It was half-past eleven when Ruyler and Spaulding, masked and wearing
colored silk dominoes, entered the great gates of the Thornton estate in
San Mateo, the detective merely displaying something in his palm to the
stern guardians that kept the county rabble at bay.
The mob stood off rather grumblingly, for they would have liked to get
closer to that gorgeous mass of light they could merely glimpse through
the great oaks of the lower part of the estate, and to the music so
seductive in the distance.
They were not a rabble to excite pity, by any means. A few ragged tramps
had joined the crowd, possibly a few pickpockets from the city, watching
their opportunity to slip in behind one of the automobiles that brought
the guests from the station or from the estates up and down the valley.
They were, for the most part, trades-people from the little towns--San
Mateo, Redwood City--or the wives of the proletariat--or the servants of
the neighboring estates. But, although, they grumbled and envied, they
made no attempt to force their way in; it was only the light-fingered
gentry the police at the great iron gates were on the lookout for.
Ruyler, if his mind had been less harrowed with the looming and possibly
dire climax of his own secret drama, would have laughed aloud at this
melodramatic entrance to the grounds of one of his most intimate friends.
He and Spaulding had walked from the train, but they were not detained as
long as a gay party of young people from Atherton, who teased the police
by refusing to present their cards or lift their masks. Ruyler knew them
all, but they finally sped past him without even a glance of contempt for
mere foot passengers, even though they looked like a couple of dodging
conspirators.
He had met Spaulding at the station in San Francisco, and private
conversation on the crowded train had been impossible. When they had
walked a few yards along the wide avenue, as brilliant as day with its
thousands of colored lights concealed in the astonished pines, Ruyler sat
deliberately down upon a bench and motioned the detective to take the
seat beside him.
"It is time you gave me some sort of a hint," he said. "After all, it is
my affair--"
"I know, but as I said, you might not approve my methods, and if you
balk, all is up. We've got the chance of our lives. It's now or never."
"I do not at all like the idea that you may be forcing me into a position
where I may find myself doing something I shall be ashamed of for the
rest of my life."