull he drew off the cover. Hypnotized, he stared at the
+contents. A manila envelope, a little red book ... and a folded
+blue-print!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+There are some astonishments which cannot be translated verbally. So
+great was Mathison's that he could neither think nor move. The aftermath
+of a thunderbolt affects you like that. When a certain phase of the
+hypnosis passed, and Mathison began to get the hang of life again, he
+became conscious of the porter. He drew out a bill and presented it.
+
+"Thanks. Uncle Sam will be very grateful to you. Any idea what was in
+this box?"
+
+"De lady said it was military, suh."
+
+Mathison nodded. "The man next door, George, is not a Secret Service
+man. I'd like to tell you all about it, but the time is too short. By
+telling him that I'm going straight to the Waldorf you will be doing
+your Uncle Sam an extra service."
+
+"I told him, Cap'n."
+
+"Good! Send a redcap in when the train stops. Good-by and good luck."
+
+Mathison closed the door and locked it. The little red book he slipped
+into an inner pocket, the manila envelope he dropped into one of the
+kit-bags. What he did with the blue-print will be revealed at the proper
+moment. Then he sat down, his brain beginning to boil with questions. By
+and by he came to what he believed to be the solution of this miracle.
+The Yellow Typhoon was afraid. She had betrayed her companions because
+she saw immunity in the betrayal. She would never receive it from John
+Mathison, Bob Hallowell's friend! She, too, should pay. All the cards in
+his hand again, and he would play them on the basis that the phrase
+"blood and iron" was not pertinent to the Teuton only.
+
+For what had been the primal impetus of this remarkable journey of ten
+thousand miles, of hiding continually behind steel walls, of refusing to
+take profit from the vast power at his service? An eye for an eye, a
+tooth for a tooth! That he was a secret agent, carrying a tremendous
+undeveloped sea-offensive--which he still had by the hair--was to his
+mind, obsessed with a single idea, an affair of secondary importance.
+
+Draw the hand strongly across the surface of the water. What happens? A
+wave, that follows irresistibly, fatefully, inescapably. This was, then,
+primarily a man-hunt, played backward, probably as peculiar a man-hunt
+as was ever conceived. The pursuers were in reality the pursued. Being a
+good psychologist, Mathison had simply put himself back of his enemies'
+point of view. In their minds, who would be the logical messenger? John
+Mathison, transferred to European waters, the familiar friend of the
+inventor, the one man living who knew exactly what the invention in its
+entirety was. This established in their minds, there were ninety-nine
+chances in a hundred that they would follow him. And there was always
+the possibility that Paolo, the Spanish servant, had conveyed enough
+scraps of information to decide them.
+
+Had he been only vaguely certain that they carried the blue-print,
+Mathison would have used his power and struck immediately after the
+sleep-fume attack the first night on shore. But, he had argued,
+supposing he struck and the print was not found? They would be
+liberated; forewarned, they would vanish. He hadn't credited them with
+the stupidity of carrying so dangerous a thing as that blue-print. In
+their place he would have mailed it from San Francisco, with absolute
+certainty that it would reach the hands intended. There was no
+censorship over national mail. And now that the print was in his
+possession, he never could prove that it had actually been in theirs.
+
+For the real point was to secure evidence, of which to date he had not
+an iota, not such as would pass muster in any court outside of Germany.
+To have the blond man and his companions arrested as matters now stood
+would be a waste of time. So his whole plan was to lure them to a point
+where the hand of the law could touch and _hold_. An overt act, culpable
+legally. And The Yellow Typhoon herself had restored the means.
+
+There was still one puzzle--the woman's lack of curiosity. She had not
+opened the envelope. Had she declared to the blond man that she had not
+found it? It would not be stating it strong enough to say that she was
+the most baffling woman he had ever met; he had never _read_ of one her
+match.
+
+At length Mathison and redcap swung along with the crowd making for the
+gates. Just beyond the gates Mathison signaled to the redcap to pause.
+He felt a hand on his arm, but he did not turn his head.
+
+"Mathison?" came in a whisper.
+
+"Yes. The blond man with the ruddy cheeks. The woman behind him in the
+sables. Follow and report to your chief." Mathison went on.
+
+Quarter of an hour later he entered the Waldorf. This time he seemed
+indifferent to the kit-bags. The boy deposited them along with the cage
+in front of the desk. Mathison signed the register, opened one of the
+kit-bags, and took out the manila envelope, which, before leaving the
+Philippines, he had been warned solemnly to guard with his life.
+
+"Please deposit this in your safe and give me a receipt." Mathison spoke
+calmly, but his heart pounded with suppressed excitement. Carelessly, in
+view of any who cared to see, he stuffed the receipt into the little
+pocket at the top of his trousers. Then he went up to his room. He set
+Malachi on a stand by the radiator. He emptied the kit-bags and
+distributed the contents into drawers and closets.
+
+Afraid. The Yellow Typhoon was afraid! Or was it Hallowell!--a touch of
+remorse?
+
+He sat down and opened the little red book for some addresses Morgan had
+given him. And something fluttered to his knee. It was a blue-green
+feather, brilliant as an emerald. Malachi's; he was always finding
+Malachi's feathers. But the sight of this one recalled a promise he had
+made himself--to call up Mrs. Chester's apartment. If he had to sail
+before she returned, he would leave Malachi with the apartment people.
+So he stuffed the feather absently into his match-pocket. Later he sent
+many messages over the telephone.
+
+He felt in his pockets for his fountain-pen and, not finding it,
+remembered that he hadn't taken it from the vest of his civilian suit.
+Naturally, he went through all the pockets, and among other things came
+upon a folded slip of glazed paper. He opened it.
+
+Several minutes passed. Mathison was like stone. Norma Farrington. He
+saw now why the photograph had originally intrigued him. It resembled
+Morgan's description of the woman known as The Yellow Typhoon!...
+Absurd! It was not within reason. Some twist, some legerdemain the
+photograph had given it. The shadows; these had something to do with it.
+Norma Farrington, The Yellow Typhoon? The absurdity was patent. The
+notorious woman of Honan Road could not possibly be a celebrity on
+Broadway. Too many miles between.
+
+He sprang to the telephone. "Give me the theater-ticket agency....
+Hello! Is Norma Farrington playing in town?... She _is_?... What
+theater?... Thanks!" Mathison got out the little red book with trembling
+fingers. He rang up a number. "This is Mathison, the green ribbon.
+What's the report on the woman in the sables?... All right. I'll hold
+the wire." Five minutes passed. "Hello!... Entered a house in Fiftieth
+Street? Fine!" Mathison consulted the time; it was seven-fifty.
+
+He became a whirlwind. He flew down-stairs and plunged toward the
+revolving doors.
+
+"Taxi!"
+
+The vehicle was forthcoming instantly, due to his visored cap, gold
+bands, and star. He jumped into the taxi, naming a theater up-town. He
+paid a speculator five dollars for the only seat left--Q, center. As he
+was late, he had to navigate through channels of reluctant feet. Norma
+Farrington! He had only one idea with four sides to it--something
+complete.
+
+The footlights flashed. When the curtain rolled up there were three
+people on the stage--no one he had ever seen before. They moved about
+and talked. Occasionally a ripple of laughter ran over the house. But
+none of these things meant anything to Mathison. He was not conscious of
+a word that was spoken or the significance of a single movement.
+
+There were four entrances to this stage living-room, and Mathison grew
+dizzy trying to watch all four at once. At eight-forty, through the
+French window--you saw a charming garden beyond--came a woman in gray.
+Her expression was demure--mischievously demure. The audience broke into
+applause. Tense, Mathison strained his ears.
+
+Outside the blond man waited with the patience of his breed. His glance
+never left the entrance to the theater.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+As soon as the curtain fell Mathison stood up and plowed his way out to
+the aisle. Once in the aisle, he rushed to the foyer, where he demanded
+the way to the managerial office. His uniform was open sesame.
+
+The producing manager, a dapper, bright-eyed Jew, happened to be in, and
+he was outlining a campaign for his press agent when Mathison burst in.
+
+"I am Lieutenant-Commander John Mathison," he announced, a bit out of
+breath for his run up the stairs.
+
+"What's the difficulty?" asked the manager, coolly. "Anchor afoul my
+unlighted sign?"
+
+Mathison laughed. He understood at once that here was a good sport.
+"Pardon my abruptness," he apologized. "I'd like to use your telephone."
+
+The manager waved his hand. He heard Mathison's side of the
+conversation.
+
+"Mathison. What's the report from Fiftieth Street?... The woman still
+inside? Thanks.... No, that's all." Mathison hung up the receiver
+dreamily.
+
+"What's happened?" asked Rubin, ironically. "Have we sunk the German
+fleet?"
+
+"We are going to," said Mathison. "I want a messenger the quickest way I
+can get him."
+
+"War stuff?" thrilled in spite of his resentment at the intrusion. Rubin
+was an autocrat in the theatrical world.
+
+"Well, I don't believe you'd call it that. I want to get some flowers."
+
+The manager sank back. "You sailors! I thought maybe a submarine was
+loose outside!" He was going to add a sting, when a boot came into
+contact with his shin, a sign that the alert press agent had something
+on his mind. "Flowers!"
+
+"I have come ten thousand miles to send these flowers," replied
+Mathison, smiling.
+
+"Get a head usher, Klein," said the manager, secretly bubbling. What a
+humdinger for the morning papers! As the press agent vanished, Rubin
+turned to Mathison. "You may send flowers, but not across the lights. I
+will not break that rule for anybody."
+
+"So long as she gets them. May I write a note?"
+
+The manager got up and indicated his chair. "Write as many as you like.
+I take it that the flowers are for Miss Farrington."
+
+"They are."
+
+"Do you know her?" curiously.
+
+"I do." The smile was still on Mathison's lips.
+
+"In that case, go ahead. But if it happens that she doesn't recall you,
+your posies will go directly to the ash-can. She isn't easy to know."
+
+"I know her," insisted Mathison.
+
+"I rather wish, though, that you would put this off until to-morrow
+night. Miss Farrington will be very tired. She's done a fine and
+generous thing--gone on without rest, after an unbroken journey from the
+other side of the world."
+
+"No one is better aware of that than I. She will see me."
+
+Rubin knew confidence when he saw it.
+
+He twisted his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. A
+vigorous, unusual chap, this, and handsome enough to wake up The
+Farrington. Ten thousand miles! Her aloofness toward men was now
+accounted for. An old affair nobody had heard of. There was an ominous
+portent in this affair for Broadway. She was the loyalest of the loyal;
+she'd stick to her contract. But after!
+
+Mathison settled down to his note. Each time he balled up a piece of
+paper and flung it into the waste-basket Rubin frowned.
+
+The press agent came storming back, an usher in tow. The latter was
+given fifty dollars and ordered to purchase Parma violets.
+
+"No tinfoil, no tinsel strings, no bouquet; loose, as they came from the
+soil. Carry this note and the flowers to Miss Farrington's
+dressing-room. And here is something for your trouble." To the manager
+he said, "Thanks for your courtesy."
+
+"You're as welcome as the spring."
+
+"Oh, boy!" cried the press agent as the door closed behind Mathison. "In
+a dead world like this! A real yarn, no faking. Did you lamp the roll he
+dragged out? That was real money, all yellows. Think of it! Our Norma, a
+navy man, ten thousand miles, flowers, a wad of yellows! She'll set up a
+holler. Pass the buck to me. I'll be the goat with the cheerfulest smile
+ever!"
+
+"Klein, we sha'n't use this."
+
+"What?" barked the press agent.
+
+"No. It's real. This is no Johnny. Norma is no chorus beauty. Of course,
+I jumped at the idea, but we'll have to pass it up. I wouldn't lose
+Norma's genuine affection for me for a million three-sheets, free of
+charge. No. Lock it up and forget it."
+
+"Well, what do you know about that?"
+
+Mathison returned to his seat, apologizing to every one so courteously
+and agreeably that even the men forgave him. He was quite calm now. All
+incertitude was gone; he _knew_. The Yellow Typhoon was in a house in
+Fiftieth Street, and Norma Farrington was yonder on the stage,
+delighting his eyes, thrilling his ears. The wonder of her! God bless
+her, she had tried to save Bob Hallowell that night! And he would never
+have known but for that posed photograph!
+
+She did not wear any of the flowers in the second act, nor in the third;
+but when she came on in the fourth she carried a small bouquet in her
+corsage. She was Joyousness. It radiated from her into the audience.
