"Because the man's not—well, not the sort of manyour brother (if you have one) would be too pleased to find you making friends with, Miss Lovelace."
"Never mind all these brothers and sisters. They aren't here," I said rather impatiently. "What sort of man d'you mean you think Mr. Burke is that you want Miss Million warned against him?"
"I think any man would guess at the kind of man he was—shady."
"D'you mean," I said, "that he cheats at cards; that sort of thing?"
"Oh! I don't know that he'd do that——"
"What does he do, then?"
"Ah! that's what one would like to know," said the young bank manager, frowning down at me. "What does he do? How does he live? Apparently in one room in Jermyn Street, over a hairdresser's.
"But he's never there. He's always about in the most expensive haunts in London, always with people who have money. Pigeons to pluck. I don't believe the fellow has a penny of his own, Miss Lovelace."
"Is that a crime?" I said. "I haven't a penny myself."
Then I felt absolutely amazed with myself. Here I was positively defending that young scamp and fortune-hunter who had this very afternoon admitted to me that he'd told Million fibs, and that he got what he could out of everybody.
Another thing. Here I was feeling quite annoyed with Mr. Brace for coming here with these warnings about this other man! Yet it was only the other day that I'd made up my mind to ask Mr. Brace for hiscandid opinion on the subject of Miss Million's new friend!
And now I said almost coldly: "Have you anything at all definite to tell me against Mr. Burke's character?"
"Yes. As it happens, I have," said Mr. Brace quickly, standing there even more stiffly. "I told you that I had met the man once before. I'll tell you where it was, Miss Lovelace. It was at my own bank. He came to me with a sort of an introduction from a client of ours, a young cavalry officer. He, Mr. Burke, told me he'd be glad to open an account with us."
"Yes? So did Miss Million."
"Hardly in the same way," said Mr. Brace. "After a few preliminaries this man Burke told me that at the moment he was not prepared to pay anything in to his account, but——"
"—But what?" I took up as my visitor paused impressively, as if before the announcement of something almost unspeakably wicked.
"This man Burke actually had the assurance," said the young bank manager in outraged tones, "the assurance to suggest to me that the bank should thereupon advance to him, as a loan out of his 'account,' fifty pounds down!"
"Yes?" I said a little doubtfully, for I wasn't quite sure where the point of this came in. "And then what happened?"
"What happened? Why! I showed the new 'client' out without wasting any more words," returned my visitor severely.
"Don't you see, Miss Lovelace? He'd made use of his introduction to try to 'rush' me into letting him have ready-money to the tune of fifty pounds! Do you suppose I should ever have seen them again? That," said the young bank manager impressively, "is the sort of man he is——" He broke off to demand: "Why do you laugh?"
It certainly was unjustifiable. But I couldn't help it.
I saw it all! The room at the bank where Million and I had interviewed the manager. The manager himself, with the formal manner that he "wears" like a new and not very comfortable suit of clothes, asking the visitor to sit down.
Then the Honourable Jim, in his gorgeously cut coat, with his daring yet wary blue eyes, smiling down at the other man (Mr. Brace is a couple of inches shorter). The Honourable Jim, calmly demanding fifty pounds "on account" (of what) in that insinuating, flattering, insidious, softly pitched Celtic voice of his ..."
"Common robbery. I see no difference between that and picking a man's pocket!" declared the young manager.
Perfectly true, of course. If you come to think of it, the younger son of Lord Ballyneck is no better than a sort of Twentieth-century Highwayman. There's really nothing to be said for him. Only why should Mr. Brace speak so rebukefully to me? It wasn't I who had tried to pick the pocket of his precious bank!
"And yet you don't see," persisted the manager, "why a fellow of that stamp should not be admitted to friendly terms with you!"
"With me? We're not talking about me at all!" I reminded this young man. And to drive this home I turned to the mirror and gave a touch or two to the white muslin butterfly of the cap that marked my place. "We're talking about my mistress. I am only Miss Million's maid——"
"Pshaw!"
"I can't pretend to dictate to my mistress what friends she is to receive——"
"Oh!" said the young man impatiently. "That's in your own hands. You know it is. This maid business—well, if I were your brother I should soon put a stop to it, but, anyhow, you know who's really at the head of affairs. You know that you must have a tremendous influence over this—this other girl. She naturally makes you her mentor; models herself, or tries to, on you. If she thought that you considered anything or any one undesirable, she would very soon 'drop' it. What you say goes, Miss Lovelace."
"Does it, indeed!" I retorted. "Nothing of the kind. It did once, perhaps. But this evening—do you know what? Miss Million has gone out in a frock that I positively forbade her to buy. A cerise horror that's not only 'undesirable,' as you call it, but makes her look——"
"Oh, a frock! Why is it a woman can never keep to the point?" demanded this young Mr. Brace. "What's it got to do with the matter in hand what frock Miss Million chooses to go out in?"
"Why, everything! Doesn't it just show what's happening," I explained patiently. "It means thatMiss Million doesn't make an oracle of me any more. She'd rather model herself on some of the people she's going to supper with tonight. Miss Vi Vassity, say——"
"What! That awful woman on the halls?" broke in Mr. Brace, with as much disapproval in his voice and tone as there could have been in my Aunt Anastasia's if she had been told that any girl she knew was hobnobbing with "London's Love," the music-hall artiste.
"Who introduced her to Miss Million, may I ask?" he went on. "No, I needn't ask; I can guess. That's this man Burke. That's his crowd. Music-hall women, German Jews, disreputable racing men, young gilded idiots like the man in the cavalry who sent him to me."
Then (furiously): "That's the set of people he'll bring in to associate with you two inexperienced girls," said Mr. Brace.
And now his face was very angry—quite pale with temper. He looked rather fine, I thought. He might have posed for a picture of one of Cromwell's young Ironsides, straight-lipped, uncompromisingly sincere, and "square," and shocked at everything.
I simply couldn't help rather enjoying the mild excitement of seeing him so wrathful.
Surely he must be reallyépriswith Million to be so roused over her knowing a few unconventional people. I've read somewhere that the typical young Englishman may be considered to be truly in love as soon as he begins to resent some girl's other amusements.
Mr. Brace went on: "And where has he taken Miss Million to this evening, may I ask?"
I moved to put the cushions straight on the couch as I gave him the evening's programme. "They were dining at the Carlton with a party, I think. Then they were going on to see Miss Vi Vassity's turn at the Palace. Then they were all to have supper at a place called the Thousand and One——"
"Where?" put in Mr. Brace, in a voice so horrified that it made his remarks up till then sound quite pleased and approving. "The Thousand and One Club? He's taken Miss Million there? Of all places on earth! You let her go there?"
