Part 25 (1/2)
”One thing,” said she, smiling a smile that could have cut gla.s.s, ”you are going to do. I know that you won't fail this time, because I shall personally see you through with it. You're going to stop making a fool of me.”
”Tell me,” pleaded Billy Magee. ”Tell me who you are--what this is all about. Can't you see I'm working in the dark? You must--”
She threw open the card-room door.
”An English officer,” she remarked loudly, stepping out into the other room, ”taught the admiral the game. At least, so he said. It added so much romance to it in the eyes of the rocking-chair fleet. Can't you see--India--the hot sun--the Kipling local color--a silent, tanned, handsome man eternally playing solitaire on the porch of the barracks?
Has the barracks a porch?”
Roused, humiliated, baffled, Mr. Magee felt his cheeks burn.
”We shall see what we shall see,” he muttered.
”Why coin the inevitable into a bromide,” she asked.
Mr. Magee joined the group by the fire. Never before in his life had he been so determined on anything as he was now that the package of money should return to his keeping. But how? How trace through this maze of humans the present holder of that precious bundle of collateral? He looked at Mr. Max, sneering his lemon-colored sneer at the mayor's side; at the mayor himself, nonchalant as the admiral being photographed; at Bland, author of the Arabella fiction, sprawling at ease before the fire; at the tawdry Mrs. Norton, and at Myra Thornhill, who had by her pleading the night before made him ridiculous. Who of these had the money now? Who but Cargan and Max, their faces serene, their eyes eagerly on the preparations for lunch, their plans for leaving Baldpate Inn no doubt already made?
And then Mr. Magee saw coming down the stairs another figure--one he had forgot--Professor Thaddeus Bolton, he of the mysterious dialogue by the annex door. On the professor's forehead was a surprising red scratch, and his eyes, no longer hidden by the double convex lenses, stood revealed a washed-out gray in the light of noon.
”A most unfortunate accident,” explained the old man. ”Most distressing.
I have broken my gla.s.ses. I am almost blind without them.”
”How'd it happen, Doc?” asked Mr. Cargan easily.
”I came into unexpected juxtaposition with an open door,” returned Professor Bolton. ”Stupid of me, but I'm always doing it. Really, the agility displayed by doors in getting in my path is surprising.”
”You and Mr. Max can sympathize with each other,” said Magee, ”I thought for a moment your injuries might have been received in the same cause.”
”Don't worry, Doc,” Mr. Bland soothed him, ”we'll all keep a weather eye out for reporters that want to connect you up with the peroxide blondes.”
The professor turned his ineffectual gaze on the haberdasher, and there was a startlingly ironic smile on his face.
”I know, Mr. Bland,” he said, ”that my safety is your dearest wish.”
The Hermit of Baldpate announced that lunch was ready, and with the others Mr. Magee took his place at the table. Food for thought was also his. The spectacles of Professor Thaddeus Bolton were broken. Somewhere in the scheme of things those smashed lenses must fit. But where?
CHAPTER XIII
THE EXQUISITE MR. HAYDEN
It was past three o'clock. The early twilight crept up the mountain, and the shadows began to lengthen in the great bare office of Baldpate Inn.
In the red flicker of firelight Mr. Magee sat and pondered; the interval since luncheon had pa.s.sed lazily; he was no nearer to guessing which of Baldpate Inn's winter guests hugged close the precious package.
Exasperated, angry, he waited for he knew not what, restless all the while to act, but having not the glimmer of an inspiration as to what his course ought to be.
He heard the rustle of skirts on the stair landing, and looked up. Down the broad stairway, so well designed to serve as a show-window for the sartorial triumphs of Baldpate's gay summer people, came the tall handsome girl who had the night before set all his plans awry. In the swift-moving atmosphere of the inn she had hitherto been to Mr. Magee but a puppet of the shadows, a figure more fict.i.tious than real. Now for the first time he looked upon her as a flesh-and-blood girl, noted the red in her olive cheeks, the fire in her dark eyes, and realized that her interest in that package of money might be something more than another queer quirk in the tangle of events.
She smiled a friendly smile at Magee, and took the chair he offered. One small slipper beat a discreet tattoo on the polished floor of Baldpate's office. Again she suggested to Billy Magee a house of wealth and warmth and luxury, a house where Arnold Bennett and the post-impressionists are often discussed, a house the head of which becomes purple and apoplectic at the mention of Colonel Roosevelt's name.
”Last night, Mr. Magee,” she said, ”I told you frankly why I had come to Baldpate Inn. You were good enough to say that you would help me if you could. The time has come when you can, I think.”