challenging.
'Of course, you would,' she said. ''I would, too.' She seemed to feel the force of his challenge. 'Let me try to think . . .' she said soberly and sat down, pulling the long blue around her pretty feet.
Paul came back and spoke reluctantly to Rosemary's yearning face. 'Nothing.' He looked nervous and defeated. 'Not a word. It's three thirty. Where is that stuff?'
'It's somewhere,' said Rosemary with a little gasp. 'Somewhere.'
Mr. Gibson found himself pushing his imagination, too,
trying to picture the bottle in the green bag . . . somewhere. But where?
'Rosie, this is too tough,' said Paul. 'I don't think we're accomplishing anything.'
'Yes, we are. Be quiet,' said Lee Coffey reverently, 'Virginia is thinking.' The nurse smiled at him. She had a lovely smile, and the bus driver let his face look fond.
'Lee ...' said Rosemary, her voice ready to break, 'Miss . . . Virginia. It's no time for . . .'
'We're not,' said the bus driver quickly.
Mr. Gibson understood perfectly. But Paul Townsend didn't. His tall frame remained in the archway and his handsome face wore a lost expression as if to say. But what are you all talking about? Virginia had understood too, Mr. Gibson guessed, as her lids went down again. And Virginia agreed.
How remarkably quickly, thought Mr. Gibson, things can be communicated. Lee Coffey has told this girl he's long noticed her, has liked her looks, likes her now, and expects a good deal of her. And she has told him she is . . . not offended. She would even like to deserve his good opinion. She already knows this is an interesting man. Yet both of them resolve that they will not pursue this enchantment . . . that, first, they will help me if they can. A bus driver, he thought. A blonde. His eyes stung suddenly.
Nobody spoke. Until the little nurse said, at last, in her quiet unexcited voice, 'There was somebody I know, on the bus. Would that help?'
'Oh yes, it might,' cried Rosemary, jumping up. 'Oh yes! Oh, good for you!'
'You see?' said Lee Coffey.
'Mrs. Boatright was on that bus,' the nurse told them, getting to her feet. 'Mrs. Boatright. I remember now, wondering how three or four cars could all be unavailable, at once. She had a heap of packages, too. On the bus. It seemed strange. She's so very wealthy ... at least her husband is. She lives in a huge place on the hill. I'm sure it was she. I once met her at Red Cross headquarters.'
'Walter Boatright . . .' Lee Coffey sprang up and dove into the hallway and came back with the phone book.
'But I'm afraid she'd have an unlisted number,' Virginia said. 'In fact, I know she has.'
I'Not what the number is?' The bus driver lowered the book.
'No. Sorry.'
'Do you know the house?'
'Yes, but not the street number, either.'
'Can't we go there?' Rosemary cried. And Paul half groaned and the bus driver looked at his blonde.
'You all start,' Virginia said. She was already at a plain white door the far side of the room. 'Don't wait I'll catch you at the car.'
Lee Coffey grinned and glanced at his watch, and then took Mr. Gibson by one wing. 'Is she a blonde?' he murmured, almost carrying Mr. Gibson down the porch steps past the lilac bush. 'Do you blame me?'
'She's a lovely blonde,' said Mr. Gibson, overwhehned' 'This is so good of you.'
'And all for money, too,' said Rosemary tartly. 'All for material advantage.' Mr. Gibson looked at his wife, who had his other arm. Her blue eyes were bright.
'Listen, we got our teeth in it now,' said Lee with enormous gusto.
'We're going to find it,' said Rosemary.
Mr. Gibson could almost believe this.
Chapter XVIl
THEY STUFFED HIM into the tonneau and Rosemary sprang in, too. She shoved over, and Lee Coffey, using nothing but an air of expectancy, stuffed Paul Town-send in at the other side of Rosemary. Then he slipped into the driver's seat and turned the key. The motor caught. The door of the house opened. Virginia skipped down the walk, wearing a brown jumper over a white blouse, brown pumps on her bare feet; her blond hair was neat and shining. The bus driver grinned and let the car move just as she slipped in beside him. He had not waited even one-tenth of a second. She had not failed him either. Paul said admiringly, 'That was a quick change!' Nobody paid any attention to him. It would have been better not to have commented.
As the car moved, the little nurse began to describe the location of the house they were seeking, and Lee sent them spinning around the block, across the Boulevard, and on north. They were heading for a swelling slope in the northwest section of the town where lawns grew wider and houses larger as they stood higher on the hill. Mrs. Boatright's house, she said, would be close to the top, on a short street, where there were only three or four houses, and hers had vast lawns behind a wall.
'The higher the fewer, I guess,' said Paul.
Virginia turned to look back. 'Is there an antidote to this poison, Mr. Townsend?' she said in a professional kind of way.
'Paul,' he suggested.