He spoke as if nothing more terrible could have happened....
Butwhy am I writing all this, in view of the really serious and terrible thing that has happened after all?
Yes. The most terrible thing has happened. Miss Million has disappeared.
Gone! And no trace of her!
And I don't know where to look for her.... But to go back to the beginning of it all—to that fatal evening when Mr. Reginald Brace stood there in her sitting-room, looking at me with that horrified face because I told him she'd gone to supper at the Thousand and One Club.
Five minutes after that young man's appalled-sounding "What? You let her go there?" I was sitting in a taxi, with him, whirling towards Regent Street.
"Yes; that's where she's gone," I told him, with a queer mix-up of feelings. There was defiance among them. What right had he to come and bully me because I couldn't keep Miss Million and her dollars and her new friends all under my thumb? There was anxiety.... Supposing this Thousand and One Club were such an appallingly awful place that no young girl ought to set foot in it? There was a queer excitement.... Well, anyhow, I might see and judge for myself. Then I should be in a position to lecture Miss Million about it, if necessary, afterwards!
So I said: "Not only that, but I'm going there, too. To-night. Now!"
"Impossible," said Mr. Brace. "Madness. Quite impossible. You go? To a night club? You? Alone?"
"No," I said on another impulse. "You'll come with me. I've got to have a man with me, I suppose. You'll take me, please."
"I shall do nothing of the sort, Miss Lovelace," said the young bank manager, standing there in my mistress's sitting-room as if nothing would ever dislodge him from the spot. "Take you to that place—it's not a place that I should ever let any sister of mine know by sight!"
By this time I'd heard so much of this (non-existent) sister of his that I almost felt as if I knew her well (poor girl). I felt as if I were she. Yes. Mr. Brace seemed to behave so exactly like the typical "nice" big brother; the man who shows his respect for women by refusing to let his own sisters see or do anything except, say, the darning of his own socks. However, in some way or other I managed to drive it home (this was when we were already in the taxi) that he need not look upon this as an evening's entertainment to which he was escorting either his own or anybody else's sister.
This was part of the business of looking after Miss Million.
We were at Piccadilly Circus when the young man at my side protested: "But we can't get in, you know! I'm not a member of this thing. I can't take you in, Miss Lovelace——"
"I'm Smith, the lady's-maid of one of the ladies who's in the club, and I've come to wait for my mistress," I told him. "That's perfectly simple. And I daresay it'll allow me to see something of what's going on!"
Here we drew up at a side street. It was half full of cars and taxis, half full with a rebuilding of scaffolding that made a tunnel over the basement.
The door of the club was beyond the scaffolding and a tall commissionaire, with a breast glittering with medals, opened and closed it with the movements of a punkah-wallah. Inside was red carpet and a blaze of lights and an inner glass door.
In this vestibule there was a little knot of men in chauffeurs' liveries, with wet gleaming on the shoulders of their coats, for an unexpected shower had just come on. I was glad of it. This gave me, too, my excuse for waiting there, when one of the attendants slipped up to me and looked inquiringly down at me in my correct, outdoor black things.
"I am to wait," I said, "for my mistress."
"Very good, Miss. Would you like a chair in the ladies' cloak-room?"
"No. I don't think she will be very long, thank you," I said. And I heard Mr. Brace, behind me, saying in his embarrassed, stiff, young voice: "I am waiting with this lady."
(The commissionaires and people must have thought that the little, chestnut-haired lady's-maid in black had got hold of a most superior sort of young man!)
I stepped farther up the vestibule towards a longdoor with a bevelled, oval, glass-panelled top. Evidently the door of the supper-room. From beyond it came the muffled crash and lilt of dance music that set my own foot tapping in time on the smooth floor. I looked through the glass panel that framed, as it were, the gayest of coloured moving pictures.
The big room was a sort of papier-maché Alhambra; all zigzaggy arches and gilded columns and decorations, towering above a spread of supper-tables. Silver and white napery were blushing to pink under the glow of rosy-shaded electric candles innumerable. Some chairs were turned up, waiting for parties. But there were plenty of people there already; a flower-bed of frocks, made more bright by the black-and-white border of the men's evening kit.
The ladies were all sitting on the wall seats; their cavaliers sat with chairs slewed round, watching three or four couples one-stepping among the tables to the music of that string band, in cream-and-gold uniforms, who were packed away in a Moorish niche at the top of the room.
I got a burst of louder, madder music as a waiter with a tray pushed through the swung door; a waft of warmer air, made up of the smells of coffee, of cigarettes, of hot food, and of those perfumes of which you catch a whiff if you pass down the Burlington Arcade—oppoponax, lilac, Russian violet, Phul-nana—all blended together into one tepid, overpowering whole, and, most penetrating, most unmistakable of all the scents; the trèfle incarnat.... It reminded me that Million would buy a great spray-bottle of mixedbouquet, and had drenched herself with it, heedless of my theory that a properly groomed woman needs very little added perfume.
But where was Miss Million, in the middle of the noise and feasting? Ah! There! I caught, in a cluster of other colours—green, white, rose, and gold—the unmistakable metaphorical shriek of the frock I'd begged her not to wear. "Me cerise evening one." There it was; and there were Million's sturdily built, rather square little shoulders, and her glossy black hair that I've learnt to do rather well. She was gazing about her with jewel-bright eyes and a flush on her cheeks that almost echoed the cherry-colour of her odious frock, and listening to the chatter of the golden-haired, sulphur-crested cockatoo, Vi Vassity; there she was; and there was the Jew they called Leo, and Lady Golightly-Long in a fantastic Oriental robe of sorts, and a cluster of others. There, too, towering above them all as he came steering his way across the room, and looking more like a magazine illustration than ever in evening-dress, was the Honourable James Burke.
I saw Million's mouth open widely to some lively greeting as he came up; they were all laughing and chattering together. But I didn't hear a word, of course. All was blent into an indistinguishable hubbub against the music. The loudest part of all seemed to be at a table next to Miss Million and her new friends. This other table was entertained by a vacuous young man with an eyeglass, who looked as if he'd already had quite as much Bubbley as was good for him. Helaughed incessantly; wrangling with the waiter, calling to friends across the room.
As the Honourable Jim passed, this eyeglassed young man signalled wildly to him, and took up a paper "dart" into which he'd twisted his menu-card. He flung it—and missed.
