What could I say? How could I tell him that he was opening a door for me that I could never enter; that by all the canons of decency and honor I should never seek to enter? In the mingled emotions of the moment there was a blind anger at the thought that he had unconsciously made my hard case infinitely harder by showing me that my loyalty to him was entirely needless.
"There are good reasons why I can't think of such a thing," I began; but when I would have gone on the words froze in my throat. Since the hour was nearly midnight, the mezzanine lounge was practically deserted. But as I choked up and stopped, a couple, a man and a woman who had come around from the other side of the gallery parlors, passed us on their way to the elevator alcove.
I hardly saw the man of the pair. A second after they had passed I could not have told whether he was black or white. That was because the woman, fair, richly gowned, statuesquely handsome and apparently in perfect health, was Agatha Geddis.
XVIII
"The Woman . . . Whose Hands are as Bands"
If I looked as stricken as I felt—and I doubtless did—Barrett had ample reason for assuming that I had been suddenly taken sick.
"Why, Jimmie, old man!" he exclaimed in instant concern; and then he took the half-burned cigar from between my fingers and threw it away, at the same time sending the floor boy scurrying after a drink for me.
I couldn't touch the whiskey when it came; and I was still trying to persuade Barrett that I wasn't sick when he walked me to the elevator. Wanting only to be free, I still had to let him go all the way with me to the door of my room. But the moment he was gone I hurried out again and descended to the lobby.
The night clerk knew me; or if he didn't, he knew the Little Clean-Up; and he was quite willing to talk. Miss Geddis was only temporarily a guest of the house, he told me. She was with a party of friends from the East, but her Denver home was with Mrs. Altberg, a widow and a prominent society woman. Yes, Miss Geddis was quite well known in social circles; she was reputed to be wealthy, and the clerk understood that she had originally come to Colorado for her health.