In And Out Part 24

He paused, partly in distress and partly because it seemed to him that Wilkins was whispering to somebody. He sat up then, because Wilkins _was_ talking and there was another voice he could not at first place.

He had heard it before, many times, and it was very calm, very clear, very determined; and now Wilkins' tone came distinctly and resignedly.

"Well, of course, if he's expecting you, sir----"

The door closed. Steps approached the living-room. And with Mary sitting at the table, coffee-cup in hand, furnishing just the homelike touch a bachelor apartment must normally lack, Hobart Hitchin was with them!

One glance settled the fact that the amateur detective had attained a high state of nervous tension. Behind his spectacles, the keen eyes flashed about like a pair of illuminated steel points; his face seemed tired, but the rest of him was as alive as a steel spring, and his right hand held a fat brief-case.

Had he been more intimately acquainted with Hobart Hitchin, Anthony Fry would have trembled. As it was, he felt merely keen annoyance--and then utter consternation, because Hitchin had stopped with a jerk and was looking straight at Mary.

"I--er--didn't know," he said.

Poor little Mary, be she who she might, was in a decidedly ticklish position, however perfectly her outward calm was preserved. Everything that was chivalrous in Anthony surged up and told him to protect her; and coming out of the nowhere at the very last second, merciful inspiration reached his brain and he stared so fixedly, so warningly at Johnson Boller that that gentleman's chronic quiver ceased.

"Only--ah--Mrs. Boller!" Anthony said quietly. "My dear Mrs. Boller--Mr.

Hitchin, one of our neighbors here."

Johnson Boller himself started out of his chair, gripping its arms; and then, the general sense penetrating his cranium, dropped back with a puff. His mouth opened, as if to protest; his eye caught the eye of Anthony Fry. With a gasp and a flush, Mr. Johnson Boller subsided for the time, and Anthony was saying suavely:

"Mr. and Mrs. Boller were with me overnight, you know--decorators have captured their place and they were good enough to take the edge off my loneliness for a little."

"I never knew you minded it; I've heard you say you liked it," Hobart Hitchin smiled as he took Mary's hand and favored her with his drill-point stare. "But when you are alone again I'm quite sure that you'll know how lonely you are! My dear Mrs. Boller, I am honored!"

Mary, after one startled and one thankful glance at Anthony, dimpled charmingly. Mr. Hitchin dropped her hand and ceased his inspection, and immediately he turned more tensely solemn than upon his entrance.

"Ah--Fry," said he. "I suppose we can have a few minutes' chat?"

"An hour if you like," Anthony smiled, quite happily, too, because he was rather proud of his quick-wittedness.

Hobart Hitchin gazed straight at Mary.

"And Mr. Boller will remain with us?"

"What's the mystery?" Johnson Boller asked.

"There is not, I fear, much mystery," Hitchin said, looking straight at Anthony. "But there is a little matter I'd like to discuss with--er--you two gentlemen."

Mary rose hastily.

"I'd better go?" she smiled.

"If it would not inconvenience you, dear lady," Hitchin said unsmilingly and with a stiff bow.

Chin squared, he stood in silence until she had vanished down the corridor. He crossed the room and listened intently, dramatically; he held up the curtains and looked for the sliding doors which had been taken out five years before.

"No way of shutting up this room, Fry?" he asked crisply.

"No need of shutting it up, either," said Anthony. "There is no one to listen. What seems to be the trouble, Hitchin?"

Hitchin wheeled suddenly and turned his remarkable eyes upon Anthony.

"_You_ don't know, eh?" he shot at him.

"I'm sure I do not."

"And whether he does or not, what do you think you're doing?" Johnson Boller asked impatiently. "Acting a moving picture or----"

"Mr. Boller, may I trouble you to keep out of this for a little?" the crime student asked amazingly. "Later on I may wish to ask you a question or two, and if you will answer them it will serve me and--Mr.

Fry. Just now, suppose we draw up around the table here, so that it will not be necessary to shout?"

Anthony was there already, scowling. Johnson Boller, with a grunt, shuffled over and took a chair; because this. .h.i.tchin creature, on the face of him, was the morning's latest full-blown freak, and Johnson Boller did not wish to miss anything.

Also, if the chance came, he meant to inform Hitchin that Mary was not Mrs. Boller at all, if it could be contrived without casting too much of a slur on Mary--although that could wait until they learned the cause of Hitchin's pale cheek and his keen, excited eye.

Hitchin, however, had relaxed in the most curious fashion; he was smiling whimsically at Anthony now and, although his eye was across the room, one felt that it could turn with one one-thousandth of a second's warning and peer through Anthony's soul.

"Fry," he said thoughtfully, "I have been interested in crime for a good many years. I have, as it were, dabbled in it partly for the love of the thing and partly because, on one occasion or another, it has been possible for me to extend help that would not otherwise have been extended."

"That's a mysterious statement," Anthony said.

"Crime--some of it--is mysterious," smiled Mr. Hitchin. "Motives are usually more mysterious. Mistaken motives--motives formed under misapprehension--are most mysterious of all. But the consequences of crime," said Mr. Hitchin, whirling suddenly on Anthony, "are inevitable, inescapable as the rising of the sun."

Johnson Boller shook his head. The man had always been queer; now, overnight, he, too, had gone crazy! Anthony, who was largely nerves this morning, asked:

"What the devil are you talking about, anyway? I'm not trying to be unpleasant, Hitchin, but I'm not myself this morning and this rambling discourse about crime is rather trying."

"You are not yourself this morning?" Hitchin repeated slowly, with a very keen smile at Anthony.

"No."

"Why are you not yourself this morning, Fry?"

"What? Because I lost some sleep last night, I suppose."

"Ah!" Hitchin cried softly. "And why did you lose some sleep last night?"

Anthony's patience snapped.

"See here, Hitchin!" he cried. "I like to be polite and hospitable as possible, but why on earth I should sit here and answer your ridiculous questions I cannot see."

Hobart Hitchin laughed, a low, rippling, sinister laugh that chilled the hearer without giving a clue to the reason for the chill.

"Shall I show you why it were better for you to answer, Fry?" he purred.

"No!"

"Oh, but I'd better," insisted the crime student. "Fry, let us go back a few hours. You returned home last night about midnight, I think--fifteen or twenty minutes before the hour?"