“Never you mind,” she said. “I have done what you asked me anyway. If Mr. Ruff had not found me an agreeable companion he would not have bothered about getting Spencer to meet me. And now he’s done it,” she added, “I do believe he’s a little jealous.”
John Dory glared, but he said nothing. It seemed to him that his hour of revenge was close at hand!
It was the first occasion upon which words of this sort had passed between Peter Ruff and his secretary. There was no denying the fact that Miss Violet Brown was in a passion. It was an hour past the time at which she usually left the office. For an hour she had pleaded, and Peter Ruff remained unmoved.
“You are a fool!” she cried to him at last. “I am a fool, too, that I have ever wasted my thoughts and time upon you. Why can’t I make you see? In every other way, heaven knows, you are clever enough! And yet there comes this vulgar, commonplace, tawdry little woman from heaven knows where, and makes such a fool of you that you are willing to fling away your career—to hold your wrists out for John Dory’s handcuffs!”
“My dear Violet,” Peter Ruff answered deprecatingly, “you really worry me—you do indeed!”
“Not half so much as you worry me,” she declared. “Look at the time. It’s already past seven. At eight o’clock Mrs. Dory—your Maud—is coming in here hoping to find her old sweetheart.”
“Why not?” he murmured.
“Why not, indeed?” Miss Brown answered angrily. “Don’t you know—can’t you believe—that close on her heels will come her husband—that Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald, if ever he comes to life in this room, will leave it between two policemen?”
Peter Ruff sighed.
“What a pessimist you are, my dear Violet!” he said.