“what i don’t like about women,” exclaimed roy morton, with an inflection of disgust, “is the kind of men they like.”
it was the morning of another day, and the exhaustive search commanded by billy walker as the mouthpiece of inexorable logic had begun. the voice of the oracle could at this moment be heard from the porch, where he was engaged in pleasant conversation with mrs. west, while his three friends were busy with the actual work of investigation. they were in the small room opening off the hall, on the ground floor, which had been used by the late owner of the cottage as a sort of office. there, he had kept all of his business papers—at least as far as the knowledge of his secretary went. a flat-top desk in the center of the room contained a number of drawers, and in one corner stood a small iron safe. under the terms of the will, every freedom was[80] accorded to the searchers, and now safe and drawers had been opened for their convenience by may thurston, who thus followed the instructions she had received from the lawyer. at the moment when roy made his rather bitter remark concerning the nature of womankind, he had just observed, through a window that looked out to the south, a trio strolling along the lake shore. the three were margaret, may and the ubiquitous masters. it was the presence of the engineer that had aroused the indignation of roy, and had caused him thus cynically to stigmatize feminine indiscretion in friendship. himself a devotee of the fair sex, though shockingly irresponsible as an eligible bachelor, it irked him mightily that the requirements of his present relation to saxe were such as to hold him there, poring over a motley of sordid bills, receipts, and other financial memoranda, the while a scoundrelly nincompoop (so he secretly termed the engineer) strutted abroad with two charming girls.
david laughed at the disgust in his friend’s voice, for he, too, had observed the passing[81] of the three, and he understood perfectly the jealousy that underlay roy’s displeasure in the situation. he paused in his task of conning the year’s milk bills of one eleazer sneddy, lighted a cigarette, and inhaled the fumes with a sigh of deep gratification.
“i wouldn’t mind being in his place myself, roy,” he said, placidly.
the grumbler scowled at his too penetrant crony. saxe looked up from a sheet of foolscap, covered in the minute handwriting of the miser with long columns of figures by which were set forth details of the expenditures for a month in the matter of postage. he, too, paused, welcoming any diversion from the uncongenial labor, and lighted a cigarette with manifest relief.
“be in whose place, dave?” he questioned, idly.
roy attempted a distraction from the topic.
“huh!” he sneered. “this adventure isn’t what it’s been cracked up to be—no gore, no gold, no anything, except a parcel of musty papers. i have just finished the thrilling items of tenpenny nails in the matter of[82] shingling the cottage; i suppose that poor old miser had a spasm every time he paid for a pound of them. in fact, i’m sure of it, because i get psychosympathetically those same spasms in going over the charges.”
“psychosympathetically is good,” david generously declared. then, he turned to saxe. “roy just saw masters out for a walk with the girls, and it stirred him to envy, naturally enough. it did me, too, for there are certainly two unusually nice girls.”
roy’s gloomy face lighted in an instant, marvelously. his eyes grew very blue and soft, his lips curved in the smile that made all women like him.
“peaches!” he ejaculated, with candid enthusiasm. “but what a revelation it was when little miss thurston took off her spectacles. a demure angel appeared where before had been a dumpy new england schoolmarm.... i have discovered the important fact that spectacles on a short woman take exactly two inches from her height.”
“have you informed miss thurston of your interesting discovery?” david inquired.
[83]“not yet,” was the answer; “but i shall, at the first opportunity. it’s a crime for any woman not to be as beautiful as she possibly can, every moment of her life. think of the wholesome happiness that loveliness gives to every observer!”
“except the other women,” saxe suggested.
roy disdained the interruption:
“and yet,” he continued, energetically, “there are women, good women, mind you, who give away soup, but look like frumps, and actually believe that they are doing their duty. why, sirs, they minister to the bellies of a dozen, perhaps, while they shock the finest sensibilities of the souls of a thousand who have to look at ’em. and they believe that they have done their duty. it’s shameful. are bellies more than souls?”
the thoughts of saxe were busy with the other of the two girls, margaret west; and now he spoke of her, reverting to roy’s diatribe concerning the chief duty of women.
“margaret west certainly fulfills all her obligation,” he observed. there was a quality of repressed admiration in his voice,[84] which set the observant david to thinking. “she is beautiful at all times. it’s a delight to look at her.”
the others nodded agreement, but, in the same moment, roy grinned sardonically.
