The Withdrawing Room Read Online Free PDF Page A

to a restaurant to get anything to eat. It’s no fun. No fun at all. Living here with you would be ideal for my purposes. Good food, good company, lovely home, ground floor. I’m not supposed to climb stairs, you know. Doctor’s nonsense about my heart. Other than that, I’m fit as a fiddle.” Sarah believed him. Mr. Hartler could have posed for Thomas Nast’s drawing of St. Nick with his tummy and his twinkle, except that he was clean-shaven and not smoking a pipe and withal as spruce and tidy an old gentleman as any landlady might want occupying her front parlor suite.
    “And it would be so convenient for my work,” he sighed.
    “Your work?” Sarah asked in some surprise. “Volunteer work, of course, but it’s important. Most important! I’m tracking things down for the restoration of the Iolani Palace. In Honolulu, you know.”
    “As a matter of fact, I do know. Edgar Driscoll had a fascinating feature story about it in the Boston Globe a while ago and we had a letter back when my husband was alive, asking whether we had anything to donate from the royal visit in 1887.”
    “And did you?” cried Mr. Hartler eagerly. “Nothing of consequence. Queen Kapiolani and Princess Liliuokalani never stayed with us, but they did pop in for tea one afternoon.”
    “Here? In this very room?”
    “Oh no. They’d have been entertained in the formal drawing room.”
    “Mrs. Kelling, could I see that room? Just for a moment?”
    Sarah shook her head. “I’m terribly afraid you can’t because it doesn’t exist anymore. I’ve had to turn it into a bedroom. That’s the room you’d have had if you’d only come a little sooner.”
    For a moment, Sarah thought Mr. Hartler was going to burst into tears.
    “I feel as if St. Peter had just slammed the pearly gates in my face,” he said with a rueful smile. “To think that I might have been sleeping in the very same room where those two wonderful, vibrant ladies sat and drank teal Mrs. Kelling, I’m shattered, utterly shattered. I only hope the fortunate person who occupies it now realizes his great good fortune. Would it be someone I know, by any chance?”
    “His name is Quiffen, and he’s a friend of the Protheroes. You’ve met them, surely?”
    “The Protheroes, yes, though only in passing as it were. But Quiffen? No, I can’t say that name rings a bell. Perhaps I could find a way to scrape his acquaintance,” he added, brightening a little. “If I were to explain what it would mean to me—I don’t suppose he’d be amenable to a spot of bribery and corruption, by any chance?”
    He said it with a whimsical smile, but Sarah wasn’t altogether sure he didn’t mean it. “I’m afraid not,” she said firmly. “Mr. Quiffen is very well off and he appears to be perfectly satisfied with his accommodations. For the moment, at any rate.”
    Mr. Hartler took the hint she couldn’t resist throwing in. “Ah, then if you think there may be any chance whatever, I implore you to keep me in mind. The Harvard Club will always find me. They’ll take a message at the switchboard. Wonderful people. Most obliging. You’re quite sure it wouldn’t do any good for me to explain the circumstances to this Mr. Quiffen?”
    “Quite sure. I really shouldn’t try it if I were you, Mr. Hartler.”
    If old Barnwell Augustus thought anybody else wanted the room that badly, he’d dig himself in like a badger for sheer cussedness, and she’d be stuck with him forever. One could only wait and pray.

Chapter 4
    S ARAH HAD ESTABLISHED THE pleasant routine of gathering her boarders in the library half an hour before dinnertime for sherry and chat. This helped her get them to the table on time in a mellow mood, and gave Charles breathing space to change from working clothes into his butler’s rigout. It also provided an opportunity to dull people’s appetites with some inexpensive but hearty hors d’oeuvres if the meal was going to be a trifle on the lean side, as it was on