Chapter XV: Part II: I (6)

But although she hesitated to acknowledge it, she was tired of her waiting game, she wished that “fate would get a move on”, and she had left her husband once with unforeseen results. She leaned her elbows on her knees and pressed her hands against her face. She had always cherished a high opinion of her cleverness in regard to men, but she was nonplussed. For a woman of her resource there should be some alternative to waiting. She knew that she had made a deep impression on her husband in that momentous interview, but who could say that he had not deliberately put the memory of it out of his mind? Certainly there was no sign that it had softened him or paved the way for her reinstatement into his life.

She was alarmed at her waning self-control. During these last few days she barely had been able to play her part in society; the people at the various functions she had attended had seemed to her confused and absent mind like marionettes that she could sweep off the stage with her arm, and she had retreated into her shell lest she insult them irreparably.

She brought her heavy brows together. Could there be another woman after all? Gregory was cleverer than any detective. Why should it occur to him to suggest divorce, he a man so absorbed in a mine that he had forgotten how to live--merely out of consideration for a discarded wife whose existence he generally managed to forget? It was certainly odd, and its idiosyncrasies grew and swelled as she brooded. She wondered if she had been a fool. But who in heaven’s name could the woman be? Of course it was only a passing fancy, but could she wait, _could she wait_?

She was aroused by a slight cough, discreet but full of subtle insolence. She sprang to her feet, and Whalen smiled as he saw her drawn face and bloodshot eyes. He stood just within the door, and held a cap in his hand. He wore a light automobile coat; a pair of goggles only half covered his bulging brow. His upper teeth were clamped down over his lower lip, a habit when steadying his nerves. Ida thought she had never seen him look so hideous, so like a mongrel cur.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“How gracious you are! How like Mrs. Blake, who would not forget her manners if she----”

“I’ve got no manners for your sort. Get out.”

“Oh, not yet. I’ve something to say. I’ve waited for over a year, but my time has come----”

“You’ll go out the way you went last time if you don’t say what you’ve got to say pretty quick and get out by yourself.”

Whalen looked over his shoulder nervously, and measured the distance to the front door. He had asked leave of the maid to announce himself, and, when she had disappeared, reopened the door and left it ajar.

“It won’t take me long,” he said grimly. “It took me a little longer to tell Mrs. Blake, for she was hard to convince; but she _was_ convinced before I left. It is merely this: I saw you go into Lord John Mowbray’s rooms on Monday night shortly after ten o’clock and come out at half-past one.”

“Oh, you did, did you? I had a feeling all the time there was a sneak in the neighbourhood. Well, much good your spying will do you. Lord John was at the Country Club until three in the morning and everybody knows it.”

She spoke calmly, but she was profoundly disturbed. She continued, however, in the same tones of cutting contempt, for she saw that he was taken aback, “I merely misunderstood an invitation of Lord John’s for a bridge party. I thought it was for that night, and although I was surprised to find myself the first and Lord John not there, I sat down to wait and fell asleep. I had had a hard day. I only condescend to explain,” she continued witheringly, “because you are as venomous as a mad dog and it is as well to muzzle you at once.”

“I don’t believe a word of that yarn, and neither will anyone else. I certainly managed to convince Mrs. Blake----”

“Not she. She must have laughed in your face----”

“Oh no! Not Mrs. Blake! But I will admit that it was not easy to make her believe ill of you. Perhaps I should not have succeeded, but when a woman is eager to believe----” He laughed and shrugged his shoulders; but once more he cast a quick glance at the line of retreat. The heavy library table was between them.

“What the devil do you mean?” Ida spoke roughly, but her heart began to hammer. She felt a sudden impulse to run away, but she stood rigidly and glared at him. “Here!” she continued, “come to the point. Spit out your poison. What particular object had you in trying to set my best friend against me? It would have been more like you to run to a newspaper.”

“That later. I wanted to do Mrs. Blake a good turn and at the same time let her be the one to tell your husband that he could secure his freedom without further delay----”

“What do you mean? What do you mean?” Ida’s eyes were staring as if they saw a vision of herself at the stake; she tossed off her pride as she would a hampering cloak. “Ora! Ora! Oh, not Ora! You liar!” she screamed. “Prove what you said quick----” But he saw that she had caught the edge of the table and that her body was swaying.

