Mrs. Quackenboss
carried a small brown paper parcel in her hands--in which, under the
circumstances, we had little difficulty in recognising Charles's
dispatch-box, loosely enveloped.
Then I knew how it was done. The chambermaid, loitering about the
room for a tip, was--Mrs. Quackenboss! It needed but an apron to
transform her pretty travelling-dress into a chambermaid's costume;
and in any of those huge American hotels one chambermaid more or
less would pass in the crowd without fear of challenge.
"We will follow them on to Saratoga," Charles cried. "Pay the bill
at once, Seymour."
"Certainly," I answered. "Will you give me some money?"
Charles clapped his hand to his pockets. "All, all in the
dispatch-box," he murmured.
That tied us up another day, till we could get some ready cash from
our agents in New York; for the manager, already most suspicious at
the change of name and the accusation of theft, peremptorily refused
to accept Charles's cheque, or anything else, as he phrased it,
except "hard money." So we lingered on perforce at Lake George in
ignoble inaction.
"Of course," I observed to my brother-in-law that evening, "Elihu
Quackenboss was Colonel Clay."
"I suppose so," Charles murmured resignedly. "Everybody I meet seems
to be Colonel Clay nowadays--except when I believe they _are_, in
which case they turn out to be harmless nobodies.
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