She suddenly remembered that he was there.
"None of your business, young man. And don't stand around on my front stoop."
Then she was gone, with a slamming of the door that echoed through the lonely block. Pete decided that her advice was sound; there was nothing to be achieved by standing there. He walked down the steps, climbed into the car and drove slowly off.
"Something is peculiar," he observed, half aloud. "Let us examine the facts."
All the way back to the Marshall house he examined the facts, but when he backed the car into the garage he had reached no conclusion.
Another conversation had been in progress during the time that Pete Stearns was playing rescuer to a stricken lady. It took place in the "office," a term that Mary Wayne had fallen into the habit of applying to the sun parlor where she transacted the affairs of Bill Marshall. For a considerable time all of the conversation flowed from one pair of lips. To say that it flowed is really too weak a characterization; it had the fearsome speed and volume of an engulfing torrent.
Bill walked during most of it. He could not manage to stay in one place; the torrent literally buffeted him about the room. He felt as helpless as a swimmer in the Niagara rapids. Never before had he realized the conversational possibilities of a social secretary. He was particularly disquieted because she did not rant. She did not key her voice high; she did not gesture; she did not move from her chair. She simply sat there, pouring scorn upon him in appallingly swift and even tones. She drenched him with it; she seemed in a fair way to drown him.
At last, inevitably, there came a pause. There was awe as well as surprise in the gaze with which Bill contemplated her. She sat stiffly on the edge of her chair, pinker in the cheeks than he had ever seen her before, with her lips tightly set and her eyes glowing.
"That's more than I ever stood from anybody," he said slowly.
"Then you have been neglected in the past," was the comment she shot back.