The Rest Hollow Mystery Part 6

The day clerk darted a contemptuous glance after his disappearing figure. "Some nut," he remarked. "Told me the terms were all right and then got cold feet. I'll bet he's a crook."

"Sure he's a crook." The blond cas.h.i.+er spoke with cheerful authority. "I could have told you that when he first came in. I can size 'em up as far off as the front door. And I had him posted on the 'Losses by Default'

page before he'd set down his bag."

The day clerk regarded her musingly. "He _had_ a bag, though, and that's more than this Kenwick fellow showed. But Brown thought he was all right and let him have 526. Did you notice him this morning? Tall, dark fellow, young but with hair a little gray around the temples."

"Ye-a. High-brow. Looks like he was here for his health. Probably broke down in some government job."

"No, he's a newspaper man."

"Let's see where he's from?" She reached for the slip.

"New York. Well, I slipped a cog. I would have said he was a Westerner."

"That's right. That last chap looked more like New York to me. But you never can tell. And something seemed to hit him all wrong about this place."

With this conclusion Richard Glover was in complete accord. As he walked down Geary Street clutching his heavy bag, he was conscious with every nerve of his being that something had struck him decidedly wrong about the St. Germaine. "It might be just a coincidence," he rea.s.sured himself. "It's undoubtedly just a coincidence but--but that isn't such a very common name. My G.o.d! I begin to feel like a spy caught in his own trap."

With scarcely more than a glance at the name above the entrance he turned into the lobby of another hotel and signed for a room. It was almost noon when he appeared again and wrote a letter at one of the lobby desks. It was not a long letter, hardly more than a note, but its composition consumed almost an hour and a half a dozen sheets of stationery, which were successively torn to bits and thrown into the waste-basket. And then at last the final sheet met the same fate and Richard Glover sat tapping the desk softly with the edge of the blotter.

"No, I won't write; I'll just go," he decided. "For asking if I may come almost invites a refusal. And then it takes longer. I'll go up there this afternoon. The secret of getting what you want out of people is to take them off guard."

Following this policy he set out in the late afternoon to pay a call. At the door of the uptown address he was met by a colored maid. She offered him neither hope nor despair but agreed to present his card.

And in front of the living-room fire Marcreta Morgan read the card and flicked it across to her brother. "I don't think I care to see anybody to-day," she said. "It's your first night at home, and there's so much to talk about."

"Don't know him," Clinton decided. "Somebody you met while I was away?"

"Oh, yes, you know him, Clint. You introduced me to him yourself. Don't you remember he came here one night before you went to Was.h.i.+ngton and asked you to a.n.a.lyze some specimens of mineral water."

"Oh, _that_ fellow! Has he been hanging around here ever since?"

"Well, no. I can't say that he has hung around exactly. But of late he has called rather often. He's really quite entertaining in some ways.

You were very much interested in his specimens."

"In his _specimens_, yes."

It may have been that she resented his implied dislike. It may have been for some other reason. But Marcreta suddenly reversed her decision.

"Show him in, please," she ordered. And the next moment the visitor stood in the doorway.

It was apparent as he crossed the long room that he had not expected to meet any one save his hostess. But he responded warmly to Clinton's handshake and drew up a chair for himself opposite Marcreta. "It's a pleasant surprise to find you here, Mr. Morgan," he said. "I thought you were still in the service at Was.h.i.+ngton. But it's time for every one to be getting home now, isn't it?"

Clinton Morgan surveyed him silently. It struck him that his guest was very much at home himself. For a time the conversation followed that level, triangular form of talk which so effectually conceals purpose and personality. Then Clinton excused himself on the plea that he had some unpacking to do, and Marcreta and Richard Glover were left alone.

"It's been a long time since I've seen you, Mr. Glover," she said. "You haven't been in the Bay region lately?"

"No, I've not been able to get away." His tone indicated that he had chafed under this pressure of adverse circ.u.mstance. "But it's good to get back now," he went on. "I'm always glad to get back--here."

