"I beg your pardon," he said. "It IS an ugly word. We will strike it from the record. Would you mind telling me whose apartment you intended to--er--investigate? If this is the wrong one, you know."
"I was looking for a Letter."
"Letters, letters!" he said. "When will you women learn not to write letters. Although"--he looked at me closely--"you look rather young for that sort of thing." He sighed. "It"s born in you, I daresay," he said.
Well, for all his patronizing ways, he was not very old himself.
"Of course," he said, "if you are telling the truth--and it sounds fishy, I must say--it"s hardly a Police matter, is it? It"s rather one for diplomasy. But can you prove what you say?"
"My word should be suficient," I replied stiffly. "How do I know that YOU belong here?"
"Well, you don"t, as a matter of fact. Suppose you take my word for that, and I agree to beleive what you say about the wrong apartment, Even then it"s rather unusual. I find a pale and determined looking young lady going through my desk in a business-like manner. She says she has come for a Letter. Now the question is, is there a Letter? If so, what Letter?"
"It is a love letter," I said.
"Don"t blush over such a confession," he said. "If it is true, be proud of it. Love is a wonderful thing. Never be ashamed of being in love, my child."
"I am not in love," I cried with bitter furey.
"Ah! Then it is not YOUR letter!"
"I wrote it."
"But to simulate a pa.s.sion that does not exist--that is sackrilege. It is----"
"Oh, stop talking," I cried, in a hunted tone. "I can"t bear it. If you are going to arrest me, get it over."
"I"d rather NOT arrest you, if we can find a way out. You look so young, so new to Crime! Even your excuse for being here is so naive, that I--won"t you tell me why you wrote a love letter, if you are not in love? And whom you sent it to? That"s important, you see, as it bears on the case. I intend," he said, "to be judgdicial, unimpa.s.sioned, and quite fair."
"I wrote a love letter" I explained, feeling rather cheered, "but it was not intended for any one, Do you see? It was just a love letter."
"Oh," he said. "Of course. It is often done. And after that?"
"Well, it had to go somewhere. At least I felt that way about it. So I made up a name from some malted milk tablets----"
"Malted milk tablets!" he said, looking bewildered.
"Just as I was thinking up a name to send it to," I explained, "Hannah--that"s mother"s maid, you know--brought in some hot milk and some malted milk tablets, and I took the name from them."
"Look here," he said, "I"m unpredjudiced and quite calm, but isn"t the "mother"s maid" rather piling it on?"
"Hannah is mother"s maid, and she brought in the milk and the tablets, I should think," I said, growing sarcastic, "that so far it is clear to the dullest mind."
"Go on," he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. "You named the letter for your mother"s maid--I mean for the malted milk. Although you have not yet stated the name you chose; I never heard of any one named Milk, and as to the other, while I have known some rather thoroughly malted people--however, let that go."
"Valentine"s tablets," I said. "Of Course, you understand," I said, bending forward, "there was no such Person. I made him up. The Harold was made up too--Harold Valentine."
"I see. Not clearly, perhaps, but I have a gleam of intellagence."
"But, after all, there was such a person. That"s clear, isn"t it? And now he considers that we are engaged, and--and he insists on marrying me."
"That," he said, "is realy easy to understand. I don"t blame him at all.
He is clearly a person of diszernment."
"Of course," I said bitterly, "you would be on HIS side. Every one is."
"But the point is this," he went on. "If you made him up out of the whole cloth, as it were, and there was no such Person, how can there be such a Person? I am merely asking to get it all clear in my head. It sounds so reasonable when you say it, but there seems to be something left out."
"I don"t know how he can be, but he is," I said, hopelessly. "And he is exactly like his picture."
"Well, that"s not unusual, you know."
"It is in this case. Because I bought the picture in a shop, and just pretended it was him. (He?) And it WAS."
He got up and paced the floor.
"It"s a very strange case," he said. "Do you mind if I light a cigarette? It helps to clear my brain. What was the name you gave him?"
"Harold Valentine. But he is here under another name, because of my Familey. They think I am a mere child, you see, and so of course he took a NOM DE PLUME."
"A NOM DE PLUME? Oh I see! What is it?"
"Grosvenor," I said. "The same as yours."
"There"s another Grosvenor in the building, That"s where the trouble came in, I suppose, Now let me get this straight. You wrote a letter, and somehow or other he got it, and now you want it back. Stripped of the things that baffle my intellagence, that"s it, isn"t it?"
I rose in excitement.
"Then, if he lives in the building, the letter is probably here. Why can"t you go and get it for me?"
"Very neat! And let you slip away while I am gone?"
I saw that he was still uncertain that I was telling him the truth. It was maddening. And only the Letter itself could convince him.
"Oh, please try to get it," I cried, almost weeping. "You can lock me in here, if you are afraid I will run away. And he is out. I know he is. He is at the Club ball."
"Naturaly," he said "the fact that you are asking me to compound a felony, commit larceny, and be an accessery after the fact does not trouble you. As I told you before, all I have left is my good name, and now----!"
"Please!" I said.
He stared down at me.
"Certainly," he said. "Asked in that tone, Murder would be one of the easiest things I do. But I shall lock you in."
"Very well," I said meekly. And after I had described it--the Letter--to him he went out.
I had won, but my triumph was but sackcloth and ashes in my mouth. I had won, but at what a cost! Ah, how I wished that I might live again the past few days! That I might never have started on my Path of Deception!
Or that, since my intentions at the start had been so inocent, I had taken another photograph at the shop, which I had fancied considerably but had heartlessly rejected because of no mustache.