Ambrotox and Limping Dick | Page 9

chemist in the country that knows my line of work will be searching in a furious effort to forestall the new legislation by discovering and putting on the market new synthetic opiates. There is not, perhaps, much fear that chance shooting will achieve the actual bull's-eye of Ambrotox. But there is a greater danger than commercial rivalry--criminal! The illicit-drug interest is growing in numbers and wealth. Every threat of so-called temperance legislation stimulates it. We have lately heard much of crime as a policy. Soon, perhaps, the world will learn with startled disgust, that crime went into trade two years ago.
"There are men in every big city to whom thousands of pounds and the lives of many hirelings would be a small price to pay for the half-sheet of paper and the small bottle hidden in the safe in that alcove.
"Knowing a little," he concluded, turning to Dick, "you might have told too much. Knowing everything, you will tell nothing at all."
There was a silence in the room, so heavy that it seemed long. And then,
"Some dope," said Dick Bellamy.
CHAPTER VI.
AMARYLLIS.
A little after noon on the following day, Amaryllis and Dick Bellamy, followed by Gorgon with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, entered the hall by the front door, clamouring for drinks, to find Caldegard swearing over a telegram.
"What's the matter, dad?" she asked.
"Sir Charles Colombe," replied her father. "He will be deeply indebted if I will call at the Home Office at one-thirty p.m. I should think he would be! If the message had been sent in time I could have caught the twelve thirty-five. It's a quarter past now, and it can't be done."
"Yes, it can," said Dick. "Grab your hat and tie it on, while I get my car."
Randal, coming from his study, was in time to see the car vanish in a cloud of dust.
"Where are they going?" he asked.
"To catch the twelve thirty-five," replied Amaryllis. "Dick says he can do it in seven and a half minutes."
Randal not only noticed the christian name, but also the girl's unconsciousness of having used it.
"They want father at the Home Office. Who's Sir Charles Colombe, Sir Randal?" she asked.
"Permanent Under Secretary," he answered. "I suppose Broadfoot is making trouble again."
And he looked at her as if he were thinking of Amaryllis rather than of permanent or political chiefs of Home Affairs.
"This is Friday, you know," he said at last.
"Yes," replied the girl, and Randal thought her face showed embarrassment--but of what nature, he could not tell.
"I won't spoil your lunch, my dear child," he said, looking down at her with eyes curiously contracted. "But if you'll give me half an hour in the afternoon----"
"Of course I will," she replied, with frank kindness. "And, oh! may I have a lemon-squash?"
A little later, as he watched her drink it, he admired her more than ever before. Since he first met her he had taken increasing pleasure from the tall figure, of which the fine lines and just proportions hid the strength and energy he had seen her upon occasion display; and he had often asked himself in what attitude or action her inherent grace appeared most charming. Sometimes it was driving from the tee, at another taking a swift volley which she must run to meet; or, again, just pouring out his coffee. But now, lounging on the old leather sofa, with her head tipped well back for red lips and white teeth to capture the slip of ice sliding to them from the bottom of the long tumbler, he thought her the very perfection of innocent freedom and symmetry.
And when the ice was crunched and swallowed, she laughed joyously, showing him that the teeth he had cried pity on were sound as ever; so that he raked his mind for jest and anecdote just that he might see them flash yet again.
But there was a difference in her to-day--a softer touch, as of happiness to come, flinging backward in her face a clouded reflection from the future. The image in that distant mirror, however, he could not see, and his gaiety failed him.
"I'm awfully untidy," she said at last, springing to her feet and pushing back loosened hair. "It's nearly lunch time--I hope so, at least, because I'm horribly hungry."
Perhaps it was best, after all, standing a little to one side, to see her mount that flight of broad, shallow steps; yet, being unable at once to make up his mind, he waited there at the stair's foot to see her come down again.
She came at last, with so new a smile on her lips, that criticism was lost in curiosity. Its subtle curves blended expectancy, fear and tenderness, seen through a veil of restraint.
Then he saw that she was looking over his head, and turned to see