To be sure he had suggested the Senator; but only in a whimsical spirit, as he might have named any other person whose name was familiar in contemporaneous history. Arabella had accepted it, he remembered, with alacrity. He had read in the newspapers about the Bannings’ marital difficulties, and he recalled that Coningsby, a millionaire in one of the Western mining states, had been implicated with Banning in a big irrigation scandal.
It was no wonder that Mrs. Banning had been outraged by her husband’s efforts to marry Arabella to the wheezing son of the magnate. In adding to the dramatis personæ Zaliska, whose name had glittered on Broadway in the biggest sign that thoroughfare had ever seen, Arabella had contributed another element to the situation which caused Farrington to grin broadly.
He looked at his watch. It was only nine-thirty, though it seemed that eternity had rolled by since his first encounter with Gadsby. He had taken a pistol away from a detective of reputation and pointed it at a United States Senator; and he was no longer the Farrington of yesterday, but a very different being, willing that literature should go hang so long as he followed this life of jaunty adventure.
After a brief rest he opened the door cautiously, crept down the back stairs to the second floor, and, venturing as close to the main stairway as he dared, heard lively talk in the hall below. Gadsby, it seemed, was for leaving the house to bring help and the proposal was not meeting with favor.
“I refuse to be left here without police protection,” Mrs. Banning was saying with determination. “We may all be murdered by that ruffian.”
“He’s undoubtedly a dangerous crook,” said the officer; “but he’s safe for the night. And in the morning we will take him to jail and find means of identifying him.”
“Then for the love of Mike,” chirruped Zaliska from the piano, “let’s have something to eat!”
Farrington chuckled. Gadsby and Banning had not told the truth about their efforts to lock him up. They were both cowards, he reflected; and they had no immediate intention, at least, of returning to molest him. In a room where Banning’s suitcase was spread open he acquired an electric lamp, which he thrust into his pocket. Sounds of merry activity from the kitchen indicated that Zaliska had begun her raid on the jam pots, assisted evidently by all the company.
One thought was uppermost in his mind—he must leave the house as quickly as possible and begin the search for Arabella. He wanted to look into her eyes again; he wanted to hear her laughter as he told of the result of her plotting. There was more to the plan she had outlined at the tea house than had appeared, and he meant to fathom the mystery; but he wanted to see her for her own sake. His pulses tingled as he thought of her—the incomparable girl with the golden-brown eyes and the heart of laughter!
He cautiously raised a window in one of the sleeping rooms and began flashing his lamp to determine his position. He was at the rear of the house and the rain purred softly on the flat roof of a one-story extension of the kitchen, fifteen feet below. The sooner he risked breaking his neck and began the pursuit of Arabella the better; so he threw out his rubber coat and let himself out on the sill.