Shad O'Rory was sitting in a wooden chair in the center of the room facing the fireplace. He smiled dreamily at Ned Beaumont, saying, in his musical faintly Irish barytone, 'And so it is,' and, 'How are you, Ned?'
Jeff Gardner's apish face broadened in a grin that showed his beautiful false teeth and almost completely hid his little red eyes. 'By Jesus, Rusty!' he said to the sullen rosy-cheeked boy who lounged on the bench beside him, 'little Rubber Ball has come back to us. I told you he liked the way we bounced him around.'
Rusty lowered at Ned Beaumont and growled something that did not carry across the room.
The thin girl in red sitting not far from Opal Madvig looked at Ned Beaumont with bright interested dark eyes.
Ned Beaumont took off his coat. His lean face, still bearing the marks of Jeff's and Rusty's fists, was tranquil except for the recklessness aglitter in his eyes. He put his coat and hat on a long unpainted chest that was against one wall near the door. He smiled politely at the man who had admitted him and said: 'My car broke down as I was passing. It's very kind of you to give me shelter, Mr. Mathews.'
Mathews said, 'Not at all—glad to,' somewhat vaguely. Then his frightened eyes looked pleadingly at O'Rory again.
O'Rory stroked his smooth white hair with a slender pale hand and smiled pleasantly at Ned Beaumont, but did not say anything.
Ned Beaumont advanced to the fireplace. ''Lo, snip,' he said to Opal Madvig.
She did not respond to his greeting. She stood there and looked at him with hostile bleak eyes.
He directed his smile at the thin girl in red. 'This is Mrs. Mathews, isn't it?'
She said, 'It is,' in a soft, almost cooing, voice and held out her hand.
'Opal told me you were a schoolmate of hers,' he said as he took her hand. He turned from her to face Rusty and Jeff. ''Lo, boys,' he said carelessly. 'I was hoping I'd see you some time soon.'
Rusty said nothing.
Jeff's face became an ugly mask of grinning delight. 'Me and you both,' he said heartily, 'now that my knuckles are all healed up again. What do you guess it is that makes me get such a hell of a big kick out of slugging you?'
Shad O'Rory gently addressed the apish man without turning to look at him: 'You talk too much with your mouth, Jeff. Maybe if you didn't you'd still have your own teeth.'
Mrs. Mathews spoke to Opal in an undertone. Opal shook her head and sat down on the stool by the fire again.
Mathews, indicating a wooden chair at the other end of the fireplace, said nervously: 'Sit down, Mr. Beaumont, and dry your feet and—and get warm.'
'Thanks.' Ned Beaumont pulled the chair out more directly in the fire's glow and sat down.
Shad O'Rory was lighting a cigarette. When he had finished he took it from between his lips and asked: 'How are you feeling, Ned?'
'Pretty good, Shad.'
'That's fine.' O'Rory turned his head a little to speak to the two men on the bench: 'You boys can go back to town tomorrow.' He turned back to Ned Beaumont, explaining blandly: 'We were playing safe as long as we didn't know for sure you weren't going to die, but we don't mind standing an assault-rap.'
Ned Beaumont nodded. 'The chances are I won't go to the trouble of appearing against you, anyhow, on that, but don't forget our friend Jeff's wanted for West's murder.' His voice was light, but into his eyes, fixed on the log burning in the fireplace, came a brief evil glint. There was nothing in his eyes but mockery when he moved them to the left to focus on Mathews. 'Though of course I might so I could make trouble for Mathews for helping you hide out.'
Mathews said hastily: 'I didn't, Mr. Beaumont. I didn't even know they were here until we came up today and I was as surprised as—' He broke off, his face panicky, and addressed Shad O'Rory, whining: 'You know you are welcome. You know that, but the point I'm trying to make'—his face was illuminated by a sudden glad smile —'is that by helping you without knowing it I didn't do anything I could be held legally responsible for.'
O'Rory said softly: 'Yes, you helped me without knowing it.' His notable clear blue-grey eyes looked without interest at the newspaper-publisher.
Mathews's smile lost its gladness, flickered out entirely. He fidgeted with fingers at his necktie and presently evaded O'Rory's gaze.
Mrs. Mathews spoke to Ned Beaumont, sweetly: 'Everybody's been so dull this evening. It was simply ghastly until you came.'
He looked at her curiously. Her dark eyes were bright, soft, inviting. Under his appraising look she lowered her head a little and pursed her lips a little, coquettishly. Her lips were thin, too dark with rouge, but beautiful in form. He smiled at her and, rising, went over to her.
Opal Madvig stared at the floor before her. Mathews, O'Rory, and the two men on the bench watched Ned Beaumont and Mathews's wife.
He asked, 'What makes them so dull?' and sat down on the floor in front of her, cross-legged, not facing her directly, his back to the fire, leaning on a hand on the floor behind him, his face turned up to one side towards her.
'I'm sure I don't know,' she said, pouting. 'I thought it was going to be fun when Hal asked me if I wanted to come up here with him and Opal. And then, when we got here, we found these—' she paused a moment—said, 'friends of Hal's,' with poorly concealed dubiety—and went on: 'here and everybody's been sitting around hinting at some secret they've all got between them that I don't know anything about and it's been unbearably stupid. Opal's been as bad as the rest. She—'
Her husband said, 'Now, Eloise,' in an ineffectually authoritative tone and, when she raised her eyes to meet his, got more embarrassment than authority in his gaze.
'I don't care,' she told him petulantly. 'It's true and Opal is as bad as the rest of you. Why, you and she haven't even talked about whatever business it was you were coming up here to discuss in the first place. Don't think I'd've stayed here this long if it hadn't been for the storm. I wouldn't.'
Opal Madvig's face had flushed, but she did not raise her eyes.
Eloise Mathews bent her head down towards Ned Beaumont again and the petulance in her face became playful. 'That's what you've got to make up for,' she assured him, 'and that and not because you're beautiful is why I was so glad to see you.'
He frowned at her in mock indignation
She frowned at him. Her frown was genuine. 'Did your car really break down?' she demanded, 'or did you come here to see them on the same dull business that's making them so stupidly mysterious? You did. You're another one of them.'
He laughed. He asked: 'It wouldn't make any difference why I came if I changed my mind after seeing you, would it?'
'No—o—o'—she was suspicious—'but I'd have to be awfully sure you had changed it.'
'And anyway,' he promised lightly, 'I won't be mysterious about anything. Haven't you really got an idea of what they're all eating their hearts out about?'
'Not the least,' she replied spitefully, 'except that I'm pretty sure it must be something very stupid and probably political.'
He put his free hand up and patted one of hers. 'Smart girl, right on both counts.' He turned his head to look at O'Rory and Mathews. When his eyes came back to hers they were shiny with merriment. 'Want me to tell you about it?'
'No.'
'First,' he said, 'Opal thinks her father murdered Taylor Henry.'
Opal Madvig made a horrible strangling noise in her throat and sprang up from the footstool. She put the back of one hand over her mouth. Her eyes were open so wide the whites showed all around the irises and they were glassy and dreadful.
Rusty lurched to his feet, his face florid with anger, but Jeff, leering, caught the boy's arm. 'Let him alone,' he rasped good-naturedly. 'He's all right.' The boy stood straining against the apish man's grip on his arm, but did not try to free himself.
