“I don’t think anything about it,” I replied caustically. Her interest in the radium annoyed me. I felt repelled at her callous lack of grief. Suppose she and Dr. Letheny had not been on the best of terms, nevertheless they were cousins and housemates.
“Well,” she kept on, “it all seems very strange. Didn’t you see or hear a thing while all that was going on?” Her catlike eyes, whose pupils shone large and flat and black in the semi-twilight, flickered over me with interest.
“No,” I said shortly. I did not relish being questioned by Corole Letheny. “If there is nothing I can do for you I am going.”
“No need to be in a hurry,” she said indolently, yawning a little as she moved with a luxuriant stretching of muscles to a more comfortable position among the cushions.
“Good night,” I said curtly. “And do have some light!” As I spoke I reached abruptly for the lamp cord, pulled it, and the green light fell on the davenport.
Corole sprang upright with a startled half word, clutched the Chinese scarf and pulled it more securely over her feet.
“Good night,” I said again and left.
Huldah was waiting in the hall. As I took my coat it seemed to me that there was something hesitant in her attitude, as if she wanted to speak to me, but I was in a hurry and furthermore in no mood to condole with her. So I threw the slicker over my shoulders and splashed along the sodden path.
I scarcely noticed the rain, however, nor the cold discomforts of the path. When I entered the south wing and slipped quietly along its hushed length, I was still rotating in my mind a certain question.
When the light had flashed on there in Dr. Letheny’s study, I had caught a brief but distinct view of Corole’s slippers. They were beautiful pumps, high-heeled bronze kid with dainty, cut-steel buckles. But they were mud-stained and sodden with moisture and had wet leafmold clinging to them.
Where had Corole Letheny gone that afternoon? What errand had been so urgent that she had gone out of the house through the rain and storm in such haste that she had not had time to remove those dainty slippers?
Facing my own white, tired face in the mirror, I pushed my loosened hair together, removed little torn pieces of leaves from it and righted my cap. My shoes were soaked, so I changed them. Premonitory pangs of neuralgia began to shoot over my left temple, and I wished that I had not stood so long in the rain talking to Jim Gainsay.
With the thought came memory of the note with which I had been entrusted and I planned to give it to Maida at dinner; the bell was just ringing for the meal, then.
In my abstraction I had worn the borrowed slicker to my room; as I started down to the dining room I threw it over my arm. Idly wondering whose coat I had appropriated I ran my hand into a pocket, drawing out a man’s handkerchief. It was large and white and had no distinguishing marks on it. But there was a faint scent—I pressed the square of linen to my nose, sniffed—and sniffed again with quickened interest. Faint but unmistakable, the scent of ether emanated from its folds.
I stopped midway on the stairs, stared at the thing and deliberately went through the other pockets. There was nothing more to be found; no identifying label or initials on the whole garment.
One yellow slicker is very much like another, and search though I did I found no means of discovering its owner. I felt, however, that I should like to have the ether smell clinging to that handkerchief explained. Possibly if I returned it to the rack and watched to see who came for it I should learn, at least, the identity of its owner. Thinking that no one would call for it during the dinner hour, the quietest time of the whole day, I replaced the handkerchief and hung the slicker on the hook from which I had taken it, and went down to dinner. But when I returned some fifteen minutes later, after hurrying over my dinner, the slicker was gone and I had not the faintest idea as to who had removed it.
I gave the note from Jim Gainsay to Maida when I met her in the hall outside the dining room and had the dubious satisfaction of seeing her crimson vividly as she read it. The crimson, however, was succeeded by a pallor that went to her lips as she finished reading the few sentences, and during the meal she kept her eyes steadfastly on her plate and ate practically nothing. And shortly after dinner, happening to be standing near an east window, I saw a slim, shadowy figure, crowned in a white cap, winding its way into the apple orchard. Something after seven o’clock, when I was catching forty winks in my own room, Maida came in. The soft frame of black hair around her face had little beads of mist caught in it and I did not doubt that Jim Gainsay had succeeded in seeing her.
She did not mention him, however, but fussed around the room for a while, playing with the manicure things I had left on the dressing-table top, flipping through the leaves of the last Surgical News, and generally behaving as a woman does whose thoughts are elsewhere. She even picked up my tool kit, commenting on the curved bandage scissors and shining forceps and playing idly with the tiny plunger of my own hypodermic set.
We said nothing of the affair of the previous night; it was too recent, its developments too terrifying; we were both, I suppose, unconsciously fortifying ourselves against the ordeal of the coming second watch, which the memory of the last was not calculated to make easier.
Maida had two crimson spots on her cheeks—from the walk in the
