Friday, the Thirteenth | Page 9

game. The blow seems to
have turned this child into a wonderfully nervy creature, and, old man, I

am beginning to have a feeling that perhaps the cards may come so she
will win the judge out. You and I know where less than sixty thousand
has been run up to millions more than once, and that, too, without the
aid she will have, for I'll surely do all I can to help her steer this last
chance into spongy places."
Bob in his enthusiasm had completely lost sight of the fact that he was
indorsing a project that but a moment previously he had pronounced
insane, and with a start I realised what this sudden transformation
betokened. Inevitably, if the project he outlined were carried out, Bob
and the beautiful Southern girl would be thrown into close association
with each other, and further acquaintance could only deepen the
startling influence Beulah Sands had already won over my ordinarily
sane and cool-headed comrade. As I looked at my friend, burning with
an ardour as unaccustomed as it was impulsive, I felt a tug at my
heartstrings at thought of the sudden cross-roading of his life's highway.
But I, too, was filled with the glamour of this girl's wondrous beauty,
and her terrible predicament appealed to me almost as strongly as it had
to Bob. So, although I knew it would be fatal to any chance of his
weighing the matter by common sense, I burst out:
"Bob, I don't blame you for falling in with the girl's plans. If I were in
your shoes, I should too."
Tears came to Bob's eyes as he grabbed my hand and said:
"Jim, how can I ever repay you for all the good things you have done
for me--how can I!"
It was no time to give way to emotional outbursts, and while Bob was
getting his grip on himself, I went on:
"Come along down to earth now, Bob; let us look at this thing squarely.
You and I, with our position in the market, can do lots of things to help
run that sixty thousand to higher figures, but six months is a short time
and a million or two a world of money."
"She knows that," he said, "and the time is much shorter and the road to

go much longer than you figure," he replied. "This girl is as
high-tensioned as the E string on a Stradivarius, and she declares she
will have no charity tips or unusual favours from us or any one else.
But let us not talk about that now or we'll get discouraged. Let's do as
she says and trust to God for the outcome. Are you willing, Jim, to take
her into the office as a sort of confidential secretary? If you will, I'll
take charge of her account, and together we will do all that two men
can for her and her father."
Chapter II.

The following week saw Miss Sands, of Virginia, private secretary to
the head of Randolph & Randolph, established in a little office between
mine and Bob's. She had not been there a day before we knew she was
a worker. She spent the hours going over reports and analysing
financial statements, showing a sagacity extraordinary in so young a
person. She explained her knowledge of figures by the hand-work she
had done for the judge, all of whose accounts she had kept. Bob and I
saw that she was bent on smothering her memory in that antidote for all
ills of heart and soul--work. Her office life was simplicity itself. She
spoke to no one except Bob, save in connection with such business
matters of the firm's as I might send her by one of the clerks to attend to.
To the others in the banking-house she was just an unconventional
young literary woman whose high social connections had gained her
this opportunity of getting at the secrets of finance, from actual
experience, for use in forthcoming novels. It had got abroad that she
was the writer of great distinction who, under a nom de plume, had
recently made quite a dent in the world's literary shell--a suggestion
that I rightly guessed was one of Bob's delicate ways of smoothing out
her path. I had tried in every way to make things easy for her, but it was
impossible for me to draw her out in talk, and finally I gave it up. Had
it not been that every time I passed her office door I was compelled by
the fascination which I had first felt, and which, instead of diminishing,
had increased with her reticence, to look in at the quiet figure with the
downcast eyes, working away at her desk as though her life depended
on never