“The French window? Nobody comes or goes that way in this weather; the path isn’t even shoveled. That’s used mostly in summer time.”
“Nevertheless,” Cray opened the window door, “somebody has been here.”
Morton looked out and stared hard. How had he come to neglect a matter of such importance. There were two plainly visible lines of footprints in the snow, one quite obviously coming toward the house and one going away from it.
“There’s your murderer,” said Cray, quietly.
“Oh, no,” but Morton wriggled uneasily. “It couldn’t be. No murderer is going to walk through crusted snow, to and from the scene of his crime, leaving definite footprints like those!”
“That’s no argument. He might have come here with no intent of crime, and afterward, might have been so beside himself he couldn’t plan safely.”
“Oh, well, get what you can from them,” said Morton, pettishly. “I suppose you deduce a tall man, with blue eyes and two teeth missing.”
“Don’t be cheap, Morton. And, on the contrary, I deduce a small man. They are small footprints, and close together. The Japanese are small men, Morton.”
“Well, these prints are more than twenty-four hours old, and they’re not clear enough to incriminate anybody.”
“They haven’t changed an iota from the moment they were made. This cold snap has kept everything frozen solid. Look at the frost still on the panes, the icicles still on the window sashes, the ice coating still on all the trees and branches. In fact it has grown steadily colder since night before last, and until it begins to thaw we have these footprints as intact evidence. I will have them photographed.”
“They are small,” Morton agreed after further examination. “And as you say, too close together for an ordinary sized man. It looks like the Jap.”
“Beginning to wake up, are you? You’ve sure been asleep at the switch, Morton.”
“Nothing of the sort, Mr. Cray. But I ought to have help. I’ve had all I could tackle, making the necessary first inquiries, and getting the facts straightened out.”
“That business could have waited better than these other things. Now, there’s Crimmins, the lawyer arriving. Let’s interview him. But not in the study. Keep that clear.”
They met Crimmins in the hall, and took him to the living room.
The matter of the will was immediately taken up, and Mrs. Bates was asked to tell which desk drawer it was in.
Accompanied by the lawyer and the secretary, Mrs. Bates indicated the drawer, and Lockwood opened it with his key.
There were a few papers in it but no will.
Nor could further search disclose any such document.
“Who took it?” said Mrs. Bates, blankly.
But no one could answer her. The others came thronging in, Cray’s urgent requests to keep out of the study being entirely ignored.
“I knew it,” declared Mrs. Peyton, triumphantly. “Now, I guess you won’t be so cocky, Emily Bates—you or your ‘authority!’”
Mrs. Bates looked at her. “I am the heir,” she said haughtily. “I assert that—but I cannot prove it until the will is found. It isn’t in your possession, Mr. Crimmins?”
“No; Doctor Waring preferred to keep it himself. I cannot understand its disappearance.”
“A lot of paper has been burned in this fireplace,” said Helen Peyton who was poking the ashes around.
Morton hastened to look, for it seemed to him as if everybody was stealing his thunder.
“Nothing that can be identified,” he said, carelessly.
“No?” demurred Cray. “At any rate, it looks as if some legal papers were destroyed. This bit of ash is quite evidently the remainder of several sheets folded together.”
But no definite knowledge could be gained outside the fact that much paper had been burned there. As no fire had been made since the discovery of the tragedy, it stood to reason the papers were burned by Doctor Waring himself or by his midnight intruder, if there were such a one.
“Well,” Cray demanded of the lawyer, “if no will can be found, then who inherits the property of Doctor Waring? And is it considerable?”
“Yes; Doctor Waring had quite a fortune,” Crimmins told them. “As to an heir, he has a distant cousin—a second cousin, who, I suppose would be the legal inheritor, in the absence of any will. But, I know he made a will in Mrs. Bates’ favor, and it included a few minor legacies to the members of this household and some neighbors.”
“I know it,” Mrs. Bates said. “I’m perfectly familiar with all the bequests. But where is the will? It must be found! It can’t have been burnt!”
