"Anyhow it's a triumph for you," he said graciously. "Allow me to
congratulate you."
Was there a faint ring of irony in his words? In either case I never
felt less triumphant. What booted it to return her jewels if I had
broken her heart? I bowed my acknowledgment.
As he left he said: "Come and see me sometimes, though the case is
closed. You are too valuable a man for me to lose sight of."
I bowed again, mutely registering a resolve to ask him a thumping
figure if he ever did require my services.
Meanwhile I had the reporters to deal with. I have a strong
fellow-feeling for the boys. As a class they are the most human lot of
fellows I know. They do not make the rotten conditions of their
business. But they certainly are the devil to deal with when they get
you on the defensive. They seemed to spread through that hotel like
quicksilver, bribing the bell-boys, the maids, even the waiter who
brought up my dinner. If we had not been on the eleventh story I
should have expected to find them peeping in the windows.
I did not dare see them myself. In my anomalous position they would
have made a monkey of me. In my mind's eye I could see the story of
the mysterious stranger who claimed to represent Miss Hamerton, etc.,
etc. I had to take every precaution, too, to keep them from that fool
of a Mrs. Bleecker. I carefully drilled the doctors in what they
should say, and then sent them down to their fate. They came off
better than I expected. Of course the lurid tales did appear next day,
but they were away beside the mark. Nothing approaching the truth was
ever published.
A little before five everybody had gone, and I was alone in the
sitting-room gazing out of the window and indulging in gloomy enough
thoughts, when I heard the door behind me open. I turned with a sigh,
expecting fresh complaints and demands from the old harridan. But
there was Irma trying to smile at me. She was wearing a white negligée
affair that made her look like a fragile lily. She walked with a firm
step, but her face shocked me. It looked dead. The eyes open, were
infinitely more ghastly than when I had laid her down with them closed.
Mrs. Bleecker and the maid followed, buzzing around her. She seemed to
have reached the limits of her patience with them.
"Let me be!" she said as sharply as I ever heard her speak. "I am
perfectly well able to walk and to speak. Please go back to the
bedroom. I have business to discuss with Mr. Enderby."
They retired, bearing me no love in their hearts.
"I must go away, quite by myself," she said, speaking at random. "Can
you help me find a place, some place where nobody knows me? If I do
not get away from these people they will drive me mad!"
"I will find you a place," I said.
"Perhaps I'd better not go alone," she said. "If I could only find the
right kind of person. I'm so terribly alone. That nice girl you
brought into the company, Miss Farrell, do you think she would go with
me?"
There was something in this more painful than I can convey. "She'd
jump at the chance," I said brusquely.
"You have been so good to me," she said.
"You can say that!" I said, astonished.
"Oh, I've not quite taken leave of my senses," she said bitterly. "If
I had not known the truth, it would have been much worse."
This struck me as extraordinary generosity in a woman who loved.
"I--I have something else to ask of you," she said in the piteous
beseeching way that made me want to cast myself at her feet.
"Anything," I murmured.
"Mr. Quarles is coming here at five. Please see him and tell him--Oh!
tell him anything you like, anything that will keep him from ever
trying to see me again."
I nodded. "You had better lose no time in getting out of this," I
suggested. "Can you be ready by to-morrow morning?"
"I will start packing now," she said. "It will give me something to
do."
How well I understood the hideous blankness that faced her.
"Don't let those women bother you," I said. "Refer them to me."
"They mean well," she said.
"I will answer for Miss Farrell," I said. "She'll be here at nine
to-morrow."
She started to thank me again, but I would not let her go on. I really
could not stand it.
"Very well, you will see," she said with a smile, and left me.
Shortly afterwards Roland Quarles came striding down the hall. I
opened the door to him. He was astonished to find a strange man in the
room. He did not recognise me without my Faxon makeup.
"Enderby," I said in response to his enquiring glance. "You met me
here once before."
"What's this I hear downstairs about Miss Hamerton being sick?" he
demanded anxiously.
"She has had a nervous breakdown," I said.
He was not deceived. "What does that mean?" he demanded. "She was
quite well yesterday."