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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75754 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: The first quarter of the Honeymoon!]
+
+
+
+
+  SOME
+  HONEYMOON!
+
+
+  BY
+
+  CHARLES EVERETT HALL
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATED BY
+  ROBERT GASTON HERBERT
+
+
+
+  New York
+  GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1918, by
+  GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
+
+  _All Rights Reserved_
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER
+
+  I  The Man of Business
+  II  "Needles and Pins"
+  III  "When a Man Marries--"
+  IV  "His Trouble Begins!"
+  V  The Arrow of Suspicion
+  VI  Business Methods
+  VII  Shock Upon Shock
+  VIII  The Bridal Night
+  IX  With the World Shut Out
+  X  The Beginning of a Nightmare
+  XI  The Nightmare Continues
+  XII  Some Experiences of a Bridegroom
+  XIII  The Eagle Eye of the House Detective
+  XIV  Some Sleuth
+  XV  The Cat Shows Her Claws
+  XVI  The Duty Again Devolves
+  XVII  The Private Buccanneer
+  XVIII  It Is No Longer Farce
+  XIX  An Outlaw in Fact
+  XX  The Name On the Billboard
+  XXI  In the Part of the Injured Husband
+  XXII  "Who Is My Wife?"
+  XXIII  In the Maze
+  XXIV  Nemesis
+  XXV  John Ryder Forgives Fate
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+The first quarter of the Honeymoon! _Frontispiece_
+
+"No manager can dispossess me. I refuse to get out."
+
+Flung herself with abandon into John Ryder's arms. (_See page 129._)
+
+"I am another woman.  I am not the person you married." (_See page
+243._)
+
+
+
+
+SOME HONEYMOON!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE MAN OF BUSINESS
+
+When John Ryder put his foot upon the plank of the _Minnequago_ on
+his return journey from Europe he was a bachelor of thirty-five
+summers--and had never counted his winters at all.  He believed, with
+many another upholder of single blessedness, that a man did not begin
+to count his wintry years until he was married.
+
+Just the same, as he walked up the incline of the runway he was
+walking to his fate.  Indeed, he came face to face with it as he trod
+upon the deck of the ship and, almost bumping into it, politely
+lifted his hat and said:
+
+"Pardon me!"
+
+The lady bowed silently and turned upon him a careless shoulder.
+John Ryder allowed himself a second glance--and then let the steward
+take his hand luggage below while he did something he had not done
+since his early crossings.  He hung about on deck to see the hawsers
+cast off--a mark of curiosity that usually stamps the traveler as
+quite new to the game.
+
+Even then he did not know why he did this.
+
+Business.  Business with a big B.  Business first, last, and all the
+time.  That was John Ryder, and so plain was it to most people who
+met him that a tag on his back stating that he was a hustling
+American business man would have been quite unnecessary.
+
+Ryder had been in the chase after the nimble dollar since he was
+breeched.  He was a self-made man, and although he was proud of that
+fact he did not go around blowing about the quality of the product.
+
+People could take him for what he was--or what they thought he was.
+He was not personally assertive, although he fully knew his own
+opinion upon any subject to which he had given thought.  He did not
+consider it necessary to tell every person who interviewed him, or
+show them by his manner, that he was really too busy with weighty
+affairs to give their own little matter its proper attention.  He
+seldom cared what people thought of him as long as he impressed them
+with his honesty of purpose, and that he was in earnest.
+
+That is, he had seldom cared until now.  But he confessed to himself,
+in the secrecy of his inner thoughts and the privacy of his
+stateroom, that he was desirous of having at least one person aboard
+the _Minnequago_ think of him as being every whit as good as he
+really was, if not a little better.
+
+When a man's hard hit, that is about his first thought.  He wants the
+woman to think of him as the finest and best who has ever crossed her
+path.  And before bumping into Miss Mont as he boarded the ship, he
+had actually never looked twice at a woman.
+
+She was a good sailor, and he had crossed back and forth so many
+times that he was only seasick when the Old Salt in the story was
+ill--on the occasion "that the ship went down and all hands were
+lost."
+
+Ryder accepted his fate manfully on that very first time that they
+paced the deck together.  It was not easy for Ryder to admit that he
+had met and fallen in love with a woman at first sight.  It was
+opposed to all his well-established theories.  At his age he
+considered himself case-proof.
+
+Yet never had a woman impressed him as did Miss Mont.  When they
+became so quickly such very good friends and she showed plainly that
+she enjoyed his society, and even took him into her confidence with
+little urging on his part, Ryder began to see that he would be
+tempting Providence if he went ashore at New York without letting her
+know just how he felt toward her.
+
+He had nobody to consider in this matter but himself; he had no
+family.  Miss Mont, she said, was in a similar situation.
+
+She had been adopted by people in Manchester when she was a small
+child and had lived with them as their daughter until these foster
+parents died.
+
+Other children had come into the family after her adoption, and they
+did not look kindly upon the alien.  So Miss Mont had come away.
+
+"I do not know much about my own people," she told Ryder.  "Only that
+my mother and father are both dead.  There were several of us
+children.  We were parceled out like a brood of puppies.  I know
+nothing now about my brothers and sisters."
+
+So she had nobody to consider; there was no living soul to say her
+nay, no matter what course she took in life.  To John Ryder's
+disappointment he found that she was on the verge of choosing a
+profession for which he had a strongly rooted, if narrow, dislike.
+Miss Mont had met some theatrical people in London.  There was,
+indeed, a certain agent, or manager, aboard the _Minnequago_ to whom
+she had been introduced.
+
+This man had told her that he could put her on the stage.  She had
+the presence for it, and if her ability proved anywhere equal--well,
+his talk had inspired her with the fever for a stage career.  She had
+done a little in a semi-professional way in London as an entertainer,
+and this man, Sam Marks, had chanced to see her work.
+
+"And you know I need to work," she told John Ryder.  "My bit of money
+won't last forever.  I should dislike teaching, and I couldn't work
+in a shop, I know.  I have a retentive memory, and I believe I should
+'make good' as you Americans say, as an imitator.  I really have some
+talent."
+
+"You do not know what you contemplate," cried Ryder, and he was a
+little angry.  "The theater is no place for a domestic, home-loving
+woman like you."
+
+"But it will bring me more money than other work."
+
+"It brings you a lot besides the money.  It spoils a woman.  It
+spoils a man, too, for that matter.  And it is the hardest work a
+woman can tackle."
+
+"Some actresses draw large salaries."
+
+"And what do they pay for the pedestals they gain?  You don't know
+the mire they have to drag their skirts through.  And some of it
+always sticks."
+
+"I think you are prejudiced," she said softly.
+
+"Oh, I know there are exceptions.  But there are no exceptions when
+it comes to the hard work.  When an actress achieves a lasting place
+in her profession, it means that she has worked harder for years than
+any governess, or seamstress--yes, or washwoman!"
+
+"I know it is kind of you to advise me," she said.
+
+"No, it isn't.  It's selfish on my part.  I'll tell you why.  I love
+you!" blurted out this man of business, who was noted for his silky
+and diplomatic tongue when it came to a business proposition.  This
+situation was, however, almost too much for John Ryder.
+
+She gazed at him in utter astonishment.
+
+"Mr. Ryder!" she gasped.
+
+"Don't be surprised," said he, mopping his brow and glad the words
+were out at last.  "I'm no kid.  I've been bucking the world for a
+good many years, if my head isn't bald!  I'm not likely to say a
+thing I don't mean, or to try to fool a woman like you.  I love you,
+and I'll marry you the first minute we can after getting ashore, if
+you'll agree.
+
+"And I'm not doing it through any foolish desire to keep you out of a
+business that you'll be sorry you ever got into.  I want you for a
+strictly selfish reason.  I want you because I love you--have loved
+you ever since I first laid eyes on you on this boat."
+
+"But--but we know so little of each other!" she faltered.
+
+"What more have you got to tell me?  It won't take you long," said
+Ryder with a chuckle.  He knew his drawing powers as an interviewer,
+and could figure on Miss Mont's having told him about everything of
+importance in her life.
+
+"As for me, I'm plain John Ryder.  I'm just what I appear to be,
+nothing more and nothing less."  The sly villain, however, was hoping
+she would think him a deal better than he was.  "I've got some money.
+I can make more.  I'll keep you in comfort, and when I die leave you
+enough to live on.
+
+"That may not sound very sentimental, but don't let it cloud your
+eyes to the fact that I love you just as hard as any Romeo of the
+lot.  I'm not much on playing the lute under a lady's window; but
+I'll be great on hustling out and, as we Americans say, 'bringing
+home the bacon.'"
+
+"Oh, dear, Mr. Ryder!  You make me laugh in spite of myself."  But
+she was actually wiping tears from her eyes.
+
+"That's right.  I'd rather you'd take it laughing than crying.  And
+as far as in me lies," he added, solemnly, "I'll never bring tears to
+your eyes, but always laughter to your heart," which was a
+wonderfully pretty observation for John Ryder to make.
+
+Nor was he at first disturbed in the least when Miss Mont told him
+she dared not answer on such short notice.  She must think it over.
+
+"I like you," she admitted.  "I am fond of you, I might say.  But to
+be bound to a man _for life_ upon so short an acquaintance seems
+an--an awful thing."
+
+"Well, it is rather sudden, I suppose," admitted the American.
+"Though I have often noticed that the most successful deals I have
+ever put through are settled in short order--on the spur of the
+moment, as you might say.  Ahem!  This, of course, is different," he
+added, seeing her smile.  "But take your time.  Take until we land.
+That's day after tomorrow.  One can do a lot of thinking in that
+time."
+
+And, from that moment, he religiously refrained from recurring to the
+theme in conversation with her, which showed plainly that John Ryder
+was a novice at the game of winning a woman's love.
+
+But before the _Minnequago_ steamed safely through the Narrows into
+New York Bay, Ryder saw Marks, the theatrical agent, walking with
+Miss Mont on the upper deck.  They were in close talk for more than
+an hour.
+
+He had never particularly noticed Marks before.  Now he found him a
+most objectionable looking person--squatty, with bulbous arms and
+legs, and his eyes half hidden behind heavily creased lids.  Ryder
+was stabbed by jealousy, and did not know what the strange emotion
+meant.  He went to his stateroom and wrote a note to Miss Mont.
+
+It was a kind note, a just note.  It pointed out the fact that he was
+still waiting for his answer, that he could prove to her an hour
+after they landed just who and what he was, and that he could do all
+for her that he had said.  He added that he desired her answer by the
+time the _Minnequago_ docked.
+
+Strictly business, you see.  If he had been pulling off a deal with
+another man and somebody like this Sam Marks had put in an oar, this
+was about how John Ryder would have handled the situation.  She must
+choose at once between Marks and him--between the position she would
+gain by wedding him, and possible success upon the vaudeville stage.
+Had the ideas expressed in the note not been clothed in the kindest
+terms and had not a strong current of downright love permeated it,
+any woman might have taken umbrage.
+
+Ryder knew he had said nothing that could offend.  Therefore, he was
+the more surprised that no response to his letter was brought to him.
+He remained away from the general table at dinner that last night
+purposely.  He did not wish to meet Miss Mont again until he knew
+exactly what her answer was to be.
+
+The evening passed without his receiving any reply.  In the morning
+as they swung into the dock at an early hour he asked the steward if
+there was any message for him and received a negative answer.
+
+He had made his declaration and waited with his repacked bag until
+most of the passengers, he was certain, had gone ashore.  Until the
+last moment, when he came to the gangway, he hoped to get some reply
+from her.  Or was she waiting for him to tell him verbally her answer?
+
+She was!  There she stood upon the dock as he went down the
+gangplank.  She was looking eagerly toward the ship.  Ryder felt a
+sudden tingling warmth at his heart.  His love for this girl, so
+strangely born, made his pulse go at a gallop and brought a flush
+into his sea-tanned face.
+
+She saw him, and the faint flicker of a dawning smile overspread her
+sweet countenance.  He approached with outstretched hand, his heart
+in his eyes--an expression that no woman could mistake.  It told
+her--that look--as plainly as though he cried it aloud: "I love you!"
+
+The girl put out her hand--both her hands indeed--impulsively and met
+his grasp with one quite as warm.  Her eyes searched his face,
+perhaps with a puzzled expression at first when he approached; but
+afterward with decided approval.
+
+"What have you to say to me, my dear?" asked John Ryder, strong in
+his belief that she could have only waited for him with good news.
+
+A blush suffused her face.  Her lips parted--parted in such a shy and
+lovely smile--as she said in a low voice: "I--I will marry you."
+
+"Good!" he almost shouted, and immediately added: "When?"
+
+"Whenever you like," she whispered, and no woman since the world
+began ever gave herself so completely into her lover's keeping, John
+Ryder was sure, as did this woman whom he loved.
+
+"Then as soon as we can get the license and I can arrange certain
+matters," he said quite composedly, despite the accelerated beat of
+his pulse.  "We will drive first to the City Clerk's office.  There
+is some red tape about the matter, I believe.  Then I will take you
+to a hotel where you may lunch.  I shall need several hours for
+business before the banks close.  Then we can go at once to a
+minister of whom I know."
+
+"Oh! can it be done so quickly?" and she caught her breath, though
+with a little laugh.
+
+"Don't be frightened," he said tenderly.  "It will be all right.
+Where are your trunks?"
+
+"On their way to the Pennsylvania Railway station, I believe."
+
+"So soon?  Were you getting ready to run away from me?" he asked in
+some little surprise.
+
+"No-o."  Then she laughed and tossed her head with that gesture that
+had become familiar to him--which he had noticed so many times aboard
+ship.  "I was getting ready to run away with you," she whispered.
+
+He laughed, tucked her hand under his arm, and they walked up the
+dock.  Near the gate he saw Marks standing.  Miss Mont did not chance
+to look his way, but Ryder saw that the theatrical man observed him
+and smiled sardonically as they passed.
+
+"Confound his impudence!" muttered Ryder.
+
+Then he glanced at the woman at his side.  She was certainly
+beautiful, with plenty of warm, rich color in her cheeks, the
+blackest of level brows, the very whitest of skin.
+
+"By heaven! she's a treasure," thought Ryder, as he hailed a taxicab.
+"And I'm a lucky fellow to get her.  To think that, in a few short
+hours, she will be Mrs. John Ryder!"
+
+A foolish little mist obscured his vision, and he stumbled on the
+step as he followed her into the cab.  She laughed.
+
+"You won't get married this year if you stumble upstairs," she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"NEEDLES AND PINS"
+
+None of his business associates, not even his head clerk, knew just
+when John Ryder would return to New York.  He had gone across for a
+rest--a pleasure trip; but he had struck some splendid
+contracts--"the woods were full of them," he said--and he cabled
+orders until his agents in America fairly begged him to stop.  Prices
+for raw material had not yet risen to top-notch, and they were
+skimming the cream of the manufacturing situation.
+
+He arrived on the _Minnequago_ with none aware of his coming.  Nor
+did he propose to tell anybody of the change he now contemplated to
+make in his private life.
+
+Had he done so, he knew that certain "good fellows" of his
+acquaintance would undertake to make existence an agony for him and
+for this beautiful girl whom he was to marry.  It seems to be the
+delight of a certain order of mankind to make the sweetest, most
+intimate hours of a newly-married couple a Saturnalia upon which they
+can only look back with horror.
+
+Ryder was practically free to do as he pleased, and what he pleased
+to do was to take time to get acquainted with the charming woman at
+his side.  They must go somewhere for their honeymoon where he would
+not be likely to run into people he knew, and where he and his wife
+could be quiet and undisturbed.
+
+Getting the license was neither a long nor troublesome matter, for
+they were the first at the clerk's office.  He signed his name "John
+Ryder," knowing that there were probably a dozen of the same name in
+the directory and the publication of it would scarcely warn his
+friends of what he was doing.  The girl signed after him, and surely
+nobody--unless it was that detestable Sam Marks--would realize who
+she was.
+
+"Who will marry us?" she asked, leaving all the details to him very
+prettily.
+
+"We could be married right here in the chapel," he told her.  "But if
+you would rather, I know of an old dominie on Bank Street."
+
+"How funny!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"That you should know anybody in that part of New York.  That is
+Greenwich Village, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes.  You seem to have studied your map of the town."
+
+"Oh, I have learned a little something about New York," she
+responded, smiling slightly.
+
+Aside from this brief interchange of remarks, there was very little
+said as the taxicab rolled uptown to a quiet hotel.  Both were doing
+some very serious thinking.  It was not a situation to provoke
+trifling conversation.
+
+Ryder arranged for a parlor where Miss Mont could remain quietly
+during his absence.  He did not delay for luncheon himself, but did
+not forget to send up a dainty repast for his bride-to-be.  He walked
+into the offices of John Ryder & Company about noon and cast the
+whole force into first a state of confusion, and then of wonder.
+
+He was usually the most methodical of persons and went through with
+any business--even the routine work of the day--in a most exemplary
+manner.  There was seldom any friction in John Ryder's offices when
+he was there.  From his chief clerk and his personal stenographer
+down through the strata of employees to the very porter, system was
+inculcated into their daily lives both by precept and the example of
+the "boss."
+
+Today he literally tore what little system there was left in his
+force to shreds.  He started several people on the same errand; he
+dictated the same letter three times and in as many different ways.
+His stenographer, a very severe young woman, came closer to him than
+she ever had before in her life and sniffed his breath.  Drink was
+the only explanation she could think of.
+
+He gave Brumby, his chief clerk, orders which absolutely antagonized
+each other, and when the man tremblingly pointed out this fact to
+Ryder the latter actually lost his temper.
+
+"Well, confound it!" ejaculated John Ryder, "you know what I mean,
+don't you?  There's only one sensible way to do that thing.  Do it,
+and don't bother me!"
+
+Inexplicable!  Nobody had ever seen Ryder in such a state of mind
+before.  He was one minute as snappy as a mud turtle; the next he ran
+his hand through the curly red mop of hair on the errand boy's head,
+gave him a dollar, and told him to take in the next ball game at the
+Polo Grounds without troubling himself to tell Brumby that his
+grandmother had died.
+
+But to capsheaf his entire performance on this occasion, Ryder sat
+down again to dictate a few notes on personal matters and began the
+first one by saying:
+
+"Ahem!  Are you ready, Miss Nelson?  Here goes: 'My dear Rose'--Good
+Lord! that isn't it.  Er--er--Write Hallett and Mayes about the
+renewal of the lease of my apartment.  Tell them--er----  Well, write
+it yourself, Miss Nelson," he concluded in much confusion and
+beginning to perspire.  "I shall not renew it.  It runs out the first
+of November and I shall make--er--ahem!--a change."
+
+She stared at him in amazement.  John Ryder had occupied the same
+chambers on the north side of Gramercy Park for ten years and was
+considered as permanent a fixture in that neighborhood as the fenced
+and locked garden in the middle of the square.
+
+"Well, hang it!" he demanded, catching her wondering eye and losing
+patience again.  "Can't I make a change?  I hope I'm not _married_ to
+those rooms?"
+
+And then he reddened furiously.  Miss Nelson gazed upon him with
+dawning understanding.  She was not a young woman whose thoughts
+lingered much upon the tender passion; but she was by no means a
+fool.  She knew now that her employer was not intoxicated.
+
+Brumby might think Mr. Ryder suddenly bereft of his senses; the
+bookkeeper could say that "the old man" was about to "bust"; and the
+red-headed office boy could declare that the boss had felt the change
+before death when he gave up the dollar, but Miss Nelson knew now
+what the matter was.  _Mr. Ryder was in love!_
+
+When she went out for her lunch she--the frigid Miss
+Nelson--sentimentally bought a flower from a street vender and
+brought it back to the office.  But by that time John Ryder had
+cleared up all the matters he considered really vital, had given
+Brumby a nervous shock by telling him to expect no word from him,
+Ryder, for at least a fortnight, and had left the offices.
+
+All these petty details of business were the "needles and pins" of
+life.  For the first time in his business career Ryder found that he
+hated business.  He fairly walked on air as he hurried to the subway,
+crowded himself into an already crowded train, and was transported
+uptown.
+
+A few steps to the hotel--then the elevator--then the carpeted
+corridor to the door of the parlor where he had left his bride.  A
+knock, a swift patter of feet in answer, the turning of the key,
+and----
+
+She was there--a vision of delight to him!  Her coat and hat were
+already on.  His heart glowed.  She had been as eager for his return
+as he had been to get back to her.
+
+"Are--are you ready?" was all he could say.
+
+"Yes," she murmured, quite as embarrassed.
+
+Ryder remembered the old parsonage on Bank Street very well.  He had
+been wont to go to the church hard by when he was a boy.  The same
+minister was not there now, but the present incumbent had a peaceful,
+old-world face, was silver-haired and kindly spoken, and might have
+been the same whom Ryder remembered.
+
+The clergyman welcomed them as though he were well used to such calls.
+
+Miss Mont was shy and kept her veil down until the clergyman's wife
+and a servant were brought in to witness the ceremony.  Then she
+plucked up courage, raised her veil, and if her cheeks were
+tear-stained nobody remarked it.  The old man stood before them and
+pronounced the simply worded ritual with grace and kindliness.
+
+Ryder himself felt confused.  It was really the first time he had
+ever been present at such a ceremony.
+
+"With a ring?" the minister asked him softly before he began, and
+Ryder knew just enough to nod and then fumble in his inner pocket for
+a tiny leather case which he always carried.
+
+Out of this he brought forth, happily at the right moment, a plain
+gold band, worn rather thin, and with letters engraved on the inner
+side that were almost indecipherable.  It had been his mother's
+wedding ring--the one keepsake that had come into his possession as a
+boy from the parent he scarcely remembered.
+
+The girl evidently understood when he produced the ring.  She smiled
+at him tremulously and, before the band was slipped on her finger,
+she touched her lips to it.
+
+Then: "You, John, do take this woman, Ruth--" and so on to the end.
+Ryder responded as though in a dream.  It all seemed unreal.  Serious
+as was the moment, the undercurrent of his thought was: "'Ruth?'
+That is a pretty name.  But I got the idea somehow that her name was
+Rose."
+
+They were married.  Ryder feed the minister with a liberality that
+made his withered cheeks flush with pleasure.  The clergyman's wife
+kissed Ruth heartily, and the servant, who was sentimentally
+inclined, wiped her eyes furtively on the corner of her kitchen
+apron, which she had forgotten to take off when she came into the
+study.
+
+They went out to the taxicab again, the chauffeur of which was
+grinning knowingly.
+
+"Now, dear, where shall we drive?" asked John Ryder.
+
+"My trunks are at the Pennsylvania station by this time I am sure.
+May I choose where we shall go?"
+
+"Of course," he answered, though he felt some surprise.
+
+"Then let it be Pinewood."
+
+"Why--why," Ryder cried, "you must have studied this business all
+out.  Ah, you sly girl!  What put Pinewood in your head?"
+
+"They say it is very nice there--and quiet--at this time of year.  It
+will remind us of old times," she added dreamily.
+
+Afterward when he was attending to the checking of her baggage and
+arranging for his own to be sent on from the steamship dock, it
+suddenly smote Ryder that her remark about Pinewood reminding them
+"of old times" was peculiar.
+
+This was Ruth's first visit to America and surely he had never been
+at Pinewood in all his life!  Later he forgot to speak about it.
+Indeed, he was too busy and too happy to be curious.
+
+He telephoned ahead for a suite of rooms at the only hotel which, he
+understood, was open at this time of year at Pinewood.  This was the
+Pinewood Inn, one of the oldest and best-known hotels on the coast.
+
+Somehow there is a "newness" sticking to bridal couples that no
+amount of deception can hide--from the eagle eye of the railroad
+porter least of all!  The colored functionary on their car hovered
+about them as though they had been especially placed in his care, and
+his attentions were so marked that they might as well have come
+aboard showered with rice and old shoes.  Everybody in the coach very
+soon knew that they were newly wed.
+
+To tell the truth, John Ryder was inordinately proud of it.  He was
+as delighted as a boy.  It was an effort for him to retain his usual
+dignified bearing.  A smile was continually breaking through the calm
+of his features.  He wanted to shout or sing--and he sang like a crow!
+
+From a heretofore modest and retiring man socially he suddenly became
+bold and daring.  He secretly wished to strut about and brag of
+himself, and show off his wife.  He would have liked to distribute
+"largess" (whatever that might be) to the people at the stations
+where the train stopped; and he tipped the porter three separate
+times before the train was ten miles on its way.
+
+He had reason, good reason, for being proud.  When Ruth removed her
+veil and hat she was startlingly beautiful.  Somehow there had come a
+new expression into her face that increased her attractiveness.  She
+had never seemed so sweet, so gentle and modest, so altogether
+adorable before.
+
+They reached their railroad destination just as dusk was falling.
+Pinewood Inn was exclusive--so exclusive, indeed, that it was back
+among the pines quite twelve miles from the station.  A motor bus met
+all trains and transferred the arriving guests to the hotel.
+
+"Just a pleasant half hour's run," Ryder told his bride, helping her
+into the vehicle and getting in himself with several other arrivals.
+"We shall have an appetite for dinner I fancy."
+
+He was just then reminded that he had eaten nothing since a modest
+breakfast in his stateroom on the _Minnequago_--not even on the
+train.  The bus rumbled away from the hamlet that surrounded the
+railroad station.  They swept into the brown shadows of the pines and
+rolled almost silently over the velvet carpet of the needles.
+
+"Needles and pins, needles and pins!  When a man marries----"  The
+old rhyme came into his mind again.  But he had thrown off all petty
+details.  The needles and pins of business, or of anything else,
+should not rankle in his mind.  This was the beginning of his
+honeymoon.
+
+And just then the motor bus slid down a slight slope to a long bridge
+that crossed the salt creek dividing the island, which the railroad
+crossed, from the higher ground where the hotel was located.  Ryder,
+glancing ahead, thought he saw the flash of a red light.
+
+Then a woman screamed and the forward truck of the motor bus crashed
+through the loosened planking of the bridge.  The passengers were
+tumbled together, but nobody was hurt.  Ryder found himself holding
+Ruth in his arms--and somehow he did not care to let her go.
+
+Men and women began to scramble out of the bus, having hastily
+gathered together what hand baggage they had taken inside with them.
+It was a time of confusion.  A handbag was dropped, calling forth a
+grunt of protest from someone whose toes had been hurt.  An umbrella,
+caught crosswise in the door, caused delay and more confusion.
+
+"I--I fancy we shall have to get out with the rest of them," Ruth
+whispered.
+
+"Oh, I suppose so," Ryder admitted.
+
+They were the last to leave the stalled bus.  The driver was
+explaining:
+
+"I didn't suppose these country fools would begin to repair the
+bridge flooring tonight.  I didn't see the light.  'Twas all right
+when I came down from the hotel.  Guess you'll hafter walk.  It'll
+take half the night to jack this old car up out of the hole.  And
+see! they've left only a footpath the length of the bridge.  I bet
+they'll leave it that way till over Sunday.  Just like 'em."
+
+The guests, already in sight of the hotel lights, went on with
+laughter or grumbling, as their dispositions dictated.  The incident
+seemed quite unimportant to John Ryder, bemused as he was in the very
+first quarter of his honeymoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"WHEN A MAN MARRIES----"
+
+Ryder and his bride climbed the winding road to the wide and pillared
+veranda of the hotel behind the other shipwrecked passengers from the
+motor bus.  In the rear of the hotel was a considerable village; they
+could see the twinkling lights in the small frame dwellings and the
+glare of acetylene lamps in the big general store.
+
+"I--I really think," Ruth observed, "that the bridge is not safe.
+Didn't it tremble as we came over it?"
+
+"Seemed rather a rickety affair, that's a fact," Ryder agreed.  "But
+we're all right now.  We've reached the hotel.  It looks friendly and
+comfortable--and old-fashioned.  Nothing much untoward can happen to
+us here, dear."
+
+He said it tenderly, and looked at her lovingly.  Nothing more was
+needed as they entered the wide foyer to advertise the fact that they
+were newly wed.  The clerk--and even the bellboys--welcomed them with
+broad smiles.  But Ryder was getting hardened to the notoriety of
+their situation now.
+
+He went to the desk to register and get the key of the rooms he had
+ordered before leaving New York, while Ruth went toward a quiet spot
+which overlooked the entire foyer to wait for him.
+
+His business finished, Ryder turned to look for his bride.  He saw
+men standing or sitting about, talking, smoking, and reading.  He saw
+women, knitting or crocheting for the most part, in the foyer and in
+the parlors, into which he hastily looked.  But where was Ruth?
+Where could she have gone--and why?  The bellboy waited at the
+elevator, while Ryder stood helplessly, not knowing what to do.
+
+In a moment Ruth came from around a corner in the hall, eyes shining
+and a smile on her face.  When she caught sight of Ryder, she went
+directly to him, unheedful of all others, and a deeper expression
+sprang into her happy eyes.
+
+The man felt moved to the depth.  Could this look be for him?
+
+"I have been exploring a little," she said, as she came up to him,
+"and this is a lovely place to stay.  I am glad we came here."  Then,
+dropping her voice so that no chance passerby might hear, she added:
+"Oh, I am happy--so happy--too happy, almost!"
+
+Ryder had the whimsical thought as he crossed the foyer with his wife
+that he would like to shout aloud his own happiness and exultation.
+
+He hung back just a moment before entering the elevator with Ruth, to
+give a bellboy some money and certain instructions.  Then the couple
+were shown to their rooms.
+
+"Oh, they are fine!  Lovely!" cried Ruth delightedly, as soon as they
+were alone.  "You dear boy!  I believe you engaged the best suite in
+the house!"
+
+"The best I could get," admitted Ryder modestly.
+
+"But you mustn't be extravagant," and she came close to him, smiling
+directly into his eyes with a look in her own that almost dazzled him.
+
+"Folks can afford to be extravagant at this time if at no other," he
+declared stoutly, wondering if she knew the Pinewood Inn people were
+charging him thirty dollars a day for the suite.
+
+"You--you are a dear!" she said, and, putting her hands suddenly on
+his shoulders, she pressed closer, offering him her lips.
+
+The gracefulness of this little gesture was delightful.  Ryder felt
+the flush rise in his cheeks as though he really were a youth.  In
+that instant, when he first kissed his wife, he felt keen
+satisfaction that he had lived a clean, decent life and could meet
+her innocent caress without shame.
+
+"I believe you are going to be a disgracefully indulgent husband,"
+she said, laughing and gliding quickly out of his arms.  "I must stop
+that.  You will make a wreck of your ship of fortune on the rock of
+an expensive wife."
+
+"Oh, there are a few shots left in the locker yet," said Ryder grimly.
+
+They could not dress for dinner as Ruth's trunks had not yet arrived
+and his own luggage would not be along until the next day.  Ruth had
+toilet articles and brushes in her bag and she brought out of this,
+too, a wonderful little dressing sack, all ruffles and ribbons and
+lace, to wear while she dressed her hair.
+
+"May I smoke?" Ryder asked, sitting down to wait for her.
+
+"Of course.  I like to see you.  It--it seems so homey," and she
+showed him a blushing face and sparkling eyes for an instant at the
+curtained doorway of the inner room.
+
+She reappeared in the dressing sack, which was cut to reveal most
+charmingly her throat and forearms.  Ryder watched her lazily through
+the smoke of his cigar while she performed the graceful rites of the
+hairdresser.  He never remembered having seen a woman brush and
+arrange her hair before, and this intimate and innocent art of the
+toilet thrilled him.
+
+She had finished and turned to him with a smile for his approval when
+there came a rap on the door.  She tripped across the room and opened
+it.
+
+"For Mrs. Ryder," mumbled the boy.
+
+"Oh!  I thought they were for me!" Ruth exclaimed disappointedly.
+"You have come to the wrong suite, boy," and she closed the door
+lingeringly.
+
+Ryder sprang up, laughing.  "What was it?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, such lovely flowers!  A great heap of them."
+
+Ryder strode to the door, still chuckling.
+
+"She hasn't had it long enough to know her new name," he thought, and
+opened the door to call after the boy:
+
+"All right!  Those flowers come here, sonny.  Let me have 'em."
+
+He came back, bearing the heap of blossoms in his arms.  "They're for
+you, girlie," he said.
+
+She uttered a little scream of delight and came at him like a small
+whirlwind.  But she could not encircle both him and the roses in her
+embrace, so she satisfied herself for the moment with the flowers,
+sitting down in a low chair, with her face buried in the fragrant
+blossoms, and rocking herself to and fro in delight.
+
+"You will spoil me!" she said, looking up at him, as he stood above
+her with that broad, quiet smile of his stealing over his big face.
+John Ryder was by no means a handsome man, but he was good to look
+upon because of his manliness.  "These are so beautiful!  Let us fill
+every vase in the suite."
+
+This they did together.  And every time their hands met (and, oh! how
+many times this happened as they divided or arranged the flowers)
+they both thrilled at the contact, looking at each other and smiling
+and coloring like two children caught in some innocent escapade.
+
+It was a happy hour--an hour quite unmarred by a thought or a
+suspicion of any possible disaster.  On his part Ryder had forgotten
+what trouble was like.
+
+The patronage of the hotel was large all the year around, and at
+dinner they held the good-natured attention of the entire
+dining-room.  There was a good orchestra, attentive waiters, soft
+lights, the murmur of conversation, fine women in fine
+gowns--everything to make the place attractive.  Mrs. John Ryder in
+her plain traveling dress, however, was eclipsed by none of the other
+women.
+
+Ryder, watching her, saw many approving glances from other diners,
+too, and smiled.  He was thinking how she would shine--this jewel of
+a woman he had married!--when she had time to find some real "bridey"
+finery.  She looked like a little brown thrush now; she would look
+like a bird of paradise when he had given her _carte blanche_ at a
+Fifth Avenue modiste's.
+
+He allowed her to go upstairs alone after dinner while he strolled
+into the office for some cigars.  Several of the men he had seen at
+the tables were grouped there talking earnestly, and as Ryder stood
+at the cigar counter he overheard loud voices from the private office
+of the manager at the rear of the stand.
+
+A man near by was saying: "I tell you the bridge has sunk in the
+middle--it's impassable.  All that held the wabbly old thing together
+were the flooring planks.  This town is as far behind the times as
+any yap hamlet I ever saw.  Why, we're actually stuck here till they
+build a new bridge!  Can't get a machine over it, or through the
+tide-water; and the railroad bridges are nothing but skeletons, you
+very well know."
+
+"What about going over to Bearsburg----"
+
+"Nothing doing!  The roads behind this hotel are the worst in the
+world.  The main road is impassable for autos because of the work
+being done on it.  It will be a good road some time next spring.  As
+for the other highways, they are merely lanes and farm paths."
+
+"Guess you are marooned here, then, Carey," chuckled another.  "Might
+as well make up your mind to it.  Come on!  let's see if we can't get
+up a game and murder a little time."
+
+At that moment the door of the manager's office opened and the clerk
+come out.  He had a worried expression of countenance.  Now, hotel
+clerks are supposed to be urbane at all times.  Flood or fire should
+not alarm the well-trained hotel clerk.
