When Taylor entered a minute later he found the two girls looking out of the big window across the harbor. They seemed untroubled and unafraid and were discussing the dimensions of a big liner making her way out.
“Sorry to have had to leave you,” he said briskly, “especially as things were getting a bit interesting.”
Ethel Cartwright looked at him coldly. It was a glance which Taylor rightly interpreted as a warning to remember that he occupied a wholly different sphere from that of the daughters of the late Vernon Cartwright. But it daunted him little. The Secretary of the Treasury had just told him that his work was evoking great interest in Washington. And the Collector somewhat cryptically had said that Daniel Taylor might always be relied upon to do the unexpected. For Washington and Collectors, Taylor had little respect. Unconsciously he often paraphrased that royal boast, “L’État c’est moi!” by admitting to his confidants that he, Daniel Taylor, was the United States Customs.
“I quite fail to see,” Miss Cartwright observed chillingly, “what all this rather impertinent cross-questioning of my sister has to do with—”
“You will in a minute,” he interrupted.
“Meanwhile,” she said, “I can’t wait any longer for those papers about the ring.”
“There isn’t any ring,” he said suavely. “That was just a pretext to get you here. I was afraid the truth wouldn’t be sufficiently luring so I had to employ a ruse.”
She looked at him, her eyes flashing at his daring to venture on such a deception. “You actually asked me to come here because you thought I had swindled the company?”
“Well,” he observed genially, “we all make our little mistakes.”
“So you admit it was a mistake?” she said, hardly knowing what to make of this changed manner.