The Window at the White Cat Part 7

"'The purple peaks of Darien,'" she quoted, pouring me my coffee. "Do you know, I feel so much better since you have taken hold of things.

Aunt Let.i.tia thinks you are wonderful."

I thought ruefully of the failure of my first attempt to play the sleuth, and I disclaimed any right to Miss Let.i.tia's high opinion of me.

From my d.o.g.g.i.ng the watchman to the police station, to Delia and her note, was a short mental step.

"Before any one comes down, Miss Fleming," I said, "I want to ask a question or two. What was the name of the maid who helped you search the house that night?"

"Annie."

"What other maids did you say there were?"

"Delia and Rose."

"Do you know anything about them? Where they came from, or where they went?"

She smiled a little.

"What does one know about new servants?" she responded. "They bring you references, but references are the price most women pay to get rid of their servants without a fuss. Rose was fat and old, but Delia was pretty. I thought she rather liked Carter."

Carter as well as s.h.i.+elds, the policeman. I put Miss Delia down as a flirt.

"And you have no idea where Carter went?"

"None."

Wardrop came in then, and we spoke of other things. The two elderly ladies it seemed had tea and toast in their rooms when they wakened, and the three of us breakfasted together. But conversation languished with Wardrop's appearance; he looked haggard and worn, avoided Miss Fleming's eyes, and after ordering eggs instead of his chop, looked at his watch and left without touching anything.

"I want to get the nine-thirty, Margie," he said, coming back with his hat in his hand. "I may not be out to dinner. Tell Miss Let.i.tia, will you?" He turned to go, but on second thought came back to me and held out his hand.

"I may not see you again," he began.

"Not if I see you first," I interrupted. He glanced at my mutilated features and smiled.

"I have made you a Maitland," he said. "I didn't think that anything but a prodigal Nature could duplicate Miss Let.i.tia's nose! I'm honestly sorry, Mr. Knox, and if you do not want Miss Jane at that b.u.mp with a cold silver knife and some b.u.t.ter, you'd better duck before she comes down. Good-by, Margie."

I think the girl was as much baffled as I was by the change in his manner when he spoke to her. His smile faded and he hardly met her eyes: I thought that his aloofness puzzled rather than hurt her. When the house door had closed behind him, she dropped her chin in her hand and looked across the table.

"You did not tell me the truth last night, Mr. Knox," she said. "I have never seen Harry look like that. Something has happened to him."

"He was robbed of his traveling-bag," I explained, on Fred's theory that half a truth is better than a poor lie. "It's a humiliating experience, I believe. A man will throw away thousands, or gamble them away, with more equanimity than he'll see some one making off with his hair brushes or his clean collars."

"His traveling-bag!" she repeated scornfully. "Mr. Knox, something has happened to my father, and you and Harry are hiding it from me."

"On my honor, it is nothing of the sort," I hastened to a.s.sure her. "I saw him for only a few minutes, just long enough for him to wreck my appearance."

"He did not speak of father?"

"No."

She got up and crossing to the wooden mantel, put her arms upon it and leaned her head against them. "I wanted to ask him," she said drearily, "but I am afraid to. Suppose he doesn't know and I should tell him! He would go to Mr. Schwartz at once, and Mr. Schwartz is treacherous. The papers would get it, too."

Her eyes filled with tears, and I felt as awkward as a man always does when a woman begins to cry. If he knows her well enough he can go over and pat her on the shoulder and a.s.sure her it is going to be all right.

If he does not know her, and there are two maiden aunts likely to come in at any minute, he sits still, as I did, and waits until the storm clears.

Miss Margery was not long in emerging from her handkerchief.

"I didn't sleep much," she explained, dabbing at her eyes, "and I am nervous, anyhow. Mr. Knox, are you sure it was only Harry trying to get into the house last night?"

"Only Harry," I repeated. "If Mr. Wardrop's attempt to get into the house leaves me in this condition, what would a real burglar have done to me!"

She was too intent to be sympathetic over my disfigured face.

"There was some one moving about up-stairs not long before I came down,"

she said slowly.

"You heard me; I almost fell down the stairs."

"Did you brush past my door, and strike the k.n.o.b?" she demanded.

"No, I was not near any door."

"Very well," triumphantly. "Some one did. Not only that, but they were in the store-room on the floor above. I could hear one person and perhaps two, going from one side of the room to the other and back again."

"You heard a goblin quadrille. First couple forward and back," I said facetiously.

"I heard real footsteps--unmistakable ones. The maids sleep back on the second floor, and--don't tell me it was rats. There are no rats in my Aunt Let.i.tia's house."

I was more impressed than I cared to show. I found I had a half hour before train time, and as we were neither of us eating anything, I suggested that we explore the upper floor of the house. I did it, I explained, not because I expected to find anything, but because I was sure we would not.

We crept past the two closed doors behind which the ladies Maitland were presumably taking out their crimps and taking in their tea. Then up a narrow, obtrusively clean stairway to the upper floor.

It was an old-fas.h.i.+oned, sloping-roofed attic, with narrow windows and a bare floor. At one end a door opened into a large room, and in there were the family trunks of four generations of Maitlands. One on another they were all piled there--little hair trunks, squab-topped trunks, huge Saratogas--of the period when the two maiden ladies were in their late teens--and there were handsome, modern trunks, too. For Miss Fleming's satisfaction I made an examination of the room, but it showed nothing.

There was little or no dust to have been disturbed; the windows were closed and locked.

In the main attic were two step-ladders, some curtains drying on frames and an old chest of drawers with gla.s.s k.n.o.bs and the veneering broken in places. One of the drawers stood open, and inside could be seen a red and white patchwork quilt, and a grayish thing that looked like flannel and smelled to heaven of camphor. We gave up finally, and started down.

Part way down the attic stairs Margery stopped, her eyes fixed on the white-scrubbed rail. Following her gaze, I stopped, too, and I felt a sort of chill go over me. No spot or blemish, no dirty finger print marked the whiteness of that stair rail, except in one place. On it, clear and distinct, every line of the palm showing, was the reddish imprint of a hand!

Margery did not speak; she had turned very white, and closed her eyes, but she was not faint. When the first revulsion had pa.s.sed, I reached over and touched the stain. It was quite dry, of course, but it was still reddish-brown; another hour or two would see it black. It was evidently fresh--Hunter said afterward it must have been about six hours old, and as things transpired, he was right. The stain showed a hand somewhat short and broad, with widened finger-tips; marked in ink, it would not have struck me so forcibly, perhaps, but there, its ugly red against the white wood, it seemed to me to be the imprint of a brutal, murderous hand.

Margery was essentially feminine.

"What did I tell you?" she asked. "Some one was in this house last night; I heard them distinctly. There must have been two, and they quarreled--" she shuddered.

We went on down-stairs into the quiet and peace of the dining-room again. I got some hot coffee for Margery, for she looked shaken, and found I had missed my train.

"I am beginning to think I am being pursued by a malicious spirit," she said, trying to smile. "I came away from home because people got into the house at night and left queer signs of their visits, and now, here at Bellwood, where nothing _ever_ happens, the moment I arrive things begin to occur. And--just as it was at home--the house was so well locked last night."

I did not tell her of the open hall door, just as I had kept from her the fact that only the contents of Harry Wardrop's bag had been taken.