Gloria found herself the victim of the attentions of a large, jovial man whose playfulness was a little too heavy for her liking. She was about to snub him when someone casually alluded to him as Frank Mulry. Gloria staggered in the snow at meeting thus by chance the man she had tried in vain to overtake in town. Mulry, never imagining who she was, thought that she had slipped on the icy snow; he put out his hand to catch her. Mulry was always ready for flirtation.
Preparedness was Mulry's motto.
Gloria studied him a moment. This was the partner of her murdered lover. He was too amiable of men to be incapable of such a crime. She acquitted him of wishing to do away with Freneau. In fact, the papers said that Freneau's death laid nearly, wrecked the firm. Mulry did not look bankrupt. Gloria did not know that her father had given a large sum of money to Freneau a few days before his death and that Mulry was living on that.
There was a shifty flippancy in Mulry's eyes and manner that made Gloria distrust him. She felt a little added distrust of her dead lover for having such a man as a partner. The hateful proverb about "birds of a feather" ran through her mind like a tune in any case, here at last was the man she sought, and she was impatient to question him. There were too many people on the crest of the hill to permit of conversation there. So she dared him to a toboggan ride. 