There was a good deal of excitement and confusion.  I don’t believe anybody knows just what happened but a drunken Mexican drew a dagger somewhere in the mix up and let it fly indiscriminate like.  We all scattered like mischief when we saw the thing flash.  Nobody cares much for that kind of plaything at close range.  But Massey didn’t move.  It got him, clean in the heart.  He couldn’t have suffered a second.  It was all over in a breath.  He fell and the mob made itself scarce.  Another fellow and I were the first to get to him but there wasn’t anything to do but look in his pockets and find out who he was.  We found his name on a card with this address and your name scribbled on it in pencil.  I say, Mr. Carson, I am horribly sorry,” suddenly perceiving Dick’s white face.  “You care a lot, don’t you?”

“I care a lot,” said Dick woodenly.  “He was my cousin and—­my best friend.”

“I am sorry,” repeated the young engineer.  “Mr. Carson, there is something else I feel as if I had to say though I shan’t say it to any one else.  Massey might have dodged with the rest of us.  He saw it coming just as we did.  He waited for it and I saw him smile as it came—­a queer smile at that.  Maybe I’m mistaken but I have a hunch he wanted that dagger to find him.  That was why he smiled.”

“I think you are entirely right, Mr. Hallock,” said Dick.  “I haven’t any doubt but that was why he smiled.  He would smile just that way.  Where —­where is he?” Dick brushed his hands across his eyes as he asked the question.  He had never felt so desolate, so utterly alone in his life.

“They are bringing him here.  Shall I stay?  Can I help anyway?”

Dick shook his head sadly.

“Thank you.  I don’t think there is anything any one can do.  I—­I wish there was.”

A little later Alan Massey’s dead body lay in austere dignity in the house in which he had saved his cousin’s life and given him back his name and fortune together with the right to win the girl he himself had loved so well.  The smile was still on his face and a strange serenity of expression was there too.  He slept well at last.  He had lost himself as he had proclaimed his intent to do and in losing had found himself.  One could not look upon that calm white sculptured face without feeling that.  Alan Massey had died a victor undaunted, a master of fate to the end.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE SONG IN THE NIGHT

Tony Holiday sat in the dressing room waiting her cue to go on the stage.  It was only a rehearsal however.  Miss Clay was back now and Tony was once more the humble understudy though with a heart full of happy knowledge of what it is like to be a real actress with a doting public at her feet.