“You?” Mrs. Ogden nearly dropped her coffee cup. “When?”
“Where did you see him?” demanded Walter Ogden, almost in the same breath.
“The night before last when Ito came to steal the silver,” answered Ethel, and she looked challengingly at Professor Norcross, who was following each word with careful attention. Could she depend on him to take his proper cue and not divulge too much? “Professor Norcross and I both saw him,” she supplemented, “in his flight from the house.”
“Yes,” added Norcross. “I heard Ito open the pantry window and came down to investigate, met Miss Ogden in the hall, and we watched Ito’s hasty exit.”
“Well, upon my word!” ejaculated Mrs. Ogden. “And I slept peacefully through all the excitement, and this is the first I hear of your share in it, Ethel. I must say you are not very communicative—is she, Julian?” twisting about to include her cousin in the conversation. Barclay, who had loitered in the dining room to smoke his cigar, advanced farther into the room.
“Not very communicative,” he responded absently. “What were you discussing?”
“Cabbages,” retorted Ogden, whose temper was getting out of hand. The fire, Patterson’s tragic death; a sleepless night, unpropitious conditions of the stock market, the developments at the inquest had all had their effect on his surly disposition, and Barclay’s urbane manner proved not only a source of annoyance, but the last straw.
“Cabbages? Very good things in their line, Ogden,” answered Barclay, with unruffled good humor. “And possibly more profitable to cultivate than investing in Pacific trading ships.” He turned to Norcross, apparently oblivious of Ogden’s scowl. “I see by the newspapers that Japan and Russia plan to negotiate the new loan to China. Where will American interests and American invested capital be if the ‘Yankees of the East’ steal a march on us in China?”
Norcross looked grave. “It may mean the closing of the ‘open door’ in the Orient,” he said. “And to think that the United States was the first to open Japan’s eyes to the world——”
“The flesh, and the devil,” supplemented Barclay skeptically. “Japan has learned the bad along with the good, and we are wilfully blind to the situation developing in the Far East.”