"Oh, thank you!" cried his beautiful wife softly. She slipped a hand beneath his elbow and gave his massive arm an affectionate squeeze while her blue eyes twinkled up at his. "Is um itty-witty baby happy, then?"
"Shut up," commanded Mr. Krech with intense dignity. "Don't go cooing at me—not where any one might hear you, anyway!"
An unprejudiced observer of the trend of events at the house on the hill must have admitted that Mrs. Krech had considerable grounds for her romantic suspicions. Twice during the ten days aforementioned Creighton was obliged to go to New York and spend half a day on business that would not be denied, and each time he returned bearing books and candy and a vast quantity of assorted and exotic fruits for which Miss Ocky had expressed a casual longing and which the marts of Hambleton could not provide. On the first occasion he pretended they were for Lucy Varr, still confined to her room, but on the second he abandoned pretense.
Then there was the incident of the picnic, sponsored by Miss Ocky. They took their lunch and plunged into the wilderness of hills that lay to the north of Hambleton, their destination the cave that was reputed to have sheltered the legendary monk. It was Miss Ocky's suggestion that in the haunts of the old monk they might come upon some traces of the new, if that imaginative imitator had carried his masquerade to the extent of using his predecessor's quarters, and Creighton, without the flutter of an eyelash, agreed that nothing was more likely. They found the cave—or some cave—but nothing else. Their disappointment weighed lightly upon them, and the detective enjoyed the day with all the artless abandon of a schoolboy playing hooky.
Even more significant than the picnic was the pilau. Miss Ocky had described this supposedly delectable dish to Creighton at some length, and the next day was impelled to possess herself of the kitchen and compose a pilau such as she swore appeared daily on the tables of the first epicures of Constantinople. However that might be, affairs are approaching a crisis when a woman is seized with a desire to demonstrate her culinary accomplishments to a man.
The pilau was an amazing dish. At table with them during those days was a very pale, very thin young man with gold pince-nez, fair hair and a painfully self-effacing manner, who had been quartered on the house by Judge Taylor for the purpose of documenting a vast accumulation of papers in Simon Varr's study. He took a mouthful of the pilau, started slightly, and took a second to make sure his senses had not deceived him about the first. Ten minutes later, the closest approach to any emotion that he ever revealed was visible on his face as Creighton sent back his plate for a third helping.
If Miss Ocky noticed his tactless expression of awe—and she rarely missed anything so obvious—it probably did nothing to raise the young man in her esteem. She frankly disliked him.
"That Merrill!" she grumbled to Creighton when they were by themselves after dinner. "A perfect imposition on the part of Judge Taylor! Of course I couldn't very well refuse under the circumstances, but I'll be glad when we lose him!"
"He must have nearly finished his work," Creighton consoled her. "After all, he's harmless. Why does he annoy you?"
"I don't know," was the conclusively feminine reply. "He just does."