The Port of Adventure Part 7

"I know--I mean, are you willing I should call you it, just as if I was really acquainted with you?"

"Of course. Why not?"

"Well, you see," he explained. "What I don't know about society and the right way to act with ladies could be put in a book bigger than the Bible.

And I wouldn't offend you, for--for a good deal."

"I feel certain you'd know the 'right way to act,' by instinct," Angela a.s.sured him. "You were splendid to me that night in New York. Very few men would have known how to do what you did."

"Thank you a thousand times for saying that, though I don't deserve one word," Nick burst out, flushing again, and hoping she did not see, because he had a trying task before him. "But my idea is this. Couldn't you let me lend the money you need, and go on when you like, instead of waiting? You could send it back, any old way--check or anything. And I wouldn't care a hang--I wouldn't care a red cent--when."

"Oh, I couldn't----" Angela began, but the look on his face stopped her.

It was so strong a mixture of disappointment and chagrin, as to make him instantly pathetic in her eyes. She had just said that he was a man whose instinct would always be right, and she had meant it sincerely. She knew, if she knew anything about men, that here was one of Nature's gentlemen.

He had proved that already; and--it was a shame to hurt his feelings after all he had done for her.

"I beg your pardon if I've said the wrong thing. I meant no harm," he apologized warmly. "But I get left-handed and tongue-tied, I guess, when it comes to being civilized--where there's a lady in the case. It must have been I said it the wrong way, for, I _do_ know the thing itself would be right. You want to go. You've lost your money. And I expect your bank wouldn't send it on a telegram. They mostly won't. That means waiting days, perhaps. So I thought----"

"It would mean waiting," she broke into his pause. "My bank is a long way off. You're very kind, and I _will_ borrow the money, if it won't inconvenience you, on condition that--you let me give you security."

"That would hurt my feelings badly," said he; "but I'd rather you'd do it than not take the money, because your convenience is a heap more important than my feelings."

"If I go I can get money in a few days, and wire it back to you here,"

Angela reflected aloud, at a loss how to treat the situation when it became a question of hurting Mr. Hilliard's feelings.

Nick's face fell. "I--unless you give me your orders--I don't want to stay here very long," said he. "I don't care when I get the money back."

"Why, you've only just arrived, haven't you?"

"Ye-es. But I feel my homesickness coming on again. I shouldn't wonder if I'll always be sort of restless, now, away from the West. It's my country--anyhow, the country of my heart."

Angela came near saying, "So it is mine." But that might have necessitated explanations. "Well, you must take the security, I'm afraid," she said, "or I can't take the loan. As I told you, I left most of my things in New York, to be sent on when I settle down. Still, there's _one_ thing, which I couldn't p.a.w.n, or leave with hotel people. But I wouldn't mind giving it to you. It's a diamond frame for a miniature I always carry with me. I could take the miniature out."

Nick stared hard at the carpet again. He was afraid to let her see the look on his face. "It's her dead husband's picture," he thought. "She must have loved him, if she always carries his portrait around." Aloud he said, "Very well, if you won't do my way, I'll have to do yours."

"I'll give you the address of my bank; and I must have your address,"

Angela went on. "Then, if you should change your mind and stay here----"

"I'm going to stay just long enough to get your bag," he replied.

She laughed. "That may be forever."

"I reckon it will be some hours at longest."

"You must be a wonderful detective!"

"There's more of the bulldog than the detective in me. But it will go hard if we don't find that bag."

"Thank you again. We shall see!" she said. "Anyway, as you're to be my banker I can tell the hotel clerk I shan't need to keep people in bathrooms, waiting for my suite, after to-night."

"Oh, was it you?" exclaimed Nick. "The fellow was telling me a lady wanted to stay----"

"Then it's _you_ they've stuffed into a laundry!"

"I like it," Nick a.s.sured her. "It's a mighty clean place. I wish you could see some of the holes I've slept in--that is, I _don't_ wish so! But it's all right. And now, just say how much money you want. Anything up to three thousand dollars I can give you in a minute----"

"Oh, not nearly so much. A few hundreds. But I'm going to lunch now. Would you care to lunch at the same table, and we can arrange about the loan?

Also you can tell me more of Dutchy."

"I'd like it better than anything," said Nick. "But first I've got to fix things about your bag with the police. I'll be back, and look you up by the time you're halfway to dessert. I remember just what that bag was like, because--maybe you've forgotten--I picked it up in the hotel hall when you dropped it. I can see it as plain as if it was here. 'Twas a kind of knitted gold, like chain armour for a doll. And there was a rim all smothered in diamonds and blue stones."

"Sapphires," said Angela.

"That's right. Well, I'll be back in twenty minutes."

It was useless to protest against his going, for he had gone before she could speak. And instead of beginning luncheon, Angela went upstairs to take from its diamond frame her father's miniature. On the gold back of this frame there was an inscription: "Angela, on her eleventh birthday, from her father. The day before she sails." And it was because of the inscription that she could not have offered the frame to an ordinary person as security, no matter how desperately she had wanted a loan. But Mr. Nickson Hilliard was not an ordinary person.

VII

A POLICE MYSTERY

It was a blow to Nick to be told that there was little hope of finding the lost bag. He had pledged himself to "see the thing through," but he had reasons--immensely important reasons they seemed to him--for wishing to leave New Orleans next day.

So far as was known, Cohensohn was an honest man. There was nothing against him, and his shop could not be searched by the police. All they could do was to get a description of the people who had called between the times of Mrs. May's going out and coming in. But ten chances to one, like most women, she had mislaid her bag somewhere else, or left it at home.

Nick did not like these insinuations against the s.e.x to which an angel deigned to belong; but he took them quietly, and instructed the police to offer five-hundred dollars reward for the bag alone, or a thousand with the contents intact. Then he went back and had lunch with Mrs. May, which was, without exception, the most exquisite experience of his life. Yet he did not know what he ate, or afterward, whether he had eaten anything at all--unless it was some bread which, with bitter disgust at his bad manners, he vaguely remembered crumbling on the table.

He was cheered, however, by a plan he had, and by the inscription on Angela's miniature frame. He would have hated the thing if it had been her husband's.

Evening came and there was no news of the missing bag. There were not even any satisfactory clues.

When Nick heard this he thought very hard for a few minutes, and then inquired at what time the shops closed. He was told; and consulting his watch, realized that they would shut in less than an hour.

"What's the name of the best jewellery store in this town?" he wanted to know.

There were several which ranked about the same, and scribbling three or four names on his shirt-cuff, he rushed off to find the first.

"Got any gold handbags?" he asked in a low voice, as if he had something to conceal. "Kind made of chain, with diamonds and sapphires along the top."

He was shown the stock; saw nothing apparently which struck his fancy, and was off like a shot in search of the next name on his list.

At this place lived a bag which, so far as he could remember, seemed the duplicate of Mrs. May's except that the stones alternating with the diamonds were emeralds instead of sapphires.

"Just keep that thing for twenty minutes," said he. "I'll come back to tell you whether I'll take it or not, and what I want done to it, if I do."

"Another gentleman was in to-day looking at that bag," said the attendant.

"If he comes before you, I must let him have it."