An Amiable Charlatan Part 20

"Are you sure?" I persisted. "Please ask at the office."

The porter left me for a moment, but returned shaking his head.

"Mr. Parker said there would be no messages or letters, and accordingly he left no address."

I turned slowly away. The hall porter followed me. He was drawing something from his waistcoat pocket.

"I wouldn't do a thing," he declared, "to get Mr. Parker into any trouble --for a nicer, freer-handed gentleman never came inside the hotel; but I don't know as there's much harm in showing you this, being as you're a friend. I picked it up in the sitting room after they'd gone."

He held out a cablegram. Before I realized what I was doing, I had read it. It was handed in at New York:

"Look out! H----sailed last Sat.u.r.day!"

"Pretty badly scared of H----he was!" the hall porter remarked. "Ten minutes after that cablegram came they were hard at it, packing."

I gave the man a tip and drove back to my rooms, where I spent a restless morning, then lunched at my club and returned to the Milan afterward, only in the hope that I might find there a note or a message. There was nothing, however. Just as I was starting to go out the telephone bell rang. I took up the receiver. It was Eve's voice.

"Is that Mr. Walmsley?"

"It is," I admitted. "How are you, Eve?"

"Quite well, thank you."

"Still in London?"

"Certainly. Would you like to come and have tea with me?"

"Rather!" I replied enthusiastically. "Where are you?"

"Hiding!"

"That's all right," I replied. "I shan't give it away. Where shall I find you?"

"Well," she said, "we talked it over and decided that the best hiding place was one of the larger hotels. We are at the Ritz."

"I'll come right along if I may."

"Very well," she agreed. "Ask for Mr. Bundercombe."

I groaned under my breath, but I made no further comment; and in a very few minutes I presented myself at the Ritz Hotel. I was escorted upstairs and ushered into a very delightful suite on the second floor. Eve rose to meet me from behind a little tea-table. She was charmingly dressed and looking exceedingly well. Mr. Bundercombe, on the other hand, who was walking up and down the apartment with his hands behind his back, was distinctly nervous. He nodded at my entrance.

"How are you, Walmsley?" he said. "How are you?"

"I am quite well, sir, thank you," I replied, a little stupefied.

"Say, I'm afraid we are making a great mistake here," he went on anxiously. "We've slipped a point too near to the wind this time."

"If you'll allow me to tell you exactly what I think," I ventured, "frankly I think you have made a mistake. There's that matter of Reggie Sidley. He was worrying me all yesterday morning to find out where you were, and when I evaded the point he told me straight that he didn't believe you were the Bundercombes at all. He is always in and out of this place, and if he sees your name on the register--or his mother, Lady Enterdean, sees it--it seems to me it's about all up!"

"A piece of bravado, I must admit," Mr. Parker muttered--"a piece of absolute bravado! But there's the young woman who's responsible!" he added, shaking his fist at Eve. "I may have suggested our coming to your party as the Bundercombes, but it was Eve's idea that we put up this little piece of bluff. Now I'm all for Paris!" he went on insinuatingly.

At that precise moment I felt that there was nothing I wanted so much as to get Eve away from the Ritz, and I fell in with the scheme.

"We'll all go," I suggested. "I haven't had a week in Paris for a long time."

Eve handed me my tea.

"Don't count me in!" she begged. "I never felt less inclined to move from anywhere. If being Eve Bundercombe means living at the Ritz I think I'd rather go on. The life of an adventuress is, after all, just a little strenuous and I am tired of living on the thin edge of nothing."

"Perhaps, before you know where you are," Mr. Bundercombe remarked gloomily, "you'll be living on the thin edge of a little less than nothing!"

There was a knock at the door. We all looked at one another. A magnificent person with powdered hair, breeches and silk stockings presented himself.

"Lord Reginald Sidley!" he announced.

In walked Reggie. He was correctly attired for calling and he carried a most immaculate silk hat in his hand. I fully expected to see him drop it on the floor, but he did nothing of the sort. He laid it upon a small table, paused for one second to shake his fist at me, and advanced toward Eve with both hands outstretched.

"At last I have found you, then!" he exclaimed. "Miss Bundercombe! Well, I am glad to see you!"

"h.e.l.lo, Reggie!" she answered sweetly. "What a time you've been looking us up."

He was taken aback.

"Well, I like that!" he gasped. "And--how are you, Mr. Bundercombe?"

"Glad to see you!" Mr. Bundercombe replied cheerlessly.

The meeting had taken place and I seemed to be the only person in the room who was suffering from any sort of shock. Reggie was still holding one of Eve's hands and was almost incoherent.

"Come, I like that! I like that!" he exclaimed. "A long time looking you up indeed! Why didn't you let me know you were here? There hasn't been a line from you or from your father. We couldn't believe it when we heard that you had been at the dinner the other evening. I was never so disappointed in my life!"

I gripped Mr. Bundercombe by the arm and led him firmly to one side.

"Look here," I said, "is your name Bundercombe?"

"It is," he admitted gloomily.

"Are you a millionaire?" I persisted.

"Multi!" he groaned.

"Then what the blazes--what the----"

I stopped short. Once more the door was opened--this time without the formality of a knock. If Mr. Bundercombe had seemed anxious and depressed before it was obvious now that the worst had happened. All the cheerful life seemed to have faded from his good-humored face. He had literally collapsed in his clothes. Even Eve gave a little shriek.

Upon the threshold stood Mr. Cullen, and by his side a lady who might have been anywhere between fifty and sixty years old. She was dressed in a particularly unattractive checked traveling suit, with a little satchel suspended from a shiny black leather band round her waist. She wore a small hat that was much too juvenile for her; and from the back of it a blue veil, which she had pushed on one side, hung nearly to the floor. Her complexion was very yellow; she had a square jaw; and through her spectacles her eyes glittered in a most unpleasant fashion. Her greeting was scarcely conciliatory.

"So I've got you at last, have I? Say, this is a pretty chase you've led me! Do you know I've had to desert my post as president of the Great Amalgamated Meeting of the Free Women of the West to come and look after you two? Do you know that three thousand women had to listen to a subst.i.tute last Thursday?--and after I'd spent two months getting my facts for them! Do you know that you're the laughing-stock of Okata?"