“Pshaw, now, ain’t that jest my luck! Can’t you pussuade him, Judge,—pussuade him, as it were?”
“I’ll try,” and smiling involuntarily, Judge Hoyt dismissed his caller.
“At it again!” said Fibsy, to himself, as he passed along the corridor. “Gee! what whoppers I did tell about them clo’es!”
CHAPTER XIV
TWO SUITORS
“Oh, of course, that settles it” Pinckney was saying to Avice, as he watched for her answering gleam of satisfaction at his words. She had been telling him about the Hemingway letter, and had said he might use it in his newspaper story.
Avice was disappointed that the police had not been entirely convinced by the note she found, and while they searched for the unknown Hemingway, they kept strict surveillance over Kane Landon and a wary eye on Stryker.
But Pinckney agreed with her, positively, that Hemingway was the murderer, and that it was in accordance with the dead man’s wishes that he should not be hunted down, consequently the matter ought to be dropped.
However, the young reporter had reached such a pitch of infatuation for the beautiful girl, that he would have agreed to any theory she might have advanced. He lived, nowadays, only to get interviews with her, and to sanction her plans and carry out her orders. They had evolved theories and discarded them time and again, and now, Avice declared, this was the absolute solution.
“Of course, Uncle Rowland looked forward to this fate,” she said, her face saddened at the thought, and, “Of course,” Pinckney echoed.
“Seems queer, though,” put in Landon, who was present, “that the note just cropped up. Where was it, Avice?”