style="font-size:15px;"> "I know. Ingerson is a brute, you would say; and so would I, if I were on the witness stand and obliged to testify. But in condemning him we should be in the minority, Dick. He has the entrée to the best houses in New York, and half of the dowagers in that abandoned city would snap at him for a son-in-law."
"That may well be. But to shut yourself up with him in a yacht party for weeks on end – "
"Your point is well taken. But you will remember that I have admitted the madnesses from start to finish. The vital thing, however, is this: Will you consent to go along with us to add the saving touch of sanity? Don't turn me down, Dick," he added, and the adjuration was almost a pleading.
"I'm not turning you down," I hastened to say. "I am merely asking 'why?'"
Van Dyck's face was a study in moody perplexity, and he spoke slowly, almost hesitantly, when he answered my query.
"I don't know that I can explain the exact 'why,' or give a logical reason, even to so good a friend as you are, Dick. The winter-cruise notion originated with Mrs. Van Tromp, I believe; and she is responsible for the inclusion of the major and his nephew. Also, she is the one who asked me to invite Ingerson. She has been playing in hard luck lately, and for the sake of her three girls, who, in her point of view, have simply got to marry money, she is obliged to keep the pace. I suppose the prospect of a winter in Florida – the four of them at Palm Beach, with no chance to cut economical corners, you know – appalled her. Besides, she knows the Andromeda, and the Andromeda's chef. That goes a long way with as good a trencherwoman as she is."
"That will do for a starter," I said. "Let us say that Mrs. Van Tromp and her daughters are bread-and-butter guests. But how about the others?"
Van Dyck did not reply until after the deft serving man had cleared the table and brought the cigars.
"The others, with the possible exception of Billy Grisdale, who is only an infant, are people with whom I should like to become better acquainted, as I have said."
"Which is still purer piffle," I put in. "You've known all of them practically all your life. But go on."
"I've known them, and I haven't known them," he asserted. "There are the Sanfords – the professor and his wife: they typify the older married set, and the casual onlooker would say that they try to give the impression that they are still satisfied and happy. I should like to find out if they really are satisfied and happy. Then there are the Greys; they are still in the billing and cooing stage: I'd like to see if it isn't possible for them to get too much of each other when the doors are all shut and locked and neither of them can duck out for a breath of the fresh air of solitude."
"Jehu!" I muttered. "The blue-bearded old gentleman of the Old-World legend wasn't in it with you. Let's have the rest of it."
Van Dyck's smile barely missed being a saturnine grin, and there was scarcely a suggestion of mirth in it.
"Major Terwilliger poses as a generous, large-hearted old rounder who is eventually going to do something handsome for Jerry Dupuyster, his sister's son. Privately, I have a notion that the major's liberal fortune – which he promises to bestow upon Gerald – is largely, if not wholly, a myth, and that he is selfish enough to keep Jerry dangling as a bait to the scheming mammas – and aunts – for the social advantages and 'side' thereby accruing to Jerry's uncle."
"Conetta Kincaide's aunt, for example?" I interpolated.
"Yes, Aunt Mehitable, if you like. And, this being the case, I have a perfectly normal curiosity to see what will happen when the dragoness gets the major and Jerry in a clear field, with no possibility of a breakaway for them, or of interference with her dragonizing for her."
"Having already used Bluebeard, I'm out of comparisons for you," I said. "What about the Barclays, father and daughter?"
Van Dyck shook his head and the faintest possible shadow of a frown came and sat between his eyes.
"We needn't be ill-natured on the wholesale plan," he evaded. "You wouldn't suspect a man like Holly Barclay of offering his daughter to the highest bidder, would you? Supposing we admit that he has gone through the fortune that his wife's father got together, and let it stand at that."
"You are not letting it stand at that," I countered shrewdly.
"No, perhaps I am not," he admitted, after a thoughtful pause. "I thought I should like to prove or disprove a thing that I have heard, about Holly Barclay – and Madeleine – and – well, you'll guess it if I don't say it – about Ingerson."
"Again with the clear field and no favor, I suppose," I put in a bit savagely. Then: "Van Dyck, you ought to be shot!"
He was glancing at his watch, and his smile was wry.
"I shall get my little drink of hemlock before the table is cleared, never fear," he said soberly. "Any time you may think I am not getting it, you have my permission to blow the gaff; to call the others together and tell them what I've done to them. That is fair, isn't it?"
I nodded, and again he relapsed into thoughtful silence. Our dinner appointment had been for a rather late hour in the evening, and by now the great dining-room was all but empty, though the small dark-faced man on our right was still dallying with the sweets and the black coffee. A heavy, intoxicating fragrance drifted across from the flowering cereus in the palm room, and the distance-mellowed strains of an orchestra playing in an alcove on the opposite side of the rotunda added another sensuous touch. The glamour of the tropics, a far-reaching breath of the beckoning mystery of shimmering seas, and coral reefs singing to the beat of the murmuring surf – the mystery whose appeal is ever and most strongly to the senses and the passions – was in the air when I said, gravely enough, I make no doubt:
"I'll go with you, Bonteck; and chiefly for the reason you have just given – the reason and the permission. Let this be your fair warning: if at any time your little farce threatens to grow into a tragedy, I shall most certainly call you down."
"I was rather hoping you'd say something like that," he agreed, with what appeared to be the utmost sincerity.
"At the same time," I went on, "it is only fair to add that your expensive experiment will fail. Nothing will happen on the Andromeda that couldn't, or wouldn't, happen in a house party at your country place in the Berkshires. You will come back as wise – or as foolish – as you are now."
"Oh, well," he said, pushing his chair back and casting the napkin aside, "we needn't pull the bud in pieces to find out what kind of a flower it's going to be. I can't promise you that you will be greatly edified, and it is quite within the possibilities that you may find yourself frightfully bored. But, in any event, it will help out a little if we leave something to the imagination, don't you think? – something to speculate about and to look forward to. I know it does look rather cut-and-dried in the prospect; eight bells breakfast, luncheon when you like to have it, dinner in the second dog-watch, and cards – always cards when Mrs. Van Tromp can find a partner and a table – in the evening."
He had got upon his feet and was standing before me, an acutely attractive figure of a well-built, well-groomed man in faultless evening dress. The identifying smile of other and less cynical days was drawing at the corners of his eyes when he went on.
"We'll live in hopes. Perhaps we shall be able to smash the Andromeda on some reef that isn't down on the charts. Failing that, there is always the chance of a stray hurricane – with the other chance of the engines breaking down at the inopportune moment. We shall find excitement of some kind; I can feel it in my bones."
"Small
