She returned Loveman’s pen, waved the checks daintily until the ink had dried, then slipped them within her sex’s invariable postal box. Loveman glanced at his watch and rose briskly.
“Excuse me a minute or so,” he said. “I promised to call up a party at two o’clock, and it’s almost half after.”
He disappeared through the heavily curtained doorway through which he had entered. The next moment he reappeared.
“Nina, just as I started to use the ’phone, there came a call for you. A woman, but she refused to give her name.”
When Nina had stepped into the hall and the heavy curtains had swung behind her, Loveman silently held out his right hand. Also in silence Nina reached within the bosom of her gown, drew out the checks and handed them to him. He unfolded them, scrutinized them sharply, refolded them, and slipped them into an inner pocket.
“Nina, you certainly did it great,” he said in a whisper. “If you were as good on the stage as you are in a play like this, Dave Belasco would be paying you a thousand a week. Great stuff, Nina!”
And then rapidly: “Go on back in. Remember you’ve got to keep him going for two days. He mustn’t suspect a thing, and we’ve got to keep him out of the way until these checks go through.”
“I understand,” and silently that excellent off-stage actress reëntered the drawing-room.
Beneath the stairway of Le Bain’s house of a hundred precautions was an item which on occasions helped measurably toward the ultra-private pleasures of his guests—a telephone installed in a closet. Loveman stepped through the door of this, closed it, and after a wait was speaking to Mary Regan at the Mordona—speaking in a well-mimicked voice:—
“Hello.... This is Lieutenant Jimmie Kelly, of the Tenderloin Squad,—you know, friend of Mr. Clifford. Mr. Clifford has just found Mr. Morton—Jack Morton, I mean. Jack is sick of what he’s been doing the last few days—half crazy with remorse, you understand. Mr. Clifford can’t leave Jack, and he asked me to telephone you to come for him. We’re all at”—here Loveman gave the address—“it’s one of those old private houses made into an exclusive restaurant. Just ring and I’ll let you in.... All right, then, we’ll expect you in half an hour.”