Part 39

“Here's the Queen of Sheba,” he said. “I'll go upstairs and have a headache, if you don't mind.”

He kissed Nina and departed hastily. He was feeling extremely gentle toward Nina those days and rather smugly virtuous. He considered that his conscience had brought him back and not a very bad fright, which was the fact, and he fairly exuded righteousness.

It was the great lady's first call, and Nina was considerably uplifted. It was for such moments as this one trained servants and put Irish lace on their aprons, and had decorators who stood off with their heads a little awry and devised backgrounds for one's personality.

“What a delightful room!” said Mrs. Sayre. “And how do you keep a maid as trim as that?”

“I must have service,” Nina replied. “The butler's marching in a parade or something. How nice of you to come and see our little place. It's a band-box, of course.”

Mrs. Sayre sat down, a gross disharmony in the room, but a solid and not unkindly woman for all that.

“My dear,” she said, “I am not paying a call. Or not only that. I came to talk to you about something. About Wallace and your sister.”

Nina was gratified and not a little triumphant.

“I see,” she said. “Do you mean that they are fond of one another?”

“Wallace is. Of course, this talk is between ourselves, but--I'm going to be frank, Nina. I want Wallie to marry, and I want him to marry soon. You and I know that the life of an unattached man about town is full of temptations. I want him to settle down. I'm lonely, too, but that's not so important.”

Nina hesitated.

“I don't know about Elizabeth. She's fond of Wallie, as who isn't? But lately--”

“Yes?”

“Well, for the last few days I have been wondering. She doesn't talk, you know. But she has been seeing something of Dick Livingstone.”

“Doctor Livingstone! She'd be throwing herself away!”

“Yes, but she's like that. I mean, she isn't ambitious. We've always expected her to throw herself away; at least I have.”

A half hour later Leslie, upstairs, leaned over the railing to see if there were any indications of departure. The door was open, and Mrs. Sayre evidently about to take her leave. She was saying:

“It's very close to my heart, Nina dear, and I know you will be tactful. I haven't stressed the material advantages, but you might point them out to her.”

A few moments later Leslie came downstairs. Nina was sitting alone, thinking, with a not entirely pleasant look of calculation on her face.

“Well?” he said. “What were you two plotting?”

“Plotting? Nothing, of course.”

He looked down at her. “Now see here, old girl,” he said, “you keep your hands off Elizabeth's affairs. If I know anything she's making a damn good choice, and don't you forget it.”

XVIII

Dick stood with the letter in his hand, staring at it. Who was Bassett? Who was “G”? What had the departure of whoever Bassett might be for Norada to do with David? And who was the person who was to be got out of town?

He did not go upstairs. He took the letter into his private office, closed the door, and sitting down at his desk turned his reading lamp on it, as though that physical act might bring some mental light.

Reread, the cryptic sentences began to take on meaning. An unknown named Bassett, whoever he might be, was going to Norada bent on “mischief,” and another unknown who signed himself “G” was warning David of that fact. But the mischief was designed, not against David, but against a third unknown, some one who was to be got out of town.

David had been trying to get him out of town.--The warning referred to himself.

His first impulse was to go to David, and months later he was to wonder what would have happened had he done so. How far could Bassett have gone? What would have been his own decision when he learned the truth?