Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/134

 move, they, in that house, would have been cared for as the house had been cared for without them, when they had been abroad. If any unforeseen difficulty came up, her mother and she were not supposed to face it but to dodge it by supplementing their ordinary corps of servants with experts in domestic emergencies with which such a place as Evanston teemed.

Now her father—or rather Gregg Mowbry acting in the man's place of her father, temporarily disabled—had employed Felix Rinderfeld as a specialist in this present crisis which threatened them; and here she was at home, assigned to duty in aiding in the protection of her mother if Mr. Stanway or Russell eluded them in the outer circle of defense they had flung about her home; but otherwise they were keeping her ignorant even of what they were doing to shield her.

Billy did not know; for, when she asked him, he told her uncomfortably that Gregg and Rinderfeld on that day—it was the same on which she counted the delivery wagons—were up to something; they wouldn't tell him what, but Billy had discovered that Gregg had not been going to his office for a couple of days; and later Marjorie learned that Gregg hadn't returned to the apartment for two nights and Billy was worried.