The Cab of the Sleeping Horse | Page 5

shall see who will win this time--if you're in it; and I take it you are, else why this picture. Yet to induce you to break your rule and cross the Atlantic, the moving consideration must be of the utmost weight, or else it's purely a personal matter. H-u-m! Under all the circumstances, I should say the latter is the more likely. In which event, I may not be concerned further than to return these--" with a wave of his hand toward the exhibits.
For a while longer he sat in silence, eyes half closed, lips a bit compressed; a certain sternness, that was always in his countenance, showing plainest when in reflective thought. At last, he smiled. Then he lit another cigarette, took up the letter and the photograph, and put them in the small safe standing behind an ornate screen in the corner--not, however, without another look at the calmly beautiful face.
The roses he left lie on the table; the steel safe would not preserve them in _statu quo_; moreover, he knew, or thought he knew, all that they could convey. He swung the door shut; then swung it open, and looked again at the picture--and for sometime--before he put it up and gave the knob a twirl.
"I'm sure bewitched!" he remarked, going on to his bedroom. "It's not difficult for me to understand the Duke of Lotzen. He was simply a man--and men, at the best, are queer beggars. No woman ever understands us--and no more do we understand women. So we're both quits on that score, if we're not quite on some others." Then he raised his hands helplessly, "Oh, Lord, the petticoats, the petticoats!"
Just then the telephone rang--noisily as befits two o'clock in the morning.
"Who the devil wants me at such an hour?" he muttered.
The clang was repeated almost instantly and continued until he unhooked the receiver.
"Well!" he said sharply.
"Is that Mr. Harleston?" asked a woman's voice. A particularly soft and sweet and smiling voice, it was.
"I am Mr. Harleston," he replied courteously--the voice had done it.
"Oh, how do you do, Mr. Harleston!" the voice rippled. "I suppose you are rather astonished at being called up at such an unseemly hour--"
"Not at all--I'm quite used to it, mademoiselle," Harleston assured her.
"Now you're sarcastic," the voice replied again; "and, somehow, I don't like sarcasm when I'm the cause of it."
"You're the cause of it but not the object of it," he assured her. "I'm quite sure I've never met you, and just as sure that I hope to meet you today."
"Your hope, Mr. Harleston, is also mine. But why, may I ask, do you call me mademoiselle? I'm not French."
"It's the pleasantest way to address you until I know your name."
"You might call me madame!"
"Perish the thought! I refuse to imagine you married."
"I might be a widow."
"No."
"Or even a divorcée."
"And you might be a grandmother," he added.
"Yes."
"And doing the Maxixe at the Willard, this minute."
"Yes!" she laughed.
"But you aren't; and no more are you a widow or a divorcée."
"All of which is charming of you, Mr. Harleston but it's not exactly the business I have in hand."
"Business at two o'clock in the morning!" he exclaimed.
He had tried to place the voice, and had failed; he was becoming convinced that he had not heard it before.
"What else would justify me in disturbing you?" she asked.
"Yourself, mademoiselle. Let us continue the pleasant conversation and forget business until business hours."
"When are your business hours, Mr. Harleston--and where's your office?"
"I have no office--and my business hours depend on the business in hand."
"And the business in hand depends primarily on whether you are interested in the subject matter of the business, _n'est-ce pas_?"
"I am profoundly interested, mademoiselle, in any matter that concerns you--as well as in yourself. Who would not be interested in one so impulsive--and anything so important--as to call him on the telephone at two in the morning."
"And who on his part is so gracious--and wasn't asleep," she answered.
Harleston slowly winked at the transmitter and smiled.
He thought so. What puzzled him, however, was her idea in prolonging the talk. Maybe there was not any idea in it, just a feminine notion; yet something in the very alluring softness of her voice told him otherwise.
"You guessed it," he replied. "I was not asleep. Also I might guess something in regard to your business."
"What?"
"No, no, mademoiselle! It's impertinent to guess about what does not concern me--yet."
"Delete the word 'yet,' Mr. Harleston, and substitute the idea that it was--pardon me--rather gratuitous in you to meddle in the first place."
"I don't understand," said Harleston.
"Oh, yes you do!" she trilled. "However, I'll be specific--it's time to be specific, you would say; though I might respond that you've known all along what my business is with you."
"The name of an individual is a prerequisite to the