“Oh! a little bit slack. A pinch of quinine will put me right with the world. But, Deirdre, I’ve some fierce news for you. What do you think the last mail brought me but an announcement that your solicitor, Morton, had skidooed with every rap of yours. Betty wrote to me in a fearful state about it. You’re bust, my child.”
“Dick!”
“Yes, every red cent! We don’t have a bit of luck about the dibs, you and I. It turns out that he has only been keeping things going for the last year or so, by borrowing money on your securities; then just as things began to look too fishy, and discovery had to come, he scooted with the fragments that remained—about twelve baskets full I don’t think, and Chancery Lane knows him no more. But wait till I get after him! Just wait till I have got things fixed up all right for Mrs Marriott, and you and Judy! I’ll get after him! Not that I suppose I shall get much out of him, but still—”
The cold-blooded American who has been robbed of a dollar gleamed out of one of Dick’s eyes and a red Indian raging for the scalp of his foe glared from the other.
“If he’s got anything left he’ll belch up all right when I get him!” he announced with the conviction of a Nemesis. Presently he regained calmness.
“You must come up and live with me and Judy,” he said. “There are some catamarans of women in the world, Deirdre, and I believe you’ve been up against one or two, but they’re not all like that. There are some jolly nice women in Salisbury, and we’ll put the rest to the rightabout, and make them eat up their silly tales.”
“Dear Dick,” I said, “it takes a real reformed rake like you to be truly generous. But I can’t come to Salisbury.”
“Why not? It isn’t like you to run away from the music.”
“I’m not going to. But I can’t leave Fort George yet.”
He looked troubled and wistful, but asked me more questions. He was too much a believer it the family integrity. But after a day or two, most of which he spent with Gerry Deshon and Colonel Blow, for I was still much engaged at the hospital and had only the evenings for him, his troubled looks disappeared. Eventually, having planned with Mrs Marriott her secure future, he was ready to return to Salisbury.