+Faces all over the house were beaming, not with merriment, but with
+good humor.
+
+There came a little moment when throats became stuffy--one of those
+flashes of tenderness whose link is generally laughter. When the whole
+house was watching the _comédienne_ tensely, in absolute silence,
+Mathison laughed aloud, joyously! Heads swinging resentfully in his
+direction woke him up. His cheeks flushed.
+
+Doubtless by this time you have formed the impression that Mathison had
+lost his compass, that he was drifting, that he had forgotten the vital
+business which had brought him all these thousands of miles. Nothing
+could be farther from the truth. All these little eddies, currents,
+whirlpools were at the sides of the stream, that flowed on, impervious,
+inevitable.
+
+For a man whose soul was in haste he took his time. His movements within
+the theater and outside in the lobby were leisurely. On the street he
+made no effort to bore through. But when he reached the corner he was
+off like a shot toward the dark alley which led to the stage door. This
+he plunged through recklessly--into the arms of the ancient Cerberus who
+tended the door.
+
+"Outside, outside! The comic opera has went!"
+
+Mathison presented his card. "Miss Farrington is expecting me."
+
+"Oh, she is, huh? Well, she said nothin' to me about it."
+
+"I'll wait."
+
+"You're welcome; but in the alley, admiral, in the alley. Nobody gits by
+me to-night, comin' in. Orders."
+
+"I don't suppose ten dollars would interest you in the least."
+
+"Not unless I _saw_ it. Honest, now, are you meetin' Miss Farrington?"
+
+"I am. I'll be peaceful, Tirpitz; but if you send for the stage-hands,
+I'm likely to shoot up the place."
+
+"All right. I'll take it in two fives."
+
+Mathison discovered that he was now free to walk about as he pleased, so
+long as he did not amble in the direction of the dressing-rooms. He
+anchored himself by the wall, from where he could see all who came down
+the narrow iron staircase. The draughty, musty, painty odors were to him
+like perfumed amber from Araby.
+
+By and by two women came down. They went past Mathison without taking
+any notice of him. They were followed shortly by a man whom Mathison
+recognized as the conceited ass who made love to Miss Farrington in the
+play.
+
+A row of lights overhead went out. The stage was now in a kind of
+twilight. I wonder if there is a sadder place than a stage when the
+actors have left it to the tender mercies of scene-shifters, carpenters,
+and electricians? To Mathison it was only the door to Ali Baba's cave.
+
+At length--thirty minutes, to be exact--a woman came down the stairs
+slowly. A veil was wrapped about her face and hair. But Mathison would
+have recognized that sable coat anywhere. He stepped forward shakily and
+took off his cap.
+
+"I suppose it's still snowing outside?" casually.
+
+"What we sailors call thick weather." No questions; just an ordinary,
+every-day query about the weather. No confusion. "You are not afraid to
+shake hands?"
+
+"I don't know just what to do."
+
+"Oh, I'd return the hand." His laughter rocked the lurking echoes above.
+
+And something in that laughter made her afraid of him, of herself.
+
+"Where in the world did you find all those violets--loose, the way I
+love them?" She did not give him time to answer. "My car is at the end
+of the alley. Where shall we go? I'm going to give you a half-hour.... I
+suppose it was written."
+
+"That I should find you? Yes."
+
+"I like the way you say that." Had the porter betrayed her? And yet the
+porter could not have betrayed anything beyond the fact that she, not
+Berta, had given him that box. Some unforeseen stroke of luck; certainly
+not that feather. He was no brother to the Cumæan Sibyl. Still, he had
+found her. She was tremendously curious to learn how. On the other hand,
+she was determined to ask him no questions and, as adroitly as she
+could, evade his. If he persisted, she would cut the meeting short. Some
+day--if she ever saw him again--she would tell him the story. She was
+too weary to-night. She was at once happy and miserable; happy because
+it was as though his finding her had been written, miserable because the
+sordid dénouement might break at any moment. To save Berta, not for
+Berta's sake, but for the mother's.
+
+She knew that she was beautiful, that she possessed extraordinary
+talent in attracting men, though she had never used it. She knew what
+power lay in expression, in vocal music. She might have made this man
+love her. For if he had not been drawn to her through some mysterious
+forces, why had he sought her? Those flowers! There were gall and
+wormwood in this cup, but she drank it with a smile. Romance, and she
+must let it go by!
+
+What had he learned within these four short hours? That she was not The
+Yellow Typhoon, certainly. Had there been a cable from that man Morgan,
+after his solemn promise? The gray wig and the goggles....
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"That we had better be moving. You take me wherever you think best."
+
+"Give me your arm. It will be slippery in the alley. There's an umbrella
+in the corner by the door. Take it."
+
+Outside, he put up the umbrella; and as she took his arm she knocked
+against something heavy and hard in his pocket.
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Part of a sailor's paraphernalia."
+
+"It is not over yet?" with sudden suspicion.
+
+"No. There are a few threads that need picking up."
+
+The metal in his voice did not escape her. She was puzzled, for,
+logically, all his land adventures should be over.
+
+It was only a short distance to the restaurant, which was a famous one.
+
+She selected it tactfully, solely on his account. She herself had never
+been inside of it before in the evening. But she knew a good deal about
+men, that even so nice a one as this fresh-skinned, blue-eyed sailorman
+would not object to having his vanity played up to. There was another
+kind of thought besides in her mind. The night would be far more
+memorable if there was a background of color and movement and music. She
+was weak enough to want him always to remember this night.
+
+The moment she took off her veil and coat she was recognized. That is
+the penalty of theatrical fame in New York. The head waiter passed the
+word, and the people at the near-by tables stared and whispered; and
+Mathison wouldn't have been human if he had not expanded a little under
+this patent interest in his lovely companion.
+
+How was he to know that the gown she wore had been donned expressly for
+him? How was he to know that it had been sent for after the arrival of
+the flowers, or that she had worried all through the performance for
+fear her mother would send the wrong one, or that it might reach the
+theater too late?
+
+Later, Mathison could not have told whether she wore green or blue or
+red. No normal man would have paid any attention to her gown--with her
+face, her eyes, her lips to watch.
+
+Their orders scandalized the waiter. Miss Farrington ordered two apples
+and Mathison a bowl of bread and milk. They laughed.
+
+"That's all I ever eat at night--fruit."
+
+"And I didn't come here to eat," he said.
+
+About this time the blond man, occupied by a single idea, entered the
+restaurant lobby, gave his hat and coat to the check-boy, then walked
+out to the curb and approached the footman.
+
+"Dismiss Miss Farrington's limousine. She will go home with us."
+
+"Yes, sir." The footman went down to execute the order.
+
+The blond man waited until he saw the gray limousine maneuver out of
+the line and swing into the street; then he returned for his hat and
+coat. The Farrington was nothing to him. He had never heard of her until
+to-night. Ordinarily he might have been curious enough to have had her
+pointed out. To-night such curiosity might dissipate his cleverly
+conceived plans. Perhaps Mathison had not seen him actually. Anyhow, he
+did not intend to risk the future to satisfy a curiosity which was only
+negligible. If he had looked into that dining-room, it is quite possible
+this tale would have had a different ending. As matters stood, he had
+reason to be grateful to the actress. She had opened a way for him. A
+man with a pretty woman in his charge would not be particularly keen
+mentally.
+
+"Did you like the play?"
+
+Mathison shook his head.
+
+"You didn't like it?" astonished.
+
+"I'll see it before I sail."
+
+"Then you weren't in the theater to-night?"
+
+"Oh yes; in Q. I was the ass who laughed out loud when the whole house
+was so still you could have heard a pin drop."
+
+"You?... I heard that, and wondered what had happened. But if you saw
+the play...."
+
+"That's just the point. I wasn't an audience; I was a spectator."
+
+Something in his eyes, a lurking fire, warned her not to press in this
+direction. After all, he had not come to see the play; he had come to
+see her. And the knowledge was like the warmth from a wood fire.
+
+"A sailorman! No doubt a girl in every port."
+
+"No." Without vehemence. "The same girl in every port, in the fire, in
+the moon-mists; the girl who has been in my heart since I was a boy."
+
+"Oh." A little dagger-stab in her heart. "Then you have come back to
+marry before you go across?"
+
+"Quite likely."
+
+"Love, marriage, off to the wars!... What is she like?"
+
+"Petrol on water."
+
+She stared blankly.
+
+"If you have never seen wide spreads of petrol on a smooth sea," he
+explained, "then you have missed something indescribably beautiful.
+Fire! Dawns, sunsets, moonlight; all the flashing gems in the world,
+moving, circling, advancing, retreating. The soul of a woman should be
+like that."
+
+"Are you a poet?"
+
+"Possibly, but inarticulate. I don't know one rhyme from another."
+
+"But poetry isn't rhyme. Your description of oil on water is poetry."
+
+He laughed. "If the wardrooms ever find that out, I'm done for." The
+glory of her! All his life he had been dreaming of an hour like this.
+
+A pause followed. His utter lack of inquisitiveness intrigued her beyond
+expression. Not a word about how he had found her. Not a word about the
+Adventure. Why? What kind of a man was he, that he could sit opposite
+her without deluging her with questions? And he had a right to know many
+things. She had given him one opening without meaning to--the query
+relative to the automatic in his pocket. Why hadn't he taken advantage
+of it?
+
+She broke the silence and led him into the war; but after a few phrases
+he veered away from this. He spoke of the snow, how he longed for the
+north country of late, how he had grown weary for the need of cold,
+lashing winds and the smell of snow.
+
+When she could stand it no longer she said, "Tell me by what magic you
+found me!"
+
+"I'm a queer codger. I have a strange memory for sounds. Possibly
+because I've lived much in the open. My leaves were generally spent in
+the jungles. Foliage moving--I can tell almost instantly whether it is
+the wind or animal life. The same with the crackling of a twig.
+Sometimes the recurrence of a sound confuses me. There may be some
+difficulty in placing it. But I know I have heard the sound before."
+
+Then he produced the photograph. She stared at it bewilderedly. Sound?
+What _was_ he talking about?
+
+"You found me by that? But you did not _hear_ that!"
+
+"Still, it recalled a sound."
+
+Her glance fell on the photograph again. She had forgotten the posing
+for it. This was not the sort of dénouement she wanted; he had found her
+quite ordinarily. Yet she could not make him out. This was not the man
+she had known on the _Nippon Maru_, the boy who had been like crystal
+or an open book. This was an inscrutable stranger, of velvet and steel.
+
+"I begin to understand," she said. She felt the mantle of weariness
+falling again on her shoulders. The hide-and-seek of the encounter irked
+her. Why didn't he speak, demand questions, satisfy her curiosity? She
+was very tired. He would never know how much awake she had been on that
+journey. She had walked the car corridors at all hours; she had watched
+for Berta to pass the crack in the door until the concentration had made
+her dizzy. She was tired, and she hadn't the power to resist her own
+curiosity. She flung open Bluebeard's door recklessly. "I begin to
+understand."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why you were sent on this hazardous mission. You are quite sufficient
+unto yourself. I believed I was doing a fine, brave thing."
+
+"Ah, but it was a fine, brave thing. You made it possible for me to go
+on. Secret service!"
+
+"It would be useless to deny it." She leaned on her elbows, locking her
+ringless fingers under her chin. "It's not generally known, but I am of
+Danish stock. I came to America when I was very little. I spoke no
+English. There were lean years; yes, even poverty. But I had a little
+talent--the faculty of making people smile. Not all aliens are
+ungrateful. This is now my country. I love it!" Her eyes flashed. "It
+made me all I am, gave me all I have. It has been glorious to me. Long
+ago I vowed if ever the chance came I would pay back these
+benefactions--with my life if need be!"
+
+Mathison's conduct was logical enough. All he had wanted was to see her,
+hear her voice for a little while, get one absolute fact, a fact she
+could not withhold from him, being unaware of what he was seeking. He
+would satisfy his curiosity, disperse these mysteries, after his work
+was done. Before this night was over one of two things was going to
+happen. He was going to succeed or he was going to be badly hurt. He now
+had a tolerably keen insight into the character of this glorious woman.
+She was brave and resourceful. The slightest hint of what was on foot
+and she might seek to intervene, with the best of intentions, and spoil
+everything. But day after to-morrow--when he returned from Washington!
+
+"It is very wonderful to be here to-night," he said.