“Oh, neither will deny it now,” he replied in a tone of deadly quiet. “She went out there to be near him, no doubt of that; and he’s spent hours on end in that bungalow. I went to Helena and back with him and I guessed that something was up, for he was glummer and more disagreeable than usual; and this afternoon when I saw her come up out of his mine I guessed they had had a painful scene and parted. So I told her she had the game in her own hands, and that I’d go on the stand and swear to what I saw. No husband would believe anything but the truth, nor this town either. You might prove that your lord made a fool of you and amused himself elsewhere, but you’re done for all the same; and I guess Mr. Compton would manage his divorce all right. Then two people that are madly in love will be happy----”

Ida’s strength rushed back and the world turned scarlet. She picked up a heavy bronze from the table and hurled it at him. But Whalen was expecting a physical assault in some form. He ducked and fled. When she reached the open door he was not in sight.

XXIV

Ora watched the clock until twenty minutes after eleven.

The miners changed shift promptly, and the last should have gone down the Primo shaft by a quarter past at the latest. The shaft house would be empty, as no hoisting was being done on the night shift.

She turned out the light in her living-room, wrapped herself in a dark lodenmantel, a long cape with a hood that she had worn while climbing in Bavaria, and let herself out. She walked through the grove to the edge of the bluff above her camp and stood for a few moments, listening intently. Some ten minutes since she had heard the warning shriek of an automobile horn, but the garage of her manager, who had motored Whalen into Butte, was on the flat, and he had had time either to go down into the mine or climb to his own cottage.

The moon was at the full and the scene as sharply outlined as by day, although less animated. Save for the usual raucous noises of a mining camp the only sign of life was in the saloon. Some one was playing a pianola, and through the open door she saw men standing at the bar. For a moment she was tempted to take the surface path across the camps; but the risk was too great. Some one was sure to be abroad, and although she had been willing to brave the scorn of the world when there was no apparent alternative, she shrank from the plain Saxon the miners would use if they saw her. From Gregory’s shaft house she could reach his cabin by the path behind the abandoned cut.

A light was burning in her shaft house. She was not expert enough to descend the ladder candle in hand, and for a moment faltered above the darkness of the well; she had not been down before at night. Then she reflected that it was always night in the mines and descended without further hesitation.

At the foot of the shaft the usual station was one with the chamber left after removing the first large deposit of ore. They had merely cut through the vein at this point without stoping, and the great excavation had a lofty roof. Ora struck a match and lit a candle near by. On the day of the geologists’ visit a number of miner’s candlesticks had been thrust into what little wood there was in the chamber, and the candles were but half burnt out. Then she lit the one she had brought in her pocket. Accustomed as she was by this time to the route underground by chamber and gallery to the Perch mine, she always picked her way carefully, particularly down the first drift; her lessees, impatient at the leanness of the connecting vein, and not wishing to spend either the time or the money to sink the shaft another hundred feet, had understoped, and the holes were ill-covered.

She crossed the large black cavern toward the first of these tunnels, or drifts, sweeping the candle about her head, and then holding it downward, for she always feared cave-ins. The room was almost untimbered, owing to the hardness of the rock.

She had almost reached the mouth of the drift, when she paused suddenly, listened intently, and then blew out her candle. Some one was on the ladder. It was one of the miners, no doubt. Something had detained him above ground, and not daring to summon the shaft house man, he was sneaking down the ladder. He would go on down to the second level of the mine. Ora stood motionless, her hood pulled over her white face. Her miners were good average men, but the saloon flourished, and was no doubt responsible for the present delinquency.

Then once more she listened intently. The upper part of her body stiffened like a startled animal’s. Whoever was coming down was making his first descent by foot; not only was his progress slow, but he was breathing heavily, and hesitating between rungs, as if it were his first experience of an inclined ladder. Miners hate the shaft ladder, and will resort to any subterfuge to avoid it, but they are experts in “negotiating” it nevertheless. No doubt this was some green hand, recently employed. Or possibly the man was drunk.

