“How do you do, Cy—Miss Gail?” he greeted her. He was quite sure of her but doubtful as to use of her given name.
“Hubert Lennon!” Ruth exclaimed, giving her hand to his grasp—a nice, pleased, and friendly grasp. She had ventured that, whoever he was, he had known Cynthia Gail long ago but had not seen her recently; not for several years, perhaps, when she was so young a girl that everyone called her Cynthia. Her venture went well.
She was able to learn from him, without his suspecting that she had not known, that she had an engagement with him for the afternoon; they were to go somewhere—she could not well inquire where—for some event of distinct importance for which she was supposed to be “ready.”
“I’m not ready, I’m sorry to say,” Ruth seized swiftly the chance for fleeing to refuge in “her” room. “I’ve just come in, you know. But I’ll dress as quickly as I can.”
“I’ll be right here,” he agreed.
She stepped into a waiting elevator and drew back into the corner; two men, who talked together, followed her in and the car started upwards. If the Germans had sent someone to the hotel to observe her when she appeared to take the place of Cynthia Gail, that person pretty clearly was not Hubert Lennon, Ruth thought; but she could not be sure of these two men. They were usual looking, middle-aged men of the successful type who gazed at her more than casually; neither of them called a floor until after Ruth asked for the third; then the other said, “Fourth,” sharply while the man who remained silent left the elevator after Ruth. She was conscious that he came behind her while she followed the room numbers along the hallway until she found the door of 347; he passed her while she was opening it. She entered and, putting the key on the inside, she locked herself in, pressing close to the panel to hear whether the man returned. But she heard only a rapping at a door farther on; the man’s voice saying, “I, Adele;” then a woman’s and a child’s voices.
“Nerves!” Ruth reproached herself. “You have to begin better than this.”
She was in a large and well-furnished bedroom; the bed and bureau and dressing table were set in a sort of alcove, half partitioned off from the end of the room where was a lounge with a lamp and a writing desk. These were hotel furniture, of course; the other articles—the pretty, dainty toilet things upon the dressing table, the dresses and the suit upon the hangers in the closet, the nightdress and kimono upon the hooks, the boots on the rack, the waists, stockings, undergarments, and all the other girl’s things laid in the drawers—were now, of necessity, Ruth’s. There was a new steamer trunk upon a low stand beyond the bed; the trunk had been closed after being unpacked and the key had been left in it. A small, brown traveling bag—also new—stood on the floor beside it. Upon the table, beside a couple of books and magazines, was a pile of department-store packages—evidently Cynthia Gail’s purchases which she had listed in her letter to her mother. The articles, having been bought on Saturday, had been delivered on Monday and therefore had merely been placed in the room.
Ruth could give these no present concern; she could waste no time upon examination of the clothes in the closet or in the drawers. She bent at once before the mirror of the dressing table where Cynthia Gail had stuck in two kodak pictures and two cards at the edge of the glass. The pictures were both of the same young man—a tall, straight, and strongly built boy in officer’s uniform; probably Lieutenant Byrne, Ruth thought; at least he was not Hubert Lennon; and the cards in the glass betrayed nothing about him, either; both, plainly, were “reminder” cards, one having “Sunday, 4:30!” written triumphantly across it, the other, “Mrs. Malcolm Corliss, Superior 9979.”
Ruth knew—who in Chicago did not know?—of Mrs. Malcolm Corliss, particularly since America entered the war. Ruth knew that the Superior number was a telephone probably in Mrs. Corliss’ big home on the Lake Shore Drive. Ruth picked up the leather portfolio lying upon the dressing table; opening it, she faced four portrait photographs; an alert, able and kindly looking man of about fifty; a woman a few years younger, not very unlike Ruth’s own mother and with similarly sweet eyes and a similar abundance of beautiful hair. These photographs had been but recently taken. The third was several years old and was of a handsome, vigorous, defiant looking boy of twenty-one or two; the fourth was of a cunning, bold little youth of twelve in boy-scout uniform. Ruth had no doubt that these were Cynthia Gail’s family; she was very glad to have that sight of them; yet they told her nothing of use in the immediate emergency. Her hand fell to the drawer of the dresser where, a moment ago, Ruth had seen a pile of letters; she recognized that she must examine everything; yet it was easier for her to open first the letters which had never become quite Cynthia Gail’s—the three letters and the dispatch which the clerk had given Ruth.