"And then," he said, with a truthfulness so bold that he was sure the reporter would not follow it, "and then—don't you see? he is to try to make her go down to New York and pay a visit to that lonely old father who needs her so badly. Since she is so obstinate about it, he must find some way to make her go before it is too late. Now do you understand, Mr. Hammerton? Now do you perceive why the thought of having all this pitiful story scareheaded in a penny paper is insufferable to me?"
He towered above Hammerton, crisp words falling like leaden bullets, stern, insistent, determined to be believed. But he saw a look dawn on the younger man's face which made him instantly fear that he had told too much.
And then suddenly Hammerton sprang to his feet, keen eyes shot with light, ruddy cheek paled a little with excitement, fronting Varney in startled triumph over the drinks they had shared.
"Make her!" he blurted in a high shrill voice. "Mr. Varney, you came up here to kidnap her!"
The two men stared at each other in a moment of horrified silence. Something in the reporter's air of victory, in the kind of thrilling joy with which he pounced upon the carefully guarded little secret and dragged it out into the light, made him all at once loathsome in Varney's eyes, a creature unspeakably repellent.
Suddenly he leaned across the little table and struck Hammerton lightly across the mouth with the back of his hand.
"You cad," he said whitely.
But Hammerton, never to be stopped by details now, ignored both the insult and the blow. He was on the rail like a cat, ready to swim for it, hot to take his great scoop to Mrs. Carstairs, to Coligny Smith, to readers of newspapers all over the land.
The table was between them, and it went over with a crash. Quick as he was, Varney was barely in time. His hand fell upon the reporter's coat when another fraction of a second would have been too late. Then he flung backward with a wrench, and Hammerton came toppling heavily to the deck.
Smarting with the pain of the fall, hot with anger at last, the reporter was up in an instant, spitting blood, and they clenched with the swiftness of lightning. Then they broke away, violently, and went at it in grim earnest.