"For another thing I feel obliged to say——"
"You feel obliged to say," chuckled Baxter, "that it's a crazy notion. Bet ye four dollars and a quarter that's what ye think. But listen to me, Bish. I've made my fortune doin' crazy things. Once I bought three thousand plug hats at auction in Chicago fer eight hundred dollars, an' I sold 'em at dollar apiece in Denver for a political parade. I've bought busted railroads and watched 'em come up to par. I've bought played-out oil wells an' made 'em spout gold. Why, I even bought an old church once with a haunted graveyard and got square on the marble in it, with all the land as velvet."
"Dear, dear, dear! A haunted graveyard?" murmured the bishop.
"Yes, sir; and I'll put this thing through the same as I did that, because it's a good idea. A big, sound, American idea. Now you just watch me."
CHAPTER IV
A SHOCK FOR BETTY
One immediate consequence of the golf-bag-purse-vanishing episode narrated above, was a delay of two hours in Betty Thompson's arrival in London, which delay meant that Hiram Baxter and his wife, having waited vainly at Charing Cross station for the expected traveler, had now returned, quite out of sorts, especially Mrs. Baxter, to their rooms at the Savoy Hotel.
"I think it's very inconsiderate of Betty to be so careless about her trains. You wired her, didn't you?" said the wife as she stood before a cheval glass preparatory to removing a new and very large green velvet picture hat, with gold-brown plumes and drooping brim. Beneath this effective covering her hair was discreetly shadowed, her eyes, if they were calculating, seemed only pensive, and the pouting of her mouth was transformed to an expression of winsome pleading—so much for the wizardry of a woman's hat.
As she stood before the mirror Mrs. Baxter's half-turned face wore that sidelong, disquieted look with which a woman always regards her newest hat, half pleasure of possession and half regret for that other hat, the one in the shop that she did not buy and whose fetching colors and enticing lines have ever since haunted her. A pleasing panel picture she made in the black framed oval of the cheval glass, a harmony in green and golden brown. Boldini might have painted that mirror picture of Eleanor Baxter. She was a harmony of insincerities, a woman who seemed to have youth and height and slenderness, but who really had none of these. This, however, was a secret between Mrs. Baxter and her looking-glass.
"I wired her all right," answered Hiram.