Miss Maitland Private Secretary Part 29

He read them slowly, word by word, then turned upon her a face so charged and vitalized with a fierce interest that, had she been able to see beyond the circle of her own pain, she would have wondered. If he forgot to ask for Esther's hiding place it was because the larger matter of her vindication had swept all else from his mind. The proofs of her innocence were in his hands; he did not for a moment doubt their genuineness.

It was what he had thought from the first.

His manner changed from that of the sympathizing friend to one of stern authority. He shot questions at her, tabulating her answers, discarding c.u.mbering detail, seizing on the important fact and separating it from the jumble of confused impressions and fancies that she poured out. A few inquiries set Larkin's position clear before him. The money he dismissed with a curt sentence; of course he would give it, she wasn't to think of that any more.

"Thank heaven you decided on me," he said. "I'll straighten this out for you and I'll do it quick."

She was ready to take fright at anything and his eagerness scared her.

"But you'll not do anything they don't want? You'll not tell the police or try to catch them?"

He had seen from the start that she was dominated by terror, as the kidnapers had intended she should be: and seeing this had recognized her as a negligible factor. To keep her quiet, soothe her fears, and employ her services just so far as they were helpful was what he had to do with her. What he had to do without her was shaping itself in his mind.

"You can rely on me. I won't make any breaks. And _you_ have to be careful, not a word about me to this man Larkin. He must think the money is yours."

She a.s.sured him of her discretion and he felt he could trust her that far.

"Now listen," he said slowly and impressively as if he was speaking to a child, "we've both got to go very charily. A good deal of the threat-stuff in these letters is bluff, but also men who would undertake an enterprise of this kind are pretty tough customers and we don't want to take any risks. When I'm gone you drive over to Larkin's, tell him you have the money for the ransom, and to put in the ad. As soon as either you or he get an answer let me know. I'll be at Council Oaks; I'll go back there now. It's probable you're watched and if they saw me hanging about here they might think I was in the game and take fright.

Do you understand?"

She nodded:

"Yes, you've put some courage into me. I was ready to die when you came in."

"Well, that's over now. What you've got to do is to follow my instructions, keep your nerve and have a little patience."

He smiled down at her as she sat, a huddled heap of finery, on the edge of the sofa. She tried to return the smile, a grimace of the lips that did not touch her somber eyes. No man, least of all d.i.c.k Ferguson, could have been angry with her.

"She was crazy," he said to himself as he walked down the hall. "They were all crazy and I guess they had enough to make them so. I'll get the child back, and when I do, I'll make them bite the dust before my girl."

Several people who knew him saw d.i.c.k Ferguson driving his black car down Fifth Avenue late that afternoon. He saw none of them, steering his way through the traffic, his eyes fixed on the vista in front. He stopped at Delmonico's for an early dinner, telling the waiter to bring him anything that was ready, then sat with frowning brows staring at his plate. Here again were people who knew him and wondered at his gloomy abstraction-not a bit like Ferguson, must have something on his mind.

Night was falling as he crossed the Queensborough bridge, a smoldering glow along the west glazing the surface of the river. When he left the straggling outskirts of Brooklyn and reached the open country the dark had come, deep and velvety, a few bright star points p.r.i.c.king through the cope of the sky. He lowered his speed, his glance roving ahead to the road and its edging gra.s.ses, startlingly clear under the radiance of his lamps.

Round him the country brooded in its rest, silence lying on the pale surface of fields, on the black indistinctness of trees. Here and there the lights of farms shone, caught and lost through shielding boughs, and the cl.u.s.tered sparklings of villages. The air was heavy with scents, the breath of clover knee-high in the gra.s.s, grain still giving off the warmth of the afternoon sun, and the delicate sweetness of the wild grape draped over the roadside trees. All this night loveliness in its fragrant quietness, its rich and penetrating beauty, reminded him of her. He looked up at the sky, and its calm and steadfast splendor came to him with a new meaning. She was related to it all, in tune with the eternal harmonies, part of everything that was stainless and n.o.ble and pure. And he would show the world that she was, clear her of every spot, place her where she would be as far from suspicion, as serenely above the meanness of her accusers, as the stars in the crystal depths of the sky.

When he reached Council Oaks he had a vision of her, belonging there, a piece of its life. He saw a future, when, coming back like this to its friendly doors, she would be waiting on the balcony to greet him. There was no one there now; the house was still, its lights shining across the pebbled drive. Obsessed by his thoughts, he jumped out, and leaving the car at the steps, entered. From the kitchen wing he could hear the servants' voices raised in cheerful clamor. Crossing the hall, he had a glimpse through the dining room door of the table, set and waiting for him, two lamps flanking his place. He had no mind for food and went upstairs, dreams still holding him. In his room he switched on the lights and his vacant glance, sweeping the bureau, brought up on the box with the crystal lid.

In his mind the robbery had faded into a background of inconsequential things. It had become a side issue, a thread in the tangled skein he had pledged himself to unravel. When Molly had told him of the evidence against Esther his interest had centered on the charge of kidnaping-the monstrous and unbelievable charge of which she almost stood convicted.

Even now, as he looked at the box and remembered what he had hidden there, it came to his memory not as another weapon to be used in her defense, but as a souvenir of the moment when his present pa.s.sion had flamed into life. A picture rose of that night, the silver moon spatterings, her hand, white in the white light, with the band on its third finger. He opened the box to take it out-it was not there.

