The Lighted WayOppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
General
The Lighted Way
Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
Detective and mystery stories
She laughed.
"Ah! I see, then, that there are hopes of you," she admitted. "You
should read the reign of Queen Elizabeth if you would know what
Englishmen should be like. You know, I had an English mother, and
she was descended from Francis Drake.... Ah, we are arrived!"
They had lost themselves somewhere between Oxford Street and Regent
Street. The car pulled up in front of a restaurant which Arnold had
certainly never seen or heard of before. It was quite small, and it
bore the name "Cafe Andre" painted upon the wall. The lower windows
were all concealed by white curtains. The entrance hall was small,
and there was no commissionnaire. Fenella, who led the way in, did
not turn into the restaurant but at once ascended the stairs. Arnold
followed her, his sense of curiosity growing stronger at every
moment. On the first landing there were two doors with glass tops.
She opened one and motioned him to enter.
"Will you wait for me for a few moments?" she said. "I am going to
telephone."
He entered at once. She turned and passed into the room on the other
side of the landing. Arnold glanced around him with some curiosity.
The room was well appointed and a luncheon table was laid for four
people. There were flowers upon the table, and the glass and cutlery
were superior to anything one might have expected from a restaurant
in this vicinity. The window looked down into the street. Arnold
stood before it for a moment or two. The traffic below was
insignificant, but the roar of Oxford Street, only a few yards
distant, came to his ears even through the closed window. He
listened thoughtfully, and then, before he realized the course his
thoughts were taking, he found himself thinking of Ruth. In a
certain sense he was superstitious about Ruth and her forebodings.
He found himself wondering what she would have said if she could
have seen him there and known that it was Fenella who had brought
him. And he himself--what did he think of it? A week ago, his life
had been so commonplace that his head and his heart had ached with
the monotony of it. And now Fenella had come and had shown him
already strange things. He seemed to have passed into a world where
mysterious happenings were an every-day occurrence, into a world
peopled by strange men and women who always carried secrets about
with them. And, in a sense, no one was more mysterious than Fenella
herself. He asked himself as he stood there whether her vagaries
were merely temperamental, the air of mystery which seemed to
surround her simply accidental. He thought of that night at her
house, the curious intimacy which from the first moment she had
seemed to take for granted, the confidence with which she had
treated him. He remembered those few breathless moments in her room,
the man's hand upon the window-sill, with the strange colored ring,
worn with almost flagrant ostentation. And then, with a
lightning-like transition of thought, the gleam of the hand with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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