"I purpose being perfectly straightforward. To begin with, I don't place you, Mr. Kirkwood. You are an unknown quantity, a new factor. Won't you please tell me what you are and.... Are you a friend of Mr. Calendar's?"
"I think I may lay claim to that honor, though"--to Kirkwood's way of seeing things some little frankness on his own part would be essential if they were to get on--"I hardly know him, Mrs. Hallam. I had the pleasure of meeting him only this afternoon."
She knitted her brows over this statement.
"That, I assure you, is the truth," he laughed.
"Nor I, Mrs. Hallam. Calendar aside, I am Philip Kirkwood, American, resident abroad for some years, a native of San Francisco, of a certain age, unmarried, by profession a poor painter."
"Beyond that? I presume I must tell you, though I confess I'm in doubt...." He hesitated, weighing candor in the balance with discretion.
"But who are you for? Are you in George Calendar's pay?"
"Heaven forfend!"--piously. "My sole interest at the present moment is to unravel a most entrancing mystery--"
"Entitled 'Dorothy Calendar'! Of course. You've known her long?"
"Eight hours, I believe," he admitted gravely; "less than that, in fact."
"Miss Calendar's interests will not suffer through anything you may tell me."
"Whether they will or no, I see I must swing a looser tongue, or you'll be showing me the door."
The woman shook her head, amused, "Not until," she told him significantly.
"Very well, then." And he launched into an abridged narrative of the night's events, as he understood them, touching lightly on his own circumstances, the real poverty which had brought him back to Craven Street by way of Frognall. "And there you have it all, Mrs. Hallam."
She sat in silent musing. Now and again he caught the glint of her eyes and knew that he was being appraised with such trained acumen as only long knowledge of men can give to women. He wondered if he were found wanting.... Her dark head bended, elbow on knee, chin resting lightly in the cradle of her slender, parted fingers, the woman thought profoundly, her reverie ending with a brief, curt laugh, musical and mirthless as the sound of breaking glass.
"It is so like Calendar!" she exclaimed: "so like him that one sees how foolish it was to trust--no, not to trust, but to believe that he could ever be thrown off the scent, once he got nose to ground. So, if we suffer, my son and I, I shall have only myself to thank!"