The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  The villain's only hold on her had been the letters, so he went to South Africa and was gored by an elephant, thus passing out of her life.

  Then and there I knew that I would have to get my letter back from H. Without it he was powerless. The trouble was that I did not know where he was staying. Even if he came out of a Cabinet, the Cabinet would have to be somewhere, would it not?

  I felt that I would have to meet gile with gile. And to steal one's own letter is not really stealing. Of course if he was visiting any one and pretending to be a real person, I had no chance in the world. But if he was stopping at a hotel I thought I could manage. The man in the book had had an apartment, with a Japanese servant, who went away and drew plans of American Forts in the kitchen and left the woman alone with the desk containing the Letter. But I daresay that was unusualy lucky and not the sort of thing to look forward to.

  With me, to think is to act. Hannah was out, it being Xmas and her brother-in-law having a wake, being dead, so I was free to do anything I wanted to.

  First I called the Club and got Carter Brooks on the telephone.

  "Carter," I said, "I--I am writing a letter. Where is-- where does H. stay?"

  "Who?"

  "H.--Mr. Grosvenor."

  "Why, bless your ardent little Heart! Writing, are you? It's sublime, Bab!"

  "Where does he live?"

  "And is it all alone you are, on Xmas Night!" he burbled. (This is a word from Alice in WonderLand, and although not in the dictionery, is quite expressive.)

  "Yes," I replied, bitterly. "I am old enough to be married off without my consent, but I am not old enough for a real Ball. It makes me sick."

  "I can smuggle him here, if you want to talk to him."

  "Smuggle!" I said, with scorn. "There is no need to smuggle him. The Familey is crazy about him. They are flinging me at him."

  "Well, that's nice," he said. "Who'd have thought it! Shall I bring him to the 'phone?"

  "I don't want to talk to him. I hate him."

  "Look here," he observed, "if you keep that up, he'll begin to beleive you. Don't take these little quarrels too hard, Barbara. He's so happy to-night in the thought that you----"

  "Does he live in a Cabinet, or where?"

  "In a what? I don't get that word."

  "Don't bother. Where shall I send his letter?"

  Well, it seemed he had an apartment at the Arcade, and I rang off. It was after eleven by that time, and by the time I had got into my school mackintosh and found a heavy veil of mother's and put it on, it was almost half past.

  The house was quiet, and as Patrick had gone, there was no one around in the lower Hall. I slipped out and closed the door behind me, and looked for a taxicab, but the veil was so heavy that I hailed our own limousine, and Smith had drawn up at the curb before I knew him.

  "Where to, lady?" he said. "This is a private car, but I'll take you anywhere in the city for a dollar."

  A flush of just indignation rose to my cheek, at the knowledge that Smith was using our car for a taxicab! And just as I was about to speak to him severely, and threaten to tell father, I remembered, and walked away.

  "Make it seventy-five cents," he called after me. But I went on. It was terrable to think that Smith could go on renting our car to all sorts of people, covered with germs and everything, and that I could never report it to the Familey.

  I got a real taxi at last, and got out at the Arcade, giving the man a quarter, although ten cents would have been plenty as a tip.

  I looked at him, and I felt that he could be trusted.

  "This," I said, holding up the money, "is the price of Silence."

  But If he was trustworthy he was not subtile, and he said:

  "The what, miss?"

  "If any one asks if you have driven me here, YOU HAVE NOT" I explained, in an impressive manner.

  He examined the quarter, even striking a match to look at it. Then he replied: "I have not!" and drove away.

  Concealing my nervousness as best I could, I entered the doomed Building. There was only a hall boy there, asleep in the elevator, and I looked at the thing with the names on it. "Mr. Grosvenor" was on the fourth floor.

  I wakened the boy, and he yawned and took me to the fourth floor. My hands were stiff with nervousness by that time, but the boy was half asleep, and evadently he took me for some one who belonged there, for he said "Goodnight" to me, and went on down. There was a square landing with two doors, and "Grosvenor" was on one. I tried it gently. It was unlocked.

