Miss Strange was not in a responsive mood. This her employer had
observed on first entering; yet he showed no hesitation in laying on
the table behind which she had ensconced herself in the attitude of one
besieged, an envelope thick with enclosed papers.
“There,” said he. “Telephone me when you have read them.”
“I shall not read them.”
“No?” he smiled; and, repossessing himself of the envelope, he tore off
one end, extracted the sheets with which it was filled, and laid them
down still unfolded, in their former place on the table-top.
The suggestiveness of the action caused the corners of Miss Srange’s
delicate lips to twitch wistfully, before settling into an ironic smile.
Calmly the other watched her.
“I am on a vacation,” she loftily explained, as she finally met his
studiously non-quizzical glance. “Oh, I know that I am in my own home!”
she petulantly acknowledged, as his gaze took in the room; “and that the
automobile is at the door; and that I’m dressed for shopping. But for
all that I’m on a vacation--a mental one,” she emphasized; “and business
must wait. I haven’t got over the last affair,” she protested, as he
maintained a discreet silence, “and the season is so gay just now--so
many balls, so many--But that isn’t the worst. Father is beginning to
wake up--and if he ever suspects--” A significant gesture ended this
appeal.
The personage knew her father--everyone did--and the wonder had always
been that she dared run the risk of displeasing one so implacable.
Though she was his favourite child, Peter Strange was known to be quite
capable of cutting her off with a shilling, once his close, prejudiced
mind conceived it to be his duty. And that he would so interpret the
situation, if he ever came to learn the secret of his daughter’s fits
of abstraction and the sly bank account she was slowly accumulating, the
personage holding out this dangerous lure had no doubt at all. Yet he
only smiled at her words and remarked in casual suggestion:
“It’s out of town this time--‘way out. Your health certainly demands a
change of air.”
“My health is good. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as one may choose to
look at it, it furnishes me with no excuse for an outing,” she steadily
retorted, turning her back on the table.
“Ah, excuse me!” the insidious voice apologized, “your paleness misled
me. Surely a night or two’s change might be beneficial.”
She gave him a quick side look, and began to adjust her boa.
To this hint he paid no attention.
“The affair is quite out of the ordinary,” he pursued in the tone of one
rehearsing a part. But there he stopped. For some reason, not altogether
apparent to the masculine mind, the pin of flashing stones (real stones)
which held her hat in place had to be taken out and thrust back again,
not once, but twice. It was to watch this performance he had paused.
When he was ready to proceed, he took the musing tone of one marshalling
facts for another’s enlightenment:
“A woman of unknown instincts--”
“Pshaw!” The end of the pin would strike against the comb holding
Violet’s chestnut-coloured locks.
“Living in a house as mysterious as the secret it contains. But--” here
he allowed his patience apparently to forsake him, “I will bore you no
longer. Go to your teas and balls; I will struggle with my dark affairs
alone.”
His hand went to the packet of papers she affected so ostentatiously to
despise. He could be as nonchalant as she. But he did not lift them;
he let them lie. Yet the young heiress had not made a movement or even
turned the slightest glance his way.
“A woman difficult to understand! A mysterious house--possibly a
mysterious crime!”
Thus Violet kept repeating in silent self-communion, as flushed with
dancing she sat that evening in a highly-scented conservatory, dividing
her attention between the compliments of her partner and the splash of
a fountain bubbling in the heart of this mass of tropical foliage; and
when some hours later she sat down in her chintz-furnished bedroom for
a few minutes’ thought before retiring, it was to draw from a little oak
box at her elbow the half-dozen or so folded sheets of closely written
paper which had been left for her perusal by her persistent employer.
Glancing first at the signature and finding it to be one already
favourably known at the bar, she read with avidity the statement of
events thus vouched for, finding them curious enough in all conscience
to keep her awake for another full hour.
We here subscribe it:
I am a lawyer with an office in the Times Square Building. My business
is mainly local, but sometimes I am called out of town, as witness the
following summons received by me on the fifth of last October.