TO THE RESCUE OF MISS MORRIS

I met Grace Morris for the first time at Mrs. Hatfield's musical tea--a unique affair at which the half-dozen world-famous artists our hostess had engaged for the afternoon strove vainly to make their music heard above the care-free voices of her guests. I had isolated myself behind a potted palm in the great music-room, and was trying to distinguish the strains of Mischa Elman's playing from the conversational high notes around me when a deprecating little laugh sounded in my ear.

"It's no use," said a clear, languid young voice. "We might as well chat, too. But first _do_ rise on your toes, look over the purple plume on the fat woman's hat, and catch one glimpse of Elman's expression! He thinks we're all insane, or that he is."

I did not follow this stimulating suggestion. Instead I looked at the speaker. She was a typical New York society girl of twenty-three, or possibly twenty-four, dressed to perfection and bored to extinction, her pale, pretty features stamped with the avid expression of the chronic seeker of new sensations.

"You're Miss Iverson, aren't you?" she went on, when I had smiled my acknowledgment of her swift service across the conversational net. "My brother pointed you out to me at the theater the other night. He wants us to meet. He's one of your editors on the _Searchlight_, you know--G.o.dfrey Morris."

In another minute we were chatting with as little compunction as the ruthless throng around us, and while we talked I studied Miss Morris.

I knew a great deal about her. She had only recently returned from Germany, where for two years she had been studying singing with Lehmann. She had an exquisite voice, and, though it was understood that she would make no professional use of it, she had already sung at several concerts given in behalf of charities that appealed to her.

She possessed a large fortune, inherited from her grandfather; her brother G.o.dfrey had inherited one of equally impressive proportions, but its coming had not interrupted the daily and nightly grind of his editorial work. Evidently the Morrises, despite their languid air, sprang from energetic stock. It was whispered that Miss Morris's energies occasionally lent themselves to all-night tango parties, and late suppers with Bohemian friends in operatic and dramatic worlds whose orbits hardly touched the exclusive one in which she dwelt; but thus far there had been nothing more significant than a few raised eyebrows to emphasize this gossip.

"I'm lucky to meet you," she ran on now. "It saves writing a note.

Mother and I want you to dine with us Thursday evening of next week, at our hotel. We haven't gone to housekeeping. We're at the Berkeley for the winter, because G.o.dfrey has an apartment there. Can you come?--I'm so glad. At eight, then."

A ravishing strain of music reached us. Simultaneously the voice of the fat woman with the purple plume uttered the final notes of the recital she had been pouring into the ears of the acquaintance on her left. "Then, and not till then," she shouted, "I found that the unhappy woman _lived on the West Side_!"

Miss Morris's eyes and mine exchanged a look that carried us a long way forward on the road of friendship.

"I wouldn't miss these musicales for the world," she murmured. "Isn't Mrs. Hatfield unique? Look at her now, out in the dining-room, putting a layer of French pastry over Amato's perfectly good voice! He won't be able to sing for a week. Oh, Elman has finished. Do you know him?

No? Then come and meet him."

Miss Morris interested me, and I was sorry to say good-by to her when we parted, and genuinely disappointed when I reached the Berkeley the following Thursday night, to learn that she was not to be with us at dinner. Her mother lost no time in acquainting me with this distressing fact.

"Grace wants me to apologize for her, and to tell you how _very_ sorry she is to miss you," Mrs. Morris drawled at once, as she came forward to receive me.

She was a charming woman of fifty, with white hair, a young face, and the figure of a girl of twenty. Under the controlled calm of her manner a deep-seated nervousness struggled for expression. She had her daughter's languor, but none of her cool insolence or cynicism; in the look of her gray eyes I caught a glint oddly like that in the eyes of her son.

"Grace was looking forward to your coming," she went on, as she seated herself on a davenport facing the open fire, and motioned me to a place beside her. "But an hour ago she received a note from a friend who is in town only for the night. There was something very urgent in it, and Grace rushed off without stopping to explain. My son G.o.dfrey will be with us--and we hope Grace will be back before you leave."

As if in response to his cue, "my son G.o.dfrey" appeared, looking extremely handsome in his evening clothes, and rather absurdly pleased to find his mother and me so deep in talk that we did not hear him approach.

"Friends already, aren't you?" was his comment on the effective tableau we made, and as we descended in the elevator to the hotel dining-room he explained again how glad he was to have his mother and sister home after two years of absence, and to bring us together at last.

The little dinner moved on charmingly, but before an hour had pa.s.sed I realized that my host and hostess were under some special strain.

Mrs. Morris wore a nervous, expectant look--the look of one who is listening for a bell, or a step long overdue. Several times I saw G.o.dfrey glance toward the door, and once I caught a swift look that pa.s.sed between him and his mother--a look charged with anxiety. Both obviously tried to throw off their care, whatever it was, and to a degree they succeeded. I was sending my spoon into the deep heart of a raspberry-ice when a servant leaned over the back of my chair and confidentially addressed me.

"Beg pardon, miss," he murmured, deprecatingly. "But if it's Miss Iverson, a person wants Miss Iverson on the wire."

I flushed and hesitated, glancing at Mrs. Morris.

"Party says it's urgent, miss," prompted the servant.

I apologized to my hostess, and rose. There seemed no other course open to me. Mrs. Morris looked mildly amused; her son looked thoughtful as he, too, rose and accompanied me across the dining-room to the door, returning then to the table, as I insisted that he must.

In the telephone-booth the voice of Grace Morris came to me over the wire, not languid now, but quick and imperative.

