"As for the drug business, it cures in the end by killing, and grandmotherly legislation belongs to dear old tyranny; and I'm not at all sure, if five-eighths of the people said that the rest mustn't kill pigs to eat 'm, that you and I would be wrong to have an illicit rasher when we could get it. Anyhow, the immoral remnant of the nation doesn't trouble my dreams. It rubs itself out in the end. So, you see, it wasn't the dope evil that made me bind him in the chains of tangle-foot and force his putrid company on an angel. Guess again."
"I'm too tired," said Amaryllis "to have a guess left in me. Tell me."
"My dear," he answered, "the cherry's always been bigger than the bunch to me. You are just the greatest, and the roundest and the reddest, and the sweetest cherry on the big tree. And the cherry nearest to you——"
"My dad?" she asked, interrupting with a catch of the breath.
He nodded.
"Yes," he said. "It was for him I took the dope from that scented ape—because he'd have been hurt if it'd got loose to ravage the world. And when I got the chance I just pouched the ape too for the same reason—so that the man that cursed you shall not only feel that his patent curse hasn't done any damage, but has even helped to chain up a lot of rival plagues. These men of science are like benevolent Jupiters: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday colloguing with Vulcan to forge heavier and sharper thunderbolts; Thursday, Friday and Saturday conferring anxiously with all Olympus as to how they shall be blunted and lightened, lest they hurt poor mortal fools too much.
"This chap Melchard, properly handled, will give the show away, and the League of Nations or some other comic crowd'll corral the lot."
"What lot?" asked Amaryllis.
"The crew your father told us about. My dear, I wanted to please you by pleasing him. To do it I had to let you run a shade more risk and endure a lot more discomfort. Was that—was it——"
For once Dick Bellamy could not find his words. Yet his eyes, it seemed to Amaryllis, were hardened—stabbing hers with steel points barbed with curiosity.