The little joke which he was having all to himself put Ryder in a better humor. Mrs. Judson grew more animated, and Ruth did her best to make the impromptu occasion pleasant.
"Just think! this is a bridal supper," simpered Mrs. Judson. "We ought to celebrate—just a little. It's wicked, I know, to think of champagne at such a time. But we must have something more sparkling than water to drink this pretty lady's health in. If you will allow me, Mr.—er—Romeo——"
"I could not think of your ordering anything at my table," said Ryder with an involuntary frown. "But if you ladies would enjoy a glass of wine we will have some, of course."
"Now, that is gallant of you," cried the widow, forseeing a luxury that she loved, but seldom paid for. "When poor dear Horace was alive we had it often for dinner. He was inordinately fond of the good things of life."
"But his taste in wives was not very select," thought John Ryder, his disgust growing.
Ruth had crimsoned, but her signal to Ryder to order no wine was unheeded. To tell the truth he was a little piqued. It was Ruth's fault that they were in this situation. She had made friends first with Mrs. Judson.
But when the waiter brought the bucket of ice in which nestled a quart bottle, the very atmosphere about their table seemed to be enlivened. The widow's dusky cheek soon glowed, her eyes sparkled, and her vivacity seemed to increase with the good things placed before her.
Ryder noted, too, that Ruth's eyes held in their depths a sparkle—a point of fire—that had not been there before. And those eyes, brilliant at one moment and the next swimming as though in unshed tears, rested upon his countenance most of the time. Her smile was for him. She played the hostess prettily; but her attention, after all, was for her husband, and the color came and went in her cheeks in a manner most charming.
She was a woman in love—in love with the man she had married—with every thought of her soul and every fibre of her being.
A realization of this fact swept from the chambers of her husband's mind every atom of suspicion. No woman could look at a man as Ruth looked at him and withhold in her secret heart any mystery that might bring shame upon him or disaster to herself.
"Romeo, you are a lucky man," whispered the widow, tapping him on the arm with the expressive lorgnette and leaning forward to put her full, red lips close to his ear, but with her laughing eyes on Ruth's face to see how the bride took another woman's familiarity with her husband. "She loves you as one woman in a thousand ever loves her husband."
"I am a lucky man," repeated Ryder, though more to himself than to the cynical widow.
The latter shook a playful—and diamond bedewed—finger at Ruth. "You are giving him a great advantage, Juliet. Let a man once realize that you love him so devotedly, and he'll ride rough shod over your heart. It's always the way," and she sighed heavily—"though," thought John Ryder, "the sigh may be caused more by the supper she has eaten than by any sentimental emotion."
"Yes, Juliet," rambled on the wined, and consequently quite happy, Mrs. Judson, "take the advice of a woman of experience, and do not give your heart too completely into any man's keeping. I am not old—oh, no! for we women who live and love do not grow old—but I have lived more years than have you, sweet girl, and I have loved—and been loved," she simpered, "and I tell you it is always better to keep the driving hand."
Ruth shivered in disgust. Ryder kept a stony face and began to eat the meal before him, which before he had scarcely touched.
"Do you see that woman over there?" suddenly questioned Mrs. Judson. "They say she is the most abominable——"
"Oh, Mrs. Judson," and this time Ruth spoke with decision, "in time we shall learn to know our fellow guests perhaps. Tonight let us talk about things—not people;" and with a power rare in so young and inexperienced a person, she kept the talk from again wandering to personalities or to sentimentalities.
Ryder ignored the suggestion of any more wine, and the widow finally bethought her of the fact that the lights might go out soon and leave her in the dark. So the little supper party broke up.
Almost everybody else had left the room save a young woman whom Ryder had noticed before—a plainly dressed, freckled, sharp-featured girl, who ate alone at a table near the door. That is, she was supposed to eat; but in reality she read most diligently a rather dingy paper covered pamphlet that was folded into small compass beside her plate.
As Ryder and his party passed out he saw the girl devouring the story she was reading with a mouthful from her plate poised on her fork. So eager was she over the book, and so excited, that she gestured with this mouthful, jabbing the fork to and fro as though duelling with an imaginary enemy and feeling within herself, without doubt, all the emotions of the characters in the fiction she was perusing.
Mrs. Judson, now in a very happy state, indented Ryder's ribs with an irritating thumb, and whispered shrilly: "Do you know who she is?"
"I haven't the pleasure of the young lady's acquaintance."
"She's the house detective," giggled the heavy lady. "Isn't she funny? She's reading a five-cent detective thriller. She gave me a pile of them to read once. She says—he, he!—they feed the imagination."
Ryder looked back at the plain-featured girl. She was still waving the mouthful on her fork, wrapped in her novel, as he and the two women of his party went on to the elevator. He left Ruth and Mrs. Judson to go up in that while he went for a final conference with George and the steward before retiring himself. The porters had fixed the bracket lamps in the main corridors of the hotel (and there were none too many) while one was at the clerk's desk and was already lighted.
"Back to the days of our grandfathers," said George, grinning. "'The light of other days.' Say! some of these fellows, Mr. Ryder, are frothing at the mouth about you."
"I thought Colonel Brack——"
"Not him. The old boy's been taken off to his own room by his wife. That lady is of the salt of the earth, and she knows just how to handle Aurelius. She's been handling him for a good many years. He's nowhere near such a 'howling wolf' in his own coral as he appears outside.
"But some of the others——"
He halted, for Jimson, the man with the invalid wife, suddenly appeared in a glow of indignation, and George let him speak for himself.
"See here, Mr. Ryder," he sputtered, "I am not challenging your right to make money out of our necessity—that seems to be your business," and he sneered so that it must have hurt him. "But at least you should have some humanity—some bowels of compassion. My wife is ill and almost helpless; the last time I was up there the rooms were already becoming chilled because of the decreased steam pressure.
"You positively must let me have one of those stoves Al has there in the storeroom. I don't care what you want for it. I'll pay. I must have one."
"They are not for sale, Mr. Jimson," Ryder responded coldly.
"Mr. Ryder, this is outrageous! I will give you ten dollars for one of those stoves."
"That would be only about fifty per cent. profit on the large stoves, Mr. Jimson. Do you think you would care to do that if you were in my place?"
"I—I'll give you twenty—fifty dollars, then," Jimson blurted out.
Here George interfered. The clerk seemed really put out with little Jimson.
"You should take a walk around and cool off, Mr. Jimson—and Colonel Brack, too. Some of you have been insulting Mr. Ryder for two hours, and jawing your heads off about what he's done. And you don't know what he's done."
"Eh?" bristled Jimson, yet puzzled.
"He has done what none of the rest of you had public spirit enough to do," went on the hotel clerk. "If anybody pays him for what he has laid out for the comfort of the guests of this hotel it will be the Barnaby estate, when this trouble is finally straightened out. Five minutes ago, Mr. Jimson, Mr. Ryder had one of the largest oil heaters he bought and a nice reading lamp sent up to your wife."
