I hadscarcely been in the room ten minutes. I was putting fresh water into the tall glass jar that held the sheaf of red carnations, when there came yet another tap at the white door that I have had to open several times already to-day, but never to any messenger with tidings of my missing mistress!
This time, to my amazement, it was quite a group of men who asked for admittance to Miss Million's room!
There was first the frock-coated manager; then a very stout and black-eyed and fleshy-nosed Hebrew gentleman whom I hadn't seen before; then a quiet-looking man with a black tie whom I recognised as the one who had been pointed out to me by the telephone girl as a Scotland Yard plain-clothes detective; then the young American in the light-grey tweeds.
I wondered if I were dreaming as this quartette proceeded to walk calmly in.
Such an invasion!
What could they all want?
The manager turned to me with a smile. He spoke in quite as pleasant a voice as he had spoken before; it was, indeed, quite conciliating! But there was an order behind it!
"Now, Miss Smith, I am very sorry to have to disturbyou. We're all very sorry, I'm sure," with a glance at the other three men.
The detective looked polite and blank; the Jew man seemed fussing and fuming over something; the young American glanced interestedly about the room, taking everything in, down to the carnations in my hand. He smiled at me. He had a friendly face.
"Not at all," I said, wishing my heart would not beat with such unreasonable alarm. "Is there anything—is it anything about my mistress?"
"Oh, no. Miss Smith. It's a mere formality we're asking you to submit to," said the manager. "All our own staff have complied, without raising any objection. And we think it advisable to apply the same thing to other—er—to other people employed about the place. It's as much for your own sake as for ours, you know?"
"What is?" I asked, feeling distinctly more fluttered.
"I am sure you're far too reasonable to make any demur," the manager went on soothingly. "The last young lady, our Miss Mackenzie, raised no objection at all."
Mackenzie is the sandy-haired chamber-maid.
"Objection to what?" I asked, with as much dignity as I could possibly summon up.
"Why, to having us go through her boxes, Miss Smith," said the manager with great suavity. "The fact is an article of value is missing from this hotel. The property of Mr. Rattenheimer here," with a turn towards the obese Hebrew, "and it would be a satisfactionto him and to all of us to prove that no suspicious can be attached to anybody in the place. So——"
So that was it!
They wanted to search my things to see if I were a thief!
Yes, they actually wanted to search my trunks! Just as if I were a suspected servant in a country house where one of the guests finds a diamond bar missing!
Here was a nice predicament for Aunt Anastasia's niece, and for my poor father's child, to say nothing of Lady Anastasia's great-granddaughter! It was so absurd that I nearly laughed. At all events, I suppose the anxious expression must have left my face for the moment.
The manager rubbed his hands, and said in a pleased voice: "Ah, I knew you were sensible, and would make no fuss! When people have clear consciences I don't suppose they mind who goes looking through their things. I am sure I should not mind anybody in the world knowing what was inside my boxes. Now, Miss Smith, I think your room is No. 46, is it not? So if you will be kind enough to give me your keys, and——If you would not mind stepping with us across the corridor——"
Here I found voice.
"You really mean it?" I said. "You want to search my trunks?"
"Merely as a matter of form," repeated the manager a little more insistently. "I am sure a young lady like you would not mind who knew what was in her trunks."
I stood there, one hand still full of the red carnations that I was rearranging, the other gripping the end of the pink couch. I was thinking at lightning speed even as the frock-coated, shrewd-eyed, suave-voiced manager was speaking.
My trunks?
Well, as far as that went, I had only one trunk to my name! For I had given Mackenzie, the sandy-haired chamber-maid, all the luggage which had known me in Putney.
When she asked me what she was to do with it, I told her she could give it to the dustman to take away, or cut it up for lighting the fires with, or anything she liked. She had said, "Very good" in a wooden tone that I knew masked surprise and wonderment unceasing over the inhabitants of Nos. 44, 45, and 46. Consequently I had, as I say, only one single trunk in the whole wide world.
And that was the brand-new masterpiece of the trunkmaker's art, bought in Bond Street, and handed over to me for my use by Miss Million on the ill-fated day when we first arrived at the Cecil.
As for what was in it——
Well, in one of Miss Million's own idioms, "It was full of emptiness"!
There was not a thing in it but the incorporate air and the expensive-smelling perfume of very good new leather!
As the luggage of a modest lady's-maid it was really too eccentric-looking to display to the suspicious eyes of the four men who waited there in Miss Million'ssitting-room confronting me. I protested incoherently: "Oh, I don't think I can let you——"
"Ah!" said the stout Jewish gentleman, with a vicious glance from me to the Scotland Yard detective, "this don't seem a case of a very clear conscience!"
The manager put up a deprecating hand.
"A little quietly, sir, if you please. I am sure Miss Smith will see that it is quite as much for her own benefit to let us just give a bit of a look through her things."
Her "things!" There, again, was something rather embarrassing. The fact was I had so ridiculously few things. No dress at all but the well-cut, brand-new gown that I stood up in; one hat, one jacket, and two pairs of expensive shoes, three changes of underclothes, and silk stockings. All were good, but all so obviously just out of the shop! There was absolutely nothing about them to link their owner to any past before she came to the hotel!
For the fact is that when I sent my boxes and hold-all away I had also repudiated every stitch of the very shabby clothing that had been mine while I was not Miss Million's maid, but her mistress. The ne'er-do-well serge skirts, the makeshift "Jap" silk blouses with no "cut" about them, the underclothes, all darned and patched, the much-mended stockings, once black cashmere but now faded to a kind of myrtle-green—all, all had gone to swell two bulky parcels which I had put up and sent off to The Little Sisters of the Poor!
I had heaved a sigh of delight as I had handed those parcels over the post-office counter. It had been the fulfilment of the wish of years!
I expect every hard-up girl knows that impulse, that mad longing that she could make a perfectly clean sweep of every single stitch she possesses to wear! How rapturously she would send it all, all away! Oh, her joy if she might make an entirely new start—with all fresh clothes; good ones, pretty ones, becoming ones! Clothes that she would enjoy wearing, even if there were only so very few of them!
In my case they were so few that I really did not feel that they could support any sort of kit-inspection. Especially under the eyes of mere male men, who never do understand anything that has to do with our attire.
There I stood, in the only frock I had got, in the only other apron and cap (all exquisite of their kind, mind you!), and I said falteringly: "I am very sorry to be disobliging! But I cannot consent to let you search my things, or open my boxes."
"Looks very bad, indeed, that's all I can say," broke out the stout Hebrew gentleman excitedly. "Afraid we shall be obliged to do so, officer, whether this young woman wants to let us or not."
