“Kind of a philanthropist, aren’t you, Baron?” Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge remarked quietly.
“Not in the least,” Peter assured him. “I know there is some tricky work going on and I haven’t brains enough to get to the bottom of it. That’s why I’ve come blundering in to you, and why I suppose you’ll be telling the whole story to the Count von Hern at luncheon in an hour’s time.”
Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge smoked in silence for a moment or two.
“This transaction of mine,” he said at last, “Isn’t one I can talk about. I guess I’m on to what you want to know, but I simply can’t tell you. The security is unusual, but it’s good enough for me.”
“It seems so to you, beyond a doubt,” Peter replied. “Still, you have to do with a remarkably clever young man in the Count von Hern. I don’t want to ask you any questions you feel I ought not to, but I do wish you’d tell me one thing.”
“Go right ahead,” Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge invited. “Don’t be shy.”
“What day are you concluding this affair?”
Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge scratched his chin for a moment thoughtfully and glanced at his diary. “Well, I’ll risk that,” he decided. “A week to-day I hand over the coin.”
Peter drew a little breath of relief. A week was an immense time! He rose to his feet.
“That ends our business, then, for the present,” he said. “Now I am going to ask both of you a favor. Perhaps I have no right to, but as a man of honor, Mr. Heseltine-Wrigge, you can take it from me that I ask it in your interests as well as my own. Don’t tell the Count von Hern of my visit to you.”
“That’s all right,” he declared. “You hear, Myra?”
“I’ll be dumb, Baron,” she promised. “Say, when do you think Vi can come and see me?”
Peter was guilty of snobbery. He considered it quite a justifiable weapon.
“She is at Windsor this afternoon,” he remarked.
“What, at the Garden-Party?” Mrs. Heseltine-Wrigge almost shrieked.
“I believe there’s some fete or other to-morrow,” he said, “but we’re alone this evening. Why won’t you dine with us, say at the Carlton?”
“We’d love to,” the lady assented, promptly.
“At eight o’clock,” Peter said, taking his leave.
The dinner party was a great success. Mrs. Heseltine-Wrigge found herself among the class of people with whom it was her earnest desire to become acquainted, and her husband was well satisfied to see her keen longing for society likely to be gratified. The subject of Peter’s call at the office in the city was studiously ignored. It was not until the very end of the evening, indeed, that the host of this very agreeable party was rewarded by a single hint. It all came about in the most natural manner. They were speaking of foreign capitals.