“Yes. You’re ’way too early; they haven’t been to dinner yet.”
“Did you see her?”
“Sure.”
“Can she do it?”
“She knows she’s got to do it.”
“Good enough; I’ll go on up to the house and help her.”
Jarvis reached up, felt in Antrim’s vest pocket, found a cigar, and coolly purloined it. “Begging your pardon, you will do nothing of the kind, savez vous? That little battle is one she will have to fight for herself. You go away and kill time for an hour and then come back.”
Antrim held his watch down so that the flare of Jarvis’s match lighted the face of it.
“Six-thirty—seven-thirty. The train Hobart is coming on is late, and I’ll time things so we can go by the station and pick him up. That gives me a clear hour to spare. Get in, and we’ll take you back to town.”
The reporter took his place in the empty four-wheeler and rode cityward in solitary state, rode as far as the Union Depot, and then got out to walk uptown. Recalling the incidents of that eventful night, he could never quite account for the impulse which led him to drift aside from the straight course to the Plainsman building, to turn the corner at Blake Street, and finally to stroll aimlessly into Draco’s. At that early hour the place was all but deserted, and Tom Deverney was glad enough to have some one to talk to. As a matter of course, he reverted to the impending fate of the one known to both.