I

On the following day Ruyler, who had looked upon the whirlwind of passion

that had swept him into a romantic and unworldly marriage, as likely to

remain the one brief drama of his prosaic business man's life, began

dimly to apprehend that he was hovering on the edge of a sinister and

complicated drama whose end he could as little foresee as he could escape

from the hand of Fate that was pushing him inexorably forward. When Fate

suddenly begins to take a dramatic interest in a man whose course has run

like a yacht before a strong breeze, she precipitates him toward one half

crisis after another in order to confuse his mental powers and render him

wholly a puppet for the final act. These little Earth histrionics are

arranged no doubt for the weary gods, who hardly brook a mere mortal

rising triumphantly above the malignant moods of the master playwright.

He lunched at the Pacific Union Club and caught the down-town California

Street cable car as it passed, finding his favorite seat on the left side

of the "dummy" unoccupied. He was thinking of Helene, a little

disappointed, but on the whole vastly relieved, congratulating himself

that, no longer haunted, he could give his mind wholly to the important

question of the merger he contemplated with a rival house that had limped

along since the disaster, but had at last manifested its willingness to

accept the offer of Ruyler and Sons.

It was a moment before he realized that his mother-in-law occupied the

front seat across the narrow space, and even before he recognized that

large bulk, he had registered something rigid and tense in its muscles;

strained in its attitude. When he raised his eyes to the face he found

himself looking at the right cheek instead of the left, and it was

pervaded by a sickly green tint quite unlike Madame Delano's florid

color. She was listening to a man who sat just behind her on the long

seat that ran the length of the dummy. Although the day was clear, there

was still a sharp wind and no one else sat outside.

Ruyler knew the man by sight. Before the fire he had owned some of the

most disreputable houses in the district the car would pass on its way to

the terminus. The buildings were uninsured, and he had made his living

since as a detective. Even his political breed had gone out of power in

the new San Francisco, but he was well equipped for a certain type of

detective work. He had a remarkable memory for faces and could pierce any

disguise, he was as persistent as a ferret, and his knowledge of the

underworld of San Francisco was illimitable. But his chief assets were

that he looked so little like a detective, and that, so secretive were

his methods, his calling was practically unknown. He had set up a cheap

restaurant with a gambling room behind at which the police winked,

although pretending to raid him now and again. He was a large soft man

with pendulous cheeks streaked with red, a predatory nose, and a black

overhanging mustache. His name was 'Gene Bisbee, and there was a

tradition that in his younger days he had been handsome, and irresistible

to the women who had made his fortune.




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