+
+After that her heart grew warm again. She, too, knew the value of
+sounds. At least he was grateful. That weapon in his pocket--she longed
+to ask him about that. But a question here might alarm him. He must not
+suspect the plan she had in her head. Logically the great adventure was
+at an end; but they may have threatened his life. She stood up.
+
+"I'm a brute!" he cried, contritely. "I forgot that you must be weary
+beyond measure."
+
+He held the sable coat for her, particularly careful not to touch her.
+As she was wrapping the veil about her hair and face he asked if he
+might come to tea the day after.
+
+"I'll tell you. In a little while I shall be in the thick of it. I may
+not come back. In my room at the hotel I've a little Rajputana
+parrakeet--green as an emerald. Fact is, he's the only pal I have
+to-day. He hates the sea. May I give him to you?"
+
+She trembled. "To me?" Malachi!
+
+"Yes--that is, if you'd like him. He talks. Wait." He fumbled about in
+a pocket. "Here's a little feather of his. It will give you an idea of
+what a brilliant color he has. May I give him to you?"
+
+"Yes!" The blood whipped into her throat. The girl he saw in every port:
+what about her? Why didn't he offer the bird to her?... That feather! It
+wasn't humanly possible that he understood and was playing with her.
+
+Truth is he was thousands of miles away from the message. But there were
+other roads to Rome; and he knew what he knew.
+
+"Then I may come to tea day after to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes," She turned away from the table. Upon reaching the curb she
+wheeled upon Mathison. "My car!" she cried, dismayed.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"It isn't here!"
+
+Mathison hailed the footman. "What has become of Miss Farrington's car?"
+
+"Why, sir, she gave orders to dismiss it!"
+
+Mathison returned to Miss Farrington. "Some mistake. They've dismissed
+it."
+
+"Taxi, sir?" said a man at Mathison's elbow.
+
+"Yes. Here, Miss Farrington; jump into this. Day after to-morrow at
+four. Good night."
+
+"But you are coming with me!"
+
+"No."
+
+"I say yes!"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then I'll walk to the Subway--four blocks. I shall ruin my dress, my
+shoes, and my temper. I am going to take you back to the hotel."
+
+The last place in the world Mathison intended going at this hour. The
+devil and the deep blue sea! He was confident that she would do just as
+she threatened--walk. But this he knew: the moment he entered this taxi
+it would become a trap--a trap he would jump into with the greatest
+cheerfulness, alone. What to do? He could not give her any warning, with
+the strange chauffeur's ear scarcely a foot off. And under no
+circumstances must the blond man see Norma Farrington's face this night.
+
+"A compromise," he said, believing he had found a solution to the
+difficulty. "I'll go with you if you will let me take you home first."
+
+"Agreed!" she cried, readily. She smiled in the dark of the cab. This
+was exactly what she wanted. Once at the apartment, she would discharge
+this taxi and order one she was tolerably sure of.
+
+He laughed and sprang into the cab. The snow was coming down thickly.
+Corners were dim; the street-lamps hung in a kind of pearly twilight. A
+strange silence fell upon them.
+
+I don't suppose either of them marked the turns. Perhaps the
+impenetrable haze had something to do with it. You are not ordinarily
+attracted by nebulous objects. Again, it might have been due to the fact
+that they were both fatalists. Suddenly the cab stopped with a slewing
+jerk. The door opened. The man who opened it presented his arm stiffly.
+Neither Miss Farrington nor Mathison had to be informed regarding that
+blue-black bit of metal at the end of that arm. She shrank back, but not
+in fear. Her idea was to give Mathison all the elbow room he might
+require.
+
+"Step out, both of you, with your hands up--quickly!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+"Do what you think best," she murmured across Mathison's shoulder.
+"Please do not consider me at all."
+
+But Mathison stepped out tamely, his hands above his head. She followed,
+slightly chilled. Her arms hung at her side. This was not quite as she
+would have had it. Why didn't he attempt to distract the man with the
+automatic--arguments, protests, threats? There was always a chance. She
+was not afraid of pistol-shots, and he ought to know that. Chilled and
+disappointed, she stood beside him.
+
+"The lady will put up her hands also." Nothing of the speaker's face
+could be seen, only his pale-blue eyes, which snapped frostily over the
+rim of the black handkerchief.
+
+"The lady will do nothing of the kind, for the obvious reason that the
+cut of her coat will not permit it."
+
+Mathison tightened his lips. Unafraid!
+
+"Brandt!"
+
+The chauffeur jumped down from the taxicab.
+
+"Search them for weapons."
+
+The chauffeur rifled Mathison's pockets, and tossed the heavy Colt to
+his superior. Then he seized Miss Farrington by the arm. He started to
+run his free hand over her, when she struck his cheek with a lively
+report.
+
+"No man shall touch me like that!"
+
+Mathison intervened. "Just a moment. I'll keep my hands up, but on
+condition that no indignity shall be offered this lady. Otherwise you
+will have to shoot me."
+
+"No indignity will be offered the lady. So far as I am concerned, she
+does not exist. Her word that she is unarmed, and no one shall touch
+her."
+
+"I give it." A diversion for his sake, and he had not taken profit! What
+was the meaning of this singular tameness?
+
+"March up those steps, both of you. The lady will have to share your
+luck until it is advisable to release you. March!"
+
+Mathison put his arm under Miss Farrington's and helped her up the icy
+steps. In the faintest whisper: "Do not lift up your veil while in this
+house. There is danger. Do not speak unless I give you the lead."
+
+The door opened to admit them and they stood in a dimly lighted hallway.
+
+"The parlor; you will find it comfortable."
+
+Inside the parlor Mathison was ordered to halt. With a detached air he
+obeyed. Miss Farrington shuddered. She saw the man in the black
+handkerchief search the little pocket at the top of Mathison's trousers
+and extract a bit of paper, folded. What was it?
+
+"A long chase, but we are patient. The receipt!... Yankee swine!" The
+man struck Mathison across the mouth, stepped back quickly, the
+automatic ready.
+
+Mathison did not stir, but his tan faded; and presently a thin trickle
+of blood ran down his chin.
+
+"You despicable coward!" she cried. "How like the Hun!"
+
+"Be silent! Your immunity is not irrevocable."
+
+A receipt of deposit! She understood now. A receipt of deposit for that
+manila envelope. To have come all this way, and then lose! And it came
+to her like a blow that she herself was directly the cause. He had not
+wanted to get into the taxi, and she had forced him. In trying to save
+him she had merely led him to defeat. But the tameness, when she knew
+that he was quick as light!
+
+"You will be detained about an hour. A telephone-call will release you.
+Madame, my thanks. You made everything very easy for us. Without your
+innocent assistance there might have been difficulties. Unwittingly, you
+have entered the war zone, with casualties."
+
+Then, with an ironical wave of the hand, the man in the black
+handkerchief stepped forth and closed the door.
+
+Mathison pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his lips, turning
+gradually so that his back was toward the double doors.
+
+"I could cry!" she said. "All my fault!"
+
+Mathison laid a warning finger on his bruised lips. Instinctively he
+knew that he was being watched. The affair wasn't over yet.
+
+"Please don't feel badly. The fortunes of war. The thing is done. Don't
+bother any more about it."
+
+"But you wouldn't have surrendered like this if I hadn't been with
+you!"
+
+"I'd have put up some kind of a scrap, I suppose. I should have kept my
+head, and didn't."
+
+"But through fault of mine...."
+
+"It might have been worse," he interrupted. "They didn't hurt you. I'll
+be given my destroyer. I'm a good navigator. Better take off your coat;
+otherwise you will feel it when you go out." He laid his hands on her
+shoulders--and whispered: "Be on your guard! They must not know that you
+know. Follow my leads. They are watching or listening."
+
+"I'll keep the coat on." She sat down, trembling.
+
+He began to walk about. From time to time he touched his lips with his
+handkerchief.
+
+She watched him. All through the night he had puzzled her as no man had
+ever puzzled her before. She knew that he was strong, resourceful,
+courageous. And yet he had taken that blow on the mouth without comment,
+without a sign of wrath. Resourceful, he had carried that receipt with
+him. Her fault, directly and indirectly. His discovery that Norma
+Farrington--Hilda Nordstrom--and The Yellow Typhoon were two individuals
+had befogged his foresight. He had probably dashed out of the hotel with
+no thought but of finding her. It would have been the simplest thing in
+the world to leave the receipt in the key-box. Beaten because of her!
+
+"Think of finding you!" he said. He covered the length of the room
+again. "No doubt you think I'm a queer codger. The fact is I never waste
+time or energy in wailing. When I lose I pay. When I win I pocket the
+stakes. I never drop out of a game, once I take up the cards." He sat
+down beside her. "Do you believe in love at first sight?"
+
+Good Heavens! But she managed to say, calmly, "In a play?" She lifted
+the veil to the tip of her nose. "Oh yes. It goes very well that way." A
+cue? Very good; she would follow up this bewildering lead, even if her
+heart did begin to act queerly.
+
+"I mean in real life."
+
+"I never fell in love with any one offstage; so I'm not in a position to
+speak. The trouble with me is I have a fatal gift of reading men at a
+glance. I have always revolted at the idea of marrying a man I knew all
+about on my wedding-day. He must be a fine story-book--to be read a page
+at a time, to offer a mystery tantalizing enough to create a longing to
+solve it. And if I ever do marry I shall go on with my work. Why?
+Because I shall always be puzzling him just a little. In marriage
+absolute knowledge always makes for dullness."
+
+Of all the amazing, heartrending subjects to select! And she could not
+tell him that he was hurting her dreadfully.... His poor lips! All her
+fault.
+
+That voice! he thought. In his ears it was sweeter than the intoning of
+choirs in cathedrals. He glanced at his wrist-watch. Probably the man
+was at the desk, presenting the receipt. God send he did not pass the
+job on to a confederate! In twenty minutes, perhaps, the call would come
+for their release. Mathison ran his tongue over his throbbing lips. Then
+he smiled--a smile through which his teeth flashed whitely.
+
+She, watching him, waited for him to carry on. His bent head was so
+close that it was hard to resist that old inclination--to touch it with
+her hand. All this talk about love!... He was merely passing the time.
+But when she saw that smile her eyes widened behind her veil. It was a
+terrible smile, savage, relentless, and _confident_!
+
+And then, in one of those blinding ribbons of light that flash across
+the storms, she saw distinctly the meaning of the whole affair. Each
+time the recollection of the manila envelope returned to her mind fog
+enshrouded it. She could see nothing but a childish whim in the
+superscriptions and decorations. His own name and rank sprawled across
+the middle and a photograph at each end--of himself in mufti and
+uniform. The Machiavellian cunning of it! Boy! Would she ever be able to
+call him that again? She thrilled.
+
+"What shall I call you? Lieutenant-commander is so formal and Mister is
+an abomination."
+
+"Call me John. My mother thought it a good name."
+
+"Not Jack?"
+
+"Too many Jacks in the navy. I'd like very much if you'd call me John."
+
+"Mathison. I believe for the present I'll call you Mathison. That's
+comrade-y. And day after to-morrow we shall have tea together."
+
+"And I'll bring Malachi. But I warn you he swears dreadfully sometimes,
+when he's happy."
+
+"I'd love him!" She laughed. A few moments ago she hadn't believed she
+could ever laugh again joyously. After all, what did her affairs amount
+to in this great game? She was an infinitesimal grain of sand,
+inconsiderable. A trap for his enemy, and she had almost spoiled it. And
+casually he had said he had a few loose threads to pick up!
+
+She was reasonably certain now that all recollection of the old lady on
+the _Nippon Maru_ had passed from his mind. Why not? Why should a young
+man of thirty keep fresh in his memory an old woman ostensibly sixty? He
+had found Hilda Nordstrom, and that was sufficient for the present.
+
+"Did I see the red and blue lights of a drug-store down the street as we
+came along?"
+
+"I don't remember."
+
+The double doors rolled back smoothly and The Yellow Typhoon stepped
+into the room, sending the doors shut again. She leaned with her back
+against one of the doors, and the crooked smile on her lips almost hid
+the little mole.
+
+Mathison was on his feet immediately, his nerves singing. All along he
+had expected such a moment; and yet, now that it had come, it stupefied
+him. He stood so that he partially covered Miss Farrington. He wondered
+if any man had ever before been confronted by such a situation. He
+managed to throw a bit of gallantry into his bow.
+
+"And how is the jealous husband to-night?"