“beware!” he advised, mockingly. “remember that that girl, so young and seemingly so innocent, is your deadly enemy. don’t let the spell of her loveliness lull you into a fancied security, in which you may be caught off guard. again, i bid you beware.”
“what on earth are you raving about?” saxe demanded, in genuine astonishment, “but you’re merely joking, of course—though i must say that i don’t exactly see the humor.”
“perhaps my language was a trifle extravagant,” roy conceded; “but as to the essential fact, why, i stand by what i said. margaret west is, naturally, your enemy. there can’t be a shadow of doubt as to that.”
“margaret west my enemy!” the incredulous saxe repeated, in a voice that was indignant. “why, man, the idea’s absurd.”
roy wagged his head, sapiently.
“human nature is human nature,” he[85] vouchsafed. “money is power. there are a dozen truisms that i might utter very aptly at this present juncture, but i refrain. it so happens, however, that, in the event of your failing to discover the hiding-place of the gold so artfully concealed by the late lamented, this same margaret west will fall heiress to exactly one-half of that gold. therefore, inevitably, she is your enemy. such is the law of our civilization, in which gold plays the vital part.”
saxe was frowning. he turned to david, with open impatience.
“did you ever hear the like of that nonsense?” he demanded.
david smoked thoughtfully, and paused for a few seconds before he answered. then, he smiled his usual kindly smile, as he spoke decisively:
“of course, it does seem a bit preposterous, first off,” he admitted. “but, you see, the common facts of experience lend color to roy’s argument. miss west is a charming girl, and doesn’t seem a bit the sordid, avaricious type, and yet—well, you never can tell. women are kittle cattle, and there’s a[86] pot of money concerned. i’m thinking she wouldn’t be quite plain human, if she didn’t want you to fail. of course she does—she must—yes, roy is right enough, miss west is your natural enemy.”
saxe was silenced, and, in a manner of speaking, convinced as well. he was forced to admit the plausibility of the reasoning of his friends, although his feeling was still bitterly opposed to any admission that their contention was just in this particular instance. it occurred to him that, were the case reversed, he would undoubtedly desire the seeker’s discomfiture with all his heart, would, in fine, regard the seeker as his natural enemy—just as roy had designated margaret west to be his natural enemy. nevertheless, something within him forbade that he should esteem this girl as one hostile to himself. the color in saxe’s cheeks deepened a little. of a sudden, it was borne in on his consciousness that there existed a most cogent reason why he could not regard margaret west as an enemy. it was because he so earnestly desired her as a friend. in that instant of illumination, he realized that[87] never before in his life had he longed for the friendship of woman as now he yearned for that of margaret west. a strange confusion fell on him. he did not quite understand the emotion that welled in his spirit; it was something new to his experience, something subtle, bafflingly elusive—and very, very sweet.
saxe was recalled to the business of the moment by the pained voice of roy:
“digging the drain cost six dollars and ninety-eight cents.”
“sounds like a department store,” was david’s amused comment. “i learn that, on the sixteenth of last january, nine cents was expended in the purchase of the succulent onion.”
roy groaned with dismal heartiness.
“i embark on an adventure. i crave adventure, i seek it in far places and near, wherefore i come hither with my bold companions, a-hunting a chest of gold. forthwith, i become an uncertified private accountant. what hideous degradation! i tell you, saxe, i’m mighty sick of this job. i’d just as lief be assistant bookkeeper in a[88] tannery.”
“why tannery?” david inquired. he pushed the heap of papers aside, and lighted another cigarette, highly pleased with the diversion.
“because a tannery happened to be the most disagreeable place i could think of at the moment,” was the simple explanation. “smells, you know.”
“yes, i know,” david admitted. his jagged nose wrinkled violently, as memory smote his olfactory nerves.
saxe seized on a topic that promised some measure of distraction from his crowding thoughts:
“myself, i don’t think much of this method.” he waved a hand contemptuously toward the litter of papers on the desk before them. “it seems to me that we’re just losing time in wading through all this trash. but what shall we do, instead? this is a part of the exhaustive search.”
roy sprang up with an exclamation of impatience.
