The Window at the White Cat | Page 6

into reform?"
"Bad egg," he said, jabbing his potato as if it had been a politician, "and

there's no way to improve a bad egg except to hold your nose. That's
what the public is doing; holding its nose."
"Hasn't he a daughter?" I asked casually.
"Yes--a lovely girl, too," Edith assented. "It is his only redeeming
quality."
"Fleming is a rascal, daughter or no daughter," Fred persisted. "Ever
since he and his gang got poor Butler into trouble and then left him to
kill himself as the only way out, I have felt that there was something
coming to all of them--Hansen, Schwartz and the rest. I saw Fleming
on the street to-day."
"What!" I exclaimed, almost jumping out of my chair.
Fred surveyed me quizzically over his coffee cup.
" 'Hasn't he a daughter!' " he quoted. "Yes, I saw him, Jack, this very
day, in an unromantic four-wheeler, and he was swearing at a
policeman."
"Where was it?"
"Chestnut and Union. His cab had been struck by a car, and badly
damaged, but the gentleman refused to get out. No doubt you could get
the details from the corner-man."
"Look here, Fred," I said earnestly. "Keep that to yourself, will you?
And you too, Edith? It's a queer story, and I'll tell you sometime."
As we left the dining-room Edith put her hand on my shoulder.
"Don't get mixed up with those people, Jack," she advised. "Margery's
a dear girl but her father practically killed Henry Butler, and Henry
Butler married my cousin."
"You needn't make it a family affair," I protested. "I have only seen the
girl once."

But Edith smiled. "I know what I know," she said. "How extravagant of
you to send Bobby that enormous hobby-horse!"
"The boy has to learn to ride sometime. In four years he can have a
pony, and I'm going to see that he has it. He'll be eight by that time."
Edith laughed.
"In four years!" she said, "Why, in four years you'll--" then she
stopped.
"I'll what?" I demanded, blocking the door to the library.
"You'll be forty, Jack, and it's a mighty unattractive man who gets past
forty without being sought and won by some woman. You'll be
buying--"
"I will be thirty-nine," I said with dignity, "and as far as being sought
and won goes, I am so overwhelmed by Fred's misery that I don't
intend to marry at all. If I do--if I do --it will be to some girl who turns
and runs the other way every time she sees me."
"The oldest trick in the box," Edith scoffed. "What's that thing Fred's
always quoting: 'A woman is like a shadow; follow her, she flies; fly
from her, she follows.' "
"Upon my word!" I said indignantly. "And you are a woman!"
"I'm different," she retorted. "I'm only a wife and mother."
In the library Fred got up from his desk and gathered up his papers. "I
can't think with you two whispering there," he said, "I'm going to the
den."
As he slammed the door into his workroom Edith picked up her skirts
and scuttled after him.
"How dare you run away like that?" she called. "You promised me--"
The door closed behind her.

I went over and spoke through the panels.
"'Follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows'--oh, wife and
mother!" I called.
"For heaven's sake, Edith," Fred's voice rose irritably. "If you and Jack
are going to talk all evening, go and sit on his knee and let me alone.
The way you two flirt under my nose is a scandal. Do you hear that,
Jack?"
"Good night, Edith," I called, "I have left you a kiss on the upper left
hand panel of the door. And I want to ask you one more question: what
if I fly from the woman and she doesn't follow?"
"Thank your lucky stars," Fred called in a muffled voice, and I left
them to themselves.
I had some work to do at the office, work that the interview with
Hunter had interrupted, and half past eight hat night found me at my
desk. But my mind strayed from the papers before me. After a useless
effort to concentrate, I gave it up as useless, and by ten o'clock I was on
the street again, my evening wasted, the papers in the libel case of the
Star against the Eagle untouched on my desk, and I the victim of an
uneasy apprehension that took me, almost without volition, to the
neighborhood of the Fleming house on Monmouth Avenue. For it had
occurred to me that Miss Fleming might not have left the house that
day as she had promised, might still be there, liable to another intrusion
by the mysterious individual who had a key