Young Mr. Deever met with harsh disappointment when he came forth to renew his conversation with Rosie Keating. She was chatting at the telephone, her face wreathed in smiles.
"Thank you," she was saying, "it will be so nice. I was afraid I had an engagement for to-morrow night, but I haven't. Everybody says it's a perfectly lovely play. I'm crazy to see it. What? About seven-thirty. It takes nearly half an hour down on the Clark Street cable. Slowest old thing ever. All right. Good-bye." Then she hung up the receiver and turned upon Eddie, who stood aghast near the desk. "Oh, I thought you'd gone."
"Say, what was that you were saying over the 'phone? Didn't I ask you--"
"I'm going to the theatre with Mr. Kempshall. Why?"
"WHY? Why, you know I asked you to--"
"You didn't specify, Eddie, that's all. I'll go some other night with you. Good-bye." Clackety-clack went the machine, throwing insult into his very face as it were. He tramped out of the office in high dudgeon.
"Confound this detective business, anyhow," he might have been heard to remark. Three nights later, however, he took Rosie to the play, and on the fourth night he was Droom's guest again in the rooms across the river. He was well prepared to begin the campaign of insinuation which was to affect Bansemer in the end. Sitting stiff and uncomfortable in the dingy living-room overlooking Wells Street, he watched with awe the master of the place at work on the finishing touches of a new "invention," the uses of which he did not offer to explain.
He was without a coat and his shirt sleeves were rolled far above the elbows, displaying long, sinewy arms, hairy and not unlike those of the orang-outang Eddie had seen in Lincoln Park.
"I've got a new way of inflicting the death penalty," the gaunt old man said, slipping into a heavy, quilted dressing-gown. "These rascals don't mind hanging or the penitentiary. But if they thought their bodies would be everlastingly destroyed by quicklime, they'd hesitate before killing their fellow-men."
"But they already bury them in quicklime in England," said Eddie loftily.
"Yes, but not until after they're dead," said Droom with a cackle. He grinned broadly at the sight of the youth's horror-struck face. "Go ahead and smoke, my boy. I'll light my pipe. Make yourself at home. I keep the window closed to keep out the sound of those Wells Street cars. It's good of you to come over here and cheer up an old man's evenings. I'm--I'm not used to it," he said with a wistful touch which was lost to Eddie.