London not on it." The room in which I stand, the Hotel Regina, and the city of Paris all reel unsteadily for an instant. Has the British Government eaten up all my journalistic findings so preciously entrusted to Wellington House? I grasp the brass foot rail of the bed and bring myself upstanding. If they have, it is no time for me to lose my head.
Jacques with the empty coat sleeve and the Croix de Guerre on his breast, who operates the elevator, I am sure thinks it a woman demented who is going out in the streets of Paris alone at midnight. But "an Americaine," one can never tell what "an Americaine" will do. "Pardon," he says hesitatingly as I step out, "madame knows the hour?" Yes, madame knows the hour. But an alien may not send a telegram without presenting a passport, the document that never for an instant goes out of one's personal possession. No messenger can do this errand for me.
Five minutes later I am in a taxicab tearing down the Rue Quatre Septembre to the cable office in the Bourse. My appeal for help to Sir Gilbert Parker in London is being counted on the blue telegraph blank by the operator at the little window, when suddenly I remember I have forgotten. My hand feels helplessly over my left hip where there is concealed a letter of credit for three thousand dollars. But I falter, "I haven't any money, that is, where I can get at it."
"I have," speaks a voice over my shoulder. I look around into a man's cheerful countenance. "What's
