NEVER THE TWAIN

SHALL MEET

PETER B. KYNE

AUTHOR OF

CAPPY RICKS RETIRES,

THE PRIDE OF PALOMAR,

KINDRED OF THE DUST, Etc.

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

Peter B. Kyne

including the Scandinavian

Manufactured in the United States of America

To a Little Girl—

who believed

that when the fairies married,

one might, by lying very quietly

in the grass,

hear the bluebells ringing

Never the Twain Shall Meet

CHAPTER I

It was a song that never before had been sung; once sung, never again would it be heard. Such a song, indeed, as little girls croon to their dolls; half funeral chant, half hymn, sung in a minor key by a girl with a powerfully sweet lyric soprano. The last of the land breeze carried it aft to Gaston Larrieau, the master of the 200-ton auxiliary trading schooner Moorea, where he stood on the top step of the companion, his leonine head and tremendous shoulders showing above the deck-house, as he smoked his first after-breakfast pipe.

While he listened, a shadow passed over the man’s face, as when winds drive a dark cloud above a sunny plain. He removed his pipe thoughtfully to murmur:

“Ah, my poor Tamea! Dear child of the sun! Homesick already!” Then he came out on deck and stood by the weather rail, looking forward until he espied the figure of the singer stretched face downward, at full length, alongside the bowsprit, but snuggled comfortably in the belly of the jib. One arm enveloped the bowsprit; at each rise and fall of the Moorea’s long clipper bow, her feet, sandal-clad, beat the canvas in rhythm. And, because she was young and athrill with the music of the spheres, because the dark blue water purling under the schooner’s forefoot brought to her memories of the insistent, peaceful swish of the surf enveloping the outer reef at Riva, the girl Tamea sang:

“Behold! Tamea, Queen of Riva,

Has forsaken her mother’s people.

In her father’s great canoe called Moorea

After the mother of Tamea, who loved him,

Tamea sails over a cold sea

To the white man’s country.

Tamea is happy and curious.

But if the hearts in this new land

Are cold as the fog this morning,

Then will the heart of Tamea grow heavy.

Then will she weep for a sight of Riva.

Then will she yearn for love and pleasure,

For dancing and feasting; for the water

White on the reef where the fishermen stand . . .”

“I must shake her out of that mood,” Larrieau muttered, and strode aft to the wheel. The Tahitian helmsman gave way to him and as the master put the helm down and the schooner came sharply up into the wind and hung there shivering her canvas until it cracked like pistol shots, Tamea rose briskly from her hammock in the belly of the jib and stood poised on the bowsprit, with one hand clasping the jib to steady her. The suddenness with which she had been disturbed and the air of regal hauteur she assumed as she faced aft for an explanation from the Tahitian helmsman, who had now resumed the wheel and was easing the Moorea away on her course once more, brought a bellow of Brobdingnagian laughter from Larrieau.

Tamea came aft with stately tread, pausing at the forward end of the deck-house. “So it was you, great, wicked Frenchman,” she cried in a Polynesian dialect. “Truly, my father forgets that he is but a wandering trader, while I am Tamea, Queen of Riva!” Simulating a royal fury she was far from feeling, Tamea grasped a bucket attached to a rope, dropped it overboard, drew it back filled with water and, poising it in position to hurl its contents, advanced to the assault.

“Tiens!” Gaston Larrieau chuckled. “I shall never succeed in making a Christian of you. It is written that even a queen shall honor her father and mother? nevertheless you, my own child, would dishonor me with sea water!” As she threatened him laughingly, he leaped for the opposite corner of the deck-house, and she saw that it was his humor to invite the deluge. Wherefore, with the perversity of her sex and royal blood, she deluged the helmsman, who stood grinning at her.

“Your eye belongs on the lubber’s mark, on the sails, on the horizon—anywhere but on me, Kahanaha,” she admonished the amazed fellow. And then, while Gaston Larrieau, momentarily off guard, stood roaring great gales of laughter at the discomfited Kahanaha, Queen Tamea of Riva dashed into his face fully a quart of water remaining in the bucket. She smiled upon Larrieau adorably.

“He laughs best who laughs last. Kahanaha, you may laugh.”

Larrieau dashed the water from his bush of a beard. “Nom d’un chien! This is mutiny. Tamea, come here!” But Tamea merely wrinkled her nose at him, and when he charged at her she cried aloud, half delighted, half deliciously apprehensive, and started up the starboard main shrouds. Her father followed her, moving, despite his sixty years and his tremendous bulk, with something of the ease and swiftness of a bear.

At the masthead Tamea cowered, pretending to be frightened and cornered, until his hand reached for her slim ankle; when without the slightest hesitation she sprang for the backstay and went whizzing swiftly down to the deck. Here she threw him a peace offering, in the way of a kiss, but he ignored her. From the masthead he was looking out over the low-lying smear of fog that shrouded the coast of California, and the girl thrilled as his stentorian voice rang through the ship.

“Land, ho!”

Within a few minutes the Moorea had slipped through the cordon of fog into the sunshine. Off to starboard the red hull of the lightship loomed vividly against the blue of sea and sky; a white pilot schooner ratched lazily across their bows, while off to port three gasoline trawlers out of San Francisco coughed violently away toward the Cordelia banks, their hulls painted in bizarre effects of Mediterranean blue with yellow decks and upper works. Their Sicilian crews waved tassled, multicolored tam-o’-shanter caps at Tamea and when she threw kisses to them with both hands they shouted their approval in ringing fashion.

From Point San Pedro on the south to Point Reyes on the north fifty miles of green, mountainous shore line sweeping down abruptly to ocher-tinted bluffs lay outspread before Tamea. She viewed it with mixed feelings of awe, delight and a half sensed feeling of apprehension, for all that enthralling vision impressed her with the thought that beyond the indentation which her father called to her was the Golden Gate, lay another world of romance, of dreams, curiosity-compelling, palpitant with something of the same warmth that had nurtured Tamea in the little known, seldom visited and uncharted island kingdom under the Southern Cross. Following the fashion of her people when their emotions are profoundly stirred, again Tamea’s golden voice was lifted in a semi-chant, an improvised pæan of appreciation.

Down through the entrance the Moorea ramped, with Tamea standing far out on the bowsprit, as if she would be the first to arrive, the first to see the wonders she felt certain lurked just around the bend behind crumbling old Fort Winfield Scott. As she leaned against the jib stay and held on with her elbows she searched the shore line with her father’s marine glasses until, the Moorea having loafed up to the quarantine grounds, the crew disturbed the girl in order to take in the headsails.

They were scarcely snugged down before the Customs tug scraped alongside. While Gaston was down below in the cabin presenting his papers for the inspection of the port officer, a representative of the Public Health Service examined the crew on deck. Before Tamea he stood several moments in silent admiration. Then he asked:

“Miss, do you speak English?”

Tamea looked him over with frank admiration and approval. “You bet your sweet life I speak English,” she replied melodiously; and from her English the doctor knew that she also spoke French. Having heard her giving an order to the Kanaka steward in an alien tongue, he concluded she spoke Hawaiian and sought confirmation of that conclusion.

“No, mister, I do not speak Hawaiian,” said Tamea. “I can understand much of it, because all Polynesian languages are derived from the same Aryan source. The difference between the hundreds of languages in Polynesia is mostly one of dialect—phonetic differences, you know.”

He sighed. “I didn’t know, but I’m glad to find out—from you. Are you Venus or Juno or one of the Valkyries from some tropical Valhalla?”

“Now you grow very queer,” she retorted soberly. “You make the josh, and I do not like men who do that. I am Tamea Oluolu Larrieau. I am the Queen of Riva, and in Riva it is taboo to josh the Queen.”

“I think the Queen is a josher, however,” he replied gravely.

“Ah! You do not believe, then, that I am the Queen of Riva?”

“No, I do not. You’re the Queen of Hearts.”

Fortunately for Tamea she knew how to play casino and was, therefore, acquainted with the queen of hearts. Hence she could assimilate the compliment, and a ravishing smile was the reward of the daring doctor.

He bowed low.

“Will Tamea Oluolu Larrieau, Queen of Riva—wherever that may be, if it isn’t another name for Paradise, since an houri has come from Riva—oblige a mere mortal by opening her mouth, sticking out her tongue and saying, ‘Ah-h-h!’—like that.”

“Why?” There was suspicion in Tamea’s glance now.

“It is a ceremonial peculiar to this country, Your Majesty. It is required of all visitors, of whatever rank. An Indian prince did it yesterday and a dato from Java will do it this afternoon.”

Tamea shrugged—a Gallic shrug—and complied.

“What a lovely death it would be to be fatally bitten by those teeth! Now, just one more ceremonial, if you please. It is required that I shall look into your eyes very closely. You may have trachoma, but if you have I’ll never survive the shock of having to deport you.”

Again Tamea shrugged. A peculiar custom, she thought, but one that was not difficult to comply with.

“Well, if you’re a fair sample of the womanhood of Riva, O Tamea Oluolu Larrieau, I’m mighty glad that I’m not a practicing physician there. I should never earn a fee.”

“And if you should earn a fee nobody would think of paying it,” she laughed. “Perhaps, if you liked bananas or coconuts——” And her shoulders came up in collaboration, as it were, with an adorable little moue. The young doctor laughed happily.

“Alas! God help the poor missionaries with sirens like her on every hand,” he thought as he descended into the cabin, where Larrieau was in conference with an immigration official touching his daughter’s right to land. This detail was, happily, quickly passed and the health officer tapped Gaston Larrieau on the arm.

“Captain, it will be necessary for me to give you a physical examination before I can issue your vessel a clean bill of health.”

“Open your mouth and say, ‘Ah-h-h!’” commanded Tamea, who had followed the doctor below. “Then open your eyes and look wise. Is my father not a frail little man, eh?” she demanded of the doctor.

“The examination of this physical wreck is merely a matter of routine, Your Majesty.”

Gaston Larrieau; came close to the doctor and opened his cavernous mouth.

“Ah-h-h!” he said.

“Ah!” the doctor repeated softly—and touched lightly, in succession, a slightly puffed spot high up on each of the captain’s cheeks. As he pressed the color fled, leaving a somewhat sickly whitish spot that stood out prominently in an otherwise ruddy face. A moment later the spots in question had regained their original color, which had been a ruddiness somewhat less pronounced than the surrounding tissue.

Perhaps only a doctor’s eye—an eye especially alert for such spots—would have detected them.

“Is this not a fine doctor, father Larrieau!” Tamea exclaimed almost breathlessly. “You open your mouth—and he looks at your eyes!”

The health officer glanced at her. A minute before he had noted particularly the glory of her complexion—pale gold, with an old-rose tint, very faintly diffused through the clear skin, like a yellow light masked by a pale pink silk cloth. Now the rose tint was gone and old ivory had replaced the pale gold. There was a gleam of excitement, of fear, in her smoky eyes, and the smile which accompanied her attempted badinage was just a bit forced. As the glances of the two met each realized that the other knew!

“I cannot help it; I must do my duty,” the doctor murmured helplessly, and turned to look down Gaston Larrieau’s open throat. “Any soreness in the nose, Captain?”

“A little, of late, Doctor.”

“Any other pain?”

“Well, for a couple of months I’ve had a small, steady pain in my right shoulder—like rheumatism.”

“No. It is neuritis.” He picked up the captain’s ham-like hand and noted on the back of it, close to the knuckles, the same faintly white, puffy spots. “Now please remove your shirt.”

Tamea’s eyes closed in momentary pain before she retired to a stateroom adjoining the main cabin. Larrieau removed his shirt and the doctor examined his torso critically. On his back, partially covering the right scapula, he found that which he sought. “That will be all,” he informed Larrieau. “Replace your garments.”

An assistant poured some disinfectant on his hands and he washed them vigorously in it, wiping them on a handkerchief which he tossed overboard through a porthole. At a sign from the doctor the others went on deck.

He lighted a cigarette and when Larrieau faced him inquiringly he said:

“Now, regarding your daughter, Captain. What are your plans for her?”

“I have brought her up to San Francisco to place her in a convent to complete her education. As you have observed, she speaks English very well, but with a very slight French accent. She has had some schooling in English, but not very much.”

“Her mother, I take it, is a Polynesian.”

“Pure-bred Polynesian. She died a year ago, during the influenza epidemic.”

“Forgive me, Captain, if my questions appear impertinent. They are not, strictly speaking, questions which I should ask you, but under the circumstances the immigration officer has left the asking of them to me. Have you or your daughter any friends or relatives in this country?”

“We have no relatives, Monsieur Doctor, and the only friends I have in this country are my owners.”

“Is your financial situation such that, should you be taken away from your daughter, she would be provided for to the extent that she would not be likely to become a public charge?”

Gaston Larrieau smiled. “And you ask that of a Frenchman, to whom thrift is a virtue? I have not traded among the South Pacific islands more than thirty-five years to come away without the price of a peaceful old age. I am worth a quarter of a million dollars, and with the exception of a few pearls and a quarter interest in this vessel, all of my fortune is in cash.”

“Did you plan to return to the Islands after placing your child in school here?”

“Parbleu, no! No one could manage Tamea without my help. I am finished with the sea. All of my interests and those of Tamea in the South have been sold. Two years hence, when Tamea has grown used to civilized customs, we will return to France—to Brittany, where I was born.”

“Tamea will probably marry well in France,” the doctor suggested.

“Yes. We Frenchmen are more democratic than Americans or the English in our choice of wives. The fact that my Tamea is half Polynesian—ah, they would not forget that, though she is more wonderful than a white girl! I was married to her mother,” he added, as if he suspected the doctor might secretly be questioning that point. “We were married by the mission priest in Nukahiva.”

The doctor finished his cigarette and suddenly hurled the butt through the porthole. “Lord!” he growled. “I’m so tired of breaking people’s hearts and shattering their hopes.”

“Eh? What is that? Have you, then, unpleasant news for me?”

The doctor nodded gravely. “Captain, I have very unpleasant news for you. Dreadful news, in fact. While I hesitate to state so absolutely until a microscopic examination has been made and the presence of the bacillus in your body determined beyond question, I am morally certain that you have contracted—leprosy!”

The master of the Moorea met the terrible blow as a ship meets an unexpected squall. He flinched and trembled for a moment, then righted himself. His wind-and-sun-bitten face and neck went greenish white; his eyes closed for perhaps ten seconds; his shoulders sagged and his great breast heaved with a single sigh. In those ten seconds old age appeared to have touched him for the first time. When his eyes opened again he was the same calm, good-natured, almost boyish man who had romped through the rigging of the Moorea with his child that morning. He smiled a little sadly—and shrugged.

“Well, that’s over,” he murmured. “I am very sorry for you, Doctor. These things are very unpleasant. However, I have no regrets. I have enjoyed my life—down yonder—because nothing matters. There are not many rules and regulations—and we ignore them.”

“It is different here.”

“Alas, yes!”

“You are a naturalized citizen of the United States?”

“Yes, Monsieur Doctor.”

“It is my duty to remove you from this schooner to the quarantine station at Angel Island. You will be held there for observation, and when the fact that you are a leper is officially determined, you will be removed to the Isolation Hospital in San Francisco. However, it might be arranged to have you sent to the colony at Molokai. If you were not a citizen of the United States you would be deported to the country of which you are a subject.”

“We have said good-by to Riva and the South, and we are not going back. The white blood predominates in my girl; I want her to live her life among white men and women. Besides, she can afford it. She may marry some fine fellow here. Who knows? I had picked on Brittany for my old age—so Molokai will not do. Bon dieu! I should have such ennui in Molokai. I could not stand that.”

“Rules and regulations, Captain,” the doctor reminded him sympathetically.

Gaston Larrieau shook his head. “Old Gaston of the Beard caged like a pet monkey, eh? I think not.” He sat down and tugged at his beard thoughtfully. “Well, one thing is certain,” he continued. “It is more than seventeen years since I begot Tamea. I was clean then and for all the years since until this morning.”

“Non-leprous children are born of leprous parents, Captain. Tamea is clean.”

“She must not know that I am not.”

“Ah, but she does know it.”

Larrieau sprang erect, terrible. “You dared to tell her——” he roared, and advanced with upraised hand.

“Sit down. The girl has eyes, and in Riva she has, doubtless, seen more than one leper. I told her nothing. Listen, Captain.”

From the stateroom came the sound of a muffled sob.

Larrieau sat down, dumb and distressed. “Yes, there is leprosy in Riva. And tuberculosis and worse. The scourges of our white civilization are creeping in and where they strike there is no hope. So I brought Tamea away—only to be stricken—— Well, I knew that was one of the risks I had to take, and a life without risks is as an egg without salt. In my day I have adventured in strange and terrible places, and while this is the very devil of a joke to have fate play on me, still”—he shrugged again—“I have lived my life and I have loved my love, and by the blood of the devil, life owes me nothing. I am ready! Voilà!” And the Triton snapped his fingers. “I am no mealy-mouthed clerk to go whimpering to my finish, protesting at the last that my heart is breaking with sorrow for my sins.” He laughed his mellow, resonant, roaring laugh.

“No, no. Old Gaston of the Beard has enjoyed his sins. They were not many, for I was ever a simple man, but such sins as I had—ah, they were magnificent! I have children in a hundred islands. But Tamea is the child of my love, and like her mother she is a glorious pagan.”

“You say her mother is dead.”

Gaston of the Beard nodded. “She was a queen and believed herself descended from her Polynesian gods. Damnation! She had every right to, for she was a goddess. Tall, Monsieur Doctor—six feet, for she came of a race of hereditary rulers and in Polynesia before the white men came to ruin and degenerate these children of nature, a king was not a king in very truth unless, standing among his people, he could gaze over their heads as one gazes over a wheat field from the top rail of a fence. Tamea’s great-great-grandfather was deposed and exiled to an island five hundred miles to the west, where his enemies enslaved him. In his old age his people rescued him and offered him the scepter he had lost in his youth. But he would not accept, for age and toil had crooked his back and he could no longer stand head and shoulders over his people.”

“What a magnificent old chap he must have been, Captain!” said the doctor.

Larrieau nodded. “Tamea’s mother, Moorea, could walk! You, my young friend, have never seen a woman walk; it is a lost art; our women mince or hop or strut. Moorea was a beautiful woman in point of features. Her hair was a wonderful seal-brown and her skin—well, her skin——”

“Was Tamea’s,” the doctor interrupted.

Gaston of the Beard smiled and nodded. “She was regal of bearing and regal of soul—and the missionaries called her a heathen. For years I kept them out of Riva, with their mummery of morals and religion. Why, there was no sin in Riva until I came—and then it wasn’t recognized until the missionaries gave it a name. Monsieur Doctor, behold a man who dwelt in Eden until the serpents drove him out.”

The doctor chuckled quietly.

“Tamea’s mother,” the sailor resumed, “had features as fine and regular as any white woman. But then, why should she not? Her blood was pure, because it was a chief’s blood. The dark skin, the flat nose and the crinkly hair are souvenirs, in the Polynesian race, of their sojourn in the Fijis before they resumed their age-old hegira that started in Asia Minor. In the common people we find evidences of Papuan blood, and that is negroid, Monsieur Doctor. But the pure-bred Polynesian is not a nigger, as ignorant and stupid people might have you believe. They are a lost fragment of the Caucasian race, and any ethnologist who has studied them carefully and sympathetically knows this. Monsieur Doctor, they are not of Malayan origin, but Cushite, and the Cushites were an Aryan people, as doubtless you know.”

“My knowledge of ethnology is very meager, Captain Larrieau,” said the doctor.

“Mine is not. Gaston of the Beard they call me down under the Line, but I have a head to hold up my beard. How do you account for the fact that the Polynesian priesthood in Hawaii was possessed of the story of the Hebrew Genesis as early as the sixth century, and that, in many respects, this version is more complete than the Jewish?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” the doctor protested. He had the feeling that to argue with Larrieau was to argue with an encyclopedia.

“Well, they acquired the story while drifting eastward from the land of their origin and establishing contact with the Israelites, although on the other hand it may be an independent and original version of legends common to the Semite and Aryan tribes of the remote past and handed down to posterity quite as accurately as the Jewish version before the latter became a part of the literature of that race.”

