THE LOCKED DOOR
Meantime Hester had crossed the lawn and entered the conservatory.
She carried the golf bag by its supporting strap and walked quickly.
She knew that the conservatory opened directly into the library where
the Reverend Horatio Merle was reading the morning paper and her idea
was to go straight to the curate and tell him the whole truth. In
the absence of Miss Thompson this was the only thing to do. If Anton
followed her, as might happen, Mr. Merle would be a protection, for,
in his presence, the chauffeur would not dare make trouble. He would
wait to get Hester alone, never suspecting that she would be capable,
in her wildest dreams, of giving back this great sum of money. The
girl paused to enjoy the warm fragrance of the lilies. It reminded
her of something way back--something sad and strange. What was it?
Oh, yes! Now she knew. It was the funeral of Billy Connor--"Diamond
Billy," the confidence man, over in Brooklyn. She had gone with
Maggie Connor and Rosalie. Poor old Billy. He drank himself to
death after they shut down on horse-racing in New York State. How
she cried when the organ played and they all knelt down! That was
the only time she had ever been in a church or tried to pray.
"To be honest, to be kind.... To make amends for any wrong act. To
ask God for strength against temptation."
Now, in her need, these words that the curate had taught her came
back to her mind and comforted her. This had been a hard fight with
Anton and she had won out. She had rescued the money and would give
it back, as she had promised--that was something.
Hester smiled as she pictured Anton's face when he opened the purse.
The nerve of the man to think he could get the best of her at a game
like that, her own game! "Now put your two little hands outside your
cloak and keep 'em there!" Silly Anton! Didn't he know that Hester
Storm had worked that trick when she was a twelve-year-old kid
sneaking leathers from shopping guys on Sixth avenue cars? Two
little hands outside your cloak! Ha! Two little gloved hands--very
innocent--and one of them a fake, joined onto a fake arm and the
whole thing strapped from the shoulder! Then if the man gets gay and
hugs you in the automobile, and pretty soon gets crazy and kisses
you, while you wriggle and twist and keep him busy--and then get busy
yourself with your real arm down in the golf bag--why, it was too
easy! It was a wonder Anton didn't get wise when she stopped so long
at the lodge. Those shoulder straps take time to fasten on.
With a thrill of professional pride and a sigh of half regret, Hester
pressed her hand to the bosom of her dress, where the bundle of crisp
banknotes crackled alluringly. Five thousand pounds! Twenty-five
thousand dollars! And it must be given back! No fiddling around,
either! It was not good for a girl like her to have twenty-five
thousand dollars that belonged to somebody else in her clothes. Not
good at all!
She walked straight to the wide double doors with their green
portieres that separated the conservatory from the library, and,
bracing herself for this ordeal with the Reverend Merle, she turned
the knob.
"Rosalie will be glad," she thought, as she pressed against the door.
To her surprise nothing moved or yielded, and the girl realized, with
a sudden sinking of the heart, that the library door was locked.
Hester tapped lightly on the panel, then louder, but no one came.
She listened, with her ear close to the door, but there was no sound
from the adjoining room. Strange! Mr. Merle must have gone out.
Ordinarily there would have been nothing alarming in this, but now to
the agitated girl it assumed the proportions of a disaster. She had
counted on giving this money immediately to the clergyman, but, with
the clergyman absent----
Seized with alarm, Hester darted back to the door of the
conservatory, the door, in the ground glass wall that led in from the
lawn. She opened this door just a crack and looked out, then
instantly closed it and turned the key. Not a hundred yards distant,
Anton was hurrying toward this very spot.
In the presence of danger Hester's mind acted quickly. The essential
thing now was to hide this money. But where? She looked wildly
about her. In the center of the conservatory stood a small, low
table covered with potted plants. There was a drawer in this table.
Hester put down the golf bag and pulled the drawer open. Lengths of
twine and wire, some gardener's tools and a lot of seed catalogues.
She shook her head and pushed the drawer shut. Anton would look
there at once. She must find, some simple place that he would not
think of.
Perhaps she could bury the money in one of these big tubs that held
the palm trees, but no, there wasn't time. It was maddening!
In this emergency the girl's eyes fell upon a small standard rose
bush growing in a gilt basket. It was a plant that Lionel and the
countess had purchased at the Progressive Mothers' bazaar. Hester
bent down eagerly to see if there was a space between the basket and
the flower pot and, in trying to move the latter, she caught the stem
of the rose-bush, whereupon to her surprise the bush itself, with the
earth about its roots, detached itself from the flower pot so that
she was able to lift the plant and a cylinder of dry earth entirely
out of the pot. Ah! This might do. And a moment later she had laid
the banknotes in the bottom of the pot and replaced the cylinder of
earth above them. To the casual glance there was not the slightest
indication that the rose-bush had been tampered with.
