Miss Million's Maid Part 27

"Laughing and talking together all the time they was afterwards," said the waiter, in his suspicious, weary voice. "I rec'lect the young pers--the young lady, now. You called to wait for her, didn't you, Miss?

You and a fair gent. Last night. Then you left before she come away."

"When? When did she go?" I demanded quickly.

"About an hour after you did, I should say."

"And who with?" I asked again breathlessly. "Who was Miss Million with when she left this place?"

"Ar!" said the waiter, "now you're arskin'!" He spoke more suspiciously than ever. And he looked sharply at me, with such disfavour that I felt quite guilty--though why, I don't know.

Of what should he suspect me? I am sure I looked nothing but what I was, a superior lady's-maid, well turned out in all-black; rather pale from my last night's vigil, and genuinely anxious because I could not find out what had become of my mistress.

"Want to know a lot, some of you," said the waiter, quite unpleasantly this time.

And he turned away. He left me, feeling snubbed to about six inches shorter, standing, hesitating, on the red carpet of the corridor.

Horrid man!

The attendant came up.

"Miss! About that young lady of yours," he began, in a low, confidential voice.

"Oh, yes? Yes? You remember her now? You'll tell me who she went away with?" I said quite desperately. "Do tell me!"

"Well, I couldn't say for certain, of course; but--since Alfred there was telling you she was talking a lot with that young Lord Fourcastles, well! I see him go off in the small car, and there was a lady with him,"

the attendant told me. "That I did see. A young lady in some sort of a wrap----"

"Yes, but what sort of a wrap?" I cried impatiently.

Oh, the incomprehensible blindness of the Masculine Eye! Woman dresses to please it. She spends the third of her means, the half of her time, and the whole of her thought on that object alone. And what is her reward? Man--whether he's the restaurant attendant or the creature who's taken her out to dinner--merely announces: "I really couldn't say what sort of a wrap she had on."

"Was it a white one? At least you'll remember that?" I urged. I saw before my mind's eye Million's restaurant coat of soft, creamy cloth, with the mother-o'-pearl satin lining. How little I'd dreamt, as I put it about my mistress's shoulders last night, that I should be trying to trace its whereabouts--and hers--at eleven o'clock this morning!

"Was it a light coat or a dark one that the lady had on who drove away with Lord Fourcastles? You can at least tell me that!"

The sallow-faced attendant shook his head.

Afraid he "hadn't thought to notice whether the young lady's coat was white or black or what colour."

Blind Bat!

And as I turned away in despair I caught an amused grin on his sallow face under the peaked cap, and I heard him whistle through his teeth a stave of the music-hall song, "Who Were You With Last Night?"

Horrid, horrid man!

It seems to me this morning that all men are perfectly horrid.

What about this young Lord Fourcastles?

That's the thought that's worrying me now as I walk up and down Miss Million's deserted sitting-room, unable to settle to anything; waiting, waiting....

Yes, what about that eyegla.s.sed, rowdy, fair-faced boy who was sticking flowers in her hair the last time I saw her? Was it she who drove away from the Thousand and One Club in his car? Was it? And where to?

Can he----Awful thought! Can he possibly have kidnapped Miss Million?

Run away with her? Abducted her?

After all, he must know she's an heiress----

Pooh! Absurd thought! This isn't the eighteenth century. People don't abduct heiresses any more. Million is all right--somewhere.

She's gone on with one of these people. They've made what they call "a night" of it, and they're having breakfast at Greenwich, or somewhere in the country. Yes, but why didn't my mistress wire or telephone from wherever she is to let her maid know?

Surely she'll want other clothes taken to her? I see visions of her still in that low-cut, cerise frock, with the June sunlight glinting on the spangles of it; her creamy restaurant coat still fastened about her st.u.r.dy bare shoulders, the wilting pink carnations still in her hair.

How hideously uncomfortable for her, poor little thing....

CHAPTER XX

WHERE IS SHE?

AT mid-day! Where is she? What have they done with her? And who are "they"?

Is it an idiotic joke on the part of that noisy, irrepressible Lord Fourcastles? Is it for some bet that he has spirited the little heiress away? Is it perhaps some bit of absurd skylarking got up between himself and the Honourable Jim?

If there's a chance of this it mustn't go further. I shall have to keep my mouth shut.

I can't go applying to the police--and then having Miss Million turning up and looking more than foolis.h.!.+ Then scolding her maid for being such a fool!

That stops my telling anybody else about my fearful anxiety--the mess I'm in!

Oh! Won't I tell Million what I think of her and her friends--all of them, Fourcastles, the cobra-woman, "London's Love," the giggling theatrical girls, and that unscrupulous nouveau-pauvre pirate, the Honourable Jim--as soon as she does condescend to reappear!...

A tap at the door. I fly to open it....

Only one of those little chocolate-liveried London sparrows, the Cecil page-boys.

He has a large parcel for Miss Million. From Madame Ellen's. (Oh, yes, of course. The blush-rose pink that had to be let out.) Carriage forward.

"Please have it paid and charge it to Miss Million's account," says Miss Million's maid, with great outward composure and an inward tremor.

I've no money. Three-and-six, to be exact. Everything she has is locked up. What--what am I to do about the bills if she stays away like this?

She seems to have been away a century. Yet it's only half-past twelve now. In half an hour Mr. Brace will be calling on me for an answer to his proposal of marriage....

There's another complication!