The doctor glanced at his watch. “Captain, it would be most delightful to linger and receive instruction in so interesting a subject, but we have a Japanese liner to clear before noon, so I must be off.”

“But,” persisted the sailor, “have I convinced you that, if this brutal and iconoclastic world but knew it, my little Tamea is all Caucasian, not merely half?”

“Captain, your daughter is the most dazzling, the most glorious woman I have ever seen.”

“Would you care to marry her, Monsieur Doctor?” The words shot out from the man who had been condemned to a living death with calm but deadly earnestness. “That is,” Larrieau continued, “provided you are not already married.”

“I am engaged to be married, Captain.”

“You have seen Tamea. It will not be hard to forget the other woman. Come, come, my boy! How does the proposition strike you?”

“It doesn’t strike me at all. One does not accept such a proposition for consideration quite so abruptly, my friend.”

“Ah, why not? Why not, indeed? Because others do not? Blood of the devil, what a horrible thing is tradition! If it were not a tradition that a woman shall accept from her fiancé a diamond ring which the idiot cannot, in all probability, afford to give her—well, women would not accept them. If it were the custom, they would accept a blow or a brass ring through the nose or a brand, with equal eagerness. Monsieur Doctor, he who has not learned to accept both good and evil, the usual and the unusual, abruptly and without mature consideration, has not learned to live. Life has not given him of its richness and fulness. Why be afraid? Why shrink from the silly comment of silly people who do not understand when you have a woman with a glorious body, a glorious soul and a glorious mind, to compensate you?”

“I am not free to marry her——”

Gaston of the Beard brushed aside this feeble excuse with a quotation from Epictetus: “‘He only is free who does as he pleases.’”

But the young doctor was not to be persuaded by such philosophical considerations.

“Has your fiancée a dot of a quarter of a million dollars?” Larrieau shot at him.

“It is quite useless to discuss the matter, Captain.”

The latter hung his head, disappointed. “You realize why I asked you, of course,” he said presently.

“I do, Captain. You must see her provided for. You were at some pains to prove to me that her blood was the equal of mine——”

“I spoke of her mother’s people. But I am not a common man. There is blood and breeding back of me—yes, far back, but I can trace it.”

“You pay me a tremendous compliment, Captain.”

“You are young, you have education, intelligence. You are a doctor, a man of broad human sympathy and understanding. It is too bad your spirit is not free. Too bad!”

“I will return for you this afternoon, about six o’clock, Captain. You will not attempt to leave the Moorea, will you?”

“I told you I was a thrifty man, but I did not tell you, also, that I am generous.”

“I am rebuked, Captain Larrieau. Forgive me.”

“On one condition. Give my vessel pratique—now.”

“I dare say we can risk that. But why do you ask it?”

“So that young Mr. Pritchard, of Casson and Pritchard, my owners, may be permitted to come aboard, with an attorney. I have some business details to attend to before I accompany you to the quarantine shed at Angel Island. There is the business of the Moorea, and the financial future of my Tamea must be provided for.”

“Do you wish me to return to the dock and telephone Mr. Pritchard?”

“If you will be so kind. And ask Mr. Pritchard to bring flowers—a great many beautiful flowers. We sons of Cush are childishly fond of flowers.”

The health officer nodded and went over the side into the Customs tug with a constricted feeling in his throat. Had he not gone then he would have remained to weep, with Tamea, for old Gaston of the Beard!

CHAPTER II

In his office in the suite of Casson and Pritchard, on the top floor of a building in the heart of San Francisco’s financial district, Daniel Pritchard, the junior partner, sat with his back to his desk and his feet on the sill of a window that gave a view, across the roofs of the city, to the bay beyond. He was watching the ferryboats ply backward and forward between the old gray town and Oakland; viewed from that height and distance their foamy wakes held for him a subconscious fascination. Indeed, whenever he desired to indulge a habit of day-dreaming, the view from his window on a clear, warm day could quickly lull him into that state of mind. This morning Dan Pritchard was day-dreaming.

A buzzer sounding at his elbow aroused him. He reached for the inter-office telephone and murmured “Yes?” in the low-pitched, kindly, reassuring voice that is inseparable from men of studious habits and placid dispositions.

“The Moorea is passing in, Mr. Pritchard. The Merchants’ Exchange lookout has just telephoned,” his secretary informed him.

“Thank you.” He glanced at his desk clock. “She should clear quarantine and the Customs before noon, and Captain Larrieau should report in by one o’clock at the latest. You’ll recognize him immediately, Miss Mather. A perfectly tremendous fellow with a huge black beard a foot long. When he arrives show him in at once, please. Meanwhile I’m not in to anybody else.”

He resumed his day-dreaming, drawing long blissful drafts from a pleasant smelling pipe, his mind in a state of absolute quiescence in so far as business was concerned. He had that sort of control over himself; a control that rested him mentally and armed his nerves against the attrition that comes of the high mental pressure under which modern American business men so frequently operate.

At twelve-fifteen Miss Mather entered.

“The Meiggs Wharf office of the Merchants’ Exchange telephoned that the Moorea has been given pratique, but that Captain Larrieau is ill and the health officer is going to have him removed to the quarantine station at Angel Island,” she informed him. “Evidently his disease is not contagious, because the health officer said it would be quite safe for you to visit him. The Captain requests that you come aboard at your earliest convenience and that you bring an attorney and some flowers.”

Dan Pritchard’s eyebrows went up. “That request is suggestive of approaching dissolution, Miss Mather.”

“Scarcely, Mr. Pritchard. If that were the case would the Captain not have requested the attendance of your doctor to confirm the health officer’s diagnosis? And would he not have sent for a clergyman?”

“Not that great pagan! His approach to death would be marked by an active scientific curiosity in the matter up to the moment when his mind should cease to function. Please telephone Mr. Henderson, of Page and Henderson, our attorneys, and ascertain what hour will be convenient for him to accompany me to the Moorea.”

“I have already done so, Mr. Pritchard. Mr. Henderson is playing in a golf tournament at Ingleside and will be finished about three o’clock. He is in the club-house now and says he can meet you at Meiggs Wharf at four o’clock, provided the matter cannot go over until tomorrow morning.”

“It cannot. Old Gaston of the Beard is an impatient man, and this is an urgent call. Please telephone Mr. Henderson that I will meet him at Meiggs Wharf at four o’clock. Then telephone Crowley’s boathouse to have a launch waiting there for us at five o’clock. When you have done that, Miss Mather, you might close up shop and enjoy your Saturday afternoon freedom.”

“Thank you, Mr. Pritchard. Miss Morrison is in Mr. Casson’s office. She said she might look in on you a little later.”

When his secretary had departed he resumed his reverie, to be roused from it at twelve-thirty o’clock by the soft click of the latch as his office door was gently opened. He turned and observed a girl who stood in the general office, with her head and one shoulder thrust into Dan’s office.

“May I come in?” she queried.

“Of course you may, Maisie. You’re as welcome as a gale in the doldrums. The best seat in my office isn’t half worthy of you.” He rose and took her hand as she advanced into the room.

“Doing a little ground and lofty dreaming, I observe.” The girl—her name was Maisie Morrison, and she was the niece of Casson, the senior member of the firm—seated herself in a swivel desk chair and looked brightly up at him as he stood before her, his somewhat long grave face alight with approval and welcome.

“It’s very nice of you to pay me this little visit, Maisie,” he declared. “And I like that hat you’re wearing. Indeed, I don’t think I have ever seen you looking more—er—lookable!”

It was like him to ignore her implied query and voice the thought in his mind.

“Sit down, Abraham Lincoln, do, please,” she urged.

He obeyed. “Why do you call me Abraham Lincoln?”

“Oh, you’re so long and loose-jointed and raw-boned and lantern-jawed! Your shoulders are bowed just a little, as if from bearing great burdens, and when I caught a glimpse of your face, as I entered, it was in repose and incredibly sad and wistful. Really, Dan, you’re a very plain man and very dolorous until you smile, and then you’re easy to look at. Your right eyebrow is about a quarter of an inch higher than your left and that lends whimsicality to your smile, even when you are feeling far from whimsical.”

His chin sank low on his breast and he appeared to be pondering something. “Perhaps,” he said aloud, but addressing himself nevertheless, “it’s spring fever. But then I have it in the summer, autumn and winter also. I want to go away. Where, I do not know.”

“Perhaps you are suffering from what soul analysts call ‘the divine unrest.’”

“I’m suffering from the friction that comes to a square peg in a round hole. That much I know. The round hole I refer to is the world of business, and I’m the square peg. The situation is truly horrible, Maisie, because the world believes I fit into that hole perfectly. But I know I do not.”

Her calm glance rested on him critically but not sympathetically. In common with the majority of her sex she believed that men are prone to conjure profound pity for themselves over trifles, and her alert mind, which was naturally disposed toward practicalities, told her that Daniel Pritchard had, doubtless, been up too late the night previous and had eaten something indigestible.

“This is an interesting and hitherto unsuspected condition, Dan. I have always been told, and believed, that you are a particularly brilliant business man.”

“I am not,” he objected, with some vehemence. “But if I am, that is because I work mighty hard to be efficient at a disgusting trade. I know I am regarded as being far from a commercial dud, for I am a director in a bank, a director in a tugboat company, and really the managing partner of Casson and Pritchard. But I loathe it all. Consider, Maisie, the monstrous depravity of dedicating all of one’s waking hours to the mere making of money. Why, if any man of ordinary intelligence and prudence will do that for a lifetime he just can’t help leaving a fortune for his heirs to squabble over. Making money isn’t a difficult task. On the other hand, painting a great picture is, and if one’s task isn’t difficult and above the commonplace, how is one to enjoy it?”

“I was right,” the girl declared triumphantly. “It is the divine unrest. You are possessed of a creative instinct which is being stifled. It requires elbow room.”

He smiled an embarrassed little smile. “Perhaps,” he admitted. “I like to work with my hands as well as with my head. I think I could have been happy as a surgeon, slicing wens and warts and things out of people, and I could have been happiest of all if I had nothing to do except paint pictures. If I could afford it I would devote my life to an attempt to paint a better picture of Mount Tamalpais yonder, with the late afternoon sun upon it, than did Thad Walsh. And I do not think that is possible.”

“That picture yonder,” she said, pointing to an oil on the wall of his office, “indicates that you have excellent judgment. What is the subject, Dan?”

“Blossom time in the Santa Clara Valley.”

“It’s a beautiful thing and much too fine for a business office.”

His face, on the instant, was alight with happiness. “Now, I’m glad to have you say that, Maisie, because I painted that picture.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“But you never told us——”

“My dear Maisie, you must never breathe a word of this to anybody. If the world of business had discovered ten years ago that I would rather dabble in paint and oil than figure interest, it would not now be regarding me as a capable, conservative business man. I would be that crazy artist fellow, Pritchard.”

She walked to a point where the best view of the picture was obtainable and studied it thoughtfully for several minutes.

“It’s very beautiful and the colors are quite natural, I think,” was her comment. “What do you say it is worth, Dan?”

“Oh, about a million dollars in satisfaction over a good job accomplished, and fifty or a hundred dollars in the average art shop.”

Maisie returned to her seat. “Well,” she declared with an emphasis and note of finality in her tone that stamped her as a young woman of initiative and decision, “if I were as rich as you, Dan Pritchard, I’d continue to be a square peg in a round hole just long enough to send that picture home and then walk out of this office forever. How old are you?”

“Thirty-four, in point of years, but at least a hundred viewed from any other angle.”

“Fiddlesticks! Why don’t you retire and live your life the way you want to live it? I would if I were you. . . . Now, Dan, there you go again with that sad Abraham Lincoln look!”

“I am sad. I’ve just had a great disappointment. I told you I wanted to go away but that I didn’t know where to go. Well, I did know where I wanted to go—until this morning. I had planned to take one more cruise with old Gaston of the Beard——”

“With whom?”

“Captain Gaston Larrieau, master of our South Seas trading schooner Moorea. I had planned to knock around with him in strange places for the next six months.”

“I cannot visualize you making a pal of a sea captain, Dan.”

“Nonsense, Maisie. Gaston is a satyr with a soul. Twelve years ago I took a cruise with him and I’ve never had time for another. Gaston of the Beard—my father dubbed him that thirty years ago and the name has stuck to him ever since—is like no other man living. He’s about sixty years old now, six feet six inches tall, and weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds in condition. He’s a Breton sailor with the blood of Vikings in him, and if I ever find the tailor who makes his clothes I’m going to pension the man in order to remove a monster from the sartorial world. When going ashore in a temperate climate Gaston affects very wide trousers, a long black Prince Albert coat, a top silk hat, vintage of 1880, and a stiff white linen shirt with round detachable cuffs bearing tremendous moss-agate cuff buttons. When he walks he waddles like a bear and when I walk with him I run.

“He is most positive in his likes and dislikes; he has read everything and remembers it; he plays every card game anybody ever heard of and plays them all well; he performs very well on the accordion, the flute and the French horn; he knows music and the history of music. He speaks four or five European languages and a dozen South Seas dialects. He is a sinful man, but none of his sins are secret. He loathes swanks, frauds and pretenders, and he bubbles with temperament. When he is enthusiastic about anything or when he is angry, his voice rises to a roar; when he is touched he weeps like a baby. He knows more English poetry than any man living and is quite as much at home with the best of our modern literature as he is with all of the ancient classics. He knows all about ships and shipping since the days of the Phoenicians and the Hanseatic League; there are as many facets to his character as to a well cut diamond, and every facet sparkles. Good Lord, Maisie, the man’s different, and I want a change.”

“Well, then, as I said before, why not have it? You can afford it, Dan.”

“That’s the rub. I cannot. And even if I could I’ve just received word that Gaston of the Beard is ill with some sort of disease that requires his removal to quarantine. It must be a very serious illness, because he has sent for an attorney—to draw his will, doubtless. Henderson and I are going aboard at four o’clock this afternoon.”

“But why can’t you go for a cruise if and when your satyr recovers his health?”

“A man cannot drop a business just because he desires to. My going would disorganize everything and distress a great many people. I’m the binder that holds this organization together.”

“Don’t take yourself too seriously, Dan. You weren’t born to daddy the world, you know. You worry too much about other people and what will happen to them when they can no longer lean against you for support. Why not give them an opportunity to care for themselves for a change?”

From the tip of her small feet to the cockade on her dainty little hat, his calm, serious glance roved over her. “Well,” he replied soberly, “how would you relish the prospect of caring for yourself—for a change?”

“I’m sure I do not know. I fear I’d be rather helpless—for a while.”

“Do you think I ought to accord your uncle and aunt an opportunity to care for themselves—for a change?”

“Good gracious, no! Is there a possibility of that situation presenting itself?”

“An excellent possibility—if I elect to forget that I am a square peg in a round hole and doomed to remain such.”

“Oh, Dan, I’m so sorry!”

“Sorry for whom?”

“For—everybody.”

The slight hesitation between her words caused him to smile faintly. Vaguely he had hoped she would feel sorry for him exclusively. Her next question convinced him that Maisie, in common with the rest of the world, had a more alert interest in herself than in him.

“Then there is danger, Dan? Something may happen to us?”

“There is a possibility, Maisie. However, I must admit that my feeling that such a possibility exists is based on nothing tangible. If I leave the office for a long vacation, this firm will be in the position of a pugilist who has incautiously left a wide opening for his opponent to swat him to defeat.”

“Whose fault is it?” said Maisie.

“I do not mean to criticize my partner, Maisie, but if, while I should be away, we climb out on the end of a limb and then somebody saws off the limb, the responsibility for our fall will be entirely your Uncle John Casson’s. The man is an optimist, devoid of mental balance.”

“Have you and Uncle John been quarreling, Dan?”

“No. What good does that do? If mischief is done, quarreling will neither avert nor cure it. In a business dilemma your uncle always loses his head, so I practise the gentle art of keeping mine!” He drew a chair up to her and prepared for a confidential chat. “You must know, Maisie, that following my entrance into this firm after my father’s death we have had five narrow escapes from serious financial embarrassment, due to Mr. Casson’s passion for taking long chances for large profits. And if five beatings fail to cure a man my opinion is that he is incurable. Holding that opinion as I do, I fear the result if I leave the office for more than a month and expose your uncle to temptation.”

“It is kind of you to say that, Dan. Perhaps you have been too gentle with Uncle John. Perhaps if you had asserted yourself——”

He held up a deprecating hand. “Forgive me, Maisie, if I assure you that the only way to assert oneself with your avuncular relative is with some sort of heavy blunt instrument.”

His bluntness caused her to flush faintly, but she kept her temper. “I believe your father and Uncle John quarreled frequently, Dan.”

“Yes, that is true. But that was not because your uncle is a difficult man to get along with in the ordinary day to day business. He is a charming and agreeable old gentleman for whom I entertain a great deal of respect and affection. My father was undiplomatic, aggressive and extremely capable. For a quarter of a century he dominated the affairs of Casson and Pritchard, and before he died he warned me if I should take his place in the firm to do likewise.” He was silent, looking out of the window at the ferryboats. “A horrible legacy,” he said. “I loathe dominating people.”

“Uncle John always resented your father’s domination.”

“I have observed that most people resent that which is good for them. Since my father’s death your uncle has evinced a disposition to run hog-wild with power, as the senior member of the firm. The sublimated old jackass!”

“My uncle is nothing of the sort, Dan Pritchard.”

He disregarded her protest, because he knew she had protested out of a sense of loyalty to an uncle who had stood in the place of a father to her since her fifth birthday. And John Casson, he knew, was both kind and indulgent. But he also knew that Maisie knew her relative was exactly what Dan Pritchard had called him.

“The first time Mr. Casson disregarded my youth and lack of business experience and jumped in over his head,” Dan continued, “I hauled him out by the simple method of disregarding him and insuring all of our ledger accounts, because one of them was very doubtful. Well, we collected that insurance and all we were out was the premium. Your uncle talked of suicide when he thought he had ruined both of us, but when he discovered I’d saved the firm he accepted about seventy-five per cent of the credit for my perspicacity. In those days, Maisie, it wasn’t necessary for us to have a very heavy loss in order to be embarrassed or ruined. All that saved us the last time was the war, which caught us with a flock of schooners on long time charters at low freight rates.

“Why, Maisie, I haven’t dared to leave him alone for years. He is no longer a young man, and his naturally uncertain judgment hasn’t improved with age. From August, nineteen fourteen, when the Great War began until April, nineteen seventeen, when this country joined with the Allies, I admit I gambled. I gambled everything I had and I induced your uncle to gamble everything he had, and between us we committed Casson and Pritchard to a point miles in advance of what would, ordinarily, have been the danger point.

“I am a conservative in business, but I knew then that we were gambling on a rising market and that we would be safe while the war lasted. Even during the year and a half I was in the navy and your uncle had a free hand in the direction of our business, I did not worry. Those were the days when all radicals made quick fortunes because they just could not go wrong on charters and the prices of commodities. Three months after the armistice had been signed I returned to civil life and since then I have been very busy getting our firm out from under the avalanche of deflation which must inevitably follow this war, even as it followed the Civil War. It has not been an easy task, Maisie, for your uncle has developed a spirit of arrogance and stubbornness difficult to combat.”

“Yes,” Maisie agreed, “Uncle John has acquired a very good opinion of himself as a business man.”

Pritchard nodded. “Those days when I was in the service and he operated alone have spoiled him. However, only this morning I succeeded in gaining his consent—in writing—to the sale, at a nice profit, of the last of our long-term charters at war rates. Now, if I can hold him in line until the deflation process commences, I shall be well pleased with myself.”

“Is the money burning a hole in Uncle’s pocket?”

“I fear it is. He is seventy years old; yet, instead of planning to retire, he seethes with a desire to double his present fortune. He has dreams of vast emprise. I wish he had gout instead!”

“Casson and Pritchard is a partnership, Dan. Why do you not incorporate? Then if the business fails, through any indiscretion of Uncle John, you will not be responsible for more than your fifty per cent of the company’s debts.”

