The Golden Slipper Part 16

"Hetty, what did you see in Mrs. Quintard's action last night, to make you infer that she left the missing doc.u.ment in this room?"

The woman's eyes, which had been respectfully studying her face, brightened with a relief which made her communicative. With the self-possession of a perfectly candid nature, she inquiringly remarked:

"My mistress has spoken of her infirmity?"

"Yes, and very frankly."

"She walks in her sleep."

"So she said."

"And sometimes when others are asleep, and she is not."

"She did not tell me that."

"She is a very nervous woman and cannot always keep still when she rouses up at night. When I hear her rise, I get up too; but, never being quite sure whether she is sleeping or not, I am careful to follow her at a certain distance. Last night I was so far behind her that she had been to her brother's room and left it before I saw her face."

"Where is his room and where is hers?"

"Hers is in front on this same floor. Mr. Brooks's is in the rear, and can be reached either by the hall or by pa.s.sing through this room into a small one beyond, which we called his den.."

"Describe your encounter. Where were you standing when you saw her first?"

"In the den I have just mentioned. There was a bright light in the hall behind me and I could see her figure quite plainly. She was holding a folded paper clenched against her breast, and her movement was so mechanical that I was sure she was asleep. She was coming this way, and in another moment she entered this room. The door, which had been open, remained so, and in my anxiety I crept to it and looked in after her.

There was no light burning here at that hour, but the moon was s.h.i.+ning in in long rays of variously coloured light. If I had followed her--but I did not. I just stood and watched her long enough to see her pa.s.s through a blue ray, then through a green one, and then into, if not through, a red one. Expecting her to walk straight on, and having some fears of the staircase once she got into the hall, I hurried around to the door behind you there to head her off. But she had not yet left this room. I waited and waited and still she did not come. Fearing some accident, I finally ventured to approach the door and try it. It was locked. This alarmed me. She had never locked herself in anywhere before and I did not know what to make of it. Some persons would have shouted her name, but I had been warned against doing that, so I simply stood where I was, and eventually I heard the key turn in the lock and saw her come out. She was still walking stiffly, but her hands were empty and hanging at her side."

"And then?"

"She went straight to her room and I after her. I was sure she was dead asleep by this time."

"And she was?"

"Yes, Miss; but still full of what was on her mind. I know this because she stopped when she reached the bedside and began fumbling with the waist of her wrapper. It was for the key she was searching, and when her fingers encountered it hanging on the outside, she opened her wrapper and thrust it in on her bare skin."

"You saw her do all that?"

"As plainly as I see you now. The light in her room was burning brightly."

"And after that?"

"She got into bed. It was I who turned off the light."

"Has that wrapper of hers a pocket?"

"No, Miss."

"Nor her gown?"

"No, Miss."

"So she could not have brought the paper into her room concealed about her person?"

"No, Miss; she left it here. It never pa.s.sed beyond this doorway."

"But might she not have carried it back to some place of concealment in the rooms she had left?"

The woman's face changed and a slight flush showed through the natural brown of her cheeks.

"No," she disclaimed; "she could not have done that. I was careful to lock the library door behind her before I ran out into the hall."

"Then," concluded Violet, with all the emphasis of conviction, "it is here, and nowhere else we must look for that doc.u.ment till we find it."

Thus a.s.sured of the first step in the task she had before her, Miss Strange settled down to business.

The room, which towered to the height of two stories, was in the shape of a huge oval. This oval, separated into narrow divisions for the purpose of accommodating the shelves with which it was lined, narrowed as it rose above the great Gothic chimney-piece and the five gorgeous windows looking towards the south, till it met and was lost in the tracery of the ceiling, which was of that exquisite and soul-satisfying order which we see in the Henry VII chapel in Westminster Abbey. What break otherwise occurred in the circling round of books reaching thus thirty feet or more above the head was made by the two doors already spoken of and a narrow strip of wall at either end of the s.p.a.ce occupied by the windows. No furniture was to be seen there except a couple of stalls taken from some old cathedral, which stood in the two bare places just mentioned.

But within, on the extensive floor-s.p.a.ce, several articles were grouped, and Violet, recognizing the possibilities which any one of them afforded for the concealment of so small an object as a folded doc.u.ment, decided to use method in her search, and to that end, mentally divided the s.p.a.ce before her into four segments.

The first took in the door, communicating with the suite ending in Mr.

Brooks's bedroom. A diagram of this segment will show that the only article of furniture in it was a cabinet.

It was at this cabinet Miss Strange made her first stop.

"You have looked this well through?" she asked as she bent over the gla.s.s case on top to examine the row of mediaeval missals displayed within in a manner to show their wonderful illuminations.

"Not the case," explained Hetty. "It is locked you see and no one has as yet succeeded in finding the key. But we searched the drawers underneath with the greatest care. Had we sifted the whole contents through our fingers, I could not be more certain that the paper is not there."

Violet stepped into the next segment.

This was the one dominated by the huge fire-place. A rug lay before the hearth. To this Violet pointed.

Quickly the woman answered: "We not only lifted it, but turned it over."

"And that box at the right?"

"Is full of wood and wood only."

"Did you take out this wood?"

"Every stick."

"And those ashes in the fire-place? Something has been burned there."

"Yes; but not lately. Besides, those ashes are all wood ashes. If the least bit of charred paper had been mixed with them, we should have considered the matter settled. But you can see for yourself that no such particle can be found." While saying this, she had put the poker into Violet's hand. "Rake them about, Miss, and make sure."

Violet did so, with the result that the poker was soon put back into place, and she herself down on her knees looking up the chimney.

"Had she thrust it up there," Hetty made haste to remark, "there would have been some signs of soot on her sleeves. They are white and very long and are always getting in her way when she tries to do anything."