"Oh, by Jove! I—I thought—— I didn't understand——"
Mr. Jimson's words rambled off into a stammering monologue. Ryder had handed George back the list he had been looking over. "That will be about all, I guess," he said. "I'm going to turn in. Good-night!" and ignoring the apologizing Jimson he made for the stairway.
The dining-room was closed. The last elevator boy came out of his cage and locked the door. The hands of the clock in the foyer lacked but a few minutes of midnight.
"Gentlemen," said the clerk from his station at the desk. "The dynamos will run but ten minutes longer. The café is closed for the night. I advise you to go to your rooms."
The sharp-faced girl whom Ryder had noticed in the dining-room had taken up her station near the foot of the stairs. She had the folded paper novel in her hand. She looked particularly wideawake, and the literary pabulem she so enjoyed might indeed spur her imagination. She was evidently on duty for the night.
"Gad!" exclaimed one man. "We might as well be stopping at a Mills' Hotel. They send you to bed with the chickens," and with laughter and jest the company slowly broke up.
The telephone buzzed at the clerk's elbow. He took down the receiver, listened a moment, and then spoke to the house detective:
"Miss Solomons, you're wanted in Parlor A."
Ryder, in serious mood, was already climbing the stairs. The young woman passed him like a shot, and still he was not aroused from his reverie. He was tired. His work for the comfort of the hotel guests was done, and he uttered a sigh of satisfaction at the thought. There was positively nothing else that could happen to balk his desire to be alone with his wife.
CHAPTER X
THE BEGINNING OF A NIGHTMARE
Coming to Parlor A on his way to his apartment, Ryder saw lights and heard a buzz of excited voices. He saw the house detective, and stopped a moment to see what had brought her here in such haste.
Drawn into a corner at the end of the room near the huge picture of "The Cheesemonger" was an invalid's chair, which the colored man, James, had evidently just made up as a bed for his crotchety master. And there was old Cudger, in a blanket robe, nightcap, and carpet slippers, wrathfully facing three women who, so Ryder thought, should have long since been in bed.
Eying both parties stood the sharp-featured Miss Solomons, her novel in one hand, the other on her hip and her head on one side. The chatter of the women, the grumbling of Cudger, and the chuckling of James, who seemed to find much amusement in the situation, made little impression upon the phenomenal calm of the house detective.
"Now, then!" the latter said at last, "let's get this thing straight. Mr. Cudger has permission to sleep here to watch his oil painting tonight. What are you ladies doin' here? Lights'll go out in two minutes anyway."
"It is disgraceful!" ejaculated one woman, a hard-featured person with glasses and a "transformation" that did not match her back hair in color. "This man coming into the ladies' parlor in his nightclothes——"
"Ha! Don't expect me to sleep in my day clothes, do you?" snapped Mr. Cudger.
"What are you ladies here for?" reiterated the sharp voice of Miss Solomons. "I ask you."
"We were holding a committee meeting—a very important meeting," said the hard-featured one. "You know very well, young woman, that the Society for the Betterment of the Condition of Delinquent Girls will hold their convention here next week. We are the advance committee of the S.B.C.D.G.
"All right," interrupted Miss Solomons. "But you had better advance right to bed, ladies. Lights out in one minute. Talk it over in the morning. Mr. Cudger has the call on this parlor tonight."
"But I tell you, young woman, we have a right to hold our meeting here, no matter what the time is," cried the militant lady.
"In the dark?" exclaimed the house detective. "No, ma'am!" and she advanced upon the three much as she might have upon a flock of chickens, literally shooing them out of the parlor.
But once in the hall the women stopped to parley some more.
"Miss Solomons, this is a perfect outrage—an outrage not to be permitted in a well-ordered house, such as the Pinewood Inn is supposed to be," stormed the hard-featured woman, and there was the ring of war in her voice.
"Now, Mrs. Dent," put in the oily voice of a large brawny woman, another of the three ejected committee women, "Miss Solomons is not to blame. Miss Solomons, no doubt, is deeply interested in our work"—Miss Solomons sniffed and the woman with the "transformation" glared angrily at the house detective—"but this awful Bangs——"
"Miss Solomons is to blame!" interrupted Mrs. Dent, in a hard, decisive tone. "If she had the judgment of a kitten——"
"Now, see here, ladies!" flared out the house detective, "we're not a-goin' to have any meanderings around the hallways in the dark this night. There go the lights now. You go, and go now!"
The women scuttled away without further words, and Miss Solomons disappeared in the darkness.
John Ryder, vastly amused, changed his opinion then and there regarding the appointment of a woman for such a position as Miss Solomons held. No man could have handled this situation with such vigor and promptness.
A smile wreathed his lips as he went on to his own door. Along the corridor before him, now illumined only by an occasional bracket lamp, he saw flitting the lighted candles of the other late guests seeking their beds.
Ryder opened the door of his suite expecting to see a picture similar to the one he had observed when he had come to the room before supper. But, although the lamp he had sent up was burning on the reading table, Ruth was not present. The room was empty and the atmosphere of it seemed chill as he stepped in.
Nor was there a light in the inner room. He did not hear a sound. Where had his wife gone? Was she with Mrs. Judson in that lady's rooms? And where were they?
Ryder was suddenly disgusted again. For heaven's sake! couldn't Ruth break away from that woman? And after the experience they had had with her at the supper table, too!
He had heard certain of his married acquaintances occasionally curse the interference of some "woman friend" in the otherwise quiet pool of their domesticity. Was he going to butt up against something like that at the very start? It could not be possible that Ruth was enamored of the society of such a woman as the vulgar Mrs. Judson!
He turned up the wick of the lamp and strode with it to the door of the bedroom, flinging back the hangings. Instantly the light flooded the chamber, and a prettily disheveled figure started up out of a nest of pillows.
"Oh! I was napping!" she cried with a tremulous little laugh. "What a bad girl I am! You were so long, Johnny, and I was so sleepy. It must be very late."
She had made ready for the night. Her beautiful hair was in two thick plaits over her shoulders—those shoulders so white and soft and beautifully curved betrayed by the cut of her nightgown and the lacy negligee she had thrown over it.
As she slipped out of bed he saw her slim bare ankles, her feet thrust into swansdown slippers. They were like a child's. She seemed more childish and appealing to him than she had before. Ryder felt momentary shame again that he should have been impatient.
"It is late," he admitted. "I am afraid, Ruth, you have had a very tiresome evening. This hasn't been just the sort of a beginning to our married life that we might wish."
