A wave of self-pity flooded over George Finch. Why should he be so ill-used? He asked so little of Life—merely to be allowed to lie quietly under a bed and inhale fluff: and what happened? Nothing but interruptions. Nothing but boots, boots, boots, boots, marching up and down again, as Kipling has so well put it. Ever since he had found his present hiding-place, the world had seemed to become one grey inferno of footsteps. It was wrong and unjust.
The only thing that could possibly be said in extenuation of the present footsteps was that they sounded too light to be those of any New York policeman. They had approached now to the very door. Indeed, they seemed to him to have stopped actually inside the room.
He was right in this conjecture. The switch clicked. Light jumped at him like a living thing. And when he opened his eyes he found himself looking at a pair of ankles clad in stockings of diaphanous silk.
The door closed. And Mrs. Waddington, who had just reached the top of the fire-escape, charged across the roof and, putting her ear to the keyhole, stood listening intently. Things, felt Mrs. Waddington, were beginning to move.
V
For a moment, all that George Finch felt as he glared out at this latest visitation was a weak resentment at the oafishness of Fate in using the same method for his tormenting that it had used so short a while before. Fate, he considered, was behaving childishly, and ought to change its act. This ankle business might have been funny enough once: but, overdone, it became tedious.
Then to indignation there succeeded relief. The remarks of Hamilton Beamish in his conversation with the policeman had made it clear that the possessor of the ankles had been his old friend May Stubbs of East Gilead, Idaho: and, seeing ankles once again, George naturally assumed that they were attached, as before, to Miss Stubbs, and that the reason for her return was that she had come back to fetch something—some powder-puff, for example, or a lipstick—which in the excitement of the recent altercation she had forgotten to take along with her.
This, of course, altered the whole position of affairs. What it amounted to was that, instead of a new enemy he had found an ally. A broad-minded girl like May would understand at once the motives which had led him to hide under the bed and would sympathise with them. He could employ her, it occurred to him, as a scout, to see if the staircase was not clear. In short, this latest interruption of his reverie, so far from being a disaster, was the very best thing that could have happened.
Sneezing heartily, for he had got a piece of fluff up his nose, George rolled out from under the bed: and, scrambling to his feet with a jolly laugh, found himself gazing into the bulging eyes of a complete stranger.
That, at least, was how the girl impressed him in the first instant of their meeting. But gradually, as he stared at her, there crept into his mind the belief that somewhere and at some time he had seen her before. But where? And when?
The girl continued to gape at him. She was small and pretty, with vivid black eyes and a mouth which, if it had not been hanging open at the moment like that of a fish, would have been remarkably attractive. Silence reigned in the sleeping-porch: and Mrs. Waddington, straining her ears outside, was beginning to think that George could not be in this lair and that a further vigil was before her, when suddenly voices began to speak. What they were saying, she was unable to hear, for the door was stoutly built: but beyond a doubt one of them was George’s. Mrs. Waddington crept away, well content. Her suspicions had been confirmed, and now it remained only to decide what it was best to do about it. She moved into the shadow of the water-tank, and there remained for a space in deep thought.
Inside the sleeping-porch, the girl, her eyes fixed on George, had begun to shrink back. At about the third shrink she bumped into the wall, and the shock seemed to restore her power of speech.
“What are you doing in my bedroom?” she cried.
The question had the effect of substituting for the embarrassment which had been gripping George a sudden bubbling fury. This, he felt, was too much. Circumstances had conspired that night to turn this sleeping-porch into a sort of meeting-place of the nations, but he was darned if he was going to have his visitors looking on the room as their own.
“What do you mean, your bedroom?” he demanded hotly. “Who are you?”
“I’m Mrs. Mullett.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Frederick Mullett.”
Mrs. Waddington had formed her plan of action. What she needed, she perceived, was a witness to come with her to this den of evil and add his testimony in support of hers. If only Lord Hunstanton had been present, as he should have been, she would have needed to look no further. But Lord Hunstanton was somewhere out in the great city, filling his ignoble tummy with food. Whom, then, could she enroll as a deputy? The question answered itself. Ferris was the man. He was ready to hand and could be fetched without delay.
Mrs. Waddington made for the stairs.
“Mrs. Mullett?” said George. “What do you mean? Mullett’s not married.”
“Yes, he is. We were married this morning.”
“Where is he?”
“I left him down below, finishing a cigar. He said we’d be all alone up here, nesting like two little birds in a tree top.”
George laughed a brassy, sardonic laugh.
“If Mullett thought anyone could ever be alone for five minutes up here, he’s an optimist. And what right has Mullett to go nesting like a little bird in my apartment?”
“Is this your apartment?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Oh! Oh!”
“Stop it! Don’t make that
