“No?” One felt that he could have crushed her with evidence to the contrary but that he was restraining himself—it was not worthwhile to bother with such a girl seriously. “Things have fallen into a tangle since I left, old Satan Macon is on the spot and your rat of a father has let Landis get away. What have you been doing, Nelly, while all this was going on? Sitting with your eyes closed?”
He took a chair and lounged back in it gracefully.
“How could I help it? I’m not a watchdog.”
He was silent for a time. “Well,” he said, “if you told me the truth I suppose I shouldn’t love you, my girl. But this time I’m in earnest. Landis is a mint, silly child. If we let him go we lose the mint.”
“I suppose you’ll get him back?”
“First, I want to find out how he got away.”
“I know how.”
“Ah?”
“Donnegan.”
“Donnegan, Donnegan, Donnegan!” burst out Lord Nick, and though he did not raise the pitch of his voice, he allowed its volume to swell softly so that it filled the room like the humming of a great, angry tiger. “Nobody says three words without putting in the name of Donnegan as one of them! You, too!”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Donnegan thrills The Corner!” went on the big man in the same terrible voice. “Donnegan wears queer clothes; Donnegan shoots Scar-faced Lewis; Donnegan pumps the nerve out of poor Jack Landis and then drills him. Why, Nelly, it looks as though I’ll have to kill this intruding fool!”
She blanched at this, but did not appear to notice.
“It’s a long time since you’ve killed a man, isn’t it?” she asked coldly.
“It’s an awful business,” declared Lord Nick. “Always complications; have to throw the blame on the other fellow. And even these blockheads are beginning to get tired of my self-defense pleas.”
“Well,” murmured the girl, “don’t cross that bridge until you come to it; and you’ll never come to it.”
“Never. Because I don’t want him killed.”
“Ah,” Lord Nick murmured. “And why?”
“Because he’s in love—with me.”
“Tush!” said Lord Nick. “I see you, my dear. Donnegan seems to be a rare fellow, but he couldn’t have gotten Landis out of this house without help. Rix and the Pedlar may have been a bit sleepy, but Donnegan had to find out when they fell asleep. He had a confederate. Who? Not Rix; not the Pedlar; not Lebrun. They all know me. It had to be someone who doesn’t fear me. Who? Only one person in the world. Nelly, you’re the one!”
She hesitated a breathless instant.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
She added, as he stared calmly at her, considering: “There’s a girl in the case. She came up here to get Landis; seems he was in love with her once. And I pitied her. I sent him back to her. Suppose he is a mint; haven’t we coined enough money out of him? Besides, I couldn’t have kept on with it.”