The Second Latchkey Part 3

"We needn't talk of _him_, anyway!"

There was a hint of anger in the girl's protest; but her resentment was for the man who had humiliated her by breaking his appointment--_such_ an appointment!

She hurried on, trying to hide all signs of agitation. "You see, Mrs.

Ellsworth once hoped to have Archdeacon Smith and his wife for friends.

They didn't care for her, but they loved my father--oh, long ago in the country, where we lived. When he died and I hadn't any money or training for work, they were nice to Mrs. Ellsworth for my sake--or, rather, for my father's sake--and persuaded her to take me as her companion. She was glad to do it to please them; but soon she realized that they didn't mean to reward her by being intimate.

"Poor woman, I was almost sorry for her disappointment! You see, she's a sn.o.b at heart, and though 'Smith' sounds a common name, both the Archdeacon and his wife have t.i.tled relations. So have I--and that was another reason for taking me. She adores a t.i.tle. Doesn't that sound pitiful? But she has few interests and no real friends, so she's never given up hope of 'collecting' the Smiths.

"That's why she lets me visit them. And when I happened to mention, for something to say, that the Archdeacon had an eccentric cousin in America who was afraid of hotels and even of visiting at their house because of a fad about burglars, she offered to give him the better of her two spare rooms whenever he came to England. I never thought he'd accept, but he did, only he would insist on paying.

"That's the story, if you can call it a story, for Mr. Ruthven Smith isn't a bit exciting nor interesting. When he appears--generally quite suddenly--he finds his room ready. He has his breakfast sent up, and lunches out at his club or somewhere. He mostly dines out, too, but he has a standing invitation to dine with Mrs. Ellsworth, and we always have good dinners when he is staying, to be ready in case of the worst."

The man smiled, rather a charming smile, Annesley could not help noticing.

"In case of the worst!" he repeated. "He must be deadly if his society bores you more than that of an old lady on whom, I suppose, you dance attendance morning, noon, and night. Now, my situation is so--er--peculiar that I ought to be thankful to exchange ident.i.ties with any man. But I wouldn't with Mr. Ruthven Smith for all his money and jewels."

Annesley opened her eyes. "Did I say anything about jewels?" she asked.

"No, you didn't," the man a.s.sured her, "except in mentioning the name of Ruthven Smith. Anybody who has lived in America as long as I have, a.s.sociates jewels with the name of Ruthven Smith. His 'Ruthven' lifts him far above the ruck of a _mere_ Smith--like myself, for instance"; and he smiled again.

Annesley began curiously to feel as if she knew him well. This made her more anxious to give him help--for it would not be helping a stranger: it would be helping a friend.

"I've heard, of course, that he's something--I'm not sure what--in a firm of jewellers," she said. "But I'd no idea of his being so important."

"He's third partner with Van Vreck & Co.," her companion explained. "I've heard he joined at first because of his great knowledge of jewels and because he's been able to revive the lost art of making certain transparent enamels. The Van Vrecks sent for him from England years ago.

He buys jewels for the firm now, I believe. No doubt that's why he's in such a funk about burglars."

"Fancy your knowing more about Mr. Smith than I know! Perhaps more than Mrs. Ellsworth knows!" exclaimed Annesley, forgetting the strain of expectation--the dread that a pair of mysterious, nightmare men might break up the dreamlike dinner-party for two.

"I don't know more about him than half America and Europe knows," laughed the man. "It's lucky I _do_ know something, though, as I may have to be mistaken for Ruthven Smith, and add an 'N' to his initials. I suppose he's not in England now by any chance?"

"No. It must be six or seven months since he was here last," said Annesley. "I don't think Mrs. Ellsworth has heard from him. She hardly ever does until a day or two before he's due to arrive; neither do his cousins."

"A peculiar fellow, it would seem," remarked her companion. And then, out of a plunge into thought, "You say you've never seen the Mr. Smith you came to meet at the Savoy? How can you be sure it isn't old 'R. S.' as they call him at Van Vreck's, wanting to play you a trick--give you a surprise?"

Annesley shook her head. "If you knew Mr. Ruthven Smith, you'd know that would be impossible. Why, I don't believe he remembers when I'm out of sight that I exist."

"Still more peculiar! Miss Grayle, I haven't any right to ask you questions. But I shouldn't be a man if I weren't forgetting my own affairs--in--in curiosity, if you want to call it that (I don't!), about yours. No! I won't let it pa.s.s for ordinary curiosity. Can't you understand you're doing for me more than any woman ever has done, or any man would do? That does make a bond between us. You can't deny it. Tell me about this Mr. Smith whom you don't know and never saw, yet came to the Savoy Hotel to meet."

CHAPTER III

WHY SHE CAME

Surprised by the abruptness of his question, Annesley's eyes dropped from the eyes of her host, which tried to hold them. She felt that she ought to be angry with him for taking advantage of her generosity--for it amounted to that! Yet anger would not come, only shame and the desire to hide a thing which would change his grat.i.tude to contempt.

"Don't let's waste time talking about me," she said. "We haven't arranged----"

"We've arranged everything as well as we can. For the rest, I must trust to luck--and you. Do tell me why you came here, why you _thought_ you came here, I mean; for I'm convinced you were sent for my sake by any higher powers there may be. I felt that, the minute I saw you. I feel it ten times more strongly now. I know that whatever your reason was, it's nothing to be ashamed of."

