The Girl and The Bill Part 18

"Did you know him?" asked Orme.

"I never saw him before to my knowledge; but he made an exclamation which indicated that he knew me."

"What did he do then?"

"I told him that I wished to talk to him about the papers. His answer was that, if I would step down into the boat, he would talk. He said that he would not leave the boat, and added that he was unwilling to discuss the matter aloud. And I was foolish enough to believe his excuses. If he wished to whisper, I said to myself, why, I would whisper. I never felt so like a conspirator."

She paused to look up at the street-sign at the corner which they had reached, and turned to the right on a shady avenue.

"Well, I got into the boat," she continued. "I told him that I--my father was prepared to pay him a large sum of money for the papers, but he only shook his head and said, 'No, no.' I named a sum; then a larger one; but money did not seem to tempt him, though I made the second offer as large as I dared.

"'How much _will_ you take then?' I asked at last. Instead of answering, he bent down and started the motor, and then I noticed for the first time that while I was talking we had been drifting away from the dock. I made ready to jump overboard. We were near the sh.o.r.e, and the water was not deep; anyway, I am a fair swimmer. But he turned and seized my wrists and forced me down into the bottom of the boat. I struggled, but it was no use, and when I opened my mouth to scream, he choked me with one hand and with the other pulled from his pocket a handkerchief and tried to put it in my mouth."

She gave a weary little laugh.

"It was such a crumpled, unclean handkerchief, I couldn't have stood it.

So I managed to gasp that, if he would only let me alone, I would keep quiet."

"The brute!" muttered Orme.

"Oh, I don't think he intended to hurt me. What he feared, as nearly as I can make out, is that I might have him intercepted if he let me go free.

That must have been why he tried to take me with him. Probably he planned to beach the boat at some unfrequented point on the North Side and leave me to s.h.i.+ft for myself.

"When your boat came, of course I didn't know who was in it. I never dreamed it would be you. And I had promised to keep still."

"Hardly a binding promise."

"Well, before he stopped threatening me with that awful handkerchief, he had made me swear over and over that I would not call for help, that I would not make any signal, that I would sit quietly on the seat. When you recognized me, I felt that all need of observing the promise was over."

"Naturally," muttered Orme.

She sighed. "It does seem as though Fate had been against us," she said.

"Fate is fickle," Orme returned. "You never know whether she will be your friend or your enemy. But I believe that she is now going to be our friend--for a change. To-morrow I shall get those papers."

CHAPTER VIII

THE TRAIL OF MAKU

When for the second time that night he bade the girl adieu and saw her enter the house of her friends, Orme went briskly to the electric-car line.

He had not long to wait. A car came racing down the tracks and stopped at his corner. Swinging aboard at the rear platform, he glanced within.

There were four pa.s.sengers--a man and woman who, apparently, were returning from an evening party of some sort, since he was in evening dress and she wore an opera-cloak; a spectacled man, with a black portfolio in his lap; a seedy fellow asleep in one corner, his head sagging down on his breast, his hands in his trousers pockets; and--was it possible? Orme began to think that Fate had indeed changed her face toward him, for the man who sat huddled midway of the car, staring straight before him with beady, expressionless eyes, was Maku.

Under the brim of his dingy straw hat a white bandage was drawn tight around his head--so tight that from its under edge the coa.r.s.e black hair bristled out in a distinct fringe. The blow of the wrench, then, must have cut through the skin.

Well--that would mean one more scar on the face of the j.a.panese.

The other scar, how had Maku come by that? Perhaps in some battle with the Russians in Manchuria. He seemed to be little more than a boy, but then, one never could guess the age of a j.a.panese, and for that matter, Orme had more than once been told that the j.a.panese had begun to impress very young soldiers long before the battle of Mukden.

While making these observations, Orme had drawn his hat lower over his eyes. He hoped to escape recognition, for this opportunity to track Maku to his destination was not to be missed. He also placed himself in such a position on the platform that his own face was partly concealed by the cross-bars which protected the windows at the end of the car.

In his favor was the fact that Maku would not expect to see him.

Doubtless the j.a.panese was more concerned with his aching head than with any suspicion of pursuit, though his somewhat indeterminate profile, as visible to Orme, gave no indication of any feeling at all. So Orme stood where he could watch without seeming to watch, and puzzled over the problem of following Maku from the car without attracting attention.

