He turned on her quickly.
“I was going to tell you about those,” he said. “You’re not to touch them under any circumstances. They belong to the old man and he’s very stuffy about such things. Leave them just as they are. Let him touch them and nobody else. Do you understand?”
She nodded, and, to his surprise, pecked his cheek with her cold lips.
“I’ll help you, boy,” she said tremulously. “Maybe that trip will come off after all, if——”
“If what?”
“Those men—the men you were talking about—the Four Just Men, don’t they call themselves? They scare me sick, Monty! They were the people who took her away before, and they’ll kill us—even Oberzohn says that. They’re after him. Has he”—she hesitated—“has he killed anybody? That snake stuff . . . you’re not in it, are you, Monty?”
She looked more like a child than a sophisticated woman, clinging to his arm, her blue eyes looking pleadingly into his.
“Stuff! What do I know about snakes?” He disengaged himself and came back to where Oberzohn was waiting, a figure of patience.
The girl was lying on the bed, her face in the crook of her arm, and he was gazing at her, his expression inscrutable.
“That is all, then. Good night, gracious ladies.”