"Charlotte? What have you to do with Charlotte?"
"A good deal, young man. You will learn a lot before you are many hours older. Miss Joyce and I have come to a pretty good understanding, and it was I who signalled you to-night. Oh, you don't need to look so astonished; the sooner you realize that I am sole boss of this affair, the less trouble you will cause yourself. You go and talk with your sister. You will be glad enough to talk to me afterwards."
"Do you—do you—mean that Joyce—that Miss Westbrook has voluntarily told you—"
"Exactly. She has voluntarily taken me into her confidence. But it chanced she suddenly became ill, and some things which she fully intended to tell—well, she will not be able to tell them for a while. Otherwise you could still be roosting undisturbed in your old garret. Clever idea, that."
Fairchild was dazed. He looked at the Captain blankly, as if his mind was seething. Talk to Charlotte?—go home?—this extraordinary man had signalled to him with his and Joyce's secret code? From out the whirl of ideas but one presented itself in the shape of a clearly distinguishable fact: somehow his carefully laid plan—his ultimate resource for turning the tide away from Joyce and her beloved brother—had evaporated; this unusual individual, moving silently and invisibly behind the scenes, had discovered the wires, and now he seemed to have them well in his own hand. Then, how was it with Joyce? At the thought he became suddenly icy—frozen with a terror that put his manhood, for the moment, utterly to rout. But abruptly he became sensible again of the sibilant voice, of a note of kindness in it, and he managed to direct his attention once more to what the man was saying.
"But the result of your and Miss Westbrook's conduct," Converse was proceeding quietly, "has been to make her position one of the utmost peril. Heaven knows, it's bad enough. Now, you've got to help her."
"Good God! anything, anything!" The reply was a groan.
"Very good. Do as I say, then, and go home. There will be no charge against you here; nothing to show that you've been here at all. Stay at home till I arrive—some time to-morrow forenoon—when I wish to see you and Miss Charlotte together; and, above all, keep yourself out of sight for a time."
Still laboring with his emotional storm, Fairchild followed the Captain docilely enough; yet he had himself pretty well in hand. A hundred questions surged to his lips; questions of such vital importance to his peace of mind that it was an acute distress to keep them back unasked and unanswered; but the manner in which the big, impassive man had terminated the colloquy was so decisive that he could only manage to blurt out one of them.
"Stay a moment!" he cried. "I'll go crazy if you leave me in this way. You tell me to talk to Charlotte: do you mean that she—that Charlotte—can explain the turn affairs seem to have taken?"