"You can't," I protested. "Nobody can search a person's box against their will!"
I remember hearing from Million, in the old days of heart-to-heart confidences about her "other situations," that this was "The law of the land."
No mistress had the right of opening the trunk of a reluctant maid on her, the mistress's, own responsibility!
"We might find ourselves obliged to do so, Madam,"put in the Scotland Yard man in a quiet, expressionless voice. "We might take steps to enable us to examine this young lady's belongings, if we find it necessary."
"Very well, then, charge me! Get an order, or whatever it's called," I said quietly but firmly. I meditated swiftly. "Getting an order" might take time, quite a lot of time! Anything to do with "the law" seems to take such ages before it happens! In that time Miss Million would, I hope to goodness! have turned up again. If she were here I should not feel so helpless as I do now—a girl absolutely "on her own," with all her visible means of support (notably her heiress-mistress) taken from her!
"Oh, we hope that it will not be found necessary," persisted the manager, who, I suspect, thought he was being very nice about the affair. "I am sure Miss Smith will only have to think the matter over to see the reasonableness of what is being asked her. Here we are, in this big hotel, all sorts of people coming and going——"
"Coming and going" rather described my absent mistress's procedure. "And we find suddenly that a piece of very valuable jewellery is missing."
"The Rattenheimer ruby! Not another like it in the world!" cried the stout and excited Jew. "I won't tell you how much I gave for that stone! My wife wears it as a pendant, unmounted, just pierced so as to hold on a gold chain.... I won't let that be lost, I can tell you! I will search everywhere, everything, everybody. I tell you, young woman, you need not imaginethat you can get out of having your boxes overhauled, if it takes all Scotland Yard to do it!"
Here the pleasant, rather slow voice of the American with the unfamiliar note in boots and clothes and thick, mouse-coloured hair broke in upon the other man's yapping. "Ca'm yourself, Rats. Ca'm yourself. You keep quite ca'm and easy. You won't get anything out of a young lady like this by your film-acting and your shouts!"
"I tell her I'll have her searched."
"Not with my consent," I said, feeling absolutely determined now. "And to do it without my consent you have to wait."
"I shall go through the other girl's things, then, first," snorted the excited Jew. "What's the name of the girl this one's alleged to be working for?" In every look and tone the man voiced his conviction that poor little Million and I were two notorious, practised jewel thieves in a new disguise.
"This woman who calls herself Million, I will go through her things."
"You will not," I said stiffly. "My mistress is out. I will not allow any of her things to be touched during her absence. That is my duty."
"That's so," said the young American softly.
The excited Jew man almost grimaced with rage. Loudly he demanded: "Out, is she? 'Out'? Where may that be?"
How ardently I wished that I knew, myself!
But all I said was: "I fail to see that it has got anything to do with you."
"Probably," said the manager soothingly, "probably when Miss Million returns she will persuade Miss Smith to be more reasonable."
"They are in league together! It is a put-up job! These two girls ... Half the hotel's talking about them.... There is something fishy about them. I will find out what it is," the fat Jew was bubbling, while the young American took him by the arm and walked him quietly towards the door. The Scotland Yard man had already unobtrusively disappeared. Last of all the manager went, with quite a pleasant nod and quite a friendly, "Well, Miss Smith, I expect you will think better of it presently."
I know that all four of them suspects me! They think that Million and I know something about this wretched Rattenheimer ruby, or whatever it is. Perhaps they think that we are in communication with gangs of jewellery thieves all over Europe? Perhaps they imagine that I am left here to mount guard over some other loot while Million has gone over for a trip to Hamburg or Rotterdam, or wherever it is that people do go with stolen jewels?
And for all I know she may be doing something just as idiotic—the silly girl, getting her head turned and her hair decorated by moon-calves of young lords!... Oh! I wish there was any one to whom I could turn for advice! There is not a soul.
That nice, sensible, reliable Mr. Brace is by this time in Paris. Out of reach! As for Mr. Burke, he is gallivanting at Brighton, and, of course, one could not depend upon him, anyhow!
I feel I must go out.
It's evening, which means that Million has been away from the hotel for twenty-four hours. I have not left it except for that flying visit to the "Thousand and One" Club.
Get a breath of fresh air before dinner I simply must. My head seems whirling round and round, and my nerves feel as if something in them has snapped with a loud twang like a violin string. I shall go out—if they will let me, but I should not be at all surprised if the manager of the hotel and the Rattenheimer creature between them did not mean to let me stir out of their sight.
Still, I shall try. I shall take a little turn on the Embankment, and watch the barges on the river. That ought to have a soothing influence.
How perfectly terrible if I am stopped in the vestibule!...
I was not stopped.
Nobody seemed to see me go out.
But when I got out into the Strand, with its summer evening crowds of people, I happened to glance across the street, and beheld some one that I had just seen in my room—namely, the quiet-faced man from Scotland Yard. How awful! I was being shadowed! It was a horrible feeling. So horrible that I am sure it could not have been any worse if I had really taken the Rattenheimer ruby, and had it fastened securely inside my black coat at the moment!
I felt as if I had. I wondered if the man would come across and dog my footsteps!
I turned down one of the little quiet streets on the right that lead to the river, and then I did hear footsteps behind me. They were following—positively following—me!
"Good evening!" said a quite friendly but un-English voice. It was not the Scotland Yard detective, then, after all. I turned. It was the young American.
"Goodevening," I said, coldly looking up at the young man, with a glance that said as plainly as possible, "What do you want?"
"I hoped you might be kind enough to allow me to escort you on this little stroll of yours, Miss Smith," said the young American politely, lifting his grey felt hat. "See here, I guess I'd better introdooce myself. I'm Hiram P. Jessop, of Chicago."
"You are a detective, too, I suppose," I said, still more coldly. We were standing by the railings of the old London churchyard close to the river. The dark-green leaves of the plane-trees rustled above us. "I suppose you are following me to find out if I'm taking Mr. Rattenheimer's ruby to a pawnshop?"
The young American smiled cheerfully down at me.
"Nix on the detective racket here," he said, in his queer, slow, pleasant accent. "You can cut out that about Rats and his ruby, I guess. I don't care a row o' beans where his old ruby has gann to. What I wanted to ask you about was——" He concluded with a most unexpected two words—
—"My cousin!"
I stared up at this big young stranger in the padded grey coat.
"Your cousin? But—I think you're making some mistake——"
"I guess not," said the young American. "You're my cousin's maid all right, aren't you? You're Miss Million's maid?"
