"The game is a queer one. I may want to
come over later and show up and make a little society play on the
girl. I may, however, join you and help you secretly, or I may have
to stay away altogether. But I must act at once. There's money in
it. If you have to make the running yourself, you can get your own
help."
"And, you have the real stuff?" agnostically demanded Jack Blunt.
"What do you want for a starter as your pay for the report to be
sent to me at the Hotel Faucon, Lausanne, Switzerland?" Hawke was
eager and disposed to be liberal.
"Oh! A hundred sovs for the job, as you lay it out--and fifty for
my little incidentals," laughed Jack Blunt. "Of course, if it goes
on to anything serious, you'll have to put away the real 'boodle,'
where I have something to run with, if I have to cut it. I might
run up a dangerous plant!"
"Bah!" decisively said Hawke. "Only an old fool to dodge, who is
over seventy--a dotard--and a foolish girl of eighteen--a simple
boarding-school miss!"
"Yes, but she has a million, you say. There's always some one to
love a girl with that money! Love comes in by the door, and the
window, too, you know!"
"She has never been five minutes alone with a man in her life!"
cried Hawke. "You are safe--dead sure safe!" Blunt's roving black
eyes rested on Hawke's eager face as he laughed.
"And you want to marry her, to keep others from her, or run her
off at the worst, you say? That's your little game.
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