“But you haven’t told me anything about yourself, Jack; only about your work. You’re not married, I suppose?”
“Not me!” the other laughed, then amended: “At least, not yet. I’ve looked ’em all over, from Tampico to Nome and from ’Frisco to Boston, but I haven’t seen one yet that I’d tie up to for keeps; except maybe this little dame I wanted to talk to just now. Prettiest little thing you ever saw in your life, Norman, and got a lot of horse sense besides. Want to see the picture?”
He pulled out his watch, snapped the case open and extended it across the table.
The face in the little photograph was undeniably pretty, but the style of coiffure was over-elaborate, and even to Storm’s untrained masculine eye the gown seemed cheaply ornate; not the sort of thing that Leila or any of her set would have worn.
“Who is she?” he asked; then correcting himself hastily, “I mean, where does she come from? She is mighty pretty,” he added as he snapped the watch shut and handed it back.
“You’ve guessed it; she’s no New Yorker; comes from Pennsylvania, out Bethlehem way. Her daddy made a pot of money in steel during the war, and she’s on here trying to catch up with the procession. She’ll do it, too, with the old man’s cash and her looks.” Horton grinned fatuously. “She’s strong for your Uncle Jack, all right.”
What an ass he looked, blithering there about a girl while at his feet lay the price of his life! But Storm must know more.
“Then I suppose congratulations are in order?” he queried, eying his guest through narrowed lids.
“Not yet. I don’t mean to brag, but I have an idea they will be as soon as I make up my mind to say the word.” He paused to lay his cigar stub with the others in the tray, and Storm’s eyes followed the motion as if fascinated. The mounting heap of pale gray ashes reminded him suddenly of certain ashes which he had scattered in a garden at midnight a month before. They were so like them, light and flakey, tossed by a light wind, gone forever at the twist of an arm! How easily that had been accomplished! Not only the destruction of the handkerchief, but of all other clues! How easily he had outwitted them all, and then he had been a mere amateur and handicapped by the fact that the blow had been unpremeditated; when he started to build up the circumstantial evidence of accident he had been compelled to make what use he could of conditions as they lay. Sinister but intoxicating reflections came to him. He had succeeded then; could he fail now when the opportunity was his to prepare beforehand each step of the way?
“How about your family, Jack? I haven’t heard, you know, since I lost track of you.” He must keep the conversation going somehow until he formed a plan.