Chapter XI
Always Gloria, yielding to the heady impulses of youth, was ready for High Adventure. Therein lay the explanation of many things which Gloria did.
Time went scurrying on. Mark King had returned to the Sierra; no word came from him, and Gloria told herself with an exaggerated air of indifference that she had just about forgotten him. Autumn came, that finest of all seasons about San Francisco Bay, the ocean fogs were thrust back, unveiling the clear sunny skies by day, the crystalline glitter of stars by night. The city grew gayer as the season advanced; dinners and dances and theatre-parties made life a gloriously joyful affair for Gloria. She had hardly the time to ask herself: “Just where am I going?” It was so much easier to laugh and cry lightly, in the phrase of the day, “I am on my way!” She had drifted, drifted like one in a canoe trailing her fingers idly in the clear water and never noting when the little craft was caught by a steady, purposeful current. It was speeding now; but she only laughed breathlessly and drank her fill of the hour, and left to others the thoughts which carve fine lines about brow and eyes. She knew that her father was beset by some sort of financial troubles; for the first time in her life he had not come to her birthday-party, and her mother had explained, rather soberly, that it was because of a business crisis. Gloria did not know that crises lasted so long. Weeks and weeks had gone and still she knew from a look which her mother could not hide that the money troubles were still stalking her father, and coming so close that for the first time in history they cast a shadow from the top of the Sierra down into her mother’s heart in San Francisco.
Now Gratton became the man of the hour. He had studied Gloria with infinite patience and he never displeased her. “He understood her,” as she comfortingly assured herself. That meant, of course, that he gave in to her always; that tirelessly he exerted himself to please her. At a time when there was much financial depression, Gratton’s obvious affluence was very agreeable to the pleasure-seeker. He dressed well; he entertained with due respect for the most charming accessories; he took her to dance or theatre, or for a drive in the park or down the peninsula in a new, elegantly appointed limousine. And about the same time fate had it that by two entirely unassociated trends of circumstance he should draw to the dregs of Gloria’s lively and romantic interest. In the first place, he began to become a prominent figure in San Francisco. His name was in the papers with names of “men who counted.” And, of far greater import to Gloria, he became what she liked to consider a “Man of Mystery!”
For, weeks ago, Gloria had noted that regularly once a week Mr. Gratton dropped out of sight, to be gone for one or two days. He was never to be seen Saturday; seldom Sunday; always any day from Monday to Friday night. During week-ends he was “out of town.” And, though there were countless opportunities for an off-hand explanation, Gratton never gave it. Others than Gloria remarked the fact; a girl friend insinuatingly remarked: “Better watch out for him, Glory, dear. Cherchez la femme, you know.”
Gloria never suspected any such condition of affairs; she was too sure of Gratton’s attentions. But, being Gloria, she wondered.
One night she and Gratton were having a late supper together at the Palace. They had been to the theatre and now, yielding to the demands of her young appetite, they sat before sandwiches and coffee. Gloria saw the page as he came to the doorway; he stood, an envelope in his hand, looking up and down the room. When at last his eyes rested on her and her companion, the boy came to the table.
“Telegram, Mr. Gratton.”
Gratton, more interested in what she was saying than in the yellow envelope, opened it carelessly. But in a flash his attention was whipped away from her; she stopped in the middle of a sentence and knew that he had not noticed. A quick spurt of blood flushed his dead-white skin; his eyes grew bright with excitement. He read in a sweeping glance, and before his eyes came back to her they went hurriedly to his watch.
“I’ve got to go, Gloria,” he said nervously. “Immediately. This is important.”
“Why, of course,” she agreed. “I can get a bite when I get home.”
He thrust the telegram into his pocket and came around to the back of her chair. He was all impatience; it seemed he could not wait until hat and coats were gotten. On the way to the street he looked again at his watch.
“I’ve got to go out of town,” he explained. “I’ll be gone a couple of days.”
“But this is only Wednesday!”
“And usually I don’t go before Saturday?” He was tapping at his cigarette-case as they came to their taxi. “Yes. But something has happened.”
He helped her in and lifted his foot to follow.
“Gloria,” he muttered, “I can’t make it. If I see you home I will miss the last boat across the bay.”
She was more and more interested. She had never known Gratton to show emotion as he showed it to-night; she was more and more curious about that “business” which carried him out of town. Why hadn’t he tossed the telegram across the table for her to read? Here was a shut door, and from being barred a door always invites the more temptingly. Especially to a girl like Gloria.
