CHAPTER XVII.
“NERVE”
Mrs. Gaylord took up her temporary abode at the Essenden expecting at almost any hour to be summoned to Peter Cairns’s offices or else receive a call from him at the hotel. Neither the summons nor the call came.
Following her spirited moment of defense of her chaperon Leslie returned to her usual half domineering, always wilful manner. Since her father had seen fit to order Mrs. Gaylord on the scene, she had decided that the chaperon would be more of an asset than a hindrance. Under Mrs. Gaylord’s wing she and Doris could go about more freely to tea rooms and hotel restaurants, and the theatres. They could stay out later in the evening with a certain feeling of assurance which neither had possessed during their first evening venture into New York’s gaieties.
The day after New Years Leslie announced to her chaperon and Doris that she wished they would go where they pleased and do as they pleased through the days that remained to them of the Christmas holiday, but without her company.
“Gaylord can show you the village as well as I can; maybe better,” she assured Doris with a droll twist of her mouth. “She won’t be peevish with you. I would, if you made me sore, which you’d probably do. I have special business to tend to here in the next few days. It concerns my garage proposition and is very important. I’ll hustle around through the days so as to go out to dinner with you in the evenings.”
Doris was as well pleased with Leslie’s new arrangement though she kept her satisfaction carefully hidden behind her politely indifferent features. She and Mrs. Gaylord had grown friendly from the start. The chaperon admired the sophomore’s unusual beauty and enjoyed the covert appreciation it drew wherever they went. She thought Doris’s poise remarkably high-bred and was satisfied that Peter Cairns could but approve of her as a friend for his daughter. He was still in the city, she believed. Leslie was of the same belief. “Don’t doubt he knows our middle names and what time we come back to the hotel every night,” was her shrewdly humorous opinion.
The special business to which she devoted her days was typical of the intriguing side of Leslie. While her father was presumably keeping an eye on her, she was even more anxious to trace his movements. She burned to know how long he intended to stay in New York, and whether he was staying at the family residence far out on Riverside Drive, or at his club.
There was another man, too, besides her father, whose whereabouts in New York she was eager to learn. He was a man to whom her father had more than once intrusted certain business about which she thought she knew a good deal. This man had come to their home twice as a dinner guest. He was tall, slim, with aquiline, foreign features, deep set dark eyes and iron gray hair. She could recall distinctly his courtly manners. What she could not recall was his full name. It was Anton—. There memory failed her.
After she had unsuccessfully racked her brain for the missing surname she came into startled knowledge of a way to gain it. Dared she take it? Leslie’s heart beat faster every time she thought about it. She could not make up her mind to take it until she had definite information concerning her father’s plans. She decided that she would at once try to obtain it from his offices.
On the day after New Years she left Mrs. Gaylord and Doris directly after breakfast and hurried from the Essenden to start on the trail of the “special” business. It was a fairly long drive from the Essenden to her father’s downtown offices. Leslie grew perceptibly nervous as she neared her destination. There was no one to witness her uneasiness, however. There was only one chance against a hundred that she might encounter her father. She could not imagine what she would do if she were to come suddenly face to face with him. And in this thought lay her inclination to panic.