"Paul Whitridge, thirty-four, master mariner—British subject," he said, and the clerk recalled afterward the strange hesitancy with which he gave his name and nationality.
The manager reappeared at this moment and began reading a memorandum to the clerk: "Miss Emily Granville, twenty-four—American." Whitridge gave a barely perceptible start of surprise as the name fell from the manager's lips. He compressed his eyes as if to shut out some unpleasant thought or memory. The manager threw the slip of paper on the desk. "You can make it out, Burr. It's all there. Book her and the maid that way," he said. Then, turning to Whitridge, he went on: "I'm mightily obliged to you, sir. I'll send a note to the ship asking to have special care taken of you. She is one of the big stockholders in the Western Line. Cables came last night for her—she's just down from Tokyo. Some business trouble at home—trustee of her estate dead. Something like that. Must get home immediately. Can't bear to travel in inside rooms. She—her——"
"It's all right," Whitridge said, cutting him off. "I'm glad to have been able to do it."
He spoke with an indication of impatience in tone and manner. Without another word he gathered up his tickets and went out of the agency. The manager and clerk wished him a pleasant voyage, but if he heard them he made no sign.
"Devilish strange sort," said the manager in surprise.
"I should say so. I think he's the captain that brought that wreck of a Chink tramp in here a couple of months ago," answered the clerk.
"Indeed!" With this exclamation of surprise the manager hurried back to his office where Emily Granville was waiting and thinking of the inexpressible sadness she had seen in the face of the stranger who had resigned his stateroom to her. It troubled her. In the instant that she had turned to find his gaze fixed on her she saw a pain in his eyes so poignant that it hurt her. A soul sounding the deeps of anguish seemed to have been crying out just behind them.
Whitridge, going swiftly along The Bund, was torn by the thoughts which the name of Granville had started. It had been these thoughts which had driven him out of the agency so strangely. He argued and argued with himself that he must be wrong; that there were undoubtedly others of that name in San Francisco. He tried hard to think of other things, but ever the vision of this woman with the golden hair remained dominant. It excluded even the thought of his mother whose message to come home to her before it was too late had decided him in an hour to cross the ocean. His remembrance of the woman was so vivid that she might have waited at his side. The fragrance of her remained in his nostrils. The atmosphere of her girlish freshness clung to him. There was an indefiniteness about her like the mystery of the Spring. The Englishman had been right in thinking she suggested Burne-Jones' "Springtime." She was a veritable gold woman.
As he came to the little hotel hidden away in the fringe of The Bluff's European respectability a Chinaman, waiting as a dog waits, greeted him. It was the Cantonese serang called Chang, who had come out of the maw of death with him in the Kau Lung. Yokohama knew him as Whitridge's shadow.
"Tlunk all pack, master. Him gone ship. What time you sail?" the Chinaman asked in a breath.