“We’ve no right to assume that those paper ashes are the will, but I confess I fear it,” Crimmins announced, his face drawn with anxiety. “I should be deeply sorry, if it is so, for the cousin I speak of is a ne’er do well young man, and not at all a favorite of his late relative. His name is Maurice Trask and he lives in St. Louis. I suppose he must be notified in any case.”
“Yes,” said Cray, “that must be done. But, please, all go out of this room, for the finger print experts and the photographers are coming soon, and every moment you people stay here, you help to cloud or destroy possible clues.”
Impressed by his sternness, they filed out and gathered in the living-room.
There they found a neighbor, Saltonstall Adams, awaiting them.
“I came over,” he said, with scant preliminary greetings, “because I have something to tell. You in charge, Mr. Cray?”
“Yes, Salt, what do you know?”
“This. I was awake late, night before last—the night Doc Waring died, and I was looking out my window, and it was pretty light, with the snow and the moonlight and all, and I saw a man—a small man, creeping along sly like. And I watched him, he went along past my house down toward the railroad tracks. He had a bag with him, and a bundle beside. I wouldn’t have noticed him probably, but he skulked along so and seemed so fearful that somebody’d see him.”
“Nogi?” said Gordon Lockwood, calmly, looking at the speaker.
“Don’t say it was, and don’t say it wasn’t. But I went down to the station and the station master told me that that Jap of Waring’s went off on the milk train.”
“He did!” cried Morton, “what time does that train go through?”
“’Bout half past four. The fellow passed my house ’long about half past twelve, I should say—though I didn’t look, and he must have waited around the station all that time till the milk train came along.”
“Is the station master sure it was Nogi?” asked Mrs. Peyton, greatly excited.
“Said he was, and there’s mighty few Japs in Corinth, all told.”
“Of course it was Nogi,” said Lockwood, and Morton snapped him up with, “Why are you so sure?”
Lockwood treated the detective to one of his most disconcerting stares, and said,
“You, a detective, and ask such a simple question! Why, since there are but a very few Japanese in this town, and since one of them left on that milk train, and since all the rest are accounted for, and only Nogi is missing—it doesn’t seem to me to require superhuman intelligence to infer that it was Nogi who took his departure.”
“And who was mixed up in the murder of Doctor John Waring?” cried Morton, exasperated beyond all caution by the ironic tone of Lockwood. “And, unless you can explain some matters, sir, you may be considered mixed in the same despicable deed!”
“What matters?” Gordon Lockwood asked, but his already pale face turned a shade whiter.
“First, sir, you have a large number of unpaid bills in your possession.”
The secretary’s face was no longer white. The angry blood flew to it, and he fairly clenched his hands in an effort to preserve his usual calm, nor even then, could he entirely succeed.
“What if I have?” he cried, “and how do you know? You’ve searched my rooms!”
“Certainly,” said Morton, “I warned you I should do so.”
“But, in my absence!”
“The law is not always over ceremonious.”
“Now, Mr. Lockwood,” Cray began, “don’t get excited.”
Gordon Lockwood almost laughed. For him to be told not to get excited! He, who never allowed himself to be even slightly ruffled or perturbed! This would never do!
“I’m not excited, Mr. Cray,” he said, and he wasn’t, now, “but I am annoyed that my private papers should be searched without my knowledge. Surely I might—”
“Never mind the amenities of life, Mr. Lockwood,” Cray went on; “your effects were searched on the authority of a police warrant. Now, regarding these bills—”
“I have nothing to say. A man has a right to his unpaid bills.”
“But he has not a right to steal five hundred dollars in cash and a ruby pin, in order to be able to pay them!” This from Morton, and instead of replying to the detective in any way, Lockwood ignored the speech utterly, quite as if he had not heard it, and addressed Cray.
“Was anything further found to incriminate me?” he asked.
“Was there anything else to be found?” said Cray, catching at the implied suggestion.
“That’s for your sleuths to say. I know of nothing.”
