The Second Latchkey | Page 2

It is now!"
Creep as she might, three minutes' brought her from the turning out of
the Strand close to the welcoming entrance where revolving doors of
glass received radiant visions dazzling as moonlight on snow.
"No, I can't!" the girl told herself, desperately. She wheeled more
quickly than the whirling door, hoping that no one would think her mad.
"All the same, I was mad," she admitted, "to fancy I could do it. I ought
to have known I couldn't, when the time came. I'm the last person
to--well, I'm sane again now, anyway!"
A few long steps carried the girl in the sparkling dress and transparent
cloak into the Strand again. But something queer was happening there.
People were shouting and running. A man with a raucous, alcoholic
voice, yelled words Annesley could not catch. A woman gave a

squeaking scream that sounded both ridiculous and dreadful. Breaking
glass crashed. A growl of human anger mingled with the roar of
motor-omnibuses, and Miss Grayle fell back from it as from a slammed
door in a high wall.
As she stood hesitating what to do and wondering if there were a fire or
a murder, two women, laughing hysterically, rushed past into the hotel
court.
"Hurry up," panted one of them. "They'll think we belong to the gang.
Let's go into the hotel and stay until it's over."
"Oh, what is it?" Annesley entreated, running after the couple.
"Burglars at a jeweller's window close by--there are women--they're
being arrested," one of the pair flung over her shoulder, as both hurried
on.
"'Women ... being arrested ...'" That meant that if she plunged into the
fray she might be mistaken for a woman burglar, and arrested with the
guilty. Even if she lurked where she was, a prowling policeman might
suppose she sought concealment, and bag her as a militant.
Imagine what Mrs. Ellsworth would say--and do--if she were taken off
to jail!
Annesley's heart seemed to drop out of its place, to go "crossways," as
her old Irish nurse used to say a million years ago.
Without stopping to think again, or even to breathe, she flew back to
the hotel entrance, as a migrating bird follows its leader, and slipped
through the revolving door behind the fugitives.
"It's fate," she thought. "This must be a sign coming just when I'd made
up my mind."
Suddenly she was no longer afraid, though her heart was pounding
under the thin cloak. Fragrance of hot-house flowers and expensive

perfume from women's dresses intoxicated the girl as a glass of
champagne forced upon one who has never tasted wine flies to the head.
She felt herself on the tide of adventure, moving because she must; the
soul which would have fled, to return to Mrs. Ellsworth, was a coward
not worthy to live in her body.
She had room in her crowded mind to think how queer it was--and how
queer it would seem all the rest of her life in looking back--that she
should have the course of her existence changed because burglars had
broken some panes of glass in the Strand.
"Just because of them--creatures I'll never meet--I'm going to see this
through to the end," she said, flinging up her chin and looking entirely
unlike the Annesley Grayle Mrs. Ellsworth knew. "To the end!"
She thrilled at the word, which had as much of the unknown in it as
though it were the world's end she referred to, and she were jumping
off.
"Will you please tell me where to leave my wrap?" she heard herself
inquiring of a footman as magnificent as, and far better dressed than,
the Apollo Belvedere. Her voice sounded natural. She was glad. This
added to her courage. It was wonderful to feel brave. Life was so
deadly, worse--so stuffy--at Mrs. Ellsworth's, that if she had ever been
normally brave like other girls, she had had the young splendour of her
courage crushed out.
The statue in gray plush and dark blue cloth came to life, and showed
her the cloak-room.
Other women were there, taking last, affectionate peeps at themselves
in the long mirrors. Annesley took a last peep at herself also, not an
affectionate but an anxious one. Compared with these visions, was she
(in Mrs. Ellsworth's cast-off clothes, made over in odd moments by the
wearer) so dowdy and second-hand that--that--a stranger would be
ashamed to----?
The question feared to finish itself.

"I do look like a lady, anyhow," the girl thought with defiance. "That's
what he--that seems to be the test."
Now she was in a hurry to get the ordeal over. Instead of hanging back
she walked briskly out of the cloak-room before those who had entered
ahead of her finished patting their hair or putting powder on their
noses.
It was