out to dinner. Listen, if you like, while an arrested felon telephones to his friends, seeking bondsmen. You may hear secret codes and signals passing over the wire. You may even wish to put under surveillance the gentlemen with whom I communicate."
"Doctor! Doctor!" protested Searle, with hands uplifted comically. "Your hospitality and your irony both embarrass us. The detectives and I will be on our way. Wyatt will have to do his duty."
"As you please," exclaimed Hampstead, who was fast recovering his poise; "quite as you please."
With this speech he held open the outside door and bade the three departing guests good evening; and then, while the Deputy waited in the room, the clergyman was busy at the telephone until he had the promise of three different gentlemen of his acquaintance to meet him at Judge Brennan's chambers at nine that night and qualify as his bondsmen in the sum of ten thousand dollars.
This much attended to, dinner became the next order; but it was not a very happy affair. There had never been a time when the little family group, bound together by ties that were unusually tender, wished more to be alone at a meal. Now, when the superfluous presence was the official representative of the very thing that had plunged them into gloom, the situation became one of torture. Food stuck to palates. Scraps of conversation were dropped at rare intervals and upon entirely extraneous subjects in which nobody, not even the speakers, had the slightest interest. At times there was no sound save the audible enjoyment of his food by their guest, for the Deputy Sheriff, accustomed to the ruthless thrust of his official self into the personal and sometimes the domestic life of individuals, was quite too crass to sense the embarrassment and positive pain his presence caused and was also exceedingly hungry.
