"Thanks. At least it proves you still have some consideration for me. You would smoke whether it was agreeable or not. But I like the odor of a good cigar. And it always helps you to think."
Braine lighted his cigar and began his customary pacing. At length he paused.
"Suppose we have a real old-fashioned coaching party out to the old mansion we know about?"
"And what shall we do there?"
"Make the mansion, an enchanted castle where sometimes people who enter can't get out. Do you think you could get her to go?"
"I can try."
"Olga, I must have that girl; and I must have her soon. Sometimes I find myself mightily puzzled over the whole thing. If Hargreave is alive, why doesn't he turn up now that it's practically known that his daughter presides over his household? I might understand it if I didn't know that Hargreave is really afraid of nothing. Where is the man with the five thousand, picked up at sea? What was the reason for Jones carrying that box out in broad daylight? Who is the chap watching across the street? Sometimes I believe in my soul—if I have one!—that Hargreave is playing with us, playing! Well," flinging the half consumed cigar into the grate, "the Black Hundred always goes forward, win or lose, and never forgets."
"We are a fine pair!" said the woman bitterly.
"We are exactly what fate intended us to be. They wrote you down in the book as a beautiful body with a crooked mind. They wrote me down as the devil, doomed to roam the earth's top till I'm killed."
"Killed?"