“But, as a matter of fact,” she said, raising and lowering once again her smooth, white lids, “my name does happen to be Rose; or, at any rate, Rosie.”
“So you are sweet by right!” exclaimed Mr. Mercaptan, with a pretty gallantry which he was the first to appreciate. “Let’s order tea on the strength of it.” He jumped up and rang the bell. “How I congratulate myself on this astonishing piece of good fortune!”
Rosie said nothing. This Mr. Mercaptan, she thought, seemed to be even more a man of the great artistic world than Toto.
“What puzzles me,” he went on, “is why your anonymous friend should have chosen my address out of all the millions of others. He must know me, or, at any rate, know about me.”
“I should imagine,” said Rosie, “that you have a lot of friends.”
Mr. Mercaptan laughed—the whole orchestra, from bassoon to piccolo. “Des amis, des amies—with and without the mute ‘e,’” he declared.
The aged and forbidding servant appeared at the door.
“Tea for two, Mrs. Goldie.”
Mrs. Goldie looked round the room suspiciously. “The other gentleman’s gone, has he?” she asked. And having assured herself of his absence, she renewed her complaint. “Shoving in like that,” she said. “Bolshevism, that’s what I——”
“All right, all right, Mrs. Goldie. Let’s have our tea as quickly as possible.” Mr. Mercaptan held up his hand, authoritatively, with the gesture of a policeman controlling the traffic.