The Three Strings

EVELYN PRESTON ran lightly up the steps of her home and inserting her latch-key in the vestibule door, pushed it open just as the taxi-driver, following more slowly with many an upward glance at the blind-closed windows, reached her side.

“Put the suit case down,” she directed. “I’ll have the front door opened by the time you get the trunk here.”

The cool if somewhat stale air of the closed house which met Evelyn as she stepped across the threshold of the open door was refreshing after the glare of the asphalt pavements, for Washington was experiencing one of the hot waves which come in late September and make that month one to be avoided in the Capital City.

Evelyn, intent on calling a servant, paused midway in the large hall as the taxi-driver’s bulky figure blocked the light in the front doorway. Without waiting for directions he lowered her motor trunk from his shoulders and stood it against the wall.

“Shall I leave it here, Miss?” he inquired.

Evelyn, busily engaged in searching for change in her purse, nodded affirmatively, and the man propped himself against the door jamb and waited for his pay.

“Thank you, Miss,” he exclaimed a moment later, his politeness stimulated by the generous tip which accompanied Evelyn’s payment of the taxi fare. “Would you like me to carry your trunk upstairs?”

“No; the butler will take it up, thank you.” Evelyn’s gesture of dismissal was unmistakable, and the man hitched uncomfortably at his cap, glanced furtively up the hall and then back at Evelyn who, totally unconscious of his scrutiny, stood impatiently waiting for him to go. He opened his mouth, but if he intended to address her again he thought better of it, and with a mumbled word banged out of the front door.

Evelyn turned at once and sped to the back stairs, but call as she did, no servant responded and the blind-closed windows made the passageway dark and unfriendly. With an impatient exclamation Evelyn returned to the front hall; the servants had evidently not arrived from the seashore to open the house for her.

She stopped only long enough to push her trunk into the billiard room just off the hall and pick up her suit case, then she went rapidly upstairs to her bedroom which, in its summer covered furnishings, looked very inviting to her tired eyes. Four nights in a sleeper and three extra hours added to the tedium of her journey from the west by a hot-box which had delayed her train’s arrival in Washington, had made her long for home comforts.