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Page 18
With quick apologies she made ready to accompany him down-stairs.
Firmly, as she planned their campaign for the day, she resolved to
put from her mind all thought of Adelphi Terrace. How well she
succeeded may be judged from a speech made by her father that night
just before dinner:
"Have you lost your tongue, Marian? You're as uncommunicative as a
newly-elected office-holder. If you can't get a little more life
into these expeditions of ours we'll pack up and head for home."
She smiled, patted his shoulder and promised to improve. But he
appeared to be in a gloomy mood.
"I believe we ought to go, anyhow," he went on. "In my opinion this
war is going to spread like a prairie fire. The Kaiser got back to
Berlin yesterday. He'll sign the mobilization orders to-day as sure
as fate. For the past week, on the Berlin Bourse, Canadian Pacific
stock has been dropping. That means they expect England to come in."
He gazed darkly into the future. It may seem that, for an American
statesman, he had an unusual grasp of European politics. This is
easily explained by the fact that he had been talking with the
bootblack at the Carlton Hotel.
"Yes," he said with sudden decision, "I'll go down to the steamship
offices early Monday morning."
CHAPTER V
His daughter heard these words with a sinking heart. She had a
most unhappy picture of herself boarding a ship and sailing out of
Liverpool or Southampton, leaving the mystery that so engrossed her
thoughts forever unsolved. Wisely she diverted her father's
thoughts toward the question of food. She had heard, she said,
that Simpson's, in the Strand, was an excellent place to dine. They
would go there, and walk. She suggested a short detour that would
carry them through Adelphi Terrace. It seemed she had always wanted
to see Adelphi Terrace.
As they passed through that silent Street she sought to guess, from
an inspection of the grim forbidding house fronts, back of which
lay the lovely garden, the romantic mystery. But the houses were so
very much like one another. Before one of them, she noted, a taxi
waited.
After dinner her father pleaded for a music-hall as against what he
called "some highfaluting, teacup English play." He won. Late that
night, as they rode back to the Carlton, special editions were being
proclaimed in the streets. Germany was mobilizing!
The girl from Texas retired, wondering what epistolary surprise the
morning would bring forth. It brought forth this:
DEAR DAUGHTER OF THE SENATE: Or is it Congress? I could not quite
decide. But surely in one or the other of those August bodies your
father sits when he is not at home in Texas or viewing Europe
through his daughter's eyes. One look at him and I had gathered
that.
But Washington is far from London, isn't it? And it is London that
interests us most--though father's constituents must not know that.
It is really a wonderful, an astounding city, once you have got the
feel of the tourist out of your soul. I have been reading the most
enthralling essays on it, written by a newspaper man who first fell
desperately in love with it at seven--an age when the whole
glittering town was symbolized for him by the fried-fish shop at the
corner of the High Street. With him I have been going through its
gray and furtive thoroughfares in the dead of night, and sometimes
we have kicked an ash-barrel and sometimes a romance. Some day I
might show that London to you--guarding you, of course, from the
ash-barrels, if you are that kind. On second thoughts, you aren't.
But I know that it is of Adelphi Terrace and a late captain in the
Indian Army that you want to hear now. Yesterday, after my
discovery of those messages in the Mail and the call of Captain
Hughes, passed without incident. Last night I mailed you my third
letter, and after wandering for a time amid the alternate glare and
gloom of the city, I went back to my rooms and smoked on my balcony
while about me the inmates of six million homes sweltered in the heat.
Nothing happened. I felt a bit disappointed, a bit cheated, as one
might feel on the first night spent at home after many successive
visits to exciting plays. To-day, the first of August dawned, and
still all was quiet. Indeed, it was not until this evening that
further developments in the sudden death of Captain Fraser-Freer
arrived to disturb me. These developments are strange ones surely,
and I shall hasten to relate them.
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