“I fear he cannot do much. Your son is so wilful.”
“Don’t you understand? Rex is quite unmanageable. I depend wholly on the girl—and Senator Meiklejohn is just the man to deal with her.”
They kissed farewell—alas, those Judas kisses of women! Both were satisfied, each believing she had hoodwinked the other. Mrs. Carshaw returned to her flat to await her son’s arrival. If the trail at East Orange proved difficult he promised to be home for dinner.
“There will be a row if Rex meets Meiklejohn,” she communed. “Helen will be furious with me. What do I care? I have won back my son’s love. I have not many years to live. What else have I to work for if not for his happiness?”
So one woman in New York that night was fairly well content. There may be, as the Chinese proverb has it, thirty-six different kinds of mothers-in-law, but there is only one mother.
CHAPTER XXII
THE HUNT
Steingall, not Clancy, presented his bulk at Carshaw’s apartment next morning. He contrived to have a few minutes’ private talk with Mrs. Carshaw while her son was dressing. Early as it was, he lighted a second cigar as he stepped into the automobile, for Carshaw thought it an economy to retain a car.