As Gaza de Lure entered the house in which she
roomed, her landlady came hastily from the living room.
“Is that you, Miss Burke?” she asked. “Here is a
telegram that came for you just a few minutes ago. I
do hope it’s not bad news!”
The girl took the yellow envelope and tore it open.
She read the message through very quickly and then
again slowly, her brows puckered into a little frown,
as if she could not quite understand the meaning of
the words she read.
“Your mother ill,” the telegram said. “Possibly not
serious—doctor thinks best you come—will meet you
morning train.” It was signed “Custer Pennington.”
“I do hope it’s not bad news,” repeated the landlady.
“My mother is ill. They have sent for me,” said the
girl. “I wonder if you would be good enough to call
up the S. P. and ask the first train I can get that stops
at Ganado, while I run upstairs and pack my bag?”
“You poor little dear!” exclaimed the landlady. “I’m
so sorry! I’ll call right away, and then I’ll come up
and help you.”
A few minutes later she came up to say that the first
train left at nine o’clock in the morning. She offered
to help pack; but the girl said there was nothing that she
could not do herself.
“I must go out first for a few minutes,” Gaza told
her. “Then I will come back and finish packing the few
things that it will be necessary to take.”
When the landlady had left, the girl stood staring
dully at the black traveling bag that she had brought from
the closet and placed on her bed; but she did not see the
bag or the few pieces of lingerie that she had taken
from her dresser drawers. She saw only the sweet face
of her mother, and the dear smile that had always shone
there to soothe each childish trouble—the smile that had
lighted the girl’s dark days, even after she had left
home.
For a long time she stood there thinking—trying to
realize what it would mean to her if the worst should
come. It could make no difference, she realized, except
that it might perhaps save her mother from a still greater
sorrow. It was the girl who was dead, though the
mother did not guess it; she had been dead for many
months. This hollow, shaking husk was not Shannon
Burke—it was not the thing that the mother had loved.
It was almost a sacrilege to take it up there into the clean
country and flaunt it in the face of so sacred a thing
as mother love.
The girl stepped quickly to a writing desk, and, drawing
a key from her vanity case, unlocked it. She took
from it a case containing a hypodermic syringe and a
few small phials; then she crossed the hall to the bathroom.
When she came back, she looked rested and
less nervous. She returned the things to the desk, locked
it, and ran downstairs.
“I will be back in a few minutes,” she called to the
landlady. “I shall have to arrange a few things to-night
with a friend.”
She went directly to the Vista del Paso bungalow.
Crumb was surprised and not a little startled as he
heard her key in the door. He had a sudden vision of
Allen returning, and he went white; but when he saw
who it was he was no less surprised, for the girl had
never before returned after leaving for the night.
“My gracious!” he exclaimed. “Look who’s here!”
She did not return his smile.
“I found a telegram at home,” she said, “that necessitates
my going away for a few days. I came over to
tell you, and to get a little snow to last me until I come
back. Where I am going they don’t have it, I imagine.”
He looked at her through narrowed, suspicious lids.
“You’re going to quit me!” he cried accusingly.
“That’s why you went out with Allen! You can’t get
away with it. I’ll never let you go. Do you hear me?
I’ll never let you go!”
“Don’t be a fool, Wilson,” she replied. “My mother
is ill, and I have been sent for.”
“Your mother? You never told me you had a mother.”
“But I have, though I don’t care to talk about her
to you. She needs me, and I am going.”
He was still suspicious.
“Are you telling me the truth? Will you come back?”
“You know I’ll come back,” she said. “I shall have
to,” she added with a weary sigh.
“Yes, you’ll have to. You can’t get along without
it. You’ll come back all right—I’ll see to that!”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“How much snow you got home?” he demanded.
“You know I keep scarcely any there. I forgot my
case to-day—left it in my desk, so I had a little there—a
couple of shots, maybe.”
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll give you enough to last
a week—then you’ll have to come home.”
“You say you’ll give me enough to last a week?” the
girl repeated questioningly. “I’ll take what I want—it’s
as much mine as yours!”
“But you don’t get any more than I’m going to give
you. I won’t have you gone more than a week. I can’t
live without you—don’t you understand? I believe you
have a wooden heart, or none at all!”
“Oh,” she said, yawning, “you can get some other
poor fool to peddle it for you if I don’t come back; but
I’m coming, never fear. You’re as bad as the snow—I
hate you both, but I can’t live without either of you.
I don’t feel like quarreling, Wilson. Give me the stuff—enough
to last a week, for I’ll be home before that.”
He went to the bathroom and made a little package up
for her.
“Here!” he said, returning to the living room. “That
ought to last you a week.”
She took it and slipped it into her case.
“Well, good-by,” she said, turning toward the door.
“Aren’t you going to kiss me good-by?” he asked.
“Have I ever kissed you, since I learned that you
had a wife?” she asked.
“No,” he admitted; “but you might kiss me good-by
now, when you’re going away for a whole week.”.
“Nothing doing, Wilson!” she said with a negative
shake of the head. “I’d as lief kiss a Gila monster!”
He made a wry face.
“You’re sure candid,” he said.
She shrugged her shoulders in a gesture of indifference
and moved toward the door.
“I can’t make you out, Gaza,” he said. “I used to
think you loved me, and the Lord knows I certainly love
you! You are the only woman I ever really loved. A
year ago I believe you would have married me, but now
you won’t even let me kiss you. Sometimes I think there
is some one else. If I thought you loved another man,
I’d—I’d——”
“No, you wouldn’t. You were going to say that
you’d kill me, but you wouldn’t. You haven’t the nerve
of a rabbit. You needn’t worry—there isn’t any other
man, and there never will be. After knowing you I could
never respect any man, much less love one of ’em. You’re
all alike—rotten! And let me tell you something—I
never did love you. I liked you at first, before I knew
the hideous thing that you had done to me. I would
have married you, and I would have made you a good
wife, too—you know that. I wish I could believe that
you do love me. I know of nothing, Wilson, that would
give me more pleasure than to know that you loved
me madly; but of course you’re not capable of loving
anything madly, except yourself.”