  "FACILUS DESCENSUS IN AVERNU."

  I am not defending myself. What I did was the result of desparation. But I cannot even write of my sensations as I stepped through that fatal portal, without a sinking of the heart. I had, however, had suficient forsight to prepare an alabi. In case there was some one present in the apartment I intended to tell a falshood, I regret to confess, and to say that I had got off at the wrong floor.

  There was a sort of hall, with a clock and a table, and a shaded electric lamp, and beyond that the door was open into a sitting room.

  There was a small light burning there, and the remains of a wood fire in the fireplace. There was no Cabinet however.

  Everything was perfectly quiet, and I went over to the fire and warmed my hands. My nails were quite blue, but I was strangly calm. I took off mother's veil, and my mackintosh, so I would be free to work, and I then looked around the room. There were a number of photographs of rather smart looking girls, and I curled my lip scornfully. He might have fooled them but he could not decieve me. And it added to my bitterness to think that at that moment the villain was dancing--and flirting probably--while I was driven to actual theft to secure the Letter that placed me in his power.

  When I had stopped shivering I went to his desk. There were a lot of letters on the top, all addressed to him as Grosvenor. It struck me suddenly as strange that if he was only visiting, under an assumed name, in order to see me, that so many people should be writing to him as Mr. Grosvenor. And it did not look like the room of a man who was visiting, unless he took a freight car with him on his travels.

  THERE WAS A MYSTERY. All at once I knew it.

  My letter was not on the desk, so I opened the top drawer. It seemed to be full of bills, and so was the one below it. I had just started on the third drawer, when a terrable thing happened.

  "Hello!" said some one behind me.

  I turned my head slowly, and my heart stopped.

  THE PORTERES INTO THE PASSAGE HAD OPENED, AND A GENTLEMAN IN HIS EVENING CLOTHES WAS STANDING THERE.

  "Just sit still, please," he said, in a perfectly cold voice. And he turned and locked the door into the hall. I was absolutely unable to speak. I tried once, but my tongue hit the roof of my mouth like the clapper of a bell.

  "Now," he said, when he had turned around. "I wish you would tell me some good reason why I should not hand you over to the Police."

  "Oh, please don't!" I said.

  "That's eloquent. But not a reason. I'll sit down and give you a little time. I take it, you did not expect to find me here."

  "I'm in the wrong apartment. That's all," I said. "Maybe you'll think that's an excuse and not a reason. I can't help it if you do."

  "Well," he said, "that explains some things. It's pretty well known, I fancy, that I have little worth stealing, except my good name."

  "I was not stealing," I replied in a sulky manner.

  "I beg your pardon," he said. "It IS an ugly word. We will strike it from the record. Would you mind telling me whose apartment you intended to--er--investigate? If this is the wrong one, you know."

  "I was looking for a Letter."

  "Letters, letters!" he said. "When will you women learn not to write letters. Although"--he looked at me closely--"you look rather young for that sort of thing." He sighed. "It's born in you, I daresay," he said.

  Well, for all his patronizing ways, he was not very old himself.

  "Of course," he said, "if you are telling the truth--a
nd it sounds fishy, I must say--it's hardly a Police matter, is it? It's rather one for diplomasy. But can you prove what you say?"

  "My word should be suficient," I replied stiffly. "How do I know that YOU belong here?"

  "Well, you don't, as a matter of fact. Suppose you take my word for that, and I agree to beleive what you say about the wrong apartment, Even then it's rather unusual. I find a pale and determined looking young lady going through my desk in a business-like manner. She says she has come for a Letter. Now the question is, is there a Letter? If so, what Letter?"

  "It is a love letter," I said.

  "Don't blush over such a confession," he said. "If it is true, be proud of it. Love is a wonderful thing. Never be ashamed of being in love, my child."

  "I am not in love," I cried with bitter furey.

  "Ah! Then it is not YOUR letter!"

  "I wrote it."

