“Frequently.” Lieutenant Valcour stored away in his memory the broken nail on the little finger of Mrs. Endicott’s left hand. The uniform perfection of detail in the rest of her appearance made it stand out jarringly. “This is all most unfortunate,” he said sympathetically, “but I still doubt whether there is anything we could do. If there were only something definite—say a threat, for example—we’d be very glad to investigate it and to offer Mr. Endicott suitable protection.”
Mrs. Endicott stood up. The abruptness of the movement spread the folds of chiffon that streamed from a bow on her left shoulder, and Lieutenant Valcour’s deceptively indifferent eyes lingered on bruise marks that showed blue smears upon white skin before the chiffon fell back into place.
“Would you come with me to my husband’s room?” Mrs. Endicott said.
“Certainly.”
“There’s something there I’d like to show you—to ask you what you think about it.”
Lieutenant Valcour followed Mrs. Endicott along the corridor that led past her dressing room. A door beyond this opened into her bedroom, and directly across the corridor from it was the door to Endicott’s room. The blank end of the corridor served as a wall for the bathroom, which connected the two bedrooms and turned them into a suite which ran the width of the rear of the house.
Lieutenant Valcour sensed a difference in the furnishings of Endicott’s bedroom that set it at sharp variance with the other parts of the house that he had seen. It was done in heavy mahoganies that were antiquated rather than antique, and methodically centred in each panel of its gray-toned walls was a print of some painting by Maxfield Parrish. After a comprehensive glance around he felt as if he had already met Endicott. He had at least evolved a fairly accurate portrait of the man’s sensibilities, if not of his physique. He thought that Endicott would be difficult: a clearly divided neighbouring of the physical and the ideal, assuredly conscious of the fitness of things—which would be responsible for his acquiescence in the tone of the rest of the house—but dominated by an inner stubbornness which faced ridicule in the maintaining of his private room at the level he had accepted as a standard years before.
“That is his desk.”
Mrs. Endicott indicated a flat-topped desk which was placed before one of the rear windows. A lemon-jacketed book with crumpled pages was lying on it as if it had been slammed there. Near the book was a scrap of paper. Lieutenant Valcour leaned down and stared at the paper without picking it up. On it was printed in pencil:
He looked at Mrs. Endicott. She was evidently waiting for him to speak.
“Today is Thursday,” he said. “Might it not be simply a memorandum?”
“My husband doesn’t print his memorandums, nor is it likely he would use a piece of paper torn from a paper bag.” She added, to clinch her belief, “I can’t imagine Herbert ever having a paper bag.”
“Perhaps he bought something at some haberdasher’s.”
“The paper is too cheap. It’s more like the sort they use at grocers’ or small stationers’.”
“So it is.”
“And there’s a crudeness about the printing. It’s almost an intentional crudeness.” Mrs. Endicott stared fixedly at Lieutenant Valcour. “It’s the sort of printing you’d expect to find in a threat,” she said.
“I have learned to find almost any sort of writing or material used for purposes of conveying a threat,” Lieutenant Valcour said. “People who threaten are invariably unbalanced emotionally, if not actually mentally, and there is never any telling just what they will do. There was a case that recently came to my attention where a woman received a threat which had been engraved on excellent paper and enclosed in the conventional inner envelope one uses for formal announcements or invitations.”
“Really.”
“I’m not, by that, questioning your judgment in the matter of this note, Mrs. Endicott. It might quite well be a threat, as you think.”
“There is nothing else apparent that it could be.”
“When did you find it, Mrs. Endicott?”
“After my husband had left.”
“Lying just about where it is now?”
“Exactly where it is now.”
“I see. You didn’t touch it then—just read it. I wonder why your husband left it there.”
She looked at him almost impatiently. “I don’t imagine he did leave it there—that is, purposely. It probably fell out from between the leaves when he slammed the book down.”
“Has it occurred to you that we might call up this Marge Myles—but that’s foolish. Of course you’d have thought of that.”
He observed her obliquely as she answered.
“He’d never forgive me.” Her gesture was faintly expressive of helplessness. “I’m not supposed to know anything about it.”
“Of course. This menace, Mrs. Endicott, this danger that you are fearing, where do you think it lies?”
She became consciously vague. “The streets—indoors—out—”
“And you’re basing it entirely upon this note?”
“Primarily. It’s something concrete, at any rate. I think that he ought to have protection, and yet, if I did do anything about it, he’d put it down as spying.”
“Well, if this note is a threat there is rarely only one, you know. I wonder whether we might find any others. I haven’t the remotest justification for looking, but I’m willing to do so if you wish me to.”
Mrs. Endicott grew curiously detached. “His papers are in the upper right-hand drawer,” she said.
Lieutenant Valcour opened the drawer. Its contents were in a state of considerable confusion. It was not the sort of confusion which is the result of a cumulative addition of separate notes, letters, and
