“No,” Brooks smiled a bit grimly. “I’m quitting—for good.”
’Dolph Cleeburg’s eyes, comprehending now, took in the drawn face and tired look of the man who had fought a losing battle—and won. And some strange click of memory brought simultaneously the same look of desperation in another face. Where had he seen it? When? Why did it haunt him? He sat down, picked up the halves of the paper cutter and tried to piece them together. Suddenly they rattled to the desk. Gloria! Gloria’s white face that night after he had put them through their paces, the night she had clung to him, the night of her strange outburst of hysteria. Gloria’s face when he suggested sending them abroad! Gloria’s face a dozen times since!
His gaze moved slowly toward the door, straining as a man stares through the dark. His thumb pressed the button on his desk, not as before, but mechanically. He [210] ]waited without moving. Yet his secretary stood in the doorway fully half a minute before he spoke.
“Find out if Miss Cromwell is in her dressing-room. Say I’d like to see her here.”
Brooks took a quick step toward him.
“What do you want her for.”
“To tell her you’re quitting.”
“That’s not necessary. See here, ’Dolph, let’s drop it. You and I understand each other.”
“No harm telling her, is there?”
The other man stepped back and sat down with a gesture that told the futility of argument. He, too, sat with eyes on the door.