Miss Maitland Private Secretary Part 16

The girl got red, burning; she started to answer, but Mrs. Price cut in, for the first time addressing her:

"Oh, Miss Maitland, that reminds me-I want these letters answered, if you'll be so kind. Just follow the notes on the edges, and please do it as soon as possible-they're rather important. They must go out on the evening mail."

She handed the letters to the girl and Esther Maitland took them with a murmur. I know that kind of answer-it's the agreeing response of the wage-earner. It comes soft and polite-it has to-but like the pleasant rippling of the ocean on the beach it's not the only sound that element can give forth.

Ferguson tried to say something; he was mad and mortified and everything else he ought to have been, but she wouldn't give him a chance.

"Come along, d.i.c.k," she says, bright and easy, "you've kept me waiting which is very rude, but I'm in a good humor and I'll forgive you.

There's a racket at the court-we were playing there this morning. You can walk with Miss Maitland some other day. I'm afraid she'll have to attend to _my_ work this afternoon."

He got balky, lingered, looked at Miss Maitland, but she turned sharply away and moved toward the balcony. So there was nothing for him to do but to go off with his captor. I couldn't but look after them, both in beautiful white clothes, both rich, both young, he so tall, she so slim, for all the world like a picture of lovers on the cover of a magazine.

Then I switched back to Miss Maitland. She's come to a halt, right below the window, and, standing there like a graven image, was watching them.

I never saw any one so still. You wouldn't have known she was alive except for her eyes which moved after them, moved and moved, until the pair disappeared behind the rose-covered trellis that hid the courts.

Then she let out a sound, a smothered e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n that you couldn't spell with letters; but you didn't need to, it said more than printed pages. Rage was in it and pain and love. They were in her face, too, stamped and cut into it. I wouldn't have known it for hers, it was all marred and tragic, a pitiful, dreadful face.

She looked blankly at the letters in her hand, at first as if she didn't know what they were, then crumpled them, threw them on the ground and made a run for the balcony. She was almost there, I craning my neck to keep her in sight, when she stopped, wheeled around, went back to the scattered papers and picked them up. "Oh, bread and b.u.t.ter," I thought, "bread and b.u.t.ter! Aren't you cursing it now?" Bad as I believed her to be I couldn't but be sorry for her, for I've been in that position myself. Take it from me, licking the hand that feeds you is a job that comes hard to the worst of us.

She pressed out the letters, smoothed away the creases slow and careful and came back to the balcony. Just before she disappeared under it she stopped and lifted her face, the eyes closed, the teeth pressed on her under lip. It quivered like a child's on the brink of tears, but she wasn't crying-fighting, I'd say, against something deeper than tears. I couldn't bear to look at it and shut my own eyes; when I opened them she was gone.

You didn't need to tell me any more after that. She was in love with Ferguson, not Price; she was in love and straining every nerve to hide it; she was in love so she was jealous of Mrs. Price-and I'd bet a hat she was the kind who could love fierce and hard.

I had to get this into the office and the next day asked for time off from Mrs. Janney and went in. I found them different to what they had been on my first visit, taking it serious like they were warming to it.

I'd hardly sat down before I heard the reason. O'Malley had been busy and turned up enough evidence to make them sure that Chapman Price and Miss Maitland were in deep in some sort of plot or conspiracy.

O'Malley's investigation of Price's movements on the night of July the seventh had revealed these facts: Price had taken his car from Sommers'

garage at Cedar Brook at eight-thirty, not returning till five minutes before two. To one of the garage men he had said that the night being so fine he had gone for a long run over the island. No trace of his whereabouts during these hours had been found until O'Malley dropped on a policeman at the end of the Queensborough Bridge. This man said Price had crossed over to the city between nine-thirty and ten. He was positive of his identification, as early in June he had stopped the young man for exceeding the speed limit on the bridge, taken his name and address and had a heated altercation with him. From that time to his return to Cedar Brook Price had dropped out of sight. He had not been in the lodgings he kept in town or in any of the garages he patronized.

Whatever his business had been in the city he had had plenty of time to return to Gra.s.slands and partic.i.p.ate in the theft of the jewels.

