“And still you fear and doubt,” he chided. “Well, take your little gun, since you believe that your goods are safe only when you have death in your hand.”
“I can’t help it!” She looked at him, ashamed, pathetic, defiant.
“Too bad—too bad.” His eyes twinkled.
The colour flamed to her brow. Her eyes wavered from his. With a sudden, reckless motion, she tossed the little weapon on the table toward him.
“There! And I don’t know who you are!”
Smiling, with open delight in her, he reached for the pistol, drew the charges, and dropped them into a vase on the bookcase.
“Much safer on the whole; don’t you think so, child?”
“Oh!” she cried passionately. “You make me feel like—like—so foolish!” Avoiding his merry eyes, she dashed into the dining room.
“It’s extraordinary,” he muttered, moving about the room. “It should be the house. But, of course, it can’t be. And where did she come from—the little lady curator of the museum?”
He was hampered in his investigations by his hostess. She was in and out with table-cloth, napkins, trays of bread and butter, sandwiches, salad, and whatever she felt would appease a hungry, though refined, tramp’s appetite. At one turn in his peregrinations about the apartment he arrived at the flower-stand behind the settee, and saw the small volume lying there.