"You said a mouthful there, Bobs." Worth halted, grinning, to interrupt her. "He never—none whatever. But he has now."
"Leave it to Jerry. Jerry saw him that first night in at Tait's; then afterward, in the office."
"Oh, come on!" Barbara started ahead impatiently. "What difference would it make."
They went on ahead of me, scrapping briskly, as a boy and girl do who have grown up together. I stumped along after and reflected on the folly of mankind in general, and that of Allen G. Cummings in particular. That careful, mature bachelor had seen this lustrous young creature blossom to her present perfection; he'd no doubt offered her safe and sane attention, when she came to live in San Francisco where they had friends in common. But it had needed Worth Gilbert's appearance on the scene to wake him up to his own real feeling. Forty-five on the chase of nimble sweet and twenty; Cummings was in for sore feet and humiliating tumbles—and we were in for the worst he could do to us. I sighed. Worth had more than one way of making enemies, it seemed.
At last we came in sight of the country club upon its rise of ground overlooking the golf links. The low, brown clubhouse, built bungalow fashion, with a long front gallery and gravel sweep, was swarming with people—the decorators. Motors came and went. The grounds were being strung with paper lanterns. We skirted these, and the links itself where there were two or three players, obstinate, defiant old men who would have their game in spite of forty blossom festivals—climbed a fence, and crossed the grass up to the crest of a little round hill, halting there for the view. It wasn't high, but standing free as it did, it commanded pretty nearly the entire Santa Ysobel district. Massed acres of pink and white, the great orchards ran one into the other without break for miles. The lanes between the trunks, diamonded like a harlequin's robe in mathematical primness, were newly turned furrows of rich, black soil, against which the gray or, sometimes, whitewashed trunks of apricot, peach and plum trees gave contrast. Then the cap of glorious blossoms, meeting overhead in the older orchards, with a warm blue sky above and puffs of clouds that matched the pure white of the plum trees' bloom.
The spot suited me well; we had left the town behind us; here neither Dykeman's spotter nor any one he hired to help him could get within listening distance, I dropped down on a bank; Worth and Barbara disposed themselves, he sprawling his length, she sitting cross-legged, just below him.
It wasn't easy to make a beginning. I knew it wouldn't do me any particular good with Worth to dwell on his danger. But I finally managed to lay fairly before them my case against Eddie Hughes, and I must say that, as I told it, it sounded pretty strong.
I didn't want to put too much stress on having found my evidence in the diaries; I knew Worth was as obstinate as a mule, and having said that he would not stand for any one being prosecuted on their evidence, he'd stick to it till the skies fell. I called on my memory of those pages, now unfortunately ashes and not get-atable, and explained that Worth's father hired Hughes directly after a jail-break at San Jose had roused the whole country. Three of the four escapes were rounded up in the course of a few days, but the fourth—known to us as Eddie Hughes—was safe in Thomas Gilbert's garage, working there as chauffeur, having been employed without recommendation on the strength of what he could do.
"And the low wages he was willing to take," Worth put in drily. "Old stuff, Jerry. I wasn't sure till you spilled it just now that my father was wise to it. But I knew. What you getting at?"