The Intriguers. Harold Bindloss
winter from the Wild-goose hills. I'd put in the winter with a band of Stonies."
"The Northern Stonies? Did you find them easy to get on with?"
"They knew some interesting things," Clarke answered dryly. "I went there to study."
"Ah!" said the agent. "What plain folk, for want of a better name, call the occult. But it's fortunate that there's a barred door between white men and the Indian's mysticism."
"It has been opened to a white man once or twice."
"Oh, yes! He stepped through into the darkness and never came out again. There was an instance I could mention."
"Civilized people would have no use for him afterward," Harding broke in. "We want sane, normal men on this continent. Neurotics, hoodoos and fakirs are worse than the plague; there's contagion in their fooling."
"How would you define them? Those who don't fit in with your ideas of the normal?" Clarke sneered.
"I know a clean, straight man when I meet him, and that's enough for me," Harding retorted.
"I imagine that cleverer people are now and then deceived," said
Clarke, moving away as he spoke.
"That's a man I want to keep clear of," Harding declared. "There's something wrong about him; he's not wholesome!"
CHAPTER V
CORNERING THE BOBCAT
The next evening Harding was taking out a cigar in the vestibule when a man brushed past him wearing big mittens and a loose black cloak such as old-fashioned French-Canadians sometimes use.
"Why, Blake!" he cried. "What have you got on? Have you been serenading somebody?"
"I can't stop," Blake answered with a grin. "Open that door for me—quick!"
A porter held back the door, but as Blake slipped through, Harding seized his cloak.
"Hold on! I want a talk with you!"
Blake made an effort to break loose, and as he did so a bobcat dropped from beneath his arm and fell, spitting and snarling, to the floor. Its fur was torn and matted, tufts were hanging loose, and the creature had a singularly disreputable and ferocious appearance. Blake made an attempt to recapture it, but, evading him easily, it ran along the floor with a curious hopping gait and disappeared among the pillars. Then he turned to his friend with a rueful laugh.
"You see what you've done! It's gone into the rotunda, where everybody is."
Harding looked at him critically.
"You seem sober. What ever possessed you to get yourself up like an Italian opera villain and go round the town with a wild beast under your arm?"
"I'll tell you later," Blake laughed. "What we have to do now is to catch the thing."
"It's time," drawled Harding. "The circus is beginning."
Men's laughter and women's shrieks rose from the rotunda. Somebody shouted orders in French, there was a patter of running feet, and then a crash as of chairs being overturned. Blake sprang in, and Harding followed, divided between amusement and impatience. They saw an animated scene. Two porters were chasing the bobcat, which now and then turned upon them savagely, while several waiters, keeping at a judicious distance, tried to frighten it into a corner by flourishing their napkins. Women fled out of the creature's way, men hastily moved chairs and tables to give the pursuers room, and some of the more energetic joined in the chase. At one end of the room, Mrs. Keith stood angrily giving instructions which nobody attended to. Millicent, standing near her, looked hot and unhappy, but for all that her eyes twinkled when a waiter, colliding with a chair, went down with a crash and the bobcat sped away from him in a series of awkward jumps.
At last, Blake managed to seize it with his mittened hands. He rolled it in a cloth and gave it to a porter, and then advanced toward Mrs. Keith, his face red with exertion but contrite, and the cloak, which had come unhooked, hanging down from one shoulder. She glanced at him in a puzzled, half-disturbed manner when he stopped.
"As the cat belongs to me," she said imperiously, "and as I'm told you dropped it in the vestibule, I feel that I'm entitled to an explanation. I gave the animal to my maid this morning, sending Miss Graham to see it delivered to a veterinary surgeon, and it disappeared. May I ask how it came into your possession?"
"Through no fault of Miss Graham's, I assure you. I happened to notice your maid trying to carry an awkwardly shaped hamper, and Miss Graham looking for a cab. It struck me the thing was more of a man's errand and I undertook it."
"It's curious that you knew what the errand was, unless Miss Graham told you." Mrs. Keith looked sternly at Millicent, and the girl blushed. "I have been led to believe that you made her acquaintance, without my knowledge, on board the steamer by which we came up."
"That," said Blake respectfully, "is not quite correct. I was formally presented to Miss Graham in England some time ago. However, as I saw a car coming along St. Catharine's while your maid was looking for a hack, and there was no time to explain, I scribbled a note on a bit of a letter and gave it to a boy to deliver to Miss Graham, and then I took the cat to a taxidermist."
"To a taxidermist! Why?"
"It struck me that he ought to know something about the matter.
Anyway, he was the nearest approach to a vet that I could find."
Mrs. Keith looked at him thoughtfully.
"You seem to have a curious way of reasoning. What did the man say?"
"He promised to engage the services of a dog-fancier friend of his."
"You imagined that a dog-fancier would specialize in cats?"
Millicent's eyes twinkled, but Mrs. Keith's face was serious and
Blake's perfectly grave.
"I don't know that I argued the matter out. To tell the truth, I undertook the thing on impulse."
"So it seems. But you haven't told me what became of my hamper."
"The hamper was unfortunately smashed. I left it at a basket shop; and that explains the cloak. My friend, the taxidermist, insisted on lending it and his winter gloves to me. One looks rather conspicuous walking through the streets with a bobcat on one's arm."
Then, to Blake's astonishment, Mrs. Keith broke into a soft laugh.
"I understand it all," she said. "It was a prank one would expect you to play. Though it's a very long time since I saw you, you haven't changed, Dick. Now take that ridiculous cloak off and come back and talk to me."
When Blake returned, Millicent had gone, and Mrs. Keith noticed the glance he cast about the room.
"I sent Miss Graham away," she said. "You have been here some days.
Why didn't you tell me who you were?"
"I wasn't sure you would be willing to acknowledge me," he answered frankly.
"Oh, I never quite agreed with the popular opinion about what you were supposed to have done. It wasn't like you; there must have been something that did not come out."
"Thank you," Blake said quietly.
She gave him a searching glance.
"Can't you say something for yourself?" she urged.
"I think not. The least said, the soonest mended, you know."
"But for the sake of others."
"So far as I know, only one person was much troubled about my disgrace.
I'm thankful my father died before