“Nothing much is wrong, Loveman,—except most of my war-babies have whooping-cough.”
“Buck up, old scout, and come over to my table, and let me buy you some bubble-water.”
“Can’t, thank you. I’m waiting for a party.” And then Clifford, with seeming carelessness, but watching Loveman all the while, played a bold card: “What d’you think—I was to have had supper here with Jack Morton. And I just learned from his father that the young scamp has gone to Canada on a shooting trip.”
Loveman showed a mild surprise; in him the stage had lost an admirable actor. “You don’t say! I hadn’t heard that.”
“His father showed me Jack’s telegram. Jack might at least have sent me word before this,” said Clifford.
“Just like Jack: a good fellow, but you can’t count on him.” Loveman’s voice lowered. “I wonder if our common friend, Mary Regan, has heard anything from him.”
“Not unless he thinks a lot more of her than he does of me,” Clifford grumbled.
“Queer situation there, isn’t it?” mused Loveman. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he had treated her the same as he has you.” The lawyer’s tone became humorously lugubrious. “Well, we all have our troubles. Here’s that little Nina Cordova. After I’ve said a fond, swift, and eternal farewell to twenty thousand dollars backing her in that awful frost ‘Orange Blossoms’—honest, a guinea-hen that’d half-swallowed an open safety-pin would pull out its hair and eat bichloride if it had a voice like Nina’s—here’s Nina begging me to back her in a new piece that’s a crippled and half-witted twin to ‘Orange Blossoms.’ Can you beat it! And yet I suppose I’ll come across. That’s just the sort of sucker game I always fall for.”
With a gesture of mock despair, the little lawyer—true lover of the best in music and the arts, and patron of the worst—crossed to his table. Clifford knew that Loveman, as well as himself, had been fencing. He wondered whether he had made Loveman believe that he believed in Jack’s northern trip, and that he was unconcerned about Jack and Mary. He thought he had.
Clifford, alert for every possible clue, managed to keep an eye on Loveman’s table. Presently he saw a lithe, handsome young man in close conversation with Loveman. It was Hilton, whom from a previous experience he knew to be a suave adventurer in this brilliant border-world wherein smart fashion and glossed scoundrelism mix in easy fellowship. So then Hilton and Loveman, for mutual advantage, had adjusted the financial contretemps which had risen when their plans had crossed that afternoon at the Mordona. This undoubtedly meant that something was brewing. Clifford would have given his balance at the bank and all he could have borrowed there, to have known the exact substance of their talk.