Now, in desperate haste, Hester flung off her scarlet cloak and, with
a few deft movements, loosened the shoulder straps that held the
false arm in place. Anton might search her and, if he found
this--There! it was off! And none too soon, for at that very moment
the loose-jointed figure of the chauffeur appeared, silhouetted in
sinister black, against the ground glass wall of the conservatory. A
moment later he was trying to open the door, clicking savagely at the
lock.
Where could she hide the false arm? Anton would be here in a second.
There was another door at the end of the conservatory where he could
come in. She dared not lock this other door, for then he would know
that she was guilty. But the false arm? High up along the wall,
higher up than she could reach, ran a wide shelf ranged with tin cans
and packages of seed and coils of rubber hose. It was the best she
could do, and, with a quick movement, Hester flung the false member
upward so that it touched the ceiling and then fell out of sight
behind a rusty watering pot. As she did so she saw Anton's shadow
nearing the other door. Well, she was ready for him. Wait! Her
cloak! There!
And now, partly to hide her agitation, partly with a feminine idea of
taking the aggressive in a bad cause, Hester stepped to a telephone
fixed against the wall near the library door. What was the telephone
number on that card she had picked up in the garage? Ah, yes! And
in the very last second before the chauffeur entered she took up the
receiver, placing her hand so that the little finger, unperceived,
held down the hook and there was no communication.
Thus, when the chauffeur burst in, boiling with anger, Hester Storm,
attired in her scarlet cloak and perfectly calm, was talking in a
natural and business-like way to the unresponsive green-painted wall
of the conservatory.
"Hello! Yes, Mr. Henderson," she was saying, apparently absorbed in
her telephoning and quite unconscious that Anton was present. "I
understand. I'll report to-morrow as usual. What? You don't want
me to call up 724 Chelsea? Oh, I see."
As she pretended to listen, the girl held the transmitter so that she
could watch her adversary's face in the nickel-plate surface. It was
evident that his surprise and alarm were genuine.
"Very well, Mr. Henderson," she concluded. "I will telephone to the
house. Good-by, sir." And, hanging up the receiver, she turned
innocently toward Anton.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "When did you come?"
He strode toward her with an ugly look. "Who were you telephoning
to?"
"No one in particular, a--a friend of mine," she answered with
simulated embarrassment.
"A friend named Henderson?" he demanded.
She shook her head. "You've got your wires twisted. I don't know
anyone by that name."
"You called up 724 Chelsea. I heard you."
"Well, what of it?"
"You said you were going to report there to-morrow? What do you mean
by that?"
Hester looked him steadily in the eyes, then, going close to him, she
spoke with a semblance of concentrated anger.
"If you think you can run me off on a side-track like this, little
chauffeur boy, let me tell you you've got another guess coming. I
want to know where is my part of that money?"
He swore violently. "You know ---- ---- well where it is."
"What?"
"You took the money, my share and yours."
"So that's your game! That's the kind of a cheap skate you are!"
She seemed to tremble with rage. "Remember what I told you. You
can't flimflam me. I--I won't stand for it."
Her bosom heaved, her nostrils dilated and her Spanish eyes burned on
him so fiercely that the chauffeur hesitated. Was it possible she
was on the level? Had someone else taken the money?
"There was nothing in that purse," he said sullenly.
"You mean there _is_ nothing in it," she sneered. "I suppose you'll
show it to me--empty? Ha!"
"It is empty and it was empty. You got away with the stuff and I
know it."
"How did I get away with it? You wouldn't let me touch the bag or
move my hands. I suppose I took it with my feet?"
Anton scowled and was silent. "I don't know how you got it, but----"
Suddenly he caught her arm and drew her sharply to him.
"Leave me alone," she struggled.
He held her in his powerful grip and, with business-like
thoroughness, proceeded to press his hands over her garments until he
had satisfied himself that the banknotes were not concealed about her
person.
"Little devil! You've hidden it somewhere," and he pushed her from
him savagely, glaring at her.
"You--you----" she tried to brave him again, but her words failed
her. He had hurt her and shamed her with his rough handling, and,
frightened now, she sheltered herself in a woman's last defense, she
burst into tears. Whereupon, Anton, man-like, began to weaken.
After all, he did not know that she had taken the money from the
purse. He had followed her quickly and found her
telephoning--telephoning to Henderson. That was another queer thing,
but, anyway, it always took him three or four minutes to get
Henderson, so she wouldn't have had time to hide the money. Besides,
how did she get it? He had watched her like a hawk, even while he
was kissing her. And it was true the golf bag had been four days at
the club house. Many things may happen to a golf bag in four days.
"Say, kid, don't cry," he relented. "I'm sore about the money,
but--maybe you didn't take it."
Hester wept on inconsolable.
