The Window at the White Cat
Page 7
CHAPTER VII
CONCERNING MARGERY
When Hunter had finally gone at six o'clock, summoned to town on urgentbusiness, we were very nearly where we had been before he came. He couldonly give us theories, and after all, what we wanted was fact--and MissJane. Many things, however, that he had unearthed puzzled me.
Why had Wardrop lied about so small a matter as his fountain pen? Thecloset was empty: what object could he have had in saying he had notbeen in it for years? I found that my belief in his sincerity of thenight before was going. If he had been lying then, I owed him somethingfor a lump on my head that made it difficult for me to wear my hat.
It would have been easy enough for him to rob himself, and, if he had aneye for the theatrical, to work out just some such plot. It was evenpossible that he had hidden for a few hours in the secret closet thecontents of the Russia leather bag. But, whatever Wardrop might ormight not be, he gave me little chance to find out, for he left thehouse before Hunter did that afternoon, and it was later, and understrange circumstances, that I met him again.
Hunter had not told me what was on the paper he had picked out of thebasket in Miss Jane's room, and I knew he was as much puzzled as I atthe scrap in the little cupboard, with eleven twenty-two on it. Itoccurred to me that it might mean the twenty-second day of the eleventhmonth, perhaps something that had happened on some momentous,long-buried twenty-second of November. But this was May, and the findingof two slips bearing the same number was too unusual.
After Hunter left I went back to the closet under the upper stairs, andwith some difficulty got the panel open again. The space inside, perhapseight feet high at one end and four at the other, was empty. There was arow of hooks, as if at some time clothing had been hung there, and aflat shelf at one end, gray with dust.
I struck another match and examined the shelf. On its surface werenumerous scratchings in the dust layer, but at one end, marked out as ifdrawn on a blackboard, was a rectangular outline, apparently that of asmallish box, and fresh.
My match burned my fingers and I dropped it to the floor, where itexpired in a sickly blue flame. At the last, however, it diedheroically--like an old man to whom his last hours bring back some ofthe glory of his prime, burning brightly for a second and then fadinginto darkness. The last flash showed me, on the floor of the closet andwedged between two boards, a small white globule. It did not needanother match to tell me it was a pearl.
I dug it out carefully and took it to my room. In the daylight there Irecognized it as an unstrung pearl of fair size and considerable value.There could hardly be a doubt that I had stumbled on one of the stolengems; but a pearl was only a pearl to me, after all. I didn't feel anyof the inspirations which fiction detectives experience when they happenon an important clue.
I lit a cigar and put the pearl on the table in front of me. But noexplanation formed itself in the tobacco smoke. If Wardrop took thepearls, I kept repeating over and over, if Wardrop took the pearls, whotook Miss Jane?
I tried to forget the pearls, and to fathom the connection between MissMaitland's disappearance and the absence of her brother-in-law. Thescrap of paper, eleven twenty-two, must connect them, but how? A familyscandal? Dismissed on the instant. There could be nothing that wouldtouch the virginal remoteness of that little old lady. Insanity? Well,Miss Jane might have had a sudden aberration and wandered away, but thatwould leave Fleming out, and the paper dragged him in. A common enemy?
I smoked and considered for some time over this. An especially malignantfoe might rob, or even murder, but it was almost ludicrous to think ofhis carrying away by force Miss Jane's ninety pounds of austere flesh.The solution, had it not been for the blood-stains, might have been apeaceful one, leaving out the pearls, altogether, but later developmentsshowed that the pearls refused to be omitted. To my mind, however, atthat time, the issue seemed a double one. I believed that some one,perhaps Harry Wardrop, had stolen the pearls, hidden them in the secretcloset, and disposed of them later. I made a note to try to follow upthe missing pearls.