+
+Ryder looked quickly into the inner room.  He saw the rather fleshy,
+white-waistcoated manager--a man of evident choleric temper.  He was
+talking loudly with a plainly dressed man who had a paper in his
+hand, which he was evidently insisting that the manager accept.
+
+"You must accept this service, Mr. Bangs," the smaller man
+interrupted, the manager stopping his sputtering long enough to catch
+his breath.  "It is not my fault, and personalities make no
+difference.  I am merely a court officer.  This is returnable next
+Monday.  Shall I read you the original paper?"
+
+Bangs seized the paper offered him and swore largely.  "You get out
+of here!" he roared.  "I'll fix Giddings for this trick.  Dispossess
+me, will he?  I'll show him!  I'll--I'll ruin his old hotel for him!"
+
+Ryder walked away with his cigars.  Other people's trouble did not
+stick in his mind now.  Broken bridges and impassable roads did not
+disturb him in the least; nor was he worried by the manager's
+difficulties.  He had come here for at least two peaceful, delightful
+weeks--and he was going to get them.
+
+When he entered his own rooms there had been a transformation scene
+enacted.  Ruth's trunks had arrived, and she had removed her
+traveling dress, had slipped on the dressing sack again, and, to the
+eyes of a mere man, she seemed burrowing in the several trunks like a
+squirrel in a heap of fallen leaves.
+
+"Those poor porters," she explained, "had such hard work getting
+these boxes over here.  The wagon could only come to the bridge, you
+know, and they told me they had to pole the luggage over in a
+punt---and that leaks and isn't safe.  Then they brought the boxes on
+barrows to the hotel.  Re'lly!  They worked so hard that I gave them
+a dime each."
+
+"Oh!"  Ryder clapped a hand over his mouth, and then sneezed to hide
+his laughter.  "Had--hadn't I better stay out until this is all
+over?" he asked.  He thought some of hunting up the porters and
+seeing that they had larger tips.
+
+"No.  You can remain if you will be good.  And you can see my
+dresses, too.  I think I did very well in getting them--especially
+when I wasn't _sure_, you know."
+
+"Sure of what?" he asked, comfortably, establishing himself in a
+reserved seat--that is, one that was not already hidden under billows
+of feminine wear.
+
+"Why, sure I should marry you," she said, turning to give him a
+roguish look.
+
+"Oh--ah--yes," murmured Ryder.  Then he started.  "By the way, what
+chance did you have to get ready----"
+
+His question was interrupted by a heavy summons at the door.  He went
+himself this time.  One of the bellboys was there.
+
+"Sorry, sir," said the boy in a low voice, "but the manager, Mr.
+Bangs, has to tell you that the hotel is to be vacated at once.  He
+had no notice himself, so he can give you none."
+
+"What in thunder do you mean?" demanded Ryder, in amazement.
+
+"Yes, sir.  You can't stay here, sir."
+
+"Why not?  Does the manager want his money in advance?"
+
+"No, sir.  'Tain't you alone.  Everybody's got to get out, sir.
+We're all losing our jobs, sir.  I--I don't know what to do myself,
+sir----"
+
+"Why, it's ridiculous!"
+
+"I don't know nothin' about it, sir.  I was just told to tell
+everybody in this corridor.  And you've all got to get right out.  He
+wouldn't let the clerk telephone to the rooms 'cause it would take so
+much time.  Mr. Bangs says he will turn off the lights at half past
+eight and lock the door--that's in half an hour, sir.  There's to be
+no service after that time."
+
+The boy hurried to the door of the next suite.  Ryder was too amazed
+at first to feel proper anger.  To be told that, in half an hour, one
+must get out of a hotel in which one has just established oneself----
+
+"It is preposterous!" determined John Ryder, turning back into his
+rooms.  He saw Ruth, all unconscious of the unpleasant announcement,
+still busy over the trunks.  The uselessness of her task suddenly
+smote his mind.  "Why," he muttered, "she's wasting her time.  She
+might as well stop that if we can't stay here.  And, by thunder!
+where will we go if this hotel closes--and at such an hour?
+
+"There's not another hotel open in Pinewood, I understand.  The
+bridge is down.  That fellow says traffic to the west is barred by
+the condition of the roads.  The dickens!"
+
+Ruth had paid no attention to his mutterings.  She was quite
+unconscious of his perplexity, or of its cause.  He came to a quick
+decision.
+
+"I'm going downstairs a moment, dear," he said.
+
+"All right."
+
+"All right, what?  Haven't you a name for me?" he inquired, drawing
+her to him.
+
+"All right--hubby," she replied, blushing slightly, and he kissed her
+and then shot out of the room and dashed down the single flight of
+stairs to join the excited crowd already milling about the hotel desk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"HIS TROUBLE BEGINS!"
+
+Bangs, the red-faced manager of Pinewood Inn, was facing the group of
+clamoring masculine guests like a rat at bay before a pack of
+terriers.  Every individual man in the crowd was demanding what it
+meant.
+
+Then, before he could make any audible explanation, they burst out
+again in a staccato of such observations as:
+
+"It's an outrage!  The man should be hung!"
+
+"I never heard the like!  Why, my wife says----"
+
+"It's a most abominable imposition!  Lights out at half past eight!"
+
+"And the help discharged!"
+
+"And no other hotel open anywhere along this part of the coast!
+Disgraceful!"
+
+"Not even a cottage open.  We can't go and live on these muckers who
+stay here all winter."
+
+Then a general roar, as they faced Bangs again:
+
+"What do you mean by it?"
+
+"If you'll give me a chance to tell you!" shouted Bangs, shaking both
+clenched fists in the air.  "And if you'll listen to reason perhaps I
+can make you understand."
+
+Then, as a grumbling silence was accorded him, he added: "At last I
+can make myself heard!  Lemme tell you about it.  Giddings, the
+trustee of the Barnaby estate, the owners of this hotel, and I have
+had some difficulty over the rental.  And because I won't agree to be
+robbed by him, he has taken this tack----"
+
+"What tack?" asked John Ryder, thrusting in a question which struck
+at the heart of the business.  "You haven't said what he has done."
+
+"He's served me with dispossess papers," said the heated Bangs.
+
+"Then you haven't paid your rent," Ryder observed.  "Why don't you
+pay it and not put your guests to this trouble?  Settle with Giddings
+in the courts."
+
+"He'd beat me--the scoundrel!" cried Bangs.  "And the rent is
+exorbitant.  I served him notice three months ago that I could not
+run this hotel and pay such a price for it.  It's an imposition."
+
+"It is a greater imposition on your part to give your guests half an
+hour's notice to get out.  Why, Bangs, it really can't be done, you
+know," said one man.
+
+But John Ryder, with his clear insight into anything of this kind,
+again drove right at the heart of the business.
+
+"You have had three months to prepare for this very emergency," he
+said.  "You admit that."
+
+"I don't!" yelled Bangs.  "I admit nothing of the kind.  They just
+served me----"
+
+"Then you have several days in which to arrange the matter," Ryder
+went on.  "What about this turning off the lights in half an hour?
+It is ridiculous."
+
+"That's exactly what it is," chimed in another aggrieved voice.  "You
+can't put your guests out in any such way, Mr. Bangs--and guests who,
+some of them, have been here long before you were ever manager.  My
+wife and I have been staying here for eight years.  I can't be turned
+out of my home on half an hour's notice."
+
+"Well, you'd have to get out if there was a fire," snarled Bangs.
+
+"A fire would be 'an act of God,' according to the coroner's
+finding," grimly laughed somebody.  "This isn't."
+
+"Quite the contrary.  It's a deucedly mean trick."
+
+"It isn't my fault, I tell you," Bangs mendaciously declared.  "You
+can blame that hound, Giddings.  I can't be bled any more of all my
+profits, and I am going to close my connection with this hotel
+tonight--and in a very few minutes."
+
+"Great heavens, Bangs!" exclaimed one man.  "Get out if you want to.
+We'll none of us weep over your departure.  Leave George, here, to
+run the desk and Al, the steward, to see to the kitchen and the help,
+and we'll get along all right."
+
+"And who is going to assure the help's wages?" demanded Bangs.
+"_I'm_ not, you bet!  And who'll pay for the lighting and heating?  I
+can tell you gentlemen right now there isn't coal enough in the bins
+to run the dynamos and boilers till midnight."
+
+At that a howl went up which boded ill for the manager of the
+Pinewood Inn and he dodged behind the desk before which he had been
+standing.  Several of his guests looked suddenly dangerous to Bangs.
+
+There came, however, an interruption.  Somebody said: "Here comes
+Colonel Brack," and the group parted willingly enough to let in a
+tall, military figure of a man with drooping gray mustache and
+goatee, fiery eyes under penthouse brows--a man who walked with the
+"step-clump, step-clump" of a cripple with an artificial limb.
+
+Nevertheless, Colonel Brack bore himself very erect and stepped with
+a firmness that betrayed more than ordinary hardihood of character.
+The other guests who knew him looked upon the old man with evident
+respect.
+
+"What is this I hear, Bangs?" the ex-military officer demanded in a
+deep voice.  "You sent one of your cubs to my room with a saucy
+message and I boxed his ears for him.  What do you mean by telling me
+to get out of this hotel, suh?"
+
+"I can't help it, Colonel Brack," declared the manager, backing out
+of any possible reach of the colonel's long arm.  "The hotel's got to
+close."
+
+"Then close it.  But do it decently and in order," the colonel said.
+"Still, I doubt if the Barnaby estate will allow the house to be
+shut.  They can find somebody else to run it quite as well as you,
+suh."
+
+"Well, they won't find that other man tonight!" cried Bangs, in a
+tone that showed he felt impish delight in making all this trouble.
+"And I am going to close the house now.  I've said my last word,
+gentlemen.  If you want to pack your trunks, I'll keep the dynamos
+running till nine o'clock.  There is a combination train leaves
+here--over the spur track, you understand, at that hour----"
+
+"Confound you!  Yes!" cried somebody.  "But it only goes as far as
+the Junction and there is no connection there for New York until five
+o'clock in the morning.  A nice train for ladies to take!"
+
+"And how about those of us who have our autos here?" chimed in
+another.  "The bridge is down.  Your own motor bus is out of
+commission.  The other roads are impassable for cars.  You ought to
+be beaten to death, Bangs!"
+
+"Ye-es--" drawled a sleek, dapper little man, whom, so Ryder told
+himself, one would naturally expect to speak in a crisp, quick tone,
+quite contrary to the one he used.  "Ye-es, suppose we do tha-at same
+thing.  It would not do the gu-uests of this hotel much good just
+now, perhaps; but it would rid the wo-orld of one rascal.  Tha-at
+would be to the good."
+
+Colonel Brack leaned over the counter and shook a long finger at the
+manager.
+
+"I have lived in this hotel fourteen years, sub!" he exclaimed.  "No
+manager can dispossess me.  I refuse to get out, suh--I refuse to get
+out!"
+
+[Illustration: "No manager can dispossess me.  I refuse to get out"]
+
+"That's right!  We all refuse to get out!" was the vociferous chorus.
+
+"Then you'll stay in the dark and without heat and without service,"
+growled Bangs doggedly.  "I'm doing my best for you.  I'll be liable
+for no further expense in a house of which I am dispossessed--that's
+flat!"
+
+Bangs here erased himself from the scene by dodging into the private
+office and banging the door.  The clerk oh duty was instantly
+besieged by a part of the crowd.  He could do absolutely nothing to
+assist in untangling the difficulty.  Like the other hotel employees,
+he was as much disturbed over his abrupt discharge as the guests were
+over their dismissal by the manager.
+
+"I shall remain here, even if that rascal shuts off the heat and
+lights," Colonel Brack loudly declared, in the midst of the group of
+which John Ryder was one.  "It is a preposterous--an impossible
+situation, suh!  Whoever heard the like?  A hotel cannot close its
+doors and turn its guests out upon the streets on half an hour's
+notice."
+
+"But Bangs will do as he says.  I know the dog.  When he's ugly,
+he'll do anything," returned one man gloomily.
+
+"He may turn off the heat and light; but here I stay!" reiterated the
+colonel, with all the determination of Horatius on the Bridge.
+
+"Not a pleasant prospect," said a drummer.  "I reckon I'll go and
+pack up and take that nine o'clock switchback."
+
+"We cannot all do that," Ryder finally said, with calmness.  "It is
+ridiculous to think of the ladies leaving on such short
+notice--especially those who have lived here for any length of time."
+
+"And there's one car on that train, a combination day coach and
+smoker.  It wouldn't hold a third of the guests in this house
+to-night," was the positive declaration of another man.
+
+"Besides," Ryder pursued, "how would we get our baggage away at this
+hour?  If we left it, thieves would ransack every trunk in the house.
+This Bangs is evidently a slippery customer.  He could not be found,
+it is likely, when it came time to apportion damages."
+
+"You are right, suh," said Colonel Brack.  "You are Mr. John Ryder,
+of New York?"
+
+Ryder acknowledged it.  "My wife and I have just arrived, intending
+to remain a fortnight or so.  I don't fancy having our visit spoiled
+in this way."
+
+"Then, Mr. Ryder," said the colonel pompously, "I wish you would come
+into the café with a number of us older guests, suh, where we will
+hold a council of war."  The colonel could scarcely conceive of any
+discussion being official out of sight of a bar.  "We cannot be
+driven out of this hotel in this way.  We must plan some means of
+thwarting Bangs, suh."
+
+"We'd better chip in and pay his rent for him," suggested one
+compromising individual, bent on cutting the Gordian knot with one
+simple stroke.
+
+"I understand," said the colonel hastily, "that he is at least three
+months behind in his rent.  That would never do.  And it is not
+because he is unable to pay.  The house is well patronized and he
+collects his money promptly.  It is merely a personal fight between
+him and Giddings, who, I judge, desires to break this fellow's
+connection with Pinewood Inn.  I never did like the dog."
+
+"Giddings should come down here and attend to the matter himself,
+then," said another of the angry guests.
+
+"I do not presume for a moment," said the colonel, starting for the
+barroom, "that Giddings dreamed Bangs would do this.  No, suh!  No
+gentleman could imagine such a dastardly thing."
+
+"But it seems to have been in the manager's mind for some time,"
+Ryder interposed.  "He has allowed his coal to run so low that there
+is not enough, he now says, to last the night through."
+
+"Maybe he is lying," Jimson suggested.
+
+"No," asserted some one.  "He's not lying now, for once in his life.
+He's telling the truth this time--but only because the truth is
+meaner than any lie he could possibly concoct."
+
+"He has planned to get back at Giddings and the estate by injuring
+the reputation of the hotel.  Why, gentlemen," pursued the wrathful
+colonel, all bristling like an enraged turkeycock, "this house has
+been my home for fourteen years.  I am the oldest inhabitant.  Mr.
+Jimson, here, has an invalid wife.  She cannot be taken out at this
+hour of the night.  And the house has been her home for eight years.
+It is brutal--positively brutal!"
+
+"All right!  All right!" said Ryder.  "But this isn't getting us
+anywhere.  We all know our wrongs.  Let's see what can be done to
+stop the fellow's deviltry."
+
+"By Jove!" exclaimed a man at his elbow.  "Here Bangs is turning us
+out and along come other guests.  What do you know about that?"
+
+"How could anyone get here at this hour with that bridge in that
+condition?" queried Jimson.  "Couldn't get an auto over it."
+
+"Oh, anyone that was eager enough to come could get punted over the
+inlet.  Must have come down on that train that does not stop at Barr,
+though, and motored back from the first stop below--unless a big
+enough party was on to make a special stop possible."
+
+But it was a single guest only who entered the foyer and office of
+the hotel.  This man had no luggage and he stood for a moment
+nervously drawing off his gloves as his glance swept swiftly the
+faces of those in sight.
+
+George, the clerk, stepped to the turntable on which the register
+rested.  It was not a grateful task to inform the man who had just
+come what the situation of affairs was.
+
+Ryder noticed the stranger only casually at first.  The group of
+excited men, whom he was tailing toward the café, were slow in
+leaving the vicinity of the hotel desk.
+
+When the clerk had explained the situation as well as he was able the
+disappointed guest stood back, nervously rolling his gloves and with
+an expression of indetermination upon his face.  Finally he asked
+George a question in a low voice.
+
+"No, sir.  Nobody by that name in the house, sir," the clerk said.
+
+One of the boys came through the foyer intoning the name of a guest:
+"Mr. White's wanted.  Mr. White!  Mr. White!"
+
+Nobody gave the boy any attention at first, and he approached the
+desk still singsonging the name of the man wanted.
+
+"Who's wanted?" asked George, the clerk, briskly.
+
+"Message for Mr. White.  His wife wants him upstairs--Suite Three."
+
+"White?" repeated the clerk.  "What White's that?  I didn't know----"
+
+Just then Ryder, looking back over his shoulder, chanced to see again
+the face of the last comer to the hotel.  He was as pale as death;
+Ryder could see the drops of perspiration standing on his broad, high
+brow.  He was staring at the bellboy as though in the latter he
+beheld a ghost.
+
+Suddenly, while the puzzled clerk bent over the register evidently in
+search of the name "White" among those of the new arrivals at
+Pinewood Inn, the stranger darted at the bellboy.  "Who--who is
+asking for Mr. White?" Ryder heard the man gasp.
+
+"Mrs. White.  She wants him.  Suite Three," repeated the boy.  "Mr.
+John B. White."
+
+The emotions displayed in succession upon the stranger's countenance
+ran the gamut of human expression.  Amazement, incredulity, rage,
+determination--a dozen different feelings evidently gripped the man's
+mind and soul.  Ryder had his own attention recalled with difficulty
+by Colonel Brack, who stuck his head out of the swinging door of the
+café, crying:
+
+"We're waiting for you, suh!  Mr. Ryder, what'll you take, suh?  And
+I'd like your opinion on this important matter.  It will cost us,
+severally and collectively, some money to keep this house open.  I,
+for one, will assume my share of the obligation and trust to getting
+back at Bangs afterward.  What do you say, Mr. Ryder?"
+
+The discussion of ways and means claimed the attention of John Ryder.
+Yet he glanced back at the stranger again as he entered the café.
+The latter was moving toward the stairway clutching the bellboy
+firmly by the shoulder.  Back in the mind of Ryder was this comment:
+
+"Odd about that fellow.  Acts strange.  White?  Don't know anyone of
+the name--that I remember.  Suite Three?  Why--what's the number of
+our suite?  I thought that was Number Three.  Must be Number Two.
+Odd----"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE ARROW OF SUSPICION
+
+The first excitement having worn away, the Council of War was now
+organized.  Colonel Brack had gathered together those men best fitted
+to form a working committee--and likewise best able to finance any
+scheme decided upon for the keeping open of Pinewood Inn.
+
+The situation was already thoroughly canvassed.  No other hotel in
+the vicinity was open.  To escape from the place by either motor or
+train--at least for some hours, if not days--was impossible.  Local
+residents could not take in the hotel guests had they so desired.
+Here were women and children used to every luxury who were threatened
+with dismissal from the hotel at once.  As the colonel loudly said,
+it was brutal.
+
+The track to Pinewood was for the accommodation of freight for the
+most part.  For the very reason that the owners of the Barnaby
+property wished to keep the hotel exclusive, they had fought any
+improvement in railroad accommodations.
+
+At this time of night even the station telegraph office was closed;
+and George had already informed the guests that there had been a
+break in the long-distance telephone service since dark.
+
+Any such thing as a special train to transport the guests to New York
+could not be arranged for until the following day.
+
+"And we'd have to put up with vile accommodations from here to the
+Junction," explained the excitable Jimson.  "Do you realize that this
+spur-track roadbed is scarcely fit to pull coal cars over?  My wife
+couldn't stand it, I am sure."
+
+"How about getting across to the island and to the regular railroad
+station at Barr?" John Ryder asked.
+
+"That bridge is practically a wreck.  Do you know the bus slumped
+clear through it, and will have to be raised by a derrick?  And the
+road to any other station is impossible for autos.  No, we can't get
+away and that's all there is to it."
+
+This was the consensus of opinion.  The disorganization of the hotel
+employees which would follow the closing of the doors of the house
+and its abandonment by the guests would make it unsafe to leave
+personal property in the hotel.  There were half a hundred reasons,
+and all very good ones, that proved the guests must remain.
+
+"And in union there is strength," quoted Mr. Jimson.
+
+"We must hang together," declared another.
+
+"Speaking of hanging," observed one, "how would it do to begin with
+Bangs?  I'd like to see him dangling at the end of a rope."
+
+"Better starve him," murmured another.
+
+But these futile remarks were cut off when John Ryder began to speak
+seriously.  He suggested that a committee be appointed to confer in a
+quiet way with Bangs and try to pacify him if possible--even if it
+cost some money.  Some arrangement should be made, too, for the
+retention of the servants.
+
+Ryder was at once elected by acclamation to head this committee.  The
+colonel refused to be a member.
+
+"You want cool men--calm men, suh," said the bristling old fellow.
+"I am a fire-eater.  I'd rather wring that skunk's neck than take a
+drink!"
+
+"Oh, Colonel!" exclaimed Jimson, "that is a very strong statement."
+
+"I know it.  But it's a fact.  I know my weaknesses," said the
+colonel modestly.
+
+First the committee were to make sure of the truth of the manager's
+statement regarding the coal supply.  Then they were to sound the
+help through the steward, Al, to find out how many would remain.  To
+learn what the prospect was for feeding the people in the house,
+including the help, was likewise important.
+
+"If the coal gives out," Ryder said, "there is surely coal in the
+village here that may be bought.  Perhaps not tonight, but early in
+the morning.  We should be able to find oil lamps and heaters in that
+big store which I see is still open for business.  The town has no
+gas plant, I understand.  We are dependent upon the hotel's lighting
+plant."
+
+The committee divided to attend to several of these matters before
+going to see Bangs, agreeing to meet at the desk in ten minutes.
+
+"I must not leave Ruth alone any longer," thought John Ryder, pulling
+himself up short.  "By thunder! there must be something more
+important for a bridegroom to do on his wedding night than running
+about as I am, shouldering other people's troubles.  I must go and
+take a peep at the dear girl and cheer her up a bit.  She'll be
+frightened by my remaining so long away, perhaps.  No doubt she has
+heard by this time of the manager's threat."
+
+As his suite was on the second floor he did not use the elevator, but
+ran up the broad, main stairway which led out of the office.  Here
+the hotel seemed to be running in its usual quiet way.
+
+A white-capped and aproned maid passed him; a bellboy bustled by with
+a tray of pitchers in which the ice tinkled; he heard the dull whir
+of the elevators.  He walked along the broad, central corridor and
+turned off at his own proper "alley."
+
+He saw that the door of his suite was open.  There were voices which
+reached his quickened ear--a man's deep tones and then (and this
+startled him) a woman's sharp cry.
+
+He was not yet sufficiently familiar with Ruth's voice to recognize
+its tone under stress of emotion.  But he felt, somehow, that it was
+her cry.
+
+He quickened his step.  There was a man standing in the doorway of
+the suite.  Instantly, from the side view Ryder obtained of his face,
+he knew him to be the stranger who had come last to the hotel on this
+fateful evening.
+
+"The bungling fool!" thought John Ryder.  "Is he going from room to
+room in this hotel looking for his friends?  Maybe he is not honest.
+The disturbed state of the hotel guests would open very easily the
+way to business for an industrious burglar."
+
+"I--I don't know you," Ruth said just as Ryder reached the spot.
+
+She stood within the room, clinging with both hands to the edge of
+the door and staring at the stranger with such a wild look in her
+eyes that her husband was frightened.  He turned on the man furiously.
+
+"What do you want?  What are you disturbing this lady for?"
+
+"I--I beg your pardon," stammered the stranger, backing away from
+both John Ryder and the open door of his suite, his face now
+displaying nothing but pain and anxiety.  "I have made a mistake--a
+terrible mistake."
+
+"Oh, I am so glad you have come," Ruth said quickly to Ryder.  "I--I
+thought you were lost--or something had happened.  And then this man
+came----"
+
+She was still staring at the stranger with eyes in which lurked
+actual terror.  Ryder's fierce aspect seemed to trouble the strange
+man.
+
+"I--I beg your pardon--and the lady's," he murmured.  "I thought I
+was acquainted with her.  It--it is a mistake."
+
+"I never saw him in my life!" gasped Ruth.
+
+"It's all right.  Mistakes will happen," said Ryder, and entered the
+room, shutting the door abruptly in the man's face.  He caught Ruth
+quickly in his arms with a sort of fierceness this time that was his
+man-way of claiming possession, as well as a desire to defend her
+from annoyance.  "Were you frightened, dearie?" he asked.
+
+"Yes.  He--he startled me so.  He is a strange looking man.  Do you
+think him quite--quite right?"
+
+"Not right to come bungling up here and disturbing you," Ryder
+responded, tenderly.
+
+She blushed, slipping out of his arms suddenly.  "Here, dear," she
+said softly.  "I have a visitor."
+
+Ryder looked down the room and saw for the first time a large,
+smiling woman sitting in a chair beyond the line of half-unpacked
+trunks.  She was a person whom he knew he had never seen before, and
+he was not particularly happy to see her now.
+
+She was a richly dressed--indeed a gaudily dressed--person wearing
+many jewels and lacking that quiet demeanor and appearance that Ryder
+admired most in womankind.  Nevertheless, he walked in with as good a
+grace as he could summon while Ruth introduced him.
+
+"This is my husband, Mrs. Judson," she said, and there was a thrill
+of pride in her sweet voice that delighted the man.  "Mrs. Judson has
+been telling me how dreadfully this Mr. Bangs, the hotel manager, is
+behaving.  Are they actually going to close the hotel?  Mrs. Judson
+is all upset about it.  Being alone here with only a maid, she
+doesn't know what to do."
+
+"A committee of the older guests is trying to arrange now to keep the
+house open in spite of Bangs," said John Ryder.  "But Bangs is a
+sharper.  He may have fixed things so that we shall be without light
+or heat for a part of the night.  But to-morrow----"
+
+"Oh, dear!" broke in the large lady in horror.  "I'll never dare stay
+in my rooms in the dark.  And all stark alone.  What _shall_ I do?
+You know how very helpless we widows feel, Mister--er----"  She did
+not speak the name, which evidently had escaped her, but her smirk
+caused Ryder a feeling of sudden nausea.
+
+"You don't look helpless," he thought, with much disapproval of the
+visitor.  Mrs. Judson gave one the impression of being a woman amply
+able to take care of herself in any emergency.  Aloud he said:
+
+"There are men now seeing about obtaining candles and lamps.  Perhaps
+heat may be furnished some of the rooms with the aid of oil stoves.
+Of course, the furnace fires are not out yet."
+
+"It is not cold in here," Ruth said brightly.
+
+"But it will be if what Bangs says is true.  He hasn't coal enough to
+last until midnight.  Oh, he was ready weeks ago for this trick,
+without any doubt."
+
+"And we can't get away!" wailed the heavy woman in the armchair.
+"When poor, dear Horace was alive nothing like this ever happened to
+me.  And an oil stove!  Horrid, smelly things!  Oh, I never could
+sleep with one in my room!  I am delicate, you know, quite delicate!
+Dear Horace always took the greatest care of me!"
+
+Ryder looked at the huge, over-fed woman before him, and had some
+difficulty to keep from snorting aloud at her claim of delicate
+health.
+
+"And candles!" she wailed on.  "You surely can't expect a woman to
+dress and undress by the aid of candle light!  Oh, it's all
+horrid--perfectly horrid!"
+
+She seemed on the verge of tears, and from her size Ryder expected
+nothing less than a deluge.  He made for the door.
+
+"I'll see what can be done about it," he whispered to Ruth, who
+followed him swiftly, to squeeze his hand in both her own.  "Don't
+you be troubled, dearie.  I will not remain away long."
+
+"I was troubled," she confessed in the same tone.  "Then I sent a
+bellboy to page you and he couldn't find you anywhere."
+
+"The stupid!  I was right down there in the foyer.  We'll be all
+right when this tangle is straightened out.  But, for the beginning
+of a honeymoon----"
+
+"Yes," she suddenly giggled.  "Isn't it just too _funny_?  Shall we
+really stay?"
+
+"To be sure.  Dispossessing a manager who won't pay his rent is all
+right; but to try to dispossess a guest who is ready and willing to
+pay is quite another matter.  It can't be done."
+
+"Then shall I continue to unpack my trunks?"
+
+Ryder smiled at her, then glanced back at the boxes.  They were more
+than half empty already and the open wardrobe doors gave him a view
+of a number of pretty gowns which Ruth had shaken out and hung away.
+
+"Go ahead," he said, easily.  "You'll want the furbelows out of the
+boxes, anyway.  They look as though they'd muss pretty easily."
+
+She glanced at him sidewise with a little blush, and squeezed his
+hand again.  "Don't you think they're _sweet_?" she whispered.  "I
+made them almost all myself."
+
+"Is that so?" responded Ryder, with another curious glance at the
+gowns in display.  Then he went out and she closed the door after
+him.  When he had walked half the length of the corridor he halted
+and came near going back to the suite again.  Two startling facts had
+finally made an impression on his busy mind.
+
+One was the nature of Ruth's wardrobe.  Ryder was not much versed in
+women's apparel, and all those pretty, dainty, gray and cream colored
+dresses could mean but one thing.  To his mind, they were bride's
+gowns.
+
+He had met his wife first aboard the _Minnequago_ and had known her
+just seven days before they were married.  He had seen her wear no
+dress on shipboard like these she had brought out of her trunks.
+Indeed, Miss Mont had been gowned with severity and with no more
+style than the average English woman displays.
+
+"Why," muttered Ryder, "she has a complete bridal outfit--or, it
+seems so to me.  How could she have got those dresses?  And she says
+she made them herself!"
+
+He turned back, but bethought him of Mrs. Judson.  He could have no
+private word with Ruth now.  So he walked slowly on toward the main
+stairway, and his mind reverted to the second puzzling circumstance
+he had noted.  There were few if any labels on his wife's trunks.
+
+No trunk can cross the ocean without being plastered over with the
+various marks and stamps of the European agencies, and of the
+steamship companies.  It was a small matter, perhaps--this lack of
+the usual labels--but it continued to puzzle John Ryder until he had
+descended to the office once more and found himself again in the
+thick of the circumstances connected with the attempt of the hotel
+manager to turn his guests out of house and home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+BUSINESS METHODS
+
+The members of the committee had regathered and were awaiting their
+chairman.  Matters had been found to be in a much worse condition
+than the guests had really believed.
+
+From the steward they had learned that the whole kitchen was
+disorganized, and had been so for some days.  He had had the greatest
+difficulty in preventing an eruption there.
+
+"Why?" demanded Ryder, having been told this.
+
+"They are afraid they will lose their pay.  These French and Italians
+are easily excited anyway," explained Jimson, who was not a little
+excited himself.  "The waiters and the upstairs help are in a blue
+funk for the same reason."
+
+"How about the coal?" Ryder asked another man.
+
+"It's every whit as bad as Bangs said.  There is only a little
+furnace coal.  If they use the coal intended for the kitchen fires
+there would not be enough to keep the boilers warm until daylight."
+
+"Hang that Bangs!"
+
+"With all my heart," agreed Ryder, grimly.  "But that will not get us
+any coal tonight--nor keep the hotel warmed and lighted."
+
+"The scoundrel certainly deserves to figure in a necktie party,"
+growled one man.  "My wife's in hysterics upstairs right now."
+
+"Let us interview this Bangs before he gets away," Ryder said.  "I
+understand he has really given orders to shut everything down at nine
+o'clock, and it only lacks ten minutes of that time now."
+
+The committee moved in a body on the private office.  The door was
+closed, but Ryder did not give the manager a chance to refuse them
+admittance.  He entered without knocking and the other determined men
+filed in.  Bangs sat at his desk scratching off a letter at a furious
+pace.  But he dropped his pen and turned toward them with a snarl.
+
+"Well, what is it now?"
+
+"We want your attention for a few moments, Mr. Bangs," John Ryder
+said quietly.
+
+"Who the deuce are you?" demanded the hotel manager.  "You're not
+like Brack and Jimson and these other old stagers, who have been here
+so long they think they own the house.  I never remember of seeing
+you before."
+
+Ryder handed him his card.  "That is my name," he said, "and I came
+into this house for the first time tonight.  That, however, is quite
+aside from the matter we have come to discuss.
+
+"We, the guests of this hotel, cannot be treated in this cavalier
+manner, Mr. Bangs.  We will not stand for it.  There will be damage
+suits after this night's work if you dare follow out your
+program--damage suits against the Barnaby estate of course.  But I,
+for one, shall not be satisfied until I see you properly punished
+unless you immediately change your attitude."
+
+He spoke so firmly, and the threatening attitude of his co-workers
+was so impressive, that the manager began to cower.
+
+"I tell you I can't do a thing!" he began; but John Ryder stopped him
+with raised hand.
+
+"We demand your co-operation in keeping the hotel force together
+until the owners can be communicated with and until they send
+somebody to take charge here in your place."
+
+"I'll be hanged if I will!" cried Bangs, jumping up.
+
+"And you may be hanged if you don't," declared another of the
+committee, putting a rather broad back against the office door.
+
+Again Bangs cowered.  These five men might do him bodily injury if
+they wished to.
+
+"I can't do a thing, I tell you," he whined.  "There's no coal----"
+
+"We know all about that," Ryder interrupted sternly.  "And we know
+why there is none.  You knew this dispossessory proceeding was
+pending, and you made your plans to checkmate Giddings by shutting up
+the hotel in this way.  Without regard for the comfort of your guests
+or the rights of your employees, you have tried to whip your enemy,
+Giddings, over our shoulders.
+
+"Now we, the guests, have taken the affair into our hands inasmuch as
+we propose to keep the hotel open and make the ladies and children,
+at least, as comfortable as may be.  And we shall not let you leave,
+Mr. Bangs, until you have done all in your power to repair the damage
+you have already done."
+
+"What can I do?" snarled the manager.  "I'm not going to pay for heat
+and light and for service in a hotel which I no longer manage."
+
+"You are legally in charge here until the Court puts you out."
+
+"I'll not run this hotel for that Giddings after he's served me in
+dispossess proceedings," Bangs said, turned sullen.
+
+"You will help us make the house as comfortable as possible until we
+can communicate with this Giddings and inform him of what has
+occurred," said Ryder quietly but severely.  "You have given orders
+for everything to shut down at nine o'clock.  You must rescind that
+command."
+
+"You can none of you get away after that hour," Bangs said.
+
+"Nor at that time," said Ryder promptly.  "If any of your guests are
+going on that jerkwater train they are already over there at the
+station.  But the stampede of the help must be stopped."
+
+"What do you want me to do?" growled Bangs, rather afraid of this
+determined John Ryder.
+
+"To tell the engineers to keep the dynamos and boilers running as
+long as they have a shovelful of coal.  Likewise to send word
+throughout the building for all employees who wish to retain their
+situations under the new management----"
+
+"What new management?" cried Bangs, leaping up again.
+
+"The management which will follow your régime," Ryder told him
+coolly.  "You do not suppose for a moment, do you, that the owners of
+this property will allow the hotel to close?"
