Part 29 (1/2)
”Why--I had understood that it was purely a pleasure-trip that brought you here!”
He made no answer to this, but stepped forward and swung open the door for her.
”Maginnis,” he said, ”is to call for me immediately in a motor. We shall leave by the un.o.btrusive back alley. Two men, a motor, and a dark rear exit. You will scarcely imagine that there is any danger now. But may I thank you again for giving us warning when there _was_, perhaps, some danger?”
”So you think there is a 'perhaps'? If you take precautions, it is only to humor a--”
”I withdraw that 'perhaps,'” he broke out in a rush. ”I blot it out, annihilate it. Who am I to catch at tatters of self-respect? Are you blind? Can't you see that every fiber of me is tingling with the knowledge that there was real danger, and that you saved me from it?”
The quick bitterness in his voice, which there was no missing, was the last straw, breaking through her reserve, demolis.h.i.+ng her dainty aloofness. She shook the swinging gray veil back out of her eyes and looked up at him, openly and frankly bewildered, looking very young and immeasurably alluring.
”Will you tell me why you speak in that way? Will you tell me why it is the worst thing that has happened to you in Hunston to have been helped a little by me?”
They faced each other at the open door, not an arm's length between them; and the moment of his reckoning for the quarter of an hour he had spent with her that night was suddenly upon him. He met her eyes, which were darkly blue, stared down into them; and as he did so, the spell of her beauty treacherously closed round him, piping away his self-control, deadening him to the iron fact of who she was and who he was, shutting out all knowledge except that of her fragrant nearness.
”It is absurd,” he answered her suddenly, ”but to save my life I can't decide whether you are tall or short.”
The front door came open with a bang; the noise brought him sharply to himself; and the next moment a pleasant impatient masculine voice called out:
”I say, Miss Carstairs! Er--everything all right?”
”Oh!--yes, Mr. Richards!” she called penitently. ”I'm coming this minute. No, please don't go out with me, Mr. Varney. Don't let anybody see that you are here.”
”Certainly not,” said he, struggling for a poise which he could not quite recapture. ”Then will you be good enough to convey my grat.i.tude to Mr. Higginson and say that I hope to have the opportunity of thanking him personally to-morrow?”
”Yes, of course. Good-night once more--and good luck!”
But he detained her long enough to put the plain business question which had been torturing his soul for the last twenty-four hours.
”We shall see you at luncheon to-morrow?”
He strove to give his remark the air of a mere commonplace of farewell; but at it, he saw her look break away from his and the warm color stream into her face.
”Why--I--I'll come with pleasure. We don't get the chance to lunch on yachts every day in Hunston. Oh, but please,” she exclaimed, her embarra.s.sment suddenly melting in a very natural and charming smile--”never let my mother _dream_ that we've _not been introduced!_”
He bowed low so that she might not see the burlesque of polite pleasure on his face.
The back alley exit proved all that the most timorous could have desired. Peter approached it by an elusive detour; Varney appeared promptly at the sound of his three honks; and the rendezvous was effected in a black darkness which they seemed to have entirely to themselves. Not a hand was raised to them, not a threatening figure sprang up to dispute their going, not a fierce curse cursed them. The would-be a.s.sa.s.sins, if such there were, presumably still lurked in some Main Street cranny, patiently and stupidly waiting, entirely unaware that they had been neatly outwitted by the clever strategies of Miss Mary Carstairs.
The car rolled noiselessly out of the alley, skimmed off through the southern quarter of the town and bowled into the rough and rutty River road toward the yacht. Once there, since a sharp lookout for the reporter was necessary, they slowed down and down until the smooth little car, with all lights out, crawled along no faster than a vigorous man will walk.
”What're you going to do when we catch him?” asked Peter. ”Want to haul him on back to the yacht?”
”No. I'm--only going to talk to him a little. Go on with the story.”
”Well,” resumed Peter, taking one hand from the driving-wheel to remove a genuine Connecticut Havana, ”the first thing was a wire from the _Daily_ firing Hammerton. That a.s.sisted a little, of course. Then, they asked us to give them a new, good man at once, and meantime to push along all the story we had. We answered with a wire that was a beauty, if I do mention it myself, telling them exactly how they'd been sold a second-hand gold brick by a corrupt paper which was trying to play politics. It simply knocked the pins from under them. It took 'em quite a while to come back with inquiries about the name off the yacht, Varney's air of mystery and all that line of slush. My response was vigorous, yet gentlemanly, straining the truth for all she'd stand, and even bu'sting her open here and there, I gravely fear. However, it was a clincher. It crimped them right. Not a peep have we had from 'em since.”
”I suppose they'll run four lines on the thirteenth page to-morrow explaining it was all a mistake.”
”But that wasn't the serious part of the thing--not by a mile-walk,”