"My dear fellow," I said, as he gazed at it transfixed, "don't
let us go on like a pair of fools. Eleanor charged me to give
you this, and beg you to return."
I don't believe he heard me at all. That flashing trinket was
far more eloquent than any words of mine. He laid his head in
his hands beside it, and his whole body trembled with emotion.
He trembled and trembled, till finally I got tired of waiting. I
poked him in the back, and reminded him that my car was waiting
down stairs. He rose with a strange, bewildered air, and
submitted like a child to be led into the street. He had the
locket clenched in his hand, and every now and then he would
glance at it as though unable to believe his eyes. I shut him
into the tonneau, and took a seat beside my chauffeur.
"Let her out, James," I said.
James let her out with a vengeance. There was a sunny-haired
housemaid at the Van Coorts' . . . and it was a crack, new
four-cylinder car with a direct drive on the top speed. Off we
went like the wind, jouncing poor Jones around the tonneau like a
pea in a pill-box. But he didn't care. Was he not seraphically
whizzing through space, obeying the diamond telegram of love? In
the general whizzle and bang of the whole performance he even
ventured to raise his voice in song, and I could overhear him
behind me, adding a lyrical finish to the hum of the machinery.
It was a walloping run, and we only throttled down on the
outskirts of Morristown. You see I had to coach him about that
Japanese war business, or else there might be trouble! So I
leaned over the back seat and gently broke it to him I thought I
had managed it rather well. I felt sure he could understand, I
said, the absolute need of a little--embellishing and--
"Let me out," he said.