“Why, I can go home alone—”
“I don’t like it. I—” He ended abruptly and thrust his head into the car, his eyes questing hers in the half-light; the chauffeur with his engine going looked over his shoulder.
“Come with me, Gloria!”
Gloria wondered what he meant: whether the man was suggesting an elopement or just a wild bit of downright unconventionality.
“I mean it,” said Gratton. “Listen. The new day has already started. By the time the ferry lands us in Oakland it will be nearly three o’clock. I’ve got to drive up into the country; we’ll phone your mother and will start right away. We’ll get there long before noon; we’ll be back before night. It would mean only a day’s outing and no harm done. Won’t you come, Gloria? Please come!” He pulled out his watch again. “We’ve just got time to catch the boat comfortably.” He called to the taxi-driver, “To the ferry,” and jumped in.
“But——”
“You can come as far as the ferry, anyway. Even if you won’t give me a day of motoring. It’s wonderful out in the country this time of year. And——”
When they came to the ferry there was no time for debating the matter; the crowd was pouring toward the last boat, and Gloria, her eyes bright with the joy of her escapade, went with him through the little gate where the tickets were presented for the last boat across the bay. It was unconventional, as she saw quite clearly. But to Gloria unconventionality was a condition fairly divided into two widely separated browsing-grounds; there was the thing which was just “daring”; there was that other which was ugly because it was “compromising.” This adventure promised to fall into the safer category; to be off motoring with Mr. Gratton from three o’clock in the morning until late afternoon was what she considered a “lark.”
They laughed together in anticipation as they crossed the bay. They sat where they could watch the red and green lights, reflected like topazes and rubies in the shimmering water, fall away and dwindle as the silhouette of the embarcadero receded. On the electric train they were whizzed among many sleepy folk into a sleeping town, Oakland, drowsing and silent. Gratton summoned a somnolent taxi-driver and they were whisked through the cool air to a garage. He left her a moment, sitting in the taxi, while he ran in and arranged for a roadster.
Gloria, left to her own thoughts, began to regret having come. The thing, reviewed in solitude, was “crazy.” She grew vaguely distressed. She wanted to go back to San Francisco—but there would be no boat now until full morning, three or four hours; she could not get home before seven or half-past seven o’clock. She tried to recall a friend on this side of the bay to whom she could go at this time of night—day, rather! Her lips shaped to a half smile.
“I’ve got the car.” Gratton was back offering to help her down. “And I phoned your mother.”
“Was she——?”
“She trusts you with me, Gloria,” he said quickly.
She let him help her into the car he had hired. Gratton took the wheel and turned into San Pablo Avenue. The street was deserted and he gently pressed down the throttle; he had hired a dependable, high-priced car, and the motor sang softly. The wind blew in Gloria’s face and her zest came back to her.
Gratton would not tell her where they were going; he made a great lark of their escapade, assuring her gaily that their destination was reserved as the final surprise for her. He evaded laughingly when she asked. “Maybe we’ll keep right on going, always and always,” he jested with her. She thought that under the jest there was a queer note; when his eyes flashed briefly toward her she tried to read their message. But the hour, mystery-filled, filled them with mystery.
Gloria began laughing.
“What will we look like to-morrow—I mean when it’s full day! Me dressed like this—you in evening suit!”
“By Jove!” said Gratton. Then he laughed with her. “It’s the lark of my life.”
The ocean breeze smarted in their eyes, the motor thrummed merrily, trees and houses flew by, the racing car leaped to fresh speed. On the cement highway the spinning tyres whined musically.
They were far up-country when the sun rose. Gloria, very sleepy now, watched it climb above the hills. She had watched the sunrise last June—with Mark King. Later, again with Mark King, she had seen it thrust its great burning disk above the pine ridges.
She was asleep and started wide awake when the car stopped suddenly. They were in the one street of a little town; it must be eight o’clock. She was cold.
“What do you say to a cup of coffee? And toast and eggs?”
“I am hungry,” she confessed.
Over their breakfast in the little wayside restaurant, with its untidy tables and greasy lunch-counter, it was Gratton who did all of the talking. Gloria by now realized that she was downright sorry she had come. He seemed eager, his eyes very bright, his voice quick and vibrant with an electrical urge dominating. She wondered vaguely what made him seem “different.”
“The waiter,” she said as they finished, “is staring his head off at our clothes.”
“We’re going to remedy that matter. Come on; the stores are open.”
“Fancy shopping here!” The thought made her laugh.
