e
her own. At the worst, he had the nucleus of another fortune.

Curled among the pillows of her bed that night, she looked over the
evening papers, read with a swift heart-sinking that the Roaring Lake
fire was assuming terrific proportions, that nothing but a deluge of
rain would stay it now. And more significantly, except for a minor blaze
or two, the fire raged almost wholly upon and around the Fyfe block of
limits. She laid aside the papers, switched off the lights, and lay
staring wide-eyed at the dusky ceiling.

At twenty minutes of midnight she was called to the door of her room to
receive a telegram. It was from Linda, and it read:

"Charlie badly hurt. Can you come?"

Stella reached for the telephone receiver. The night clerk at the C.P.R.
depot told her the first train she could take left at six in the
morning. That meant reaching the Springs at nine-thirty. Nine and a half
hours to sit with idle hands, in suspense. She did not knew what tragic
denouement awaited there, what she could do once she reached there. She
knew only that a fever of impatience burned in her. The message had
strung her suddenly taut, as if a crisis had arisen in which willy-nilly
she must take a hand.

So, groping for the relief of action, some method of spanning that nine
hours' wait, her eye fell upon a card tucked beside the telephone case.
She held it between, finger and thumb, her brows puckered.

TAXIS AND TOURING CARS
Anywhere . . . Anytime

She took down the receiver again and asked for Seymour 9X.

"Western Taxi," a man's voice drawled.

"I want to reach Roaring Hot Springs in the shortest time possible," she
told him rather breathlessly. "Can you furnish me a machine and a
reliable chauffeur?"

"Roaring Springs?" he repeated. "How many passengers?"

"One. Myself."

"Just a minute."

She heard a faint burble of talk away at the other end of the wire. Then
the same voice speaking crisply.

"We gotta big six roadster, and a first-class driver. It'll cost you
seventy-five dollars--in advance."

"Your money will be waiting for you here," she answered calmly. "How
soon can you bring the car around to the Hotel Granada?"

"In ten minutes, if you say so."

"Say twenty minutes, then."

"All right."

She dressed herself, took the elevator down to the lobby, instructed the
night clerk to have a maid pack her trunk and send it by express to
Hopyard, care of St. Allwoods Hotel on the lake. Then she wa