He pointed to the door, and said laconically: "Fresh air."
I retorted by laying the diamond locket before him.
"My dear fellow," I said, as he gazed at it transfixed, "don't
let us go on like a pair of fools. Eleanor charged me to give
you this, and beg you to return."
I don't believe he heard me at all. That flashing trinket was
far more eloquent than any words of mine. He laid his head in
his hands beside it, and his whole body trembled with emotion.
He trembled and trembled, till finally I got tired of waiting. I
poked him in the back, and reminded him that my car was waiting
down stairs. He rose with a strange, bewildered air, and
submitted like a child to be led into the street. He had the
locket clenched in his hand, and every now and then he would
glance at it as though unable to believe his eyes. I shut him
into the tonneau, and took a seat beside my chauffeur.
"Let her out, James," I said.
James let her out with a vengeance. There was a sunny-haired
housemaid at the Van Coorts' . . . and it was a crack, new
four-cylinder car with a direct drive on the top speed. Off we
went like the wind, jouncing poor Jones around the tonneau like a
pea in a pill-box.
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