Langdon Jesse maintained a bachelor apartment in London the year round.
When he arrived there, about a fortnight after his turbulent scene with
Mrs. Treharne and his signally unsuccessful attempt at an _entente_ with
Blythe, he found everything in order, quite as he had left it the year
before. Gaskins, factotum and general overseer of the bachelor
apartments, of which there were three tiers, Jesse's being the second,
was a little more bald and fat, but he still rubbed his hands as a mark
of subservience and cocked his head to one side in a bird-like way while
engaged in conversation with his supposititious superior. He had a
respectful but earnest complaint to make of one of Jesse's New York
cronies, a man engaged in the somewhat tempestuous task of drinking
himself to death, who had occupied Jesse's apartment for a month during
the spring; for it was Jesse's habit to extend the use of his London
lodging, which was desirable mainly on account of its highly privileged
character, to those of his intimates who happened to be in London while
he himself was in New York.
"'E was more than 'arf-seas hover hall the time, sir," Gaskins told
Jesse, lamentingly, "which of course was 'is privilege, but 'e did give
'isself some 'orrid bumps when 'e come 'ome along o' three or four o'
mornings. Hi'm afraid 'e would 'ave killed 'iself, sir, falling hagainst
the furniture, 'ad I not been living on the premises hand come hup hand
got 'im straightened hout hin bed. Hand, sir, when Hi didn't come hup,
'e would halways go to sleep in the bath-tub with 'is clothes on. A
swift goer, sir, but killing 'isself; killing 'isself fast."
Jesse laughed. He was tolerant enough of the idiosyncrasies of his
intimates, and this one, the "swift goer," had been of use to him in New
York as a sort of organizer and major domo of revelries.
Jesse's apartment was on one of the quiet squares of Curzon Street, set
amid a row of other houses given over to the accommodation of stationary
and transient bachelors who found the restraints of London hotels
irksome. It was beautifully appointed, even to the culinary department
which Jesse himself only used on the occasions when he entertained
companies of roystering Americans and their companions, who were usually
more or less photographed figurantes from the musical comedies. His
breakfast was brought to him from the Gaskins ménage in the basement,
and he dined here, there and everywhere--not infrequently at the Savoy.
It had not taken Jesse long, following his arrival in London, to
ascertain that Louise and Laura were at the Savoy. He had, in fact,
within an hour after his arrival, caused a telephone canvass to be made
of the London hotels mainly patronized by Americans during the touring
season to gain this information. Now, lounging about his apartment while
his Japanese man unpacked his things, he began upon the devising of a
method whereby he might again meet Louise. He had been reluctantly
forced to abandon the idea that by this time she might have "altered her
prejudice" against him and might therefore be at least passively willing
to meet him upon the plane of ordinary acquaintanceship, thus giving him
an opportunity to exercise his fascinations upon her.
But he had not the least intention of abandoning his besiegement of
Louise Treharne--even if the besiegement had to be turned into an
ambuscade. He had come to London, leaving New York at a time when the
market was setting strongly against him, solely with this purpose in his
mind. He furnished himself with plenty of excuses for the deliberation
with which he undertook this particular quest. It was his indurated
habit to doubt the continence of all women; and he made no exception of
Louise Treharne. The fact that she had scarcely been out of school a
month when he had first met her did not in the least serve to give her
immunity from such a doubt in Jesse's mind. His single guide in such
appraisals of women was his own experience with them, and his
experience, he told himself, embodied plenty of parallels to the case of
Louise Treharne. Why should she be immune from a furtiveness, and the
indulgences thereof, which he had so often studied at first hand? Why
should she be less clever at dissimulation than many others he had
known?
He had not the least doubt that he was right in this view. He sought to
make himself believe that otherwise he would be entirely willing to
permit Louise to go her way. But, being right, then it was intolerable
that she should have flouted him--_him!_--as she had. It was a girlish,
immature prejudice. He had not had sufficient opportunity to gain her
better will. Her treatment of him had sorely touched his vanity as a
moulder of women to his purposes. The circumstances of his meeting with
her had deprived him of a fair chance. She was young, beautiful, and, he
felt sure, superbly secretive. He had not the least intention of
supinely yielding to her foolish belief--it could not be other than
that--that she disliked him.
But how to proceed?
