But he was spared the possibility of this insane freak by the fact that he could not exhibit the diamonds. They were in the vault. Damn the vault! To hell with them! To hell with everything! To hell with himself! That was where he was going!
Suddenly he looked up, trembling. Mercer, the assistant cashier whose desk was next to his own, must have overheard him. But no, Mercer was calmly writing. He had heard nothing, because nothing had been spoken. Rollie had been thinking in shouts, not speaking. And yet he looked about him wonderingly, like a man coming out of a temporary aberration.
"I will be shouting it next," he said to himself. "I am getting dotty; I'll burst if I have to hold this much longer. I'll burst and give the whole thing away."
His hat had been pushed back from his brow; he drew it forward and down until it shaded his face, and then with his jaws set in the most determined mood he could muster, he walked out of the bank and piloted his steps, with knees that were sometimes stiff and sometimes tottering, in the direction of the Hotel St. Albans.
Without waiting to be announced, he went up and knocked at the door of Miss Dounay's apartment. It was opened a mere crack to reveal a nose and a bit of an eyebrow. This facial fragment belonged to Julie, and with it she managed to convey an expression at once forbidding and inquisitorial.
"Oh, la la!" she exclaimed, after her survey. "It is the handsome man. Come in," and the door swung wide. "Madame will be glad to see you. Perhaps you bring the diamonds."
Julie said all this in her slight but charming accent with an attempt at good-humored vivacity, but that last was a very embarrassing remark to a caller in young Mr. Burbeck's delicate position. It caused one of his knees to knock sharply against the other as he manoeuvered to a position where he could lean against a heavy William-and-Mary chair, and thus remain standing until Miss Dounay should enter the room; since to sit down and then rise again suddenly was a feat that promised to be entirely beyond him.
Moreover, light as had been Julie's manner, Rollie saw that her appearance belied it. Her eyes were red, her sharp little nose was also highly colored, and in her hand was a tight ball of a handkerchief that had been wetted to such compactness by tears.