Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/20

 "I know his line of thought; so that's all?" said Cuncliffe, relieved. "From the sounds that drifted into the hall, I thought possibly he'd heard of the hell to pay at the Hales'."

"What hell to pay?" Gregg said quickly, his voice now even more careful than his visitor's.

Cuncliffe lit a cigarette and tossed the box to Gregg, who seated himself on the bed. "With Mr. Hale. Don't you know anything about it?"

"What?" said Gregg cautiously.

"Sybil Russell," Cuncliffe replied, and turned toward Gregg's glass; he took off his hat and laid it down and, picking up Gregg's brushes, he busied himself smoothing his hair.

Gregg said nothing for several moments; then he went into the bathroom and made sure that Whittaker's door was firmly shut; he returned and closed his own door.

"Yes; I heard Mr. Hale knows a girl named Russell," he admitted at last. "She'd married a man named Russell during the war. He came from Rockford, and was in the army, wasn't he?"

"That's the one."

"She busted up with him even before his division sailed, I understand."

"Yes; she'd been out at Rockford with him, but she came to Chicago and took a flat up north near Wilson Avenue," Cuncliffe informed, putting down the brushes and turning around.

Gregg refrained from further comment; he merely waited, holding an unlit cigarette in one hand, the other in his side pocket clasped, unconsciously, over Marjorie Hale's note to him. He felt queerly unsteady