"A young lady?" I echoed. My thoughts created a white and gold vision of Maida, but the clerk's next words broke it like a bubble.
"She was dressed as a nurse," he explained. "She wouldn't give her name; said you'd not know it—but she mentioned that she'd called first at your Long Island hotel. When she told them there that her errand was urgent they consented to give this address."
"The errand was urgent!" I felt my blood leap. After all, the vision might not have been so far-fetched. What if this woman were the nurse from Sisterhood House—Anne Garth, whom I had seen come out of prison—Anne Garth with a message for me from Maida?
"What did you tell her?" I asked.
"Well," the clerk hedged, "she seemed anxious to know where she could find you—insisted it was a matter of life and death, so I suggested you might be at Mrs. Gorst's ball for that Egyptian Prince."
My first impulse was of anger. The man was a fool, not to have known that I must come back to dress! But in a flash I realised that if he hadn't known, it was my fault. I had left no word when I went out at a quarter to eight.
"I may see or hear from her later," I said, holding out a hand for my key. With it, the clerk gave me an envelope—one of the hotel envelopes, sealed and containing a thing which felt like a small account book. It was addressed in pencil, evidently in haste. Inside the flap I caught sight of something else hurriedly pencilled, luckily discovering it as I tore the envelope, to extract a black-covered note-book. "I was going to write a letter," I read, "but I fear I'm watched. This is the best I can do, unless they let me in at the ball."
There was no signature, not even an initial.
I went up to my room, and opened the book under the light of a reading-lamp. Its contents suggested a diary, with a number of disjointed notes dashed down in pencil (the same handwriting as that inside the envelope) with many blank spaces.
"I never hoped for anything like this," were the only words on the first page, under the vague date, "Wednesday." On the next page was jotted: "It's like heaven after hell, and she is an angel. I never saw anyone so beautiful or sweet. Would she be as kind if she knew?"