Her Forbidden Knight Read Free Page A

ONE o’clock in the afternoon, that Pierre Dumain and Bub Driscoll, seated in the lobby of the Lamartine, beheld a sight that left them speechless with astonishment.
    They saw Tom Dougherty enter the hotel by the Broadway door, carrying a bouquet of roses—red roses. They were unwrapped, and he bore them openly, flamboyantly, without shame. An ex-prizefighter carrying roses on Broadway in the light of day!
    “ ‘Mother, Mother, Mother, pin a rose on me!’ ” they sang in unison.
    Dougherty ignored them. He scowled darkly at the hotel clerk, who grinned at him delightedly, and walked boldly down the center of the lobby, past a score of curious eyes. At the telegraph desk he halted and accosted the messenger boy. Lila had gone to lunch.
    “Got a vase?” Dougherty demanded.
    The boy gaped in complete bewilderment.
    “Don’t you know what a vase is?” said Dougherty sarcastically. “V-a-s, vase. Get one.”
    “They ain’t any,” said the boy.
    “Then get one!” Dougherty roared, producing a dollar bill. “Here, run around to Adler’s. They keep all kinds of ’em. Get a pretty one.”
    The boy disappeared. In a few minutes he returned, bearing a huge, showy, glass vase, the color of dead leaves. During his absence Dougherty had kept his back resolutely turned on Dumain and Driscoll, who received only silence in return for their witty and cutting remarks.
    “Fill it with water,” commanded Dougherty.
    The boy obeyed.
    “Now,” said Dougherty, arranging the roses in the vase and placing it on the top of Lila’s desk, “see that you leave ’em alone. And don’t say anything to Miss Williams. If she asks where they came from, you don’t know. Understand?”
    The boy nodded an affirmative. Dougherty stepped back a pace or two, eyed the roses with evident satisfaction, and proceeded to the corner where the others were seated.
    “Do you know who that is?” said Driscoll in a loud whisper as the ex-prizefighter approached.
    “No,” said Dumain. “Who ees eet?”
    “Bertha, the flower girl,” Driscoll replied solemnly.
    “Oh, shut up!” growled Dougherty. “You fellows have no sentiment.”
    Dumain lay back in his chair and laughed boisterously.
    “Sentiment!” he gasped. “Dougherty talking of sentiment!”
    Then suddenly he became sober.
    “All the same, you are right,” he said. “Miss Williams should get zee roses. They seem made for her. Only, you know, eet is not—what you say—correct. We can’t allow it.”
    “How?” said Dougherty. “Can’t allow it?”
    “Positively not,” put in Driscoll. “Too much of a liberty, my dear fellow. ’Tis presumptuous. You know your own views on the subject.”
    This staggered Dougherty. Without a word he seated himself, and appeared to ponder. Dumain and Driscoll, after trying vainly to rouse him by sarcastic observations and comments, finally tired of the sport and wandered over to throw Indian dice for cigars with Miss Hughes. That lady, being wise in her manner, separated them from two or three dollars in as many minutes with ease, complacency, and despatch.
    They were rescued by Dougherty, who came bounding over to them with the grace of a rhinoceros.
    “I have it!” he exclaimed triumphantly.
    “Then hold onto it,” said Driscoll, setting the dice box far back on the counter with an emphatic bang. “You have what?”
    “About the roses. See here, Miss Williams ought to have ’em. Dumain said so. Well, why can’t we take turns at it? Say, every day we fill up the vase, each one in his turn. She’ll never know where they come from. Are you on?”
    “Wiz pleasure,” said Dumain. “And I’ll tell Booth and Sherman and the others. We’ll have to let them in.”
    “Ordinarily,” said Driscoll, “I would be compelled to refuse. Being an actor, and, I think I may add, an artist, my normal condition is that of flatness. But at the present time I have a job. I’m on.”
    Thus it was that Lila, on her return from lunch, was