Bab: A Sub-Deb

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

“The what, miss?”

“If any one asks if you have driven me here, you have not,” I explained, in an impressive manner.

He examined the quarter, even striking a match to look at it. Then he replied: “I have not!” and drove away.

Concealing my nervousness as best I could, I entered the doomed Building. There was only a hall boy there, asleep in the elevator, and I looked at the thing with the names on it. “Mr. Grosvenor” was on the fourth floor.

I wakened the boy, and he yawned and took me to the fourth floor. My hands were stiff with nervousness by that time, but the boy was half asleep, and evadently he took me for some one who belonged there, for he said “Goodnight” to me, and went on down. There was a square landing with two doors, and “Grosvenor” was on one. I tried it gently. It was unlocked.

“Facilus descensus in Avernu.”

I am not defending myself. What I did was the result of desparation. But I cannot even write of my sensations as I stepped through that fatal portal, without a sinking of the heart. I had, however, had suficient forsight to prepare an alabi. In case there was some one present in the apartment I intended to tell a falshood, I regret to confess, and to say that I had got off at the wrong floor.

There was a sort of hall, with a clock and a table, and a shaded electric lamp, and beyond that the door was open into a sitting room.

There was a small light burning there, and the remains of a wood fire in the fireplace. There was no Cabinet however.

Everything was perfectly quiet, and I went over to the fire and warmed my hands. My nails were quite blue, but I was strangly calm. I took off mother’s veil, and my mackintosh, so I would be free to work, and I then looked around the room. There were a number of photographs of rather smart looking girls, and I curled my lip scornfully. He might have fooled them but he could not decieve me. And it added to my bitterness to think that at that moment the villain was dancing—and flirting probably—while I was driven to actual theft to secure the Letter that placed me in his power.