It stuck in the hair of one of the girls who was dancing. And then there was a little gale of laughter and protests and calls, and the eyeglassed young man put two fingers in his mouth and whistled piercingly to Mr. Burke, who strode over to him, laughing, and cuffed him on the side of the head. Then they began a sort of mock fight, and a waiter came up and whispered and was pushed out of the way, and there was more laughter.
The attention of the room was caught by the two skirmishing, ragging young men. They were for the moment the centre of the whirl and swirl of colour and noise and rowdy laughter.
"There you are, Miss Lovelace. You see the kind of thing it is," said an austere voice behind me. I turned from the gay picture to a gloomy one—the face of Mr. Reginald Brace, more than ever that of a young Puritan soldier—a Roundhead, in fact—left over from the Reformation, and looking on at some feasting of the courtiers of Charles II. So far, I hadn't see anything very terrible in the giddy scene before us; it was loud, it was rowdy, rather silly, perhaps, but quite amusing (I thought) to watch!
Mr. Brace evidently took it quite differently.
He said: "Will this convince you? By Jove! how disgusting." Mr. Burke had now got the other youngman down on the carpet. His glossily shod feet waved wildly in the air. People from the tables farthest away stood up to see what was happening. A slim American flapper of sixteen, with the black hair-ribbons bobbing behind her, skipped up on her chair to look. The Honourable Jim Burke stepped back, showing his white teeth in his cheeriest grin, and one of the other youths at the table helped the eyeglassed one to struggle to his feet.
"Who is that? Do you know?" I asked Mr. Brace.
He answered morosely: "Yes, I'm afraid I do. It was with his introduction that that fellow Burke came to me. That's Lord Fourcastles."
The noble lord seemed to have quite a fancy for throwing things about—for first he made his table-napkin into a rabbit and slung it at the waiter's head; and then he picked up a "Serpentine" of gay tinsel, and with a falsetto shout of "Play!" flung it across the supper-room.
Somebody there seemed to have a stock of the things. Lord Fourcastles was pelted back with them. Presently the brilliant strings of colour were looped right across food, and flowers, and diners in a gaudy, giant web. I saw the Honourable Jim's merry face break through it as he caught at a scarlet streamer and pretended to use it as a lariat.
Then I saw him turn and take Lord Fourcastles by the arm and draw him towards his own table. Evidently he was going to introduce this young peer to Miss Million.
I caught a glimpse of Million's excited little face,all aglow, turned towards the door through which I was peeping. If I'd gone a step nearer she might have seen me. I could have beckoned to her, made her come out to see what the matter was. Then I could have insisted that it was time for her to come home, or something ... something!
I believe I might have made her come!
Oh, why didn't I try to do this?
Why, why didn't I do it before it was too late?
As the two neighbouring supper parties amalgamated into one the fun seemed to get even more fast and furious.
It was deafeningly noisy now. And still the noise was rising as more guests came in. People flung themselves about in their chairs; the dancing became, if anything, more of a romp than before.
I had a glimpse of the eyeglassed, young Lord Fourcastles stretching over the table to grab some pink flowers out of a silver bowl. He began sticking them in Miss Million's hair; I saw her toss her little dark head back, giggling wildly; I could imagine the shrill "Ows" and "Give overs" that were coming out of her pink "O" of a mouth.
Then I saw Mr. Burke spring up from his chair again, and put his arm round Miss Vi Vassity's waist, dragging "London's Love" round the tables in a mad prance that I suppose was intended for a one-step, she laughing so much that she could neither dance nor stand still, and giving a generous display of high-heeled, gilt cothurne and of old-gold silk stocking as she was steered and whirled along.
"Stand away from the door, there, Miss. Stand away, please," said one of the hurrying waiters. And I stood away, followed by my grave-faced escort, Mr. Brace. We retired further down the vestibule, among the little knot of attendants and of waiting chauffeurs.
"Have you seen enough of it, Miss Lovelace?" asked Mr. Brace.
"I think so," I said. I was feeling suddenly rather tired, bored by the noise, dazzled by the blaze of pink lights and the whirl of colour. "I don't think I'll wait for Miss Million after all. I'll go home." I meant to think over the talking-to that I should give Million when she returned.
"I'll get you a taxi," began Mr. Brace. But I stopped him.
"I don't want a taxi, thanks——"
"Please. I want to see you home."
"Oh! But I don't want you to," I said hastily. "I'll get the 'bus. It's such a short way. Good-night."
But he wouldn't say "Good-night." He insisted on boarding the 'bus with me, and plumping himself down on the front seat beside me, under the fine drizzle that was still coming down.
Certainly it was only a short 'bus ride to the Strand, but a good deal happened in it. In fact, that happened which is supposed to mark an unforgettable epoch in a girl's life—her first proposal of marriage.
Wewere alone on the top of the 'bus.
Mr. Brace turned to me, settling the oil-cloth 'bus apron over my knees as if I were a very small and helpless child that must be taken great care of.
Then he said: "You didn't like it, did you? All that?" with a jerk of his head towards the side street from which the 'bus was lurching away.
I said: "Well! I don't think there seemed to be any real harm in that sort of frivolling. It's very expensive, though, I suppose——"
"Very," said Mr. Brace grimly.
"But, of course, Miss Million has plenty of money to waste. Still, it's rather silly—a lot of grown-up people behaving like that——"
Here I had another mental glimpse of Mr. Burke's reckless, merry, well-bred face, bending over Miss Vi Vassity's common, good-humoured one, with its shrewd, black eyes, its characteristic flash of prominent white teeth; I saw his tall, supple figure whirling round her rather squat, overdressed little shape in that one-step.
"'Larking' about with all sorts of people they wouldn't otherwise meet, I suppose, and shrieking and 'ragging' like a lot of costers on Hampstead Heath. Yes. Really it was rather like a very much more expensive Bank Holiday crowd. It was only anotherway of dancing to organs in the street, and of flourishing 'tiddlers,' and of shrieking in swing-boats, and of changing hats. Only all that seems to 'go' with costers. And it doesn't with these people," I said, thinking of Mr. Burke's clean-limbed, public-school, hunting-field look.
"I shall tell Mill—Miss Million that. And she won't like it," I chattered on, as Mr. Brace didn't seem to be going to say anything more. "I really think she's better away from those places, perhaps, after all.