Then--I clung to the theory that Miss Maitland had been abducted and wasbeing held for ransom. If I could have found traces of a vehicle of anysort near the house, I would almost have considered my contentionproved. That any one could have entered the house, intimidated and evenslightly injured the old lady, and taken her quietly out the front door,while I sat smoking in my room with the window open, and Wardrop tryingthe shutters at the side of the house, seemed impossible. Yet there werethe stains, the confusion, the open front door to prove it.
But--and I stuck here--the abductor who would steal an old woman, andtake her out into the May night without any covering--not evenshoes--clad only in her night-clothes, would run an almost certain riskof losing his prize by pneumonia. For a second search had shown not anarticle of wearing apparel missing from the house. Even the cedarchests were undisturbed; not a blanket was gone.
Just before dinner I made a second round of the grounds, this timelooking for traces of wheels. I found none near-by, and it occurred tome that the boldest highwayman would hardly drive up to the door for hisbooty. When I had extended my search to cover the unpaved lane thatseparated the back of the Maitland place from its nearest neighbor, Iwas more fortunate.
The morning delivery wagons had made fresh trails, and at first Idespaired. I sauntered up the lane to the right, however, and about ahundred feet beyond the boundary hedge I found circular tracks, broadand deep, where an automobile had backed and turned. The lane wasseparated by high hedges of osage orange from the properties on eitherside, and each house in that neighborhood had a drive of its own, whichentered from the main street, circled the house and went out as it came.
There was no reason, or, so far as I could see, no legitimate reason,why a car should have stopped there, yet it had stopped and for sometime. Deeper tracks in the sand at the side of the lane showed that.
I felt that I had made some progress: I had found where the pearls hadbeen hidden after the theft, and this put Bella out of the question. AndI had found--or thought I had--the way in which Miss Jane had been takenaway from Bellwood.
I came back past the long rear wing of the house which contained, Ipresumed, the kitchen and the other mysterious regions which only womenand architects comprehend. A long porch ran the length of the wing, andas I passed I heard my name called.
"In here in the old laundry," Margery's voice repeated, and I retracedmy steps and went up on the porch. At the very end of the wing,dismantled, piled at the sides with firewood and broken furniture, wasan old laundry. Its tubs were rusty, its walls mildewed and streaked,and it exhaled the musty odor of empty houses. On the floor in themiddle of the room, undeniably dirty and dishevelled, sat MargeryFleming.
"I thought you were never coming," she said petulantly. "I have beenhere alone for an hour."
"I'm sure I never guessed it," I apologized. "I should have been onlytoo glad to come and sit with you."
She was fumbling with her hair, which threatened to come down anyminute, and which hung, loosely knotted, over one small ear.
"I hate to look ridiculous," she said sharply, "and I detest beinglaughed at. I've been crying, and I haven't any handkerchief."
I proffered mine gravely, and she took it. She wiped the dusty streaksoff her cheeks and pinned her hair in a funny knob on top of her headthat would have made any other woman look like a caricature. But stillshe sat on the floor.
"Now," she said, when she had jabbed the last hair-pin into place andtucked my handkerchief into her belt, "if you have been sufficientlyamused, perhaps you will help me out of here."
"Out of where?"
"Do you suppose I'm sitting here because I like it?"
"You have sprained your ankle," I said, with sudden alarm.
In reply she brushed aside her gown, and for the first time I saw whathad occurred. She was sitting half over a trap-door in the floor, whichhad closed on her skirts and held her fast.
"The wretched thing!" she wai
led. "And I have called until I am hoarse.I could shake Heppie! Then I tried to call you mentally. I fixed my mindon you and said over and over, 'Come, please come.' Didn't you feelanything at all?"
"Good old trap-door!" I said. "I know I was thinking about you, but Inever suspected the reason. And then to have walked past here twentyminutes ago! Why didn't you call me then?" I was tugging at the door,but it was fast, with the skirts to hold it tight.
"I looked such a fright," she explained. "Can't you pry it up withsomething?"
I tried several things without success, while Margery explained herplight.
