She took hold of the collar of his overcoat. “Yes, call me that. Do: I like to hear it. You frighten me a little, but I expect I frighten you more. I’m always a scarecrow after I sing a long part like that—so high, too.” She absently pulled out the handkerchief that protruded from his breast pocket and began to wipe the black paint off her eyebrows and lashes. “I can’t take you in much to-night, but I must see you for a little while.” She pushed him to a chair. “I shall be more recognizable to-morrow. You mustn’t think of me as you see me to-night. Come at four to-morrow afternoon and have tea with me. Can you? That’s good.”
She sat down in a low chair beside him and leaned forward, drawing her shoulders together. She seemed to him inappropriately young and inappropriately old, shorn of her long tresses at one end and of her long robes at the other.
“How do you happen to be here?” she asked abruptly. “How can you leave a silver mine? I couldn’t! Sure nobody’ll cheat you? But you can explain everything tomorrow.” She paused. “You remember how you sewed me up in a poultice, once? I wish you could to-night. I need a poultice, from top to toe. Something very disagreeable happened down there. You said you were out front? Oh, don’t say anything about it. I always know exactly how it goes, unfortunately. I was rotten in the balcony. I never get that. You didn’t notice it? Probably not, but I did.”
Here the maid appeared at the door and her mistress rose. “My supper? Very well, I’ll come. I’d ask you to stay, doctor, but there wouldn’t be enough for two. They seldom send up enough for one,”—she spoke bitterly. “I haven’t got a sense of you yet,”—turning directly to Archie again. “You haven’t been here. You’ve only announced yourself, and told me you are coming to-morrow. You haven’t seen me, either. This is not I. But I’ll be here waiting for you to-morrow, my whole works! Goodnight, till then.” She patted him absently on the sleeve and gave him a little shove toward the door.
V
When Archie got back to his hotel at two o’clock in the morning, he found Fred Ottenburg’s card under his door, with a message scribbled across the top: “When you come in, please call up room 811, this hotel.” A moment later Fred’s voice reached him over the telephone.
“That you, Archie? Won’t you come up? I’m having some supper and I’d like company. Late? What does that matter? I won’t keep you long.”
Archie dropped his overcoat and set out for room 811. He found Ottenburg in the act of touching a match to a chafing-dish, at a table laid for two in his sitting-room. “I’m catering here,” he announced cheerfully. “I let the waiter off at midnight, after he’d set me up. You’ll have to account for yourself, Archie.”
The doctor laughed, pointing to three wine-coolers under the table. “Are you expecting guests?”
“Yes, two.” Ottenburg held up two fingers,—“you, and my higher self. He’s a thirsty boy, and I don’t invite him often. He has been known to give me a headache. Now, where have you been, Archie, until this shocking hour?”