Part 27 (2/2)
He stopped short.
”I'll change and go to the club,” he decided.
He rose to his feet. Just then there was a ring at his bell. He opened the door and found a messenger boy standing in the vestibule.
”Note, sir, for Mr. Stephen Laverick,” the boy announced, opening his wallet.
Laverick held out his hand. The boy gave him a large square envelope, and upon the back of it was ”Universal Theatre.”
Laverick tried to a.s.sure himself that he was not so ridiculously pleased. He stepped back into the room, tore open the envelope, and read the few lines traced in rather faint but delicate handwriting.
Are you coming to fetch me to-night? Don't let me be a nuisance, but do come if you have nothing to do. I have something to tell you.
ZOE.
Laverick gave the boy a s.h.i.+lling for himself and suddenly forgot that he was tired. He changed his clothes, whistling softly to himself all the time. At eleven o'clock, he was at the stage-door of the Universal Theatre, waiting in a taxicab.
CHAPTER XX
LAVERICK IS CROSS-EXAMINED
One by one the young ladies of the chorus came out from the stage-door of the Universal, in most cases to be a.s.sisted into a waiting hansom or taxicab by an attendant cavalier. Laverick stood back in the shadows as much as possible, smiling now and then to himself at this, to him, somewhat novel way of spending the evening.
Zoe was among the last to appear. She came up to him with a delightful little gesture of pleasure, and took his arm as a matter of course as he led her across to the waiting cab.
”This sort of thing is making me feel absurdly young,” he declared.
”Luigi's for supper, I suppose?”
”Supper!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands. ”Delightful! Two nights following, too! I did love last night.”
”We had better engage a table at Luigi's permanently,” he remarked.
”If only you meant it!” she sighed.
He laughed at her, but he was thoughtful for a few minutes.
Afterwards, when they sat at a small round table in the somewhat Bohemian restaurant which was the fas.h.i.+onable rendezvous of the moment for ladies of the theatrical profession, he asked her a question.
”Tell me what you meant in your note,” he begged. ”You said that you had some information for me.
”I'm afraid it wasn't anything very much,” she admitted. ”I found out to-day that some one had been inquiring at the stage-door about me, and whether I was connected in any way with a Mr. Arthur Morrison, the stockbroker.”
”Do you know who it was?” he asked.
She shook her head.
”The man left no name at all. I tried to get the doorkeeper to tell me about him, but he's such a surly old fellow, and he's so used to that sort of thing, that he pretended he didn't remember anything.”
”It seems odd,” he remarked thoughtfully, ”that any one should have found you out. You were so seldom with Morrison. I dare say,” he added, ”it was just some one to whom your brother owes some small sum of money.”
<script>