Doubloons—and the Girl

by John Maxwell Forbes

When Allen Drew opened his eyes the next morning, he was conscious of an unusual feeling of elation. He lay for a moment in the twilight zone between sleeping and waking, seeking the reason. Then in a flash it came to him.

He was out of bed in a twinkling. Life was too full and rich now to waste it in sleep. Yesterday morning it had seemed drab and commonplace. To-day it sparkled with prismatic hues. He was a new man in a new world.

He found himself whistling from sheer excess of good spirits as he moved about the room. He hurried through his shower and dressing in record time. Then he despatched his breakfast with a speed and absent-mindedness that were most unusual for him and evoked the mild astonishment of his landlady. A few minutes later he had joined the hurrying throng that was moving toward the nearest subway station. He left the train at Fulton Street and surprised Winters by appearing at the shop a half hour earlier than his usual time.

There were two reasons for pressing haste on this morning. The moving from the old quarters to the new involved an amount of work that was appalling. There were a thousand things to be done, and for the next week or ten days the force of three employees must work at top speed. Current business would have to be attended to as usual, and in addition there was the colossal task of removing the contents of the three crowded floors from the old building to the new.

There was a second task which, in Drew's secret heart, seemed the more important. That was to discover the address of the girl he had met on the pier and learn what he could about her.

In the first flush of determination this had seemed to be a comparatively easy matter. The very fact that he wanted it so badly seemed to guarantee his success. Such difficulties as suggested themselves he waved airily aside. No young Lochinvar coming out of the West had felt more certain of carrying off his Ellen than Allen Drew had felt the night before of finding Miss Ruth Adams. But when he applied his mind to the task in the cold light of day, it did not seem so easy and he was hazy as to the best way to go about it.

He opened his desk, and before looking at the mail that mutely besought his attention, he reached for the huge city directory and opened to the letter "A." He was appalled to find how many Adamses there were. There were dozens, scores, hundreds! Even with the firm and corporation names eliminated, the individual Adamses were legion. And not one of them had Ruth before it.

This, however, he had hardly expected. She was too young to be listed separately, and would probably be included under the name of her father or her mother.

He had had a vague idea that, if there were not too many Adamses, he might take them one by one and by discreet inquiries in the neighborhood of each find out if the family included a young lady named Ruth. If he succeeded, that would be a great point gained. What he should do after that he would have been puzzled to tell. But he had a desperate hope that, hovering in the vicinity, some way, somehow, he could manage to secure an introduction.

But now, with this formidable array of names before him, his plan vanished into thin air. Life was too short, and he could not wait for eternity!