“Yaas, sah, Mr. Estabrook, sah. De dohman lef’ a message, sah. Der has been a lady waitin’ foh you, sah, mos’ all de ahfternoon. She comin’ back, she say—dis evenin’. She sutt’nly act very queer, sah.”
“All right,” I snapped. “It’s one of my clients.”
“Um-um,” he said, shaking his head. “I spec she ain’t, Mr. Estabrook, sah. She mos’ likely has pussonal business, sah!”
The others—Folsom the broker, and Madison, and Ingle the architect—had evidently dined well, preparing for a musical comedy, and they snickered without shame.
“Let my man know when she comes,” said I, and without smiling hurried into the elevator.
I had no belief that the woman, whoever she might be, would come back after dark to call upon me. With my conflicting thoughts about Julianna, I forgot the incident. It was therefore with some surprise that I heard Saito, my Jap, arouse me from my sleepy reverie, to which exhaustion had reduced my mind, to tell me that a lady was waiting in the reception room downstairs.
You may understand the conservative nature of my life and habits more thoroughly when I tell you that the mere idea that a woman had dared to ask for me at my apartment in the evening caused me the greatest anxiety. As if to prove what dependence we can put upon our intuitions, I felt, on my way down, most strongly, that an evil event was about to take place.
Nothing could, I think, better illustrate the nonsense of attaching importance to these fore-warnings than to tell you that the woman who waited for me was Julianna herself!
My first instinct, before I had been seen by her, was to hurry her out of the garish little reception room, where, through the door which opened into the hallway, she might well have been seen by anybody; it was only when she greeted me and turned her face toward the tiled floor, and I saw that her shoulders drooped and that her hands hung down at her side, and that she stood like a guilty, punished, and remorseful child, that my wish to protect her was displaced by a mad desire to take her in my arms and comfort her.
“Julianna!” I cried. “What has happened? Is it the Judge? Tell me! Why did you come?”