The Heads of Cerberus | Page 5

last
grasped the friendly, powerful hand which his innate and self-denied
honesty had prevented his taking except on a basis of open
understanding.
Gathering up the stuff on the floor in one great armful, Trenmore bore

it down to his own bedroom, followed by Drayton.
"I'll advise Jimmy to get him a new safe," chuckled Trenmore as he
tossed his burden on the bed. "If there's aught of value here he deserves
to be robbed, keeping it in that old tin box of a thing. But perhaps I'm
ungrateful. I never thought, so freely he offered it, that he had to clear
his own things out of this wall safe to give me the use of it. I'll share it
with him from this day, and if there's anything missing from this lot I'll
make the value up to him so be he'll let me, which he will not, being
proud, stiff-necked, and half a Sassenach, for all he's my mother's third
cousin on the O'Shaughnessy side. So I'll do it in a most underhand and
secretive manner and get the better of him."
Still running along in a light, commonplace tone which denied any
trace of the unusual in the situation, he again rang for Martin, and when
that young man appeared bade him prepare breakfast for his guest as
well as himself. The servant did his best to conceal a not unnatural
amazement; but his imitation of an imperturbable English man-servant
was a rather forlorn and weak one.
He went off at last, muttering to himself: "How'd the fellow get in?
That's what I want to know! He wasn't here last night, and Mr.
Trenmore hasn't been out of his room or I'd have heard him, and I never
let his friend in, that's sure!"
Not strangely, perhaps, it did not occur to Martin that Mr. Trenmore's
mysterious friend might have come a-visiting through the roof.
CHAPTER 2
: DUST OF PURGATORY
LESS than an hour later, Robert Drayton, amateur burglar and so
shortly previous a desperate and hunted man, sat down at table in the
respectable Philadelphia residence he had fortunately chosen for his
first invasion. His wounded temple was adorned with several neatly
adjusted strips of plaster, and if his head ached, at least his heart was
lighter than it had been in many a day. This last, as it were, in spite of

himself. He felt that he should really be cringing under the
table--anywhere out of sight. But with Terence Trenmore sitting
opposite, his countenance fairly radiating satisfaction and good cheer,
Drayton could not for the life of him either cringe or slink.
The breakfast, moreover, proved Martin to be what his master had
boasted--an uncommonly good cook. Before the charms of sweet
Virginia ham, fresh eggs, hot muffins, and super-excellent coffee,
Drayton's misery and humiliation strangely faded into the background
of consciousness.
Trenmore was an older man than he, by ten years of time and thrice
their equivalent in rough experience. The two had first met in Chicago
during the strenuous period of a strike. Drayton, unwise enough to play
peaceful bystander at a full-grown riot, had found himself involved in
an embattled medley of muscular slaughter-house men and equally
muscular and better-armed police. He had stood an excellent chance of
being killed by one party or arrested by the other, and none at all of
extricating himself, when Trenmore, overlooking the fight from the
steps of a near-by building, and seeing a young, slender, well-dressed
man in a struggle in which he obviously had no place, came to his aid
and fought a way out for the two of them.
Later they had joined forces on a long vacation in the Canadian woods.
Drayton was then a rising young lawyer of considerable independent
means, high-strung, nervous, and with a certain disposition toward
melancholy. In the Irishman, with his tireless strength and humorous
optimism, he found an ideal companion for that outdoor life, while
Trenmore, well read, but self-educated, formed a well-nigh extravagant
admiration for the young lawyer's intellect and character. And Terence
Trenmore, his faith once given, resembled a large, loyal mastiff; he was
thenceforth ready to give at need all that was his, goods, gains, or the
strength of his great brain and body.
Following those months in Canada, however, Drayton returned to
Cincinnati, his home. The two had kept up for some time a desultory
correspondence, but Trenmore's fortune, acquired in the Yukon,
permitted him to live the roving life which suited his restless

temperament. His address changed so frequently that Drayton found it
difficult to keep track of him, and as the latter became more and more
desperately absorbed in certain ruinous complications of his own affairs,
he had allowed his correspondence with Trenmore to lapse to nothing.
Their appetites pleasantly quelled