“You know I only came back from the Philippines in February.”
“It was in all the Chicago papers. I was interviewed myself. I assure you the other candidates (there were two) tried the very lowest political methods. Melville said it was scandalous. There were at least three luncheons given against me. It wasn’t the congress, it was the lobby defeated me. And their methods! I would not believe that gentlewoman could stoop to such infamy of misrepresentation.” The colonel chewed his mustache; he felt for that reporter of the Chicago paper; he was evidently getting a phonographic record now; he made an inarticulate rumble of sympathy in his throat which was as the clucking of the driver to the mettled horse. Mrs. Melville gesticulated with Delsartian grace, as she poured forth her woes.
“They accused me of a domineering spirit; they said I was trying to set up a machine. I! I worked for them, many a time, half the night, at my desk; never was a letter unanswered; I did half the work of the corresponding secretary; yet at the crucial moment she betrayed me! I learned more in those two days of the petty jealousy, the pitiless malevolence of some women than I had known all my life before; but at the same time, to the faithful band of friends”—the colonel had the sensation of listening to the record again—“whose fidelity was proof against ridicule and cruel misrepresentation, I return a gratitude that will never wane. Rupert”—she turned herself in the seat and waved the open palm of her hand in a graceful and dramatic gesture, “—those women not only stooped to malignant falsehoods, they not only trampled parliamentary law underfoot, but they circulated through the hall a cartoon called the Making of the Slate. Of course, we had our quarters at a hotel, and after the evening meeting, after I had retired, in fact, a bell-boy brought me a message; it was necessary to have a meeting at once, to decide for the secretaryship, as we had found out Mrs. Ellennere was false. The ladies in the adjoining rooms and the others of us on the board who were loyal came into my chamber. Rupert, will you believe it, those women, had a grotesque picture of us, with faces cut out of the newspapers—of course, all our pictures were in the papers—and they had the audacity and the meanness to picture me in—in the garments of night!”
“That was pretty tough. But where does Miss Smith come in?”
“She was at the convention. She is a Daughter. I’ve always said we are too lax in our admissions.”
“Who drew the picture?”
“It may not be Miss Smith, but—she does draw. I’m sure that she worked against me; she covered up her footprints so that I have no proof; but I suspect her. She’s deep, Bertie, she’s deep. But she can’t hoodwink me. I’ll find her out.”
The colonel experienced the embarrassment that is the portion of a rash man trying to defend one woman against another; he retreated because he perceived defense was in vain; but he did not feel his growing opinion of Miss Smith’s innocence menaced by Mrs. Melville’s convictions.
She played too square a game for a kidnapper—and Smith was the commonest of names. No, there must be some explanation; Rupert Winter had lived too long not to distrust the plausible surface clue. “It is the improbable that always happens, and the impossible most of the time,” Aunt Rebecca had said once. He quite agreed with her whimsical phrase.
Nothing happened to arouse his suspicions that day. Haley reported that Cary Mercer was going on to San Francisco. The conductor did not know his name; he seemed to know Mr. Keatcham and was with him in his drawing-room most of the time. Had the great man a secretary with him? Yes, he seemed to have, a little fellow who had not much to say for himself, and jumped whenever his boss spoke to him. There was also a valet, an Englishman, who did not respond properly to conversational overtures. They were all going to get off at Denver.