The Golden Slipper Part 18

Violet started and glanced where Hetty pointed. Mrs. Quintard was within a few feet of them, but as oblivious of their presence as though she stood alone in the room. Possibly, she thought she did. With fixed eyes and mechanical step she began to move straight towards the table, her whole appearance of a nature to make Hetty's blood run cold, but to cause that of Violet's to bound through her veins with renewed hope.

"The one thing I could have wished!" she murmured under her breath. "She has fallen into a trance. She is again under the dominion of her idea.

If we watch and do not disturb her she may repeat her action of last night, and herself show where she has put this precious doc.u.ment."

Meanwhile Mrs. Quintard continued to advance. A moment more, and her smooth white locks caught the ruddy glow centred upon the chair standing in the hollow of the table. Words were leaving her lips, and her hand, reaching out over the blotter, groped among the articles scattered there till it settled on a large pair of shears.

"Listen," muttered Violet to the woman pressing close to her side. "You are acquainted with her voice; catch what she says if you can."

Hetty could not; an undistinguishable murmur was all that came to her ears.

Violet took a step nearer. Mrs. Quintard's hand had left the shears and was hovering uncertainly in the air. Her distress was evident. Her head, no longer steady on her shoulders, was turning this way and that, and her tones becoming inarticulate.

"Paper! I want paper" burst from her lips in a shrill unnatural cry.

But when they listened for more and watched to see the uncertain hand settle somewhere, she suddenly came to herself and turned upon them a startled glance, which speedily changed into one of the utmost perplexity.

"What am I doing here?" she asked. "I have a feeling as if I had almost seen--almost touched--oh, it's gone! and all is blank again. Why couldn't I keep it till I knew--" Then she came wholly to herself and, forgetting even the doubts of a moment since, remarked to Violet in her old tremulous fas.h.i.+on:

"You asked us to pull down the books? But you've evidently thought better of it."

"Yes, I have thought better of it." Then, with a last desperate hope of re-arousing the visions lying somewhere back in Mrs. Quintard's troubled brain, Violet ventured to observe: "This is likely to resolve itself into a psychological problem, Mrs. Quintard. Do you suppose that if you fell again into the condition of last night, you would repeat your action and so lead us yourself to where the will lies hidden?"

"Possibly; but it may be weeks before I walk again in my sleep, and meanwhile Carlos will have arrived, and Clement, possibly, died. My nephew is so low that the doctor is coming back at midnight. Miss Strange, Clement is a man in a thousand. He says he wants to see you.

Would you be willing to accompany me to his room for a moment? He will not make many more requests and I will take care that the interview is not prolonged."

"I will go willingly. But would it not be better to wait--"

"Then you may never see him at all."

"Very well; but I wish I had some better news to give."

"That will come later. This house was never meant for Carlos. Hetty, you will stay here. Miss Strange, let us go now."

"You need not speak; just let him see you."

Violet nodded and followed Mrs. Quintard into the sick-room.

The sight which met her eyes tried her young emotions deeply. Staring at her from the bed, she saw two piercing eyes over whose brilliance death as yet had gained no control. Clements's soul was in that gaze; Clement halting at the brink of dissolution to sound the depths behind him for the hope which would make departure easy. Would he see in her, a mere slip of a girl dressed in fas.h.i.+onable clothes and bearing about her all the marks of social distinction, the sort of person needed for the task upon the success of which depended his darlings' future? She could hardly expect it. Yet as she continued to meet his gaze with all the seriousness the moment demanded, she beheld those burning orbs lose some of their demand and the fingers, which had lain inert upon the bedspread, flutter gently and move as if to draw attention to his wife and the three beautiful children cl.u.s.tered at the foot-board.

He had not spoken nor could she speak, but the solemnity with which she raised her right hand as to a listening Heaven called forth upon his lips what was possibly his last smile, and with the memory of this faint expression of confidence on his part, she left the room, to make her final attempt to solve the mystery of the missing doc.u.ment.

Facing the elderly lady in the hall, she addressed her with the force and soberness of one leading a forlorn hope:

"I want you to concentrate your mind upon what I have to say to you. Do you think you can do this?"

"I will try," replied the poor woman with a backward glance at the door which had just been closed upon her.

