“I can’t possibly—”
“Of course she’s not really a governess,” McKibben concluded, looking rather pathetically at Dick.
“As a matter of fact my wife knows your sister-in-law, Baby Warren.”
But Dick was not to be drawn in a blind contract.
“I’ve promised to travel with two men.”
“Oh,” McKibben’s face fell.
“Well, I’ll say good-by.”
He unscrewed two blooded wire-hairs from a nearby table and departed; Dick pictured the jammed Packard pounding toward Innsbruck with the McKibbens and their children and their baggage and yapping dogs— and the governess.
“The paper says they know the man who killed him,” said Tommy.
“But his cousins did not want it in the papers, because it happened in a speakeasy. What do you think of that?”
“It’s what’s known as family pride.”
Hannan played a loud chord on the piano to attract attention to himself.
“I don’t believe his first stuff holds up,” he said.
“Even barring the Europeans there are a dozen Americans can do what North did.”
It was the first indication Dick had had that they were talking about Abe North.
“The only difference is that Abe did it first,” said Tommy.
“I don’t agree,” persisted Hannan.
“He got the reputation for being a good musician because he drank so much that his friends had to explain him away somehow—”
“What’s this about Abe North?
What about him?
Is he in a jam?”
“Didn’t you read The Herald this morning?”
“No.”
“He’s dead.
He was beaten to death in a speakeasy in New York.
He just managed to crawl home to the Racquet Club to die—”
“Abe North?”
“Yes, sure, they—”
“Abe North?”
Dick stood up.
“Are you sure he’s dead?”
Hannan turned around to McKibben:
“It wasn’t the Racquet Club he crawled to—it was the Harvard Club.
I’m sure he didn’t belong to the Racquet.”
“The paper said so,” McKibben insisted.
“It must have been a mistake.
I’m quite sure.”
“Beaten to death in a speakeasy.”
“But I happen to know most of the members of the Racquet Club,” said Hannan.
“It MUST have been the Harvard Club.”
Dick got up, Tommy too.
Prince Chillicheff started out of a wan study of nothing, perhaps of his chances of ever getting out of Russia, a study that had occupied him so long that it was doubtful if he could give it up immediately, and joined them in leaving.
“Abe North beaten to death.”
On the way to the hotel, a journey of which Dick was scarcely aware, Tommy said:
“We’re waiting for a tailor to finish some suits so we can get to Paris.
I’m going into stock-broking and they wouldn’t take me if I showed up like this.
Everybody in your country is making millions.
Are you really leaving to-morrow?
We can’t even have dinner with you.
It seems the Prince had an old girl in Munich.