“I love them when they wear bonnets,” said the red-headed girl. “What’s he like?”
“Pat? Well, take a good look at him; that’s what he’s like.”
The red-headed girl obediently took a good look. Black hair, blue eyes, black with pain, set in a haggard, beautiful young face that looked white to the bone, a reckless mouth set in a line of desperation.
“He doesn’t look very contented,” she commented mildly.
“And his looks don’t belie him,” the reporter assured her drily. “Young Mr. Ives belongs to the romantic school—you know—the guardsman, the troubadour, the rover, and the lover; the duel by candlelight, the rose in the moonlight, the dice, the devil and boots, saddle, to horse and away. The type that muffs it when he’s thrown into a show that deals in the crude realism of spilled kerosene and bloody rags and an Italian labourer’s stuffy little front parlour. Mix him up with that and he gets shadows under his eyes and three degrees of fever and bad dreams. Also, he gets a little irritable with reporters.”
“Did you interview him?” inquired the red-headed girl in awe-stricken tones.
“Well, that’s a nice way of putting it,” said the reporter thoughtfully. “I went around to the Ives’ house with one or two other scientific spirits on the night after Sue Ives and Bellamy were arrested—June twenty-first, if my memory serves me. We rang the doorbell none too optimistically, and the door opened so suddenly that we practically fell flat on our faces in the front hall. There stood the debonair Mr. Ives, in his shirt sleeves, with as unattractive a look on his face as I’ve ever seen in my life.
“ ‘Come right in, gentlemen,’ says he, and he made that sound unattractive too. ‘I’m not mistaken, am I? It’s the gentlemen of the press that I’m addressing?’ We allowed without too much enthusiasm that such was indeed the case, and in we came. ‘Let’s get right down to business,’ he said. ‘None of this absurd delicacy that uses up all your energy,’ says he. ‘What you gentlemen want to know, I’m sure, is whether I was Madeleine Bellamy’s lover and whether my wife was her murderess. That’s about it, isn’t it?’
“It was just about it, but somehow, the way he put it, it sounded not so good. ‘Well,’ said Ives, ‘I’ll give you a good straight answer to a good straight question. Get to hell out of here!’ says he, and he yanks the front door open so wide that it would have let out an army.
“Just as I was thinking of something really bright to come back with, a nice soft little voice in the back of the hall said, ‘Oh, Pat darling, do be careful. You’ll wake up the babies. I’m sure that these gentlemen will come back another time.’ And Mrs. Daniel Ives trotted up and put one hand on his arm and smiled a nice, worried, polite little smile at us.