There was no earthly hope of speaking to my dream girl alone. I shoved the mystery of Collins into the back of my head and went off to my room before I remembered I was still unconsciously holding that torn-off flap of poor old Thompson's envelope in my shut fist. I dropped it on my floor,—and grabbed it up again, to stare at it for a full minute. Because there was writing on it, too.
"For God's sake, search my cards—my cards—my cards," Thompson had scrawled across the three-cornered envelope flap Macartney's grab had left in my hand: and, knowing Thompson, it was pitiful. He was the sort who must have been crazy indeed before he spoke of the Almighty and cards in the same breath.
I remembered taking his measly solitaire pack out of his pocket at the Halfway, and wished I had brought them along with me. But it was simple enough to go and get them from Billy Jones. Meantime I had no desire to speak to Macartney of them or the scrawled, torn-off flap from Thompson's envelope: he was sick enough already about old Thompson's aberration, without any more proofs of it. It hurt even me to remember I had always laughed at the poor devil and his forlorn cards. I had no heart to burn the scrap of his envelope either, while old Thompson lay unburied. I put it away in my letter case, and locked it up.
Which seemed a tame ending; I had not sense enough to know it was not tame at all!
CHAPTER IX
TATIANA PAULINA VALENKA!
Poor old Thompson seemed a closed incident. There was nothing to be found out about him, even regarding his departure from La Chance. Nobody remembered his going through Caraquet, or even the last time he had been there. He was not a man any one would remember, anyhow, or one who had made friends. We put a notice of his death and the circumstances in a Montreal paper, and I thought that was the end of it all, till Dudley, to my surprise, stuck obstinately to his idea of tracing Thompson from Montreal. He told Macartney and me that he had written to a detective about it, and I think we both thought it was silly. I know I did; and I saw Macartney close his lips as though he kept back the same thought. But we gave old Thompson the best funeral we could, over at the Halfway, with a good grave and a wooden cross. All of us went except Marcia. She said she had never cared about the poor old thing, and she wasn't going to pretend it.
It was a bitter day, with no snow come yet. Macartney looked sick and drawn about the mouth as he stood by the grave, while Dudley read the prayers out of Paulette's prayer book. I saw her notice Macartney when I did, and I think neither of us had guessed he had so much feeling. I stayed a minute or two behind the others, because I'd ridden over, instead of driving with them; and just before I started for La Chance I remembered that torn scrap of paper in my room there. I turned hastily to Billy Jones.