“Could you have seen him take a book from the corner shelf?”
“No—the screen between the rooms cut off that corner.”
“Nothing unusual occurred at dinner?”
“No. That made it worse. Nothing unusual occurred at all. Pat talked and laughed a good deal, but that’s what he always did.”
“And after dinner?”
“After dinner Mother Ives went out into the garden, and Pat asked me to come into the study to look at the clipper ship that he’d been making for Pete. All the time that I was supposed to be looking at it, I couldn’t take my eyes off the desk, wondering what he’d done with those papers—wondering what they were. There had been quite a little pile of them. After a while I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I said, ‘If you want to say good night to Pete and Polly, you’ll have to hurry. They ought to be asleep by now.’ He said, ‘Lord, that’s true!’ He snatched up the boat and started for the door, and I called after him, ‘I’m not coming. I kissed them good night before dinner.’ I waited until I heard his footsteps on the stairs—”
She paused for a moment, pushing the bright hair back from her brow as though she found it suddenly heavy.
“And then, Mrs. Ives?”
“Then,” said Sue Ives steadily, “I did something disgusting. I searched the desk, I pushed the door to, so that none of the servants could see me if they passed through the hall, and I hurried like mad. I don’t know exactly what I expected to find, but I thought that maybe those papers were letters from Mimi, and then I knew that Pat kept his checkbook there, too, and I thought that there might be entries of some kind that would tell me something; I could bear anything but not knowing. It was like a—like a frenzy. Oh, it was worse! The top drawer on the left-hand side of the desk was locked.”
She paused again for a moment, staring down as curiously and intently at the upturned faces below her as they stared up at her; then, with a quick, impatient shake of her head she went on: “But that didn’t make any difference, because I knew where the key was. I used the top right-hand drawer myself for my household accounts and bills and loose silver, and I kept it locked because, whenever Pat brought home gold pieces from his directors’ meetings, we used to put them there. We saved them up until we had enough to get a present for the house, something beautiful and—No, that doesn’t make any difference. We called the drawer the bank, and Pat showed me where he kept the key so that I could always get into it.”
“Where did he keep this key?”
“In a tobacco jar on top of the bookcase. I found it and opened the drawer, and there were the papers, quite a thick packet of them, pushed way back in the drawer. They were bonds—eighty-five thousand Liberty, fifteen thousand municipal. I counted them twice to make sure.” For the first time since she had mounted the stand she turned her dark and shining eyes on the perturbed Lambert. “You were very anxious to know whether anyone but Pat had seen that money, weren’t you? Well, I saw it. And I was just as sure that Pat had taken it out of our safe-deposit box in order to run away with Mimi Bellamy as I was that I was standing there counting it—just as sure as that. I put it back and locked the drawer and dropped the key back into the tobacco jar and went to the flower room to telephone to Stephen Bellamy. The clock in the hall said five minutes past eight. I hadn’t been in the study for more than ten minutes.” Once more she lifted her hands to that bright hair. “Do you want me to repeat the telephone conversation?”
“Was it substantially the same as Miss Page gave it?”
“Exactly the same, word for word.”
“Then I hardly think that that will be necessary. Just tell us what you did after you finished telephoning.”
“I went to the foot of the nursery stairs and called up to ask Pat if he had absolutely decided to go to the poker game. He called back yes, and asked if he couldn’t drop me at the Conroys’. I told him that I’d rather walk. I got that flannel coat out of the closet and started off for the gate at the back of the house that led to the back road. I was almost running.”
“Had you planned any course of action?”
“No, I hadn’t any definite plan, but I knew that I had to get to Stephen and make him stop Mimi, and that every minute was precious. Just as I got to the gate, I noticed that a wind had sprung up—quite a cold wind—and I remembered that Mother Ives had told me at dinner that Polly’s ear had been hurting her, and that she slept right by the window where that wind would blow on her, so I turned back to the house to tell Miss Page to be sure to put a screen
