“You’d forgive me for not knowing whom to trust if you could realize that what was in that box means everything to me and that I’d never get it back if its real value became known. Can’t you imagine something whose loss means the completest kind of ruin to me and to one who——”
She pressed her teeth into her lower lip, whether to stop its quivering or its admission he did not care. He felt his sensibilities scorched by the blue blaze of fears which had burnt the doubt of him from her eyes. His original ideas of how to learn this lady he had self-selected seemed somehow thrown into the discard. They were much too slow, much too steady, much too cool as compared with hot, dizzy, instantaneous realization like this. One didn’t learn the woman. One just knew her. And knowing her as the woman, one served her.
Without superfluous words Pape’s lips swore their oath of allegiance—fervently kissed her hand. The click of the receiver being returned to its useless hook punctuated the small ceremony—that and the distant tintillation of an electric bell.
“Thank goodness, they’re back at last, the folks for supper!” exclaimed Aunt Helene and started for the stair-head.
Jane started after her. “One minute, Auntie. I want to ask—to beg a favor of you.”
Pape followed them to their stand in the hall, glancing hastily about for his hat and overcoat. He decided that he must escape. The returning quartette—Irene especially—could not be expected to play his game as had the strangely hostile, compliant and altogether enigmatic Jane. Stripped of his professional mask, he would lose the advantage he had gained with Aunt Helene, even did her niece deign to let him hold it for long. Perhaps he’d better forget his hat and coat. Yet how to get out without passing the party——
“If you’ll point the way to the back-stairs, madam—” he began. “It would be better if your friends did not see me. As the sleuth on the case I don’t want to be recognized.”
Jane interrupted, her one hand grasping his arm, her other Mrs. Sturgis’. Rapidly Jasper could be heard pad-padding through the lower hall to the street door.
“There’s no need for you to be named as a—a sleuth, Mr. Pape. Aunt Helene, what I wanted to ask—to implore is that you don’t mention the theft at all. As the only loser, I insist on working it out my own way. Won’t you promise, please?”
“But, my dear, there must be some explanation to Harford—my hurrying you home and all——”