"Not allowed to tell. State secret. Governor forbids it!" he grinned; and Patricia found herself laughing as much at his serio-comic expression as at his very apparent nonsense. "Anything else wanted?" he ended.
"Nothing but your name," she replied, following her father's tactics. "If you're going to be around here regularly, my father would like to know it."
"Oh, it's Chet, just Chet Jackson!" he said, apparently a trifle dumfounded to think that anyone should care to know it. To the hotel at large he was only 'Number 27.'
"Well, goodnight. That will be all, I think." And Patricia turned back into the room to lay the tray on the table. But as she retraced her steps to close the door, she suddenly remembered that she had meant to order ice-water for the night also, and walked out into the corridor to see if Chester were still in sight. He was not, however, and she turned back toward her own door, murmuring, "Oh, well, it doesn't really matter. I don't want to bother 'phoning down again. Daddy can send for it when he comes in."
What impelled her, just at that instant, to turn her head and glance over her shoulder, she never quite knew. Perhaps if she had not, if she had gone quietly in and closed her door, all future events might have been different. At any rate, turn her head she did, drawn by some mysterious power, and beheld a curious sight.
A door diagonally opposite her own, across the corridor, was standing a trifle ajar. It had not been so while she was talking to the bell-boy, of that she was positive, nor had she heard the faintest sound of its being opened. And in the opening was framed a face, gazing at her absorbedly, intently. Patricia's heart gave a sudden leap. It was the face of the young girl she had noticed in the dining-room.
So unexpected to both was this encounter of eyes, that for a long instant, neither could remove her gaze. Patricia was first to recover her poise; moreover, truth to tell, she was even a trifle pleased at this opportunity to break the growing monotony of the evening. She smiled her friendliest smile at the face across the corridor, and with its resultant effect on the girl in the opposite doorway, she was not a little astonished. The expression in the big, black eyes changed suddenly from watchfulness to wonder, and a slow, reluctant answering smile curved the sullen mouth. The effect was like a shaft of sunlight breaking through a black cloud.
"I was looking for our bell-boy," Patricia called across laughingly and informally. "He escaped before I could speak about bringing ice-water." The girl in the opposite doorway suddenly realized that her presence too, might call for some explanation.
"I was looking for my—ah—for Mme. Vanderpoel," she hesitated. "She has gone out. I am a little lonely—and was watching for her—to return." She spoke with a noticeably foreign accent and her manner was reticent and confused. But Patricia, for some inexplicable reason felt immediately drawn to her. The girl was lonely. So was she. What possible objection could there be to spending a while in each other's company?
"Why, I'm lonely, too," she vouchsafed. "My father was to be away all the evening. Won't you come in and sit with me awhile? I've a couple of sandwiches that we can divide, or I can send for more. Do come!"