Nothing was to be gained
by attempting to hasten the culmination of the fate that flung him about
like a chip on a turbulent stream. Fiends and angels might be battling
for his soul, and Lucifer might take him in the end, but meanwhile he
was having a jolly good time.

He looked at her covertly and they laughed with the mirth of children
planning mischief in secret.

"The little girl," he ventured; "you are not apprehensive about her?"

"Not in the slightest. My father-in-law is most disagreeably eccentric,
but he is very fond of my children. It was quite like him to attempt to
carry off the little girl, always a particular pet of his. I was
shocked, of course, when it happened. I thought I should be safe in the
park for a few hours until I could catch a train. I meant to put the
children quite out of my husband's way. I didn't know he was in town; in
fact, I don't know now that he is or anything about him. But he's
undoubtedly in communication with his father. It's rather a complicated
business, you see."

It was much more complex than she knew, and not, all things considered,
a laughing matter. He spent an uncomfortable moment pondering a
situation which he viewed with the mingled joy and awe of a child
watching the fire in a fuse approach a fire-cracker.

"I shall be glad to assist you if I can aid you in any way. You will try
to recover the child--?" he suggested.

"It's generous of you to offer, but I think you had better keep out of
it. Of course I shall have Edith back; you may be sure of that."

"You have some idea of where they are taking her--?"

"No, I really haven't. But she will be safe, though I hate to think of
her being subjected to so hideous an experience. It's rather odd, as I
think of it, that my husband didn't personally try to take the child
from me."

This, uttered musingly, gave Archie a perturbed moment. But the car had
reached the Altmore. He lifted out the boy and accompanied them to the
door.

"Thank you, very much," she said in a tone that dismissed him.

Archie drove to another hostelry for a superficial cleaning up,
explaining to the brush boy who scraped the oily mud from his trousers
that he had been in an automobile accident. He rode downtown in the
subway, strolled past the skyscraper in which his office was situated
and returned to the Governor's house feeling on the whole well pleased
with himself.

IV

Refreshed by a nap and a shower he was dressed and waiting for