The Net Part 20

"They wouldn't if you didn't jerk and flirt around--"

"Flirt, indeed! Bunny! Bunny! What an idea!" She kissed him with a resounding smack, squarely upon the end of his thin nose, then flounced over to the old-fashioned haircloth sofa.

Now, Mr. Dreux abhorred the name of Bunny, and above all things he abominated Myra Nell's method of saluting him upon the nose, but she only laughed at his exclamation of disgust, saying:

"Well, well! You haven't told me how nice I look."

"There is no possible hope for him," he acknowledged. "The gown fits very nicely, too."

"Chloe did it--she cut it off, and sewed on the doodads--"

"The what?"

"The ruffly things." Myra Nell sighed. "It's hard to make a dressmaker out of a cook. Her soul never rises above fried chicken and light bread, but she did pretty well this time, almost as well as--Do you know, Bunny, you'd have made a dandy dressmaker."

"My dear child," he said in scandalized tones, "you get more slangy every day. It's not ladylike."

"I know, but it gets you there quicker. Lordy! I hope he doesn't keep me waiting until I get all wrinkled up. Why don't you go out and have a good time? I'll entertain him."

"You know I wouldn't leave you alone."

She made a little laughing grimace at him and said:

"Well, then, if you must stay, I'll keep him out on the gallery all to myself. It's a lovely night, and, besides, the drawing-room is getting to smell musty. Mind you, don't get into any mischief."

She bounced up from the sofa and gave his ear a playful tweak with her pink fingers, then danced out into the drawing-room, where she rattled off a part of a piano selection at breakneck speed, ending in the middle with a crash, and finally flung open the long French blinds.

The next instant he heard her swinging furiously in the hammock.

Bernie smiled fondly, as a mother smiles, and his pinched little face was glorified, then he sighed for a third time, as he thought of Felicite Delord, and regretfully settled himself down to a dull and solitary evening. The library had long since been denuded of its valuable books, in the same way that the old frame mansion had lost its finer furniture, piece by piece, as some whim of its mistress made a sacrifice necessary. In consequence, about all that remained now to afford Bernie amus.e.m.e.nt were certain works on art which had no market value. Selecting one of these, he lit a cigarette and lost himself among the old masters.

When Norvin Blake came up the walk beneath the live-oak and magnolia trees, Myra Nell met him at the top of the steps, and her cool, fresh loveliness struck him as something extremely pleasant to look upon, after his heated, bustling day on the Exchange.

"Bernie's in the library feasting on Spanish masters, so if you don't mind we'll sit out here," she told him.

"I'll be delighted," he a.s.sured her. "In that way I may be seen and so excite the jealousy of certain fellows who have been monopolizing you lately."

"A little jealousy is a good thing, so I'll help you. But--they don't have it in them. They're as calm and placid as bayou water."

Blake was fond of mildly teasing the girl about her popularity, a.s.suming, as an old friend, a whimsically injured tone. She could never be sure how much or little his speeches meant, but, being an outrageous little coquette herself, she seldom put much confidence in any one's words.

"Tell me," he went on--"I haven't seen you for a week--who are you engaged to now?"

"The idea! I'm never really engaged; that is, hardly ever."

"Then there is a terrible misapprehension at large!"

"Oh, I'm always misapprehended. Even Bernie misapprehends me; he thinks I'm frivolous and light-minded, but I'm not. I'm really very serious; I'm--I'm almost morose."

He laughed at her. "You don't mean to deny you have a bewildering train of admirers?"

"Perhaps, but I don't like to think of them. You see, it takes years to collect a real train of admirers, and it argues that a girl is a fixture. That's something I won't be. I'm beginning to feel like one of the sights of the city, such as Bernie points out to his Northern tourists. Of course, you're the exception. I don't think we've ever been engaged, have we?"

"Um-m! I believe not, I don't care to be considered eccentric, however. It isn't too late."

"Bernie wouldn't allow it for a moment, and, besides, you're too serious. A girl should never engage herself to a serious-minded man unless she's really ready to--marry him."

"How true!"

"By the way," she chattered on, "what in the world have you done to Bernie? He has talked nothing but Mafia and murders and vendettas ever since he saw you the other day."

"He told you about meeting Donnelly in my office?"

"Yes! He's become tremendously interested in the Italian question all at once; he reads all the papers and he haunts the foreign quarter. He tells me we have a fearful condition of affairs here. Of course I don't know what he's talking about, but he's very much in earnest, and wants to help Mr. Donnelly do something or other--kill somebody, I judge."

"Really! I didn't suppose he cared for such things."

"Neither did I. But your story worked him all up. Of course, I read about _you_ long ago, and that's how I knew you were a hero. When you returned from abroad I was simply smothered with excitement until I met you. The _idea_ of your fighting with bandits, and all that! But tell me, did you discover that murderer creature?"

"Yes. We identified him."

"Oh-h!" The girl fairly wriggled with eagerness, and he had to smile at her as she leaned forward waiting for details. "Bernie said you asked him to go, but he was afraid. I--I wish you'd take me the next time. Fancy! What did he do? Was he a tall, dangerous-looking man? Did he grind his teeth at you?"

"No, no!" Norvin briefly explained the very ordinary happenings of his trip with the Chief of Police, to which she listened with her usual intensity of interest in the subject of the moment.

"You won't have to testify against him in those what-do-you-call-'em proceedings?" she asked as soon as he had finished.

"Extradition?"

"Why! Why, they'll blow you up, or do something dreadful!"

"I suppose I'll have to. Donnelly is bent on arresting him, and I owe something to the memory of Mattel Savigno."

"You mustn't!" she exclaimed with a gravity quite surprising in her.

"When Bernie told me what it might lead to, it frightened me nearly to death. He says this Mafia is a perfectly awful affair. You won't get mixed up in it, will you? Please!"

The girl who was speaking now was not the Myra Nell he knew; her tone of real concern struck him very agreeably. Beneath her customary mood of intoxication with the joy of living he had occasionally caught fleeting glimpses of a really unusual depth of feeling, and the thought that she was concerned for his welfare filled him with a selfish gladness. Nevertheless, he answered her, truly:

"I can't promise that. I rather feel that I owe it to Martel"

"He's dead! That sounds brutal, but--"

"I owe something also to--those he left behind."

"You mean that Sicilian woman--that Countess. I suppose you know I'm horribly jealous of her?"

"I didn't know it."

"I am. Just think of it--a real Countess, with a castle, and dozens-- thousands of gorgeous dresses! Was she--beautiful?"