Celia had by now gained enough insight to realize that although under ordinary circumstances Willis would be furious at having been deceived by a domestic employee, the fact of her inheritance would change matters entirely: his brain would make the nimble leap from bold duplicity to innocent mischief. And, by the same token, he would pursue her all the more zealously.
Celia felt thoroughly capable of handling that part of it. But what if he should penetrate the Hotel Alexandra and pass under the knowledgeable green eye of Mrs. Pond? (“I had an English nurse once.”) What if he should turn drunkenly and publicly boastful?
She had left the hotel with her usual free, unhurried stride; she returned to it far more speedily. In her room she called her lawyer, ostensibly to find out whether he had tried to reach her—“I’ve been out of town for a few days.”
“Well, no,” said Mr. Agnew, “but I believe we’ll have some good news for you by the end of the week. I have a dentist—they’re the ones with the ready cash these days, eh?—who wants the house badly. I’m assuming you’d be willing to sacrifice a couple of hundred dollars, if necessary, in favor of an immediate sale?”
Celia said yes, although even in her present anxiety it went against the grain. “Oh, by the way,” she added casually but firmly, “I’d rather that you didn’t give out my address to anyone just now. I’m so unsettled that I’d prefer to do any getting in touch myself. I don’t suppose anyone has asked?”
This necessitated some interoffice inquiries, and then, “Just a Mr. Lambert,” said Mr. Agnew.
He assured her that his secretary had taken the call and that no information had been given out, but the Alpine hat had certainly been an omen. Celia applied herself fiercely to her apartment hunting in the conviction that she would be far more invisible as the roommate of a stranger than anywhere else: for one thing, the telephone would be listed under a name other than hers.
But it was not as simple as Mrs. Pond had seemed to think it. The first of Celia’s marked possibilities did not answer, the second had already found someone, thank you. The third inquired distrustfully, “Do you have a stereo?” It was impossible to discern whether the answer wanted were negative or affirmative. Celia said no, truthfully, and the voice said with regret, “That’s too bad, because I have all these marvelous albums and nothing to play them on. I guess I’d better put that in the ad.”
The fourth number was so garrulous and eager that she sounded like one of Mrs. Pond’s weird ones. “Actually it’s just one great huge room,” she confided (the ad had read studio apt.) “but I’ve done the cunningest things with screens and the possibilities are endless. I have a real wood-burning fireplace, that’s always so cosy, don’t you think, and my cat adores new people, doesn’t he?” This addressed to the cat. “I’ll be in all evening if you’d care to come by.”
The fifth and last advertiser was a crisp and chilly voice belonging to a nurse on a hospital night shift, and the division of duties and meal-preparing and entertaining privileges sounded daunting. Celia tried the first number again without success, went down to dinner, presently retired for the night, and, in the morning, bought two newspapers.
On the fourth day of her search she came upon Mary Ellen Vestry, who had already had one disaster in her life.
Celia had spoken to perhaps thirty strange feminine voices. Because it had a diffident quality lacking in the others, she pounced upon this one at once, much as a miner might pounce upon a demure-looking lump with the conviction that there was something very valuable inside. The preliminaries over, she said firmly that the apartment sounded like just what she had been looking for—it hadn’t; the rent was more than she had hoped to pay—and might she come and see it right away?
“Well . . . I’m on my way out now, as a matter of fact,” said the voice with an air of hasty improvisation. “Would eight o’clock be convenient? It’s Apartment 4A, and I’m Mary Ellen Vestry. Oh, and I’m afraid the elevator isn’t working tonight. It seems to be something to do with the rain, although how that . . .”
Celia was to become accustomed to these puzzled irrelevancies. Now she only said with renewed briskness that she would be there at eight, and hung up with an excitement that she was presently able to trace to its source. Even this hotel was a link with the past, sheltering her as it had on the weekends when she had watched and listened and learned; it held, however faintly, the ghost of a maid-turned-housekeeper. The Celia Brett who left it for good could become whoever she wished.
Although it was barely six she called room service, a rare extravagance for her, and ordered a sandwich and coffee. She was dressed and ready to leave by seven; she filled the interval determinedly with a magazine, with the result that when she finally picked up her bag and gloves she almost succeeded in surprising herself in the mirror as she might appear to Mary Ellen Vestry.
Tall; fair hair wound smoothly into a chignon, a fugitive glimmer of the Bonwit Teller pearls at the throat of her tailored raincoat: there was no trace of any deferential tray-carrying in that self-possessed carriage. It was true that she looked very faintly foreign—an automatic avoidance of starches and desserts, plus her natural thrift, had placed slight hollows under her broad cheekbones—but it was in an assured rather than a bewildered way.
From the fluster in her young-sounding voice, the Vestry girl had almost certainly wanted time to call someone in to help pass judgment. Celia was bolstered up by her own reflection. It was still raining, and she
