Читать книгу The Cluny Problem (Musaicum Murder Mysteries) - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 4

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IT was the afternoon after Vivian Young's arrival. The garden of Villa Porte Bonheur lay drowsing in the August heat which was robbing even the flowers of perfume and color. The very hills seemed to fling the light back into the valley, as though it were molten metal too hot to hold. Closed were the windows, empty the summer-house, deserted the tennis courts.

A man pushed open the iron gate, shut it, and looked about him. When he was near the house itself, he studied it attentively. He seemed to be registering the position of all the doors and windows, even of the chimneys, with his cool, light eyes. Then he walked up to the door and knocked. Could he see Mr. Smith?

He spoke in very fair French, but with an accent that bewildered the butler, who answered with a sleepy:

"Monsieur désire?"

"To see Mr. Smith," the visitor repeated clearly. He handed in a card. "Take that to the gentleman, and say that I've come to make some further inquiries about the money that Mr. Davidson lost in the express up to Paris a fortnight ago."

"Ah!" The butler became all interest. He showed the caller into a room.

"I'm right, am I not?" asked the young man in a friendly way. "A couple of Monsieur Pichegru's guests lost their belongings two weeks ago in the train de luxe between Macon and Paris, did they not? A Mrs. Brownlow lost some valuable jewels. And a Mr. Davidson lost a thousand pounds in money? While Mr. Smith and Mr. Tibbitts, who went by the same train, lost nothing?"

"Correct, monsieur. The losses nowadays in sleepers are enough to make one thankful that one travels third class! Monsieur is connected with the inquiry?"

There was a certain alertness about the visitor's face and carriage and a shabbiness about his clothes that made the butler take him for a newspaper man.

"Yes, I am a reporter. Mr. Davidson is connected with my paper. He has entrusted me with the task of clearing up how the money was taken." He seated himself in an arm-chair, which seemed chosen instantly and at random, but which was the most comfortable one in the room.

The butler went in search of Mr. Smith. That young man was taking a siesta, and looked at the pastboard with great disfavor.

"Mr. Mackay. Aberdeen Mail." The last was written in one corner, with the words, "Called for an interview about Mr. Davidson's loss in the Paris train."

"Tell him I know nothing whatever about the affair." Mr. Smith's French was exceedingly good. "Any inquiries he has to make should be put to the police. They have all the information and are handling the case. In other words, Honoré, as far as I am concerned—throw him out! I don't intend to be bothered with reporters."

Mr. Smith relapsed sleepily on to his pillows again.

Tea was at five—a true summer tea, with iced drinks and sugary cakes and salad sandwiches.

Mrs. Brownlow superintended with the grace that seemed native to her. As the only woman—up till now—in the villa, she naturally played hostess for Monsieur Pichegru. Everyone appeared to like the Brownlows, Vivian thought. And, indeed, they seemed to belong to the pleasant, unassuming type of people whom one so often meets, never saying anything worth remembering, and yet who are themselves remembered when brilliant wits are forgotten.

After tea came tennis. Some French neighbors drifted in, but Vivian and Mr. Tibbitts very wisely withdrew and played by themselves.

"Game!" she called finally, with the snap of victory in her voice; "and set!"

Tibbitts seemed to take his beating philosophically. He was a tall, weedy youth who yet conveyed a suggestion of hidden strength in the set of his sloping, narrow shoulders and the hang of his long arms. He had a weak face, and dressed in the very height of French fashion. Even here in Cluny, Tibbitts alone seemed to have no old clothes, no hats or shoes that only long affection saved from being discarded. His very flannels shrieked of their first month's wear. Vivian had met his type before, she thought; the sons of the newly-rich, with all the blemishes, but none of the brains and pluck, that had given father his rise in the world.

"I'm afraid I'm no good at games," Tibbitts said now in his Cockney voice.

"Sure," Vivian agreed heartily; "I am bad, but thou art worse, brother. I guess Mademoiselle Lenglen would wonder what the game was, if she watched us. But there are still two balls missing. And new ones too."

"It's about time to change, isn't it?" the young man asked doubtfully. "I thought I heard the bell, I mean the gong, go some time ago. Whereabouts do you think the balls are?"

"One, your's, was apparently off on a non-stop flight to my home town in Texas. Try over there, while I hunt here in these bushes."