+
+Bangs grinned like an angry dog.  "I don't care a hang what they do,"
+he said.  "I only know I'm out of it."
+
+"You're not out of it yet, Mr. Bangs," Ryder grimly said.  "Telephone
+to the engine room at once."
+
+The manager picked up the receiver with bad grace.  "You are
+intimidating me," he complained.
+
+"You bet we are!" exclaimed the man with his back to the door.  "And
+thank your lucky stars we don't manhandle you in the bargain."
+
+Ryder raised his hand for silence and the manager gave the order to
+the engineer.  "Now," said Ryder, "call the head chef and have him
+inform the kitchen help that the hotel will not be closed and that
+their wages will be paid."
+
+"Who's going to pay 'em?" demanded Bangs.
+
+"You do as you are told.  The courts will decide that."
+
+Bangs began to bluster; then he caught the look in the eye of the man
+with his back against the door and he once more subsided.  Together,
+Ryder and the burly committeeman were too much for Bangs' courage.
+
+The steward was called in; likewise George, the clerk on duty.  The
+two were told, Bangs agreeing doggedly, that the employees of the
+hotel were to be pacified and the guests to be made as comfortable as
+possible until Giddings could be communicated with.
+
+Then the committee of five went back to the crowd in the foyer and
+reported progress.  Colonel Brack led in acclaiming them public
+benefactors.  But their work was not yet finished.
+
+Those who knew, declared there was no possibility of finding even a
+small supply of coal without considerable delay.  The hotel manager
+had had an arrangement with the railroad company to furnish coal by
+the carload, and the local dealers would not put themselves out to
+accommodate the hotel now.  Indeed, Bangs had made himself locally
+disliked.
+
+"The best we can do is to send our committee over to Cal Crabtree's
+store and buy up all the lamps and oil stoves he's got in stock,"
+Colonel Brack said.  "I'd head such a foraging party if it wasn't for
+my artificial limb.  I'm afraid I'll get rheumatism in that if I go
+out at night," and the jovial colonel chuckled.
+
+But when it was vociferously agreed that the already elected
+committee, of which John Ryder was chairman, should do this
+purchasing and it had started out to do what Colonel Brack suggested,
+one of them observed:
+
+"Now, isn't that the colonel all over?  That bum peg of his keeps him
+out of a lot of trouble.  He's off this committee because some of us
+will have to put up money and then run the risk of getting it back
+from the estate, or from that slippery Bangs.  The colonel gets cold
+in that artificial foot plaguey easy if the cards go against him at
+poker."
+
+And indeed, before they got to the general store, the committee was
+in a wrangle over this very thing.  Who was going to put up the money
+for the lamps and stoves?  Nobody seemed to care to step info the
+breech.  John Ryder listened and said nothing at first.  Finally he
+suggested:
+
+"Let's divide it among us.  Think of the ladies----"
+
+"Let those who have got 'em, think of 'em," snapped one bachelor.
+"That's nothing in my young sweet life."
+
+"Oh, I say, Long, you wouldn't mind putting up a share for Mrs.
+Judson, would you?" chuckled another.
+
+"By jove! that's what I am afraid of," declared the bachelor.  "If
+the widow ever heard I put up money to buy her an oil heater, she'd
+have me in court in breach of promise proceedings."
+
+It was evident the large lady was a standing joke among the men at
+the hotel.  Ryder frowned.  He was sorry that she had forced her
+society on Ruth.
+
+Meanwhile, the four other members of the committee agreed that they
+would not put their hands in their pockets.  On the very steps of the
+store they halted and vociferously stated this decision.
+
+"Let's go back and take up a collection," said the bachelor member.
+"I know those ginks back there.  There are more hard boiled eggs in
+that bunch at Pinewood Inn than you could find anywhere else along
+the coast.  I'm not going to be nicked for more than my share."
+
+With this his brother-committeemen seemed to agree.  All but Ryder.
+The latter looked at his watch.  It was already half after nine.
+There was every sign as they came along the street that the villagers
+were retiring for the night; and as they stood discussing the matter
+the proprietor of the store began to put out his lights.
+
+"You can go back and ask for further instructions if you wish to,
+gentlemen," said Ryder in disgust.  "But I will go in and see what I
+can do.  There is no time to waste."
+
+"At your peril, Mr. Ryder," said one.  "Don't drag us into it."
+
+"I never forced a man into a deal yet--especially if he was a bad
+loser," declared John Ryder, and turned his back on the others to
+enter the store alone.
+
+He found the proprietor, a shrewd, long-headed countryman, ready to
+be affable, or businesslike, as the case might be.  Ryder knew well
+how to tackle such a character.  He had been doing business with all
+kinds of men all his life.  He went directly to the point of the
+matter.
+
+"I want every oil lamp you've got in the shop, and all your candles,
+and those oil heaters yonder.  If you have oil, I want a barrel.  And
+I want you to find me a truckman right now to cart 'em over to the
+hotel.  I'll give you cash, or my check, in full for the whole
+amount.  What say?"
+
+"It's a bargain," laconically said the storekeeper, and there was
+little haggling either, over the price of the articles bought.  Ryder
+did not believe that Crabtree was over-reaching him on that point,
+for he seemed to sympathize with the situation of the people in the
+hotel.
+
+"That bridge breaking down is a bad business.  Foolish, too,"
+Crabtree agreed.  "The Highway Department of this town is about as
+useful as a left-handed boot to a man who's only got a wooden leg on
+that side of him.  And let me tell you, Mr. Ryder, the bridge won't
+be repaired again in a hurry.  Nothing ever is done in a hurry by our
+road menders and bridge builders."
+
+Ryder was more intimately interested in the supplies he could buy.
+There were two full boxes of so-called "waxlights" and a box of
+tallow candles of the double-six size.  There were over a hundred
+lamps of all kinds and sizes, and the oil stoves numbered
+twenty-three.  The check Ryder made out was a substantial one.
+
+In half an hour he was back at the hotel where the guests were
+wrangling in the foyer over how the bill for supplies should be
+apportioned.  The other members of the committee were finally
+instructed to pay for the goods out of a collection of about two
+hundred dollars that had been grudgingly made.
+
+"Here's Ryder!" exclaimed Colonel Brack, red-faced and excited.  "He
+should head this committee again.  He is a chap who _does_ things.
+Ryder forever!"
+
+The colonel's evening potations began to show upon him.  Ryder tried
+to brush by on his way to the desk.
+
+"You're just the man we want on this committee," reiterated the
+colonel, following him.
+
+"What committee?" the business man asked.
+
+"The committee on buying supplies."
+
+"It discharged itself half an hour ago," said Ryder, bruskly.  "And
+now there is nothing for it to do."
+
+"Why not?" gasped several, including the colonel, who asked the
+question truculently.
+
+John Ryder bit off the end of his cigar and lit it calmly.
+
+"As far as I know, gentlemen, I've bought up every lamp, every oil
+stove, every candle, and all the surplus supply of oil in this
+village tonight.  I bought them on to my own private account.  If I
+decide to resell them I'll let you know later."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+SHOCK UPON SHOCK
+
+The clamor of those who heard John Ryder's statement drew most of the
+crowd surging toward the desk, before which the business man stood.
+Colonel Brack, reddening and with glittering eyes, advanced upon
+Ryder with his "step-clump" stride, demanding:
+
+"Suh! do you call this a gentlemanly thing to do?  Why, suh, the
+women and children in this hotel are at your mercy.  It's an outrage,
+suh!"
+
+"The rest of the committee backed out on the steps of the store,"
+said Ryder coolly.  "Time was passing."
+
+"Why, the money is already put up for the supplies," cried somebody
+with much bombast.
+
+"Not for these supplies that I have obtained," said Ryder decisively.
+"In the first place two hundred dollars will not go far toward the
+purchase of the goods."
+
+"You mean to profit upon our necessities, do you, Mr. Ryder?" cried
+Jimson shrilly.
+
+"Shylock!" exclaimed another of the angry men.
+
+Ryder turned his back upon them and approached George.
+
+"I've bought the stuff," he said shortly.  "It was a perfectly
+legitimate transaction."
+
+"By gad, suh!" reiterated the wrathful colonel, "you have taken an
+unfair advantage of a party of gentlemen who trusted you.  You're
+a----"
+
+Ryder failed to hear the remainder of the colonel's sputterings.  But
+a voice nearer to his ear could not be drowned.  This said:
+
+"By George! that Ryder's a cleaner.  He was never known to let a good
+chance slip in the Street, they say, and I can believe it.  He's got
+us where the hair's short--and it's our own fault."
+
+John Ryder was angry.  The manner in which the other members of the
+committee had dodged financial responsibility and were now declaiming
+against his "grasping" methods, exasperated him.  He would not give
+them the satisfaction of an explanation.  He took nobody but the
+steward and the clerk into his confidence.
+
+It was while he was discussing matters with these two employees of
+the hotel that the engineer sent up word that he had been forced to
+bank the fires under the boilers, but that the dynamos would be kept
+running until midnight.
+
+"That man seems faithful," Ryder observed.  "Has word been sent
+around for the help to come together for a talk with us?  We want to
+know how many will remain here."
+
+The steward turned red and blurted out: "I don't believe--that is, it
+will be difficult to get many of them together, sir."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It is believed that Mr. Bangs will not pay wages beyond today, and
+the men and girls are deserting.  Some went on that nine o'clock
+train, and others have found means of getting away from the hotel."
+
+"By thunder!" ejaculated Ryder.  "Where's Bangs?  We'll get what's
+left of the help together and make him assure them----"
+
+"I--I don't think Mr. Bangs is here," hesitated George.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I couldn't help his going, sir.  I could not hold him by force, you
+know.  You gentlemen should have had him watched."
+
+"What has he done?" asked Ryder, recovering his calmness.
+
+"Right after you gentlemen left I heard him telephoning to the
+railroad station.  The operator and agent were not there, but the
+conductor of that combination was.  He's a friend of Bangs'.  The
+train was held ten minutes.  It did not get away until ten minutes
+past nine.  And I think Mr. Bangs went on it."
+
+"And his going has disorganized the whole household," the steward
+added, sadly.  "The chef has the kitchen fairly under control now.
+He's an Italian--Vitalli is his name--not a bad fellow at all and
+attached to the house rather than to Bangs--as I am and George, here,
+is."
+
+"You believe the estate will do the right thing by you?" Ryder asked
+curiously.
+
+"Yes," said the steward.  "The heirs will not wish the house closed.
+In such a way, too!  They would consider it a disgrace.  Pinewood Inn
+is one of the oldest hotels on the coast.  This Mr. Giddings, the
+lawyer, doesn't know much about the hotel business, I fancy, or he
+would not have acted so precipitately and given Mr. Bangs a chance to
+put the guests out.  If all the help would work together we'd come
+out all right.  But most of them care nothing about the hotel or the
+welfare of its guests," and the steward wagged his head.
+
+"Where are the other clerks?" Ryder asked of George.
+
+"Mr. Manger, the head clerk, went to town day before yesterday.
+Somehow, I feel that he had some wind of what was coming.  But heaven
+knows _I_ didn't, Mr. Ryder."
+
+"Or you would have gone, likewise?" asked the man of business, with a
+grim smile, but watching the ruddy young fellow with his plastered
+yellow hair in some curiosity.
+
+"Well--no," hesitated George.  "I think I should have hung on in any
+case.  You see," he added, "I'm rather fond of a scrap.  And Jim
+Howe--he relieves me at midnight--_he'll_ see it through, no fear!"
+
+"Well, gentlemen," Ryder finally said with a sigh, "there doesn't
+seem to be much now that we can do save to sit tight.  You two
+influence all the employees you can to stick by the ship.  These
+lights and stoves and oil are already at the door, I have no doubt.
+You take charge of them all," he said to the steward, "and get
+somebody to fix up the lamps and fill them.  But give none of them
+out until George, here, has listed them.  He knows more about the
+guests and their needs than any of us, I presume."
+
+Ryder had no time to go upstairs just then; but fearing Ruth would be
+again disturbed by his continued absence, he scratched off a little
+note and handed it to one of the boys.
+
+"Now, give that to nobody but Mrs. Ryder," he told the boy,
+remembering Mrs. Judson, who he feared might still be hovering about
+the suite.
+
+Ryder observed that the male guests who had heretofore been so
+friendly with him now eyed him askance and that Colonel Brack had
+gathered around him a group that he was haranguing vigorously.  By
+the fiery glances cast in his direction by the old campaigner Ryder
+was quite sure Brack spoke of him.
+
+"I am certainly getting _persona non grata_ in this hotel," murmured
+Ryder, with grim humor.
+
+Then, of a sudden, he saw that one of those listening to Colonel
+Brack was the man who had disturbed Ruth at the door of their suite.
+Ryder turned back to speak once more with the clerk:
+
+"Who is that fellow?" he asked, calling George's attention to the
+stranger.
+
+"That man?  Let's see--he came tonight.  Refused to be turned away
+although at that time, being under Mr. Bangs' instructions, I told
+him we could not accommodate him.  And I have not yet assigned him a
+room.  But his name's White."
+
+George whirled the register about and pointed to the last name on the
+page.  Ryder murmured it over to himself: "'John B. White, Rome.'
+
+"Rome, what?  New York, Georgia, or the original home of the Cæsar
+family?" Ryder asked carelessly.
+
+"I don't know, sir.  He just wrote that down.  I don't really know
+what do to with him.  I think from something he dropped that he came
+here expecting to find friends."
+
+"And didn't find them?"  Ryder's curiosity prompted him to demand.
+
+"He hasn't seemed to."
+
+"Who are his friends?  Don't you know their names?"
+
+"I--I----  Well, I declare, sir, he did mention one name.  That of a
+Miss--Miss----  Well, it escapes me," said George, in confusion.  "It
+was just at the outburst of this trouble, and I was all mixed up.  I
+am sure it was a lady he asked me about.  Perhaps it is a runaway
+match and the lady has backed out," and George chuckled at his own
+joke.
+
+"He doesn't act much like a bridegroom," observed Ryder, still
+watching White.
+
+"I might say that about you, Mr. Ryder," ventured the clerk slyly.
+
+"By thunder! that's so," admitted Ryder.  "Nor do I feel like one.
+This is a nice mess for a fellow to get into at such a time.  I can't
+say that I am glad I came to Pinewood Inn for my honeymoon, George."
+
+But as he strolled away from the hotel desk his mind was still fixed
+on the man, White.  He remembered the bellboy coming through the
+foyer paging "John B. White" and saying that Mrs. White wanted him
+upstairs.  Now, hang it! if Mrs. White was here, didn't the hotel
+clerk know her?
+
+"Odd--deucedly odd," thought John Ryder.  "And how startled that
+fellow was when he heard the boy.  Or was he?  Not a bad looking
+fellow; but he's queer.  Ruth says he is touched in the upper story,
+and I believe myself that some of his buttons are loose.
+
+"Or, if he is a crook--and that would not be so strange," added
+Ryder, letting his mind run upon this train of thought.  "A crook
+with a woman accomplice in this hotel might easily make a good haul
+tonight, considering the state affairs are in.  I wonder if there
+isn't a detective attached to Pinewood Inn."
+
+Before he could turn back to ask George about this, his attention was
+attracted from the man, White, to an old gentleman who had just left
+the elevator leaning on the arm of a colored man.  The old fellow was
+in some excitement, and he hobbled quickly to the desk, his gray hair
+bristling from under the rim of the round black cap he wore, his feet
+shuffling in gay carpet slippers.
+
+It was evident that he had retired to his room for the night, and had
+made himself comfortable there.  Something had routed him out and he
+had merely shrugged himself into a coat before coming down to the
+office.
+
+"Look here, sir!  Look here, sir!" the old man cried, shaking his
+cane at George in a hand that quivered with palsy.  "What does this
+mean?  How dare that Bangs turn us out of the hotel in such a way?
+I'll write Mr. Giddings about it.  Mr. Giddings is my friend.  He
+will not see me so insulted and annoyed."
+
+Ryder heard an amused bystander say:
+
+"Here's old Pop Cudger; he's on the warpath, too.  Now there'll be
+something doing."
+
+"Get him and the colonel together and there will be fireworks, sure
+enough," agreed another man, with a chuckle.
+
+George was trying to pacify the angry old man, but the latter would
+not accord the clerk's explanation much attention.
+
+"It is nonsense!  It is preposterous!" cried Mr. Cudger.  "Mr.
+Giddings is my friend----"
+
+"And if Giddings hadn't been so anxious to put Bangs out we wouldn't
+all be in this pickle," somebody remarked loud enough for Mr. Cudger
+to hear.
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed the latter, turning a withering glance upon the
+speaker, and then immediately turning back to George.  "Is it true
+that the lights are to be put out?"
+
+"The dynamos can't run later than midnight.  Then the lights will
+naturally have to be shut off all over the hotel, Mr. Cudger.  I'm
+sorry, sir----"
+
+"Lights turned out--and half the help running away?" cried Cudger.
+"Next thing, I suppose, James, here, will be leaving me in the
+lurch," and he glared at the colored man.
+
+"Oh, no, suh!  I'se gwine to stay right heah by yo'," declared James.
+
+"And what's going to become of my picture?" demanded the old
+gentleman, beginning on another tack.  "What provision has been made
+to guard my picture, sir----  Van Scamp's famous 'Cheesemonger'?
+That was hung in the parlor by special permission of Mr. Giddings,
+sir."
+
+"I don't think anybody will touch your picture, Mr. Cudger," said the
+clerk, soothingly.
+
+"Ha!  How do you know that?  In the state of confusion the house is
+now in, some vandal might easily cut the canvas out of its frame.  It
+cost me many thousands of dollars, sir--and it's the finest example
+of Van Scamp's art in existence today.  I will not trust it unguarded
+in that parlor under present circumstances."
+
+"But I can't furnish a watchman to guard your picture," George urged.
+
+"Well, where's the house detective?" demanded the old gentleman.  "I
+must have protection for my picture."
+
+"You certainly can't expect Miss Solomons to stand guard over it!"
+the clerk exclaimed.  "You'd better have it removed to your room."
+
+"You clown!" exclaimed the crotchety old man.  "It wouldn't go
+through the door of my room.  That is why it has to be hung in your
+miserable parlor."  And as the clerk restrained both his temper and
+his tongue, he added: "If you will not furnish a watchman--and Mr.
+Giddings shall hear of your refusal, sir!--then James will have to
+guard the picture."
+
+"Oh, no suh!" murmured the colored man.  "Dat ain't no place fo' me
+all night.  No, suh!  Yo' might need me----"
+
+"You will have to do it, James," repeated the old man.  "If the
+lights go out what is going to prevent that canvas being cut out of
+the frame?"
+
+"Das jest it, suh!" rejoined the colored man.  "I don't want to stay
+dere in de dark--no, suh!"
+
+"You are a coward, James--a pusillanimous coward!"
+
+"Yes, suh!  Dat may be, suh.  But yo' might need me in de night."
+
+"Of course I shall need you.  I'll likely have one of my choking
+spells--or something.  But I can't risk losing my Van Scamp.  We
+shall both have to watch it, James.  We will camp in the parlor all
+night.
+
+"Young man," turning to George, "have a bed brought into the parlor
+for me.  I will sleep there, and James shall keep watch."
+
+"But, Mr. Cudger, that is the main parlor of the hotel.  We cannot
+very easily let you sleep there," cried the distracted George.
+
+At this point Ryder lost interest in the entire affair.  The boy he
+had sent upstairs with the note to Ruth tugged at his sleeve.
+
+"I can't find the lady, sir," he said, returning the letter to Ryder.
+
+"Can't find who?"
+
+"Mrs. Ryder, sir."
+
+The man was amazed, and for an instant he was a little frightened.
+"Where did you go, boy?" he demanded.
+
+"To Suite Three--where you told me.  She wasn't there."
+
+"How do you know she wasn't there?"
+
+"The lady told me so.  The lady who was there.  She told me I'd made
+a mistake."
+
+Ryder started for the staircase, his mind in a whirl.  Where could
+Ruth have gone?  Possibly to Mrs. Judson's apartment.  Yet if so, who
+had met the boy and sent him away from Suite Three with such a
+message?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE BRIDAL NIGHT
+
+The excitement among the guests had now spread to the floors above.
+Too, there was a noticeable dearth of serving people.  In the parlor
+on this second floor into which Ryder glanced curiously on his way to
+his own rooms, was a crowd of women with a sprinkling of husbands,
+discussing the situation in varying degrees of anxiety.
+
+The corridors and parlor were ablaze with electric lights, and Ryder
+saw the great picture, covering half the further end-wall of the
+room, about which Mr. Cudger was making such a row at the clerk's
+desk.
+
+An especially arranged string of lights over the picture cast the
+proper glow upon it.  It really was the work of a master of color,
+but that its owner should consider it in danger of suffering the fate
+of some of the great paintings that have been stolen, rather amused
+John Ryder.
+
+While he stood for a moment looking at the picture he realized that a
+sudden hush had fallen upon the several groups in the parlor, and he
+saw that the majority of the guests there assembled were staring at
+him.  Whether their interest was aroused because he was a bridegroom
+or because he had cornered the lighting and heating supplies of the
+village, the man of business did not know--nor did he care.  He
+shrugged his shoulders and passed on.
+
+A bridegroom!  Well, this did not seem a very fortunate beginning for
+one's honeymoon.  Another man might have easily slipped from under
+the duties that had settled on John Ryder's shoulders.  But it was
+his way, when he saw things going wrong, to step in and right them.
+
+He had given his mind to this business of trying to bring some order
+out of the chaotic condition of affairs in the hotel with as much
+zest as he ever gave to business matters.  Now, as he approached the
+apartment in which he and Ruth had expected to be so happy in each
+other's society for the next few weeks, he tried to throw off all the
+anxieties that had recently accumulated in his mind.
+
+This was his bridal night.  He had fallen in love with the most
+beautiful and charming woman he had ever met, and had married her
+offhand.  Were it not for this troublesome matter of the hotel
+closing, he would be the happiest man alive.
+
+Indeed, he was the happiest man alive in any case.  Had he not just
+been married to the loveliest and sweetest girl in the world?  Was
+not _his wife_ (John Ryder almost strutted) waiting for him in their
+rooms at this very moment?
+
+Then a feeling of humility, unusual humility in this successful
+business man who was accustomed to getting what he wanted, overcame
+him.  What was he to have won this jewel of a woman in so short a
+time?  Seven days, and she had consented to become his wife!  Men
+sometimes strove and worked for the love of a woman for months--for
+years!  But no--that could not be real love!  When two people loved
+as he and Ruth loved, there was no waiting in uncertainty.  They knew
+it--they must know it--at once.
+
+In spite of his thirty-five years and his somewhat ruthless business
+career, John Ryder was undoubtedly still very much of a boy.  And
+indeed, in love matters, he was but a boy, inasmuch as never before
+had he even imagined himself in love.
+
+"Confound this old ranch, anyway!" John Ryder muttered.  "Why should
+I bother my head about it--or about these silly folks in it?  I
+declare! we'll find some way of getting out of the pickle ourselves
+tomorrow morning and go to some place where we can enjoy our
+honeymoon undisturbed."
+
+Then he remembered that Ruth had chosen Pinewood particularly.  It
+might be only a whim on her part; but he was in a mind just then to
+satisfy even her whims, if it could be done.
+
+"This man, Giddings, will show up, and things will probably be
+running all right before tomorrow night.  And Ruth--God bless that
+sweet name!--has taken all the trouble to unpack.  By thunder!" he
+added, "it's funny about those dresses of hers.  I must ask her----"
+
+He had come to the door and opened it softly--so softly indeed that
+the occupant of the room did not hear him.  His heart throbbed and
+his eyes actually smarted with unshed drops as he looked down the
+long apartment and saw his wife sitting reading in the radiance of
+the drop-light at the table.
+
+She was alone.  The other lights had been extinguished, and she sat
+awaiting his return, evidently with her mind not wholly upon the book
+in her lap, for she turned no leaves while Ryder watched her.
+
+In her attitude and in the loosely flowing gown she had donned since
+dinner, she made a delightful picture.  Ryder drank in the details as
+he stood, shrinking from breaking the spell of her reverie.
+
+It was by no means a sad mood which held her, for her lips slowly
+parted in a most ravishing smile.  He could see this, though it was
+her profile only he watched from his station at the door.
+
+He was about to close the latter softly when she dropped her book and
+her fingers fluttered about her throat for a moment.  She loosened
+her gown there, thrust one hand within the laces, and drew forth a
+tiny object attached to a thin gold chain which he had already
+noticed about her throat.  The ornament she held for a moment in her
+palm was a locket.
+
+When she snapped it open and gazed upon what it contained she turned
+a little so that he saw her expression of countenance more clearly.
+It startled him.
+
+He was a sane and level-headed man.  He was thirty-five, and the
+foolish emotions of adolescence should not have ruffled his calm.
+Yet aboard the steamship he had felt an unrecognized pang of jealousy
+whenever he saw Miss Mont talking with Marks, the theatrical man.  A
+similar pang smote him now.
+
+No human being ever looked as Ruth looked unless the object of such
+gaze was a dearly loved one, or the memento of a loved one!  While
+Ryder watched, his wife raised the locket reverently and pressed her
+lips to the object it contained.
+
+He must have uttered some sound, or moved, or the door latch clicked
+as he closed it.  She started, saw him, and hastily concealed the
+locket in her bosom, rising in some confusion to greet him.
+
+The arrow of suspicion first driven into his mind when he had seen
+that stranger at their door and Ruth had seemed so frightened, was
+barbed.  Now that he sought to cast it out of his thought, it rankled.
+
+What! was he of a low, suspicious, jealous nature?  Was he the kind
+of cur to make himself and his wife miserable by a jealousy that was
+insulting to them both?
+
+This woman and he had known each other but a short time before their
+hasty marriage, but Ryder flattered himself that he had drawn from
+her a rather full and connected story of her life up to the day she
+had stepped aboard the _Minnequago_.
+
+There had been nothing in her story, he was positive, of which she
+needed to be ashamed.  There had been no man but him.  She had told
+him that frankly.
+
+She might possess some keepsake; but only such as an honorable wife
+might have.  He knew it--he would stake his life upon it!
+
+Perhaps it was some dear reminder of the mother she had scarcely
+known.  He had carried his mother's wedding ring all these years
+until he had given it to the clergyman to slip on Ruth's finger.  He
+saw the glint of that ring now as she advanced to meet him with hands
+outstretched and the same light in her eyes that he had seen just now
+while she bent above the locket.
+
+"I am a fool!" bethought.  "A wicked fool."
+
+He hurried down the room and clasped her yielding body within the
+circle of his arms.  There was a passion in his embrace which he had
+scarcely expressed before, and she seemed to feel it.
+
+"Dearest!" she whispered.  "I am glad you have come back, I was
+getting lonesome again," and she gave him her lips of her own accord.
+
+The heart of John Ryder beat higher.  He remembered what he had told
+her aboard ship:
+
+"I'll never bring tears to your eyes, but always laughter to your
+heart!"
+
+"And a villain I'd be to break my word.  Now is not the time to ask
+an explanation of such a simple act.  It might show her how mean and
+vile a thought I had," was his thought.
+
+"I sent a message up to you a while ago, but the boy seemed unable to
+find you," he said.
+
+"Why, I never saw such stupid boys as they have at this hotel!
+Another knocked on our door while Mrs. Judson was here and asked for
+somebody else."
+
+"Oh, the guests are all around, visiting in each other's rooms, I
+presume," he observed.  "The whole household is upset.  And you never
+saw such a lot of cranks as there are here in your life.  A circus
+sideshow has no more freaks, I guess, than a hotel like this Pinewood
+Inn."
+
+Ryder, laughing, told of old Mr. Cudger and his picture, and sketched
+the character of Colonel Aurelius Brack.  Incidentally he told her
+something of what had been done, though in an impersonal way, to make
+the guests comfortable and to keep the employees of the hotel on
+their jobs.
+
+"Dear me, John!" she cried, leading him to a couch where they could
+sit side by side, "I thought this was to be a vacation for both of
+us," looking at him roguishly.  "A honeymoon!  It should begin pretty
+soon, don't you think?"
+
+"Do you want to pack those trunks again and leave in the morning?"
+
+"No-o.  I want to stay here if we can.  But can't some of the other
+men attend to all these things?"
+
+"They are attending to them.  They are discussing them to beat the
+band!  But nobody seemed to have any really practical ideas--not when
+it touched their pocketbooks," and Ryder laughed grimly.
+
+"I'm going down once more to see about something particular.  The
+dining-room is still open.  It will be late before we get to bed, and
+you only pecked at your dinner, I noticed.  Don't you want to come
+down for a bite--or will it be too much trouble?"
+
+"Ah-ha!" she said shaking a finger at him, "you have the late-supper
+habit.  I believe you are a gay boy.  I certainly shall not let my
+hubby go out alone to suppers.  And--whisper it!--I am hungry.  I was
+so excited when we arrived.  And people stared so at us down
+there----"
+
+"They'll stare now," he said smiling.
+
+"Especially if I should go down in this robe?" and she blushed as she
+sprang up from the couch.  "I will put on one of my nicest and,"
+looking at him from across the room with sparkling eyes, "bridiest
+gowns!"
+
+She disappeared within the curtains of the bedchamber.  Ryder started
+up.
+
+"Oh, by the way, about those gowns--" he began awkwardly, when a
+summons at the door terminated his proposed speech abruptly.  The
+steward had sent up for him to come down in haste.  The supplies from
+the store had arrived, and the guests were clamoring at the storeroom
+door for a distribution of the lamps and candles.
+
+Ryder stepped back to the door of the inner room.
+
+"I've got to run down again, Ruth," he said.
+
+She uttered a little scream when he appeared in the doorway; but then
+she came to kiss him without affectation.  Her white shoulders and
+arms, bared for the moment, almost dazzled him.  Ryder smiled down
+into her eyes and saw in their depths what he wished to see.
+
+"Come below when you are ready.  There is a little waiting room at
+the foot of the main stairway and you can see all over the office
+from there.  I'll probably see you come down; but if I'm not in
+sight, go to the dining-room, if you like, and select a table."
+
+He said this, kissed her again, and hastened after the steward's
+messenger.  Descending in the elevator he found a crowd about the
+little office in which the steward made up his accounts, just back of
+the café.
+
+Colonel Brack was foremost in the disturbance, and when Ryder
+appeared the old campaigner turned upon him wrathfully.
+
+"See here, Ryder!" he exclaimed, "you can't do this.  You must have
+some of the instincts of a gentleman about you, and you should
+remember the women----"
+
+"I can excuse a man who has been drinking," interposed Ryder sharply;
+"and I cannot strike a cripple.  But I advise you to have a care how
+you address me."
+
+Brack threw himself forward at him; but two of his friends held back
+the unsteady old fire-eater.  "By gad, suh, I'd call you out for that
+if you were not such a dog, suh!"
+
+"I am not dog enough to run at every fool's call," responded Ryder.
+And then he ignored the sputtering Brack, turning to the remainder of
+the party: "Gentlemen, I shall see that you make no raid on these
+supplies I have secured.  They are my private property and I shall do
+with them as I see fit."
+
+"My goodness, man! you don't intend to freeze us out completely, do
+you?" gasped Jimson, whose wife was an invalid.
+
+"I shall distribute them as I choose and under such terms as I see
+fit," Ryder repeated calmly.  "The steward is to have direct control
+of them.  Within the next hour, and before the electric lights are
+put out, the matter will all be arranged.
+
+"None of you at first wished to take any financial responsibility for
+the good of the general herd.  I took that responsibility.  Why
+should I not reap my proper reward?" and he smiled at them grimly.
+
+Then he shut the door of the office in their faces and consulted with
+the steward again.
+
+"How many of the help will stay?" he asked.
+
+"Perhaps half, sir.  Some of the guests' private servants--the maids
+and valets--have gone already with the others on that train.  There
+are drafts being made on George and me for some of the maids and
+waiters----"
+
+"Cut that off.  Refuse everybody," advised Ryder.  "These people will
+have to get along without such personal service for the present.
+They should know that without explanation.  You need every man and
+woman you've got on your roster, don't you?"
+
+"Why, sir, I don't see how we shall get along at all with so few in
+the morning."
+
+"So I thought.  Now, follow out my instructions to the letter in the
+matter of the placing of the oil lamps.  Send the porters around
+through the corridors to screw up the brackets for the bracket lamps.
+There are more than four dozen of those.  We'll decide about the
+stoves later.  It is not getting very cold out of doors, and nobody
+will suffer much before bedtime."
+
+He left the steward's room and went back to the office, ignoring the
+men who stood about and looked at him as though he were a dog in a
+strange town.  As he walked down the long corridor and came in sight
+of the stairway he observed Ruth standing at the foot of the flight.
+Half the men in the foyer had turned to look at her, and Ryder saw
+her color and shrink toward the curtained entrance of the dining-room.
+
+Ryder did not wonder that the other guests stared at her.  This did
+not fan any foolish jealousy into flame.  It was because she was so
+very, very beautiful that she attracted attention.
+
+If she had been attractive in the traveling dress she had worn at
+dinner, this gray and pink costume enhanced her beauty marvelously.
+
+The wonder of it smote Ryder again.  How came his wife by such gowns?
+When did she get them?  What did it mean?
+
+And then something occurred to draw his mind from this thought.  He
+saw Ruth whisper to a passing bellboy and then she disappeared into
+the dining-room.
+
+Ryder walked slowly forward expecting the boy would come directly to
+him.  But to his amazement the messenger did not glance in his
+direction.  Instead the boy approached a group in one corner and
+Ryder saw that the man calling himself "John B. White" was a member
+of that group.
+
+The bellboy said something.  Ryder was watching White's face.  He saw
+the man pale, then color, and with quick steps he crossed the foyer
+and entered the dining-room as though directly in answer to the
+summons from Mrs. Ryder!
+
+The half-stunned bridegroom caught at the sleeve of the bellboy as he
+came back.
+
+"See here!" he whispered, fiercely, in the ear of the startled
+messenger, "who did the lady send for?"
+
+"Mr. White," was the answer of the boy, and looked at Ryder in wonder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+WITH THE WORLD SHUT OUT
+
+Ryder stopped dead in his tracks and let the boy pass on.  His
+usually well ordered mind was a chaos.
+
+To see Ruth deliberately send for that man whom she had declared she
+did not know, and seemingly make an engagement to meet him in the
+hotel dining-room!  Well! it was enough to make any husband
+suspicious.
+
+John Ryder's impulse was to follow swiftly after White.  Had he done
+so, there would have been an ugly scene in the dining-room of
+Pinewood Inn.  But the blaze of anger that immediately leaped up
+within him, and would have choked his utterance and perhaps made him
+disgrace himself, warned Ryder that it would be the part of wisdom
+for him to cool down before presenting himself in the dining-room.
+
+He swung on his heel and returned along the corridor.  The café door
+was right before him.  He was not a drinking man--that is, one who
+made a practice of patronizing a bar, or drinking other than at his
+meals; but the swinging door of the hotel café invited him, and he
+felt that if ever in his life he wanted a drink it was now.