“Well, there’s your round, sharp penholder. And the fact that you had keys to all desk drawers. Also the fact that only you and the Jap are known to have been in that part of the house that night. These things were not learned from the search of your rooms; but your pecuniary embarrassment, which was discovered, all go together to make a web of circumstances that call for investigation.”
“Don’t beat about the bush!” exclaimed Lockwood, his lips set, and his eyes staring coldly at the District Attorney. “I’d far rather be accused definitely than have it hinted that I am responsible for this crime.”
“But we haven’t sufficient evidence, Mr. Lockwood, to accuse you definitely, that’s why we must question you.”
“Sufficient! You haven’t any evidence at all!”
“Oh, we have some.” With a turn of his head, Cray summoned a man who stood at the hall door.
The man came in, and handed Cray a report.
“H’m,” the attorney scanned the paper. “We find, Mr. Lockwood, fresh finger prints on the chair which stood near Doctor Waring’s desk. Facing the Doctor’s chair, in fact, as if some one had sat there talking to him. Did you?”
“No; I never sat down and talked to him. I was always waiting on him in the matter of bringing books or taking letters for transcription, and in any case, I either stood, or sat at my desk, never in that chair you speak of.”
“This man will take the finger prints of all present,” the Attorney directed, and one and all submitted to the process.
Old Salt Adams was greatly interested.
“But you can’t get the prints of Friend Jap,” he said. “Like’s not, he’d be of more importance than all of us put together. Me, now, I can’t see where I come in.”
Yet, after time enough had passed to complete the processes, it was learned that the finger prints on the shiny black wood of the chair under discussion were indubitably those of Gordon Lockwood. Also, there were other prints there, slightly smaller, that Cray immediately assumed to be those of the missing Japanese.
Lockwood looked more supercilious than usual, if that were possible.
“How can you identify the prints of a man not here?” he asked with an incredulous look.
“Supposition not identification,” said Cray, gravely. “But we’re narrowing these things down, and we may yet get identification.”
“Get the Jap back,” advised Old Salt Adams. “That’s your next move, Cray. Get him, check up his finger prints and all that, and best of all get his confession. There’s your work cut out for you.”
“Find Doctor Waring’s will,” Mrs. Bates lamented. “There’s your work cut out for you. I am not unduly mercenary, but when I know how anxious Doctor Waring was that I should inherit his estate, when I realize what it meant that he drew this will before our marriage, so urgent was his desire that all should be mine, you must understand that I do not willingly forego it all in favor of a distant relative, whom, Mr. Crimmins tells us, Doctor Waring did not care for at all.”
“I should say not!” and Crimmins looked positive. “It will be an outrage if Mr. Trask inherits the estate already willed to Mrs. Bates. I stand ready to do all I can to see justice done in this matter.”
“But justice, as you see it, can only result from finding the will,” said Cray.
“Yes,” agreed Crimmins, “and the whole matter opens up a new train of thought. May not the distant cousin, this man Trask be in some way responsible for the destruction of the will and the death of the decedent?”
“It is a new way to look,” Cray agreed, with a thoughtful air; “and we will look that way, you rest assured. We will at once get in touch with this cousin, you will give us his address, and learn where he was and how employed on the night of Doctor Waring’s death. We still have to face the problem of an outsider’s exit from a locked room, and though it seems more explicable in the case of a member of the household, yet a new suspect brings fresh conditions, and perhaps fresh evidence, which may show us where to look. At any rate, we must speedily find Mr. Maurice Trask.”
“Look here, Esther,” said old Salt to his wife, “that’s a mighty curious case over at Waring’s.”
“How you do talk! I should think that to you and me, knowing and loving John Waring as we did, you’d have no doings with the curious part of it! As for me, I don’t care who killed him. He’s dead, isn’t he? It can’t bring him back to life to hang his murderer. And to my mind it’s heathenish—all this detectiving and evidencing—or whatever they call it. Whom do they suspect now? You?”
