Molly"s eyes opened wide. The color had gone from her face.
"Crooked, father?"
McEachern perceived that he had traveled very much too far, almost to disaster. He longed to denounce Jimmy, but he was gagged. If Molly were to ask the question, that Jimmy had asked in the bedroom--that fatal, unanswerable question! The price was too great to pay.
He spoke cautiously, vaguely, feeling his way.
"I couldn"t explain to you, my dear. You wouldn"t understand. You must remember, my dear, that out in New York I was in a position to know a great many queer characters--crooks, Molly. I was working among them."
"But, father, that night at our house you didn"t know Mr. Pitt. He had to tell you his name."
"I didn"t know him--then," said her father slowly, "but--but--" he paused--"but I made inquiries," he concluded with a rush, "and found out things."
He permitted himself a long, silent breath of relief. He saw his way now.
"Inquiries?" said Molly. "Why?"
"Why?"
"Why did you suspect him?"
A moment earlier, the question might have confused McEachern, but not now. He was equal to it. He took it in his stride.
"It"s hard to say, my dear. A man who has had as much to do with crooks as I have recognizes them when he sees them."
"Did you think Mr. Pitt looked--looked like that?" Her voice was very small. There was a drawn, pinched expression on her face. She was paler than ever.
He could not divine her thoughts. He could not know what his words had done; how they had shown her in a flash what Jimmy was to her, and lighted her mind like a flame, revealing the secret hidden there. She knew now. The feeling of comradeship, the instinctive trust, the sense of dependence--they no longer perplexed her; they were signs which she could read.
And he was crooked!
McEachern proceeded. Belief made him buoyant.
"I did, my dear. I can read them like a book. I"ve met scores of his sort. Broadway is full of them. Good clothes and a pleasant manner don"t make a man honest. I"ve run up against a mighty high-toned bunch of crooks in my day. It"s a long time since I gave up thinking that it was only the ones with the low foreheads and the thick ears that needed watching. It"s the innocent w.i.l.l.i.e.s who look as if all they could do was to lead the cotillon. This man Pitt"s one of them.
I"m not guessing, mind you. I know. I know his line, and all about him. I"m watching him. He"s here on some game. How did he get here?
Why, he sc.r.a.ped acquaintance with Lord Dreever in a London restaurant. It"s the commonest trick on the list. If I hadn"t happened to be here when he came, I suppose he"d have made his haul by now. Why, he came all prepared for it! Have you seen an ugly, grinning, red-headed scoundrel hanging about the place? His valet.
So he says. Valet! Do you know who that is? That"s one of the most notorious yegg-men on the other side. There isn"t a policeman in New York who doesn"t know Spike Mullins. Even if I knew nothing of this Pitt, that would be enough. What"s an innocent man going round the country with Spike Mullins for, unless they are standing in together at some game? That"s who Mr. Pitt is, my dear, and that"s why maybe I seemed a little put out when I came upon you and him out here alone together. See as little of him as you can. In a large party like this, it won"t be difficult to avoid him."
Molly sat staring out across the garden. At first, every word had been a stab. Several times, she had been on the point of crying out that she could bear it no longer. But, gradually, a numbness succeeded the pain. She found herself listening apathetically.
McEachern talked on. He left the subject of Jimmy, comfortably conscious that, even if there had ever existed in Molly"s heart any budding feeling of the kind he had suspected, it must now be dead.
He steered the conversation away until it ran easily among commonplaces. He talked of New York, of the preparations for the theatricals. Molly answered composedly. She was still pale, and a certain listlessness in her manner might have been noticed by a more observant man than Mr. McEachern. Beyond this, there was nothing to show that her heart had been born and killed but a few minutes before. Women have the Red Indian instinct; and Molly had grown to womanhood in those few minutes.
Presently, Lord Dreever"s name came up. It caused a momentary pause, and McEachern took advantage of it. It was the cue for which he had been waiting. He hesitated for a moment, for the conversation was about to enter upon a difficult phase, and he was not quite sure of himself. Then, he took the plunge.
"I have just been talking to Sir Thomas, my dear," he said. He tried to speak casually, and, as a natural result, infused so much meaning into his voice that Molly looked at him in surprise. McEachern coughed confusedly. Diplomacy, he concluded, was not his forte. He abandoned it in favor of directness. "He was telling me that you had refused Lord Dreever this evening."
"Yes. I did," said Molly. "How did Sir Thomas know?"
"Lord Dreever told him."
Molly raised her eyebrows.
"I shouldn"t have thought it was the sort of thing he would talk about," she said.
"Sir Thomas is his uncle."
"Of course, so he is," said Molly, dryly. "I forgot. That would account for it, wouldn"t it?"
Mr. McEachern looked at her with some concern. There was a hard ring in her voice which he did not altogether like. His greatest admirer had never called him an intuitive man, and he was quite at a loss to see what was wrong. As a schemer, he was perhaps a little naive. He had taken it for granted that Molly was ignorant of the maneuvers which had been going on, and which had culminated that afternoon in a stammering proposal of marriage from Lord Dreever in the rose-garden.
This, however, was not the case. The woman incapable of seeing through the machinations of two men of the mental caliber of Sir Thomas Blunt and Mr. McEachern has yet to be born. For some considerable time, Molly had been alive to the well-meant plottings of that worthy pair, and had derived little pleasure from the fact.
It may be that woman loves to be pursued; but she does not love to be pursued by a crowd.
Mr. McEachern cleared his throat, and began again.
"You shouldn"t decide a question like that too hastily, my dear."
"I didn"t--not too hastily for Lord Dreever, at any rate, poor dear."
"It was in your power," said Mr. McEachern portentously, "to make a man happy--"
"I did," said Molly, bitterly. "You should have seen his face light up. He could hardly believe it was true for a moment, and then it came home to him, and I thought he would have fallen on my neck. He did his very best to look heart-broken--out of politeness--but it was no good. He whistled most of the way back to the house--all flat, but very cheerfully."
"My dear! What do you mean?"
Molly had made the discovery earlier in their conversation that her father had moods whose existence she had not expected. It was his turn now to make a similar discovery regarding herself.
"I mean nothing, father," she said. "I"m just telling you what happened. He came to me looking like a dog that"s going to be washed--"
"Why, of course, he was nervous, my dear."
"Of course. He couldn"t know that I was going to refuse him."
She was breathing quickly. He started to speak, but she went on, looking straight before her. Her face was very white in the moon-light.
"He took me into the rose-garden. Was that Sir Thomas"s idea? There couldn"t have been a better setting, I"m sure. The roses looked lovely. Presently, I heard him gulp, and I was so sorry for him! I would have refused him then, and put him out of his misery, only I couldn"t very well till he had proposed, could I? So, I turned my back, and sniffed at a rose. And, then, he shut his eyes--I couldn"t see him, but I know he shut his eyes--and began to say his lesson."
"Molly!"
She laughed, hysterically.
"He did. He said his lesson. He gabbled it. When he had got as far as, "Well, don"t you know, what I mean is, that"s what I wanted to say, you know," I turned round and soothed him. I said I didn"t love him. He said, "No, no, of course not." I said he had paid me a great compliment. He said, "Not at all," looking very anxious, poor darling, as if even then he was afraid of what might come next. But I rea.s.sured him, and he cheered up, and we walked back to the house together, as happy as could be."
McEachern put his hand round her shoulders. She winced, but let it stay. He attempted gruff conciliation.
"My dear, you"ve been imagining things. Of course, he isn"t happy.
Why, I saw the young fellow--"