The Second Latchkey

The Second Latchkey, by Charles
Norris

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Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson, Illustrated by Rudolph
Tandler
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Title: The Second Latchkey
Author: Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

Release Date: May 29, 2006 [eBook #18470]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE SECOND LATCHKEY
by
C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON
Frontispiece by Rudolph Tandler

Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1920

CONTENTS
I. A White Rose
II. Smiths and Smiths
III. Why She Came
IV. The Great Moment
V. The Second Latchkey
VI. The Beginning--or the End?

VII. The Countess de Santiago
VIII. The Blue Diamond Ring
IX. The Thing Knight Wanted
X. Beginning of the Series
XI. Annesley Remembers
XII. The Crystal
XIII. The Series Goes On
XIV. The Test
XV. Nelson Smith at Home
XVI. Why Ruthven Smith Went
XVII. Ruthven Smith's Eyeglasses
XVIII. The Star Sapphire
XIX. The Secret
XX. The Plan
XXI. The Devil's Rosary
XXII. Destiny and the Waldos
XXIII. The Thin Wall
XXIV. The Anniversary
XXV. The Allegory
XXVI. The Three Words

THE SECOND LATCHKEY
CHAPTER I
A WHITE ROSE
Even when Annesley Grayle turned out of the Strand toward the Savoy
she was uncertain whether she would have courage to walk into the
hotel. With each step the thing, the dreadful thing, that she had come to
do, loomed blacker. It was monstrous, impossible, like opening the
door of the lions' cage at the Zoo and stepping inside.
There was time still to change her mind. She had only to turn now ...
jump into an omnibus ... jump out again at the familiar corner, and
everything would be as it had been. Life for the next five, ten, maybe
twenty years, would be what the last five had been.
At the thought of the Savoy and the adventure waiting there, the girl's
skin had tingled and grown hot, as if a wind laden with grains of heated
sand had blown over her. But at the thought of turning back, of going
"home"--oh, misused word!--a leaden coldness shut her spirit into a
tomb.
She had walked fast, after descending at Bedford Street from a fierce
motor-bus with a party of comfortable people, bound for the Adelphi
Theatre. Never before had she been in a motor-omnibus, and she was
not sure whether the great hurtling thing would deign to stop, except at
trysting-places of its own; so it had seemed wise to bundle out rather
than risk a snub from the conductor, who looked like pictures of the
Duke of Wellington.
But in the lighted Strand she had been stared at as well as jostled: a girl
alone at eight o'clock on a winter evening, bare-headed, conspicuously
tall if conspicuous in no other way; dressed for dinner or the theatre in
a pale gray, sequined gown under a mauve chiffon cloak meant for
warm nights of summer.

Of course, as Mrs. Ellsworth (giver of dress and wrap) often pointed
out, "beggars mustn't be choosers"; and Annesley Grayle was worse off
than a beggar, because beggars needn't keep up appearances. She
should have thanked Heaven for good clothes, and so she did in
chastened moods; but it was a costume to make a girl hurry through the
Strand, and just for an instant she had been glad to turn from the white
glare into comparative dimness.
That was because offensive eyes had made her forget the almost
immediate future in the quite immediate present. But the hotel, with
light-hearted taxis tearing up to it, brought remembrance with a shock.
She envied everyone else who was bound for the Savoy, even old
women, and fat gentlemen with large noses. They were going there
because they wanted to go, for their pleasure. Nobody in the world
could be in such an appalling situation as she was.
It was then that Annesley's feet began to drag, and she slowed her steps
to gain more time to think. Could she--could she do the thing?
For days her soul had been rushing toward this moment with
thousand-horsepower speed, like a lonely comet tearing through space.
But then it had been distant, the terrible goal. She had not had to gasp
among her heart-throbs: "Now!