"You're through."
"Hello, what is it?" a beery voice asked.
"I want to speak to Miss Vera Thorold?"
"Vera 'oo?"
"Thorold."
"Theobald? He's out."
"_Thorold_, Miss _Vera Thorold_," I shouted in despair.
"Oh, we ain't got no Veras here," the beery voice replied, and I could
picture the speaker's leer. "This ain't a ladies' seminary; it's
Poulsen's Brewery Company, Limited. You're on the wrong number. Ring
off."
And again the instrument was silent.
Vera had been cut off just at the moment she was about to reveal her
whereabouts.
Almost beside myself with anxiety, I tried to collect my thoughts in
order to devise some means of discovering Vera's whereabouts and getting
into immediate communication with her. I even went to the telephone
exchange, interviewed the manager, and told him the exact time, to the
fraction of a minute, when I had been rung up, but though he did his
best to help me, he could not trace the number.
I have a vivid imagination, and am of an exceptionally apprehensive
disposition, which has led some men to declare that I meet trouble
half-way, though that is a thing I am constantly warning my friends not
to do. In this case, however, I found it impossible not to feel
anxious, desperately anxious, about the one woman I really cared for in
the whole world. She had appealed to me urgently for help, and I was
impotent to help her.
Dejectedly I returned to my flat. The lift-boy was standing in the
street, his hands in his pockets, the stump of a cheap cigarette between
his lips. Without removing his hands from his pockets, or the
cigarette-end from his mouth, he looked up at me with an offensive grin,
and jerked out the sentence between his teeth--
"There's a lady here to see you--a Miss Thorold."
"Miss Thorold? Where is she? How long has she been here?" I
exclaimed, quelling all outward appearance of excitement.
"About ten minutes. She's up in your rooms, sir. She said you knew
her, and she'd wait till you came back."
"Vera!" I gasped involuntarily, and entered the lift, frantic with
impatience.
At last. She was there--in my rooms, awaiting me with explanation!