Suddenly her mind was made up, and with a quick movement she rushed across to the electric bell beside the fireplace.
He gave vent to a short dry laugh of triumph, the reason of which was next second plain. The little porcelain push had been broken, and the contact disarranged.
Jim Jannaway always took precautions. He was a cool and calculating scoundrel.
She turned upon him in quick anger, and he saw that she intended to scream for help.
“One moment, if you please, Miss Griffin,” he cried in a low voice. “Just hear my suggestion before you raise the alarm and compel me to depart hurriedly through the window. A word now will save both of us a great deal of unnecessary bother afterwards. You’re a very brave little girl, and I admire you for it. Most other girls, on seeing me here, would have gone into hysterics, or fainted. But you’re a little ‘brick.’”
“Thank you, this is really no time for compliments,” was her cold, resentful reply. “Please say what you have to say, and quickly.”
She had managed to cross the room half-way, and from where she now stood she could see that the precious document she had typed lay open at its last page. The fellow had evidently read it all!
“Well,” he said, in that easy-going manner of his that she found so extremely irritating. “As far as I can at present discern, Miss Griffin, the game is a drawn one. I can quite—”
“I consider it blackguardly impertinence on your part to enter my father’s house at night, and read his private papers,” she protested, her face pale and determined.
“My dear girl, to me your opinion of my actions really doesn’t matter,” he laughed. “I wanted to discover something, and have adopted the easiest means of doing so.”