“He was that—and to find out about you. He was that crazy to know where you’d gone that he was at Coggles’s, and had the Robsons turned ’most inside out with his questions. When he couldn’t get nothing out of them, he got detectives to track out Mick,—’cause, you remember, he’d left that package,—and he was here to find out what I knew. Oh, he’s got it bad.”
Viola, conscious of the scrutiny fastened upon her, bent her face over the tray. She began to make another cup of tea.
“I couldn’t give him no information,” continued Mrs. Cassidy—“more’s the pity, for I ain’t never seen a gentleman that took my fancy more; and just as pleasant and agreeable as if he was no better off than me or Mick. Policeman O’Hara, when I asked him, says to me: ‘Rich? Why, Mrs. Cassidy, he’s more money in a minute than you’ll ever see in your life. He’s a capitalist, and not mean, like the rest of ’em, neither.’”
Though the widow’s tongue had been busy, her eyes had followed the tea-making closely. It was not a success. Viola had abandoned it, and her hands were now clasped under the edge of the table. But she made no comment, sitting motionless, with her face averted. Nothing daunted, Mrs. Cassidy returned to the charge.
“He was just dead set upon finding you. He says to me as he left, says he, ‘If you hear anything of her, Mrs. Cassidy, let me know. Send over Mick the first thing in the morning.’”
It must be confessed that Mrs. Cassidy’s imagination had added this last touch; but to Viola, in her fluttered alarm, it carried no suggestion of fiction.
“Mrs. Cassidy,” she said, turning on the woman, “you haven’t let him know? You haven’t sent Mick?”
“Lord love you, no, dear,” returned the widow, good-humoredly. “I was waiting till you pulled yourself together a little more. But don’t you think, now,”—she leaned forward and spoke in a wheedling tone, but with her eyes full of an avid interest,—“don’t you think you might write a little letter, and Mick’ll take it over to his office this evening?”
Viola pushed back from the table, her face suddenly suffused with an angry red.