“Forty per cent, Maisie. I was admitted to partnership on that basis, although my father was an equal partner. However, his death terminated that partnership and I suppose Mr. Casson felt that with my youth and inexperience forty per cent was generous.”

The girl was silent, gazing abstractedly out of the window. Dan realized that she was striving to scheme a way out for him, and he smiled in anticipation of what her plan would be. He was not mistaken.

“Dan,” she said presently, “I believe you are more or less of a thorn in Uncle John’s side. Why do you not sell out to him, retire and paint pictures? I feel certain he would be glad to buy you out.”

He sighed. “There are several minor reasons and one major reason why such a course would be repugnant to me.”

“Name them.”

“Mr. Casson, Mrs. Casson and all of our employees constitute the minor reasons. You constitute the major one.”

She flushed pleasurably and the lambent light of a great affection leaped into her fine eyes. He continued:

“I fear the old gentleman would make a mess of the business if my guiding hand should be withdrawn, and at his age—consider the sheltered life you have led, the ease and comfort and luxury and freedom from financial worry! Maisie, it would be a sorry mess, indeed.”

“So you have concluded to hang on, eh, Dan?”

He nodded. “And while hanging on I hang back, like a balky mule on his halter.”

“‘Go not, like the quarry slave, scourged to his dungeon,’” she quoted bitterly. “Nevertheless, I fail to see why a nice consideration of my—of our—comfort should deter you from seeking your own happiness.”

“Why, Maisie, you know very well I’m terribly fond of you.”

“Indeed, Dan! This is the first official knowledge I have had of it, although, of course, I have for years suspected that you and I were very dear friends. However, Dan, my friendship is not one that demands great sacrifices. I—I——”

Tears blurred her eyes and her voice choked, but she recovered her poise quickly. With averted face she said: “I’m sure, my dear Dan, I would much prefer to see you painting your pictures than serving as a sacrifice on the altar of your—of our—friendship.”

“I think I might be able to glean a certain melancholy happiness from the sacrifice,” he protested.

“Dan Pritchard, you are exasperatingly dull today. I dislike being under obligation to anybody.”

He held up a deprecating hand. “You know, Maisie, I have always given you my fullest confidence, as I would to a sister. And I do this in the belief that you will understand perfectly. My dear girl, I am not complaining because I have to stick by this business. I am merely voicing my disappointment at the impossibility of taking the sort of vacation I had planned. If I——”

A knock sounded on the door, and a moment later John Casson entered. He was a large, florid old gentleman, groomed to the acme of sartorial and tonsorial perfection—a handsome old fellow with a hearty and expansive manner, but a man, nevertheless, whom a keen student of human nature would instantly deduce to be one who thought rather well of himself.

“What? Dan, my boy, are you still on the job? Maisie, can’t you induce him to drive to the country club with us? How about nine holes of golf?”

Dan Pritchard shook his head. “Not today, sir, thank you.”

“No? Sorry, my boy. Maisie, are you ready to run along?”

“Yes, Uncle.”

She rose hurriedly, went to the mirror in Dan’s wash cabinet and powdered her nose. And while powdering it she studied critically the reflection, in that mirror, of Dan Pritchard’s long, sad, wistful, thoughtful face. It was in repose now, for Casson had walked to the window and was looking out over the bay; and Maisie had ample opportunity to watch Dan and wonder what was going on inside that bent head.

“Sweet old thing,” she soliloquized. “I love you so. I wonder if you’ll ever know—if you’ll ever care—if it will ever occur to you, dear dreamer, to diagnose that warm friendship and discover that it may be love. For just now, stupid, you talked of sacrifice—for me. Oh, Dan, I could beat you!”

She crossed the room silently and stood beside his chair. As he started, politely, to rise, she bent and placed her lips to his ear. “Art is a jealous mistress. I am told. I hope, Dan, you’ll be as true to her as you can be. I’m almost jealous of her.”

He glanced meaningly at old Casson, who was beating time with his fingers on the window-pane and striving to hum a popular fox-trot. “The old bungler!” Dan whispered. “Come in and visit me the next time you come to the office. And if you’ll invite me over to dinner some night next week I shall accept. I want to continue our conversation. I——”

He glanced swiftly at Casson, saw that the old gentleman was still preoccupied with his pseudo-valuable thoughts and decided to risk putting through a plan which had that instant popped into his head. He took Maisie’s chin in thumb and forefinger, drew her swiftly toward him and kissed her on the lips. Old Casson continued to beat his unmusical tattoo on the window-pane, and Maisie, observing this, grimaced at his broad back and—returned Dan’s kiss! For a breathless instant they stood staring at each other—and then old Casson turned.

“Au revoir, Danny dear,” said Maisie in a voice that rang with joy.

“Good-by, Maisie. Good afternoon, Mr. Casson. I hope you’ll enjoy your game.”

“Thank you, boy. Ta-ta!”

Dan bowed them out of his office and returned to his seat by the window.

“Thunder!” he murmured presently. “Thunder, lightning and a downpour of frogs and small fishes! Now, what imp put into my silly head that impulse to kiss Maisie! I’m mighty fond of Maisie, but I’m not at all certain that I’d care to marry her—she’s so practical and dominating and lovable. Such a good pal. I wonder if I’d be happy married to Maisie. . . . I’m a lunatic. When fellows of my mental type marry they give hostages to fortune, and I haven’t lived yet. My life has been dull and prosaic—nothing new under heaven—and then I had that impulse—yes, that was new! That kiss from Maisie was an adventure. It thrilled me. I wonder what put the idea into my fool head!”

If he had not been fully as stupid as Maisie gave him credit for being, he would have known that Maisie had put the idea into his head. Being what he was, however, he went down to Meiggs Wharf at four o’clock to meet Henderson, still obsessed with the belief that, all unknown to himself hitherto, he was a singularly daring, devilish and original character!

CHAPTER III

Following the departure of the Customs tug, Gaston of the Beard had sat below in earnest converse with Tamea. The Triton had wept a little at first, albeit his tears were not for himself but for Tamea; and after her initial gust of despair and grief, the girl had remembered that strength and not weakness was what her father expected of her. Accordingly she had rallied to the task of comforting him.

“And you knew I had contracted this disease, my daughter?” old Gaston queried amazedly.

“Oui, mon père. I saw the puffy places on your cheeks and knuckles before we sailed from Riva, but I was not certain until I saw you one day in swimming. There is a white patch on your right shoulder.”

“But you have touched me, Tamea. You have caressed me——”

“And shall again, dear one. The disease has but recently made its appearance. There are no active lesions and I am not fearful, father Larrieau.”

“In this country, Tamea, when one is afflicted so, he is restrained of his liberty. He is confined in a hospital called the pesthouse. There are no men or women there with whom I should care to associate—and I am old enough to die, anyhow. I would be free from this tainted body and dwell with your mother in Paliuli”—the Polynesian equivalent of heaven.

Tamea had no answer for this. All too thoroughly she divined the hidden meaning in his speech, but because she was what she was—a glorious pagan—the knowledge of the course which Gaston of the Beard contemplated aroused in her neither apprehension nor grief. To Tamea the mystery of death was no greater than the mystery of birth. Men and women lived their appointed time and passed on to Paliuli, if they were worthy like her father; or to Po, the world of darkness, if they were unworthy. The departure for Paliuli was not one to cause a grief greater than that experienced when one’s nearest and dearest departed for a neighboring island, to be absent for an indefinite period. Of course she would weep, for were not her people the most affectionate and tender-hearted race in the world?

And was not she, the last of her line, a descendant of kings and expected to meet with complacency whatever of good or of evil life might have in store for her? So she tugged the great bush of a beard affectionately, from time to time, as her father talked, telling her of his plans for her, his ambitions and desires, impressing upon her, above all things, the necessity for absolute obedience to the man whom he would name her guardian.

With a full heart Tamea gave him the promise he desired, and when she noticed how much the assurance comforted him her triumphant youth routed for the nonce consideration of everything save the necessity for cheering her father. So she went to her stateroom and returned with—an accordion! It was a splendid instrument belonging to old Larrieau, and Tamea had learned to play it very well by ear. She lay back in her chair and commenced to play very, very softly a ballad that was old a decade before Tamea was born, to wit, “Down Went McGinty!”

But—it had a lilt to it, and presently her father was beating time and humming the song. And Tamea, like her father, like so many of her mother’s race, had a gift for clowning; now, as she played, she swayed her body a trifle, raised her shoulders on the long drawn out “D-o-w-n” and made funny faces; somehow the instrument seemed to wail and sob as McGinty sank to the bottom of the sea. It was ridiculous, wholly amusing, and old Gaston’s mellow bellow of laughter reached the ears of Dan Pritchard while yet his launch was a cable’s length from the Moorea. And then Tamea swung her instrument and broke into “La Marseillaise” while her father sang it as only a Frenchman can.

Dan Pritchard came overside and stuck his head down through the ventilator over the deck-house. “Gaston,” he remarked, when the singer ceased, “I came because I heard you were very ill.”

“Ill, mon petit, ill? I am worse than ill. I am a dead man and I sing at my own wake. Come down, rascal! By my beard, my old heart sings to see you, Dan Pritchard. Come down, I tell you.”

“Coming,” Dan answered laughingly—and came.

“I could embrace you, my boy,” the old sailor informed him, “but during Lent one must do something to mortify the flesh. Besides, I have had the devilish luck to acquire leprosy.”

Dan Pritchard made no sign that this news was disturbing, albeit he was hearing it for the first time.

“Well, if I may not shake your hand, give me a tug at your beard, Gaston. Upon my word, there is no blight on those whiskers, old shipmate.” And before Larrieau could prevent him he had grasped a handful of whiskers and given the huge head a vigorous shaking. The Triton, tremendously pleased, roared out an oath to hide a sob.

“Dan, this is my well beloved daughter, Tamea. Tamea, my dear child, this is Monsieur Dan Pritchard, the gentleman of whom we were speaking.”

Tamea’s wondrous smoky eyes glowed with a welcoming light. “He who twitches my father’s beard—when he knows,” she said very distinctly, “shall never lack the love and respect of my father’s daughter. Monsieur Dan Pritchard, my father would he might embrace you. Behold! I embrace you—once for old Gaston of the Beard and once for myself.” And she set her accordion on the cabin table, walked calmly to Dan Pritchard, drew him to her heart and kissed him, in friendly fashion, on each cheek.

Embarrassed, Dan took her hand in his and patted it. “You are a sweet child,” he said simply. Then, turning to the old man: “Gaston, it’s great to see you again. But explain yourself, wretch. How dare you foul up the Moorea with your frightful indisposition?”

“I was ever a disciple of the devil, Dan. It’s all through the islands. The Chinese brought it. Dan, I am to be taken from Tamea—forever—and I go as soon as my business has been arranged. Here is the book containing my accounts as master to date. There is a balance of four thousand eight hundred and nine dollars and eight cents due me. Give this to Tamea for her personal needs. The vouchers are in this envelope. What is a fair price for my one-quarter interest in the Moorea?”

“She is an old vessel but sound, and she pays her way like a lady, Gaston. She’s worth twenty-five thousand dollars. I will buy your interest on that basis.”

“Sold. Invest the money for Tamea. Here are drafts on the Bank of California for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. I have indorsed them to you. Buy bonds with them for Tamea. And here”—he burrowed in the base of his beard and brought forth a small tobacco bag he had hidden in that hirsute forest—“are the crown jewels of my little Tamea. They are the black pearls I have come by, from time to time. It was known that I had some of great value and I have had to conceal them carefully.” He laughed his bellowing laugh. “Pay the duty on them, Dan, if you are more honest than I; then sell them and buy more bonds for Tamea.”

Dan Pritchard took an old envelope from his pocket, Larrieau dropped the bag into it, and Dan sealed the envelope.

“I desire that Tamea be educated and affianced to some decent fellow. Tamea, hear your father. You are not to marry any man Monsieur Dan Pritchard does not approve of.”

Dan looked at her. “I promise,” she replied simply.

“You are to be her guardian, Dan.”

“Very well, Gaston,” said Dan instantly, “since you desire it. I shall try to discharge the office in a commendable manner.”

“That, my boy, is why the office is yours. For your trouble you shall have my gratitude while I live and the gratitude of Tamea after I am dead. Also, you shall be the executor of my estate, which will bring you a nice fee, and in addition the largest and most beautiful pearl in that lot is yours. It will make a magnificent setting for a ring for the woman you may marry—if you have not married.”

“I still revel in single blessedness, Gaston.”

The sailor nodded approvingly. “Time enough to settle down after you are forty,” he agreed. “You will select the pearl, however. It is yours now. It is magnificent. Its equal is not to be found in the world, I do believe. The heart of it has a warm glow, like my old heart when I think of my friendship for your good father and for you—when I think of Tamea and Tamea’s wonderful mother. Damnation! I have lived! I have known love; my great carcass has quivered to the thrill of life as a schooner quivers in the grip of a willi-waw!” He smiled wistfully at Dan. Then: “Well, bring down your lawyer, Dan. I would make my will, leaving all I possess to Tamea.”

At a summons from Dan, Henderson came down into the cabin and was introduced to Gaston of the Beard and his daughter. The last will and testament of the Triton was as simple as the man who signed it, and Dan and the lawyer appended their signatures as witnesses.

“Now then, Gaston,” said Dan, “of what does your estate consist?”

“These pearls, the money due me for disbursements made for account of the Moorea and her owners, my interest in the Moorea and these drafts on San Francisco. I have no real estate, and I owe nobody. Neither does anybody owe me.”

“Then,” said Dan smilingly, “why make a will, with its fees and taxes? Why not make a gift of all you possess to Tamea now? Gifts are not taxable, nor do they have to be probated—expensively.”

Gaston of the Beard smiled and winked at the lawyer. “I knew I should make no mistake in entrusting my little Tamea to this good friend,” he declared. “Dan, the drafts are already indorsed to her. Take them. The pearls you already have. Go ashore, my good friend, and return with a bill of sale and a check for my interest in the Moorea, which I sell to you, and your firm’s check for the amount due me on the final adjustment of the ship’s accounts. I will then indorse both checks to Tamea and the troublesome business of dying will have been simplified a thousand-fold.”

Dan returned to the office of Casson and Pritchard, found a printed bill of sale form such as is used in shipping offices, filled it in, unlocked the safe, drew Casson and Pritchard’s check and his own for the amount due Larrieau and returned to the Moorea. Three scratches of a pen and Dan’s word passed, and the estate of Gaston of the Beard had been probated and distributed.

Meanwhile Tamea had opened the boxes of flowers Dan had brought aboard in compliance with her father’s request. Deftly she wove a lei of sweet peas, and when the business with Dan and the lawyer was done she hung the lei around old Gaston’s burly neck and garlanded his shaggy head with roses.

Presently, at his suggestion, Tamea called the steward, who brought glasses and a dusty bottle of old French Malaga. When the glasses had been filled and passed by Tamea, Gaston of the Beard raised his on high.

“I drink to my loves, living and dead; to you, friend Dan Pritchard, and to you, Monsieur l’Avocat! Morituri te salutamus! I wish you good luck, good health, happiness and a life just long enough not to become a burden. May you live as joyously as I have lived and love life as I have loved it; may you die as contented as I shall die, and without repining. And may we embrace, like true friends and clean, in Paliuli!”

They drank.

“I have six quarts of that Malaga left. It is very old and of a rare vintage. Monsieur l’Avocat, will you have money for your fee or would you prefer the six live soldiers?. . . Ah, I thought so! The steward will deliver them to you at your home, provided the prohibition agents are not encountered first. Let us go on deck.”

At the head of the companion Tamea kissed a rose and passed it to her father.

And that was their farewell.

“The tide has turned. It is at the ebb. It will bear me far to the sea that I have loved and upon whose bosom my days have been spent,” said Gaston of the Beard casually. “Thank you, dear Dan, for all that you have been to me in life, for all that you will be to me in death. I go, finding it hurts to leave those I love. Farewell, Dan Pritchard, and you also, my good Monsieur l’Avocat. . . Tamea, dear child, I depart, loving you.”

He pressed to his red lips the rose she had given him and then, with a look of unutterable love for Tamea and a blithe kiss tossed to sea and sky, he ran swiftly to the rail, stepped over it, and disappeared with a very small splash for so huge a man. . . .

“He has gone to join my mother in Paliuli,” said Tamea bravely. “He goes to her, flower-laden, like a bridegroom. It is the custom in Riva with those for whom life has lost its taste to have their loved ones adorn them with flowers; then they walk out into the sea until they are seen no more.”

Presently, to Dan Pritchard, watching over the taffrail of the Moorea, something floated up from the dark depths and drifted astern. It was the emblem of love, the crown of roses and the lei with which Tamea had decked the great pagan e’er he left her for Paliuli. . . . Afterward Dan remembered that Gaston had worn his marvelous going-ashore clothes and that his tremendous trousers had bagged somewhat more than usual. So Dan suspected he had taken the precaution to fill his pockets with pig lead or iron bolts, and with the tide at the ebb he was drifting in those dark depths out through the Golden Gate at the rate of four miles an hour. . . . Well, they would not see him again.

The sun had sunk behind Telegraph Hill, and dusk was creeping over the waters of the bay of St. Francis. Dan saw the flag at Fort Mason come fluttering down, and across the waters came the sound of the garrison band; from the church of St. Francis de Sales over in North Beach the Angelus was ringing.

“Well, Mr. Henderson,” said Dan presently, “the day’s work is done. The launch is still alongside, so I suggest that you go ashore first and send the launch back for me. Your family doubtless expects you home to dinner. I shall remain here, I think, and go ashore later, when Tamea has packed her belongings. I don’t suppose I ought to leave the child here all night alone.”

Mr. Henderson inclined his head, for he was profoundly affected; as the launch coughed away in the gathering gloom to land him at Meiggs Wharf, Dan descended to the cabin, whither Tamea had gone.

As he entered the main cabin she came out of her stateroom. Her glorious black hair had been loosely braided and hung over her left breast; in the braid a scarlet sweet pea-blossom nestled. She still wore the cheap white cotton skirt Dan had observed on her when he first came aboard and she was still hatless, but buttoned tightly around her lithe young body she now wore an old navy pea-jacket; under her arm she carried her father’s very expensive accordion.

“I am your Tamea now, Monsieur Dan Pritchard,” she announced tremulously. “In this new land I know no one but you. I go with you where you will. I will obey you always, for you are my father and my mother.”

The pathos of that simple speech stabbed him. Poor, lonely little alien! Poor wanderer, in a white man’s world—a world which, Dan sensed, she would never quite understand. How wondrously simple and sweet and unspoiled she was! How transcendently lovely! He wished he might paint her thus—he had a yearning to stretch forth his hand and touch her hair. . . and presently he yielded to this desire. At his gentle, paternal touch all the stark, suppressed agony in the heart of the Queen of Riva rose in her throat and choked her. . . .

Dan Pritchard took the outcast in his arms and soothed and petted her while she emptied her full heart. And to him the experience did not seem an unusual one, for as Maisie had often assured him he had been born to bear the burdens of other people. He was one of those great-hearted men who seem destined to daddy the world. . . .

He wiped her tears away with his handkerchief and when the launch bumped alongside again they said good-by to the Moorea. Kahanaha, the Kanaka, wept, for he had sailed ten years with Gaston of the Beard. As they disappeared into the darkness headed for Meiggs Wharf, his mellow baritone voice followed them.

He was singing “Aloha!”

CHAPTER IV

Throughout the ten minute journey from the Moorea to Meiggs Wharf, Tamea sat beside Dan Pritchard in the stern sheets of the launch, holding his hand tightly and, in silence, gazing ahead toward the lights of the city. She seemed afraid to let go his hand, nor did she relinquish it when they paused beside Dan’s limousine, waiting for them at the head of the dock. Graves, his chauffeur, with the license of an old and favored employee, was sound asleep inside the car when Dan opened the door and prodded him; at sight of his employer standing hand in hand with Tamea, Graves’s eyes fairly popped with excitement and interest.

Tamea’s lashes still held a few recalcitrant tears and she looked very childish and forlorn. Dan was carrying her accordion, and observing this, Graves instantly concluded that his master had casually attached himself to some wandering gipsy troubadour. He stared and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle; his eyebrows went up perceptibly.