"Yes. Yes, of course," I said, clinging on to that one straw of fact in an ocean of unexpectedness. "I'm her maid——"
"And I'm her cousin," said the young American simply. "Second cousin, or second, once removed—or something of that sort. You haven't heard of me?"
"No, I never have heard of any of Miss Million's cousins," I said, shaking my head with a gesture of firm disbelief. For I summed up his claim to relationship with my mistress as being about as authentic as the Honourable Jim's alleged friendship with her uncle.
Only the fibbing of this second young man seemed rather more shameless!
I said: "I didn't know that Miss Million had any cousins."
"And you don't believe it now you hear it? Is that so?" he said, still smiling cheerfully. "Why, it's quite right to be on the side of caution. But you're overdoing it, Miss Smith. I'm related to old man Million right enough. Why, I'm at the boss-end of no end of his business. The Sausage King. Well, I've been the Sausage Prince. I see you looking at me as much as to say, 'You say so.' See here, d'you want some proofs? I've a wad of letters from the old man in my pocket now."
He put his hand to the breast of the grey-tweed jacket.
"Maybe you think those aren't proofs, either? Write myself a few billets-doux signed, 'Yours cordially, Sam Million'—easy as falling off a horse, eh?"
(Of course, this was what I had thought.)
"I guess I shall have to take you and my cousin along with me to our lawyers the next time I'm calling, that's all," concluded the young American with his cheerfully philosophical air. "Chancery Lane, Messrs. Chesterton, Brown, Jones, and Robinson. That's the firm."
"Oh! You know Mr. Chesterton!" I exclaimed in accents of relief. I'd quite forgotten Miss Million's dear old family lawyer. That nice old gentleman! If I wanted advice or help of course there was Mr. Chesterton to fall back on! I hadn't thought of him before.
"Know Mr. Chesterton? Sure thing," said the American. We had moved away from the churchyard railings and were strolling slowly towards the embankment now. "Why, Mr. Chesterton and I had a long, long heart-to-heart talk this afternoon, before I came on in the great trunk-searching act! I was just coming in to leave a card on my cousin, Miss Nellie Million, when I found myself one of the galaxy of beauty and talent that was going to make a thorough examination of you girls' things."
"Oh, were you?" I said lamely. I couldn't think what else to say. Too many things had been happening all day long!
I said: "Miss Million didn't know you were coming?
"Why, no! I guess she didn't suspect my existence, any more than I suspected hers until a few weeks ago," said Miss Million's cousin. (At last I found myself believing that he really was her cousin after all.) "Horrible shock to me, I can tell you, that my Uncle Sam was cherishing the thought of this little English niece of his all this time! Making up his mind to leave his pile to this girl. Meantime Hiram P. Jessop," here he tapped the grey-tweed jacket again, "had been looking upon himself as the heir-apparent!"
"Oh! You thought all that money was coming to you?" I said, half-amused, half-pityingly, for this was certainly the frankest, most boyish sort of young man I'd ever come across. "And you've lost it all on account of my mistress?"
"Say, doesn't that sound the queerest ever? A daisy little girl like you talking about some other girl as her 'mistress'!" rejoined my companion in a wondering tone. "Why, d'you know? When I saw you standing there in the sitting-room, in your black dress and that cute little apron and cap, I said to myself: 'If this isn't the image of some Society girl of the English upper class playing the Pretty Domestic part in some private theatricals where they rush you a quarter's salary, I guess, for half a look and a programme!' I said, if you'll pardon me: 'It's just the accent, just the look, just the manner.'"
"Oh!" I said, rather vexed.
I was annoyed that he should think there was anytrace of "acting" about my appearance. I thought I'd had the art that conceals Art. I thought I'd come to look such an irreproachable lady's-maid.
"Just typically the English Young Lady of the Upper Classes," pronounced this surprising young American, meditatively walking along by my side on the asphalt paths of the Embankment Gardens. "As typical as the Westminster Abbey, or those tea-shops.... Real sweet-looking, real refined-looking, if I may say so. But cold! Cold and stiff! 'Do not dare to approach me, for all my family were here dying of old age when William the Conqueror landed on these shores.' That's the way you'd impress one, Miss Smith. 'Look through my trunks?'" Here he adopted an extraordinary voice that I suppose was intended for an imitation of my own tones.
Then he pulled himself up and said gravely: "You'll pardon me if I'm too frank. But I'm always outspoken. It's my nature. I'm interested in types. I was interested in yours. Noo to me. Quite noo. The young lady that looks as if she ought to be standing to have her portrait painted on the grey-stone steps of some big English country house—the young lady that turns out to be paid maid to my own cousin! A noo thing."
"Really!" I said gravely. I couldn't help feeling amused at his puzzled face.
We turned again down the asphalt path between the flower-beds of those gardens that are overshadowed by the big hotel. On a bench I caught sight again of the quiet figure that I had noticed on the other side ofthe Strand. It was the Scotland Yard man. He seemed to be reading an evening paper. But I felt that he was watching, watching....
I didn't mind; even if he did think he was watching some one who knew what had become of the Rattheimer ruby! I felt something comforting and trustworthy in the presence of this other young man; this peculiar cousin of Million's, from whom one heard, quite unresentfully, remarks that one would not forgive in an Englishman, for instance Mr. Brace. Not that Mr. Brace would ever venture on such personalities ... the Honourable Jim now.... Yes, but he's a Celt. A Celt is a person who takes, but cannot give, offence. Most unfair, of course.
The American pursued: "And this cousin of mine? There's another type I shall be interested to see. Tell me about her, Miss Smith, will you? Have you known her long?"
"Oh, yes," I said. "It's some years since I've known Miss Million."
"And well, considering the difference in your positions, that is?"
"Oh, yes, fairly well," I said, thinking of the many artless confidences I'd listened to from Miss Million—then "Million," of our disgracefully inconvenient little kitchen at Putney. Those far-away days seemed very pleasant and peaceful to me to-night! But they—those kitchen days—were no part of the business of the young man at my side.
"D'you get on with her?" he said.
"Oh, yes, thank you."
"You don't tell me much. It's this English reserve I'm always up against. It's a thing you'd need an ice-axe for, I guess, or a hundred years with your families living in the same village," complained the young American, laughing ruefully.
"Were you two girls raised together? School together?"
"Oh, no."
He sighed and went off on another tack.
"Can't you tell me the way she looks, so as to prepare me some for when I see her?" he suggested. "Does she resemble you, Miss Smith?"
"I don't think so," I said, suppressing a foolish giggle. It was the first time I'd wanted to laugh at anything for the last twenty-four hours. "No; Miss Million is—well, she's about my height. But she's dark."
