Kent shook his head. “You’re still obsessed with dubious evidence,” he remarked. “Let me see your time-table.”
Having studied the schedules that the artist produced for him, he nodded consideringly. “Boston it is, then,” he said. “As I thought. Sedgwick, I’m off for two or three days of travel—if we get through this night without disaster.”
[CHAPTER XV—THE TURN OF THE GAME]
Night came on in murk and mist. As the clouds gathered thicker, Chester Kent’s face took on a more and more satisfied expression. Sedgwick, on the contrary, gloomed sorely at the suspense. Nothing could be elicited from the director of operations, who was, for him, in rather wild spirits. The tennis match seemed to have sweated the megrims out of him. He regaled his chafing friend with anecdotes from his varied career; the comedy of the dynamiter’s hair; the tragedy of the thrice fatal telephone message at the Standard Club; the drama of the orchid hunt on Weehawken Heights. From time to time he thrust a hand out of the window. Shortly after midnight there was a splatter of rain on the roof.
“Good!” said Kent, stretching elaborately. “Couldn’t be better. Life’s a fine sport!”
“Couldn’t be worse, I should think,” contradicted Sedgwick.
“Depends on the point of view, my boy. No longer can my buoyant spirit support your determined melancholy—without extraneous aid. The time has come for action. Be thankful. Get on your coat.”
Sedgwick brightened at once. “Right-o!” he said. “Get your lamps lighted and I’ll be with you.”
“No lights. Ours is a deep, dark, desperate, devilish, dime-novel design.”
“Ending, most likely, in the clutch of some night-hawk constable for violation of the highway laws.”