  "But to simulate a passion that does not exist--that is sackrilege. It is----"

  "Oh, stop talking," I cried, in a hunted tone. "I can't bear it. If you are going to arrest me, get it over."

  "I'd rather NOT arrest you, if we can find a way out. You look so young, so new to Crime! Even your excuse for being here is so naive, that I--won't you tell me why you wrote a love letter, if you are not in love? And whom you sent it to? That's important, you see, as it bears on the case. I intend," he said, "to be judgdicial, unimpassioned, and quite fair."

  "I wrote a love letter" I explained, feeling rather cheered, "but it was not intended for any one, Do you see? It was just a love letter."

  "Oh," he said. "Of course. It is often done. And after that?"

  "Well, it had to go somewhere. At least I felt that way about it. So I made up a name from some malted milk tablets----"

  "Malted milk tablets!" he said, looking bewildered.

  "Just as I was thinking up a name to send it to," I explained, "Hannah--that's mother's maid, you know--brought in some hot milk and some malted milk tablets, and I took the name from them."

  "Look here," he said, "I'm unpredjudiced and quite calm, but isn't the `mother's maid' rather piling it on?"

  "Hannah is mother's maid, and she brought in the milk and the tablets, I should think," I said, growing sarcastic, "that so far it is clear to the dullest mind."

  "Go on," he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. "You named the letter for your mother's maid--I mean for the malted milk. Although you have not yet stated the name you chose; I never heard of any one named Milk, and as to the other, while I have known some rather thoroughly malted people--however, let that go."

  "Valentine's tablets," I said. "Of Course, you understand," I said, bending forward, "there was no such Person. I made him up. The Harold was made up too--Harold Valentine."

  "I see. Not clearly, perhaps, but I have a gleam of intellagence."

  "But, after all, there was such a person. That's clear, isn't it? And now he considers that we are engaged, and--and he insists on marrying me."

  "That," he said, "is realy easy to understand. I don't blame him at all. He is clearly a person of diszernment."

  "Of course," I said bitterly, "you would be on HIS side. Every one is."

  "But the point is this," he went on. "If you made him up out of the whole cloth, as it were, and there was no such Person, how can there be such a Person? I am merely asking to get it all clear in my head. It sounds so reasonable when you say it, but there seems to be something left out."

  "I don't know how he can be, but he is," I said, hopelessly. "And he is exactly like his picture."

  "Well, that's not unusual, you know."

  "It is in this case. Because I bought the picture in a shop, and just pretended it was him. (He?) And it WAS."

  He got up and paced the floor.

  "It's a very strange case," he said. "Do you mind if I light a cigarette? It helps to clear my brain. What was the name you gave him?"

  "Harold Valentine. But he is here under another name, because of my Familey. They think I am a mere child, you see, and so of course he took a NOM DE PLUME."

  "A NOM DE PLUME? Oh I see! What is it?"

  "Grosvenor," I said. "The same as yours."

  "There's another Grosvenor in the building, That's where the trouble came in, I suppose, Now let me get this straight. You wrote a letter, and somehow or other he got it, and now you want it back. Stripped of the things that baffle my intellagence, that's it, isn't it?"

  I rose in excitement.

  "Then, if he lives in the building, the letter is probably here. Why can't you go and get it for me?"

  "Very neat! And let you slip away while I am gone?"

  I saw that he was still uncertain that I was telling him the truth. It was maddening. And only the Letter itself could convince him.

  "Oh, please try to get it," I cried, almost weeping. "You can lock me in here, if you are afraid I will run away. And he is out. I know he is. He is at the Club ball."

  "Naturaly," he said "the fact that you are asking me to compound a felony, commit larceny, and be an accessery after the fact does not trouble you. As I told you before, all I have left is my good name, and now----!"

  "Please!" I said.

  He stared down at me.

  "Certainly," he said. "Asked in that tone, Murder would be one of the easiest things I do. But I shall lock you in."

  "Very well," I said meekly. And after I had described it--the Letter--to him he went out.