Tamea’s moist eyes blazed. Rage superseded her grief.

“Monsieur Dan Pritchard,” she demanded, “is this man your servant?”

Dan nodded.

“If we were in Riva I should have him beaten with my father’s razor belt to teach him humility.”

Dan reflected, sadly humorous, that it would be like Gaston of the Beard to utilize a razor strop for any purpose save the one for which it had been intended. But the girl’s complaint annoyed him.

“Oh, don’t bother about Graves!” he urged. “He isn’t awake yet. He thinks he’s seeing things at night.”

“The man stares at me,” Tamea complained. “He is saying to himself: ‘What right has this girl with my master?’ I know. Yes, you bet.”

“Graves,” said Dan wearily, “you are, I fear, permitting yourself a liberty. Wake up, get out of here and in behind the wheel. And by the way, Graves, hereafter you will be subject to the orders of Miss Larrieau. In her own country Miss Larrieau is a queen and accustomed to the most perfect service from everybody with whom she comes in contact. I expect, therefore, that you will remember your manners. Driving for a bachelor is very apt, I quite realize, to make any chauffeur careless, but from now on, Graves, whenever Queen Tamea of Riva craves snappy service, see that she gets it. I should regret very much the necessity for flaying you with a razor strop.”

“Lay forward, you,” Tamea commanded. “What business have you aft? Your place is in the fo’castle, not the cabin.”

Fortunately, Graves was blessed with a sufficient sense of humor to respond humbly: “Beg pardon, Your Majesty. I didn’t mean to get fresh. As the boss says, wakin’ me up sudden like that scared me sorter.”

He carefully drew the curtains in the rear, on both sides and in front, for, notwithstanding his cavalier manner in the presence of royalty, Graves was more than passing fond of his employer and desired to spare the latter the humiliation of being seen with a lady of uncertain lineage and doubtful social standing riding in public with him in his limousine. Graves was fully convinced that his master suddenly had gone insane, and as a result it behooved him now, more than ever before, to render faultless service. He wondered where the Queen was taking the boss or where the boss was taking the Queen; already he was resolved to drive them through streets rarely frequented by the people who dwelt in Dan Pritchard’s world.

Tamea’s haughty voice disturbed his benevolent thoughts.

“Are you ashamed to ride with me, Dan Pritchard?”

“Certainly not, my dear girl. Graves, how dare you draw those curtains without permission? I’ll skin you alive for this!”

“Beg pardon, sir,” mumbled the bewildered Graves.

He raised the curtains, vacated the car immediately and stood at a stiff salute while Dan handed Tamea into the luxurious interior. As he followed her in he turned to Graves and growled, “Scoundrel! You shall pay dearly for this.” A lightning wink took the sting out of his words, however, and caused Graves to bow his head in simulated humiliation; nevertheless the faithful fellow could not forbear one final effort. Just before he closed the door upon them he switched off the dome light. As he did so he saw Tamea’s hand slip into Dan Pritchard’s.

“All I ask,” Graves murmured a moment later to the oil gage, “is that Miss Morrison don’t get her lamps on them two. She don’t seem to have no success gettin’ him to fall for her, but along comes this Portugee or gipsy or somethin’ with an accordion on her arm, and the jig is up. She’s dressed like a North Beach wop woman that’s married a fisherman, but she tells him she’s a queen and wants to step out with him in his automobile. Right away he falls for her. Bing! Bang! And they’re off in a cloud of dust. Ain’t it the truth? When these quiet birds do step out they go some!”

There was a buzzing close to his left ear.

“Sailing directions,” murmured Graves and inclined his ear toward the annunciator.

“Home, Graves!” said the voice of Daniel Pritchard.

Graves quivered as if mortally stung, but out of the chaos of his emotions the habit of years asserted itself. He nodded to indicate that he had received his orders and understood them, and the car rolled away down the Embarcadero.

“Now,” murmured the hapless Graves, addressing the speedometer, “I know he’s crazy! Of course I can stand it, Sooey Wan won’t give a hoot and Julia probably won’t let on she’s saw anything out of the way, but Mrs. Pippy’ll give notice p. d. q. and quit quicker’n that. . . . Well, I should worry and grow a lot of gray hairs.”

He tooled the car carefully through rough cobbled streets which ordinarily he would have avoided, and by a circuitous route reached Dan Pritchard’s house in Pacific Avenue. “I’ll be shot if I’ll pull up in front to unload them,” he resolved, and darted in the automobile driveway, nor paused until the car was in the garage! As he reached for the hand brake the annunciator buzzed again; again Graves inclined a rebellious ear.

“While appreciating tremendously the sentiments that actuate you, Graves,” came Dan Pritchard’s calm voice, “the fact is that my garage is scarcely a fitting place in which to unload a lady. Back out into the street and so maneuver the car that we will be enabled to alight at the curb in front of the house.”

Again the habit of years conquered. Graves nodded. But to the button on the motor horn he said dazedly:

“He’s got the gall of a burglar! Here I go out of my way to help him and he throws a monkey wrench into the machinery. Very well, boss! If you can stand it I guess I can. I ain’t got no proud flesh!”

With a sinking heart he obeyed and stood beside the car watching Dan Pritchard steer Tamea up the steps; saw the incomprehensible man open the street door with his latchkey; saw him propel Tamea gently through the portal and follow; saw the door close on the incipient scandal!

Then he looked carefully up and down the street and satisfied himself that he had been the only witness to the amazing incident; whereupon he put the car up and hastened into the servants’ dining room to ascertain what, if any, impression had been created upon Mrs. Pippy, the housekeeper, Julia, the maid, and Sooey Wan, the Chinese cook, who, with Graves, constituted the Pritchard ménage.

As Graves took his seat at the servants’ table and gazed inquisitively through the door into the kitchen where Sooey Wan, squatted on his heels, was glowering at something in the oven, Pritchard entered the kitchen. Sooey Wan looked up at him but did not deem it necessary to stand up.

“Boss,” he demanded, “wha’ for you allee time come home late for dinner?”

“I don’t come home late for dinner all the time. Confound your Oriental hide, Sooey Wan, are you never going to quit complaining?”

The imperturbable Sooey Wan glanced at the alarm clock on an adjacent shelf.

“You klazy, boss,” he retorted. “You fi’, ten, fi’teen, twenty-fi’ minutes late. Dinner all spoil, ever’thing go lotten boss don’ come home on time.”

“Go to thunder, you old raven! Quit your croaking,” Dan admonished the heathen.

Sooey Wan flew—or rather pretended to fly—into a rage. “Helluva note,” he cried, and shied a butcher knife into the sink. “Twenty year I cook for you papa, but he never late. Papa allee time in heap hurry. Son, allee time go slow, takum easy. Well, you likee lotten dinner I ketchum, boss. You likee A-numba-one dinner no can do—gee, Missa Dan, wha’s mallah? You no look happy.”

“I’m a bit distressed tonight, Sooey Wan.”

Sooey Wan stood up and laid a hand on Dan’s shoulder. “You tell Sooey Wan,” he urged, and in his faded old eyes, in his manner and in the intonation of his voice, no longer shrill with pretended rage, there was evidenced the tremendous affection which the old San Francisco Chinese servant class always accords to a kindly and generous employer and particularly to that employer’s children.

“A good friend has died, Sooey Wan.”

“That’s hell,” said Sooey Wan sympathetically. “Me know him, boss?”

“Yes, he was a friend of yours, too, Sooey, Captain Larrieau, the Frenchman with the big beard.”

“Sure, I remember him. When he come Sooey Wan have sole for dinner. He teachee me how makum sauce Margie Lee.”

“Yes, poor Gaston was very fond of tenderloin of sole with sauce Margery, as it is made in Marseilles. Well, he’s dead, Sooey Wan, and tonight I brought his daughter home with me. I am her guardian.”

“Allee same papa, eh?”

Dan nodded, and Sooey Wan thoughtfully rubbed his chin. “All li’, Missa Dan,” he replied. “I have A-numba-one dinner! Too bad captain die. Him one really nice man—him likee Missa Dan velly much. Too bad!”

He patted his employer on the shoulder in a manner that meant volumes.

“The lady has to dress, Sooey Wan, so we cannot have dinner for half an hour yet.”

“You leavee dinner to Sooey Wan,” the old Chinaman assured him. “Missa Dan, you likee cocktail now?”

“Never mind, thank you.”

“Sure, boss, you likee cocktail now. You no talkee Sooey Wan. Sooey Wan fixee nice Gibson cocktail. My boy ketchum cold heart, Sooey Wan makum heart warm again. . . . Shut up, shut up! Boss, you allee time talkee too damn much.”

Realizing the uselessness of protest, Dan stood by while Sooey Wan manufactured the heart-warmer. And when the drink was ready the old Chinaman produced two glasses and filled one for himself. “I dlink good luck to spirit Captain Larrieau. Hoping devil no catchum,” he said. “Tonight me go joss-house and burn devil paper.”

He set down his empty glass and with paternal gentleness thrust Dan out of the kitchen; as the door swung to behind the latter, Sooey Wan began audibly to discharge a cargo of oaths, both Chinese and English. This appeared to relieve his feelings considerably, for presently he commenced to sing softly, which emboldened Graves to address him.

“Say, Sooey,” he suggested, “I wouldn’t mind bein’ wrapped around one of those cocktails of the boss’s myself.”

Sooey Wan looked at him—once. Once was sufficient. Ah, these new servants—these fresh American boys! How little did they know their place! What a febrile conception of their duty toward the author of the payroll was theirs!

“Bum!” hissed Sooey Wan. “Big Amelican bum!” Seizing the poker he commenced stirring the fire vigorously, from time to time favoring Graves with a tigerish glance which said all too plainly, “I stir the fire with this, but if I hear any more of your impudence I’ll knock your brains out with it.”

Graves subsided. He knew who was the head of that house!

CHAPTER V

From the moment that he and Tamea left the schooner Dan’s thoughts had been occupied with the weightiest problem that had ever been presented to him for solution. What was he to do with Tamea and where was he to take her? For a while he was comforted by the thought that he could not possibly do better than bring her to Maisie Morrison, explain the circumstances and ask Maisie to take the orphan in for the night, lend her some clothing and tell her a few things about life in a civilized community which it was apparent she should know at the earliest opportunity. Then he reflected that Maisie might not be at all obliged to him for thrusting such a task upon her; clearly it was none of her business what happened to this half-caste Polynesian girl. Always practical, Maisie would, doubtless, suggest that the girl be taken to a hotel; even if she did not suggest it, that pompous old ass, Casson, would.

Dan remembered that Gaston of the Beard had never liked Casson and that Casson had never liked Gaston of the Beard. Nothing save Gaston’s record for efficiency and shrewd trading, plus Dan’s influence, had conduced to keep the pagan in the employ of Casson and Pritchard.

So Dan resigned that plan, but not before he had broached it to Tamea.

“Who is the woman, Maisie?” Tamea queried without interest.

Dan informed her.

“I do not like her,” Tamea decided. “I will not go to the home of a woman I do not know.”

It was then that Dan considered the plan of taking the girl to a hotel. But the prospect horrified him. He could not abandon her to her own resources in a metropolitan hotel. He had no definite idea how far Riva had progressed in civilization, but he assumed it was still, to all intents and purposes, in the Neolithic Age, and consequently Tamea would find plumbing, hot and cold water, electric lights, telephones, strange maids and perky little bellhops much too much to assimilate alone on this, her first night in her new environment. Moreover, Dan shrank from the task of entering the Palace or the St. Francis hotels with Tamea, registering her as Queen Tamea of Riva, and having the room clerk, for the sake of publicity for the hotel, give the ever watchful hotel reporters a tip on an interesting story of a foreign potentate, clothed in white cotton and a pea-jacket, who had just arrived tearful and bareheaded, with no baggage other than a huge accordion, and accompanied by a wealthy shipping man.

Decidedly he could not risk that. He must avoid publicity. Remained, therefore, no alternative save taking her to his own home, in San Francisco’s most exclusive residence section on Pacific Heights.

Thank God, he had in his employ as housekeeper a prim and proper person, a Mrs. Pippy. In her fiftieth year Mrs. Pippy’s husband, a bank cashier, had absconded to parts unknown with a lady somewhat younger and handsomer than Mrs. Pippy, who thereupon had been forced to earn her living in almost the only way possible for a woman of her advanced age. Knowing her to be a woman of taste, culture and refinement, Maisie had induced Dan to engage her at his housekeeper, which he was very loath to do, owing to serious objection on the part of Sooey Wan. Maisie had run this oriental tyrant quickly to earth, however. Sooey Wan could cook a dinner, but he couldn’t order one and he couldn’t see that it was served properly; wherefore, since Dan liked to entertain his friends at dinner very frequently, Mrs. Pippy could be depended upon to manage his household affairs efficiently and delightfully.

At Maisie’s suggestion, Mrs. Pippy had engaged as waitress and housemaid an exile from Erin who answered to the name of Julia. Julia was an amiable creature who daily entrusted Sooey Wan with the sum of twenty-five cents to be bet for her in a Chinese lottery in Washington Alley. Dan remembered now that Julia was about the same size as Tamea, and only the Sunday afternoon previous he had seen Julia leaving the house clad in a tailored suit that gave her what Graves termed a “snappy” look.

“I’ll buy that suit from Julia and pay her a fine price for it,” Dan soliloquized. “Tamea has just naturally got to have something decent to wear downtown when the horrible job of shopping begins. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Julia could sell me a pair of shoes, some stockings and a shirtwaist, and do Tamea’s hair up in an orderly manner. Mrs. Pippy will take her in hand and do the needful. If she doesn’t,” he added fiercely, “I’ll dismiss her immediately.”

Fortunately, Tamea’s mournful thoughts claimed her attention; she was content to sit perfectly quiet and hold Dan’s hand, as if from the contact she drew strength to face the unknown. When Dan broached the subject of turning her over to Maisie she had been distinctly alarmed, and when he sang Maisie’s praises so generously, she decided that he was very fond of Maisie, and, for a reason which she did not consider necessary to analyze, Tamea made up her mind instantly that she was not going to like Maisie; which decision, in view of the fact that she had never seen Maisie, must be regarded as only another example of the extraordinary instinct or intuition of the feminine sex, wheresoever situated and with regard to age, color, creed, or previous condition of servitude.

She was relieved when Dan abandoned the subject without comment or urging; she had a hazy impression that he had been rather nice about it and that her father had selected, to take his place, a singularly kindly and comfortable person, indeed. She gave his hand a little squeeze, which he didn’t even notice.

Mrs. Pippy was just ascending the stairs from the entrance hall when Dan let Tamea and himself into the house. The good lady paused in her ascent with much the same abruptness which, we imagine, characterized the termination of the flight of Lot’s wife when that lady was metamorphosed into a pillar of salt.

“Good heavens, Mr. Pritchard!” she exclaimed—and assumed a regal attitude.

“Good evening, Mrs. Pippy,” Dan saluted her cheerfully. “May I have your attendance here for a moment, dear Mrs. Pippy?. . . Thank you so much. Mrs. Pippy, this young lady is Miss Tamea Larrieau, and in her own land, which is the island of Riva, in eastern Polynesia, she is quite the most important person of her sex. In fact, Miss Tamea is the hereditary ruler of the Rivas, or Rivets, or whatever one might term them. Tamea, this lady is Mrs. Pippy, who is kind enough to manage my household, Mrs. Pippy is a kind lady who will take good care of you, won’t you, Mrs. Pippy?”

Mrs. Pippy favored Tamea with a wintry nod and an equally wintry and fleeting smile. She still stood on the stairs in her regal attitude; apparently, in the presence of royalty, she was not impressed.

Immediately Tamea gave her guardian additional evidence of an alert mentality and extreme sensitiveness to the slightest atmosphere of disapproval or hostility. She favored Mrs. Pippy with a long, cool, impersonal glance, before she turned to Dan and said, naïvely:

“She looks like Columbia, the gem of the ocean!”

Decidedly, Dan Pritchard was not in humorous mood; nevertheless he burbled and churned inwardly for several seconds before conquering an impulse to burst into maniac laughter. He realized in time, fortunately, that he could not possibly afford to laugh at his housekeeper. The good soul was arrayed in a black crêpe de Chine gown, trimmed with lace—a voluminous and extremely frippery garment; standing there, her cold countenance handsome with a classic handsomeness beneath a pile of silvery hair, she did indeed offer a splendid comparison with the popular conception of Columbia.

“Pardon me, Mr. Pritchard,” said Mrs. Pippy frigidly, “did I understand you to say that Miss Larrieau comes from eastern Polynesia?”

“Yes, indeed, Mrs. Pippy. She arrived from there today.”

“For a moment I was inclined to think you had been misinformed and that the young lady hails from the region known as ‘south of Market Street.’”

“That one went over Tamea’s head,” Dan thought. “It was meant for me. Well, it landed.”

He smiled upon his housekeeper.

“We will, if you please, Mrs. Pippy, call that round a draw. Miss Larrieau is my ward. I acquired her about two hours ago and it is my firm intention to do as well by her as possible. To that end I crave your indulgence and hearty coöperation, Mrs. Pippy.”

The housekeeper thawed perceptibly. “I shall be most happy to aid you in making Miss Larrieau as comfortable and happy as possible.”

“That’s perfectly splendid of you, Mrs. Pippy. Tamea, my dear, will you step into the living room and play your accordion, or do something to amuse yourself, while Mrs. Pippy and I hold a conference?”

“You will not go away—far?” Tamea pleaded.

“This is my house, Tamea, and it is your home for the present at least. You are very welcome. Whenever your dear father came to San Francisco it was his pleasure to visit me here, to dine with me and sit up half the night talking with me. He always felt that this was his San Francisco home, and you must feel likewise.”

“Very well,” Tamea replied and entered the room. A wood fire was crackling in the large fireplace, and Tamea sat down on her heels before this fire and held her hands out to the cheerful flames.

“This is a cold country,” she complained. “Cold winds and cold hearts.”

Dan rejoined Mrs. Pippy and drew her into the dining room, where, in brief sentences, he explained Tamea and his hopes and desires concerning her. Mrs. Pippy gave a respectful ear to his recital; that was all.

“I have a feeling, Mr. Pritchard, that you are going to have your hands full with that young woman,” she declared. “I have always heard that half-castes of any kind partake of the worst characteristics of both parents. Eurasians are—well, scarcely desirable.”

“Tamea is not a Eurasian. She is a pure-bred Caucasian, but in many respects she is a child of nature. It is evident that her father saw to it that she received all the educational advantages possible in her little world, but I must impress upon you, Mrs. Pippy, that when dealing with her you are not dealing with a modern girl. Her outlook on life, her thoughts, impulses—and, I dare say, her moral viewpoint—antedate the Christian era.”

“Is she a—Christian, Mr. Pritchard?”

“I think not. Her father was not. Neither was he an atheist. He was a pagan. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Tamea’s religious beliefs, if she has any, are idolatrous.”

“Horrible!”

Dan smiled. “I dare say Tamea is quite as happy as any Christian, Mrs. Pippy.”

“I do hope she’s clean, Mr. Pritchard.”

“Well, her people usually are. However, you might explain to her the mysteries of a modern bathtub. Do you think you and Julia can manage to dress her for dinner—after a fashion?”

Mrs. Pippy expressed the hope that the experiment might prove successful and suggested that Julia be interviewed.

Julia, a romantic, rosy-cheeked, imaginative but extremely plain woman in the early thirties, was overwhelmed with importance to discover that the master of the house had elected to lean upon her, to seek her advice and coöperation when confronted by this most unusual dilemma.

“An’ is it lady-in-waitin’ to a queen you’d ask me to be, Misther Pritchard? Faith, then, an’ I’ll defy you to find a body more willin’. Of course we’ll take care of her. Why shouldn’t we? Sure, ’tis sympathy an’ undhershtandin’ she’ll need this night. Where’s the poor lamb?”

