“So much the better.”
“Why, little Winnie French – she found me out at once – has been looking all through the card rooms for “Dear Mrs. Follingsbee.”” And the jolly lawyer laughs anew.
“Mr. Follingsbee,” – Stanhope has ceased to jest, and speaks with his usual business brusqueness – “Mrs. Warburton, I don’t know for what reason, wished to be informed when I left the house. Will you tell her I am about to go, and that I will let her hear from me further through you? I will go up to the dressing room floor, and wait in the boudoir until you have seen her.”
The boudoir opening upon the ladies’ dressing rooms, is untenanted. But from the inner room, Stanhope catches the hum of feminine voices, and in a moment a quartette of ladies come forth, adjusting their masks as they move toward the stairway.
Suddenly there is a little exclamation of delight, and our detective, standing near the open window, with his face turned from the group, feels himself clasped by a pair of pretty dimpled arms, while a gay voice says in his ear:
“Oh! you dear old thing! Have I found you at last? Follingsbee, you look stunning in that costume. Oh! – ” as Stanhope draws back with a deprecating gesture – “you needn’t deny your identity: isn’t Mr. Follingsbee here as Uncle Sam? I found him out at once, and didn’t Leslie and I see you enter together?”
Stanhope quakes inwardly, and the perspiration starts out under his mask. It is very delightful, under most circumstances, to be embraced by a pair of soft feminine arms, but just now it is very embarrassing and – very ridiculous.
Divided between his desire to laugh and his wish to run away, the detective stands hesitating, while Winnie French, for she it is, begins a critical examination of his costume.
“Don’t you think the dress muffles your figure a little too much, Follingsbee? If it were snugger here,” – giving him a little poke underneath his elbows, – “and not so straight from the shoulders. Why didn’t you shorten it in front, and wear pointed shoes?”
And she seizes the flowing drapery, and draws it back to illustrate her suggestion.
Again Stanhope recoils with a gesture which the gay girl misinterprets, and, quite ignoring the persistent silence of the supposed Mrs. Follingsbee, she chatters on:
“I hope you don’t resent my criticisms, Follingsbee; you’ve picked me to pieces often enough. Or are you still vexed because I won’t fall in love with your favorite Alan? There, now,” – as Stanhope, grown desperate, seems about to speak, – “I know just what you want to say, and you need not say it. Follingsbee,” lowering her voice to a more confidential tone, “if I ever had a scrap of a notion of that sort, I have been cured of it since I came into this house to live. Oh! I know he’s your prime favorite, but you can’t tell me anything about Alan; I’ve got him all catalogued on my ten fingers. Here he is pro and con; pro’s your idea of him, you know. You say he is rich. Well, that’s something in these days! He’s handsome. Bah! a man has no business with beauty; it’s woman’s special prerogative. He came of a splendid blue-blooded family. Fudge! American aristocracy is American rubbish. He’s talented. Well, that’s only an accident for which he deserves no credit. He’s thoroughly upright and honorable. Well, he’s too bolt upright for me.”
“So,” murmurs Stanhope to his inner consciousness, “I am making a point in personal history, but – it’s a tight place for me!” And as Winnie’s arms give him a little hug, while she pauses to take breath, he feels tempted to retort in kind.
“Now, then,” resumes Winnie, absorbed in her topic; and releasing her victim to check off her “cons” on the pretty right hand; “here’s my opinion of Mr. Warburton. He’s proud, ridiculously proud. He worships his name, if not himself. He is suspicious, uncharitable, unforgiving. He’s hard-hearted. If Leslie were not an angel she would hate him utterly. He treats her with a lofty politeness, a polished indifference, impossible to resent and horrible to endure, – and all because he chooses to believe that she has tarnished the great Warburton name, by taking it for love of the Warburton fortune instead of the race.”
Up from the ball-room floats the first strains of a delicious waltz. Winnie stops, starts, and turns toward the door.
“That’s my favorite waltz, and I’m engaged to Charlie Furbish – he dances like an angel. Follingsbee, bye, bye!”
She flits to the mirror, gives two or three dainty touches to her coquettish costume, tosses a kiss from her finger tips, and is gone.
“Thank Heaven,” mutters Stanhope. “I consider that the narrowest escape of my life! What a little witch it is, and pretty, I’ll wager.”
He draws from beneath his flowing robe a tiny watch such as ladies carry, and consults its jewelled face.
“My time is up!” he ejaculates. “Twenty minutes delay, now, will ruin my Raid. Ah! here’s Follingsbee.” And he moves forward at the sound of an approaching step.
But it is not Follingsbee who appears upon the threshold. It is, instead, Stanhope’s too-obsequious, too-attentive admirer, the Celestial, who has voted the prospect of a flirtation with a mysterious mask, a thing of spice.
CHAPTER XII.
A “’MELLICAN LADY’S” LITTLE TRICK
In such an emergency, when every moment has its value, to think is to act with Richard Stanhope. And time just now is very precious to him.
This importunate fellow is determined to solve the mystery of his identity, to see him unmask. Ten minutes spent in an attempt to evade him will be moments of fate for the ambitious detective.
And, for the sake of his patroness, he cannot leave the house at the risk of being followed. This difficulty must be overcome and at once.
These thoughts flash through his mind as if by electricity; and then, as the Celestial approaches, he turns languidly toward the open window and rests his head against the casement, as if in utter weariness.
“‘Mellican lady slick?” queries the masker solicitously; “‘Mellican lady walm? Ching Ling flannee, flannee.”
And raising his Japanese fan, he begins to ply it vigorously.
Mentally confiding “Ching Ling,” to a region where fans are needed and are not, Stanhope sways, as if about to faint, and motions toward a reclining chair.
The mask propels it close to the window, and the detective sinks into it, with a long drawn sigh.
Then, plying his fan with renewed vigor, the Celestial murmurs tenderly:
“‘Mellican lady slick?”
“Confound you,” thinks Stanhope; “I will try and be too slick for you.” Then, for the first time, he utters a word for the Celestial’s hearing. Moving his head restlessly he articulates, feebly:
“The heat – I feel – faint!” Then, half rising from the chair, seeming to make a last effort, he reels and murmuring: “Water – water,” sinks back presenting the appearance of utter lifelessness.
“Water!” The Celestial, utterly deceived, drops the fan and his dialect at the same moment, and muttering: “She has fainted!” springs to the door.
It is just what Stanhope had hoped for. When the Celestial returns with the water, the fainting lady will have disappeared.
But Fate seems to have set her face against Stanhope. The Celestial does not go. At the very door he encounters a servant, none other than the girl, Millie, who, having for some time lost sight of little Daisy, is now wandering from room to room in quest of the child.
“Girl,” calls the masker authoritatively, “get some water quick; a lady has fainted.”
Uttering a startled: “Oh, my!” Millie skurries away, and the Celestial returns to the side of the detective, who seems just now to be playing a losing game.
But