"Yes. And I can wait, because I haven't got a match box of dynamite caps in my shirt. Or a box of conjuring powder, either."
"I don't expect you to see. I didn't send for you. I didn't want to get you mixed up in it."
"You never thought of that when you took my ring. Besides, you had already got me mixed up in it, the first night I ever saw you. You never minded then. So now I know a lot I didn't know before. And what does he think about that ring, by the way?" She didn't answer. She was not looking at him; neither was her face averted. After a time he said, "I see. He doesn't know about the ring. You never showed it to him." Still she didn't answer, looking neither at him nor away. "All right," he said "I'll give you one more chance."
She looked at him. "One more chance for what?" Then she said, "Oh. The ring. You want it back." He watched her, erect, expressionless, while she drew from inside her dress a slender cord on which was suspended the ring and a second object which he recognized in the flicking movement which broke the cord, to be the tiny metal rabbit of which the proprietress had told him. Then it was gone, and her hand flicked again, and something struck him a hard, stinging blow on the cheek. She was already running toward the stairs. After a time he stooped and picked up the ring from the floor. He looked about the lobby. "They're all down at the spring," he thought, holding the ring on his palm. "That's what people come here for: to drink water."
They were there, clotting in the marquee above the well, with their bright shawls and magazines. As he approached, Mrs. King came quickly out of the group, carrying one of the stained tumblers in her hand. "Yes?" she said. "Yes?"
Jarrod extended his hand on which the ring lay. Mrs. King looked down at the ring, her face cold, quiet, outraged.
"Sometimes I wonder if she can be my daughter. What will you do now?"
Jarrod, too, looked down at the ring, his face also cold, still. "At first I thought I just had to compete with a horse," he said. "But it seems there is more going on here than I knew of, than I was told of."
"Fiddlesticks," Mrs. King said. "Have you been listening to that fool Lily Cranston, to these other old fools here?"
"Not to learn any more than everybody else seems to have known all the time. But then, I'm only the man she was engaged to marry." He looked down at the ring. "What do you think I had better do now?"
"If you're a man that has to stop to ask advice from a woman in a case like this, then you'd better take the advice and take your ring and go on back to Nebraska or Kansas or wherever it is."
"Oklahoma," Jarrod said sullenly. He closed his hand on the ring. "He'll be on that bench," he said.
"Why shouldn't he?" Mrs. King said. "He has no one to fear here."
But Jarrod was already moving away. "You go on to Louise," he said. "I'll attend to this."
Mrs. King watched him go on down the path. Then she turned herself and flung the stained tumbler into an oleander bush and went to the hotel, walking fast, and mounted the stairs. Louise was in her room, dressing. "So you gave Hubert back his ring," Mrs. King said. "That man will be pleased now. You will have no secret from him now, if the ring ever was a secret. Since you don't seem to have any private affairs where he is concerned; don't appear to desire any "
"Stop," Louise said. "You can't talk to me like that."
"Ah. He would be proud of that, too, to have hard that from his pupil."
"He wouldn't let me down. But you let me down. He wouldn't let me down." She stood thin and taut, her hands clenched at her sides. Suddenly she began to cry, her face lifted, the tears rolling down her cheeks. "I worry and I worry and I don't know what to do. And now you let me down, my own mother."
Mrs. King sat on the bed. Louise stood in her underthings, the garments she had removed scattered here and there, on the bed and on the chairs. On the table beside the bed lay the little metal rabbit; Mrs. King looked at it for a moment.
"Don't you want to marry Hubert?" she said.
"Didn't I promise him, you and him both? Didn't I take his ring? But you won't let me alone. He won't give me time, a chance. And now you let me down, too. Everybody lets me down except Doctor Jules."
Mrs. King watched her, cold, immobile. "I believe that fool Lily Cranston is right. I believe that man has some criminal power over you. I just thank God he has not it for anything except to try to make you kill yourself, make a fool of yourself. Not yet, that is "
"Stop," Louise said; "stop!" She continued to say "Stop. Stop!" even when Mrs. King walked up and touched her.
"But you let me down! And now Hubert has let me down. He told you about that horse after he had promised me he wouldn't."
"I knew that already. That's why I sent for him. I could do nothing with you. Besides, it's anybody's business to keep you from riding it."
"You can't keep me. You may keep me locked up in this room to-day, but you can't always. Because you are older than I am. You'll have to die first, even if it takes a hundred years. And I'll come back and ride that horse if it takes a thousand years."
"Maybe I won't be here then," Mrs. King said. "But neither will he. I can outlive him. And I can keep you locked up in this room for one day, anyway."
Fifteen minutes later the ancient porter knocked at the locked door. Mrs. King went and opened it. "Mr. Jarrod wants to see you downstairs," the porter said.
She locked the door behind her. Jarrod was in the lobby.
It was empty. "Yes?" Mrs. King said. "Yes?"
"He said that if Louise would tell him herself she wants to marry me. Send him a sign."
"A sign?" They both spoke quietly, a little tensely, though quite calm, quite grave.
"Yes. I showed him the ring, and him sitting there on that bench, in that suit looking like he had been sleeping in it all summer, and his eyes watching me like he didn't believe she had ever seen the ring. Then he said, 'Ah. You have the ring. Your proof seems to be in the hands of the wrong party. If you and Louise are engaged, she should have the ring. Or am I just old fashioned?' And me standing there like a fool and him looking at the ring like it might have come from Woolworth's. He never even offered to touch it."
"You showed him the ring? The ring? You fool. What..."
"Yes. I don't know. It was just the way he sat there, the way he makes her do things, I guess. It was like he was laughing at me, like he knew all the time there was nothing I could do, nothing I could think of doing about it he had not already thought about; that he knew he could always get between us before in time..."
"Then what? What kind of a sign did he say?"
"He didn't say. He just said a sign, from her hand to his. That he could believe, since my having the ring had exploded my proof. And then I caught my hand just before it hit him and him sitting there. He didn't move; he just sat there with his eyes closed and the sweat popping out on his face. And then he opened his eyes and said, 'Now, strike me.'"