“I’ll show you,” he offered, and he led her around an obstructing material train and over to the spur-track, where he helped her up the steps of the private car. As he was lifting his hat to go away she stopped him to ask a question.
“Do you happen to know where Mr. Vallory is?”
Plegg gave such information as he had, or thought he had: the chief was somewhere down the line at one of the lower camps; or at least he had gone down earlier in the evening and he had not come back to supper. The young woman appeared to be satisfied with the answer, and when the porter had admitted her to her father’s car, Plegg went his way, wondering if anything new had developed. The conclusion was negative. Miss Virginia’s question was natural and casual; one that need have no bearing upon the threatening conditions—doubtless had none. But if he could have been a listener at the door of the office compartment in the Athenia, he would have known better how much was at stake in the matter of keeping in close touch with his chief’s movements.
Miss Virginia found her father planted in his great chair behind the glass-topped table-desk. The fishing absence was responsible for a huge accumulation of mail, and he was slitting the envelopes with a nimble dexterity curiously at variance with his massive bulk and knotty-knuckled, square-fingered hands.
“Hello, little girl; you down here?” he rumbled; and before she could speak: “I got your wire—two days late. What is it?—something that won’t keep until I have read my mail?” Then, with a chuckling laugh: “Which one is it you’re going to spring on me—Wishart, or the ‘belted earl’?”
“Neither,” she replied succinctly. “I have come to talk business.”
“Oho! business, is it? Well, I guess I’m a business man. Go ahead and open up your samples.”
“The reason why I telegraphed you to come back was because you haven’t kept your promise.”
“Which one?” he inquired, with large indulgence.
“The one you made me when you were sending David out here. You promised me that he wasn’t to be spoiled.”