Nor did Graham, nor even Paula, imagine that Dick--the keen one, the
deep one, who could see and sense things yet to occur and out of
intangible nuances and glimmerings build shrewd speculations and
hypotheses that subsequent events often proved correct--was already
sensing what had not happened but what might happen. He had not heard
Paula's brief significant words at the hitching post; nor had he seen
Graham catch her in that deep scrutiny of him under the arcade. Dick
had heard nothing, seen little, but sensed much; and, even in advance
of Paula, had he apprehended in vague ways what she afterward had come
to apprehend.
The most tangible thing he had to build on was the night, immersed in
bridge, when he had not been unaware of the abrupt leaving of the piano
after the singing of the "Gypsy Trail"; nor when, in careless smiling
greeting of them when they came down the room to devil him over his
losing, had he failed to receive a hint or feeling of something unusual
in Paula's roguish teasing face. On the moment, laughing retorts,
giving as good as she sent, Dick's own laughing eyes had swept over
Graham beside her and likewise detected the unusual. The man was
overstrung, had been Dick's mental note at the time. But why should he
be overstrung? Was there any connection between his overstrungness and
the sudden desertion by Paula of the piano? And all the while these
questions were slipping through his thoughts, he had laughed at their
sallies, dealt, sorted his hand, and won the bid on no trumps.
Yet to himself he had continued to discount as absurd and preposterous
the possibility of his vague apprehension ever being realized. It was a
chance guess, a silly speculation, based upon the most trivial data, he
sagely concluded. It merely connoted the attractiveness of his wife and
of his friend. But--and on occasional moments he could not will the
thought from coming uppermost in his mind--why had they broken off from
singing that evening? Why had he received the feeling that there was
something unusual about it? Why had Graham been overstrung?
* * * * *
Nor did Bonbright, one morning, taking dictation of a telegram in the
last hour before noon, know that Dick's casual sauntering to the
window, still dictating, had been caused by the faint sound of hoofs on
the driveway. It was not the first of recent mornings that Dick had so
sauntered to the window, to glance out with apparent absentness at the
rush of the morning riding party in the last dash home to the hitching
rails. But he knew, on this morning, before the first figures came in
sight whose those figures would be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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