The
strawberry-mad one may write one letter a day for seven days--to
prove that he is an interesting person, worth knowing. Then--we
shall see. Address: M. A. L., care Sadie Haight, Carlton Hotel.
All day West walked on air, but with the evening came the problem
of those letters, on which depended, he felt, his entire future
happiness. Returning from dinner, he sat down at his desk near
the windows that looked out on his wonderful courtyard. The weather
was still torrid, but with the night had come a breeze to fan the
hot cheek of London. It gently stirred his curtains; rustled the
papers on his desk.
He considered. Should he at once make known the eminently
respectable person he was, the hopelessly respectable people he
knew? Hardly! For then, on the instant, like a bubble bursting,
would go for good all mystery and romance, and the lady of the
grapefruit would lose all interest and listen to him no more. He
spoke solemnly to his rustling curtains.
"No," he said. "We must have mystery and romance. But where--where
shall we find them?"
On the floor above he heard the solid tramp of military boots
belonging to his neighbor, Captain Stephen Fraser-Freer, of the
Twelfth Cavalry, Indian Army, home on furlough from that colony
beyond the seas. It was from that room overhead that romance and
mystery were to come in mighty store; but Geoffrey West little
suspected it at the moment.
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