"And this is all you mean to tell me?"
"I think you will find it quite enough, Miss Strange."
"Just the address--"
"And this advice: that your call be speedy. Distracted nerves cannot wait."
Violet, across whose wonted piquancy there lay an indefinable shadow, eyed her employer with a doubtful air before turning away toward the door. She had asked him for a case to investigate (something she had never done before), and she had even gone so far as to particularize the sort of case she desired: "It must be an interesting one," she had stipulated, "but different, quite different from the last one. It must not involve death or any kind of horror. If you have a case of subtlety without crime, one to engage my powers without depressing my spirits, I beg you to let me have it. I--I have not felt quite like myself since I came from Massachusetts." Whereupon, without further comment, but with a smile she did not understand, he had handed her a small slip of paper on which he had scribbled an address. She should have felt satisfied, but for some reason she did not. She regarded him as capable of plunging her into an affair quite the reverse of what she felt herself in a condition to undertake.
"I should like to know a little more," she pursued, making a move to unfold the slip he had given her.
But he stopped her with a gesture.
"Read it in your limousine," said he. "If you are disappointed then, let me know. But I think you will find yourself quite ready for your task."
"And my father?"
"Would approve if he could be got to approve the business at all. You do not even need to take your brother with you."
"Oh, then, it's with women only I have to deal?"
"Read the address after you are headed up Fifth Avenue."
But when, with her doubts not yet entirely removed, she opened the small slip he had given her, the number inside suggested nothing but the fact that her destination lay somewhere near Eightieth Street. It was therefore with the keenest surprise she beheld her motor stop before the conspicuous house of the great financier whose late death had so affected the money-market. She had not had any acquaintance with this man herself, but she knew his house. Everyone knew that. It was one of the most princely in the whole city. C. Dudley Brooks had known how to spend his millions. Indeed, he had known how to do this so well that it was of him her father, also a financier of some note, had once said he was the only successful American he envied.
She was expected; that she saw the instant the door was opened. This made her entrance easy--an entrance further brightened by the delightful glimpse of a child's cherubic face looking at her from a distant doorway. It was an instantaneous vision, gone as soon as seen; but its effect was to rob the pillared spaces of the wonderful hallway of some of their chill, and to modify in some slight degree the formality of a service which demanded three men to usher her into a small reception-room not twenty feet from the door of entrance.
Left in this secluded spot, she had time to ask herself what member of the household she would be called upon to meet, and was surprised to find that she did not even know of whom the household consisted. She was sure of the fact that Mr. Brooks had been a widower for many years before his death, but beyond that she knew nothing of his domestic life. His son--but was there a son? She had never heard any mention made of a younger Mr. Brooks, yet there was certainly some one of his connection who enjoyed the rights of an heir. Him she must be prepared to meet with a due composure, whatever astonishment he might show at the sight of a slip of a girl instead of the experienced detective he had every right to expect.
But when the door opened to admit the person she was awaiting, the surprise was hers. It was a woman who stood before her, a woman and an oddity. Yet, in just what her oddity lay, Violet found it difficult to decide. Was it in the smoothness of her white locks drawn carefully down over her ears, or in the contrast afforded by her eager eyes and her weak and tremulous mouth? She was dressed in the heaviest of mourning and very expensively, but there was that in her bearing and expression which made it impossible to believe that she took any interest in her garments or even knew in which of her dresses she had been attired.
"I am the person you have come here to see," she said. "Your name is not unfamiliar to me, but you may not know mine. It is Quintard; Mrs. Quintard. I am in difficulty. I need assistance-- secret assistance. I did not know where to go for it except to a detective agency; so I telephoned to the first one I saw advertised; and--and I was told to expect Miss Strange. But I didn't think it would be you though I suppose it's all right. You have come here for this purpose, haven't you, though it does seem a little queer?"
"Certainly, Mrs. Quintard; and if you will tell me--"
"My dear, it's just this--yes, I will sit down. Last week my brother died. You have heard of him no doubt, C. Dudley Brooks?"
