“Please don’t!” he remarked soothingly. “With the tinkle of a bell you can call your man and have me bounced. I repacked my bag after taking a bath in your very comfortable guest-room, and we can part immediately. But let us be sensible, Deering; just between ourselves, don’t you really need me?”
His tone was ingratiating, his manner the kindest. Deering had walked the streets for two days trying to bring himself to the point of confessing his plight to one of a score of loyal friends—men he had known from prep-school days, and on through college: active, resourceful, wealthy young fellows who would risk much to help him—and yet in his fear and misery he had shrunk from approaching them. Hood, he was now convinced, was not a detective come to arrest him; in fact his guest’s sympathies and connections seemed to lie on the other side of the law’s barricade.
They had coffee in the living-room, where Hood, inspired by specimens of the work of several of the later French painters, discussed art with sophistication. Deering observed him intently. There was something immensely attractive in Hood’s face; his profile, clean-cut as a cameo, was thoroughly masculine; his head was finely moulded, and his gray eyes were frank and responsive.
“It’s possible,” said Deering, after a long silence in which Hood smoked meditatively, “that you may be able to help me.”
On a sudden impulse he rose and put out his hand.
“Thank you,” said Hood gravely, “but don’t tell me unless you really want to.”
II
“So after all the bother of stealing two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of negotiable securities you lost them!” Hood remarked when Deering ended his recital.