Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/63

Rh Pondering this puzzle, with an intensity that had something poignant and personal in it, he would have been carried past his station but for the guard, who knew him, and who touched him on the arm. He went mechanically down the stair and turned up toward the avenue. Still mechanically, he mounted to his rooms and opened the door. A man who had been sitting in a chair before the fire sprang up as he entered.

“Why, Jack!” cried Godfrey, waking suddenly, and he held out his hand with that fine heartiness of greeting which is sometimes seen between men. Then, as he caught the other’s eyes, his face changed. “Sit down,” he said gently, “till I get out of these damp togs. Then we’ll have a talk.”

He disappeared into the inner room, while the younger man sank back into his chair and gazed gloomily into the fire. Even strained by emotion as it was at this moment, his face was worth looking at—clear-cut, square-jawed, alert-such as one has come, of late years, to associate with the typical college-bred American. But the face was more than merely handsome—it was open, ingenuous, winning—and looking at it, one could understand without further explanation how it happened that John Tolbert Drysdale had so many friends and so few enemies.

Godfrey was back in a moment, drew up another chair, and got out tobacco and pipes—for Drysdale a glossy briar, consecrated to his service; for himself, a meerschaum of a deep and tender brown, bespeaking years of loving usage. Not until the pipes were going nicely did Godfrey speak.