CHAPTER XX
LAVERICK IS CROSS-EXAMINED
One by one the young ladies of the chorus came out from the stage-door of the Universal, in most cases to be assisted into a waiting hansom or taxicab by an attendant cavalier. Laverick stood back in the shadows as much as possible, smiling now and then to himself at this, to him, somewhat novel way of spending the evening. Zoe was among the last to appear. She came up to him with a delightful little gesture of pleasure, and took his arm as a matter of course as he led her across to the waiting cab.
“This sort of thing is making me feel absurdly young,” he declared. “Luigi’s for supper, I suppose?”
“Supper!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands. “Delightful! Two nights following, too! I did love last night.”
“We had better engage a table at Luigi’s permanently,” he remarked.
“If only you meant it!” she sighed.
He laughed at her, but he was thoughtful for a few minutes. Afterwards, when they sat at a small round table in the somewhat Bohemian restaurant which was the fashionable rendezvous of the moment for ladies of the theatrical profession, he asked her a question.
“Tell me what you meant in your note,” he begged. “You said that you had some information for me.
“I’m afraid it wasn’t anything very much,” she admitted. “I found out to-day that some one had been inquiring at the stage-door about me, and whether I was connected in any way with a Mr. Arthur Morrison, the stockbroker.”
“Do you know who it was?” he asked.