Chapter XIII

Denin cabled an answer to Barbara, and then began a letter to her. He was in the midst of it, when he was disturbed by a caller, a man he had never seen before. Expecting no one, the hermit of the Mirador had been writing out of doors, in the pergola, and so was caught without a chance of escape. He sprang up and stood in front of the little table on which were his paper and ink, as if to protect the letter from the touch of a stranger's eyes. But the visitor, who had caught sight of John Sanbourne through the network of leaves and flowers, appeared blissfully ignorant that he was unwelcome.

He was tall, almost as tall as Denin himself, though he looked less than his height, because of a loose stoutness which hung upon him as if his clothes were untidily padded. His large face, and the whites of his eyes, and his big teeth, were all of much the same shade of yellow; and his hair, turning gray, had streaks of that color under the Panama hat which he did not remove.

"Good afternoon. I suppose you are Mr. Sanbourne?" he remarked, in a throaty voice, with a certain air of condescension which told that here was no author-worshiping pilgrim. "My name is Carl Pohlson Bradley."

"Ah! How do you do?" replied Denin aloofly. He wanted to go on with his letter.

"I'm pretty well, thank you," responded the other, accepting the suggested solicitude for his health as fact, not a fiction of politeness. "I got here this morning. Staying at the Potter, of course. I been taking a look round the place."

"Ah!" said Denin again. He could not think--and did not much care to think--of anything else to say. But the large yellow face changed slightly, in surprise. "I expect you heard I was likely to come, didn't you?"

"No," said Denin. "Not to my recollection." Then more kindly, "I'm rather a hermit. I go out very little, and have only a few callers. I don't get much news, except what I see in the papers."

"It _was_ in the papers." The tone in which Mr. Carl Pohlson Bradley gave this piece of information suggested that his prominence was international as well as physical.

"Can he be a New York reporter?" thought Denin, his heart sinking.

But the caller had pulled from a pocket of his brown tweed coat a newspaper, folded in such a way as to make conspicuous a marked paragraph in the middle column. This he handed to Denin as if it had been a visiting card.

The paper was a local one, and the very first line of the paragraph mentioned Mr. Carl Pohlson Bradley as a St. Louis millionaire. It went on to state that, having retired from business with a great fortune at the early age of fifty-nine, Mr. Bradley intended to buy an estate in California, as a winter residence for his family. Having read so far, Denin supposed that he had sufficiently informed himself, and offered to give the paper back.

Bradley, however, waved it away. "Read the rest," he advised.

Denin did so, and with a shock learned that his tall yellow visitor had become the owner of what was still known as "the old Fay place."

"This is a surprise," he said, not making any attempt to look pleased. "I didn't even know the place was for sale."

"Most places are, if the price is big enough to be tempting. When I want a thing I'm willing to pay for it. And that brings us to my call on you, sir. I hear you're an author, and have written a story that's sold about a million copies or some other big figure which makes a lot of folks want to come here and see what you're like. But that isn't what _I'm_ here for. I don't read stories. I've called on business. I want to know how much you'll take to sell me this bit of land you've bought on my place?"

Denin's nerves had been on edge for the last few weeks, and he felt an unreasonable impulse of anger against the fat, self-complacent man. "I won't sell," he said. "I'm sorry if you don't like having so near a neighbor, but I was on the spot first."

"I don't see what that's got to do with it," said Bradley. "To my notion, this bit walled off from my place is a regular eyesore. The Mirador, or whatever they call it, is a rotten little den anyhow, if you'll excuse my saying so, more fit for a child's playhouse than a gentleman."

"I believe it was built for a child's playhouse," said Denin. "But it happens to suit me, though I've never thought of dignifying it by the name of 'residence.'"

"Well, anyhow, if you like a little bungalow, you can buy a better one than this with more ground around it, without troubling yourself to move a mile," Bradley persisted. "I'm no bargainer. As I said just now, when I want a thing I'm willing to pay for it. I'll tell you what I'll do, Mr. Sanbourne. I'll give you, for this little corner lot, as you might call it, not only twice what it's worth, but the price of any other bungalow within reason you choose to select. And I'll pay your moving expenses, too. Now, what do you say to that?"

"Just what I said before. I don't wish to sell."

"Say, this is a holdup!" blustered the St. Louis millionaire.

Suddenly Denin's good temper came back, with a laugh.

"So you think I'm trying to 'hold you up' for a higher price!" he exclaimed. "I assure you I'm not. If you offered me twenty thousand dollars I wouldn't accept."

"What!" gasped Mr. Bradley. "Twenty thousand dollars for this little rabbit hutch in a back yard? Good Lord, it ain't worth a thousand, at top price."

"Not to you, but it is to me. So, don't you see, it's useless to argue further?" asked Denin, his eyes still laughing at the big man's ruffled discomfiture and surprise that such things could happen between a poor author and a millionaire.

"Argue! I didn't come here expecting to argue!" spluttered Bradley, looking like a bull stopped at full gallop by a spider web. "I came here to--to--"

"I quite understand, and I'm sorry to be disobliging, but I'm afraid I must," Denin cut in. "Anyhow, I needn't be inhospitable too. Will you lunch with me, Mr. Bradley? I can't offer you much, but if we're to be neighbors--"

"Great Scott, man, I'm staying at the Potter!" exploded Bradley, with a glance almost of horror at the little table in the pergola where writing materials had pushed aside dishes on a white cloth already laid. The look contrasted John Sanbourne's hospitality so frankly with the fare awaiting him at Santa Barbara's biggest hotel, that Denin laughed again.

"Well, then," he said, "if ever I change my mind I'll send you word. We'll let it stand at that."

With a reluctance pathetic in a man so large and yellow, Bradley saw himself forced for the present to swallow the humble author's dictum. His jaundiced eyes traveled over the little pink house, with its balcony shaded by pepper trees, over the garden which he had called a "corner lot," and over the simple pergola which for its owner was a "corridor of illuminated tapestry." It seemed to Denin that the man could have burst out crying, like a spoiled child suddenly thwarted.

"I think you're da-- mighty foolish!" Bradley amended, remembering the need to be conciliatory. "But I'm sure you'll think better of it. I'm sure you _will_ change your mind. I only hope for your sake I won't have changed _mine_ when that time comes!"

On that he made a dramatic exit, with a mixture of stride and waddle suited to one who felt that he had had the last word.

When he had gone, Denin finished his letter and forgot all about Mr. Carl Pohlson Bradley. Also he forgot about luncheon. But that did not matter, for his meals were movable feasts. He had them, or did not have them, according to his mood, like the hermit he was becoming. Mr. Bradley, however, he was forced to remember at short intervals, nearly every day, while he lived through the time of waiting for the letter promised in Barbara's cable. "Changed your mind yet?" the new owner of the "Fay place" would yell from his huge automobile, spraying dust over John Sanbourne on the white road to Santa Barbara. Or he would prowl, grumbling, on the other side of the flower-draped barrier which separated the Mirador garden from his newly acquired property. At last he sent a lawyer to his irritating neighbor with a definite offer of twenty thousand, five hundred dollars--just temptingly over the price Sanbourne had said that he would not take. But Denin answered, "The Mirador is my ewe lamb."