A Butterfly on the Wheel Part 6

"Now?" the girl asked.

"Yes! they get here at five." He caught up the receiver again and pressed it to his ear, leaning forward to the mouthpiece.

"I say, Ellerdine--I say, why not wait for us at Chalons? What? You have decided not to go on? Very well. We will wait for you."

He placed the receiver of the telephone back upon its rest, and turned the handle to ring off. Then he looked at Peggy, walking slowly towards her as he spoke.

"Ellerdine is vexed," he said.

Peggy's face was the most alluring pink, her eyes looked angry.

"Please leave the room," she said.

Collingwood stopped. "I am sorry," he said. "I heard the telephone ring, and before I knew where I was...."

Peggy cut him short, pointing to the door on the left-hand side of the room, the door not far from that which led into the corridor. "Is that your room?" taking a couple of steps towards him.

"Yes," the dark man answered; "the hotel was full--it was the only room left. Don't be vexed, Peggy."

The girl's face had a sort of hard impatience in it, though mingled with something else also--something very difficult to define. "Wait," she said. "That door was locked when I tried it before you came in to supper. Did you unlock it?"

Mr. Collingwood laughed a pleasant, musical laugh, which seemed to resolve the somewhat tragic note of Mrs. Admaston's voice into nothing--to make it seem rather unnecessary and absurd. It was a thoroughly boyish laugh.

"Why, Peggy," he said, "what a very serious mood you are in! Unlock it?

Of course I unlocked it, when I heard you at the telephone. I thought you would not mind. Besides, I wanted to know what Ellerdine was up to.

Come, come, Peggy; this is not the first time we have been together so late."

Peggy looked at him with wide eyes. "Oh, but it is different," she said; "we are in a strange hotel--by accident. Colling, it was by accident, wasn't it?"

He started, bent forward a little, and answered her with great eagerness.

"Of course, of course; surely you did not think----"

"Oh, I don't know what I thought; but I feel so funny, so nervous."

Collingwood laughed again--really, it was the most rea.s.suring and musical laugh. "Peggy nervous?"

"Well, it is rather alarming," Peggy replied.

Collingwood laughed once more, and stepped up towards her. "But rather nice--isn't it rather nice?--what, Peggy?"

There was something so irresistibly amusing in his voice and smile that Mrs. Admaston began to bubble over with laughter.

"Isn't it rather nice?" he went on, crossing over to the little switch-board and putting out the big central light which depended from the roof. "Isn't it rather nice?"

Peggy had entrenched herself behind the little table on which supper had been laid. She was obviously tremendously amused, but she made a great effort to be serious. "Colling!" she said, "it is mad. Supposing anybody knew!"

Collingwood was quite calm. He treated the whole thing as if it were the most ordinary occasion. He strolled lazily over to the fireplace, took a cigarette-case from his pocket, a cigarette from it, and struck a light.

"How can anyone know?" he asked.

Peggy seemed alarmed once more.

"No! Colling, please don't light a cigarette. It is too late. I must go to bed."

Collingwood's only answer was to blow out a cloud of smoke, to cross over to the sofa and throw himself upon it.

"Not yet," he said. "Don't be unkind, Peggy. Just one cigarette. Just one, in front of the fire--which, by the way, is out,--and then bye-byes."

"Well, one cigarette, but only one," Peggy said.

Collingwood sat up. "Good little Peggy," he said in a low, quiet voice; and then, raising his head, he looked at her intently with his brilliant grey eyes.

Peggy looked him straight in the face also, and then the spirit of mischief, the excitement of this odd meeting, got the better of her prudence. She came to the back of the sofa and leant over it. "Isn't Peggy going to have one?" she said.

The man took his cigarette-case from his waistcoat pocket, opened it, and gave her a cigarette. Her face was tantalisingly close to his, and she noticed, well enough, that his hand was trembling as he did so. She kept her face close to his just half a moment longer than the situation required.

Collingwood's voice began to shake also. "Now, Peggy, you little devil,"

he said.

"Why is Peggy a little devil?"

With a slim brown hand, which, despite all the man's _sang-froid_, still shook like a leaf in the wind, he lit the cigarette for the girl, looking up into her face as he did so.

"Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Called Robin Goodfellow."

There came a little bubble of laughter from Peggy, which seemed to remove all diffidence from Collingwood. "How are you, my friend Puck?"

he said.

Peggy perched herself upon the head of the sofa. "Oh, Puck was an imp of mischief," she said.

"Well?" he asked.

The girl puffed her cigarette contentedly for a few seconds; then she bent towards him, swinging her little brown-shoed foot. "Tell me, Colling," she asked: "why weren't my boxes registered?"

"Well--of all the suspicious little demons I ever came across!

Registered?"

"Yes, registered."

"Well, I suppose that fool of a porter at Charing Cross forgot to do it," Collingwood replied.

"It was a bit of luck, wasn't it?" Peggy said.

Collingwood seemed to be thinking of something else. He was gazing at the end of his cigarette and not looking at her at all. "Yes," he said in an absent-minded voice.

"I wonder----" Peggy went on; and then suddenly she stopped, and Collingwood looked up with a start.

"I wonder," Peggy continued, "what the Attwill will think?"