“NERVE”
Mrs. Gaylord took up her temporary abode at the Essenden expecting at
almost any hour to be summoned to Peter Cairns’s offices or else receive
a call from him at the hotel. Neither the summons nor the call came.
Following her spirited moment of defense of her chaperon Leslie returned
to her usual half domineering, always wilful manner. Since her father
had seen fit to order Mrs. Gaylord on the scene, she had decided that
the chaperon would be more of an asset than a hindrance. Under Mrs.
Gaylord’s wing she and Doris could go about more freely to tea rooms and
hotel restaurants, and the theatres. They could stay out later in the
evening with a certain feeling of assurance which neither had possessed
during their first evening venture into New York’s gaieties.
The day after New Years Leslie announced to her chaperon and Doris that
she wished they would go where they pleased and do as they pleased
through the days that remained to them of the Christmas holiday, but
without her company.
“Gaylord can show you the village as well as I can; maybe better,” she
assured Doris with a droll twist of her mouth. “She won’t be peevish
with you. I would, if you made me sore, which you’d probably do. I have
special business to tend to here in the next few days. It concerns my
garage proposition and is very important. I’ll hustle around through the
days so as to go out to dinner with you in the evenings.”
Doris was as well pleased with Leslie’s new arrangement though she kept
her satisfaction carefully hidden behind her politely indifferent
features. She and Mrs. Gaylord had grown friendly from the start. The
chaperon admired the sophomore’s unusual beauty and enjoyed the covert
appreciation it drew wherever they went. She thought Doris’s poise
remarkably high-bred and was satisfied that Peter Cairns could but
approve of her as a friend for his daughter. He was still in the city,
she believed. Leslie was of the same belief. “Don’t doubt he knows our
middle names and what time we come back to the hotel every night,” was
her shrewdly humorous opinion.
The special business to which she devoted her days was typical of the
intriguing side of Leslie. While her father was presumably keeping an
eye on her, she was even more anxious to trace his movements. She burned
to know how long he intended to stay in New York, and whether he was
staying at the family residence far out on Riverside Drive, or at his
club.
There was another man, too, besides her father, whose whereabouts in New
York she was eager to learn. He was a man to whom her father had more
than once intrusted certain business about which she thought she knew a
good deal. This man had come to their home twice as a dinner guest. He
was tall, slim, with aquiline, foreign features, deep set dark eyes and
iron gray hair. She could recall distinctly his courtly manners. What
she could not recall was his full name. It was Anton—. There memory
failed her.
After she had unsuccessfully racked her brain for the missing surname
she came into startled knowledge of a way to gain it. Dared she take it?
Leslie’s heart beat faster every time she thought about it. She could
not make up her mind to take it until she had definite information
concerning her father’s plans. She decided that she would at once try to
obtain it from his offices.
On the day after New Years she left Mrs. Gaylord and Doris directly
after breakfast and hurried from the Essenden to start on the trail of
the “special” business. It was a fairly long drive from the Essenden to
her father’s downtown offices. Leslie grew perceptibly nervous as she
neared her destination. There was no one to witness her uneasiness,
however. There was only one chance against a hundred that she might
encounter her father. She could not imagine what she would do if she
were to come suddenly face to face with him. And in this thought lay her
inclination to panic.
She arrived at last before the skyscraper, two floors of which housed
the executive and clerical forces necessary to Peter Cairns’s several
speculative interests. Leslie ordered the driver of the taxicab to wait
and made a bold entrance into the building. She could hear her heart
begin to thump against her side as she dodged into the cage of a waiting
elevator and dodged out again at the third floor. Presently she had
walked a little way down a wide corridor and opened a door which in the
past she had opened many times.
It led to an outer office, given over to the keeping of a solitary
office boy. When she inquired for Mr. Carrington, one of her father’s
important managers, and gave the youngster her name, he stared at her
with blue startled eyes and made a zealous dash for a door leading to an
inner office.
“How are you, Mr. Carrington?” she drawled to a clean-cut pleasant man
of perhaps forty, who had instantly emerged from the office to greet her
and now ushered her into his private business domain.
“Very well, Miss Cairns; thank you. And you? It has been a long time
since you visited these offices.”
“Yes;” Leslie smiled affably. She was speculating how long it might take
to “pump Carrington, and beat it.” “I was at college for several
winters, you know, and away from New York summers. I’m not at the
Riverside Drive house much. It doesn’t pay to keep it open. My father is
there so seldom for any length of time.”
“So he tells me. He doesn’t stay even in New York for any length of
time, for that matter,” laughed the manager. “It isn’t an easy
proposition, getting hold of him when I need him.”
“I should imagine not.” Leslie smiled in apparent sympathy. “Even I lose
track of him for days at a time. I am at the Essenden, at present with
my chaperon, Mrs. Gaylord. I came down town this morning to see if you
would help me with a little steamer surprise I am planning to give my
father. That is, if he goes to England soon. I thought you would let me
know the day and hour he’d plan to sail. Then I wouldn’t need to ask him
a single question, beforehand. He is likely to start for England in a
hurry without coming to the hotel to say good-bye. Then where would my
surprise be?” Leslie put just the right amount of dejection into the
question.
“Oh, he has changed his mind about the trip to England, Miss Cairns. He
doesn’t intend to go across the pond until he comes back from the coast.
That will be two weeks at least. I will let you know, nearer the date of
sailing,” was the pleasant promise.
“The western trip? Oh, yes.” Leslie nodded wisely. “I have no surprise
ready for him for that. There’d hardly be time for one, would there?”
she asked innocently.
“Hardly.” The manager consulted his watch as though amused at his own
reply. “His car was to pull out from the B. R. P. at noon today. It’s
almost noon now.”
“You mean for the west; to the coast?” was Leslie’s double question. It
was asked with a drawling inflection that nearly robbed it of
interrogation.
“Yes. Where shall I address you, Miss Cairns, about the England matter?”
Mr. Carrington questioned courteously.
“At the Essenden. Thank you so much, Mr. Carrington. You are always so
kind to me. Not a word to my father that I was here!” She raised a
playful forefinger. “You understand why.”
“Absolutely discreet, Miss Cairns.” The manager raised a hand as though
taking an oath.
After a further brief exchange of pleasantries Leslie rose to depart.
She was in nervous haste to be gone. It had taken “nerve,” according to
her way of thinking, to lead up to the information she had sought, then
to ask the right questions at the right time. She had not devised until
the last moment a way of exacting secrecy from the manager that would
not arouse him to suspicion against her. She knew that her father’s
lieutenants of years were chary of speech and still more chary of
information. It was evident that her father’s harsh stand in regard to
herself was not known in his offices. Since Mr. Carrington did not know
it, Leslie was sure he did not, then none other of his staff of
financiers knew.
She would have liked to ask Mr. Carrington to give her the surname of
the man, Anton. She remembered that the manager had once dined with them
on the same evening as the foreigner. She had not dared ask about him.
Nor did she believe it would be wise to call again at her father’s
offices to interrogate Mr. Carrington further. She recalled the old
fable of the pitcher that went once too often to the well and was
broken. She did not intend to risk losing what she had already gained.
There was still the other way of learning the name.
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