  I had won, but my triumph was but sackcloth and ashes in my mouth. I had won, but at what a cost! Ah, how I wished that I might live again the past few days! That I might never have started on my Path of Deception! Or that, since my intentions at the start had been so inocent, I had taken another photograph at the shop, which I had fancied considerably but had heartlessly rejected because of no mustache.

  He was gone for a long time, and I sat and palpatated. For what if H. had returned early and found him and called in the Police?

  But the latter had not occurred, for at ten minutes after one he came back, eutering by the window from a fire-escape, and much streaked with dirt.

  "Narrow escape, dear child!" he observed, locking the window and drawing the shade. "Just as I got it, your--er--gentleman friend returned and fitted his key in the lock. I am not at all sure," he said, wiping his hands with his handkerchief, "that he will not regard the open window as a suspicious circumstance. He may be of a low turn of mind. However, all's well that ends here in this room. Here it is."

  I took it, and my heart gave a great leap of joy. I was saved.

  "Now," he said, "we'll order a taxicab and get you home. And while it is coming suppose you tell me the thing over again. It's not as clear to me as it ought to be, even now."

  So then I told him--about not being out yet, and Sis having flowers sent her, and her room done over, and never getting to bed until dawn. And that they treated me like a mere Child, which was the reason for everything, and about the Poem, which he considered quite good. And then about the Letter.

  "I get the whole thing a bit clearer now," he said. "Of course, it is still cloudy in places. The making up somebody to write to is understandable, under the circumstances. But it is odd to have had the very Person materialise, so to speak. It makes me wonder--well, how about burning the Letter, now we've got it? It would be better, I think. The way things have been going with you, if we don't destroy it, it is likely to walk off into somebody else's pocket and cause more trouble."

  So we burned it, and then the telephone rang and said the taxi was there.

  "I'll get my coat and be ready in a jiffey," he said, "and maybe we can smuggle you into the house and no one the wiser. We'll try anyhow."

  He went into the other room and I sat by the fire and thought. You remember that when I was planning Harold Valentine, I had imagined him with a small, dark mustache, and deep, passionate eyes? Well, this Mr. Grosvenor had both, or rather, all three. And he had the loveliest smile, with no dimple. He was, I felt, exactly the sort of man I could di
e for.

  It was too tradgic that, with all the world to choose from, I had not taken him instead of H.

  We walked downstairs, so as not to give the elevator boy a chance to talk, he said. But he was asleep again, and we got to the street and to the taxicab without being seen.

  Oh, I was very cheerful. When I think of it--but I might have known, all along. Nothing went right with me that week.

  Just before we got to the house he said:

  "Goodnight and goodbye, little Barbara. I'll never forget you and this evening. And save me a dance at your coming-out party. I'll be there."

  I held out my hand, and he took it and kissed it. It was all perfectly thrilling. And then we drew up in front of the house and he helped me out, and my entire Familey had just got out of the motor and was lined up on the pavment staring at us!

  "All right, are you?" he said, as coolly as if they had not been anywhere in sight. "Well, good night and good luck!" And he got into the taxicab and drove away, leaving me in the hands of the Enemy.

  The next morning I was sent back to school. They never gave me a chance to explain, for mother went into hysterics, after accusing me of having men dangling around waiting at every corner. They had to have a doctor, and things were awful.

  The only person who said anything was Sis. She came to my room that night when I was in bed, and stood looking down at me. She was very angry, but there was a sort of awe in her eyes.

  "My hat's off to you, Barbara," she said. "Where in the world do you pick them all up? Things must have changed at school since I was there."

  "I'm sick to death of the Other Sex," I replied languidley. "It's no punishment to send me away. I need a little piece and quiet." And I did.

  CONCLUSION:

  All this holaday week, while the girls are away, I have been writing this Theme, for Literature class. To-day is New Years and I am putting in the finishing touches. I intend to have it tiped in the village and to send a copy to father, who I think will understand, and another copy, but with a few lines cut, to Mr. Grosvenor. The nice one. There were some things he did not quite understand, and this will explain.