“Place your prisoner by the fireplace, where we can have a good look at him,” the Senator ordered. “And, if you please, Gadsby, I will question him myself.”
Rudely planted on the hearth, Farrington stared about him. Two of the persons on Arabella’s list had answered the summons at any rate. His eyes ran over the others. A short, stout woman, wearing mannish clothes and an air of authority, advanced and scrutinized him closely.
“A very harmless person, I should say,” she commented; and, having thus expressed herself sonorously, she sat down in the largest chair in the room.
The proceedings were arrested by a loud chugging and honking on the driveway.
Farrington forgot his own troubles now in the lively dialogue that followed the appearance on the scene of a handsome middle-aged woman, whose face betrayed surprise as she swept the room with a lorgnette for an instant, and then, beholding Banning, showed the keenest displeasure.
“I’d like to know,” she demanded, “the precise meaning of this! If it’s a trick—a scheme to compromise me—I’d have you know, Tracy Banning, that my opinion of you has not changed since I bade you farewell in Washington last April.”
“Before we proceed farther,” retorted Senator Banning testily, “I should like to ask just how you came to arrive here at this hour!”
She produced a telegram from her purse. “Do you deny that you sent that message, addressed to the Gassaway House at Putnam Springs? Do you suppose,” she demanded as the Senator put on his glasses to read the message, “that I’d have made this journey just to see you?”
“Arabella suffering from nervous breakdown; meet me at Corydon house Thursday evening,” read the Senator.
“Arabella ill!” exclaimed the indomitable stout lady. “She must have been seized very suddenly!”