Page:Rowland--The closing net.djvu/100

86 to her feet and went to the writing desk, where for several minutes she scribbled fast.

"There, Frank," said she, rising and turning to me, as smooth and sleek and unruffled as though she had never been mauled about like a mutinous school boy. She had pushed back her short, wavy hair, and jammed down over it the gold band which she usually wore to keep it in place and which had flown off when I gave her the shaking; and to look at her, no one would ever have guessed that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Such rows, after all, are food and drink to women of the Léontine sort; they love the excitement, and like to rouse the dominant male in the man on whom their fancy happens to rest. But I thought she would have some blue fingermarks on her shoulders the following day.

She slipped the note into an envelope and handed it to me unsealed.

"Here, Frank," she said, "take this note to Ivan. He never wanted to take up the job and he will be quite content to give you back your old pearls. I'll have to make it right with Chu-Chu, though. He did his part, poor man."

"I've got a little score with him, too, on the debit side," I answered. "Better let me settle mine out first; it might cancel yours."

"Be careful, Frank; and don't make any more threats. If Ivan were to guess what was in your mind you would be like a rabbit in the coils of a cobra. His system is like a cancer—it sifts in everywhere."

"The mob may be the cobra," said I, "but I ain't a rabbit by a whole lot. I know my way home in the dark."