After that Monday night when he went off in a rage, Ferguson didn’t show
up at Grasslands 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 scrap 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 Grasslands 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.
How did he get the rose? As far as I could see there was just one way.
Esther Maitland had spent part of the afternoon of July the seventh
altering her evening dress. Ellen had pinned it up on her and she’d
taken the waist down to her study to sew on as her room was too hot.
When she’d gone upstairs again—it was Ellen who gave me all this—she’d
left part of the trimming on the desk. The next morning the parlor maid
had given it to Ellen—all cut and picked apart, some of the roses loose
in a cardboard box—to put in Miss Maitland’s room. It had lain on the
desk all night and, in my opinion, the thief had either known it was
there or found it, taken the rose, and made his "plant" with it.
Now one man who would be familiar to the dogs and might know Miss
Maitland’s privileges and habits, was Chapman Price. But it wasn’t he,
for at nine-thirty, the hour when the thief was busy, Mr. Price was
crossing the Queensborough bridge, headed for New York. And anyway, if
he hadn’t been, you couldn’t suspect him of trying to lay the blame on
the girl who was his partner. No—Chapman Price was wiped off the map
with all the rest of the Grasslands crowd.
When I’d got this far I sat biting my pen handle and sizing it up. A
thief, professional, had taken the jewels. He was some one unknown,
having no connection with Mr. Price or Miss Maitland. The two crimes
that had nearly shaken the Janney family off its throne had been
committed by different parties. I was as sure of that as that the sun
would rise to-morrow.
After dinner that evening I went out on the balcony and sat there,
turning it all over in my head, and looking at the woods, black-edged
and solid against the night sky. It was very still, not a breath, and
presently, off across the garden, I heard the gravel crunch under a
foot, a soft padding on the grass, and then a long, lean figure came
into the brightness that shot out across the drive from the hall behind
me—Ferguson.
He dropped down on the top step, settled his back against one of the
roof posts, and took out a cigarette case. He was right where the light
shone on him, and I could see he had a serious, glum look which made me
think he still "had a mad on me" as they say on the east side. That
didn’t trouble me; people getting mad when they’ve a reason to never
does, and he’d reason enough, poor dear.
Puffing out a long shoot of smoke, he said:
"I’ve come over to speak to you about that idea of mine—that cigar band
I told you about."
"Oh," I answered, "you’ve got round to that, have you?"
"I have, or perhaps you might say half way around."
"Well, I’m the whole way. I’ve spent three days getting there."
"I thought you’d beat me to it. What have you arrived at?"
"The certainty that the man who dropped the band was the thief."
"We’re agreed at last. Have you gone far enough round to come to a
suspect?"
"No, I’m stuck there."
He blew out a ring, watched it float away into the darkness and said:
"So am I. But I’ve a small, single compartment brain that can’t
accommodate more than one idea at a time. And it’s busy just now in
another direction. If you’ll put that forty horse-power one of yours on
this we ought to get round the whole way." He glanced sideways at me,
his eyes full of meaning. "You’ll find I can be a very grateful person."
"Gratitude’s a kind of pay I like."
"Yes—it’s stimulating and it can take more than one form." He flung away
the cigarette, leaned back against the post and said: "The worst of it
is that our main exhibit, the cigar band, is gone. I looked for it last
night and found it was lost."
"Lost!" I sat up quick. He’d told me where he kept it and right off I
thought it was funny. "Gone out of that box you had it in?"
"Yes. I wanted to see it when I came in—I’d been in town—and it wasn’t
in the box."
"Had it been there recently?"
"Um—I can’t tell just how recently—perhaps a week ago."
"Did you ask about it?"
"Yes, I asked Willitts. He said he hadn’t seen it."
"Didn’t you tell me you kept studs and jewelry in that box?"
"I did; that’s what it’s for. I don’t see how he could have helped
seeing it. I daresay he did and, thinking it was of no use, threw it
away and then, when he saw I wanted it, got scared and lied."
A thing like a zigzag of lightning went through me. It stabbed down from
my head to my feet, giving my heart a whack as it passed. My voice
sounded queer as I spoke:
"He could have known, couldn’t he, of that walk you and Miss Maitland
took, that walk when you found the band?"
He had been looking, dreamy and indifferent, out into the darkness. Now
he turned to me, a little surprised, as if he was wondering at my
questions:
"I suppose so. He knew all my crowd up there; they’re forever running
back and forth from one place to the other. They know everything, and
they’re the greatest gossips and snobs in the country. I’ve no doubt he
heard it talked threadbare—the boss walking home with Mrs. Janney’s
secretary. Probably gave their social sensibilities a jolt."
Something lifted me out of my chair, carried me across the balcony,
plunked me down beside him on a lower step. I craned up my head near to
his and I’ll never forget the expression of his face, sort of blank, as
if he wasn’t sure whether I’d gone crazy or was going to kiss him.
"Some one who knew the family, some one who knew it was out that night,
some one who knew Miss Maitland had the combination, some one who could
have got a key to the front door, some one _the dogs were friendly
with_!"
He was staring at me as if he was hypnotized—getting a gleam of it but
not the full light. I put my hands on his shoulders and gave them a
shake.
"You simp, wake up. It’s Willitts!"