"Oh, yes; my father knew him--we all knew him by reputation. Do not hurry, Mrs.
Quintard. I have sent my car away. You can take all the time you wish."
"No, no, I cannot. I'm in desperate haste. He--but let me go on with my story. My brother was a widower, with no children to inherit. That everybody knows. But his wife left behind her a son by a former husband, and this son of hers my brother had in a measure adopted, and even made his sole heir in a will he drew up during the lifetime of his wife. But when he found, as he very soon did, that this young man was not developing in a way to meet such great responsibilities, he made a new will--though unhappily without the knowledge of the family, or even of his most intimate friends--in which he gave the bulk of his great estate to his nephew Clement, who has bettered the promise of his youth and who besides has children of great beauty whom my brother had learned to love. And this will--this hoarded scrap of paper which means so much to us all, is lost! lost! and I--" here her voice which had risen almost to a scream, sank to a horrified whisper, "am the one who lost it."
"But there's a copy of it somewhere--there is always a copy--"
"Oh, but you haven't heard all. My nephew is an invalid; has been an invalid for years-that's why so little is known about him. He's dying of consumption. The doctors hold out no hope for him, and now, with the fear preying upon him of leaving his wife and children penniless, he is wearing away so fast that any hour may see his end. And I have to meet his eyes--such pitiful eyes--and the look in them is killing me. Yet, I was not to blame. I could not help--Oh, Miss Strange," she suddenly broke in with the inconsequence of extreme feeling, "the will is in the house! I never carried it off the floor where I sleep. Find it; find it, I pray, or--"
The moment had come for Violet's soft touch, for Violet's encouraging word.
"I will try," she answered her.
Mrs. Quintard grew calmer.
"But, first," the young girl continued, "I must know more about the conditions. Where is this nephew of yours--the man who is ill?"
"In this house, where he has been for the last eight months."
"Was the child his of whom I caught a glimpse in the hall as I came in?"
"Yes, and--"
"I will fight for that child!" Violet cried out impulsively. "I am sure his father's cause is good . Where is the other claimant-- the one you designate as Carlos?"
"Oh, there's where the trouble is! Carlos is on the Mauretania, and she is due here in a couple of days. He comes from the East where he has been touring with his wife. Miss Strange, the lost will must be found before then, or the other will be opened and read and Carlos made master of this house, which would mean our quick departure and Clement's certain death."
"Move a sick man?--a relative as low as you say he is? Oh no, Mrs. Quintard; no one would do that, were the house a cabin and its owners paupers."
"You do not know Carlos; you do not know his wife. We should not be given a week in which to pack. They have no children and they envy Clement who has. Our only hope lies in discovering the paper which gives us the right to remain here in face of all opposition. That or penury. Now you know my trouble."
"And it is trouble; one from which I shall make every effort to relieve you. But first let me ask if you are not worrying unnecessarily about this missing document? If it was drawn up by Mr. Brooks's lawyer--"
"But it was not," that lady impetuously interrupted. "His lawyer is Carlos's near relative, and has never been told of the change in my brother's intentions. Clement (I am speaking now of my brother and not of my nephew) was a great money-getter, but when it came to standing up for his rights in domestic matters, he was more timid than a child. He was subject to his wife while she lived, and when she was gone, to her relatives, who are all of a dominating character. When he finally made up his mind to do us justice and eliminate Carlos, he went out of town--I wish I could remember where--and had this will drawn up by a stranger, whose name I cannot recall."
Her shaking tones, her nervous manner betrayed a weakness equalling, if not surpassing, that of the brother who dared in secret what he had not strength to acknowledge openly, and it was with some hesitation Violet prepared to ask those definite questions which would elucidate the cause and manner of a loss seemingly so important. She dreaded to hear some commonplace tale of inexcusable carelessness. Something subtler than this-the presence of some unsuspected agency opposed to young Clement's interest; some partisan of Carlos; some secret undermining force in a house full of servants and dependants, seemed necessary for the development of so ordinary a situation into a drama justifying the exercise of her special powers.
