He looked her straight in the face. “You have admitted that that procedure might be effective.”
“You wouldn’t dare do that!” And she seized his arm with a grasp no less intense than his of a minute before, and glared at him.
“I’ll do exactly what may be necessary, Miss Regan.”
“You—you—” she gasped. “You have no right to interfere in my affairs!”
“There is far more to this affair than just You, Miss Regan.” With an almost impersonal movement he removed her hand from his arm and let it fall. “I must be going. But do not forget for a moment that I am going to prevent your marriage, and prevent it in whatever way will be most effective.”
He bowed slightly. Standing just where he had left her, she watched him go out, within her a dazed commotion of surprise, consternation, suspense—and, strangely, not quite so high an anger toward Clifford as she had felt two moments before.
CHAPTER VII
NINA CORDOVA
Yes, he must prevent this marriage, he must block Loveman, he must find out Loveman’s plan, and he must do all quickly—but how? To warn the Mortons would achieve some of these ends; but he had a strong repugnance to this procedure. He would only play this as his last card.
Clifford thought of Slant-Face; but he realized that Slant-Face would probably have no influence with his sister, and possibly the ex-pickpocket might even regard the affair from Mary’s viewpoint. Also he thought of her Uncle Joe; but the same objection held true regarding him, and also the width of the continent made him unavailable. As for Commissioner Thorne, he could not be of service in the present stage of affairs. And then Clifford thought of Uncle George. Uncle George might possibly give suggestions, for Uncle George knew as much about the pleasure life (and what lay beneath it) of Broadway and of Broadway’s closest territorial relative, Fifth Avenue between the Waldorf and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, as any other hundred men in New York put together.
An hour after leaving Mary, Clifford sat in the Grand Alcazar restaurant, looking into the bland, genial, cunning, loose-skinned old face. He had just finished telling Uncle George of his discovery of the whereabouts of Mary Regan and the other events of the day.