She stepped back swiftly. As she did so, she felt beneath her heel, not yielding earth, but the very firm toe of a very stout shoe. Instead of a scream, she made a swift and amazingly sure lunge. She caught at a man's tightly-buttoned coat, felt her hand struck off with a jerk, and then the branches around her swished and eddied. She had seen nothing. Standing listening, she heard the swishing pass to the other side, then silence. No one was visible as she ran out on to the grass and looked about her.

For fully two minutes Vivian stood staring, then she walked slowly back to the house. The average woman would have run, but this one walked almost reluctantly away, as though guided by prudence, as though impulse would have sent her after that unexplained figure.

From an open window came a contralto voice singing:

Let us get all the blue overhead,

Let us soar like birds in their flight,

For it's while we are here that the roses are red,

It's after we're gone they are white.

Vivian had heard the song before, but not the voice. It was evidently Mrs. Brownlow. There was something caressing and passionate in it. The voice of a siren. It went well with Mrs. Brownlow's face, while her manner—quiet but indifferent—her way of speaking—cool though kind—went with neither. So thought Vivian as she ran on to her own room. She was in time for dinner. Most girls would have been late, especially if, like herself, they had no maid with them. But Vivian could hustle. One toss, and her tennis frock lay on the floor. Another toss, a plunge, a splash or two, a rub down, some more tosses, and she stood ready to go downstairs, her curly hair still damp around the nape of her white neck.

They all went in to dinner in a cheery, unconventional group. The two women first, the men following. Miss Young's seat faced the window, and she looked out of it a good deal, and very attentively.

"How have you been getting on with your history of Cluny, Mr. Murgatroyd?" Mrs. Brownlow asked of the only elderly member of the party. Mr. Murgatroyd sighed a little. He was a stout, short man with a ludicrous resemblance to Pickwick.

"I'm afraid I haven't done well today," he said apologetically; "the sunshine was too much for me. And the country-side too inviting."

"You have to be bored to work, don't you find it so?" Vivian asked.

"You mean you've got to work to be bored," Tibbitts corrected with a guffaw of startling loudness. Tibbitts was at his worst seen indoors. He was the kind of young man who gets hats and coats handed to him in the evening and is asked to call the car, with subsequent abject apologies for the mistake. His voice, too, fitted the nameless look about him of being a rank outsider.

"Ever tried it?" Smith asked with a supercilious yet measuring stare.

For some reason or other Tibbitts seemed startled.

"N-no. I mean to say—I was speaking airily." And very red in the face, he turned to Mrs. Brownlow.

Meanwhile Mr. Murgatroyd was talking to Vivian. She had made some remark about architecture, and then continued to watch the gardens. Was that a shadow, or a man, far away facing her? When she had finally decided that it was the shadow of a thick branch, Mr. Murgatroyd appeared to be finishing a short lecture.

The professor was evidently nothing if not thorough. He did his best to ensure that Miss Young should be able to recognize the Cluny offshoot of Burgundian architecture whenever she should meet it in later life. Advanced Romanesque it was, but he warned her that, in his humble opinion, she would be making a great mistake to call it pre-Gothic, though if she chose to refer to it as Early Pointed—with the careful stipulation that she was referring to Early Pointed on the continent—she would be quite safe, he thought.

"It was inevitable that the Cluny Benedictines would evolve their own peculiar architecture," he murmured finally, "since their thoughts were peculiar. Their own. Original."

"You think thoughts can influence buildings?" their host asked with a hearty laugh. His English was slow and labored. "The architect's thoughts—yes—and the brickmason's—oh, yes! But otherwise?"

"Buildings"—Mr. Murgatroyd looked across at him—"are made of brick or stone or wood. Are they not? Of thought manifestations, that is to say. And can, therefore, be influenced by thought."

"Then, let's have a week of high thinking," Smith said urgently; "and raise this ceiling for Monsieur Pichegru; he finds it far too low."

Murgatroyd chuckled. But he maintained his position.

"Every thought creates," he repeated, "in us and around us. And it creates in its own image. It draws to itself other thoughts of like kind, therefore other manifestations of like kind."

"I know what you mean," broke in Tibbitts with the air of an exhausted swimmer at last touching bottom with his toes. "I know what you mean, Mr. Murgatroyd. Misfortunes never come singly. And so on..."