No problem, having to do with what he would have called his diversions,
had ever before so daunted him. Laura, to begin with, was a stumbling
block in his path. Laura, with whom he had a perfunctory
acquaintanceship extending over several years, had pointedly cut him,
not once, but frequently, since the newspapers had flared with accounts
of the one disreputable affair concerning him which had leaked out. He
knew very well that there was not the least possible chance for him to
regain even a nodding plane with Laura Stedham. And she was the barrier
between himself and Louise Treharne. They were rarely, he felt sure, out
of each other's company. If Laura were out of the way, and he could
reach Louise alone, there would, he felt, be a chance. It was
unimaginable that Louise would, in such a case, be unresponsive to the
allurements of his wealth, his power proceeding from wealth, his
personality--Jesse felt so absolutely certain of this that he smiled
when a vague doubt of it passed through his mind.
He had won many aloof women by bestowing upon them magnificent gifts.
But he knew perfectly well that this method would not do with Louise
Treharne. Whatever else she might be, there was, he felt, not a particle
of greed in her. There had even been times when Jesse had not scrupled
to effect his designs by putting forth the pretence that his devotions
tended in but one direction--the altar. How to employ even this final
method to engage the attention of a woman whose eyes, he very well knew,
would flame with scorn of him even if she found herself accidentally in
his presence?
For several hours, while Mutsu, his Japanese valet, went forward with
the unpacking, Jesse strode up and down his apartment, going over this
problem as he would have calculated the chances and mischances of a
market campaign.
It was inevitable that Jesse, at the end of his study of the problem,
should have reached but one conclusion: it must be an ambuscade.
Having reached this conclusion, he measured the risk and sought to
forecast the aftermath. Everything was in his favor. In the situation
which he meditated bringing about, he knew that, in case anything went
wrong, the man's word would be worth that of a thousand women, no matter
how exalted their reputations. And more than likely, he calmly figured,
there would be no aftermath at all. Entrapped, and perceiving no
possibility of escape Louise would acknowledge her finely-acted
furtiveness to him, and, like all women who used furtiveness as a
screen, would make the best of the situation--which was all that Jesse
desired.
The salient feature of the plan which rapidly took form in his mind
consisted in discovering when Louise and Laura should be out of each
other's company, even for a short time. Jesse, not in the least balking
at the idea of setting a deliberate trap because he knew that he would
hold the advantage no matter what the outcome, applied himself to the
solution of this by no means minor difficulty. The sight of the silent,
busy Mutsu, industriously stowing his master's gear in dressers and
closets, furnished Jesse with a suggestion.
He would give his Japanese man a vigil at the Savoy. The vigil might be
a tedious as it was sure to be a delicate one, but Mutsu was both
patient and discreet. He was a studious but alert man-boy of
indeterminate age, as is characteristic of Japanese males under fifty,
who had been employed as a club attendant in New York for several years
and thus had added to his natural gift for discretion. He had been with
Jesse for more than a year, always doing more than was ever asked of
him, but studiously refraining from indicating whether he entertained
any personal liking for his employer--which is another trait of a
certain type of Japanese in their relationships with Occidentals.
Jesse spent a concentrated half hour in minutely instructing Mutsu as to
what he desired of him. The valet was to go to the Savoy on the morrow,
and, by liberally tipping the doorman at the ladies' entrance, or the
carriage-opener, or whomsoever among the hotel's menials he found the
most pliable or knowing, have Mrs. Laura Stedham and Miss Louise
Treharne, American ladies who were guests of the hotel, pointed out to
him when they should make their appearance, as they no doubt would in
the course of the day, either for driving or walking. Miss Treharne
would be the younger of the two. After having familiarized himself with
the personal exteriors of these ladies, Mutsu was to keep vigil, on
whatever pretext he might invent, in or around the hotel, until such a
time as he should see the older of the two American ladies leaving the
hotel alone. Whenever that should happen, the valet was instantly to
telephone to Jesse at the Curzon Street apartment. The watch on the
movements of the two ladies was not to terminate until Mrs. Stedham
should leave the hotel unaccompanied by Miss Treharne, no matter how
many days of waiting should be required before such a thing occurred.
Mutsu nodded and exhibited his dental smile when Jesse had finished his
instructions. He understood the instructions perfectly, without, of
course, in the least guessing at the purpose back of them.
Jesse made no mistake in appraising his Japanese man's acuteness at such
work. Within less than two hours after ingratiating himself, by the use
of unostentatiously distributed backsheesh, with certain of the Savoy's
flunkeys, Matsu had had Laura and Louise pointed out to him as they left
the hotel and entered a taxicab. He fixed their faces on his mental
recording tablets, and called up Jesse on the telephone and told him of
his progress.