She laughed merrily. "I guess neither of us imagined a honeymoon like this, dear. I used to try to think what you would be like after all these years—and you were so far away, too, John. It—it was like a dream——"
Ryder had stepped back to replace the lamp upon the table. He almost dropped it. What was she saying? But before he could find his voice or move from the spot where surprise had frozen him, the door which he had failed to lock burst in and Mrs. Judson, in a state of mind—and of dishabille—that completely shocked John Ryder, entered.
A large woman in bedroom wrapper and tears is not a fetching sight. And when she came down the room like a cyclone and flung herself with abandon into his arms, he—well, John Ryder swore!
Flung herself with abandon into John Ryder's arms
Not loud, but deep and with a fervency that could not be mistaken. She came within an ace of toppling him over, and he dragged her to the couch and dropped her there—the springs creaking a pained objection to her sudden weight.
"Great heavens above!" grumbled the exasperated Ryder. "What's the matter with the creature now?"
"Oh, what is it?" asked Ruth from the chamber, and he heard the patter of her slippered feet as she ran to the door.
"It's your friend, Mrs. Judson," said the harassed bridegroom with disgust. "She's come in here to have a fit—or something." Then to himself he added: "Why in hades didn't I lock that door? But she'd have busted it in and come right through. Talk about a honeymoon! Ye gods! was ever a man——"
Here he was startled by Mrs. Judson's hysterical acrobatics. She was gasping and crying and laughing, all at once. Her state was plainly volcanic.
"What the deuce is to be done with her?" he demanded of his wife.
Ruth brushed him aside and took charge of the patient, whom he had been trying to hold down upon the cushions by main force.
"The ammonia bottle—on the bureau in there—quick!" Ruth commanded, and Ryder ran to obey like a lamb.
Ruth thrust the unstoppered bottle under Mrs. Judson's nose. The ammonia almost choked Ryder when he got a whiff of it; and it brought the widow up standing and trying to catch her breath. She had been by no means unconscious, and it flashed through John Ryder's brain that she might have heard what he said about her.
Mrs. Judson choked for a moment, sputtered, uttered a stifled shriek or two, and then fell to crying more quietly, but rocking herself to and fro on the couch and wringing her bejeweled hands.
"Well, I'm hanged!" muttered Ryder. "This is pretty near the limit!"
Ruth turned to look at him for a moment. Her eyes suddenly sparkled with merriment and she shook a playful finger at him.
"You're like other men, I see," she whispered. "I guess I'm glad. I began to think you were almost an angel, hubby."
Mrs. Judson monopolized her attention then. She began to pour out a tale of woe that Ryder could scarcely understand; but it seemed Marie had left her—had run away while she was at supper—and had gone with some of the hotel help in a wagon back into the country where there was a station on another railroad—a long and toilsome journey, but anything to get away from a hotel that had no heat or electric lights!
"And she's robbed me—I know she has! Of course she has! Don't you say she hasn't!" chattered the large lady, her bosom heaving, threatening to go into another convulsion. "Send for Miss Solomons. She must find my brooches—my rings—my necklace——"
"Who is Miss Solomons?" asked Ruth wonderingly.
"The house detective," said Ryder, and was very glad thereafter that he said no more, for a cold voice at the open door of the suite said clearly:
"What's going on here? Who wants Miss Solomons?"
Mrs. Judson had gone waveringly on to another phase of her trouble. "And I tried to undress myself; but I didn't dare go to bed. And then the lights went out and—and——"
She trailed off again into spasmodic cries. Miss Solomons marched down the room to where the bridegroom and his bride were endeavoring to pacify the large lady.
"Huh!" sniffed the house detective, high disgust expressed upon her keen face. "It's that Judson woman. What's the matter with her now?"
The question, Ryder thought, was to the point. At that moment Mrs. Judson's gyrations reminded him of those of an eel upon a hot frying pan. Personally he was becoming frightened.
"Shouldn't she have a doctor?" he demanded.
"A barrel stave would do her more good," declared Miss Solomons harshly.
"If I had a little aromatic spirits I'd fix her!" exclaimed Ruth, biting her lower lip either to stifle a desire to laugh or to cry, Ryder could not tell which.
"Doctor!" sniffed the house detective, glaring at the hysterical woman.
But Ryder rushed to the telephone and called the office. George answered at once.
"Mrs. Judson is ill—here in our rooms," Ryder said. "Isn't there a doctor in the neighborhood?"
"There's one in the house. I'll send Dr. Hoyle right up, Mr. Ryder," said the clerk.
"Hoyle won't thank you for troubling him," Miss Solomons sneered. But as Mrs. Judson began on another spasm she did not leave Ruth all the work of holding the large lady upon the couch.
"My soul! this is awful!" groaned Ryder, coming back just as Mrs. Judson began another series of convulsions, for which indulgence in public she was not dressed exactly right.
"Say!" exclaimed the house detective to Ryder. "This is no place for a man. You had better go."
"Hang it!" groaned Ryder, realizing that Miss Solomons was right, and starting for the door again. "Why couldn't she have gone somewhere else to have her fit?"
Just then the doctor's welcome knock sounded. Ryder let him in. The medical man appeared, candle in one hand and his black case in the other. The ridiculousness of walking about this big hotel carrying a candle stuck into the neck of a whisky bottle did not appear to strike any of them at the moment as humorous.
Dr. Hoyle was a young but very businesslike practitioner. He handed his candle to Ryder, strode down the room, and sat down beside the widow, one end of whom each of the other women was trying to hold to the couch.
"Half a glass of water, please," he said to Ruth. "Let her go, Miss Solomons. She isn't going to kick any more now."
"Gee!" gasped the house detective, getting up from her knees and striking her usual attitude, one hand on her hip and the other clutching the paper novel.
The doctor selected a vial from his case, dropped a little of its contents into the water, which instantly turned the water cloudy and white; then held the glass to the patient's lips.
"Drink this," he commanded.
Mrs. Judson's jaws seemed to be locked and her eyes were tightly closed. She breathed stertorously. Ryder, looking on from afar, was actually frightened. If that woman dared to die in this room——
"Drink this, Mrs. Judson!" said the doctor again.
No result. Then the professional man leaned forward, with the glass still at her lips, and, seizing the large lady's nose, deliberately wrung it! The seemingly fixed jaws unlocked instantly and Mrs. Judson uttered an entirely different cry from her former painful sounds.
"Gee!" sighed Miss Solomons again, but with satisfaction. "This is no place for us, Mister. Come on! Dr. Hoyle can manage her without our help," and she started for the door.
CHAPTER XI
THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES
"Drink this!" the doctor said again to the large lady, and, choking and sputtering, Mrs. Judson did as she was told. Ryder looked on in amazement. Ruth, seeing his face, and Miss Solomon's back being turned, broke into a giggle and cast herself helplessly into Ryder's arms.
"Oh! you funny, funny man!" she murmured. "I like to see a doctor work over a woman with hysterics—they know 'em so well!"
