“Do you mean to deny that that affair was a frame-up?” she demanded sharply.
“I do not, for it was,” he returned promptly. “Further, it was a frame-up chiefly against you. That brings me to the point that made me hurry here—a point that had to have immediate explanation. It was a frame-up, yes—but, honest, Mary, I framed you for your own good.”
“For my own good!” she exclaimed skeptically.
“Exactly. Listen, Mary. I’ve got to repeat myself—but I can’t help that if I am to make myself clear. Your big idea in this secret marriage with Jack Morton has grown to be to keep Jack at work—to do what no one else has ever been able to do, make a man out of him—so that after a time, when the big blow-off comes and they find out who you are, you will have established yourself so thoroughly by the service you have rendered that the Mortons will have to overlook everything shady about your past and your part in this affair. That’s the way you had it doped out to yourself, now, isn’t it?”
Mary did not answer.
“That was your plan—exactly. And your plan, all the big future you saw for yourself, was based upon your making a man out of Jack. Mary,—I’m talking straight goods now,—I saw you could never make a man out of Jack. Nobody could or can. The stuff’s not there. I saw you were headed toward certain failure—and wasting good months, and big chances, in trying to put your grand dream across. I told you all this and tried to talk you out of it, but you wouldn’t listen to me. So I decided to try to prove my point by showing you the facts. I decided to frame you.
“To-night, I let you stumble across, as if by accident, Jack chloroformed by grape juice and in the company of those ladies. I admit I helped lead Jack into that. But I hoped you would see it as the real thing, see how hopeless any dream was that was based on making a man of Jack—and that you would quit the game right there. But my little act was a fizzle. Still, Mary,”—and the little lawyer’s voice was persuasively emphatic,—“even though Jack was led into this to-night, the picture you saw of him, that wine and woman stuff, is an honest-to-God picture of what Jack will be in a few months. Broadway hasn’t yet got him completely—but Broadway is going to get him! I’m telling you, Mary!”
Mary’s face was expressionless. “You didn’t come here merely to deliver that speech, Peter Loveman.”
“Naturally, there is something else.” His round, large eyes regarded her meditatively; then he leaned forward. “Mary, I’m going to lay all my cards on the table. First, here’s a bit of a confession: I hung around Le Minuit, and heard your offer to Mr. Morton to straighten Jack out, and heard him turn you down flat, and saw him drive away with Jack.”
“Well?”