"I was sure Robert had not looked carefully in the old wine cellar," shesaid, "and then I remembered this trap-door opened into it. It was theonly place we hadn't explored thoroughly. I put a ladder down andlooked around. Ugh!"
"What did you find?" I asked, as my third broomstick lever snapped.
"Nothing--only I know now where Aunt Letitia's Edwin Booth went to. Hewas a cat," she explained, "and Aunt Letitia made the railroad pay forkilling him."
I gave up finally and stood back.
"Couldn't you--er--get out of your garments, and--I could go out andclose the door," I suggested delicately. "You see you are sitting on thetrap-door, and--"
But Margery scouted the suggestion with the proper scorn, and demanded apair of scissors. She cut herself loose with vicious snips, while Iparaphrased the old nursery rhyme, "She cut her petticoats all aroundabout." Then she gathered up her outraged garments and fledprecipitately.
She was unusually dignified at dinner. Neither of us cared to eat, andthe empty places--Wardrop's and Miss Letitia's--Miss Jane's had not beenset--were like skeletons at the board.
It was Margery who, after our pretense of a meal, voiced the suspicion Ithink we both felt.
"It is a strange time for Harry to go away," she said quietly, from thelibrary window.
"He probably has a reason."
"Why don't you say it?" she said suddenly, turning on me. "I know whatyou think. You believe he only pretended he was robbed!"
"I should be sorry to think anything of the kind," I began. But she didnot allow me to finish.
"I saw what you thought," she burst out bitterly. "The detective almostlaughed in his face. Oh, you needn't think I don't know: I saw him lastnight, and the woman too. He brought her right to the gate. You treat melike a child, all of you!"
In sheer amazement I was silent. So a new character had been introducedinto the play--a woman, too!
"You were not the only person, Mr. Knox, who could not sleep lastnight," she went on. "Oh, I know a great many things. I know about thepearls, and what you think about them, and I know more than that, I--"
She stopped then. She had said more than she intended to, and all atonce her bravado left her, and she looked like a frightened child. Iwent over to her and took one trembling hand.
"I wish you didn't know all those things," I said. "But since you do,won't you let me share the burden? The only reason I am still hereis--on your account."
I had a sort of crazy desire to take her in my arms and comfort her,Wardrop or no Wardrop. But at that moment, luckily for me, perhaps, MissLetitia's shrill old voice came from the stairway.
"Get out of my way, Heppie," she was saying tartly. "I'm not on mydeath-bed yet, not if I know it. Where's Knox?"
Whereupon I obediently went out and helped Miss Letitia into the room.
"I think I know where Jane is," she said, putting down her cane with ajerk. "I don't know why I didn't think about it before. She's gone toget her new teeth; she's been talkin' of it for a month. Not but whather old teeth would have done well enough."
"She would hardly go in the middle of the night," I returned. "She was avery timid woman, wasn't she?"
"She wasn't raised right," Miss Letitia said with a shake of her head."She's the baby, and the youngest's always spoiled."
"Have you thought that this might be more than it appears to be?" I wasfeeling my way: she was a very old woman. "It--for instance, it might beabduction, kidnapping--for a ransom."
"Ransom!" Miss Letitia snapped. "Mr. Knox, my father made his money byworking hard for it: I haven't wasted it--not that I know of. And ifJane Maitland was fool enough to be abducted, she'll stay a while beforeI pay anything for her. It looks to me as if this detective business wasgoing to be expensive, anyhow."
My excuse for dwelling with such attention to detail on the preliminarystory, the disappearance of Miss Jane Maitland and the peculiarcircumstances surrounding it, will have to find its justification in theevents that followed it. Miss Jane herself, and the solution of thatmystery, solved the even more tragic one in which we were about to beinvolved. I say _we_, because it was borne in on me at about that time,that the things that concerned Margery Fleming must concern mehenceforth, whether I willed it so or otherwise. For the first time inmy life a woman's step on the stair was like no other sound in theworld.