"I _am_ ashamed," Annesley was led on to confess. "You'd despise me if I told you, for you can't realize what my life's been for five years. And that's my one excuse."

"Only a fool would want a woman like you to excuse herself for anything. I swear I wouldn't despise you. I couldn't. If you should tell me--knowing you as little, or as well, as I do, that you'd been plotting a murder, I'd be certain you were justified, and my first thought would be to save you, as you're saving me now."

Annesley felt again the man's intense magnetism. Suddenly she wanted to tell him everything. It would be a relief. She would watch his face and see how it changed. It would be like having the verdict of the world on what she had done--or meant to do.

"I saw an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Morning Post_," she said with a kind of breathless violence, "from a man who--who wanted to meet a girl with--a 'view to marriage.'"

The words brought a blush so painful that the mounting blood forced tears to her eyes. But she looked her _vis-a-vis_ unwaveringly in the face.

That did not change at all, unless the interest in his eyes grew warmer.

The sympathy she saw there gave Annesley a new and pa.s.sionate desire to defend herself. If he had shown disgust, she would not have cared to try, she thought.

"I told you it was horrid, and not interesting or romantic," she dashed on. "But I was desperate. Mrs. Ellsworth is awful! I don't suppose you ever met such a woman. She's not cruel about starving my body. It's only my soul she starves. What business have _I_ with a soul, except in church, where it's proper to think about such things? But she nags--_nags_! She makes my hair feel as if it were turning gray at the roots, and my face drying up--like an apple.

"I wasn't nineteen when I came to her. I'm twenty-three now, and I feel _old_--desiccated, thanks to those piling-up hundreds of days with her.

They've killed my spirit. I used to be different. I can feel it. I can see it in the mirror. It isn't only the pa.s.sing days, but having nothing better to look forward to. I'm too cowardly--or too religious or something, to kill myself, even if I knew how to, decently. But the deadliness of it all, the airlessness of her house and her heart!

"A man couldn't imagine it. She's made me forget not only my own youth, but that there's youth in the world. Why, at first I was so wild I should have loved to say dreadful things, or strike her. But now I haven't the spirit left to feel like that. My blood's turning white. The other day when I was reading aloud to Mrs. Ellsworth (I read a lot: the stupidest parts of the papers and the silliest books, that turn my brain to fluff) I caught sight of an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Personal Column.

"I stopped just in time and didn't read it out. Only a glimpse I had, for I was in the midst of something else when my eyes wandered. But when Mrs.

Ellsworth was taking her nap after luncheon I got the _Post_ again and read the advertis.e.m.e.nt through carefully. The reason I was interested was because even the glance I took showed that the girl who was 'wanted'

seemed in some ways rather like me. The advertis.e.m.e.nt said she must be from twenty-one to twenty-six; needn't be a beauty, but of pleasant appearance; money no object; the essentials were that she must have a fair education and be of good birth and manners, so as to command a certain position in society.

"I believe those were the very words. And it didn't seem too conceited to think that I answered the description. I'm not bad-looking, and my mother's father was an earl--an Irish one. I couldn't get the advertis.e.m.e.nt out of my head. It fascinated me."

"No wonder!" exclaimed Mr. Smith. He had been listening intently, and though she had paused, panting a little, more than once, he had not broken in with a word.

"Do you _honestly_ think it no wonder?" Annesley flashed at him.

"It was like a prisoner seeing a key sticking in a door that has always been locked," he said.

"How strange you should think of that!" she cried. "It was the thought which came into my mind, and seemed to excuse me if anything could."

Annesley felt grateful to the man. She was sure she could never have explained herself in this way or pleaded her own cause with the real Mr.

Smith. A man cold-blooded enough to advertise for a wife "well-born and able to command a certain position in society" would have frozen her into an ice-block of reserve.

She might possibly have accepted his "proposition" (one couldn't speak of it in the ordinary way as a "proposal"), provided that, on seeing her, he had judged her suitable for the place; but she could never have talked her heart out to him as she was led on to do by this other man, equally a stranger, yet sympathetic because of his own trouble and the mystery which made of him a figure of romance.

"It isn't strange I should think of the prison door and the key," her companion said. "That was the situation. 'N. Smith' was rather clever in his way. There must be many girls of good family and good looks who are in prison, pining to escape. He must have had a lot of answers, that fellow; but none of the girls could have come within a mile of you. I'm selfish! I bless my lucky stars he didn't turn up here."

"I dare say it's the best thing that could happen," Annesley agreed with a sigh. "Probably he's horrible. But there was one thing: I thought, though he must be a sn.o.b and vulgar, advertising as he did for a wife of good birth, that very thing looked as if he were no _worse_ than a sn.o.b.

Not a villain, I mean. Otherwise, I shouldn't have dared answer. But I did answer the same day, while I had the courage. I posted a letter with some of Mrs. Ellsworth's, which she sent me out to drop into the box. His address was 'N. S., the _Morning Post_'; and I told him to send a reply, if he wrote, to the stationery shop and library where Mrs. Ellsworth makes me go every day to change her books."

"And the answer? What was it like? What impression did it give you?"