It was half-past eleven when Ruyler and Spaulding, masked and wearing

colored silk dominoes, entered the great gates of the Thornton estate in

San Mateo, the detective merely displaying something in his palm to the

stern guardians that kept the county rabble at bay.

The mob stood off rather grumblingly, for they would have liked to get

closer to that gorgeous mass of light they could merely glimpse through

the great oaks of the lower part of the estate, and to the music so

seductive in the distance.

They were not a rabble to excite pity, by any means. A few ragged tramps

had joined the crowd, possibly a few pickpockets from the city, watching

their opportunity to slip in behind one of the automobiles that brought

the guests from the station or from the estates up and down the valley.

They were, for the most part, trades-people from the little towns--San

Mateo, Redwood City--or the wives of the proletariat--or the servants of

the neighboring estates. But, although, they grumbled and envied, they

made no attempt to force their way in; it was only the light-fingered

gentry the police at the great iron gates were on the lookout for.

Ruyler, if his mind had been less harrowed with the looming and possibly

dire climax of his own secret drama, would have laughed aloud at this

melodramatic entrance to the grounds of one of his most intimate friends.

He and Spaulding had walked from the train, but they were not detained as

long as a gay party of young people from Atherton, who teased the police

by refusing to present their cards or lift their masks. Ruyler knew them

all, but they finally sped past him without even a glance of contempt for

mere foot passengers, even though they looked like a couple of dodging

conspirators.

He had met Spaulding at the station in San Francisco, and private

conversation on the crowded train had been impossible. When they had

walked a few yards along the wide avenue, as brilliant as day with its

thousands of colored lights concealed in the astonished pines, Ruyler sat

deliberately down upon a bench and motioned the detective to take the

seat beside him.

"It is time you gave me some sort of a hint," he said. "After all, it is

my affair--"

"I know, but as I said, you might not approve my methods, and if you

balk, all is up. We've got the chance of our lives. It's now or never."

"I do not at all like the idea that you may be forcing me into a position

where I may find myself doing something I shall be ashamed of for the

rest of my life."




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