Miss Holder crossed the landing and tapped at the door of the adjoining room, while Nellie Townshead walked to the window and looked down on the city. It stretched away before her, silent for once under its blinking lights, sidewalk and pavement lying empty far down beneath the mazy wires and towering buildings, but she saw little of it as she glanced towards the block where the Somasco Consolidated had their offices. The message had troubled her, for she recalled many kindnesses shown to her and her father by the owners of Somasco ranch. She also owed one of them a reparation, for she had seen the man who miscarried the message in Vancouver, and knew that the delay, when the ranch was sold, was not Alton's fault. Nor had she forgiven Hallam for the greed and cunning which had effected her father's ruin, and now it seemed that he held Alton of Somasco and his partner in his grip. That there was treachery at work she felt sure, and grew hot with indignation as she determined that if she could prevent it neither Alton—nor his partner—should suffer.
It might have occurred to a man that what she contemplated implied a breach of confidence, but Nellie Townshead was a high-spirited girl, and only realized that Hallam was about to wrong her friends just then.
There would also be no difficulty in warning him, for Alton had taken over the office of the Somasco Consolidated on his arrival at Vancouver, and while she considered the question a voice came out of the adjoining room.
"Hallam's at Westminster, and it will have to wait until he comes round in the morning. Don't stay any longer, and take Miss Townshead with you. It's later than I fancied."
Five minutes afterwards the two girls went out into the silent streets, and Miss Townshead, who left her companion at the corner of one of them, turned round again and walked back somewhat slowly part of the way she had come. She did not notice that Miss Holder had also turned and was watching her, for she realized for the first time that what she was about to do admitted of misconception. Still, remembering how Hallam had tricked her father, she went on, and only stopped for a moment when she entered the great building in the upper part of which was the office of the Somasco Consolidated. It was very silent. The rooms which had hummed with voices all day long were shut, and one blinking light emphasized the darkness of the big empty corridor. Scarcely a sound reached her from the city, but she had seen that two windows high up were lighted, and went up the stairway resolutely. The warning could be delivered in less than a minute, and she fancied that Alton would not be alone, while she knew that the conventionalities as understood in England are almost unknown in the West.
As it happened Alton, who, though Miss Townshead did not know this, lived in the room adjoining his office, was busy about the stove just then. In those days, when Vancouver had more inhabitants than it could well find room for and its hotels overflowed, single men taking their meals in the public restaurants lived as best they could, over their stores and offices, or in rude cabins and shanties flung up anywhere on the outskirts of the city, while it is not improbable that a good many of them live in much the same fashion now. Alton had, however, missed the six o'clock supper, for reasons which the sheaf of papers on his desk made plain, and was then engaged in cooking something in a frying-pan. A portable cedar partition partly shrouded the little table set out with a few plates, and the stove, while his old worked-deerhide slippers and loose jacket indicated that the man was just then not so much in his place of business as at home. He had been busy in the city and at his desk for ten hours that day, for the Somasco products were becoming known, and men had been toiling in the valley, driving roads, and building a new sawmill in the frost and snow. Part of Alton's business in the city was to raise the money that was needed to maintain them, and already he could foresee that if the time of prosperity was delayed it might go hardly with the Somasco Company.
He had laid down the frying-pan and was shaking a pot of strong green tea when there was a tapping at the door, which opened while he wondered whether there would be time for him to alter his attire. Then he stood up with the teapot in his hand, and made a little whimsical gesture of dismay as Miss Townshead stood before him. She coloured a trifle, but took courage at Alton's soft laugh, for it was clear that he was as yet only concerned about the plight in which she had found him. Alton, she remembered, had not been brought up conventionally in England, and she knew his wholesome simplicity.
"I'm very glad to see you, but if I'd known who was there I'd have fixed the place up before you got in," he said. "Sit right down beside the stove."
Nellie Townshead stood still a moment, but she was tired and the night was cold, so she took the chair he drew forward, and then shook her head as he laid a cup before her.
"It's Horton's tea, and bad at that, but it will help us to fancy ourselves back in the bush," he said. "Your father is keeping all right?"