Empire Builders Part 9

"'They?' Then Mr. Colbrith isn't alone?"

"No, suh; got a pahty 'long with him--a young gentleman and two ladies; yes, suh. Mr. Colbrith nebber goes nowhah's 'dout he teks a pahty in de cyar."

"Heavens!" groaned Ford, under his breath; "as if the thing wasn't complicated enough without making a picnic of it!" Then aloud. "I wish to go in. My name is Ford, and Mr. Colbrith is expecting me."

"Sho' you isn't a newspapuh man?"

"Of course not," said Ford shortly.

"All right, suh," said the negro; and he made way and opened the door.

The Nadia was a commodious hotel on wheels, with a kitchen and buffet forward, four state-rooms opening upon a narrow side vestibule, and a large dining and lounging room looking out through full-length windows upon a deep, "umbrella-roofed" platform at the rear.

There was no one in the large compartment when Ford reached it; but a moment later a door opened and closed in the vestibule, and Adair made his appearance. Ford drew a breath of relief and shook hands with his backer.

"I'm glad it's you, Mr. Adair. I've been scenting all sorts of hindrances since the porter told me there was a party aboard."

The young man without an avocation dropped into the easiest of the wicker chairs and felt in his pockets for his cigarette case.

"Your prophetic soul didn't deceive you any," he laughed. "The hindrances are here in full force. It is one of Uncle Sidney's notions never to travel without a tail like a Highland chieftain's. I had a foreboding that he'd ask somebody, so I took it upon myself to fill up his pa.s.senger list with Aunt Hetty, my sister, and my uncle's nephew."

"I understand," said Ford, and would have plunged forthwith into the business pool; but Adair stopped him with a gesture of dismay.

"Not before breakfast, if you love me, my dear fellow!" he protested, with a little grimace that instantly set the reminiscent part of Ford's brain at work. "After I've had something to eat--"

The interruption was the noiseless entrance of a motherly little lady in gray, with kindly eyes and a touch of silver in the fair hair drawn smoothly back from her forehead.

"This is Mr. Stuart Ford, I am sure," she said, giving her hand to the young engineer before Adair could introduce him. "You look enough like your father to make me recognize you at once."

Ford was a little embarra.s.sed by the gratefully informal greeting.

"Ought I to remember you, Mrs. Adair?" he asked ingenuously.

"Oh, no, indeed. I knew your father as a young man before he married and went to the farther West. The Fords and the Colbriths and the Stanbrooks are all from the same little town in central Illinois, you know."

"I didn't know it," said Ford, "though now I recall it, I used often to hear my father speak of Miss Hester Stanbrook." Then he was going on to say that trite thing about the smallness of the world when Adair broke in.

"I'd like to know what is keeping Uncle Sidney and Alicia. _I_ haven't had breakfast yet."

As if his protest had evoked her, a young woman drew the portiere of the vestibule--a young woman with bright brown hair, eyes like dewy wood violets, and an adorable chin. Ford stared helplessly, and Adair laughed.

"Shocked, aren't you?" he jested. "But you needn't be alarmed. I have persuaded my sister not to prosecute in the case of the s.n.a.t.c.hed purse.

Alicia, this is Mr. Stuart Ford, and he desires me to say that he is not often reduced to the necessity of robbing unprotected young women for the sake of sc.r.a.ping an acquaintance."

Ford lost sight of the Pacific Southwestern exigencies for the moment, and surely the lapse was pardonable. If the truth must be told, this young woman, who had been discovered and lost in the same unforgetable evening, had stirred the neglected pool of sentiment in him to its profoundest depths, and thoughts of her had been dividing time pretty evenly with some parts of the strenuous business affair. Indeed, the hopelessness of any effort toward rediscovering her had been one of his reasons for hurrying away from New York. He knew himself--a little--and that quality of unreasoning persistence which other people called his strong point. The search he had been half-minded to make once begun--

"I hope you haven't forgotten me so soon, Mr. Ford," she was saying; and he recovered himself with a start.

"Forgotten you? No, indeed!"--this with almost lover-like emphasis.

"I--I think I am just a trifle aghast at my good luck in finding you again. It seemed so utterly hopeless, you know. Don't you think--"

But now the president had stalked in, and his high querulous voice was marshaling the party breakfastward. Ford manoeuvered skilfully in the pairing off, and so succeeded in securing Miss Adair for a companion on the short walk across to the Grand Pacific.

"You were about to ask me something when Uncle Sidney interrupted you,"

she prompted, when they were clear of the throng in the station vestibule.

"Yes; I was going to ask if you don't think it was unnecessarily cruel to send me that note of thanks unsigned."

"Cruel?" she echoed, and her laugh was so exactly a replica of her brother's that Ford wondered why the reminiscent arrow had not gone at once to its mark. "How absurd! What possible difference could it make?"

"It made a lot of difference to me," said Ford, refusing to be brushed aside. "How did you expect I was ever going to be able to find you again, without even your name as a clue?"

She glanced up at him with unfeigned interest. The men of her world were not altogether unappreciative; neither were they so primitively straightforward as this young industry captain out of the West.

"It is not impossible that I never thought of your finding me again,"

she said, and only the tone saved it from being a small slap in the face.

Ford took the rebuff as a part of the day's work.

"Perhaps you didn't," he admitted. "But I mean to go on hoping that you did."

"The idea!" she scoffed; but this time she blunted the keen edge of the rebuke by adding: "I thought, perhaps, we might meet again, sometime.

You see, we are all stock-holders in the Pacific Southwestern; my brother, Aunt Hetty and I; and Uncle Sidney had shown us a letter--it was from Mr. North, I think--saying that you were likely to come to New York with some kind of a plan of reorganization. So when you gave me your card, I knew at once who you were."

Ford made an immediate mental note of the bit of information implicating Mr. North, but did not allow himself to be diverted by the business affair.

"Yes, I know; but that didn't help me a little bit," he protested, wis.h.i.+ng that the distance to the hotel were twice as far.

"That was just because it happened so; you ran away before my brother had a chance to offer you any hospitality," she explained. Then, before he could say any more straightforward things: "Tell me, Mr. Ford; are you really going to find something to interest brother?--something that will keep him actually and enthusiastically busy for more than a few days at a time?"

Ford laughed. "I fancy he hasn't been bored for the lack of work since I left New York, has he?"

"No; and it has made such a difference! Won't you please try and keep him going?"

"You may rest a.s.sured that I shall do what I can. But you see he has quit already."

"By coming to Chicago with us? Oh, no, indeed; you are quite mistaken.

He is here to help you to--to 'minimize' Uncle Sidney; I think that is the word he used. He was afraid you had been finding Uncle Sidney rather difficult. Have you?"

"I have, for a fact," said Ford, out of the depths of sincerity. And, again out of a full heart: "Your brother is a brick, Miss Adair."

"Isn't he?" and she laughed in sheer good comrades.h.i.+p. "If you can only manage to make him rise to his capabilities--"

"He'll never be able to live the simple life for a single waking hour,"

said the engineer, finis.h.i.+ng the sentence for her.

"Oh, but that is a mistake!" she objected. "The very first requirement is work; plenty of work of the kind one can do best."