Tomorrow! She had said tomorrow. "Even though I totter and fall down after every drive," affirmed Henry, seizing her hand rather violently.
"That will be very sporting of you," declared Billie.
"Good afternoon, Miss Boland!" said a voice right over Henry's shoulder.
Scanlon! Harrington's pose instantly stiffened; he controlled himself with an effort; for it was the voice of the traitor—those same throaty, powerful tones that he had heard last in the darkness of this early morning yonder by the decayed boat landing—the identical tones!
But when he turned, the speaker was not Scanlon at all. He was a man as large, but younger—not more than thirty-five. Burly of head and shoulders, with close-clipped yellow mustaches and a V-shaped patch of the hirsute upon his chin; with eyes abnormally bright and areas immediately beneath them abnormally dark and faintly seamed, a foreign-looking type or at least a cosmopolitan one.
Harrington's mind was groping. It was the very voice—yes; and the fellow, with all his silk hat and frock coat and spats, looked the villain underneath; looked the master mind of almost any sort of plot that was nefarious and evil and profit-promising. He looked a smarter, keener, more merciless and unscrupulous Hornblower! Yet he had addressed Miss Boland as if he were upon terms of familiar acquaintance with her. He was a stranger to Edgewater; how should he know Miss Boland then?
"Ah, Count Eckstrom!" Billie exclaimed in the tones of pleasant surprise. "Count Eckstrom—my friend Mr. Henry Harrington."
