The Lighted Way Part 50

"Not a bit," he answered. "All that you have to do is to hold my hand and wait."

In less than ten minutes the cab stopped. He hurried her into the entrance hall of a tall, somewhat somber building. A man in uniform rang a bell and the lift came down. They went up, it seemed to her, seven or eight flights. When they stepped out, her knees were trembling. He caught her up and carried her down a corridor. Then he fitted a Yale key from his pocket into a lock and threw open the door. There was a little hall inside, with three doors. He pushed open the first; it was a small bedroom, plainly but not unattractively furnished. He carried her a little way further down the corridor and threw open another door--a tiny sitting-room with a fire burning.

"Our new quarters!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "The room at the other end of the pa.s.sage is mine. A pound a week and a woman to come in and light the fires! Mr. Jarvis let me have some money and I paid three months' rent in advance. What do you think of them?"

"I can't think," she whispered. "I can't!"

He carried her to the window.

"This is my real surprise, dear," he announced, in a tone of triumph. "Look!"

The blind flew up at his touch. On the other side of the street was a row of houses over which they looked. Beyond, the river, whose dark waters were gleaming in the moonlight. On their left were the Houses of Parliament, all illuminated. On their right, the long, double line of lights shining upon the water at which they had gazed so often.

"The lighted way, dear," he murmured, holding her a little more closely to him. "While I am down in the city you can sit here and watch, and you can see the ships a long way further off than you could ever see them from Adam Street. You can see the bend, too.

It's always easier, isn't it, to fancy that something is coming into sight around the corner?"

She was not looking. Her head was buried upon his shoulder. Arnold was puzzled.

"Look up, Ruth dear," he begged. "I want you to look now--look along the lighted way and hold my hand very tightly. Don't you think that, after all, one of your ships has come home?"

She lifted her face, wet with tears, and looked in the direction where he pointed. Arnold, who felt nothing himself but a thrill of pleasure at his new quarters, was puzzled at a certain trouble which he seemed to see in her features, a faint hopelessness of expression. She looked where he pointed but there was none of the eager expectancy of a few weeks ago.

"It is beautiful, Arnold," she murmured, "but I can't talk just now."

"I am going to leave you to get over it," he declared. "I'm off now to fetch the luggage. You won't be afraid to be left here?"

She shook her head. A certain look of relief flashed across her face.

"No, I shall not be afraid," she answered.

He wheeled the easy-chair up to the window which he had flung wide open. He placed a cushion at the back of her head and left her with a cheerful word. She heard his steps go down the corridor, the rattle of the lift as it descended. Then her lips began to tremble and the sobs to shake her shoulders. She held out her hands toward that line of lights at which he had pointed, and her fingers were clenched.

"It is because--I am like this!" she cried, half hysterically. "I don't count!"

CHAPTER XXIX

COUNT SABATINI VISITS

There was an air of subdued excitement about the offices of Messrs.

Samuel Weatherley & Company from nine until half-past on the following morning. For so many years his clerks had been accustomed to see Mr. Weatherley stroll in somewhere about that time, his cigar in his mouth, his silk hat always at the same angle, that it seemed hard for them to believe that this morning they would not hear the familiar footstep and greeting. Every time a shadow pa.s.sed the window, heads were eagerly raised. The sound of the bell on the outside door brought them all to their feet. They were all on tiptoe with expectation. The time, however, came and pa.s.sed. The letters were all opened, and Mr. Jarvis and Arnold were occupying the private office. Already invoices were being distributed and orders entered up. The disappearance of Mr, Weatherley was a thing established.

Mr. Jarvis was starting the day in a pessimistic frame of mind.

"You may take my word for it, Chetwode," he said solemnly to his companion, after he had finished going through the letters, "that we shall never see the governor again."

Arnold was startled.

"Have you heard anything?" he asked.

Mr. Jarvis admitted gloomily that he had heard nothing.

"It's my belief that nothing more will be heard," he added, "until his body's found."

"Rubbish!" Arnold declared. "Mr. Weatherley wasn't the sort of man to commit suicide."

Mr. Jarvis looked around the office as though he almost feared that the ghost of his late employer might be listening.

"It is my belief," he said impressively, "that we none of us knew the sort of man Mr. Weatherley was, or rather the sort of man he has become since his marriage."

"I don't see what marriage with Mrs. Weatherley could have had to do with his disappearance," Arnold remarked.

Mr. Jarvis looked foolishly wise from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles.

"You haven't had the opportunity of watching the governor as I have since his marriage," he declared. "Take my advice, Chetwode. You are not married, I presume?"

"I am not," Arnold a.s.sured him.

"Nor thinking of it?"

"Nor thinking of it," Arnold repeated.

"When the time comes," Mr. Jarvis said, "don't you go poking about in any foreign islands or places. If only the governor had left those smelly European cheeses to take care of themselves, he'd be sitting here in his chair at this moment, smoking a cigar and handing me out the orders. You and I are, so to speak, in a confidential position now, Chetwode, and I am able to say things to you about which I might have hesitated before. Do you know how much the governor has spent during the last year?"

"No idea," Arnold replied. "Does it matter?"

"He has spent," Mr. Jarvis announced, solemnly, "close upon ten thousand pounds."

"It sounds like a good deal," Arnold admitted, "but I expect he had saved it."

"Of course he had saved it," Mr. Jarvis admitted; "but what has that to do with it? One doesn't save money for the pleasure of spending it. Never since my connection with the firm has Mr. Weatherley attempted to spend anything like one half of his income."

"Then I should think it was quite time he began," Arnold declared.

"You are not going to suggest, I suppose, that financial embarra.s.sments had anything to do with Mr. Weatherley's disappearance?"

Mr. Jarvis started. To him the suggestion sounded sacrilegious.

"My dear Chetwode," he said, "you must indeed be ignorant of the resources of the firm when you make such a suggestion! I simply wished to point out that after his marriage Mr. Weatherley completely changed all his habits. It is not well for a man of his age to change his habits.... G.o.d bless my soul, here is an automobile stopping outside. If it should be Mr. Weatherley come back!"

They both hurried eagerly to the window. The automobile, however, which had drawn up outside, was larger and more luxurious than Mr.

Weatherley's. Count Sabatini, folding up his newspaper, made a leisurely descent. The cashier looked at him curiously.

"Wonder who it is," he remarked. "Looks like some sort of a foreigner."

"It is Mrs. Weatherley's brother," Arnold told him.