"I think I understand now your exact position in the house, as well as the value of the paper which you say you have lost. The next thing for me to hear is how you came to have charge of this paper, and under what circumstances you were led to mislay it. Do you not feel quite ready to tell me?"
"Is--is that necessary?" Mrs. Quintard faltered.
"Very," replied Violet, watching her curiously.
"I didn't expect--that is, I hoped you would be able to point out, by some power we cannot of course explain, just the spot where the paper lies, without having to tell all that. Some people can, you know."
"Ah, I understand. You regarded me as unfit for practical work, and so credited me with occult powers. But that is where you made a mistake, Mrs. Quintard; I'm nothing if not practical. And let me add, that I'm as secret as the grave concerning what my clients tell me. If I am to be of any help to you, I must be made acquainted with every fact involved in the loss of this valuable paper. Relate the whole circumstance or dismiss me from the case. You can have done nothing more foolish or wrong than many-- "
"Oh, don't say things like that!" broke in the poor woman in a tone of great indignation. "I have done nothing anyone could call either foolish or wicked. I am simply very unfortunate, and being sensitive--But this isn't telling the story. I'll try to make it all clear; but if I do not, and show any confusion, stop me and help me out with questions. I--I--oh, where shall I begin?"
"With your first knowledge of this second will."
"Thank you, thank you; now I can go on. One night, shortly after my brother had been given up by the physicians, I was called to his bedside for a confidential talk. As he had received that day a very large amount of money from the bank, I thought he was going to hand it over to me for Clement, but it was for something much more serious than this he had summoned me. When he was quite sure that we were alone and nobody anywhere within hearing, he told me that he had changed his mind as to the disposal of his property and that it was to Clement and his children, and not to Carlos, he was going to leave this house and the bulk of his money. That he had had a new will drawn up which he showed me--"
"Showed you?"
"Yes; he made me bring it to him from the safe where he kept it; and, feeble as he was, he was so interested in pointing out certain portions of it that he lifted himself in bed and was so strong and animated that I thought he was getting better. But it was a false strength due to the excitement of the moment, as I saw next day when he suddenly died."
"You were saying that you brought the will to him from his safe. Where was the safe?"
"In the wall over his head. He gave me the key to open it. This key he took from under his pillow. I had no trouble in fitting it or in turning the lock."
"And what happened after you looked at the will?"
"I put it back. He told me to. But the key I kept. He said I was not to part with it again till the time came for me to produce the will."
"And when was that to be?"
"Immediately after the funeral, if it so happened that Carlos had arrived in time to attend it. But if for any reason he failed to be here, I was to let it lie till within three days of his return, when I was to take it out in the presence of a Mr. Delahunt who was to have full charge of it from that time. Oh, I remember all that well enough! and I meant most earnestly to carry out his wishes, but--"
"Go on, Mrs. Quintard, pray go on. What happened? Why couldn't you do what he asked?"
"Because the will was gone when I went to take it out. There was nothing to show Mr. Delahunt but the empty shelf."
"Oh, a theft! just a common theft! Someone overheard the talk you had with your brother. But how about the key? You had that?"
"Yes, I had that."
"Then it was taken from you and returned?
You must have been careless as to where you kept it--"
"No, I wore it on a chain about my neck. Though I had no reason to mistrust any one in the house, I felt that I could not guard this key too carefully. I even kept it on at night. In fact it never left me. It was still on my person when I went into the room with Mr. Delahunt. But the safe had been opened for all that."
"There were two keys to it, then?"
"No; in giving me the key, my brother had strictly warned me not to lose it, as it had no duplicate."
"Mrs. Quintard, have you a special confidant or maid?"
"Yes, my Hetty."
"How much did she know about this key?"
