“Carpenter—to explain a Marston proposition,” Harleston remarked, pushing back the instrument.
“They are muddying the water all around,” Ranleigh commented. “So I imagine they are about to make a get-away with the goods.”
“Try to, Ranleigh, try to,” Harleston amended. “They won’t make a get-away so long as we have Madame Spencer in our midst. Keep your eye on the dark-haired loveliness; with her in the landscape the goods are still here. Now for Carpenter.”
“Permit me to suggest a taxi!” Ranleigh observed. “It’s just as well that you shouldn’t wander about alone on the well-lighted streets of the National Capital—”
“You think I might be suspended by the Interstate Commerce Commission, or enjoined by the Federal Trades Commission, or be violating the Clayton Anti-Trust Act?”
“You might be any and all of them, God knows—as well as contrary to some paternal act of a non-thinking, theoretical, and subservient Congress. However, I’m pinning my faith to you and hoping for the best; Jimmy-the-Snake is cruising whether and whence and wherefore.”
“Also besides and among!” Harleston laughed.
“Seriously, I mean it about The Snake,” Ranleigh repeated; “and you’d better have this with you also,” taking a small automatic from a drawer of his desk and handing it across. “You may have need of it; if you do, it will be very convenient.”
Harleston, descending from the taxi, found Carpenter waiting for him on the front piazza.
“Your friend Marston is a very pleasant chap,” he remarked; “also he has a most astonishing nerve. He actually tried to bribe me for a copy of the Clephane letter.”