Jimmy cocked his head at the last sentence and looked up at her quickly.
“So you helped him, eh?” he inquired.
“Just a little,” she replied. “What are a few thousand dollars if they will bring peace to a troubled spirit? Peace is everything, Mr. Martin, quite everything worth while. And I’m going to keep the poor, dear prince peaceful for ever and always and aye. Good-bye, dear Mr. Martin. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Jimmy went down the gravel path in a thoughtful mood. Somehow he felt rather fed up with Prince Rajput Singh.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mr. J. Herbert Denby, between sips of his morning coffee next day in a secluded corner of the breakfast room of his hotel, was reading for the second time, with an inner glow of satisfaction, a letter which he had just received. It was a brief communication from Chester Bartlett complimenting him upon his success as a lecturer and announcing the manager’s forthcoming arrival in Chicago that very morning.
“I can’t resist the temptation,” Bartlett wrote, “to look in on one of your seances and catch His Royal Highness and yourself in action. I must congratulate you on the success which you have achieved in putting this stunt over on the natives and I have instructed the office to give you a twenty-five per cent increase in salary.”
Mr. Denby laid the letter down and decided that, after all, theatrical managers had their proper place in the scheme of existence. Up to that moment he had always been inclined to consider them as useless encumberers of the earth.
He picked up the morning paper which lay at his elbow, adjusted his glasses and turned to the front page. He glanced cursorily at a story in the left-hand column dealing with the newest series of what are technically known in newspaper circles as “Red Raids;” let his attention wander to an account of the launching of a new presidential boom and then took a look at the right hand corner. What he saw emblazoned there caused him to almost drop the cup which he had just daintily raised to his lips and provoked an audible spluttering that sent the head-waiter hurrying in his direction from the other side of the room.