The house detective stalked out, leaving the door of the suite open. Ryder did not know whether to follow her or remain. Mrs. Judson was evidently determined not to give up the role of patient too easily. She caught the hand that had so cruelly wrung her nose and begged the doctor not to leave her.
He said he would not—in that sympathetically disgusted tone that medical men use on such occasions. He felt himself in a foolish position, and another man was looking on.
"Your husband, Madam?" he asked Ruth shortly, nodding toward Ryder.
"Yes," she said with a blush.
"Better ask him to retire while we get Mrs. Judson to bed. She has had these attacks before. She will not be over this one in a hurry." Then he added in a lower tone: "What's the matter now? Is her lapdog sick?"
"Her maid has left her," Ruth said, having hard work, as Ryder saw, to keep from laughing. But he felt no desire to laugh himself. Undress that woman and put her to bed here? John Ryder was getting desperate. This nightmare of untoward incidents was altogether too much for his self-control.
"That's a serious matter," grunted the doctor. "Neither of us will get much rest tonight if Mrs. Judson follows her usual course. Perhaps you can get somebody to help you, Madam——"
"I am used to nursing sick people," Ruth told him demurely. "I can follow your instructions exactly, Doctor. In fact, I have had considerable experience in nursing. In the present state of the hotel's affairs it might be difficult to get a maid."
"I suppose that is so," the medical man admitted. "Well, the first thing to do is to get her into bed."
Ryder, who felt that he never, on short acquaintance, had so disliked a man as he did this physician, had edged off to the further end of the room. Ruth came to him, still with laughter expressed in her quivering face and voice.
"You are only a 'mere man'—you cannot stay here, hubby," she whispered, putting her lips up to his. "You will have to go out until we get Mrs. Judson into my bed. Then—if she gets quiet—you may come back. I will sit up to tend to her and you can nap on the couch. But don't go too far away."
"Why, hang it, Ruth!" he complained, not at all the business man now, "can't she be lugged back to her own room?"
"But that would be cruel. She was frightened there, because she was alone and the lights went out. I should have to go with her, you know. Come now! be knightly, Mr. Romeo," she added, her voice trailing off into a laugh as she pushed him gently out of the room.
John Ryder walked away about ten steps. Then he stopped, and smote one clenched fist into his other open palm.
"Well, I am hanged!" he ejaculated, and with fervor, "Some honeymoon! What?
"For a man to be turned out of his rooms at this hour of the night, and for a confounded, silly, hysterical old woman! Bah!"
John Ryder drew out a cigar, bit off the end savagely and lit it in direct contradiction to hotel rules, and puffed away like a donkey engine while he paced the carpeted corridor.
He was no longer the man with the welfare of his fellow guests at heart—particularly of the women and children in Pinewood Inn. He was tired, he was sleepy, and he had had enough excitement to last him for some time to come.
The procession of incidents which had enlivened his existence since the Minnequago had docked were flung upon the screen of his memory again, and he reviewed them like a spectator at a moving picture show.
He remembered in what a nervous state he awaited the steamship's docking, expecting some word from the beautiful girl whom he had learned to love during the passage across the Atlantic.
Having not seen her to speak to for some hours, he had half feared to have her accept his proposal, now that he had made it. But the instant he saw her on the wharf awaiting his coming, he had flung all such hesitation and uncertainty to the winds. She seemed in her appearance all that was good and beautiful.
Then followed in swift succession the obtaining of the license, his own jumbled business at his offices, the drive to the minister's, the marriage ceremony, their hurried departure by train, their arrival at the Pinewood Inn in safety despite the accident at the bridge, their cozy little dinner, and then——
In more somber colors followed the chain of circumstances which had finally culminated in his present plight. Was ever a bridegroom up against such confounded luck?
Some honeymoon, indeed!
He tried to laugh; but his position was too serious, and his laugh was choked off by the time it was started. He swore softly again and paced on down the hallway. Coming to the door of the parlor, he looked in.
Old Cudger was asleep in the invalid's chair with a rug thrown over him. Candles, in saucers for sconces, burned before the picture, all other lights in the room being extinguished. Marching up and down the rug like a sentinel with his master's gold-headed cane upon his shoulder, was James, the colored factotum of the owner of Van Scamp's "Cheesemonger."
"It does look as though the hotel were in a state of siege," muttered Ryder. "It's an experience that none of us will forget for many a long day. Heigh ho! I wish I'd never come into the ranch," and he stretched his arms above his head and yawned. "This isn't my idea of a nice, quiet honeymoon."
At this end of the parlor the shadows were heavy. But Ryder saw the outlines of several comfortable looking chairs. Plowing up and down the corridor waiting for Ruth to call him back, began to pall upon his mind. He ventured into the big room.
His feet made no sound upon the rugs. James marched back and forth in perfect unconsciousness of his presence. Ryder made his way to a big, sleepy-hollow chair, fumbled for the arms, found them, and sank back restfully into—some other person's lap!
It would be hard telling whether John Ryder or the person in the easy chair, was the most startled. The former leaped up with a surprised grunt. The other darted out of the chair and, before the man could get more than a yard away, he felt the end of a revolver thrust right against his waistline!
"Hold on!" hissed an excited voice. "What you doing here? Trying to get fresh with me, or are you just a ninny?"
John Ryder, had he not been for the moment speechless, would certainly have owned to the final accusation. "Ninny" it was! If he were not one, he certainly would not be wandering about this hotel instead of peaceably occupying the suite for which he was paying thirty dollars a day.
"March out there under the lamp till I get a look at you! Quick now!" jerked out the person with the weapon.
Ryder began to do as he was told—backward. He could see the lighted end of the room. James, his face graying with fear, was squatting down behind the invalid chair in which his sleeping master reclined. Evidently the row at the upper end of the room had startled the negro more than it had the two who were taking part in it.
Ryder's brusk antagonist jerked him swiftly around into the corridor, under the nearest bracket lamp.
"Hugh!" exclaimed Miss Solomons. "So it's you? I've had my eye on you for some time. What you doing here, anyway? And what you doin' back there in those rooms where that Judson had a fit? You one of her friends? What's your name?"
"I am Mr. Ryder," he told the house detective mildly, noting that the paper novel was still clutched fast in her left hand.
She grunted, tucking the revolver out of sight. Evidently, whatever she suspected John Ryder of, she did not consider him dangerous.
"Ryder, heh?" jerked out the house detective. "Same one that beat 'em all to the lamps and candles? Not a crook, then. Anyway, not a little crook. What you doin' in those rooms just now?" she repeated. "Mrs. Judson still there?"
"Yes," Ryder said with vast disgust. "They are putting her to bed. Turned me out."
"And why not?" snapped Miss Solomons. "You didn't expect to stay there all night, did you?"
"Why not?" Ryder demanded with sudden vexation. "I'm paying for them."
"That may be. I don't doubt it," the house detective said sharply. "But we don't allow anything like that here."