“no christian gentleman, not even a miser, would concoct the diabolical idea of preserving[89] a clue to his gold pots amid trash of this sort; besides, i have a presentiment.”
“oh, a presentiment!” there was a note of scoffing in saxe’s voice.
but david, in the years since their graduation, had journeyed with roy through strange places, and so had come to know the whimsical nature intimately, with a consequent respect for some seemingly fantastic idiosyncracies. now, he stared at his friend expectantly, with no hint of derision in the look.
roy smiled quizzically, as he met david’s earnestly inquiring gaze:
“you’re not so skeptical, eh, dave?” he said.
david smiled wryly, and shook his head. in his gentle, goggling eyes was reminiscence.
“it’s borne in on my consciousness,” roy continued, rather pedantically, “that the clue isn’t here, and it’s not to be found by tedious, disgusting ransacking of scraps, like these we’ve been wasting our time on here, but, on the contrary, will be revealed to us in some much more curious manner. in fact, i feel that we shall succeed, but that our success will come in an apparently chance suggestion from some one of us, which will really be in the[90] nature of an inspiration. you see, dave,” he concluded, staring at the other intently, “the idea of the hiding-place is well compacted as a thought-form, for the old man was thinking of his treasure and its concealment hour after hour, day after day. the influence is here, ready to affect anyone sensitive enough to be susceptible to such vibration. for my part, i’m sure some one of us will presently become obsessed by some seemingly absurd idea—an idea, in all likelihood, quite irrational—that idea will lead us to victory, and to the abernethey gold.”
saxe laughed, a bit sourly. roy’s psychic gasconading would have been more amusing with another theme. it seemed, in truth, rather heartless jesting, when a fortune was the issue. to suggest that wealth must await the vagaries of a thought-form’s impact on somebody’s consciousness, which wouldn’t know even what had hit it! of all preposterous things! it was brutal, too.
david sprang to his feet, his big, brown eyes shining alertly through the eyeglasses.
“praise be!” he cried. instantly, thereafter, he proceeded to the execution of a clog-dance,[91] which he performed with astonishing precision and swiftness, while roy clapped the rhythm with foot and hands.
saxe looked on in unconcealed disgust. at the conclusion of the pas seul, he lifted his voice in complaint:
“well, of all the heartless, unsympathetic wretches! if it was your money, you might not feel so devilishly tickled.” he glared at the unabashed two accusingly.
david strode forward, and clapped his friend on the back.
“hold your hosses!” he cried. a crisp note of authority was in his voice. “why, old fellow, this is just what i’ve been waiting for.”
“indeed!” saxe exclaimed, with sarcasm. then, he shrugged his shoulders resignedly. he found himself fairly bemused by this madness on the part of his friends.
“it’s this way,” david went on. his manner proved that, however extravagant in his credulity, he was quite sincere. “i’ve been about more than a bit with roy, and in some infernally tough places, too, let me tell you.” saxe nodded assent. “well, the fact of the matter is simply this: from experience, i’ve learned[92] that, when roy has a hunch, it goes—that’s all. he has sensed things, as he calls it, and our acting on the knowledge we got in that way has saved our lives—more than once—so, here, i’ve been waiting for his sixth sense to get busy, and it has, at last. i was beginning to get discouraged. now, everything’s all right. roy’s got his hunch.”
before saxe could voice utter disbelief in a trust so fantastic, he was interrupted by roy himself. that intermittent seer, who had been smoking with an expression of infantile contentment on his face, sprang lithely and noiselessly to his feet. while saxe and david stared curiously, he leaned close to them, and whispered:
“there’s somebody listening. look out of the window, saxe.”
roy had been sitting for some time with his back to the one window in the room, while the other two had been facing it. there had come no sound from without. now, instinctively obedient to the command, saxe darted to the window, which was open, and thrust out his head. close to the wall of the cottage, within a yard of him, stood hartley masters in an attitude[93] of absorbed attention.
without attracting the notice of the eaves-dropper, saxe drew back, and turned to his friends. he nodded affirmation of roy’s surmise. in the gaze with which he scrutinized the amateur psychic, there was a curious commingling of bewilderment, respect and chagrin.
david threw back his head, and laughed joyously, scorning the listener, and spoke his mind:
“when roy gets a hunch—watch out!”
