The Second Latchkey

								


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THE SECOND LATCHKEY
by
C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON
Frontispiece by Rudolph Tandler

Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1920

CONTENTS

CHAPTER



       I. A White Rose



      II. Smiths and Smiths



     III. Why She Came



      IV. The Great Moment



       V. The Second Latchkey



      VI. The Beginning--or the End?



     VII. The Countess de Santiago



    VIII. The Blue Diamond Ring



      IX. The Thing Knight Wanted



       X. Beginning of the Series



      XI. Annesley Remembers



     XII. The Crystal



    XIII. The Series Goes On



     XIV. The Test



      XV. Nelson Smith at Home



     XVI. Why Ruthven Smith Went



    XVII. Ruthven Smith's Eyeglasses



   XVIII. The Star Sapphire



     XIX. The Secret



      XX. The Plan



     XXI. The Devil's Rosary



    XXII. Destiny and the Waldos



   XXIII. The Thin Wall



    XXIV. The Anniversary



     XXV. The Allegory



    XXVI. The Three Words

THE SECOND LATCHKEY

CHAPTER I
A WHITE ROSE

Even when Annesley Grayle turned out of the Strand toward the Savoy she
was uncertain whether she would have courage to walk into the hotel. With
each step the thing, the dreadful thing, that she had come to do, loomed
blacker. It was monstrous, impossible, like opening the door of the
lions' cage at the Zoo and stepping inside.
There was time still to change her mind. She had only to turn
now ... jump into an omnibus ... jump out again at the familiar corner,
and everything would be as it had been. Life for the next five, ten,
maybe twenty years, would be what the last five had been.
At the thought of the Savoy and the adventure waiting there, the girl's
skin had tingled and grown hot, as if a wind laden with grains of heated
sand had blown over her. But at the thought of turning back, of going
"home"--oh, misused word!--a leaden coldness shut her spirit into a tomb.
She had walked fast, after descending at Bedford Street from a fierce
motor-bus with a party of comfortable people, bound for the Adelphi
Theatre. Never before had she been in a motor-omnibus, and she was not
sure whether the great hurtling thing would deign to stop, except at
trysting-places of its own; so it had seemed wise to bundle out rather
than risk a snub from the conductor, who looked like pictures of the Duke
of Wellington.
But in the lighted Strand she had been stared at as well as jostled:
a girl alone at eight o'clock on a winter evening, bare-headed,