Very cordially your friend,
NAN CHARTERS.
This note was the first which Beecher read on awakening the next morning. He had slept by fits and starts, troubled by the memory of his last interview with the young actress. The sudden unchecked tempest of jealousy and anger which had revealed to him the dramatic intensity of the woman had made a more haunting impression on his imagination than all her premeditated appeals.
"If after all she does love me? How tremendous it would be," he had said to himself a dozen times, turning restlessly, in the half stupor of waking sleep.
He lived over again the scene—only this time it seemed to him that when she had flung the clock from her in a passion, he had laughed joyfully and caught her struggling in his arms, exulting in this rage which burned so close to him. His first impulse on reading her note was to telephone her immediately, but he resisted this movement, saying to himself that that would be surrendering all his advantage.
"I'll call up later," he thought with a smile; "that will be much better."
He went eagerly down to McKenna's office, wondering what surprise was in store. Gunther and McKenna were already in the latter's private office, as he entered, and with the first look he took at the detective's smiling countenance, he perceived that he must be on the track of something significant.
"We were discussing Mrs. Kildair's engagement," said Gunther. "McKenna agrees with me that it will expedite matters wonderfully."
"How did Slade manage it?" said Beecher at once.
The detective, without answering, went to his desk and picked up a square of cardboard on which he had pasted two clippings from the newspapers, one the announcement signed by Gunther, Sr., Marx and Fontaine, giving notice of their support of the Associated Trust, and the other the bare announcement of the prospective marriage of John G. Slade and Mrs. Rita Kildair.