Murgatroyd nodded a little curtly. Tibbitts was not a favorite with him.

"Whatever causes one misfortune would be bound to cause another would be a better way of stating it," he murmured. "Take a criminal—I think that at the back of all our prison systems is the unacknowledged certainty that an evil mind should not be allowed at large to attract other evil minds. We hang a murderer because he must, not he may, cause other murders. The mind of a murderer will murder, in other words."

"It really comes to this," Monsieur Pichegru cut in, in his careful English, and in the tone of a man who dislikes the mysterious, "that talents for good or evil will draw to themselves their own opportunities. I think we can all agree on that?" Monsieur Pichegru had all the Frenchman's love of a discussion at the dinner table. Not at lunch. The midday meal was for the passing of light items of news or gossip, but with the evening, the French spirit seems to expand and rejoice in exercise.

"What do I draw to myself, professor?" Vivian asked gaily, catching Murgatroyd's eye as he entirely agreed with their host's condensed version of his idea.

"Opportunities for using your very remarkable quickness of observation, I should say," was his reply. It surprised her. Here was some one else who was quick too. "I should think you would make a very successful newspaper correspondent, because by that law of which we're talking, events of interest would be bound to come your way, rather than the way of some duller person."

Vivian smiled a little as at a quaint phantasy, but on that came the startling reflection that here was the problem from Anthony Cross's past sitting beside Smith. Here, to the town, if not to the villa where she was staying, Anthony Cross was coming, perhaps on some errand of his own, perhaps really brought here by the hunt for the diamond-stealers of which he had spoken.

Here, where just before dinner she had herself had the incident of the boot in the bushes on which she had stepped. And, why—yes, she herself—why was she here? Not as an ordinary tourist...

"Law?" Tibbitts bit off a chunk of peach and talked through it. "You called it that before. I never heard of any such law. Where is it?"

"It's the law by which, unless we ourselves deliberately bury them, our gifts will surely get the chance to be used to their best advantage. It's a law we do not yet understand. But then, what do we understand?" The professor sighed.

"Nothing of what's been talked about just now," Tibbitts said bluntly.

Every one laughed. He flushed a little and thrust out his weak chin.

"I say, Miss Young, I've mended your bracelet for you." He spoke loudly, in the tone of one who intended to show the rest that there were some things he could do better perhaps than they.

"Oh, thank you!" Vivian's bracelet, one of the heavy kind fashionable just now, had come undone during tennis, and had refused to stay fastened. Tibbitts had volunteered to put it right.

He now took it out of his pocket and held it out to her on the palm of his large, red hand—the hand of a laboring man in spite of its obvious acquaintance with soap and water.

It fastened perfectly. Thanking him, she snapped it shut.

"Talents, and opportunities to use them," Smith murmured lazily, with that undertone of careless contempt in which he always spoke to Tibbitts. "I didn't know you were a handy man, Tibbitts. There should be plenty of work for you if your tastes lie in that direction."

"I used to do metal work when I was a boy." Tibbitts looked uncomfortable. "Arts-and-crafts classes, you know. No end fond of it I was. That's where I got these weals on my palms."

"Just the lad for the garden roller," Smith said firmly. "Monsieur Pichegru, get him to have a heart-to-heart talk with it this evening."

Smith disliked Tibbitts, that much Vivian knew already.

Mrs. Brownlow protested that Tibbitts and she were going to feed some carp in the Abbotts' Pond. She said it gently enough, yet Vivian was certain that she was not pleased with something. Was it possible that she did not care for her fag to slave for other people? If so, here was the first glimpse of one of the vamp's characteristics that Vivian had seen.

"No, no," Monsieur Pichegru said promptly; "I use Mr. Tibbitts for something better. Adrien, the chauffeur, thinks him a marvel. He thinks—"

"Who was that chap, a red-haired chap, who called here this afternoon," Brownlow asked the table in general, apparently not noticing that his host was speaking. "We met just outside the gate?"

"A reporter. He wanted to see me about Davidson's lost money," Smith answered in his drawl that struck Vivian as so affected.

"About my lost jewels, I hope, too," Mrs. Brownlow said urgently.

"He only wrote on his card that he came about Davidson's loss," Smith explained. "I didn't see him—why should I? I told him to go to the police. They have all the facts. I loathe reporters."