"Late hours won't suit her, I know. Why, she's never been out of bed after half-past ten before in her whole life. And she's never tasted those weird things they were having for supper; hot dressed crab and pastry with mushrooms inside it! As for champagne—well, I expect she'll have a horrid headache to-morrow. I shall have to give her breakfast in bed and look after her like a moth——"
"Miss Lovelace! You must do nothing of the sort. That sort of thing must stop," the young man at my side blurted out. "You oughtn't to be doing that. It's too preposterous——"
This was the second time to-day I'd heard that word applied to my working as Miss Million's maid. The first time the Honourable Jim Burke had said it. Now here was a young man who disagreed with the Honourable Jim on every other point, apparently working himself up into angry excitement over this.
"That you—you—should be Miss Million's maid. Good heavens! It's unthinkable!"
"I suppose you mean," I said rather maliciously,"that you couldn't think of that sister of yours doing anything of the kind."
He didn't seem to hear me. He said quite violently: "You must give it up. You must give it up at once."
I laughed a little. I said: "Give up a good, well-paid and amusing situation? Why? And what could I do instead? Go back to my aunt, I suppose——"
"No," broke in the young bank manager, still quite violently, "come to me, couldn't you?"
I was so utterly taken aback that I hadn't a word to reply. I thought I must have misunderstood what he said.
There was a moment of jolting silence.
Then, in a tone of voice that seemed as if it had been jerked out of him, sentence by sentence, with the rolling of the 'bus, Mr. Brace went on:
"Miss Lovelace! I don't know whether you knew it, but—I have always—if you only knew the enormous admiration, the reverence, that I have always had for you—I ought not to have said it so soon, I suppose. I meant not to have said it for some time yet. But if you could possibly—there is nothing that I would not do to try to make you happy, if you would consent to become my wife."
"Oh, good heavens!" I exclaimed, absolutely dazed.
"I know," said young Mr. Brace rather hoarsely, "that it is fearful presumption on my part. I know I haven't got anything much to offer a girl like you."
"Oh," I said, coming out of my first shock of surprise, "oh, but I'm sure you have." I felt quite a lumpin my throat. I was so touched at the young man's modesty. I said again: "Oh, but I'm sure you have, Mr. Brace. Heaps!"
And I looked at his face in the light of the street lamp past which the 'bus was swinging. That radiance and the haze of lamp-lit raindrops made a sort of "glory" about him. He has a nice face, one can't deny it. A fair, frank, straight, conscientious, young face. So typically the best type of honourable, reliable, average young Englishman. Such a contrast to the wary, subtle, dare-devil Celtic face, with the laughing, mocking eyes of Mr. Jim Burke, for example.
The next thing I knew was that Mr. Brace had got hold of my hand and was holding it most uncomfortably tight.
"Then, could you?" he said in that strained voice. "Do you mean you could make me so tremendously proud and happy?"
"Oh, no! I'm afraid not," I said hastily. "I couldn't!"
"Oh, don't say that," he put in anxiously. "Miss Lovelace! If you only knew! I am devoted to you. Nobody could be more so. If you could only try to care for me. Of course, I see this must seem very abrupt."
"Oh, not at all," I put in hastily again. I did hate not to seem kind and nice to him, after he'd said he was devoted, even though it did sound—well—do I mean "stilted"? The next thing he said was also rather stilted and embarrassing.
"But ever since I first saw you in Putney I knewthe truth. You are the one girl in the world for me!"
"Oh, no! There must be such crowds of them," I assured him. "Really pretty ones; much nicer than me. I'm sure I'm not one bit as nice as you think me.... Oh, heavens——"
For here a wild jolt from the motor-'bus had nearly pitched me into his arms. The top of the 'bus is absolutely the worst place in the world to listen to a proposal, unless you're absolutely certain of accepting the young man. Even so it must have its drawbacks.
"I'm sure," I said, "that I should be bad-tempered, horrid to live with——"
"Miss Lovelace——"
"And here's the Cecil. I must get off here," I said with some relief. "Good-night. No! Please don't get off with me. I'd so much rather you didn't."
"May I see you again, then? Soon?" he persisted, standing up on that horrible 'bus that rocked like a boat at anchor in a rough sea. "To-morrow?"
"Yes—no, not to-morrow——"
"Yes, to-morrow. I have so much to say to you. I must call. I'll write——"
"Good-night!" I called back ruefully.
And feeling aghast and amused and a little elated all at once, Miss Million's maid, who had just had an offer of marriage from the manager of Miss Million's bank, entered Miss Million's hotel, and went upstairs to Miss Million's rooms to wait until her mistress came back from the Thousand and One.
When I had taken off my wet outdoor things andreassumed my cap and apron, I sat down on Miss Million's plump pink couch, stuffed one downy cushion into the curve of my back, another into the nape of my neck, put my slippered feet up on apouffe, and prepared to wait up for her, dozing, perhaps....
Itwas a very deep doze into which I sank. I roused myself with a start as the little gilt clock on the mantel-piece chimed four.
I sprang up. Had Miss Million come in without waking me?
I tapped at the door of her bedroom. No reply.
I went softly in, switching on the lights. There was no one there. All was in the apple-pie order in which I had left her pretty, luxurious room.
She hadn't come in? At four o'clock? Wondering and troubled, I went back to the couch and dozed again.
It was five o'clock when next I woke. Dawn struggled through the chinks of the blinds.
No Million.
I waited, and waited.
Six o'clock in the morning. I threw aside the curtains.... Bright daylight now. Still no Million!
Seven o'clock, and the cheery sounds of morning activity all around me.
But Million hadn't come in.
Out all night?
What could be the meaning of it?
From eight to nine-thirty this morning I have spent sitting at the telephone in my mistress's room; feverishlyfluttering the leaves of the thick red telephone book, and calling up the numbers of people who I have imagined might know what has become of Miss Million, the heiress, and why she has not come home.
I turned up first of all her hostess at the Supper Club. "London's Love," she may be; but certainly not my love. It was she who asked Million to that horrible party.
"Give me 123 Playfair, please.... Is that Miss Vi Vassity?... Can I speak to Miss Vi Vassity, please? It is something urgent——"
A pert and Cockney voice squeaked into my ear that Miss Vi Vassity wasn't at home. That nobody knew when she was coming back. That the time to expect her was the time when she was seen coming in!
Charming trait! But why did the comedienne with the brass-bright hair choose to pass on that characteristic to my mistress?
I tried another number. "Nought, nought, nought Gerrard, please. I want to speak to Mr. Burke."
A rich brogue floated back to me across the wires. "What's attached to the charmin' girlish voice that's delighting my ears?"
"This is Miss—Miss Million's maid."
