Chapter XIV.  ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE

Dal had been acting strangely all day.  Once, early in the evening, when I had doubled no trump, he led me a club without apology, and later on, during his dummy, I saw him writing our names on the back of an envelope, and putting numbers after them.  At my earliest opportunity I went to Max.

“There is something the matter with Dal, Max,” I volunteered.  “He has been acting strangely all day, and just now he was making out a list—­names and numbers.”

“You’re to blame for that, Kit,” Max said seriously.  “You put washing soda instead of baking soda in those biscuits today, and he thinks he is a steam laundry.  Those are laundry lists he’s making out.  He asked me a little while ago if I wanted a domestic finish.”

Yes, I had put washing soda in the biscuits.  The book said soda, and how is one to know which is meant?

“I do not think you are calculated for a domestic finish,” I said coldly as I turned away.  “In any case I disclaim any such responsibility.  But—­there is something on Dal’s mind.”

Max came after me.  “Don’t be cross, Kit.  You haven’t said a nice word to me today, and you go around bristling with your chin up and two red spots on your cheeks—­like whatever-her-name-was with the snakes instead of hair.  I don’t know why I’m so crazy about you; I always meant to love a girl with a nice disposition.”

I left him then.  Dal had gone into the reception room and closed the doors.  And because he had been acting so strangely, and partly to escape from Max, whose eyes looked threatening, I followed him.  Just as I opened the door quietly and looked in, Dallas switched off the lights, and I could hear him groping his way across the room.  Then somebody—­not Dal—­spoke from the corner, cautiously.

“Is that you, Mr. Brown, sir?” It was Flannigan.

“Yes.  Is everything here?”

“All but the powder, sir.  Don’t step too close.  They’re spread all over the place.”

“Have you taken the curtains down?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Matches?”

“Here, sir.”

“Light one, will you, Flannigan?  I want to see the time.”

The flare showed Dallas and Flannigan bent over the timepiece.  And it showed something else.  The rug had been turned back from the windows which opened on the street, and the curtains had been removed.  On the bare hardwood floor just beneath the windows was an array of pans of various sizes, dish pans, cake tins, and a metal foot tub.  The pans were raised from the floor on bricks, and seemed to be full of paper.  All the chairs and tables were pushed back against the wall, and the bric-a-brac was stacked on the mantel.

“Half an hour yet,” Dal said, closing his watch.  “Plenty of time, and remember the signal, four short and two long.”

“Four short and two long—­all right, sir.”