Chapter VI. Blue Fires - Page 2

His glance swept the range of vision and settled upon a rathskeller sign. "Come over there where we can talk."

They crossed the grilling roadway, and, being wise in the heat, ordered "soft" drinks.

"Now," said the stranger, "you've declared in on my game. Make good. What's your interest?"

"None, personally. I like your looks, that's all," replied the other frankly. "And I don't like to see you run into that spider's web."

"You know them?"

"Twice in the last year I've made 'em change their place of business."

"But you don't know me. And you spoke of a woman."

"I've been studying you on the car," explained Average Jones. "You're hard as nails; yet your nerves are on edge. It isn't illness, so it must be trouble. On your watch-chain you've got a solitaire diamond ring. Not for ornament; you aren't that sort of a dresser. It's there for, convenience until you can find a place to put it. When a deeply troubled man wears an engagement ring on his watch chain it's a fair inference that there's been an obstruction in the course of true love. Unless I'm mistaken, you, being a stranger newly come to town, were going to take your case to those man-eating sharks?"

"How do you know I've just come to town?"

"When you looked at your watch I noticed it was three hours slow. That must mean the Pacific coast, or near it. Therefore you've just got in from the Far West and haven't thought to rectify your time. At a venture I'd say you were a mining man from down around the Ray-Kelvin copper district in Arizona. That peculiar, translucent copper silicate in your scarf-pin comes from those mines."

"The Blue Fire? I wish it had stayed there, all of it! Anything else?"

"Yes," returned Average Jones, warming to the game. "You're an Eastern college man, I think. Anyway, your father or some older member of your family graduated from one of the older colleges."

"What's the answer?"

"The gold of your Phi Beta Kappa key is a different color from your watch-chain. It's the old metal, antedating the California gold. Did your father graduate some time in the latter forties or early fifties?"

"Hamilton, '51. I'm '89. Name, Kirby."

A gleam of pleasure appeared in Average Jones keen eyes. "That's rather a coincidence," he said. "Two of us from the Old Hill. I'm Jones of '04. Had a cousin in your class, Carl Van Reypen."

They plunged into the intimate community of interest which is the peculiar heritage and asset of the small, close-knit old college. Presently, however, Kirby's forehead wrinkled again. He sat silent, communing with himself. At length he lifted his head like one who has taken a