The Waterbury Democrat., 1936-03-12
CHAPTER V

she is too interested in him.
 CHAPTER v
 Dirk Strom folded his expensive tweeds and hung them up carefully on hangers in closet. He went to his travelling bag and took out the new white linens for the tropical phase of this cruise. His single bag was in the middle of his bedroom and he eyed 1t sorrowfully.
 How can I fill up three-room suite with the contents of one bag?" he said, half-aloud, and laughed at himself in the mirror "Here I am on de luxe cruise in the most expensive suite" he unused 'It's more than a bridal suite. The bellhop said it was the royal suite. The King of Siam used 1t on his last transatlantic crossing. Who'd ever have thought 1t? One year ago today I was marooned out in the High Sierras, and had never seen a big ship. Nor street car" he added smiling. "Nor building higher than the three-story saloon in Truckee. T
 Dirk got out his safety razor, and took 1t inside the green-tiled bath room, intending to shave before din- ner. He had two hours to kill before o'clock.
 Then he took a silver trophy from his bag, and placed 1t on view on . stand in the big sitting room. He paused to admire 1t. It was the fig ure of ski jumper poised in a mad flight through the air-symbolic of Dirk's victory in ski jumping competition at Lake Placid.
 Dirk went back into the bed- room and began to undress. When he stood by the bed in shorts and athletics, he ran hand in his pants pockets and began to count his money, fiinging 1t down on the cov- CTS. Five dollars and sixty-two centsl" he said, aloud. "The sardine king, my eyel couldn't buy plate of sardine sandwiches!"
 1nwardly he unused, "I'll have to go easy or I'll be broke in the mid- de of this luxury cruise. But If l had told Jane Weston was only 8 ski jumper, and broke, she wouldn't have been interested in me. Not Q girl who's going on the stage"
 Dirk Strom had spent 20 years in an isolated mining town high up in the Sierras of California, self-edu- cat9d in arithmetic as well as in skiing. Way back there in the eighties his father a Norwegian, had been imported-as they are im- ported into the Andes today - for the task of carrying the mail to isolated mining camps on skis.
 Throughout the nine months of Isolation in the high Sierra snows, skis were the only practicable means of running swiftly over the ground from post to post. old Lars had frozen to death in the blizzard of woman, had taken his job until 1927, and his wife, a sturdy Norse- Dirk was old enough to become the pack animal and postman on the hazardous, sky-high route.
 Then one day a celebrated skier had seen him jumping on the rude hill at Truckee, and, observing his style and terrific distance leaps, had sent him on an exhibition tour of the Rockies, the middlewest and the east with all expenses paid.
 Now, on board the s. s. Oceanic, Dirk sat down in a chair and began to massage the tendons in a leg.
 He had injured the leg in a fall on his skis at Lake Placid, and it had cost him coveted place on the American Olympic team this year. A little girl of five had run out on the jumping hill, in the path of his downward flight on skis. He had landed safely and was speeding straight toward the child at 60 or 70 miles an hour when he took the spill to avoid hurting her. He had rolled over and over and landed against 8 post.
 With an injured leg he couldn't make the trip to Europe with the Olympic squad, and 1t was 6 bitter disappointment. The father of the child whose life he had saved had showered wealthy intentions or Dirk, all of which he refused except the one-a letter to a prominent ski manufacturer who accepted Dirks' new design for skis and gave him 6 job in hickory sawmill down south where all the skis came from
 But when the doctor said it'd be q wise thing for Dirk to do lot oi sitting down and baking his leg in the sun, he accepted this offer of a cruise under a tropic sun.
 Now, as he went into the bath room to shave, Dirk smiled at his lone suitcase in the middle of this royal suite. The child's grateful father had ordered the best! Even the expensive tweeds and white linens had been part of the wealthy mans idea of a cruise; they had been forced on him.
 Dirk put his razor away, and came put into the bedroom to dress. But when he had finished he picked out . small slab of hickory from his suitcase and began to whittle on it. It looked like a small model of a ski--which 1t undoubtedly was. He was busily engaged in the work he liked most in the world when a knock came at the door.
 "Hello?" Dirk said. low, to him. self. "Who can this be?"
 When he opened the door a man with sleek black hair stood outside. Dirk saw his furtive glance about the suite. and noted the shifty ex- precision in his eyes. It was the man who had been following him and Jsne earlier.
 Instinctively Dirk let his frame bar entrance. "Yes?" he said.
 Even as the intruder spoke his eyes ceaselessIy roved about objects in the suite. taking in everything the furniture. the clothes in dis- array, the bedroom and bathroom beyond.
 "I-T beg your pardon" he said. boHing with an eNaRgerated gesture