CHAPTER XXV
It transpired that Miss Maria Potts had not been asleep, save possibly for a few weary winks. Howard’s inability to reach her ear was due not to her slumbers but to the fact that half a dozen other Roseborough citizens were demanding to be connected with Mrs. Mearely’s residence. For the first hour of the doctor’s absence, Mrs. Wells, muffled in an eider-down wrapper, and topped with a frilled nightcap, had sat at the telephone and called everyone whose number she could remember. There were several whom she did not call, because Peter had mislaid the book. The book in Mrs. Witherby’s home, however, was not mislaid; and, as she made Mabel and Corinne do all the packing of her small trunk and her several bandboxes, she herself had time to spend in notifying the persons Mrs. Wells omitted that Mrs. Mearely had been “taken ill and of course sent at once for me to come and oversee things.”
So it was that Mr. Howard had less than five minutes in which to bend his stern, menacing, contemptuous gaze on the interloper, who was not only a poacher in the emotional realm, but, judging by his eccentric attire, was also something of the sort by field and stream. The instrument behind him tinkled. For the next hour, indeed, it tinkled incessantly. Howard ran back and forth telling soothing fictions to first one and then another; sometimes pausing to upbraid the somnolent constable because he had not caught the gaol-bird and put leg-irons on him before ever he entered Villa Rose. Constable Marks, sleeping and waking by jerks, mumbled protests. Mrs. Mearely and her guest, discreetly seated at opposite sides of the room, were unable to exchange more than a whispered word or two. His amused cheerfulness stabbed her to the heart; because he did not know his danger. Straining her ears nervously, at times she believed she could hear groans outside—the rumblings of Woodseweedsetisky’s secret service, Teodor Carl Peter Lassanavatiewicz, shot in the leg by Roseborough’s human watchdog, Constable Alfred Marks.
Another tinkle drew Howard from his chaperoning station, just within the doorway. He always left the door open when the bell called him upon these excursions. The guilty pair could see the back of his head—and be reminded that he had two ears, and that only one of them was required for the receiver.
The prince leaned as far out of his chair as he could, without falling out, and whispered across the room:
“Where does he come in? And why doesn’t he like me?”
“Ssh—!” She held on to the arm of her chair and stretched out her neck and alarmed countenance, for all the world as though she expected to be guillotined. “He’s a relative—of Mr. Mearely’s, and—and—” she stopped, and gestured for silence, thinking that what he overheard of Howard’s conversation might enlighten him.
“No, thank you.” Howard was repeating what had become a formula; his tones were still unfailingly polite, but weary and suggestive of nerves straining thin under the surface. “Mrs. Mearely is not ill. Just a fright. Mrs. Witherby is most kind and considerate, but it was really unnecessary to call you up about it. No. Thank you.” He came to the door and addressed Mrs. Mearely, coldly, “That was Mrs. Field. She says she has been trying for half an hour to get this line. Between them, I don’t think Mrs. Wells and Mrs. Witherby have overlooked anybody.”
Ting-a-ling-a-ling! With a barely suppressed sigh Mr. Howard went back to the instrument; absent-mindedly, he closed the door. This time it was Central herself who desired speech with him.
“Land to goodness! Mr. Howard, I’m tuckered out!” she complained, bitterly. “What in creation’s happened up to Villa Rose, anyhow? Never, in all my days in this office, have I heard subscribers ramp round like they been doin’ this night. I ain’t had a wink of sleep; and maw’s jest come and stuck a Dollop’s stickem headache plaster on to the back of my neck. I declare I’m weak as a plucked chicken. I give all Roseborough fair warning, right now, that I ain’t a-goin’ to stand much more of it. Here, hold on. Don’t ring off. There’s your party.” Anon, Howard was answering the same questions in the same wearily courteous manner.