“Just the place for what we want. Khaki trousers and flannel shirt and boots for me; an outing-suit for you.”
He took her arm and they walked the half-dozen doors to the dry-goods store.
“I haven’t a cent with me——”
“Let me be your banker,” he said lightly.
Gloria hesitated. But very briefly. Hot coffee had done much for her drooping courage; the escapade, even this going at eight o’clock in the morning into a country store with a man, and on money borrowed from the man, was an experience to put the gay note of adventure back into the affair.
Gloria made her purchases in fifteen minutes and the change from theatre gown into an olive outing-suit in another fifteen. Her discarded garments were gathered up, put into a cardboard box by the clerk, and wrapped in heavy paper to be stowed away in the car. She confronted Gratton smilingly in her new garb, her hands in her pockets, her face saucy, her slim body boyish in its swagger and richly feminine in its unhidden curves. Gratton’s eyes shone, quick with admiration. She laughed and a flush came into her cheeks as he gravely paid for her clothing and his own. When they went to their car both were strangely silent.
“I owe you a lot of money,” she said with assumed carelessness.
“Which I hope you never repay,” he returned meaningly.
At nine o’clock they were threading the streets of Sacramento. At a little after ten they were in Auburn. They drove through “Old Town,” passed the courthouse and through the newer portion of the village; by the Freeman Hotel and the railroad-yards, through the “subway” under the tracks, and turned off to the right, leaving the highway for the first time and skirting the olive-orchards on the hill. Then, sweeping around a wide curve they caught the first glimpse of the American River deep down in its historic canon. On, over a narrow, red-dirt road, closer down to the gorge, across the long bridge, up and up the steep, writhing grade. They came to the top of the ridge; raced through Cool, through Lotus——
“Coloma!” gasped Gloria. “You are going to Coloma!”
He slowed the car down that he might look at her keenly.
“Well?” he said lightly.
“It is to Coloma that you have been coming every week!”
“Well?” he said a second time.
“Then you—you, too——”
He glanced at the road, cut down the speed still more, and looked back into her thoughtful eyes.
“Would you rather that it was Mark King or I who succeeded?”
She was clearly perplexed.
“Mark King is papa’s partner,” she said musingly.
“And I? I hope one day to be more than his partner!”
She understood but gave no sign of understanding. He did not press the point.
“Here we are,” he said presently as the first of the picturesque old rock-and-mortar houses of Coloma stood forth out of the wilderness. “And you’re dead tired and nearly dead for sleep. I am sorry we can’t have a city hotel up here; but I’ll get you a room where you can lie down. You can sleep and rest for two or three hours; then we’ll start back.”
Gloria had been tired and sleepy half an hour ago; not now. Gratton was playing his own hand in his own way—against her father and against Mark King. And Gratton had a way of winning. Something had happened; some one had telegraphed for him to come. Gloria was aquiver with excitement. She watched Gratton while he was watching the road; he, too, was tense and eager.
When he stopped the car she got down, not knowing just what to do or say. He led the way to the little “hotel,” and she followed. Since she could not insist on following him about his “business,” it was, perhaps, just as well if she lay down. And, alone, thought things out. He placed a chair for her and arranged for her room. He paid for it in advance, saying that they would be leaving in a hurry; he registered for her. Then Gloria was shown down a long hall and to her room. Here Gratton left her, impatient to be away. She went to her window and stood looking out. She heard a man call; a deep, rumbling bass voice. She saw Gratton come about the corner of the house and start across the street. A man, a very big man, came to meet him. They stood together talking in the middle of the road, their voices low, their looks earnest. They went away together. She shivered and went to her bed and sat down, her hands tight clasped, a look of trouble in her eyes. Gratton and Swen Brodie together——
“I don’t understand.” She said it to herself over and over. “I can’t understand!”
She sprang up and left the room, going in feverish haste back to the front part of the building. The man who had given Gratton the register followed her with his speculative eyes. She went to the door and looked out, seeing neither the dusty road, the deserted house across the way, nor the mountains beyond. She was groping blindly in a mental fog; she was tired, very tired. And uncertain. Something was happening—had happened, or was about to happen, and she did not know which way to turn. Her father, poor old papa, was fighting hard against some kind of money troubles. Mark King, Gratton, Brodie—figures to race through her brain, to confuse her with their own contentions, to baffle and bewilder. Suddenly she felt utterly alone, hopelessly, helplessly alone. She wanted her mother, and with the impulse wheeled back toward the man watching her.
