She hurried up the stairs and rang George’s front-door bell. For awhile it seemed as if her ringing was to meet with no response: then, after some minutes, footsteps made themselves heard coming along the passage. The door opened, and Molly found herself gazing into the inflamed eyes of a policeman.
She looked at him with surprise. She had never seen him before, and she rather felt that she would have preferred not to see him now: for he was far from being a pleasing sight. His nose, ears and eyes were a vivid red: and his straggling hair dripped wetly on to the floor. With the object of diminishing the agony caused by the pepper, Officer Garroway had for some time been holding his head under the tap in the kitchen: and he now looked exactly like the body which had been found after several days in the river. The one small point that differentiated him from a corpse was the fact that he was sneezing.
“What are you doing here?” exclaimed Molly.
“Achoo!” replied Officer Garroway.
“What?” said Molly.
The policeman, with a nobility which should have earned him promotion, checked another sneeze.
“There has been an outrage,” he said.
“Mr. Finch has not been hurt?” cried Molly, alarmed.
“Mr. Finch hasn’t. I have.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Gar-hosh-hoosh-hish.”
“What?”
“Gar-ish-wash-wush … Garroway,” said the policeman, becoming calmer.
“Where is Mr. Finch?”
“I could not say, miss.”
“Have you a cold?”
“No, miss, not a ker-osh-wosh-osh. A woman threw pepper in my face.”
“You ought not to know such women,” said Molly severely.
The injustice of this stung Officer Garroway.
“I did not know her socially. I was arresting her.”
“Oh, I see.”
“I found her burgling this apartment.”
“Good gracious!”
“And when I informed her that I was compelled to take her into custody, she threw pepper in my face and escaped.”
“You poor man!”
“Thank you, miss,” said Officer Garroway gratefully. A man can do with a bit of sympathy on these occasions, nor is such sympathy rendered less agreeable by the fact that the one who offers it is young and charming and gazes at you with large, melting blue eyes. It was at this point that Officer Garroway began for the first time to be aware of a distinct improvement in his condition.
“Can I get you anything?” said Molly.
Officer Garroway shook his head wistfully.
“It’s against the law, miss, now. In fact, I am to be one of a posse this very night that is to raid a restaurant which supplies the stuff.”
“I meant something from a drugstore. Some ointment or something.”
“It is extremely kind of you, miss, but I could not dream of putting you to so much trouble. I will look in at a drugstore on my way to the station-house. I fear I must leave you now, as I have to go and drish-hosh-hish.”
“What?”
“Dress, miss.”
“But you are dressed.”
“For the purposes of the raid to which I alluded it is necessary for our posse to put on full evening drah-woosh. In order to deceive the staff of the rish-wish-wosh, and lull them into a false security. It would never do, you see, for us to go there in our uniforms. That would put them on their guard.”
“How exciting! What restaurant are you raiding?”
Officer Garroway hesitated.
“Well, miss, it is in the nature of an official secret, of course, but on the understanding that you will let it go no further, the rosh-ow-wush is the Purple Chicken, just round the corner. I will wish you good night, miss, as I really must be off.”
“But wait a moment. I came here to meet Mr. Finch. Have you seen anything of him?”
“No, miss. Nobody has visited the apartment while I have been there.”
“Oh, then I’ll wait. Good night. I hope you will feel better soon.”
“I feel better already, miss,” said Officer Garroway gallantly, “thanks to your kind sympathy. Good nish-nosh, miss.”
Molly went out on to the roof, and stood there gazing over the million twinkling lights of the city. At this height the voice of New York sank to a murmur, and the air was sweet and cool. Little breezes rustled in the potted shrubs over which Mullett was wont to watch with such sedulous care, and a half-moon was shining in rather a deprecating way, as if conscious of not being at its best in such surroundings. For, like Sigsbee H. Waddington (now speeding towards his third Gallagher), the moon, really to express itself, needs the great open spaces.
Molly, however, found nothing to criticise in that pale silver glow. She felt a proprietary interest in the moon. It was her own private and personal moon, and should have been shining in through the windows of the drawing-room of the train that bore her away on her wedding-journey. That that journey had been postponed was in no way the fault of the moon: and, gazing up at it, she tried to convey by her manner her appreciation of the fact.
It was at this point that a strangled exclamation broke the stillness: and, turning, she perceived George Finch.
George Finch stood in the moonlight, staring dumbly. Although what he saw before him had all the appearance of being Molly, and though a rash and irreflective observer would no doubt have said that it was Molly, it was so utterly impossible that she could really be there that he concluded that he was suffering from an hallucination. The nervous strain of the exacting day through which he had passed had reduced him, he perceived, to the condition of those dying travellers in the desert who see mirages. And so he remained where he was, not daring to approach closer: for he knew that if you touch people in dreams they vanish.
But Molly was of a more practical turn of mind. She had
