Reaction had left her almost calm. The trepidation of a few moments back had vanished; and she advanced now in a brisk and businesslike way. She found the door and opened it. There was more darkness beyond, but an uncurtained window gave sufficient light for her to see that she was in a sitting-room. Across one corner of this room lay a high-backed chesterfield. In another corner stood a pedestal desk. And about the soft carpet there were distributed easy chairs in any one of which Mrs. Waddington, had the conditions been different, would have been delighted to sit and rest.
But, though she had been on her feet some considerable time now and was not a woman who enjoyed standing, prudence warned her that the temptation to relax must be resisted. It was a moment for action, not repose. She turned to the door which presumably led into the front hall and thence to the stairs and safety: and had just opened it when there came the click of a turning key.
Mrs. Waddington acted swiftly. The strange calm which had been upon her dissolved into a panic fear. She darted back into the sitting-room: and, taking the chesterfield in an inspired bound, sank down behind it and tried not to snort.
“Been waiting long?” asked some person unseen, switching on the light and addressing an invisible companion.
The voice was strange to Mrs. Waddington: but about the one that replied to it there was something so fruitily familiar that she stiffened where she lay, scarcely able to credit her senses. For it was the voice of Ferris, her butler. And Ferris, if the truth was in him, should by now have been at the sickbed of a relative.
“Some little time, sir, but it has caused me no inconvenience.”
“What did you want to see me about?”
“I am addressing Mr. Lancelot Biffen, the editor-in-chief of Town Gossip?”
“Yes. Talk quick. I’ve got to go out again in a minute.”
“I understand, Mr. Biffen, that Town Gossip is glad to receive and pay a substantial remuneration for items of interest concerning those prominent in New York Society. I have such an item.”
“Who’s it about?”
“My employer—Mrs. Sigsbee H. Waddington, sir.”
“What’s she been doing?”
“It is a long story. …”
“Then I haven’t time to listen to it.”
“It concerns the sensational interruption to the marriage of Mrs. Waddington’s stepdaughter. …”
“Didn’t the wedding come off, then?”
“No, sir. And the circumstances which prevented it. …”
Mr. Biffen uttered an exclamation. He had apparently looked at his watch and been dismayed by the flight of time.
“I must run,” he said. “I’ve a date at the Algonquin in a quarter of an hour. Come and talk to me at the office tomorrow.”
“I fear that will be impossible, sir, owing to. …”
“Then, see here. Have you ever done any writing?”
“Yes, sir. At Little-Seeping-in-the-Wold I frequently contributed short articles to the parish magazine. The vicar spoke highly of them.”
“Then sit down and write the thing out. Use your own words and I’ll polish it up later. I’ll be back in an hour, if you want to wait.”
“Very good, sir. And the remuneration?”
“We’ll talk about that later.”
“Very good, sir.”
Mr. Biffen left the room. There followed a confused noise—apparently from his bedroom, in which he seemed to be searching for something. Then the front door slammed, and quiet descended upon the apartment.
Mrs. Waddington continued to crouch behind her chesterfield. There had been a moment, immediately after the departure of Mr. Biffen, when she had half risen with the intention of confronting her traitorous butler and informing him that he had ceased to be in her employment. But second thoughts had held her back. Gratifying as it would undoubtedly be to pop her head up over the back of the sofa and watch the man cower beneath her eye, the situation, she realised, was too complicated to permit such a procedure. She remained where she was, and whiled away the time by trying out methods to relieve the cramp from which her lower limbs had already begun to suffer.
From the direction of the desk came the soft scratching of pen on paper. Ferris was plainly making quite a job of it, putting all his energies into his task. He seemed to be one of those writers, like Flaubert, who spared no pains in the quest for perfect clarity and are prepared to correct and re-correct indefinitely till their artist-souls are satisfied. It seemed to Mrs. Waddington as though her vigil was to go on forever.
But in a bustling city like New York it is rarely that the artist is permitted to concentrate for long without interruption. A telephone-bell broke raspingly upon the stillness: and the first sensation of pleasure which Mrs. Waddington had experienced for a very long time came to her as she realised that the instrument was ringing in the passage outside and not in the room. With something of the wild joy which reprieved prisoners feel at the announcement of release she heard the butler rise. And presently there came from a distance his measured voice informing some unseen inquirer that Mr. Biffen was not at home.
Mrs. Waddington rose from her form. She had about twenty seconds in which to act, and she wasted none of them. By the time Ferris had returned and was once more engrossed in his literary composition, she was in the kitchen.
She stood by the window, looking out at the fire-escape. Surely by this time, she felt, it would be safe to climb once more up to the roof. She decided to count three hundred very slowly and risk it.
XV
Molly and Sigsbee Horatio, the latter muttering “Gallagher! Gallagher! Gallagher!” to himself in order that the magic name should not again escape him, had started out in the two-seater about a quarter of an hour after the departure of Mrs. Waddington’s Hispano-Suiza. Halfway to New York, however, a blowout had arrested their progress: and the inability of Sigsbee H. to make
