"It depends upon what you call a little child, doesn't it? Miss Carstairs is nineteen years old."

Peter straightened in his chair with a jerk, and stared at him as though one or the other had suddenly gone mad.

"_Nineteen_! Why, I thought she was twelve."

"So did I."

"Why, how in Sam Hill did you ever make such an asinine mistake?"

Varney gave an impatient laugh.

"What difference does that make now? My impression was that the separation took place about eight years ago. It may have been twelve. My other impression was that the girl was about four at the time. She may have been eight instead. If it's of any interest to you, I should say that the mistake was natural enough. Besides, Uncle Elbert rather helped it along."

"Uncle Elbert rather lied to you--that's what he did," said Peter with the utmost quietness.

There was a considerable silence. Peter pulled frowningly at his cigar; it had gone out but he was too absorbed to notice it, and mechanically pulled on. Presently he raised his head and looked at Varney.

"Well? This ends it, I suppose? You'll go back to New York this afternoon?"

"No," said Varney, "I'm going to stay and carry it through just as I expected."

Peter tapped the chair-arm with his heavy fingers. "Why?"

"Because--well, I promised to, and on the strength of my promise, Uncle Elbert has gone to trouble and expense for one thing, and has pinned high hopes on me, for another. I had my chance to ask questions and make terms and stipulations--and I didn't do it. That was my fault. I am not even sure that he meant to deceive me. I have no right to break a contract because I find that my part in it is going to be harder than I thought."

"This business about her age changes everything. Carstairs has no legal rights over a nineteen-year-old daughter."

"Legal rights! My dear Peter, you never supposed I thought I was doing anything legal, did you? No, no; the moral part of it has been my prop and stay all along, and that still holds. I promised without conditions, and I'll go ahead on the same terms."

"Give me a match," said Peter thoughtfully. "Maybe you are right, Larry," he added presently. "I only wanted to point out another way of looking at it. I stand absolutely by your decision. You think that this girl is wrong-headed and obstinate, and that her father has a moral right to have her, over age or not. This--discovery makes it a pretty serious business, but of course you've thought of all that. But--will it be possible now?"

"I have invited her," said Varney, with a light laugh, "to lunch on the _Cypriani_ on Thursday with two or three other Hunston friends."

"Well?"

"She accepted with every mark of pleasure. Great men like Stanhope, it seems, require no introduction: it beats me. The point now is to find the other Hunston friends."

"Hare and his sister, Mrs. Marne--the very thing!--chaperon and all!

I'll invite them to-night. Then the whole thing's done!" Peter sat silent a moment, looking at Varney. "I've been awfully rushed to-day,"

he resumed, "because if I was going to help Hare at all, I didn't dare lose this one big opportunity. But remember, anything that has to be done from now on--I'm your man."

"There'll be nothing more now until Thursday. The thing's practically done."

Peter was still looking at him steadily. "It's going to be dirt easy, provided we don't weaken. You can't do things to your friends, but you can emphatically do them to your enemies. We have got to remember always that this girl, who has been so heartless to her old fool of a father, is our enemy."

"Yes, that is what we have got to remember."

"Good Lord!" cried Peter, looking at his watch. "Twenty minutes past four, and I must be at the hall at four-thirty sharp. I'll have to sneak right away. You're going to sit tight on the yacht, of course?"

"Never! I like to have a little of the fun myself. I must certainly take in this meeting to-night, and watch you put your heel on their necks and all that."

"Don't! With what you've got to do, you can't afford to expose yourself.

What's the use of running risks, even little ones, when there is nothing to gain?"

"Satan reproving sin! Fudge! Free yourself once for all, my dear sir, that I'm starring in The Prisoner on the Yacht for the next three days, or anything of that sort."

"Well, if you will go," said Peter, reluctantly, "here's a reserved seat ticket--a peacherine, right up at the front."

"Great! Count on me to lead the applause."

Peter rose. His engrossed brow advertised the fact that his thought had already flown back to his own private maelstrom of new concerns.

"If Hare gets his chance to-night," he meditated out loud, "you can rely on him to make the most of it. He'll make good; he's a man, sound in wind and limb, head and heart. I do wish, though, he wasn't so--somehow innocent--so easy--so confoundedly affable and handshaking with everybody that comes along. There's a sneaky-looking stranger at the hotel--rubber-heeled fellow named Higginson, with one of these black felt hats pulled down over his eyes like a stage villain--that Hare never laid eyes on till to-day. For all he knows the man may be an agent of Ryan's, a hired spy imported to--By Jove! That's just what he is, I'll bet!" he cried suddenly; and after a frowning pause, hurried warmly on: "Don't you remember last night, just after we hit the town, I said there was a man following us--sneaked up the alley when he saw me looking at him?"

"I believe I do, Peter. But the fact is that I met so many exciting people last night--"

"It's the same man--it was Higginson!" said Peter positively. "I'm sure of it! I didn't get a look at his face last night, but it's the same hat, same figure--everything. I'll bet anything he's on Ryan's payroll; and there's little Hare hobn.o.bbing with him as friendly as though they'd been cla.s.smates at college! That kind of free-for-all geniality doesn't go, you know! A reformer in a rotten town like this," said Peter vehemently "would do well to cultivate a profound distrust of strangers."

Varney burst out laughing.

"You yourself have known Hare from the cradle, I believe?"

"I'm different," said Peter without a smile. "Well! I must move. Now let's see--that lunch. What time shall I ask Hare and Mrs. Marne for?"

"Two o'clock, Thursday. I didn't have the nerve," Varney explained, "to ask Miss Carstairs for to-day--rather lucky I didn't--and she was engaged for Thursday."

"Right. I'll arrange it all. Well, for the Lord's sake take care of yourself to-night, Larry, and trust me to keep out of trouble. So long."

Varney looked after Peter's disappearing back, and envied him all the fun he was having. His own lot was certainly far less entertaining.

However, it was his own; and here he resembled his friend in one respect at least. His thoughts, like Peter's, had a way just now of reverting at short notice to the matters in which he himself was most closely concerned.

He lay back idly among the cushions, and let his mind once more run over the unexpected problems of his situation.

The new graveness of what he was pledged to do had, of course, been strongly present in his mind from the first moment of revelation.

Kidnapping a nineteen-year-old girl was certainly, as Peter had pointed out, a pretty serious business. He perceived that it would not look well in the papers in the least. Also if she cared to raise a row afterwards, there might be an aftermath which would not be wholly a laughing matter.

Nevertheless, this side of the question seemed remote and of minor interest to him just now. The problem appeared to be a personal one, not a question of statutes and judges. In his talk with Miss Carstairs before he knew her by name, he had failed to notice anything that suggested the spoiled and wilful child he had come to find. He could remember nothing she had said or done that helped him at all to think of her as his enemy. The fact was that it was all quite the other way. And this helped him to understand now, as he had not understood before, why Uncle Elbert had begged a solemn oath from him with such a piteous look on his handsome, haggard old face.

CHAPTER IX

VARNEY MEETS WITH A GALLING REBUFF, WHILE PETER GOES MARCHING ON

Peter's p.r.o.nounced views as to Mr. Stanhope were not, it appeared, purely of the stuff that dreams are made of. Testimony to the author's lack of popularity in his native town came to Varney with unexpected promptness.