"But why shouldn't he tell about my jewels too in his paper?" Mrs. Brownlow asked pathetically. She spoke perfect English, but with a very pretty French regularity of accent. "The same thief took both."

"The insurance company in London is investigating, you may be sure," her husband reminded her. "They won't thank us to insert articles in newspapers."

"But the things were only insured for half their value," she said accusingly. "All your fault too. And, of course, no company could be as keen on getting them back as I am. Do see if he won't write up a description of my jewels too. Who did you say the man was, Mr. Smith?"

"Name of Mackay. Scot evidently. Works on some Aberdeen paper."

"Then you may be quite sure he won't work for nothing," Brownlow pointed out to his wife.

Vivian was listening intently. This talk of theft...And it was on account of thefts that Anthony had said he was coming to Cluny...Was it, after all, really business that was bringing him? She had forgotten Edith Montdore's words about "the vamp's" lost sapphires.

Monsieur Pichegru explained, in answer to her inquiry, that a couple of weeks ago Mrs. Brownlow, another guest called Davidson who had now left, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Tibbitts, had all four gone up to Paris, taking the night Pullman at Macon. Mrs. Brownlow to join her husband in the capital, and at the same time have some jewelery re-set. Davidson to put some money into a tourist agency. Smith to have a couple of merry days with some friend, and Tibbitts to escort Mrs. Brownlow apparently; at least, so Monsieur Pichegru said with a twinkle in his bright, dark eyes.

In the morning, on their arrival at Paris, Mrs. Brownlow was minus her jewelery and Davidson had lost his wallet containing a thousand pounds in bonds—international bearer bonds unfortunately. Neither Smith nor Tibbitts had lost anything. Except Mr. Smith, all the travelers had been chloroformed—by sprays inserted in holes pierced in the doors, the police thought. They had been the only occupants of the carriage, which had been put on at Macon. The porter seemed to have been drugged. There was nothing about the affair to distinguish it from other similar railway thefts, so Smith claimed when Monsieur Pichegru had finished.

"They tried to bore a hole through the panel of my door, but it was a new one. And teak!" he explained.

"These thefts on the French lines are getting as numerous as their accidents," Lascelles murmured under his breath to Mrs. Brownlow. He had only arrived yesterday morning, and was leaving at the end of the week.

After dinner some French neighbors dropped in again, this time for bridge. Smith, a remarkably good player, and his friend Lascelles excused themselves after a rubber, and sat out in the gardens close to a bed of rhododendrons.

In the thick undergrowth behind them there was from time to time a slight, noiseless ripple—a ripple that seemed to be steadily nearing the two figures. It had begun on the outer edge of the little thicket—then it showed towards the middle—then past the middle—now it was close to the edge nearest the backs of the two talkers.

It was on that movement in the bushes that Miss Young's gaze was fixed as she sat by her bedroom window watching the grounds through a very good glass, waiting for the first sign of the return of the man on whose boot she had stepped in the bushes. He was sure to come again she thought. She had looked for him all through dinner and ever since. Now she was certain that her glass was on him, though she saw nothing of any figure.

"I guess a Red Indian couldn't move better," she murmured, putting on a dark cloak, and slipping into her crepe tennis shoes. She made for a clump of bushes behind the two chatting men by a little detour, lingering until at last they got up and passed into the house again. Then she sprang forward into the thicket. The figure should be about here...

It was her own shoulder that a hand grasped.

"Don't be frightened! Don't holler! It's quite all right!" The figure in the darkness was that of a man, the voice just now was low and very urgent.

Most young women would have needed some further reassurance, but Vivian Young did not try to pull herself away. She put her free hand instead into her pocket. Instantly a hand, that felt like steel, gripped it too, not hard, but very firmly.

"It's a torch, not a gun," she said quietly.

"Worse yet," came the swift whisper.

"You're an American, aren't you?" she asked. "I'm from God's country too."

"Has he only one?" came the tart question. "I'm frae Aberdeen, and—but whaur can we talk wi'oot being overheard?"

"Come with me." Vivian had made up her mind as to her course. "There's a summer-house not far off..."

"Mind these laurel bushes!" he cautioned her. "They rustle unco' loudly."

She took his hand and led him swiftly, considering all things, to a dark outline not far off. There she paused, felt for a moment, opened the door, pulled her companion in, shut the door, and only then switched on the light.