A continued watch of the house at 76 Gayle Street had shown that both Miss Maitland and Price had been there on the Thursday previous and Price on Sunday afternoon. Each had entered with noiseless haste and each had used a latchkey. O'Malley in a search for a room had interviewed the janitor, a grouchy old chap living in the bas.e.m.e.nt; and got a line on all the tenants, none of whom answered to the description of Price or Miss Maitland. Of their visits to the house the man was evidently ignorant, but he supplied some information which showed how they could come and go without his cognizance.

On July the eighth a lady, giving no name, had taken the right hand front room on the top floor for a friend, Miss Agnes Brown, an art student coming from the west but not yet arrived in the city. The lady paid a month's rent in advance, took the key, and said when Miss Brown arrived, the janitor would be informed, but that she might be delayed through illness in her family. This lady, as described by the janitor, was beyond a doubt Esther Maitland.

O'Malley was positive that the man honestly believed the room unused and awaiting its occupant. He had seen no signs of habitation, heard no sound from behind its closed door. Cooking was permitted in the house and it was part of his business to sweep down the halls every morning and empty the pails containing the food refuse which were placed outside the doors. He had seen no pail, no milk bottles, and never at night, when he went up to light the hall gas, had there been a gleam from the transom of Miss Brown's apartment.

The room had been engaged by Esther Maitland the day after the robbery, had been secured for a tenant who had not materialized. She had taken the key herself and had visited the place, as Chapman Price had done.

Both had made their exits and entrances so carefully that the janitor had no idea any one had ever been inside the door since the day it was rented.

After I'd heard all this I opened up with what I'd collected. The Chief didn't say much, which is his way when you come in with a new "twist,"

but Mr. George wouldn't have it, got quite peevish and said my imagination had run away with me.

"Do you think a girl in love with another man would have embroiled herself with Price the way she has?" he snapped out.

"I don't know, Mr. George. I'm not ready to say yet what she's done or hasn't done. No one can deny that things are dead against her. All I'm sure of now is that she is in love with Mr. Ferguson and, that being the case, I don't think she's the kind, guilty or innocent, who'd take up with another man."

"But you can't base a conviction on a moment's pantomime such as you overlooked. The girl was probably angry at Mrs. Price's manner. It can be a deuced disagreeable manner; I've seen it."

"She didn't act like that-it wasn't only anger-it was all sorts of feelings."

He couldn't see it any way but his own and hammered at me.

"But the whole structure's built on the a.s.sumption of an affair between her and Price. Do you think she'd steal for him, lie for him, hire a room to meet him in, unless she was so crazy about him she was clay in his hands?"

"Mr. George," I said, dropping back in my chair sort of helpless but still as obstinate as a government mule, "every word you say sounds like sense and I'm not saying it isn't. But while I'm not pa.s.sing any criticisms on you, in this kind of question, I'd back my own judgment against any man's that ever lived since Adam tried to throw the blame on Eve."

The Chief laughed like he was amused at the sc.r.a.pping of two kids.

"That's right, Molly," he says, "don't let him brow-beat you, stick to your own opinion."

"Well, what do _you_ think?" Mr. George turned to him all red and ruffled up. "Isn't she building up theories on the flimsiest kind of foundation?"

The Chief wouldn't give him any satisfaction.

"I'll take a leaf out of her book," he said, "not pa.s.s any criticisms.

And I think we're going on too fast. I expect to have Chapman here himself in a day or two and ask some questions about that long ride on the night of July the seventh. After that we'll be on a firmer footing-or we ought to be. Meantime, Molly, you go back to Gra.s.slands.

Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut and if anything turns up let me know."

CHAPTER XIV-A CHAPTER ABOUT BAD TEMPERS

Things were not going Mr. Larkin's way. What had begun with such bright promise was declining to a twilight uncertainty. The morning after his ignominious failure with Willitts he had a letter from Suzanne, forwarded from his New York office, telling him that she would be in town on the following Monday and would like to see him. The letter disturbed him greatly. It was not alone that he had nothing to report; it was that the tone of the missive was irritated and impatient. It was the angrily imperious summons of a lady who is disappointed in her hireling.