+
+The bar had been well patronized all the evening, the trade keeping
+the two white jacketed men behind it on the jump.  Here was the storm
+center of the indignant outburst against the hotel management, and
+Colonel Brack's frequent visits to the bar had increased his fluency
+and fanned the fires of his rage against what he loudly termed "this
+beastly imposition, suh!"
+
+He was calling it this and harder things when Ryder entered.  The
+latter slipped quietly up to the bar, told the man what he wanted,
+and waited to sip the appetizer without giving the least attention to
+the other patrons.  But his appearance did not pass unmarked.  There
+were plenty of trouble breeders ready to call the colonel's attention
+to Ryder's presence.
+
+Suddenly there was a roar at the end of the bar and the colonel,
+crying, "Lemme at him!  Lemme see him!" charged down the line,
+brushing the men along the rail away like flies.
+
+The crowd cleared the way instantly, leaving the space open between
+the wrathful old campaigner and the man quietly sipping his sherry
+and bitters.  Perhaps the suspicion that the colonel was in the habit
+of "going heeled" made the shrinkage of the men hanging on the
+bar-rail so unanimous.
+
+Colonel Brack, afflicted with an artificial limb, was not possessed
+of that grace of movement necessary to make a man a personable figure
+in leading a cotillion; but he was getting over the floor with mighty
+strides until he suddenly awoke to the fact that none of his friends
+was restraining him.
+
+Not a single man in the group of his adherents laid hold on his
+coat-tails or tried to soothe and pacify the doughty warrior, while
+Ryder stood coolly sipping his drink.
+
+It was an embarrassing moment.  The colonel halted midway in his
+flight and glanced hastily about; but nobody came tardily to his aid.
+They all plainly considered that John Ryder deserved all that was
+coming to him--and they were willing in this case to let the colonel
+go ahead.
+
+Ryder meanwhile watched the colonel curiously, but made no move to
+guard himself from the threatened attack.  For fourteen years Colonel
+Brack had been a picturesque figure in the café of Pinewood Inn.  It
+was whispered among those whom the colonel had taken into his
+confidence at odd and various times, that he had in the West a
+reputation for being "a bad man to stir up, suh!"
+
+Usually he played his cards so well that he was "saved by his
+friends" when upon the verge of doing something rash.  In this case
+everybody was willing to see John Ryder get all that the colonel
+threatened him with.  And it suddenly smote the old fire-eater, and
+smote him hard, that he had "overplayed his hand."
+
+The crowd had rapidly got out of his way, and he had all the room he
+needed for either fisticuffs or guns.  Ryder finished his sherry, and
+placed the glass softly on the bar.  His movements were as deliberate
+as the colonel's had been impetuous.  The latter finally found his
+voice.
+
+"Suh! my contempt for you, and the interference of my friends here,
+are all that save you from the punishment you deserve, suh!  Crippled
+as I am, honorably and in my country's cause" (it was not generally
+known that Colonel Brack had lost his leg in a premature explosion in
+the Leading Sinner Mine, from which still-paying proposition he drew
+his small income), "and old as I am, nothing less would keep me from
+laying violent hands upon you, suh!"
+
+Ryder turned away from the bar and, as he did so, he snapped his
+fingers under the colonel's glowing nose.
+
+"Cut it short, Colonel, I'm busy," he said.  "Haven't you anything
+else to say to me?  No?  Then--good-night!" and he walked out of the
+café.
+
+It was a cruel blow to the colonel's popularity.  The crowd began to
+snicker, and the snicker grew to a loud and general laugh.  Colonel
+Brack's prestige as a "bad man" melted, and was gone at the Pinewood
+Inn bar forever.
+
+Ryder, perhaps somewhat relieved of his ill temper, it having found a
+vent in this incident, walked directly to the dining-room.  He
+glanced about for White but did not see him.  Was the man still with
+Mrs. Ryder?
+
+The moment had perhaps arrived for the mystery to be explained.  The
+thought made him secretly tremble.  It is facing the unknown that
+makes cowards of us all.
+
+But John Ryder's countenance did not betray his inward feelings.  He
+walked into the dining-room in his usual, dignified manner.
+Everything was rose-tinted from the shaded lamps on each table.  He
+almost instantly saw his wife sitting at a cozy table, and with her
+was Mrs. Judson.
+
+White was not in sight.  There were perhaps two dozen little parties
+sprinkled about; but with none of them was the individual who had
+earned so much of John Ryder's attention.
+
+Ryder, appearing much calmer than he really was, approached his wife
+and her companion.  Ruth seemed undisturbed save that her face was a
+trifle paler than it had been.  But it lit up with pleasure and her
+eyes shone when she saw Ryder coming.
+
+And this look staggered the man.  There was nothing furtive--nothing
+secretive--in Ruth's manner.  It was disgraceful to think of her
+having some secret from him when her beautiful face beamed such love
+and happiness at his approach.
+
+"I'm a fool--a cad--a scoundrel!" he told himself savagely.  "I ought
+to tell her what is troubling me right now and have the matter
+explained.  Confound this old busybody, anyway!"
+
+But he managed to hide his dislike for the widow as he sat down.
+
+"Really, your wife looked so lonely, that I had to come over and talk
+with her," cried the vivacious Mrs. Judson, shaking her lorgnette at
+Ryder.  "You shameful men--going off by yourselves--herding together
+socially--and in that vulgar café, I'll be bound!  I declare! the
+ordinary man wouldn't give up his nightcap even on his wedding night.
+Fie!  For shame!"
+
+Ruth blushed faintly, and looked at Ryder apologetically.  The latter
+checked his real feelings and displayed an emotionless face.  The
+widow rambled on:
+
+"I got into the habit of taking a late bite with poor dear Horace.
+He always liked it.  And to-night when we were all so upset I knew I
+couldn't sleep without it.  I really get so lonely--living alone and
+eating alone----"
+
+What could Ryder do?  He looked at Ruth.  She made a little _moue_
+with her pretty lips and shrugged her shoulders slightly.
+
+"We shall be glad to have you take supper with us, Mrs. Judson,"
+Ryder said, telling the lie with an expressionless face.
+
+"Now, isn't that too, too sweet of you?" gushed the widow.  "And when
+I know you must be just longing to be tête-à-tête--both of you.  Now,
+don't deny it!"
+
+Their faces did not, if their murmurs belied their expression of
+countenance.  But Mrs. Judson ran on untiringly--she was a "fluid"
+speaker--and settled herself more comfortably in her chair.
+Evidently Ryder had her on his hands, and he beckoned the waiter so
+as to have it over with as soon as possible.
+
+Ruth had said she was hungry, and Mrs. Judson looked like a woman
+with a hearty appetite.  Her order did not belie her appearance.
+Ryder was too much disturbed in his mind to know whether he could eat
+or not; but he ordered something, and tried to be social while a
+dozen different threads of thought were entangled in his brain.
+
+"I think it's so romantic, don't you know, for you two to get married
+and come right here when the hotel is so disrupted," gushed the widow.
+
+"Very romantic," acquiesced Ryder grimly.
+
+"You two poor babes in the woods.  No!  I'm going to call you Romeo
+and Juliet," she declared.  "I'm sure the opportunity for your
+husband to be a romantic knight," looking at Ruth, "is just as good
+in this hotel under present conditions as he would have found in the
+days of the Montagues and Capulets.
+
+"He has surely rescued one lone dame in distress--that's me!" and she
+laughed with a heartiness that shook her ponderous figure.  "There
+are dragons to kill now, too.  I understand that one man here in the
+hotel has bought up all the lamps and candles in town and refuses to
+let us have any save at an exorbitant price."
+
+"How mean!" murmured Ruth, trying to be polite while Ryder smiled
+behind his napkin.
+
+"Isn't it?  I mean to get back to my rooms so that Marie can undress
+me before the lights are put out.  I don't know what I would do in
+the dark."
+
+"I think it is horrid of anybody to take advantage of our necessities
+in such a way as this," Ruth said thoughtfully.  "Fancy being at the
+mercy of a man who would be mean enough to corner the lighting of the
+world--and if he'd corner the lighting of a single hotel I suppose he
+would a deal rather found a Universal Lighting Trust."
+
+The little joke which he was having all to himself put Ryder in a
+better humor.  Mrs. Judson grew more animated, and Ruth did her best
+to make the impromptu occasion pleasant.
+
+"Just think! this is a bridal supper," simpered Mrs. Judson.  "We
+ought to celebrate--just a little.  It's wicked, I know, to think of
+champagne at such a time.  But we must have something more sparkling
+than water to drink this pretty lady's health in.  If you will allow
+me, Mr.--er--Romeo----"
+
+"I could not think of your ordering anything at my table," said Ryder
+with an involuntary frown.  "But if you ladies would enjoy a glass of
+wine we will have some, of course."
+
+"Now, that is gallant of you," cried the widow, forseeing a luxury
+that she loved, but seldom paid for.  "When poor dear Horace was
+alive we had it often for dinner.  He was inordinately fond of the
+good things of life."
+
+"But his taste in wives was not very select," thought John Ryder, his
+disgust growing.
+
+Ruth had crimsoned, but her signal to Ryder to order no wine was
+unheeded.  To tell the truth he was a little piqued.  It was Ruth's
+fault that they were in this situation.  She had made friends first
+with Mrs. Judson.
+
+But when the waiter brought the bucket of ice in which nestled a
+quart bottle, the very atmosphere about their table seemed to be
+enlivened.  The widow's dusky cheek soon glowed, her eyes sparkled,
+and her vivacity seemed to increase with the good things placed
+before her.
+
+Ryder noted, too, that Ruth's eyes held in their depths a sparkle--a
+point of fire--that had not been there before.  And those eyes,
+brilliant at one moment and the next swimming as though in unshed
+tears, rested upon his countenance most of the time.  Her smile was
+for him.  She played the hostess prettily; but her attention, after
+all, was for her husband, and the color came and went in her cheeks
+in a manner most charming.
+
+She was a woman in love--in love with the man she had married--with
+every thought of her soul and every fibre of her being.
+
+A realization of this fact swept from the chambers of her husband's
+mind every atom of suspicion.  No woman could look at a man as Ruth
+looked at him and withhold in her secret heart any mystery that might
+bring shame upon him or disaster to herself.
+
+"Romeo, you are a lucky man," whispered the widow, tapping him on the
+arm with the expressive lorgnette and leaning forward to put her
+full, red lips close to his ear, but with her laughing eyes on Ruth's
+face to see how the bride took another woman's familiarity with her
+husband.  "She loves you as one woman in a thousand ever loves her
+husband."
+
+"I am a lucky man," repeated Ryder, though more to himself than to
+the cynical widow.
+
+The latter shook a playful--and diamond bedewed--finger at Ruth.
+"You are giving him a great advantage, Juliet.  Let a man once
+realize that you love him so devotedly, and he'll ride rough shod
+over your heart.  It's always the way," and she sighed
+heavily--"though," thought John Ryder, "the sigh may be caused more
+by the supper she has eaten than by any sentimental emotion."
+
+"Yes, Juliet," rambled on the wined, and consequently quite happy,
+Mrs. Judson, "take the advice of a woman of experience, and do not
+give your heart too completely into any man's keeping.  I am not
+old--oh, no! for we women who live and love do not grow old--but I
+have lived more years than have you, sweet girl, and I have
+loved--and been loved," she simpered, "and I tell you it is always
+better to keep the driving hand."
+
+Ruth shivered in disgust.  Ryder kept a stony face and began to eat
+the meal before him, which before he had scarcely touched.
+
+"Do you see that woman over there?" suddenly questioned Mrs. Judson.
+"They say she is the most abominable----"
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Judson," and this time Ruth spoke with decision, "in time
+we shall learn to know our fellow guests perhaps.  Tonight let us
+talk about things--not people;" and with a power rare in so young and
+inexperienced a person, she kept the talk from again wandering to
+personalities or to sentimentalities.
+
+Ryder ignored the suggestion of any more wine, and the widow finally
+bethought her of the fact that the lights might go out soon and leave
+her in the dark.  So the little supper party broke up.
+
+Almost everybody else had left the room save a young woman whom Ryder
+had noticed before--a plainly dressed, freckled, sharp-featured girl,
+who ate alone at a table near the door.  That is, she was supposed to
+eat; but in reality she read most diligently a rather dingy paper
+covered pamphlet that was folded into small compass beside her plate.
+
+As Ryder and his party passed out he saw the girl devouring the story
+she was reading with a mouthful from her plate poised on her fork.
+So eager was she over the book, and so excited, that she gestured
+with this mouthful, jabbing the fork to and fro as though duelling
+with an imaginary enemy and feeling within herself, without doubt,
+all the emotions of the characters in the fiction she was perusing.
+
+Mrs. Judson, now in a very happy state, indented Ryder's ribs with an
+irritating thumb, and whispered shrilly: "Do you know who she is?"
+
+"I haven't the pleasure of the young lady's acquaintance."
+
+"She's the house detective," giggled the heavy lady.  "Isn't she
+funny?  She's reading a five-cent detective thriller.  She gave me a
+pile of them to read once.  She says--he, he!--they feed the
+imagination."
+
+Ryder looked back at the plain-featured girl.  She was still waving
+the mouthful on her fork, wrapped in her novel, as he and the two
+women of his party went on to the elevator.  He left Ruth and Mrs.
+Judson to go up in that while he went for a final conference with
+George and the steward before retiring himself.  The porters had
+fixed the bracket lamps in the main corridors of the hotel (and there
+were none too many) while one was at the clerk's desk and was already
+lighted.
+
+"Back to the days of our grandfathers," said George, grinning.  "'The
+light of other days.'  Say! some of these fellows, Mr. Ryder, are
+frothing at the mouth about you."
+
+"I thought Colonel Brack----"
+
+"Not him.  The old boy's been taken off to his own room by his wife.
+That lady is of the salt of the earth, and she knows just how to
+handle Aurelius.  She's been handling him for a good many years.
+He's nowhere near such a 'howling wolf' in his own coral as he
+appears outside.
+
+"But some of the others----"
+
+He halted, for Jimson, the man with the invalid wife, suddenly
+appeared in a glow of indignation, and George let him speak for
+himself.
+
+"See here, Mr. Ryder," he sputtered, "I am not challenging your right
+to make money out of our necessity--that seems to be your business,"
+and he sneered so that it must have hurt him.  "But at least you
+should have some humanity--some bowels of compassion.  My wife is ill
+and almost helpless; the last time I was up there the rooms were
+already becoming chilled because of the decreased steam pressure.
+
+"You positively must let me have one of those stoves Al has there in
+the storeroom.  I don't care what you want for it.  I'll pay.  I
+_must_ have one."
+
+"They are not for sale, Mr. Jimson," Ryder responded coldly.
+
+"Mr. Ryder, this is outrageous!  I will give you ten dollars for one
+of those stoves."
+
+"That would be only about fifty per cent. profit on the large stoves,
+Mr. Jimson.  Do you think you would care to do that if you were in my
+place?"
+
+"I--I'll give you twenty--fifty dollars, then," Jimson blurted out.
+
+Here George interfered.  The clerk seemed really put out with little
+Jimson.
+
+"You should take a walk around and cool off, Mr. Jimson--and Colonel
+Brack, too.  Some of you have been insulting Mr. Ryder for two hours,
+and jawing your heads off about what he's done.  And you don't _know_
+what he's done."
+
+"Eh?" bristled Jimson, yet puzzled.
+
+"He has done what none of the rest of you had public spirit enough to
+do," went on the hotel clerk.  "If anybody pays him for what he has
+laid out for the comfort of the guests of this hotel it will be the
+Barnaby estate, when this trouble is finally straightened out.  Five
+minutes ago, Mr. Jimson, Mr. Ryder had one of the largest oil heaters
+he bought and a nice reading lamp sent up to your wife."
+
+"Oh, by Jove!  I--I thought----  I didn't understand----"
+
+Mr. Jimson's words rambled off into a stammering monologue.  Ryder
+had handed George back the list he had been looking over.  "That will
+be about all, I guess," he said.  "I'm going to turn in.
+Good-night!" and ignoring the apologizing Jimson he made for the
+stairway.
+
+The dining-room was closed.  The last elevator boy came out of his
+cage and locked the door.  The hands of the clock in the foyer lacked
+but a few minutes of midnight.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the clerk from his station at the desk.  "The
+dynamos will run but ten minutes longer.  The café is closed for the
+night.  I advise you to go to your rooms."
+
+The sharp-faced girl whom Ryder had noticed in the dining-room had
+taken up her station near the foot of the stairs.  She had the folded
+paper novel in her hand.  She looked particularly wideawake, and the
+literary pabulem she so enjoyed might indeed spur her imagination.
+She was evidently on duty for the night.
+
+"Gad!" exclaimed one man.  "We might as well be stopping at a Mills'
+Hotel.  They send you to bed with the chickens," and with laughter
+and jest the company slowly broke up.
+
+The telephone buzzed at the clerk's elbow.  He took down the
+receiver, listened a moment, and then spoke to the house detective:
+
+"Miss Solomons, you're wanted in Parlor A."
+
+Ryder, in serious mood, was already climbing the stairs.  The young
+woman passed him like a shot, and still he was not aroused from his
+reverie.  He was tired.  His work for the comfort of the hotel guests
+was done, and he uttered a sigh of satisfaction at the thought.
+There was positively nothing else that could happen to balk his
+desire to be alone with his wife.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE BEGINNING OF A NIGHTMARE
+
+Coming to Parlor A on his way to his apartment, Ryder saw lights and
+heard a buzz of excited voices.  He saw the house detective, and
+stopped a moment to see what had brought her here in such haste.
+
+Drawn into a corner at the end of the room near the huge picture of
+"The Cheesemonger" was an invalid's chair, which the colored man,
+James, had evidently just made up as a bed for his crotchety master.
+And there was old Cudger, in a blanket robe, nightcap, and carpet
+slippers, wrathfully facing three women who, so Ryder thought, should
+have long since been in bed.
+
+Eying both parties stood the sharp-featured Miss Solomons, her novel
+in one hand, the other on her hip and her head on one side.  The
+chatter of the women, the grumbling of Cudger, and the chuckling of
+James, who seemed to find much amusement in the situation, made
+little impression upon the phenomenal calm of the house detective.
+
+"Now, then!" the latter said at last, "let's get this thing straight.
+Mr. Cudger has permission to sleep here to watch his oil painting
+tonight.  What are you ladies doin' here?  Lights'll go out in two
+minutes anyway."
+
+"It is disgraceful!" ejaculated one woman, a hard-featured person
+with glasses and a "transformation" that did not match her back hair
+in color.  "This man coming into the ladies' parlor in his
+nightclothes----"
+
+"Ha!  Don't expect me to sleep in my day clothes, do you?" snapped
+Mr. Cudger.
+
+"What are you ladies here for?" reiterated the sharp voice of Miss
+Solomons.  "I ask you."
+
+"We were holding a committee meeting--a very important meeting," said
+the hard-featured one.  "You know very well, young woman, that the
+Society for the Betterment of the Condition of Delinquent Girls will
+hold their convention here next week.  We are the advance committee
+of the S.B.C.D.G.
+
+"All right," interrupted Miss Solomons.  "But you had better advance
+right to bed, ladies.  Lights out in one minute.  Talk it over in the
+morning.  Mr. Cudger has the call on this parlor tonight."
+
+"But I tell you, young woman, we have a right to hold our meeting
+here, no matter what the time is," cried the militant lady.
+
+"In the dark?" exclaimed the house detective.  "No, ma'am!" and she
+advanced upon the three much as she might have upon a flock of
+chickens, literally shooing them out of the parlor.
+
+But once in the hall the women stopped to parley some more.
+
+"Miss Solomons, this is a perfect outrage--an outrage not to be
+permitted in a well-ordered house, such as the Pinewood Inn is
+supposed to be," stormed the hard-featured woman, and there was the
+ring of war in her voice.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Dent," put in the oily voice of a large brawny woman,
+another of the three ejected committee women, "Miss Solomons is not
+to blame.  Miss Solomons, no doubt, is deeply interested in our
+work"--Miss Solomons sniffed and the woman with the "transformation"
+glared angrily at the house detective--"but this awful Bangs----"
+
+"Miss Solomons is to blame!" interrupted Mrs. Dent, in a hard,
+decisive tone.  "If she had the judgment of a kitten----"
+
+"Now, see here, ladies!" flared out the house detective, "we're not
+a-goin' to have any meanderings around the hallways in the dark this
+night.  There go the lights now.  You go, and go now!"
+
+The women scuttled away without further words, and Miss Solomons
+disappeared in the darkness.
+
+John Ryder, vastly amused, changed his opinion then and there
+regarding the appointment of a woman for such a position as Miss
+Solomons held.  No man could have handled this situation with such
+vigor and promptness.
+
+A smile wreathed his lips as he went on to his own door.  Along the
+corridor before him, now illumined only by an occasional bracket
+lamp, he saw flitting the lighted candles of the other late guests
+seeking their beds.
+
+Ryder opened the door of his suite expecting to see a picture similar
+to the one he had observed when he had come to the room before
+supper.  But, although the lamp he had sent up was burning on the
+reading table, Ruth was not present.  The room was empty and the
+atmosphere of it seemed chill as he stepped in.
+
+Nor was there a light in the inner room.  He did not hear a sound.
+Where had his wife gone?  Was she with Mrs. Judson in that lady's
+rooms?  And where were they?
+
+Ryder was suddenly disgusted again.  For heaven's sake! couldn't Ruth
+break away from that woman?  And after the experience they had had
+with her at the supper table, too!
+
+He had heard certain of his married acquaintances occasionally curse
+the interference of some "woman friend" in the otherwise quiet pool
+of their domesticity.  Was he going to butt up against something like
+that at the very start?  It could not be possible that Ruth was
+enamored of the society of such a woman as the vulgar Mrs. Judson!
+
+He turned up the wick of the lamp and strode with it to the door of
+the bedroom, flinging back the hangings.  Instantly the light flooded
+the chamber, and a prettily disheveled figure started up out of a
+nest of pillows.
+
+"Oh!  I was napping!" she cried with a tremulous little laugh.  "What
+a bad girl I am!  You were so long, Johnny, and I was so sleepy.  It
+must be very late."
+
+She had made ready for the night.  Her beautiful hair was in two
+thick plaits over her shoulders--those shoulders so white and soft
+and beautifully curved betrayed by the cut of her nightgown and the
+lacy negligee she had thrown over it.
+
+As she slipped out of bed he saw her slim bare ankles, her feet
+thrust into swansdown slippers.  They were like a child's.  She
+seemed more childish and appealing to him than she had before.  Ryder
+felt momentary shame again that he should have been impatient.
+
+"It is late," he admitted.  "I am afraid, Ruth, you have had a very
+tiresome evening.  This hasn't been just the sort of a beginning to
+our married life that we might wish."
+
+She laughed merrily.  "I guess neither of us imagined a honeymoon
+like this, dear.  I used to try to think what you would be like after
+all these years--and you were so far away, too, John.  It--it was
+like a dream----"
+
+Ryder had stepped back to replace the lamp upon the table.  He almost
+dropped it.  What was she saying?  But before he could find his voice
+or move from the spot where surprise had frozen him, the door which
+he had failed to lock burst in and Mrs. Judson, in a state of
+mind--and of dishabille--that completely shocked John Ryder, entered.
+
+A large woman in bedroom wrapper and tears is not a fetching sight.
+And when she came down the room like a cyclone and flung herself with
+abandon into his arms, he--well, John Ryder swore!
+
+[Illustration: Flung herself with abandon into John Ryder's arms]
+
+Not loud, but deep and with a fervency that could not be mistaken.
+She came within an ace of toppling him over, and he dragged her to
+the couch and dropped her there--the springs creaking a pained
+objection to her sudden weight.
+
+"Great heavens above!" grumbled the exasperated Ryder.  "What's the
+matter with the creature now?"
+
+"Oh, what is it?" asked Ruth from the chamber, and he heard the
+patter of her slippered feet as she ran to the door.
+
+"It's your friend, Mrs. Judson," said the harassed bridegroom with
+disgust.  "She's come in here to have a fit--or something."  Then to
+himself he added: "Why in hades didn't I lock that door?  But she'd
+have busted it in and come right through.  Talk about a honeymoon!
+Ye gods! was ever a man----"
+
+Here he was startled by Mrs. Judson's hysterical acrobatics.  She was
+gasping and crying and laughing, all at once.  Her state was plainly
+volcanic.
+
+"What the deuce is to be done with her?" he demanded of his wife.
+
+Ruth brushed him aside and took charge of the patient, whom he had
+been trying to hold down upon the cushions by main force.
+
+"The ammonia bottle--on the bureau in there--quick!" Ruth commanded,
+and Ryder ran to obey like a lamb.
+
+Ruth thrust the unstoppered bottle under Mrs. Judson's nose.  The
+ammonia almost choked Ryder when he got a whiff of it; and it brought
+the widow up standing and trying to catch her breath.  She had been
+by no means unconscious, and it flashed through John Ryder's brain
+that she might have heard what he said about her.
+
+Mrs. Judson choked for a moment, sputtered, uttered a stifled shriek
+or two, and then fell to crying more quietly, but rocking herself to
+and fro on the couch and wringing her bejeweled hands.
+
+"Well, I'm hanged!" muttered Ryder.  "This is pretty near the limit!"
+
+Ruth turned to look at him for a moment.  Her eyes suddenly sparkled
+with merriment and she shook a playful finger at him.
+
+"You're like other men, I see," she whispered.  "I guess I'm glad.  I
+began to think you were almost an angel, hubby."
+
+Mrs. Judson monopolized her attention then.  She began to pour out a
+tale of woe that Ryder could scarcely understand; but it seemed Marie
+had left her--had run away while she was at supper--and had gone with
+some of the hotel help in a wagon back into the country where there
+was a station on another railroad--a long and toilsome journey, but
+anything to get away from a hotel that had no heat or electric lights!
+
+"And she's robbed me--I know she has!  Of course she has!  Don't you
+say she hasn't!" chattered the large lady, her bosom heaving,
+threatening to go into another convulsion.  "Send for Miss Solomons.
+She must find my brooches--my rings--my necklace----"
+
+"Who is Miss Solomons?" asked Ruth wonderingly.
+
+"The house detective," said Ryder, and was very glad thereafter that
+he said no more, for a cold voice at the open door of the suite said
+clearly:
+
+"What's going on here?  Who wants Miss Solomons?"
+
+Mrs. Judson had gone waveringly on to another phase of her trouble.
+"And I tried to undress myself; but I didn't dare go to bed.  And
+then the lights went out and--and----"
+
+She trailed off again into spasmodic cries.  Miss Solomons marched
+down the room to where the bridegroom and his bride were endeavoring
+to pacify the large lady.
+
+"Huh!" sniffed the house detective, high disgust expressed upon her
+keen face.  "It's that Judson woman.  What's the matter with her now?"
+
+The question, Ryder thought, was to the point.  At that moment Mrs.
+Judson's gyrations reminded him of those of an eel upon a hot frying
+pan.  Personally he was becoming frightened.
+
+"Shouldn't she have a doctor?" he demanded.
+
+"A barrel stave would do her more good," declared Miss Solomons
+harshly.
+
+"If I had a little aromatic spirits I'd fix her!" exclaimed Ruth,
+biting her lower lip either to stifle a desire to laugh or to cry,
+Ryder could not tell which.
+
+"Doctor!" sniffed the house detective, glaring at the hysterical
+woman.
+
+But Ryder rushed to the telephone and called the office.  George
+answered at once.
+
+"Mrs. Judson is ill--here in our rooms," Ryder said.  "Isn't there a
+doctor in the neighborhood?"
+
+"There's one in the house.  I'll send Dr. Hoyle right up, Mr. Ryder,"
+said the clerk.
+
+"Hoyle won't thank you for troubling him," Miss Solomons sneered.
+But as Mrs. Judson began on another spasm she did not leave Ruth all
+the work of holding the large lady upon the couch.
+
+"My soul! this is awful!" groaned Ryder, coming back just as Mrs.
+Judson began another series of convulsions, for which indulgence in
+public she was not dressed exactly right.
+
+"Say!" exclaimed the house detective to Ryder.  "This is no place for
+a man.  You had better go."
+
+"Hang it!" groaned Ryder, realizing that Miss Solomons was right, and
+starting for the door again.  "Why couldn't she have gone somewhere
+else to have her fit?"
+
+Just then the doctor's welcome knock sounded.  Ryder let him in.  The
+medical man appeared, candle in one hand and his black case in the
+other.  The ridiculousness of walking about this big hotel carrying a
+candle stuck into the neck of a whisky bottle did not appear to
+strike any of them at the moment as humorous.
+
+Dr. Hoyle was a young but very businesslike practitioner.  He handed
+his candle to Ryder, strode down the room, and sat down beside the
+widow, one end of whom each of the other women was trying to hold to
+the couch.
+
+"Half a glass of water, please," he said to Ruth.  "Let her go, Miss
+Solomons.  She isn't going to kick any more now."
+
+"Gee!" gasped the house detective, getting up from her knees and
+striking her usual attitude, one hand on her hip and the other
+clutching the paper novel.
+
+The doctor selected a vial from his case, dropped a little of its
+contents into the water, which instantly turned the water cloudy and
+white; then held the glass to the patient's lips.
+
+"Drink this," he commanded.
+
+Mrs. Judson's jaws seemed to be locked and her eyes were tightly
+closed.  She breathed stertorously.  Ryder, looking on from afar, was
+actually frightened.  If that woman dared to die in this room----
+
+"Drink this, Mrs. Judson!" said the doctor again.
+
+No result.  Then the professional man leaned forward, with the glass
+still at her lips, and, seizing the large lady's nose, deliberately
+wrung it!  The seemingly fixed jaws unlocked instantly and Mrs.
+Judson uttered an entirely different cry from her former painful
+sounds.
+
+"Gee!" sighed Miss Solomons again, but with satisfaction.  "This is
+no place for us, Mister.  Come on!  Dr. Hoyle can manage her without
+our help," and she started for the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES
+
+"Drink this!" the doctor said again to the large lady, and, choking
+and sputtering, Mrs. Judson did as she was told.  Ryder looked on in
+amazement.  Ruth, seeing his face, and Miss Solomon's back being
+turned, broke into a giggle and cast herself helplessly into Ryder's
+arms.
+
+"Oh! you funny, funny man!" she murmured.  "I like to see a doctor
+work over a woman with hysterics--they know 'em so well!"
+
+The house detective stalked out, leaving the door of the suite open.
+Ryder did not know whether to follow her or remain.  Mrs. Judson was
+evidently determined not to give up the role of patient too easily.
+She caught the hand that had so cruelly wrung her nose and begged the
+doctor not to leave her.
+
+He said he would not--in that sympathetically disgusted tone that
+medical men use on such occasions.  He felt himself in a foolish
+position, and another man was looking on.
+
+"Your husband, Madam?" he asked Ruth shortly, nodding toward Ryder.
+
+"Yes," she said with a blush.
+
+"Better ask him to retire while we get Mrs. Judson to bed.  She has
+had these attacks before.  She will not be over this one in a hurry."
+Then he added in a lower tone: "What's the matter now?  Is her lapdog
+sick?"
+
+"Her maid has left her," Ruth said, having hard work, as Ryder saw,
+to keep from laughing.  But he felt no desire to laugh himself.
+Undress that woman and put her to bed _here_?  John Ryder was getting
+desperate.  This nightmare of untoward incidents was altogether too
+much for his self-control.
+
+"That's a serious matter," grunted the doctor.  "Neither of us will
+get much rest tonight if Mrs. Judson follows her usual course.
+Perhaps you can get somebody to help you, Madam----"
+
+"I am used to nursing sick people," Ruth told him demurely.  "I can
+follow your instructions exactly, Doctor.  In fact, I have had
+considerable experience in nursing.  In the present state of the
+hotel's affairs it might be difficult to get a maid."
+
+"I suppose that is so," the medical man admitted.  "Well, the first
+thing to do is to get her into bed."
+
+Ryder, who felt that he never, on short acquaintance, had so disliked
+a man as he did this physician, had edged off to the further end of
+the room.  Ruth came to him, still with laughter expressed in her
+quivering face and voice.
+
+"You are only a 'mere man'--you cannot stay here, hubby," she
+whispered, putting her lips up to his.  "You will have to go out
+until we get Mrs. Judson into my bed.  Then--if she gets quiet--you
+may come back.  I will sit up to tend to her and you can nap on the
+couch.  But don't go too far away."
+
+"Why, hang it, Ruth!" he complained, not at all the business man now,
+"can't she be lugged back to her own room?"
+
+"But that would be cruel.  She was frightened there, because she was
+alone and the lights went out.  _I_ should have to go with her, you
+know.  Come now! be knightly, Mr. Romeo," she added, her voice
+trailing off into a laugh as she pushed him gently out of the room.
+
+John Ryder walked away about ten steps.  Then he stopped, and smote
+one clenched fist into his other open palm.
+
+"Well, I am hanged!" he ejaculated, and with fervor, "Some honeymoon!
+What?
+
+"For a man to be turned out of his rooms at this hour of the night,
+and for a confounded, silly, hysterical old woman!  Bah!"
+
+John Ryder drew out a cigar, bit off the end savagely and lit it in
+direct contradiction to hotel rules, and puffed away like a donkey
+engine while he paced the carpeted corridor.
+
+He was no longer the man with the welfare of his fellow guests at
+heart--particularly of the women and children in Pinewood Inn.  He
+was tired, he was sleepy, and he had had enough excitement to last
+him for some time to come.
+
+The procession of incidents which had enlivened his existence since
+the _Minnequago_ had docked were flung upon the screen of his memory
+again, and he reviewed them like a spectator at a moving picture show.
+
+He remembered in what a nervous state he awaited the steamship's
+docking, expecting some word from the beautiful girl whom he had
+learned to love during the passage across the Atlantic.
+
+Having not seen her to speak to for some hours, he had half feared to
+have her accept his proposal, now that he had made it.  But the
+instant he saw her on the wharf awaiting his coming, he had flung all
+such hesitation and uncertainty to the winds.  She seemed in her
+appearance all that was good and beautiful.
+
+Then followed in swift succession the obtaining of the license, his
+own jumbled business at his offices, the drive to the minister's, the
+marriage ceremony, their hurried departure by train, their arrival at
+the Pinewood Inn in safety despite the accident at the bridge, their
+cozy little dinner, and then----
+
+In more somber colors followed the chain of circumstances which had
+finally culminated in his present plight.  Was ever a bridegroom up
+against such confounded luck?
+
+Some honeymoon, indeed!
+
+He tried to laugh; but his position was too serious, and his laugh
+was choked off by the time it was started.  He swore softly again and
+paced on down the hallway.  Coming to the door of the parlor, he
+looked in.
+
+Old Cudger was asleep in the invalid's chair with a rug thrown over
+him.  Candles, in saucers for sconces, burned before the picture, all
+other lights in the room being extinguished.  Marching up and down
+the rug like a sentinel with his master's gold-headed cane upon his
+shoulder, was James, the colored factotum of the owner of Van Scamp's
+"Cheesemonger."
