whispered.

CHAPTER V

THE PIRATE AND PAULINE

A sort of false quiet, like the calm that broods between storms, kept
all serene at the Marvin mansion for a week after the aeroplane
catastrophe. Little had been seen of Harry, who was busy with
directors' meetings and visits to the factories. Owen had read with
alarm of rumors that some one had tampered with a wire of the wrecked
biplane. But if the authorities were investigating he saw no signs of
it, and suspicion pointed no finger at him.

What puzzled and worried Owen more than anything else was his own mind
and behavior. Having no belief in the supernatural, he could not
account for the dream which had thrown him into a criminal partnership
with Hicks. Hicks had blackmailed him in the past, and there was
nobody he had feared and hated more than this vulgar and disreputable
race track man. Yet Hicks had appeared to him in a dream, and Owen had
promptly done his bidding, involving himself in what would probably
turn out to be murder. The newspapers reported the French aviator as
barely living from day to day.

Owen suffered the torment of a lost soul, but, at least he had no more
dreams, or spectral visitations. Hicks called him on the telephone
once or twice, but the secretary refused to talk.

Pauline, too, had a busy week. Besides her usual social activities,
she rewrote and finished her new story. It seemed to her even better
than the one in the Cosmopolitan Magazine.

"This will surely be taken," Pauline thought with a little sigh of
regret, "and that means the end of my year of adventures--"

She had determined on this course the night after the accident. It was
after midnight, and Pauline was trying to marshal the exciting
recollections of the day into the orderly mental procession that leads
to sleep. Very faintly she heard what sounded like the music of a
distant mandolin. Pauline knew it was Harry, went to the open window
and looked down on the dark lawn. There he was playing with a bit of
straw instead of a pick that his music might not disturb the sleepers
in the house.

Pauline wanted to throw her arms around him and promise not to cause
any more worry. But she didn't, because she couldn't reach him from
the window. After Harry had gone Pauline decided to finish her story,
send it to a publisher and let his decision be hers.

"If they accept it, you stay home and marry Harry," she told the pretty
face under the filmy