Adams looked at his wife with a mild reproach. “Woman all over! No sense of justice, no righteous indignation. Don’t you know the murderer must be found and punished? That is if it was a murder.”
“Of course it was! That blessed man never killed himself! And he about to marry Emily Bates—a lady, if ever there was one!”
“Well, now you listen to me, Esther, and whatever you do, don’t go babbling about this. They say the Jap, who vamoosed from the Waring house, made a line of foot tracks in the snow. The snow’s crusted over, you know, and those footprints are about as clear now as when they were made.”
“Huh! footprints! Corinth is full of footprints.”
“Yes, but these—listen, Esther—these lead straight from the Waring house, over to this house. And back again.”
“How can they?” Mrs. Adams looked mystified. “That Japanese didn’t come over here.”
“You can’t say that he didn’t. And, look here, Esther, where’s Miss Austin? What’s she doing?”
“Miss Austin? She’s in her room. She hasn’t been quite up to the mark for a day or two, and she’s had her meals upstairs.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“A slight cold, she says. I can’t make her out, Salt. What’s she doing here, anyway?”
“Don’t pester her, my dear. How you and Bascom do love to pick at that girl! Why does she have to do anything?”
“It’s queer, though. And I hate a mystery.”
“Well, she is one—I grant you that. Have you told her about Doctor Waring? Though I daresay it wouldn’t interest her.”
“And I daresay it would! Why, that girl cut his picture out of the paper, and she did have one stuck up on her dresser, till I looked at it sort of sharp like, and she put it away.”
“Poor child! Can’t even have a newspaper cutting, if she wants it! You’re a tyrant, Esther! Don’t you ever try to boss me like that!”
The good-natured smile that passed between them, proved the unlikelihood of this, and Old Salt went on. “I wish you’d tell her, wife, about the tragedy. Seems like she ought to know.”
Mrs. Adams stared at him. “I’ll tell her, as a matter of course, but I don’t know why you’re so anxious about it.”
“Good morning, Miss Austin,” the good lady said, soon after, “better this morning?”
“Yes, thank you. My cold is almost entirely well.”
The girl was sitting by the window, in an easy chair. She had on a Japanese dressing gown of quilted silk, embroidered with chrysanthemums, and was listlessly gazing out across the snow covered field opposite.
The Adams house was on the outskirts of the little town, and separated by a wide field from the Waring place.
“Heard the news about Doctor Waring?” Mrs. Adams said, in a casual tone, but watching the girl closely.
“No; what is it?”
The words were simple, and the voice steady, but Miss Austin’s hands clutched the arms of the chair, and her face turned perfectly white.
“Why, what ails you? You don’t know the man, do you?”
“I—I heard him lecture, you know. Tell me—what is the—the news?”
“He’s dead.” Mrs. Adams spoke bluntly on purpose. She had felt in a vague way, that this strange person, this Miss Mystery, had more interest in Doctor Waring than she admitted, and the landlady was determined to find out.
To her own satisfaction she did find out, for the girl almost fainted. She didn’t quite lose consciousness, indeed it was not so much a faint as such a desperate effort to regain her poise, that it unnerved her.
“Now, now, Miss Austin, why do you take it so hard? He was a stranger to you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes—yes, of course he was.”
“Why are you so disturbed then?”
“He was such a—such a fine man—” the girl’s stifled sobs impeded her speech.
“Well, somebody killed him.”
At that, Miss Austin seemed turned to stone. “Killed him!” she whispered, in accent of terror.
“Yes—or else he killed himself—they don’t feel sure.” Mrs. Adams, once embarked on the narrative, told all she knew of the circumstances, and in the exciting recital, almost forgot to watch the effect of the tale on her listener.
But this effect was not entirely unnoted. At the partly open door, Old Salt Adams, stood, eavesdropping, but with a kindly, anxious look on his face, that boded no ill to any one.
And he noticed that the girl’s attention was wandering. She was pitifully white, her face drawn and scared, and soon she exclaimed, with a burst of nervous fury, “Stop! please stop! Leave the room, won’t you?”
