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little short, sign a note and I'll write a check. That's the
way gentlemen do business. If you want to put up some
San Felipe as collateral, let her go, but I shan't touch a
share of it. Pens and ink, please, Oscar,"--he lifted a
large forefinger to the Austrian.
The Captain took out his checkbook and a book of blank
notes, and adjusted his nose-nippers. He wrote a few words
in one book and Archie wrote a few in the other. Then
they each tore across perforations and exchanged slips of
paper.
"That's the way. Saves office rent," the Captain com-
mented with satisfaction, returning the books to his pocket.
"And now, Archie, where are you off to?"
"Got to go East to-night. A deal waiting for me in New
York." Dr. Archie rose.
The Captain's face brightened as he saw Oscar approach-
ing with a tray, and he began tucking the corner of his
napkin inside his collar, over his ascot. "Don't let them
unload anything on you back there, doctor," he said gen-
ially, "and don't let them relieve you of anything, either.
Don't let them get any Cripple stuff off you. We can man-
age our own silver out here, and we're going to take it out
by the ton, sir!"
The doctor left the dining-room, and after another con-
sultation with the clerk, he wrote his first telegram to
Thea:--
Miss Thea Kronborg,
Everett House, New York.
Will call at your hotel eleven o'clock Friday morning.
Glad to come. Thank you.
ARCHIE
He stood and heard the message actually clicked off on
the wire, with the feeling that she was hearing the click at
the other end. Then he sat down in the lobby and wrote a
note to his wife and one to the other doctor in Moonstone.
When he at last issued out into the storm, it was with a
feeling of elation rather than of anxiety. Whatever was
wrong, he could make it right. Her letter had practically
said so.
He tramped about the snowy streets, from the bank to
the Union Station, where he shoved his money under the
grating of the ticket window as if he could not get rid of it
fast enough. He had never been in New York, never been
farther east than Buffalo. "That's rather a shame," he
reflected boyishly as he put the long tickets in his pocket,
"for a man nearly forty years old." However, he thought
as he walked up toward the club, he was on the whole glad
that his first trip had a human interest, that he was going
for something, and because he was wanted. He loved holi-
days. He felt as if he were going to Germany himself.
"Queer,"--he went over it with the snow blowing in his
face,--"but that sort of thing is more interesting than
mines and making your daily bread. It's worth paying out
to be in on it,--for a fellow like me. And when it's Thea
-- Oh, I back her!" he laughed aloud as he burst in at the
door of the Athletic Club, powdered with snow.
Archie sat down before the New York papers and ran
over the advertisements of hotels, but he was too restless
to read. Probably he had better get a new overcoat, and
he was not sure about the shape of his collars. "I don't
want to look different to her from everybody else there,"
he mused. "I guess I'll go down and have Van look me
over. He'll put me right."
So he plunged out into the snow again and started for his
tailor's. When he passed a florist's shop he stopped and
looked in at the window, smiling; how naturally pleasant
things recalled one another. At the tailor's he kept whis-
tling, "Flow gently, Sweet Afton," while Van Dusen ad-
vised him, until that resourceful tailor and haberdasher
exclaimed, "You must have a date back there, doctor; you
behave like a bridegroom," and made him remember that
he wasn't one.
Before he let him go, Van put his finger on the Masonic
pin in his client's lapel. "Mustn't wear that, doctor. Very
bad form back there."
II
FRED OTTENBURG, smartly dressed for the after-
noon, with a long black coat and gaiters was sitting
in the dusty parlor of the Everett House. His manner was
not in accord with his personal freshness, the good lines of
his clothes, and the shining smoothness of his hair. His
attitude was one of deep dejection, and his face, though it
had the cool, unimpeachable fairness possible only to a
very blond young man, was by no means happy. A page
shuffled into the room and looked about. When he made
out the dark figure in a shadowy corner, tracing over the
carpet pattern with a cane, he droned, "The lady says you
can come up, sir."
Fred picked up his hat and gloves and followed the crea-
ture, who seemed an aged boy in uniform, through dark
corridors that smelled of old carpets. The page knocked
at the door of Thea's sitting-room, and then wandered
away. Thea came to the door with a telegram in her hand.
She asked Ottenburg to come in and pointed to one of the
clumsy, sullen-looking chairs that were as thick as they
were high. The room was brown with time, dark in spite
of two windows that opened on Union Square, with dull
curtains and carpet, and heavy, respectable-looking furni-
ture in somber colors. The place was saved from utter dis-
malness by a coal fire under the black marble mantelpiece,
--brilliantly reflected in a long mirror that hung between
the two windows. This was the first time Fred had seen
the room, and he took it in quickly, as he put down his hat
and gloves.
