Free Her Forbidden Knight by Rex Stout Page A

Sixth Avenue.”
    The driver nodded and started the cab north on Broadway.
    Knowlton sat upright in his corner, intuitively divining Lila’s wish for a period of silence to adjust her thoughts. The cab went forward by fits and starts owing to the heavy traffic.
    Light and shadow came and went through the windows as they passed glaring cafés and theaters, or darkened shops and office buildings. The air was crisp and tingling.
    Lila felt herself transported to a scene in the Arabian Nights. Not the gorgeous palaces, or the tricks of magicians, or the dark and mysterious passages, but the spirit of wonder.
    This lies not ever in mere things, but in the heart. To ride up Broadway in a taxicab at half past six of a December evening may mean anything, or nothing. To the tired businessman it means a convenient but expensive method of getting home to dinner. To the painted woman it means one of the advantages to be derived from an easy conscience. To Lila it meant love and romance and youth and hope.
    She did not stop to analyze her feelings; they surged through her heart and brain tumultuously with a glorious gladness. She was discovering for herself what a great philosopher has called “the sweetness of facts.”
    She was with Knowlton. He was able to explain the counterfeit bills. He did care about what she thought of him.
    She was grateful to him for his silence. Certainly her mind needed readjustment. For two days she had been miserable and unhappy to the verge of despair.
    A few minutes ago she had actually been ready to allow Sherman to accompany her home. The smile which this thought brought to her lips was not very complimentary to Mr. Sherman.
    And then, with the suddenness of an impetuous Jove, the prince of her dreams had arrived and carried her off in his chariot! Was it not enough to make a girl wish for time to get her breath?
    She was so deep in her contemplation of “the sweetness of facts” that she was positively startled by the sound of Knowlton’s voice announcing that they had reached their destination.
    He helped her from the cab and paid the driver, and they entered the restaurant.
    The Restaurant Lucia was one of those places to be found, by the initiated, here and there from the Battery to Harlem, where one may obtain excellent food, well cooked and well served, without the fuss and glitter and ostentation of the “lobster palaces.” It does not pretend to Bohemianism, and is therefore truly Bohemian.
    As Knowlton and Lila entered the dining room by a door set two or three steps lower than the sidewalk, the orchestra, consisting of a pianist, a ’cellist, and two violinists, was finishing a Spanish melody. They walked down the aisle to the right to the clapping of hands, and Lila turned to observe the little orchestra leader, who was bowing right and left with the air, and the appearance, of an Italian duke.
    Knowlton halted at a table near the wall toward the rear, and they seated themselves opposite each other. It was a little early for dinner in the Restaurant Lucia; it was not yet half filled. Lila glanced about curiously as she took off her gloves and gave the inevitable tug to her hat.
    Knowlton, being a man, immediately proceeded to business.
    “Will you have oysters, or clams?” he asked. “And will you have a cocktail?”
    Lila made a grimace.
    “I couldn’t possibly decide what to eat,” she declared. “You select. And I—I don’t care to drink anything.”
    Knowlton regarded her with the usual mild surprise of a man at a woman’s lack of interest in the sublime topic of food, and entered into a serious conversation on that subject with the waiter, while Lila amused herself by a survey of the dining room. She was seated facing the door, to which Knowlton’s back was turned.
    Knowlton, having completed his order, tossed the menu aside and looked across at his companion. Her elbow was resting on the table, with her chin in her cupped hand.
    Her eyelids drooped as though reluctant