"I've always admired the small brunette woman myself," admitted Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, adding quickly and courteously: "Not that I don't think it's perfectly lovely to see a blonde with the bright chestnut hair and the brown eyes that you have."
"Thank you," I said.
"And how soon can I see this little dark-haired cousin of mine?" went on the American when we turned out of the Gardens. Unobtrusively the Scotland Yard man had risen also. "What time can I call around this evening?"
"I—I don't know when she'll be in," I hesitated.
"Where's she gone to?" persisted the cousin of this missing heiress. "How long did she go for?"
I fenced with this question until we arrived at the very doors of the Cecil again.
Then an impulse seized me.
All day long I had wrestled alone with this trouble of mine. I hadn't consulted Mr. Brace. I had kept it from the Honorable Jim. I had put up all sorts of pretences about it to the people at the hotel. But I felt now that it would have to come out. I couldn't stand it any longer.
I turned to Miss Million's cousin.
"Mr. Jessop, I must tell you," I said in a serious and measured voice. "The truth is I don't know!"
"What?" he took up, startled. "Are you telling me that you don't know where my cousin is at this moment?"
I nodded.
"I wish I did know," I said fervently. And as we stood, a little aside from the glass doors in the vestibule, I went on, in soft, rapid tones, to tell him the story of Miss Million's disappearance from my horizon since half-past eleven last night.
I looked up, despairingly, into his startled, concerned face.
"What has happened to her?" I said urgently. "What do you think? Where do you think she is?"
Before he could say a word a messenger came up to me with a telegram.
"For Miss Smith."
I felt that this would be news at last. It must be. I seized the wire; I tore it open.
I read——
"Oh!" I cried quite loudly.
One of the commissionaires glanced curiously over his shoulder at me.
I dropped my voice as I said feverishly: "Yes, it is! It's fromher!"
And I held the telegram out, blindly, towards the young American.
The telegram which my mistress had sent ran simply and superbly thus:
"Why ever don't you bring my clothes?
"Miss Million."
There was no address.
The wire had been handed in at half-past seven o'clock that evening at Lewes. It left me silent for a moment with bewilderment and dismay. After waiting so long for a message! To receive one that told me nothing!
"What is the meaning of this here?" said Miss Million's cousin, repeating, in the accent that makes all our English words sound something new and strange. "'Why ever don't you bring my clothes?' Well! I guess that sounds as if nothing very terrible had happened to her. Her clothes! A woman's first thought, of course. Where does she want you to 'bring' them to, Miss Smith?"
"How on earth should I know?" I cried, in desperation. "When I still don't know where she is, or what she is doing!"
"But this place, Lewes. Surely that's some guide to you?"
"Not the slightest," I said. "We don't know anybody at Lewes! At least, I don't know that she knew anybody there! I don't know who on earth can have taken her there!" This with another nervous thought of young Lord Fourcastles. "I shall have to go at once—no, it's too late to-night. To-morrow I shall go. But——
"She may not be there at all. She may have been motoring through when she sent this absurd wire!"
"Maybe," said the American. "But it's a clue, for all that. Lewes! The post-offices at Lewes will tell you something about her."
"Why, why didn't she tell me something about herself?" I stormed softly. "Here she is taking it for granted that I know exactly what's happened and where she's gone! Does she imagine that she explained that to me last night before she went out? Does she think she gave me any orders? Here she is actually asking 'why?' to me!" I concluded, stammering with indignation. "She sounds quite furious because I haven't brought her clothes to her——somewhere in Space!"
"What clothes was she wearing, may I ask?" demanded the American cousin, in his simple, boyishly interested manner.
And when I told him of the bright, cherry-coloured evening gown, and the creamy restaurant coat, and the little cerise satin shoes with jewelled heels that Million had on, he put back his head and laughed gently.
"Poor little girl! Poor little Cousin Nellie! I guess she must have been real mad with herself and you forletting her loose in that get-up," he said, "prancing about all day in the bright sunlight in that outfit. Enough to jar any girl of taste in dress, I guess!"
Then his alert face grew grave again. He said, glancing over his shoulder at the groups that were coming and going in the vestibule: "Well, we'll discuss this. Come into the lounge, where we can talk quietly."
We went into the lounge, where only yesterday I had perceived for the first time the sumptuous apparition of Miss Vi Vassity pouring out tea for my now vanished mistress.
It seemed to me that everybody there looked up at me as we passed in. I bit my lip and frowned a little.
"You are right. This is no place for a quiet chat," said the American softly. "It will have to be my cousin's sitting-room again, I reckon."
Upstairs, in Miss Million's sitting-room, that I seemed to know as well now as a penal-servitude prisoner knows his cell, the American said to me gravely and quietly: "There is one thing, I daresay, which you have not thought of in connection with that——"
He nodded his smooth, mouse-coloured head at the tantalising wire that I still held crushed in my hand.
"Now, I don't know much about your police system," said young Mr. Jessop, "but I reckon it won't be so very different from our own in a matter of this nature." He nodded again, and went on gravely:
"That telegram will have been read all right! The people here, the manager and the Scotland Yard man, they will know what's in that."
"Know what's in it?" I gasped, staring at him."Why, how can they? Do you mean," indignantly, "that they opened it?"
"Why, no! You saw for yourself the envelope was not opened when you got the thing. But that is not to say that they could not get it repeated, as easy as winking, at the post-office," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, of Chicago. "So I'd be ready to bet that everybody here knows what you're up to when you leave this hotel to-morrow. My old acquaintance, Rats, and all of 'em. They'll know you're taking something to your young mistress—your confederate, they'll think her!—in Sussex. You may be quite sure they're not going to allow you to take any trips into Sussex—alone. Nope. Somebody will go with you, Miss Smith."
"Go with me? D'you mean," I said, "that I shall be shadowed all the way by that odious detective man?"
"Well, now, isn't it more than probable, Miss Smith?" said the young American shrewdly. "They'd their eye on you two girls from the start, it seems. You aren't a very usual couple. Noo to me, you are. Both of you seemed noo to them!"
"I knew they gossiped about us!" I said ruefully.
"Sure thing; but don't say 'gossip' as if it was something nobody else did only the folks around this hotel!" protested the American, twinkling. "Well, to-day after the great Jewel Steal you aroused considerable suspicion by refusing to let Rats and the others do the Custom House officer's act through your wardrobe. This wire will have raised more suspicion this evening. And to-morrow—d'you think they're going to let you quit without further notice taken? Think!"
I thought for a second.
I saw that he was perfectly right.
It was just what would happen. Wherever I went to-morrow in search of that baffling mistress of mine I should have that Scotland Yard detective on my heels!