He packed up his things and left Cedar Brook-the collapse of his endeavor there was complete-and at the hour appointed found Suzanne waiting in the shaded reception room. Her words and manner showed him how disagreeable a fine lady can be; they gave him a cold premonition that his fat salary would end unless something distinct and definite was soon forthcoming. In fact she hinted it; his a.s.surances that interesting developments were pending, that this sort of work was necessarily slow, kindled no responsive enthusiasm in the crossly accusing eye she fastened on him. His manner became almost pleading; he was on the edge of discoveries, unquestionably he would have something to tell her by the end of the week. At that she hung dubious, the angry eye less disconcerting, and said she would be in town on Friday as she was going to take her little girl to the oculist.

Mr. Larkin hailed the announcement with a sleuth-like eagerness, but, as if anxious to quench any little flicker of his spirit, she added blightingly that she didn't think it would be possible to see him as the child would be with her. He grappled with the difficulty, displaying both patience and resourcefulness, for Mrs. Price, in a bad temper, had a talent for creating obstacles.

Why, he suggested, couldn't the little girl go to the oculist with her nurse or companion and Mrs. Price be left, so to speak, free to roam?

Mrs. Price's answer snapped with an angry click-that was of course what she would do-she always did. _But_, Mr. Larkin did not suppose she took the exhausting trip from Berkeley for nothing, did he? She had matters to attend to herself, shops to go to, people to see; when they came into town they were swamped, simply _swamped_, by what they had to do. She depicted with a lively irritation their harried progress, the party split into halves, one in a hired vehicle, one in the family motor, pa.s.sing through the marts of trade in a stampede of breathless shopping.

She rubbed it in, seemed to be intimating that he was attempting to frustrate an overtaxed and weary woman in the accomplishment of gigantic tasks.

Mr. Larkin met the difficulties and kept his patience. It took a good deal to finally reach a settlement which was obvious from the start. The child and her companion could go on their errands and Suzanne could go on hers, but be back before them. He could meet her at the house at any hour she named and would leave before the return of the other half of the party. He forced her to an admission that the plan was feasible, though she gave it grudgingly, her manner still suggesting that if he had conducted himself as a detective worthy of his hire she would not have been put to so much trouble. She arranged to be at the house at twelve which she calculated might give her half an hour alone with him.

Should there be any change of plans she would let him know, and she _hoped_, with an accentuated glance, he would have something satisfactory to tell her.

His good temper unshaken, Mr. Larkin a.s.sured her he would and rose to go. On the doorstep he mopped his forehead though the day was not warm, also he swore softly as he descended the steps.

A day or two after this, Chapman Price went to the Whitney office. He had received a communication from them asking for an interview, the ostensible subject of debate being Suzanne's divorce. The suit would be conducted at Reno where Mrs. Price would go in the autumn, but the Whitneys, as the Janney lawyers, wanted to talk the matter over with Mr.

Price for the arranging of various financial details.

These were quickly opened up for his attention by Wilbur Whitney, who, with George, saw the young man in his private office. The ground of divorce-non-support-was touched on with a tactful lightness. Mrs. Price would of course ask for no alimony and so forth and so on. From that the elder Whitney pa.s.sed to the subject of the child; it was the desire of its mother and grandparents that Chapman should relinquish all claim on it. The young man listened, gloomy and scowling, now and then muttering in angry repudiation. But the diplomatic arguments of the lawyer bore down his opposition; he had to give in. The child ought to remain with its mother, the natural guardian of its tender years; left entirely to the Janneys it would be the eventual heiress of their great wealth, but if Chapman antagonized them by a fight for its possession its prospects might suffer. It was a persuasive appeal, made to Chapman's parental affections, the welfare of his daughter before his own. It brought him to a sullen consent, and Wilbur Whitney, with a sound of approval, pushed back his chair, elated as by a good work done.

Price rose, his face flushed and frowning. That he was resentful was plain to be seen, but he had himself in hand, inquiring with a sardonic politeness if that was all they wanted of him. The elder Whitney with a hospitable gesture toward the empty chair, said no, there were some questions he'd like to ask, nothing of any especial moment and on an entirely different matter.

"Mrs. Janney," he explained, "has suggested that we make a separate, private investigation of the robbery. She's lost faith in Kissam, who hasn't done anything but draw his pay envelope and wants us to see what we can do. So we've been clearing up a lot of dead wood, looking into the movements of the people in the house and the neighborhood that night."

Price, who had remained standing, turned his eyes on the speaker in a gaze that had a quality of sudden fixed attention.