Brooke dropped wearily into the chair by the desk; the strain of the last hour had been greater than what she actually felt; she had been hurried swiftly to face stern realities, which all her life, though through no choice of her own, had been to her a side issue in which she took no part or responsibility, and which she was never allowed to question. Then, seeing that the reporter was standing and evidently at a loss how to go, she went forward with extended hand, saying, very gently, “Good-by. I think I may trust you not to misunderstand my father’s illness now.” Turning to the figure by the window, now all on the alert, she said, “Lucy, dear, will you please show Mr. Brownell the way out, there are so many turns in this inner hall?” Then, as Lucy raised her eyebrows in disgusted question marks, Brooke continued, “Ah, forgive me! this is my dear friend, Miss Dean, Mr. Brownell, and”—a little smile hovered around the comers of her mouth in spite of herself—“you may be very sure that she will never tell you anything but the whole truth!”
Then, as the two girls changed places and Lucy led the way down the main hall, Brooke reseated herself before the desk, that might tell so much if it only could, folded her arms upon it, hiding her weary eyes in them. Had she done right or wrong in letting a stranger see her father’s real condition? Would it make outside conditions better or worse? Why had the doctor given out such evasive bulletins? Well, the die was cast, and something within told her that from that hour, when she had taken the family responsibility upon herself, she would have to bear it.
As Tom Brownell crossed the rug that lay before the outer door of the Lawton apartment, something between it and the tiled flooring slid under the pressure of his foot. Checking his first impulse to pass on and get out as quickly as possible, he turned back, even though the door itself was open, and, lifting the corner of the rug, picked up two thin keys, one smaller than the other, that were joined by a steel ring. Accustomed to fit two and two together rapidly, he involuntarily glanced at the spring lock on the door to see if they belonged to it, but found it of a different pattern. Stepping outside, the better to see by the hanging electric light, he found that the keys bore no name or mark other than figures, probably the factory number of keys of a fine make. Turning to Lucy, who had already come into the main hall and, half closing the door behind her, was watching him, he muttered a hasty apology for his curiosity concerning the keys, saying: “To me unfamiliar keys have always had a strange fascination, for all my life I have expected to find one that would unlock a mystery. These probably belong to some of Mrs. or Miss Lawton’s possessions—a travelling bag or jewel case. Will you please take charge of them? And thank you for showing me the way out,” turning up the corridor as he spoke.
“You needn’t thank me for showing you the way, as you evidently don’t know it,” said Lucy; “that is, unless you have professional reasons for going down in the luggage lift with trunks, baby wagons, clothes-baskets, and scrubbing pails. No, you needn’t raise your eyebrows, I’m not English or infected with Anglomania either, simply I’m to the point, and luggage lift is a much more smooth and pronounceable expression than baggage elevator, don’t you think?
“To the right—there you are! Not running? Why, the thing was all right when I came in not an hour ago, but I’ve noticed that the power has a way of giving out, or the machinery needs oiling, about the time the man might be supposed to want an afternoon nap. You’ll have to walk downstairs. Good afternoon. Oh, by the way, do you happen to know Charlie Ashton? I beg his pardon, Carolus, though I only promised to call him that at his studio teas. He had a chum at college, he said, with a literary and reformatory streak, who a year ago had cut away from his father’s business, and incidentally his own fortune, and was climbing into journalism, not in at the top story, but up the cellar stairs. I’ve rather forgotten his name. He doesn’t chance to be you, does he?”
“I’m afraid he does, and that Ashton has guyed me unmercifully to you, in spite of all the good turns that he has done me. But as I am myself, you must be his cousin, Miss Dean, of whom he talks so much at the club. I did not quite catch what name Miss Lawton said.”
“I am Lucy Dean, and I dare say that he has talked about me even at so reprehensible a place as the club. Talking about me, I fear, is a bad habit that a great many of my friends have. I also know that he didn’t call me Miss Dean. What club was it? What did he call me? Lucyfer is his pet title—and what did he say?”
“Oh, Miss Dean, it wasn’t the way you mean at all. I was lunching, at his invitation, with him at the Players,—quite by ourselves on my word, and—he—well, he did call you Lucyfer, and said it expressed your stand-off way and all that; but he declared you were the best chum a fellow ever had, and if he wanted a studio entertainment to be a corking success, he always had you pour tea. If I hadn’t been spending all my time the last year climbing up the cellar stairs, as you express it, I should have begged him to ask me to one of the teas; but I’m out of that sort of thing, for good and all, you see.”
Lucy flushed slightly, an odd thing for her, and then said suddenly, holding out her right hand, both having been held behind her, after a habit she had, until this moment: “You are keen to avoid teas, they are horribly stupid; the cigarette smoke makes one’s eyes weak, and the Saké punch does for the rest of one’s head, and unless we act like mountebanks and shock people so that they forget to be bored, no one would come twice. Ask Charlie to bring you up to the house some afternoon, as you live so near to him, about five for a cup of real tea. No, don’t thank me, it is not an invitation. It’s years since I’ve taken the responsibility of giving one to a man,—certainly not since I was eighteen; you must take the responsibility of coming upon yourself!”