"Go on, darlin'," said the voice.
I gasped.
"Is that Mr. Burke speaking?"
"Who should ut be? This is the great, the notorious Burke himself."
"I mean," I called flurriedly, "is that my Mr. Burke?"
"I'd ask to be called nothing better!" declared the voice. "Thry me!"
I raged, flushing scarlet, and thanking heaven that those irrepressible blue Irish eyes did not see my angry confusion.
I called back: "This is important, Mr. Burke. I want to ask you about my mistress. Miss Million has not come back, and I want you to tell me if you know where she has gone."
"Is there anything I'd refuse a young lady? I'd tell you in one minute if I knew, me dear."
"You don't know?" anxiously. "Where did you last see her?"
"Isn't it my own black and bitter loss that I'll confide to ye now? Miss Million, d'ye say? Faith, I've never seen her at all!"
"Not last night——"
"Not anny night. Can't I come round and dhry those tears for her pretty maid?" demanded the voice that I now heard to be Irish with a difference from the softly persuasive accent of the Honourable Jim.
It went on: "Sure, I can see from here the lovely gyrull you must be, from your attractive voice! Where'r' ye speakin' from? Will I call on ye this afternoon, or will ye come round to——"
I broke in with severity:
"Do you mind telling me your other name?"
"Christian names already? With all the pleasure in life, dear," came back the eager answer. "Here's a health to those that love me, and me name's Julian!"
With another gasp I hung up the receiver, cuttingoff this other, this unknown "J. Burke," whom I had evoked in my flurry and the anxiety that caused the addresses in the telephone book to dance before my eyes.
I got the number of the Honourable James Burke, and found myself speaking, I suppose, to somebody in the Jermyn Street hairdresser's shop, above which, as I'd heard from Mr. Brace, the Honourable Jim lived in a single room.
"No, Madam, I am afraid he is not in," was the answer here. "I am afraid I couldn't tell you, Madam. I don't know at all. Will you leave any message?"
"No, thank you."
It didn't seem worth while, for, as Mr. Brace said, he's never there. He's always to be found in some expensive haunt.
Next I rang up the abode in Mount Street of the cobra-woman, the classic dancer, Lady Golightly-Long. Her maid informed me, rebukefully, that her ladyship wasn't up yet; her ladyship wasn't awake. I left a message, and the maid will ring me up here.... There may be something to hope for from that, but I shall have to wait. I seem to have waited years!
Now, in desperation, I have got on to Lord Fourcastles's house.
"No; his lordship has not been at home for several days."
I suppose this is the man speaking.
"No. I couldn't say where his lordship is likely to be found, I'm sure."
Oh, these people! These friends of the HonourableJim's, who all seem to share his habit of melting into some landscape where they are not to be found! Never mind any of them, though. The question is, Miss Million! Where have they put her, among them? What have they done with my child-heiress of a mistress?
I had hoped to receive some explanation of the mystery by this morning's post. Nothing! Nothing but a sheaf of circulars and advertisements and catalogues for Miss Million, and one grey note for Miss Million's maid. It was addressed to "Miss Smith."
I sighed, half-resentfully, as I tore it open. Under any other circumstances it would have marked such a red-letter day in my life.
I knew what it was. The first love-letter I had ever received. Of course, from Mr. Reginald Brace. He writes from what used to be "Next Door," in Putney, S.W. He says:
My Dear Miss Lovelace:—I wanted to put 'Beatrice,' since I know that is your beautiful name, but I did not wish to offend you. I am afraid that I was much too precipitate to-night when I told you of the feeling I have had for you ever since I first saw you. As I told you, I know this is the greatest presumption on my part. Had it not been for the very exceptional circumstances I should not have ventured to say anything at all——"
Oh, dear! I wish this didn't remind me of the Honourable Jim's remark, "Curious idea, to put in a deaf-and-dumb chap as manager of a bank!" For he isreally so good and straight and frank. I call this such a nice letter. Oh, dear, what am I to say to it?
"But as it is" (he goes on) "I could do nothing but take my chance and beg you to consider if you could possibly care for me a little. May I say that I adore you, and that the rest of my life should be given up to doing anything in the world to secure your happiness? Had I a sister——"
Good heavens! His non-existent sister is cropping up again!
"Had I a sister or a mother living, they would come over at once to wait on you; but I am a man literally alone in the world. I live with an old uncle who is practically an invalid. I hope you will not mind my calling upon you to-morrow, about lunch-time, when I hope so much that you in your sweetness and kindness may find it in your heart to give me another answer to the one I had to hear to-night.
"Yours ever devotedly,
"Reginald Brace."
Yes! A charming letter, I call it. I do, indeed. And he—the writer of it—is charming—that is, he's good, and "white," as men call it, which is so much more, so much better than being "charming," which, I suppose, people can't help, any more than they can help having corncockle-blue eyes with black lashes—or whatever kind of eyes they may happen to possess.
Mr. Brace's own eyes are very pleasant. So honest. It was horrid of me to be ruffled and snappy to himwhen he came last night; cattish of me to begin thinking of him as a Puritan and a prude and a prig. He's nothing of the sort. It was only kind of him to come and try to warn me.
And, as it turns out, Mr. Brace was perfectly right about all these people being no fit companions for a young and inexperienced girl....
Which reminds me! Only a few days ago I was considering this Mr. Brace as a possible suitor for Million herself! Why, I'd quite forgotten that. And now here he is lavishing offers of a life's devotion upon me, Miss Million's maid.
I suppose I ought to be fearfully flattered. There's something in Shakespeare about going down on one's knees and thanking Heaven fasting for a good man's love. (I'm sure he is that.) And so I should be feeling most frightfully pleased and proud, if only I'd time!
This morning I can think of nothing. Not even of my first proposal and love-letter. Only of Miss Million, whom I last saw at half-past eleven or so last night, sitting in her "cerise evenin'—one with the spangles"—at a Thousand-and-One supper-table, with a crowd of rowdy people, and having pink flowers stuck in her hair by an over-excited-looking young man!
Million, of whom I can find no further trace! Now, what is the next——
"Prrrring-g!"
Ah, the telephone bell again. The message from Lady Golightly-Long.
She is speaking herself, in a deep, drawly voice. Shetells me that she knows nothing of Miss Million's movements.
"I left her there. I left them all there, at the Thousand and One," she drawls. "I was the first to leave. Miss Million was there, with Lord Fourcastles and the rest of them when I left.... What?... The time? Oh, I never know times. It wasn't very late. Early, I mean. I left her there."
