He muttered a jumble of apologies.
I cut him short. “You _have_ made a mistake,” I said. “Now have the
kindness to keep your head shut, will you!”
He bowed himself back into his little den. I turned and found Sir Robert
looking straight at me, from his chair. I must admit that his eyes never
wavered. And there, for a long, tense moment we stared at each other
like the enemies we were. Then I walked out to the doorway to resume my
watch.
What a fox he was! Even in his desperate, terror-stricken pursuit of
Heloise, he had deftly avoided entangling himself before an outsider.
And he had extricated himself, as if by instinct, from the slightest
financial risk in the matter. I knew then that this old man would give
nothing save as a _quid pro quo_.
In a moment more I quite forgot him. I stood there in the little street,
looking at the shopkeepers in their doorways sipping their bowls of tea
after the rush and turmoil of the day. But I don't think I saw anything
clearly; I remember some such scene, and know that I must have observed
it at this time.
For the thought of Heloise, penniless in this sorry, shabby place,
was almost more than I could endure. Though I had wondered, and even
worried, about her finances, somehow I had not thought of her condition
as utterly desperate.
I don't know what she would say--or think; for she would say little--if
she knew that I had paid the account for her. Even yet, I have not told
her. I have got to tell her, but I see that it is going to be difficult,
I must think out some way of broaching the subject. Perhaps I shouldn't
have done it. Or perhaps a more tactful man would have found some less
crude way of managing it. I can't say as to this.
Standing there, I suddenly remembered that odd little scene of the
preceding evening that I had witnessed from the stairway--the manager
in her room talking to her, and Sir Robert outside, at his own door,
listening.
He had known of this trouble. His knowledge of it had held him here to
annoy her with skilfully aimed persistence. She had been unwilling to
come to me. She had not known what to do. She had been helpless.
Oh, the thoughts that raced through my mind as I stood there in the
doorway! And the pictures that my heated fancy contrived! I wanted to
rush up those stairs and make her speak to me. It was all I could do to
fight this impulse. I knew that I was going to do this, sooner or later;
but I knew too that I could hold out a little longer. For I must not
thrust myself, an ungoverned, passion-shaken man, into her trouble.
If Sir Robert had gone up, I am sure I would have followed him. But he
did not. He sipped his tea for a long time, and nibbled his toast. I
could look in through the doorway and see him. Then he tried to read.
Then he wandered about the lounge, like a tortured ghost of passions
that had died with his prime. Once he came to the hall and stood
irresolute at the foot of the stairs, twisting his monocle in his
shaking fingers.
But then he saw me standing there like a sentry. And he walked hurriedly
back into the lounge.
So the time dragged on. When I looked again at my watch it was five
minutes of eight. It was time for Sir Robert's dinner. Few things in
life. I knew, were more Important to him. Perhaps he would go over to
the Wagon-lits for it. Anyway, unless he had some definite knowledge of
Crocker's whereabouts, he would not wait about here much longer, for he
was a coward; his assurance had been undermined by the consciousness of
his own guilty intentions. That much I had seen twenty-four hours and
more earlier, when he warned me about Crocker.
But he did not go to the Wagon-lits. He went, instead, into the dingy
dining-room of our own hotel. And I kept my watch, out there at the
street door. A little later it occurred to me that I had seen no tray
going up the stairs.
I stepped in and ordered the manager to send up a waiter to number
eighteen. There seemed to be no use in holding back now. So far as
that manager was concerned, I had crossed the line--both for myself and
Heloise. And he, at least, would say nothing. His poor mind was already
full of such unpleasant secrets as he imagined mine to be.
The waiter went up, and in a moment returned. The manager stepped out to
me.
“The lady she does not answer to the waiter's knock,” said he, all
concern and deference.