Her eyes flashed appreciatively.
“You’re dead right,” she acknowledged. “Take us two, for instance. You know very well that Jocelyn Thew is a pal of mine. You know very well that I shall see him within the next twenty-four hours. You know very well that you’re out to hunt him to the death, and you know that I know it. Every question you ask me has a purpose, yet we talk here just as chance acquaintances might — I, a girl whom you rather like the look of — you do like the look of me, don’t you, Mr. Crawshay?”
Crawshay had no need to be subtle. His eyes and tone betrayed his admiration.
“I have thoroughly disliked you ever since you were too clever for me in New York,” he confessed, “and I have been in love with you all the time.”
“And you,” she continued, with a little gleam of appreciation in her eyes, “are a very pleasant-looking, smart, agreeable Englishman, who looks as though he knew almost enough to ask a poor girl out to dinner.”
Crawshay glanced at his wrist watch.
“It is you who have the science of detection,” he declared. “You have read my thoughts. Do you wish to change your clothes first, or shall we turn in at a grill room?”
She rose promptly to her feet.
“I’m all for the glad rags,” she insisted. “I bought a heap of clothes in Bond Street this afternoon, and I don’t know how many chances I shall have of wearing them. I am a quick dresser, and I shan’t keep you more than a quarter of an hour. But just one moment first.”
Crawshay stood attentively by her side.
“I am at your service,” he murmured.
“It’s all in the game,” she went on, “for you to take me out to dinner, of course, but I guess I needn’t tell you that there’s nothing doing in the information way. You’ve fixed it up in your mind, I dare say, that I am mad with Jocelyn Thew. I may be or I may not, but that doesn’t make me any the more likely to come in on your side of the game.”
Mr. Crawshay’s gesture was entirely convincing.
“My dear Miss Sharey,” he said softly, “I am going to take a holiday. Business is one thing and pleasure is another. For this evening I am going to put business out of my mind. The sentiment at which I hinted a few moments ago, has, I can assure you, a very real existence.”
“Hinted?” she laughed. “Guess there wasn’t much hint about it. You said you were in love with me.”
“I am,” Crawshay sighed.
Her eyes danced joyously.
“You shall tell me all about it over dinner,” she declared. “I’ve got a peach of a black gown — you won’t mind if I am twenty minutes?”
“I shall mind every moment that you are away,” Crawshay replied, “but I can pass the time. I will telephone and have a cocktail.”
She leaned towards him.
“I can guess whom you are going to telephone to.”
“Perhaps — but not what I am going to say.”
“You are going to telephone to that chap with the dark moustache — Brightman, isn’t it? I can hear you on the wire. ‘Say, boys,’ you’ll begin, ‘I’m on to a good thing! Everything’s looking lovely. I’m taking little Nora Sharey, of Fourteenth Street, out to dine — girl who came over to Europe after Jocelyn Thew, you know. Good business, eh?’”
Crawshay laughed tolerantly. The girl’s humour pleased him.
“You are wrong,” he declared. “If I told them that, they’d expect something from me which I know I shan’t get. You are right about the person, though. I am going to telephone to Brightman.”
“What are you going to say?” she challenged him.
“I am just going to tell him,” Crawshay confided, “that Jocelyn Thew is dining with Miss Beverley and her brother, more red roses and a corner table in the restaurant, and—”
“Well, what else?”
Crawshay hesitated.
“Perhaps,” he said, “if I went on I might put just one card too many on the table, eh?”
“We’ll let it go at that, then,” she decided. “After all, you know, I am not coming exactly like a lamb to the slaughter. There are a few things you’d like to get to know from me about Jocelyn Thew, but there are also a few things I should like to worm out of you. We’ll see which wins. And, Mr. Crawshay.”
“Miss Sharey?” he murmured, bending down to her as he held the door open.
“I don’t mind confessing that it depends a great deal upon what brand of champagne you fancy.”
“Mum cordon rouge?” he suggested.
She made a little grimace as she turned away.
“I am rather beginning to fancy your chance,” she declared.
.
CHAPTER XXI
Crawshay, about half an hour later, piloted his companion to the table which he had engaged in the restaurant with all the savoir faire of a redoubtable man about town. She was, in her way, an exceedingly striking figure in a black satin gown on which was enscrolled one immense cluster of flowers. Her neck and arms, very fully visible, were irreproachable. Her blue-black hair, simply arranged but magnificent, triumphed over the fashions of the coiffeur. The transition from Fourteenth Street to her present surroundings seemed to have been accomplished without the slightest hitch. She leaned forward to smell the great cluster of white roses which he had ordered in from the adjoining florist’s.
“The one flower I love,” she sighed. “I always fall for white roses.”
Crawshay’s eyes twinkled as he took his place.
“Do you remember your English history?” he asked. “This is perhaps destined to become a battle of red and white roses — red roses at Claridge’s and white roses here.”
“Which won — in history?” she asked indifferently.
“That I won’t tell you,” he said, “in case you should be superstitious. At the same time, I am bound to confess that if we could both of us hear exactly what Jocelyn Thew is saying to-night across those red roses, I think perhaps that I should back the House of York.”
“So that’s the stunt, is it?” she remarked coolly. “You want to make me jealous of Katharine Beverley?”
“The cleverest and hardest men in the world,” Crawshay observed, “generally meet with their Waterloo at the hands of your sex. So far as I am concerned, I am myself in distress. I am jealous of Jocelyn Thew.”
“You’re bearing up!”
“I am bearing up,” Crawshay rejoined, “because I am hoping that with kindness and consideration, and with opportunity to prove to you what a domestic and faithful person I am, you will perceive that of the two men I am the more worthy.”
“Think something of yourself, don’t you?” she observed.
“I have cultivated this confidence,” he told her. “In my younger days I was over-diffident.”
“Guess you’re older than I thought you, then.”
“I am thirty-seven years old,” he declared, “and I was well brought up.”
“Jocelyn Thew,” she said reflectively, “is forty.”
“I did not bring you here,” he declared, “to discuss the age of my unworthy rival. I brought you to tell me whether you consider that this Lobster Americaine reminds you at all of Delmonico’s, and to prove to you that we can, if we put our minds to it and speak plain and simple words to the sommelier, serve our champagne as iced even as you like it.”
Nora was not wanting in appreciation.
“It’s the best thing I’ve had to eat since I left New York, and for some time before that,” she assured him. “There hasn’t been much Delmonico’s for me during the last few months. Too many of your lot poking about Fourteenth Street.”