Beecher made a rapid mental reservation and repeated her phrase, expecting a direct examination, but her manner became thoughtful again and she said pensively: "Besides, you have stumbled on a confidence yourself, and if you are to be trusted with that you should be trusted entirely." She looked at him quietly for a moment, and then added: "As a proof of my trust, Teddy, I am going to ask you to be my ally now. Mr. Slade will be here shortly. I do not wish to be alone with him. Do not go until he is gone." This request, implying as it did his own superior intimacy, delighted Beecher. He felt half of his suspicions vanish as he answered wisely: "I understand. He is quite daffy about you, isn’t he?" "Quite. But he has to be kept in place." "Oh, of course." "And now you are happy again," she said, tapping his arm with a little friendly gesture and smiling inwardly at the satisfaction which began to radiate from his face. "Teddy, you are a nice boy. I will teach you what the world is; you shall be my confidant, and we will laugh together; only, you must not be sentimental, you understand." "Never," he said with vigorous assertion. Then his conscience began to reprove him, and he blurted out: "I say, Rita, I haven’t been quite honest, but you rubbed me the wrong way. I really have been on the job." "Besides Gunther, whom else have you talked with?" she asked. "McKenna, the detective; and he’s dead keen on the case," he said enthusiastically, not noticing what she had implied. "Oh, McKenna!" she said, nodding appreciatively. "You have done well." She sat up, suddenly serious, and, extending her hand, took from him the address she had given him. "Did McKenna tell you to find out my detective?" she said slowly. Beecher comprehended all at once how he had played into her game, but, with her glance on his, it was impossible to deny. "Yes," he said; "he told me that he’d been on a dozen cases where the detectives who had come in to make a search had gone partners with the thief. He wanted to be certain there had been a real search." This seemed to reassure her, for she nodded with a return of her careless manner, as though comprehending the situation. Then, crumpling in her hands the paper with the address, she allowed her body to regain its former languid position and said: "I should like to meet McKenna; you must bring him around. How is he starting on the case?" Before Beecher could answer, the bell rang and Slade’s bulky figure crowded the frame of the doorway. He entered, and the portières, at his passing, rolled back like two storm clouds.