“One can’t go to tea with a paralytic, Dot, besides, he lives in a hotel, unless they’ve moved him to a hospital. I’ll find out and if it’s all right of course you can go too.”
“Just look at Ruth, Nels; she looks as concerned as if the dragon were a dear friend.”
“I’m not at all; it’s just that it’s sudden—and I was thinking of something else too.”
She was remembering Gloria’s last words about not mentioning Pendragon’s name again. Here was another piece of information that she must keep to herself. It was so annoying to be just one person with only one pair of eyes and ears and only one small brain. If she could only see inside and know what Gloria was really thinking, what depths of ignorance or wickedness were concealed behind George’s black brows, what secret Professor Pendragon knew—and even, yes, it might blight romance, but she would like to know just what Terry Riordan thought.
Did Gloria love Terry or did her heart still belong to her first husband? And what of those other two whose names were never mentioned? If only she could be one of those wonderful detective girls one read about in magazine stories. How simply she would solve everything.
She found Terry with Gloria when she reached home. They were talking interestedly as they always did, with eyes for no one else apparently, and her heart sank. George came in to ask come question about dinner. He did look like something that had stepped from the carvings on a pyramid. His fine features were inexpressibly cruel, yet there was something splendid about him too. He was so tall—taller than Gloria. Tall enough to play—she stopped affrighted at her unnatural thought.
CHAPTER VII
The entire régime of the house on Gramercy Square had been changed. Instead of rising at eleven o’clock Gloria now left the house shortly after eight, to be at the motion picture studios in New Jersey at nine, so that Ruth seldom saw her before dinner time. The balancing of Gloria’s bank book disclosed that she had been living at a rate far in excess of her income—news that did not seem to trouble Gloria at all.
“I’ll make it all up again in a few weeks now that I’m working,” she said. “If you’ll only write out a book full of checks for my poor, dear creditors, I’ll sign them and then you can mail them out and everything will be lovely—for a few months at least.”
“Yes, but don’t you think you ought to regulate your expenditures according to your assured income, Gloria? You know you aren’t always working,” said Ruth.