Thenceforward, for several days, the wiry little Japanese valet hovered
about the ladies' entrance of the Savoy, forestalling suspicion as to
the purpose of his loitering by the bestowal of liberal _pourboires_
upon such of the flunkeys as were in a position to notice the constancy
of his vigil.
Jesse kept to his Curzon Street apartment during the day, ever on the
alert for a telephone message from his valet. He chafed under the
necessity--as he deemed it--which kept him indoors throughout the
daylight hours and only permitted of his prowling about London at night.
But he possessed a sort of Luciferian determination in the pursuit of
such a purpose as that upon which he was now engaged; to the successful
accomplishment of which he would have passed his days in a cellar if
that had been one of the requirements of the game.
* * * * *
Laura had many friends, English and American, in London whom she
received and called upon informally. She cared nothing for the
"functionizing" of the Anglo-American social season in London, but she
keenly enjoyed the unceremonious gayeties of little groups of friends.
She laughingly declared that she had "trained" the people she liked to
"drop in" upon her in London in the American manner of neighborliness;
and she enjoyed "showing off," as she expressed it, "the beautiful Miss
Treharne, from the States," as some of the chatty London weeklies had
alluded to Louise. She liked to junket about, too, with Louise; and
there was no lack of agreeable men keen to take them on day-long motor
tours through the country, attach them for merry afternoons to houseboat
parties, and so on. For her part, Louise enjoyed the contrast afforded
by the shy diffidence of the young Englishmen whom she met to the
exuberant breeziness of Laura's American men friends in London.
One afternoon--it was ten days after Jesse's arrival in London--Laura
suggested to Louise, at luncheon, that, as they had a "clean slate" for
the remainder of the daylight hours for the first time in a long while,
a tour among the shops, including a visit to the American department
store just then established in London, might fill in a part of the time
agreeably.
"But I am not insisting upon your going with me, dear," said Laura. "I
know your lack of keenness for shopping in London, and I don't blame
you, considering how the tradespeople here try to positively _make_ one
buy things one doesn't want. So you can very easily escape on the plea
that you have letters to write, or that you are tired and want to rest
up for the theatre tonight, and I shan't be in the least miffed."
"I'll make it the letter-writing plea, then, Laura," said Louise, "and
cling to the truth in spite of the temptation you offer me to fib. I
really have a lot of letters to write."
Laura went away in a taxicab directly after luncheon, saying that she
would not be gone more than three hours, and Louise, at the desk in the
sitting room of their suite, began a letter to her father, from whom,
forwarded by John Blythe, she had lately received a long and
affectionate letter, expressing his anxiety to see her and the hope that
he might so arrange his business affairs as to permit of his visiting
New York late in the Autumn.
About half an hour after she had begun writing the telephone bell rang.
"His this Miss Tre'arne?" Louise heard a man's voice, "but Mrs. Stedham
says that you are that of an upper servant," in the telephone.
"Yes, I am Miss Treharne--what is it?" she replied.
"Begging pardon, Miss Tre'arne," went on the man's voice, "but Mrs.
Stedham says that you are not to be halarmed. Mrs. Stedham, Miss, was
taken slightly ill in a taxicab--nothing serious, Miss, she hasks me to
hassure you--and she is now with Mrs. 'Ammond, at Number Naught-Fourteen
Curzon Street. Mrs. Stedham, Miss, hinsists that you be not halarmed,
and wishes you to come to 'er at Mrs. 'Ammond's at once. This is Mrs.
'Ammond's butler that is speaking."
"Tell Mrs. Stedham, please, that I shall come at once," said Louise,
instantly aroused by the thought that something serious might have
happened to Laura. "What is the number and street again, please? And you
are sure Mrs. Stedham has had no accident or is not seriously ill?"
"It is Naught-Fourteen Curzon Street, Miss Tre'arne," came the reply,
"hand Mrs. Stedham 'erself hasks that you be hassured that she is only
slightly hindisposed."
"I shall be there immediately, please tell her," said Louise, making a
pencilled note of the address.
Very uneasy, Louise put on her hat and long pongee coat with fluttering
fingers. She felt that something serious must have happened to deflect
Laura from a shopping tour to the home of a woman friend. She had not
heard Laura allude to any woman friend in London named Mrs. Hammond, but
that consideration did not linger more than an instant in her mind, for
Laura no doubt had many London friends of whom she had not chanced to
speak.
