She looked at him, unsmiling, eye to eye like a man; but she looked from under a fantastic and exceedingly becoming little hat, swathed all about with a wholly fascinating gray veil. Her skin was of an exquisite freshness, which threw into sharp relief the vivid coloring of her lips; the modeling of her cheek and throat was consummate, beyond improvement; and her eyes--he told himself that they could have no match anywhere.

Varney laughed shortly. "I am not to go out with Maginnis. I am not to go out without him. May I ask if I am expected to spend thnight prudently curled up under the office table here?"

The situation was odious to him; he knew that his manner betrayed it; but if she was aware of this she gave no sign. On the contrary her face all at once became miraculously sweet.

"You aren't thinking that there's any question of courage mixed up in this, Mr. Varney? Indeed, indeed, there is not. They would fight in the dark; they would fight from behind. The very _bravest_ men would have no chance, and very brave men don't take foolish risks, do they? I know by Mr. Hare. Mr. Varney, I have a little plan."

"Indeed? Do tell me."

"Our car is at the door, you know--Mr. Richards's car. We'd both like it very much if you would come with us."

"Where?"

"Well--I thought that perhaps you'd come to my house. Only to get rid of these men and not to--get them into any trouble. Of course, no one in Hunston would annoy you when you were with me."

If he had hated the thought of accepting protection from Mary Carstairs less intensely, he might have laughed aloud. As Higginson's catspaw, she was certainly the most screaming failure that the whole world could have yielded. What, oh what, would the old gum-shoe have said if he could have heard that invitation?

"Thank you, but that is quite impossible."

"I am awfully sorry."

There was a faint stiffening in her manner. She began to draw on her right glove, slowly tucking out of sight the thumb with the tiny white spot on the nail.

"I hoped that perhaps you might come to dinner with us. I haven't had any yet. May I--suggest another way out of all this, then? There is a back gate to this place, leading into a kind of alley, you know. I am sure that they--these poor men--haven't thought of that. Couldn't you please go out--"

"Certainly," said Varney. "Certainly. Yes, indeed. I'll do anything--anything in the wide world to avoid getting thumped on the head with Mr. Hackley's walking-stick."

Her face told him that she found his tone and manner somewhat disconcerting, but she took no notice of it otherwise.

"I hope it won't be necessary to do anything more than that. But if it should be, I hope you'll do it. I'm afraid I've failed to make you see that this is really serious. Good-night."

But Varney, having a question to ask her, could not let her go yet.

"But--but," he said, hastily, "you must allow me to thank you--you and Mr. Higginson--"

"The thanks are all Mr. Higginson's. I'm only a messenger--and besides, you aren't grateful at all, you know! You think we've all been _extremely_ intrusive!" She smiled brightly, bowed, and then was suddenly checked by a new thought. "Oh--I wonder if you would tell me something before I go?"

"By all means," said Varney, having no idea whether he would or not.

But the loud jangling whir of a telephone bell from the adjoining room cut into the air, drowning out conversation; and it rang on and on and on as though Central had had her orders.

"I suppose I'll have to answer that to shut them up," he said. "Excuse me for the merest second, won't you?"

He pa.s.sed through into the brightly-lit business office beyond, and found the telephone, still ringing away on a desk at the farther end.

Behind him the door swung shut, a circ.u.mstance for which he later had reason to be glad.

"Well?" he called impatiently.

"You, Larry?" asked a familiar voice.

"Yes. What's the matter?"

"Matter enough," said Peter in a guarded undertone. "Hammerton's loose."

"_What_!"

"It's a fact. G.o.d knows how he did it; but he's just phoned in here from a house a long way down the road. Wanted to let the city editor know he was flying in with the one best bet of the year. Luckily he gave no details."

Varney's lips tightened; he spoke in a low voice. "He mustn't arrive--not till I've seen him first. Did you find out how he's coming--river or road?"

"Trust Uncle Dudley. He's borrowed a bicycle and is burning up the River road with it."

"Good. How soon will you be through?"

"About three minutes."

"You've hired a motor, you said? Get it and run back here as soon as you can, will you?"

He rapidly explained the situation, though making no mention of Higginson: how somebody had plotted to get them together in the darkness of Main Street, how Miss Carstairs and her friend had kindly stopped to warn them, and how he had humored her by promising to take all sorts of precautions.

"Right-O," said Peter. "I'll be in the alley at the back in no time.

Come quick when I honk three times."

Varney came back into the little office where Mary Carstairs waited, fresh from more cheap plotting in which she was the innocent central figure; and faced her, uncomfortable, ill at ease, disquieted inwardly as a conspirator taken red-handed.

"It was Maginnis--upstairs," he explained awkwardly.

"Yes?" she said indifferently, and resumed the b.u.t.toning of her glove.

"And will you tell me something now? It has been on my mind since last night."

"Certainly."

"Who was it that spoke of me to you and made you think that I was a little girl?"

He was entirely taken aback by the question; but he could have parried it easily, and he knew it. However, he was heartily sick of subterfuge for that night.

"It was your father," he said bluntly.

"My father!" She stood silent a moment, slim hands interlocked before her, heavily fringed eyes lowered. "So you know them both--my mother and my father. Then--the mistake--about my age," she added with something of an effort, "was natural enough. I have not seen my father for many years."

"I see him," said he, "constantly. Your father and I are great chums." A sudden insane hope overwhelmed him, and he went on with a rush: "You know, or rather probably you don't know, that he and my mother were old friends; and I am proud to have fallen heir to the friendship. You say that you have not seen him for some time? He is growing older very fast this last year or two; he is much changed of late. And then, Miss Carstairs, he is desperately lonely, all by himself in that great house of his--"

"_Stop_!" cried Mary Carstairs, with quick pa.s.sionateness. "Stop! You are trying to make me feel sorry for my father."

"Well," he said, as stormy as she, "_you ought to_! But your friends are waiting. I must not detain you any longer."

At the curtness of his speech a very faint wave of color ran up her cheek; and when he saw this he was sorry and glad in a single breath. At least, she could not say afterwards that he had ever tried to make himself falsely civil and lyingly agreeable. "Yes, I have stayed very much too long already. You've promised that you will be careful, haven't you? I'm really too sorry," she said, from the door, "that your visit to Hunston should have been made disagreeable in all these ways."

"In the name of heaven," he said, stung into momentary recklessness, "you don't suppose that I came here expecting any _fun_!"