«Listen," said Emery, breathing hard. He had treated the suggestion with the utmost seriousness. "Kidnap her? Man, I wouldn't ruffle a hair of that girl's head, I wouldn't hurt her little finger so much as, for one split second in the world; and Lord help the man who tries it, that's all I've got to say. Yes. I love that woman like she was my own Margarette, and I want to see her have everything in the world…"
"Watch the road," said Bennett sharply. "Where are we going?"
"Out to reason with her, if she's there." "His white, fiercely earnest face turned away again. "She went shopping this morning — in a wig, mind you. A wig. But I was telling you: if she wants to make a picture of this Charles-the-Second thing, all right. Why not? It's swell box-office. Radiant Pictures did one like that last year, and it got top rating from Variety. (That's the show you put Nell Gwynn in, isn't it? Uh-huh. I thought so.) All right. We'll fix it up with Baumann. We'll shoot a million dollars into production. A million-dollars," said Emery, savoring the words, "Yes, and so everything's right we'll bring over some of these Oxford guys to act as technical advisers. You think I don't want an artistic success? Well, I do. That's just what I do want," he said fiercely, and the car swerved again. He meant it. Jerking his neck sharply, he went on: "If that's what she wants, she'll get it. But not here. What kind of a guy is this Bohun, I'm asking you? — when he don't know his own mind from one minute to the next? Soft. That's Bohun. And here's their trick. To get her away from me, in case I'd make her see reason, they're taking her down to this place in the country; then we've lost her, see? But I won't bother with that end of it. She can go to the country. But there may be ways of queering their game right here in London."
"How?"
"Oh, ways." He wrinkled up his forehead and lowered his voice. "Look. Keep this under your hat. Do you know who's putting up the money for this show? Eh?"
"Well?"
"It's Canifest," said Emery. "This is where we turn:'
He maneuvered through the traffic at Hyde Park Corner, and swung into the courtyard of a white-stone block of flats overlooking the brown earth and spiky trees of the Park. Emery beat the hall-porter into submission about not announcing their names; then growled and slid a banknote into his hand. They went up through a cathedral dimness to a landing where the door of Number 12 stood open. "Like a funeral," said Emery, sniffing the thick odor of flowers; but he stopped as he heard voices inside.
In a blue drawing-room, bright with wintry sun through wide windows, were three men. One of them, who leaned back in a window-seat smoking a cigarette, was a stranger to Bennett. On a table among a litter of crushed orchids lay a brown-paper parcel unwound from its wrappings, showing gaudy ribbon and a gaudily colored nude siren painted on the lid of a five-pound chocolate box. John Bohun stood on one side of the table, Carl Rainger on the other. And, as Bennett watched them, he knew that there was danger here. You had only to come into the rooms of Marcia Tait, among her belongings and things that she had touched, to feel the damnable atmosphere tightening again.
"I don't know whether you are aware of it," John Bohun's voice rose sharply, hornet-like in suggestion, and lowered again. "It is customary to allow people to open their own parcels. Manners, we sometimes call it. Did you ever hear anything of the sort?"