Then suddenly Ora turned cold with the chill of the mine itself, a mere physical attribute that her warm blood had never deigned to notice before. A form was slowly coming into view below the high roof of the cavern, and although it was little more than a blot on the general blackness, Ora’s keen eyes, accustomed to the faint relief given by the candle near the shaft, noted as it descended further that it covered more of the ladder than it should. Miners are almost invariably thin and they wear overalls. This person wore a heavy cape like her own. But it was not alone the garment, which any miner would scorn, that betrayed the sex of the invader; it may have been the physical awkwardness, the shallow breathing, or some subtle psychical emanation--or all--that warned Ora of the approach not only of a woman but of a malignant force.

And this woman was following her. There was no doubt in her mind of that. She suffered a moment or two of furious unreasoning terror as she crouched against the wall and watched that shadow against a shadow slowly descend the final rungs of the ladder. Her first impulse had been to flee down the drift, but there was danger of falling into one of the gouge holes and disabling herself. She dared not relight her candle.

Shaking, terrified as she never had been in her life--for she was normally brave, and it was not a normal woman she feared but that aura of hate and lust for vengeance--undecided, putting up a frantic prayer that Gregory would come to her rescue, she pulled the hood over her face and almost sank to her knees. The woman, breathing heavily, reached the last rung and touched the ground as warily as a cat. For a moment she stood drawing in deep breaths like sighs, but which escaped, to tormented ears, like a hiss. Ora, her eyelids almost meeting over the intense concentration of her gaze, saw the woman fling back the mantle that covered her, throw out her arms as if to relax the muscles after the strain of the descent. Then she turned suddenly, snatched the candlestick from the wall and held it above her head.

For the moment Ora thought her heart had stopped. The woman was Ida. Her heavy lowered brows were like a heavy band across the white ghastliness of her face. Her eyes glittered horribly. Her lips were a mere tight line. Her black hair, loosened, fell over her face. Ora’s hypnotised gaze tore itself from those slowly moving eyes and lowered itself instinctively to Ida’s right hand. It held the stiletto she had given her in Genoa. The slanting rays of the candle fell on the jewels of the hilt. Then she knew that Ida had followed her down into the mine to kill her.

Her courage came back as quickly as it had fled. Ora’s brain might be democratic but her soul was haughty. The friendship of the past eighteen months between herself and this woman suddenly shaped itself as forced and artificial, and she was filled with a cold surprise and anger. _Who_ was Ida Hook that she should presume to question Ora Stratton? Similar reflections, no doubt, stiffened many a noble when on his way to the guillotine at the behest of the _canaille_.

Ora was beyond the ray of the candle at present but Ida was beginning to move forward, her eyes almost blank in spite of their brilliancy, moving from side to side, striving to pierce the darkness, her head bent forward to catch the slightest sound. It was evident that she had seen Ora go into the shaft house, and knew that she could not be far off.

Ora took the automatic from the bag at her waist, pointed it at the roof of the cave and fired twice. The din was terrific in that confined space. Ida shrieked, dropped the stiletto and candle, and flung her arms about her head. Ora hastily lighted two other candles, and then retreated against the wall. She believed that the terrible inhibition in Ida’s tormented mind was shattered, but she kept the automatic in her hand, nevertheless.

The reverberations died away and once more the mine was as silent as only a deserted level of a mine can be. Ida raised her head and saw Ora. She gave a strangled cry and moved forward a step. Then her arms fell heavily to her side. She did not even pick up the dagger. The inhuman tension of her mind relaxed, the body barely had force enough to hold itself together.

“I came here to kill you,” she said. “But I can’t do it. I’ve been mad for hours, and I wish I could have found you in bed as I thought I would. I could have killed you then. But I saw you come down here--Have you told him?”

“No. He was down in the mine until eleven. I was on my way to tell him--to break down his resistance tonight!”

“His resistance?” Ida raised her head. She had lost the pitch necessary for murder, but her mind began to recover its alertness and her drooping body to set its springs in motion. “What do you mean by that? I thought he was in love with you.”

