CHAPTER XVII

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_ Pamela sat that afternoon on the balcony of the country club at Baltusrol and approved of her surroundings. Below her stretched a pleasant vista of rolling greensward, dotted here and there with the figures of the golfers. Beyond, the misty blue background of rising hills.

"I can't tell you how peaceful this all seems, Jimmy," she said to her brother, who had brought her out in his automobile. "One doesn't notice the air of strain over on the Continent, because it's the same everywhere, but it gets a little on one's nerves, all the same. I positively love it here."

"It's fine to have you," was the hearty response. "Gee, that fellow coming to the sixteenth hole can play some!"

Pamela directed her attention idly towards the figure which her brother indicated--a man in light tweeds, who played with an easy and graceful swing, and with the air of one to whom the game presented no difficulties whatever. She watched him drive for the seventeenth--a long, raking ball, fully fifty yards further than his opponent's-- watched him play a perfect mashie shot to the green and hole out in three.

"A birdie," James Van Teyl murmured. "I say, Pamela!"

She took no notice. Her eyes were still following the figure of the golfer. She watched him drive at the last hole, play a chip shot on to the green, and hit the hole for a three. The frown deepened upon her forehead. She was looking very uncompromising when the two men ascended the steps.

"I didn't know, Mr. Lutchester, that there were any factories down this way," she remarked severely, as he paused before her in surprise.

For a single moment she fancied that she saw a flash of annoyance in his eyes. It was gone so swiftly, however, that she remained uncertain. He held out his hand, laughing.

"Fairly caught out, Miss Van Teyl," he confessed. "You see, I was tempted, and I fell."

His companion, an elderly, clean-shaven man, passed on. Pamela glanced after him.

"Who is your opponent?" she asked.

"Just some one I picked up on the tee," Lutchester explained. "How is our friend Fischer this morning?"

"I walked with him for an hour in the Park," Pamela replied. "He seemed quite cheerful. I have scarcely thanked you yet for returning the pocketbook, have I?"

His face was inscrutable.

"Couldn't keep a thing that didn't belong to me, could I?" he observed.

"You have a marvellous gift for discovering lost property," she murmured.

"For discovering the owners, you mean," he retorted, with a little bow.

"You're some golfer, I see, Mr. Lutchester," Van Teyl interposed.

"I was on my game to-day," Lutchester admitted. "With a little luck at the seventh," he continued earnestly, "I might have tied the amateur record. You see, my ball--but there, I mustn't bore you now. I must look after my opponent and stand him a drink. We shall meet again, I daresay."

Lutchester passed on, and Pamela glanced up at her brother.

"Is he a sphinx or a fool?" she whispered.

"Don't ask me," Van Teyl replied. "Seems to me you were a bit rough on him, anyway. I don't see why the fellow shouldn't have a day's holiday before he gets to work. If I had his swing, it would interfere with my career, I know that, well enough."

"Did you recognise the man with whom he was playing?" Pamela inquired.

"Can't say that I did. His face seems familiar, too."

"Go and see if you can find out his name," Pamela begged. "It isn't ordinary curiosity. I really want to know."

"That's easy enough," Van Teyl replied, rising from his place. "And I'll order tea at the same time."

Pamela leaned a little further back in her chair. Her eyes seemed to be fixed upon the pleasant prospect of wooded slopes and green, upward-stretching sward. As a matter of fact, she saw only two faces-- Fischer's and Lutchester's. Her chief impulse in life for the immediate present seemed to have resolved itself into a fierce, almost a passionate curiosity. It was the riddle of those two brains which she was so anxious to solve. ... Fischer, the cold, subtle intriguer, with schemes at the back of his mind which she knew quite well that, even in the moment of his weakness, he intended to keep to himself; and Lutchester, with his almost cynical devotion to pleasure, yet with his unaccountable habit of suggesting a strength and qualities to which he neither laid nor established any claim. Of the two men it was Lutchester who piqued her, with whom she would have found more pleasure in the battle of wits. She found herself alternately furious and puzzled with him, yet her uneasiness concerning him possessed more disquieting, more fascinating possibilities than any of the emotions inspired by the other man.

Van Teyl returned to her presently, a little impressed.

"Thought I knew that chap's face," he observed. "It's Eli Hamblin-- Senator Hamblin, you know."

"A friend and confidant of the President," she murmured. "A Westerner, too. I wonder what he's doing here ... Jimmy!"

"Hallo, Sis?"

"You've just got to be a dear," Pamela begged. "Go to the caddy master, or professional, or some one, and find out whether Mr. Lutchester met him here by accident or whether they arrived together."

"You'll turn me into a regular sleuthhound," he laughed. "However, here goes."

He strolled off again, and Pamela found herself forced to become mundane and frivolous whilst she chatted with some newly-arrived acquaintances. It was not until some little time after her brother's return that she found herself alone with him.

"Well?" she asked eagerly.

"They arrived within a few minutes of one another," Van Teyl announced. "Senator Hamblin bought a couple of new balls and made some inquiries about the course, but said nothing about playing. Lutchester, who appears not to have known him, came up later and asked him if he'd like a game. That's all I could find out."

Pamela pointed to a little cloud of dust in the distance.

"And there they go," she observed, "together."

Van Teyl threw himself into a chair and accepted the cup of tea which his sister handed him.

"Well," he inquired, "what do you make of it?"

"There's more in that question than you think, James," Pamela replied. "All the same, I think I shall be able to answer it in a few days."

Another little crowd of acquaintances discovered them, and Pamela was soon surrounded by a fresh group of admirers. They all went out presently to inspect the new tennis courts. Pamela and her brother were beset with invitations.

"You positively must stay down and dine with us, and go home by moonlight," Mrs. Saunders, a lively young matron with a large country house close by, insisted. "Jimmy's neglected me terribly these last few months, and as for you, Pamela, I haven't seen you for a year."

"I'd love to if we can," Pamela assured her, "but Jimmy will have to telephone first."

"Then do be quick about it," Mrs. Saunders begged, "It doesn't matter a bit about clothes. We've twenty people staying in the house now, and half of us won't change, if that makes you more comfortable. Jimmy, if you fail at that telephone I'll never forgive you."

But Van Teyl, who had caught the little motion of his sister's head towards the city, proved equal to the occasion. He returned presently, driving the car.

"Got to go," he announced as he made his farewells. "Can't be helped, Pamela. Frightfully sorry, Mrs. Saunders, we are wanted up in New York."

Pamela sighed.

"I was so afraid of it," she regretted as she waved her adieux. . . . .

An hour or so later the city broke before them in murky waves. Pamela, who had been leaning back in the car, deep in thought, sat up.

"You are a perfect dear, James," she said. "Do you think you could stand having Mr. Fischer to dinner one evening this week?"

"Sure!" he replied, a little curiously. "If you want to keep friends with him for any reason, I don't bear him any ill-will."

"I just want to talk to him," Pamela murmured, "that's all." _

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