Arriving at Marble Arch in due course, the heroic Elbert piloted the fugitive out of the station and across the road into Park Lane. Here, under a street lamp, they paused a moment to examine the label on the parcel for the number of the house they sought. Thirty-nine was the number, and it proved to be not the least imposing home in that plutocratic thoroughfare.
Elbert accompanied June as far as its doorstep. Before ringing the bell she said good-bye to her escort with all the gratitude she could muster, begging him to give her his name and address, so that she might at least restore to him the price of her fare. Yet the squire of dames saw no necessity for this. His scowl was softened a little by her thanks, but his only answer was to press the electric button and then, without a word, to slink abruptly away into the fog.
XLIX
June felt a wild excitement, as she stood waiting for the answer to her ring. The stress of events had buoyed her up, but with Elbert no longer at her side and the door of a strange house confronting her, trolls were loose once more in her brain. A fresh wave of panic surged through her, and again she feared that she was going to faint.
The prompt opening of the door by a gravely dignified manservant acted as a strong restorative. June mustered the force of will to ask if she could see Miss Babraham. Such a request, made in a nervous and excited manner, gave pause to the footman, who at first could not bring himself to invite her into the large dimly lighted hall. Finally he did so; closed the door against the fog, and then asked her name with an air of profound disapproval, which at any other time must have proved highly embarrassing.
“I’m Miss Gedge,” said June. “From the second-hand shop in New Cross Street. Miss Babraham’ll remember me.”
The servant slowly repeated the fragmentary words in a low voice of cutting emphasis. “I’m afraid,” he said, while his eye descended to June’s shoes and up again, “Miss Babraham will not be able to see you to-night. However, I’ll inquire.”
Superciliously the footman crossed the hall, to discuss the matter with an unseen presence in its farthest shadows. The conference was brief but unsatisfactory, for a moment later the unseen presence slowly materialized into the august shape of a butler, who seemed at once to diminish the footman into a relative nothingness.
“Perhaps you’ll let me know your business,” said the butler, in a tone which implied that she could have no business, at any rate with Miss Babraham, at such an hour.
June, alas, could not explain the nature of her errand. These two men were so imposing, so unsympathetic, so harsh, so frightening that had life itself depended upon her answers, and in quite a special degree she now felt that it did, she was yet unequal to the task of making them effective.