The entrance of Metcalfe interrupted the conversation. The juvenile man dashed in and addressed his opening line to Tanner. Klein withdrew to the background, where he arranged the decanter and the glasses on a tray, preparatory to the next piece of business.
The dialogue between the other men continued. Both poured out their drinks. Metcalfe, posing dramatically before the table, proposed a toast.
But the toast was never drunk. Hardly had the words left Metcalfe’s lips when he reeled slightly; the muscles in his throat contracted violently. The glass slipped from his fingers and crashed upon the surface of the polished table.
A strange hush fell upon the scene, and in the silence the steady hum of the calciums came like the droning of a million bees.
It seemed an age must have elapsed before the strain was broken, but in reality it could not have been more than a few seconds. Yet in that time, swift as it was, and unexpected, too, Klein had discovered the reason for the interruption.
Metcalfe’s eyes, at the moment of the toast, had fallen upon Delmar’s photograph. And the sight of it had robbed him of all speech! He had betrayed even greater agitation than had Tanner. What did it mean? What could it mean, other than——
Like a snapping of a taut thread the tension was broken. Metcalfe, as if suddenly aroused from a stupor, broke into a hard and forced laugh, and he took up the regular lines of the play.
Passing close to him, bearing the tray, Klein noticed that the juvenile man’s fingers were clenched and that he was breathing a trifle faster than normal.
Klein was off the scene before the curtain of the act, and was touching up his eyes when Metcalfe came into the dressing room.
In a calm and matter-of-fact way Klein sought to bring out the truth of the affair by referring to the incident casually.