+
+"It does look as though the hotel were in a state of siege," muttered
+Ryder.  "It's an experience that none of us will forget for many a
+long day.  Heigh ho!  I wish I'd never come into the ranch," and he
+stretched his arms above his head and yawned.  "This isn't my idea of
+a nice, quiet honeymoon."
+
+At this end of the parlor the shadows were heavy.  But Ryder saw the
+outlines of several comfortable looking chairs.  Plowing up and down
+the corridor waiting for Ruth to call him back, began to pall upon
+his mind.  He ventured into the big room.
+
+His feet made no sound upon the rugs.  James marched back and forth
+in perfect unconsciousness of his presence.  Ryder made his way to a
+big, sleepy-hollow chair, fumbled for the arms, found them, and sank
+back restfully into--some other person's lap!
+
+It would be hard telling whether John Ryder or the person in the easy
+chair, was the most startled.  The former leaped up with a surprised
+grunt.  The other darted out of the chair and, before the man could
+get more than a yard away, he felt the end of a revolver thrust right
+against his waistline!
+
+"Hold on!" hissed an excited voice.  "What you doing here?  Trying to
+get fresh with me, or are you just a ninny?"
+
+John Ryder, had he not been for the moment speechless, would
+certainly have owned to the final accusation.  "Ninny" it was!  If he
+were not one, he certainly would not be wandering about this hotel
+instead of peaceably occupying the suite for which he was paying
+thirty dollars a day.
+
+"March out there under the lamp till I get a look at you!  Quick
+now!" jerked out the person with the weapon.
+
+Ryder began to do as he was told--backward.  He could see the lighted
+end of the room.  James, his face graying with fear, was squatting
+down behind the invalid chair in which his sleeping master reclined.
+Evidently the row at the upper end of the room had startled the negro
+more than it had the two who were taking part in it.
+
+Ryder's brusk antagonist jerked him swiftly around into the corridor,
+under the nearest bracket lamp.
+
+"Hugh!" exclaimed Miss Solomons.  "So it's you?  I've had my eye on
+you for some time.  What you doing here, anyway?  And what you doin'
+back there in those rooms where that Judson had a fit?  You one of
+her friends?  What's your name?"
+
+"I am Mr. Ryder," he told the house detective mildly, noting that the
+paper novel was still clutched fast in her left hand.
+
+She grunted, tucking the revolver out of sight.  Evidently, whatever
+she suspected John Ryder of, she did not consider him dangerous.
+
+"Ryder, heh?" jerked out the house detective.  "Same one that beat
+'em all to the lamps and candles?  Not a crook, then.  Anyway, not a
+_little_ crook.  What you doin' in those rooms just now?" she
+repeated.  "Mrs. Judson still there?"
+
+"Yes," Ryder said with vast disgust.  "They are putting her to bed.
+Turned me out."
+
+"And why not?" snapped Miss Solomons.  "You didn't expect to stay
+there all night, did you?"
+
+"Why not?" Ryder demanded with sudden vexation.  "I'm paying for
+them."
+
+"That may be.  I don't doubt it," the house detective said sharply.
+"But we don't allow anything like that here."
+
+She gave Ryder a little shove toward the stairs, and turned abruptly
+back into the parlor.
+
+"All right, Je-eames!" he heard her drawl to the colored man.  "No
+gun-play this time.  Come out and do your goose-step up and down the
+rug.  And if anybody else blunders in here while I'm napping, keep
+'em out of my lap, will you?"
+
+To tell the truth John Ryder was so utterly amazed that he could not
+reply to the house detective.  He scarcely knew what she meant by her
+innuendo; yet he felt rising anger.  She seemed to have doubted the
+status of Ruth and himself as a properly wedded pair!
+
+Nightmare?  It was a saturnalia of misunderstanding and vexing
+incidents!  John Ryder would have been glad right then and there to
+take Ruth and escape from the Pinewood Inn, even if they had to walk
+through the night to some other shelter.  Later he wished with all
+his heart that he had done just that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+SOME EXPERIENCES OF A BRIDEGROOM
+
+John Ryder, just here, hearing voices and laughter--even the clink of
+glasses--from the floor below, felt a desire for human society--for
+speech with sane people.  His mind was in such a chaotic condition
+that he was not sure whether these recent remarkable incidents had
+really happened to him, or he had dreamed them.
+
+He arrived at the top of the broad flight leading down to the foyer.
+There were candles glimmering at the clerk's desk beside the bracket
+lamp, and several of the guests were keeping George company.  Jimson
+was one; there were three men whom Ryder had not before particularly
+noticed; and there was White, the man of mystery.  The latter was
+sitting rather sullenly with the others, sipping some concoction in a
+tall glass--which, indeed, they were all doing.
+
+If for no other reason than to get a closer look at John B. White,
+Ryder joined the party.  He was welcomed vociferously by the clerk.
+Jimson considered it was up to him to pacify the man he had so
+foolishly and impulsively insulted.
+
+"Hope you'll let me mix you one, Mr. Ryder," Jimson said.  "Just to
+show there's no hard feelings, you know."
+
+"Go ahead," Ryder said, conscious that White was watching him with
+clouded eyes.  Indeed, the man seemed unable to keep his gaze off
+John Ryder.
+
+"How's Mrs. Judson?" asked George, with a knowing grin.
+
+"Confound her!" ejaculated the bridegroom.  "She's turned me out of
+house and home."
+
+"Ho, ho!  And you a newly married man!" cackled one of the crowd.
+
+"On his honeymoon," said Jimson.  Then he blew a sigh.  "Well, it
+might be worse, Mr. Ryder.  You don't know what it is to have an
+invalid wife."
+
+"Or a heavyweight, like the Lady Judson," chuckled another.
+
+Ryder showed he was not deeply interested in these witticisms.
+George said rather lamely:
+
+"Well, a man's got to make way for the ladies."
+
+"Especially when they are hysterical," Jimson added.  "I remember
+when my wife----"
+
+He started on a story that did not interest Ryder in the least.  He
+was the host--it was his private bottle they were sampling--so the
+clerk and all but White and Ryder gave the narrator some attention.
+
+White rose up suddenly and tapped John Ryder on the shoulder.  "I beg
+your pardon, Mr.--er--did I catch your name?"
+
+"Ryder."
+
+"Ah!  Mr. Ryder!"  The man spoke rather gaspingly, as though
+something interfered with his breathing.  He gazed at Ryder with eyes
+that burned strangely.  Altogether he did not seem in good health,
+and again Ryder wondered if he was quite right in his mind.  Perhaps
+ill health might explain his odd actions, after all.
+
+"I feel I owe you an apology--an explanation," said White, still in a
+low voice.  "Will--will you come over here a moment--to this bench?
+Give me your attention briefly?"
+
+"Guess I can," said Ryder.  "There seems nothing much pressing on my
+time just now," he added grimly, and followed White to the gloomier
+side of the office where the two men seated themselves on one of the
+leather-covered divans just under the stairway.
+
+"You see," said White, still in that stifled tone.  "I--I came down
+here expecting to intercept--that is, to meet--er--friends.  I
+followed her down here----  Ahem!  Them, I mean; and I couldn't
+find----"
+
+His voice trailed off into silence, while Ryder watched him in the
+dusk with reviving interest.  There was surely something wrong with
+this man's brain.  If ever John Ryder had seen a man with beclouded
+mind, John B. White was that man.
+
+"And I saw--saw your--er--wife," went on White.  "She looked so
+like--well, like what I thought my friend--one of my friends--would
+look----"
+
+"My wife looks like somebody you know?"  Ryder asked in that loud and
+cheerful tone which the average person uses in addressing one who he
+thinks is not mentally balanced.
+
+"Ye-es.  As I thought she'd look.  And her name----"
+
+"What name?" demanded Ryder.
+
+White ignored the question.  "You see, I've been away so long," he
+murmured.  "I didn't know just how she would look.  We had never
+exchanged photographs in all that time."
+
+Ryder glanced at him curiously.  "You come from Rome, the clerk tells
+me?"
+
+"Yes," admitted the man, looking startled again.  "I--I only recently
+arrived in the country."
+
+"Recently arrived from an insane asylum, more like," thought John
+Ryder.
+
+"And, then, your wife," reiterated White.  "You--you haven't been
+married to her long?"
+
+"I should say not!" groaned Ryder.  "Not long enough to get used to
+being a married man.  We were only married yesterday."
+
+"Not married _here_?" gasped White.
+
+"No.  In New York.  Just before coming here," replied Ryder,
+wonderingly.  "And I wish heartily we hadn't come here.  We're in a
+nice mess."
+
+"Yes--unfortunate," said White.  "Your case is indeed unhappy.  A
+bridegroom and bride.  Dear, dear!"
+
+Ryder still gazed at him wonderingly.  "If ever I have seen a man who
+has slipped his trolley, this White is that man!" he thought.
+
+"I--I suppose you and Mrs. Ryder had looked forward to a very
+different sort of a honeymoon?" said White, bending forward to devour
+his companion's face in the dusk, his own eyes glowing in the wild
+way which had already attracted Ryder's notice.
+
+"Indeed yes," Ryder admitted, with a chuckle, the drink Jimson had
+mixed for him having had a soothing effect.  "But we were neither of
+us thinking of honeymoons when we embarked on the _Minnequago_."
+
+The man started.  "You--you mean when you embarked on the ship?  You
+only landed from her yesterday morning?"
+
+"That is when she docked," the puzzled Ryder replied.  "We were
+married not long after.  My wife, you see, is an English girl----"
+
+"An English girl!  Yes?"  A faint tone of disappointment colored the
+remark.  White subsided for a moment into deep thought.  Suddenly, as
+Ryder was about to rise, the other clutched his arm feverishly.  "I
+beg your pardon!  One other question--if you will bear with me, Mr.
+Ryder.  Will--will you tell me your wife's name?
+
+"Why, Ryder!" ejaculated the other.
+
+"I--I mean before she was married?"
+
+"Mont--Ruth Mont," and Ryder broke away from the man and walked to
+the desk to set his empty glass upon the counter.  George was telling
+a story--one of those interminably long yarns which begin, "There was
+an Irishman, and."  He was the only person who was facing the divan
+on which White was sitting.
+
+Suddenly the clerk's face turned puttylike, and he stopped, his jaw
+hanging.  He glared over the shoulders of his audience.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" demanded the nervous Jimson, jumping up.
+
+"Look there!" exclaimed George.  "What's the matter with that man?"
+
+They all wheeled at his question to look.  But while the others were
+moved first by White's appearance, as George had been, Ryder saw the
+face of Miss Solomons, the house detective, hanging over the
+balustrade of the stairs, just above the place where he had been
+sitting with White.  She dodged back out of sight; and then Ryder saw
+what had startled the hotel clerk.
+
+White had slid down in his seat, with only the small of his back
+resting on its edge, the back of his head rigidly against the settee
+back and his legs stretched stiffly before him.  His face was purple
+in color and he was gasping for breath.
+
+"The man's in a fit!" cried Jimson.
+
+There was a concerted rush toward White, all but Ryder joining in the
+stampede.  He remained by the desk, staring up the stairway and
+wondering what was the matter with Miss Solomons, who he supposed had
+gone back to her broken sleep in the parlor chair.
+
+"What the deuce does the girl want?" he thought.  "Was she spying on
+me or on White?  And what is the matter with White, all of a sudden?
+What threw him into such a state?  What did he ask me last?  Why!
+Ruth's maiden name----"
+
+George came charging back to the desk.
+
+"I say, Mr. Ryder! isn't Doctor Hoyle up in your rooms?"
+
+"I left him there," grumbled Ryder.  "He and my wife are putting that
+Judson woman to bed."
+
+George tore around the desk to the telephone.  He stuck the proper
+plug into the board and began to pump the annunciator in Ryder's
+apartment.  The other men picked the stiffened White up and laid him
+on the couch.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE EAGLE EYE OF THE HOUSE DETECTIVE
+
+George began at once to shout "Hullo!" into the instrument.  Finally
+he got a reply from Suite Three.  It was the doctor himself who
+answered the insistent call from the hotel desk.
+
+"Yes, this is George!" ejaculated the clerk.  "Come down here to the
+office at once, Doc.  Something's happened to Mr. White----
+
+"What is it?  I dunno.  He's fallen in a fit--looks awful--face as
+black as your hat!"
+
+The clerk was excited and he spread it on rather thick.  Still, White
+did look bad.
+
+George came away from the telephone.  "He'll be right down," he said
+aloud.  "I guess your wife's scared, Mr. Ryder.  I heard her scream."
+
+Ryder was immediately troubled.  His own nerves were jumping.  No
+wonder if Ruth should become frightened.  There was nothing he could
+do for White, and he started for the stairway.  Half way up the
+flight he passed the doctor, bag in hand, charging down.  This was
+certainly a busy night for the hotel physician.
+
+And then, as Ryder reached the top of the stairway, he saw another
+figure coming along the corridor--a white-faced, gasping woman, with
+eyes like coals, rushing like a whirlwind into his arms--a whirlwind
+of laces and ruffles and ribbons, with a boudoir cap over one ear and
+her tiny bare feet twinkling in and out under her trailing robes.
+
+It was Ruth, and she was the picture of fright.
+
+"My heavens!" gasped Ryder, "what's the matter, girlie?  What's
+frightened you so?"
+
+"Oh!"  She saw him then and clutched him tightly about the neck.
+"I--I thought something had happened to you.  They said so--I heard
+the clerk speaking through the 'phone to the doctor----"
+
+"Oh, no," said Ryder soothingly.  "It was another man.  He was taken
+ill down there in the office."  He could not tell her, now that she
+was so disturbed, that it was the stranger who had already annoyed
+her.  "Why, sweetheart, don't sob so!  I'm all right.  Don't you see
+I am?  Never was sick a day that I remember in my whole life.  You
+couldn't----"
+
+He looked over her head, and there was the sharp face of Miss
+Solomons at the parlor door.  The sharp eye of the house detective
+seemed devouring them both.  Ryder felt a shocking desire to consign
+both the house detective and Mrs. Judson to the same place--and that
+a spot not often mentioned in polite company.
+
+But to Ruth he murmured: "Brace up, girlie!  It's all right--it's all
+right, I tell you.  You've been overdoing.  This confounded Mrs.
+Judson has been too much for you."
+
+She still clung tightly to him, sobbing, her head buried on his
+shoulder.  He gathered her up in his arms, holding her yielding body
+close against his breast, and carried her swiftly along the corridor.
+As he passed the parlor he glared at Miss Solomons.
+
+Once he halted to pick up one of the slippers Ruth had lost in her
+flight down the hall.  The other was in the doorway of their suite.
+He strode in with her, kicked shut the door, and placed Ruth tenderly
+upon the couch.  The heavy lady was not in sight.
+
+"Poor Mrs. Judson!" Ruth gasped.  "The doctor left me to take care of
+her."
+
+"Hang Mrs. Judson!" exclaimed Ryder.  "Is she to be tied about our
+necks like a millstone?  Is she our Old Man of the Sea?"
+
+"Sh!"  She put her own lips to his.  "Don't be offensive, dear boy!"
+she gasped after a long breathless kiss which shook both of them.
+"She--she can't help being--well!--being just what she is."
+
+"Humph!" grunted John Ryder with much doubt.  "Where is she?"
+
+"In there," Ruth replied nodding toward the inner room.  "Oh!  I am
+so glad you are all right, I could forgive Mrs. Judson everything
+now!" she whispered, snuggling her face down against his breast again.
+
+"I'm hanged if I forgive her for spoiling this night for us," growled
+he.
+
+"But there are other nights--hundreds of them--thousands----"
+
+"How do you know?" demanded he.  "And we never saw her in our lives
+before last evening!  By thunder! this is the unluckiest old hole of
+a hotel.  I'm almost tempted to ask you to pack up again.  Some
+honeymoon!"
+
+"But how would we get away from here?" she asked, wonderingly.  "They
+say there are no passenger trains on this short line to Pinewood.
+And until the bridge is repaired, how can we get to the station at
+Barr, on the main line?"
+
+"There is a combination that runs down to the Junction at eight and
+another at one o'clock, besides the evening train," John Ryder said.
+"Of course, it is not very luxurious.  But you say the word, and I'll
+get the telegraph to working in the morning and we'll have a special
+sent up here."
+
+"A special what?" she asked in wonderment.
+
+"Special train."
+
+"Oh!  You foolish boy!  How extravagant!  Why, you talk as though you
+were a millionaire!" cried Ruth, laughing up into his face.
+
+"Why, I----"
+
+Ryder halted.  Did she not know he was very wealthy?  He had not
+boasted of his money, but surely, on the _Minnequago_, he had told
+her enough about his circumstances for her to realize that she had
+married a very wealthy man.
+
+She was speaking again now, and rather seriously.  "I don't really
+think I want to go, dear.  Not right away.  I want time to look about
+the old place.  We must walk through the pines--and down to the inlet
+where the crabbing used to be so good.  You know the places we want
+to see, John."
+
+"Oh!  Do I?" asked John Ryder in growing surprise.
+
+"Of course.  Now, don't make believe you are not sentimental.  I know
+you are," and she squeezed him tightly about the throat until there
+was grave danger of his choking.
+
+Ryder had moved over into a big armchair and had taken Ruth with him.
+"So I am sentimental, am I?" he said.  "You seem to know a deal about
+me for a man you've seen so short a time."
+
+"Oh, but," she responded, "remember how often I have thought of you
+since--well, since I was a tiny girl.  I've often imagined just how
+you'd look and just the sort of man you'd be."
+
+"The deuce you did!" muttered Ryder.  Then: "Do all girls dream about
+their future husbands and wonder what they will look like?"
+
+"I suppose so.  Only, all of them are not so sure of the kind of man
+he will be as I was."
+
+John Ryder was vastly puzzled again.  He gazed down at her as she lay
+there in his arms and asked: "Do--do you think I fill the bill?"
+
+"Oh, not altogether as to looks, perhaps.  You know, hubby, you are
+not a bit romantic looking." and she smiled at him roguishly.
+
+"No.  I suppose I am not--thank fortune!" and he grinned in return.
+"If I wore my hair long, and sported a velvet jacket and broad
+collar, for instance----  Well! what do you suppose they would do
+with me in business?"
+
+"I know.  You are awfully practical.  That really is surprising," she
+murmured.  "But the minute you took my hands and I looked into your
+eyes----"
+
+"On the dock, you mean?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, on the dock where I waited for you."
+
+"And _then_?"
+
+"Why, then I knew I loved you.  I wasn't sure before.  If you hadn't
+been--well--just you, I'd have run away and you'd never have seen me
+again, hubby.  I made up my mind to that."
+
+"To run away from me if I didn't suit?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And yet you sent your trunks to the station just the same?" and he
+laughed into her blushing face.
+
+"Oh, but that was only so as to be ready to go with you if you proved
+to be as nice as you did.  Otherwise--well, there are other places on
+the Pennsylvania Road to go to, besides Pinewood."
+
+"So I measured up, when you had considered everything, to your idea
+of what a husband should be?"
+
+"Oh, yes, dear!  You were all that was to be desired," and she patted
+his cheek tenderly.
+
+"Say!" exclaimed Ryder, "I'm not sure I'll be able to wear my hat
+tomorrow.  I can feel my head increasing in size momently.  You'll
+make me conceited."
+
+"No.  Only proud."
+
+"Ah, I'm the proudest man alive to get you!"
+
+"Now, you mustn't say that.  I am just a poor girl.  I would have to
+work hard for my living all my life if you hadn't come for me."
+
+"Nobody else, of course, would have taken pity on you?" he laughed.
+
+"Ah, but there could have been nobody else.  You were meant for me.
+You were the only one."
+
+"I'm glad you saw it that way," he laughed, "and realized what a
+stage career meant before it was too late."
+
+She turned squarely to look at him then, a puzzled little frown
+marring her brow.  "What--what did you say?" she asked.
+
+They were both startled the next moment by a shriek from the inner
+room.
+
+"Help!  I'm--I'm robbed!  My rings--my brooches--my necklace!  I know
+I am robbed!"
+
+It was the hysterical voice of Mrs. Judson.  They heard her bound out
+of bed.  The whole house seemed to rock when she landed on the
+bedroom floor.
+
+"Huh!" ejaculated a sharp voice behind the bride and bridegroom,
+"about what I expected."
+
+It was Miss Solomons.  How she had got into the suite Ryder did not
+ask.  His wife had started for the inner room, crying:
+
+"Oh, poor Mrs. Judson!  I really forgot her."
+
+"Heaven forgive me!" groaned the bridegroom, shaking both fists in
+the air, as he sat in the armchair from which his wife had leaped.
+"I wish that woman would either be gathered peacefully to her
+ancestors, or--or get married again!"
+
+Then he turned to find the eye of the house detective upon him.
+
+"Huh!" said that individual, "if you dared maybe you'd add murder to
+larceny!  How about it?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SOME SLEUTH
+
+"Now, stop right where you are," said Miss Solomons, as John Ryder
+started to rise.  "I'll search you later--and that woman.  I knew
+there was somethin' fishy about all this.  I was a chump not to see
+into it right at the start.  Of course Mrs. Judson is just the sort
+of a party a pair of crooks would get their hooks into."
+
+"Say, are you crazy, or am I?"
+
+"Sit down!"
+
+At Ryder's second attempt to rise the house detective unlimbered her
+artillery.  For the life of him Ryder could not guess where she could
+hide the big revolver about her person, she was so thin.  Holding the
+weapon recklessly aimed in his direction, Miss Solomons began to
+search the sitting-room scientifically.
+
+In the bed chamber Ruth could be heard soothing the refractory
+patient.  Mrs. Judson was still bewailing the loss of her jewelry.
+
+"My rings!  My brooches!  My necklace!" she kept repeating, her voice
+rising in crescendo until John Ryder thought the whole hotel would be
+roused and come crowding into his suite.
+
+"But, Mrs. Judson," Ruth said, when the heavy lady stopped for
+breath, "you know you did not wear your necklace or a brooch here.
+Only your rings----"
+
+"My rings!  Where are my rings, then?" demanded the invalid, and the
+bed-spring creaked as she dropped upon it again.  "I know I have been
+robbed!"
+
+"Sure thing!" muttered Miss Solomons, still holding John Ryder under
+the point of her weapon while she poked into the umbrella stand near
+the door with his walking stick.
+
+Then Ruth, in a very small voice: "Why, I--I took them off, Mrs.
+Judson."
+
+"Ha!" was Miss Solomon's comment, leaving the umbrella stand.
+
+"What for?  My rings!" cried Mrs. Judson.
+
+"The doctor told me to.  We wanted to chafe your hands.  I----"
+
+"What did you do with them?" snapped Miss Solomons, and tore aside
+the curtain so as to get a view of the bed chamber.
+
+This time Ryder rose up, pistol or not.
+
+"Come away from there!" he commanded.
+
+"Anybody but an idiot would see that my wife knows nothing about the
+woman's rings."
+
+"Your wife?  You mean your accomplice," sneered the house detective.
+
+"By heaven!  If you were only a man!" gasped Ryder, and took a stride
+toward Miss Solomons.
+
+"This here's loaded," said that woman firmly, and stuck the barrel of
+her revolver against his waistband again.  "No foolin' with me.  Sit
+down.  Come on out here, you!" she added over her shoulder to Ruth.
+
+"Why--why, what is the matter?" the latter gasped, coming to the
+doorway.  "Oh!"
+
+"What did you do with the rings?" demanded the house detective.
+
+She was still shoving against the pistol, and naturally John Ryder
+fell back before such pressure.  When he dropped into the chair again
+Ruth screamed.
+
+"Huh!" exclaimed Miss Solomons, seeing the direction of Ruth's
+frightened gaze.  "That lamp, eh?  Opened the oil tank and dropped
+'em in, did you?  Likely place!  But 'tain't new.  All you crooks
+have the old stuff.  Not an original one among you."
+
+She started for the table, still keeping Ryder covered.
+
+"What do you want?" gasped Ruth.
+
+"Mrs. Judson's rings," declared Miss Solomons decisively.
+
+"I dropped them into the doctor's medicine case.  He took them with
+him when he was called downstairs," Ruth said and then, blessed with
+a sense of the ridiculous, she began to giggle.
+
+The house sleuth halted and looked from Ryder to his bride.
+Suspicion seemed fairly to sharpen her nose as she sniffed.  "That's
+a likely story," she said.
+
+Ryder took a hand, now having gained his self-control.  "Do give us
+credit for some originality, Miss Solomons," he said.  "If we have
+stolen Mrs. Judson's gems we naturally would have an accomplice on
+whom to plant them.  Who more likely than the doctor?"
+
+"Huh!" snorted Miss Solomons.
+
+The doctor himself appeared at the moment The house detective sprang
+forward and seized his black case.
+
+"What have you in this?" she demanded, having slipped her weapon out
+of sight.
+
+"Enough poison to even satisfy you, My Lady Sleuth," remarked Dr.
+Hoyle, evidently having his own private opinion of the house
+detective.  "What mare's nest have you uncovered now?"
+
+"Mrs. Judson's rings have been nicked," observed Miss Solomons, quite
+unabashed.
+
+"I--I dropped them into your case," said Ruth apologetically.
+
+"So you did.  Here they are," said the doctor, flashing the gems in
+question.  "Satisfied, Miss Solomons?  Then, if so, you and
+this--this gentleman, here, would better go away.  You are likely to
+disturb my patient with your noise."
+
+Miss Solomons pulled the folded novel from the bosom of her blouse.
+
+"All right," she said shortly.
+
+"You'd better go and help James watch Van Scamp's 'Cheesemonger,'"
+Ryder observed.  "That's about your limit as a sleuth."
+
+Miss Solomons, without changing countenance in the least, stalked
+away.  Before the doctor could escape to the bedroom Ryder said:
+
+"I don't fancy my wife staying here all night to attend this woman.
+She has had an exciting day and evening.  You'll have another patient
+on your hands if you don't have a care."
+
+Hoyle glanced at Ruth's laughing face and shook his head.
+
+"Not as long as she sees the funny side of the situation," he
+observed.
+
+"It is an imposition!" declared Ryder, with more heat.
+
+"Undoubtedly," observed the doctor, with a shrug of his shoulders;
+but Ruth placed her little pink palm, light as a rose leaf, upon his
+lips.
+
+"Don't speak so, Johnny," she whispered.  "She needs some woman about
+her at this time."
+
+"She's not sick."
+
+"But she thinks she is--which is worse," laughed Ruth.  Then to the
+doctor: "Don't mind him.  He is the most indulgent of husbands after
+all.  I will remain.  I told you that I have been trained to the work
+of nursing."
+
+"I see you have, Madam," said the doctor cheerfully, and he went into
+the other room where Mrs. Judson lay groaning and sobbing on the bed.
+
+John Ryder, much vexed but in control of himself now, said decidedly:
+
+"Even the most indulgent husband must put down his foot some time,
+Ruth.  If that woman is not well enough to be removed to her own
+rooms by morning we will let her have this apartment and take another
+suite.  You can play the Good Samaritan until then if you so desire.
+But remember! after this, and for the remainder of our honeymoon, if
+we see any despoiled victim lying by the roadside we will emulate the
+Jews and pass by on the other side."
+
+He did not even kiss her as he passed out, and Ruth stood looking
+after him with quivering lips.  Everything that had gone before was
+by chance, and unlucky.  But this was actually the first jarring note
+in the honeymoon!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE CAT SHOWS HER CLAWS
+
+Ryder had got all over the desire for human company.  He did not even
+care to ask how White was getting along, and the doctor had said not
+a word about the man.  Ryder was just about worn out.  What he wanted
+was rest and sleep.
+
+He sought the parlor, determined to find a comfortable chair there,
+in spite of Miss Solomons.  But the house detective did not appear to
+be present.  James had fallen into a chair himself, and was snoring
+with his head upon the back of the seat.  Mr. Cudger was sleeping as
+peacefully as a child.  "The Cheesemonger" could have been stolen by
+anybody who desired a new sail for a catboat, for instance, and had a
+sharp knife to cut away the canvas from its frame.
+
+Ryder settled into a chair with a groan, first being sure that it was
+unoccupied.  He closed his eyes.  He was almost asleep when this
+disturbing thought partially aroused him:
+
+"_Ruth a trained nurse_?  She spoke of it before.  But she never told
+me aboard the _Minnequago_.  I remember distinctly that she said she
+had learned nothing she could turn to good account, now that she was
+left to her own resources, save her talent for stage entertainment.
+
+"Humph! perhaps nursing isn't a well paid profession in England.  In
+America, I believe, when a trained nurse enters one's home, one might
+as well hand her the bankbook.
+
+"Don't understand it," said this new-made cynic.  "Huh!  There's a
+lot of things I don't understand.  One is, _Why is a honeymoon?_
+
+"I've heard it said a man gets his eyes opened after he's married.  I
+swear my vision is fast becoming clouded.  There are a lot of things
+I want explained.  Goodness! am I developing suspicious qualities
+that I never knew I possessed before?  It does seem as though a dozen
+things poor Ruth has said puzzle me mightily.
+
+"It must be because we have known each other so short a time, and our
+whole affair was so hurried.  Goodness!  I haven't found time yet to
+learn whether I am a benedict or still a bachelor.  But how easily
+she assumes the little airs and graces of a bride!
+
+"I suppose most womenly women are so.  Their whole young lives are
+lived in preparation for this event--the event of giving themselves
+into the keeping of the man they love."  Ryder lacked expert
+knowledge on this point, it will be noted.  "And what an imaginary
+little thing she is!  Miss Solomons has nothing on Ruth when it comes
+to imagination," and Ryder made a face in the dark at thought of the
+house detective.
+
+"To think of a girl's dreaming about what her husband, whom she does
+not know and never has heard of, will be like; fairly conjuring up a
+vision of the man which the real husband, when he appears, has to
+stack up against.
+
+"Bless her heart!  If she believes me half as fine and noble as the
+picture she imagined of the man she some day expected to marry----
+By thunder!  I wonder what is in that locket she wears and gazes at
+so fondly?"
+
+The thought pretty well awoke him.  He cursed himself roundly, and
+aloud, and James stirred in his sleep and groaned.
+
+"Great heavens!  That thought is unworthy of me--and of her!" Ryder
+muttered.  "Bless her sweet face!  No woman could hold sacred the
+memento of another man and show so clearly--as does Ruth--that she
+loves her husband.
+
+"Can I ever forget how she looked just now running through that hall?
+She was wild to think that some harm had befallen me--befallen her
+husband.  No mistake there, John Ryder!  You are it.  You are the man
+she loves."
+
+He sighed ecstatically.  He closed his eyes.  He fell asleep almost
+at once.  James was snoring gently.  Old Cudger added his nasal
+murmur to James' snores.  And from a distant corner that John Ryder
+had overlooked, the eagle eye of the house detective still watched
+him.
+
+When John Ryder awoke he was stiff and lame and chilled to his
+marrow.  The candles had burned down to puddles of grease in the
+saucers.  A cold gray light stole into the parlor through a high
+window and lay in a comfortless mantle over Mr. Cudger, James and
+"The Cheesemonger."
+
+The heart in John Ryder lay like lead.  Never had he risen with such
+a sickening premonition of ill as upon this gloomy Saturday morning.
+Indeed, John Ryder was not in the habit of having premonitions at all.
+
+He was a healthy, sane and perfectly level-headed individual.  Never
+before in his busy life had he found time for romance; and certainly
+the brand of romance that Fate had handed out to him since the
+_Minnequago_ had docked did not encourage Ryder to wish for more.
+
+"It was Friday!" he suddenly muttered.  "No wonder everything went
+wrong.  Friday!"
+
+He was hungry for a sight of Ruth's face and for a word with her.  In
+spite of the feeling within him that everything had gone wrong during
+the past several hours, he turned to the thought of his beautiful
+girl-wife as a child turns to its mother when it wishes comfort.
+
+Circumstances may have handed John Ryder some awful jolts during the
+past night; but his thought of Ruth was one of joy and the delight of
+possession.  He started, rubbing his eyes and yawning, for Suite
+Three.
+
+Just as he reached the door a maid came out.  She evidently
+recognized Ryder when he asked:
+
+"What's going on in there this morning?"
+
+"Oh, she's sleeping, sir.  Just as swate as a baby.  I've been
+filling the heater again and I left it burning, sir, so it would be
+warm when she gets up.  Yes, sir.
+
+"Who?  Mrs. Judson?" Ryder asked gloomily.
+
+"Bless you!  No, sir.  _She_ went back to her own room hours ago.
+Doctor says she's all right.  Gittin' scare't about her jool'ry cured
+her quicker than his medicines."
+
+"She's gone!" cried Ryder in delight.
+
+"Yes, sir.  Oh, thank you, sir!  'Tis your own little lady I was
+spakin' of.  Shall--shall I open the door for ye, sir, with me pass
+key?"
+
+"No, no!" said John Ryder, blushing a little but feeling extremely
+relieved.  "I won't disturb her if she's sleeping," and he
+immediately turned toward the breakfast room.
+
+Going down the main stairway, he saw Colonel Aurelius Brack and his
+wife before him, the doughty colonel having difficulty in making the
+trip because of his artificial limb.  He had gone up to his room the
+night before while the elevators were still running, and now depended
+upon the balustrade and his wife's arm to get safely to the bottom of
+the flight of steps.
+
+Mrs. Brack was a delightfully motherly looking woman with a face as
+peaceful as the colonel's was stormy.  He scowled savagely at John
+Ryder.  The latter wished for no words with the old fire-eater,
+especially in the presence of his wife; but as he would have passed
+them the woman placed a detaining hand on his arm.
+
+"You are Mr. Ryder?" she asked sweetly.
+
+Ryder felt his face flush, and he was as confused as a boy caught in
+some peccadillo.  He was sorry now that, in his ill temper, he had
+treated the colonel so cavalierly in the café.  The colonel looked
+away from the younger man, but the latter could not avoid Mrs.
+Brack's searching gaze.
+
+"I am sure you are the gentleman who put himself out to make me
+comfortable," she said softly.  "I thank you very much for the stove
+and light.  It was very good of you to remember an old woman--and a
+stranger.  But I hope we will not be strangers now.  I want to meet
+your charming wife, whom I saw at dinner last evening."
+
+"Thank you, Madam!" exclaimed Ryder, his coldness melted instantly by
+her courtesy.  "But you should thank the clerk and the steward.
+Without their advice and assistance I should not have known those
+guests who were clearly entitled to consideration."
+
+He bowed and passed down ahead of the old couple.  There was a
+strange face at the desk in place of George's so he went on to the
+breakfast room where Al himself stood directing the guests to their
+tables.  There was plainly a dearth of waiters.  Several of the oil
+heaters had been brought in here, and with screens about the tables
+to fend off any possible draught, the guests were being made
+comfortable.
+
+As Ryder stopped to speak to Al, Mrs. Judson and the hard-featured
+committee woman of the S.B.C.D.G. swept in.  The widow did not look
+like a person who had spent a hard night.  Ryder felt his gorge rise
+at her fresh and rejuvenated appearance.
