Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/216

 commonplace, except for a little more set to her mouth than ordinary and a bit of glint of I'm-used-to-relying-on-myself in her gray eyes. On second glance, those eyes did not seem to Marjorie to accord with the rest of her at all.

"Is Mrs. Russell here?" Marjorie asked her.

"No; who shall I say called?"

"Mrs. Russell still lives here?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll come back," Marjorie announced, staring about. There was the desk in which she had discovered her father's picture and the letters from him; she could breathe the close air here no longer. She flung back the entrance door and stepped out, the woman making not the slightest objection.

Not until she was again on the street and had fled some distance away from that building did Marjorie connect her impressions of the woman sufficiently to become convinced that the matron was no mere friend of Mrs. Russell's nor co-tenant nor was she in the apartment on any ordinary employment. She was a sort of sentinel, Marjorie was sure, waiting for some one not a girl like Marjorie Hale.

Looking up, she noticed a sign on the front of a six-flat building—or a structure which originally must have been six-apartments—which proclaimed:

"Rooms to rent; also rooms with bath and kitchenette."

Marjorie halted and then started up the short walk toward the entrance, but the effect of her call at Mrs. Russell's was too strong upon her; she merely noted the number on Clearedge and went on. Farther along were similar signs, and the streets crossing Clearedge and parallel to it supplied her a dozen addresses. The