That sort of thing made me terribly nervous and uneasy! But I could imagine the ingenuous Million being forty times worse about it! If I did succeed in running her to earth at last, I could just imagine Million's unconcealed and compromising horror at seeing me turn up with a companion who talked about "the necessary steps" and "the Law!"
Million would be so overwhelmed that she would look as if she had a whole mine full of stolen rubies sewn into the tops of her corsets. She has a wild and baseless horror of anything to do with the police. (I saw her once, at home, when a strange constable called to inquire about a lost dog. It was I who'd had to go to the door. Million had sat, shuddering, in the kitchen, her hand on her apron-bib, and her whole person suffering from what she calls "the palps.")
So this was going to be awkward, hideously awkward.
Yet I couldn't go out in search of her!
I said, desperately: "What am I to do about it?"
"There is only one thing for it as far as I can see," said the young American thoughtfully; "you will have to let me go down with a suit-case full of lady's wearing apparel. You will have to let me make all the inquiries in Lewes."
"You? Oh, no! That is quite impossible," I exclaimed firmly. "You could not."
"Why not? I tell you, Miss Smith, it seems to me just to meet the case," he said earnestly.
"Here's this little cousin of mine, that I have never yet seen, that I've got to make friends with. I am to be allowed to make her acquaintance by doing her a service. Now, isn't that the real, old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon chivalry? It would just appeal to me."
"I don't think it would appeal to Miss Million," I said, "to have a perfectly strange young man suddenly making his appearance in the middle of—wherever she is, with a box full of all sorts of her things, and saying he is her cousin! No, I shall have to go," I said.
And then a sudden awful thought struck me. How far could I go on the money that was left to me? Three and sixpence!
"My goodness! What's the railway fare from Victoria, or wherever you go to Lewes from? I don't believe I have got it!" I turned to the young man with a resigned sigh of desperation. "I shall have to borrow from you," I said.
"With great pleasure," said the young American promptly. Then, with a twinkle, he added swiftly: "See here, Miss Smith. Cut out the railroad business altogether. Far better if you were to permit me to take you down by automobile. Will you let me do that, now? I can hire an automobile and tear off a hundred miles or so of peaceful English landscape before anybody has had time to say 'How very extraordinary!' which is the thing they always are saying in Englandwhen any remark is put forward about what they do in the States. Pack up my cousin's contraptions to-night, will you? To-morrow morning, at nine or eight or seven if you like, we'll buzz out of this little old town and play baseball with all the police traps between here and Brighton! Does this appeal to you?"
I could not help feeling that this did very considerably appeal to me.
If I went with this un-English, unconventional, but kind and helpful young man, I should at least not feel such a lone, lorn female, such a suspect in the eyes of the law! I could rise superior to the dogging of detectives, just as I had risen superior to them this evening in the Embankment Gardens.
Suffragists and college-educated girls and enlightened persons of that sort may say what they choose on the subject of woman becoming daily more self-reliant and independent of man.
But I don't care. The fact remains that to the average girl-in-a-scrape the presence of man, sympathetic and efficient, does still appear the one and only and ideal prop!
Bless Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, of Chicago! I was only too thankful to accept the offer of his escort—and of his car!
Before he left me I had arranged to meet him at a certain garage at nine o'clock in the morning.
"Bright and early, as we may want to have the whole day before us," said the American as he went out. "Till then, Miss Smith!"
Andnow to set about sorting out some of these "clothes," after which my young mistress inquires so peremptorily! It won't take me long, thanks to the apple-pie order in which I keep them all. (So much easier to be "tidy" with new and gorgeous garments than it is with a chest of drawers full of makeshifts!)
I shall take her dressing-bag with the crystal-and-ivory fittings. That ought to impress even the Fourcastles' ménage, assuming that Lord Fourcastles has carried her off to his people's. I wonder whose dressing things and whose dress Miss Million made use of to-day? For, seriously, of course, she can't have gone "prancing about" in "me cerise evenin'-one." She must have worn borrowed plumes for the day—plumes probably miles too long for the sturdy little barn-door chicken that Million is! I wonder, I wonder from whom those plumes were borrowed? Please Heaven I shall know by this time to-morrow night!...
Here's her week-end case packed up. The choice of two costumes; the blue cloth and the tobacco-brown taffeta; blouses; a complete set of luxurious undies. Even the slip petticoat was an "under-dress" according to the shops Miss Million patronised! Shoes; a hat; a motor-veil and wrap. Yes, that's all.
That ought to do her—when we get the things to her!
But now to bed and to sleep the sleep of exhaustion after quite the most crowded day of my whole life.
To-morrow for Lewes—and more adventure!
We were shadowed on our Lewes journey, though scarcely in the way that I had anticipated. However, to begin at the beginning.
At nine o'clock this morning, in spite of all difficulties, I did find myself free of the "Cecil" and away in a two-seater with my mistress's luggage, sitting beside my mistress's cousin and whirling through the dull and domesticated streets of South London.
It was a gorgeous June day, just the very day for a quick flight out into the country. In spite of my anxiety about my mistress my spirits rose and rose. I could have sung aloud for joy as we left grimy London behind us and found ourselves whirling nearer the green heart of the country.
"This is better than your first idea of the railroad trip, Miss Smith?" said the young American at my side.
"Oh, far more enjoyable," I agreed so eagerly that he laughed.
"There is another thing about that," he said. "I suppose you haven't thought of what they would do if they saw you going off by train anywhere?"
"What?" I asked, looking up at him with startled eyes.
"Why, they would wire to every station along the line to take notice where you got off before Lewes,and to follow up all your movements, you real, artful, detective-dodging little diamond thief you," declared my companion teasingly.
And I saw him simply shaking with laughter over the steering-wheel as he went on.
"The brilliant idea of Rats, and the manager, that you and my little cousin Nellie should have gotten hold of his old ruby!"
"You knew at once," I said, "that we hadn't!"
And he laughed easily and said: "It didn't take much guessing when he had seen me and knew that Nellie Million was a relative of his and a niece of the old man's."
"Jewel thieves, not much!" he said in his quick, reassuring accent.
I said: "Well! I hope you put in a good word for us with that odious little Jew man that lost the ruby."
"Not on your life! I just love to watch somebody who thinks they are too quick and clever to live go over-reaching themselves some," said the American good-humouredly.
How funny it felt to be sitting there beside him, while the hedges whirled past—I, who had never set eyes on the young man before yesterday, now joining him in this wild quest of a cousin whom he had never yet seen!
"Oh, dear! I wonder if we shall find her!" I murmured.