It was not a command but an agonized entreaty. Mrs. Adams fairly jumped, and alarmed as well as offended, she rose and started for the door, only to meet her husband entering.
“Go downstairs, Esther,” he said, gravely, “I want to speak to Miss Austin myself.”
Staring at one then at the other, and utterly routed by this unbelievable turn of affairs, Mrs. Adams went.
Old Salt closed the room door, and turned to the trembling girl.
“Miss Austin,” he said kindly, “I like you, I want to help you—but I must ask you to explain yourself a little. The people in my house call you Miss Mystery. Why are you here? Why are you in Corinth at all?”
For a moment the girl seemed about to respond to his kindly, gentle attitude and address. Then, something stayed her, and she let her lovely face harden to a stony blankness, as she replied, “It is a bit intrusive, but I’ve no reason not to tell. I am an art student, and I came here to paint New England winter scenery.”
“Have you done much?”
“I haven’t been here quite a week yet—and I’ve been picking out available bits—and for two days I’ve had a cold.”
“How did you get cold?” The voice was kind but it had a definite note, as if desirous of an accurate answer.
Miss Mystery looked at him.
“How does any one get cold?” she said, trying to smile; “perhaps sitting in a draught—perhaps by means of a germ. It is almost well now.”
“Perhaps by walking in the snow, and getting one’s feet wet,” Mr. Adams suggested, and the girl turned frightened eyes on him.
“Don’t,” she breathed; “Mr. Adams, don’t!” Her voice was piteous her eyes implored him to stop torturing her.
“Why, what’s the harm in my saying that?” he went on, inexorably. “You wouldn’t go anywhere that you wouldn’t want known—would you—Miss Mystery?”
He spoke the last two words in a meaning way, and the great dark eyes faced him with the look of a stag at bay.
Then again, by a desperate effort the girl recovered herself, and said, coldly,
“Please speak plainly, Mr. Adams. Is there a special meaning in your words?”
“There is, Miss Austin. Perhaps I have no right to ask you why—but I do ask you if you went over to Doctor Waring’s house, late in the evening—night before last?”
“Sunday night, do you mean?”
Miss Mystery controlled her voice, but her hands were clenched and her foot tapped the floor in her stifled excitement.
“Yes, Sunday night.”
“No; of course I did not go over there at night. I was there in the afternoon, with Mrs. Bates and Mr. Payne.”
“I know that. And you then met Doctor Waring for the first time?”
“For the first time,” she spoke with downcast face.
“The first time in your life?”
“The first time in my life,” but if ever a statement carried its own denial that one seemed to. The long dark lashes fell on the white cheeks. The pale lips quivered, and if Anita Austin had been uttering deepest perjury she could have shown no more convincing evidence of falsehood.
Yet old Salt looked at her benevolently. She was so young, so small, so alone—and so mysterious.
“I can’t make you out,” he shook his head. “But I’m for you, Miss Austin. That is,” he hedged, “unless I find out something definite against you. I feel I ought to tell you, that you’ve enemies—yes,” as the girl looked up surprised, “you’ve made enemies in this house. Small wonder—the way you’ve acted! Now, why can’t you be chummy and sociable like?”
“Chummy? Sociable? With whom?”
“With all the boarders. There’s young Lockwood now—and there’s young Tyler—”
“Yes, yes, I know. I will—Mr. Adams—I will try to be more sociable. Now—as to—to Doctor Waring—why did he kill himself?”
Old Salt eyed her narrowly. “We don’t know that he did,” he began.
“But Mrs. Adams told me all the details”—she shuddered, “and if that room he was in was so securely locked that they had to break in, how could it be the work of—of another?”
“Well, Miss Austin, as they found a bad wound in the man’s neck, just under his right ear, a wound that produced instant unconsciousness and almost instant death, and as no weapon of any sort could be found in the room, how could it have been suicide?”
“Which would you rather think it?” the strange girl asked, looking gravely at him.