She ignored the new ardent note in his voice. "But the southern part of the State is beautiful," she said. "Mont-Mer, particularly, is so beautiful that it makes the soul ache."

The words seemed to startle him. His eyes left the camouflaged log of wood in the fireplace and fixed themselves steadily upon her. "How do you know? How do you, San Francis...o...b..und, know?"

"I have just returned from there. My brother and I arrived home the same day. I spent a week near Mont-Mer visiting my friends, the Paddingtons.

Do you know them?"

"No. But I think I know their home. They call it 'Utopia,' I believe?"

"Yes. And until I saw it I had always thought that Utopia was a myth."

"Mont-Mer," he mused, "does look rather like a fairy-story come true, doesn't it? There's something perilously seductive about it. It's a place where people go to forget."

"I have heard that said about it, but somehow it didn't make that kind of an appeal to me. I had the feeling that in such a place as that every sorrow of life is a bleeding wound. There's a terrible cruelty about that tropical sort of beauty. It drives memories in, not out."

For some unaccountable reason the tensity of her tone annoyed him. "You didn't like it then?"

"It's beautiful, as I have said, but--I shall never go there again."

"The place you ought to see," he told her, "is Cedargrove, about two hours' trip to the south."

"That's where the mineral springs are?"

"Yes. And what I really came to tell you to-day is that I've bought the controlling interest in the springs. It was after your brother had given me his final a.n.a.lysis of the water last year that I decided to do it. He said, you know, that in his opinion the medicinal ingredients equaled that of the waters of Carlsbad. I've made great plans. You see, there are twenty acres, and so far we've found eighteen springs. We've been bottling the stuff for several months now and it's selling like hot cakes. The next step is a hotel. It's not to be too colossal, but unique in every respect. That's what takes in California. Show people that you've got 'something different' and they'll jump to the conclusion that because it's different it must be desirable. That's America. I've had other chemists besides your brother tell me that the water is wonderful.

The best doctors in the South declare that those springs are a bigger find than a gold mine."

He had warmed to his theme now and his amber eyes glowed. And she followed his words with that quick responsiveness that was all unconsciously one of her chief charms. "And what are your advertising plans?" she asked.

It was like a fresh supply of gasolene to an engine. He plunged into stupendous plans for a publicity campaign. "I'm doing most of the copy work myself so far. I love the advertising game. I love telling people what they want and making them want it. I'm calling it 'The Carlsbad of America.' That will get the health-seekers, and health-seekers will pay any price."

For half an hour he talked, going into every detail of his plan. And then all at once he stopped abruptly as though he had grown suddenly weary of Carlsbad. She sat gazing into the fire, waiting in sympathetic silence, for him to resume the subject. But he didn't resume it. When he spoke again, his tone had changed as well as his theme. For the first time the conversation became keenly personal. He talked about himself with a humility that was quite new and, to his listener, somewhat startling.

"I don't think it can be a complete surprise to you," he said, "to know how much I need you; how much I depend upon your sympathy and understanding. You must have guessed something of my feeling. You are too intuitive not to have guessed."

Her frank, blue-gray eyes were fixed upon him with an expression that baffled him, yet gave him hope. "No, it is not quite unexpected," she admitted. "But I didn't realize that it had gone quite so far. It seems to have all happened rather suddenly. We haven't known each other very long; not nearly long enough for anything like this."

"No. But I've been looking for you all my life. That ought to count for something."

"For something--yes. But not for so much as--that."

"Love isn't a matter of time," he told her.

"No. But it's a matter of exploration. It's a matter of finding each other. And in the half a dozen times that you have called here, Mr.

Glover, we haven't talked about the finding kind of things. No, we don't know each other. We don't know each other half well enough to consider anything like this."

"But we can get to know each other better. Is there any reason why we should not do that?"

She pondered this for a moment. "Well, for one thing, there is distance."

"There is no longer distance," he pleaded eagerly. "For I have severed my connections with Mont-Mer."