She stood still. "You don't like my dancing," she pouted. "He likes it!" She pointed at Crockett, who, twisting his eased neck about, smiled.
"I'll like lifting you down," said Merriam.
Jennie smiled and approached the edge of the table. For a moment he held a rosy, fragrant burden in his arms, and in that moment Jennie raised her face to his as if to be kissed. She was really rather incorrigible.
On a different occasion the young man might have been irresistibly tempted (he had not thought of Mollie June for a long time), but just now he was no more in a mood to be enticed than Crockett had been an hour before.
He set her lightly and quickly on her feet.
"There!" he said.
She made a face at him and dropped petulantly into a chair.
Merriam turned to face his well-trussed victim.
The said victim was now sufficiently at ease to open the conversation.
"Well, Mr. Merriam," he said, "you've managed it rather cleverly. Very neat, in fact. You have me a prisoner all right. But what's the big idea? It seems to me you've only given yourself away. Before I only knew your name and that you were in connection with Rockwell and that your presence was desired at some hotel--the Nestor House, we'll say, to avoid argument, Now it's very clear that you are deeply implicated in the extraordinary events that have been happening. Otherwise you would have had no sufficient motive for this rather violent, not to say melodramatic, line of conduct." He glanced, with a smile, at his pinioned arms.