Page:The City of Masks (1918).djvu/112

100 that they might be overheard and misunderstood by their own well-trained and admirable butler, whose respect they could not afford to lose.

Once a week, on Wednesday nights, Mr. Cricklewick took off his mask. It was, in a sense, his way of going to confession. He told his wife, however, that he was going to the club.

He sighed a little more briskly as he turned away from the window and crossed over to the closet in which his fur-lined coat and silk hat were hanging. It had taken time and a great deal of persuasion on the part of his wife to prove to him that it wasn't quite the thing to wear a silk hat with a sack coat in New York; he had grudgingly compromised with the barbaric demands of fashion by dispensing with the sack coat in favour of a cutaway. The silk hat was a fixture.

"A lady asking to see you, sir," said his office-boy, after knocking on the door marked "Private."

"Hold my coat for me, Thomas," said Mr. Cricklewick.

"Yes, sir," said Thomas. "But she says you will see her, sir, just as soon as you gets a look at her."

"Obviously," said Mr. Cricklewick, shaking himself down into the great coat. "Don't rub it the wrong way, you simpleton. You should always brush a silk hat with the nap and not—"

"May I have a few words with you, Mr. Cricklewick?" inquired a sweet, clear voice from the doorway.

The head of the house opened his lips to say something sharp to the office-boy, but the words died as he obeyed a magnetic influence and hazarded a glance at the intruder's face.