Within less than five minutes after receiving the telephoned summons,
Louise was on her way in a taxicab to the address in Curzon Street. She
was pale and in a tremor of uneasiness when the taxicab pulled up at the
curb of a neat three-story house near the end of a row of similar
houses.
So perturbed was she by the thought that she had not been told the
entire truth as to what had happened to Laura that she scarcely noticed
the bald, bland Gaskins when he opened the door for her and said "Miss
Tre'arne?"
"Yes, yes," hastily replied Louise. "Where is Mrs. Stedham?"
"If you please, Miss, Hi shall conduct you," said Gaskins, inured by
years of experience to the sort of deception he was practising; and he
softly padded up the thickly-carpeted stairs in advance of her. Closely
followed by Louise, who paid hardly any attention at all to the
surroundings in her trepidation as to how she might find Laura, Gaskins
quietly opened the front side door of the second floor apartment and
held it open for her. Louise stepped into the room, and Gaskins, not
entering himself, closed the door after her. She did not of course
notice the click which denoted that the closed door was fitted with a
spring lock. Afterwards Louise remembered having thought it odd that
Gaskins did not follow her into the room to announce her, instead of so
suddenly effacing himself.
Louise quickly saw that there was nobody in the charmingly arranged
room--partly study, partly living room--in which she found herself. Also
she noticed that it was distinctively a man's room. Wondering, but not
yet affected by any fear, she made a few steps toward the portieres at
the rear of the room.
She was about to reach out a hand to draw the portieres side, when they
parted; and Langdon Jesse confronted her. He was trig in a big,
overweight way in his lounging suit of grey; but the pallor of
excitement had overspread his naturally waxy face, and his attempt at
the debonair manner was proclaimed to be a mere assumption by the
trembling of his hands and the huskiness of his voice when he spoke.
Louise had never swooned in her life. Now, however, at this apparition
of the one human being she had ever learned to loathe, she pressed one
hand to her forehead and another to her heart and swayed slightly. She
feared that she would fall; but the thought rocketed through her mind
that if she yielded to the almost overpowering physical weakness of the
moment she would be at his mercy. By an effort of will which she
afterwards remembered with wonderment, she steadied herself as if by the
process of actually forcing her blood to flow evenly. She permitted her
hands to fall to her sides and regarded Jesse with an appearance of
calmness. In that clash of eyes, Jesse, after a very few seconds of it,
turned his head away on pretence of motioning Louise to a chair. The
impalement of her gaze was beyond his endurance.
Louise paid no attention to his arm-waved invitation to be seated, but
stood in the spot where she had stopped when the first sight of him had
almost sent her reeling. She regarded him steadily, almost
incredulously; an expression of incredulity that such a thing could be.
"It is unpardonable, of course, Miss Treharne," said Jesse, with a
clearing of the throat in an attempt to sweep away his huskiness. "But
my madness to see you, the hopelessness of trying to see you, alone, in
any other way--" He brought his sentence to a finish with a gesture
meant to emphasize the excusableness of his position.
"Therefore you have sought to entrap me?" said Louise, with no trace of
scorn in her tone; her contempt for him was quite beyond such a
manifestation of loathing; she asked the question as if really
astonished to discover that a man would do such a thing.
"What other method could I employ save a sort of strategy?" asked
Jesse, evading her gaze. "Knowing that I was under the ban of your
unreasonable dislike, that you would refuse to receive me, and wretched,
despairing, under the constant castigation of your prejudice--what else
could I do? What else could any man do who found himself in a state of
desperation from his love for a woman?"
"Say anything but that, I beg of you," replied Louise, experiencing a
surge of disgust at the man's effrontery in professing love in such a
situation. "I have no reason to expect anything savoring of manliness
from you, of course; but you might at least spare yourself the
humiliation--if you can be humiliated--of seeming ridiculous."
"I expected harsh words from you, which, of course, is tantamount to
confessing that I deserve them," said Jesse. "But I think we shall have
a better understanding. Won't you be seated?"
"I would have credited you for knowing better than to ask me that,"
replied Louise. She stepped to the door by which she had entered, tried
the knob, and of course found that the door was locked. Jesse, watching
her, gradually resumed his attempt at the debonair manner. All of the
odds were in his favor in this adventure. He could not see where he
stood a chance to lose. Therefore, according to the smooth argument of
cowardice, there was no reason, he considered, why he should continue
his air of deference.
