"Thank you," said Merriam, but his answering smile was again a little cynical.
Then he opened the door for Aunt Mary and waved his hand to the others, with some amusement at the anxious looks with which they were regarding him. Even Simpson's countenance was perturbed!
Rockwell and the Mayor went down to the street with them and put them in the limousine. The Mayor directed the chauffeur to drive them to the hotel and then to return for himself and the others. Rockwell spoke to Aunt Mary:
"You put the essential facts before her and then leave them--leave Mr. Merriam to do the rest!"
And again Merriam smiled with an acid amusement that is commonly supposed to belong to the middle-aged and old but is really most characteristic of those who are under thirty.
Rockwell glanced at Merriam as if about to give him too a parting exhortation, but hesitated, checked perhaps by the younger man's expression, and spoke to the driver instead: "All right!"
They had started, and Merriam tried to think. His whole life turned in a very peculiar sense on the events of the next hour--whether he should continue to be himself or take up the life of another man. He got that far. But what he should say to Mollie June--even what it was he wanted to say to her--he could not get on with it. The mood of youthful cynicism was by no means the right mood for the business in hand.
And then--too soon for him now--they were at the hotel.
So little had he been able to think clearly that it was not until he was helping Aunt Mary out of the machine that he realised that in entering the hotel with her again this way, in the character of the dead Senator, he was already in effect consenting to Rockwell's plan and binding its consequences upon himself and Mollie June.
He had a wild idea of getting back into the limousine and driving away and later entering the hotel via the fire escape again. But Aunt Mary was already on the pavement.