“Well?” demanded Roddy.
“And, besides,” continued Caldwell slowly, picking his words, “Vega is going to marry his daughter, and so we win both ways. And Vega is amenable to reason. He will help us.” As though in a sudden burst of confidence he added ingratiatingly, “And you could help your father, too, if you liked. If you’ll tell me what the Rojas party mean to do I’ll set you right with your father. What do you say?”
“What do I say, you poor, little—thing!” Roddy roared. Then he laughed shortly and shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll say this much,” he added. “If I were sure you couldn’t swim I’d throw you into the harbor.”
“So you could pull me out,” laughed Caldwell. “Why don’t you? You know you were always a grand-stand actor, Roddy. Think how heroic it would be,” he taunted, “to rescue the hated enemy, to save my life!”
Roddy, unmoved, regarded him thoughtfully.
“It would be an awful thing to have on one’s conscience,” he said, and left the wheel-house.
When, at five o’clock that same afternoon, Roddy found himself sitting opposite Inez Rojas in a properly appointed drawing-room, guarded by a properly appointed chaperon and with a cup of tea on his knee, the situation struck him not only as delightful, but comic. With inward amusement he thought of their other meetings: those before sunrise, and the one by moonlight when Inez had told him he was seeing her for the last time, and when policemen threatened his advance and sharks cut off his retreat. From a smile in the eyes of the girl herself Roddy guessed that she also found the meeting not without its humorous side. Roddy soon discovered he could not adjust his feelings to the exigencies of an afternoon call. After doing his duty as an adopted uncle to the Broughton children and to his hostess and her tea and to Peter, in permitting him ten minutes’ talk with Inez, he brought that interview to an abrupt end.
“Miss Rojas,” he exclaimed, “you haven’t seen Mrs. Broughton’s garden in two years, have you? Such a lot of things grow up in two years. Let me introduce them to you.”
Giving her no chance to demur, Roddy strode out of the French windows into the garden, and, as Inez with an apologetic bow to the others followed, Peter moved to a chair beside Mrs. Broughton and held out his empty cup.
“There’s a certain subtlety about Roddy’s methods,” he remarked, “that would easily deceive the deaf, dumb and blind.”