"And him?" said Officer Garroway, indicating George.
"He is one of my best friends."
The policeman heaved a dreary sigh. He relapsed into silence, baffled.
"The whole affair," said Hamilton Beamish, "appears to have been due to a foolish misunderstanding. This lady, Garroway, is the stepmother of this young lady here, to whom Mr. Finch should have been married to-day. There was some little trouble, I understand from Mr. Waddington, and she was left with the impression that Mr. Finch's morals were not all they should have been. Later, facts which came to light convinced her of her error, and she hastened to New York to seek Mr. Finch out and tell him that all was well and that the marriage would proceed with her full approval. That is correct, Mrs. Waddington?"
Mrs. Waddington gulped. For a moment her eye seemed about to resume its well-known expression of a belligerent fish. But her spirit was broken. She was not the woman she had been. She had lost the old form.
"Yes.... Yes.... That is to say ... I mean, yes," she replied huskily.
"You called at Mr. Finch's apartment with no other motive than to tell him this?"
"None.... Or, rather.... No, none."
"In fact, to put the thing in a nutshell, you wished to find your future son-in-law and fold him in a mother-in-law's embrace. Am I right?"
This time the pause before Mrs. Waddington found herself able to reply was so marked and the look she directed at George so full of meaning that the latter, always sensitive, could not but wonder whether in refraining from punching her on the nose he was not neglecting his duty as a man and a citizen. She gazed at him long and lingeringly. Then she spoke.