They were in a pleasant, pine-walled, pine-ceilinged room, with a rug or two on the floor. Osier chairs in Mandarin blue with cretonne cushions on them, an osier settee and a small table by the fireplace gave the summer-house a homely look.

Seen in the bright electric light, her companion showed as a short, stocky figure with thick hair of a handsome auburn; a shrewd, freckled face lit by a pair of alert, cool gray eyes.

"Who are you?" she asked, though she guessed.

"Suppose I were to tell ye that I'm just the new under-gairdener wi' a taste for listenin' in?" he asked in his marked Scottish accent.

"I should know you for a liar," she replied promptly. "I'm from Texas. We use our wits out there. You're no gardener."

"And wherefore no?"

"Your hands—your fingers—and you called those rhododendrons 'laurels' just now."

He scratched his jutting chin and showed a very fine set of teeth. "Nane sae bad," he conceded fairly. His eyes swept her and studied her. "You yourself are?"

"A visitor to Porte Bonheur." She sat down. So did he. There was a pause.

"I'll e'en tak' a chance," the man said finally, after he had watched her intently for another moment; "I'll e'en trust ye. I'm a repairter on a paper in Aberdeen."

"Where's that?" she asked.

His reply was a look of boundless pity.

"It's the maist important toon in Grreat Britain," he explained modestly. "Well, I'm a repairter there, and yon affair of the robbery in the train of an Aberdonian, a Mr. Davidson, interested me. I've an idea aboot that theft. At least I had," he said, with rather a sheepish grin. "I've been sent by ma editor to speir oot hoo it a' happened. It's ma ain idea," he went on. "If I fail ma paper winna back me. You tak' ma meaning? If I'm caught oot, I'm just—well, whatever I maun hae to be. A trespasser or maybe even a burglar. But the pay promised if I succeed is grrand. And the credit too. I'd be a made man in ma profession. I'd like fine to succeed," he added in a tone whose sincerity there was no mistaking.

"I've got an idea that might be of use to you," she said brightly, and scribbled something on a magazine lying on the table. Tearing off the page, she handed the scrap to the man.

"That may help you in your search," she repeated pleasantly.

He looked at what she had given him, and a dull red surged up in his lean face till his cheeks glowed like his hair. Then he turned and gave her rather a helpless look.

"You can read shorthand of course," she went on, "since you're a reporter."

For a second he stood biting his thin lips, looking at the little white tag. Then he raised his head and laughed a trifle grimly.

"You're a wonder! But you're richt. I'm nae repairter. But I thocht it wad be easier to gain access to the hoose, and your help too, maybe, if ye thocht I was a man belonging to a recognized newspaper. I wanted ye to have confidence in me," he wound up.

"I have confidence in myself," Vivian said placidly; "quite enough to risk associating with you, Mr. Mackay, or even helping you."

"She kens ma name! She kens everything!" he said in half-assumed, half-real admiration. "Well, I am a private detective, Miss Young. Here are my credentials."

He passed a thick note-case over to her. She studied its contents quickly—but quite carefully.

"You're one of the heads of the firm?" she asked, handing it back.

"I am the firm. A' there is to it." He spoke the last sentence soberly enough. His glance swept his thread-bare clothes, his shabby shoes, his ancient felt hat, with a meaning look. "It's make or break with me, Miss Young, this job."

Had he tried for a month he could have found no surer way to interest Vivian Young. "Make or break"—that was real life, she thought, with the feeling of a man who comes back after a long absence to familiar landmarks.

"As good as that?" she breathed eagerly. "My, there's nothing like just air behind one for helping to put pep into things. And putting pep into things is all there is to life," she finished with a laugh.

"As guid as that," Mackay repeated her words too, as though he liked them. "'Make or break' is guid, eh?" He seemed to consider the thought. "Well, I ca'd masel' a repairter as less alarming than a private detective," he explained after a pause. "I thocht I would hae a better chance for a crack wi' Mr. Smith."

"He seems to disapprove of reporters," she told him. "I must keep it dark that I'm one if I want to fascinate him."

"You're a reporter?"

"On the Texas Whirlwind," she said proudly.

"I did land a kelt when I talked of being a newspaper man to you!" he said with fervor.

Miss Young did not know what fish he meant, but she grasped the meaning.

