“I’m universally rated rather high on susceptibility,” admitted the reporter with modest pride. “Did you sleep better last night?”
“Not any better at all.”
“Look here, are you telling me that after reducing me to a state of apprehension that resulted in my spending six dollars and thirty-five cents, and two hours and twenty minutes of invaluable time in a hired flivver in order to cure you of insomnia, you went back to that gas log of yours and worked half the night and had it again? Didn’t you solemnly swear——”
“I’m not ever solemn when I swear. I didn’t work after twelve. If you paid six thousand dollars for it, it was a tremendous bargain. It was the nicest ride I ever took. That was why I didn’t sleep.”
“Mollifying though mendacious,” said the reporter critically. “Are you by any chance a flirt?”
The red-headed girl eyed him thoughtfully. After quite a lengthy period of contemplation she seemed to arrive at a decision. “No,” she said gravely, “I’m not a flirt.”
“In that case,” said the reporter quite as gravely, “I’m going to get you some lunch. And if Sue Ives decides to confess to the entire newspaper fraternity that it really was she who did it, after all, I’m not going to be there—I’m going to be bringing your lunch back to you because you’re not a flirt. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, thank you,” said the red-headed girl.
She sat staring after him with round bright eyes that she was finding increasingly difficult to keep open. What was it that she had said that first day—that day that seemed so many, many days ago? Something about a murder story and a love story being the most enthralling combination in the world? Well—— The red-headed girl looked around her guiltily, wondering if she looked as pink as she felt. It was frightful to be so sleepy. It was frightful and ridiculous not to be able to sleep any more because of the troubles and passions of half a dozen people that you’d never laid eyes on in your life, and didn’t really know from Adam and Eve—or Cain and Abel were better, perhaps. What’s he to Hecuba or Hecuba to him? What indeed? She yawned despairingly.
No, but that wasn’t true—you did know them—a hundred times—a thousand times better than people that lived next to you all the days of their lives. That was what gave a trial its mysterious and terrible charm; curiosity is a hunger in everyone alive, and here the sides of the houses were lifted off and you saw them moving about as though they were alone. You knew—oh, you knew everything! You knew that little Pat Ives had sold papers in the streets and that he carved ships, and that once he had played the ukulele and had taken Mimi Dawson riding on spring nights.