He turned to Wilkins, who had waited patiently for him to speak. “I can’t help you off-hand,” he declared, “but perhaps I may be able to do so later. Perhaps I can trace that letter. I don’t know whether I can or not, but I will try. Certainly I can learn something about the wreck of the _Orkney_, and that ought to help. Your brother’s room is vacant. Suppose you occupy it to-night, and meanwhile I will see what I can learn. And if I were you, I should keep that letter to myself.” The man’s lips curled contemptuously. “Don’t you worry about me none!” he responded grimly. “I ain’t takin’ no chances. I’ve had time to arrange things. Do you know what would eventuate if I didn’t show up for such and such a time? Well, I’ll tell you. Copies of this here letter would go to half a dozen newspapers _mucho pronto_. An’ I judge that would queer the game some for the folks that did for Jim.” It was this interview that had caused Caruth to consult Bristow and to tell that clever newspaper man a great deal more than he had dreamed of doing when he began, though, for some reason not entirely intelligible to himself, he did not touch on the arrival of the Westerner. It was the interview, too, that led him to the presence of his charmer. CHAPTER SEVEN The Women’s Hotel of New York is sacred to the unattended woman. The clerks and the cooks are women; women wait on the tables; and women convey characteristically feminine trunks to virgin apartments. No man, attended or unattended, may spread his name upon its register, or settle himself within its sacrosanct precincts. Scarcely may he win permission to wait in a parlor while a feminine bell-hop carries his card to the arcana above. In this parlor Caruth awaited an answer to his call. Fearing that a card alone might meet denial, he had inscribed it with the words “On most important business” before he sent it up. He had the parlor to himself, and carefully he chose a position, partly screened by flowering plants, where he might hope to talk unheard and undisturbed by any one who might enter. What he had to say was not too pleasant, and he wanted no chance eavesdroppers. He waited a long time--so long, in fact, that he began to fear that his note might be ineffective, and he was contemplating a further appeal and wondering, in the event that this too failed, how long he could roost on the steps of the opposite house watching for her to come out, without being arrested. For he was determined to see her. But at last she came. She wore an evening dress of some glittering material, rich and black. Her clear-cut profile and delicately arched eyebrows reminded him of a cameo or an old French miniature. Her shoulders, rising from a corsage of black velvet, gleamed like tinted marble in the soft lights of the hall. It seemed incredible that she and the girl of a week before could be the same. He bowed in silence, dumbly staring.