"218 Murray Hill," Lola repeated impatiently into the telephone. "I
have been waiting quite five minutes. Hello! Hello! Madam Zelya,
please! This is Miss Barnhelm! Hello! Is that you, Madam? Yes, yes, I
have just received your note, and I do not think you are quite fair in
the matter. Yes, I know that I did promise, but it is quite
impossible. What! My father has nothing to do with this matter,
absolutely nothing. If you will be patient for two or three days
longer the account will be settled. What is that?... Oh! I am sorry
that you choose to take that tone. If you call upon my father you will
get nothing, either from my father or from me. I will promise to send
a check in a day or two; until then please do not annoy me."
With this Lola hung up the receiver, leaving a very angry Hungarian
dress-maker to get what satisfaction she might from shrill threats and
dire prophecies, and turned away from the telephone in time to meet
her father and Dr. Crossett as they entered from the outside hall.
"Who has been annoying you, little girl?" inquired her father, who had
heard the end of the conversation.
"Only that stupid hall-boy," answered Lola calmly. "He is always
making mistakes. What a time you two have been, to be sure. I thought
that you had deserted me for good."
"No chance of that, my dear," said Dr. Crossett. "In fact it was to be
sure of having a long talk with you that I hurried your father back."
"I am afraid we must postpone that talk for a little while, Doctor. I
am going to my room for a few moments. You will excuse me, won't you?"
She smiled sweetly at him and held out her hand, and he bowed over it
gallantly as he answered:
"Come back soon. I shall be waiting."
"Oh, I promise you that you shall see quite enough of me, Doctor," she
replied; "before you are here a day you will be glad to get me out of
your sight. I know I am going to bore you dreadfully, but I have so
many things I want to talk over with you, and so many questions I want
to ask you, about things that happened long ago before I was here to
be a trouble to you."
She went gayly down the long hall, stopping at her door to wave her
hand at him as he stood watching her.
"No sign there of nervous troubles," he said as he joined her father
in the sitting room. "Her eyes are bright and clear, her voice is
steady. She looks happy and well. You, Martin, are the greatest
inventor in the world's history."
"Hardly that," said the Doctor with a laugh.
"Ah, yes," insisted the Frenchman. "Men have made fortunes, fame,
history by the children of their brain, but what man before, by the
power of his mind, has brought back from the dead his own daughter?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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