And she rings off. So that's drawn a blank. Well, now what am I to do next?
I think I'd better go round to the club itself and make inquiries there about the missing heiress!
I have just come back from making inquiries at the Thousand and One Club.
The place looked strangely tawdry and make-believe this morning. Rather like ballroom finery of the night before, seen in daylight. I interviewed a sallow-faced attendant in the vestibule, whence I had got those glimpses of the larking and frolicking in the supper-room last night.
Miss Million? He didn't know anything about a lady of that name. With Miss Vi Vassity's party, had she been? Miss Vi Vassity always had a rare lot of friends with her. He'd seen her, of course, Miss Vi Vassity, all right. Several young ladies with her.
"But a small, dark-haired young lady, in a bright cerise dress, with spangles on it?" I urged. "She was sitting—I'll show you her place at the table. There! Don't you remember?"
The sallow-faced attendant couldn't say he did. There was always a rare lot of bright-coloured frocksabout. He beckoned to a waiter, who came up, glancing at me almost suspiciously out of his sunken eyes.
"Young lady in a bright, cherry-coloured frock, sitting at Miss Vi Vassity's table? Yes! Now he came to go back in his mind, he had seemed to notice the young lady. She'd seemed a bit out of it at first. Would that be the one?"
"Yes, yes," eagerly from me. "That would probably be Miss Million!"
"Afterwards," said the waiter, "she seemed to be having a good deal o' conversation with that young Lord Fo'castles, as they call him."
"Ah, yes," I said, thinking again of the glimpse I'd had of the rowdy, foolish-faced young man with the eyeglass, who had been grabbing pink flowers off the table and therewith scufflingly decorating Million's little dark head.
"Laughing and talking together all the time they was afterwards," said the waiter, in his suspicious, weary voice. "I rec'lect the young pers—the young lady, now. You called to wait for her, didn't you, Miss? You and a fair gent. Last night. Then you left before she come away."
"When? When did she go?" I demanded quickly.
"About an hour after you did, I should say."
"And who with?" I asked again breathlessly. "Who was Miss Million with when she left this place?"
"Ar!" said the waiter, "now you're arskin'!" He spoke more suspiciously than ever. And he looked sharply at me, with such disfavour that I felt quite guilty—though why, I don't know.
Of what should he suspect me? I am sure I looked nothing but what I was, a superior lady's-maid, well turned out in all-black; rather pale from my last night's vigil, and genuinely anxious because I could not find out what had become of my mistress.
"Want to know a lot, some of you," said the waiter, quite unpleasantly this time.
And he turned away. He left me, feeling snubbed to about six inches shorter, standing, hesitating, on the red carpet of the corridor.
Horrid man!
The attendant came up.
"Miss! About that young lady of yours," he began, in a low, confidential voice.
"Oh, yes? Yes? You remember her now? You'll tell me who she went away with?" I said quite desperately. "Do tell me!"
"Well, I couldn't say for certain, of course; but—since Alfred there was telling you she was talking a lot with that young Lord Fourcastles, well! I see him go off in the small car, and there was a lady with him," the attendant told me. "That I did see. A young lady in some sort of a wrap——"
"Yes, but what sort of a wrap?" I cried impatiently.
Oh, the incomprehensible blindness of the Masculine Eye! Woman dresses to please it. She spends the third of her means, the half of her time, and the whole of her thought on that object alone. And what is her reward? Man—whether he's the restaurant attendant or the creature who's taken her out to dinner—merelyannounces: "I really couldn't say what sort of a wrap she had on."
"Was it a white one? At least you'll remember that?" I urged. I saw before my mind's eye Million's restaurant coat of soft, creamy cloth, with the mother-o'-pearl satin lining. How little I'd dreamt, as I put it about my mistress's shoulders last night, that I should be trying to trace its whereabouts—and hers—at eleven o'clock this morning!
"Was it a light coat or a dark one that the lady had on who drove away with Lord Fourcastles? You can at least tell me that!"
The sallow-faced attendant shook his head.
Afraid he "hadn't thought to notice whether the young lady's coat was white or black or what colour."
Blind Bat!
And as I turned away in despair I caught an amused grin on his sallow face under the peaked cap, and I heard him whistle through his teeth a stave of the music-hall song, "Who Were You With Last Night?"
Horrid, horrid man!
It seems to me this morning that all men are perfectly horrid.
What about this young Lord Fourcastles?
That's the thought that's worrying me now as I walk up and down Miss Million's deserted sitting-room, unable to settle to anything; waiting, waiting....
Yes, what about that eyeglassed, rowdy, fair-faced boy who was sticking flowers in her hair the last time I saw her? Was it she who drove away from theThousand and One Club in his car? Was it? And where to?
Can he——Awful thought! Can he possibly have kidnapped Miss Million? Run away with her? Abducted her?
After all, he must know she's an heiress——
Pooh! Absurd thought! This isn't the eighteenth century. People don't abduct heiresses any more. Million is all right—somewhere.
She's gone on with one of these people. They've made what they call "a night" of it, and they're having breakfast at Greenwich, or somewhere in the country. Yes, but why didn't my mistress wire or telephone from wherever she is to let her maid know?
Surely she'll want other clothes taken to her? I see visions of her still in that low-cut, cerise frock, with the June sunlight glinting on the spangles of it; her creamy restaurant coat still fastened about her sturdy bare shoulders, the wilting pink carnations still in her hair. How hideously uncomfortable for her, poor little thing....
Atmid-day! Where is she? What have they done with her? And who are "they"?
Is it an idiotic joke on the part of that noisy, irrepressible Lord Fourcastles? Is it for some bet that he has spirited the little heiress away? Is it perhaps some bit of absurd skylarking got up between himself and the Honourable Jim?
If there's a chance of this it mustn't go further. I shall have to keep my mouth shut.
I can't go applying to the police—and then having Miss Million turning up and looking more than foolish! Then scolding her maid for being such a fool!
That stops my telling anybody else about my fearful anxiety—the mess I'm in!
Oh! Won't I tell Million what I think of her and her friends—all of them, Fourcastles, the cobra-woman, "London's Love," the giggling theatrical girls, and that unscrupulous nouveau-pauvre pirate, the Honourable Jim—as soon as she does condescend to reappear!...
A tap at the door. I fly to open it....
Only one of those little chocolate-liveried London sparrows, the Cecil page-boys.
He has a large parcel for Miss Million. From Madame Ellen's. (Oh, yes, of course. The blush-rose pink that had to be let out.) Carriage forward.
