“I leave you here,” he said. “You will see me frequently at the villa.”
“I certainly shall be there frequently. Good night.”
Courtlandt quickened his pace which soon brought him alongside the others. They stopped in front of Abbott’s pension, and he tried to persuade them to come up for a nightcap.
“Nothing to it, my boy,” said Harrigan. “I need no nightcap on top of cognac forty-eight years old. For me that’s a whole suit of pajamas.”
“You come, Ted.”
“Abbey, I wouldn’t climb those stairs for a bottle of Horace’s Falernian, served on Seneca’s famous citron table.”
“Not a friend in the world,” Abbott lamented.
Laughingly they hustled him into the hallway and fled. Then Courtlandt went his way alone. He slept with the dubious satisfaction that the first day had not gone badly. The wedge had been entered. It remained to be seen if it could be dislodged.
Harrigan was in a happy temper. He kissed his wife and chucked Nora under the chin. And then Mrs. Harrigan launched the thunderbolt which, having been held on the leash for several hours, had, for all of that, lost none of its ability to blight and scorch.
“James, you are about as hopeless a man as ever was born. You all but disgraced us this afternoon.”