She gave Ryder a little shove toward the stairs, and turned abruptly back into the parlor.
"All right, Je-eames!" he heard her drawl to the colored man. "No gun-play this time. Come out and do your goose-step up and down the rug. And if anybody else blunders in here while I'm napping, keep 'em out of my lap, will you?"
To tell the truth John Ryder was so utterly amazed that he could not reply to the house detective. He scarcely knew what she meant by her innuendo; yet he felt rising anger. She seemed to have doubted the status of Ruth and himself as a properly wedded pair!
Nightmare? It was a saturnalia of misunderstanding and vexing incidents! John Ryder would have been glad right then and there to take Ruth and escape from the Pinewood Inn, even if they had to walk through the night to some other shelter. Later he wished with all his heart that he had done just that.
CHAPTER XII
SOME EXPERIENCES OF A BRIDEGROOM
John Ryder, just here, hearing voices and laughter—even the clink of glasses—from the floor below, felt a desire for human society—for speech with sane people. His mind was in such a chaotic condition that he was not sure whether these recent remarkable incidents had really happened to him, or he had dreamed them.
He arrived at the top of the broad flight leading down to the foyer. There were candles glimmering at the clerk's desk beside the bracket lamp, and several of the guests were keeping George company. Jimson was one; there were three men whom Ryder had not before particularly noticed; and there was White, the man of mystery. The latter was sitting rather sullenly with the others, sipping some concoction in a tall glass—which, indeed, they were all doing.
If for no other reason than to get a closer look at John B. White, Ryder joined the party. He was welcomed vociferously by the clerk. Jimson considered it was up to him to pacify the man he had so foolishly and impulsively insulted.
"Hope you'll let me mix you one, Mr. Ryder," Jimson said. "Just to show there's no hard feelings, you know."
"Go ahead," Ryder said, conscious that White was watching him with clouded eyes. Indeed, the man seemed unable to keep his gaze off John Ryder.
"How's Mrs. Judson?" asked George, with a knowing grin.
"Confound her!" ejaculated the bridegroom. "She's turned me out of house and home."
"Ho, ho! And you a newly married man!" cackled one of the crowd.
"On his honeymoon," said Jimson. Then he blew a sigh. "Well, it might be worse, Mr. Ryder. You don't know what it is to have an invalid wife."
"Or a heavyweight, like the Lady Judson," chuckled another.
Ryder showed he was not deeply interested in these witticisms. George said rather lamely:
"Well, a man's got to make way for the ladies."
"Especially when they are hysterical," Jimson added. "I remember when my wife——"
He started on a story that did not interest Ryder in the least. He was the host—it was his private bottle they were sampling—so the clerk and all but White and Ryder gave the narrator some attention.
White rose up suddenly and tapped John Ryder on the shoulder. "I beg your pardon, Mr.—er—did I catch your name?"
"Ryder."
"Ah! Mr. Ryder!" The man spoke rather gaspingly, as though something interfered with his breathing. He gazed at Ryder with eyes that burned strangely. Altogether he did not seem in good health, and again Ryder wondered if he was quite right in his mind. Perhaps ill health might explain his odd actions, after all.
"I feel I owe you an apology—an explanation," said White, still in a low voice. "Will—will you come over here a moment—to this bench? Give me your attention briefly?"
"Guess I can," said Ryder. "There seems nothing much pressing on my time just now," he added grimly, and followed White to the gloomier side of the office where the two men seated themselves on one of the leather-covered divans just under the stairway.
"You see," said White, still in that stifled tone. "I—I came down here expecting to intercept—that is, to meet—er—friends. I followed her down here—— Ahem! Them, I mean; and I couldn't find——"
His voice trailed off into silence, while Ryder watched him in the dusk with reviving interest. There was surely something wrong with this man's brain. If ever John Ryder had seen a man with beclouded mind, John B. White was that man.
"And I saw—saw your—er—wife," went on White. "She looked so like—well, like what I thought my friend—one of my friends—would look——"
"My wife looks like somebody you know?" Ryder asked in that loud and cheerful tone which the average person uses in addressing one who he thinks is not mentally balanced.
"Ye-es. As I thought she'd look. And her name——"
"What name?" demanded Ryder.
White ignored the question. "You see, I've been away so long," he murmured. "I didn't know just how she would look. We had never exchanged photographs in all that time."
Ryder glanced at him curiously. "You come from Rome, the clerk tells me?"
"Yes," admitted the man, looking startled again. "I—I only recently arrived in the country."
"Recently arrived from an insane asylum, more like," thought John Ryder.
"And, then, your wife," reiterated White. "You—you haven't been married to her long?"
"I should say not!" groaned Ryder. "Not long enough to get used to being a married man. We were only married yesterday."
"Not married here?" gasped White.
"No. In New York. Just before coming here," replied Ryder, wonderingly. "And I wish heartily we hadn't come here. We're in a nice mess."
"Yes—unfortunate," said White. "Your case is indeed unhappy. A bridegroom and bride. Dear, dear!"
Ryder still gazed at him wonderingly. "If ever I have seen a man who has slipped his trolley, this White is that man!" he thought.
"I—I suppose you and Mrs. Ryder had looked forward to a very different sort of a honeymoon?" said White, bending forward to devour his companion's face in the dusk, his own eyes glowing in the wild way which had already attracted Ryder's notice.
"Indeed yes," Ryder admitted, with a chuckle, the drink Jimson had mixed for him having had a soothing effect. "But we were neither of us thinking of honeymoons when we embarked on the Minnequago."
The man started. "You—you mean when you embarked on the ship? You only landed from her yesterday morning?"
"That is when she docked," the puzzled Ryder replied. "We were married not long after. My wife, you see, is an English girl——"
"An English girl! Yes?" A faint tone of disappointment colored the remark. White subsided for a moment into deep thought. Suddenly, as Ryder was about to rise, the other clutched his arm feverishly. "I beg your pardon! One other question—if you will bear with me, Mr. Ryder. Will—will you tell me your wife's name?
"Why, Ryder!" ejaculated the other.
"I—I mean before she was married?"
"Mont—Ruth Mont," and Ryder broke away from the man and walked to the desk to set his empty glass upon the counter. George was telling a story—one of those interminably long yarns which begin, "There was an Irishman, and." He was the only person who was facing the divan on which White was sitting.
Suddenly the clerk's face turned puttylike, and he stopped, his jaw hanging. He glared over the shoulders of his audience.
"What's the matter with you?" demanded the nervous Jimson, jumping up.
"Look there!" exclaimed George. "What's the matter with that man?"
They all wheeled at his question to look. But while the others were moved first by White's appearance, as George had been, Ryder saw the face of Miss Solomons, the house detective, hanging over the balustrade of the stairs, just above the place where he had been sitting with White. She dodged back out of sight; and then Ryder saw what had startled the hotel clerk.