“I want to use the long-distance telephone,” she said. “Where is it?”
“This way, miss,” said the man, eager to be of service. Then, with a bashful grin, he amended: “I beg pardon. Mrs. Gratton, I mean!”
Gloria stared at him. Her mouth was open to correct him; she saw how naturally his mistake was made. But before she could speak a wild flutter in her heart stopped the words; she went swiftly to the register. In Gratton’s own hand, set opposite the clerk’s number seven indicating her room, were the words: “Gratton & Wife, S.F.” She turned crimson; went white.
“I’ll telephone later,” she said faintly, and went again to the door and this time out into the autumn sunshine. All of the high adventure was dead ashes; the “lark” was lost in a sinister enterprise.
Gratton’s wife—Mrs. Gratton——He had done that! She walked on blindly; tears gathered, tears of mortification, of blazing anger. But they did not fall; she dabbed viciously at her eyes. Why had he done that? Why? Never a “why” so insistent in all of the girl’s lifetime. Never a moment of such blind wonder.
“Howdy, miss?” a voice was saying.
It brought her back to earth from a region of swirling vapours, back to to-day and Coloma. She stopped and looked at the man, startled. He was a stranger, yet dimly familiar. The little store, his own round face, his shirt-sleeves and boots——
“I wanted to ask,” he said solicitously, “how your father was this morning.”
“My father?” she repeated dully. “Oh, he’s quite well, thank you.”
Plainly her words puzzled him. He squinted his eyes as though to make sure of her.
“You’re the young lady that stopped in here one day last spring with Mark King? June it was, wasn’t it? You bought some stuff for lunch.”
“Yes,” she admitted. She would never have remembered him. But he, who had not seen others like her, remembered.
“Then you’re Ben Gaynor’s girl?”
“Yes,” she said again, and was about to go on, resenting his persistent meddlesomeness.
“And you say he’s well?”
“Quite well, I believe,” she said coolly.
“But wait a minute,” he called after her. “Wasn’t he bad hurt last night?”
“Papa hurt?”
“I supposed that was why you was here——”
“How hurt?” she cried sharply. “When? Where? Tell me; why don’t you tell me?”
He looked at her in wonder.
“All I know is just what I heard. And you know how news gets itself all twisted up travelling half a mile. I heard he got hurt at old Loony Honeycutt’s last night. Right bad hurt, they said. But I was just asking you——”
“Where is he?” she cut in excitedly. “Now?”
“Didn’t you just come out of the hotel?” He looked more puzzled than ever. “Wasn’t he there?”
“How do I know? Was he taken there?”
He nodded. “Leastways I heard he was. Last night——”
Gloria did not wait for more. She turned and ran back to the building she had quitted only a moment ago, bursting into the front room, demanding earnestly and in words that came with a rush:
“Is my father here? Is he hurt?”
“Your father? Hurt——Say, you ain’t Ben Gaynor’s daughter, are you?”
“Yes, yes. And papa——”
“They had a doctor over from Placerville last night. He’s coming back again this morning some time.”
“Take me to papa. Quick!” said Gloria imperiously. “You should have told me the minute I came.”
“But I didn’t know——”
“Quick!” repeated Gloria.
He showed her to the room, only three doors beyond her own. He moved to open the door but Gloria’s hand was first to the knob; she opened and went in, closing the door softly. She was trembling, frightened, dreading, oppressed by fear of what might be. Though both windows were open the shades were drawn, the light was dim. She made out a man’s form on the bed; there was a white bandage about his head. He stirred and turned half over.
“Papa!” cried Gloria, her voice catching.
She ran to him and went down on her knees at his bedside, her two hands finding his upon the coverlet, clasping them tight. He looked at her in wonderment; Gloria misread the look in his eyes and for a terrible moment thought that he was dying.
“Gloria!” he said in amazement. “Here——”
“Oh, papa!”
To Ben Gaynor this unannounced coming of his daughter partook of the nature of an apparition and of a miracle. At first he would not believe his senses, fearing that he had just gone off his head. Then it was that the look in his eyes frightened her. But the hands gripping his were flesh-and-blood hands, and, besides, Ben Gaynor was a very matter-of-fact man, little given to prolonged fanciful ideas, even after a night of pain and mental distress.
“By the Lord, we’ll nail their hides to our barn door yet!” were his first words of greeting. He hitched himself up against his pillows.
“What in the world happened?” Gloria asked after a sigh of relief.