Ora laughed. She was filled with an utter despair, but the knife was still in Ida and she could turn it round. “Oh, yes, make no doubt of that. He loves me and will as long as he lives----”

“Not much he won’t!” roared Ida. “If I’ve been too quick for you you’ll never tell him now, and he practically gave me his word the other day that he’d never even ask me for a divorce again. That means you go and go quick, and if you think Gregory will have nothing to do but sit down and nurse your memory----”

The blood flew to Ora’s head and she hastily dropped the automatic into her bag. “I’ll not go!” she said. “And what is more I shall tell him. When Gregory knows that you spent three hours in Mowbray’s rooms at night----”

“Mowbray was not there! He was at the Country Club----”

“_Was_ he?”

“Yes, and it can be proved. Moreover, you know me well enough----”

“It doesn’t matter what can be proved or what I believe. You waited for Mowbray--Do you suppose that Gregory--or any court of law----”

“My God!” cried Ida. “You! You! I think it was that drove me off my head more than the prospect of disgrace and losing Gregory. You! What in God’s name is possessing you? I always knew that you would be the concentrated essence of all damn fool women that ever lived when you did fall in love, but I never believed it was in you to do anything dishonourable----”

“And would you have believed that you, the concentrated essence of all that is cool, deliberate, calculating, would ever be inspired to commit murder? And for a man? What’s the use of talking? People possessed by love either are wholly themselves while it lasts, or are abnormal and should not be held accountable even to the law. I suppose this means that you too love Gregory Compton?”

“Yes it does!” cried Ida, the more vehemently because it shamed her to put this unwonted weakness into words. “I do, damn it all! I do. I thought I was immune, but I guess we are all born with the microbe and it bites when the soil is good and ready.” Her anger had vanished, for in spite of Ora’s defiance she knew that she was master of the situation. She kicked the stiletto contemptuously aside, clasped her hips with her large firm hands and threw back her shoulders. “Now!” she said, “admit right here that you know I didn’t go to Mowbray’s rooms for any old intrigue. That kind of thing isn’t in me and you know it.”

“I will confess I was surprised--I refused to believe it at first--Oh, I suppose I don’t. But it doesn’t matter----”

“Are you ready to come with me this minute to Gregory and tell him that yarn--knowing that I can prove Mowbray wasn’t there--I say _go with me_--not by yourself.”

Ora made no reply. She was beaten but she was not ready to admit it.

“You may bet your life on one thing,” continued Ida. “You go with me or you don’t go at all, for I’ll stick to you like wet paint until this thing is settled once for all. Now just tell me what you meant a while back by Gregory’s resistance? When you found I wouldn’t consent to a divorce--of course you put him up to ask me, you traitorous little white devil--did you want him to elope with you?”

“Yes I did!”

“And he wouldn’t!”

“He--he would not sacrifice me----”

“Shucks! Where did you want him to go? To Europe?”

“Yes.”

“Good Lord! And what did you think you were going to do with him over there? Spoon in orange groves for forty years?”

“There are several thousand resources in Europe besides orange groves--but you would never understand----”

“Oh, don’t I understand? It’s I that does understand, not you, or you would never have made such an asinine proposition to Gregory Compton. Why on earth didn’t you propose some place with _mines_--Mexico, Alaska, China--Then you might have stood some show--but Europe--Gregory--Do you remember those American business men that always looked as if they had left their minds in an office at the top of a thirty-story building, and their bodies were being led round by a string? The vision of Gregory astray in Europe for the rest of his life would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. Talk about the conceit of man. It isn’t a patch on that of a woman when she gets the bug inside her head that she can be ‘everything’ to a man. I can manage Gregory till doomsday when I get him back, but you’d lose him inside of six months no matter which way you got him----”

“That couldn’t be true! I recognised that he was mine--_mine_--the night we met before I left----”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, yes, I met him once before I went abroad with you--we talked for an hour----”

“And he was the man you wrote those letters to in Europe----”

“Yes.”

“And I your most intimate friend!”

“I never sent them, and you did not care for him then----”

“Oh, I don’t see you apologising if you had turned heaven into hell. You made up your mind then to have him, I suppose?”

“No. And not even when I came out here. I only wanted to be with him--know him a little better--have that much--Oh, I couldn’t make you understand any more than that I can suffer as much as if I were the best of women who had lost her husband by death. It was only after Mowbray came--there seemed a prospect----”

“Well, I don’t know that I blame you so much, for I certainly bluffed it pretty well. I can forgive you for that but not for meaning to make me out a strumpet and send me to the muck heap, disgraced for the rest of my life. Well, come along. Let us go straight to Gregory and let him decide.”

