Dinner in the Nob Hill palace was served at six-thirty. He arrived at six-forty-five and encountered Mrs. Summer-stone. She was a stout, elderly, decayed gentlewoman, a daughter of the great Porter-Rickington family that had shaken the entire Pacific Coast with its financial crash in the middle seventies. Despite her stoutness, she suffered from what she called shattered nerves.
This will never, never do, Richard, she censured. Here is dinner waiting fifteen minutes already, and you have not yet washed your face and hands.
I am sorry, Mrs. Summerstone, Young Dick apologized. I wont keep you waiting ever again. And I wont bother you much ever.
At dinner, in state, the two of them alone in the great dining-room, Young Dick strove to make things easy for the lady, whom, despite his knowledge that she was on his pay-roll, he felt toward as a host must feel toward a guest.
Youll be very comfortable here, he promised, once you are settled down. Its a good old house, and most of the servants have been here for years.
But, Richard, she smiled seriously to him; it is not the servants who will determine my happiness here. It is you.
Ill do my best, he said graciously. Better than that. Im sorry I came in late for dinner. In years and years youll never see me late again. I wont bother you at all. Youll see. It will be just as though I wasnt in the house.
When he bade her good night, on his way to bed, he added, as a last thought:
Ill warn you of one thing: Ah Sing. Hes the cook. Hes been in our house for years and years oh, I dont know, maybe twenty-five or thirty years hes cooked for father, from long before this house was built or I was born. Hes privileged. Hes so used to having his own way that youll have to handle him with gloves. But once he likes you hell work his fool head off to please you. He likes me that way. You get him to like you, and youll have the time of your life here. And, honest, I wont give you any trouble at all. Itll be a regular snap, just as if I wasnt here at all.
Chapter V
No use headin north, said Tim. Winterll come on up that way and make the sleepin crimpy. Dye want to go East that means Nevada and the deserts.
Any other way? queried Young Dick. Whats the matter with south? We can head for Los Angeles, an Arizona, an New Mexico oh, an Texas.
How much money you got? Tim demanded.
What for? Young Dick countered.
We gotta get out quick, an payin our way at the start is quickest. Me Im all hunkydory; but you aint. The folks thats lookin after youll raise a roar. Theyll have more detectives out than you can shake at stick at. We gotta dodge em, thats what.
Then we will dodge, said Young Dick. Well make short jumps this way and that for a couple of days, layin low most of the time, paying our way, until we can get to Tracy. Then well quit payin an beat her south.
All of which program was carefully carried out. They eventually went through Tracy as pay passengers, six hours after the local deputy sheriff had given up his task of searching the trains. With an excess of precaution Young Dick paid beyond Tracy and as far as Modesto. After that, under the teaching of Tim, he traveled without paying, riding blind baggage, box cars, and cow-catchers. Young Dick bought the newspapers, and frightened Tim by reading to him the lurid accounts of the kidnapping of the young heir to the Forrest millions.
Back in San Francisco the Board of Guardians offered rewards that totaled thirty thousand dollars for the recovery of their ward. And Tim Hagan, reading the same while they lay in the grass by some water-tank, branded forever the mind of Young Dick with the fact that honor beyond price was a matter of neither place nor caste and might outcrop in the palace on the height of land or in the dwelling over
a grocery down on the flat.
Gee! Tim said to the general landscape. The old man wouldnt raise a roar if I snitched on you for that thirty thousand. It makes me scared to think of it.
And from the fact that Tim thus openly mentioned the matter, Young Dick concluded that there was no possibility of the policemans son betraying him.
Not until six weeks afterward, in Arizona, did Young Dick bring up the subject.
You see, Tim, he said, Ive got slathers of money. Its growing all the time, and I aint spending a cent of it, not so as you can notice though that Mrs. Summerstone is getting a cold eighteen hundred a year out of me, with board and carriages thrown in, while you an I are glad to get the leavings of firemens pails in the round-houses. Just the same, my moneys growing. Whats ten per cent, on twenty dollars?
Tim Hagan stared at the shimmering heat-waves of the desert and tried to solve the problem.