"I'm afraid we can't wait," the other answered quickly. "If you aren't able to pay we shall have to keep your baggage till you do."
Loveland stared. "That's a little too steep, isn't it?" he sneered. "You turn me out of your hotel in the most insulting and unprovoked manner, and then expect me to go somewhere else without my luggage. Are these American manners with foreigners?"
"They have to be, with some foreigners," returned the other, smiling mysteriously.
"I intend to go now, whether you like or not," said Val, "and take my luggage with me."
"You can't take it unless you pay your bill. That's the law, and our police know how to enforce it. If I were you I wouldn't do anything to make it necessary to call the police. Once in their hands, you might be quite a while getting out, you know."
Loveland clenched his hands, to keep from striking this mouth-piece of the "Management." He would not be drawn into a vulgar brawl, as a preface to his New York campaign in search of an heiress. Things had begun badly enough, as they were, but nothing had happened yet at which he might not be able to laugh—rather bitterly perhaps—tomorrow. He had heard of horrors in connection with the New York police; innocent British visitors arrested and kept for days in gaol, for some offence never committed; the newspapers printing lies about them, to be copied in London, and read by their shocked acquaintances. Such things he had been told, and though they mightn't be true, Loveland could not afford to risk any such incident for himself. He was far too important.
It seemed to him that there was a peculiar significance, almost a menace, in the hint he had just been given. If he were a criminal escaping from justice, instead of a British peer with a proud name which he would willingly bestow on a daughter of America, just such an emphasis might have been used to warn him that he had better bear the ills he knew, if he did not want to incur worse evils.
Val believed that Cadwallader Hunter had somehow contrived to bring about this hideous state of affairs; though he could not imagine how, unless all Americans were ready to band together and avenge one another's fancied wrongs against a stranger. On the face of it, nothing could be more ridiculous than to suppose that an Englishman of title was being asked to leave a New York hotel in the evening, because he had been a little rude to a retired Major and a newspaper man, in the morning. Yet, for his life, Loveland could think of no other reason; and his polite but cold companion did not seem inclined to explain, unless in answer to undignified entreaties.
"My luggage is worth a lot more than what I owe you here," he said.
"We have heard all about that luggage," was the meaning reply.