“Well, to me—I’m an old-fashioned chap—suicide always suggests cowardice, and Doc Waring was no coward, that I’ll swear!”
“No, he was not—”
“How do you know?”
Miss Mystery started at the sudden question.
“I heard him lecture, you know,” she returned; “and, too, I saw him in his home—Sunday afternoon—and he seemed a fine man—a fine man.”
“Well, Miss Austin,” Old Salt rose to go, “I’m free to confess you’re a mystery to me. I consider myself a fair judge of men—yes, and of women, but when a slip of a girl like you acts so strange, I can’t make it out. Now, I happen to know—”
He paused at the panic-stricken look on her face, and lamely concluded;
“Never mind—I won’t tell.”
With which cryptic remark he went away.
“Well, what you been saying to her?” demanded his aggrieved spouse, as the Adamses met in their own little sitting-room.
“Why, nothing,” Old Salt replied, and his troubled eyes looked at her pleadingly. “I don’t think she’s wrong, Esther.”
“Well, I do. And maybe a whole lot wrong. Why, Saltonstall, Miss Bascom says shesawMiss Austin traipsing across the field late Sunday night.”
“She didn’t! I don’t believe a word of it! She’s a meddling old maid—a snooping busybody!”
“There, now, you carry on like that because you’re afraid we will discover something wrong about Miss Mystery.”
“Look here, Esther,” Adams spoke sternly; “you remember she’s a young girl, without anybody to stand up for her, hereabouts. Now, you know what a bobbery a few words can kick up. And we don’t want that poor child’s name touched by a breath of idle gossip that isn’t true. I don’t believe Liza Bascom saw her out on Sunday night! I don’t even believe she thought she did!”
“Well, I believe it. Liza Bascom’s no fool—”
“She’s worse, she’s a knave! And she hates little Austin, and she’d say anything, true or false, to harm the girl.”
“But, Salt, she says she saw Miss Austin, all in her fur coat and cap going cross lots to the Waring house Sunday evening—late.”
“Can she prove it?”
“I don’t know about that. But she saw her.”
“How does she know it was Miss Austin? It might have been somebody who looked like her.”
“You know those footprints.”
“The Jap’s?”
“You can’t say they’re the Jap’s. Miss Bascom says they’re the Austin girl’s.”
“Esther!” Old Saltonstall Adams rose in his wrath, “you ought to be ashamed of yourself to let that girl’s name get into the Waring matter at all. Even if she did go out Sunday night, if Miss Bascom did see her, you keep still about it. If that girl’s wrong, it’ll be discovered without our help. If she isn’t, we must not be the ones to bring her into notice.”
“She couldn’t be—be implicated—could she, Salt?”
“No!” he thundered. “Esther, you astound me. That Bascom woman has turned your brain. She’s a viper, that’s whatsheis!”
He stormed out of the room, and getting into his great coat, tramped down to the village.
Gordon Lockwood was in his room. This was much to the annoyance of Callie, the impatient chambermaid, who wanted to get her work done.
Lockwood was himself impatient to get over to the Waring house, for he had much to do with the mass of incoming mail and the necessary interviews with reporters and other callers.
Yet he tarried, in his pleasant bedroom at Mrs. Adams’, his door securely locked, and his own attitude one of stupefaction.
For the hundredth time he reread the crumpled paper that he had taken from the study waste-basket under the very nose of Detective Morton.
Had that sleuth been a little more worthy of his profession he never would have allowed the bare-faced theft.
And now that Lockwood had it he scarce knew what to do with it.
And truly it was an astonishing missive.
For it read thus:
My darling Anita:
At the first glance of your brown eyes this afternoon, love was born in my heart. Life is worth living—with you in the world! And yet—
That was all. The unfinished letter had been crumpled into a ball and thrown in the basket. Had another been started—and completed? Had Anita Austin received it—and was that why she kept to her room for two days? Was she a—he hated the word! a vamp? Had she secretly become acquainted with John Waring during her presence in Corinth, and had so charmed him that he wrote to her thus? Or, had they known each other before? What a mystery!
