LITMIR.BIZ

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his voice irascibly, continuing to write

      the while. “Where the devil are you! Can't you hear the door bell?”

      Soames did not reveal himself; and to the ringing of the bell was added

      the unmistakable rattling of a letter-box.

      “Soames!” Leroux put down his pen and stood up. “Damn it! he's out! I

      have no memory!”

      He retied the girdle of his dressing-gown, which had become unfastened,

      and opened the study door. Opposite, across the entrance lobby, was

      the outer door; and in the light from the lobby lamp he perceived two

      laughing eyes peering in under the upraised flap of the letter-box. The

      ringing ceased.

      “Are you VERY angry with me for interrupting you?” cried a girl's voice.

      “My dear Miss Cumberly!” said Leroux without irritation; “on the

      contrary--er--I am delighted to see you--or rather to hear you. There is

      nobody at home, you know.”...

      “I DO know,” replied the girl firmly, “and I know something else, also.

      Father assures me that you simply STARVE yourself when Mrs. Leroux is

      away! So I have brought down an omelette!”

      “Omelette!” muttered Leroux, advancing toward the door; “you

      have--er--brought an omelette! I understand--yes; you have brought an

      omelette? Er--that is very good of you.”

      He hesitated when about to open the outer door, raising his hands to his

      dishevelled hair and unshaven chin. The flap of the letter-box dropped;

      and the girl outside could be heard stifling her laughter.

      “You must think me--er--very rude,” began Leroux; “I mean--not to open

      the door. But”...

      “I quite understand,” concluded the voice of the unseen one. “You are a

      most untidy object! And I shall tell Mira DIRECTLY she returns that she

      has no right to leave you alone like this! Now I am going to hurry back

      upstairs; so you may appear safely. Don't let the omelette get cold.

      Good night!”

      “No, certainly I shall not!” cried Leroux. “So good of you--I--er--do

      like omelette.... Good night!”

      Calmly he returned to his writing-table, where, in the pursuit of the

      elusive character whose exploits he was chronicling and who had brought

      him fame and wealth, he forgot in the same moment Helen Cumberly and the

      omelette.

      The table-clock ticked merrily on;

      SCRATCH--SCRATCH--SPLUTTER--SCRATCH--went Henry Leroux's pen; for this

      up-to-date litterateur, essayist by inclination, creator of “Martin

      Zeda, Criminal Scientist” by popular clamor, was yet old-fashioned

      enough, and sufficient of an enthusiast, to pen his work, while lesser

      men dictated.

      So, amidst that classic company, smiling or frowning upon him from the

      oaken shelves, where Petronius Arbiter, exquisite, rubbed shoulders

      with Balzac, plebeian; where Omar Khayyam leaned confidentially toward

      Philostratus; where Mark Twain, standing squarely beside Thomas Carlyle,

      glared across the room at George Meredith, Henry Leroux pursued the

      amazing career of “Martin Zeda.”

      It wanted but five minutes to the hour of midnight, when again the door

      bell clamored in the silence.

      Leroux wrote steadily on. The bell continued to ring, and, furthermore,

      the ringer could be heard beating upon the outer door.

      “Soames!” cried Leroux irritably, “Soames! Why the hell don't you go to

      the door!”

      Leroux stood up, dashing his pen upon the table.

      “I shall have to sack that damned man!” he cried; “he takes too many

      liberties--stopping out until this hour of the night!”

      He pulled open the study door, crossed the hallway, and opened the door

      beyond.

      In, out of the darkness--for the stair lights had been

      extinguished--staggered a woman; a woman whose pale face exhibited,

      despite the ravages of sorrow or illness, signs of quite unusual beauty.

      Her eyes were wide opened, and terror-stricken, the pupils contracted

      almost to vanishing point. She wore a magnificent cloak of civet fur

      wrapped tightly about her, and, as Leroux opened the door, she tottered

      past him into the lobby, glancing back over her shoulder.

      With his upraised hands plunged pathetically into the mop of his hair,

      Leroux turned and stared at the intruder. She groped as if a darkness

      had descended, clutched at the sides of the study doorway, and then,

      unsteadily, entered--and sank down upon the big chesterfield in utter

      exhaustion.

      Leroux, rubbing his chin, perplexedly, walked in after her. He

      scarcely had his foot upon the study carpet, ere the woman started up,

      tremulously, and shot out from the enveloping furs a bare arm and a

      pointing, quivering finger.

      “Close the door!” she cried hoarsely--“close the door!... He has...

      followed me!”...

      The disturbed novelist, as a man in a dream, turned, retraced his steps,

      and closed the outer door of the flat. Then, rubbing his chin more

      vigorously than ever and only desisting from this exercise to fumble in

      his dishevelled hair, he walked back into the study, whose Athenean calm

      had thus mysteriously been violated.

      Two minutes to midnight; the most respectable flat in respectable

      Westminster; a lonely and very abstracted novelist--and a pale-faced,

      beautiful woman, enveloped in costly furs, sitting staring with fearful

      eyes straight before her. This was such a scene as his sense of the

      proprieties and of the probabilities could never have permitted Henry

      Leroux to create.

      His visitor kept moistening her dry lips and swallowing, emotionally.

      Standing at a discreet distance from her:--

      “Madam,” began Leroux, nervously.

      She waved her

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