And mystery and intrigue were equally a part of life, as indigenous to

the Twentieth Century as to those days long entombed in history when the

troops of Ferdinand and Isabella sat down on the plain before Grenada.

Plot and melodrama were in every life; in some so briefly as hardly to be

recognized, in others--in that of certain men and women in the public

eye, for instance--they were almost in the nature of a continuous

performance.

In these days men took a bath morning and evening, ate daintily, had a

refined vocabulary to use on demand, dressed in tweeds instead of velvet.

There were longer intervals between the old style of warfare when men

were always plugging one another full of holes in the name of religion or

disputed territory, merely to amuse themselves with a tryout of Right

against Might, or to gratify the insane ambition of some upstart like

Napoleon. To-day the business world was the battlefield, and it was his

capital a man was always healing, his poor brain that collapsed nightly

after the strain and nervous worry of the day.

It suddenly felt quite normal to be here flattened against a wall waiting

for some impossible denouement.

Nevertheless, he was sick with apprehension.

Would it merely be the prelude to another drama? Was his life to be a

series of unwritten plays, of which he was both the hero and the

bewildered spectator? Or would it bring him calm, the terrible calm of

stagnation, of an inner life finished, sealed, buried?

It was inevitable in these romantic surroundings and conditions that he

should revert to his almost forgotten jealousy. Suppose Spaulding had

stumbled upon something.... But he had been asked for no such

evidence.... It would be a damnable liberty.... It might be inextricably

woven with the business in hand.... There were other men besides Doremus

whom Helene saw constantly.... Spaulding may have seen his chance to nip

the thing in the bud, and had taken the risk....

He felt the detective's lips at his ear: "Hear anything? Move a little

so's you can look up."

Ruyler heard his wife's voice above him, then Aileen Lawton's. He parted

the branches and saw the two girls lean over the low sill of the

casement. Both had removed their masks, but their faces were only dimly

revealed. Their voices, however, were distinct enough, and his wife's was

dull and flat.

"Oh, I can't," she said. "I can't."

"Well, you'll just jolly well have to. You've got it, haven't you?"

"Oh, yes, I've got it!"

"Well, he'll never suspect you."




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