Bab: A Sub-Deb by Mary Roberts Rinehart Read Free Book Online

thoughts of murder. It shows how the first false step leads down and down, to crime and even to death. Oh never, never, gentle reader, take that first False Step. Who knows to what it may lead!
    "One false Step is never retreived." Gray--On a Favorite Cat.
    I reflected also on how the woman in the book had ruined her life with a letter. "The written word does not change," she had said. "It remains always, embodying a dead truth and giving it apparent life."
    "Apparent life" was exactly what my letter had given to H. Frankenstein. That was what I called him, in my agony. I felt that if only I had never written the Letter there would have been no trouble. And another awful thought came to me: Was there an H after all? Could there be an H?
    Once the French teacher had taken us to the theater in New York, and a woman sitting on a chair and covered with a sheet, had brought a man out of a perfectly empty Cabinet, by simply willing to do it. The Cabinet was empty, for four respectible looking men went up and examined it, and one even measured it with a Tape-measure.
    She had materialised him, out of nothing.
    And while I had had no Cabinet, there are many things in this world "that we do not dream of in our Philosophy." Was H. a real person, or a creature of my disordered brain? In plain and simple language, COULD THERE BE SUCH A PERSON?
    I feared not.
    And If there was no H, really, and I married him, where would I be?
    There was a ball at the Club that night, and the Familey all went. No one came to say good-night to me, and by half past ten I was alone with my misery. I knew Carter Brooks would be at the ball, and H also, very likely, dancing around as agreably as if he really existed, and I had not made him up.
    I got the book from Sis's room again, and re-read it. The woman in it had been in great trouble, too, with her husband cleaning his revolver and making his will. And at last she had gone to the apartments of the man who had her letters, in a taxicab covered with a heavy veil, and had got them back. He had shot himself when she returned--the husband--but she burned the letters and then called a Doctor, and he was saved. Not the doctor, of course. The husband.
    The villain's only hold on her had been the letters, so he went to South Africa and was gored by an elephant, thus passing out of her life.
    Then and there I knew that I would have to get my letter back from H. Without it he was powerless. The trouble was that I did not know where he was staying. Even if he came out of a Cabinet, the Cabinet would have to be somewhere, would it not?
    I felt that I would have to meet gile with gile. And to steal one's own letter is not really stealing. Of course if he was visiting any one and pretending to be a real person, I had no chance in the world. But if he was stopping at a hotel I thought I could manage. The man in the book had had an apartment, with a Japanese servant, who went away and drew plans of American Forts in the kitchen and left the woman alone with the desk containing the Letter. But I daresay that was unusualy lucky and not the sort of thing to look forward to.
    With me, to think is to act. Hannah was out, it being Xmas and her brother-in-law having a wake, being dead, so I was free to do anything I wanted to.
    First I called the Club and got Carter Brooks on the telephone.
    "Carter," I said, "I--I am writing a letter. Where is-- where does H. stay?"
    "Who?"
    "H.--Mr. Grosvenor."
    "Why, bless your ardent little Heart! Writing, are you? It's sublime, Bab!"
    "Where does he live?"
    "And is it all alone you are, on Xmas Night!" he burbled. (This is a word from Alice in WonderLand, and although not in the dictionery, is quite expressive.)
    "Yes," I replied, bitterly. "I am old enough to be married off without my consent, but I am not old enough for a real Ball. It makes me sick."
    "I can smuggle him here, if you want to talk to him."
    "Smuggle!" I said, with scorn. "There is no need to smuggle him. The Familey is