Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/391

 new day was hurrying on. The cars were banging outside, and the newsboys were making a devil of a racket about something, their cries filling the street and ringing vibrantly into the lobby from without. Everything was strident and noisy, jarring upon his nerves. His first instinct was a dive for the bar, but he stopped before the door was reached. He was on a new tack. He resolved not to drink to-day. He had signed no pledges; but he felt that a highball was not in keeping with what he proposed to do.

Instead he veered toward the grillroom and ordered a pot of hot, hot coffee with rolls. To fill the impatient interval between the order and the service, he snatched eagerly at the morning paper in the extended hand of a waiter. At the first glance his eyes dilated, and his lips parted.

When the coffee came, he was still absorbed. The dark liquid was cold before he swallowed it, mechanically, in great gulps. It was well the chair had arms, or his body might have fallen from it. His mind was reeling like a drunken thing as he tried to grasp the process by which a woman's malice had used him for a vicious assault upon the man who had saved him when he stood eye to eye with ruin.

Slowly Burbeck's muddled intelligence groped backward over the events of yesterday. What a fool, he! How clever, she! How demoniacally clever! No wonder she forgave him so lightly; no wonder she cooed so ecstatically once she found the diamonds were in the preacher's vault! No wonder she had made sure that he went upon the yachting party, even to the point of going herself. It was to keep him out of reach until her diabolical plot against Hampstead could take effect. And no wonder she sat bolt and staring at the shore lights all the long night through.