"Of course I recognized his voice instantly when he said, 'That you,
Penny?' and it's a wonder I didn't scream," said Penny Crain, fighting
her way up through dazed bewilderment to explain in detail, in answer to
Dundee's pelting questions. "I said, 'Of course, Ralph.... Where _have_
you been?...' And _he_ said, in that coaxing, teasing voice of his that
I know so well: 'Peeved, Penny?... I don't blame you, honey. You really
ought not to let me come over and explain why I stood you up last night,
but you will, won't you?... Ni-i-ze Penny!...' That's exactly how he
talked, Bonnie Dundee! Exactly! _Oh, don't you see he couldn't know that
Nita is dead?_"
"Did you ask him where he was?" Dundee asked finally.
"No. I just told him to come on over, and he said I could depend on it
that he wouldn't waste any time.... Oh, Bonnie! What shall we _do_?"
"Listen, Penny!" Dundee urged rapidly. "You must realize that I've got
to see and hear, but I don't want Ralph Hammond to see _me_ until after
he's had a talk with you. Will you let me eavesdrop behind these
portieres?... I know it's a beastly thing to do, but--"
Penny agreed at last, and within ten minutes after that amazing
telephone call Dundee, from behind the portieres that separated the
dining and living room, heard Penny greeting her visitor in the little
foyer. She had played fair; had not gone out into the hall to whisper a
warning--if any warning was needed.
He had seen Ralph Hammond enter the dining room of the Stuart House the
day before, in company with Clive Hammond and Polly Beale, when the
three had been strangers to him; but Dundee told himself now that he
would hardly have recognized the young man whom Penny was preceding into
her living room. The Ralph Hammond of Saturday had had a white, drawn
face and sick eyes. But this boy....
Like his older brother, Clive, Ralph Hammond had dark-red, curling hair.
But unlike his brother's, his eyes were a wide, candid hazel--the green
iris thickly flecked with brown. A little shorter than Clive, a trifle
more slender. But that which held the detective's eyes was something
less tangible but at once more evident than superlative masculine good
looks. It was a sort of shy joyousness and buoyance, which flushed the
tan of his cheeks, sang in his voice, made his eyes almost unbearably
bright....
Before Penny Crain, very pale and quiet, could sink into the chair she
was groping toward, Ralph Hammond was at her side, one arm going out to
encircle her shoulders.
"Don't look like that, Penny!" Dundee heard him plead, his voice
suddenly humble. "You've every right to be sore at me, honey, but please
don't be. I know I've been an awful cad these last few weeks, but I'm
myself again. I'm cured now, Penny--"
"Wait, Ralph!" Penny protested faintly, holding back as he would have
hugged her hard against his breast. "What about--Nita?"
Dundee saw the young man's face go darkly red, but heard him answer
almost steadily: "I hoped you'd understand without making me put it into
words, honey.... I'm cured of--Nita. I can't express it any other way
except to say I was sick, and now I'm cured--"
"You mean--" Penny faltered, but with a swift, imploring glance toward
Dundee, "--you don't love Nita any more? You can't deny you were
terribly in love with her, Ralph. Lois told us--told _me_ last night
that Nita had told her in strictest confidence that she had promised to
marry you, just Thursday night--"
The boy's face was very pale as he dropped his hands from Penny's
shoulders, but Dundee, from behind the portieres, was not troubling to
spy for the moment. He was too indignant with Penny for having withheld
from him the vital fact of Nita's engagement to Ralph Hammond....
"That's true, Penny," Ralph was saying dully. "You have a right to know,
because I'm asking _you_ to marry me now.... I did propose to Nita again
Thursday night, and she did accept me. I confess now I was wild with
happiness--"
"Why did she refuse you before?" Penny cut in, and Dundee silently
thanked her for asking the question he would have liked to ask himself.
"Was it because she wasn't sure she was in love with you?"
"You're making it awfully hard for me, honey," the boy protested,
then admitted humbly, "Of course you want to know, and you should
know.... No, she said all along, almost from the first that she loved
me more than I could love her, but that there were--reasons.... _Two
reasons_, she always said, and once I asked her jealously if they were
both men, but she looked so startled and then laughed so queerly that I
didn't ask again.... Then I thought it might be because I was younger
than she was, though I can't believe she is more than twenty-three or so,
and I'm twenty-five, you know. And once I got cold-sick because I thought
she might still be married, but she said her husband was married again,
and I wasn't to ask questions or worry about him--"
"But she _did_ accept you Thursday night?" Penny persisted.
"Yes," the boy admitted, his face darkly flushed again. "This is awfully
hard, honey, but I'll tell you once for all and get it over with.... I
took her to dinner. We drove to Burnsville because she said she was sick
of Hamilton. When we were driving back she suddenly became very
queer--reckless, defiant.... And she asked me if I still wanted to marry
her, and I said I did. I asked her right then to say when, and she said
she'd marry me June first, but she added--" and the boy, to Dundee's
watching eyes, seemed to be genuinely puzzled again by what must have
sounded so odd at the time--"that she'd marry me June first _if she
lived to see the day_."
