It was after five now, and all San Francisco, to say nothing of Oakland and Berkeley, was stumbling home through the murk.

"Your husband seems in a gay humor tonight," I remarked to Carlotta Drew. She nodded, but said nothing. "Probably the effect of San Francisco," I went on. "I've always heard of it as a merry town. Life and color and romance-"

"And dozens of beautiful girls," put in Mary Will.

"I don't see them."

"Wait till the fog lifts," she answered.

Henry Drew was again at the door. He ordered the driver to stop at my hotel, then popped back into his seat. In his hand he carried a small package.

"Candles for the party," he laughed. "Fifty little pink candles."

Fifty! I stared at him there in that dim-lit car. Fifty-why, the old boy must be seventy if he was a day. Did he hope by this silly ruse to win back his middle age, in our eyes at least? Or wait a minute! Was he only fifty, after all? If rumor were true, he had lived a wild, reckless life. Perhaps that life had played a trick upon him-had made his fifty look like seventy.

We drew up before my hotel, and Hung Chin-chung was instantly on the sidewalk with my bags.

"I'll send the car for you at seven," Drew said. "We'll have a merry party. Don't fail me."

I thanked him, and amid muttered au revoirs the car went on its way. Standing on the curb, I stared after it. This was incredible! My first night back on American soil, the night I had been dreaming of for four years-and I was to spend it celebrating the birthday of my bitterest enemy! But there was Mary Will. She had dismissed me forever, and I was bound to show her she could not do that.

III

A few minutes before seven I came downstairs into the bright lobby of my hotel. Parker, the ship's doctor, whose cabin Drew and I had shared on the way across, was lolling in a chair. He rose and came toward me, a handsome devil in evening clothes-indubitably handsome, indubitably a devil.

"All dolled up," he said.

"Going to a birthday party," I answered.

"Great Scott! You don't mean you're invited to old Drew's shindig?"

"Why shouldn't I be invited?" I asked.

"But you and the old man-you're deadly enemies-"

"Not at all. He rather likes me. Found me so easy to flimflam-my type appeals to him. He pleaded with me to come."

"But you? You don't like him? Yet you accept. Ah, yes-I was forgetting the little southern girl-"

"My reasons," I said hotly, "happen to be my own affair."

"Naturally." His tone was conciliatory. "Come and have a drink. No? I am going to the party myself."

I had been wondering-his fame as a philanderer was international. Was this affair with Carlotta Drew anything more than a passing flurry to relieve the tedium of another trip across? Here was the answer. Evidently it was.

"Fearful bore," he went on. "But Carlotta insisted. I'd do anything for Carlotta Drew. Wonderful woman!"

"Think so?" said I.

"Don't you?" he asked.

"In the presence of an expert," said I, "I would hesitate to express an opinion."

He laughed.

"Er-you know something of old Drew's affairs," he ventured. "Must be a very rich man?"

"Must be," said I.

"That mine you worked in? Big money maker?"

"Big money maker." I repeated his words intentionally.