“I do love you, Gaza,” he said seriously. “I love you
so that I would rather die than live without you.”
She cocked her head on one side and eyed him
quizzically.
“I hope you do,” she told him; “for if it’s the truth,
I can repay you some measure of the suffering you
have caused me. I can be around where you can never
get a chance to forget me, or to forget the fact that
you want me, but can never have me. You’ll see me
every day, and every day you will suffer vain regrets
for the happiness that might have been yours, if you
had been a decent, honorable man; but you are not
decent, you are not honorable, you are not even a man!”
He tried to laugh derisively, but she saw the slow
red creep to his face and knew that she had scored.
“I hope you’ll feel better when you come back from
your mother’s,” he said. “You haven’t been very good
company lately. Oh, by the way, where did you say
you are going?”
“I didn’t say,” she replied.
“Won’t you give me your address?” he demanded.
“No.”
“But suppose something happens? Suppose I want
to get word to you?” Crumb insisted.
“You’ll have to wait until I get back,” she told him.
“I don’t see why you can’t tell me where you’re going,”
he grumbled.
“Because there is a part of my life that you and your
sort have never entered,” she replied. “I would as lief
take a physical leper to my mother as a moral one. I
cannot even discuss her with you without a feeling that
I have besmirched her.”
On her face was an expression of unspeakable disgust
as she passed through the doorway of the bungalow
and closed the door behind her. Wilson Crumb simulated
a shudder.
“I sure was a damn fool,” he mused. “Gaza would
have made the greatest emotional actress the screen has
ever known, if I’d given her a chance. I guessed her
wrong and played her wrong. She’s not like any woman
I ever saw before. I should have made her a great
success and won her gratitude—that’s the way I ought
to have played her. Oh, well, what’s the difference?
She’ll come back!”
He rose and went to the bathroom, snuffed half a
grain of cocaine, and then collected all the narcotics
hidden there and every vestige of contributary evidence
of their use by the inmates of the bungalow. Dragging
a small table into his bedroom closet, he mounted and
opened a trap leading into the air space between the ceiling
and the roof. Into this he clambered, carrying the
drugs with him.
They were wrapped in a long, thin package, to which
a light, strong cord was attached. With this cord he
lowered the package into the space between the sheathing
and the inner wall, fastening the end of the cord
to a nail driven into one of the studs at arm’s length
below the wall plate.
“There!” he thought, as he clambered back into the
closet. “It’ll take some dick to uncover that junk!”
Hidden between plaster and sheathing of the little
bungalow was a fortune in narcotics. Only a small fraction
of their stock had the two peddlers kept in the
bathroom, and Crumb had now removed that, in case
Allen should guess that he had been betrayed by his
confederate and direct the police to the bungalow, or the
police themselves should trace his call and make an
investigation on their own account. He realized that
he had taken a great risk; but his stratagem had saved
him from the deadly menace of Allen’s vengeance, at
least for the present. The fact that there must ultimately
be an accounting with the man he put out of his
mind. It would be time enough to meet that contingency
when it arose.
As a matter of fact, the police came to the bungalow
that very evening; but through no clew obtained from
Allen, who, while he had suspicions that were tantamount
to conviction, chose to await the time when he
might wreak his revenge in his own way. The desk
sergeant had traced the call to Crumb, and after the
arrest had been made a couple of detective sergeants
called upon him. They were quiet, pleasant-spoken men,
with an ingratiating way that might have deceived the
possessor of a less suspicious brain than Crumb’s.
“The lieutenant sent us over to thank you for that
tip,” said the spokesman. “We got him all right, with
the junk on him.”
Not for nothing was Wilson Crumb a talented actor.
None there was who could better have registered polite
and uninterested incomprehension.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that I don’t quite get you.
What tip? What are you talking about?”
“You called up the station, Mr. Crumb. We had central
trace the call. There is no use——”
Crumb interrupted him with a gesture. He didn’t
want the officer to go so far that it might embarrass him
to retract.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, a light of understanding illuminating
his face. “I believe I have it. What was the message?
I think I can explain it.”
“We think you can, too,” agreed the sergeant, “seein’
you phoned the message.”
“No, but I didn’t,” said Crumb, “although I guess it
may have come over my phone all right. I’ll tell you
what I know about it. A car drove up a little while
after dinner, and a man came to the door. He was a
stranger. He asked if I had a phone, and if he could
use it. He said he wanted to phone an important and
confidential message to his wife. He emphasized the
‘confidential,’ and there was nothing for me to do but
go in the other room until he was through. He was only
a minute or two talking, and then he called me. He
wanted to pay for the use of the phone. I didn’t hear
what he said over the phone, but I guess that explains
the matter. I’ll be careful next time a stranger wants
to use my phone.”
“I would,” said the sergeant dryly. “Would you know
him if you saw him again?”
“I sure would,” said Crumb.
They rose to go.
“Nice little place you have here,” remarked one of
them, looking around.
“Yes,” said Crumb, “it is very comfortable. Wouldn’t
you like to look it over?”
“No,” replied the officer. “Not now—maybe some
other time.”
Crumb grinned after he had closed the door behind
them.
“I wonder,” he mused, “if that was a threat or a
prophecy!”
A week later Slick Allen was sentenced to a year in
the county jail for having morphine in his possession.