"Oh!" Penny gasped, then, controlling her horror, she asked with what
sounded like real curiosity, "Then what--happened, Ralph? Why do you
propose to _her_ on Thursday and to _me_ on--on Sunday?"
"A gorgeous actress sacrificed to the typewriter," Dundee told himself,
as he waited for Ralph Hammond's reluctant reply.
"Can't we forget it, honey?... You do love me a little, don't you? Can't
you take my word for it that--I'm cured now--forever?"
Penny's hands went up to cover her face, and Dundee had the grace to
feel very sorry indeed for her--sorry even if she intended to give her
promise to Ralph Hammond, as a sick feeling in his stomach prophesied
that she was about to do....
"How can I know you're really--cured, if I don't know what cured you?"
"I suppose you're right," the boy admitted miserably. "There's no need
to ask you not to tell anyone else. Although I don't want to see her
again ever--. Why, Penny, I wouldn't even tell Polly and Clive
yesterday, after it happened, though Polly guessed and went upstairs--.
I tried to keep her back--."
"I don't--quite understand, Ralph," Penny interrupted. "You mean
something happened when you were at Nita's house yesterday morning?"
"Yes. Judge Marshall had promised Nita to have the unfinished half of
the top story turned into a maid's bedroom and bath and a guest bedroom
and bath. Clive let me go to make the estimates. Of course I was glad of
the chance to see Nita again--I hadn't been with her since Thursday
night. But she had to take Lydia in for a dentist's appointment, and
they left me alone in the house. I had to go into the finished half to
make some measurements, and in the bedroom I found--oh, God!" he
groaned, and pressed a fist against his trembling mouth.
"You found that Dexter Sprague was staying there, was using the bedroom
that used to be mine--didn't you?" Penny helped him at last, in
desperation.
"How did you know?" The boy stared at the girl blankly for a moment,
then seemed to crumple as if from a new blow. "I suppose it was common
gossip that Nita and Sprague were lovers, and I was the only one she
fooled!... My God! To think all of you would stand by and let me _marry_
her--a cheap little gold-digger from Broadway, living with a cheap
four-flusher she couldn't get along without and had to send for--"
"Did you--want to kill her, Ralph?" Penny whispered, touching one of his
knotted fists with a trembling hand.
"Kill her?... Good Lord, _no_!" the boy flung at her violently. "I'm not
such an ass as that! You girls are all alike! Polly had so little sense
as to think I'd want to kill Nita and Sprague both! She couldn't see,
and neither could Clive, that all I wanted was to get away from
everybody and get so drunk I could forget what a fool I'd been--"
"What _did_ you do, Ralph?" Penny asked urgently.
"Why, I got drunk, of course," the boy answered, as if surprised at her
persistence. "Darling, you wouldn't believe me if I told you how much
rot-gut Scotch it took to put me under, but that filthy bootlegging
hotel clerk would have charged me twice what he did for the stuff if he
had known how much good it would do me."
"Hotel?" Penny snatched at the vital word. "Where did you go to get
drunk, Ralph?"
"I never realized before you had so much curiosity, honey," the boy
grinned at her. "After I shook Clive--Polly went on to Nita's bridge
party, because she couldn't throw her down at the last minute--I
wandered around till I came to the Railroad Men's Hotel, down on State
Street, you know, the other side of the tracks. It's a miserable dump,
but I sort of hankered for a place to hide in that was as miserable and
cheap as I felt--"
"Did you register under your own name?"
"Ashamed of me, Penny?... No, I registered under my first two
names--Ralph Edwards. And the rat-faced, filthy little hotel clerk
turned out to be a bootlegger.... Well, when I woke up about eleven this
morning I give you my word I wasn't sick and headachy, though God knows
I'd drunk enough to put me out for a week.... Penny, I woke up
feeling--well, I can't explain it but to say I felt light and new
and--and clean.... All washed-up! At first I thought my heart was
empty--it felt so free of pain. But as I lay there thanking God that
_that was that_, I found my heart wasn't empty at all. It was brimming
full of love--Gosh, honey! I sound like a Laura Jean Libbey hero, don't
I?... But before I rang you from the lunch room where I ate breakfast I
wrote Nita a special delivery note, telling her it was all off. I had to
be free actually, before I could ask you.... You _will_ marry me, won't
you, Penny honey?... I knew this morning I had never really loved anyone
else--"
Penelope Crain remained rigid for a moment, then very slowly she laid
both her hands on his head, for he had knelt and buried his face against
her skirt. But as she spoke, her brown eyes, enormous in her white face,
were upon Dundee, who had stepped silently from behind the portieres.
"Yes. I'll marry you, Ralph!... You may come in now, Mr. Dundee!"