"I'm waiting to see you. You must bear with me, I'm afraid," she said in gentle accents. "It's about Nan. You haven't been to see her because I'm there. Isn't that a pity?"
Napier's apparent obliviousness of her presence vanished. He made no effort to keep his indignation out of his face as he stopped abruptly to say: "I decline to discuss that or anything else with you." He turned his back on her with unmistakable finality, marched out into the corridor, and so to the columned porch, with never a look behind.
Napier hadn't often betrayed in public such heat of anger as the woman's audacity had stirred in him. Much she cared! he told himself, still tingling. She would shrug her handsome shoulders and return to her senator. Presently she would be entering the sanctum Napier had just left. To-morrow, in Hallett Newcomb's audience. Newcomb was one of those Britons invited by American friends to come and correct transatlantic misapprehension, and to present facts. Yet even such unorganized and unofficial efforts, so slight in sum, were not suffered by the thoroughgoing German propagandists to pass unchallenged or unneutralized. In this connection Roderick Taylor had set down to Miss Greta's credit an astute discovery. It was that, as some one put the case, "pro-Ally Americans stayed away from these meetings in vast numbers." Your pro-Ally American didn't need converting. He was occupied in other ways. What he failed to recognize was that in the absence of a sufficiently represented pro-Ally element in these audiences, Miss Greta's confederates, judiciously disposed about the hall, could and frequently did get up a powerful and "spontaneous" pro-German demonstration. By this means certain meetings convened in the interests of the Allies were turned into triumph for their enemies.
In front of Napier, at the office desk in Miss Ellis's hotel, stood a man impressing on the clerk in an undertone the importance of a letter he had brought. Could he have a receipt for it? Could he see the bell-boy who was to deliver it? That business despatched, the clerk was free to attend to Mr. Napier. Yes, he had been told a gentleman of that name would call for Miss Ellis at 7:30. A bell-boy was waiting to take Mr. Napier up.
Side by side in the elevator they shot through story after story, to be set down near the roof. With his thumb pressing the envelop to a little brass tray, the bell-boy held in its place, address face-downward, the much-sealed packet which had been the object of so much solicitude. At the end of an interminable corridor the bell-boy tapped at a door. Without waiting, he opened it and went in, returning almost at once with the tray empty and the words, "This way, sir."
The instant Napier was over the threshold, the door was shut behind him. He stood facing Miss von Schwarzenberg. She had risen in the act of laying the sealed packet on the table. In the midst of his surprise Napier mentally registered the fact that he had never seen her in more brilliant good looks. She was wearing over her dinner dress a superb fur coat, thrown back to show her jeweled neck.
"I am too early," Napier said. "I will wait downstairs."
"You are not too early. It is Nan who is late. She won't be a minute." Miss Greta pointed to a chair as Napier stood that instant rigid by the door. "Don't," she cried softly—"don't be so hard upon me! Can't you see that I'm not standing in your way any more?"
"If that is so, you have your own reason for it." He turned and laid his hand on the door-handle. These American fastenings! He turned the knob fruitlessly.