+
+"He is doing nicely at this moment, thank you. You and the lady are free
+to go."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Mathison started to turn, but stopped, fascinated by the singular change
+which was passing over the face of the woman in front of him. Slowly her
+hands reached out on each side, fingers spread; her body seemed to
+shrink.
+
+"_Hilda?_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Mathison stepped aside, not only physically, but figuratively. He saw
+that for a little while he was to be an outsider. There was a strange
+tragedy here, and it was going to be threshed out immediately. The
+attitude of the two women was a dead reckoning that there were accounts
+to settle. Already they seemed to have forgotten him.
+
+Of course he had known, or at least suspected, that these two remarkable
+women were sisters--twins. From the moment he had discovered that posed
+photograph, located The Yellow Typhoon in this very house, established
+the fact that Norma Farrington was acting on the stage that night, he
+had known.
+
+From where he stood, ill at ease and restless, he could see the two
+faces. So alike that, separately, it was impossible to tell which was
+which or that there were two. Witness his own adventures in that hotel
+room. The detective had declared that two women had mounted that
+fire-escape because he had seen nothing but footprints. But the two
+together, as Mathison now saw them! The one with the white soul of her
+shining in her face; the other--a sphinx. Hilda--he would never think of
+her as Norma again--a white page with a beautiful poem written thereon;
+the other, a page with a cryptogram. A miracle; he could call it nothing
+else; a physical allegory, the good fairy and the bad. The forest pool
+that slaked your thirst; the lying mirage of the desert. And yet the
+mirage was no less glorious to the eye than the honest pool. He knew he
+would never again mistake the one for the other.
+
+The shock over, the reality confirmed, The Yellow Typhoon gathered her
+shattered forces. She folded her arms, and her body seemed to expand.
+
+"Hilda!... Well, why not? I knew that if I returned to New York our
+paths would cross again. I did not will it. But what will be will be.
+Always meddling, always trying to thwart me!"
+
+"Yes, Berta; the same old Hilda, always bearing the brunt of your
+misdeeds, always sacrificing herself to shield you ... to save the
+mother a hurt. For what I did never hurt her; she loved you, tolerated
+me. And the bitter irony of it all lies in the fact that she would have
+stood away from you but for my sacrifices, which misled her. Yes, I am
+Hilda."
+
+"You!" rasped Berta. "It was you, then, who wore that kimono! You,
+turned Yankee swine!"
+
+"I, who have sworn loyalty to the land you would betray. I tried to save
+you, but you would not have it."
+
+"Save me? On the contrary, your safety depends upon my good nature. I
+hold you and this mollycoddle in the palm of my hand. Take care!"
+
+"You never could frighten me, Berta. You know that. Eight years! Do you
+realize that you have been dead eight years?"
+
+"There are many kinds of death--some of our own choosing," said Berta,
+insolently.
+
+"I mean the dead who never more return. Eight years ago the mother and I
+buried you in Greenwood."
+
+"What?" explosively. "What are you telling me?"
+
+"The Berta who was found in the river, recognizable only by the dress
+she wore and the locket. And every spring the mother goes there with
+flowers. Your ghost is not pleasant to see, Berta. The horror of that
+night in Shanghai, when I learned the truth, that you were alive,
+notorious! The owner of a gambling-house in the Honan Road! Nightmare!
+Who was it we buried?" Hilda stepped forward menacingly.
+
+Fine steel and hammered brass, thought Mathison. He could not touch the
+woman of brass now; she was Hilda's sister, and Hilda should say what
+should be done. Nor could he smother the spark of admiration. Bad she
+might be, ruthless and predatory, but she was no weakling. Whatever her
+end, she would meet it hotly. He saw that Hallowell had been stronger
+than Samson, since this Delilah had not shorn his locks.
+
+Sisters who had not seen each other in eight years--deadly antagonists!
+He could not help philosophizing a little over this phenomenon of life.
+Sisters and brothers; the long roll of bitter tragedies from the day
+Cain grew jealous of Abel! He wished he was elsewhere. It was sacrilege
+to witness the baring of two souls.
+
+"Who was it we buried?" repeated Hilda.
+
+Berta frowned. Eight years, a long time to remember the trivial
+incidents associated with the abandonment of her people. All at once her
+eyes flashed and a corner of her lip went up in a twisted smile. "I
+remember now. I gave the old clothes and the locket to a creature on the
+street. So she killed herself, and I am dead! No wonder you left me in
+peace!"
+
+"Thief!" cried Hilda, flaming. "You cold-blooded thief! You took the
+last jewel that mother had and pawned it--the jewel she had been
+clinging to desperately--the last link to the life she had known. The
+tragedy was nothing to you. You pawned it to buy a new dress, a new hat.
+What was her love for you? Something for you to prey upon; and, having
+preyed upon the last morsel, you took wing, like the kite you are! I
+discovered what had become of the jewel. Without her knowing it, I
+worked nights for months to reclaim it. Then I 'found' it. I would waste
+my breath if I cried '_Shame!_'"
+
+"Then don't waste your breath, Hilda. Shame? I am my father's daughter,
+and I take what pleases me when and where I find it. I ran away because
+I was tired of poverty, tired of you all. I hated you because you were
+always whining at my elbow not to do this and not to do that. Fine
+music! We were born in an hour of hate and terror. I am the daughter of
+my father, a noble; you are the daughter of a Copenhagen circus-rider. I
+am a law unto myself, and you are the puppet of circumstances. Love my
+mother? Love anything? I don't know. But I have avenged her. I have made
+mankind pay for the blows my father dealt her. And I never forgave her
+for not claiming her rights when father died. We might have grown up in
+comfort, and her stupid pride kept us in rags. I did not ask to be born;
+my birth was not my will. Flesh and blood? What is life but an accident?
+Selfish? Who would look out for Berta but Berta? I am myself, no more,
+no less; and the path I travel is of my own choosing. Life! I have
+lived. No law can take that away from me. You have called me the kite.
+What is the kite but cousin to the eagle? Look back. Did I ever cringe,
+whine? If a blow was struck, did I not always strike back? The fault is
+you were always trying to pour me into another mold. I had already been
+poured. What you wanted of me was something like this fool
+parrakeet--something content to live in a cage. Not for Berta Nordstrom!
+I don't know what my end shall be, but it will be a free end."
+
+A wave of pity surged over Mathison. For Hilda's sake he had
+contemplated letting this wild, untamed thing go; and now for the same
+reason he would not dare let her go. There was a chill of fear, too.
+There was no knowing how far this rising fury might carry The Yellow
+Typhoon. Never would he forget this picture. The angel and the
+destroyer; the same blood, the same physical perfections--sisters! And
+beyond the blood-tie, total strangers. And for days he had been
+shuttlecock to their battledores; the one trying to save him, the other
+trying to break him.
+
+"One question," he interrupted, grimly.
+
+Berta whirled upon him. "Ask it!"
+
+"Had you a hand in Bob Hallowell's death?"
+
+"If I had I'd answer, wouldn't I! No. But I had killed him a thousand
+times in my heart. I hated him above all other men. Men call me The
+Yellow Typhoon. I accept. Woe to those who stand in my way. If I did
+not break Hallowell, I spoiled his life. And I have beaten you. You and
+your sanctimonious Hallowell! Fools, I had but to crook my finger and
+how beautifully you danced! I'd have twisted you around my finger with
+half a chance."
+
+"Berta, do you ever stop to think?"
+
+The Yellow Typhoon laughed. "A sermon? Save it."
+
+"No regret, no pity?"
+
+"Oh, I have my regrets ... failures. But if you mean do I regret you and
+the past, a thousand times no. You say I have returned from the grave.
+You have yourself to thank for that. I had almost forgotten you. I
+promise you that I shall seek the mother."
+
+"Take care, Berta! I am my father's daughter, too!"
+
+"A threat?"
+
+Mathison began to grow alarmed. Never had he felt the danger so near. If
+Hilda suspected the game he was playing and dropped a single hint, they
+were lost; he, at any rate. The Secret Service would not strike until he
+was out of this house. Such had been his order. But if this madwoman
+caught one glimmer of the truth!
+
+"Come, Miss Farrington," he said.
+
+"Very well. But always remember I tried to save you, Berta."
+
+"Farrington, Farrington! And I had all but forgotten! One of the men
+here told me. Farrington, the Broadway celebrity, rich and famous! Oh,
+if I but had the time!"
+
+"To injure me? You will not find it, Berta."
+
+"No? Wait and see. To-morrow I shall search for the mother."
+
+"You shall never find her. I wish you no evil. After all, you are still
+the child that was always touching the stove. Take care of yourself; and
+good-by forever, sister."
+
+In reply The Yellow Typhoon sped across to the hall door, which opened
+with such violence that the knob was shattered.
+
+"Go! I am ordered to free you. But for that!... Go! Meddle no more with
+my affairs, Hilda Nordstrom!"
+
+Hilda passed into the hall. Mathison ran ahead and unslipped the
+door-chain; and a moment later they stood on the sidewalk, shadowy to
+each other in the blinding snow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Straightway Mathison put his arm under hers and began plowing along
+through the snow, which was more than ankle-deep. As his stride was
+long, she slipped and staggered to keep pace with him. There was a
+comforting strength in that arm of his.
+
+The tension over, the encounter past, her mind was like her feet, heavy
+and without spring. A thought, entering her head, wandered about
+emptily, then went away. Her brain was like a vast cathedral, with one
+or two lonely tourists exploring. This droll imagery caused her to burst
+out laughing. Mathison merely tightened his grip.
+
+She was soul-weary and body-weary. She would have liked to lie down in
+the soft inviting snow and never move again. The drab future that lay
+beyond! What might have been could not possibly be now. So long as Berta
+lived Hilda must walk in her shadow. It did not matter whether Berta
+roved free or was locked up in prison. And no doubt this man at her
+side, clean-cut and honorable above his kind, was already planning how
+to break the slender thread of their acquaintance. Why not? Seeing her,
+would he not always be seeing Berta, who in his eyes was a criminal of a
+dangerous type? From afar she heard his voice.
+
+"There's a drug-store on the next corner. We'll order a taxi from there.
+Your feet will be wet.... I need not tell you I'm sorry."
+
+"That my feet are wet or that the woman you know as The Yellow Typhoon
+is my twin sister? Why bother? I ought to hate her. Still, to me flesh
+and blood is flesh and blood. She is dangerous and should be punished;
+and yet instinct rebels at the thought. Free, she will be havoc. I know
+her of old. Her furies when she was little were frightful because they
+were always calculated. For days I've been dreading the encounter,
+dreading yet courting it. It was inevitable. Flesh and blood! What _was_
+God's idea? My poor mother! She has been through so much; and now this
+must strike her. She was a circus-rider in the Copenhagen hippodrome,
+beautiful and admired. My father won and married her because it pleased
+his vanity. He tired of her within a month. Then he beat her. He was
+half Prussian. Tortured and discarded her. Is there anything in prenatal
+influence? They say not. Yet look at Berta! My father's soul. I don't
+understand! brokenly.
+
+"I am terribly sorry. An _impasse_; and I don't know which way to turn.
+She is a dangerous enemy, and this is war. For your sake I want to let
+her go, back to the East. For my country's sake I cannot. She must pay
+the grim reckoning. I have some influence. There will be no publicity. I
+can readily promise you that. You're a brick; and I'd cut my hand off to
+save you this hurt. But I repeat, this is war. Fortunately the affair is
+military, out of the reach of civil court, beyond the reporters.
+Winnowed of all chaff, the grain is that I'm powerless. In certain
+directions I have tremendous power, but only as an agent. I cannot
+judge, condemn, or liberate. I am desperately sorry. She is the wife or
+companion of the man I believe killed my friend. She is the woman who
+gratuitously spoiled my friend's life. The counts against her are
+heavy."
+
+"I understand. You cannot break your oath of allegiance for me; and my
+oath of allegiance will not permit you. But it tears and rends. Still,
+she once passed out of my life absolutely. Perhaps my concern is for my
+mother. I am numb with the tragedy of it. Flesh and blood, but she
+denied it. I tried to save her. Suppose we let Berta's fate rest on the
+knees of the gods?"
+
+"If it is proven she had nothing to do with Hallowell's death, there is
+a chance of merely interning her for the duration of the war."
+
+"Hallowell! That afternoon he spoke to me in the Botanical Gardens. He
+thought I was Berta. I tried to save him, but I reached the villa too
+late. I _saw_ it, in silhouette on the curtains! I called, rang the
+bell, shook the gate. Then the lights went out.... I tried to save him!"
