Page:Earl Derr Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913).djvu/256

236 "Well?" said the girl, with an eagerness she could not conceal.

Mr. Magee groped for words. And found—his old friends of the mountain.

"I love you," he cried desperately. "You must believe I want to help you. It looks rather the other way now, I'll admit. I want you to have that money. I don't know who you are, nor what this all means, but I want you to have it. I went up-stairs determined to give it to you—"

"Really." The word was at least fifty degrees below the temperature of the card-room.

"Yes, really. I won t ask you to believe—but I'm telling the truth. I went to the place where I had fatuously hid the money—under a brick of my fireplace. It was gone."

"How terribly unfortunate."

"Yes, isn't it?" Mr. Magee rejoiced that she took so calm a view of it. "They searched the room, of course. And they found the money. They re on top now. But I'm going—"

He stopped. For he had seen her face. She—taking a calm view of it? No, indeed. Billy Magee saw that she was furiously, wildly angry.