"That is not quite clear," said Vivi frowning. "This looks like it--but again this line--the cold calculating streak in your nature--"
At this moment, from down the beach, came a shrill whistle imitative of the whip-poor-will, insistent, querulous and repeated.
Vivi dropped his hand and glanced hastily at her watch.
"All right, I'm on. Who's the little bird?" said Skippy, who had not heard himself described as the acme of suspicion for nothing.
The whip-poor-will rose to shriller heights.
"It's Charlie Brownrigger," said Vivi, trying to appear embarrassed, "and he's come round to say good-bye."
"I _had_ to let him say good-bye," said Vivi imploringly to the young sultan. "I've treated him abominably since you came. I can't be rude to a chap, can I? I'll be right back."
"How long's it going to take?" asked Skippy, drawing out his watch.
"I'll wait exactly half an hour. Four-thirty to the minute. Not a second more."
"I do believe you're jealous, Jack Bedelle!" said Vivi expectantly.
"Jealousy has no part in my nature," said Skippy loftily. "Besides you can see it in my hand. Firmness, that's all!"
"Brute!" said Vivi with a killing glance.
She picked up the pink parasol and hastened down the beach. Skippy fished out the Philomathean Debating Society pin and slowly attached it to his vest. He switched to the vacated place with the back rest and began to whistle to himself. At the end of a seeming hour he glanced at his watch. Exactly seven minutes had elapsed.
"Half an hour was a mistake. Fifteen minutes is enough for a mut like Brownrigger. I should have been firmer. When a girl gets you to waiting for her--she has you going and coming. Firmer, I should have been much firmer!"
He slipped off his shoes to empty them of sand, and in doing so filled the gayly coloured work-bag that was Vivi's. His toilette finished, he took up the bag to clean it in turn. At the first touch as fate had decreed a book tumbled out and lay with opened pages before him. It looked most suspiciously like a diary. He averted his eyes and then his glance came slowly back to it.
"Here, that's not square," he said to himself angrily, torn by a mighty temptation. He leaned over and closed the book abruptly. The next moment he was staring at three gilded words that confronted him with the suddenness of Belshazzar's vision: