even if the servants do. But every now and then I feel toward her as I used to when I was a kid and she caught me stealing Uncle Oz’s cigarettes. Hurry!”

It was within a half hour of dinner time when Vail and Chase, by devious back ways, returned to Vailholme and let themselves in at a rear door, preparatory to creeping upstairs to their rooms to dress for the seven-o’clock meal.

[76]The dinner ordeal was one of unrelieved hideousness. But for gallant old Miss Gregg, the situation must have fallen asunder much sooner than it did. Thaxton Vail, at the table’s head, writhed in misery. He had absolutely no idea how to handle the unhandleable situation.

[76]

It was Miss Gregg who, unasked, took control of everything. Being wholly fearless, she had no normal terror of the austere Horoson or of the ever-sourer-visaged Vogel.

During the endless wait before dinner was announced she slipped out to the dining room. Thaxton was there, flustered and curt, trying to coerce his rebellious upper servants into setting the wheels of domestic machinery into motion.

Vogel already had given warning, proclaiming briefly but proudly the list of his former super-excellent positions, and repeating, as a sort of eternal slogan of refrain that he was a butler and not a boarding-house head waiter.

It was at this point that Hester Gregg took charge.

Grateful and sweating, Vail went back to the living room to listen gloomily to the Moselys’ recital to Chase and Doris of the various inns at which they had been either cheated or incompetently served. Though the couple did not say[77] so in actual words, Thaxton was left to infer that Vailholme combined the worst qualities of all their tour’s other wretched stopping places.

[77]

As he listened to the tale, Miss Gregg swept into the room again with the pure exaltation in her eyes of one who has triumphed in a seemingly hopeless battle. Presently thereafter Vogel announced dinner.

As the party filed stragglingly into the dining room, Clive Creede came downstairs and joined them. He seemed a little better for his afternoon’s rest, but still looked sick and shaky.

Thaxton’s collie, as usual, accompanied Vail to the dining room, lying down majestically 

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