“Clive,” said Vail, coldly, ignoring the gesture, “if you think I’m a thief I don’t want to shake hands with you. If you don’t think I’m a thief there’s no need in shaking hands in that melodrama fashion. Good night. Need any help to get upstairs?”
“No, thanks,” returned Creede, wincing at the rebuff. “I—”
He finished the sentence by toppling over in a dead faint at his host’s feet.
Instantly Vail and Chase were working over him, loosening his collar and belt, and lifting his arms on high so that the blood might flow back into the heart. Miss Gregg dived into the recesses of the black bead handbag she always carried on her wrist. From it she exhumed an ounce vial of smelling salts.
“Here!” she said. “Let me put this under his nostrils. It’s as strong as the Moral Law and almost as rank. The poor boy! He— Drat this cork! It’s jammed in. Got a corkscrew?”
Thaxton paused long enough in his work of resuscitation to take from his hip pocket the big German army knife which Clive had brought him from overseas.
“Here!” he said, opening the corkscrew and handing the knife to her.
“What a barbarous contraption!” commented Miss Gregg, as she strove to extract the cork from her smelling-bottle. “How do you happen to be carrying it in your dinner clothes?”
“I stuck it into my pocket, along with my cash, when I changed, I suppose,” said Vail, as he worked. “I was in a rush, and I—”
“That’s a murderous-looking thing on the back of it,” she went on, as she finished drawing the cork and laid the knife on the table. “It looks like the business-half of a medieval poniard.”