"Please go now," she begged. "I can't think clearly while you are here, and I want to make up my mind. I will send to you when I am ready."
Pamela sat that afternoon on the balcony of the country club at Baltusrol and approved of her surroundings. Below her stretched a pleasant vista of rolling greensward, dotted here and there with the figures of the golfers. Beyond, the misty blue background of rising hills.
"I can't tell you how peaceful this all seems, Jimmy," she said to her brother, who had brought her out in his automobile. "One doesn't notice the air of strain over on the Continent, because it's the same everywhere, but it gets a little on one's nerves, all the same. I positively love it here."
"It's fine to have you," was the hearty response. "Gee, that fellow coming to the sixteenth hole can play some!"
Pamela directed her attention idly towards the figure which her brother indicated--a man in light tweeds, who played with an easy and graceful swing, and with the air of one to whom the game presented no difficulties whatever. She watched him drive for the seventeenth--a long, raking ball, fully fifty yards further than his opponent's-- watched him play a perfect mashie shot to the green and hole out in three.
"A birdie," James Van Teyl murmured. "I say, Pamela!"
She took no notice. Her eyes were still following the figure of the golfer. She watched him drive at the last hole, play a chip shot on to the green, and hit the hole for a three. The frown deepened upon her forehead. She was looking very uncompromising when the two men ascended the steps.
"I didn't know, Mr. Lutchester, that there were any factories down this way," she remarked severely, as he paused before her in surprise.
For a single moment she fancied that she saw a flash of annoyance in his eyes. It was gone so swiftly, however, that she remained uncertain. He held out his hand, laughing.
"Fairly caught out, Miss Van Teyl," he confessed. "You see, I was tempted, and I fell."
His companion, an elderly, clean-shaven man, passed on. Pamela glanced after him.
"Just some one I picked up on the tee," Lutchester explained. "How is our friend Fischer this morning?"
"I walked with him for an hour in the Park," Pamela replied. "He seemed quite cheerful. I have scarcely thanked you yet for returning the pocketbook, have I?"