“Well,” I answered. It bored me, her being there. I wanted to be alone.
“You don't seem overjoyed to see me. What's the matter with you? What's happened?”
I laughed. “Vane's bolted and taken the week's money with him.”
“The beast!” she said. “I knew he was that sort. What ever made you take up with him? Will it make much difference to you?”
“It makes a difference all round,” I replied. “There's no money to pay any of you. There's nothing to pay your fares back to London.”
She had risen. “Here, let me understand this,” she said. “Are you the rich mug Vane's been representing you to be, or only his accomplice?”
“The mug and the accomplice both,” I answered, “without the rich. It's his tour. He put my name to it because he didn't want his own to appear—for family reasons. It's his play; he stole it—”
She interrupted me with a whistle. “I thought it looked a bit fishy, all those alterations. But such funny things do happen in this profession! Stole it, did he?”
“The whole thing in manuscript. I put my name to it for the same reason—he didn't want his own to appear.”
She dropped into her chair and laughed—a good-tempered laugh, loud and long. “Well, I'm damned!” she said. “The first man who has ever taken me in. I should never have signed if I had thought it was his show. I could see the sort he was with half an eye.” She jumped up from the chair. “Here, let me get out of this,” she said. “I just looked in to know what time to-morrow; I'd forgotten. You needn't say I came.”