The sun was above the horizon when Maculay carried his bride—now asleep—over the threshold of his hotel suite. It was late afternoon when the Maculays, man and wife, checked out of their hotel to take a honeymoon in the jungle cities of Venus.
And Hanson fumed and fretted because he had no word from Ava, and worried because he knew that Redmond was poring through Maculay's secret file of computations and beginning to unravel the data that would permit Redmond to create and establish negative space.
On the third day of such worrying, Hanson knew then he had mis-calculated or over-stepped his reasoning. It was at that moment that Hanson did something that he had stoutly insisted that not even a man should do to his wife, or the reverse. Like reading another's mail, one did not paw through desk drawers nor inspect the corners of another's soul to see whether they concealed something. But Hanson went through the desk drawers of his nurse, attempting to learn how he had erred.
He came up with a small package, neatly tied in a very ornamental manner under the plain store-bag. The name on the fancy ribbon was that of a highly gilded women's shoppe where the salesgirls were very beautiful, the silk very sheer, and the prices very high.
Hanson opened the package. It disgorged a petticoat and bra, through either of which the doctor could have read the telephone directory without his glasses. A scant concession to the custom that a woman should wear lingerie—for the sake of the custom but not necessarily for warmth, protection, fire or famine.
It might have been a gift.
It might have been her own.
It made no difference whether Ava had selected this daring set of scanties for herself or for a gift, wedding or Christmas. It displayed her taste, showed her subconscious desires.
"Damn!" exploded Hanson. "I've been working with a courtesan concealed behind an armor of white starch. Oh, brother!"
The doctor knew. Like two small streams, turned here and there by the minor hills and rocks of fate, they had been joined by Hanson into a flowing river, complete unto itself—themselves—which would go its way as it damn well pleased and overflow its banks to the ruination of anything in its path if it were constrained.