"Nothing, but that it didn't help the fit of my dress. Hetty has cared for me for years. There's no more devoted woman in all New York, nor one who can be more relied upon to tell the truth. She is so honest with her tongue that I am bound to believe her even when she says--"
"What?"
"That it was I and nobody else who took the will out of the safe last night. That she saw me come from my brother's room with a folded paper in my hand, pass with it into the library, and come out again without it. if this is so, then that will is somewhere in that great room. But we've looked in every conceivable place except the shelves, where it is useless to search. It would take days to go through them all, and meanwhile Carlos--"
"We will not wait for Carlos. We will begin work at once. But just one other question. How came Hetty to see you in your walk through the rooms? Did she follow you?"
"Yes. It's--it's not the first time I have walked in my sleep. Last night--but she will tell you. It's a painful subject to me. I will send for her to meet us in the library."
"Where you believe this document to lie hidden?"
"Yes."
"I am anxious to see the room. It is upstairs, I believe."
"Yes."
She had risen and was moving rapidly toward the door. Violet eagerly followed her.
Let us accompany her in her passage up the palatial stairway, and realize the effect upon her of a splendour whose future ownership possibly depended entirely upon herself.
It was a cold splendour. The merry voices of children were lacking in these great halls. Death past and to come infused the air with solemnity and mocked the pomp which yet appeared so much a part of the life here that one could hardly imagine the huge pillared spaces without it.
To Violet, more or less accustomed to fine interiors, the chief interest of this one lay in its connection with the mystery then occupying her. Stopping for a moment on the stair, she inquired of Mrs. Quintard if the loss she so deplored had been made known to the servants, and was much relieved to find that, with the, exception of Mr. Delahunt, she had not spoken of it to any one but Clement. "And he will never mention it," she declared, "not even to his wife. She has troubles enough to bear without knowing how near she stood to a fortune."
"Oh, she will have her fortune!" Violet confidently replied. "In time, the lawyer who drew up the will will appear. But what you want is an immediate triumph over the cold Carlos, and I hope you may have it. Ah!"
This expletive was a sigh of sheer surprise.
Mrs. Quintard had unlocked the library door and Violet had been given her first glimpse of this, the finest room in New York.
She remembered now that she had often heard it so characterized, and, indeed, had it been taken bodily from some historic abbey of the old world, it could not have expressed more fully, in structure and ornamentation, the Gothic idea at its best. All that it lacked were the associations of vanished centuries, and these, in a measure, were supplied to the imagination by the studied mellowness of its tints and the suggestion of age in its carvings.
So much for the room itself, which was but a shell for holding the great treasure of valuable books ranged along every shelf. As Violet's eyes sped over their ranks and thence to the five windows of deeply stained glass which faced her from the southern end, Mrs. Quintard indignantly exclaimed:
"And Carlos would turn this into a billiard room!"
"I do not like Carlos," Violet returned hotly; then remembering herself, hastened to ask whether Mrs. Quintard was quite positive as to this room being the one in which she had hidden the precious document.
"You had better talk to Hetty," said that lady, as a stout woman of most prepossessing appearance entered their presence and paused respectfully just inside the doorway. "Hetty, you will answer any questions this young lady may put. If anyone can help us, she can. But first, what news from the sick-room?"
"Nothing good. The doctor has just come for the third time today. Mrs. Brooks is crying and even the children are dumb with fear."
"I will go. I must see the doctor. I must tell him to keep Clement alive by any means till-"
She did not wait to say what; but Violet understood and felt her heart grow heavy. Could it be that her employer considered this the gay and easy task she had asked for?
The next minute she was putting her first question:
"Hetty, what did you see in Mrs. Quintard's action last night, to make you infer that she left the missing document in this room?"
The woman's eyes, which had been respectfully studying her face, brightened with a relief which made her communicative. With the self-possession of a perfectly candid nature, she inquiringly remarked:
"My mistress has spoken of her infirmity?"
"Yes, and very frankly."
"She walks in her sleep."
"So she said."
"And sometimes when others are asleep, and she is not."
