I wondered, from time to time, exactly what was in that nice, new suit case under my feet. A few hundred thousand in neat, new bills, I thought; or possibly plates. Maybe both.
That suit case kept bothering my bean-business conscience. It was decidedly one matter to like Doris Wellington and wish her to stay out of the clutches of old “Iron Age”; but it was something quite up another street to take charge of that handbag full of cash and plates and deliver them at destination for her. Obviously, this was what she meant me to do.
The day was waning; and all lights were on as we drew into Toledo, where old “Iron Age” sent his sheaf of telegrams over to Western Union. He received a couple of yellow envelopes too. I saw him strolling on the platform, reading enclosures and watching the doors of the train. He was developing a more menacing look.
Neither Doris nor George got off; Felice did, flirting expertly with one of the clothing merchants. “All aboard.” We were going again. Cleveland, the next stop.
In the observation car, I found “Iron Age” ponderously on duty beside Doris who was reading Harper’s. A good touch that, I thought; there’s something so disarming about Harper’s. But it wasn’t Harper’s alone which made the effect. There was George a couple of seats away and he was reading the Atlantic Monthly, with Galsworthy’s “Forsythe Saga” ready beside him for good measure, yet he didn’t appear half so innocuous.
This was probably because he wasn’t. The more I looked at George, the more I questioned his general character; but the more I gazed at Doris, the surer I was that—in all but one of the essential senses—she was a “good” girl. Looseness of living simply wasn’t in her make-up.
You couldn’t associate her with anything personally depraved or disagreeable. She’d no more steal a diamond ring, left in the ladies’ wash room, than my mother, I felt certain. No; I was confident that her dereliction was highly specialized to the subject represented in that suit case of hers under my seat.
I wanted to talk to her about that and about other topics; but old “Iron Age” was asserting a priority claim just now.
He looked up at me and cut me dead, signifying of course that just now he and I weren’t to know each other. Doris nodded to me and I to her and I found a chair opposite.
Watching Dibley, I perceived that he was in the throes of opening a casual conversation. Of course Doris perceived it, too, and about a minute after I sat down, she dropped her Harper’s.