The Cockney twang of her voice made his heart jump with joy. Two hours ago he had been on the boat-train, watching the ancient trees and green fields and golden stubble of England flash past the Pullman windows in the October sunlight, and he had dreamed then, as he had dreamed while pacing the liner’s deck, of an honest-to-goodness London voice addressing him in a London street.
‘Lov—ely roses, sir?’
‘They are!’ agreed Alan Gilmour. ‘I’ll have that little fellow there—the red one.’
‘Good luck, sir!’ said the flower-seller when he waved aside the change from his half-crown.
‘Good luck to you,’ said Alan Gilmour with a laugh; ‘I’ve got all that’s good for me.’
‘Gorblimey!’ said the flower-seller below her breath, but he caught the sound of it, and laughed again. Was it so very unusual, he wondered, for a man to be a bit bucked up about his good fortune? . . . Perhaps his own had been too good to last! . . . The thought sobered him a little; but not for long, because it was his nature to be resilient, and the sudden prospect of lunch revived his spirits. Lunch? . . . Where should he go? Back to the hotel? He thought not. He didn’t feel quite at home in that hotel. It was very new and large and fashionable, and he had put up at the ‘Marquise’ only because a man on the boat-train had recommended it. No; he would lunch as he used to do on those special days when he’d felt riotously flush of cash and could spring three-and-sixpence for one of the tremendous grilled steaks they gave you at that little pub near Leicester Square—that is, if the pub still existed, and they still ran to those deep, gory steaks you could cut like cream-cheese! It did exist, he found—everything as before, even to the mirrors on the dull green walls and the red-faced chef beside the spluttering grill. He drank his beer from a tankard, and thought of the old times when to order another half-pint required a certain fortitude; and then he sauntered back to his hotel, his pipe alight, his soft felt hat set at a jaunty angle, feeling that of all the many good things on this earth few could be sweeter than to return to London after six years of exile—provided, of course, that these years had not been altogether fruitless!
Pausing for a moment near the National Gallery, he looked across Trafalgar Square at the severe frontage of the Marquise Hotel, one of London’s new landmarks. It had a magnificence, certainly, and inside there was a pallid distinction in its corridors of shining steel and black marble and the unexpected splashes of chromatic brilliance. As Alan Gilmour crossed the square, passed between the two recumbent stone lions which guarded the doorway, and stepped into the lucent splendour of the entrance-hall, he decided that he’d prefer some comfortable little service-flat as his London head-quarters. But for the first week he felt he would thoroughly enjoy the immense spree of living in what was now acknowledged to be the most luxurious and costly place in town, and of rubbing shoulders with millionaires and ambassadors and the great ones of the earth. Both lifts had just disappeared upwards before he approached, so he strolled up the wide staircase with its carpet that yielded below the feet like an ancient meadow turf, and made for his room on the third floor. The second one from the end of the corridor was his, and he was fumbling for his key when he noticed that the door was ajar. He pushed it open and walked in, humming under his breath, then drew back in dismay.
He saw that he had blundered. Instead of entering his own room he had stepped into the tiny passage of a self-contained suite. He prepared to back out hastily, but saw that it was too late. In front of him a door stood open, and at a large table beside the window sat a girl.
Alan Gilmour grabbed the pipe from his mouth and stuffed it into his pocket. ‘I’m fearfully sorry,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve come to the wrong floor.’
A rapid glance told him that the room was furnished like an office. On the wall to his left, the doors of a square steel cabinet stood open, disclosing row upon row of letter-files. Beside it were several black deed-boxes, and on the table was a little pile of documents tied with red tape. The girl, who had been busy at a typewriter, looked up with a smile, and Alan Gilmour stared at her in surprise.
The reason for his surprise is a simple one. His first glance had told him little more than the obvious fact that she was a girl, but the second look revealed something more, namely, that she was quite the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. She was of a type that does not appeal to everybody: he was ready to acknowledge that at once. There was no vivacity, no hint of archness, in her response to his stammering apology; and indeed her look was almost one of sadness. And yet on Gilmour’s mind she made an impression of almost flawless beauty. The perfect oval of her face, the long shadowed eyes, the full lips and rounded chin, the soft dark hair: these might have come straight from a Rossetti picture, and the effect was intensified by the wistful and mysterious quality of her smile as she looked up at him.
‘I thought for a moment you had come to see Sir Richard,’ she said. Her voice was low and had a soft contralto quality.
‘Sir Richard?’
‘Sir Richard Templeton,’ she explained. ‘This is his suite—he lives here.’
Templeton. Sir Richard Templeton. The name seemed familiar. Of course! Alan Gilmour knew the name quite welclass="underline" knew the man’s face too, from photographs of the famous barrister he’d seen in the English papers out East in the last few years. Why, he’d been reading about him that very morning! Odd that he should have stumbled into Sir Richard Templeton’s suite in the ‘Marquise’ . . . Well, anyhow, Templeton seemed to have an eye for the exquisite, judging by his secretary. With a renewed apology, Alan Gilmour was about to withdraw when he heard a quick step behind him.
A tall clean-shaven man, with sharply cut features, grey hair, and brilliant dark eyes, had entered from the corridor. He paused to glance into the room before passing on; and Gilmour could not fail to recognize him. It was Templeton himself. A door opened and shut; and, lifting some letters from the table beside her, the girl rose. This was Alan Gilmour’s cue to clear out, and he took it.
The early afternoon was occupied by a necessary call at the city offices of the National Bank of India, where he presented his letter of credit, and was given a cheque-book; then he spent an hour at a tailor’s in Curzon Street. These two visits, intimately personal, he had looked forward to with a certain pleasure; but for some reason or other he was glad to get them over and be back in the hotel lounge with a cigarette. When he squared up to the truth, he was compelled to admit that his mental disturbance had begun at the moment when he had come face to face with the girl in Sir Richard Templeton’s suite upstairs. It was ridiculous! He ordered tea, and forgot about her; but before the tea arrived, her dark wistful eyes were dancing in his thoughts once more. ‘Damnation!’ said Alan Gilmour, and crushed out his cigarette. The chances were ten to one that he’d never see her again. And even if he did, what about it? . . . Yes, what about it? And yet, for a reason that he didn’t attempt to define, he was conscious of an almost devastating curiosity about the girl into whose room he had blundered.
Beyond the glass screen the figure of a man passed, walking quickly. Gilmour sat up in his chair, for he recognized Templeton; and as he watched the barrister making for the front door and getting into a taxi-cab, an idea came to him. He knew it was absurd. But he was on his feet and going towards the lift before he allowed himself time to change his mind. Something told him that he was about to make a complete fool of himself, but there was a dancing imp within him that refused to be quietened. ‘Alan Gilmour,’ he said to himself as he stepped out on the second floor, ‘six foot one on your stocking soles, five thousand three hundred and forty-two quid in the bank, you’re about to get the biggest snub in your career, and you damn well deserve it!’