He had seen it a few days before, was certain he had, shook up the contents, then overturned the box, strewing the studs and pins on the bureau. But it was fruitless-the band, crushed and flattened as he remembered it, was gone. He muttered an angry phrase, its loss came as a jar on the exaltation of his mood. Then a soft step on the staircase caught his ear, and looking up he saw Willitts' head rise into view. The man came down the pa.s.sage and spoke with his customary quiet deference:

"I saw the car outside, sir, and knew you'd come back. Would you like dinner-the cook says she can have it ready in a minute?"

"No," Ferguson's voice was short, "I dined in town. Look here, I've lost something-" he pointed to the scattered jewelry-"I had a cigar band in that box and it's gone. Did you see it?"

Willitts looked at the box and shook his head:

"No, sir. A cigar band, a thing made of paper?" There was the faintest suggestion of surprise in his voice.

"Yes, you must have seen it. It was there a few days ago, underneath all that truck-I saw it myself."

The man again shook his head and, moving to the bureau, began to shift the toilet articles and look among them.

"I'm afraid I didn't see it, sir, or if I did I didn't notice. Maybe it's got strayed away somewhere."

He continued his search, Ferguson watching him with moody irritation:

"What the devil could have happened to it? I put it in there myself, put it in that particular place for safekeeping."

Willitts, feeling about the bureau with careful fingers, said:

"Was it of any _value_, sir?"

"Yes," Ferguson having little hope of finding it turned away and threw himself into a chair, "it was of great value. I wouldn't have lost it for anything. It was evidence-" he stopped, growling a smothered "d.a.m.n."

He had said enough; he didn't want the servants chattering.

"I'm very sorry, sir, but it doesn't seem to be here. Perhaps the chambermaid threw it away, thinking it had got in the box by mistake."

"I daresay-it sounds likely. I wish the people in this house would let my room alone, control their mad desire for neatness and leave things where I put them. Have the car taken to the garage, I'm not coming down again. If any one calls up I'm out. Good-night."

"Good-night, sir," said Willitts, and softly withdrew.

CHAPTER XXIII-MOLLY'S STORY

After that Monday night when he went off in a rage, Ferguson didn't show up at Gra.s.slands for several days and I had the place to myself and all the time I wanted. Believe me, I wanted a lot and made use of it. While the others were concentrating on the kidnaping-the big thing that had absorbed all their interest-I went back to the job I was engaged for, the robbery. And I went back with a fresh eye, the old idea cleared out of my head by Mrs. Price's confession.

She'd explained the light, the light by the safe at one-thirty. With that out of the way, I could get busy on the cigar band. I was just aching to do it, for, as I'd told Ferguson, it was an A1 starting point.

Given that, there's nothing more exciting in the world than tracking up from it, following different leads, seeing if they'll dovetail, putting bits together like a picture puzzle.

So I started in and for two days collected data, ferreted into the movements of every person on the place, gossiped round in the village, picked up a bit here and a sc.r.a.p there, and made notes at night in my room. I broke down Dixon's dignity and had a long talk with him; I got Ellen to show me how to knit a sweater and before I'd learnt had her inside out. I spent two hours and broke my best scissors spoiling the lock of the bookcase in my room and had Isaac up to try keys on it. When I was done I knew the movements of everybody in the house on the night of July seventh as if I'd personally conducted each one through that important and exciting evening.

It wasn't love of the work alone, or the feeling that I ought to earn my salary, that pushed me on. There was something else-I wanted to clear Esther Maitland. I wanted it bad. I kept thinking of her eyes looking at me when I gave her the drink of water and it made me sort of sick. In my thoughts I kept telling my husband about it, and I always tried to make out I'd acted very smart and some way or other I knew he wouldn't think so. It wasn't that I felt guilty-I'd done nothing but what I was hired for-but there's a meanness about beating a person down, there's a meanness about staring into their white, twisted face and saying, "Ha-Ha-you're cornered and I did it!" You have to be awfully good yourself to do that sort of thing.

Thursday morning I'd got all I could and with my notes and my fountain pen I went out on the side piazza by Miss Maitland's study; there was a table there and it was quiet and secluded. So I fixed everything convenient and set to work. Taking the cigar band as the central point I built up from it something like this:

It had been dropped by a man-so few women smoke cigars you could put that down as certain. It had been dropped between half-past eight when the storm stopped and half-past ten when Miss Maitland found it. The man could not be Mr. Janney who had driven both ways, nor Dixon or Isaac who had walked to the village by the road and come back the same route. It couldn't have been Otto the chauffeur as he had stayed at Ferguson's garage visiting there with Ferguson's men. The head gardener had gone to the movies with the other Gra.s.slands servants, and the under gardeners had been in their own homes in the village as I had taken pains to find out. Therefore it was no man living on the place at that time.

But that it was some one who was familiar with the house and its interior workings was proved by two facts:-that the dogs, heard to start barking, had suddenly quieted down, and that a rose from Miss Maitland's dress had been found inside the safe.

An expert burglar could have got round all the rest, had a key to the front door, worked out the combination-the house was virtually empty for over two hours-it was known that the family and servants were out. But the most expert burglar in the world couldn't have controlled those dogs-Mrs. Price's Airdale was as savage to strangers as a wolf and had a bark on it like a steam calliope.

The rose figured as a proof this way: It had been put inside the safe to throw suspicion on Miss Maitland, the thief was aware that she knew the combination. This would argue that he was acquainted with the habits of the household. All social secretaries are not given the leeway Miss Maitland was; all social secretaries aren't given the combination of a safe where two hundred thousand dollars' worth of jewels are kept. The man knew she had it, and tried to fix the guilt on her. Where his plan slipped up was Mrs. Price coming later, finding the rose, salting it down in a piece of tissue paper, and, for some reason of her own, not saying a word about it.