White had slid down in his seat, with only the small of his back resting on its edge, the back of his head rigidly against the settee back and his legs stretched stiffly before him. His face was purple in color and he was gasping for breath.
"The man's in a fit!" cried Jimson.
There was a concerted rush toward White, all but Ryder joining in the stampede. He remained by the desk, staring up the stairway and wondering what was the matter with Miss Solomons, who he supposed had gone back to her broken sleep in the parlor chair.
"What the deuce does the girl want?" he thought. "Was she spying on me or on White? And what is the matter with White, all of a sudden? What threw him into such a state? What did he ask me last? Why! Ruth's maiden name——"
George came charging back to the desk.
"I say, Mr. Ryder! isn't Doctor Hoyle up in your rooms?"
"I left him there," grumbled Ryder. "He and my wife are putting that Judson woman to bed."
George tore around the desk to the telephone. He stuck the proper plug into the board and began to pump the annunciator in Ryder's apartment. The other men picked the stiffened White up and laid him on the couch.
CHAPTER XIII
THE EAGLE EYE OF THE HOUSE DETECTIVE
George began at once to shout "Hullo!" into the instrument. Finally he got a reply from Suite Three. It was the doctor himself who answered the insistent call from the hotel desk.
"Yes, this is George!" ejaculated the clerk. "Come down here to the office at once, Doc. Something's happened to Mr. White——
"What is it? I dunno. He's fallen in a fit—looks awful—face as black as your hat!"
The clerk was excited and he spread it on rather thick. Still, White did look bad.
George came away from the telephone. "He'll be right down," he said aloud. "I guess your wife's scared, Mr. Ryder. I heard her scream."
Ryder was immediately troubled. His own nerves were jumping. No wonder if Ruth should become frightened. There was nothing he could do for White, and he started for the stairway. Half way up the flight he passed the doctor, bag in hand, charging down. This was certainly a busy night for the hotel physician.
And then, as Ryder reached the top of the stairway, he saw another figure coming along the corridor—a white-faced, gasping woman, with eyes like coals, rushing like a whirlwind into his arms—a whirlwind of laces and ruffles and ribbons, with a boudoir cap over one ear and her tiny bare feet twinkling in and out under her trailing robes.
It was Ruth, and she was the picture of fright.
"My heavens!" gasped Ryder, "what's the matter, girlie? What's frightened you so?"
"Oh!" She saw him then and clutched him tightly about the neck. "I—I thought something had happened to you. They said so—I heard the clerk speaking through the 'phone to the doctor——"
"Oh, no," said Ryder soothingly. "It was another man. He was taken ill down there in the office." He could not tell her, now that she was so disturbed, that it was the stranger who had already annoyed her. "Why, sweetheart, don't sob so! I'm all right. Don't you see I am? Never was sick a day that I remember in my whole life. You couldn't——"
He looked over her head, and there was the sharp face of Miss Solomons at the parlor door. The sharp eye of the house detective seemed devouring them both. Ryder felt a shocking desire to consign both the house detective and Mrs. Judson to the same place—and that a spot not often mentioned in polite company.
But to Ruth he murmured: "Brace up, girlie! It's all right—it's all right, I tell you. You've been overdoing. This confounded Mrs. Judson has been too much for you."
She still clung tightly to him, sobbing, her head buried on his shoulder. He gathered her up in his arms, holding her yielding body close against his breast, and carried her swiftly along the corridor. As he passed the parlor he glared at Miss Solomons.
Once he halted to pick up one of the slippers Ruth had lost in her flight down the hall. The other was in the doorway of their suite. He strode in with her, kicked shut the door, and placed Ruth tenderly upon the couch. The heavy lady was not in sight.
"Poor Mrs. Judson!" Ruth gasped. "The doctor left me to take care of her."
"Hang Mrs. Judson!" exclaimed Ryder. "Is she to be tied about our necks like a millstone? Is she our Old Man of the Sea?"
"Sh!" She put her own lips to his. "Don't be offensive, dear boy!" she gasped after a long breathless kiss which shook both of them. "She—she can't help being—well!—being just what she is."
"Humph!" grunted John Ryder with much doubt. "Where is she?"
"In there," Ruth replied nodding toward the inner room. "Oh! I am so glad you are all right, I could forgive Mrs. Judson everything now!" she whispered, snuggling her face down against his breast again.
"I'm hanged if I forgive her for spoiling this night for us," growled he.
"But there are other nights—hundreds of them—thousands——"
"How do you know?" demanded he. "And we never saw her in our lives before last evening! By thunder! this is the unluckiest old hole of a hotel. I'm almost tempted to ask you to pack up again. Some honeymoon!"
"But how would we get away from here?" she asked, wonderingly. "They say there are no passenger trains on this short line to Pinewood. And until the bridge is repaired, how can we get to the station at Barr, on the main line?"
"There is a combination that runs down to the Junction at eight and another at one o'clock, besides the evening train," John Ryder said. "Of course, it is not very luxurious. But you say the word, and I'll get the telegraph to working in the morning and we'll have a special sent up here."
"A special what?" she asked in wonderment.
"Special train."
"Oh! You foolish boy! How extravagant! Why, you talk as though you were a millionaire!" cried Ruth, laughing up into his face.
"Why, I——"
Ryder halted. Did she not know he was very wealthy? He had not boasted of his money, but surely, on the Minnequago, he had told her enough about his circumstances for her to realize that she had married a very wealthy man.
She was speaking again now, and rather seriously. "I don't really think I want to go, dear. Not right away. I want time to look about the old place. We must walk through the pines—and down to the inlet where the crabbing used to be so good. You know the places we want to see, John."
"Oh! Do I?" asked John Ryder in growing surprise.
"Of course. Now, don't make believe you are not sentimental. I know you are," and she squeezed him tightly about the throat until there was grave danger of his choking.
Ryder had moved over into a big armchair and had taken Ruth with him. "So I am sentimental, am I?" he said. "You seem to know a deal about me for a man you've seen so short a time."
"Oh, but," she responded, "remember how often I have thought of you since—well, since I was a tiny girl. I've often imagined just how you'd look and just the sort of man you'd be."
"The deuce you did!" muttered Ryder. Then: "Do all girls dream about their future husbands and wonder what they will look like?"
"I suppose so. Only, all of them are not so sure of the kind of man he will be as I was."
John Ryder was vastly puzzled again. He gazed down at her as she lay there in his arms and asked: "Do—do you think I fill the bill?"
"Oh, not altogether as to looks, perhaps. You know, hubby, you are not a bit romantic looking." and she smiled at him roguishly.
"No. I suppose I am not—thank fortune!" and he grinned in return. "If I wore my hair long, and sported a velvet jacket and broad collar, for instance—— Well! what do you suppose they would do with me in business?"