"You did not suppose that, having been to somewhat adroit pains to get
you here, I would make it so easy for you to walk out without, at least,
a little interchange of ideas?" he asked her, with coolly lifting brows,
when she turned from the door.
She noticed his change of tone, and was conscious that she preferred it
to his manner of fawning self-exculpation.
"Make your mind easy as to that. I have told you that I expect nothing
whatever of you that befits a man," she replied with a coldness of tone
from which he inwardly recoiled far more than if she had poured out upon
him an emotional torrent of rebuke.
For a moment Jesse, studying her, was visited by the suggestion that
perhaps, after all, Louise Treharne was wearing no mask; that she was
really that anomaly--as he would have viewed such a one--a woman who was
what she professed to be. But he quickly dismissed this prompting as
something out of the question. She was merely a proficient in the art of
acting, and she was employing her mimetic talent to the utmost upon
him--thus he argued it out with himself. Moreover, he decided to give
expression to his belief, as being calculated sooner to bring her to the
realization that he had her measured.
"Listen, Louise," he said to her, thus calling her without even
attempting to make his tone apologetic; he leaned his elbows on the back
of a leather chair and forced himself to look directly at her as he
spoke: "It is idle for you to seek to delude me. It might do if I were
not nearly twice your age and had not had about five thousand times your
experience. As the matter stands, it is simply absurd. At least give me
credit for having cut my wisdom teeth as to women. You portray the part
you assume with me very well. I'll have to say that for you. But, seeing
that I have penetrated to the heart of the comedy, why protract the
play?"
Louise disdained to attempt to have him believe that she did not
understand him. But she was so riven by the shamefulness of his
imputation that she could not have found words to reply to him if she
had wanted to.
"Why not give me a chance to make good with you, Louise?" went on Jesse
in a tone of arguing familiarity, coming from behind the leather chair
and advancing toward her. He accepted her silence for wavering, or at
least a willingness to listen to the sort of a presentation he had
started. "You know that I am devilishly fond of you, else I would not
have gone to all this trouble to get you here. Of course you may call it
a trap and all that sort of penny-dreadful rot; but what other way had
I to see you? You've scarcely been out of my mind since first I met you
at Judd's--I should say, at your mother's house. I've been stark raving
about you--am yet; and that's the truth. Why can't we be bully good
friends? Your little pretenses are all very engaging and that sort of
thing, and do you credit, of course, but you see I have penetrated them.
Well, then, why can't we hit it off? You don't know how good I'll be to
you if you look at the thing in the sensible way. The first time I saw
you I heard them hail you as Empress Louise. Well, I'll see to it that
you have the adornment and the investiture of an Empress. Well, is it a
bargain, Louise? Will you shake hands on it?"
He was very close to where she stood by this time, having continued to
advance toward her as he spoke. A sudden flush had appeared on his
features, and his enunciation was choppy, muffled, indistinct from the
huskiness of passion.
"Don't come any closer to me than you are," she said to him when, within
an arm's length of her, he stopped and held out his hand to bind the
pact his words had attempted to frame. She spoke quietly, stood her
ground, looked straight at him, and placed her hands behind her back.
"And allow me to say this: I feel sure no coward of your kind ever yet
escaped some sort of retribution. You will repent what you have said to
me. But you will repent far more if you put your hands upon me. Will
you open this door and let me go?"
She looked her innocence, her perfect purity, as she stood before him.
But Jesse was blind to what even the most ordinary, uncultivated man
might have seen at a glance. His prominent, protrusive eyes had become
bloodshot, and, instead of breathing, he was almost gasping.
"So you're going to keep on your white domino of pretense, eh?" he
sneered. "Open the door? Do you think I'm going to let you treat me as
if I were some credulous cub just turned loose from school? Open the
door? Don't, for Heaven's name, take me for an imbecile!"
Suddenly he reached forward and twined his arms about her waist and
crushed her to him, making for her lips. She gave no outcry, but,
raising her right forearm, pressed it under his chin, thus holding his
head back and keeping his face from hers. But he did not relax his
powerful embrace. Louise strove with all of her unusual woman's strength
to break his hold upon her, but his hands were clasped back of her, and
her exertions only caused the two of them to sway and change ground; and
his embrace remained that of a python.
