The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1911-12-07
CHAPTER |.

/ "A still and sultry dusk had fallen
Iclosing an oppressive, wearing day
lone of those days whose sole function
Iseems to reside in rendering us irri
Etably conscious of our too-close cas-
iings of too-solid flesh whose humit
and inert atmosphere, sodden witt
tepid moisture, clings palpably to the
body, causing men to feel as If they
crawled, half-suffocated, at the bot
tom of a sea of raretied water.
The hour may have been eight; II
may have been not quite that, but II
was almost dark. The windows were
iOblongs, black as night in the yellow
walls of O'Rourke's bedchamber In the
Hotel d'Orient. Monte Carlo.
I have the honor to make known
to you the O'Rourke of Castle
lO'Rourke in the county of Galway,
Ireland; otherwise and more widely
known as Colonel Terence O'Rourke;
a chevalier of the Legion of Honor OF
France; sometime an officer in the
Foreign Legion in Algiers; wander.
err, spendthrift, free-lance, cosmopol
lite-a gentleman-adventur he's been
termed.
! He was dressing for dinner. The
glare of half a dozen electric bulbs dis.
covered him all but ready for public
appearance-not,h however, quite ready.
!, In his shirt sleeves he faced cheval-
glass, pluckily (if with the haggard
feye of exasperation) endeavoring to
Ioutmaneuver a demon of inanimate
iperversity which had entered into his
dress tie, melting it to refuse to as
;sume, for all his coaxing and his STRAIT
,agems, that effect of nonchalant per.
lfection so much sought after so sell
dom achieved.
Patiently was the thing possessed
by devil; O'Rourke made no manner
of doubt of that. Though for minutes
at a time he fumbled, fidgeted, fumed,
1T was without avail
His room itself was in a state of
considerable Notwithstanding due
mainly to O'Rourke's characteristic ef-
forts to find just what he might hap
pen to desire at any given time with
iout troubling to think where 1t ought
properly to be.
Something of this confusion, mir
rored in the glass, was likewise re-
f1ected in O'Rourke's eyes, what time
he paused for breath and profanity.
Faith, tits worse than a davis nest,
the place." he admitted, scandalized
How ever did lone lone man-do
all that, will We be telling me?" He
flung out two helpless baffled hands,
and let them fall. After a meditative
pause he added: Damn that Alsa-
ian!"-with reference to his latest
and least competent valet, who had
but recently been discharged with
flea in his ear and months unearn-
ed wage in his pocket. For knowing
me ways" sighed O'Rourke, there
was never anyone the like of Danny"
For as many as three livelong days
this man had been reduced to the ne
cessity of dressing himself with his
own fair hands-and that at least
thrice daily, who did nothing by
halves. And, somehow, mysteriously,
his discarded garments had for the
most part remained where he had
thrown them, despite the earnest ef-
forts of the femme de chambre to re-
store something resembling order from
this man-made chaos. For servants
all liked we'll the O'Rourke, improvi-
dent soul that he was, freehanded
to a fault.
You are invited to picture to your
self O'Rourke as invariably he was
in one of his not infrequent but ever
transient phases of affluence: that Is,
a very magnificent figure indeed.
a bit over six feet, deep Of
chest and lean of flank, with his long,
legs he looked what he had
been meant to be, man Of arms and
action. His head was shapely, it's
dark hair curling the least in the
world; and, incredibly stained, trans
parent brown. his features were lean,
eager, and rendered very attractive
by quick boyish eyes in whose warm
bue-gray depths humor twinkled
more often than not, though those
same eyes were not seldom thought
full, a. trace wistful, perhaps, with
The look of one who recalls dear men,
ories, old friends and sweethearts
loved and lost. For he had
begun to live early in life and had
much to look back upon, though for
Ill that it's doubtful if he were more
han thirty at the time he became in
volved in the fortunes of the Pool
Of Flame.
For the rest of him, barring the re-
'ractory tie, the man was strikingly
we'll groomed, while his surroundings
spoke for comfortable circumstances.
On the authority of the absent and re-
yretted Danny, who had long served
he O'Rourke in the intimate capaci
les of body-servant, confldant and
chancellor of the exchequer (this last.
If course, whenever there happened
% be any excheQuer to require chan
,ellor), there was never anyone at all
Who could spend money or wear
clothes like himself, meaning the mas
-s .. "a