LITMIR.BIZ

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into the laughing face of the dark girl. I had no idea of her name, yet a haunting resemblance, a something somehow familiar came across to me which I thought for a moment was only the sweet approachableness of her young femininity.

      Bowman had found and collared a partner for Ernestine Thornhill, but that was as far as it went. The little one forebore her threat of making him dance with her, came back to her chair and tucked herself in, snuggling up to the girl beside me, getting hold of a hand and looking at me across it. She rejoiced, it seems, in the nickname of Skeet, for by that the other now spoke to her whisperingly, saying it was too bad about the dance.

      "That's nothing," Skeet answered promptly. "I'd a lot rather sit here and talk to you – and your gentleman friend – " with a large wink for me – "if you don't mind."

      At the humorous, intimate glance which again passed between me and the dark girl, sudden remembrance came to me, and I ejaculated,

      "I know you now!"

      "Only now?" smiling.

      "You've changed a good deal in seven years," I defended myself.

      "And you so very little," she was still smiling, "that I had almost a mind to come and shake hands with you when Ina went to speak to Worth."

      I remembered then that it was Worth's recognition of her which had brought him to his feet. I told her of it, and the glowing, vivid face was suddenly all rosy. Skeet regarded the manifestation askance, asking jealously,

      "When did you see Worth last, Barbie? You weren't still living in Santa Ysobel when he left, were you?"

      I sat thinking while the girlish voices talked on. Barbie – the nickname for Barbara. Barbara Wallace; the name jumped at me from a poster; that's where I first saw it. It linked itself up with what Worth had said over there about the forlorn childhood of this beguiling young charmer. Why hadn't I remembered then? I, too, had my recollections of Barbara Wallace. About seven years before, I had first seen her, a slim, dark little thing of twelve or fourteen, very badly dressed in slinky, too-long skirts that whipped around preposterously thin ankles, blue-black hair dragged away from a forehead almost too fine, made into a bundle of some fashion that belonged neither to childhood nor womanhood, her little, pointed face redeemed by a pair of big black eyes with a wonderful inner light, the eyes of this girl glowing here at my left hand.

      The father Worth spoke of brusquely as "the professor" was Elman Wallace, to whom all students of advanced psychology are heavily indebted. The year I heard him, and saw the girl, his course of lectures at Stanford University was making quite a stir. I had been one of a bunch of criminologists, detectives and police chiefs who, during a state convention were given a demonstration of the little girl's powers, closing with a sort of rapid pantomime in which I was asked to take part. A half dozen of us from the audience planned exactly what we were to do. I rushed into the room through one door, holding my straw hat in my left hand, and wiping my brow with a handkerchief with the right. From an opposite door, came two men; one of them fired at me twice with a revolver held in his left hand. I fell, and the second man – the one who wasn't armed – ran to me as I staggered, grabbed my hat, and the two of them went out the door I had entered, while I stumbled through the one by which they had come in. It lasted all told, not half a minute, the idea being for those who looked on to write down what had happened.

      Those trained criminologists, supposed to have eyes in their heads, didn't see half that really took place, and saw a-plenty that did not. Most of 'em would have hung the man who snatched my hat. Only one, I remember, noticed that I was shot by a left-handed man. Then the little girl told us what really had occurred, every detail, just as though she had planned it instead of being merely an observer.

      "Pardon me," I broke in on the girls. "Miss Wallace, you don't mean to say that you really know me again after seeing me once, seven years ago, in a group of other men at a public performance?"

      "Why shouldn't I? You saw me then. You knew me again."

      "But you were doing wonderful things. We remember what strikes us as that did me."

      She looked at me with a little fading of that glow her face seemed always to hold.

      "Most memories are like that," she agreed listlessly. "Mine isn't. It works like a cinema camera; I've only to turn the crank the other way to be looking at any past record."

      "But can you – ?" I was beginning, when Skeet stopped me, leaning around her companion, bristling at me like a snub-nosed terrier.

      "If you want to make a hit with Barbie, cut out the reminiscences. She does loathe being reminded that she was once an infant phenom."

      I glanced at my dark eyed girl; she bent her head affirmatively. She wouldn't have been capable of Skeet's rudeness, but plainly Skeet had not overstated her real feeling. I had hardly begun an apology when the dancers rushed back to the table with the information that there was no more than time to make the Los Angeles train; there was an instant grasping of wraps, hasty good-bys, and the party began breaking up with a bang. Worth went out to the sidewalk with them; I sat tight waiting for him to return, and to my surprise, when he finally did appear, Barbara Wallace was with him.

      CHAPTER IV

      AN APPARITION

      "Don't look so scared!" she said smilingly to me. "I'm only on your hands a few minutes; a package left to be called for."

      I had watched them coming back to me at our old table, with its telephone extension, the girl with eyes for no one but Worth, who helped her out of her wrap now with a preoccupied air and,

      "Shed the coat, Bobs," adding as he seated her beside him, "The luck of luck that I chanced on you here this evening."

      That brought the color into her face; the delicate rose shifted under her translucent skin almost with the effect of light, until that lustrous midnight beauty of hers was as richly glowing as one of those marvellous dark opals of the antipodes.

      "Yes," she said softly, with a smile that set two dimples deep in the pink of her cheeks, "wasn't it strange our meeting this way?" Worth wasn't looking at her. He'd signaled a waiter, ordered a pot of black coffee, and was watching its approach. "I didn't go down to the wedding, but Ina herself invited me to come here to-night. I had half a mind not to; then at the last minute I decided I would – and I met you!"

      Worth nodded, sat there humped in a brown study while the waiter poured our coffee. The minute the man left us alone, he turned to her with,

      "I've got a stunt for you."

      "A – a stunt?"

      The light failed abruptly in her face; her mouth with its soft, firm molding, its vivid, floral red, like the lips of a child, went down a bit at the clean-cut corners. A small hand fumbled the trimming of her blouse; it was almost as if she laid it over a wounded heart.

      "Yes," he nodded. "Jerry's got something in his pocket that'll be pie for you."

      She turned to me a look between angry and piteous – the resentment she would not vent on him.

      "Is – is Mr. Boyne interested in stunts – such as I used to do?"

      "Sure," Worth agreed. "We both are. We – "

      "Oh, that was why you wanted me to come back with you?" She had got hold of herself now. She was more poised, but still resentful.

      "Bobs," he cut straight across her mood to what he wanted, "Jerry Boyne is going to read you something it took about 'steen blind people to see – and you'll give us the answer." I didn't share his confidence, but I rather admired it as he finished, poising the tongs, "One lump, or two?"

      Of course I knew what he meant. My hand was already fumbling in my pocket for the description of Clayte. The girl looked as though she wasn't going to answer him; she moved to shove back her chair. Worth's only recognition of her attitude was to put out a hand quietly, touch her arm, not once looking at her, and say in a lowered tone,

      "Steady, Bobs." And then, "Did you say one lump or two?"

      "None." Her voice was scarcely audible, but I saw she was going to stay; that Worth was to have his way, to get from her the opinion he wanted – whatever that might amount

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