"I know. You are awfully practical. That really is surprising," she murmured. "But the minute you took my hands and I looked into your eyes——"
"On the dock, you mean?" he asked.
"Yes, on the dock where I waited for you."
"And then?"
"Why, then I knew I loved you. I wasn't sure before. If you hadn't been—well—just you, I'd have run away and you'd never have seen me again, hubby. I made up my mind to that."
"To run away from me if I didn't suit?"
"Yes."
"And yet you sent your trunks to the station just the same?" and he laughed into her blushing face.
"Oh, but that was only so as to be ready to go with you if you proved to be as nice as you did. Otherwise—well, there are other places on the Pennsylvania Road to go to, besides Pinewood."
"So I measured up, when you had considered everything, to your idea of what a husband should be?"
"Oh, yes, dear! You were all that was to be desired," and she patted his cheek tenderly.
"Say!" exclaimed Ryder, "I'm not sure I'll be able to wear my hat tomorrow. I can feel my head increasing in size momently. You'll make me conceited."
"No. Only proud."
"Ah, I'm the proudest man alive to get you!"
"Now, you mustn't say that. I am just a poor girl. I would have to work hard for my living all my life if you hadn't come for me."
"Nobody else, of course, would have taken pity on you?" he laughed.
"Ah, but there could have been nobody else. You were meant for me. You were the only one."
"I'm glad you saw it that way," he laughed, "and realized what a stage career meant before it was too late."
She turned squarely to look at him then, a puzzled little frown marring her brow. "What—what did you say?" she asked.
They were both startled the next moment by a shriek from the inner room.
"Help! I'm—I'm robbed! My rings—my brooches—my necklace! I know I am robbed!"
It was the hysterical voice of Mrs. Judson. They heard her bound out of bed. The whole house seemed to rock when she landed on the bedroom floor.
"Huh!" ejaculated a sharp voice behind the bride and bridegroom, "about what I expected."
It was Miss Solomons. How she had got into the suite Ryder did not ask. His wife had started for the inner room, crying:
"Oh, poor Mrs. Judson! I really forgot her."
"Heaven forgive me!" groaned the bridegroom, shaking both fists in the air, as he sat in the armchair from which his wife had leaped. "I wish that woman would either be gathered peacefully to her ancestors, or—or get married again!"
Then he turned to find the eye of the house detective upon him.
"Huh!" said that individual, "if you dared maybe you'd add murder to larceny! How about it?"
CHAPTER XIV
SOME SLEUTH
"Now, stop right where you are," said Miss Solomons, as John Ryder started to rise. "I'll search you later—and that woman. I knew there was somethin' fishy about all this. I was a chump not to see into it right at the start. Of course Mrs. Judson is just the sort of a party a pair of crooks would get their hooks into."
"Say, are you crazy, or am I?"
"Sit down!"
At Ryder's second attempt to rise the house detective unlimbered her artillery. For the life of him Ryder could not guess where she could hide the big revolver about her person, she was so thin. Holding the weapon recklessly aimed in his direction, Miss Solomons began to search the sitting-room scientifically.
In the bed chamber Ruth could be heard soothing the refractory patient. Mrs. Judson was still bewailing the loss of her jewelry.
"My rings! My brooches! My necklace!" she kept repeating, her voice rising in crescendo until John Ryder thought the whole hotel would be roused and come crowding into his suite.
"But, Mrs. Judson," Ruth said, when the heavy lady stopped for breath, "you know you did not wear your necklace or a brooch here. Only your rings——"
"My rings! Where are my rings, then?" demanded the invalid, and the bed-spring creaked as she dropped upon it again. "I know I have been robbed!"
"Sure thing!" muttered Miss Solomons, still holding John Ryder under the point of her weapon while she poked into the umbrella stand near the door with his walking stick.
Then Ruth, in a very small voice: "Why, I—I took them off, Mrs. Judson."
"Ha!" was Miss Solomon's comment, leaving the umbrella stand.
"What for? My rings!" cried Mrs. Judson.
"The doctor told me to. We wanted to chafe your hands. I——"
"What did you do with them?" snapped Miss Solomons, and tore aside the curtain so as to get a view of the bed chamber.
This time Ryder rose up, pistol or not.
"Come away from there!" he commanded.
"Anybody but an idiot would see that my wife knows nothing about the woman's rings."
"Your wife? You mean your accomplice," sneered the house detective.
"By heaven! If you were only a man!" gasped Ryder, and took a stride toward Miss Solomons.
"This here's loaded," said that woman firmly, and stuck the barrel of her revolver against his waistband again. "No foolin' with me. Sit down. Come on out here, you!" she added over her shoulder to Ruth.
"Why—why, what is the matter?" the latter gasped, coming to the doorway. "Oh!"
"What did you do with the rings?" demanded the house detective.
She was still shoving against the pistol, and naturally John Ryder fell back before such pressure. When he dropped into the chair again Ruth screamed.
"Huh!" exclaimed Miss Solomons, seeing the direction of Ruth's frightened gaze. "That lamp, eh? Opened the oil tank and dropped 'em in, did you? Likely place! But 'tain't new. All you crooks have the old stuff. Not an original one among you."
She started for the table, still keeping Ryder covered.
"What do you want?" gasped Ruth.
"Mrs. Judson's rings," declared Miss Solomons decisively.
"I dropped them into the doctor's medicine case. He took them with him when he was called downstairs," Ruth said and then, blessed with a sense of the ridiculous, she began to giggle.
The house sleuth halted and looked from Ryder to his bride. Suspicion seemed fairly to sharpen her nose as she sniffed. "That's a likely story," she said.
Ryder took a hand, now having gained his self-control. "Do give us credit for some originality, Miss Solomons," he said. "If we have stolen Mrs. Judson's gems we naturally would have an accomplice on whom to plant them. Who more likely than the doctor?"
"Huh!" snorted Miss Solomons.
The doctor himself appeared at the moment The house detective sprang forward and seized his black case.
"What have you in this?" she demanded, having slipped her weapon out of sight.
"Enough poison to even satisfy you, My Lady Sleuth," remarked Dr. Hoyle, evidently having his own private opinion of the house detective. "What mare's nest have you uncovered now?"
"Mrs. Judson's rings have been nicked," observed Miss Solomons, quite unabashed.
"I—I dropped them into your case," said Ruth apologetically.
"So you did. Here they are," said the doctor, flashing the gems in question. "Satisfied, Miss Solomons? Then, if so, you and this—this gentleman, here, would better go away. You are likely to disturb my patient with your noise."
Miss Solomons pulled the folded novel from the bosom of her blouse.
"All right," she said shortly.
"You'd better go and help James watch Van Scamp's 'Cheesemonger,'" Ryder observed. "That's about your limit as a sleuth."
