Officer 666 Part 16

Then he gave it up as a hopeless case and led the way back into the other room.

CHAPTER XVIII.

SADIE BECOMES A CONSPIRATOR.

"Ah! Be careful! Don't go out there!" was the warning that had stopped Sadie Burton in full flight for the treasure room into which her cousin and Travers Gladwin had vanished.

She was more than half way to the door in obedience to Helen's command when Whitney Barnes spoke. He was sitting on the arm of one of the great upholstered chairs in a gracefully negligent att.i.tude twirling his gold key chain about his finger. He spoke softly but with a mysterious emphasis that took hold and held the retreating miss fast in her tracks. She turned with a frightened:

"Why?"

"Because I would be all alone," he said solemnly. Then as Sadie took another hurried step forward: "Oh, no, you wouldn't desert me--you wouldn't be so cruel! How would you like to have some one desert you?"

This mystic remark caused Sadie to turn around and take a step toward him. She said timidly:

"I don't understand."

"Then I'll tell you," he said, getting on his feet and going toward her.

"No, no!" objected Sadie, and began to back away.

The young man stopped and said in his most rea.s.suring tones:

"Fear not--I am quite harmless, I a.s.sure you. Now, I can see that you are in trouble--is that not so?"

"Oh, yes!" Sadie admitted, delighted at this new turn in his att.i.tude.

Her first disturbing suspicion had been that he wanted to flirt.

"You see, I'm right," he pursued. "I would like to help you."

"Would you?" she breathed, with increasing confidence.

"Of course I would," he said, earnestly, whereat Sadie lost all fear.

"Then we must hurry if we are to stop it," she said in a dramatic whisper.

"Stop it--stop what?" The heir of Old Grim Barnes had launched the belief that he was about to start something. There wasn't any stop in the vocabulary of his thoughts at that minute.

"Why, the elopement!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Sadie, exploding a little bomb that brought Whitney Barnes down out of the clouds.

"Yes, of course--to be sure--the elopement--I'd forgotten," he raced on. "Let me look at you. No, you must not turn away. I must look at you--that's the only way I can help you."

If he had to take a hand in the business of preventing an elopement he was going to combine that business with pleasure.

"You are sure you want me to help you?" he asked.

"Yes, so awfully much!" she cried.

"Then I must look at you--look at you very closely," he said, with the utmost seriousness.

"I don't understand," murmured Sadie, both pleased and frightened by his intense scrutiny.

"I'll show you," said Barnes. "Stand very still, with your arms at your side--there! (my, but she's a picture!) I've found out the first thing--I read it in your eyes."

"What!" in a stifled whisper.

"You don't approve of this elopement."

"Oh, no!" Sadie had yielded her eyes as if hypnotized.

"There, I told you so!" exulted Barnes. "You want to stop the elopement, but you don't know how to do it."

"Yes, that's perfectly true," confessed the spellbound Sadie.

"Shall I tell you how to stop it?"

"Yes, please do."

"Then sit down."

He motioned to a chair three feet from where he stood. The victim of this, his first excursion into the fields of mesmerism, tripped with bird-like steps to the chair and sat down. Barnes went easily toward her and sat down on the arm. He was as solemn about it as if his every move were part of a ritual.

"Now, please take off your glove--the left one," he commanded softly.

Sadie obeyed mechanically. Barnes went on:

"Before deciding upon what you should do, I'd like to know definitely about you--if you don't mind."

"What do you want me to tell you?" asked Sadie, with a brave effort to keep her voice from running off into little tremors.

"Nothing!" replied the seer-faced Barnes. "What I want to discover you may not even know yourself. Allow me to look at your hand, please."

Sadie yielded her hand with shy reluctance, allowing the young man to hold only the tips of her fingers. Whitney Barnes bent his frowning eyes over the fluttering little hand, studied the palm for a long second, then exclaimed suddenly:

"By Jove! This is extraordinary!"

Sadie started, but her curiosity was greater than her fear.

"What?" she asked, excitedly.

"Really wonderful!" Barnes kept it up.

"What?" Sadie repeated, in the same little gasp.

"See that line?"