Under Cover Part 27

"b.u.t.termilk!" Alice cried triumphantly.

"And I walked four miles this morning in a rubber suit and three sweaters, _and_ gained half a pound," Nora declared disconsolately.

"I do wish hips would come in again," Alice Harrington sighed. "Ah, here come the men," she said more brightly, as the three entered.

Michael was still bearing, with what modesty he could, the encomiums on a purple punch he had brewed after exhaustive laboratory experiments.

"It's delicious," Denby declared.

Michael sighed. "I used to think so until my wife stopped my drinking."

Even Monty seemed cheered by it. "Fine stuff," he a.s.serted. "I can feel it warming up all the little nooks and crannies."

"Purple but pleasing," Denby said, with the air of an epigrammatist.

"Did they tell you any purple stories?" Michael's wife demanded.

"We don't know any new stories," Denby told her; "we've been in England."

"Do sit down, all of you," Alice commanded. "We've all been standing up to get thin."

"If they're going to discuss getting thin and dietetics," Michael said, "let's get out."

"Woman's favorite topic," Monty remarked profoundly.

"But you mustn't sit down, Alice," Nora warned, as her hostess seemed about to sink into her chair. "It isn't twenty minutes!"

"Well, I think it is twenty minutes," she returned smiling, "and if it isn't I don't care a continental."

"Women are so self-denying," Michael Harrington observed with gentle satire.

"And sometimes it pays," his wife said. "Do you know, Nora, there was a girl on the boat who lost twelve pounds."

"Twelve pounds," Michael exclaimed, and then by a rapid-fire bit of mental arithmetic added: "Why, that's sixty dollars. How women do gamble nowadays!"

"Pounds of flesh, Michael, pounds of flesh. She was on a diet. She didn't eat for three days."

"That's not a bad idea," Nora said approvingly. "Sometime when I'm not hungry I'll try it."

Ethel Cartwright had refrained from joining in the conversation for the reason she had no part just now in their lighter moods. Their talk of weight losing had been well enough, but Michael's misinterpretation of the twelve pounds brought back to her the cause of Amy's misfortune and plunged her deeper into misery.

She walked toward the window and looked over the gra.s.s to the deep gloom of the cedar trees opposite. And it seemed to her that there were moving shadows that might be Taylor and his men ready to pounce upon a man to whom a year ago she had been deeply drawn. There was a charm about Denby when he set himself to please a woman to which she, although no blushing ingenue, was keenly sensible.

"Seeing ghosts?" said a voice at her elbow, and she turned, startled, to see his smiling face looking down at her.

She a.s.sumed a lighter air. "No," she told him brightly. "Ghosts belong to the past. I was seeing spirits of the future."

"Can't we see them together?" he suggested. "I shall never tire of Parisian ghosts if you are there to keep me from being too scared. Let's go out and see if the moon looks good-tempered. The others are talking about smuggling and light and airy nothings like that. Shall we?"

"No, no!" she said, with a tremor in her voice that did not escape him.

"Not yet; later, perhaps."

She could, in fact, hardly compose her face. Here he was suggesting that she take him into a trap to be prepared later by her treachery. But she had what seemed to her a duty to perform, and no sentiment must stand in the way of her sister's salvation. And there was always the hope that he was innocent. At any other time than this she would have wagered he was without blame; but this was a day on which misfortunes were visiting her, and she was filled with dread as to its outcome.

She moved over to Mrs. Harrington's side, gracefully and slowly, free so far as the ordinary observer could see from any care.

"So you are talking of smuggling," she said. "Alice, did you really bring in anything without paying duty on it?"

"Not a thing," Alice returned promptly. "I declared every solitary st.i.tch."

"I'd like to believe you," her husband remarked, "but knowing you as I do--"

"I paid seven hundred dollars' duty," his spouse declared.

"Disgusting!" Nora exclaimed. "Think of what you could have bought for that!"

"Please tell me," Michael inquired anxiously, "what mental revolution converted you from the idea that smuggling was a legitimate and n.o.ble sport?"

"I still don't think it's wrong," Alice declared honestly. "Some of you men seem to, but I'd swindle the government any day."

"Then, for Heaven's sake," Nora wanted to know, "why waste all that good money?"

Alice waved a jewelled white hand toward Steven Denby.

"Behold my reformer!"

Ethel Cartwright looked at him quickly. Her distrust of motives was the result of her conversation with Daniel Taylor, who believed in no man's good faith.

"Mr. Denby?" she asked, almost suspiciously.

"What has Mr. Denby to do with it?" Nora cried, equally surprised that it was his influence which had stayed the wilful Alice.

"He frightened me," Alice averred.

"I want to have a good look at the man who can do that," Michael cried.

"I'm afraid Mrs. Harrington is exaggerating," Denby explained patiently; "I merely pointed out that things had come to a pa.s.s when it might be very awkward to fool with the Customs."

"They didn't give us the least bit of trouble at the dock," she answered. "I wish I'd brought in a trunk full of dutiable things. They hardly looked at my belongings."

"That sometimes means," Denby explained, "that there will be the greatest possible trouble afterwards."

"I don't see that," Nora a.s.serted. "How can it be?"

"Well," he returned, "according to some articles in McClure's a few months ago by Burns, very often a dishonest official will let a prominent woman like Mrs. Harrington slip through the lines without the least difficulty--even if she is smuggling--so that afterwards he can come to her home and threaten exposure and a heavy fine. Usually the woman or her husband will pay any amount to hush things up. I was thinking of that when I advised Mrs. Harrington to declare everything she had."

"But you said a whole lot more than that," Mrs. Harrington reminded him.

"When our baggage was being examined at Dover, you spoke about that man of mystery who is known as R. J. It was c.u.mulative, Mr. Denby, and on the whole you did it rather well. My bank-book is a living witness to your eloquence."