“You certainly went ahead,” she confirmed. “What are speed laws to you!”
“You’re telling me that I haven’t played the game according to the rules. I know I haven’t. One has to make his own rules when Fate is in the game against him.” He seemed to be reviewing something in his mind. “Fate,” he observed sententiously, “is a cheap thimble-rigger.”
“Fate,” she said, “is the ghost around the corner.”
“A dark green, sixty-horse-power ghost, operated by a matinée hero, a movie close-up, a tailor’s model—”
“If you mean Reg, it’s just as well for you he isn’t here.”
“Pooh!” retorted the vengeful and embittered Dyke. “I could wreck his loveliness with one flop of my paint-brush.”
“Doubtless,” she agreed with a side glance at the wall, now bleeding from every pore. “It’s a fearful weapon. Spare my poor Reg.”
“I suppose,” said Dyke, desperate now, but not quite bankrupt of hope, “you’d like me to believe that he’s your long-lost brother.”
She lowered her eyes, possibly to hide the mischief in them. “No,” she returned hesitantly and consciously. “He isn’t—exactly my brother.”
He recalled the initials, “R.B.W.,” on the car’s door. Hope sank for the third time without a bubble. “Good-bye,” said Martin Dyke.