+
+"I know. He was the finest friend a man ever had. And somewhere up there
+among the stars his spirit is at peace. John Mathison has come through!"
+
+"Alone, all alone, without aid from any one. With an immeasurable power
+behind you, you fought it out alone. It was splendid--American! That
+envelope! The tameness of your surrender hurt. I did not understand
+until after we were in that house and I saw you smile. That receipt was
+only a trap, a bait; and the man you believe killed Hallowell walked
+blindly into it. No one but you could touch that envelope, once it was
+in a hotel safe. Am I right?"
+
+"The man is a prisoner in my room at this moment. When we enter this
+drug-store, it is a signal for the raiding of that house, fore and aft.
+A fly couldn't escape. We idiotic Yankees! I have him. It took patience.
+But there was a guardian angel watching over John Mathison. Had you not
+warned me they would have learned the dance I was leading them, and
+vanished. They had me for sleep. I thought I was awake, but actually I
+was sleep-walking."
+
+"Then I wasn't useless, after all?"
+
+"No." He smiled at the sky, at the stars he couldn't see but knew were
+there. Day after to-morrow!
+
+Mathison was a one-idea man. What I mean is, when he undertook a task he
+went at it directly, whole-heartedly; there were never any side issues.
+
+Presently he spoke again. "There is one favor I must ask of you, to
+tighten the noose around this man's neck. Will you testify before the
+authorities that you found the blue-print in his kit-bag? Otherwise I
+cannot prove that it was in his possession. The theft of the receipt
+constitutes a military crime; but the blue-print convicts him of murder,
+either as principal or accessory. I can promise you there will be no
+publicity. Will you help me?"
+
+"I have sworn to."
+
+"Do you know that blond man's name?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Neither do I. Curious thing. In that little red book there are three
+descriptions; these vary only in the occupations of the men described.
+All three are bulky, blond, and ruddy. Until now I dared not be
+inquisitive."
+
+"And will you do me a favor?"
+
+"Ask it."
+
+"Let me see it through."
+
+"You mean, go back with me to the hotel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well. And you can take Malachi home with you."
+
+They entered the drug-store, stamping the snow from their feet.
+
+To be with him just a little while longer.... Because she loved him,
+she, Hilda Nordstrom, the proud! Not because she wanted to, but because
+it was written. The one man in the world, and he did not care. Friendly
+and interested, mystified until now; and to-morrow he would go his way.
+The daughter of a circus-rider, the sister of The Yellow Typhoon. The
+Farrington was no more; to him she would always be Hilda Nordstrom. Her
+fame would not touch him, for he was without vanity. What had her heart
+been calling out through it all, since the miracle of the violets? "Love
+me! Love me!" She had thrown it forth as a hypnotist throws the will.
+"Love me! Love me!" And all the while he was busy with this affair of
+the manila envelope, the blue-print and vengeance. All he had sought her
+for was to prove that there were two women, so that he might minimize
+the confusion, make no future misstep. Was there another woman? Had he
+not hinted at the supper-table that there was? And yet, on board the
+_Nippon Maru_, hadn't he told her there was no one? She just could not
+make him out. There, on the Pacific, his every act had been boyish,
+tender, whimsical. Here, he was smiling, bronze, inscrutable,
+primordial. Blood and iron. The one man; and he was only friendly, he
+didn't care. When she paused to analyze the situation, however, the
+question arose: Why should he care? As Hilda Nordstrom--The
+Farrington--he had known her less than three hours. It was so hard to
+remember that on board the ship he had been John Mathison to her, but
+she had been to him a baffling, begoggled old lady, hugging shadowy
+corners and keeping her back to the moon.
+
+What had happened to the world? Only a little while gone--a few
+months--she had been happy, gay with the gay, enjoying life, success,
+the rewards of long and weary endeavor. And up over the fair horizon had
+risen The Typhoon. Berta, always Berta!
+
+"Pardon! I did not hear," she said.
+
+"I said I was going to do a bit of telephoning. I'll round up a taxi.
+The boy is making you a cup of hot chocolate. Better drink it."
+
+"Oh."
+
+Mathison was gone for a quarter of an hour. He came back to her smiling.
+The taxi was at the curb.
+
+"Better let me take you straight home," he suggested.
+
+"You promised."
+
+"But to-morrow...."
+
+"To-morrow," she smiled, "always takes care of itself."
+
+"Come. After all, it will be a matter of only a few moments. All I've
+got to do is to run up to the room and give the Secret Service men their
+orders. And I'll bring down Malachi. You are sure you want him?"
+
+"Of course I am!" His little green parrakeet!
+
+Later, when they entered Peacock Alley--totally deserted at this
+hour--he flung his greatcoat into a chair, pinning the green ribbon to
+the breast of his jacket.
+
+"Suppose you sit here on this divan? I sha'n't be gone more than ten
+minutes. I ordered the taxi to wait."
+
+"Go along, sailorman. And don't forget Malachi."
+
+He wondered if she realized how easily that name fell from her lips....
+Well, day after to-morrow! He marched briskly up to the desk.
+
+"Take a good look at me," he said to the clerk; "then go to the safe and
+get the manila envelope with my photographs on it."
+
+"Yes, sir. I was waiting for you," replied the clerk, with subdued
+excitement. "The man who presented the receipt is in charge in your
+rooms." He returned shortly with the envelope.
+
+Mathison crumpled it into a pocket. "Of course you understand that all
+these mysterious actions have to do with the government and that there
+must be absolute secrecy on the part of the management."
+
+"I have my orders to that effect, sir."
+
+Mathison nodded and turned toward the nearest elevator shaft.
+
+
+In a room on the ninth floor were three men. One sat near the window.
+His arms were folded, and in his lap was a Colt. The fire-escape was
+outside this window. In a manner peculiar to Americans, he rocked on the
+rear legs of his chair; and every little while there was a slight thud
+as the chair-back hit the wall or the forelegs hit the floor. The second
+man sat with his back toward the bathroom. From this point of vantage he
+could watch both the entrance to the room and the man on the bed. He
+evinced signs of boredom, as did the face of his companion. He was
+toying with an automatic. He was sunk in his chair, his legs resting on
+the heels of his shoes.
+
+The prisoner, his hands clasped behind his head, seemed particularly
+interested in a pattern on the ceiling; but in reality he was counting
+the thuds of the Secret Service operative's chair; and out of this sound
+developed a daring campaign for liberty. Because he had surrendered
+docilely, without a sign of protest or struggle, he was confident he had
+by this time broken a wedge into the vigilance of his captors. He was a
+big man, blond, but his cheeks were no longer ruddy.
+
+On a stand by the radiator Malachi occasionally shifted his weight from
+one foot to the other. He didn't love anybody, and he never was going to
+love anybody again. His nose--or rather his beak--was thoroughly out of
+joint with the world. Rooms that swung high and swung low; rooms that
+rattled and banged, the red walls of which hurt his eyes; and rooms with
+glaring lights. And always, just as he believed his troubles over, up
+went the cotton bag and he was off to other surprises. No; he was never
+going to love anybody again.
+
+The man near the bathroom inspected his watch. "He ought to be along
+now."
+
+The man on the bed sat up. Slowly he swung his legs to the floor. He
+rubbed his palms together, and the links between the manacles clinked
+slightly. He stood up.
+
+"May I go to the bathroom?"
+
+The man in the chair near the bathroom nodded. There was no exit from
+the bathroom.
+
+"Leave the door open," he advised.
+
+Alone, he would have risen and faced the bathroom door. But across the
+room was his companion, who, from where he sat, could see into the
+bathroom obliquely. Slowly the prisoner passed the chair. He was the
+picture of dejection. With unbelievable swiftness in a man so big he
+turned and threw his arms over the Secret Service man's head, bringing
+the manacle chain against his throat, murderously, all but garroting
+him. The automatic had scarcely touched the floor before the blond man,
+releasing his victim and stooping behind the chair, recovered it.
+
+Now comes the point upon which his endeavor had been based. When you
+lean back in a chair, to recover necessitates a sharp forward tilt.
+Sometimes you get all the way down and sometimes you have to make a
+second effort. So it happened to the operative by the window, dumfounded
+by the daring and suddenness of the attack. As he threw himself forward
+the second time violently the automatic slipped. He caught it, but not
+quick enough.
+
+"Drop it! For I shall shoot to kill. Get up. Now kick it in my
+direction. Very good." These words were uttered with dispassionate
+coolness.
+
+The victim of the garroting was writhing and coughing on the floor. He
+would be out of it for several minutes. There was only one idea in his
+head--to get air through his tortured throat.
+
+To the other operative the blond man said: "I am a desperate man and I
+promise to kill you if you do not obey me absolutely. Unless I go forth
+free I might as well go forth dead. It is my life against yours. Walk
+toward me with your hands up."
+
+The Secret Service operative had heard voices like this before, and he
+wanted to live. Moreover, he knew that every exit would be covered until
+the patrol arrived, if it were not already at the curb. At the utmost
+the blond devil's victory would be short-lived.
+
+"You win," he said, quietly, stepping forward.
+
+"Face the other way."
+
+The operative obeyed. The manacled hands rose above the unprotected head
+and the gun-butt came crashing down. The operative slumped to the floor.
+The blond man's subsequent actions bespoke his thoroughness in handling
+this kind of an affair. He sought the handkerchiefs, wet them, and tied
+the operatives' hands behind their backs. Few fabrics are tougher than
+wet linen. The man he had hit was either dead or insensible; so he paid
+no more attention to this unfortunate. His interest was in the operative
+who was now slowly getting air into his lungs. The blond man threw him
+on his face, sat on him, then rifled the pockets for the manacle key.
+He found it and freed his wrists. He ran to the bathroom again and
+returned with a wet towel which he wound about the half-strangled man's
+head. Next he calmly pocketed his belongings which lay on the
+bureau-top.
+
+He was reasonably certain that he could not escape by any of the hotel
+entrances. There was only one chance. A window on the first floor, from
+which he would have to risk a drop of twelve or fourteen feet to the
+sidewalk.
+
+Malachi was climbing up to his swing and clambering down to his perch.
+
+The blond man, the automatic ready, opened the door ... and Mathison
+stepped in! The advantage of surprise was in this instance on Mathison's
+side. A fighting-man of the first order, he struck first. He brought his
+fist down hammer-wise upon the pistol, at the same time sending the toe
+of his boot to the enemy's knee-cap. Instinctive actions, but both blows
+went home. The blond man was forced to give back in order to set
+himself.
+
+There began, then, in that small room, one of those contests which the
+Blind Poet loved to recount and which we nowadays call Homeric.
+Mathison was lighter than his opponent by thirty pounds, but he gave
+battle with a singing heart. This was as it should be, man to man. No
+tedious affair of the courts; cold, formal justice. Hot blood and bare
+hands!... An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!
+
+The blond man, as he looked into Mathison's eyes, sensed that he was
+about to fight for his life; thus he became endowed with a frenzy which
+doubled his strength. His one blind endeavor was to get his gorilla arms
+around this Yankee swine who had tricked and beaten him. He lunged, head
+down. Mathison jabbed him, and with lightning speed shut the door with a
+backward kick.
+
+He met the blond man at every point; boxed him, used his boots, employed
+the science of the Jap wrestler, threw obstacles, laughed, taunted
+sailor fashion; in fact, fought with the primordial savagery of the
+Stone Age, scorning the niceties of sportsmanship. He knew what his
+antagonist was--a Prussian, or one who had been Prussianized. And with
+devilish cunning and foresight he carried the Prussian idea to this
+blond giant.... To kill him with his bare hands!
+
+The blond man's desperate swings landed frequently; for with his eye
+upon a single point, Mathison was often compelled to expose his face.
+That throat! To reach it with that Japanese side-cut, a blow that saps
+and blinds.
+
+Once the enemy succeeded in gripping Mathison's jacket where its
+fastenings met: and Mathison, wrenching back, left half the front of his
+smart jacket in the eager hand.
+
+Bloody, an eye half closed, his lips puffed and bleeding--but his teeth
+showing soundly through the grotesque smile--a gash across his forehead,
+Mathison continued to play for the throat. Queer thing about such
+contests: there isn't any pain until it is over.
+
+A dozen times they stumbled over the operatives on the floor. The one
+with the towel around his head was now alive and tugging powerfully at
+the wet linen binding his wrists. Finally he managed to get to his feet,
+only to be hurled against the wall.