For some reason not quite apparent to him, Dan had a feeling that Julia Hagerty was, beyond a doubt, the most wonderful woman he had ever met. Mrs. Pippy, he thought, had been overeducated and civilized and sheltered to the point where all the humanity had been squeezed out of her, while Julia, child of the soil, had, in the daily battle for bread and butter, been humanized to the point where she and Tamea could meet on something akin to common ground.

At that moment Tamea, having warmed her fingers and stretched herself flat on her back on the thick oriental rug, took up her accordion and commenced improvising a melody that had in it that wailing quality, that funereal suggestion inseparable from the music of a dying race, or an oppressed.

As she played Tamea sang, in a sweet little voice that scarcely filled the room, a semi-chant that Dan Pritchard suspected was also an improvisation, with words and music dedicated to the one who was still drifting outward with the tide.

Mrs. Pippy’s ultra-superior countenance commenced to soften and Julia stood listening open-mouthed.

“The poor darlin’,” murmured Julia.

Suddenly Tamea ceased her improvisation, shifted a few octaves and played “One Sweetly Solemn Thought.” In the twilight of the big living room it seemed that an organ was softly playing.

“She’s a Christian!” Mrs. Pippy whispered dramatically.

“I hope not,” Dan replied. “I think I prefer her pagan innocence.”

“But how strange that, with her father not yet cold in his—ah—watery grave, she should elect to sing and play whatever it is she plays.”

“Well, if one be tied to tradition and humbug and false standards and cowardice, I suppose Tamea’s conduct is strange,” Dan admitted. “I think, however, that I can understand it. Certainly I appreciate it. What if the girl was passionately devoted to her father? What if he did commit suicide in her presence two hours ago? They had talked it over beforehand, sanely, and both had agreed that it was the best and simplest way out. And Gaston wasn’t messy about it. To me his passing was as magnificent as that of the doomed Viking of old who put out to sea in his burning galley. Smiling, composed, he stepped blithely over the ship’s rail.

“Just one step from life to death, you say? No, not to death, but to another life! We Christians who believe in the resurrection of the dead and the communion of saints are horribly afraid of death, but the pagan has nothing to regret and journeys over the Styx in a spirit of adventure and altruism. Tamea will, from time to time, weep because she will miss her father’s comradeship and affection, but never because her father has parted with life, for to her and her people life without joy is worse than death.

“They make no mystery of death; it is not an occasion or a tremendous event save when a monarch passes. No mourning clothes or mourning period to bolster up a pretense of an affection for the deceased stronger than that which actually existed; no tolling of bells, no sonorous ritual. That is the hokum of our civilization. But tradition, mummery and religion are unknown to Tamea. She is simple, sane and philosophical, and whatever you do, Mrs. Pippy, and you, Julia, don’t pretend that anything unusual has happened. Do not proffer her sympathy. What she craves is affection and understanding.”

“You are already late to dinner, Mr. Pritchard. Sooey Wan is on the warpath,” Mrs. Pippy suggested. She was not in sympathy with Mr. Pritchard’s views and desired to change the subject.

“Some day I’m going to do something to Sooey Wan. I grow weary of his tyranny. Julia, come with me and I’ll introduce you to Her Majesty.”

Tamea turned her head as they entered the room but did not trouble to rise. Dan noticed that her eyes were bright with unshed tears, that her lips quivered pitifully, that the brave little smile of welcome she summoned for him was very wistful.

“Tamea, this is Julia, who will take good care of you.”

The Queen of Riva sat up and looked Julia over. Julia, fully alive to the tremendous drama of the situation, had wreathed her plain features in a smile that was almost a friendly leer; her Irish blue eyes glittered with curiosity and amiability.

“Hello, Tammy, darlin’,” she crooned. “Come here to me, you poor gir’rl, till I take care o’ you. Glory be to the Heavenly Father, did you ever see the like o’ that shmile? An’ thim eyes, Mrs. Pippy! An’ her hair that long she’s sittin’ on it! Wirra, will you look at her complexion! Like ripe shtrawberries smothered in cream.”

Julia held out her arms. Tamea stared at her for several seconds, then carefully laid aside her accordion and stood up.

“She is a plain woman, but her heart is one of gold,” she said to Dan, and went to Julia and was gathered into her arms.

Poor Julia! Like Tamea, she too was an exile, far from a land she loved and the loving of which, with her kind, amounts to a religious duty. Julia was a servant, a plain, uneducated woman, but at birth God had given her the treasure for which Solomon, in his mature years, had prayed. She had an understanding heart, and to it now she pressed the lonely Tamea, the while she stroked the girl’s wondrous, rippling, jet-black tresses.

“Poor darlin’,” she crooned. “You poor orphant, you.”

“I will kiss you,” Tamea declared, and did it. She looked over her shoulder at Dan Pritchard. “And you will give me this woman all for myself?” she queried.

“Yes, my dear,” he answered brazenly. “Julia belongs to you. Did she not give herself to you? Why should I withhold my permission? Julia is your slave.”

She beamed her gratitude. “Give me, please, one of my father’s black pearls—any one you do not want for yourself.”

Gravely Dan took from his pocket the envelope Gaston of the Beard had entrusted to him for Tamea, and spread the pearls on his open palm. Tamea selected one that was worth ten thousand dollars if it was worth a penny, and handed it to Julia.

“Observe, Julia,” she said, “the warm bright glow in the heart of this pearl. It is like the warm bright glow in the heart of you, my Julia. Take it. Thus I reward those who love me—thus and thus,” and she kissed Julia’s russet cheeks.

Julia eyed her employer with amazement and wonder. “Glory be, Misther Pritchard,” she gasped, “what’ll I do with it?”

“Put it away in a safe deposit box, Julia,” he suggested. “It is worth a small fortune. And remember what I told you. Nothing that may happen must be unusual. Understand. Now take Tamea upstairs and dress her while I call on Sooey Wan and set dinner back half an hour.”

CHAPTER VI

With a shower bath, a change of linen and the donning of dinner clothes, Dan always felt a freshening of the spirit—rather as if the grime of commercialism had been washed away. Whether he dined alone or with guests he always dressed for dinner.

Sooey Wan, who added to his duties as cook those of general superintendent of Dan’s establishment, in defiance of the authority vested in Mrs. Pippy, and who was, on occasion, valet, counselor and friend, came up to his room with another cocktail just as Dan finished dressing. Also, he brought a cocktail for himself, and, while waiting for Dan to adjust his tie, the old Chinaman helped himself to one of Dan’s gold-tipped cigarettes.

Ordinarily, Sooey Wan permitted himself few liberties with his boss, but upon occasions when his acute intuition told him that the boss was low in spirits, Sooey Wan always forgot that Dan was his boss. Then Dan became merely Sooey Wan’s boy, the adored male baby of the first white man for whom Sooey Wan had ever worked. The years fell away and Dan was just a ten-year-old, and he and Sooey Wan were making red dragon kites in the kitchen and planning to fly them the following Saturday from Twin Peaks.

Indeed, Pritchard, senior, had left to Sooey Wan a large share in the upbringing and character-building of his only son, for Dan’s mother had died that Dan might live. It had been Sooey Wan who had imparted to Dan a respect for the inflexible code of the Chinese that a man shall honor his father and his mother and accord due reverence to the bones of his ancestors and the land that gave him birth. It had been Sooey Wan who, inveterate gambler himself, nevertheless taught Dan that when a man loses he shall take his losses smilingly and never neglect to pay his debts. Into Dan’s small head he had instilled as much Chinese philosophy and as much Chinese honor as he would have instilled into a son of his own had his strange gods not denied him this supreme privilege.

Dan knew the old Chinaman for the treasure he was and nothing that Sooey Wan might do could possibly have offended him. In thirty-five years of perfect service to the Pritchards, father and son, Sooey Wan had bought and paid for the few liberties he took—an occasional cigarette in their presence and about six cocktails per annum.

What Sooey Wan realized his boss needed tonight was human society. Sooey Wan felt fully equal to the task of supplying that rare commodity, and he was in Dan’s room now for that purpose.

“My boy feelee little better, eh?” he suggested.

“Considerably. Life isn’t half bad, Sooey Wan. The world isn’t filled entirely with muckers.”

“Oh, velly nice world!” Sooey Wan agreed. “Today I ketchum ten spot in China lottery. I play fi’ dollar. Tonight Sooey Wan feel pretty damn good, too.”

A silence while Dan sat down, lighted a cigarette and sipped his cocktail. Then:

“Julia velly happy, boss. Captain’s girl give Julia velly nice plesent. She come show me. Missie Pip velly sorry no can understand at first. No ketchum pearl.” And Sooey Wan chuckled like a malevolent old gnome, while Dan laughed with him.

“Missie Pip too high-tone’,” Sooey Wan decided. “Yeh, too muchee. No pay muchee Missie Pip for be high-tone’. Sooey Wan don’t give a damn. Sooey Wan ketchum pearl, all li’. No ketchum pearl, all li’. Ketchum ten spot China lottery, velly good. Ketchum ten spot for Julia, too, but Julia no playum heavy. Twenty-fi’ cen’s, two bittee limit.”

The Chinese lottery was then discussed, with Sooey Wan adverting with delightful regularity to the fact that Mrs. Pippy was in a mood to kick herself up hill and down dale because of her lamentable failure to recognize a queen. The gift of all the pearls ever collected in the South Seas could not have afforded the old Chinese schemer one-half the delight this knowledge afforded him, and Dan quickly realized that for the pleasure of this social visit from Sooey Wan he was indebted quite as much to Mrs. Pippy’s misfortune as he was to Sooey Wan’s unfaltering affection. He had to share this joyous news with somebody who could appreciate it!

Presently Sooey Wan grew serious. “I lookee thlough dining room door when Captain’s girl go upstair,” he confided. “Velly pitty girl. Velly damn nice, Missa Dan, you mally lady queen?”

“No, confound you, no. What put that idea into your fool head?”

“Captain’s girl velly nice. Bimeby, boss, you have fi’, six, seven, maybe eight son! Sure, you have good luck. She give you many son.”

“I don’t want many sons. Just now I do not want any.”

“You klazy. What you think Sooey Wan stick around for, anyhow. You no ketchum baby pretty quick wha’ for I workee for you? Hey? Me ketchum plenty money. Me go China.”

“You’re an interfering, scheming old duffer, Sooey. Get back to your kitchen.”

Sooey Wan departed in huge disgust, slamming the door. A moment later he opened it a couple of inches and looked in. “Lady queen leady for dinner. Look velly nice. Missa Dan, you listen Sooey Wan. Captain’s girl velly nice.”

Dan threw a book at him and descended to dinner.

At the foot of the stairs he met Tamea, attended by Mrs. Pippy and Julia. Mrs. Pippy was a being reincarnated. She beamed, she seemed fairly to drip with the milk of human kindness. The simple Julia stood, grinning like a gargoyle, head on one side and hands clasped under her chin, presenting a picture of pride personified.

“Look at her now, Misther Pritchard, an’ the day you got her,” said Julia.

Tamea looked up at him pridefully. She was wearing a white dress, white silk stockings and white buckskin shoes. Her hair, caught at her nape with a scarlet ribbon, hung in a dusky cascade down her fine straight back.

The combination was startling, vivid, amazingly artistic, and Dan stood lost in admiration. If Tamea could only have managed a smile that predicated happiness rather than sadness, Dan told himself she would have been ravishingly beautiful.

“You’re tremendous! Perfectly tremendous!” he assured Tamea. “But that stunning dress——”

“I took the liberty of telephoning Miss Morrison,” Mrs. Pippy gurgled. “I sent Graves over after some things of hers I thought might fit Miss Larrieau.”

“I am extremely grateful to you, Mrs. Pippy.” In the back of his head the words of Sooey Wan were ringing: “Missie Pip velly sorry no can understand at first. No ketchum pearl.” Whatever the reason behind her present cordiality, she was making a strenuous effort to overcome the unfortunate impression she had made upon Tamea a half-hour previous.

Sooey Wan appeared in the dining room entrance and beamed cordially upon the guest. “What Sooey Wan tell you, boss? Velly nice, eh? You bet. Dinner leady.”

Dan silenced the wretch with a furious glance, took Tamea by the arm and steered her into the dining room. Sooey Wan retreated, but paused at the entrance to the butler’s pantry and grinned his approval before disappearing into the kitchen to pass out two plates of soup for Julia to serve. Mrs. Pippy disappeared.

Having tucked Tamea’s chair in under her, Dan took his place opposite. Tamea looked around the dining room with frank approval. She appeared a trifle subdued by the somber richness of it, the vague shadows cast by the warm pale pink glow of the four candles in four old silver candlesticks, the dark bowl, flower-laden, in the center of the table.

Dan was aware that she was watching him; not until he had selected his soup spoon from among—to Tamea—a bewildering array of silverware, did she imitate his action. Her host instantly realized that the niceties of hospitality would have to be dispensed with for the sake of Tamea’s education; consequently, when Julia entered with some toasted crackers and approached Tamea with the intention of serving her first, Dan caught Julia’s eye and directed her to his side.

“You will serve me first,” he whispered and helped himself. Tamea did likewise.

“Now, her French father taught her to break her crackers into her soup and partake of the soup without regard to the resultant melody. I will see if she is a victim of habit,” he decided.

He waited. Tamea set the crackers on her butter plate, as she had observed him do; like him, she made no movement to eat them. Dan took up his butter knife and buttered a cracker. Tamea instantly searched out her butter knife—Dan would have been willing to wager considerable she had never seen one before—and buttered her cracker. Bite for bite and sip for sip she followed his lead, her smoky glance seldom straying from him. Observing that she was not using her napkin, Dan flirted his, on pretense of straightening it out, and respread it. Immediately Tamea unfolded her napkin and spread it.

“She’ll do,” Dan soliloquized. “Doesn’t know a thing, but has the God-given grace to know she doesn’t know and is smart enough not to try to four-flush. That girl has brains to spare. She speaks when she is spoken to, but tonight silence is not good for her. She must not think too much about her father.” Aloud he said: “Tamea, what was your life in Riva like?”

“Very simple, Dan Pritchard. While our family ruled Riva we were rulers with little ruling to do. Ten years ago my mother’s father died. After that my mother and I spent many months each year with my father aboard the Moorea. My mother did not speak good French, but my father would speak to me in no other tongue. He taught me to read and write French and English, and when I was twelve years old he brought a woman from Manga Riva to be my governess. She was half Samoan and half English, and she had been educated in England. The island blood called her back. She played the piano and was lazy and would get drunk if she could, but she feared my father, so she taught me faithfully each day when sober. My father paid her well—too well.”

“What became of her, Tamea?”

“She is dead. Influenza in nineteen eighteen. Our people do not survive it, although I was very ill with it. My father said it was his blood that saved me.”

“Doubtless. What did you do all day in Riva?”

“In the morning, early, I swam in the river or to the lagoon. The tiger shark seldom comes inside the reef. Then breakfast and lessons for two hours, then some sleep and more lessons late in the afternoon, followed, perhaps, by another swim. Then dinner and after dinner some music and song and perhaps a dance. Twice a year, sometimes three times a year, we would have a big feast when some schooner would call for water and supplies and offer trade for our copra. But my father controlled that.”

“Were you happy, Tamea?”

“Oh, yes, very!”

“When your mother died, was your father in Riva?”

“No, he came two months later. When he left I went with him, to go to school in Tahiti. I have lived two years in Tahiti, and studied English and French with a school teacher from Australia. She was governess to the children of a Frenchman who was a good friend of my father.”

“So that’s why you speak such good English.”

She smiled happily. “You think so, Monsieur Dan Pritchard?”

He nodded. “And do not call me Monsieur Dan Pritchard,” he suggested. “Just call me plain Dan.”

“As you like, Plain Dan.”

Julia, listening, burst into a guffaw, caught herself in the middle of it and was covered with confusion. Tamea looked at her very suspiciously, but Julia’s quick Celtic wit saved her. She pretended to have a violent fit of coughing.

“Do you think you will be happy in San Francisco, Tamea?” Dan queried, in an effort to stimulate conversation.

“Who knows? Where one is not known, where it is cold and there is neither singing nor dancing nor laughter nor love——”

“Oh, that will come after you get acquainted! The first thing you must do is to become familiar with your surroundings and outgrow a very natural feeling of loneliness and, perhaps, homesickness. Then you shall be sent to a boarding school and become a very fine young lady.”

The suggestion aroused no enthusiasm in his guest, so he tried a new tack and one which he felt assured would appeal to the eternal feminine in her.

“Tomorrow I shall ask Miss Morrison to go shopping with you and buy a wonderful wardrobe for you, Tamea.”

“I will take this woman Julia instead, if you please, Plain Dan,” she replied.

“Call me Dan,” he pleaded. “Just one word—Dan.”

She nodded. “How long will I stay in your house, Dan?”

“Why, as long as you care to, Tamea.”

Again the grateful and adorable smile. “Then I shall stay here with you always, Dan.”

“Do you think we can manage without quarreling?”

“There will be no quarreling.”

“But you will obey me, Tamea. You will recognize my authority and do exactly what I tell you to do.”

She sighed.

“Privately she thinks that’s a pretty large order,” Dan decided.

Slowly Tamea sipped a glass of light white wine and pecked, without enthusiasm, at a lamb chop. She sighed again.

“I am very tired, Dan,” she said wearily. “I cannot eat more. I would sleep.”

Dan nodded to Julia, who set her tray on the sideboard and stood prepared to escort her charge to bed. Tamea rose, walked around to Dan’s chair, put her arms around his neck and drew his head toward her until her cheek rested against his.

“You are a good father and kind. I shall love you, chéri,” she said softly. “You will kiss your little girl good night? No? But, yes, I demand it, mon père. There, that is better. . . . Good night. In the morning I will be brave; I will not be sad and oppress this household with my sorrows.”

She kissed him. It was not a mere peck but it was undoubtedly filial, and Dan indeed was grateful in a full realization of this.

“Good night, Tamea, dear child,” he said, and watched Julia lead her away.

He was still watching her as she crossed the entrance hall to the foot of the stairs, when the door of the butler’s pantry squeaked very slightly. Dan turned. Sooey Wan’s nose was at the aperture, and one of his slant eyes was bent appreciatively upon Dan.

“Get out,” Dan cried. “What are you spying for, you outrageous heathen?”

“Velly nice. Captain’s girl velly nice. Heap nice kissee, eh? You bet! Velly nice!”

Dan was instantly furious. “Sooey Wan,” he roared, “you’re fired!”

“Boss,” retorted Sooey Wan in dulcet, honeyed tones, “you klazy.”

The door slid back into place and Sooey Wan returned chuckling to the domain where he was king.

An hour later, as Dan finished his first postprandial cigar, he decided that after all there might be a modicum of truth in Sooey Wan’s assertion. Sane he might be now—that is, moderately sane—but for all that a still small voice had commenced to whisper that the extraordinary events of this day were but a preliminary to still more extraordinary events to follow. And that night he dreamed that a Chinese infant, with a tuft of white ribbon tied in a bow at his midriff and armed with bow and arrow, climbed up on the footboard of his bed and shot him, crying meanwhile:

“Velly nice! Velly, velly nice!”

CHAPTER VII

The guest chambers in Dan Pritchard’s home were two in number—richly furnished but solid looking rooms for men. Julia scuttled from one to the other, in a frenzy of indecision as to which was worthy to receive her charge, while Tamea sat at the head of the staircase and waited. Julia was several minutes making her decision as to whether Tamea would look best in the room with taupe carpet and the French gray single bed, or the one with the old-rose carpet and the old black walnut double bed. Finally she decided on the former, and then sought Mrs. Pippy to ask if Miss Morrison had sent over a spare nightgown. It developed that Miss Morrison had neglected this important detail, so Mrs. Pippy graciously donated one of her own and Julia returned with it.

Then she discovered that Tamea, being a young woman of initiative and decision, had very promptly solved the problem of sleeping quarters. While she had been no stranger to bedsteads and pillows, nevertheless her upbringing in Riva had taught Tamea that there was no necessity to be particular as to a lodging for the night. She could always glean an excellent rest on a mat spread on a stone floor, with a polished section of the trunk of a coco-palm as a pillow; and while waiting for Julia to return, the richly carpeted floor had attracted her attention. Promptly she lay down in the hall, pillowed her head on her arm and went to sleep almost instantly.

