ome time out on Pacific Avenue, and his death was registered
where the fire didn't go--"

"But what put you on?" asked Ruyler impatiently. "I should almost rather
it had been any one else. He seems to have been about as bad a lot as
even this town ever turned out."

"He was, all right, and his father before him, although they came from
mighty fine folks back east. His father came out in '49 with the gold
rush crowd, panned out a good pile, and then, liking the life--San
Francisco was a gay little burg those days--opened one of the crack
gambling houses down on the Old Plaza. Plate glass windows you could look
through from outside if you thought it best to stay out, and see hundreds
of men playing at tables where the gold pieces--often slugs--were piled
as high as their noses, and hundreds more walking up and down the aisles
either waiting for a chance to sit, or hoping to appease their hunger
with the sight of so much gold. They didn't try any funny business, for
every gambler had a six-shooter in his hip pocket, and sometimes on the
table beside him.

"Sometimes men would walk out and shoot themselves on the sidewalk in
front of the windows, and not a soul inside would so much as look up.
Well, Delano the first had a short life but a merry one. He couldn't keep
away from the tables himself, and first thing he knew he was broke, sold
up. He went back to the mines, but his luck had gone, and his wife--she
had followed him out here--persuaded him to go back home and live in the
old house, on a little income she had; and he bored all the neighbors to
death for a few years about 'early days in California' until he dropped
off. Her name was Mary Garnett.

"That's what put me on--the G. in the middle of the name of the man
Madame Delano married. I telegraphed to Holbrook Centre to find out what
his middle name was, and after that it was easy. I also found out that he
was born in California, and I guess that old wild life was in his blood.
He stood Holbrook Centre until he was sixteen, and then homed back and
took up the trade he just naturally had inherited.

"I figger out that he didn't tell his wife the truth when he married her
back there, not until he was on the train pretty close to S.F., and then
he told her because he couldn't help himself. She couldn't help herself,
either, and besides she was in love with him. He was a handsome,
distinguished lookin' chap, and he kept right on bein' a fascinator as
long as he li