"She did not tell me that."
"She is a very nervous woman and cannot always keep still when she rouses up at night. When I hear her rise, I get up too; but, never being quite sure whether she is sleeping or not, I am careful to follow her at a certain distance. Last night I was so far behind her that she had been to her brother's room and left it before I saw her face."
"Where is his room and where is hers?"
"Hers is in front on this same floor. Mr. Brooks's is in the rear, and can be reached either by the hall or by passing through this room into a small one beyond, which we called his den.."
"Describe your encounter. Where were you standing when you saw her first?"
"In the den I have just mentioned. There was a bright light in the hall behind me and I could see her figure quite plainly. She was holding a folded paper clenched against her breast, and her movement was so mechanical that I was sure she was asleep. She was coming this way, and in another moment she entered this room. The door, which had been open, remained so, and in my anxiety I crept to it and looked in after her. There was no light burning here at that hour, but the moon was shining in in long rays of variously coloured light. If I had followed her--but I did not. I just stood and watched her long enough to see her pass through a blue ray, then through a green one, and then into, if not through, a red one. Expecting her to walk straight on, and having some fears of the staircase once she got into the hall, I hurried around to the door behind you there to head her off. But she had not yet left this room. I waited and waited and still she did not come. Fearing some accident, I finally ventured to approach the door and try it. It was locked. This alarmed me. She had never locked herself in anywhere before and I did not know what to make of it. Some persons would have shouted her name, but I had been warned against doing that, so I simply stood where I was, and eventually I heard the key turn in the lock and saw her come out. She was still walking stiffly, but her hands were empty and hanging at her side."
"And then?"
"She went straight to her room and I after her. I was sure she was dead asleep by this time."
"And she was?"
"Yes, Miss; but still full of what was on her mind. I know this because she stopped when she reached the bedside and began fumbling with the waist of her wrapper. It was for the key she was searching, and when her fingers encountered it hanging on the outside, she opened her wrapper and thrust it in on her bare skin."
"You saw her do all that?"
"As plainly as I see you now. The light in her room was burning brightly."
"And after that?"
"She got into bed. It was I who turned off the light."
"Has that wrapper of hers a pocket?"
"No, Miss."
"Nor her gown?"
"No, Miss."
"So she could not have brought the paper into her room concealed about her person?"
"No, Miss; she left it here. It never passed beyond this doorway."
"But might she not have carried it back to some place of concealment in the rooms she had left?"
The woman's face changed and a slight flush showed through the natural brown of her cheeks.
"No," she disclaimed; "she could not have done that. I was careful to lock the library door behind her before I ran out into the hall."
"Then," concluded Violet, with all the emphasis of conviction, "it is here, and nowhere else we must look for that document till we find it."
Thus assured of the first step in the task she had before her, Miss Strange settled down to business.
The room, which towered to the height of two stories, was in the shape of a huge oval. This oval, separated into narrow divisions for the purpose of accommodating the shelves with which it was lined, narrowed as it rose above the great Gothic chimney-piece and the five gorgeous windows looking towards the south, till it met and was lost in the tracery of the ceiling, which was of that exquisite and soul-satisfying order which we see in the Henry VII chapel in Westminster Abbey. What break otherwise occurred in the circling round of books reaching thus thirty feet or more above the head was made by the two doors already spoken of and a narrow strip of wall at either end of the space occupied by the windows. No furniture was to be seen there except a couple of stalls taken from some old cathedral, which stood in the two bare places just mentioned.
But within, on the extensive floor-space, several articles were grouped, and Violet, recognizing the possibilities which any one of them afforded for the concealment of so small an object as a folded document, decided to use method in her search, and to that end, mentally divided the space before her into four segments.
The first took in the door, communicating with the suite ending in Mr. Brooks's bedroom. A diagram of this segment will show that the only article of furniture in it was a cabinet.
It was at this cabinet Miss Strange made her first stop.
