Blix Part 16

"Remember the waiter," he said severely, while Richard grinned and bobbed. "Fifty cents is the very least you could tip him." Richard actually protested, but Condy was firm, and insisted upon a half-dollar tip.

"n.o.blesse oblige," he declared with vast solemnity.

They walked as far as the cathedral, listened for a moment to the bell striking the hour of eight; then as they remembered that the restaurant closed at that time, hurried back and entered the outside room in feigned perturbation.

"Did I, could I have possibly left my stick here?" exclaimed Condy to Richard, who was untying his ap.r.o.n behind the counter. But Richard had not noticed.

"I think I must have left it back here where we were sitting."

Condy stepped into the back room, Blix following. They got his stick and returned to the outside room.

"Yes, yes, I did leave it," he said, as he showed it to Richard. "I'm always leaving that stick wherever I go."

"Come again," said Richard, as he bowed them out of the door.

On the curb outside Condy and Blix shook hands and congratulated each other on the success of all their labors. In the back room, seated at the same table, a bunch of wilting marguerites between them, they had seen their "matrimonial objects" conferring earnestly together, absorbed in the business of getting acquainted.

Blix heaved a great sigh of relief and satisfaction, exclaiming:

"At last K. D. B. and Captain Jack have met!"

Chapter VIII

"But," she added, as they started to walk, "we will never know which one spoke first."

But Condy was already worrying.

"I don't know, I don't know!" he murmured anxiously. "Perhaps we've done an awful thing. Suppose they aren't happy together after they're married? I wish we hadn't; I wish we hadn't now. We've been playing a game of checkers with human souls. We've an awful responsibility.

Suppose he kills her some time?"

"Fiddlesticks, Condy! And, besides, if we've done wrong with our matrimonial objects, we've offset it by doing well with our red-headed coincidence. How do you know, you may have 'foiled a villain' with that telegram--prevented a crime?"

Condy grinned at the recollection of the incident.

"'Fly at once,'" he repeated. "I guess he's flying yet. 'All is discovered.' I'd give a dollar and a half--"

"If you had it?"

"Oh, well, if I had it--to know just what it was we have discovered."

Suddenly Blix caught his arm.

"Condy, here they come!"

"Who? Who?"

"Our objects, Captain Jack and K. D. B."

"Of course, of course. They couldn't stay. The restaurant shuts up at eight."

Blix and Condy had been walking slowly in the direction of Pacific Street, and K. D. B. and her escort soon overtook them going in the same direction. As they pa.s.sed, the captain was saying:

"--jumped on my hatches, and says we'll make it an international affair. That didn't--"

A pa.s.sing wagon drowned the sound of his voice.

"He was telling her of his adventures!" cried Blix. "Splendid!

Oth.e.l.lo and Desdemona. They're getting on."

"Let's follow them!" exclaimed Condy.

"Should we? Wouldn't it be indiscreet?"

"No. We are the arbiters of their fate; we MUST take an interest."

They allowed their objects to get ahead some half a block and then fell in behind. There was little danger of their being detected. The captain and K. D. B. were absorbed in each other. She had even taken his arm.

"They make a fine-looking couple, really," said Blix. "Where do you suppose they are going? To another restaurant?"

But this was not the case. Blix and Condy followed them as far as Washington Square, where the Geodetic Survey stone stands, and the enormous flagstaff; and there in front of a commonplace little house, two doors above the Russian church with its minarets like inverted balloons K. D. B. and the captain halted. For a few moments they conversed in low tones at the gate, then said good-night, K. D. B.

entering the house, the captain bowing with great deference, his hat in his hand. Then he turned about, glanced once or twice at the house, set his hat at an angle, and disappeared across the square, whistling a tune, his chin in the air.

"Very good, excellent, highly respectable," approved Blix; and Condy himself fetched a sigh of relief.

"Yes, yes, it might have been worse."

"We'll never see them again, our 'Matrimonial Objects,'" said Blix, "and they'll never know about us; but we have brought them together.

We've started a romance. Yes, I think we've done a good day's work.

And now, Condy, I think we had best be thinking of home ourselves. I'm just beginning to get most awfully sleepy. What a day we've had!"

A sea fog, or rather THE sea fog--San Francisco's old and inseparable companion--had gathered by the time they reached the top of the Washington Street hill. Everything was wet with it. The asphalt was like varnished ebony. Indistinct ma.s.ses and huge dim shadows stood for the houses on either side. From the eucalyptus trees and the palms the water dripped like rain. Far off oceanward, the fog-horn was lowing like a lost gigantic bull. The gray bulk of a policeman--the light from the street lamp reflected in his star--loomed up on the corner as they descended from the car.

Condy had intended to call his diver's story "A Submarine Romance," but Blix had disapproved.

"It's too 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,'" she had said. "You want something much more dignified. There is that about you, Condy, you like to be too showy; you don't know when to stop. But you have left off red-and-white scarfs, and I am very glad to see you wearing white shirt-fronts instead of pink ones."

"Yes, yes, I thought it would be quieter," he had answered, as though the idea had come from him. Blix allowed him to think so.

But "A Victory Over Death," as the story was finally called, was a success. Condy was too much of a born story-teller not to know when he had done something distinctly good. When the story came back from the typewriter's, with the additional strength that print lends to fiction, and he had read it over, he could not repress a sense of jubilation.

The story rang true.

"Bully, bully!" he muttered between his teeth as he finished the last paragraph. "It's a corker! If it's rejected everywhere, it's an out-of-sight yarn just the same."

And there Condy's enthusiasm in the matter began to dwindle. The fine fire which had sustained him during the story's composition had died out. He was satisfied with his work. He had written a good story, and that was the end of it. No doubt he would send it East--to the Centennial Company--to-morrow or the day after--some time that week.