"Children, I've got bad news fer ye, awful bad news for ye," he said. "I've made the best fight I could, but that Henderson bunch, they've done me up. Independent Copper broke twenty points to-day in the New York market, and—I was long of the stock. My man cabled me the tip to sell, but I never got it. I never got it. That cable was held up." He bent forward, resting his big grizzled head on his hands in an attitude of utter despair. "It's all off, children. It's all off."
Betty's heart was pounding violently as she listened. Things had happened so rapidly in the last few hours that she had scarcely thought of Lionel and his wild sprint for the cable office. Had he failed to get there in time? Had he made some mistake? What could have happened to Lionel?
"Excuse me a moment," she said, and hurrying toward the conservatory, she threw open the door and looked about her.
One glance showed that something had happened, for her eyes fell on a murmuring group gathered about Anton and the detective. And there in the group, calmly smoking a cigarette, was Lionel Fitz-Brown.
"Lionel!" Betty called, addressing him by his Christian name for the first time in her life. "Please come here—quick." And then, when he stood before her, very indignantly: "The idea of your not coming to tell me!"
"Tell you about what?" he asked blankly.
"About the cable. Did you—were you in time?"
Fitz-Brown adjusted his monocle with great care, then, gradually, a smile spread over his face. "Oh, I say! The cable! You see, I got so beastly wet in the storm, Miss Thompson, that I—well, the fact is, I had on thin flannel trousers and they jolly well shrunk up to my knees and—haw, haw, haw!" He exploded into uproarious merriment.
"Oh, Mr. Fitz-Brown," she wrung her hands beseechingly, "please tell me if you got the cable off by twelve?"
Lionel laid a reflective forefinger along his nose. "By twelve? No. No, I didn't."