Ora did not move.

“It’s either that or you go back to Butte with me tonight and start for Europe tomorrow morning.”

“I know when I am beaten. I will leave. And don’t imagine that you have won because you are in the right. We have emerged from the dark ages of superstition, and we know that the wicked are not punished if they are strong enough. Nor are the virtuous rewarded for mere virtue--not once in ten thousand times. You have won because you are stronger than I. That is all.”

“It’s enough for me.”

Ora laughed. “Do you really believe that you can win him back? He’ll not forget me, because I can always fire his imagination. He is as indifferent to you as only a man can be when the woman is an old story.”

“That was a nasty one! But I’m not worrying. I have been at a disadvantage since I got back, thinking my only rival was a hole in the ground. But take this from me, Ora: when a woman knows where she stands, and has the inside track, and has her nerve with her, the man has no show whatever. Nor the other woman. I’ll get him back all right. And he’ll forget you. That’s a man’s long suit.”

“We’ll neither of us ever know, so it doesn’t matter. I shall never see him again. That is all that matters to me.”

“And Valdobia?”

“I shall marry him. I suppose--after a while.”

“I don’t mind saying that he is much too good for you.”

“Possibly. And he’ll love me the more.”

“And shall you tell him of this little interlude?”

“Certainly not.”

“Well, I always have maintained that the woman who confessed anything to a man was a fool, but it certainly is a queer mix up.”

“I don’t know that I should so much mind telling him, after all. Men are too practical to resent any but the literal infidelity. And he is the only person living that understands me. Gregory does not and never would care to. Why could not I have had this madness for the one man who is really fitted to be my mate--whose ideas of life are my own, who has so much the same order of mind? Why should I love Gregory Compton, a man I not only cannot marry, but with whom I never could find a real companionship. My God! Why? Why?”

“There are several ways of getting ahead of life,” said Ida drily, “and one is not asking ‘Why’ too often. That’s just one of her little traps to keep you discontented. You and Gregory Compton! It certainly is funny. What did you talk about anyway?”

Ora threw out her arms and laughed wildly. “Ores. Ores. Ores. I tried to interest him in many of the things that interested me. He didn’t even try to understand what I was driving at. One night I offered to read to him--I had a lively new volume of memoirs in mind--he asked if I had any work on copper. I read to him for three hours from a book called ‘The Copper Mines of the World,’ technicalities and all. Of course he had read it before, but it seemed to delight him. We literally had no common meeting ground but ores, but we loved each other madly. Oh, don’t tell me that it was mere passion!” she broke out as angrily as if Ida had interrupted her. “Valdobia is attractive in far more ways and better looking. Gregory has met many women.--If that were all we should have bored each other long since--we never could have held each other’s imaginations while apart.--I tell you it is some deep primary bond--something that older races perhaps could explain. Why should we meet at all in this life----”

“I guess when we understand all the different brands of love we’ll vaccinate and be immune. Shut your teeth, Ora, and take your medicine. And for heaven’s sake let us get out of this damp hole. I’ll help you and Custer pack and we’ll go to Butte in the car I came out in. Have I got to go up that ladder!”

“No, we’ll go over to the Perch mine and ring for the skip there. My engineer is not on duty during the ‘graveyard shift.’”

XXV

On the following morning Ida, having seen Ora on the train bound for Chicago, went at once to a public garage, rented the touring car she had used the night before, and was driven out to the mines. She walked up to the cabin on the crest of Perch of the Devil and, finding it empty, summoned a miner who was lounging near and bade him call Mr. Compton. The man asked to be allowed to use the telephone in the office, obtained connection with the second level of the mine, and announced in a few moments that the boss was on his way up.

Ida, who had dropped wearily into a chair, merely nodded as Gregory entered. He was as pale as a dark man can be, and his voice when he spoke sounded as if he had been running.

“What is it?” he demanded. “Has anything happened----”

“To Ora? Nothing, except that she is on her way East and to Europe. Tired, no doubt, but quite well.”

