"Why not?" he asked simply. "If Lovely prefers the fellow's strength to my brains, what can I do but gracefully withdraw?"
The woman looked at him with a trace of suspicion.
"Such amiability is really touching, Clever. But I'll take you up on it. That thin chap can go in for Swiftest, I think, and as for the girl-" She frowned at Viola with a look of mingled dislike and reluctant admiration. "Oh, well," she finished, "the girl can enter the contest for Domestic Excellence."
Slapping his fat thigh, Virtue burst into a sudden roar of laughter.
"Splendid, Lovely! You have it all arranged, eh? Mercy, you and Cleverest are down and out! Take 'em-take your charming proteges, Lovely, my child; and shut up the Pit. Old War must go hungry to-night. And now you'll excuse me, Lovely. You've already made me miss at least one full course!"
"It would do you no harm to miss more than that," she retorted with a disparaging glance at his waist-line; but Virtue only chuckled without taking offense and hurried away.
CHAPTER 10: THE FOURTH VICTIM
THE three quondam prisoners, seated about a table where they had done full justice to an excellent repast, were alone. The scene about them was no longer of barbaric magnificence, but presented the more comfortable and familiar luxury of a good hotel. Lovely, or rather Loveliest, for such they had discovered the lady's full title to be, had done her work with surprising thoroughness and munificence. Having made herself responsible for their custody, she had ordered the two men freed, carried them all in her own motor car to a large hotel on South Broad Street, and there engaged for them a suite consisting of bedrooms, private baths and a large parlor.
Her exact standing in this new Philadelphia, so like the old and so unlike, was as yet unknown to them. So far as their needs were concerned, she seemed to possess a power of command practically unlimited.
The hotel in itself presented no apparent difference to any other large, metropolitan hostelry. Drayton, in fact, who had once before stopped at this identical hotel, could have sworn that even the furnishings were the same as upon his former visit. The clerk at the desk was perhaps a trifle too obsequious for a normal hotel clerk. Otherwise, their introduction had been attended by no bizarre circumstance. Having seen them comfortably established, having begged them to send out for anything they might require and have the price charged to "Penn Service"-that mysterious, ubiquitous Service again! — their odd protectress had assured Trenmore that she would look in on them early next day and departed.