"Please have it paid and charge it to Miss Million's account," says Miss Million's maid, with great outward composure and an inward tremor.
I've no money. Three-and-six, to be exact. Everything she has is locked up. What—what am I to do about the bills if she stays away like this?
She seems to have been away a century. Yet it's only half-past twelve now. In half an hour Mr. Brace will be calling on me for an answer to his proposal of marriage....
There's another complication!
Oh! Why is life like this? Long dull stretches of nothing at all happening for years and years. Then, quite suddenly, "a crowded hour" of—No! Not "glorious life" exactly. But one disturbing thing happening on the top of another, until——
"Ppppring!"
Ah, the telephone again. Perhaps this is some news. The cobra-lady may have heard where Miss Million went.... "Yes?"
It wasn't the cobra-lady.
It was the rich, untrustworthy accent of the Honourable James Burke.
Ah! At last! At last! Now, I thought, I should hear something; some hint of Miss Million's whereabouts.
"Yes?" I called eagerly.
"Yes! I know who that is," called the voice—how different, now that I heard it again, from that of the Mr. J. Burke I rang up earlier, by mistake. "That'sthe pearl of all ladies'-maids, isn't it? Good morning, Miss Lovelace-Smith!"
"Good morning, Mr. Burke," I called back grudgingly. Aggravating young man! How was I to find out what I wanted to know without possibly giving my mistress away?
Perhaps he had been sent to ring me up to bring Miss Million's things to—wherever the party of them were. I began: "Can I do anything for you—sir?"
"Certainly. Call me that again!"
"What?" snappishly.
"Call me 'sir' again, just like that," pleaded the Honourable and Exasperating Jim. "I never heard any pet name sound so pretty!"
I shook my head furiously at the receiver.
Teasing me like this, when I was deadly serious, and so anxious to get sense out of him for once! Tormenting me from "under cover" of a telephone that didn't allow me to see his face or to know where he was.
I said angrily: "Where are you speaking from?"
"I've paid—I mean I've had to get a trunk-call for these few minutes, so don't let them be spent in squabbling, child," said Mr. Burke sweetly. "I'm in Brighton."
"Brighton——"
Ah! They were all down there probably. That was it! He'd whisked them away on his coach—on Leo Rosencranz's coach—just as he'd said he would! At last I'd know——
"Brighton's looking fine this morning," took up the easy, teasing voice. "Let me take you down here for aglimpse of the waves and the downs on your next afternoon out, Miss Maid. Say you will? You've no engagement?"
I began, quite savagely: "Yes, I've——"
"Mr. Brace!" announced one of the chocolate-liveried page-boys at the door.
Quickly I turned. And in my silly flurry I was idiotic enough to hang up the receiver again!
Horrors!
That's done it! I've rung off before I've been able to ask that villain, the Honourable Jim, where I am to ring him up, or ring any of them up, in Brighton!
They may be anywhere there! I've missed my chance of getting them!
Yes; that's done it....
Meanwhile here's this young man who proposed to me on the top of the 'bus last night coming in for his answer!
In he came, looking rather tense and nervous.
But after all my adventures of this morning what a relief it was to me to see a friend; a man who wasn't a suspicious waiter or an attendant who stared, or a teasing incorrigible who exasperated me from the other side of a telephone!
I don't think I've ever been so glad to see anybody as I was to see Mr. Brace again!
I said "Good morning" most welcomingly. And then I was sorry.
For he caught me by both hands and looked down into my face, while his own lighted up into the most indescribable joy.
"Beatrice!" he exclaimed. "It's 'Yes,' then? Oh, my dar——"
"Oh, please don't, please don't!" I besought him, snatching my hands away in sudden horror. "I didn't mean that. It isn't 'Yes'——" He took a step back, and all the light went out of his face.
Very quietly he said: "It's 'No'?"
I hate being "rushed." It seems to me everybody tries to rush me. I hate having to give answers on the spur of the moment!
I said: "I don't know what it is! I haven't been thinking about what you said!"
That seemed rather an ungracious thing to say to a man who had just offered one the devotion of his whole life. So I added what was the honest truth: "I haven't had time to think about it!"
A scowl came over Mr. Brace's fair face. He said in tones of real indignation: "You're as pale as a little ghost this morning. You've been working too hard. You've been running yourself off your feet for that wretched little—for that mistress of yours!"
So true, in one way!
"It's got to stop," said Mr. Reginald Brace firmly. "I won't have you slaving like this. I'm going to take you away out of it all. I'm going to tell Miss Million so now."
"You can't," I said hastily.
"Why? Isn't she up?" (disgustedly).
"Y—yes, I think so. I mean yes, of course. Only just now she's out."
"When will she be in, Miss Lovelace?"
"I don't know in the very least," I said with perfect truth. "I haven't the slightest idea." But I realised that I had better keep any further details of my mistress's absence to myself.
"There you are, you see. She treats you abominably. A girl like you!" declared the young bank manager wrathfully. "Works you to death, and then goes off to enjoy herself, without even letting you know how long you may expect to have to yourself! Shameful! But, look here, Miss Lovelace, you must leave her. You must marry me. I tell you——"
And what he told me was just what he'd told me the night before, over and over again, about his adoration, his presumption, his leaving nothing in the world undone that could make me happy.... And so on, and so forth. All the things a girl loves to hear. Or would love—provided she weren't distracted, as I was, by having something else on her mind the whole time!
I am afraid my answers were fearfully "absent."
Thus:
"No! Of course, I don't find you 'distasteful.' Why should I?" Then to myself: "I wonder if Mr. Burke may ring me up again presently?"
And:
"No! Of course there isn't anybody else that I care for. I've never seen anybody else!" And again, aside: "How would it be if I rang up every hotel in Brighton, one after the other, until I came to one that knew something about Mr. Burke's party?"
I decided to do this.
Then I began to fume impatiently. If only this nice, kind, delightful young man would go and let me get to the telephone!
But there he stood, urging his suit, telling me that he was obliged to go off on business to Paris early that afternoon; begging me to let him have his answer before he had to leave me.
"How long shall you be in Paris?" I asked him.
"A week. Possibly longer. It's such a long, long time——"
"It isn't a long time to give any woman to make up her mind in," I told him desperately. I thought all the time: "Supposing Million took it into her head to stay wherever she is for a week without letting me know? Horrors!"
I went on: "I can't tell you now whether I want to marry you or not. Just at this moment I don't feel I shall ever want to marry anybody! If you take your answer now it'll have to be 'No'!"
