"Oh, so there you are, my dear!" was his cynical greeting.
Lucia still stared at him. "I thought—I thought—you were dead," she murmured. Her voice sounded far away to her. It was scarcely a whisper.
"So it seems!" Morgan Pell answered, his lip curling. "My dear, I regret to disappoint you. But aside from a slight pain in my head, I was never better in my whole life!" He wanted to see the effect of his words.
"Shall I bandage your wound for you?" his dutiful wife asked.
He looked at her from the corner of his eye. "Thank you—no," he said.
Lucia sat down on the other side of the table.
Not a word more was said. Pell took out his own handkerchief, and started to dip it in the bowl of water. But he was shaking still, and the piece of linen dropped to the floor. He stooped to pick it up. As he did so, he saw, in the dim light, the option lying exactly where Pancho Lopez had tossed it. He grasped it in his hand, crushed and crumpled as it was, and thought no one had observed him. But Uncle Henry's eagle eye had seen his movement.
"What's that?" he called out.
Pell tried to seem unconcerned. "The option, my dear sir," he answered truthfully.