“Five? Nearer ten,” scoffed her brother.
Holmes got up abruptly. “Well, I’ll be drifting. When is this binge of yours?”
“Three-thirty, which really means four,” answered Ricky. “Aren’t you going to stay to lunch?”
The New Yorker shook his head. “Sorry, I’ve another engagement. Thanks just the same.”
“Thank you!” Val waved the note-book as he vanished. “Wonder why he hurried off that way?”
“Mad to think that Miss Charity was gone,” answered Rod shrewdly. “Yo’ve had that board long enough.” He calmly possessed himself of Val’s drawing equipment. “Time to rest.”
“Yes, grandfather,” his cousin assented meekly.
Ricky slapped at a fly. “It seems to get hotter and hotter,” she said. From the breast pocket of her sport dress she produced a handkerchief and mopped her face. Then she looked at the handkerchief in surprise.
“What’s the matter? Some face come off along with the paint?” asked Val.
“No. But I just remembered what this is—our clue!”
“You mean the handkerchief we found in the hall? I wonder who—”
Rod reached up and took it out of her hand.
“Mine. Miss Charity gave me a dozen last Christmas.”
“Then you left it there,” Ricky laughed. “Well, that solves the last of our mysteries.”
“All present or accounted for,” Val agreed as around the house came Rupert and their tenant.
“So there you are,” began Ricky. “And I’d like to know what you’ve been doing all morning—”
“Would you really?” asked Rupert.
Ricky stared at him for a long moment and then she arose before transferring her gaze to Charity. It might have been sunburn or the heat Ricky had complained of which colored the cheeks of the Boston Biglow.
“Rod! Val!” cried Ricky. “Where are your manners?”
As she sank forward in a deep and graceful curtsy she added, “Can’t you see that Rupert has brought home his Marchioness?”
“Now that,” said Val. as he held out his hand to the new mistress of Pirate’s Haven, “is what I call ‘Ralestone Luck.’ “