So then, of course, he said that he would wait. He would wait until he came back from Paris, hard as it would be to bear. And then there were a lot more kind and flattering things said about "a girl like me" and "the one girl in the world," and all that kind of thing. And then, at last—at last he went, kissing my hand and saying that he would write and tell me directly he knew when he was coming to see me again.
He went, and I turned to the telephone. But before I had so much as unhooked the receiver the door of Miss Million's sitting-room opened after a brief tap, and there stood——
Who but that Power in a frock-coat, the manager of the hotel himself.
"Good morning, Miss," he said to me, with quite an affable nod.
But his eyes, I noticed, were glancing at every detail in the room, at the telephone book on the floor, at the new novels and magazines on the table, at the flowers and cushions, at the big carton from Madame Ellen's that I had not yet taken into the bedroom, at me and my tired face. "Your young lady, Miss Million, hasn't returned yet, I understand?"
"No," I said, as lightly as I could. "Miss Million is not yet back."
"Ah! Time off for you, then," said the manager still very pleasantly. But I could not help thinking that there was a look in his eye that reminded me of that suspicious waiter at the club.
"Easy life, you young ladies have, it seems to me," said the manager. "Comfortable quarters here, have you? That's right. How soon do you think that you may be expecting your young lady back, Miss?"
"Oh, I'm not sure," said I very lightly, but with a curious sinking at my heart. What was the meaning of the manager's visit? Was he only just looking in to pass the time of day with the maid of one of his patrons? Or—horrible thought!—did he imagine that there was something not quite usual about Miss Million?
Had he, too, wondered over our arriving at the hotel with those old clothes and those new trunks? And now was he keeping an eye on whatever Miss Million meant to do? For all his pleasant manner, he did look as ifhe thought something about her were distinctly "fishy"!
I said brightly: "She may stay away for a few days."
"A little change into the country, I expect? Do anybody good this stuffy weather," said the affable manager. "Going down to join her, I expect, aren't you?"
This was a poser, but I answered, I think, naturally enough. I said: "Well, I'm waiting to hear from her first if she wants me!"
And I nodded quite cheerily at the manager as he passed again down the corridor.
I trust he hadn't even a suspicion of the uneasy anxiety that he had left behind him in the heart of Miss Million's maid!
What a perfectly awful day this has been! Quite the most awful that I've ever lived through in all my twenty-three years of life!
I thought it was quite bad enough when all I had to bear was the gnawing anxiety over Million's disappearance, and the suspense of waiting, waiting, waiting for news of her! Living for the sound of the telephone bell ... sitting up here in her room, feeling as if three years had elapsed between each of my lonely hotel meals ... wondering, wondering over and over again what in the world became of her since I saw my young mistress at the Supper Club last night....
But now I've something worse to bear. Something far more appalling has happened!
I felt a presentiment that something horrible and unforeseenmight occur, even before the first visit of the manager, with his suspicious glance, to Miss Million's room.
For I'd wandered downstairs, in my loneliness, to talk to the girl in the telephone exchange.
She's a bright-eyed, chatty creature who sits there all day under the big board with the lights that appear and disappear like glowworms twinkling on a lawn. She always seems to have a cup of tea and a plate of toast at her elbow.
She also seems always to have five minutes for a chat. And she's taken a sort of fancy to me; already she's confided to me countless bits of information about the staff and the people who are staying or who have stayed in the hotel.
"The things I've seen since I've been working here would fill a book," she told me blithely, when I drifted in to find companionship in her little room.
"Really, I think that if I'd only got time to sit down and write everything I'd come across in the way of the strange stories, and the experiences, and the different types of queer customers that one has come in one's way, well! I'd make my fortune. Hall Caine couldn't be in it. Excuse me a minute." (This was a telephone interlude.)
"The people you'd never think had anything odd about them," pursued the telephone girl, "and that turn out to be the Absolute Limit!" (I wondered, uneasily, if she thought that my absent mistress, Miss Million, belonged to this particular type.)
So I went back to the subject next time I passedthe telephone office. (This was after the manager had looked into my room with his kind inquiries after Miss Million.)
"And, really," I said. I can't think what made me, Beatrice Lovelace, feel as guilty as if I were a pickpocket myself. Perhaps it was because I had something to hide. Namely, the fact that I was a maid whose mistress had left the hotel without a hint as to her destination or the date of her return!
"That's a Scotland Yard man that's passing in the hall now," she added, dropping her voice. "No; not the one you're looking at," as I turned to glance at a very broad, light-grey back. "That's another of our American cousins. Just come. A friend of Mr. Isaac Rattenheimer; have you seen Mrs. Rattenheimer when she's going out in the evening? My dear! The woman blazes with jewels like a Strand shooting-gallery with lights. You really ought to have a look at her.
"Come down into the lounge to-night; pretend you've got some note or something for your Miss Million. She'll be coming back to-night, I suppose?" she said.
"Oh, she may not. It all depends," I said vaguely, but with a desperate cheerfulness.
I left the telephone girl to decide for herself what this mysterious thing might be that I had said "depended," and I drifted out again into the vestibule.
Here I passed the young man my friend had called an American cousin. He looked very American. His shoulders, which were broad enough in all conscience, seemed padded at least two inches broader. And the cut of his light-grey tweeds, and the shape of his shoes, andthe way he'd parted his sleek, thick, mouse-coloured hair, were all unmistakably un-English.
As I passed he stared; not rudely, but with a kind of boyish, naïve interest. I wondered what Miss Million would have thought of him.
She's accustomed to giving me her impressions of every fresh person she sees; talking over each detail of their appearance while I'm doing her hair.... I mean that's what she used to be accustomed to! If only I knew when I should do her hair again!
Well, I walked upstairs, and the first hint of coming discomfort met me on our landing. It took the shape of our sandy-haired chamber-maid. She was whisking down the corridor, looking flushed and highly indignant over something or other. As I passed her she pulled up for a moment and addressed me.
"Your turn next, Miss Smith, I suppose!" she sniffed, with the air of one who feels that (like Job) she does well to be angry. "You'd better be getting ready for it!"
"Getting ready for what?" I asked bewilderedly.
But the sandy-haired one, with another little snort, had passed on.
I think I heard her muttering something about "Never had such a thing happen before! The ideear!" as she disappeared down the corridor. I was puzzled as I went back into Miss Million's room, that seems to have been empty for so long. What did the chamber-maid mean? What "thing" had happened? What was I to prepare for? And it was my "turn" for what?
I was soon to know.