"You have looked this well through?" she asked as she bent over the glass case on top to examine the row of mediaeval missals displayed within in a manner to show their wonderful illuminations.
"Not the case," explained Hetty. "It is locked you see and no one has as yet succeeded in finding the key. But we searched the drawers underneath with the greatest care. Had we sifted the whole contents through our fingers, I could not be more certain that the paper is not there."
Violet stepped into the next segment.
This was the one dominated by the huge fire-place. A rug lay before the hearth. To this Violet pointed.
Quickly the woman answered: "We not only lifted it, but turned it over."
"And that box at the right?"
"Is full of wood and wood only."
"Did you take out this wood?"
"Every stick."
"And those ashes in the fire-place? Something has been burned there."
"Yes; but not lately. Besides, those ashes are all wood ashes. If the least bit of charred paper had been mixed with them, we should have considered the matter settled. But you can see for yourself that no such particle can be found." While saying this, she had put the poker into Violet's hand. "Rake them about, Miss, and make sure." Violet did so, with the result that the poker was soon put back into place, and she herself down on her knees looking up the chimney.
"Had she thrust it up there," Hetty made haste to remark, "there would have been some signs of soot on her sleeves. They are white and very long and are always getting in her way when she tries to do anything."
Violet left the fire-place after a glance at the mantel-shelf on which nothing stood but a casket of open fretwork, and two coloured photographs mounted on small easels. The casket was too open to conceal anything and the photographs lifted too high above the shelf for even the smallest paper, let alone a document of any size, to hide behind them.
The chairs, of which there were several in this part of the room, she passed with just an inquiring look. They were all of solid oak, without any attempt at upholstery, and although carved to match the stalls on the other side of the room, offered no place for search.
Her delay in the third segment was brief. Here there was absolutely nothing but the door by which she had entered, and the books. As she flitted on, following the oval of the wall, a small frown appeared on her usually smooth forehead. She felt the oppression of the books--the countless books. If indeed, she should find herself obliged to go through them. What a hopeless outlook!
But she had still a segment to consider, and after that the immense table occupying the centre of the room, a table which in its double capacity (for it was as much desk as table) gave more promise of holding the solution of the mystery than anything to which she had hitherto given her attention.
The quarter in which she now stood was the most beautiful, and, possibly, the most precious of them all. In it blazed the five great windows which were the glory of the room; but there are no hiding-places in windows, and much as she revelled in colour, she dared not waste a moment on them. There was more hope for her in the towering stalls, with their possible drawers for books.
But Hetty was before her in the attempt she made to lift the lids of the two great seats.
"Nothing in either," said she; and Violet, with a sigh, turned towards the table.
This was an immense affair, made to accommodate itself to the shape of the room, but with a hollowed-out space on the window- side large enough to hold a chair for the sitter who would use its top as a desk. On it were various articles suitable to its double use. Without being crowded, it displayed a pile of magazines and pamphlets, boxes for stationery, a writing pad with its accompaniments, a lamp, and some few ornaments, among which was a large box, richly inlaid with pearl and ivory, the lid of which stood wide open.
"Don't touch," admonished Violet, as Hetty stretched out her hand to move some little object aside. "You have already worked here busily in the search you made this morning."
"We handled everything."
"Did you go through these pamphlets?
"We shook open each one. We were especially particular here, since it was at this table I saw Mrs. Quintard stop."
"With head level or drooped?"
"Drooped."
"Like one looking down, rather than up, or around?"
"Yes. A ray of red light shone on her sleeve. It seemed to me the sleeve moved as though she were reaching out."
"Will you try to stand as she did and as nearly in the same place as possible?"
Hetty glanced down at the table edge, marked where the gules dominated the blue and green, and moved to that spot, and paused with her head sinking slowly towards her breast.
"Very good," exclaimed Violet. "But the moon was probably in a very different position from what the sun is now."
"You are right; it was higher up; I chanced to notice it."
"Let me come," said Violet.
Hetty moved, and Violet took