The Secret Power Part 18

"Better, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes! Much better!"

"And is that why Mr. Seaton lives in the hut? On account of the air?"

Manella waved her hands expressively with a charming Spanish gesture of indifference.

"I suppose so! How should I know? He is here for his health."

Sam Gwent uttered a curious inward sound, something between a grunt and a cough.

"Ah! I should like to know how long he's been ill!"

Manella again gave her graceful gesture.

"Surely you DO know if you are a friend of his?" she said.

He looked keenly at her.

"Are YOU a friend of his?"

She smiled--almost laughed.

"I? I am only a help in the Plaza--I take him his food--"

"Take him his food!" Sam Gwent growled out something like an oath--"What! Can't he come and get it for himself? Is he treated like a bear in a cage or a baby in a cradle?"

Manella gazed at him with reproachful soft eyes.

"Oh, you are rough!" she said--"He pays for whatever little trouble he gives. Indeed it is no trouble! He lives very simply--only on new milk and bread. I expect his health will not stand anything else--though truly he does not look ill--"

Gwent cut her description short.

"Well, thank you for showing me the way, Senora or Senorita, whichever you are--I think you must be Spanish--"

"Senorita"--she said, with gentle emphasis--"I am not married. You are right that I am Spanish."

"Such eyes as yours were never born of any blood but Spanish!" said Gwent--"I knew that at once! That you are not married is a bit of luck for some man--the man you WILL marry! For the moment adios! I shall dine at the Plaza this evening, and shall very likely bring my friend with me."

She shook her head smiling.

"You will not!"

"How so?"

"Because he will not come!"

She turned away, back towards the Hotel, and Gwent started to ascend the hill alone.

"Here's a new sort of game!"--he thought--"A game I should never have imagined possible to a man like Roger Seaton! Hiding himself up here in a consumption hut, and getting a beautiful woman to wait on him and 'take him his food'! It beats most things I've heard of! Dollar sensation books aren't in it! I wonder what Morgana Royal would say to it, if she knew! He's given her the slip this time!"

Half-way up the hill he paused to rest, and saw Seaton striding down at a rapid pace to meet him.

"Hullo, Gwent!"

"Hullo!"

The two men shook hands.

"I got your wire at the beginning of the week"--said Gwent--"and came as soon as I could get away. It's been a stiff journey too--but I wouldn't keep you waiting."

"Thanks,--it's as much your affair as mine"--said Seaton--"The thing is ripe for action if you care to act. It's quite in your hands, I hardly thought you'd come--"

"But I sent you a reply wire?"

"Oh, yes--that's all right! But reply wires don't always clinch business. Yours arrived last night."

"I wonder if it was ever delivered!" grumbled Gwent--"It was addressed to the Plaza Hotel--not to a hut on a hill!"

Seaton laughed.

"You've heard all about it I see! But the hut on the hill is a 'dependence' of the Plaza--a sort of annex where dying men are put away to die peaceably--"

"YOU are not a dying man!" said Gwent, very meaningly--"And I can't make out why you pretend to be one!"

Again Seaton laughed.

"I'm not pretending!--my dear Gwent, we're all dying men! One may die a little faster than another, but it's all the same sort of 'rot, and rot, and thereby hangs a tale!' What's the news in Washington?"

They walked up the hill slowly, side by side.

"Not startling"--answered Gwent--then paused--and repeated--"Not startling--there's nothing startling nowadays--though some folks made a very good show of being startled when my nephew Jack shot himself."

Seaton stopped in his walk.

"Shot himself? That lad? Was he insane?"

"Of course!--according to the coroner. Everybody is called 'insane' who gets out of the world when it's too difficult to live in. Some people would call it sane. I call it just--cowardice! Jack had lost his last chance, you see. Morgana Royal threw him over."

Seaton paced along with a velvet-footed stride like a tiger on a trail.

"Had she led him on?"

"Rather! She leads all men 'on'--or they think she does. She led YOU on at one time!"

Seaton turned upon him with a quick, savage movement.

"Never! I saw through her from the first! She could never make a fool of ME!"