+
+The inconvenience of these obstacles, animate and inanimate, reacted
+against Mathison as often as it did against his enemy; and one time
+Mathison was borne back against the foot-rail of the bed. But a violent
+thrust of his knee extricated him.
+
+Suddenly and unexpectedly Mathison was offered his opening. The
+operative, who was still blinded by the wet towel, rose again and
+staggered about. He struck against the blond man's shoulder, and as the
+latter thrust him aside Mathison struck. Not an honorable blow, this cut
+at the throat; not the sort white men use in fisticuffs. But I repeat,
+these two were bent on killing each other.
+
+When you touch a hot coal your hand jerks back. It is reflex action
+purely; the conscious brain has nothing to do with it. So it is with the
+blow on the Adam's apple. The hands fly to the throat because they must.
+
+Mathison did not pause to note the effect of the stroke. He knew that it
+had gone home. He had been badly punished, but he was still fighting
+strong. The years of clean living, of unsapped vitality, were paying
+dividends to-night. He sent in a smothering hail of blows, with all the
+power he had left to put behind them.
+
+It was now that the other man began to realize that he was no longer
+interested in killing Mathison, that he sought only to get away from
+this force and fury which were superior to his own. He looked about
+desperately for a corner to turn; but there wasn't any. Back he went,
+back until his legs struck the edge of the bed. Even as he wavered
+Mathison leaped, bore his man down, knelt on his ribs and dug his
+fingers into the bull-like neck. No doubt Mathison would have throttled
+him. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But a singular event stayed
+his hands.
+
+During all this surging to and fro, this battering and scuffling,
+Malachi's fear and agitation had grown to the point where he was
+compelled to express his disapproval in the only way he knew--by sounds,
+hoarse, raucous sounds, human words.
+
+"Mat!... _Chota Malachi!_ ... You lubber, where's my tobacco?... Mat!...
+Lysgaard!... To hell with the Ki!... Mathison, Hallowell and Company,
+and be damned to you!... Mat!... Lysgaard!"
+
+Slowly Mathison drew back. The berserker lust to kill evaporated,
+leaving him cold and sick. The revelation that the name of the murderer
+was Lysgaard was insignificant beside the fact that Hallowell had
+reached out from Beyond and saved his friend from carrying blood-guilty
+hands to Hilda Nordstrom, who waited down-stairs!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Meantime the jar of the battle had not passed unnoticed. The guests in
+the rooms adjoining and below had been telephoning the office. The
+clerk, aware that there were Secret Service operatives at all exits,
+hastily summoned them. And four plunged into Mathison's room just as he
+stepped away from the bed.
+
+"It's all over, gentlemen," he said, thickly. "The man on the bed is
+wanted on two accounts--theft of naval plans and murder. He is Karl
+Lysgaard. In 1916, to cover his espionage endeavors, he became a
+naturalized citizen. Ostensibly he is Danish; but he was born in
+Holtenau, near enough to the Kiel Canal to make him a first-class
+Prussian. Take him to the Tombs, and keep your eye on him while taking
+him there. I will appear against him in the morning. The woman known as
+The Yellow Typhoon...."
+
+"Has vanished," whispered one of the operatives.
+
+"Escaped?"
+
+"Like smoke! Telephone message came while you were up here. But she
+won't go far. Already all exits are being watched. No trains, no ships;
+and she will not be able to hide long in New York. Some scrap you must
+have had here. Your uniform's a wreck. Better wash up."
+
+Mathison staggered into the bathroom, now mindful of his injuries. He
+was sure that one or more of his ribs were broken. Every beat of his
+heart was accompanied by a stab either in his head or in his torso. The
+floor wavered like sand in the heat; and he was none too certain about
+the walls.
+
+Escaped! The Yellow Typhoon had slipped through that web! He did not
+know whether he was glad or sorry. Not one man in a thousand would have
+broken through that alert cordon; and yet this woman had done it. The
+pity of it! Brave and fearless and beautiful ... and absolutely lawless.
+He could not stir up a bit of hatred. She had broken Bob Hallowell's
+heart, and yet John Mathison could only admire her strength and
+cunning. The admiration a brave man always pays a fearless antagonist.
+Somehow he knew that she would be free for a long while. But how would
+she use this furtive freedom? Seek to injure Hilda, himself? Like as
+not. But he had in mind a solution for this problem. It would depend,
+though, upon the woman waiting down-stairs.
+
+Entering the room again, he confronted the man he had outthought and
+outfought. He was dizzy, but he could navigate alone. The blond man had
+to be propped between two operatives. He was in a bad way. Mathison
+produced the manila envelope.
+
+"Observe those photographs? That is why you did not succeed. We idiotic
+Yankees! They will hang you by the neck, Lysgaard. What! You believed I
+would risk carrying Hallowell's specifications in an ordinary manila
+envelope, depositing it when I stopped at a hotel, letting everybody
+know that I was carrying an important document? Your method, perhaps,
+but not mine. And the irony of it is the prints were always within easy
+reach of your hand. This manila envelope was merely a noose, and you
+drew it yourself. It is a forerunner of what your nation will receive
+at the hands of mine."
+
+Mathison ripped open the envelope and displayed the contents--a dozen
+sheets of heavy blank paper.
+
+"You will never see your woman again, Lysgaard. I had no evidence. I
+compelled you to furnish it. A man-hunt and you never suspected. Take
+him away, gentlemen; and thanks for your assistance."
+
+
+Down-stairs Hilda waited, with growing wonder and anxiety. When she
+finally saw Lysgaard lurch out of the elevator, supported, her anxiety
+became terror. What had happened? Where was Mathison? She wanted to rush
+forward and ask questions, but she dared not. The value of her services
+would always depend upon the fact that her activities were practically
+unknown. So she sat perfectly quiet and watched the remarkable
+procession file past and vanish round the corner of the corridor.
+
+The sight of the blond beast naturally brought back the thought of
+Berta. She, too, was now a prisoner. Prison. A cell with bars and
+filtered sunshine, interminable monotony and maddening thoughts. It was
+horrible. And she, Hilda, could do nothing. Berta merited whatever
+punishment an outraged nation might see fit to visit upon her. Flesh and
+blood--or was there something in the psychology of double-birth? Was
+there really an invisible connecting link? Yet, if so, why had she not
+_felt_ that Berta was alive? Why had she shed tears over the poor,
+unrecognizable thing in Berta's clothes she and the mother had buried
+eight years ago? If only something occult had warned her! The mother
+might have borne up under such a blow--the return of the wayward. But to
+her Berta was dead; and a return under the present tragic circumstances
+would without doubt result in a death shock. Ah, if Berta had come back
+a penitent, the news might have been broken gradually. But a lawless
+Berta, predatory, vengeful...!
+
+And to-morrow night Norma Farrington would romp across the stage, now
+tender, now whimsical; now making her audience laugh, now bringing them
+to the verge of tears. And all the while Hilda Nordstrom's heart would
+be breaking. She would complete the run because her word had never been
+broken. She could not possibly find it in her thoughts to be disloyal
+to loyal Sam Rubin.
+
+Love! It was not enough that Berta should return to life. She, Hilda,
+must give her heart unasked to a man who appeared to be quite satisfied
+with friendship. She hadn't even fought against it. Non-resistant, she
+had permitted this crowning folly to creep into her heart. She had
+forgotten that to him Mrs. Chester was an old woman, and that he had
+sought her society because he was just humanly lonesome. She hadn't had
+her chance. With the physical attributes of a Venus and the mental
+attainments of an Aspasia, a woman might not win the heart of a man in
+three short hours. Love at first sight! She trembled. He had used that
+subject merely to pass the time and to keep the conversation away from
+dangerous channels. She was very unhappy.
+
+She heard the elevator door rattle in the groove. Mathison stepped
+forth. Malachi's cage bobbed against a leg. He paused a moment
+(truthfully, to get his sea-legs, for he was still groggy) and brushed
+his forehead with his free hand. The movement left a bloody smear.
+
+She flew to him and cried, in passionate anger, "The beast has hurt
+you!"
+
+"Banged me up a bit. But my teeth are all sound, and I still can bite.
+He got loose somehow, and ... well, I went berserker. I'm a sight!
+Malachi did a fine thing to-night. I was killing that man, when Malachi
+spoke up. I'll see you home."
+
+"Indeed you shall ... straight up to my apartment, where I can take care
+of those cuts and bruises."
+
+"At this hour?" tingling.
+
+"What matters the hour? Wouldn't you prefer me to the hotel physician?"
+raising the veil and letting him look into her eyes, which were full of
+sapphire lights.
+
+"All right. You may do with me as you please."
+
+Day after to-morrow was now very far away. At no time in his life had he
+craved so poignantly for the touch of a woman's hand. To be ministered
+to, coddled, made of; a memory to take away with him to the high seas,
+from which he might never return.
+
+She ran back for his greatcoat, held it for him and noted the grimace as
+he stretched his arms backward for the sleeves.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Ribs, head, and shoulder; all in the sick-bay. Lord, but I'm a wreck!"
+
+She picked up the cage and grasped his sleeve. Her heart sang. For an
+hour or two; to use all her arts in making the episode unforgettable to
+this man. To mother and coddle him; to run her eager fingers through his
+fine hair. An hour or two, all, all her own!
+
+In the taxi he told her briefly what had happened and brought the
+Odyssey to an end by disclosing the fact that Berta had escaped the net.
+
+"But don't worry. I've an idea she'll be too busy to trouble you. She's
+keen. By now she must understand that the game is up. She will be
+concerned with little else besides her efforts to get clear of New York.
+Ten to one, she'll strike for the Orient. I'm sorry. Not that she
+escaped, but that she was able to hurt you. We're all riddles, aren't
+we?"
+
+"Berta free?... I'm glad. I can't help it. It may be the turning-point.
+In all these years she has never met with any serious defeat. Who knows?
+For if she is her father's daughter, she is also her mother's. God
+bring her vision to see things clearly! That blond beast's evil
+influence removed, who knows?"
+
+In the cozy living-room of the apartment a fire burned low. Hilda threw
+on a log, then helped him off with his coat. As a matter of fact he
+really had to be helped. Obsessed with the idea of getting his hands on
+the man Lysgaard's throat, he had laid himself open to many terrible
+blows. He was going to be very sore and lame to-morrow.
+
+She swung the willow lounge parallel to the fire and forced him to lie
+down.
+
+"Back in a moment!" she said, flying away.
+
+He lay back and closed his sound eye; the other was already closed. And
+as he lay there, awaiting her return, the Idea came. He could never win
+this glorious creature by simply telling her he loved her. He would have
+to take her by storm, carry her off her feet--and he was only a
+mollycoddle among the women. Still, he knew what he knew. Presently he
+smiled; at least it was meant for a smile. How the deuce would he be
+able to kiss her when the time came, with his lips puffed and bleeding?
+The glory of her!
+
+Obliquely he could see Malachi. "The little son-of-a-gun! And he hasn't
+the least idea that he saved his master from being as beastly as the
+Hun.... Close shave!... Bob's voice, calling out the name of the man who
+had killed him, like that!... I'll be a trig-looking individual when I
+strike Washington to-morrow!" ruefully.
+
+Hilda returned with basin, alcohol, lint, bandages, and salves. And he
+let her have her way with him. After she had bandaged the gash on his
+forehead and his raw knuckles, she wet her finger-tips with alcohol and
+ran them back and forth through his hair. Not since his mother's death
+had this happened; and never had he experienced such a thrill. He longed
+to seize the hand and kiss it, but he conquered the desire.
+
+By and by he spoke. "The blue-prints, with No. 9, are in the hollow
+under Malachi's basin. They are in a rubber sack such as you roll up
+slickers in. I'll take them out when I go. Be sure you talk a little to
+him every day. He likes it. He's a gossip. Rice and fruits and nuts;
+he's frugal. It will buck me up to know that he is in good hands."
+
+"The funny little green bird! I'll take care of him until you come
+back."
+
+"That's odd. Somehow I _know_ I'm coming back.... Where's this man
+Rubin live?"
+
+"Rubin? He has an apartment near by." Rubin? What had Rubin to do with
+this hour, resentfully!
+
+"What's a successful week amount to?"
+
+"We'll probably draw from ten to twelve thousand." What in the world was
+the meaning of such irrelevant questions?
+
+"About thirty thousand in two weeks," ruminatingly. "I am, even in these
+days, a comparatively rich man. Lots of ready money, bonds, and stock.
