“Better still, let my assistant write. Then if necessary I can curse him for not minding his own business. But what’s in the wind?”
“I wish to find out whether or not Miss Jaques knows of this Swiss journey; that is all. If the reply reaches you by one o’clock send it to the Embankment Hotel. Otherwise, post it to me at the Kursaal, Maloja-Kulm; but not in an office envelop.”
“You’ll come back, Mr. Spencer?” said the editor plaintively, for he had visions of persuading the eccentric American to start a magazine of his own.
“Oh, yes. You’ll probably see me again within six days. I’ll look in and report progress. Good by.”
A messenger caught him as he was leaving the hotel. Mackenzie had not lost any time, and Miss Jaques happened to be at the theater.
“Sorry,” she wrote, in the artistic script that looks so well in face cream and soap advertisements, “I can’t for the life of me remember the number; but Miss Wynton lives somewhere in Warburton Gardens.” The signature, “Millicent Jaques,” was an elegant thing in itself, carefully thought out and never hurried in execution, no matter how pressed she might be for time. Spencer was on the point of scattering the note in little pieces along the Strand; but he checked himself.
“Guess I’ll keep this as a souvenir,” he said, and it found a place in his pocketbook.
Helen Wynton, having crossed the Channel many times during her childhood, was no novice amid the bustle and crush on the narrow pier at Dover. She had dispensed with all accessories for the journey, except the few articles that could be crammed into a handbag. Thus, being independent of porters, she was one of the first to reach the steamer’s gangway. As usual, all the most sheltered nooks on board were occupied. There seems to be a mysterious type of traveler who inhabits the cross-Channel vessels permanently. No matter how speedy may be the movements of a passenger by the boat-train, either at Dover or Calais, the best seats on the upper deck invariably reveal the presence of earlier arrivals by deposits of wraps and packages. This phenomenon was not strange to Helen. A more baffling circumstance was the altered shape of the ship. The familiar lines of the paddle steamer were gone, and Helen was wondering where she might best bestow herself and her tiny valise, when she heard Bower’s voice.
“I took the precaution to telegraph from London to one of the ship’s officers,” he said, and nodded toward a couple of waterproof rugs which guarded a recess behind the Captain’s cabin. “That is our corner, I expect. My friend will be here in a moment.”
Sure enough, a man in uniform approached and lifted his gold laced cap. “We have a rather crowded ship, Mr. Bower,” he said; “but you will be quite comfortable there. I suppose you deemed the weather too fine to need your usual cabin?”