"Oh, I'm not sure," said I very lightly, but with a curious sinking at my heart. What was the meaning of the manager's visit? Was he only just looking in to pass the time of day with the maid of one of his patrons? Or--horrible thought!--did he imagine that there was something not quite usual about Miss Million?
Had he, too, wondered over our arriving at the hotel with those old clothes and those new trunks? And now was he keeping an eye on whatever Miss Million meant to do? For all his pleasant manner, he did look as if he thought something about her were distinctly "fishy"!
I said brightly: "She may stay away for a few days."
"A little change into the country, I expect? Do anybody good this stuffy weather," said the affable manager. "Going down to join her, I expect, aren't you?"
This was a poser, but I answered, I think, naturally enough. I said: "Well, I'm waiting to hear from her first if she wants me!"
And I nodded quite cheerily at the manager as he passed again down the corridor.
I trust he hadn't even a suspicion of the uneasy anxiety that he had left behind him in the heart of Miss Million's maid!
What a perfectly awful day this has been! Quite the most awful that I've ever lived through in all my twenty-three years of life!
I thought it was quite bad enough when all I had to bear was the gnawing anxiety over Million's disappearance, and the suspense of waiting, waiting, waiting for news of her! Living for the sound of the telephone bell ... sitting up here in her room, feeling as if three years had elapsed between each of my lonely hotel meals ... wondering, wondering over and over again what in the world became of her since I saw my young mistress at the Supper Club last night....
But now I've something worse to bear. Something far more appalling has happened!
I felt a presentiment that something horrible and unforeseen might occur, even before the first visit of the manager, with his suspicious glance, to Miss Million's room.
For I'd wandered downstairs, in my loneliness, to talk to the girl in the telephone exchange.
She's a bright-eyed, chatty creature who sits there all day under the big board with the lights that appear and disappear like glowworms twinkling on a lawn. She always seems to have a cup of tea and a plate of toast at her elbow.