There was not the slightest doubt of the writing. Lockwood knew it as well as he knew his own. And on top of all the other scraps in the waste-basket it must have been the last missive the dead man wrote—or, rather the last he threw away.
This meant he had been writing it on the Sunday evening. Then, Lockwood reasoned, knowing the routine, if he had written another, which he completed and addressed, it would, in natural course, have been put with the letters for the mail, and would have been posted by Ito that next morning.
What an oversight, never to have asked Ito about that matter.
It was an inviolable custom for the butler to take all letters laid on a certain small table, and put them in the pillar box, early in the morning.
Had Ito done this? It must be inquired into.
But far more absorbing was the actual letter before him. How could it be possible that John Waring, the dignified scholar, the confirmed bachelor, should have loved this mystery girl?
Yet, even as he formulated the question, Gordon Lockwood knew the answer. He knew that from his own point of view it would not be impossible or even difficult for any man with two eyes in his head to love that fascinating, enchanting personality.
And as he pondered, he knew that he loved her himself. Yes, had loved her almost from the moment he first saw her. Certainly from the time he sat behind her at the lecture, and counted the queer little ball fringes in the back of her dainty gown.
Those fringes! Lockwood gave a groan as a sudden thought came to him.
He jumped up, and with a determined air, set about burning the inexplicable letter that John Waring had written and thrown away.
In the empty fireplace of the old-fashioned room, Lockwood touched a match to the sheet and burned it to an ash.
Then he went over to the Waring house.
It was an hour or so later that Callie reported to Miss Bascom.
“Queer goin’s on,” the girl said, rolling her eyes at her eager listener, “Mr. Lockwood, now, he burnt some papers, and Miss Austin, too, she burnt some papers.”
“What’s queer about that?” snapped Miss Bascom, who had hoped for something more sensational.
“Well, it’s sorta strange they’re both burnin’ paper at the same time. And both so sly about it. Mr. Lockwood he kep’ lookin’ back at the fireplace as he went outa the door, and Miss Austin, she jumped like she was shot, when I come in suddenly an’ found her stoopin’ over the fireplace. An’ too, Miss Bascom, whatever else she burnt, she burnt that picture she had of Doctor Waring.”
“Did she have his picture?”
“Yep, one Mr. Lockwood guv her, after Nora carried off the one she cut out of a paper.”
“What in the world did that girl want of Doctor Waring’s picture?”
“I dunno, ma’am. What they call hero-worship, I guess. Just like I’ve got some several pictures of Harold Massinger, that man who plays Caveman in the Movies! My, but he’s handsome!”
“And so Miss Austin burned a photograph of John Waring?”
“Yes, ma’am. And you know they’re kinda hard to burn. Anyways, she was a kneelin’ by the fireplace an’ the picture was smokin’ like everything.”
“‘Lemme help you miss,’ I says, as polite as could be—“and watcha think, she snatched back, and says, ‘You lemme lone. Get outahere!’ or somethin’ like that. Oh, she was mad all right.”
“She has a high temper, hasn’t she?”
“Yes’m, there’s no denyin’ she has. Then again, she’s sweet as pie, and nice an’ gentle. She’s a queer makeup, I will say.”
“There, Callie, that will do; don’t gossip,” and Miss Bascom, sure she had learned all the maid had to tell, went downstairs to tell it to Mrs. Adams.
The landlady seemed less receptive than usual, being still mindful of her husband’s admonitions. But Miss Bascom’s story of the burnt photograph roused her curiosity to highest pitch.
“There’s something queer about that girl,” Mrs. Adams opined, and the other more than agreed.
“Let’s go up and talk to her,” Miss Bascom suggested, and after a moment’s hesitation, Mrs. Adams went.
The landlady tapped lightly at the door, but there was no response.
“Go right in,” the other whispered, and go in they did.
