Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/72

 “Yes, yes!” she answered hastily, rising. “But you must go now.”

“But when?” he asked. “I feel that you are in trouble. Miss Pomeroy. I would⸺”

“Perhaps—but why should you be mixed up in this terrible affair?” she asked. She looked at him keenly, appraisingly. “And yet I feel that you may be able to help,” she said, and his heart gave a complete somersault and landed in his throat somewhere. He could help her!

“Shall I come here to-morrow night⸺” he offered.

“No—not here,” she said swiftly. “You must not be seen here. I’ll meet you—say, at the Giltmore Hotel at seven thirty—in Peacock Alley. You can take me to dinner. Will that suit?” He nodded his head happily.

Suddenly the doorbell rang, and he heard the old woman going to the door,

“He’s coming now,” said the girl. “You must go!” There was a look of absolute terror in her eyes.

“But perhaps I’d better stay,” he offered. “This man who is coming, he⸺”

“No, you must go,” she said. She was leading him toward the entrance foyer now, a small, square room into which one stepped right from the hall. The door opened and the old woman admitted a tall, middle-aged man who sauntered in as though he belonged there. He and Val gazed at each other for a long moment in the foyer. He was big, but lithe as a cat for his size, and he had his hands in his pockets negligently, not even removing them when the girl spoke to him and I told him to go into the living room, where she would join him presently. He bowed mockingly, looking at Morley squarely with his hard blue eyes. His mouth,