“I can’t remember all. It’s very confused. I’ve had a lot of conversations, you see, and most of them awfully unpleasant. I remember, though, that Mrs. Dan impressed me as a very broad-minded lady. Said she had lived in Paris, and was not a bit jealous.”
“What!” Dan was breathing hard.
“Said she always wanted you to have the best kind of a time.”
“Did she say that?” asked the commodore. “And you believed it? Go on.” In a choked voice. “Did you tell her about that cabaret evening?”
“I believe it was mentioned, incidentally.”
“Say I was there?” put in Clarence quickly. He was losing that “chestiness.”
“I rather think I did. I—what is that?” Bob looked toward the window. There was a sound below at the foot of the balcony. Some one turned out the light in the room and Bob strode to the window and looked out. “It’s a dog,” he said. “He’s snuffing around at the foot.”
“He’s doing more than snuffing,” observed the commodore apprehensively, as at that moment a bark smote the air. They stood motionless and silent. The dog stopped barking, but went on snuffing. Maybe it would go away after a moment, and they waited. Dickie and the commodore had thrashed out that question of dogs. With so many guests around, they had figured that, of course, they would be dog-safe. Didn’t they look like guests? How could a dog tell the difference between them and a guest? It is true, they hadn’t been expecting so much trouble as they had been put to, to find Bob. They had, in that little balcony-climbing feat, rather exceeded what they had expected to be called on to do. In their impatience, they had acted somewhat impetuously, but it had looked just as easy, after the servant had pointed out the room and told them Bob was in, as certain sounds from his bed indubitably indicated.
They couldn’t very well enter the house as self-invited guests, though they, of course, would have been made welcome. They couldn’t very well say they had all changed their minds about those original invitations which had naturally included husbands as well as wives. After all three had declined to come on account of business, it would certainly look like collusion, if all three found they hadn’t had urgent business, at all, in town. If anything untoward or disastrous had happened in the conversational line, with Bob as the Demon God, Truth, their sudden entrance upon the stage of festivities, would seem to partake of inner perturbation; it might even appear to be a united and concentrated case of triple guilty conscience. This, obviously, must be avoided at any cost. How they had heard Bob was here at the Ralston house, matters not. Naturally they had kept tab on his movements, where he went and what he did being of some moment to them.
The dog barked again. Thereupon, a window opened and they knew that some one had been aroused.