"What we want," said she, "is, as I stated before, an insight into the workings of your brain at the time you took the will from the safe.

Try and follow what I have to say, Mrs. Quintard. Dreams are no longer regarded by scientists as prophecies of the future or even as spontaneous and irrelevant conditions of thought, but as reflections of a near past, which can almost without exception be traced back to the occurrences which caused them. Your action with the will had its birth in some previous line of thought afterwards forgotten. Let us try and find that thought. Recall, if you can, just what you did or read yesterday."

Mrs. Quintard looked frightened.

"But, I have no memory," she objected. "I forget quickly, so quickly that in order to fulfill my engagements I have to keep a memorandum of every day's events. Yesterday? yesterday? What did I do yesterday? I went downtown for one thing, but I hardly know where."

"Perhaps your memorandum of yesterday's doings will help you."

"I will get it. But it won't give you the least help. I keep it only for my own eye, and--"

"Never mind; let me see it."

And she waited impatiently for it to be put in her hands.

But when she came to read the record of the last two days, this was all she found:

Sat.u.r.day: Mauretania nearly due. I must let Mr. Delahunt know today that he's wanted here to-morrow. Hetty will try on my dresses. Says she has to alter them. Mrs. Peabody came to lunch, and we in such trouble! Had to go down street. Errand for Clement. The will, the will! I think of nothing else. Is it safe where it is? No peace of mind till to-morrow.

Clement better this afternoon. Says he must live till Carlos gets back; not to triumph over him, but to do what he can to lessen his disappointment. My good Clement!

So nervous, I went to pasting photographs, and was forgetting all my troubles when Hetty brought in another dress to try on.

Quiet in the great house, during which the clock on the staircase sent forth seven musical peals. To Violet waiting alone in the library, they acted as a summons. She was just leaving the room, when the sound of hubbub in the hall below held her motionless in the doorway. An automobile had stopped in front, and several persons were entering the house, in a gay and unseemly fas.h.i.+on. As she stood listening, uncertain of her duty, she perceived the frenzied figure of Mrs. Quintard approaching. As she pa.s.sed by, she dropped one word: "Carlos!" Then she went staggering on, to disappear a moment later down the stairway.

This vision lost, another came. This time it was that of Clements's wife leaning from the marble bal.u.s.trade above, the shadow of approaching grief battling with the present terror in her perfect features. Then she too withdrew from view and Violet, left for the moment alone in the great hall, stepped back into the library and began to put on her hat.

The lights had been turned up in the grand salon and it was in this scene of gorgeous colour that Mrs. Quintard came face to face with Carlos Pelacios. Those who were witness to her entrance say that she presented a n.o.ble appearance, as with the resolution of extreme desperation she stood waiting for his first angry attack.

He, a short, thick-set, dark man, showing both in features and expression the Spanish blood of his paternal ancestors, started to address her in tones of violence, but changed his note, as he met her eye, to one simply sardonic.

"You here!" he began. "I a.s.sure you, madame, that it is a pleasure which is not without its inconveniences. Did you not receive my cablegram requesting this house to be made ready for my occupancy?"

"I did."

"Then why do I find guests here? They do not usually precede the arrival of their host."

"Clement is very ill--"

"So much the greater reason that he should have been removed--"

"You were not expected for two days yet. You cabled that you were coming on the Mauretania."

"Yes, I cabled that. Elisabetta,"--this to his wife standing silently in the background--"we will go to the Plaza for tonight. At three o'clock tomorrow we shall expect to find this house in readiness for our return.

Later, if Mrs. Quintard desires to visit us we shall be pleased to receive her. But"--this to Mrs. Quintard herself--"you must come without Clement and the kids."

Mrs. Quintard's rigid hand stole up to her throat.

"Clement is dying. He is failing hourly," she murmured. "He may not live till morning."

Even Carlos was taken aback by this. "Oh, well!" said he, "we will give you two days."

Mrs. Quintard gasped, then she walked straight up to him. "You will give us all the time his condition requires and more, much more. He is the real owner of this house, not you. My brother left a will bequeathing it to him. You are my nephew's guests, and not he yours. As his representative I entreat you and your wife to remain here until you can find a home to your mind."