Gregory drew a short sigh of relief, and sat down before his table, shading his eyes with his hand. “Well?” he asked. “What is it?”

“I haven’t come out here to make a scene, or even to reproach you. I believe that I should have the self-restraint to ignore the subject altogether if it were not for that man, Whalen. Some one must put an extinguisher on him at once and you are the one to do it. That is why I am obliged to tell you that I found out yesterday about you and Ora. I had begun to believe there must be some woman in the case but I had not the least suspicion of Ora. I not only believed her to be the soul of honour, but I thought she was really in love with the Marchese Valdobia, a Roman who has everything to offer that a woman of her type demands, and to marry whom she had demanded a divorce from Mark. She has been tacitly engaged to him ever since we left Europe.”

Ida saw the muscles in Gregory’s long body stiffen as if he were about to spring, and his eyes glitter through the lattice of his fingers. But he made no comment, and after giving him time to assimilate her information, she added more gently:

“Console yourself with the reflection that she would have thrown him over for you. But she knows now what a mistake she would have made. Ora is one of those atavistic Americans that are far more at home in Europe than in the new world. She has gone where she belongs and Valdobia is her man.”

She paused again. He was still silent, and she continued less fluently: “Now I come to the unpleasant part for myself. To begin at the beginning: I made an enemy of little Whalen before I went abroad. He had the sublime impudence to kiss me one day, and I simply took him by the back of his neck and the seat of his pants and threw him out of the window. He has had it in for me ever since.”

In spite of the various emotions raging within him, Gregory laughed aloud at the picture. The atmosphere felt clearer. Ida went on with more confidence:

“Of course you know that Lord John Mowbray followed me here. He wanted me to get a divorce and marry him, as Valdobia had planned with Ora. I liked him well enough, but even if I had been free it never would have occurred to me to marry him, and no one knew better than he that I didn’t care a copper cent for him. His hope after he came here--a hope in which he was encouraged by Ora--was that, as you were so loudly indifferent, pride might drive me to leave you and make a brilliant marriage. Well, I was tempted for a moment. It was on the night of the day I had been down in the mine with you. I believed that I had given myself away absolutely, offered myself and been refused as casually as if I had been some woman of the streets; told you almost in so many words that I loved you and been invited with excruciating politeness to go to the devil.

“Well, that night I nearly went off my head. I had a whole mind, for a few moments, to ring up Mowbray and tell him that I would get my freedom and leave the country for ever. But that passed. I couldn’t have done it, and I knew it, in spite of the blood pumping in my head. I went out for a walk, for I had smashed a few things already. Then the mad impulse came to me to call on Mowbray. I knew that I’d treat him no better than I had treated Whalen if he so much as tried to kiss me. But I wasn’t afraid. He was too keen on marrying me to take any risks. What I wanted was to do something real devilish--to be more elegant, something quite the antithesis of all that is _comme il faut_. So I went. Mowbray wasn’t there. He had gone to the dance at the Country Club. I sat down to wait for him and fell asleep. When I awoke it was after one o’clock and I was still alone. I can tell you I got out pretty quick. I had slept the blood out of my head and I felt like a fool. I bribed the Jap not to tell Mowbray or anyone else.

“Well, the point of all this is--and the only reason I have told you--Whalen saw me go in and waited for me to come out. He believed that he had found his chance for revenge at last. No doubt he would have told you on the way to Helena, but he hasn’t the spunk of a road agent at the wrong end of a gun. So he took his tale to Ora when he got back.--But before I go any further I want you to say that you believe I had no wrong motive in going to Mowbray’s rooms. Of course a hundred people could testify that he did not leave the Country Club until three o’clock, but that is not the point with you.”

“I believe you,” said Gregory. He was intensely interested.

Ida drew a long sigh and the colour came back to her face. Her eyes, heavy with fatigue, sparkled. “Well! Whalen was all for drinking his cup of revenge down to the dregs. It wasn’t enough to spring a mine under me, he must see what I looked like when it blew up the first time. After he told Ora he posted into Butte and managed to get into my house unannounced--that maid has been fired. I was in the library on the other side of the room. The doorway was good enough for him. He told me. Some time I’ll tell you all I felt. After he had lit out with the Venus of Milo flying after him, I went stark mad. I made up what mind I had left to kill Ora and kill her quick.”

