Thode beckoned once more to the waiter, and, throwing a bill upon the table, rose.
"If Miss Murdaugh has gone, I'm off to-night," he announced. "It was to see her that I returned to New York, but since there's no chance of that now I must take the trail again."
"I say, you haven't stumbled upon anything that would be to her advantage, have you?" Winnie demanded suddenly as he followed his friend to the door. "Anything about the past, I mean----?"
"No, Win." Thode spoke without turning. "It was just a--a little private matter."
"And you're really off to-night? When are we going to see you again, old man?"
"I don't know." He wheeled about swiftly, then held out his hand. "Don't forget to repeat what I have told you to your father and make it as strong as you can. I'm playing a game of my own, and when we meet again it will be cards on the table. Good-bye, Win."
"Good luck!" The other hesitated wistfully. "If--if you should happen by any chance to run across Willa in your wanderings, will you tell her for me that I'm still waiting, as I said I should be; that I am still, as always, at her service?"
A long, narrow valley between snow-capped mountains glistening under the January sun; a cluster of ramshackle, weather-beaten wooden houses elbowing each other on either side of a single straggling street, with here and there a newer concrete building planted firmly like respectable citizens in a disreputable mob. Stray dogs sniffing at heaps of refuse, a group of tethered horses shivering under thin blankets in the hotel shed, a battered jitney or two stalled before shop and saloon. A Chinaman with a huge bundle upon his head, a slatternly woman brushing the dry, powdered snow from the path, a tawdry one pattering along, her rouged face pitiful in the clear merciless light; red-shirted miners crawling like ants to the yawning shaft-mouths half way up the mountainside.--This was Topaz Gulch on a certain wintry morning.
In the office of the Palace Hotel, the proprietor tossed aside his week-old Chicago newspaper and rose with alacrity as a slender, girlish figure, clad in a great fur coat, came lightly down the stairs.
"Everything all right, Ma'am? Did the missus make you comfortable?"