+It's been piling up for years. And now I'm glad it has."
+
+She understood. He had been struck a dangerous blow on the head, and his
+mind was wandering. She patted his hand reassuringly.
+
+He went on. "The old home--which I haven't seen in nearly ten years--is
+up-state, on the edge of the North Woods. The man who farms it keeps up
+the house. A day's work would make it habitable. Just now it must be
+wonderful. Skating and snow-shoeing. Lord! how I've hungered for the
+snow!... I wonder if that extension 'phone will reach over here?"
+
+"Yes." Poor boy! Did he expect to get his farmer on long-distance at
+this hour?
+
+"Splendid! Now suppose you bring it over?"
+
+She did so. She knelt beside the lounge and held out the telephone.
+
+"No. You're going to start it. Call up Rubin. He'll be asleep; but what
+I've got to say will wake him up."
+
+"What in the world...."
+
+"Call him up! I'm an invalid and must be humored."
+
+For a moment her fingers seemed all thumbs. She succeeded in calling the
+number. There came a long wait. She stole a glance at Mathison. He might
+have been asleep, for all the interest he evinced in this extraordinary
+proceeding. What _could_ he want of Rubin?
+
+"Hello! It is you, Sam? This is Hilda.... No, no! nobody's dead....
+There's a gentleman here.... Oh, it's perfectly proper.... He wants to
+speak to you.... I don't know.... He is not a dub.... Yes; the flowers
+and the note ... you _knew_ it! What do you mean?... All right."
+
+She turned to Mathison. "I have him."
+
+Mathison managed to lift himself to a more comfortable angle. "This Mr.
+Rubin? Ah!... I'll break it gently. Hilda and I are going to be married
+in the morning.... Keep your hair on!... Then we are going to
+Washington. On our return we are going to spend the honeymoon at my home
+in the North Woods.... Contract? What the deuce is that to me?... No;
+you can't talk to her until I'm through.... Contract!... Listen to me.
+You will announce that she is ill. She will be if she goes on to-morrow
+night, after all she's been through.... Hang it! She and I have a right
+to two weeks of happiness. To you it's business; to me it's love. I will
+give you fifty thousand dollars in cold, hard cash for these two weeks,
+which is about twenty thousand more than you would ordinarily make. I'll
+give my permission to make a feature story out of it. And if I know
+anything about human nature, on her return you'll pack the house all
+summer. If you refuse my offer, not a bally copper cent! I'll break her
+contract for her and you may sue from Maine to Oregon.... What's
+that?... Well, by George, that's handsome! I thought you were a good
+sport. Buy out the house for exactly what it would be worth. Come
+around in the morning and be best man! Oh, about nine-thirty. Good
+night!"
+
+Mathison turned to the stupefied Hilda. There was a short tableau; then
+she laid her head on the arm of the lounge and cried softly.
+
+"Girl, I can do only one thing well at a time. I couldn't tell you
+verbally I loved you until I'd cleared the deck.... Sounds! Remember?
+When you came in through that window it was your voice, but I couldn't
+place it then. I opened that red book and one of Malachi's feathers
+dropped out. That recalled the old lady who called me Boy. I wanted to
+write something, and couldn't find my pen. It was in my cits. And then I
+found that photograph of you. That's how I learned there were two of
+you. When you talked on the stage to-night I shut my eyes. Then I knew.
+That's how I came to laugh out loud. Sheer joy! Fourteen years! You've
+_got_ to love me. You've _got_ to marry me. God is just. He won't deny
+me now. Didn't you tell me I'd find Her?... Sounds! That's what I
+meant--your voice. I didn't know why I came to you every morning on
+board the _Nippon Maru_, but my heart did. My eyes saw only a queer,
+whimsical old lady; but my heart saw youth and beauty and love. Will you
+marry me?"
+
+A nod.
+
+"You are going to try to love me?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"You ... you can't go to do something when you already do!"
+
+"Wabbly rhetoric, but I understand!... Hilda, I love you with all my
+soul! Love you, love you! I've been saying in my heart all night: 'Love
+me! Love me!'".
+
+"So have I!... But I'll never forgive you!"
+
+"For what?"
+
+"You told Rubin before you told _me_!"
+
+"Lord! Lord! I've been telling you all night with my eyes that I loved
+you." He brushed her shining hair with burning lips. He couldn't even
+put his arms around her! "Now there's just one thing I've got to hear to
+make this the most perfect hour in my life." He raised her head. There
+was a violent stab in his side, but he considered it negligible in this
+supreme moment. "Say it!"
+
+"Boy!" she whispered.
+
+The way she had always dreamed of being loved. Berserker love! To be
+swept off her feet and carried away to an enchanted palace! That little
+magic green feather! Malachi! She pressed her cheek against this
+wonderful lover's and her hand instinctively found his.
+
+"Mat, you lubber!" grumbled Malachi, from the rosy hearth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The Mathison estate was in the foothills of the Adirondacks. There were
+farmlands, pulp-mills, forests, and streams. At the northern extremity
+of the estate there was a small lake. The manor proper stood on the
+south shore of this lake, four miles from the village and the railway
+station. It was a lonely habitation in the winter.
+
+The house was of limestone, beautifully weathered, and was dated 1812.
+Here Mathison had been born; here he had spent his early youth. With the
+father almost constantly at sea, the mother had preferred the quiet of
+the woods to the noise and bluster of New York.
+
+Hilda went into ecstasies over chairs and sofas that had become antique
+in these very rooms. She saw the mother's hand everywhere, the quiet
+artistry of a hand guided by a noble mind. Hilda romped about the rooms
+with the eager curiosity of a child; and it might be truthfully added
+that Mathison romped with her. They were so completely in love that they
+saw beauty in everything, in the hard, brilliant sunsets, in the
+Northern Lights, in the yellow dawns. Every day they skated or
+snow-shoed; and there was always a roaring chestnut fire to greet them.
+
+And yet there were shadows, deep and somber shadows, that fell across
+the sunshine of their happiness. They never said anything about these
+shadows to each other; but always during the hour that comes before
+candles the shadows pressed in and down. Hilda could not shut out the
+thought of Berta. Where was she, what was she doing? Berta might deny
+the blood, but Hilda could not. Berta was her twin. During this twilight
+hour she saw this beautiful counterpart of herself moving furtively,
+flying by night, hiding by day, alone, alone; perhaps penniless and
+hungry. When the thought of the wayward one became too strong Hilda
+sought the piano, which she played exquisitely.
+
+Mathison's shadow lay upon him perpetually, but more keenly when he and
+Hilda sat before the fire, waiting for the lights. The man Lysgaard had
+escaped. Free! Beaten and to all appearances broken, he had escaped on
+the way to the Tombs. A forced pause before a fire in a chemical
+establishment had opened the way for him. The crowd, the noise and
+confusion, and the insatiable curiosity and over-confidence of his
+captors had given him his chance. The strength of the rogue, after that
+beating! They had left one man in the patrol with him, and Lysgaard had
+suddenly dashed his manacled hands into the man's face and then choked
+him into insensibility. He had coolly taken the operative's hat and
+overcoat. The latter he had wrapped across his shoulders, holding it
+together from the inside. He had then stepped into the seething crowd
+and vanished completely. Search for him had been in vain. He had
+probably known where to find a haven. The real menace in his being at
+large lay in the fact that undoubtedly he did not know that Berta was a
+twin. He would have means of finding what had become of John Mathison.
+He would learn that a woman had accompanied his enemy. A trifling
+description of that woman would be enough. Being a Prussian, there
+would be only one idea in Lysgaard's head--Berta had run away with the
+man who had beaten him. Vengeance, before they found him and dropped the
+noose over his head.
+
+There was a third shadow and they shared this mutually if
+silently--Mathison's inevitable departure for English waters.
+
+"John," she said, one afternoon, "I'm so happy that it hurts."
+
+He laughed and swung her into his arms, which never ceased to be hungry
+for her; and there was always a sharp little stab when he let her go.
+The hour was fast approaching when he would have to let her go, perhaps
+forever....
+
+"Glorious up here, isn't it?"
+
+"But why do you bar the windows and doors so carefully at night? There
+can't be any burglars in this wilderness, at least not in the winter."
+
+"You never can tell. Sometimes there are mighty high winds around these
+diggings. You heard how the windows rattled last night." Mathison
+reached for his cup of tea. So she had noticed?
+
+"How your mother must have loved this place!"
+
+"What makes you think that?"
+
+"Why, it fairly breathes of love; the beauty of all the furnishings and
+the way they are arranged. What fun it must have been--and you toddling
+around after her! Come; I want to show you something." She led over to a
+corner, and there in a heap were rows of battered leaden soldiers,
+twisted leaden swords, and forts of wood. "War, battle," went on Hilda,
+soberly; "even as little children. What has happened to the souls of
+men, that from generation to generation the male child's toys must be
+these? Must women always suffer to see these things about? I found them
+in the garret."
+
+"Instinct, little old lady. From the day one man has had to protect
+himself and his woman, bloodily. We are still doing it, on a more
+terrible scale than ever. Odd, I haven't laid eyes on these in twenty
+years."
+
+"How often your mother must have watched you there on the floor before
+the fire, playing at war, and your father facing death at sea. But oh,
+lover, lover!" She caught him fiercely to her. "In so short a time! I
+haven't said anything, for I did not want to mar your happiness. But it
+is hurting so! Dear God, bring him back to me!"
+
+"Honey, I'll come back. There isn't a shell or a U-boat in the world
+with my name on it. I know it. I hate to have you return to the stage,
+and yet it will be the best thing. You'll be busy. Idleness never bucks
+up a person's courage."
+
+"Hark!" She stepped back from him swiftly. "I hear sleigh-bells." She
+stiffened. Sleigh-bells and yellow envelopes, for she knew that Mathison
+had left orders at the station to send out telegrams immediately they
+were received. There was no telephone.
+
+"The village grocer, maybe," suggested Mathison, himself receiving a
+shock at the sound of the bells.
+
+"No; he always drives out before noon."
+
+Hilda ran to the window to peer out, but it was too dark for her to see
+anything distinctly.
+
+As for Mathison, he shifted his automatic to the right side-pocket of
+his jacket. Merely precautionary; for the man he was expecting would not
+approach the front door with such boldness. Yet the man was infernally
+clever in some ways. He was likely to do the unexpected. Of course,
+there was always a chance that Lysgaard might try to put to sea and put
+over his hour of vengeance until later. There was an odd trait in
+Mathison's character. He was always suspicious when events ran along too
+smoothly. His very happiness was almost a warning. He had often thought
+of having a Secret Service man come up and watch the four trains that
+passed daily; but, being a man of red blood, he hated the idea. If
+Lysgaard succeeded in getting through the cordon, he would try to find
+John Mathison. Backed as he was by a powerful secret organization, and
+no doubt having John Mathison's _dossier_ in his pocket or in his
+memory, he would not have much difficulty in locating the dove-cote.
+
+"Why, it's a woman!" cried Hilda.
+
+"A woman? All right. You stay here and I'll go to the door."
+
+He reached the door just as the bell rang. The visitor entered without a
+word and raised a thick veil.
+
+"Well, brother-in-law!" mockingly.
+
+"Berta?" came a startled voice from the doorway leading to the
+living-room.
+
+"Yes, dear sister, Berta--the ghost who wants to return to her tomb and
+can't find the way. I smell tea. I'd like a cup."
+
+Berta passed into the living-room and stopped before the burning logs,
+stretching out her hands. The sable coat, once so magnificent, was
+matted and torn, the hat bedraggled, the shoes water-soaked and cracked;
+but the fire in Berta's eyes and the beauty of her face were still
+undimmed. What a woman! thought Mathison, thrilled in spite of his vague
+terror.
+
+Hilda, however, saw only the hunted woman, the desperation, the cold,
+the hunger. A sign, and she would have opened her arms. But Berta was
+still The Yellow Typhoon, harassed but unconquered. She tossed her hat
+and coat upon a chair and helped herself to a cup of tea. There was evil
+mischief in her smile. After she had drunk the tea, she selected a
+cigarette and lighted it.
+
+"Ah, that is good! I haven't had a decent cigarette in four days. The
+driver thought I was you, Hilda. What a Godforsaken hole! But it was not
+so hard to find. In your _dossier_--I read it while we were entering New
+York--it was recorded that you were born here, that it was the only
+home you had. Where would two sentimental fools like you two come for
+their honeymoon? The North is in the blood of both of you. A ghost,
+Hilda; and with a wave of your hand--my evanishment. I want a passport
+to Denmark. It will not be wise to refuse me. I haven't tried to see the
+mother. We are dead to each other; let it be so. But there are other
+ways by which I can twist your heart, my beautiful Norma."
