Detective and mystery stories; Stone, Fleming (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
“You certainly may, then. Just use this card.”
He took a card from his pocket, scribbled a line across it, and gave it
to her. Without another word, he finished his breakfast, and with a mere
courteous bow, he left the room.
Miss Austin’s face took on a more scrutable look than ever.
The card still in her hand, she went up to her room. Unheeding the maid,
who was at her duties there, the girl threw herself into a big chair and
sat staring at the card.
“The Egyptian Temples,” she said to herself, “Doctor John Waring.”
The maid looked at her curiously as she murmured the words half aloud,
but Miss Austin paid no heed.
“Go on with your work, Nora, don’t mind me,” she said, at last, as the
chambermaid paused inquiringly in front of her. “I don’t mind your being
here until you finish what you have to do. And I wish you’d bring me a
Corinth paper, please?’ There is one, isn’t there?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. Twice a week.”
Nora disappeared and returned with a paper.
“Mr. Adams says you may have this to keep. It’s the newest one.”
The girl took it and turned to find the College announcements. The
Egyptian Lecture was mentioned, and in another column was a short article
regarding Doctor Waring and a picture of him.
Long the girl looked at the picture, and when the maid, her tasks
completed, left the room, she noticed Miss Austin still staring at the
fine face of the President-elect of the University of Corinth.
After a time, she reached for a pair of scissors, and cut out the
portrait and the article which it illustrated.
She put the clipping in a portfolio, which she then locked in her trunk,
and the picture she placed on her dresser.
That night she went to the lecture. She went alone, for Gordon Lockwood
did not reappear and no one else knew of her going.
“Shall I have a key, or will you be up?” she asked of Mrs. Adams, as she
left the house.
“Oh, we’ll be up.” The round, shrewd eyes looked at her kindly. “You’re
lucky to get a ticket. Doctor Waring’s lectures are crowded.”
“Good night,” said Miss Austin, and went away.
The lecture room was partly filled when she arrived, and her ticket
entitled her to a seat near the front.
Being seated, she fell into a brown study, or, at least, sat motionless
and apparently in deep thought.
Gordon Lockwood, already there, saw her come in, and after she was in her
place, he quietly arose and went across the room, taking a seat directly
behind her.
Of this she was quite unaware, and the student of human nature gave
himself up to a scrutiny of the stranger.
He saw a little head, its mass of dark, almost black hair surmounted by a
small turban shaped hat, of taupe colored velvet, with a curly ostrich
tip nestling over one ear.
Not that her ears were visible, for Miss Austin was smartly groomed and
her whole effect modish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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