"I was just reading a corking book. Have you ever read these things? They come out every month, and they"re corking. The fellow who writes them must be a corker. It beats me how he thinks of these things. They are about a detective--a chap called Gridley Quayle. Frightfully exciting!"
An obvious remedy for dumbness struck Aline.
"Shall I read to you, Freddie?"
"Right-ho! Good scheme! I"ve got to the top of this page."
Aline took the paper-covered book.
""Seven guns covered him with deadly precision." Did you get as far as that?"
"Yes; just beyond. It"s a bit thick, don"t you know! This chappie Quayle has been trapped in a lonely house, thinking he was going to see a pal in distress; and instead of the pal there pop out a whole squad of masked blighters with guns. I don"t see how he"s going to get out of it, myself; but I"ll bet he does. He"s a corker!"
If anybody could have pitied Aline more than she pitied herself, as she waded through the adventures of Mr. Quayle, it would have been Ashe Marson. He had writhed as he wrote the words and she writhed as she read them. The Honorable Freddie also writhed, but with tense excitement.
"What"s the matter? Don"t stop!" he cried as Aline"s voice ceased.
"I"m getting hoa.r.s.e, Freddie."
Freddie hesitated. The desire to remain on the trail with Gridley struggled with rudimentary politeness.
"How would it be--Would you mind if I just took a look at the rest of it myself? We could talk afterward, you know. I shan"t be long."
"Of course! Do read if you want to. But do you really like this sort of thing, Freddie?"
"Me? Rather! Why--don"t you?"
"I don"t know. It seems a little--I don"t know."
Freddie had become absorbed in his story. Aline did not attempt further a.n.a.lysis of her att.i.tude toward Mr. Quayle; she relapsed into silence.
It was a silence pregnant with thought. For the first time in their relations, she was trying to visualize to herself exactly what marriage with this young man would mean. Hitherto, it struck her, she had really seen so little of Freddie that she had scarcely had a chance of examining him. In the crowded world outside he had always seemed a tolerable enough person. To-day, somehow, he was different. Everything was different to-day.
This, she took it, was a fair sample of what she might expect after marriage. Marriage meant--to come to essentials--that two people were very often and for lengthy periods alone together, dependent on each other for mutual entertainment. What exactly would it be like, being alone often and for lengthy periods with Freddie? Well, it would, she a.s.sumed, be like this.
"It"s all right," said Freddie without looking up. "He did get out! He had a bomb on him, and he threatened to drop it and blow the place to pieces unless the blighters let him go. So they cheesed it. I knew he had something up his sleeve."
Like this! Aline drew a deep breath. It would be like this--forever and ever and ever--until she died. She bent forward and stared at him.
"Freddie," she said, "do you love me?" There was no reply.
"Freddie, do you love me? Am I a part of you? If you hadn"t me would it be like trying to go on living without breathing?"
The Honorable Freddie raised a flushed face and gazed at her with an absent eye.
"Eh? What?" he said. "Do I--Oh; yes, rather! I say, one of the blighters has just loosed a rattlesnake into Gridley Quayle"s bedroom through the transom!"
Aline rose from her seat and left the room softly. The Honorable Freddie read on, unheeding.
Ashe Marson had not fallen far short of the truth in his estimate of the probable effect on Mr. Peters of the information that his precious scarab had once more been removed by alien hands and was now farther from his grasp than ever. A drawback to success in life is that failure, when it does come, acquires an exaggerated importance. Success had made Mr. Peters, in certain aspects of his character, a spoiled child.
At the moment when Ashe broke the news he would have parted with half his fortune to recover the scarab. Its recovery had become a point of honor. He saw it as the prize of a contest between his will and that of whatever malignant powers there might be ranged against him in the effort to show him that there were limits to what he could achieve. He felt as he had felt in the old days when people sneaked up on him in Wall Street and tried to loosen his grip on a railroad or a pet stock. He was suffering from that form of paranoia which makes men multimillionaires. n.o.body would be foolish enough to become a multimillionaire if it were not for the desire to prove himself irresistible.
Mr. Peters obtained a small relief for his feelings by doubling the existing reward, and Ashe went off in search of Joan, hoping that this new stimulus, acting on their joint brains, might develop inspiration.
"Have any fresh ideas been vouchsafed to you?" he asked. "You may look on me as baffled."
Joan shook her head.
"Don"t give up," she urged. "Think again. Try to realize what this means, Mr. Marson. Between us we have lost ten thousand dollars in a single night. I can"t afford it. It is like losing a legacy. I absolutely refuse to give in without an effort and go back to writing duke-and-earl stories for Home Gossip."
"The prospect of tackling Gridley Quayle again--"
"Why, I was forgetting that you were a writer of detective stories. You ought to be able to solve this mystery in a moment.
Ask yourself, "What would Gridley Quayle have done?""
"I can answer that. Gridley Quayle would have waited helplessly for some coincidence to happen to help him out."
"Had he no methods?"
"He was full of methods; but they never led him anywhere without the coincidence. However, we might try to figure it out. What time did you get to the museum?"
"One o"clock."
"And you found the scarab gone. What does that suggest to you?"
"Nothing. What does it suggest to you?"
"Absolutely nothing. Let us try again. Whoever took the scarab must have had special information that Peters was offering the reward."
"Then why hasn"t he been to Mr. Peters and claimed it?"
"True! That would seem to be a flaw in the reasoning. Once again: Whoever took it must have been in urgent and immediate need of money."
"And how are we to find out who was in urgent and immediate need of money?"
"Exactly! How indeed?"
There was a pause.
"I should think your Mr. Quayle must have been a great comfort to his clients, wasn"t he?" said Joan.
"Inductive reasoning, I admit, seems to have fallen down to a certain extent," said Ashe. "We must wait for the coincidence. I have a feeling that it will come." He paused. "I am very fortunate in the way of coincidences."
"Are you?"
Ashe looked about him and was relieved to find that they appeared to be out of earshot of their species. It was not easy to achieve this position at the castle if you happened to be there as a domestic servant. The s.p.a.ce provided for the ladies and gentlemen attached to the guests was limited, and it was rarely that you could enjoy a stroll without b.u.mping into a maid, a valet or a footman; but now they appeared to be alone. The drive leading to the back regions of the castle was empty. As far as the eye could reach there were no signs of servants--upper or lower.
Nevertheless, Ashe lowered his voice.