IV
More than twenty times that period had elapsed, however, before Frederick Mullett returned to the kitchen. He found his bride-to-be in a considerably less amiable mood than that in which he had left her. She was standing with folded arms, and the temperature of the room had gone down a number of degrees.
“Pretty girl?” she inquired frostily, as Mullett crossed the threshold.
“Eh?”
“You said you were going to send that model away in half a minute, and I’ve been waiting here nearer a quarter of an hour,” said Fanny, verifying this statement by a glance at the wristwatch, the absence of which from their stock was still an unsolved mystery to a prosperous firm of jewellers on Fifth Avenue.
Mullett clasped her in his arms. It was a matter of some difficulty, for she was not responsive, but he did it.
“It was not a model, darling. It was a man. A guy with grey hair and a red face.”
“Oh? What did he want?”
Mullett’s already somewhat portly frame seemed to expand, as if with some deep emotion.
“He came to tempt me, Fanny.”
“To tempt you?”
“That’s what he did. Wanted to know if my name was Mullett, and two seconds after I had said it was he offered me three hundred dollars to perpetrate a crime.”
“He did? What crime?”
“I didn’t wait for him to tell me. I spurned his offer and came away. That’ll show you if I’ve reformed or not. A nice, easy, simple job he said it was, that I could do in a couple of minutes.”
“And you spurned him, eh?”
“I certainly spurned him. I spurned him good and plenty.”
“And then you came away?”
“Came right away.”
“Then listen here,” said Fanny in a steely voice, “it don’t seem to me that your times add up right. You say he made you this offer two seconds after he heard your name. Well, why did it take you a quarter of an hour to get back to this kitchen? If you want to know what I think, it wasn’t a red-faced man with grey hair at all—it was one of these Washington Square vamps and you were flirting with her.”
“Fanny!”
“Well, I’ve read Gingery Stories, and I know what it’s like down here in Bohemia with all these artists and models and everything.”
Mullett drew himself up.
“Your suspicions pain me, Fanny. If you care to step out on to the roof, you can peek in at the sitting-room window and see him for yourself. He’s waiting there for me to bring him a drink. The reason I was so long coming back was that it took him ten minutes before he asked my name. Up till then he just sat and spluttered.”
“All right. Take me out on the roof.”
“There!” said Mullett, a moment later. “Now perhaps you’ll believe me.”
Through the French windows of the sitting-room there was undeniably visible a man of precisely the appearance described. Fanny was remorseful.
“Did I wrong my poor little Freddy, then?” she said.
“Yes, you did.”
“I’m sorry. There!”
She kissed him. Mullett melted immediately.
“I must go back and get that drink,” he said.
“And I must be getting along.”
“Oh, not yet,” begged Mullett.
“Yes, I must. I’ve got to look in at one or two of the stores.”
“Fanny!”
“Well, a girl’s got to have her trousseau, hasn’t she?”
Mullett sighed.
“You’ll be very careful, precious?” he said anxiously.
“I’m always careful. Don’t you worry about me.”
Mullett retired, and Fanny, blowing a parting kiss from her pretty fingers, passed through the door leading to the stairs.
It was perhaps five minutes later, while Mullett sat dreaming golden dreams in the kitchen and Sigsbee H. Waddington sat sipping his whisky-and-soda in the sitting-room, that a sudden tap on the French window caused the latter to give a convulsive leap and spill most of the liquid down the front of his waistcoat.
He looked up. A girl was standing outside the window, and from her gestures he gathered that she was requesting him to open it.