“Rub it in,” he said. “I don’t wonder that you are getting a bit collar-sore. But don’t forget to eat. Two o’clock is the time, you know. And, by the way, I hope you haven’t failed to keep in touch with the various members of your staff—the men whom Dimmock was in such an indecent hurry to discharge. We may need their help a little later.”
Maxwell told circumstantially what had been done, and from that the table-talk slipped easily into a discussion of human loyalty in the abstract, and so continued until the waiter brought the cigars. Sprague was looking at his watch as they made their way among the well-filled tables toward the door, and it was in the midst of a sentence pointing to the need for haste to keep the two o’clock appointment that he found Maxwell halting him.
Now it may say itself that a man may be a very Solon among reasoners and a modern Vidocq in the fine art of unravelling mysteries, without in the least approaching the type which is so aptly described by the slang phrase, “Johnnie-on-the-spot.” When Sprague dropped his watch back into its pocket he found himself halted beside a table at which were seated the cold-featured, accurately groomed chief raider of the captured railroad, and a young woman whose radiant beauty was bedazzling more eyes than those of the interested on-lookers at the surrounding tables.
Sprague looked, lost himself, and then came slowly back to earth in the realization that Dimmock was speaking.
“Excuse me, Mr. Maxwell,” he was saying: “I wanted you to meet my daughter. Diana, this is Mr. Richard Maxwell, whose wife is one of the Fairbairn girls, you know, and Mr. Maxwell’s friend, Mr. Sprague, of the Department of Agriculture.”
It was the young woman herself who broke in.
“Oh, yes; Mr. Sprague and I have met before; haven’t we, Mr. Sprague?” with a mocking smile for Sprague’s benefit. And then: “We’ve been missing you at Topaz Tepees. Have you been finding it too far to ride?”
What the athletic chemistry expert managed to stammer out in reply, what he went on saying to Miss Carswell during the fraction of a minute or so that Dimmock was holding Maxwell in talk, he could not remember a single second after the swinging together of the glass doors which shut them out of the dining-room. That was because the astounding discovery was still crippling him to blot out all the intermediate details.
But one large fact stood clear in the confusing medley. Clutching Maxwell’s arm he shoved him headlong into the near-by writing-room, which was opportunely deserted.
“Richard, I’m out of it!” he gasped hoarsely. “Dimmock knew what card to play, and he has played it. My Lord! Why didn’t I guess that the Mrs. Carswell he married four years ago was Diana’s mother? I didn’t guess it; it never entered my mind! I knew Diana was a niece of the chief wrecker—the man we’ve been after all summer; I found that out last week, and that was why I told you I couldn’t stay with you. And now: oh, dammit, dammit, dammit!”