+
+Ruth had been utterly worn out and he had spent a most woful time
+from midnight till dawn, all because of this hysterical woman.  And
+here she was as fresh as a daisy!  That the widow bowed very
+distantly to him, Ryder did not remark--nor would he have cared in
+the least had he noticed her haughtiness.
+
+"Let me find a table for you, Mr. Ryder," Al said.  "Your lady will
+not be down?"
+
+"Not yet.  She is still asleep."
+
+"I'll speak to the chef," promised the steward.  "She shall have
+something nice for breakfast sent up to her when she rings.  We have
+warned most of the other guests that it will be impossible to serve
+breakfasts upstairs until we get more help."
+
+He led Ryder to a small table next to that occupied by Mrs. Judson
+and the other woman, but there was a screen between the two tables
+and the women did not know of Ryder's presence.
+
+"Wasn't that the Mr. Ryder who bought the lamps for us?" the
+hard-featured woman asked, quite loud enough for the man in question
+to hear.  "That man who stood in the doorway?"
+
+"Oh!" ejaculated the widow, "_is_ that his name?  Are you sure?"
+
+"So I am told.  He was pointed out to me last evening by a gentleman
+who knows him.  John Ryder.  One of the shrewdest speculators in Wall
+Street they say.  Quite remarkable that he should have played the
+Good Angel to us all after cornering the heating and lighting
+supplies of the town," and she laughed unpleasantly.
+
+"Oh, my!" drawled Mrs. Judson.  "Are you _sure, quite sure_, that is
+his name?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Well--I--declare!" gasped the widow, breathlessly.  Ryder might have
+risen and sought another table, but her next words held him
+motionless in his chair.  "Do you know, I _thought_ there was
+something very odd about them.  I never heard the like in all my
+life!  And I should have _known_, too, after what Miss Solomons said.
+_She_ declares they tried to rob me----"
+
+"Who tried to rob you?" exclaimed the other woman, evidently puzzled.
+
+"This Ryder, as he calls himself, and that woman with him."
+
+"Why, Ryder is his name I tell you," declared her vis-à-vis at table.
+
+"Then," said the widow in an impressive tone, "that woman with him is
+not his wife."
+
+"_What!_"
+
+Ryder might have uttered that exclamation himself, there was so much
+emphasis in it.  The dull red of rage rose in his cheek.  He was
+tempted to leap up and kick aside the screen and----
+
+"It--it is awful!" wailed Mrs. Judson.  "And people have seen me with
+them.  I--I was over-urged by them to take supper at their table last
+night.  And it was in their rooms I had my bad spell later.  You
+know, dear, I am not at all myself when I get hysterical.  I am not
+accountable for what I do.  The doctor says so himself.  But when
+Miss Solomons interfered and kept them from robbing me----"
+
+"Robbing you!" gasped the other woman.  "How terrible!"
+
+"Wasn't it?  That girl really is sharp.  Of course, it seems strange
+to have a girl for a house detective, and she is dreadfully slangy
+and bookish----"
+
+"Yes, yes!" murmured the other.  "But tell me about this Ryder and
+the woman?  Of course, he would not have robbed you.  It must have
+been the woman--some awful creature he has brought here, of course.
+Men are such beasts!"
+
+"Aren't they?" agreed the widow.  "And she gave me quite another name
+from Ryder.  The bold thing!"
+
+"Are they here under an alias?" gasped the other gossip.  "I was told
+they had only just been married."
+
+"They can't be married at all.  She doesn't go by his name.  I never
+heard of anything so disgraceful--and right here at the Pinewood Inn
+which is supposed to be so select."
+
+Ryder rose up so suddenly that he kicked over his chair.  He wanted
+to kick away the screen, too, and fall tooth and nail upon "that old
+cat who dared say such vile things about Ruth."
+
+Not daring to trust himself even to look at the two women, he hurried
+out of the room, completely forgetting his breakfast.
+
+"There!" he muttered, striding in the direction of the café.  "That
+serves us right for associating with strangers.  Ruth shouldn't have
+taken up with her in the first place.
+
+"Hang it!  I should not have allowed the woman's familiarity myself.
+I could have nipped it in the bud last night at supper.  I shouldn't
+expect an unsophisticated girl like Ruth to see through such an old
+stager as that Judson.  And Miss Solomons!  Gad!
+
+"How can human beings be so cruel to each other?  Women in
+particular!  It is a mystery to me!
+
+"What did the old cat mean about Ruth giving her another name?  I
+swear I must have a talk with Ruth.  Not my wife?  Heavens on earth!
+when I've got the certificate of our marriage right here in my
+pocket?" and he struck himself on the breast with emphasis.
+
+"If that old fool keeps up her clatter I may have to have the
+certificate photographed and a copy handed to every guest of the
+Pinewood Inn!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE DUTY AGAIN DEVOLVES
+
+Ryder feed a waiter to bring him some breakfast into the café and did
+something he had never done before in his life--drank a "life saver"
+before the morning meal.
+
+"If this goes on," muttered John Ryder, "I shall become a sot.  I
+have drunk more between-meal drinks within the last twenty-four hours
+than I ever did before in my life.  They say getting married sobers
+most men; it seems as though it may utterly wreck _me_--morally!"
+
+When he wandered back into the office George had returned and
+beckoned him to the desk.
+
+"I've had a couple of hours' sleep, Mr. Ryder, and that's all," the
+clerk said.  "And it's all I guess I'll get.  Mr. Manger hasn't come
+back and isn't likely to; and although Jim Howe is willing, he's only
+good for detail work.  He's got to come to me to ask about every
+little thing.  And now, by Jove! _I've_ got to come to you, sir."
+
+"Come to me?" growled Ryder.  "What for?  I'm through.  You can't
+expect me to shoulder the responsibilities of running this hotel."
+
+"I just want your advice, Mr. Ryder," said George, the foxy.  "Look
+around at these other men.  They are all useless to me now.  Aside
+from Al--who has his own work--you are the only man with a head on
+him."
+
+"I'm not sure whether I have a head or not," grumbled Ryder.  "But
+fire up!  What's happened?"
+
+"Why, I filed a telegram to Mr. Giddings last night, and here's what
+I get in reply," the clerk hastened to say, handing the crumpled
+sheet to Ryder.  It read:
+
+
+"Giddings out of town.  Return Monday.  Should advise keeping house
+open at any cost.--BLACKMAN."
+
+
+"Now, I don't know who the dickens Blackman is, unless he's Mr.
+Giddings' chief clerk," the worried George said.  "But this wire
+doesn't give me proper authority to go ahead and contract bills,
+promise to pay help, and all that.  I don't know how to reach any of
+the Barnaby heirs.  They may read something about our trouble in the
+papers this afternoon, for our local correspondent is on the job.
+
+"But the heirs will expect Giddings to attend to it.  The help are
+troublesome--those that have remained.  Al has his hands full,
+believe me!  And the guests are kicking like steers about the
+heating.  We've got to have coal."
+
+"Can't you buy a little in the town?"
+
+"It would be mighty little.  These dealers here--and there are only
+two of them--buy from hand to mouth, as you might say.  And then, Mr.
+Ryder, I'm a poor man.  My salary isn't big.  This looks like a
+diamond in my tie," and George grinned; "but it is pure glass.  I
+wear it because it seems a man can't be a sure-enough hotel clerk
+without wearing what looks like a 'chunk of ice.'
+
+"You know," the clerk added more seriously, "Bangs bought his coal
+from the railroad company."
+
+"Can't you get some from them?"
+
+"Well, I tried to bluff them on it," said George.  "I managed to get
+them on the telephone at the Junction--Divisional Supervisions
+office.  There is still something wrong with the long distance
+service.  They can get us a car by next Tuesday; not a minute before."
+
+"These folks'll freeze to death here," said Ryder.  "It's already
+colder this morning.  And there's nothing being done to that bridge,
+I suppose?"
+
+"You couldn't get the farmers to work on Saturday if you offered them
+double wages," declared the clerk.  "The reputation of the Pinewood
+Inn will be ruined.  And I'd hate to see the doors closed and all
+these people put out."
+
+"And nowhere to go," Ryder said thoughtfully.
+
+"You've said a mouthful," groaned George, but watching the other
+sharply.
+
+"By thunder!" exclaimed Ryder, suddenly smiting the counter with a
+clenched fist.  He scented the battle like a warhorse and forgot his
+personal troubles for the moment.  This emergency appealed to him.
+"I can't see you beat this way, boy," he declared.
+
+"But what'll I do?"
+
+"Wait till I take a look around the village.  Sit tight and say
+nothing."
+
+"If the steam isn't knocking in those pipes pretty soon I am going to
+have a mob at this desk ready to tar and feather me, Mr. Ryder."
+
+"If they do it, you tell me," chuckled the business man with an
+answering grin, and, having his hat and coat with him, he started for
+the door without further loss of time.
+
+It looked to Ryder as though it was up to him to take hold of the
+wheel of affairs again and give it a whirl.  Ruth had expressed a
+desire to remain at the hotel; and certainly she could not stay
+without heat and light.
+
+Besides, Ryder had an additional reason for remaining.  If Mrs.
+Judson circulated her rumors and lies among the guests, certainly
+John Ryder and the woman to whom he had given his name and to whom he
+had entrusted his honor, could not afford, even seemingly, to run
+away.
+
+In his present mood he would have made an offer to buy the hotel and
+run it as he saw fit, providing he could get the owners of the
+Pinewood Inn to agree on a price.  Under no consideration or
+circumstances could he allow the guests to believe there was anything
+queer about Ruth.  They must remain.
+
+And "that impudent and half-baked house detective," which was the way
+he thought of Miss Solomons, was likely to make as much trouble for
+them as Mrs. Judson.  He did not mind what people said of him; but he
+grew furious when he thought of what might be said about Ruth.
+
+Therefore, he took hold of this coal situation with zest.  As he
+passed the local coal dealers on the way to the shack that served
+Pinewood as a station, he saw that George had been correct.  The two
+dealers together did not have enough coal to furnish the hotel with a
+proper supply for more than a day or two.  The hotel needed a carload
+at least.  And there should be two or three carloads in the cellar to
+protect the guests if the house was to remain open any length of time.
+
+When he reached the station he saw upon a spur track four gondolas
+heaped high with fuel.  A man in cap and jumper, wheeling an empty
+truck, he rightly identified as the station master and general
+factotum of the company at this rather unimportant station.
+
+He halted the man.  "I want to buy some of that coal," he said.
+
+"Huh?"
+
+Ryder repeated his observation, and the man began to grin.  "Think
+I'm dealing in coal?  You've struck the wrong man, boss."
+
+"I represent the hotel," said Ryder.  "I understand the railroad
+furnishes Pinewood Inn with fuel."
+
+"But not that coal," said the station master.  "That was shunted off
+here yesterday because the old scrapheap they called an engine
+hitched to Number Three couldn't pull her load over the rise to
+Blandins.  That coal is billed to a factory up there.  I couldn't
+touch that coal if I wanted to."
+
+"Then put me in communication with the supervisor of this division
+and I'll tell him the hotel must have coal.  We're all out.  The
+manager has lit out over night and left the bins empty and the guests
+will freeze if we don't get coal.  I'll pay for it right here, and
+you'll find that my check is good."
+
+"Oh, I ain't doubting that," said the agent.  "I guess you're Mr.
+Ryder.  I've heard tell of you.  You near bought out Cal Crabtree's
+store last night, they say.  But if you was the Angel Gabriel I
+couldn't sell you a hodful of that coal--nossir!  Neither could the
+Super.  It's not the road's coal, I tell you."
+
+"The road, then, is merely acting as carrier?"
+
+"That's right, Mister.  The Lossing Soap Factory is going to get that
+coal."
+
+"I want that coal," said John Ryder persuasively.
+
+"Can't help it.  If I should sell you a pound of it, I'd be li'ble to
+arrest for larceny, or burglary, or somethin'.  Yes, sir!"
+
+"If you can't sell it, I shall have to take it."
+
+The station agent laughed.  He laughed loudly.  In fact he was still
+holding his sides and hee-hawing when Ryder walked away.  The latter
+went directly to Crabtree's store.
+
+"Old man," he said to the storekeeper, and accepting without a qualm
+one of Crabtree's "two-fors" and lighting it, "what do teamsters ask
+here for carting a load of coal?"
+
+"They git fifty cents a ton."
+
+"I want you to get me every man who owns a horse and wagon, and will
+work, to cart coal from the spur track yonder to the hotel.  Let 'em
+weigh out and in on your scales.  I'll give a dollar a ton providing
+they get to work quickly and stick to it."
+
+"My soul and body!  Where'll you git the coal?" gasped the
+storekeeper.
+
+"I haven't _got_ it.  But I am going to _take_ it.  It's there on the
+spur, and the hotel needs it.  Can't let the women and children
+suffer.  Do you notice that the thermometer is going down?"
+
+"But what'll the railroad folks do?"
+
+"You find me enough men and they won't do anything.  We'll have what
+coal we need before they can send a gang up here from the
+Junction--even if they wish to.  This is a case of necessity and
+Necessity, as our school-books used to tell us, knows no law!"
+
+"By jinks!" exclaimed Crabtree.  "They'll call on the constable."
+
+"Where is he?  Who is he?"
+
+"Why, he--he kinder thought to go fishin' today.  The sun didn't jes'
+rise to suit him.  But he can git out now if he steps right smart,
+before anybody can tell him he's likely to be called on."
+
+"My soul, man!  Are you the constable?" gasped John Ryder.
+
+"Sh!  I'm storekeeper to you.  Don't speak loud enough for the
+constable in me to hear," chuckled the old fellow.
+
+He went to the door and blew a horn.  "That'll call my son, Sam.
+He'll 'tend to things--and weigh the coal.  I sha'n't be back 'fore
+supper time.  Sam'll gather the clans, Mr. Ryder, and see that they
+work right.  You ought to put a tidy lot of coal into them hotel bins
+before the constable gits back," and the storekeeper promptly
+disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE PRIVATE BUCCANEER
+
+The offer of double pay brought even some of the neighboring farmers
+to life.  Within an hour a string of carts of all descriptions wound
+its way along the village street to the spur railroad track.  Ryder
+was there, chewing on a cigar, watching the first loads taken from
+the cars.  The station master came running, mad as a hatter.
+
+"You can't do that, you derned fool!" he shouted, shaking his fist in
+John Ryder's face.
+
+"You watch and see if I can't."
+
+"But you'll get into trouble.  You'll be arrested.  These fellers
+will be arrested.  Why, hang it! it's high-handed piracy, that's what
+it is."
+
+"If anybody is arrested I stand ready to pay the bill," Ryder coolly
+told him.  "I tell you this is a case of necessity."
+
+Naturally the agent did not see it that way, and he rushed to wire
+his headquarters.  Of course he got orders to stop the robbery and
+came back and bawled commands that nobody paid any attention to.
+
+"You'll get neck deep into trouble over this," the agent sputtered to
+Ryder.  "There is a sheriff on the way here to arrest you."
+
+"All right.  He'll find me at the hotel," and having seen the first
+car cleaned out he strolled back to Pinewood Inn.  He knew there
+would be enough coal in the bins to last over Sunday at least.  Two
+carloads was enough anyway, and he ordered the work to cease when the
+second gondola was clean.  He left two cars for the Lossing Soap
+Factory.
+
+Sam Crabtree furnished the cash needed and he paid his teamsters; and
+when John Ryder entered the hotel office again it was past eleven
+o'clock.  Steam was already knocking in the pipes, and the hotel
+guests were beginning to smile once more.
+
+Few had tried to leave.  A couple of unattached men had gone on the
+eight o'clock combination that jounced down to the Junction over the
+worst ballasted road in seven states.  One man had cranked up his
+automobile and tried to get away by the back roads; but had come
+limping in again, having been drawn out of the mire by a farmer with
+a team of horses.
+
+The hotel motorbus was still across the inlet; and it was broken down
+anyway.  It would take several days to repair it.  A few of the
+guests, with light baggage only, had arranged to be punted across the
+inlet and would walk to Barr, the station on the main line.
+
+The most of them, however, had made no plans to get away.  Heat being
+supplied again, the promise of lights as usual, and a reorganization
+of the working force of the house, satisfied most of them that
+matters would soon take their usual course.
+
+John Ryder hoped that this was to be the fact.  He had done all--and
+more--than he desired to do for the welfare and comfort of the
+company.  And he certainly would not have assumed this last
+responsibility regarding the coal supply had not Ruth expressed a
+desire to remain here for the rest of their honeymoon.
+
+Jim Howe, the clerk's assistant, was at the desk, and he spoke to
+Ryder as soon as the latter came near.
+
+"I say, sir, you're Mr. Ryder, aren't you?  Well, there are two
+ladies been after you this morning, they want to see you."
+
+"Two ladies?"
+
+"Yes," and Howe had hard work to suppress a grin.  "One's our house
+detective, Miss Solomons.  You had a run-in with her last night?"
+
+"Something like that," returned Ryder.
+
+"The lady with the craze for five-cent detective fiction.  She's
+carrying one of those novels around now--'The Great Limburger Cheese
+Mystery, or Dick Squawker on a Strong Scent'; you know the kind.  I
+used to read 'em when I was a kid.  But she is after you."
+
+"Humph!" observed Ryder not at all pleased.
+
+"And the lady in Suite Three," added Jim Howe, now flashing the guest
+a sharp look.  "She's asking for you.  Al sent up her breakfast and
+then she telephoned down here to ask if her--ahem!--her husband was
+about."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I did not know just who she meant at first," acknowledged Howe,
+still eying Ryder curiously.  "She--she did not get your name right."
+
+The business man felt himself flushing.  But he braved it out.
+"Asked for her husband, didn't she?"
+
+"Er--yes."
+
+"Well, that's me," and he moved away from the desk.
+
+But he was suddenly impressed by the fact that Ruth must have said or
+done something to stir up suspicion at the hotel desk.  With Mrs.
+Judson peddling her misinformation through the house, he and his
+bride were likely to be misunderstood.  What could it be?  Did Ruth
+mispronounce his name?
+
+The puzzle of it enfolded him in a blanket of doubt.  He went
+upstairs muttering to himself and with clouded brow.
+
+As he approached Parlor A he saw a familiar figure standing at the
+door.  It was White--the man who had been so suddenly and strangely
+taken ill in the office during the night.  The man was speaking to
+one of the boys, and Ryder saw him give the messenger a card and a
+coin.
+
+"Yes; Suite Three.  Give it to the lady and tell her I am waiting for
+her here."
+
+White went quickly into the parlor and the boy darted away.  Ryder
+was dumbfounded.  He was fixed to his place in the corridor for some
+moments before he could move.
+
+White, the man of mystery, had sent his card to his, Ryder's, wife!
+He expected Ruth to come to the parlor at his summons!
+
+There could be no mistake about it.  Ryder was sure enough now that
+Suite Three was the one he had taken for himself and his bride.
+
+White's questions the night before, Ruth's fear of the man when he
+had come to the door, her attempt at supper time to have private
+conversation with White (Mrs. Judson's interference Ryder now saw had
+broken up that) and various other suspicious circumstances rose in
+Ryder's mind in horrid procession.
+
+He staggered forward a step until he was where he could see into the
+parlor.  He was aware that Miss Solomon's sharp face suddenly came
+within range of his vision; but he did not give the steely eyed house
+detective a second glance.  His eyes were fixed on White.
+
+Besides that individual, there seemed but two other guests of the
+hotel in Parlor A.  Cudger and James had disappeared.  Two women
+stood talking beside one of the other doors.  They were the vivacious
+Mrs. Judson and Mrs. Dent, the hard-featured member of the advance
+committee of the S.B.C.D.G.
+
+Ryder hung back.  John B. White was pacing a length of rug nervously.
+Suddenly Ruth appeared at the door beside which the widow and her
+companion stood.
+
+Ryder's heart leaped at the sight of his bride.  She looked as fresh
+and sweet as a rose.  She wore a delightfully pretty house dress.
+She carried what was evidently White's card in her hand, and she cast
+a puzzled glance about the parlor.  She first saw Mrs. Judson.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Judson," she said brightly.  "I hope you are
+better?"
+
+Up went the widow's lorgnette.  She stared Mrs. Ryder up and down
+without replying.  Then she deliberately turned her back without
+speaking, much to Ruth's pain and surprise.
+
+Ryder's gorge rose.  He was about to step forward to protect Ruth
+when the latter saw White and uttered a little cry.  The man wheeled
+and came toward her.  Did Ruth shrink from him and did she cry out in
+fear?
+
+"Madam, I must speak to you," White said, as Mrs. Judson and her
+companion left the room.  "At least you owe me some reparation--some
+explanation.  I demand that of you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+IT IS NO LONGER FARCE
+
+Ruth halted.  Her husband, from the other end of the room, saw fear
+in her face--right down terror!--as she confronted the man who
+addressed her.
+
+Nor was this surprising.  White's eyes glowed unnaturally, his long
+black hair was disheveled and his appearance altogether wild and
+uncanny.  Ruth fell back from him, and Ryder heard her breath come
+gaspingly.  Yet for the moment Ryder was spellbound and unable to go
+to her protection.
+
+"What--what do you want of me?" she asked faintly.
+
+"I sent for you.  I must talk with you," White returned.
+
+"Sent for me?" she said in a dully puzzled tone.  "Oh, no!  My
+husband sent for me."  She glanced at the card in her hand.  "He--he
+sent me this card----  So strange----"
+
+She flashed White a suddenly indignant glance.  "You have tricked
+me!" she cried with more force.  "You have obtained one of my
+husband's cards----"
+
+"That is my card, Ruth Mont!" White exclaimed harshly.  "It is the
+card of the man whom you should call 'husband'--who _is_ your husband
+by right.  _And I am that man!_"
+
+A porter suddenly entered the door at John Ryder's back.
+
+"Are you Mr. Ryder, sir?" he said.  "I was sent after you.  Your
+trunks have been brought across the inlet and we have them at the
+door of your suite.  Shall we take them inside and carry the empty
+boxes downstairs, sir?"
+
+How did he do it?  How does a man's brain sometimes continue to work
+and his limbs to move when he is sleep-walking?  The subconscious
+self of John Ryder moved out of the parlor where two human beings
+were in the throes of a gripping tragedy--a tragedy that might scar
+his whole future life--and led the porter back to Suite Three.
+
+He opened the door with the key he had obtained at the desk and saw
+the porters bring in the trunks.  He made them understand that they
+were to let the empty boxes belonging to Ruth remain.  Then he tipped
+them and was left alone.
+
+He sat down in the very chair he had sat in before and held Ruth in
+his arms, and awaited his wife's return.  His wife!  God in heaven!
+Was she his wife?  White had claimed her as rightfully belonging to
+him, and all those suspicious circumstances that had heretofore
+rankled in John Ryder's mind swam to the surface and offered proof
+that White's statement was true.
+
+What was this awful riddle that seared John Ryder's soul as though
+with a branding iron?
+
+He was convinced now that White was not a madman.  Wild he might
+appear; but that he was insane, that his strange speeches were the
+vaporings of an unbalanced mind, Ryder did not now believe.
+
+Why was he so sure that White was sane?  Because Ruth had shown by
+her manner and by the expression of her countenance that something in
+White's statement impressed her.  Ryder had seen her display this
+fear twice.  He was convinced that White actually was closely
+associated with her, or had been so in the past.
+
+Yet Ruth was bound to him--Ryder.  She was his wife.  He had been
+wedded to her less than twenty-four hours before.  Twenty-four hours!
+It seemed a lifetime of storm and stress.
+
+Ryder had promised to love, to cherish, to support and defend from
+all harm, to----
+
+"My God!" he exclaimed, leaping up.  "Am I a pusillanimous coward--a
+dastard?  I have left her to face that man--whatever or whoever he
+is--alone."
+
+He started for the door, madly intending to go back to the parlor and
+face them both.  The door of the suite opened and closed swiftly.
+Ruth came in--the vision of a panting, wild-eyed, pallid-faced woman.
+She clung to the door knob for a moment, striving to regain her
+breath, and staring strangely into John Ryder's face.  When she
+spoke, what she said shocked him as nothing else could have done.
+
+"Who are you?" she demanded.  "What--what manner of man are you?
+What did you do this to me for?  _Why did you do it?_"
+
+"Do what?" asked Ryder.
+
+"Why did you marry me?  Oh!" she cried in despair, wringing her
+hands, "why did you do this awful thing?"
+
+"Why did I marry you?" repeated the man, dumbfounded.  "Because I
+loved you.  I told you I loved you when we were aboard ship, Ruth----"
+
+"Aboard ship!  Aboard what ship?"
+
+"The _Minnequago_.  Surely you have not forgotten our long talks?
+You have not forgotten----"
+
+"Am I mad?" cried the woman, throwing her arms wildly above her head.
+"Oh!  I must be mad!"  Then she gained sudden control over herself.
+She thrust her face forward, her eyes blazing into his.  "If you are
+my husband," she whispered, "what is your name?"
+
+"I _am_ your husband," Ryder said sternly.  "You were legally married
+to me yesterday.  Here is the certificate which the minister gave
+you, and which you placed in my hands for safe keeping."
+
+He had dragged out his wallet and handed her the folded document.
+Her shaking fingers clutched at it and finally got the stiff paper
+unfolded.  She read the names aloud in crescendo:
+
+"'Ruth A. Mont': 'John Ryder'.  "The paper slipped from her fingers
+and fluttered to the floor.  "'John Ryder'?" she repeated staring at
+him.  "_I never heard of you before!_"
+
+She burst into tears, a passion of weeping that shook her whole body.
+For a moment she stood before him, so near that he might have touched
+her, her face in her trembling hands.  The man stood still, dumb and
+helpless.
+
+Then turning swiftly she ran into the inner room.  Ryder, at last
+awakened, started up.  He was frightened by her vehemence, as well as
+amazed by her words.
+
+He started to follow her.  She had shut the door sharply, but the key
+was not turned in the lock.  He put his hand upon the door and
+hesitated.  And so surely is the man lost who hesitates, John Ryder
+was lost then!  There were two courses open to him, and he chose the
+wrong one.
+
+His hand left the knob, and with the sound of the woman's wild
+sobbing in his ears he went slowly down the room and out into the
+corridor.  As he came in sight of the parlor door he saw White wildly
+break from the room and run for the stairway.  John Ryder's senses
+were so dulled that he scarcely saw the man.  But behind the
+departing White appeared in the parlor doorway the figure of Miss
+Solomons.  The expression upon the house detective's face might have
+alarmed Ryder at another time.  She fairly glared at him as he moved
+past her.
+
+"No, you ain't no crook, Mr. Ryder," he heard the strange girl
+mutter.  "You're just a particular blamed fool!  That's what you are."
+
+He managed to get out of the hotel in some way and stumbled along the
+sandy road to the shore of the inlet where he might be alone.  He
+tramped the edge of the inlet for miles.
+
+His mind was back in the room at the hotel where he had left Ruth.
+The incident was as clearly etched on his brain as it had been when
+he stood and heard her amazing declaration.
+
+What she meant he did not know.  What he should have done he did not
+know.  That he had done the wrong thing he was not sure.  But he had.
+
+_Wrong_?  Indeed, his act had been the deadliest wrong possible to
+the woman.  He was stunned, he did not understand; but there was one
+thing of which in his sane moments he was already convinced: Ruth
+loved him.
+
+Nothing should have superseded that in his mind.  Whatever the riddle
+was, whatever the skein of mystery in which they two were entangled,
+he should have remembered that.  Instead he had allowed jealousy to
+step in and becloud the issue.  John Ryder had turned his back upon a
+woman who had shown she loved him deeply.  He had deserted her at a
+time when she needed him as she never had before and probably never
+would again.
+
+All the pain and passion which followed this event John Ryder could
+lay to his own act.  He brought all that followed upon himself by his
+own unwisdom.  He was thinking only of himself.  He was like a hurt
+animal, desiring to seek some lair wherein to lick its wounds.
+
+He walked on and on.  The in-running tide lapped along the strand at
+his feet, the burden of its murmur being:
+
+"_I never heard of you before!_"
+
+What had Ruth meant by that statement?  Was it possible that she was
+insane?  What had that fellow, White, said to her that had thrown her
+mind into such confusion?
+
+White!  At the remembrance of the man of mystery Ryder suddenly spat
+out an oath.  He could explain this thing; and Ryder suddenly
+registered a vow that White should explain, or he would have his life!
+
+He was a man now enraged to the point of desperation.  He started for
+the hotel with this single idea milling in his brain.  More than an
+hour had elapsed since he had left the Pinewood Inn, but he had taken
+little note of the lapse of time.
+
+He betrayed his disturbed state of mind when he reached the desk
+where George presided.
+
+"For mercy's sake, Mr. Ryder! what's happened to you?" demanded the
+clerk.
+
+"I--I am looking for a man," stammered Ryder.  "You know--the fellow
+who threw a fit here last night.  White--John B. White."
+
+"What about him?"
+
+"I want to see him."
+
+"But he's gone, sir."
+
+"Gone?  Left the hotel?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  He had no heavy baggage, and he got somebody to row him
+across the inlet.  There are several fellows down there taking folks
+back and forth because of the broken bridge.  I guess he intended
+catching the two o'clock train on the main line.  Had your lunch,
+sir?"
+
+Ryder was not thinking of eating.  He walked away from the desk
+without replying.  White was gone.  Then who would explain to him----?
+
+Ruth!  He started up the stairway.  Instinctively he sought Suite
+Three.  Yet when he arrived there he hesitated.  Should he go in?
+Could he face Ruth?  What was he to say to her?
+
+At last he turned the knob.  The door was unlocked.  He stepped into
+the room.  Its condition instantly shocked his mind into activity.
+
+The wardrobe was wide open and was empty.  All Ruth's pretty dresses
+had disappeared and there was evidence of hasty packing.  He hurried
+down the room to her trunks.  They were repacked, strapped, and ready
+for shipment.  He stooped to peer at the tags.
+
+The trunks had come to the hotel, of course, marked with Ruth's
+maiden name and Pinewood.  The man's eyes bulged--he uttered a hoarse
+cry.  These lines were crossed out and in their stead and in a
+woman's upright handwriting he saw: "Mrs. John B. White, New York."
+Ruth had repacked the boxes ready for their return by the express
+company.
+
+Ryder turned swiftly to the bed chamber, his heart thumping so that
+he well nigh choked.  The door of the inner room was open.  He crept
+to it and looked in.  It was empty.
+
+"She's gone!  She's run away!" muttered the horrified man.
+"What--why----"  His words ceased and he dashed for the corridor.  He
+understood at last.  She had gone away with White!  This was his firm
+belief.
+
+Right here it would have been well if John Ryder had recalled the
+observation of Miss Solomons: "You're just a particular blamed fool!"
+
+He did not stop to question the reasonableness of this idea that had
+shot across his brain and seared it.  Ruth had gone.  Her trunks were
+tagged with that man's name--_with her own name_.  He saw it all now
+in a flash.  She had married him while yet she was another man's
+wife.  That man was John B. White, and he had followed them to
+Pinewood Inn and demanded that she return to him.
+
+As Ryder rushed out into the corridor he came upon the chambermaid he
+had tipped so liberally that morning.  His trembling lips formed the
+instant words:
+
+"Have you seen my wife?"
+
+"Why, Mr. Ryder!  I saw her some time ago--going out."
+
+"You mean she was leaving the hotel?"
+
+"She was dressed for traveling--yes, sir.  Just as she was dressed
+when she came last evening.  Yes, sir."
+
+Ryder brushed by and started for the stairs.  Ruth was attempting to
+get away with White on that two o'clock train.  There might still be
+time for him to catch it.  If ever hell was brewed in a man's heart
+it was in the heart of John Ryder at this moment.
+
+Somebody spoke his name behind him.  A swift glance showed him the
+motherly face of Mrs. Brack.  She seemed desirous of speaking to him,
+but Ryder could stop for nothing now.  He hurried on without a word
+of reply.
+
+He reached the head of the flight and started down.  There were
+several men at the desk, but Ryder brushed through them and leaned
+forward to speak confidentially to George.
+
+"Does that train leave Barr, on the main line, at just two o'clock?"
+he asked the clerk.
+
+"Two-thirteen, Mr. Ryder," answered George.
+
+"Thanks!"  Ryder turned to make his way to the door.  He was
+confronted by a stranger who put an authoritative hand upon his
+breast and pushed him back.
+
+"This is the gentleman, is it?" the stranger said to the clerk.
+"This is John Ryder?"
+
+"That's my name--yes," snapped Ryder.  "I'm in a hurry.  I can't talk
+to you now."
+
+"I'm afraid you'll have to wait till your hurry's over, Mr. Ryder,"
+said the man.  "I'm the sheriff's deputy.  I understand you are the
+man who stole two cars of coal from the Lossing Soap Company.  I've
+got to detain you, sir."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AN OUTLAW IN FACT
+
+Now at this particular moment John Ryder wished to be detained less
+than ever before in his life.  He had but half an hour in the clear
+to reach the Barr railroad station in any case.  White and Ruth had
+already got a good start of him.  As far as he knew there might not
+be another train to New York over the main line until night; and
+surely not on the branch from Pinewood until nine o'clock.
+
+Sheriff or no sheriff, he made a break for the door of the hotel.
+The officer ran with him and there was a squabble right in the foyer.
+
+"You can't do this, Mr. Ryder!" exclaimed the deputy sheriff.
+"You're arrested!"
+
+"I'll show you what I can do!" declared John Ryder with emphasis, and
+swung for the officer's jaw.  The blow landed and it did him good.
+Not the sheriff, but Ryder himself.
+
+This quarrel took his mind for the moment off the thoughts that had
+nearly crazed him.  He burst through the door, banged it in the
+sheriff's face, and ran for the inlet.
+
+Before he reached the waterside he heard the hue and cry behind him.
+But there was at least one boatman alert.
+
+"Dodging a board bill, Mister?" exclaimed this individual.  "Well!  I
+wouldn't wonder if they'll all be doing that.  They tell me they shut
+off the heat and lights on you all last night.  Gimme two dollars and
+I'll put you across."
+
+Here was a fellow just as crooked as John Ryder needed at that
+moment, and the latter leaped into the boat which was thrust out into
+the tide.  Down to the shore plowed the deputy sheriff bawling for
+them to come back.
+
+"I'm deafer than an adder," said the boatman, grinning up into John
+Ryder's face.  "What does he say?"
+
+"He seems anxious about the weather," said John Ryder grimly.  "He's
+got another boat.  Two men in it.  They'll beat you."
+
+"Huh!  Tom Crane and Andy Meyers.  That old punt of theirs is like
+punk.  If we should run into it, Mister, my prow would cut her right
+down to the water-line."
+
+"An extra five dollars for you if you do it," the passenger snapped,
+his jaw set and ugly.  "But don't pick 'em up.  The tide isn't
+dangerous here, is it?"
+
+"They kin near wade ashore," agreed the boatman and began to hold
+back that the pursuing boat would be sure to overtake them.
+
+"Sit tight and keep your mouth shut," said the boatman.  "The less
+said the better, as the old woman remarked when she married the deaf
+and dumb husban'."
+
+The deputy sheriff, holding a handkerchief to his jaw, was shouting
+commands that Ryder's boatman did not in the least heed.  But the
+latter let the other boat come right up on them.
