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He looked at me curiously. "Only Harbison," he replied promptly. "Jim has been eating his heart out in the den every since dinner; Dal played the Sonata Appasionata backward on the pianola he wanted to put through one of Anne's lingerie waists, on a wager that it would play a tune; I played craps with Lollie, and Flannigan has been washing dishes. Why?" Well, that was conclusive, anyhow.
There was Dan Boundary who started life by robbing his dead mother, there was 'Swell' Crewe, who was once a gentleman and is now a thief!" "Damn you!" said Crewe, lurching forward, but the gun swung round on him and he stopped. "There was Lollie who would sell her own child " "I have no child," half-screamed the girl. "Think again, Lollie darling dear little soul!" He stopped.
"I found it just where the paper said the board was thrown out, and it is from Mr. Harbison's overcoat, without a doubt." Of course I should not have been surprised. A man who would kiss a woman on a dark staircase a woman he had known only two days was capable of anything. "Kit has only been a little keener than the rest of us," Lollie said. "She found him out yesterday."
King has booked my passage to America, as you probably know," Lollie went on, "but at the last moment I have been obliged to change my plans." "I'm sorry to hear that," said the girl. "I was hoping that you'd get away before " "I am hoping to get away before," Lollie smiled faintly. "But you see, one has to be very quick, because things are moving at such a rapid rate.
As is often the case, McKnight's first words showed our parallel lines of thought. "I say, Lollie," he asked, "do you remember Dorothy Browne?" Browne, that was it! "Dorothy Browne?" I repeated. "Oh why yes, I recall her now. Why?" "Nothing," he said. "I was thinking about her. That's all. You remember you were crazy about her, and dropped back because she preferred me."
Yet, as he had said But he hadn't said, she told herself. Very likely he was married, though that fact did not greatly trouble the girl. Such men as these have always a good as well as a bad past, pleasant as well as bitter memories, and possibly he included amongst the former the recollection of a girl whose shoelaces Lollie Marsh was not fit to tie.
"Lollie has not played you false, colonel," said Crewe. His face was very pale, the colonel noticed. "I like that girl, and " "So that's it," said the colonel, "a little love romance introduced into our sordid commercial lives! Maybe you know what she's been talking to Stafford King about?" Crewe did not immediately reply. "Do you?" asked the colonel.
He was still chuckling when I came back. "Train to Richmond at six-thirty A.M.," I said. "What time is it now?" "Four. Listen, Lollie. We've got him. Do you hear? Through the woman at Baltimore. Then the other woman, the lady of the restaurant" he was obviously avoiding names "she is playing our cards for us. No I don't know why, and I don't care.
"I was thinking," he began, turning the vase around, "that, if you feel pretty well again, and and ready to take hold, that I should like to go away for a week or so. Things are fairly well cleaned up at the office." "Do you mean you are going to Richmond?" I asked, after a scarcely perceptible pause. He turned and faced me, with his hands thrust in his pockets. "No. That's off, Lollie.
When Lollie came up to the roof, she closed the door to the stairs, and coming over, drew a chair close to mine. "Have you seen much of Tom today?" she asked, as an introduction. "I suppose you mean Mr. Harbison, Lollie," I said. "No not any more than I could help. Don't whisper, he couldn't possibly hear you. And if it's scandal I don't want to know it."
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