“Poor lamb!” murmured the sympathetic Julia, and fled to summon Mrs. Pippy to behold the unconventional guest. Mrs. Pippy gazed disapprovingly, shook her handsome silvery head as if to say, “Mr. Pritchard’s action in bringing this tomboy home for us to care for is quite beyond me!” and retired to her room again, still shaking her head.

Julia awakened her sleepy charge. “Come with me, Tammy, darlin’,” she pleaded. “Sure, the flure is no place for you.”

“It is very soft,” Tamea protested. “And very warm, for such a cold country.”

“Wait till Sooey Wan—bad cess to him!—puts the furnace out. Ye’d be froze shtiff in the mornin’, Tammy——”

“My name is Tamea Oluolu Larrieau. You may call me Tamea, but to others I must be Mademoiselle Larrieau.”

“Oh, sure, why not lave me call ye Tammy? Not a one but me will use that name.”

“Your desire is granted because you are kind to me, Julia.”

“Thank you, Tammy. Here, sit you down in this chair and I’ll take off your shlippers. . . . Now, thin, here’s your nightgown. Take off your clothes and put the nightgown on whilst I fix the bed for you and get you a dhrink of wather.”

Tamea held up Mrs. Pippy’s nightgown and looked it over critically. “The wife of the missionary in Riva had several such as this,” she commented. “It is not pretty. I had prettier ones than this aboard ship, but—for a reason—I brought no baggage ashore with me. I do not like this garment.” She tossed it through the open bathroom door into the tub.

“Now, Tammy,” began Julia, mildly expostulating.

“I will not wear it, Julia.”

“Sure, why not, Tammy, you little ninny, you?”

“What is a ninny?”

“Heaven knows,” the helpless Julia replied, “but I’m thinkin’ I’m it, whatever it may be. Why won’t you wear the nightgown, Tammy? Sure all nice gir’rls——”

“It belongs to her,” said Tamea and pointed majestically upward. “It bears the letter P.”

“Be the Rock of Cashel,” sighed poor Julia, “you’re windictive so you are,” and without further ado she went upstairs and brought down one of her own plain chemises de nuit. Without a word Tamea donned it and crept dutifully into bed.

“Do you not say your prayers before you get into bed, Tammy?” the pious Julia queried reproachfully.

Tamea shook her head, dark and beautiful against the snowy pillow. Julia sighed. Her own problems were always dumped, metaphorically speaking, in the lap of her Christian God, night and morning.

“This is truly a bed for a queen,” said Tamea thoughtfully. “Is Monsieur Dan Pritchard, then, a very rich man?”

“He have barrels of it,” Julia replied reverently.

“My father gave me to him, Julia.”

“Faith, an’ that’s where he showed his common sinse. Divil a finer gintleman could you find the wide wur’rld over.”

Fell a long silence. Then: “Where is Madame Pritchard?”

“The masther has never been married, Tammy.”

“What? Has he, then, in his house none but serving women?”

“Ssh! Don’t talk like that, Tammy. Of course he hasn’t.”

“Strange,” murmured Tamea thoughtfully. “He is different from other men of his race. Have no women sought his favor?”

Julia was embarrassed and exasperated. “How the divil should I know?” she protested indignantly.

“You live in this house. You are his servant. Have you not ears? Are you blind?”

“I never shpy on the masther.”

“Perhaps,” Tamea suggested, “it is because Monsieur Dan Pritchard has a hatred of women.”

“Sorra bit o’ that.”

“Then is it that women have a hatred of him?”

“They’d give the two eyes out of their heads to marry him.”

A silence. “All this is very strange, Julia.”

“Don’t worry about it, Tammy. Go to sleep now.”

“Here is a great mystery. Has Monsieur Dan Pritchard, then, no children?”

“Heaven forbid!” Julia was now thoroughly scandalized.

“Here is a mystery. Does he not desire sons to inherit his name and wealth?”

“I never discussed the matther wit’ him.”

“This is, indeed, a strange country with strange customs.”

“We’ll think o’ that in the mornin’, Tammy darlin’. Shall I put out the light?”

“Yes, my good Julia. Good night.”

“Good night, dear.” Julia switched off the light and retired to the door. Here, poised for flight, she turned and shot back at her charge a question that had been perplexing her:

“Are you a Protestant or a Catholic, Tammy?”

“Neither,” murmured Tamea.

“Glory be! ’Tis not a Jew you are?”

“No.”

“Well, what, thin?”

“Are you trying to convert me, Julia?”

“I am not.”

“Then why do you ask?”

“I’m that curious, Tammy.”

“If you act like a missionary’s wife I shall dismiss you from my service, Julia. I have no religion. I am free. I do what I jolly well please. Yes, you bet.”

“An’ there’s an idea for you!” Julia soliloquized as she passed softly out. “Begorry, we’ll have a grand time of it with that one, so we will. Somebody’s been puttin’ notions in her head. Ochone! Where the divil was that one raised, I dunno. Angel that she is to look at she’s had a slack father an’ mother, I’ll lay odds on that.”

Julia sighed and went downstairs to seek the aid of Sooey Wan in scratching out the numbers of her choice on a ticket for the next day’s drawing in the Chinese lottery. She found Sooey Wan washing the dishes and singing softly.

“Are you singin’ or cryin’, Sooey Wan?” Julia greeted him.

“Hullah for hell,” said Sooey Wan. He tossed a soup plate to the ceiling and caught it deftly as it came down. “Boss ketchum velly nice girl,” he began.

“Can’t the poor man be kind to an orphan without you, you yellow divil, puttin’ dogs in windows?”

“Velly nice,” Sooey Wan repeated doggedly. “Pretty soon I think give boss many sons.”

“Say-y-y, what sort o’ place is this gettin’ to be, anyhow?”

“Pretty soon Sooey Wan think this going be legular place. One house no ketchum baby, no legular house.”

“Say nothin’ to Mrs. Pippy of what’s in that ould head of yours, Sooey Wan. What wit’ one haythen downstairs an’ another upstairs the woman’ll be givin’ notice.”

Sooey Wan pulled open a drawer in the kitchen table and tossed out a handful of bills and silver. “Ketchum ten spot for you today, Julia,” he explained. “You lucky. Ketchum ten spot, ketchum pearl.”

“Faith, you’ll catch more than that if you don’t lear’rn to mind your own business,” Julia warned him.

Long after the household had retired Dan Pritchard sat before the living room fireplace reviewing in his mind’s eye the startling events of that day. He felt depressed, obsessed by an unreasonable, wholly inexplicable presentiment of events still more startling to occur in the not very distant future.

As a rule, the majority of women puzzled Dan, many of them frightened him, and all of them disturbed him. Of all the women he had ever known, Maisie Morrison alone appeared to possess the gift of contributing to his mental rest, his sense of spiritual well-being, even while her practical, definite and positive personality occasionally disturbed his creature comfort, robbed him of that sense of leadership and strength which it is the right of all men to exhibit toward the women of their choice, and appeared to render null and void the necessity for any exhibition of the protective instinct. Infrequently Dan complained to himself that Maisie would be a transcendently wonderful girl if she but possessed just a trifle more imagination; having convinced himself that this was so, he would watch for definite evidence to convict Maisie of such a lack, only to be hurled back into his old state of mental confusion by indubitable evidence that Maisie could read him and his innermost thoughts as readily as if he were a signboard.

When he had complained to Maisie that morning that he was a square peg in the round hole, he had voiced the unrest which all born radicals experience when forced to live conservatively. For Dan knew he was a radical in his viewpoint on many things held sacred by his conservative brethren; he knew he lacked the instinctive caution and constructive conservatism so evident in Maisie. He felt as one whose soul was hobbled with a ball and chain. Maisie, he knew, suffered from no such sense of repression, and this knowledge of her mental freedom sometimes forced upon him a secret, almost womanish irritation.

Sometimes Dan was almost convinced that he ought to rid himself of his habit of introspection, marry Maisie and live happily ever afterward. Then, just as he would be almost on the point of growing loverlike, Maisie would seem to pop out at him from a mental ambush; would seem to lay a cool finger on the soul of him and say quite positively: “Here, Dan, is where it hurts. The pain isn’t where you think it is at all. You are a foolish, imaginative man, and if you do not heed my direction now, you will eventually regret that you did not.”

And then Dan, outwardly smiling and expansive but inwardly glum and shriveling, would tell himself that he could never, never dwell in idyllic married bliss with such a dominating and interfering woman; and Maisie, secretly furious, baffled, would watch him change from the devoted admirer to the warm friend.

Tonight Dan decided that he was, beyond the slightest vestige of a doubt, tremendously fond of Maisie Morrison. But—he was not at all certain that he loved her well enough to ask her to marry him; he marveled now, more than ever previously, what imp of impulse had moved him to kiss her that morning. How warm and sweet and responsive had been that momentary pressure of her lips to his? He visualized again that lambent light that had leaped into her eyes. . . had he gone too far?

The telephone in the booth under the stairs in the entrance hall rang faintly. He reached for the extension telephone on the living room table and said: “Yes, Maisie?”

“How did you know it was I?” Maisie’s voice demanded.

“I cannot answer that question, Maisie. I merely knew. You see, I was just beginning to think that I might have called you up and——”

“Indeed, yes,” she interrupted. How like her, he reflected. Her agile brain was always leaping ahead to a conclusion and landing on it fairly and squarely. “I have waited three hours for a report from you, Dan, and when eleven o’clock came and you had not telephoned I couldn’t restrain my curiosity any longer. Mrs. Pippy telephoned about seven o’clock and told me an extraordinary and unbelievable tale of a semi-savage young woman whom you had brought home and established as a guest in your bachelor domicile. Mrs. Pippy tried her best to appear calm, but I sensed——”

“I’m quite certain you did, Maisie,” he interrupted in turn. “You sensed Mrs. Pippy’s amazement, indignation and disapproval. You’re the most marvelous woman for sensing things that I have ever known.”

“But then, Dan,” she reminded him, “you haven’t known very many women intimately. You’re such a shy man. Sometimes I think you must have gleaned all of your knowledge of my sex from your father and Sooey Wan. Who is the South Sea belle, Dan, and what do you mean by picking up with such a creature and expecting me to help you render her presentable?”

“I didn’t expect you to, Maisie. I didn’t ask you and I didn’t suggest that Mrs. Pippy ask you.”

“I couldn’t get any very coherent information from Mrs. Pippy. She was greatly agitated. However, I called Julia up a few minutes later and from Julia I learned that your guest hasn’t sufficient of a wardrobe to pad a crutch.”

“Julia is very amusing,” he replied evenly. “However, do not think the young lady arrived here in a hula-hula costume. I am her guardian.”

“How do you know you are?” Maisie demanded, a bit crisply.

“Her father, Captain Larrieau, of our schooner Moorea, asked me to be before he died this afternoon.”

“Hum-m-m!” Maisie was silent momentarily. “How like a man to think he can fill such an order without outside help.”

He was exasperated. “There you go, Maisie,” he complained, “jumping to a conclusion.”

“If I’ve jumped to a conclusion, Dan, rest assured I have landed squarely on my objective. Why didn’t you telephone me the instant you reached home with your ward? I would have been happy to aid you, Dan.”

“I am sure you would have been, Maisie, but—well——”

“I knew I was right, Dan. The only way I can find things out is to be rude and ask questions. You thought I might not approve of——”

“Of what?” he demanded triumphantly.

“Of the young woman you brought home with you, of course.” Maisie’s voice carried just a hint of irritation.

“Certainly not. I was certain you would approve of her. She’s quite a child—about seventeen or eighteen years old, I should say—and a perfectly dazzling creature—ah, that is, amazingly interesting in her directness, her frankness, her unconventionality and innocence. I do hope you’ll like her. I thought at first I could entrust her to Mrs. Pippy but——”

“I gathered as much, Dan. Now, start at the beginning and tell me everything about her.”

Dan complied with her demand. When the recital was ended, said Maisie: “What are you going to do with her, Dan?”

“My instructions from her father were to educate her and affiance her to some worthy fellow. I shall cast my eye around the local French colony after the girl has completed her schooling. She has a fortune of approximately a quarter of a million dollars—always an interesting subject for contemplation and discussion in the matrimonial preliminaries.” He heard her chuckle softly and realized that she found amusement visualizing him in the role of a matchmaker. “I suppose,” he ventured, “you’re wondering why I didn’t take her to a hotel.”

“Any other man in your sphere of life would, but I am not so optimistic as to expect you to do the usual thing. I’m consumed with curiosity to see your Tamea, Dan.”

“A meeting can be arranged,” he answered dryly. “As soon as my little queen has had an opportunity to purchase a wardrobe befitting her rank and wealth, I shall be happy to have you presented at court, Maisie.”

“I suppose you’re going to select her wardrobe?”

“No, I think Julia will attend to that.”

“In heaven’s name, Dan, why Julia? Have you ever seen Julia all dressed up and about to set out for Golden Gate Park? Mrs. Pippy has excellent taste.”

“Mrs. Pippy is not, I fear, the favorite of the queen.”

“Then I shall attend to her outfitting, Dan.

“Will you, Maisie, dear?”

“Of course, idiot.”

“Well, that lifts a burden off my shoulders.”

“You do not deserve such consideration, Dan. You’re too uncommunicative when you are the possessor of amazing news. However, you’re such a helpless, blundering Simple Simon I knew somebody would have to manage you while you’re managing Tamea. So I concluded to volunteer for the sacrifice.”

“Maisie, you’re a peach. I could kiss you for that speech.”

“Really, you’re running wild, Dan. You kissed me once today. And I’ve been wondering why ever since.”

“How should I know?” he confessed. He had a sudden, freakish impulse to annoy her.

“Stupid! Were I as stupid as you—— I’ll be at your house at about ten o’clock tomorrow and take charge of your problem.”

“I shall be eternally grateful.”

“And eternally silly and eternally afraid of me and what I’m going to think about everything. I could pull your nose. Good night.” She hung up without waiting for his answer.

“I fear me Maisie is the bossy, efficient type of young woman,” he soliloquized as he replaced the receiver. “I hope she and Tamea will hit it off together. I sincerely hope it.”

At midnight Sooey Wan came in from Chinatown, following a prodigious burning of devil papers in a local joss-house and a somewhat profitable two hours of poker.

His slant eyes appraised Dan kindly. “Boss,” he ordered, “go bed. You all time burn ’em too muchee light, too muchee coal, too muchee wood. Cost muchee money.” He moved briskly about the room, switching off the electric light. “Too muchee thinkee, too muchee headache,” he warned Dan. “You not happy, boss, you thinkee too much. No good!”

“Oh, confound your Oriental philosophy!” Dan rasped back at him. “The curse of it is, you’re right!”

Sooey Wan pointed authoritatively upward and Dan slowly climbed the stairs to his room.

Thus ended a momentous day.

CHAPTER VIII

At breakfast the following morning Maisie Morrison decided to make no mention to her aunt and uncle of the interesting bit of news concerning Dan Pritchard of which she was the possessor.

Always cautious and conservative, she preferred to place herself in full possession of the facts in the case, and to have this information bolstered up by her own feeling about the situation following a meeting with Dan’s ward, before discussing his business with anybody.

Maisie was mildly amused in the knowledge that Dan, of all men, should have such a problem thrust upon him; she looked forward with no little interest to watching the peculiar man approach his unusual duty. She expected if she mentioned the matter that old Casson would laugh patronizingly and pretend to find the situation devoid of a mature man’s interest; he might even indulge himself in some light and caustic criticism, with a touch of elephantine humor in it. That had seemed to be his attitude toward Dan for a year past and Maisie resented it fiercely—all the more fiercely, in fact, because her position in Casson’s household forbade an expression of her resentment.

“I think I shall motor to Del Monte this morning for two weeks of golf,” old Casson announced to his wife and Maisie at breakfast. “Suppose you two pack up and go with me.”

“I think that would be delightful, John,” his wife replied.

“I have other fish to fry. Sorry!” Maisie answered him. “If you had hinted of this yesterday, Uncle John——”

“My dear Maisie, the idea but this moment occurred to me. Better alter your plans and come along.”

She shook her head.

“It occurred to me this instant—as I have already stated—” Casson continued, “to escape boredom for two weeks. Our schooner Moorea is in port and will remain here that long, in all probability. That means the office will be set by the heels. Her bear-like skipper, Larrieau, will go roaring from one room to the other, disturbing everybody except Pritchard and amusing everybody except me. I cannot tolerate the man, and if I should see too much of him I fear I might forget his record for efficiency and dismiss him. He was a pet of Dan’s father, and Dan, too, makes much of him. I dislike pets in a business office.”

Maisie looked at him coolly. “Then you will be happy to know that your contemplated exile to Del Monte is quite unnecessary, Uncle John. Captain Larrieau was discovered, upon arrival, to be a leper, so he sent ashore for Dan, settled all of his business and committed suicide by drowning yesterday evening.”

“Bless my soul! Where did you glean this astounding intelligence?”

“I talked with Dan over the telephone late last night.”

“You should have told me sooner, Maisie.”

Old Casson’s voice was stern; his weak, handsome face pretended chagrin.

“Why?”

“Why? What a question! Isn’t the man in my employ—or, at least, wasn’t he?”

“He was in the employ of Casson and Pritchard, and Dan Pritchard has attended to the matter for the firm.”

“I should have been communicated with immediately. Pritchard should have telephoned to me, not to you.”

“Oh dear, Uncle John! One would think you revered the man so highly you planned to have the bay dragged to recover his body, instead of being happy in the knowledge that you have gotten rid of the nuisance.”

“Humph-h-h-h! We’ll not discuss it further, my dear. However, it is difficult for me to refrain from expressing my irritation. How like young Pritchard it was to disregard me entirely in this matter! For all the deference or consideration that fellow pays me as the senior member of the firm, I might as well be a traffic policeman.”

Maisie’s fine eyes flamed in sudden anger. “Has it ever occurred to you, Uncle John, that in declining to annoy you with unnecessary details, by his persistence in relieving you of the labor and worry of the business management of Casson and Pritchard, Dan may be showing you the courtesy and consideration due you as the senior member of the firm?”

“I am not a back number—yet, Maisie,” he assured her.

“Why do you not buy him out, Uncle John? He seems to be a very great trial to you.”

Old Casson appeared to consider this suggestion very seriously as he gravely tapped the shell of his matutinal egg. “That isn’t a half bad idea, Maisie,” he answered. “At present, however, I am scarcely in position to buy his interest. I anticipate this condition will be materially changed within the next three or four months, and then——”

He paused eloquently and scooped his egg into the glass.

“I infer you have a hen on,” Maisie suggested.

“Perhaps the metaphor would be less mixed if we substituted a goose for the hen. I believe the goose is the fowl currently credited with the ability to lay golden eggs.”

“John Casson!” His wife now spoke for the first time. “Are you mixed in another gamble?”

“Not at all, my dear, not at all. I have invested in several cargoes of Chinese rice at a very low price, and I have sold one cargo at a very high price. I am holding the others for the crest of a market that is rising like a toy balloon. It isn’t gambling, my dear. It’s just a mortal certainty.”

The good lady sighed. How often, in the thirty years of her life with John Casson, had she heard him, in those same buoyant, confident, mellifluous tones, assure her of the infallibility of victory due to his superior judgment!

As usual, Maisie placed her finger on the sore spot. “What does Dan think of it, Uncle John?”

“He doesn’t think anything, my dear. He doesn’t know.”

“Oh, I see! This is a private venture of yours?”

He nodded. “Yes—and no, Maisie. It’s a Casson and Pritchard deal, only I’m engineering it myself. I’m going to prove to that overconfident young man the truth of the old saying ‘Nothing risked, nothing gained.’ Why, the biggest thing in years lay right under his nose—and he passed it by.”

“He was in Honolulu on that pineapple deal when you stumbled across this good thing, was he not, Uncle John?”

“Yes, but then he knew about it before he left for Honolulu.”

“Well, I hope you’ll make a killing, Uncle John.”