+
+"I'll get ye!" shouted the angry officer.  "I'll jail you for this!
+Hi! look out, you numbskull!"
+
+Ryder's man swerved his heavy boat around suddenly.  It was aimed
+directly for the leaky punt.  Crash!  The collision half drove the
+officer's craft under water and she began to settle at once.
+
+"Hi!  You'll drown us!" yelled one of the other boatmen.
+
+"Sho, you ain't nowheres near to the channel," said Ryder's man.  "It
+ain't neck deep to shore--from where you came.  You fellers kin both
+swim, and if the sheriff can't, let him sink.  I ain't got no use for
+him, anyway."
+
+Later he explained that this officer had come the week before and
+searched his house for liquor.
+
+"Thought I kept a blind pig, he said," chuckled the boatman.  "But I
+don't.  Jest the same, if he'd looked down our well----  Well! if you
+ever come back here and want a good drink of licker, look me up.  I
+always have enough for my friends."
+
+Ryder took the extra pair of oars at this point and aided in rowing
+the boat to the other side of the inlet.  He paid his helper and
+started for the station in a rattling old car.  There was no other
+vehicle to be obtained.  Just before they sighted the railroad he
+heard the train whistle.
+
+Although he knew he could not make the train, he went on down into
+the town and to the station.
+
+The two-thirteen had pulled out some time before he stepped upon the
+platform.  John Ryder went directly to the ticket window and asked
+the clerk:
+
+"You sold tickets for this last train to New York?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Coolly and carefully Ryder described White's appearance and that of
+his own wife.  "I want to catch up with these people," he explained,
+"and I do not know whether they went on this train, or on one in the
+other direction."
+
+In secret his heart was lacerated by the very words he used in
+describing Ruth.  Yet he must learn if she had actually gone with
+White.
+
+The clerk seemed to remember White clearly.  The man had paced the
+platform constantly until the train arrived.
+
+"Watching to see if I was following them," thought Ryder.  Then
+aloud: "And the woman?"
+
+"She wore a veil--one o' those auto veils.  I didn't see her face.
+But she was the only woman who left by that train."
+
+"Not with the man?"
+
+"They did not appear to be together."
+
+Ryder nodded.  He had gained complete control of himself now.  He
+wrote a long telegram to the supervisor of this division of the
+railroad, and the answer came so quickly that those about the
+railroad office were startled.  A special train was ordered started
+from the Junction for Mr. John Ryder and would arrive about three
+o'clock.  It would have right of way going north.
+
+Ryder paced the platform and chewed his cigar.  John B. White had
+paced this platform, too.  Whatever White's thoughts had been, John
+Ryder's were as black and as terrible as ever man had meditated upon.
+
+He knew what he would do to White if he caught him.  No matter what
+the guilt of his wife--or the woman who had posed as his wife for a
+few hours--Ryder was very sure that White was the more guilty.  He
+was as ruthless an outlaw at this moment as ever a twentieth century
+business man could be.
+
+The special backed in.  It stopped about ten seconds, for Ryder was
+the only person to board it.  Then on toward the city for which the
+two guilty creatures he was following had bought tickets.  They might
+have bought them for New York as a blind; but Ruth's trunks were
+plainly marked for that city.
+
+A baggage car and smoker and some official's private car made up the
+special train.  John Ryder's name was a power with the officials of
+this road if he cared to use it.  And it was of his name that he
+thought, sitting shrugged down in the leather covered lounge and
+watching the autumn landscape fly past.
+
+He remembered what he had tried to make his name stand for during the
+years he had been working up to his present business pinnacle.  He
+came of unblemished stock.  His father had been an honest man.  His
+mother, the memory of whom had ever been an inspiration to him, had
+been a beautiful woman both in person and character.
+
+He had given her ring--her wedding ring, hallowed by being worn on
+the finger of a pure and gentle wife--into the keeping of one who, he
+now believed, did not value the sacred character of the emblem.
+
+His wife----  Well! she _was_ his wife!  He had married her legally!
+He tried to push any other thought down.
+
+Yet, suppose she had no right to marry him?  That was the awful
+thought that rankled like a barbed arrow in his heart.
+
+"Mrs. John B. White," written under the erased "Ruth Mont" on the
+trunk tags seemed to clinch Ryder's suspicions first aroused by
+White's actions and words.
+
+Was Ruth a bigamist without having intended the crime?  Had she been
+married in England and, for some reason, supposed her husband dead?
+Was there something shameful connected with this White and her
+association with him that had spurred her to try to hide her former
+marriage from Ryder.
+
+What manner of woman was she?  Was her sweetness and innocence all
+assumed?  She had seemed to John Ryder until this terrible thing had
+arisen, to be good and pure--in every way a desirable character.
+
+Of course, she might be vain.  Her consideration of the offer of Sam
+Marks to put her on the stage might prove that frailty.  An actress!
+Was there an explanation in that thought?  Had she been acting all
+along?  Had the story she told him on shipboard been a tissue of
+falsehoods?  Was her apparent fondness for him born of her ability to
+simulate emotions and feelings that she did not really possess?
+
+Good heavens! was it all a part of a plot, perhaps, to link his
+name--the name of John Ryder--with the stage career of a vaudeville
+actress?  Was this the explanation of it all?
+
+And what of John B. White?  What of Ruth's apparent fear of him?
+Could any woman so assume the attitude and look of terror?  On the
+other hand, could her appearance of loving Ryder be likewise assumed?
+
+Suddenly there flashed into his mind the memory of how Ruth
+looked--what she had said, indeed--when she thought he had been taken
+ill in the hotel office late the previous night.  He saw her again as
+she came madly down the hotel corridor and flung herself into his
+arms.
+
+"She thought it was I who had been taken sick.  That I know.  My God!
+What mystery is here?  The girl loves me--deeply, sincerely, truly.
+I cannot doubt it.  Whether she has a right to do so or not, she
+_does_ love me.
+
+"Then, why has she gone away with that man?  What dreadful hold does
+he have upon her?  Is she beside herself?  Her words suggest an
+aberrant mind.  I should be with her now.  That White is a villain.
+And whatever his right, even if it is backed by law, shall I give up
+the woman I love and who loves me to any other man on earth?"
+
+And as though in answer to this question a repetition of Miss
+Solomons' last observation to him flashed into John Ryder's mind:
+
+"You're just a particular blamed fool.  That's what _you_ are!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE NAME ON THE BILLBOARD
+
+Ryder arrived in New York after dark.  He did not go to his rooms,
+for he feared if he did so his presence would become known to some of
+his friends and he would be obliged to make explanations.
+
+When the taxicab deposited him, baggageless, at the hotel he
+selected, he noted the variegated lights of a drugstore across the
+street.  He went into it before entering the hotel and shoved a
+well-wrinkled prescription across the counter to the clerk.  The
+latter raised his brows.
+
+"I've got to sleep tonight," John Ryder said quietly.  "You will see
+Dr. Harmstick's name clearly written on that prescription.  He is my
+family physician.  Here is my card."
+
+He got the drug, and, as soon as a room was assigned to him, took the
+medicine and went to bed.  He could not have slept without the dose,
+and that took effect in a short time.  But, superinduced by drugs as
+it was, his sleep was not refreshing.  However, his mind was clear
+and his body alert and vigorous when he arose on Sunday morning.
+
+He sent a boy to skirmish for clean linen and a fresh tie, and made
+himself presentable before going down for a bit of breakfast.  He had
+eaten practically nothing the day before, and while he ate now he
+tried to plan his future course of action.
+
+Future!  Why, the word held nothing for him but the promise of
+continued pain and shame.  John Ryder of spotless name had given that
+name into the keeping of a woman who was unworthy of it--whether she
+had intentionally flouted him or not, this fact seemed to be
+established.  The newspapers must soon learn the story of his
+marriage fiasco.  It would be blazoned forth for the whole world to
+read.
+
+He would be a marked man.  John Ryder, the man who had married a
+woman offhand, without knowing anything about her!  At least, he had
+known her but seven days.  And she had run away from him with another
+man!
+
+It would be a nice bit for the scandal mongers.  It would be
+something he could never live down.  Every man with whom he did
+business hereafter would be saying to himself while in Ryder's
+presence:
+
+"There must be something the matter with this fellow.  They say his
+wife ran away from him the day after they were married."
+
+Yet, even these thoughts were not the bitterest in his soul.  Higher
+than the shame of having his trouble publicly known and discussed,
+rose the fact that he had lost the treasure to which his heart clung.
+
+Ruth was the one woman in the world whom he had ever, or could ever,
+love.  He felt it--he knew it!
+
+Short as their acquaintance had been, Ryder knew that he loved Ruth
+as he should never be able to love another woman.  He had thought he
+loved her when he had first seen her on the deck of the _Minnequago_;
+but since their marriage--since the old clergyman had pronounced them
+man and wife--a deeper and more tender feeling for his girlish bride
+had grown in his mind and heart.
+
+On shipboard, coming over, she had merely been a beautiful
+creature--a woman of heart and mind and of fine physique--who
+attracted his admiration and fired his passion.
+
+Once bound, as he supposed legally and holily to Ruth Mont, his love
+for her had taken on a deeper meaning.  He was not a man who
+philosophized much, or who catechised his own motives or thoughts;
+but he knew that a subtle change had taken place in his feelings
+toward the woman even before the minister had joined their hands.
+
+It had been half pique and half determination to obtain his own
+desire that had made him write that peremptory note to Miss Mont
+before the _Minnequago_ docked.  It grated upon him to think of a man
+like Marks bearing off such a prize, even in a sordid business
+transaction.
+
+But the instant he had seen Ruth waiting for him when he landed--the
+moment she had put her hands into his--the instant she had whispered:
+"I will marry you," a greater love had leaped into full and glowing
+life in John Ryder's bosom.
+
+It was no longer a matter of mutual attraction, or the charm of her
+beautiful face and figure, or her mental attributes that held him
+captive.  From that moment of their meeting on the dock his heart
+knew her heart; they had become one.
+
+And this knowledge, which he could not scorn or overlook despite all
+that had happened since, made the darker part of the puzzle.  Had he
+not been sure of his love and of her love, he could have understood
+in part how she had come to leave him and go with this other man.
+
+For he could not accept the suggestion that all her sweetness and
+sheer happiness as a bride was merely a pose.  That, as an actress,
+she had simulated a part.  No, the woman did not live, he believed,
+who could so befool him.
+
+He gazed out of the restaurant window at the church parade on the
+broad Fifth Avenue walk, and with eyes that saw more than the passing
+throng.  Two or three couples went by whom he knew--men and their
+wives going home after service.
+
+They suggested domesticity, companionship, the best there is for
+human beings in this old world of ours.  He realized what he had
+lost--aye, what he had merely grasped at only to have the treasure
+snatched from him by this cruel turn of fate.
+
+Later he went out and wandered about somewhat aimlessly.  Not that he
+expected to find either of the two people he was looking for.  They
+would not be in the Sunday street crowd.  And yet he could not help
+looking into the faces of those he met with keen scrutiny.
+
+He could not easily set on foot any serious search for Ruth and White
+on Sunday.  Nor was he sure he wished to.  The thought of bringing
+the police or even private detectives into the case horrified him.
+Yet, was he to lose Ruth without lifting a hand to win her back?
+
+All day long John Ryder weltered in the waters of indecision.  Should
+he seek Ruth through the regular police channels?  Should he let
+matters run their own course?  This was a new state of mind for the
+determined, decisive business man.
+
+Somewhere over on the West Side, about seven o'clock he dropped in at
+a restaurant to dine.  Afterward he wandered slowly down the broad
+and busy avenue that lends itself the airs of Broadway after dark,
+jostled by the crowds, without a person to speak to and desirous
+indeed of no companionship.
+
+He came to a theater before which was a huge billboard that
+advertised mockingly "Sacred Concert," following which was a long
+list of vaudeville turns.  Many of the crowd turned in here.  There
+were speculators at the door hawking tickets, and a little eddy of
+people held up John Ryder.  His eye caught, altogether by accident it
+would seem, in flaring red type, the following announcement:
+
+
+  SPECIAL ATTRACTION
+
+  First Appearance
+  of
+  ENGLAND'S MOST FAMOUS ENTERTAINER
+
+  MISS MONT
+
+  Imitator and Comédienne
+
+  Under the sole management of Mr. Sam Marks
+
+
+Seeing that he was attracting attention, Ryder moved away.  People
+were looking into his face curiously.  He felt his heart pounding as
+though it would burst through the shell of his chest.  Rage blinded
+him.  Despair shook him through every fibre of his being.
+
+The half darkness of a narrower thoroughfare offered him shelter.
+The horror and shame of his position well nigh leveled John Ryder's
+pride with the ground.
+
+He saw what it all meant now.  There could be, he thought, no further
+doubt or mistake.  She had intended to do this from the first.  Marks
+had doubtless put her up to it.  The scandal of her having married
+Ryder and left him after twenty-four hours--on some trumped up charge
+of course--would give her an amount of free advertising such as no
+vaudeville actress could resist!
+
+The story was already in the papers.  John Ryder could not doubt it.
+His friends were laughing at his predicament.  And how coolly, and
+with what utter heartlessness, had the game been played upon him.
+
+Doubtless the woman had been under contract with Marks when the ship
+left the other side.  Ryder had foolishly showed her that he was in
+love with her.  Between them, Marks and the girl had hatched this
+plot.
+
+And who was White?  The answer was easy.
+
+He was some poor actor whom Marks had hired to impersonate a wronged
+lover or husband, whichever might best fit the needs of the case.
+His following them to the Pinewood Inn had been for the purpose of
+creating a scene that would separate the newly wedded couple.
+
+Mrs. Judson's illness had precluded the necessity for that scene.
+Fate had played into the hands of the heartless jade; and when the
+game had gone far enough for her purpose, she had run away and
+returned to New York to fill this, her initial engagement before an
+American public.
+
+He even understood now about those pretty frocks she had worn.  Of
+course they were a part of a stage wardrobe Miss Mont already
+possessed.
+
+These thoughts all but turned John Ryder's brain.  He found himself
+after a time back at the entrance to the theater.  But he could not
+have told how he got there.  One of the ticket speculators assailed
+him.
+
+"Best seat in the house, boss.  Right down front on the side.  Two
+bucks.  See the whole show."
+
+"When does Miss--Miss Mont come on?"
+
+"Nine-thirty."
+
+"Is she----"
+
+"She's a corker!  She had her try-out before the manager and a crowd
+of newspaper sharps this morning, and she's a scream.  They'll put
+out the S.R.O. signs on her for the rest of the week--you take it
+from me."
+
+Ryder bought the seat and passed in at the orchestra entrance of the
+theater.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+IN THE PART OF THE INJURED HUSBAND
+
+The blaze of lights, the music, the rustle of the audience, all
+affected Ryder but slightly.  He walked to his seat as one might walk
+in a dream.  There seemed little tangible to him in his surroundings,
+or in the people he brushed past.
+
+When he had seated himself the usher leaned over and whispered to him
+to remove his hat.  He sat in his overcoat, staring straight before
+him with glassy, unwinking eyes.
+
+A painted curtain was dropped, and between it and the footlights two
+men appeared who went through some sort of act.  Ryder never knew
+what it was; nor did he appreciate the several turns that followed
+this act.
+
+Ryder found a program in his hand, and he began to look through it
+for his wife's name.  Then he remembered that it could not be there,
+for Marks must have arranged for her appearance here on Saturday.
+She could not be a feature of the regular Sunday bill.
+
+Ryder suddenly felt a great thankfulness for this fact.  Undoubtedly
+the only places where Miss Mont's name appeared were on the billboard
+and in the newspaper advertisements.
+
+It came into his troubled mind that he was in a position to put an
+effectual stop to his wife's being advertised further as a public
+entertainer.  His brain began to work clearly along this line.
+
+She was either legally his wife, or a bigamist.  In either case, if
+he kept his head, he would have the whip-hand.
+
+If she acknowledged the legality of their marriage, then the law
+would give him control over her movements--to an extent at least.
+Until she instituted proceedings for a separation she must obey him.
+
+If the marriage had been a farce because of a former marriage on her
+part, then his hold upon her would be stronger still.  If she refused
+to retire from the stage and live in seclusion, he would prosecute
+her and put her in jail.
+
+This thought gave him untold satisfaction for the moment; then it
+horrified him.  His wife--Ruth--the woman he loved--in jail!
+
+What an awful experience it would be for her.  Her tender body to
+recline on a hard cot and be subjected to the strict rules of a
+prison, and to exist on jail fare!
+
+Then he hardened his heart.  She was no wife of his--only in name in
+any case.  She had cajoled him and fooled him and ruined him.  She
+should be made to suffer as he was suffering now.
+
+He suddenly awoke to a stir in the audience.  The orchestra burst
+forth into a new melody and the crowd began to applaud.  Who were
+they welcoming?
+
+Ryder raised his eyes from the program which was merely a blur of
+names to him and looked straight into the face of the woman who had
+come from the wings and was now bowing an acknowledgment to her
+welcome.  It was "Miss Mont, England's most famous entertainer."
+
+For an instant he believed she was looking straight at him--that she
+must see and give him some sign of greeting.  He forgot the glare of
+the footlights in the actor's eyes which makes the entire auditorium
+a magnified blur of faces and forms, and seldom allows the person on
+the stage to descry clearly a particular face in the audience.
+
+His eyes devoured her as though he had never seen her before.  She
+was neither the woman she had seemed aboard the _Minnequago_, nor as
+she had seemed in their suite at the Pinewood Inn.
+
+Plainly dressed aboard ship, the beauty of her face and figure had
+been suggested rather than displayed.  It was her brightness of mind
+that had most deeply impressed John Ryder during the voyage.
+
+Afterward, during their short wedded intercourse, her sweetness of
+disposition and lovely personality had charmed and held him in her
+toils.  How sweet she had looked in the dressing sack which revealed
+her neck and arms, bustling about the room unpacking her trunks.
+
+And now this was still another woman--a third personality.  The
+beauty of face and form was enhanced by her costume; but it was a
+cold and formal beauty; not the living, breathing, loving creature
+whom he had folded in his arms.  Nor did she seem the same woman he
+had talked and walked with on the steamship's deck.
+
+This was Miss Mont in her public character--Miss Mont, the actress--a
+woman living for the show and applause of the stage.
+
+She swept to the center of the stage in a trailing robe which was cut
+to display the line of her figure to perfection and which likewise
+left bare her neck and shoulders and her graceful arms.
+
+She wore no ornament.  She needed none.  Ryder noted, even, that she
+no longer wore the fine gold chain and the locket which had so
+stirred his doubts and jealousy two days before.
+
+She made another graceful courtesy and began her act.  That she was
+troubled with diffidence--with actual stage fright--there could be
+little doubt.  But some entertainers never get over that feeling on
+first appearance, so it did not disprove Ryder's belief that she was
+well trained in her art.
+
+Her methods were natural and did not smell of the stage; nevertheless
+Ryder was unconvinced.  No woman who had not had long training could
+have acted the part Miss Mont had played at the Pinewood Inn.  Why,
+_this_ was an utterly different woman!
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, and her voice thrilled John Ryder
+where he sat with his burning gaze fixed on her face, "I am to
+imitate certain well-known actors and actresses whose peculiarities
+and oddities are more or less familiar to you, as they are to me.
+
+"As this is my first visit to America, I cannot imitate your own
+local celebrities--only such of the profession as may have come to
+England and whom I have seen in London.  For instance, I will try to
+imitate"--here she named a musical comedy celebrity who had made a
+hit on both sides of the Atlantic--"as she sings her most popular
+song in 'The Bridal Bell.'"
+
+Instantly the transformation that took place in Miss Mont's attitude
+and facial expression carried the house by storm.  Before she opened
+her lips to sing a line of the ditty that had been so popular in "The
+Bridal Bell," she looked the woman she imitated to the life.
+
+Ryder was actually startled.  He remembered that once, in a spirit of
+fun, while aboard ship, Miss Mont had roguishly imitated the
+peculiarities of a fellow-passenger for his private amusement.  He
+had not encouraged her, because he thought it savored too much of the
+very thing he desired to shield her from--the stage.  Ah, why had not
+his eyes been opened then to what manner of woman she was?
+
+Yet during the few hours she had been with him at the Pinewood Inn
+she had attempted nothing of this kind.  Nothing in her speech or
+actions then had suggested the theater.  What a consummate actress
+this wretched woman was!
+
+The applause of the crowd encouraged her.  She did not undertake
+anything very difficult; but she filled her seventeen minutes
+acceptably; and with her beauty and personal charm there was little
+doubt that her act would be a hit.
+
+Her popularity with this audience did anything but please Ryder.  The
+more the crowd applauded the more bitter were his feelings, and the
+deeper was the pain he suffered.
+
+How could he ever drag this woman off the stage after such a
+reception?  Both she and her manager would fight to thwart his
+attempt to close her career.  Yet he had money--much money.  Marks
+could be bought out, he felt sure; but other managers would realize
+that in Miss Mont there was a fortune.
+
+It was while these bitter feelings rankled in his mind that she came
+back to bow her acknowledgment for the applause that followed her
+encore.  Her gaze swept the side of the house where Ryder sat as she
+went off again and once out of direct range of the footlights, she
+saw his face.
+
+He saw her start, pale, and then flush underneath the grease-paint
+that stained her cheeks.  She knew him.
+
+Ryder rose from his seat and walked uncertainly up the aisle.
+Several people departed after her act, and his doing so was not
+conspicuous.  At the door he stopped a man and asked him where the
+stage exit of the theater was located.  The man grinned at him and
+said:
+
+"Round on the other street."  Then to his friend he added quite loud
+enough for Ryder to hear: "A hard-hit Johnny I should say.  The Mont
+has certainly made good with him."
+
+Ryder flushed.  He could have turned and struck the man down.  It was
+his wife who the fellow had intimated would be an attraction for
+"stage-door Jonnies."
+
+He found the stage entrance and the usual Cerberus on guard.  His
+entrance was at first denied.  For a moment the maddened man was
+tempted to rush in past the doorkeeper and demand to see his wife of
+the first person he met.  Better judgment prevailed.  It was dark
+enough in the entry for the doorkeeper to miss his passion-distorted
+face.
+
+"Ain't nobody allowed inside, Mister," the man said.
+
+"I've a friend, Miss Mont----"
+
+"Let's have your card and I'll get it back to her," said the man
+whose hand itched for a quarter.
+
+"I haven't a card; but I wish to see Miss Mont.  I want to surprise
+her, you know."  The crisp banknote dropped into the man's hand.
+"She will be surprised to see me."
+
+"Whew!" whistled the guard, seeing the figure on the bill.  "I guess
+you are all right.  I ain't looking at you, anyhow, boss," and he
+turned his back deliberately upon Ryder.
+
+The latter darted past him and up the half-darkened passage to those
+regions back of the scenes which so bewilder the ordinary visitor.
+But Ryder well knew how to gain his goal.
+
+He seized the first stagehand he met, crushed another banknote into
+his hand and whispered:
+
+"Show me Miss Mont's dressing-room.  I am an old friend--from the
+other side."
+
+"Number Three.  Here this way!" said the stagehand.  He, too, was
+moved by the size of the tip he received.  He led Ryder to the door
+of the dressing-room.
+
+Without knocking, the injured husband opened the door and stepped
+swiftly into the box-like little apartment.  The woman was sitting
+before the table and glass, removing the last traces of her makeup.
+
+"Who's there?" she asked without turning her head.  Evidently she
+thought somebody had knocked, and Ryder stood at such an angle that
+she could not easily see him in the mirror.  She had removed her
+stage costume and sat in her petticoat and with frankly-bared
+shoulders and arms.
+
+Ryder breathed heavily; the sight of her satin skin and beautifully
+molded neck and arms almost staggered him.  He remembered how Ruth
+had looked for the single moment he had seen her in similar undress
+in their bedroom at the Pinewood Inn.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Marks?" cried Miss Mont.  "Wait a moment."
+
+She rose swiftly, half turning, and Ryder found his voice.
+
+"It is not Marks, Ruth; nor yet your Mr. White.  It is I."
+
+She uttered a little scream, but it was not a cry of recognition.  As
+she swung fully around to face him she exclaimed:
+
+"How dare you come in here?  Who are you?"
+
+Then she really saw his strained and passion-wrung features and cried
+in startled amazement:
+
+"Mr. Ryder!  I thought I saw you out front."
+
+"Yes.  And now I'm here," said Ryder bitterly.  "Is there anything so
+astonishing in that?  Where else should I be?  A man can scarcely be
+said to intrude when he enters his wife's dressing-room."
+
+"You--you----  What do you mean?" she gasped, shrinking away from his
+vicinity.  She quickly snatched up the nearest garment and flung it
+about her shoulders.  "This is cruel of you, Mr. Ryder.  Do leave me
+until I dress."
+
+"Pah!  Why so prudish?  Am I not your husband?"
+
+"Husband?  What do you say?  Is the man mad?" murmured the woman.
+"I--I am not your wife, Mr. Ryder."
+
+"And that may be true, too," he agreed, wetting his lips before he
+could speak.  The fires of an inward fever seemed burning him up.
+"That may be true," he pursued.  "So much the worse for you then,
+Ruth.  For by the living God! if you have tricked me in that, too,
+you shall suffer for it as a bigamist."
+
+"Tricked you?" cried she, with sudden heat, and standing more erect
+before the angry man.  "I did not trick you.  If either of us
+deserves the accusation of trickster it is you.  But a woman is
+helpless if a man makes a fool of her.  Had you been the gentleman I
+thought you, however, you would have told me you had changed your
+mind and found that the affection you declared you had for me was
+merely a passing fancy."
+
+"What's that?" he shouted.  "Don't taunt me that way, woman!  I--who
+loved you devotedly, who would do anything for you, who showed you my
+heart laid bare!  And you dare accuse me of fickleness?
+
+"A dozen suspicious acts of yours I overlooked while we were at the
+hotel together.  I refused to believe my _wife_ guilty of any thought
+or act that might suggest infidelity."
+
+She gazed at him in amazement.
+
+"What are you talking about?  You are mad, man!"
+
+"Mad?  Perhaps I am.  I know I shall be before long," groaned the
+tortured man.  "You took my name--whether you had a right to do so or
+not, you know--and you cast it back in scorn, as though it were a
+small thing for a man to give his name to a woman."
+
+"You _are_ mad!" repeated the woman.  "How dare you say I married
+you?"
+
+Ryder staggered back against the door.  He glared at her.
+
+"You--you----  Do you deny it?  You may have another husband; but you
+married me.  Either you are my legal wife, or you have committed a
+crime which the American laws shall punish.  See!"  He tore open his
+coat, dragged out his wallet, and displayed the marriage certificate
+before her startled eyes.  "Deny that name--deny that signature--if
+you can!"
+
+She bent forward, devouring the paper with her gaze.  Then suddenly
+she caught her breath and, with one hand at her bosom as though to
+stifle its throbbing, she arose to her full height and faced him.
+
+"I do deny--both.  That is not my handwriting.  And my name is _Rose_
+Mont," she said.
+
+The shout of demoniacal laughter that burst from Ryder's lips and the
+contortion of his face were terrible.
+
+"Do you think _that_ will work, woman?  Do you think you can dodge
+the law on so slight a pretext as a false name and disguised
+handwriting?  You are my wife, and by heaven I'll take you from this
+place by force if you will not go with me peaceably!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+"WHO IS MY WIFE?"
+
+Miss Mont sank slowly into her chair, still staring at the writhing
+features of the man who claimed to be her husband.  Insanity had been
+her first thought; but the agony and passion displayed by John Ryder
+taught her that he was suffering as no maniac could suffer.
+
+His words had the ring of truth that could not be ignored.  He
+claimed her as his bride, and so confident was his belief in her
+identity as the woman he had married that her own counter knowledge
+was almost shaken.
+
+"Mr. Ryder," she said at last and in almost a whisper, "sit down on
+that trunk yonder.  Let me talk to you.  Yes, sit down!  You are
+between me and the door; I cannot escape."
+
+Her quiet speech helped to bring him to his senses.  He had been
+threatening her with the vehemence he might have used to a man.  Red
+shame dyed his cheek.  His manner suddenly subsided.  He obeyed her.
+
+"Mr. Ryder, I am not your wife," she said slowly, looking at him with
+her truthful eyes.  She was the woman now she had seemed aboard the
+_Minnequago_.  "No!  I do not mean that," as she saw a wicked
+expression come into his face.  "I have neither intentionally, nor
+unintentionally wronged you.
+
+"Had I been convinced that I could--could learn to love you as a wife
+should and had married you, I would have done nothing which you in
+any way could construe as an attempt to bring disgrace upon your name.
+
+"Wait!  You are in a maze yet.  You believe I am splitting hairs.  I
+am not."  She leaned forward and raised her voice for emphasis.  "I
+am not the woman whom you married."
+
+"What do you mean?" he gasped starting up again.  "Would you make me
+doubt my own eyes?  You sit there and coolly tell me I do not know
+the woman I married--the woman whom I held in my arms night before
+last--the woman who told me over and over again, by look and word,
+that she loved me?"
+
+She had blushed vividly and for a moment covered her face with her
+hands.  But she stopped him at that point.
+
+"That is exactly what I do tell you.  You do not know your wife, the
+woman whose name is on that marriage paper.  Look at me closely.
+Come nearer.  Is there not some feature different?  Is she
+truly--this other woman--so like me?"
+
+She said it earnestly and eagerly.  She bent toward him until her
+breath fanned his face and until he could look with his troubled eyes
+deep into her clear, shadowless orbs.
+
+And then, strange as it may seem, although John Ryder saw nothing
+unfamiliar in her countenance--nothing to warn him that this was not
+the woman whom he had wedded--one thing he suddenly knew.  It was a
+startling discovery.  It shook him to the very depths of his soul.
+
+Whereas Ruth's very presence--his being near her and in physical
+contact with her--had thrilled him each time it occurred, he felt no
+such shock now.  His anger had abated.  He was shaken no more by the
+terrible rage under which he had labored.  But this woman held no
+such influence over him, after all, as had Ruth.  Still he was
+confused.
+
+"Ruth!  Can such a thing be?" he whispered brokenly.  "You surely
+_do_ love me a little?"
+
+The abjectness of his speech and the misery in the man's face were
+awful.  Miss Mont covered her face again and began to sob.
+
+"You will not do this to me, Ruth?  I know you must love me a little.
+No woman could be to a man what you were to me without loving him.
+Whatever this shadow is that has come between us----"
+
+The passion and pleading in his voice had swept her on with him.  She
+was trembling violently and her sobs were more broken.  He would have
+gathered her into his arms by one sudden movement had she not sprung
+to her feet and eluded his hands.
+
+"Stop!  Stop!" she cried hoarsely.  "This is not for me to hear!  You
+do not mean this for _me_!
+
+"I tell you, Mr. Ryder, I am another woman.  I am not the person you
+married.  I am not Ruth Mont; I am Rose Mont--and always have been
+and," she broke into passionate weeping, "and--and--always--shall
+be--_now_!"
+
+[Illustration: I am another woman.  I am not the person you married.]
+
+The vehemence of her emotion quelled Ryder as nothing else had done.
+She flung herself upon her knees with her head and arms resting upon
+the littered dressing table and abandoned herself to tears which
+seemed to well from her very soul.
+
+He leaned over her, not daring to touch her, anxious,
+panting--altogether broken in spirit.  A woman's tears flow easily
+they say; but this woman was not by nature a crying woman.  This
+flood, however, cleared her heart and mind, and she saw and
+understood more clearly when her passion was past.
+
+"Listen to me, Mr. Ryder," she said at last, recovering her seat and
+motioning him into his.  "This is a wonderful thing--and a terrible
+thing.  Don't look at me like that!  Please, _please_ don't!  I tell
+you I am not the woman you think me."
+
+"Do you mean," he said with deliberation, "that you are not the woman
+I met aboard the _Minnequago_?"
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"Or you are not the woman I asked to marry me before we landed?"
+
+"No, no, Mr. Ryder!  I am that woman."
+
+"Then why did you say just now you were not?" he demanded with heat.
+"I treated you fairly.  Were you not satisfied?  Was the glamor of
+this," and he indicated the makeup box and her discarded costume in
+his gesture, "too much for you?  Could any man give you more that is
+worth while in life than I?  Are you of so changeable a mind that you
+did not know what you really wanted?
+
+"When I wrote you aboard ship to choose once for all between this
+beastly Marks' offer of a stage career and a position as my wife----"
+
+"What letter?  What do you mean?" she cried, darting at him suddenly.
+
+"You know what I mean.  You answered the letter in person when you
+met me on the dock."
+
+"I received no letter from you, Mr. Ryder."
+
+He looked puzzled and hesitated.  "Well, what matters it?  You met me
+and said you were willing to marry me----"
+
+"I tell you _No_!" she cried.  "I did not meet you.  I did not say I
+would marry you.  And I did not marry you."
+
+"By heaven, woman!"
+
+"No, I tell you!"
+
+She bore him back into his seat upon the trunk with both hands upon
+his shoulders.  Her face was thrust close to his and she held him by
+the power of her gaze.  But again John Ryder realized that her
+nearness lacked that thrilling influence upon him which contact with
+his bride had evolved.
+
+"Listen to me," she repeated impressively.  "You have been
+betrayed--fooled.  Either you have deceived yourself, or have been
+deliberately deceived by others who knew well your wealth and
+power--the man you are.  You millionaires are a mark for designing
+persons, Mr. Ryder, as you should well know.
+
+"I cannot understand it all.  But this I do know: I did not see you
+to speak to for all of that last day before the ship docked.  I
+thought you--you had seen the unwisdom of your course in offering
+marriage to a woman like me."
+
+She hesitated and the tears welled to her eyes again, but by sheer
+force of will she drove them back.  "I received no letter from you,
+Mr. Ryder; none at all, you understand!"
+
+"I--I gave it to a steward."
+
+"It was not delivered.  When we landed I did not see you.  Stop!  Let
+me finish.  I was one of the last to leave the ship.  Mrs.
+Gurthrie--the lady who sat by my side at the table--you remember?
+Mrs. Gurthrie was taken ill as we came up the bay.  I remained with
+her after we docked.  An ambulance had to be sent for to remove her
+to her home.  I went with her in the ambulance before going to the
+hotel Mr. Marks selected for me----"
+
+"What are you saying?" gasped Ryder, his face like death.
+
+"I am telling you the truth.  I can prove every word I say.  A dozen
+witnesses--officers of the ship, the doctor, the driver of the
+ambulance, Mrs. Gurthrie herself and her husband, Mr. Marks--all
+these can bear out what I say."
+
+She thought he would faint and reaching for the glass standing at her
+elbow placed the water to his lips.  He drank it, still staring into
+her countenance with fixed gaze.
+
+"Do you understand?" she continued softly.  "Don't you _see_ that I
+am not the woman you married, Mr. Ryder?  I am forced to earn my
+living.  This way of the stage was opened to me and my success
+tonight proves that I was right in accepting the chance offered."
+
+But, he was not listening.  He did not hear her final words at all.
