“Some other time perhaps?” I ventured.
She rang for the elevator. We stood together in silence waiting for it. But just before the car reached my floor she looked up into my face. “Perhaps!” she murmured.
If it was acting, like the rest, the glow in her eyes was the most consummate part of the whole performance.
But the elevator door slammed and I returned to my empty rooms to sit down and cogitate, while my visitor presumably repaired to her luncheon with Natalie and Ivanovitch.
My papers had been disturbed, but I could not find that anything except a little card-case with a few calling cards in it—and I might have mislaid that—was missing. However, her visit was serious enough, if she were connected with the gang, as it showed that I was at last suspected. In my anxiety over Larry, however, I forgot Vining’s note-book and did not look to see whether it was still there. And events followed each other so rapidly after that, that I did not think of the little book again until several days later.
I had been sitting thinking for some ten minutes perhaps, when the front door slammed again, and in a moment Larry burst in, grimy, disheveled and wild of eye. “Thank God,” he cried as soon as he saw me. “I guessed it was a frame-up, sor, and I thought, maybe, they’d done for ye, sor, with me not here to look after—that is, I——”
“What happened, Larry?” I answered sharply. “Out with it. I’m all right.”
“There wuz a woman, sor,” he stammered, looking comically indignant. “She come to the door and rang the bell, and when I answered she grabbed my sleeve and says, ‘Oh, come wid me. Please, come wid me! I think some one is being hurt!’ ”
His imitation of an agitated woman was supremely funny, but it was too serious a matter for laughter. “Go on,” I nodded.
“Before I knew where I was at, sor, I was down two flights of stairs wid her, in frunt av that empty flat below there. She had the key of the door and I follered her in widout a thought. ‘Why, ’tis impty,’ says she. ‘So it is,’ says I. ‘What do we do next?’ ”