in the U.S.A. had to do with it shall all be unfolded in the proper order.
CHAPTER II
Moustapha Pasha
I now go forward to the Geiger Trail, one dark night. I was driving a Ford up the winding, seven-mile grade toward Virginia City, wondering at the prodigious guts of the men and women who crossed a continent to tear the inside out of those mountains with pick and shovel. I still maintain that the accident was Joan Angela’s fault entirely.
Her Ford, coming down-hill, struck mine very nearly head-on. Her lights were out and her brake-bands burning, so she enjoyed the full advantage of surprise as well as impetus, and it was only a friendly rock at the edge of the road that caught my front axle and saved car and me from falling a couple of hundred feet.
“Why didn’t you get out of the way?” laughed a musical voice. “Are you hurt?”
I proved I wasn’t by scrambling out.
“Joan Angela Leich,” I exclaimed, “or I’m a Dutchman!”
“Why, Jeff Ramsden! Shake hands! I saw you last in Egypt, laying out about a hundred natives with a pick-handle!”
“You got me into that mess!” I laughed. “Here’s some more of your doing! D’you expect me to walk all the rest of the way up-hill?”
“You enjoyed the last mess I got you into,” she retorted. “Your car’s in the way. Push it right over, and I’ll buy you a new one.”
“Tisn’t mine,” I said. “I hired it.”
“I’ll give him this in place of it. This is less than a month old. It’s a fair swap. Go on, push yours over.”
I made the attempt, but the front axle was bent and had caught on the rock like a yoke. I started to hunt in the dark for something that would do, but she backed her car far enough up the trail to descend again and bunt mine over. I had forgotten to turn off the switch, so the thing caught fire and looked pretty good as it went catapulting down the cliff-side.
“Now what’ll we do?” she demanded. “My brakes won’t, hold. Think of something, quick!”
I found a place where there was room to turn by manoeuvring carefully, and stood guard at the edge of the precipice while she did the shunting. Then I climbed in.
“Drive up-hill, drop me at Virginia City, and return to where you came from,” I suggested.
“Nothing doing! I’m on my way to Reno, and you’re the very man I need. Fun going down-hill backwards!”
You need no education to enjoy Joan Angela, so there were compensations. Her granddad crossed the continent in ‘49 or ‘50. He was about seven years old at that time, and he crossed the Six-mile Desert on the back of the last remaining mule. He left his son with a claim or two that proved bonanzas; and when the son died he left Joan Angela about a million dollars and a hundred-thousand acre ranch in California.
She had sat on my knee scores of times until either she or I, or both of us, had outgrown that, and then she went traveling. During her absence abroad, her manager, the son of her father’s closest friend, found oil on her ranch, so there’s no real reason why she should select a Ford to make long journeys in.
She’s tall-maybe a mite too tall for some folks’ notions-and mid- Victorian mammas would never have approved of her, because she’s no more coy, or shy, or artful than the blue sky overhead. She has violet eyes, riotous hair of a shade between brown and gold, a straight, shapely little nose, a mouth that is all laughter, and a way of carrying herself that puts you in mind of all out-doors. I’ve seen her in evening dress with diamonds on; and much more frequently in riding-breeches and a soft felt hat; but there’s always the same effect of natural-born honesty, and laughter, and love of trees and things and people. She’s not a woman who wants to ape men, but a woman who can mix with men without being soiled or spoiled. For the rest, she’s not married yet, so there’s a chance for all of us except me. She turned me down long ago.
“Someone told me you’d gone into business with Meldrum Strange; that’s why I was so glad to meet you,” she explained as we backed down-hill.
I swallowed that compliment, and answered truthfully.
“D’you suppose he’d sell out to me?” she asked, and again I told truth.
“He feels like a great strong spider in the middle of a web, and he loves the sensation.”
“Well, would he let me buy into the firm?”
“Not if he takes my advice, Joan Angela!”
“What have you got it in for me about?”
“We’re steady-going, plodding, conservative, cautious, patient, counting on the long swing, and exceedingly careful before we leap into anything.”
“Old fogies! Well, would you timid old ladies let me hire your firm for an investigation?”
“It all depends,” I said. “We’re at the foot of the trail now; you can turn round and go forward.”
“Thanks! Depends on what? Where were you going when I ran into you?”
“Can’t let mines alone,” I answered. “Have to go, look, see. My trade, you know. Had a case not far from here. The man got drowned in Lake Tahoe, and the woman was a poor fish, anyhow; the case against her has just been dropped.”
“Who was the woman?”
“A Mrs. Aintree.”
“That’s funny.”
“Nothing very funny about her; she’s—”
“It’s extremely funny,” Joan Angela corrected. “Do you believe in coincidences?”
“Partly. And Mrs. Aintree. So she’s—”
“A crook,” I said, preferring to put the conversation on a basis of solid fact.
“Um-m-m! That accounts for a whole lot,” said Joan Angela.
And for a while after that she sat silent, driving the Ford without lights at much higher speed than the law permits or than the manufacturer intended.
“I’m on the way to Reno more or less on Mrs. Aintree’s account,” she said, slowing down at last. “She gave a man a letter of introduction to me, and he’s in Reno now. Now that I know Mrs. Aintree is a crook, I want this man investigated more than ever.”
“What’s his name, for instance?”
“Moustapha Pasha.”
I whistled. If you go there often enough, and stay long enough, you are likely to meet almost anyone in Reno.
“You know him?”
“Noureddin Moustapha Pasha, of Cairo, Egypt? You bet I know him.”
“He’s a crook, too, isn’t he?”
“I wouldn’t lend him a match,” I answered. “Is he after your money?”
“No. He wants to pay me money. You remember I went to Egypt. They were having a side-show there, you remember-trying to shoot the King, or to go democratic or ditch the English-sort of five and ten cent revolution. And I hadn’t a visa—forgot to get one. I had a hard time getting into the country, and an even harder time to stay there after they found I wouldn’t sit still and be ornamental at Shepheard’s Hotel. I had to flirt with fat generals, until at last one of them told me that the way to work it was to transfer lots of money to Cairo; then they’d have to let me stay for business reasons. So I did. And I began to wonder what to do with the money. After that I found a statesman with brass arteries who’d do anything on earth if you let him hold your hand