+All that he really heard was this query, repeated over and over again
+in his tortured brain:
+
+"_Who is my wife?_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+IN THE MAZE
+
+Both the man and the woman were shocked into a sudden appreciation of
+the world outside that box-like dressing-room by a knock on the door.
+Miss Mont rose quickly, threw off the garment with which she had
+lightly covered her shoulders and slipped into a negligee which had
+been hanging in the corner.
+
+"Who's there?" she asked quietly.
+
+"Why, hullo!" and Sam Marks' broad face showed at the opening door.
+"Ain't you a long time getting dressed, Miss Mont?  I got a taxi at
+the door----  Hullo!"
+
+He saw Ryder but did not at first recognize him.
+
+"Got a visitor?  Scuse me----"
+
+"You may come in," said Miss Mont sternly.  "You will recognize this
+gentleman."
+
+"Gee!  Well, I wouldn't, hardly.  What's the matter with him?" asked
+Marks, finally identifying Ryder.
+
+The manager looked anxious, and he kept very close to the door.  Miss
+Mont watched him narrowly; but Ryder scarcely raised his eyes from
+the floor.
+
+"Mr. Marks," she said, "Mr. Ryder came here----  That is, he says
+that before we landed from the _Minnequago_ he sent me a letter to my
+stateroom.  I did not receive it.  You were hovering around me a good
+deal just then.  Did you happen to see the letter?"
+
+"What--_me_?  Why, I----"
+
+"Your face tells the truth if your lips cannot," she interrupted him
+sharply.  "I see that you _did_ get my letter.  Where is it?"
+
+Marks looked foolish; yet his pig-like eyes twinkled.  He found the
+hardihood to say:
+
+"Well, I had to get your name on that contract and I wasn't going to
+risk this guy butting in.  Guess you're glad now yourself.  See the
+hand you got tonight?  You're going to be a knock-out."
+
+"You scoundrel!" she said bitterly.  "You do not know what you have
+done.  You would not understand if I told you--you clod!  Can you
+understand this much?  Your stealing that letter----"
+
+"Oh, I say!  that's rather thick, you know.  I didn't steal it and I
+didn't destroy it.  I just forgot to give it to you after taking it
+from the steward," and he grinned, bringing forth the still unopened
+letter from his pocket.
+
+"You dog!  Oh, that men like you are allowed to live!  You do things
+for a selfish reason, and then can never undo the harm you have done.
+Had you killed one or both of us, your act could have been no more
+brutal."
+
+"God bless us!" gasped Marks looking fairly frightened now.  "It
+ain't as bad as that.  I got you on a contract--that's all I wanted.
+What's the matter with him?  Won't he marry you just the same?  But
+you'll have to fulfil the terms of my contract."  Then he laughed a
+sudden sneering laugh.
+
+"Or did somebody butt in on your game?  I saw him walking off the
+dock with another queen."
+
+Miss Mont started.  "You saw them together?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Saw the woman?  What did she look like?"
+
+"I didn't see her face," Sam Marks said, puzzled at her vehemence.
+"I was only thinkin' just then of the contract in my pocket."
+
+"Oh, you beast!" she exclaimed in disgust.  "Go away.  I want to talk
+with Mr. Ryder."
+
+"Oh, very well!  You can call names----"
+
+"Go!" she commanded.  "Let the taxi wait."
+
+He slunk out of the dressing-room.  It is doubtful if Ryder had
+realized his presence at all.
+
+"Come," Miss Mont said with her hand on the shoulder of the stunned
+man.  "I want you to wait for me outside the door until I dress.
+Then you shall ride to my hotel with me.  Let me help you to
+understand this--this thing."
+
+He looked at her in a dazed way; but finally he obeyed and went out
+of the room.  He was in a maze and his intellect seemed beclouded.
+
+In ten minutes she rejoined him and led the way to the stage entrance
+where the car was in waiting.  They entered it, she gave the
+chauffeur the direction, and the jouncing of the taxicab over the
+nearest car track aroused Ryder to the first audible speech he had
+made since the truth had sunk into his mind.
+
+"I--I cannot believe it, Miss Mont.  Yet it must be so.  How two
+women could look so much alike--act so much alike!  Great heavens!
+She shall suffer for it----"
+
+The woman beside him turned quickly and placed a palm lightly upon
+his lips.  So like was the gesture to Ruth's that Ryder caught his
+breath and sank back in the seat, wordless again.
+
+"Say nothing like that.  Malign no person.  Let us learn all the
+truth before we judge.  Tell me--tell me about this other woman--this
+Ruth."
+
+"She--she has left me," he said sullenly.
+
+"Left you!  How--when?  No, no!  Begin at the beginning.  Tell me
+all.  I will not hear a word against her--I must not!--until I know
+all the story."
+
+This aroused John Ryder.  He looked at her curiously.  "You are a
+strange woman," he said.  "Do you realize that she impersonated you?
+That I married her thinking she was you?  That--that--God help me!
+She stole from you my love, for I _do_ love her!  I _do_ love her!"
+
+Miss Mont had taken his hand in both of hers.  She sat and held it
+thus, looking straight ahead and saying no word for a long minute.
+Finally she whispered:
+
+"Tell me all about it--and about her.  Keep nothing back, Mr. Ryder.
+Think of me as though I were your sister.  And let that be no empty
+term, please.  For, perhaps----"  She did not finish the sentence but
+added instead: "Tell me all!"
+
+For a few moments Ryder was silent, trying to collect his thoughts in
+order to tell his story with some clarity.  He fully realized that
+his thoughts were somewhat confused, that the emotions which had been
+let loose within him had, for the time being, impaired his usual
+judgment, a little confused his clear, keen mind, which ordinarily
+decided matters so rapidly and so surely.
+
+Moreover he felt, rather than reasoned out, that in some way Miss
+Mont held the key to the situation, that if she knew the whole story
+and knew it accurately, she could be of help.  So he sat, pondering,
+for a few moments, and again came the command:
+
+"Tell me all!"
+
+And Ryder told her.  It was a long ride to the hotel uptown where
+Miss Mont was housed and there was time for him to relate every
+detail of his experience from the moment he had landed on the dock
+and met the strange woman who bore Miss Mont's name and looked so
+much like her.
+
+When the story was finished the woman beside him turned to Ryder with
+tears in her voice, but with them a note of joy, as well.
+
+"Let me tell you something, Mr. Ryder," she said.  "And, believe me,
+I would stake my life upon it: This woman you have married loves you!"
+
+"Do you believe so?" he whispered.  Then, starting up angrily, he
+began to say harshly: "Love me?  How can she and treat me so?  To run
+away with that man, White----"
+
+"Wait.  Let us know all first.  With the confidence that you should
+have in your heart of her love for you, you must not say that."
+
+"But they left the hotel; they took the same train."
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"And what hold has he over her?  What is he to her?  Is she my wife,
+or is she the wife of another?  And where is she now?"
+
+"Your last question is the most important," Miss Mont said quietly.
+"That is the first problem we have to solve.  'We,' I say, for I
+believe I am as much interested in finding Ruth Mont as you."
+
+He looked at her curiously and in surprise.  But she made no
+explanation, saying only:
+
+"As for your first queries, we can only guess at the proper answers
+for them.  And guessing is poor business.  Who the man White is I
+cannot be sure, of course.  But I should not be surprised if he were
+the man she was really waiting for that morning on the dock when the
+_Minnequago_ got in."
+
+"What?" he gasped.
+
+"Yes.  I remember well that there was a passenger named White aboard.
+He was ill most of the time coming over.  His stateroom was near
+mine.  He was being helped ashore by one of the stewards at the time
+we got Mrs. Gurthrie into the ambulance.  You say he signed 'John B.
+White, Rome,' on the hotel register.  It was Rome, Italy, of course.
+He must have been out of America for years.
+
+"If he was actually Ruth Mont's husband she would not have gone
+through a marriage ceremony with you, for she believed you to be
+White."
+
+"What are you saying?" stammered the confused Ryder.
+
+"Yes.  That is the explanation, I feel sure.  You say she picked out
+Pinewood for your honeymoon, saying something about the place
+reminding you both of old times.  I should think that would have
+awakened you to some suspicion of the facts.  But a man in love, I
+suppose, is accountable neither for his deeds nor his words.
+
+"It is plain, Mr. Ryder, that your wife and this White knew each
+other years ago.  Perhaps they had not met since childhood.  They
+have probably corresponded; but she could not have known much about
+his mature appearance.
+
+"She was waiting for him when you landed from the _Minnequago_.  You
+thought she was I.  How much we must look alike!"
+
+"Alike?" he murmured.  "You are twins."
+
+"No; we are not twins," she corrected him with confidence.  "But
+there is a reason why we should look and seem so much alike.
+
+"Now, see: You came to her on the dock, and your first question
+convinced her you were White.  From what you tell me it seems that
+she was not sure of her own mind until she had seen you in the flesh.
+
+"What woman could be sure, when she had not met her lover for years?
+And," the woman's voice broke, but she went on bravely, "for your
+comfort, Mr. Ryder, let me tell you that I believe she must have
+fallen in love with you on that instant of meeting."
+
+John Ryder was silent.  He was suddenly confronted with a second
+riddle, but he had no words in which to answer it.  Had this woman,
+now talking to him so gently and impressively, been drawn toward him,
+too?  What had his impetuosity done to her, as well as to himself?
+He could no longer selfishly feel that he was the only person injured
+by this tragedy of errors.
+
+"Then," Miss Mont continued, "the knowledge of what she had
+done--what a great mistake she had made--came to her with a
+suddenness that was enough to turn the woman's brain.  She had
+thought herself in love all these years with one man, and had married
+another!
+
+"Put yourself in her place.  Think what an opinion she holds of
+_you_.  If your heart and brain have been seared by your trouble,
+think how she must feel.  She cannot understand why you impersonated
+White.  She is as much in the dark as you were.  She must think you
+deliberately befooled her.  She fled--not with White, I stake my life
+upon it!--but because she was so mentally disturbed that flight
+seemed the only course left her."
+
+"But the name--'Mrs. John B. White'--written in her own hand upon the
+trunk labels?" questioned the man.
+
+It was dark in the taxicab.  The vehicle had stopped at the side door
+of Miss Mont's hotel and the chauffeur was impatiently waiting
+further orders or the alighting of his passengers.  Ryder could not
+see Miss Mont's face.
+
+He could not see her burning blush; he could not know of the tears
+flooding her eyes; he could only hear the tremor of her voice as she
+whispered:
+
+"My heart tells me, Mr. Ryder, that Ruth wrote those lines as soon as
+her trunks arrived at the hotel.  It was her new name.  She wished to
+see how it looked when she wrote it on the tags!"
+
+"Do you suppose that--all this you have told me--is the right
+explanation of this awful mystery?"
+
+"I believe so.  If she has come to this city and is hiding from you,
+it is because she cannot imagine what manner of man would usurp
+another's name and place as you seem to have done."
+
+The tone that suddenly sounded in Ryder's voice could not be
+mistaken.  "I'll have the whole police force hunting for her in the
+morning.  I'll turn up the whole town to find her.  Think of it!  The
+poor child running away from _me_.  When I love her so and am so sure
+she loves me----"
+
+Miss Mont stopped him.  "I--I must leave you now," she said in a
+muffled voice.  "No! don't get down.  I do not need you.  Let me know
+how you succeed."  She was out of the taxicab instantly and without a
+backward glance ran hastily into the hotel.  He did not see her face
+again; but Ryder knew she was struggling to keep back another tempest
+of weeping.
+
+He told the chauffeur where to drive him, and rode back downtown.
+After the storm of emotion of the last two hours his soul was
+strangely peaceful and he was even light-hearted.
+
+The contrast between the awful uncertainty of the riddle of his
+wife's actions and the confidence he now felt that Miss Mont's
+explanation was the only sane and reasonable explanation, was so
+great that Ruth's disappearance seemed at this moment a small matter
+indeed.
+
+Money and patience would find her, of course.  Of the first he had
+plenty, thank heaven!  The last he must cultivate as need be.
+
+A steeple clock boomed the hour of midnight.  The third day of John
+Ryder's honeymoon was ended.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+NEMESIS
+
+With this better understanding of the exciting and brain-wracking
+incidents of these three days, John Ryder became again his sane and
+businesslike self.  Before he reached his hotel he had evolved a plan
+for his future course relating to the woman he had married by
+mistake.  Of course, this plan began with the discovery of her
+whereabouts.
+
+He must have some theory to work on.  He could go to the police and
+ask them to send out a description of his wife and trust to luck that
+some sharp-eyed detective would see her.  That, however, was a method
+which he abhorred.
+
+If Ruth had come to New York, or if she had gone elsewhere, John
+Ryder could think of just one way in which she might be traced.
+
+He was convinced now that she was not with White.  Ryder had cast
+that unfortunate individual into the discard entirely.  Miss Mont's
+explanation of the mystery that had involved them all was so clear
+that Ryder could no longer feel jealous of John B. White.
+
+Indeed the man might have better reason to feel that Ryder had
+defrauded him.  Unintentionally Ryder had substituted himself for
+White, and had borne off the girl the latter expected to marry, and
+had made her his wife.
+
+The thing to do now was for Ryder to find her, to explain his own
+course in the matter, and to convince Ruth that she had, after all,
+married the right man.
+
+To start on this quest aright, he felt that he must begin at the
+Pinewood Inn.  There was something at Pinewood that he felt sure
+would aid him in his search for his bride.  She must send for the
+trunks and then he would obtain her address.
+
+Therefore he went back to his hotel with the intention of leaving a
+call for the early morning train that would take him back to the
+resort.  When he entered the hostelry and approached the desk he was
+surprised to be told that a lady was waiting for him in one of the
+hotel parlors.
+
+"Been here for some time, sir.  Said she would wait till you came in,
+no matter how late you were.  It must be something important, Mr.
+Ryder," the clerk told him.
+
+Ryder's heart leaped for joy.  His first thought was that it was
+Ruth.  How she could have found his hotel--what had brought her
+here--he did not stop to question.  He followed the bellboy with
+eager steps to the parlor where, under a dim light, the woman sat
+waiting for his return.
+
+When John Ryder strode into the room he felt a distinct drop in the
+temperature of his feelings.  This might be a woman that had waited
+for him, but she was dressed more like a man.  A long raincoat
+wrapped her about, and a felt hat pulled down over her ears disguised
+her femininity most effectually.
+
+"Miss Solomons!" exclaimed Ryder, as the person rose and turned
+toward him.
+
+"That's who 'tis," jerked out the house detective of the Pinewood
+Inn.  "I've been waiting for you, Mr. Ryder."
+
+Could it be possible that she had come with some message from Ruth,
+or information about her?  Ryder could not find voice enough in which
+to ask her.  His silence seemed to give Miss Solomons immense
+satisfaction.  Her eyes snapped, and she waved in a commanding way
+the folded copy of the novel she always carried.
+
+"I've got you!  I told 'em I'd find you, all right.  Can't fool _me_.
+You'd better come with me, Mr. Ryder.  Don't try any capers."
+
+"What the----  What do you want of me?" demanded the rapidly
+disillusioned Ryder.  He realized that Miss Solomons could have come
+on no sentimental mission.
+
+"They want you back to Pinewood.  You know.  You aren't silly enough
+to refuse to go without extradition papers, are you?"
+
+"What--under--the--sun----"
+
+"Back up!" exclaimed Miss Solomons.  "That don't go.  You know well
+enough what they want you for.  That deputy sheriff is a dunce.  You
+got away from _him_; but not from me."
+
+"But what have you got to do with the deputy's trouble?"
+
+"Say!  Don't fool yourself.  I'm a properly appointed officer of the
+State.  That deputy fell down on the job, but I told 'em I'd get you.
+Come!"
+
+"But what _for_?" demanded John Ryder, suddenly becoming quiet.
+
+"Stealin' that coal.  Thought you could get away with two carloads of
+coal and nobody do nothin' about it?"
+
+"But," pointed out Ryder, "the coal was for the use of the hotel, and
+you are an employee of the hotel.  Where do you come into this?"
+
+"I'm officer of the State first," said Miss Solomons promptly.  "It
+was a dead open and shut robbery.  Then you attacked that poor
+deputy.  That's serious.  I'm a brother officer----"
+
+"Don't you mean a _sister_ officer?" suggested John Ryder gently.
+
+"Huh!  Don't get gay," advised Miss Solomons.  "I'm asking if you are
+going to come peaceably, or must I make trouble for you in this
+ranch?"
+
+"Where will you take me?"
+
+"If you agree to go back quiet-like to Pinewood, I'll take you right
+to the station."
+
+"And sit there in a draughty station for five hours or more, waiting
+for the first train?" he asked indignantly.
+
+"Well----"
+
+"You wouldn't treat a fellow that way, would you, Miss Solomons?" he
+went on wheedlingly.
+
+"Don't try no soft stuff on _me_," advised the house detective
+gloomily.  "I don't fall for it."
+
+"But can't I go to bed and be called at a proper time to make the
+train?"
+
+"What's going to happen to me?" she demanded.  "Expect me to sleep on
+the mat outside your door?"
+
+"But can't you go to bed, too?  Let us behave humanlike," John Ryder
+urged.  "Just because you are an officer and I am a--er--criminal,
+shall we say?--we need not both be miserable.  _I_ want to sleep."
+
+"I should worry whether you sleep or not," snapped the house
+detective.  "I haven't had much myself lately."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"Where do I bunk?" asked Miss Solomons.
+
+"I will telephone down and secure a room for you.  Near my own.  You
+may lock me in if you like and keep the key."
+
+"Inside room?" she asked.
+
+"Yes.  I can't get out by the window very easily."
+
+"So be it!" she exclaimed.  "You're a particular blame fool, Mr.
+Ryder; but not fool enough to try to escape _me_, I guess.  Besides,"
+she added, "here's a note was sent to you.  Maybe it'll put you wise
+to somethin'."
+
+She handed him a sealed envelope.  Ryder's heart leaped once and then
+stopped.  It was not addressed in Ruth's handwriting, although his
+name was written in a feminine hand.
+
+He tore it open, unfolded the paper it contained, and read:
+
+
+"If you are a man and love R. return immediately.
+
+"ALICE J. BRACK."
+
+
+Ryder stood holding the note for a full minute while he regained his
+poise.  Who was "Alice J. Brack?"  Not Ruth herself.  Surely there
+could not be another mixup in names!
+
+Then, of a sudden, he remembered the white-haired, motherly-looking
+wife of the fire-eating colonel.  It flashed into Ryder's mind that
+while he was hurrying out of the hotel at Pinewood, Saturday noon,
+Mrs. Brack had sought to speak to him.
+
+What did she know about his wife and the mystery that had entangled
+him in its snare?  Why, if he loved Ruth, must he return to the Pine
+wood Inn?  He looked up and caught Miss Solomons eying him with so
+soft a gaze that he was actually startled.
+
+"Oh!" gasped John Ryder, "is she _there_?"
+
+The detective "came to attention" swiftly.  Her face hardened to its
+usual bored expression.  She said:
+
+"I don't know anything about the note.  It was given to me by the old
+lady.  I'm here to take you back for stealing coal."
+
+"Oh!  All right," said John Ryder.  "I'll go."
+
+But the detective seemed suddenly more moderate in her demands.
+"Tell you what," she said.  "I'll bunk here."
+
+"Here in the parlor?"
+
+"Yep.  'Twon't hurt _me_."
+
+"In one of these chairs?"
+
+"Good's I us'ally get at night," she declared.
+
+"But, my dear young woman," protested Ryder, "the management of the
+hotel won't permit anyone to lie around in their parlors all night."
+
+"They'll let me, I guess!  I'm a State officer.  I've got rights that
+don't pertain to any old person that just happens to drop into a
+hotel.  Now, you can beat it to your room.  I won't let you
+oversleep.  We'll make that six-fifteen train."
+
+But John Ryder needed nobody to awaken him at the proper hour.  He
+was up in good season, and had heard nothing of Miss Solomons when he
+came out of his bedchamber at half after five in the morning.
+
+He went to the parlor to look for her.  There was but a single light
+burning, and that dimly.  The house detective of the Pine wood Inn
+was sound asleep in her chair.  She had evidently succumbed to nature
+while keeping what she considered proper vigil.
+
+The long-barreled pistol she carried had slipped to the rug at her
+feet.  When Ryder stooped to pick it up before awakening Miss
+Solomons, he saw that she had dropped her "five-cent thriller" as
+well.
+
+He picked this up and unfolded the pamphlet curiously.  He expected
+to find a detective story with quite as sensational a title as Jim
+Howe had suggested.  Instead, the title of the story the house
+detective had been last perusing was:
+
+"Little Laurel's Lovers; Or, Sweethearts' Paths Made Smooth."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+JOHN RYDER FORGIVES FATE
+
+They might have arrived at the Pinewood Inn earlier had not the
+officer and her captive been met before they crossed the inlet to the
+hotel by a man with a bandage swathing his jaw.  Ryder had
+considerable trouble in identifying the deputy sheriff, whom he had
+last seen struggling in the tide.
+
+"Got him," said Miss Solomons briefly to the deputy.  "He came back
+without making any trouble."
+
+She seemed, Ryder thought, a little sorry that she was forced to hand
+him over to the mercy of the other officer.  For that deputy did seem
+vindictive.
+
+"Got a warrant, have you?" asked Miss Solomons, as an afterthought.
+
+"Oh, I know my business.  I'll get the warrant, all right," growled
+the man with the bruised jaw.
+
+"You can't arrest without a warrant on such a charge," declared the
+house detective, suddenly taking up cudgels for John Ryder.
+
+"Oh, I'll hold him all right.  He's been stealing----"
+
+"Who makes the complaint?" asked the culprit mildly.  "Of course, old
+fellow, I'm sorry you obliged me to hit you.  If anything I can do
+will salve your lacerated feelings----?"  He drew out his wallet.
+
+"You stole that coal," growled the man, his eyes glittering, however,
+when he saw the money Ryder carried.
+
+"Oh, all right!  If you insist," said John Ryder.  "But who is the
+complainant in the case?"
+
+"Why, the railroad, I s'pose."
+
+"That is what you _suppose_," said the culprit.  "Now, let me tell
+you what I know.  The railroad was merely the carrier.  It did not
+own the coal.  The railroad was neither consignor nor consignee."
+
+"Then the coal company will prosecute."
+
+"No, they won't.  They ship at consignee's risk.  If anybody moves in
+the matter it will be the actual, legal owner of the coal.  In other
+words, the Lossing Soap Company."
+
+"What does it matter?" demanded the deputy with some heat.  "Somebody
+will prosecute.  You can't get out of that."
+
+"Maybe.  Just wait a moment, Mr. Sheriff.  I happen to have a letter
+here from the Lossing Soap Company.  It's on a private matter; but
+I'll show you the letter-head.  Here, just read that aloud," and he
+tore off the printed heading of the letter and handed it to the
+officer.
+
+"'Lossing Soap Company, Capitalization----'"
+
+"Never mind that," interposed Ryder.
+
+"'Rated----'"
+
+"Skip that.  Who's the president?"
+
+"Why--er----  My goodness gracious!" gasped the deputy.  "The--the
+president of the company is--is Mr. John Ryder."
+
+"That's right," said Ryder quietly.  "John Ryder.  There is only one
+of us, and that's me.  I may be a fool--as Miss Solomons here says I
+am--but I'm not fool enough to prosecute myself for stealing my own
+coal.  You can go back and report, Mr. Deputy, to your superior; and
+when you find out how much you think that sore jaw is worth, let me
+know.  We'll be able to settle it out of court."
+
+He walked on to enter a boat that had come to transfer him across the
+inlet.  Miss Solomons looked after him, and then at the deputy.
+Scorn made her voice fairly tremble as she viewed the abashed officer
+up and down his length.
+
+"Huh!" he emitted, and stopped unable to go on, and even, seemingly,
+to close his mouth.
+
+"Good-_night!_" muttered the house detective, and followed John Ryder
+into the boat.
+
+She kept a discreet silence all the way across the inlet and as they
+walked up the path to the Pinewood Inn.  There Ryder went immediately
+to the desk, to be hailed joyfully by George.
+
+"Well, if we aren't all glad to see you again, Mr. Ryder!" exclaimed
+the clerk.  "The guests are going to give you a testimonial banquet
+soon's it can be arranged."
+
+"Good heavens, George! can't you get me out of that?  Why--why! it's
+preposterous!  Man alive! you've got to nip that!"
+
+"Don't know how I can, Mr. Ryder.  When Colonel Brack gets set on
+something he's hard to change.  And then there's Pop Cudger--he's in
+this, too, and he never stops to hear what any other fellow has to
+say once he begins on a thing."
+
+Ryder groaned dismally.
+
+"Mr. Giddings has arrived and is anxious to see you," went on the
+clerk.  "Say!  I'm going to be manager here in place of Bangs.  And
+if I make good I'll owe it all to you," declared the grateful young
+man.
+
+"And say, your wife will be tickled to see you----"
+
+"What!"  Ryder for a moment lost control of himself, but George was
+too full of news to notice his emotion.
+
+"Naturally she'd be lonely.  She's been sticking as close to Mrs.
+Brack as though the old lady was her mother.  And the colonel is
+evidently dead stuck on Mrs. Ryder.  I think he'll even forgive you,
+sir," and George chuckled.
+
+Ryder swallowed hard, and finally was able to speak without a
+noticeable tremor in his voice:
+
+"Guess it is too early to go upstairs.  Nobody will be up yet."
+
+"No.  Mrs. Ryder has not telephoned down for her breakfast.  And I
+believe Mrs. Brack is with her, anyway."
+
+"Tell 'em I'm here if they 'phone down," said Ryder, and went into
+the breakfast room.
+
+Before he completed his leisurely meal Mrs. Judson swept into the
+room in a wonderful morning gown.  She caught sight of Ryder, looked
+her astonishment for an instant, and then advanced down the room with
+the evident intention of speaking to him.
+
+It was rude, but Ryder would have knocked her down had she been a
+man.  As he could not do this, he deliberately turned his eyes away
+and ignored her.  The cut direct could not be mistaken, and several
+noticed the widow's discomfiture.
+
+A moment later one of the bellboys brought Ryder a note.  He tried to
+seem undisturbed as he opened and read it:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR:--
+
+"Come to me in the parlor before seeing your wife.  She does not know
+yet that you have returned.
+
+  "Sincerely,
+      "ALICE J. BRACK."
+
+
+He arose finally and made his way to the parlor, with an apparent
+ease of manner he did not at all feel.  It was the same room that had
+been the scene of so many events on that night when Pop Cudger and
+his colored retainer had guarded Van Scamp's famous painting of "The
+Cheesemonger."
+
+The tranquil countenance of the colonel's lady seemed to John Ryder
+one of the most beautiful he had ever seen.  Her smile encouraged
+him.  Her first words filled him with delight:
+
+"Yes; she is well."
+
+He could have hugged her!  But Mrs. Brack added gravely:
+
+"Before I let you go up to the poor child, you must tell me your side
+of the story.  All of it.  She has trusted everything to me.  I
+understand her mistakes and her misery fully.  And I tell you now
+that no shadow of wrong rests upon her conduct.  Can you say as much,
+Mr. Ryder?
+
+"I have promised that you shall not see her unless you can explain
+satisfactorily what you have done.  Tell me, why did you, a perfect
+stranger as she declares, represent yourself to her as the man she
+expected to marry and for whom she was waiting on that dock?"
+
+"Then Miss Mont was right!" exclaimed John Ryder.
+
+"Miss Mont?  Do you mean your wife?"
+
+Ryder eagerly told Mrs. Brack in detail of the mystery of the two
+girls named Mont and of all Rose Mont had surmised.  He knew now who
+Ruth must be.  His listener sat enthralled until he had completed his
+story.  Then she suddenly took him by both shoulders and gave him a
+little shake.
+
+"John Ryder," she said, repeating (though in a more refined phrase)
+Miss Solomons' stated opinion of his character, "John Ryder, you are
+a particularly foolish man.  There is one principle of married life
+which you have overlooked--it is the foundation, indeed, of wedded
+happiness.
+
+"_Mutual confidence_.  If two people possess that, happiness may come
+or go; that is a craft that sails with variable winds.  But trust
+must remain if wedded comradeship is to last.
+
+"The very first thing that started suspicion in your mind should have
+made you go to your wife for an explanation.  Because you did not do
+this you both have got into much sorrow and anxiety.
+
+"Tell me," the woman added suddenly: "Which of these two women do you
+love?  You fell in love with that other Miss Mont on the steamship,
+and asked her to be your wife.  You must have thought you loved her.
+But you met this poor child you have married and seem to have felt no
+difference in the two.  And yet there must be a difference--a vast
+difference.
+
+"Which of them do you really love?"
+
+"There is no doubt in my mind, Mrs. Brack," he told her with
+earnestness.  "I was attracted by Rose Mont's face and by her
+qualities of mind.  I thought I loved her.  Possibly, had I married
+her, I never should have known that I had mistaken admiration for
+love.
+
+"But Ruth I have married.  And from the moment I knew she was
+mine--yes, from the moment we clasped hands upon the wharf--my
+feeling for her was far different from that I had held for Rose.
+
+"Rose has no power over me, Mrs. Brack.  I cannot explain it very
+clearly; but it is true.  There is no response in me when I touch her
+hand or when she is near me.  But Ruth--I tell you I love my wife,
+Mrs. Brack, and I'll fight for the possession of her if any man tries
+to take her from me!"
+
+"That is enough!  I believe you!" the woman said, her eyes shining.
+"You need comfort as well as Ruth, for you, too, have suffered.  And
+I am going to tell you something, that which will bring to your heart
+the assurance it needs.
+
+"Your wife has been a poor girl all her life.  Of late she has been a
+nurse, supporting herself entirely.  She was tacitly adopted into the
+family of this John B. White when she was very small.
+
+"Afterward the family suffered reverses and came to America, bringing
+Ruth with them.  When the elder White died, this son was taken by an
+uncle and aunt to Europe to finish his education there.  But Ruth was
+old enough when they separated for them to have felt some attachment.
+
+"They corresponded.  For two years now his letters have been
+loverlike.  He had studied to be an artist and had gained some
+celebrity in Italy.  The less the girl encouraged him the more eager
+he was to come to America and prove to her that she still loved
+him--as he claimed to love her.  It was born of the man's romantic
+nature, I presume; yet he, poor fellow, has lost everything in this
+affair.  Ruth agreed finally to marry him if, upon his appearance,
+she should be assured he was a man she could learn to love.
+
+"Yes, you may well blush, Mr. Ryder," pursued Mrs. Brack, smiling.
+"She discovered instantly--in the flash of an eye--that she could
+love you.  She did love you.  She does love you.  She declares
+vehemently if White had met her she would have run away from him.
+
+"After their terrible scene the other day--did you know about that?"
+Ryder nodded.  "She came to you for an explanation--for help.  You
+are still a young man, John Ryder.  You do not understand women.  You
+left her alone--when she needed you--and without a word to comfort
+her.
+
+"White might have been foolish enough to linger about and cause more
+trouble, but Miss Solomons, who overheard his talk with your wife,
+tells me she 'chased him.'  That girl is dreadfully slangy and
+appears to be hard and unfeminine; but she has a soft heart under it
+all, Mr. Ryder."
+
+"I can well believe it," agreed Ryder, thinking of "Little Laurel's
+Lovers."
+
+"I met your wife in the corridor ready dressed to leave the hotel,"
+pursued Mrs. Brack.  "She had packed her trunks and would have been
+foolish enough to run away.
+
+"It was by chance--no, it was providential--that I spoke to her.  And
+because I am an old woman and have lived my life and have both
+suffered and been happy, she told me all.  I saw that Mrs. Judson
+would succeed in making her scandalous story (that I had already
+heard and then understood) sound true if we were not careful.  She
+has even been saying that you ran away from your bride----"
+
+"Confound her!" ejaculated John Ryder.  "And after all Ruth's
+kindness to her!"
+
+"She is confounded--and by her own evil tongue.  All gossips are in
+the end," said Mrs. Brack.  "My husband and I have been in this hotel
+fourteen years.  If _I_ approve of a person the guests at large are
+not very likely to believe the scandalous stories of such
+flutterbudgets as Mrs. Judson.
+
+"I have made Ruth appear with us in the dining-room.  That put a stop
+to all the gossip.  And so--she is waiting for you in her rooms now,
+Mr. Ryder.  She is a girl that any man--I do not care how high he may
+be--should be proud to secure for a wife, and----"
+
+"I am going to her!" cried John Ryder, and darted away.
+
+
+About a week later, one evening, as John Ryder and his wife were
+going up from dinner, the clerk handed him a letter.  The envelope
+was creamy and very thick, and the writing, angular and firm,
+betrayed the feminine hand.
+
+"This is from Miss Mont," he said to his wife, and when they reached
+their suite she sat eagerly upon the arm of the big chair while he
+opened the envelope.
+
+Together they looked over the letter that threw light on important
+facts which correspondence on both sides had brought to view.  In one
+place Rose Mont wrote:
+
+
+"From what your wife writes me about her remembrance of her early
+years and from my own memory, I am confident that she is the sister
+Ruth whom I so dearly loved when our parents died and we children
+were scattered.  I remember I almost cried my eyes out for her,
+although for the boys and for our older sister, Gertrude, I did not
+greatly care.
+
+"And that we should grow up to look so much alike!"
+
+
+Again she wrote:
+
+
+"Your invitation, seconded by dear Ruth, is appreciated; but I must
+refuse it now.  I could not come to disturb your new-made happiness.
+Besides, Mr. Marks has contracted for a seven-week engagement in
+Chicago and we start for the West to-morrow.  When I return to New
+York in the spring or early summer we will have recovered our
+equilibrium, I fancy, and we all, as brother and sisters, may meet
+with more freedom.  Until we meet, God bless you!
+
+  "Your sister,
+      "ROSE MONT."
+
+
+"Well, I'm sorry she's taken up that stage business," Ryder said with
+a sigh.  "And yet she has talent for it and she's a good woman.
+We'll give her the time of her life when she does come East.  We'll
+be in our own home then, honey."
+
+Ruth was looking at him very closely, but he was quite unconscious of
+the meaning of this scrutiny.  Suddenly she seized him around the
+neck and hugged him tightly.
+
+"Well," she murmured, "I won't be jealous of my own sister."
+
+Ryder did not hear.  But he held her away from him for a moment and
+looked into her eyes.  "Where's that chain and locket you used to
+wear?" he suddenly demanded.
+
+A vivid blush flooded into her throat and cheeks.  "That--that's put
+away.  Johnny White gave it to me when I was a little girl.  It--it
+had a lock of his hair in it I thought it was _your_ hair, dearest.
+How silly of me!"
+
+Ryder smiled grimly.  "And you used to kiss it, I'll be bound,
+thinking it was mine?"
+
+"How did you know?" she demanded, starting up rather petulantly.
+
+"Humph!  I know a lot of things now--since I've been married.  By
+thunder!  Marriage _does_ open a man's eyes."
+
+And then he laughed and drew her down against his breast again, and
+they were silent for a long while.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75754 ***