Captain Francis Newcombe shook his head. Hardly! Not at this hour! Thanks to the engine trouble that had delayed them, she would long since have given up expecting him to-night, even though he had written her that he would be here.
The house, then? A surreptitious inspection; an entry even?--there were half a million dollars there! Again he shook his head. He was not so great a fool as to _invite_ disaster. To-morrow, and for days thereafter, he would be an inmate of the house when he would have opportunities of that nature without number, and without entailing any risk or suspicion--and time was no object.
He smiled complacently to himself. Things were shaping up very well--very well indeed. The seed so carefully planted years ago was to bear fruit at last. The greatest coup of his life was just within his grasp; and, if he were not utterly astray, that very coup in itself should prove but the stepping stone to still greater ones. Polly! Yes, quite true! The future depended very materially upon Polly. How amenable would she be to influence?--granting always that the said influence be delicately and tactfully enough applied!
He fell to whistling very softly under his breath. He had plans for Polly. And if they matured the future looked very bright--for himself. He wondered what she was like--particularly as to character and disposition. Was she affectionate, romantic--what? A great deal, a very great deal, depended on that. Not in the present instance--Polly had fully served her purpose in so far as a certain half million dollars in cash was concerned, and being innocent of any connivance must remain so--but thereafter. England was an exploited field; it had become dangerous; the net there was drawing in. Oh, yes, he had had all that in mind on the day he had first sent Polly to America, but only in a general way then, while to-day it had become concrete. Locke would make a most admirable "open sesame" to the New Land--if Locke married Polly. Polly, as Mrs. Locke, would step at once into a social sphere than which there was no higher--_or wealthier_--and, _ipso facto_, Captain Francis Newcombe would do likewise. And given a half million as stake money, Captain Francis Newcombe, if he knew Captain Francis Newcombe at all, would not fail in his opportunities! He had expected Polly in due course to make a place for herself in social America; that was what he had paid money for--but Howard Locke was a piece of luck. Locke conserved time; Locke opened the safety vault of possibilities immediately.