He beamed his thanks upon her. “When I do—and I cannot help doing it—I’m going to be mighty nice to my niece,” he assured her. “However,” he continued reminiscently, “my day for taking a sporting chance is over. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“Have you?” his wife ventured hopefully.

“Just to prove to you that I have,” he challenged, “if I get an offer of twenty-four cents per pound, f.o.b. Havana, today, I’ll sell every pound of rice I have in transit or hold under purchase contract.”

“What was the market yesterday, John?”

“Twenty-three cents.”

“Sell at that today,” Maisie urged him.

He smiled and shook his head. These women! How little they knew of the great game of business! How little did they realize that, to succeed, a man must be possessed of an amazing courage, a stupendous belief in his own powers, in his knowledge of the game he is playing. Maisie read him accurately. He was as easy to read as an electric sign.

When he had departed for the office, Mrs. Casson, a dainty, very youthful appearing woman of fifty-five, and long since robbed of any illusions concerning certain impossible phases of her husband’s character spoke up:

“Sometimes, Maisie, I suspect John Casson is in his second childhood.”

“You’re wrong, Auntie. In some respects he hasn’t emerged from his first childhood. For instance, Uncle John is nurturing the belief that Dan isn’t aware of his operations.”

“You think Dan knows?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Has he told you so?”

“No.”

“He ought to be told.”

“I shall tell him—this very morning. Uncle John, wrapped in his supreme sense of self-sufficiency, appears to have forgotten that in an unlimited partnership each partner is irrevocably bound by the actions of the other.”

“I wonder at Dan’s patience with him.”

“I do not. Dan has explained it to me.”

Mrs. Casson’s maternal glance dwelt tenderly upon her dead sister’s daughter. “Maisie, I want to talk to you about Dan,” she began, but Maisie raised a deprecating hand.

“What profit could possibly arise from such a discussion?”

Mrs. Casson, however, was a woman driven by curiosity. “I wonder if he is in love with you, my dear. Sometimes I am almost certain of it, and at other times I am not so certain.”

“I think dear old simple Dan finds himself similarly afflicted.”

“Well?” The query, the inflection and the dramatic pause before the good soul continued were not lost on Maisie. “Why don’t you do something about it, dear?”

“Why should I?”

“You’re twenty-four years old—and certainly Dan Pritchard is the most eligible bachelor in your set. And I know you’re very, very fond of him.”

“Everybody is. He is wholly lovable.”

“Well, then, Maisie——”

“Men dislike pursuit, dear. That is their peculiar prerogative. I prefer to be dear to Dan Pritchard, as his closest friend, rather than to disturb him as a prospective wife. Dan is old-fashioned, quite dignified, idealistic, altruistic, artistic, and as shy and retiring as a rabbit. I’m certain he isn’t the least bit interested in your plans to alter his scheme of existence by adding a wife to it.”

“You’d marry Dan Pritchard tomorrow if he asked you today.”

“Perhaps,” Maisie agreed. “However, I shall not pursue him nor shall I hurl myself at him. I prefer to operate on the principle that, after all, I may prove more or less eligible myself!”

“You desire to be pursued, I see.”

“What woman does not—by the right man?”

“Then is Dan Pritchard the right man?”

“No woman could really answer such a question truthfully until after she had been married to Dan. I have never given much thought to Dan as a matrimonial possibility.”

“That is an admission that you have at least given him some thought, Maisie.”

“Of course, silly. What is a girl to think when a man’s freakish humor dictates that he shall develop all of the outward evidences of a sentimental interest one week and shrink from exhibiting the slightest evidence of it a week later? Sometimes I think that Dan is a habit with me; sometimes I’m quite certain I am a habit with him. I think I was twelve years old when Dan took me to a vaudeville show one Saturday afternoon. I remember I held his hand all through the show and he fed me so much candy I was ill. However, he is a pleasant and delightful habit to me, and I am not anxious to renounce him; I hope he feels the same toward me. By the way, I have an engagement with him this morning. I must run along and dress.”

She left her aunt gazing speculatively after her. Mrs. Casson shook her head and sighed. “It’s her frightful spirit of independence,” she soliloquized. “She scares him away. I just know it. And I do wish I knew what to do about it.”

Providentially, she did not!

CHAPTER IX

Promptly at ten o’clock the Casson limousine deposited Maisie in front of the Pritchard residence. Dan, watching for her appearance from behind the front window curtains, observed that two young women and a fussy, somewhat threadbare little man of undoubted Hebraic ancestry emerged from the limousine and followed her up the stairs.

Julia opened the door and Maisie led her followers into the living room. “Good morning, Dan,” she greeted him and gave him her hand. “I’ve brought half a dozen evening dresses which may or may not impress your ward; also a model to parade the dresses for Tamea’s inspection, and a fitter to note the necessary alterations. Of course, she’ll have to have some street clothes, so I’ve brought Rubenstein, my tailor, to take measurements.”

“By Jupiter, Maisie, you’re a marvel! You think of everything.” He pressed Maisie’s hand in his. “You may ask Miss Larrieau if she will be good enough to come down to the living room, Julia,” he directed.

“I will go up with Julia,” Maisie said, and followed the maid.

The Queen of Riva sat in a small, low chair before the window. She wore a dark silk dressing gown, which the democratic Julia had filched from Dan Pritchard’s clothes closet, and she was gazing down into the street, gray and wet with fog. Her elbows rested on her knees, her face reposed in her hands, and she was weeping, silently and without a quiver. Julia went to her, patted her wet cheek and said:

“Look up, Tammy darlin’. Here is Miss Morrison to see you. Miss Morrison is the kind leddy that sint over the nice dhress for you last night, an’ sure she has tailors an’ cloak models and dhressmakers an’ dhresses downshtairs waitin’ for you.”

Tamea dried her eyes, shook her wonderful hair back over her ivory brow, rose slowly and faced Maisie with a certain cool deliberation. Her eyes swept Maisie’s figure; she forced a smile of greeting.

“I am—happy to—meet—Miss Morrison. When one is—almost—alone and very unhappy—kindness from a stranger is like the sun that comes to dry the sails, following a storm.”

“Her greeting is as regal as her bearing,” was Maisie’s thought. She favored Tamea with a courteous little nod and her bright smile—then held out her hand. Tamea hesitated, then extended her own.

“You are Maisie?” she queried.

“Yes, I am Maisie. How did you know, Miss Larrieau?”

“I guessed,” Tamea answered simply. “You are a much nicer woman than I had expected to meet.”

Maisie flushed, partly with pleasure, partly with embarrassment. “I shall try to be nice to you, Miss Larrieau, always.”

“You may call me Tamea, if you please. I shall call you Maisie.”

“Will ye listen to that!” Julia declared happily. “Sure, Tammy’s no different from the rest of us. She’s in love wit’ you at sight, Miss Morrison, so she is.”

“I think with you, Tamea, that we should dispense with formality. I shall be happy to be your friend and to help you to adjust your life to new conditions.”

“I accept your friendship.” Tamea’s words came slowly, gravely. “You are not a woman of common blood.”

Maisie stepped close to her, removed from her fingers the sodden little ball of a handkerchief and replaced it with a fresh one of filmy lace from her handbag. “Tell my chauffeur to go back to the house and fetch Céleste, my maid,” she ordered Julia. “Between Céleste and me this wonderful hair shall be done exactly right. When you come upstairs again, Julia, bring up those boxes and the two girls in the living room. Rubenstein shall wait.”

“Monsieur Dan Pritchard told me at breakfast that Miss Morrison would call to help me select the clothing which it is fit that I should wear in this country,” said Tamea when they were alone.

“You are a brunette—one of the wonderful, olive-skinned type. With those great dark eyes and that wealth of jet-black hair you will look amazingly chic in something red and silvery or white. May I see your foot, Tamea?”

Tamea sat down and thrust out a brown foot. It was somewhat shorter and broader than Maisie had expected to see, but the arch was high and the toes perfect, with the great toe quite prehensile.

“You have gone barefoot a great deal, Tamea?”

“In Riva, always. In Tahiti I wore sandals.”

“You will have to wear shoes here, Tamea. I think a number five will do, but we must be very particular not to spoil that foot. It is the only natural foot I have ever seen except on a baby. How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

Maisie could scarcely believe this statement. Physically Tamea was a fully developed woman, perhaps five feet seven inches tall, a creature of soft curves, yet lithe and graceful and falling just a trifle short of being slim. Her ears were delicately formed but of generous proportions, her neck, sturdy and muscular, swept in beautiful curves to meet a torso full-breasted and deep.

“Her form is perfect, and I believe she has a magnificent back,” thought Maisie. “Her neck and head are Junoesque.”

They were, indeed. Tamea’s head, in shape, resembled her father’s in that it was larger than that of most women, and of that width between the ears which denotes brain capacity and consequently intelligence. Her features were not small; indeed, they were almost large, but of patrician regularity and loveliness of line. Her brow was high and wide, her eyebrows fine, silken and thick, while her eyelashes were extraordinarily long, giving a slightly sleepy appearance to large, intelligent, beautiful eyes of a very dark brown shade—almost black. Her chin was well developed, firm; from behind full, red, healthy lips Maisie saw peeping fine, strong, white, regular teeth. Tamea’s skin was clear to the point of near-transparency and her hands were small with lovely tapered fingers.

“A perfect woman,” thought Maisie. “She is more than beautiful. She is magnificent—and when she has been dressed properly——”

Her thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Julia and the cloak model and fitter. Thereafter, for an hour, Tamea dwelt in paradise. Maisie’s taste, in the matter of dress, was undoubtedly exquisite, and when she discovered that this exotic islander could wear with dignity raiment which, on another woman, would be regarded as flamboyant, Maisie felt that quiet joy which comes to all women who discover beauty or help to create it. Tamea, too, developed all of the interest of her sex in the beautiful garments submitted for her selection; so engrossing was that interest that by the time Rubenstein had departed Tamea’s drooping spirits had been more than a little uplifted. She commanded Julia to summon Dan to admire such portions of her wardrobe as she had already selected.

“My dear, but you must wait until you are fully dressed,” Mrs. Pippy cautioned her. Tamea was barefooted and wearing the skirt of a ready-made tailored suit, but not the coat; neither was she wearing waist or brassiere.

“Why?” she demanded coolly. “Why should I demand of Monsieur Dan Pritchard that he wait upon my pleasure?”

“But you can’t receive him half dressed.”

Tamea, for answer, took from the dresser a large framed photograph of Maisie Morrison in evening dress. “Mademoiselle Maisie was but half dressed when she had this photograph made. Julia, call Monsieur Dan Pritchard.”

Mrs. Pippy’s cold blue eye warned Julia that the price of obedience might be prohibitive. Julia hesitated.

Tamea, Queen of Riva, stamped a bare foot. “Obey me!” she commanded.

“Och, sure now, Tammy, darlin’, listen to Mrs. Pippy, there’s a dear——”

“There will be no talk. Obey!”

“Julia,” said Mrs. Pippy firmly, “in this house you take your orders from me. When Miss Larrieau is properly dressed she may receive Mr. Pritchard, but not before.”

“Julia is my servant. She takes orders from no one but me,” Tamea warned Mrs. Pippy. “Dan Pritchard gave Julia to me.”

“Julia is not a slave, to be given away at will, Miss Larrieau. She must be consulted in such transactions.”

“Did you not accept me as your mistress, Julia?” There could be no evasion.

“I did that,” Julia confessed weakly.

“Summon Monsieur Dan Pritchard. Take no heed of this woman—this Pippy.”

“If you disobey me, Julia,” Mrs. Pippy warned, “I shall be forced to dismiss you without a reference.”

“If you disobey me, Julia,” Tamea countered, “I shall dismiss you but not until you have been beaten. In my country that is how bad servants are treated.”

Julia appealed to Maisie. “What shall I do, Miss Morrison?”

Maisie sighed. “It is apparent, Julia,” she replied, “that Mrs. Pippy and Tamea have not hit it off very well together. Mrs. Pippy’s position in this house must not, she very properly feels, be questioned. Tamea, who has doubtless never heretofore had her authority questioned, has elected to make an issue of the seat of authority. We will seek a compromise.” She turned to Tamea and smiled upon her kindly. “Will you please me, Tamea, by declining to oppose Mrs. Pippy’s authority in this house?”

“I will not, Maisie, although I am sorry not to be kind to you. I am not one accustomed to taking orders and I will not have this Pippy thwart my desires. As you say, I have elected to force the issue. It is better thus. Why wait? Julia, for the last time, I order you to obey my command.”

“Heaven help me!” groaned Julia, and turned to open the door. Mrs. Pippy’s cool, firm voice halted her.

“Julia!”

“I’m thinkin’, Mrs. Pippy, ye’ll have a hard time queenin’ it over a rale queen,” said Julia. She made Mrs. Pippy a curious curtsy. “I quits yer service, ma’am,” she announced, thereby in the language of the sporting world beating the excellent Mrs. Pippy to the punch. The door closed behind her.

“You are dismissed. Pack and leave at once.” Thus the Pippy edict, shouted after the retiring maid.

Tamea smiled and watched the door until Dan Pritchard knocked on it.

“Come, Dan Pritchard,” Tamea called. She was standing in the center of the room, on parade as it were, when he entered and permitted his amazed glance to rest upon her. Maisie saw him recoil perceptibly, saw him as quickly become master of the situation.

“Well, well, what a marvelous apparition!” was all he said.

“You like these garments?”

“Indeed I do, Tamea. Put the coat on, please, until I see the fit of it. . . .” He sat down and waited until Tamea had finished. Then: “Stunning, by Jupiter! Maisie, I’m so grateful to you for helping Tamea and me. You’re the shadow of a rock in a weary land.”

He approached Tamea and fingered the material in her suit. “Do you think this is quite heavy enough, Maisie?” he queried anxiously. “Our climate is not quite so salubrious as our little queen is accustomed to.”

Tamea came close to him, grasping each lapel, gazing upward at him with frank approval and admiration.

“You would not care to have your Tamea die?” she queried.

“Indeed, my dear, I would not.”

“You would not care to have your Tamea put out of this warm house to suffer in the cold?”

“Certainly not.”

“You will never, never put Tamea away from you?”

“Great Scot, no! I promised your father I’d take care of you, child. What’s worrying you?”

Tamea sighed. “I have felt the necessity to leave this house,” she confessed, “unless assured that my orders to my servant will not be interfered with. Pippy grows very—well, what you call—fresh!”

Dan sensed the approach of a cyclone and hastily sought the cellar. “My dear Tamea,” he assured her, “it is conceivable that you may find me growing what you call fresh if you seek to impose your will on mine. Mrs. Pippy’s orders to the servants of this house must be obeyed by those servants. Meanwhile, try to be nice and—er—polite to Mrs. Pippy.”

“I think you ought to know what Tamea is driving at, Dan,” Maisie interposed. “Tamea is in open rebellion against Mrs. Pippy and the disaffection has spread to Julia.”

“Mr. Pritchard,” said Mrs. Pippy with great dignity, “I have found it necessary to dismiss Julia for insubordination.”

“Julia belongs to me. Pippy cannot dismiss my Julia, can she, dear Dan Pritchard?” Thus the unhappy man was caught between the cross-fire of the conflicting pair. Dan looked helplessly at Maisie, who eyed him sympathetically and humorously. “Let there be no weakness here,” Tamea warned. “I would have my answer.”

“Why, of course, you asked me for Julia and I said you could have her,” Dan began. At that moment Julia entered the room. “Julia,” Dan queried, “do you desire to remain in the service of Miss Larrieau?”

“Humph! Faith, I’ve never left her ser’rvice, sir.”

“Mrs. Pippy informs me she has dismissed you.”

“The back o’ me hand to Mrs. Pippy.” Julia had started running true to her racial instincts, which dictate a bold, offensive spirit in the face of disaster.

“Julia remains!” cried Tamea.

“Julia goes!”

Devoutly Dan wished that an old-fashioned magician were on hand to render him invisible.

“Dear Mrs. Pippy,” he pleaded, “I appeal to the undoubted wisdom of your years—to your innate sense of proportion—er—to your—why, dash it all, this difference of opinion about Julia has me in the very deuce of a box. Surely you must realize, Mrs. Pippy, the total lack of reason, of understanding, from our viewpoint, in this child!”

“Oh,” Tamea interrupted coldly, “you think I am a fool!” Suddenly she commenced to cry and cast herself, sobbing, upon the Pritchard breast.

He glanced over her heaving ivory shoulders to Mrs. Pippy, then to Maisie. “I’ve taken a big contract,” he complained.

“Julia goes,” said Mrs. Pippy firmly.

Tamea heard the edict and her round, wonderful arms clasped Dan Pritchard a trifle tighter—it seemed that her heart was just one notch closer to disintegration.

“Julia stays,” she sobbed. “You gave Julia to your Tamea—yes, you did—you did—you did!”

Suddenly, impelled by what cosmic force he knew not, Dan Pritchard made his decision and with it precipitated upon his defenseless head a swarm of troubles. “Excuse me, dear Mrs. Pippy,” he said gently. “I am sorry to have to veto your decision, which I trust is not an unalterable one. Julia—confound her Celtic skin—stays!”

Mrs. Pippy bowed her silvery head with the utmost composure and swept magnificently from the room; Tamea raised her tear-stained face from Dan’s breast, took a Pritchard ear in each hand, drew his face down to hers and rewarded him for his fearless stand with a somewhat moist and fervent kiss. Maisie, watching the tableau composedly, felt a sharp, sudden stab of resentment against Tamea—or was it jealousy?

“Well, that’s settled,” she remarked dryly, and Dan sensed the sting.

He looked at his watch. “Got to be going down to the office,” he mumbled, presenting the first excuse for escape that came to his mind. His anxious glance searched Maisie’s blue eyes in vain for that humorous glint that had marked them when he first entered the room. “Please help me, Maisie,” he murmured appealingly. “I’ve got my hands full.”

Maisie nodded. “I’ll try to undo the mischief, Dan. By the way, Uncle John told me something this morning that you ought to know. He’s up to his silly eyebrows in the rice market.”

“The double-crossing old idiot! I had begun to suspect he was up to some skull-duggery. I was on his trail and would have smoked him out in a day or two.”

“I imagine that is why he told Auntie and me about it. He wanted me to break the news to you, I think.”

Dan’s head hung low on his breast—the sad Abraham Lincoln look was in his face and in his troubled eyes. Tamea, looking up at him very soberly now, read the distress which, momentarily, he could not conceal; in a sudden burst of sympathy her arm started to curve around his neck.

“Oh, stop it, stop it, Tamea!” Maisie cried sharply. “Mr. Pritchard is not accustomed to such intimate personal attentions from comparative strangers.”

Tamea drew away from Dan quickly.

“Dress yourself!” Maisie commanded. “Julia, help her. Dan, run along and try not to worry.”

Tamea’s eyes flashed, but nevertheless she sat down and when Julia handed her a pair of black silken hose she commenced dutifully to draw them on.

“Much obliged for the tip, Maisie. I’ll start a riot in Casson and Pritchard’s office this very day. By the way, I think Mrs. Pippy is on her high horse. Please try to wheedle her down.”

“Mrs. Pippy has resigned, Dan.”

“The deuce she has; how do you know?”

“Why, any woman of spirit would.”

He pondered this.

“Oh, well, let her go if she wants to. She’s scarcely human at times. Well, if she insists upon leaving I’ll give her a year’s salary in advance. . . . Damnation. . . . Good morning, Maisie, dear. Please try to reason with—the sundry females about this house. . . . Tamea, I go to my office. Be a good girl.”

“You are my father and my mother,” she replied humbly. “I will kiss you farewell.” And she did it.

“This primitive young witch has been in this house less than twenty-four hours and already she has kissed that defenseless man twice in my presence. I have known Dan all my life—and I have kissed him but once,” Maisie thought.

The stab of resentment, of jealousy, perhaps, was more poignant this time; in addition Maisie was just a little bit peeved at the ease with which Tamea had achieved her victory.

