Running Sands Part 3

"My who? Oh, the Newberrys? Of course. Come over; you must meet them."

"The Newberrys?" Stainton looked a misapprehension.

"Yes, I told you, you know. Good old Preston Newberry and his wife."

"I thought," urged Stainton, "that I saw a girl----"

"Oh, _that_?" asked Holt, recollecting with some difficulty a person of such small importance. "That's their little Boston ward."

"What's her name?"

"Something or other. I forget. Stannard: that's it--Muriel Stannard.

She's just out of her----"

He stopped and blinked, his narrow eyes directed at Stainton, who had lifted to his face a hand that visibly trembled.

"What's the trouble?" asked Holt. "Too used to the desert to stand our nifty opera-house air? Don't wonder. Come out and have a drink. Plenty of time."

"No," said Stainton. He achieved a smile. "I'm all right. Why in the world did you think I wasn't? I'm just----She's eighteen, isn't she?"

"Who? Mrs. New----Oh, the girl? Yes, I imagine she is about that. But she's an orphan and hasn't a cent and is too young to mix in, anyhow.

Don't you bother: she won't interfere. Come along, if you won't have a drink, and meet the Newberrys. Mrs. Preston is every bit as good as a Bronx c.o.c.ktail, though she wouldn't be seen in the Bronx for a thousand of 'em."

Stainton replied with compressed lips.

"I should like to meet Miss--Miss Stannard," he said.

"Miss Stannard? The youngster?" Holt broke into a laugh. "Bless my soul!

Why, she's not even out yet; and you mean to say----"

But Stainton's firm fingers had closed so sharply about Holt's arm that, while the pain of the unexpected grip shot through him, Holt's laughter ended in a gasp.

"Don't joke about this," commanded Stainton. "You remember that we used to be friends."

"Sure. Aren't we friends now? What's. .h.i.t you, Jim? We're friends still, I hope. You don't think I'm likely to forget what you once did for me, do you?"

"Very well, then: don't joke about Miss Stannard."

"No offence intended," said the perplexed Holt; "but why in thunder shouldn't I joke about her?"

Stainton's grip loosened, and his eyes twinkled.

"After all," he said, "it must have seemed strange to you----"

"Strange? It looked like the asylum!" said Holt.

"And so," Stainton continued, "I dare say that I do owe you an explanation." He put out his hand again, but Holt dodged.

"No more of that!" said Holt.

"All right," Stainton answered. He laid a hand on Holt's shoulder. "Can you keep a secret, George?"

The clubman blinked in antic.i.p.ation.

"Seems to me we've had a few together," he said.

"Then," said Stainton, "I'll tell you why I was a little sensitive about comments on Miss Stannard: I am going to marry her."

II

YOUNG BLOOD

Holt's jaw fell.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered; "but I didn't know you even knew her."

"I have never met her," said Stainton.

"What? Oh, quit your jollying."

"I have never met her."

"Then--well, you _don't_ need a drink, after all."

"After all--that is, after the performance," said Stainton, "I shall explain. Just now I want you to take me to your friends' box and present me all round."

Holt recalled having heard that certain of the Caesars had been driven mad by their sudden acquisition of power. He recalled having read of stock-gamblers that went crazy when they achieved a great coup. He recalled having seen the Las Animas country, when the Las Animas country was really a prospectors' bedlam, one gold-seeker that had lost his wits in what were then the vast solitudes of the San Juan Triangle. All of these recollections rushed in detail through a brain warped by a few years of the most unnatural side of city life, and following them came the realisation, as the newspapers had brought it to him, of Stainton's unexpected success. Stainton had always, when Holt knew him in the West, been unlike his fellows, a man aloof. Stainton had once, Holt recollected, been practical, silent, slow; now, having come upon a gold mine after twenty-five years of adversity, in a country more desolate than the San Juan had ever been, this man was powerful, almost in a day, rich. He wondered if--

But Stainton was once more smiling his old self-reliant smile.

"No," he was saying, "I am not crazy, and I am not drunk. It sounds queer, I know----"

"Sounds! Sounds----"

"But I am sane and sober. Come along and, honestly, I'll explain--later."

"You can't," said Holt.

"Can't what?"

"Explain. Such things can't be explained. This would balk Teddy himself."

Nevertheless, in the end Holt did what he was accustomed to doing, which is to say that he did as he was told, and before the curtain had risen again Stainton was in the agonies of the introduction.