“What?” Gregory sat up and stared at her, his eyes wide open. And, astounded as he was, the immortal vanity of man thrilled responsively to the reckless and destructive passions he had inspired in these two remarkable women.

“I got a touring car and arrived at the foot of her hill--a little after eleven it was, I guess. There was a light in her living-room, and I made up my mind to wait until I was sure she was alone and in her bedroom. Then I intended to get in somehow or other and kill her with that stiletto she gave me in Genoa. It was a notion of hers that I had been one of the wicked dames of the Renaissance, and I just naturally took the hint. While I was waiting the light went out and almost immediately I saw her hurry down the path that led to her claim and go into her shaft house. I knew on the instant that she was going to you, and that she took that route to avoid being seen. My mind could grasp that much in spite of the fixed idea in it--that she was on her way to tell you Whalen’s story. This was true as I found out afterwards. She went that night, partly because she couldn’t keep it any longer, partly because she wanted to tell you when you were alone in your cabin at night and she could also bind you hand and foot with that Lorelei hair of hers. It takes the hyper-civilised super-refined Oras to stick at nothing when their primitive instincts loosen up.

“Well--I went into the shaft house, and listened until I no longer could hear her on the ladder. Then I followed. Glory! Shall I ever forget going down that ladder? I felt as if every muscle in my body were being torn up by the roots; and I had to carry the stiletto between my teeth. And pitch dark. All my clothes in the way every step. It was enough to take the starch out of tragedy, and I guess it would have flattened me out if it hadn’t been just the one thing that could make me madder still.

“I’ll give you the details of that scene some other time. I’m too tired now. It is enough to say that she had a pistol and made such an infernal racket with it--shooting at the roof--that something busted in my head and I came to. Then we had it out. She agreed to leave because she knew me too well to believe I had gone to Mowbray’s rooms for any horrid purpose, and he hadn’t been there anyway. I told her that if she told you it would have to be before me, and she knew that she couldn’t brazen it through. So I packed her and got her off this morning. That means that I had no sleep last night.”

She stood up and Gregory rose also. “Now, there are two things more,” she said with no lack of decision in her voice, whatever her fatigue of body. “You must settle Whalen, and you must move to Butte and live in my house, even if you are only there once or twice a week. Whalen, the moment he discovers that Ora has gone, will run about Butte defaming me, or carry the story to the papers. It wouldn’t do me much good to prove that Mowbray wasn’t there. People like to believe the worst, and in time would forget that Mowbray had been at the Club on that particular night. My set might be all right. But the rest--and my servants--and Ruby and Pearl! They always use the word ‘bad,’ and, as Ora says, an intrigue is only decent in a foreign language. It gives me the horrors to think of it. But if we are seen together twice a week, and you are known to be living in the house, however often you must be absent, nobody will listen to a story that is not headed toward the divorce court.”

“I’ll buy Whalen’s claim and tell him to get out of Montana. He’ll go! As for the rest of your programme--please be sure, Ida, that I stand ready to protect you now and always. You are not only my wife but an extraordinary woman, and I am very proud of you.”

“Oh, the extraordinary woman hasn’t been born yet, in spite of the big fight the sex is putting up,” said Ida lightly, as they left the cabin and walked down the hill. “When women really are extraordinary they will be just as happy without men as they now want to be with them. They try with all their might to be hard, and they can ring outside like metal, but inside they are just one perpetual shriek for the right man to come along--that is all but a few hundred thousand tribadists. But they’ve made a beginning, and one day they’ll really be able to take men as incidentally as men take women. Then we’ll all be happy. Don’t you fool yourself that that’s what I’m aiming at, though. I’m the sort that hangs on to her man like grim death.”

“You’re all right!” said Gregory, who, man-like, was automatically readjusting himself to the inevitable.

He handed her into the tonneau of the car, and tucked the robe about her. She gave his hand a hearty friendly shake, for she was much too wise and too tired for sentiment. “Don’t you worry about Ora,” she said. “Custer is with her and she has the drawing-room, and is probably sound asleep at this moment. It must be very restful to get a tragic love affair off your chest.”

And then the car rolled off and she fell asleep at once.

PART III