“Quiet, please,” said Vail. “It’ll be easy to carry you, but not if you squirm. Gangway!”
Chapter X
A CRY IN THE NIGHT
DORIS LANE followed him with her admiring gaze, noting how lightly he bore the invalid and with what tenderness he overrode Creede’s petulant remonstrances.
“Yes,” said Miss Gregg, as though answering a question voiced by her niece. “Yes, he is splendidly strong. And he’s gentle, too. A splendid combination—for a husband. I mean, for one’s own husband. It is thrown away, in another woman’s.”
“I don’t understand you at all,” rebuffed Doris.
“No? Well, who am I, to scold you for denying it, just after my longwinded lecture on the virtues of lying?”
“Auntie,” said the girl, speaking in feverish haste in her eagerness to shift the subject, “have you any idea at all who committed the robberies? Have you?”
“Yes,” returned the old lady, with no hesitation at all. “I know perfectly well who did it.”
“You do!”
“I haven’t an atom of doubt. It was Osmun Creede.”