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Updated: May 23, 2025
The whole fantastic, incredible chain of happenings came back to me in a rush; the gray car, the inn, the murder, the night in the castle, Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier. "Dunny!" I heard myself quavering in a voice utterly unlike my own. The figure in the chair started up and hurried toward me, and then Dunny's hands were holding my hands, his eyes looking into mine. "There, Dev, there!
Stodgy I may be, it was odd how that term of Dunny's rankled, but I confess that I find chance traveling acquaintances boring and avoid them when I can. Unlike most of my countrymen, I suppose I am not gregarious, though I dine and week-end punctiliously, send flowers and leave cards at decorous intervals, and know people all the way from New York to Tokio.
My metamorphosis into a hero of adventure, racing about the country, visiting places I had never heard of, coolly assuming the control of international spy plots, brutally determining to kidnap women if necessary, was astounding to say the least. That dinner in the St. Ives restaurant rose before me, and I heard again Dunny's charge that I was growing stodgy with advancing years.
I know that we talked and laughed and were very friendly and very cheerful, and that Dunny's eyes, as they studied me, began to hold a gleam of intelligence, as if he were guessing something about the reasons for my former black despondency. I recall that the duke's hand was on my shoulder, and that odd how one's attitude can change! I liked to feel it.
The duke's blue uniform, his wife's black-gowned figure, and the white, radiant blur that was Miss Falconer revolved about me in spinning, starry circles. I gasped, put out a hand, fortunately encountered Dunny's shoulder, and, leaning heavily on that perplexed person, at last got back my intelligence and my breath. "Won't you shake hands with me, Mr. Bayne?" smiled the Duchess of Raincy-la-Tour.
"In case anything should happen," ran his muttered explanation. I have never needed Dunny's money, his affection is another matter, but he can spare it, and this time I took it because I saw he wanted me to. As we approached the Jersey City piers, he seemed to shrink and grow tired, to take on a good ten years beyond his hale and hearty age.
While I paid compliments and supplied details as to my convalescence and answered Dunny's chaffing, I saw only one member of the party, the girl in white. She was rather silent; she gave me only fugitive glances. But she wasn't engaged, at least not to the Firefly. Hurrah! What an agonizing, heart-rending, utterly unnecessary experience I had endured, now that I thought of it!
But, though he too ran all the way home, not a single drop of water was left inside the basket when he reached his father. Now, at last, it was Dunny's turn; but the two elder brothers teased him, saying, "Of what use is it for such a stupid as you to try, when we, who are so much more clever than you, have failed?"
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