“How you happened to be here gets me,” said Gaynor. “It’s like magic. You didn’t hear down in San Francisco that I was hurt, did you?”
“No. I—I just happened to be here. You see, papa——”
“That’ll come later,” he broke in. “You’re here; that’s all that counts. You’re going to do something for me.”
Anything, thought Gloria. And she was glad that he did not seek just now the explanation of her presence here; of course she would tell him everything—later. But she was still confused—“Mrs. Gratton “! Did she, down in the depths of her frivolous girl-heart, want to be that? Had she glimpsed, when she so gaily left San Francisco last night, that this escapade was something more than a mere “lark”?
“You are not dangerously hurt, papa?”
“Bless you, no! Not now, that you’re here. Though I believe it would have near killed me if I’d been put out of the running altogether. I got a crack on the head that sickened me; but the tough old skull held out against it. And I got an arm broken and a rib cracked——”
Gloria, aghast, was once more in fear for him. But he cried impatiently:
“Don’t you worry about me. I’ll be on my feet in a week. Now, listen: I’ve got to talk fast before somebody comes in. The doctor is apt to be here any minute, and he’s a stiff-necked tyrant. You know the trail through the mountains to our place; you rode it twice with King.”
“Yes.”
“I want you to ride it again to-day. You can get a horse at the stable. Don’t let any one know where you are going. I want you to take a message to King. And it’s got to get to him and into nobody’s hands but his. Understand that, Gloria?”
Gloria did not answer promptly; she wanted to demur. She was tired; she was afraid of the mountains; she did not want to see Mark King. But she saw a terrible earnestness in her father’s eyes and that while he awaited her answer quick fever spots glowed in his cheeks. She squeezed his hands and replied:
“Of course, papa. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“God bless you for that,” he muttered. “This is sober, serious business, Gloria; you are the only one here I could trust. King will be at the house; at least I hope he will. I sent him word several days ago that—that something was in the wind, and to meet me there. And, Gloria, I want you to promise, by all that’s good and holy, that you won’t let a word or a sign or a hint slip to anybody else. Not to a soul on earth. Will you, Gloria?”
“Yes.” She looked at him curiously; she had never known her father to be so tensely in earnest.
“Then,” he said, “go turn the key in the lock. And hurry. Before any one comes.”
She locked the door and returned to him.
“Feel under my pillow. Got it?”
She felt the cold barrel of a revolver and started back; never had she known her father to carry arms. Then, gingerly, she sought again. She found a small parcel and drew it out. It was a flattish affair and rectangular, the size and shape of an octavo volume—a flat box, if not a book. It was wrapped in a bit of soiled cloth.
“Quick,” he commanded nervously. “Out of sight with it. Stick it into your blouse, if you can; tuck it away under your arm; it won’t show so much there.”
Catching something of his suppressed excitement, she obeyed.
“I managed a little note to Mark,” he said when she had buttoned the loose shirt again and he had sunk back, white and exhausted, among his pillows. “I stuck it inside the cloth. Lord, if I was only on my feet! But you’ll do it for me, my girl? With never a hint to any one?”
Gloria stooped and kissed him on the forehead.
“I promise, papa,” she said assuringly.
“Unlock the door again, then. There’s somebody coming. Sit down over there, across the room. And leave as soon as you can. We’ll let them think you’re going to the log house for—for——”
She was quicker at inventions.
“Doctor Rowell, our family physician, is at Lake Tahoe. I am going to find him. We would telephone, but he is camped out——”
“Pretty late for camping. Oh, that’ll do——”
Gloria sat in her chair across the room, looking innocently the part of a daughter in a sick-room, when the door opened and the Placerville doctor came in. A moment later she slipped out.
She went out into the sunshine. Down the road she saw Gratton. He came quickly to meet her. She saw that he was eyeing her keenly, and her thought was that he was wondering if by chance she had seen the hotel register.
“I don’t know just what to do,” said Gratton. “My business is going to hold me here longer than I had thought. I—I promised to go back with you this afternoon. Would it be all right if I got a man to drive you back? I am terribly sorry, Gloria, but——”
“Business is business!” She laughed a trifle nervously. Then her inspiration: “I know! I can go to our mountain home; I’ll phone mamma, and she will come up. We’ll spend a few days, and——”
For an instant his eyes fairly blazed; they were bright with triumph.
“Just the thing! I’ll go for the horses. I’ll ride over with you and get right back here.”
“But——”
But already, excusing himself hurriedly, Gratton was off for the horses.