"Sure did!" she assented blithely. She did not add that it was because of her descriptions of the scene, her work of rescue during a terrific fire, that her paper had sent her on a year's tour around the world. Nine months of the year were already gone. It was her great chance, she knew. And to think that so far it had only brought her the post of Anthony Cross's future wife. The thought flashed across her now with quite ludicrous disappointment.

"Mrs. Brownlow, the woman who lost her jewels at the same time as Mr. Davidson did his money, wants you to work for her too, Mr. Mackay. Her husband rather turned the notion down, but I guess she gets her own way with him."

Mackay shook his head.

"By the terms o' ma contract wi' Davidson, I'm pledged not to undertake ony other worrk till his job is dune. Or given up. And mind you, it's going to be a deefficult job," Mackay confided suddenly; "for every reason. Lack o' money. And on ma parrt lack o' training too. I'm but a beginner, ye ken. I bought the business wi' ma last poond-note and I've no succeeded as I hoped. So I come cheap. Which was why Mr. Davidson took me on. The prices o' a French detective made his hair fall oot. Forrby that he canna speak the language, and hasna any confidence in men that kiss each other."

"It's a great chance for you!" she said warmly.

"It's one that I'll niver get again if I slip up on't." His face looked suddenly very young and troubled. She saw the over-sharp modeling of jaw and high cheekbone. Mackay could do with more food than he had been having lately, she thought.

"As far as determination is concerned I'll no slip. But it's ma brains, I doot, ma reasoning powers. And what you want in detecting, Miss Young, is logic."

"I'm only here over the week-end, but I'll help you find out anything I can," she said impulsively.

"What? Join forces wi' an unmasked gairdener and reporter?" he asked with a swift smile.

"I guess I can call most people's bluff," she said, smiling too. The pleasant smile facing her came off promptly.

"But if it isna bluff in yon hoose? And it may not be, Miss Young. Detecting isna a game for a leddy. Though I winna say but that there micht be bits of information and—well, just bits like, where an insider could help a lot."

She rose.

"Well, I must go now. But I'll keep my ears and eyes open, and if I can think of anything brilliant I'll let you know. And if anything humble enough to entrust me with comes along you'll be so kind and condescending as to mention it, I hope."

He thanked her warmly.

"Ye're a plucky lassie," he murmured gratefully. "I kennt that weel the moment I felt your hand on ma coat. Not a tremble. Not a fumble, and not a soond. But is this summer-hoose safe for a crack?"

"It's stoutly built," she assured him. "I noticed this morning that you can't hear voices outside. Unless, of course, you were to put your ear against the cracks. But why not come to the villa? Call on me, if you like."

"I canna come ben," he said firmly. "Mr. Smith doesna like repairters, ye said yoursel'. And I've sent in ma name as a repairter. But there's an old gentleman staying in yon villa; I saw him fishing this evening. He and I passed a word together. Maist interresting talk on the ruins we had."

"Professor Murgatroyd, yes?"

"I'll watch for him, and mok' friends wi' him. He may know summat that'll help. I feel a bit like a wee laddie oot in his big brither's breeks," he confided whimsically.

"Your great chance will be the fancy-dress ball. Oh, say, Mr. Mackay, it's masked! Until supper at one. Why don't you come and go over to the bedrooms carefully, if you suspect any one in the house. Do you suspect any one in the house?" she asked. She meant, did he suspect Smith or Tibbitts.

He could not, or would not, tell her.

"I'm not a guid detective," he said at once, "and never shall be, but at least I dinna blab a' my thochts. But the ball—that's a fine idea—I'll think that over—"

"Sakes alive, Mr. Mackay, you don't want to think things over! You want to grab at them! Jump and land them!"

"Na, na!" he expostulated in a deeply shocked tone, "one should aye act according to the light o' reason, Miss Young. After long and careful deliberation."

She gave him a derisive glance.

"You're young enough to learn better, fortunately. My father was a Texas Ranger. One of the best. And his motto was 'Leap before you look.'"

"Tut, tut!" Mackay clucked, shaking his head in open horror.

"It's a good one," she said promptly. "None better."

"In Texas, verra likely," he said politely; "but in oor parrt o' the globe, Miss Young, the licht o' reason is what we maun go by."

"Shucks!" was Miss Young's reception of that bit of wisdom, after which she arranged the hour of their next meeting and said good-night.