"Why, I am determined not to close an eye to-night until we do, Miss Smith," said the missing heiress'scousin, gravely looking ahead at the sliding ribbon of white road. "It's a matter of some little importance to me that we find her soon. It is also no less important what I think of her when we do meet!"
I was a little surprised to hear him speak so impressively. Naturally, when one is going to meet a relative for the first time one wonders what sort of a mutual impression will be made. But why had this young man said so seriously that this was "important"?
He seemed to read my thoughts, for, as we cleared a village and came out into a long stretch of wide and empty road, he turned to me and said: "You know, it is as a matter of business that I am coming to see this cousin of mine and this mistress of yours. I have got to have a little serious heart-to-heart talk with her on the subject of the old man's money."
"Why?" I asked, startled. "Isn't it safe in that factory place where Mr. Chesterton said it had better be kept?"
"Oh, it is safe enough there," he said. "The question is, is all that money going to be allowed to remain in the hands of one little dark-haired girl without let or hindrance, as the lawyers say?"
"Allowed?" I echoed. "But who is to disallow it?"
There was a moment's silence.
Then the young American said meditatively: "I might! That is, I might have a try. True, it mightn't come off. I don't say that it is bound to come off. But, between you and me, the old gentleman was remarkably queer in his head when he made that secondwill, leaving the whole pile to his niece, Miss Nellie Million. The will he made a couple of years before, leaving everything to his nephew, Hiram P. Jessop, might be proved to be the valid one yet, if I liked to go setting things to work."
At the sound of this a dark cloud seemed to blot out some of the June sunshine that was steeping the white roads and the hawthorn hedges and the emerald-green fields of corn "shot" with scarlet poppies.
Poor little unsuspecting Million! Wherever she was, she had not an idea of this—that the fortune which she had only just begun to enjoy might be yet snapped out of her hands, leaving no trace of it behind but the costly new trousseau of clothes, a gorgeous array of trunks, and an unpaid hotel bill!
How terrible! It would be worse than if she had never had any money at all! For it is odd how quickly we women acclimatise ourselves to personal luxuries, even though we have not been brought up to them. For instance, already since I had had my own new things I felt that I could never bear to go back to lisle thread or cashmere stockings again. Only silk were possible for Miss Million's maid! Another awful thought. Supposing Miss Million ceased to be an heiress? She would then cease to require the services of a lady's-maid. And then I should be indeed upon the rocks!
Again that weird young American seemed to read my thoughts. Dryly he said: "You see yourself out of a job already, Miss Smith?"
"No, indeed, I don't," I said with spirit. "Youhave not got the money yet, my mistress is still in possession of it."
"And possession is nine-tenths of the law, you mean," he took up; "still I might choose to fight on the tenth point, mightn't I?"
He put back his head and laughed.
"Perhaps I shan't have to fight. This entirely depends upon how Nellie and I are going to fix it up when we do meet," he said cheerily.
"We have got to find her first," I said, with a feeling of apprehension coming over me again. And this young American who may have control of our future (mine and Miss Million's) said cheerfully: "We are going to find her or know why, I guess. Don't you get worrying."
Such an easy thing to say: "Don't worry"!
As if I hadn't had enough to worry me already! Now this fresh apprehension! I felt my face getting longer and longer and more despondent inside the frame of the thin black motor-scarf with which I had wreathed my hat. The young American glanced at it and smiled encouragingly.
"I guess you are starving with hunger," he said; "I'll wager you hadn't the horse sense to eat a decent breakfast before you started away from the 'Cess'? Tea and toast, what? I knew it. Now, see here, we are going to climb right down and have a nice early lunch at the first hostelry that we come to, with honeysuckle and English roses climbing over the porch."
It was hardly a mile further on that we came toa wayside inn such as he had described. There it was, a white-washed, low-roofed house, with roses and creepers, with a little bit of green in front of it, and a swinging painted sign, and a pond not far off, with a big white duck and a procession of little yellow ducklings waddling towards it across the road.
It looked quite like a page out of a Caldecott picture-book. The only twentieth-century detail in it was the other two-seater car that was drawn up just in front of the porch. This was a car very much more gorgeous than the hireling in which we were setting forth on our quest. She—this other car—appeared to be glitteringly new. The hedge-sparrow blue enamel and the brass work were a dazzlement to the eyes in the brilliant June sunshine. In front there was affixed the mascot, a beautiful copy of "The Winged Victory," modelled in silver.
I wondered for a moment who the lucky owner of such a gem of cars might be.
And then, even as I descended from the hireling, and entered the inner porch with my companion, I thought of the last time that I had heard a small car mentioned.
That was Lord Fourcastles's!
The gnarled-looking old woman who kept this decorative-looking inn shook her head doubtfully over the idea of being able to let us have lunch as early as all that.
"Mid-day dinner," she informed us rather reproachfully, "was at mid-day!"
However, if bread and cheese and cider would do usthose we could have. She had taken a tray with those on already to the gentleman who had driven up in a small car, if we wouldn't mind having it in the little coffee-room with him.
Thankfully enough I preceded Mr. Jessop into the coffee-room. It was long, and low-ceilinged, and dark from the screen of tangled ivy and honeysuckle and jasmine that grew up about the low window. Inside was a framed picture of Queen Victoria as a blonde girl in a dressing-gown receiving the news of her accession to the English throne. Another picture showed her in Jubilee robes. There were also cases of stuffed birds and squirrels, padded chairs with woollen antimacassars. At the further table there loomed against the light the broad back of a man eating bread and cheese and reading a newspaper. From the look of him, he was the owner of that sumptuous car.
My American friend exclaimed in delight.
"Well, now, if any one had told me there still existed anything so real old-fashioned and quaint right close up to the most sophisticated old town in Europe I would never have believed them!" he ejaculated. "It takes Old England to supply anything in the nature of a setting for romance. Doesn't this look the exact parlour where the runaway couple would be fixing things up with the relenting pa on the way back from Gretna Green, Miss Smith?"
I laughed as I said: "It is rather a long way from here to Gret——"
Here there was a sudden noise of a man springing quickly to his feet.
The guest, who had been sitting there over his bread and cheese and cider, swung swiftly round.
"By the powers, but this is a delightful surprise!" he exclaimed.
I stared up at him with eyes now grown accustomed to the dimness of the inn parlour. I beheld, handsomer and more débonnaire than ever, no less a person than the Honourable Jim Burke!
As I shook hands I wondered swiftly from whom this blue-eyed pirate had borrowed the brand-new, spick-and-span little car that stood outside there with her nose and the mascot that was its ornament turned towards London.
I saw young Mr. Jessop staring with all his shrewd yet boyish eyes. I wondered what on earth he thought of my very conspicuous-looking friend; no, I can't call him "friend" exactly, my conspicuous-looking acquaintance to whom I hurriedly introduced him?
