THE SECOND LATCHKEY

BY C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON

FRONTISPIECE

BY RUDOLPH TANDLER

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1920

"'Stop! He's my lover!' she cried. 'Don't shoot!'"

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. A White Rose
CHAPTER II. Smiths and Smiths
CHAPTER III. Why She Came
CHAPTER IV. The Great Moment
CHAPTER V. The Second Latchkey
CHAPTER VI. The Beginning—or the End?
CHAPTER VII. The Countess de Santiago
CHAPTER VIII. The Blue Diamond Ring
CHAPTER IX. The Thing Knight Wanted
CHAPTER X. Beginning of the Series
CHAPTER XI. Annesley Remembers
CHAPTER XII. The Crystal
CHAPTER XIII. The Series Goes On
CHAPTER XIV. The Test
CHAPTER XV. Nelson Smith at Home
CHAPTER XVI. Why Ruthven Smith Went
CHAPTER XVII. Ruthven Smith's Eyeglasses
CHAPTER XVIII. The Star Sapphire
CHAPTER XIX. The Secret
CHAPTER XX. The Plan
CHAPTER XXI. The Devil's Rosary
CHAPTER XXII. Destiny and the Waldos
CHAPTER XXIII. The Thin Wall
CHAPTER XXIV. The Anniversary
CHAPTER XXV. The Allegory
CHAPTER XXVI. The Three Words

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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