Miss Solomons, without changing countenance in the least, stalked away. Before the doctor could escape to the bedroom Ryder said:
"I don't fancy my wife staying here all night to attend this woman. She has had an exciting day and evening. You'll have another patient on your hands if you don't have a care."
Hoyle glanced at Ruth's laughing face and shook his head.
"Not as long as she sees the funny side of the situation," he observed.
"It is an imposition!" declared Ryder, with more heat.
"Undoubtedly," observed the doctor, with a shrug of his shoulders; but Ruth placed her little pink palm, light as a rose leaf, upon his lips.
"Don't speak so, Johnny," she whispered. "She needs some woman about her at this time."
"She's not sick."
"But she thinks she is—which is worse," laughed Ruth. Then to the doctor: "Don't mind him. He is the most indulgent of husbands after all. I will remain. I told you that I have been trained to the work of nursing."
"I see you have, Madam," said the doctor cheerfully, and he went into the other room where Mrs. Judson lay groaning and sobbing on the bed.
John Ryder, much vexed but in control of himself now, said decidedly:
"Even the most indulgent husband must put down his foot some time, Ruth. If that woman is not well enough to be removed to her own rooms by morning we will let her have this apartment and take another suite. You can play the Good Samaritan until then if you so desire. But remember! after this, and for the remainder of our honeymoon, if we see any despoiled victim lying by the roadside we will emulate the Jews and pass by on the other side."
He did not even kiss her as he passed out, and Ruth stood looking after him with quivering lips. Everything that had gone before was by chance, and unlucky. But this was actually the first jarring note in the honeymoon!
CHAPTER XV
THE CAT SHOWS HER CLAWS
Ryder had got all over the desire for human company. He did not even care to ask how White was getting along, and the doctor had said not a word about the man. Ryder was just about worn out. What he wanted was rest and sleep.
He sought the parlor, determined to find a comfortable chair there, in spite of Miss Solomons. But the house detective did not appear to be present. James had fallen into a chair himself, and was snoring with his head upon the back of the seat. Mr. Cudger was sleeping as peacefully as a child. "The Cheesemonger" could have been stolen by anybody who desired a new sail for a catboat, for instance, and had a sharp knife to cut away the canvas from its frame.
Ryder settled into a chair with a groan, first being sure that it was unoccupied. He closed his eyes. He was almost asleep when this disturbing thought partially aroused him:
"Ruth a trained nurse? She spoke of it before. But she never told me aboard the Minnequago. I remember distinctly that she said she had learned nothing she could turn to good account, now that she was left to her own resources, save her talent for stage entertainment.
"Humph! perhaps nursing isn't a well paid profession in England. In America, I believe, when a trained nurse enters one's home, one might as well hand her the bankbook.
"Don't understand it," said this new-made cynic. "Huh! There's a lot of things I don't understand. One is, Why is a honeymoon?
"I've heard it said a man gets his eyes opened after he's married. I swear my vision is fast becoming clouded. There are a lot of things I want explained. Goodness! am I developing suspicious qualities that I never knew I possessed before? It does seem as though a dozen things poor Ruth has said puzzle me mightily.
"It must be because we have known each other so short a time, and our whole affair was so hurried. Goodness! I haven't found time yet to learn whether I am a benedict or still a bachelor. But how easily she assumes the little airs and graces of a bride!
"I suppose most womenly women are so. Their whole young lives are lived in preparation for this event—the event of giving themselves into the keeping of the man they love." Ryder lacked expert knowledge on this point, it will be noted. "And what an imaginary little thing she is! Miss Solomons has nothing on Ruth when it comes to imagination," and Ryder made a face in the dark at thought of the house detective.
"To think of a girl's dreaming about what her husband, whom she does not know and never has heard of, will be like; fairly conjuring up a vision of the man which the real husband, when he appears, has to stack up against.
"Bless her heart! If she believes me half as fine and noble as the picture she imagined of the man she some day expected to marry—— By thunder! I wonder what is in that locket she wears and gazes at so fondly?"
The thought pretty well awoke him. He cursed himself roundly, and aloud, and James stirred in his sleep and groaned.
"Great heavens! That thought is unworthy of me—and of her!" Ryder muttered. "Bless her sweet face! No woman could hold sacred the memento of another man and show so clearly—as does Ruth—that she loves her husband.
"Can I ever forget how she looked just now running through that hall? She was wild to think that some harm had befallen me—befallen her husband. No mistake there, John Ryder! You are it. You are the man she loves."
He sighed ecstatically. He closed his eyes. He fell asleep almost at once. James was snoring gently. Old Cudger added his nasal murmur to James' snores. And from a distant corner that John Ryder had overlooked, the eagle eye of the house detective still watched him.
When John Ryder awoke he was stiff and lame and chilled to his marrow. The candles had burned down to puddles of grease in the saucers. A cold gray light stole into the parlor through a high window and lay in a comfortless mantle over Mr. Cudger, James and "The Cheesemonger."
The heart in John Ryder lay like lead. Never had he risen with such a sickening premonition of ill as upon this gloomy Saturday morning. Indeed, John Ryder was not in the habit of having premonitions at all.
He was a healthy, sane and perfectly level-headed individual. Never before in his busy life had he found time for romance; and certainly the brand of romance that Fate had handed out to him since the Minnequago had docked did not encourage Ryder to wish for more.
"It was Friday!" he suddenly muttered. "No wonder everything went wrong. Friday!"
He was hungry for a sight of Ruth's face and for a word with her. In spite of the feeling within him that everything had gone wrong during the past several hours, he turned to the thought of his beautiful girl-wife as a child turns to its mother when it wishes comfort.
Circumstances may have handed John Ryder some awful jolts during the past night; but his thought of Ruth was one of joy and the delight of possession. He started, rubbing his eyes and yawning, for Suite Three.
Just as he reached the door a maid came out. She evidently recognized Ryder when he asked:
"What's going on in there this morning?"
"Oh, she's sleeping, sir. Just as swate as a baby. I've been filling the heater again and I left it burning, sir, so it would be warm when she gets up. Yes, sir.
"Who? Mrs. Judson?" Ryder asked gloomily.
"Bless you! No, sir. She went back to her own room hours ago. Doctor says she's all right. Gittin' scare't about her jool'ry cured her quicker than his medicines."
"She's gone!" cried Ryder in delight.
"Yes, sir. Oh, thank you, sir! 'Tis your own little lady I was spakin' of. Shall—shall I open the door for ye, sir, with me pass key?"
"No, no!" said John Ryder, blushing a little but feeling extremely relieved. "I won't disturb her if she's sleeping," and he immediately turned toward the breakfast room.
Going down the main stairway, he saw Colonel Aurelius Brack and his wife before him, the doughty colonel having difficulty in making the trip because of his artificial limb. He had gone up to his room the night before while the elevators were still running, and now depended upon the balustrade and his wife's arm to get safely to the bottom of the flight of steps.