The refusal of the other j.a.panese to accept the girl's offer of money for the papers had given Orme a new idea of the importance of the quest. Maku and his friend must be j.a.panese government agents--just as Poritol and Alcatrante were unquestionably acting for their government. This, at least, was the most probable explanation that entered Orme's mind. The syndicate, then,--or concession, or whatever it was--must be of genuine international significance.

Though Orme continued to smother his curious questionings as to the meaning of the secret, he could not ignore his general surmises. To put his confidence in the girl--to act for her and for her alone--that was enough for him; but it added to his happiness to think that she might be leading him into an affair which was greater than any mere tangle of private interests. He knew too, that, upon the mesh of private interests, public interests are usually woven. The activity of a Russian syndicate in Korea had been the more or less direct cause of the Russo-j.a.panese War; the activity of rival American syndicates in Venezuela had been, but a few years before, productive of serious international complications. In the present instance, both South Americans and j.a.panese were interested.

But Orme knew in his soul that there could be nothing unworthy in any action in which the girl took part. She would not only do nothing unworthy; she would understand the situation clearly enough to know whether the course which offered itself to her was worthy or not.

In events such as she had that night faced with him, any other girl Orme had ever met would have shown moments of weakness, impatience, or fear.

But to her belonged a calm which came from a clear perception of the comparative unimportance of petty incident. She was strong, not as a man is strong, but in the way a woman should be strong.

The blood went to his cheeks as he remembered how tenderly he had spoken to her in the boat, and how plain he had made his desire for her. What should he call his feeling? Did love come to men as suddenly as this? She had not rebuked him--there was that much to be thankful for; and she must have known that his words were as involuntary as his action in touching her shoulder with his hand.

But how could she have rebuked him? She was, in a way, indebted to him.

The thought troubled him. Had he unintentionally taken advantage of her grat.i.tude by showing affection when she wished no more than comrades.h.i.+p?

And had she gently said nothing, because he had done something for her?

If her patience with him were thus to be explained, it must have been based upon her recognition of his unconsciousness.

Still, the more he pondered, the more clearly he saw that she was not a girl who, under the spell of friendly good will, would permit a false situation to exist. Her sincerity was too deep for such a glossing of fact. He dared a.s.sume, then, that her sympathy with him went even so far as to accept his att.i.tude when it was a shade more than friendly.

More than friendly! Like a white light, the truth flashed upon him as he stood there on the rocking platform of the car. He and she would have to be more than friendly! He had never seen her until that day. He did not even know her name. But all his life belonged to her, and would belong to her forever. The miracle which had been worked upon him, might it not also have been worked upon her? He felt unworthy, and yet she might care--might already have begun to care--But he put the daring hope out of his mind, and looked again at Maku.

The j.a.panese had not moved. His face still wore its racial look of patient indifference; his hands were still crossed in his lap. He sat on the edge of the seat, in order that his feet might rest on the floor, for his legs were short; and with every lurch of the car, he swayed easily, adapting himself to the motion with an unconscious ease that betrayed supple muscles.

The car stopped at a corner and the man and woman got out, but Maku did not even seem to glance at them. Orme stepped back to make way for them on the platform, and as they descended and the conductor rang the bell, he looked out at the suburban landscape, with its well-lighted, macadamized streets, its vacant lots, and its occasional houses, which seemed to be of the better cla.s.s, as nearly as he could judge in the uncertain rays of the arc-lamps. He turned to the conductor, who met his glance with the look of one who thirsts to talk.

"People used to go to parties in carriages and automobiles," said the conductor, "but now they take the car when they've any distance to go.

It's quicker and handier."

"I should think that _would_ be so, here in the suburbs," said Orme.

"Oh, this ain't the suburbs. We crossed the city limits twenty minutes ago."

"You don't carry many pa.s.sengers this time of night."

"That depends. Sometimes we have a crowd. To-night there's hardly anyone.

n.o.body else is likely to get on now."

"Why is that?"

"Well, it's only a short way now to the connection with the elevated road. People who want to go the rest of the way by the elevated, would walk. And after we pa.s.s the elevated there's other car-lines they're more likely to take, where the cars run frequenter."

"Do you go to the heart of the city?"