"Listen, Penny!" Dundee urged rapidly. "You must realize that I've got to see and hear, but I don't want Ralph Hammond to see me until after he's had a talk with you. Will you let me eavesdrop behind these portieres?... I know it's a beastly thing to do, but—"
Penny agreed at last, and within ten minutes after that amazing telephone call Dundee, from behind the portieres that separated the dining and living room, heard Penny greeting her visitor in the little foyer. She had played fair; had not gone out into the hall to whisper a warning—if any warning was needed.
He had seen Ralph Hammond enter the dining room of the Stuart House the day before, in company with Clive Hammond and Polly Beale, when the three had been strangers to him; but Dundee told himself now that he would hardly have recognized the young man whom Penny was preceding into her living room. The Ralph Hammond of Saturday had had a white, drawn face and sick eyes. But this boy....
Like his older brother, Clive, Ralph Hammond had dark-red, curling hair. But unlike his brother's, his eyes were a wide, candid hazel—the green iris thickly flecked with brown. A little shorter than Clive, a trifle more slender. But that which held the detective's eyes was something less tangible but at once more evident than superlative masculine good looks. It was a sort of shy joyousness and buoyance, which flushed the tan of his cheeks, sang in his voice, made his eyes almost unbearably bright....
Before Penny Crain, very pale and quiet, could sink into the chair she was groping toward, Ralph Hammond was at her side, one arm going out to encircle her shoulders.
"Don't look like that, Penny!" Dundee heard him plead, his voice suddenly humble. "You've every right to be sore at me, honey, but please don't be. I know I've been an awful cad these last few weeks, but I'm myself again. I'm cured now, Penny—"
"Wait, Ralph!" Penny protested faintly, holding back as he would have hugged her hard against his breast. "What about—Nita?"
Dundee saw the young man's face go darkly red, but heard him answer almost steadily: "I hoped you'd understand without making me put it into words, honey.... I'm cured of—Nita. I can't express it any other way except to say I was sick, and now I'm cured—"
"You mean—" Penny faltered, but with a swift, imploring glance toward Dundee, "—you don't love Nita any more? You can't deny you were terribly in love with her, Ralph. Lois told us—told me last night that Nita had told her in strictest confidence that she had promised to marry you, just Thursday night—"
The boy's face was very pale as he dropped his hands from Penny's shoulders, but Dundee, from behind the portieres, was not troubling to spy for the moment. He was too indignant with Penny for having withheld from him the vital fact of Nita's engagement to Ralph Hammond....