"Very happy to meet you," said the American, bowing. Mr. Burke, with the most extraordinary flavour of an American accent tinging his brogue, added: "Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Jessop."
Without my seeing how he did it exactly, Mr. Burke had arranged the chairs about his table so that we all sat at lunch there together. But he changed his seat so that it was Mr. Jessop who sat with his face to the light, opposite to the man I had known just a very little longer.
Really, it does seem odd to think that I am the same Beatrice Lovelace who used to live at No. 45 Laburnum Grove! There, from year's end to year's end, I neverexchanged a single word with anything that you could describe as a young man!
And now, to parody the old story about the 'bus driver, "Young men are no treat to me!" Within forty-eight hours I have had one propose to me, one taking me out for a walk on the Embankment and arranging to bring me for this motor expedition to-day, and a third having lunch with me and the second!
It was a very funny lunch. And not a very comfortable one. The two men talked without ceasing about automobiles, and "makes," and garages, and speeds, and the difference between American and English workmen. (Mr. Burke really does seem to know something about America.) But I felt that the air of that shady coffee-room was simply quivering with the thoughts of both of them on very different subjects. Mr. Jessop was thinking: "Now, see here! Who's this young Irish aristocrat? He seems to be on such perfectly friendly terms of equality with my cousin's maid. How's this?"
Mr. Burke was thinking: "Who the dickens is this fellow? How is it that Miss Million's maid seems to be let loose for the whole day without her mistress, and a young man and a car to herself?"
The keynote of the next half-hour might be summed up in Kipling's phrase, "Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he dare not say!"
My heart meanwhile was bursting with the wild longing to find out if Mr. Burke knew anything at all of the whereabouts of my mistress.
I decided that he did not, for if he had wouldn't he have mentioned something to do with her?
As it was, which I am sure was buzzing in all of our brains, the name Million did not pass any of our lips!
The men went out together, apparently on the most friendly terms, to pay the landlady and exchange inspection of the "automobiles." By some man[oe]uvring or other Mr. Burke contrived to come back first into the coffee-room where I stood alone before the mirror readjusting the black gauze scarf.
He came behind and spoke to my reflection in the mirror, smiling into the eyes that met his own blue and unabashed ones in the glass.
"Child, a word with you," murmured the Honourable Jim in his flattering and confidential tones. "Will you tell me something? Does all this mean, now, that my good services are no longer required in the way of introducing to you with a view to matrimony the wealthy alien that I mentioned at that charming tea the day before yesterday, was it?"
"What do you mean, Mr. Burke?" I said. "What do you mean by all this?"
The Honourable Jim jerked his smooth black head towards the window, whence he could get a glimpse of the waiting cars.
"I mean our friend, the American Eaglet, who is so highly favoured that he doesn't even have to wait until Friday afternoon off," said the Honourable Jim softly, watching my face, "for his flights with the little black-plumaged pigeon."
Naturally when one is watched one colours up. Whocould help it? The Honourable Jim said rather more loudly: "I'll tell you something. You have every symptom about you of a girl who has had a proposal of marriage in the last couple of days. Didn't I see it at lunch? The way you held your head! The new pride in your voice! Something in the very movement of the hand——"
He caught me very gently by the wrist of my left hand as he spoke. I hadn't yet put on my gloves.
"No ring there," said the Honourable Jim, dropping the hand again. "But—Miss Lovelace, child! Will you deny to me that some one has not proposed to you since you and I had tea together?"
At that I could not help thinking of poor Mr. Brace in Paris. He would be coming over at the end of the week to receive the answer which I had not yet had time to think about. I was so amazed at Mr. Burke's perspicacity that I could not help reddening even deeper with pure surprise. The Irishman said softly: "I am answered! Tell me, when are you going over to the Stars and Stripes?"
Good heavens! what an idiotic mistake. He really imagined that the man who had proposed to me was not Mr. Brace, but Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, of Chicago! I protested incoherently: "Why! I only met him last night."
"What is time to love?" laughed Mr. Burke.
"But don't be so ridiculous," I besought him. "This Mr. Jessop has nothing to do with me! He is——" Here the conversation was stopped by the entrance of Mr. Jessop himself.
I think Mr. Hiram P. Jessop soon discovered that Mr. Burke had made up his mind about one thing.
Namely, that he meant to start first from the inn where we'd lunched!
He rose to say good-bye, and to add that he must be "off" so very firmly, and just after he had helped me to another plateful of raspberries drowned in cream.
We shook hands, and in a few seconds we heard him starting his motor—or rather, the Super-car that I conclude he had borrowed, or "wangled," or whatever he calls it, from one of his many wealthy friends. Through the window I caught a flashing glimpse of this hedge-sparrow-blue car with her silver mascot whizzing past—on the road to Lewes.
This was odd, I thought.
For there was no doubt that when we pulled up at the inn, that car's nose had been towards home, and London.
Then we, too, started off for Lewes, and the inquiries we had to make there.
This was when I discovered that Mr. Jessop and I were, as I've said, "shadowed."
Mr. Burke, in that gorgeous car of his, had evidently determined, for some obscure reason, not to lose sight of us.
We overtook him, tooling leisurely along, a mile this side of Uckfield.
We waved; we caught a cheery gleam of his white teeth and black-lashed blue eyes. I thought that would be the last of him. Oh, dear, no. A quarter of a milefurther on he appeared to the right by some cross-road. And from then on he and the light-blue car kept appearing and disappearing in our field of vision.
At one moment the light-blue and silver gleam of his motor would flash through the midsummer green of trees overshadowing some lane ahead of us. Again he would appear a little behind and to the left. Presently, again, to the right....
"That friend of yours seems to know the country considerable well," remarked the American to me. "Looks like as if he was chasing butterflies all over it. Is he a great Nature-lover, Miss Smith?"
"I couldn't tell you," I said vaguely, and feeling rather annoyed. "I don't know this Mr. Burke at all well."
"Is that so?" said the young American gravely.
Near Lewes we lost sight of that glittering car; it seemed finally.
I felt thoroughly relieved at that. He was a most embarrassing sort of travelling companion, the Honourable Jim!
We(Mr. Jessop and I) drove slowly to the first post-office.
There we both alighted. And I in my impatience fairly flung myself against the long counter with its wirework screen that fenced off the post-office girls.
They stared curiously at the anxious-looking young woman in black and the grey-clad, unmistakably American young man, who both at once began to make inquiries about a certain telegram which had been handed in there at half-past seven o'clock the evening before.
