Adirondacks, was unanswered up to the hour of going to press."
Peter let the paper drop upon his knees, and whistled father
shamefacedly. Here was a pretty kettle of fish indeed, and it was all of
his brewing. If he had kept his fingers out of the affairs of Hunston,
as both his enemy and his friend had warned him to do, the unscrupulous
editor would have had no interest in attacking him, over his captain's
shoulders, and this damaging story would never have been concocted and
spread broadcast as a feast for gossips. He had been brought to Hunston
to help Varney--and here was the front-page result.
If a similar thought flashed across Varney's mind in this disturbing
moment, he instantly forgot it for others more practical. He sat curled
up in a folding deck-chair, swiftly weighing what this new issue might
mean, and a moment of rather heavy silence ensued.
The cat was all but out of the bag: this fatal hint at "some secret
mission" made that plain. A little carelessness, some more shrewd
probing into his affairs, and the jig would be up, indeed. This was the
one way that their enemies in Hunston could interfere with
him--insisting on knowing why he had come there; and Coligny Smith had
had the bull luck, as Peter put it, to stumble on it.
Thus it fell out that he, Varney, who had needed to seek the dark and
unobtrusive ways, found himself thrust suddenly into the full glare of
the calcium. He who was guarding an errand which nobody should know
about was now to be asked by everybody who read newspapers just what
that errand was.
It was so absurd that all at once he laughed aloud. However, it was
becoming quite serious, and he saw that, too.
"Damn him!" broke out Peter, compactly, and he added presently: "Think
of his throwing a bomb in the air like that, and smoking out poor old
Carstairs!"
Varney looked up, knocked out his pipe against his heel, and restored it
thoughtfully to his pocket. "Yes. Did you notice the difference between
those two stories? He doesn't want Hunston even to suspect that I may be
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