"You might as well drop this damned ground-and-lofty business and behave
yourself like a sensible girl, you know," panted Jesse, speaking in a
choked tone because her forearm remained wedged under his chin. "You're
game, and all that sort of thing, and you're all kinds of a good
actress, too; but, by God, you're not quite clever enough to pull the
wool over my eyes! You're Antoinette Treharne's daughter, and you're
some other things besides that I don't exactly know the details of but
have a pretty good guess at; and you're going to rest quiet in these
arms today, if you never do again!"
They struggled back and forth, Louise, quite conscious that she stood in
the greatest peril she was ever likely to know, holding her own with a
strength which Jesse, even in the madness of the moment, told himself
was almost preternatural in a young, slender woman.
"You are simply wasting your strength, you know," Jesse went on, putting
forth all of the power of his arms and holding her so close to him that
for a moment she could not move. "I have no taste for this sort of
schoolboy and schoolgirl tugging and hauling. But you force me to it.
You haven't a chance on earth of getting out of here, even if I release
you--which I shall, as soon as I have taken a little harmless toll of
your lips. Now, are you going to be sensible and quit this idiotic
business?"
Louise did not answer him. She had said no word, made no plea, since he
had seized upon her. She knew that words would be useless, and she could
not have framed a beseeching phrase to address to him had she tried. She
was taking her chance, doing all she could to make the chance better.
But she could not and would not implore him to release her. She thought
of screaming; but, remembering how the man who had conducted her
upstairs had let her into the room and then obliterated himself, she
reasoned it out, even in the intensity of the struggle, that this man no
doubt was a flunky accomplice who would pay no attention to her
screaming. Nevertheless she did decide that, as a last resort, she would
scream, taking the chance that whomsoever happened to be on the floor
beneath or the one above might come to her assistance.
She had relaxed a little, for rest, as he spoke to her, and, catching
her off her guard, Jesse suddenly put forth all of his power and swung
her, slipping and almost falling as he did so, partly through the
portieres from which he had emerged when she came in.
When the portieres thus were thrust apart, Louise saw, standing in the
middle of the room which they screened off, a surprised-looking,
somewhat scowling little Japanese. Jesse caught sight of Mutsu at the
same instant that Louise did.
"What the devil are you doing here?" Jesse demanded of the valet. "Get
out and stay out till this evening, do you hear?"
Mutsu first lowered his head, then shook it with a most decided
negative. His lips were pulled back from his teeth; mutiny shone all
over him.
"What you do?" he demanded of Jesse, falling into a pidgin vernacular
which he rarely used except when excited. "She no like to be crushed in
embrace? She is of an innocence. She is of an honorable. I saw that at
Savoy Hotel when first I see her. Why you no let go?"
"Get out of here, I say, you damned chattering monkey!" Jesse raged at
him, relaxing his hold upon Louise, and leaping at the little Japanese.
Mutsu, retreating not an inch, met the charge of his employer with
lowered head, and when Jesse thrust out a hand to grab him the Japanese,
revealing a perfect adeptness at jiu-jitsu which Jesse never had known
he possessed, seized the thrust-out hand between both of his own sinewy
ones; and in an instant Jesse's face was drawn with pain. Then the
Japanese made a sudden dart behind Jesse, pulling back the hand to which
he still clung and the arm to which it was attached in such a way that
the big, bulky man could not move without breaking the arm; he felt the
tendons stretching to the breaking point as it was.
"Now you go, Miss innocent honorable lady," said Mutsu, without visible
excitement, to Louise. "Go through next back room and out door there. I
see you at Savoy tonight after I get fired-dismissed from valet position
here."
Jesse, his face red with the torture of the accomplished jiu-jitsuing he
was receiving, stormed at and cursed the Japanese in fo'c'sle terms as
he saw Louise pass toward the rear door the Japanese had indicated. She
nodded affirmatively to Mutsu when he told her that he would be at the
Savoy that evening to see that she had arrived there safely; then she
passed through the rear door leading into the hall, went down the
thickly-padded stairs without awakening the bald and bland Gaskins, who
dozed in a hall chair; and had the luck to hail a taxicab almost in
front of the house.
* * * * *
Laura was at the hotel, and in a panic of worriment about Louise, when
the girl got back. Louise told Laura what had happened in a few words,
then fainted, falling back heavily upon a couch, for the first time in
her life--after the danger was all over, with the usual feminine
whimsiness.
That night the following cable message to John Blythe was flashed under
the sea:
"Come immediately. You are needed here. LAURA."