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“I would go myself, Ransdell, you understand,” Bronson then proceeded. “But my place, for the present, certainly is here. I mean, of course, at the observatory.… It is possible, Ransdell, in spite of precautions which have been taken, that some word of the Bronson discovery may get out. Your errand may be suspected. If it is, you know nothing—nothing you understand? You must answer no inquiry from any source. None—none whatever!”
At the landings during the fast flight north along the length of Africa, and in France, and during the first four days aboard the transatlantic vessel, nothing had happened to recall these emphatic cautions; but now, something was out. A boy was approaching with another radiogram; and so Ransdell swiftly tore open the one he had been holding:
“Twenty thousand dollars in cash paid to you if you grant first and exclusive interview regarding the Bronson discovery to this paper.”
It was signed by the man, who, an hour ago, had opened the bidding with one thousand dollars.
Dave crumpled it and tossed it overboard. If the man who had sent it had been in that trophy-room with Bronson and Lord Rhondin, he would have realized that the matter on their minds completely transcended any monetary consideration.
* * *
The evening in New York was warm. It pressed back the confused uproar of the street; and the sound which ascended to the high terrace of the Hendron apartment seemed to contain heat as well as noise. Eve found that her search for a breath of fresh air was fruitless. For a moment she gazed into the mist and monotone that was Manhattan, and then stared over the city toward the channels to the sea.
“Suppose those lights are the ship’s?” she asked Tony.
“It left quarantine before seven; it’s somewhere there,” Tony said patiently. “Let’s not go back in.”
His cigarette-case clicked open. The light of his match made a brief Rubens: buff satin of her bare shoulders, green of her evening dress, stark white of his shirt-bosom, and heads bent together. Some one inside the apartment danced past the French windows, touched the door-handle, perceived that the terrace was occupied, and danced away to the accompaniment of music that came from the radio.
“Guests take possession these days,” Eve continued. “If you suggest bridge, they tear up the rugs and dance. If I’d asked them to dance,—and had an orchestra,—they’d have played bridge—or made fudge—”
“Or played District Attorney. Why have guests at all, Eve? Especially to-night?”
“Sorry, Tony.”
“Are you, really? Then why did you have them, when for the first night in weeks the three thousand miles of this dreary continent aren’t between us?”
“I didn’t have them, Tony. They just heard we were home; and they came.”
“You could have had a headache—for them.”
“I almost did, with the reporters this afternoon. This is really a rest; let’s enjoy it, Tony.”
She leaned against the balustrade and looked down at the lights; and he, desirous of much more, bent jealously beside her. Inside the apartment, the dancing continued, making itself sensible as a procession of silhouettes that passed the window. Tony laid his hand possessively on Eve’s. She turned her hand, lessening subtly the possessiveness of his, and said:
“You can kiss me. I like to be kissed. But don’t propose.”
“Why not?… See here, Eve, I’m through with Christmas kisses with you.”
“Christmas kisses?”
“You know what I mean. I’ve been kissing you, Christmases, for three years; and what’s it got me?”
“Cad!”
He put his hand on her shoulder, and turned her away from the panorama of the city.
“Is there some real trouble, Eve?” he inquired gently.
“Trouble?”
“I mean that’s on your mind, and that stops making tonight what it might be for us.”
“No; there’s no trouble, Tony.”
“Then there’s somebody else ahead of me—is there? Somebody perhaps in Pasadena?”
“Nobody in Pasadena—or anywhere else, Tony.”
