“Or!” cried Dolly, “we might kidnap Mr. Carnegie when he’s walking in the park alone, and hold him for ransom. Or”—she rushed on—“we might forge a codicil to father’s will, and make it say if mother shouldn’t like the man I want to marry, all of father’s fortune must go to my husband!”
“Forgery,” exclaimed Champneys, “is going further than I——”
“And another plan,” interrupted Dolly, “that I have always had in mind, is to issue a cheaper edition of your book, ‘The Dead Heat.’ The reason the first edition of ‘The Dead Heat’ didn’t sell——”
“Don’t tell ME why it didn’t sell,” said Champneys. “I wrote it!”
“That book,” declared Dolly loyally, “was never properly advertised. No one knew about it, so no one bought it!”
“Eleven people bought it!” corrected the author.
“We will put it in a paper cover and sell it for fifty cents,” cried Dolly. “It’s the best detective story I ever read, and people have got to know it is the best. So we’ll advertise it like a breakfast food.”
“The idea,” interrupted Champneys, “is to make money, not throw it away. Besides, we haven’t any to throw away. Dolly sighed bitterly.
“If only,” she exclaimed, “we had that three thousand dollars back again! I’d save SO carefully. It was all my fault. The races took it, but it was I took you to the races.”
“No one ever had to drag ME to the races,” said Carter. “It was the way we went that was extravagant. Automobiles by the hour standing idle, and a box each day, and——”