“Dick, you go to bed!”
“Now, sis—”
“You go to bed!”
The young man wavered before her commanding gaze. “Jus's you say—jus's you say,” he mumbled, and went unsteadily toward the door.
The young woman watched him out, and then turned her troubled face back to Larry. “I'm sorry Dick behaved to you as he did.”
And then before Larry could make answer, her clouded look was gone. “So you're here at last, Mr. Brainard.” She held her hand out, smiling a smile that by some magic seemed to envelop him within an immediate friendship.
“I'm Miss Sherwood.” He noted that the slender, tapering hand had almost a man's strength of grip. “You needn't tell me anything about yourself,” she added, “for I already know a lot—all I need to know: about you—and about Maggie Carlisle. You see an hour ago a messenger brought me a long letter he'd written about you.” And she nodded to the photograph Larry was still holding.
“You—you know him?” Larry stammered.
She answered with a whimsical smile: “Yes. Isn't he a grand, foolish old dear? He's such a roistering, bragging personage that I've named him Benvenuto Cellini—though he's neither liar nor thief. He must have told you what I called him.”
So that explained this password of “Benvenuto Cellini”! “No, he didn't explain anything. There was no time.”