Part 30 (1/2)
”I'll send them anyhow, Marechal Neils.”
”Oh, you are a--Wait!”
For a second time Miss Warren broke off; but now Norvin heard her cry out gladly to some one. He held the receiver patiently until his arm cramped, then rang up again.
”Oh, I forgot all about you, Norvin dear,” she chattered. ”Vittoria has just come, so I can't talk to you any more. Won't you run out and meet her? I know she's just dying to--She says she isn't, either! Oh, fiddlesticks! You're not so busy as all that. Very well, we'll probably eat the cake ourselves. Good-by!”
”Good-by, Avenger,” he laughed.
As he turned away smiling he found Bernie Dreux comfortably ensconced in an office chair and regarding him benignly.
”h.e.l.lo, Bernie! I didn't hear you come in.”
”Wasn't that Myra Nell talking?” inquired the little man.
”Yes.”
”You called her 'Avenger.' What has she been up to now?”
Blake handed him the red-hand letter. To his surprise Bernie burst out angrily:
”How dare she?”
”What?”
”It's most unladylike--begging a gentleman for gifts. I'll see that she apologizes.”
”If you do I'll punch your head. She couldn't do anything unladylike if she tried.”
”I don't approve--”
”Nonsense!”
”I'll see that she gets her chocolates.”
”Oh, I've sent 'em--a deadly consignment--enough to destroy both of you. And I've left a standing order for five pounds a week.”
”But that letter--it's blackmail.” Bernie groaned. ”She holds me up in the same way whenever she feels like it. She's getting suspicious of me lately, and I daren't tell her I'm a detective. The other day she set Remus, our gardener, on my trail, and he shadowed me all over the town. Felicite thinks there's something wrong, too, and she's taken to following me. Between her and Remus I haven't a moment's privacy.”
”It's tough for a detective to be dogged by his gardener and his sweetheart,” Norvin sympathized. He began to run through his mail, while his visitor talked on in his amusing, irrelevant fas.h.i.+on.
”I'm rather offended that I wasn't named on that Committee of Fifty,”
Bernie confessed, after a time. ”You know how the Chief relied on me?”
”Exactly.”
”Well, I'm full of Italian mysteries now. What I haven't discovered by my own investigations, Vittoria Fabrizi has told me. For instance, I know what became of the boy Gino Cressi.”
”You do?” Blake looked up curiously from a letter he had been eagerly perusing.