Criminals -- Fiction; Ex-convicts -- Fiction; Love stories
When Larry awoke the next morning, he blinked for several bewildered
moments about his bedroom, so unlike his cell at Sing Sing and so unlike
Hunt's helter-skelter studio down at the Duchess's which he had shared,
before he realized that this big, airy chamber and this miracle of a bed
on which he lay were realities and not a mere continuation of a dream of
fantastic and body-flattering wealth.
Then his mind turned back a page in the book of his life and he lay
considering the events of the previous evening: the scene with Barney
and Old Jimmie and Maggie, their all denouncing him as a police
stool-pigeon and a squealer, and Maggie's defiant departure to begin her
long-dreamed-of career as a leading-woman and perhaps star in what she
saw as great and thrilling adventures; his own enforced and frenzied
flight; his strange method of reaching this splendid apartment; his
meeting with the handsome, drink-befuddled young man in evening clothes;
his meeting with the exquisitely gowned patrician Miss Sherwood, who
had received him with the poise and frank friendliness of a democratic
queen, and had immediately ordered him off to bed.
Strange, all of these things! But they were all realities. And in this
new set of circumstances which had come into being in a night, what was
he to do?
He recalled that Miss Sherwood had said that she and he would have their
talk that morning. He pulled his watch from under his pillow. It was
past nine o'clock. He looked about him for clothes, but saw only a
bathrobe. Then he remembered Judkins carrying off his rain-soaked
garments, with “Ring for me when you wake up, sir.”
Larry found an electric bell button dangling over the top of his bed by
a silken cord. He pushed the button and waited. Within two minutes the
door opened, and Judkins entered, laden with fresh garments.
“Good-morning, sir,” said Judkins. “Your own clothes, and some shirts
and other things I've borrowed from Mr. Dick. How will you have your
bath, sir--hot or cold?”
“Cold,” said the bewildered Larry.
Judkins disappeared into the great white-tiled bathroom, there was the
rush of splashing water for a few moments, then silence, and Judkins
reappeared.
“Your bath is ready, sir. I've laid out some of Mr. Dick's razors. How
soon shall I bring you in your breakfast?”
“In about twenty minutes,” said Larry.
Exactly twenty minutes later Judkins carried in a tray, and set it on
a table beside a window looking down into Park Avenue. “Miss Sherwood
asked me to tell you she would see you in the library at ten o'clock,
sir--where she saw you last night,” said Judkins, and noiselessly was
gone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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