“Stick it out,” he insisted. “Stick it out. It looks pretty serious, I know, but you want to remember that you won’t be any better off anywhere else, and here we at least know what we’re up against. They know by now that we’re getting on to them. They must. They’re getting anxious, that’s all, and the time is getting short. You might send for your wife, but that wouldn’t help any. Besides, if you play your cards right with this girl you might get her to come over to your side. In spite of what she’s doing, I think she likes you.” Gregory snorted. “Or you might make her like you, and then you could get the whole scheme out of her. See how she looks at you all the time! And don’t forget that every day you string this thing along without letting them bring it to a disastrous finish, the nearer you are to the election. If this goes on much longer without their accomplishing anything, Tilney won’t have a chance to frame up anything new before the election will be upon him, and then it will be too late. Don’t you see?” On the strength of this, Gregory agreed to linger a little while longer, but he felt that it was telling on his nerves. He was becoming irritable and savage, and the more he thought about it the worse he felt. To think of having to be pleasant to people who were murderers at heart and trying to destroy you! The next morning, however, he saw Imogene at breakfast, fresh and pleasant, and with that look of friendly interest in her eyes which more and more of late she seemed to wear and in spite of himself he was drawn to her, although he did his best to conceal it. “Why didn’t you come back last night to play cards with us?” she asked. “We waited and waited for you.” “Oh, haven’t you heard about the latest ‘accident’?” he asked, with a peculiar emphasis on the word, and looking at her with a cynical mocking light in his eyes. “No. What accident?” She seemed thoroughly unaware that anything had happened. “You didn’t know, of course, that Castleman’s car almost ran us down after you left us last night?” “No!” she exclaimed with genuine surprise. “Where?” “Well, just after you left us, in the wood beyond Bellepoint. It was so fortunate of you two to have left just when you did.” And he smiled and explained briefly and with some cynical comments as to the steering gear that wouldn’t work.