# Little Comrade (Munsey's Magazine)/Chapter 4

pp. 842–844

### CHAPTER IV
#### The Mystery of the Satin Slippers

Turning the last corner, Stewart saw his landlady standing at her door, looking anxiously up and down the street. Her face glowed with pleasure when she saw him—a pleasure so deep and genuine that the American was a little puzzled by it.
“But I am glad to see you!” she cried, as he came up, her face wreathed in smiles. “I have heard rumors of horrible things. I feared I know not what! But you are safe, it seems.”
“Quite safe. In fact, I was never in any danger.”
“I was foolish, no doubt, to have fear; but in times like these one never knows what may happen.”
“True enough,” Stewart agreed; “but an American with a passport in his pocket ought to be safe anywhere.”
“Ah, you have a passport—that is good! The police have been here to question you. They will return presently.”
“The police?”
“There have been some spies captured, it seems, and others are trying to leave the country; so every one is suspected.”
They had walked back together along the hall as they talked, and now stopped at the foot of the stairs. The little landlady seemed very nervous—as was perhaps natural amid the alarms of war. Beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead.
“The police visited your room,” she went on. “Perhaps you will find your baggage disarranged.”
Stewart smiled wryly.
“So it seems they really suspect me?” he asked.
“They suspect every one,” the landlady repeated.
She was standing with her back toward the door, and Stewart wondered why she should watch his face so closely.
Suddenly, over her shoulder, he saw the waiter with the hangdog face approaching along the hall.
“Such anxiety is quite natural,” said the landlady rapidly, in German, raising her voice a little. “I can understand it. But it is not remarkable that you should have missed her—the trains are so irregular. I will send her to you the moment she arrives. Ah, Hans,” she added, turning at the sound of the waiter's footsteps, “so you are back again! You will take up some hot water to the gentleman at once. And now you will excuse me, sir; I have the dinner to attend to”; and she hurried away, carrying the waiter with her.
Stewart stood for an instant staring after her; then he turned and mounted slowly to his room. What had the woman meant? Why should he be anxious? Who was it he had missed? “I will send her to you the moment she arrives.” No—she could not have said that. He must have misunderstood. His German was very second-rate, and she had spoken rapidly. But what had she said?
He was still pondering this problem, vaguely uneasy, when a knock at the door told him that the hot water had arrived. As he opened the door the landlady's voice floated up the stair.
“Hans!” she called. “There is something wrong with the stove. Hasten, hasten!”
Stewart took the can that was thrust into his hand, turned back into his room, and proceeded to make a leisurely toilet. If his landlady had not told him, he would never have suspected that his baggage had been searched by the police. But then he was a careless and hasty packer, by no means precise.
The events of the day had shaken him more deeply than he had realized. An undercurrent of emotion seemed to be running through his mind, and more than once he caught himself standing quite still, in an attitude of profound meditation, though he was not conscious that he had really been thinking of anything.
“Come, old man,” he said at last; “this won't do at all. You must pull yourself together!”
He had been absently turning over the contents of one of his bags, and suddenly he found himself staring at a pair of satin ball-slippers, into each of which was stuffed a blue silk stocking. For quite a minute he stared, doubting his own senses; then he picked up one of the slippers and looked at it.
It was a tiny affair, very delicate and beautiful—a real jewel in foot-wear, such as Stewart, with his limited feminine experience, had never seen before. Indeed, he might have doubted that it was intended for actual service but for the slight discoloration inside the heel, which proved that the slipper had been worn more than once.
Very deliberately he drew out the stocking, also a jewel in its way, of a texture so diaphanous as to be almost cobweblike. Then he picked up the other slipper, and held the two side by side. Yes, they were mates.
“But where on earth could I have picked them up?” he asked himself. “In what strange fit of absent-mindedness could I have packed them with my things? I couldn't have picked them up—I never saw them before.”
He sat down suddenly, a slipper in either hand. They must have come from somewhere; they could not have concealed themselves among his things. If he had not placed them there, then some one else did. But who? And for what purpose?
The police? His landlady had said that they had searched his luggage; but what possible object could they have had for increasing it by two satin slippers and a pair of stockings? Such an action was farcical—French-farcical! He could not be incriminated in such a way. He had no wife to be made jealous; and even if he had—
“This is the last straw!” he muttered to himself. “Either the world has gone mad, or I have!”
Moving as in a dream, he placed the slippers side by side upon the floor, contemplated them for a moment longer, and then proceeded slowly with his dressing. He found an unaccustomed difficulty in putting his buttons in his cuffs, and then he remembered that he had been searching for a tie when he found the slippers.
The slippers! He turned and looked at them. Yes, they were still there—they had not disappeared. Very coquettish they looked, standing there side by side, as if waiting for their owner.
“Only one thing is necessary to complete this pantomime,” Stewart told himself, “and that is that the princess should suddenly appear and claim them. Well, I'm willing! A woman with a foot like that—”
There was a knock at the door.
“In a moment!” he called.
“But it is I!" cried a woman's voice in English—a sweet, high-pitched voice, quivering with excitement. “It is I!”
The door was flung open with a crash. A woman rushed toward him—he saw vaguely her vivid face, her shining eyes; behind her, more vaguely still, he saw the staring eyes of the hangdog waiter. Then she was upon him.
“At last!” she cried.
She flung her arms about him and kissed him on the lips—kissed him closely, passionately, as he had never been kissed before.