Thea seated herself at the walnut writing-desk, still
holding the slip of yellow paper. "Dr. Archie is coming,"
she said. "He will be here Friday morning."
"Well, that's good, at any rate," her visitor replied with
a determined effort at cheerfulness. Then, turning to the
fire, he added blankly, "If you want him."
"Of course I want him. I would never have asked such
a thing of him if I hadn't wanted him a great deal. It's a
very expensive trip." Thea spoke severely. Then she went
on, in a milder tone. "He doesn't say anything about
the money, but I think his coming means that he can let
me have it."
Fred was standing before the mantel, rubbing his hands
together nervously. "Probably. You are still determined
to call on him?" He sat down tentatively in the chair Thea
had indicated. "I don't see why you won't borrow from
me, and let him sign with you, for instance. That would
constitute a perfectly regular business transaction. I could
bring suit against either of you for my money."
Thea turned toward him from the desk. "We won't take
that up again, Fred. I should have a different feeling about
it if I went on your money. In a way I shall feel freer on
Dr. Archie's, and in another way I shall feel more bound.
I shall try even harder." She paused. "He is almost like
my father," she added irrelevantly.
"Still, he isn't, you know," Fred persisted. "It would
n't be anything new. I've loaned money to students
before, and got it back, too."
"Yes; I know you're generous," Thea hurried over it,
"but this will be the best way. He will be here on Friday
did I tell you?"
"I think you mentioned it. That's rather soon. May
I smoke?" he took out a small cigarette case. "I sup-
pose you'll be off next week?" he asked as he struck a
match.
"Just as soon as I can," she replied with a restless move-
ment of her arms, as if her dark-blue dress were too tight
for her. "It seems as if I'd been here forever."
"And yet," the young man mused, "we got in only four
days ago. Facts really don't count for much, do they? It's
all in the way people feel: even in little things."
Thea winced, but she did not answer him. She put the
telegram back in its envelope and placed it carefully in one
of the pigeonholes of the desk.
"I suppose," Fred brought out with effort, "that your
friend is in your confidence?"
"He always has been. I shall have to tell him about my-
self. I wish I could without dragging you in."
Fred shook himself. "Don't bother about where you
drag me, please," he put in, flushing. "I don't give--"
he subsided suddenly.
"I'm afraid," Thea went on gravely, "that he won't
understand. He'll be hard on you."
Fred studied the white ash of his cigarette before he
flicked it off. "You mean he'll see me as even worse than
I am. Yes, I suppose I shall look very low to him: a fifth-
rate scoundrel. But that only matters in so far as it hurts
his feelings."
Thea sighed. "We'll both look pretty low. And after
all, we must really be just about as we shall look to
him."
Ottenburg started up and threw his cigarette into the
grate. "That I deny. Have you ever been really frank with
this preceptor of your childhood, even when you WERE a
child? Think a minute, have you? Of course not! From
your cradle, as I once told you, you've been `doing it' on
the side, living your own life, admitting to yourself things
that would horrify him. You've always deceived him to
the extent of letting him think you different from what
you are. He couldn't understand then, he can't under-
stand now. So why not spare yourself and him?"
She shook her head. "Of course, I've had my own
thoughts. Maybe he has had his, too. But I've never done
anything before that he would much mind. I must put
myself right with him,--as right as I can,--to begin
over. He'll make allowances for me. He always has. But
I'm afraid he won't for you."
"Leave that to him and me. I take it you want me to see
him?" Fred sat down again and began absently to trace
the carpet pattern with his cane. "At the worst," he spoke
wanderingly, "I thought you'd perhaps let me go in on the
business end of it and invest along with you. You'd put
in your talent and ambition and hard work, and I'd put
in the money and--well, nobody's good wishes are to be
scorned, not even mine. Then, when the thing panned out
big, we could share together. Your doctor friend hasn't
cared half so much about your future as I have."
"He's cared a good deal. He doesn't know as much
about such things as you do. Of course you've been a great
deal more help to me than any one else ever has," Thea
said quietly. The black clock on the mantel began to
strike. She listened to the five strokes and then said, "I'd
have liked your helping me eight months ago. But now,
you'd simply be keeping me."
"You weren't ready for it eight months ago." Fred
leaned back at last in his chair. "You simply weren't ready
for it. You were too tired. You were too tim...
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