"Miss Iverson?" she called. "Is that you at last? Thank Heaven! I thought you were never coming. Are mother and G.o.dfrey still in the dining-room? Good! Will you do me a favor? It's a big one--vital."

I expressed my willingness to do Miss Morris a vital favor.

"Thank you," she said. "Then please do exactly what I tell you. Go to the hotel desk and ask the clerk for the key to my suite. I left it with him. Then go up to my bedroom. On my dressing-table you'll find an open letter I dropped there--or perhaps it's on the floor. Conceal it in your bosom, the way they do in books, and keep it for me till we meet."

I gasped. With a rush, my mind leaped at some of the possible results of carrying out this startling suggestion.

"Really, Miss Morris," I protested, "I can't do that. Suppose some one caught me in the act? It's likely to happen. We're at dessert, and I heard your mother order the coffee brought up to her sitting-room.

Isn't the letter safe till you get home?"

There was a sharp exclamation at the other end of the line. Then Miss Morris's voice came to me again, in the controlled accents of desperation.

"Miss Iverson," she urged, "you've simply got to help me out! If my mother goes into my room and sees that letter, she'll read it. She'll think it's her duty. If she reads it--well, in plain words, there will be the devil to pay. Now do you understand?"

"But why not come home and get it yourself?" I persisted.

"I can't. There isn't time. I'm away down at the Lafayette. Heavens! I didn't mean to let that slip out, I'm so nervous I don't know what I'm saying. Don't tell a soul where I am. Don't even let any one know I've talked to you. And you _must_ get that letter. There isn't a minute to lose!"

It began to look as if I had to get that letter. And since the thing must be done, I wanted it over.

"Very well," I said, between my teeth, and hung up the receiver, shutting off the stream of thanks that gushed forth from the other end of the wire. In the same mood of grim acceptance I went to the hotel desk. I did not intend to make this part of my task more difficult than it need be, so I paid the clerk the compliment of truth.

"I want to get something from Miss Morris's room," I told him, casually. "Will you give me the key, please? I am dining with Mrs.

Morris to-night."

He gave me a swift glance, then took the key from its rack and handed it to me with a little bow. In another moment I was in the elevator and on my way to the tenth floor, on which, as I had learned, each independent member of the Morris family occupied a separate apartment, though the suites of Mrs. Morris and her daughter had a connecting door. The tag on Miss Morris's key gave me the number of her suite, and I found her door without difficulty. My fingers shook with nervousness as I inserted the key in the lock. I felt like a housebreaker, and probably looked like one, as I glanced anxiously over my shoulder and up and down the long hall, which, fortunately, was empty.

Once inside the apartment I regained my courage. I went swiftly through the entrance-hall and the sitting-room, turning, by instinct as it seemed, to the door that opened into the bedroom. This, like the sitting-room, was dark, and I could not immediately find the switch that turned on the electric light. There was, however, an open fire burning behind a bra.s.s fender, and by its uncertain light I made my way to the dressing-table, my eyes racing ahead in their eager search.

There, among a litter of silver and gla.s.s toilet articles, powder-puffs, and sh.e.l.l-pins, was the letter I was after--an unfolded sheet, lying face downward. An envelope, obviously that from which it had been taken, had fallen to the floor.

I picked up the letter. Just as I did so the door at the other end of the bedroom opened, and Mrs. Morris entered. For an instant, startled, we faced each other in the gloom. The next second, acting on an impulse which seemed to flex the muscles of my arm before it touched my brain, I flung the letter into the fire. At the same moment Mrs.

Morris touched an electric switch beside the door and filled the room with light. Then she came toward me, easily and naturally.

"Oh, here you are," she said. "The elevator-boy told me you had come this way. Is anything wrong? Are you ill?"

Her manner was perfect. There was exactly the right degree of solicitude in her voice, of quiet a.s.surance that everything would be at once and satisfactorily explained. But as she spoke she turned and fixed her eyes on the blazing letter in the fire. All but one corner was burned, but the thick paper kept its perfect outline. Bending, she picked up the envelope from the floor, glanced at the address, and nodded as if to herself, still holding it in her hand.

For a second I remained speechless. It was a hideous situation to be in. Still, even confronted by G.o.dfrey Morris's mother, I felt that I had done right, and before the pause was too deeply underlined I managed to reply naturally that nothing was wrong and that I was quite well. When my hostess realized that I did not intend to make any explanation, she threw her arm across my shoulder and led me from the room. It was not until we were again in her sitting-room, and side by side on her big davenport, that she spoke.

"My dear," she said, then, very quietly, "won't you trust me?"

I looked at her, and she smiled back at me, but with something in her face that hurt. She seemed suddenly to have grown old and care-worn.

"Do you imagine I don't understand?" she went on. "I have not lived with my daughter Grace for almost a quarter of a century without knowing her rather well. Of course it was she who telephoned you. Of course she asked you to find and burn that letter. What else did she say? Where is she now? There is a vital reason why her brother and I should know. We have been anxious about her all evening. I am afraid you noticed it."

I admitted that I had. "I'm sorry," I added. "But I can't explain. I really can't say anything. I wish I could. I'm sure you will understand."

Mrs. Morris studied me in silence for a moment. The glint in her gray eyes deepened. Her jaw-line took on a sudden firmness, oddly like that of her son.

"Of course I understand," she said. "It's girlish loyalty. You think you must stand by Grace--that you must respect her confidence. But can't you believe that Grace's mother and brother may be wiser than she is?"