C. N. Williamson & A. N. Williamson: 30+ Murder Mysteries & Adventure Novels (Illustrated). Charles Norris Williamson
you is no more convent-like than the Savoy Hotel," her companion laughed. "By Jove, neither you nor I dreamed when we got out of the last taxi that we should soon be in another, going back to the place we started from!"
"The Savoy!" exclaimed Annesley. "Oh, but we mustn't go there, of all places! Those men——"
"I assure you it's safer now than anywhere in London!" the man cut her short. "I can't explain why—that is, I could explain if I cared to rig up a story. But there's something about you makes me feel as if I'd like to tell you the truth whenever I can: and the truth is, that for reasons you may understand some day—though I hope to Heaven you'll never have to!—my association with those men is one of the things I long to turn the key upon. I know that that sounds like Bluebeard to Fatima, but it isn't as bad as that. To me, it doesn't seem bad at all. And I swear that whatever mystery—if you call it 'mystery'—there is about me, it sha'n't hurt you. Will you believe this—and trust me for the rest?"
"I've told you I would!" the girl reminded him.
"I know. But things were different then—not so serious. They hadn't gone so far. I didn't suppose that Fate would give you to me so soon. I didn't dare hope it. I——"
"Are you sure you want me?" Annesley faltered.
"Surer than I've ever been of anything in my life before. It's only of you I'm thinking. I wanted to arrange my—business matters so as to be fair to you. But you'll make the best of things."
"You are being noble to me," said the girl, "and I've been very foolish. I've complicated everything. First, by what I told Mr. Ruthven Smith about—about us. And then—saying your name was Nelson Smith."
"You weren't foolish!" he contradicted. "You were only—playing into Fate's hands. You couldn't help yourself. Destiny! And all's for the best. You were an angel to sacrifice yourself to save me, and your doing it the way you did has made me a happy man at one stroke. As for the name—what's in a name? We might as well be in reality what we played at being to-night—'Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith.' There are even reasons why I'm pleased that you've made me a present of the name. I thank you for it—and for all the rest."
"Oh, but if it isn't really your name, we sha'n't be legally married, shall we?" Annesley protested.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "I hadn't thought of that. It's a difficulty. But we'll obviate it—somehow. Don't worry! Only I'm afraid we can't ask your friend the Archdeacon to marry us, as I meant to suggest, because I was sure you'd like it."
"I should. But it doesn't matter," said the girl. "Besides, I feel that to-morrow I shall find I've dreamed—all this."
"Then I've dreamed you, at the same time, and I'm not going to let you slip out of my dream, now I've got you in it. I intend to go on dreaming you for the rest of my life. And I shall take care you don't wake up!"
Afterward there came a time when Annesley called back those words and wondered if they had held a deeper meaning than she guessed. But, having uttered them, he seemed to put the thought out of his mind, and turn to the next.
"About the Savoy," he went on. "I want to take you there, because I know a woman staying in the hotel—a woman old enough to be your mother—who'll look after you, to please me, till we're married. Afterward you'll be nice to her, and that will be doing her a good turn, because she's apt to be lonesome in London. She's the widow of a Spanish Count, and has lived in the Argentine, but I met her in New York. She knows all about me—or enough—and if she'd been in the restaurant at dinner this evening she could have done for me what you did. I had reason to think she would be there when I bolted in to get out of a fix. But she was missing. Are you sorry?"
"If she'd been there, you would have gone to her table and sat down, and we—should never have met!" Annesley thought aloud. "How strange! Just that little thing—your friend being out to dinner—and our whole lives are to be changed. Oh, you must be sorry?"
"I tell you, meeting you and winning you in this way is worth the best ten years of my life. But you haven't answered my question."
"I'll answer it now!" cried the girl. "Meeting you is worth all the years of my life! I'm not much of a princess, but you are St. George."
"St. George!" he echoed, a ring of bitterness under his laugh. "That's the first time I've been called a saint, and I'm afraid it will be the last. I can't live up to that, but—if I can give you a happy life, and a few of the beautiful things you deserve, why, it's something! Besides, I'm going to worship my princess. I'd give anything to show you how I—but no. I was good before, when I was tempted to kiss you. You're at my mercy now, in a way, all the more because I'm taking you from your old existence to one you don't know.
"I sha'n't ask to kiss you—except maybe your little hand if you don't mind—until the moment you're my wife. Meantime, I'll try to grow a bit more like what your lover ought to be; and later I shall kiss you enough to make up for lost time."
If, five hours ago, any one had told Annesley Grayle that she would wish to have a strange man take her in his arms and kiss her she would have felt insulted. Yet so it was. She was sorry that he was so scrupulous. She longed to have him hold her against his heart.
The thought thrilled her like an electric shock a thousand times more powerful than the tingling which had flashed up her arm at the first touch of his hand, though even that had seemed terrifying then. But she sat still in her corner of the taxi, and gave him no answer, lest she should betray herself.
Her silence, after the warmth of his words, seemed cold. Perhaps he felt it so, for he went on after an instant's pause, as if he had waited for something in vain, and his tone was changed. Annesley thought it, by contrast, almost businesslike.
"You mustn't be afraid," he said, "that I mean to stay at the Savoy myself. Even if I'd been stopping there, I should move if I were going to put you in the hotel. But I have my own lair in London. I've been over here a number of times. Indeed, I'm partly English, born in Canada, though I've spent most of my life in the United States. Nobody at the Savoy but the Countess de Santiago knows who I am, and she'll understand that it may be convenient for me to change my name. Nelson Smith is a respectable one, and she'll respect it!
"Now, my plan is to ask for her (she'll be in by this time), have a few words of explanation on the quiet, not to embarrass you; and the Countess will do the rest. She'll engage a room for you next to her own suite, or as near as possible; then you'll be provided with a chaperon."
"I'm not anxious about myself, but about you," Annesley said. "You haven't told me yet what happened after you went upstairs at Mrs. Ellsworth's, and how you knew those men were gone. I suppose you did know? Or—did you chance it?"
"I was as sure as I needed to be," Nelson Smith answered. "A moment after I switched on the electricity in the room up there I heard a taxi drive away. I turned off the light so I could look out. By flattening my nose against the glass I could see that the place where those chaps had waited was empty; but in case the taxi was only turning, and meant to pass the house again, I lit the room once more, for realism.
"That's what kept me rather long—that, and waiting for the dragon to go. Otherwise I should have been down before Ruthven Smith trapped me.
"For a second it looked as if the game of life was up. And then I found out how much you meant to me. It was you I thought of. It seemed beastly hard luck to leave you fast in that old woman's clutches!"
Annesley put out her hand with a warm impulse. He took it, raising it to his lips, and both were startled when the taxi stopped. They had arrived at the Savoy: and though Annesley seemed to have lived through a lifetime of emotion, just one hour and thirty minutes had passed since she and her companion drove away from these bright revolving doors.
The foyer was as brilliant and crowded as when they left at half-past ten. People were parting after supper; or they were lingering in the restaurant beyond. Nobody paid the slightest attention to the newcomers, and Annesley settled down unobtrusively in a corner, while her companion went