"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I left the young ladies chatting with Mrs. Staggchase, and they'll be here in a minute. I wanted to speak to you."
She bestowed the letter which she had received from Barnstable in some mysterious recess of her gown, some hiding-place which had been devised as an attempted evasion of the immutable law that in a woman's frock shall be no real pocket.
"Go on," she said. "I am prepared for anything now. After Mr. Barnstable anything will be tame, though; I warn you of that."
"Mr. Barnstable? I didn't know you knew him till his circus last night."
"I didn't. He came to me here, and I thought he was going to apologize; but he ended with a performance crazier than the other."
"What did he do?" asked Fairfield, dropping into the chair which Barnstable had recently occupied. "He must be ingenious to have thought of anything madder than that. He might at least have apologized first."
"I wasn't fair to him," Mrs. Harbinger said. "He really did apologize; but now he's rushing off after Jack Neligage to accuse him of having written that diabolical book that's made all the trouble."
"Jack Neligage? Why in the world should he pitch upon him?"
"Apparently because I mentioned Jack as the least likely person I could think of to have written it. That was all that was needed to convince Mr. Barnstable."
"We none of us seem to be very sane," Mrs. Harbinger returned, laughing. "I wonder what this particular madman will do."
"I'm sure I can't tell," answered Fairfield absently. Then he added quickly: "I wanted to ask you about that letter. Of course it isn't you that's been writing to me, but you must know who it is."
She stared at him in evident amazement, and then burst into a peal of laughter.
"Well," she said, "we have been mad, and no mistake. Why, we ought to have known in the first place that you were Christopher Calumus. How in the world could we miss it? It just shows how we are likely to overlook the most obvious things."
Fairfield smiled, and beat his fist on the arm of his chair.
"There," he laughed, "I've let it out! I didn't mean to tell it."
"What nonsense!" she said, as if not heeding. "To think that it was you that May wrote to after all!"
"May!" cried Fairfield. "Do you mean that Miss Calthorpe wrote those letters?"