+
+"Don't mind about me, John. You cannot hurt me, Berta."
+
+"I can try. Arrest me and see what will come of it. You two have sent to
+his death the only man I ever cared for."
+
+"He was a murderer!" cried Hilda.
+
+"No; it was war. What he did was in the interest of Germany, and that
+absolves him."
+
+"You are not a Prussian; you are a Dane."
+
+"My sympathies are with Prussia; and that is enough for me. I am the
+daughter of a noble. I did not come here to discuss the war. I came to
+demand help."
+
+Mathison sighed with relief. The woman did not know that her man was at
+large. He played a card in the dark.
+
+"I purpose to give you up to the authorities at once," he said, coldly.
+
+Berta laughed. "Try it. Do you think me such a fool as to come unarmed?"
+
+"And how might you be armed?"
+
+"Ask my sister."
+
+"She is right, John. This would kill my mother. But if we secure a
+passport, what is your bond?"
+
+"The word of Berta Nordstrom. I never broke that when once I gave it.
+Back there in New York you spoke of the tomb. All I want is to return to
+it. Let me get to Denmark, and I shall never bother either of you
+again."
+
+Mathison began pacing, his hands behind his back, his chin down. Berta
+eyed him with cynical amusement, letting the cigarette smoke drift up
+her nostrils. By and by she tossed the cigarette into the fire.
+
+"If I make threats, it is because I have to. I am tired. Wait!" She made
+a passionate gesture. "This is no sign of weakness. I shall hate you
+both as long as I live. You have forced me to walk alone. I don't want
+to go on fighting any more. I want peace and quiet. I shall find it
+where I was born. Get me a passport and I shall vanish. I have plenty
+of money. Much of it is in the banks in Copenhagen. I had always planned
+to return there some day. I can establish proofs of my identity and my
+right to the inheritance our mother denied us. Until the passport
+arrives I must abide here, however distasteful it may be to you. Do you
+believe it will be pleasant for me? Your food will be wormwood, your
+water lees, and your bed will burn me. Odd that I should wish to go on,
+that I should care to live. I sha'n't disturb your cooing. Your maid,
+who doubtless knows by this time that there are two of us, can bring me
+food. I was a fool not to have told him that there were two of us; and
+he may go to his death believing that I betrayed him. But I have written
+a letter to Manila explaining. Hate you? With every drop of blood in me!
+But get me the passport, and I promise to leave you both in peace."
+
+"Very well," said Mathison, facing her; "you shall have it. But for
+Hilda, I should not stir a hand. You are an alien enemy. You are
+dangerous and merciless. You have no mercy for your sister, who tried to
+save you; and the word 'mother' means nothing to you. You ruined--or
+tried to--the dearest friend I had. And the man of your choice murdered
+him in cold blood. There is a black score against you. But because I
+love your sister beyond ordinary man's love, I am going to let you go."
+
+"Because you are afraid of me," tranquilly.
+
+"Frankly because I am afraid of you."
+
+"I hate you. If I had the time and opportunity I would do you all the
+evil I could. You defeated me. But for all that, you are a man; and I
+know men. Hilda, will you know how to keep him?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"After all, you are not my sister for nothing. Show me to my room. Have
+your maid bring me up something to eat. I am starved. It was such a
+place to find. Cooing doves, in a bleak cage like this!"
+
+The chamber assigned to her was directly over the living-room. After
+dinner that night they heard her walking, walking, walking. The
+Snow-leopard, thought Mathison; and because she was the twin of the
+noble woman whose hand was locked in his he would have to cheat his
+government, commit his first dishonorable deed! For he would have to
+lie and cheat to secure a passport for Berta Nordstrom.
+
+"John!"
+
+"No. I shouldn't go to her, honey. Honestly, I can't help it, but I do
+not trust her. I'm afraid of her. The blood no longer links you. Forget
+that part of it. She's forgotten it."
+
+"Will there be trouble in getting her a passport?"
+
+"The trouble is nothing. I've got to lie and cheat."
+
+"We were so happy! My sister, my own flesh and blood! I just can't
+understand it!"
+
+"No more can I. But the fact remains that she is still The Yellow
+Typhoon. And God send she leaves no wreckage here when she passes. But
+what a woman!"
+
+"That is it. If we could only save her, make her see!"
+
+Mathison stared at the ceiling and shook his head. The light thud of
+shoes continued. He walked over to the stand at the side of the
+fireplace and eyed Malachi, who was dozing.
+
+"What a jogging I've given the poor little beggar! Malachi?"
+
+The little green bird opened one eye belligerently, and the feathers at
+the back of his neck ruffled.
+
+"John, why should she tramp like that?"
+
+"Go to her, honey, if you wish."
+
+But Hilda's knock on the door was not answered.
+
+Berta remained in her room all the following day. The maid reported to
+her mistress that the unwelcome guest spoke no words, not even a "thank
+you." She no longer walked the floor, however.
+
+About eight o'clock that night she came unexpectedly into the
+living-room. Mathison was putting on a fresh log. Hilda was in the
+music-room, playing Rachmaninoff's surging "Prelude."
+
+"I was cold," said Berta, unemotionally.
+
+Mathison drew up a chair for her, rather clumsily. She sent him a wry
+little smile as she sat down, spreading her fingers. After a while she
+raised her head attentively. She was listening to the music. She held
+this attitude for several minutes, then propped her elbows on her knees
+and rested her chin in her palms. Hilda played on, Chopin, Grieg,
+Rubinstein. Stonily Berta stared into the fire.
+
+"She plays well ... in the dark, too."
+
+"She does all things well," said the lover. "You are fond of something,
+then?"
+
+"Music? Yes. I am fond of many things; but I except human beings. You
+are trying to solve the riddle? Don't waste your time. I'm a riddle to
+myself. But for Hilda I should have beaten you. Do you know, if
+Hallowell had been weak I should have gone out to your villa. I wonder
+what would have happened?"
+
+"He would have been alive this day," answered Mathison, grimly; "for we
+both of us would have vacated the premises. Typhoon. They named you
+well. And yet!"
+
+"Ah, and yet?" Berta looked up.
+
+"Why not become a friend instead of an enemy? You say you want peace and
+quiet after all this stormy life. Why not melt a little? I know my wife.
+She would take you in her arms with half a chance."
+
+"Thanks. Oh, I am not ironic. I mean it. But it is impossible. I cannot
+change my nature. There is too much behind me. I chose the road I came
+by. Regret? Remorse? No. To you I am bad; to myself, I am only free....
+Tell her to play that Russian thing again.... No; I must go my chosen
+way. I am like your parrakeet. Sometimes I can be forced to do things,
+but always I am untamable. Get me that passport and I will vanish. I
+have never known what it is to be sorry. The faculty isn't in me. I am
+an outcast. I prefer it. But I am not a hypocrite. I did not come here
+to whine; I came to demand. But I'll soften that. Get me out of this
+country, which I despise, and I'll thank you. I was not implicated in
+the killing of your friend. Besides, it was war."
+
+Mathison shook his head. A pagan; that was it. He stooped to stir a log
+and got a glimpse of her eyes. They were dry and hard. A passport, or
+was she up to some deadly mischief? However quickly he might obtain a
+passport, he knew it would not arrive until after he himself had put to
+sea. Berta free and Hilda alone? He leaned against the mantel, wondering
+what the end would be.
+
+There were French doors on the south side of the living-room. To the
+north were the original deep-set windows with broad seats and heavy
+shutters. Mathison locked up only when about to retire for the night.
+His back was toward the south, so he missed the forewarning of the
+menace. The brass knob of one of the doors was turning with infinite
+slowness, a small fraction of an inch at a time. If there was any sound,
+it was smothered by the magnificent chords of Rachmaninoff's melancholy
+inspiration.
+
+Suddenly Berta stood up, covered a yawn, and started toward the
+staircase. She had reached the middle of the room, when a rush of cold
+air caused Mathison to turn. He saw Lysgaard, his blue eyes burning with
+madness, his cheeks hollow and white with fury. There followed two
+shots, but Mathison's was a second too late. Berta's hands flew
+automatically to her breast; wide-eyed she stared at Lysgaard for a
+space, then an expression of deep weariness settled upon her face. She
+swayed, her knees doubled, and she sank in a huddle upon the rug.
+
+Lysgaard leaned against the wall, gripping his bloody hand.
+
+"She had to die!... She betrayed me!" His voice was like that of a spent
+runner. "_You!_ She came to _you_! I meant to kill you, too!... _Gott!_"
+
+For Hilda was standing in the doorway to the music-room, clutching the
+portières, hanging literally to them, in fact, struck by that hypnosis
+with which sudden tragedy always benumbs us. She saw the crumpled figure
+on the floor; her husband, tense of body, his weapon ready, his face
+hard and merciless; the blond man, sagged against the wall, staring with
+pathetic bewilderment not at the woman he had shot, but at _her_. With a
+supreme effort Hilda threw off the spell, ran to her sister and knelt.
+Berta, the little one whom she had always tried to shield, for whom she
+had accepted many a buffet, shouldered the charge of many a misdeed!
+
+[Illustration: Hilda was standing in the doorway, struck by that
+hypnosis with which sudden tragedy always benumbs us.]
+
+"Berta, Berta!"
+
+One corner of Berta's lips moved upward--a touch of the old irony. "My
+passport ... has come!... The mad fool!... As much as I could love any
+one!... Hilda, the ghost ... returns to the ... tomb!" The beautiful
+head sank grotesquely against Hilda's shoulder. The Yellow Typhoon had
+slipped down the Far Horizon.
+
+"_Two!_" whispered Lysgaard, thickly. "Two!... _Gott!_" He staggered
+across the room. "Two!... And she never told me!" he babbled in German.
+He dropped to his knees, thrusting Hilda aside; put his sound arm under
+the warm, limp body of the woman he had called his own. "Berta, Berta,
+little one, I did not know! Ah, God, why didn't you tell me? I thought
+you had betrayed me, left me for this Yankee swine!... _Two!_"
+
+Mathison sprang to Hilda, raised her in his arms, and pressed her face
+against his shoulder. A miracle had happened. Berta's presence here had
+saved Hilda. That was the chief thought in Mathison's mind. Closely he
+pressed the loved one to him, so that she might not see the second
+tragedy, should Lysgaard turn upon him. But even as he made the movement
+he saw a strange action take place. Berta's body slid slowly from
+Lysgaard's arm. The man's shoulders pinched themselves together
+convulsively and his head went back with a spasmodic jerk. Then he fell
+across Berta's body. Mathison thought he had fainted, but later he
+learned that the bullet that had shattered the hand had ricocheted and
+plowed completely through the body. But for his tremendous vitality
+Lysgaard would never have reached Berta.
+
+"Mat! Mat!" shrieked Malachi, across the tragic silence.
+
+A month later--on a Friday afternoon--Sam Rubin stopped his limousine
+before a handsome apartment building and got out briskly. Under his arm
+was a portfolio. He rushed toward the entrance and popped into the
+elevator. As he was a privileged character, the maid Sarah admitted him
+at once and indicated that her mistress was in the living-room.
+
+Rubin stepped jauntily along the corridor, but he stopped at the door.
+By one window he saw the star's mother. She was knitting, but her glance
+was directed toward her daughter.
+
+"Sailorman," said Hilda.
+
+"Sailorman," repeated Malachi, soberly, if huskily.
+
+"Husband, lover!"
+
+But Malachi rocked belligerently and fell to grumbling.
+
+"I can't make him say that, mother."
+
+"He has more serious things on his mind," interrupted Rubin, entering.
+
+Hilda whirled. "Sam Rubin, what have you got under your arm?"
+
+"A bully new play for you; fit you like a glove."
+
+"I'm so glad! Work, work, work; something new and fresh that I can
+throw myself into!"
+
+"Well, I've got it right here. What's the news?"
+
+"He's with the convoy." Hilda caught her manager by the sleeve and drew
+him over to one of the front windows. "The star in the window--mine!"
+
+"You're the finest woman in all this world!" said Rubin, soberly.
+
+Hilda put her hand under the little silken banner and raised it to her
+lips.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Yellow Typhoon, by Harold MacGrath
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 56945 ***