The tuneless thrumming of a piano sounded behind him. As he passed through the low door of the restaurant a man and woman lurched past him and in their irresolute faces and leering stare he read the verification of his suspicions of the place. Through a second door he entered a large room filled with tables and chairs, and pregnant with strange odors. At one of the farther tables sat a long-queued Chinaman with his head bowed in his arms. Behind a counter stood a second, as motionless as an obelisk in the half gloom of the dimly illuminated room, his evil face challenging Howland as he entered. The sound of a piano came from above and with a bold and friendly nod the young engineer mounted a pair of stairs.
"Tough joint," he muttered, falling into his old habit of communing with himself. "Hope they make good tea."
At the sound of his footsteps on the stair the playing of the piano ceased. He was surprised at what greeted him above. In startling contrast to the loathsome environment below he entered a luxuriously appointed room, heavily hung with oriental tapestries, and with half a dozen onyx tables partially concealed behind screens and gorgeously embroidered silk curtains. At one of these he seated himself and signaled for service with the tiny bell near his hand. In response there appeared a young Chinaman with close-cropped hair and attired in evening dress.
"A pot of tea," ordered Howland; and under his breath he added, "Pretty deuced good for a wilderness town! I wonder--"
He looked about him curiously. Although it was only eleven o'clock the place appeared to be empty. Yet Howland was reasonably assured that it was not empty. He was conscious of sensing in a vague sort of way the presence of others somewhere near him. He was sure that there was a faint, acrid odor lurking above that of burned incense, and he shrugged his shoulders with conviction when he paid a dollar for his pot of tea.
"Opium, as sure as your name is Jack Howland," he said, when the waiter was gone. "I wonder again--how many pots of tea do they sell in a night?"
He sipped his own leisurely, listening with all the eagerness of the new sense of freedom which had taken possession of him. The Chinaman had scarcely disappeared when he heard footsteps on the stair. In another instant a low word of surprise almost leaped from his lips. Hesitating for a moment in the doorway, her face staring straight into his own, was the girl whom he had seen through the hotel window!
For perhaps no more than five seconds their eyes met. Yet in that time there was painted on his memory a picture that Howland knew he would never forget. His was a nature, because of the ambition imposed on it, that had never taken more than a casual interest in the form and feature of women. He had looked on beautiful faces and had admired them in a cool, dispassionate way, judging them--when he judged at all--as he might have judged the more material workmanship of his own hands. But this face that was framed for a few brief moments in the door reached out to him and stirred an interest within him which was as new as it was pleasurable. It was a beautiful face. He knew that in a fraction of the first second. It was not white, as he had first seen it through the window. The girl's cheeks were flushed. Her lips were parted, and she was breathing quickly, as though from the effect of climbing the stair. But it was her eyes that sent Howland's blood a little faster through his veins. They were glorious eyes.
The girl turned from his gaze and seated herself at a table so that he caught only her profile. The change delighted him. It afforded him another view of the picture that had appeared to him in the doorway, and he could study it without being observed in the act, though he was confident that the girl knew his eyes were on her. He refilled his tiny cup with tea and smiled when he noticed that she could easily have seated herself behind one of the screens. From the flush in her cheeks his eyes traveled critically to the rich glow of the light in her shining brown hair, which swept half over her ears in thick, soft waves, caught in a heavy coil low on her neck. Then, for the first time, he noticed her dress. It puzzled him. Her turban and muff were of deep gray lynx fur. Around her shoulders was a collarette of the same material. Her hands were immaculately gloved. In every feature of her lovely face, in every point of her dress, she bore the indisputable mark of refinement. The quizzical smile left his lips. The thoughts which at first had filled his mind as quickly disappeared. Who was she? Why was she here?
With cat-like quietness the young Chinaman entered between the screens and stood beside her. On a small tablet which Howland had not before observed she wrote her order. It was for tea. He noticed that she gave the waiter a dollar bill in payment and that the Chinaman returned seventy-five cents to her in change.
"Discrimination," he chuckled to himself. "Proof that she's not a stranger here, and knows the price of things."
He poured his last half cup of tea and when he lifted his eyes he was surprised to find that the girl was looking at him. For a brief interval her gaze was steady and clear; then the flush deepened in her cheeks; her long lashes drooped as the cold gray of Howland's eyes met hers in unflinching challenge, and she turned to her tea. Howland noted that the hand which lifted the little Japanese pot was trembling slightly. He leaned forward, and as if impelled by the movement, the girl turned her face to him again, the tea-urn poised above her cup. In her dark eyes was an expression which half brought him to his feet, a wistful glow, a pathetic and yet half-frightened appeal to him. He rose, his eyes questioning her, and to his unspoken inquiry her lips formed themselves into a round, red O, and she nodded to the opposite side of her table.
"I beg your pardon," he said, seating himself. "May I give you my card?"
He felt as if there was something brutally indecent in what he was doing and the knowledge of it sent a red flush to his cheeks. The girl read his name, smiled across the table at him, and with a pretty gesture, motioned him to bring his cup and share her tea with her. He returned to his table and when he came back with the cup in his hand she was writing on one of the pages of the tablet, which she passed across to him.
"You must pardon me for not talking," he read. "I can hear you very well, but I, unfortunately, am a mute."
He could not repress the low ejaculation of astonishment that came to his lips, and as his companion lifted her cup he saw in her face again the look that had stirred him so strangely when he stood in the window of the Hotel Windsor. Howland was not a man educated in the trivialities of chance flirtations. He lacked finesse, and now he spoke boldly and to the point, the honest candor of his gray eyes shining full on the girl.
"I saw you from the hotel window to-night," he began, "and something in your face led me to believe that you were in trouble. That is why I have ventured to be so bold. I am the engineer in charge of the new Hudson Bay Railroad, just on my way to Le Pas from Chicago. I'm a stranger in town. I've never been in this--this place before. It's a very nice tea-room, an admirable blind for the opium stalls behind those walls."
In a few terse words he had covered the situation, as he would have covered a similar situation in a business deal. He had told the girl who and what he was, had revealed the cause of his interest in her, and at the same time had given her to understand that he was aware of the nature of their present environment. Closely he watched the effect of his words and in another breath was sorry that he had been so blunt. The girl's eyes traveled swiftly about her; he saw the quick rise and fall of her bosom, the swift fading of the color in her cheeks, the affrighted glow in her eyes as they came back big and questioning to him.
"I didn't know," she wrote quickly, and hesitated. Her face was as white now as when Howland had looked on it through the window. Her hand trembled nervously and for an instant her lip quivered in a way that set Howland's heart pounding tumultuously within him. "I am a stranger, too," she added. "I have never been in this place before. I came because--"
She stopped, and the catching breath in her throat was almost a sob as she looked at Howland. He knew that it took an effort for her to write the next words.
"I came because you came."
"Why?"