137It was still light when the big car swept into an exclusive street of brownstone houses of an earlier and still more exclusive period, and stopped before the proudest of these.
Jim alighted and held out his hand.
“Come, Lou,” he said. “Journey’s end.”
138CHAPTER IX
The Long, Long Trail
Three hours later, in that same proudly exclusive house, an elderly lady with gray hair and an aristocratically high, thin nose paced the floor of her drawing-room with a vigor which denoted some strong emotion.
“I must say, John, that I think the whole affair, whatever it may be, is highly reprehensible. I supposed James to be up in Canada on a fishing trip when he telephoned me this morning from somewhere near town with a–a most extraordinary message─”
She broke off, glancing cautiously toward a room across the hall, and added: “He said he had something to tell me, and he would be here this evening. Now you come, and you appear to know something about it, but I cannot get a word out of you!”
139“All I can tell you, Mrs. Abbott, is that if Jimmie does come to-night, I’ve got to pay him a thousand bones–dollars, I mean. It was a sort of a wager, and that must be what he wants to tell you about.”
It was an exceedingly stout young man with a round, cherubic countenance standing by the mantel who replied to her, and the old lady glanced at him sharply.