But as he spoke he remembered a reason why Mr. Banger’s last suggestion was not a good one, after all. No, better not adopt it.
“I’ll just step to the desk and register for you, or let you do it for yourselves. Eh? What’s that?”
“I think it would be better for us not to register,” Philip said, slowly, “if you don’t mind; and, on second thoughts, perhaps we hadn’t better be telegraphed about—to the papers.”
“Why not, for pity’s sake? You can keep as much to yourselves while you are here as you like. You needn’t be pestered by visitors out of curiosity, if that’s what you’re thinking of.”
“No, not that. The fact is, there is—a person who might give us a great deal of trouble and upset all our plans badly if he happened to know that we were here alone—if this person could get here before Mr. Marcy or Mr. Saxton.”
Mr. Banger was nonplused. He deprecated keeping from all the rest of Knoxport and of creation this romantic return of the dead to life. Good could be done by it; and besides his own name and his hotel’s would attain the glory of New York print. What foolishness was this?
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What kind of a person? How could you be annoyed? I’ll look after you.”
There was no helping it. Philip had to explain as much of the Hilliard-Belmont persecution as made its outlines clear. He hurried it over. But of the names, and especially of his discovery that the man Belmont and Mr. Winthrop Jennison were the same person, he uttered not a syllable. “Where’s the use?” he thought. “I ought not to give you the name,” he repeated, firmly—“at least not now.”
Mr. Banger looked at him and then at the ceiling, and nodded his head slowly to show that he was considering, or would let this or that point pass for the present. Then he asked sundry questions. Philip answered them with an uncomfortable feeling that after piling Ossa on Pelion in this way he might be—doubted. But he fought off that notion.
“Well,” said Mr. Banger, “I don’t see that you’d best let Fillmore go without his news. If this man comes, as you say he might, I will see that you get rid of him. It’s a great mistake, it’s downright cruel, not to use the newspapers.”