“I told you I would share with him.”
“Then he will be nearly as rich?”
“He’ll have more than is good for him.”
That satisfied her. Then she pursued: “I want you to stand by him. He will need you.”
Ruggles lifted the hand he held and kissed it reverently. “I’ll do anything you say—anything you say.”
Down-stairs in the Savoy, as Dan had done countless times, Ruggles waited until he saw her motor car carry her and her small luggage and Higgins away.
In their sitting-room in the Carlton a half-hour later the door was thrown open and Dan Blair came in like a madman. Without preamble he seized Ruggles by the arm.
“Look here,” he cried, “what have you been doing? Tell me now, and tell me the truth, or, by God, I don’t know what I’ll do. You went to the Savoy. You went there twice. Anyhow, where is she?”
Dan, slender as he was beside Ruggles’ great frame, shook the elder man as though he had been a terrier. “Speak to me. Where has she gone?”
He stared in the Westerner’s face, his eyes bloodshot. “Why in thunder don’t you say something?”