"Are you the person to whom the telegram was addressed?" one of the girls asked almost suspiciously.
"Yes. I am Miss Smith. You see! Here is an envelope addressed to me at the Hotel Cecil," I said, feverishly producing that envelope (it belonged to Mr. Brace's last note to me). "Can you tell me who handed in this message?"
"I couldn't, I'm sure," said the girl who had spoken suspiciously. "I was off last evening before six."
"Can you tell me who was here?" I demanded, fuming at the delay.
The girls seemed blissfully unaware that this was a matter of life and death to me.
"Miss Carfax was here, I believe," volunteered oneof the other girls, in the "parcels" division of the long counter.
I asked eagerly: "Which is Miss Carfax, please?"
"Just gone to her lunch," the two girls replied at once. "Won't be back until two o'clock."
"Oh, dear!" I fretted. Then a third girl spoke up.
"Let's have a look at that wire, dear, will you?" she said to the parcels girl. "I think I remember Miss Carfax taking this in. Yes. That's right. 'Why ever don't you send my clothes, Miss Million?' I remember us passing the remark afterwards what an uncommon name 'Million' was."
"Oh, do you! How splendid!" I said, all eagerness at once. "Then you remember the young lady who telegraphed?"
"Yes——"
"A small, rather stumpy young lady," I pursued. "Nice-looking, with bright grey eyes and black hair? She was dressed in a cerise evening frock with a——"
The post-office girl shook her head behind the wire screen.
"No; that wasn't the one."
"How stupid of me; no, of course, she wouldn't be still wearing the evening frock," I amended hastily. "But she was dark-haired, and short——"
Again the post-office girl shook her head.
"Shouldn't call her short," she said. "Taller than me."
"Dark, though," I insisted. "Black hair."
"Oh, no," said the post-office girl decidedly. "That wasn't her. Red hair. Distinctly red."
"Are you sure," I said, in dismay, "that you haven't made a mistake?"
"Oh, no," said the post-office girl, still more decidedly. "I've seen her about, often. I know the colour of her hair. You know, Daisy," turning to another of the girls, "that one from the 'Refuge.'"
"There's so many from the 'Refuge' come in here," said the maddening girl she had called Daisy.
"Yes, but you know the one. Rather strikingly dressed always. Lots of scent, makes herself up. Her with the hair. The one we call 'Autumn Tints.'"
"'Autumn Tints'—oh, yes, I know her——"
"Yes, we know her," chorused the other girls, while I fidgeted, crumpling Million's baffling wire in my hand. "That's the lady who sent off the telegram. I couldn't be mistaken."
Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, at my side, interposed.
"Well, now, will you young ladies be so kind as to tell us where she resides? The 'Refuge'—what'll that be?"
We had, it seemed, still some distance to go. We must take the road that went so, then turn to the right, then to the left again. Then about a mile further down we'd see a red brick house in a clump of trees, with a big garden and green palings on to the road. It had "The Refuge" painted up on a board nailed to a big oak tree in the garden. We shouldn't be able to mistake it, said the girls.
"Certainly you won't mistake it if you see any of the 'Refugees' in the garden when you come up," hazarded the most talkative of the post-office girls.
"It's a case of 'Once seen, never to be forgotten,' there!"
As we went out of the office I found myself wondering more and more anxiously what all this might mean. What sort of a place had Million got herself into the middle of?
"What do you think it all means?" I turned again appealingly to the young man who was driving me.
He shook his grey-hatted head. His face was rather graver than before.
Mercy! What were we going to find? What did he think? Evidently he wasn't going to tell me.
Only when we got clear of the straggling outskirts of Lewes he crammed on speed. Up the gradual hills we flew between the bare shoulders of the downs where the men and horses working in the fields afar off looked as small as mechanical toys. The whole country was gaunt and gigantic, and a little frightening, to me. Perhaps this was because my nerves were already utterly overstrained and anxious. I could see no beauty in the wideswept Sussex landscape, with the little obsolete-looking villages set down here and there, like a child's building of bricks, in the midst of a huge carpet.
There seemed to me something uncanny and ominous in the tinkling of the sheep-bells that the fresh breeze allowed to drift to our ears.
On we whizzed, and by what miracle we escaped police-traps I do not know.... We took the turns of our directions, and at last I heard a short, relieved sort of exclamation from Mr. Hiram P. Jessop.
"Here we are. This'll be it, I guess." For herewere the dark-green towers of elms set back from the road. A red roof and old-fashioned chimney-stacks showed among them. There was a garden in front, with tall Mary-lilies and pink-and-white phlox and roses and carnations and thrift that grew down to the palings.
And close up beside those palings there was drawn a pale-blue car that I knew well—too well!
It was the car with the silver-winged Victory as mascot! The car in which we'd been followed and shadowed for so much of our journey by the Honourable Jim Burke.
He was here, then! He was before us!
What had he to do with the "Refuge"?
Sounds of singing greeted us as we left the car, pushed open the green-palinged gate, and walked up the pebbled path between the flower-beds of the garden. Some one behind the lilac bushes was singing, in a very clear, touching voice, a snatch of the ballad: "Oh, ye'll tak' the high road and I'll tak' the low road, and I'll be in Scotland before ye...."
A turn in the garden path brought us full upon the singer. A wonderful apparition indeed she was! As tall as any woman I had seen (excepting the long-limbed cobra-lady), and the June sun shone on a head of hair that was as bright as a bed of marigolds—red hair, but not all the same kind of red. It was long and loose in the breeze, and it fell to the singer's waist in a shower of red-gold, covering her face and hiding most of her bodice, which appeared to be a sort of flimsy muslin dressing-jacket. Her skirt was very makeshift and of brown holland. The stockings shewore were white thread, and her shoes were just navy-blue felt bedroom slippers, with jaeger turn-overs to them. In fact, her whole appearance was négligée in the extreme. Who—what could she be? She looked a cross between a mermaid and a scarecrow. She was holding one hank of red-gold out against her arm, as a shop assistant measures silk, and she crunched along the garden path, still singing in that delicious voice: "But I and my true love will never meet again, on the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond!" Blinded by her hair and the stream of sunlight, she nearly walked straight into us before she discovered that there was any one there on the path at all.
"I beg your pardon," began Mr. Hiram P. Jessop with his usual politeness. "Could you inform us——"
The singing mermaid gave a little "ow" of consternation, and tossed back some of the hair from her face.
It was a disappointing sight, rather, for what we saw was a round, full-mooney, rather foolish face, with a large pink mouth, but no other definite features. The eyes were pale blue, the cheeks were paler pink, and the eyebrows and eyelashes looked as if they had been washed away in a shower of rain.