CHAPTER XXIV
Lansdale stood watching the two red eyes on the rear platform of the sleeping-car until the curve on the farther side of the viaduct blotted them out; after which he fell in with the tide of humanity ebbing cityward through the great arch of the station, and set out to do Bartrow's errand at the house in Colfax Avenue.
On the way he found time to admire Bartrow's manliness. The little deed of self-effacement promised a much keener sense of the eternal fitness of things than he had expected to come upon, in the young miner, or in any son of the untempered wilderness. Not that the wilderness was more mercenary than the less strenuous world of an older civilization—rather the contrary; but if it gave generously it was also prone to take freely. Lansdale wrought out the antithesis as a small concession to his own point of view, and was glad to set Bartrow's self-abnegation over against it. Assuredly he would do what a friendly man might toward making good the excuses of the magnanimous one.
It was Miss Van Vetter who met him at the door, and he thought he surprised a shadow of disappointment in her eyes when she welcomed him. But it was Constance who said, "Come in, Mr. Lansdale. Where is Dick?"
She was holding the portière aside for him, and he made sure of his ingress before replying. Being of two minds whether to deny all previous knowledge of such a person as Richard Bartrow, or to commit himself recklessly to the hazards of equivocal explanations, he steered a middle course.
"Am I my brother's keeper?" he demanded, dropping into the easy-chair which had come to be called his by right of frequent occupancy.
"Oh, I hope you haven't murdered him!" said Connie, with a show of trepidation. "That's a terribly suggestive quotation."
"So it is. But are not my hands clean?" He held them up for inspection. "How are you both this evening?"
Connie's eyes danced. "Mr. Lansdale, do you happen to know anything about the habits of the ostrich?"