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She could not follow the trend of his thought, and she did not care to commit herself farther about Evelina before she had ascertained if Mr. Ramy considered nervousness interesting or the reverse. But Mr. Ramy spared her all farther indecision. "Well, Miss Bunner," he said, drawing his stool closer to the counter, "I guess I might as well tell you fust as last what I come here for to-day.
Though he still seemed tired out and nervous, he showed himself not without a quiet humor in describing the pomposities of the local police and the portentous airs of Dr. Stock. Trent turned the conversation gradually toward the problem of the crime, and all Marlowe's gravity returned. "Bunner has told me what he thinks," he said when Trent referred to the American's theory.
"He said he wanted me to do him an important service. There was a big thing on. It was a secret affair. Bunner knew nothing of it, and the less I knew the better. He wanted me to do exactly as he directed, and not bother my head about reasons. "This, I may say, was quite characteristic of Manderson's method of going to work.
Trent it's loaded, by the way. Now this Little Arthur Marlowe bought it just before we came over this year, to please the old man. Manderson said it was ridiculous for a man to be without a pistol in the twentieth century. So he went out and bought what they offered him, I guess never consulted me. Not but what it's a good gun," Mr. Bunner conceded, squinting along the sights.
In certain special cases the point of view has been made, so to speak, the real hero of the story. Some years ago Mr. Brander Matthews, in collaboration with the late H. C. Bunner, devised a very clever narrative entitled "The Documents in the Case." It consisted merely of a series of numbered documents, widely different in nature, presented with neither introduction nor comment by the authors.
First, at the southern extremity of the island, was the Battery and Battery Park. When, in "The Story of a New York House," the late H.C. Bunner described the little square of green jutting into the waters of the upper bay, it was as it had been some years before the earliest venturesome pioneers builded in lower Fifth Avenue.
Ramy sat together in the forward part of the car, and Ann Eliza could catch only an occasional glimpse of the forget-me-not bonnet and the clock-maker's shiny coat-collar; but when the little party got out at their corner the crowd swept them together again, and they walked back in the effortless silence of tired children to the Bunner sisters' basement. As Miss Mellins and Mr.
Bunner spoke with generous admiration of his friend's talent for affairs. "Jack Marlowe has a natural big head," he declared, "and if he had more experience, I wouldn't want to have him up against me. He would put a crimp in me every time." As the American's talk flowed on, Trent listened with growing surprise and anxiety.
"Marlowe and I have often talked about it, and we could never make out a solution. I had a notion at first," said Mr. Bunner in a lower voice, leaning forward, "that the old man was disappointed and vexed because he had expected a child; but Marlowe told me that the disappointment on that score was the other way around, likely as not.
It became more and more plain that something was very wrong in his theory of the situation; there was no mention of its central figure. Presently Mr Bunner mentioned that Marlowe was engaged to be married to an Irish girl, whose charms he celebrated with native enthusiasm. Trent clasped his hands savagely together beneath the table. What could have happened? His ideas were sliding and shifting.
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