Jeanne was trying to recall a name, not the name of the man who had once owned the three bags resting there in the shadows. She knew that. It was Preston Wamsley. But the name of the hotel where he had stopped in New York; this escaped her.
She could picture the place in her mind. She had taken a room there for a night. It was not one of those towering affairs of brick and stone where traveling men uphold the prestige of their firms by paying ten dollars a night for a bed. A humble, kindly old hostelry, it stood mellow with age. Within were many pictures of great men who had stopped there in days gone by.
“There were Presidents and Earls and Dukes,” she told herself. “Yes, and Princes.
“Prince!” she whispered excitedly. “Prince—Prince George! That was the name! I’ll address a letter to him there to-morrow.”
“No.” She changed her mind a moment later. “To-morrow may never come. Better do it now!”
She helped herself to paper and envelope and penned a simple note to her great friend, saying she had his traveling bags which had, no doubt, been lost; and where should she send them?
“That may reach him,” she told herself, as she hurried down to post it. “Here’s hoping!”
She had cast her bread upon the waters, half of all the bread she had in the world. And the cruel Fates had decreed that she should shortly have still less. For all that, her steps were light, her heart gay, as she clambered back up the long flight of stairs.
As she returned to her place by the fire, it seemed to her that the old trouper, Dan Baker, half hidden there in the darkness, was part of a dim, half dream life that at this moment might be passing forever. Her mind went slipping, gliding back over the days that lay in the shadows that were yesterdays.
She thought of the dark-faced gypsy who had followed her on that first morning when she was on her way to dance the sun up from the lake. It was true that she had recognized him. He was a French gypsy. This much she knew. That was all. She had seen him beside some camp fire in the land of her birth.