"Maybe somebody got away with it at the club house," he continued.
"You--you don't believe anything I say," she sobbed.
"Well, you don't believe anything I say, do you? You think I took
the stuff myself, don't you?" he retorted.
This seemed to Hester the moment for a more conciliatory attitude and
she agreed, still sniffing and dabbing at her eyes with her
handkerchief, that it was barely possible someone at the club had
stolen the money.
"But there's one thing I want to know, girlie, and I want it
straight," the chauffeur insisted. "How did you happen to be
telephoning Henderson just now?"
Hester dried her tears and smiled faintly. Now she was the victim of
her own mystification. What plausible reason could she invent for
telephoning to a man about whom she knew absolutely nothing?
"What do you care about Henderson?" she laughed.
"I care a good deal. Come, now!" It was plain that Anton took this
telephone incident very seriously.
"Henderson is a--a party I'm working for," she ventured.
"Then you do know someone by that name? You just said you didn't."
She looked at him reproachfully. "I don't have to know him
personally to work for him, do I?"
"What kind of work do you do?"
She hesitated, biting her lips, first the lower, then the full upper
one, until they were red like cherries, and all the time trying to
imagine what kind of work it could be that she was doing for
Henderson. If she only had some faint idea who Henderson was! What
a fool she had been to get herself into this tangle!
"You know what the work is, boy, or you can come pretty near to
guessing," she answered, with a wise dropping of the eyelids.
"You're making reports to Henderson? Is that it? Don't lie. I
heard you on the phone."
Hester clutched at this guiding straw. "Well, what of it? When I
came to Ippingford I--I didn't know you and--it was a--a chance to
pick up some easy money." She was feeling her way, wondering where
this glib improvisation would lead her.
"You didn't know me?" he scowled. "What's that got to do with it?"
She leaned forward and patted his hand playfully. "Now don't you be
cross, Anton. You know the little fat man with the brown derby hat?"
"No."
"Yes, you do. The one who does business for Henderson, the one who
stutters."
"Never saw him."
"You didn't? Well, I saw him. The day after I came here he got hold
of me at the lodge and--we had a walk and--he said there was a party
named Henderson who wanted to get a line on Baxter's
chauffeur--that's you--and--the end of it was I agreed to telephone
724 Chelsea every day."
"The devil you did!" Anton was so disturbed by this that he thrust
both hands into his mane of black hair and sat silent.
A moment later an electric bell echoed through the house.
"Someone at the front door, some caller," muttered Anton. Then,
looking at his watch. "I've got to get out of here. Young Baxter
wants the car."
"And I must take this golf bag to Miss Thompson's room," she
remembered.
"No hurry about that. Leave it in the library. We don't care what
becomes of the old bag now." Anton walked slowly toward the door,
biting at his mustache.
"All right, boy."
He stepped out on the lawn, but turned back. "Oh! About Henderson!
If it's all the same to you----"
"I know what you want," she anticipated. "I'll talk to you before I
telephone him again, and--buck up, boy, I'll give him reports after
this that'll boost your game. See?"
"Good girl!" And with a wave of his hand, the chauffeur disappeared.
Hester drew a long sigh of relief. Talk about excitement! And now
what should she do with the money? It was out of the question to
leave five thousand pounds in the bottom of a flower pot without even
a purse to protect it. The golf bag was better than that, but--
She started at the sound of voices and footsteps in the library.
Presently there came a rattling at the door and the turning of a key
in the lock and a moment later the Reverend Horatio Merle appeared,
followed by Ferdinand Spooner, secretary of the Progressive Mothers'
Society.
"My dear Mr. Spooner, I'm extremely sorry. I thought they might be
in the conservatory," said the curate, peering about. "Ah, my
child!" he beamed, as he saw Hester, who, on the instant, had caught
up the golf bag.
"Mr. Robert Baxter told me to put this bag away," the girl explained.
"It belongs to Miss Thompson."
"Quite so," approved Mr. Merle. "And would you see if you can find
the Countess Clendennin and Mr. Fitz-Brown. Say to them that Mr.
Spooner has called."
"Mr. Ferdinand Spooner, secretary of the Progressive Mothers'
Society," put in the latter, puffing out his red cheeks and blowing
himself up with stiff self-importance. "You may add that I have
called in regard to various articles purchased by Mr. Fitz-Brown and
the Countess Clendennin at the recent fair given by the Progressive
Mothers. Ah, there is one of the articles!" He pointed to the rose
bush. "That beautiful rose bush in the gilt basket. Is it not
exquisite, Mr. Merle?"
"Exquisite!" murmured Merle, rubbing his hands devotionally. "Hurry,
my child! Tell them Mr. Ferdinand Spooner has called in regard to
the rose bush and the other articles."
Hester stared for a moment in dismay and then went slowly from the
room.