“I’ll wager that telephone message had something to do with the Horton affair,” Millard remarked suddenly. “Maybe he was caught then!”
Storm roused himself from his meditations with a start.
“Why do you think that?”
“Well, you see, I’ve watched the Captain before,” replied Millard. “You saw how quickly his expression could change when he wanted it to. By Jove, that chap should have been an actor! He put me over the jumps for a solid hour, I don’t mind telling you, when I went in to explain about my acquaintance with Du Chainat, and although he did it in a perfectly courteous, kid-glove manner I felt as limp as a rag when I came out. His expression ran the gamut from bland incredulity to direct accusation, and if I had had anything to confess he would have broken me down absolutely. Those fellows at Headquarters could force a confession from the cleverest crook in Christendom!”
“And what has this to do with the telephone message to-day?” Storm inquired in bored disgust at his companion’s garrulousness.
“Everything, my boy!” Millard retorted. “While he was talking to Big Jim’s daughter just now and drawing her out, his face was alive with expression, but after he had heard the first few words which came to him over the ’phone he looked absolutely blank and wooden. He got some information right then that he did not mean to convey, or I am very much mistaken. I say, there was something rather fine, wasn’t there, about that girl?”
“She was rather pretty,” Storm admitted, with a shrug.
“I don’t mean that!” exclaimed the other impatiently. “She was gotten up like a circus queen! I mean her attitude, her loyalty toward your friend Horton. Jolly white of her, I thought it!”
“Oh, when a woman is in love!” Storm sneered and added in cold displeasure, “Don’t call Horton my friend, please. I doubt still that this fellow is the one I knew at college.”
“But the Captain told you he was at Elmhaven——”