“Why do you smile?” he cried, “but whatever the reason, keep on doing so! Oh, Maida, how wonderful you are!”
A glance of astonishment made him quickly apologize for his speech.
“But,” he said, “I couldn’t help it. Forgive me, Miss Wheeler, and, since you can smile over it, I’m more than ever anxious to know about the airship deal.”
“And I can tell you nothing,” she declared, “because I know nothing of any such matter. If Mr. Appleby was interested in an airship project, I know nothing of it. The matter he mentioned to me was, I am positively certain, not the deal you speak of.”
“I believe that. Your face is too honest for you to speak an untruth so convincingly. And now assure me that I am not the Keefe he referred to, and I will never open the subject again.”
But this Maida could not say truthfully, and though she tried, her assertion was belied by drooping eyes and quivering lips.
“You were not,” she uttered, but she did not look at him, and this time Curtis Keefe did not believe her.
“I was,” he said calmly, but he made no further effort to get the whole truth from her. “I’m sorry you can’t confide fully in me, but I shall doubtless learn all I want to know from Mr. Appleby’s papers.”
“You—you have them in charge?” Maida asked, quite evidently agitated at the thought.
“Yes, of course, I’m his confidential secretary. That’s why, Miss Wheeler, it’s better for you to be frank with me—in all things. Has it never occurred to you that I’m the man who can best help you in this whole moil of troubles?”