Miss Mystery lay on the couch, her eyes closed, her cheeks still wet with tears. She did not move, and after a moment’s glance to assure herself the girl was sound asleep, Miss Bascom audaciously opened one of the small top drawers of the dresser.
Mrs. Adams gasped, and frantically made motions of remonstrance, but swiftly fingering among the veils and handkerchiefs, Miss Bascom drew out a large roll of bills, held by an elastic band.
Anita Austin’s eyes flew open, and after one staring glance at the intrusive woman, she jumped from the couch and flew at her like a small but very active tiger.
“How dare you!” she cried, snatching the money from Miss Bascom’s hand, even as that elated person was unrolling it.
And from inside the roll, down on the painted floor, fell a ruby stickpin.
Mrs. Adams fell limply into a chair, her round eyes staring in horror.
Miss Bascom had taken upon herself the rôle of dictator and with an accusing finger pointed at Miss Mystery she said:
“What have you to say for yourself?”
“Nothing,” replied Anita Austin, coolly, “except to insist that you leave my room.”
“Leave your room, indeed! I am only too glad to! And I know where to go, too.”
Miss Bascom’s determined air as she strode out of the door gave a hint of her desperate intention and within five minutes she was out on the road toward the village.
Mrs. Adams, still almost speechless with surprise and dismay, looked sorrowfully at Anita. Something in the girl’s face stayed the kindly words the woman meant to say, and, instead, she broke out:
“You must leave this house! What are you anyway? A thief—and a murderer?”
“Oh! Don’t!” Anita put up her hand as if to ward off a physical blow.
Then, as if the cruel words had stung her to a quickened sense of her own danger, she cried, piteously:
“Oh, Mrs. Adams, help me—protect me—won’t you? I don’t know what to do—I’m all alone—so alone—”
She sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands.
Esther Adams was uncertain what course to pursue. Should she protect this guilty girl, of whom she really knew nothing, or should she dismiss her at once from her house, in the interests of her other boarders, who must be considered?
Surely, her first duty was to the others—the people she had known so long, and who looked upon her house as a home and a safeguard.
“You must go,” she said, though her voice wavered as she saw the pathetic face Anita raised to look at her.
“Oh, no! Don’t send me away! Where could I go? Even the Inn people wouldn’t take me!”
“Of course they wouldn’t! Go home! Haven’t you a home? Who are you, anyway? But I don’t care who you are—you must get out of this house today—this morning. Do you hear?”
Meantime Miss Bascom, on her virtuous errand had trotted quickly to the office of the Prosecuting District Attorney.
There, however, she was told that Mr. Cray was over at the Waring house, and she concluded to go there. Nor did this displease her. She longed to be in the limelight, and the tale she had to tell would surely give her the right to be there.
Mrs. Peyton received her coldly, for the two were not friends.
“I came to see Mr. Cray,” Miss Bascom announced, “on important business.”
“Oh, very well,” the housekeeper returned, “take a seat and I’ll ask him to see you.”
Miss Bascom waited in the living-room, secure in her knowledge of the importance of her news.
The attorney welcomed her cordially for he saw at once that she brought news of value.
And, expressed in emphatic language, and interspersed with many and unfavorable personal opinions, Liza Bascom told of the incident of finding the money and the ruby in Miss Austin’s bureau drawer.
“Astonishing!” commented Cray. “Who is she?”
“Nobody knows, that’s the queer part. We call her Miss Mystery.”
“Where did she come from?”
“Nobody knows. She just appeared.”
“Don’t the Adamses know?”
“No, they don’t.”
“A young girl, you say?”
“She appears to be very young—but you never can tell with those sly things. I daresay she makes herself look several years younger than she really is.”
“Did she know Doctor Waring?”
“How do I know? She came over to this house late Sunday night—for I saw her—”
“Good heavens! Are you sure?”
“Well, it was fairly light, with the moon, and the snow all over the ground, you know, and I saw her, all wrapped up in her fur coat, sneaking away from the house—”
“How late?”