The housemaid made a rapid apologetic noise and vanished with a
click of the door.
"DAMN!" said Amanda.
Then slowly she rose to her knees.
She meditated through vast moments.
"It's a cursed thing to be a woman," said Amanda. She stood up.
She put her hand on the telephone in the corner and then she forgot
about it. After another long interval of thought she spoke.
"Cheetah!" she said, "Old Cheetah! . . .
"I didn't THINK it of you. . . ."
Then presently with the even joyless movements of one who does a
reasonable business, with something indeed of the manner of one who
packs a trunk, she rang up Sir Philip Easton.
30
The head chambermaid on the first floor of the Westwood Hotel in
Danebury Street had a curious and perplexing glimpse of Benham's
private processes the morning after this affair.
Benham had taken Room 27 on the afternoon of his return to London.
She had seen him twice or three times, and he had struck her as a
coldly decorous person, tall, white-faced, slow speaking; the last
man to behave violently or surprise a head chambermaid in any way.
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