Maisie had sufficient imagination to understand why Tamea, daughter of a thousand despots, with the instinct to rule complicated by the desire, must be excused for precipitating the clash with Mrs. Pippy. But what Maisie could also understand very clearly, since she too was a woman, was that Tamea, by the grace of her sex and her shameless effrontery in using every wile of that sex, was likely to become absolute master of Dan Pritchard’s establishment. The man was helpless before her. Maisie permitted a challenging gleam in the glance which she now bent upon Tamea.

Tamea intercepted that glance and interpreted it correctly. It was as if Maisie had heliographed to her: “Young lady, you’ve got a fight on your hands.” Without an instant’s hesitation Tamea’s smoky orbs acknowledged the message and flashed back the reply: “Very well. I accept the challenge.”

Then Maisie smiled, and Tamea, with hot resentment in her heart, smiled back.

CHAPTER X

Dan left his home with the alacrity of one who seeks escape from a most uncomfortable situation. As a bachelor he was conscious of the fact that this morning there had been four women too many in his life. He cringed from the prospect of having Mrs. Pippy resign his service in a huff. He hoped she would, under Maisie’s cogent reasoning, consent to make allowances for Tamea until Maisie should have impressed upon the latter the fact that in a white democracy a South Sea Island queen was expected to be seen and not heard.

“Tamea is such a child,” Dan told himself. “And a spoiled child at that. Old Gaston has permitted her to do exactly as she pleased, and now the task of correcting that mistake is mine. It isn’t going to be an easy task, and what’s more I haven’t the slightest idea where to commence and where to stop. . . . What fragrant hair she has. . . such an appealing creature. When she weeps she’s just a broken-hearted little girl . . . makes me want to take her on my knee and soothe her. . . .

“Maisie’s nose went up a trifle the first time the child kissed me, and there was steel in her voice when she reproved Tamea. Fine state of affairs if she and Tamea fail to hit it off together and Tamea elects to use me as a club to hurt Maisie. I have a feeling it would be like her to try! Come to think of it, most women would! As soon as Tamea has adjusted herself to her new life, I’ll pack her off to some select school.”

He picked up the annunciator and ordered Graves to halt alongside the first newsstand he could find. Thus presently he found himself with half a dozen magazines, skimming through their advertising pages in search of some hint of the most advantageous school for girls of Tamea’s sort. Preferably the school should be situated in the center of a boundless prairie; as an additional safeguard, it should be surrounded by a very tall barbed-wire fence or a cactus hedge and sans communication with the outside world.

By the time Graves had deposited him on the sidewalk before his office building the problem of the right school was as far from solution as ever, and a growing resentment against Gaston of the Beard was rising in Dan’s heart. Down under the Southern Cross the problem of living was an easy one. Why, then, had Gaston transplanted this girl to a land where the problem was so complicated—where she was so certain to add to the complications?

“I feel tremendous events portending,” Dan soliloquized. “The very foundations of my life are tottering.”

On his desk he found a memorandum from his secretary to the effect that he was to call Miss Morrison at his home the moment he came in.

“Hello, Dan’l!” Maisie’s voice carried a triumphant note that cheered him wonderfully. “I merely wanted to relieve your mind of your domestic worries before you crossed swords with Uncle John. I have had a talk with Mrs. Pippy and she will remain—for the present at least.”

“I’ll raise her monthly stipend very materially,” he answered gratefully. “Have you talked to Tamea?”

“No, but I shall, Dan. I realize the precise proportions of the predicament your generous acceptance of a white man’s burden has placed you in. So, my dear, I dare say I shall have to stand at thy right hand and hold the bridge with thee.”

“God bless you for that, Maisie. I think Tamea is a wonderfully affectionate girl—fiery, but generous, loyal and grateful, but hard to handle. She must be appealed to through her heart rather than her head.”

“You don’t know anything about it, Dan.” Maisie rather bit that sentence off short. “That’s her plan for ruling you—via your soft heart and your softer head. The girl Tamea has brains, she can reason and she can understand, and the instant she realizes that your words of wisdom are about to undermine her opposition to your desires, she will make a flying leap for your manly breast——”

“Do you really think she might develop such a habit?”

“Dan, she’s a fully developed woman——”

“Don’t build me a mare’s nest, Maisie. She’s just a little girl.”

“Have it your way. But I warn you she’s the sort of little girl that a respectable bachelor cannot afford to have around his house a day longer than is quite necessary. That sounds catty, Dan, but I know whereof I speak.”

“Yes, I suppose I’ll have to do something radical and do it quickly,” he agreed. “Thank you, Maisie—a million thanks.”

“Happy to be of service to you, old boy.”

“Maisie! Will you accord me another favor?”

“Certainly. What is it?”

“Consider yourself duly and affectionately kissed.”

“Oh! Dan, you’re developing a habit. But don’t you think two kisses are quite sufficient to start the day with?”

“That was a little mean feminine jab, Maisie. Good-by. I’m going to hang up.”

He did, albeit smiling and much relieved. He could now turn to the task of standing old John Casson on the latter’s snowy head, so to speak, and see how much rice would run out of his pockets.

Experience had taught Dan that the best way to handle his partner was to rough him from the start, for, like all weak and pompous men, Casson was not superabundantly endowed with courage or the ability to think fast and clearly under fire. He would fight defensively but never offensively, and Dan had discovered the great fundamental truth that the offensive generally wins, the defensive never.

He summoned his secretary. “Miss Mather, please inform Mr. Casson that I desire to confer with him—in my office—immediately.”

As he had anticipated, old Casson obeyed him without question.

“Well, boy, what have you got on your mind this morning?” he began genially.

“Rice,” Dan answered curtly. “Sit down.”

Casson walked to the window, looked out over the vista of bay and commenced thinking as rapidly as he could under the circumstances.

“I told you to sit down,” Dan reminded him crisply. “I mean it. Sit down and face me. I want to look into your face and smoke the deception out of it.”

“By the gods of war, I’ll not stand such talk from any man!” Old Casson had decided to bluster.

Dan glowered at him. “You’ll stand it from me. You’ve got some rice deals on in this crazy market and you’ve kept the news of your operations from me. Have you speculated any in coffee or sugar?”

“No, no, Dan. Nothing but rice.”

“What sort of rice have you committed us to—California or Oriental?”

“Both.”

“Playing alone or in a pool?”

“Alone.”

“How much California rice have you purchased?”

“One million sacks.”

“Paid for any of it?”

“Half of it. Balance in sixty days.”

“Where is the rice?”

“Scattered in various warehouses throughout the upper Sacramento valley.”

“I didn’t notice that our bank account had been particularly depleted during the month I was in Hawaii. You bought the rice on open credit, hypothecated the warehouse receipts with various banks, paid for half the rice with the proceeds and used the remainder of the loan to pyramid with. I suppose you sunk that in a little jag of Philippine rice.”

“I did,” Casson admitted, flushed and anxious. He had seated himself, facing Dan.

“Holding your warehoused rice for a rising market, eh?”

“Exactly.”

“Suppose the bottom drops out?”

Casson shrugged and for the first time smiled. “I think, Pritchard, you’ll have to admit that I’ve put one over on you this time, and what’s more, you’re going to like it. I bought that California rice at prices ranging from nine and a quarter to ten and a half cents per pound, and today it is worth twenty. We stand to clean up a hundred thousand dollars on that lot alone.”

“We are engaged in legitimate business, not food profiteering. Can you dispose of that million sacks readily?”

“Had an offer of twenty cents for it this morning.”

“Reliable people?”

“Rated up to five million, A-A-A-one.”

“Cash?”

“No, ninety days.”

“Suspicious. Don’t like ninety-day paper. The banks are beginning to discriminate in their loans. All over the country there has been a wide expansion of credit in all lines, due to war-time prosperity, and my guess is that the demand for credit will soon result in the usual banking situation. The banks will discover that their loans have so increased as to be out of proportion to their reserves and deposits; and if the banks once get frightened, business will be crippled overnight.”

“Pooh, no danger of that for a couple of years yet, Pritchard.”

“On that subject I prefer sounder advice than yours, Mr. Casson. Call up the people who want that rice and tell them we’re willing to cut our price considerably if they will pay cash.”

“Sorry, but it can’t be done, my boy. I’ve already traded on a ninety-day basis. Don’t worry. We’re perfectly safe.”

“With you, the wish is father to the thought. How much Oriental rice have you bought?”

“We’ve got the British steamer Malayan loading a cargo of eight thousand tons in Manila, for Havana, Cuba. On or about the middle of next month the steamer Chinook will load four thousand tons at Shanghai, for delivery at Havana.”

“Our specialty, of which we have a good, safe, working knowledge, is South Sea products—mostly copra, and the operation of ships. The shoemaker should stick to his last. Now, then, listen to my ultimatum. If the sun sets today and leaves Casson and Pritchard the proprietors of rice stored anywhere except in our respective kitchens, you and I are going to dissolve partnership about an hour after the sun rises tomorrow. And, whether you realize it or not, the moment our partnership is dissolved, that moment you start tobogganing to ruin.”

Casson rose and stretched himself carelessly. “Oh, well, boy,” he replied, the patronizing quality of his words driving Dan into a silent fury, “suppose we leave the crossing of our bridges until we come to them.”

Dan’s fist smashed down on his desk with a thud that caused old Casson and the inkwell to jump simultaneously. “We’ll cross our bridges today,” he roared, “and we’ll start now. Sit down, you consummate old jackass!”

Casson trembled, paled and sat down very abruptly. “My dear Dan, control yourself,” he stammered.

“I’ll control myself, never fear. My chief job is controlling you. How dare you commit me to ruin without consulting me?”

“Ruin? Ridiculous! Only a fool would have neglected this golden opportunity—and I’m the senior member of this firm and a sixty percent owner in it.” Simulating righteous indignation, Casson too commenced to pound Dan’s desk.

“No bluffs!” Dan ordered, and took down the intercommunicating office telephone. The chief clerk responded. “Bring to me immediately all of the data pertaining to Mr. Casson’s rice operations,” he ordered. He hung up and faced Casson. “That will be all, Mr. Casson. From this moment you are out of the rice market and I’m in it. I’ll attend to the marketing of more rice than this firm is worth.”

“Pritchard, I forbid this!”

“Very well.” Dan reached for his hat. “I’m going up to our banker and tell him all about your rice deals. A business man should be as frank with his banker as with his lawyer. You’ll get your orders from the man higher up. If a loss threatens us, I prefer to have the blow fall now.”

The battle was over. “Oh, have it your own way, my boy!” Casson cried disgustedly and with a wave of his plump hand absolved himself from any and all disasters that might overtake the firm.

Half an hour later a well-known rice broker appeared in Dan’s office in response to the latter’s telephoned request.

“This firm,” Dan announced, “owns eight thousand tons of rice now loading for Havana, in Manila. It owns four thousand tons due to be loaded in thirty days at Shanghai. Is that rice quickly salable?”

“How soon do you want it sold?”

“Immediately.”

“Can do—at a price.”

“Do it!” Dan Pritchard commanded. “And if you can dig me up a cash customer—at a cent or two under the market—I’ll pay you an extra quarter of one per cent commission.”

“Cash, eh? Well, that’s a bit doubtful. However, that extra commission will make me work. I’ll report when I have something you can get your teeth into.”

“May I hope to hear from you today?”

“Scarcely. The market’s a bit off—somewhat sluggish. Trading has been pretty rapid of late, and the opinion prevails in some quarters that the market has about reached the point of saturation.”

“Many traders unloading?”

“Oh, no! Everybody is still holding on for a further rise in price, which I personally believe will come. We’re all optimists in the rice market.”

“Well, I’m a pessimist, but only because I do not care for rice. I have never dealt in it before and I don’t know anything about the rice market. Frankly, I’m closing out some trades of Mr. Casson’s under his protest. My instructions to you are practically to throw Casson’s trades overboard in order to get us out of the rice market.”

The broker eyed him keenly. “No necessity for getting stampeded and breaking the market,” he suggested.

The remainder of that day Dan devoted to Tamea’s business. First he went to the Appraisers’ Building and declared the pearls which Gaston had smuggled in on the Moorea. Having paid the duty on them, he called on the leading jewelers and had them appraised again, after which he added ten per cent to the appraisal value and sold the entire lot to a wholesale jeweler for cash. He reasoned, very wisely, that at the height of a period of such prosperity as the country had not hitherto known, the selected pearls of Gaston of the Beard would never bring a better price. He then deposited all of her funds to the credit of “Daniel Pritchard, guardian of Tamea Oluolu Larrieau, a minor,” in a number of savings banks. He next called upon his attorney, who drew up, at his request a formal petition to the Superior Court for letters of guardianship for Tamea.

Yes, Dan was a practical business man, a slave to the accepted forms. He was taking his office as Tamea’s guardian so very seriously that his position was analogous to that of the man who failed to see the woods because of the trees. It did not occur to him that the administration of an estate for a minor who knew nothing of the value of money and cared less, who had never known discipline and who yielded instantly to every elemental human desire and instinct, might be provocative of much distress and loss of sleep to him. On the contrary, what he did do was to return to his office hugely satisfied with the world as at that moment constituted.

CHAPTER XI

At four o’clock Dan telephoned his home and ascertained from Sooey Wan that Tamea and Maisie had gone out together.

He decided, therefore, to return to his office and look over the mail; perchance he might find there some comforting light on the rice situation.

As he came into the general office his secretary called to him that Mr. Mellenger was in his office, waiting to see him; that he had been waiting there since one o’clock.

Dan nodded comprehendingly and walked into the ambuscade. Mellenger was seated in Dan’s chair. He had his feet up on the window sill and in his left hand he held a cigar.

“Well, old horse thief,” he murmured with lazy cordiality, “you’ve given me quite a wait. Have you told the story to any other newspaper?”

“What story, you fat parasite?”

“Romantic skipper, leprosy, suicide, lovely half-caste daughter of royal blood, to be adopted by well-known young business man of highest social standing. Where is her photograph, and if no photo be available, where is she?” He touched with his toe a camera on the floor beside him. “Great story,” he continued. “Front page stuff. Got to give it a spread.”

“I could spread your nose for news all over your impudent countenance,” Dan retorted irritably. “There must be no publicity on this matter, Mel!”

“Got to be, my son. The doctor of the public health service who examined your shipmaster yesterday boarded the Moorea this morning to remove the man to quarantine, and was informed by the mate that the leprous one had gone over the rail and failed to come up. That doctor suspects Larrieau has escaped—and you know they can’t afford to have a leper running around on the loose. All the water front reporters have part of the story from the doctor and part from old Casson and they’re satisfied with that, but I’m here to get the facts.”

“I understand you’ve been here since one o’clock.”

Mellenger nodded. “My day off, Dan, but the city editor knew how close you and I have always been, so he called me up at my hotel and asked me to get the story.”

“Call him up and tell him that I decline to be interviewed.”

“Sorry, but I must interview you. I’ve already interviewed by telephone old Casson, Miss Morrison, Mrs. Pippy, Julia, Sooey Wan and Graves. The crew of the Moorea I have seen personally. I’ve got a crackerjack story but I want a better one. Sooey Wan said he thought you’d marry the queen about a week from tomorrow.”

“That Chink is absolutely out of control.”

“You leave him alone. He’s a friend of mine. And you’ll be interviewed!” He puffed at his cigar and looked sorrowfully out over the roofs of the city. “Only one way to handle a newspaper man,” he ruminated. “Receive him, ignore him or kill him. Ah, to be rich and beloved by a queen—to dwell in marble halls, with vassals and serfs rendering snappy service!”

“Mel, don’t be an ass. Don’t insist upon injecting a romantic note into this story.”

“Sooey Wan says he’ll back her against the field at a hundred to one, and any time Sooey has a celestial hunch I’ll play it.”

“Mel, you shouldn’t discuss my private affairs with my servants——”

The knight of the pad and pencil waved him into silence. “Sooey Wan isn’t a servant, Dan. He’s an institution who accepts a hundred and fifty dollars a month from you just to please you and perpetuate the institution. Why shouldn’t the old idol discuss you with me? Haven’t I been dining at your house every Thursday night for ten years? Sooey Wan knows I think almost as much of you as he does. Come, I’m listening.”

In five minutes the tale was told.

“Her photograph,” Mellenger insisted.

“You cannot have it.”

“One of the crew—by name Kahanaha—found this one for me in the late skipper’s desk,” the imperturbable Mellenger informed him, and produced a photograph of Tamea, hibiscus-crowned, barefooted, garbed in a dotted calico Mother Hubbard.

“Hideous as death,” Dan growled and snatched at it.

But Mellenger whisked it away. “It is, as you say, hideous, but if no other photograph is available we shall be forced regretfully to use it. Woodley, of the Chronicle, has one like it, but I know I can prevail upon him to hand it back for something more recent and not so colorful.”

“He shall have it.”

“You understood I couldn’t permit Woodley to scoop me on the photograph.”

There was a knock at the door and Miss Mather entered. “Miss Morrison and Miss Larrieau are in the general office, asking to see you, Mr. Pritchard.”

“God is good and the devil not half bad,” murmured Mellenger and picked up his camera. “Certainly, Miss Mather. Admit the ladies, by all means.”

To Dan he said: “I’ve always wished I might live to see a queen enter a room. Tall, stately, majestic, coldly beautiful, they sweep through the door with a long undulating stride—Judas priest!”

“Chéri! Look at me, Dan.” From the door, violently flung open, Tamea’s golden voice challenged his admiration. For one breathless instant she stood, alert, seemingly poised for flight, a glorious creature gloriously garbed, her arms held toward him, beseeching his approval; the next she was rushing to him, to fling those arms around his neck and implant a chaste salute upon each cheek.

She thrust him from her, ignored Mellenger and struck a pose.

“There, dear one,” she pleaded, “is your Tamea, then, so much uglier than the women of your own race?”

“You are perfectly glorious, Tamea.”

“As the aurora borealis,” Mellenger spoke up.

Tamea, seemingly not aware of his presence until now, turned upon him eyes which frankly sought a confirmation of the enthusiasm and pride she read in Dan’s. “You like me, too?”

“Queen, you’re adorable.”

He glanced past her to Maisie Morrison, standing, flushed and faintly smiling, in the doorway. Maisie was gazing with an eager intensity at Dan Pritchard, who saw her not. Mellenger twitched the tail of Dan’s coat, and the latter, as if summoned out of a trance, turned and gazed at him inquiringly.

“Introduce me, fool, introduce me!” Mellenger suggested, and Dan complied.

Maisie acknowledged the introduction with a cordial nod and a weary little smile, but Tamea thrust out her long, beautiful hand. “How do you do, Mr. Mel. How are all your people? Very well, I hope.” She swung around to give him a view of her from the back.

“Marvelous,” he declared. “Your Majesty is so beautiful I must make a picture of you at once.”

With the adroitness of his profession he set his camera up on the telephone stand, posed Tamea where the late afternoon sun shone through the window and photographed her half a dozen times; then, with a promise to Tamea to send her prints, he bowed himself out to have the films developed and write his story.

Dan in the meantime had provided seats for both his visitors.

“So that’s Mark Mellenger,” said Maisie. “I wish he had stayed longer. I have a curiosity to know anybody who loves you, Dan.”

“Old Mel is the salt of the earth,” he declared warmly. “When we were in college together he was editor of the college daily and I was by way of being a cartoonist. In those days we were the heroes of the campus, and thoughtless enthusiasts used to predict for each of us the prompt acquisition of a niche in the Hall of Fame. Mel was to write the great American novel and I was to create riots among millionaires anxious to buy my pictures.” He shrugged ruefully, nor did he note Maisie’s wistful smile as he turned to the radiant Tamea. “I’ll paint you, you tropical goddess,” he soliloquized audibly. “You’ve had a fine time in the shops today, eh, my dear?”

“It was very wonderful, Dan Pritchard.”

Dan turned to Maisie. “You’re so good and kind, Maisie, and your taste is always so exquisite. In this instance it is more than exquisite. It is exotic.”

“I cannot claim credit for it, Dan. All I did was bring Tamea to the best shops. What she is wearing is entirely of her own selection.”

“But, Maisie, how could she?”

“You forget that Tamea is half French. She has been born with a positive genius for artistic adornment.”

He and Tamea exchanged approving smiles. “And is our Tamea an extravagant girl?” he queried.

Never the twain shall meet