“Why did you search that room?”
“I thought the police needed a little help.”
And after the laugh, and before she could be brought to order;
“Why on earth would Sarah hide whatever she did hide, if she was going to tell Uncle Jim about it?
She trusted him.
She wasn’t hiding it from him.
Find who she was afraid of and—”
They stopped her then, and under pretense of getting her handkerchief I saw her looking at a card in her bag.
Evidently she had made some notes on it.
When they took her back to the night of Sarah’s death, and the intruder in the house, she was ready for them.
“You didn’t see him?”
“No, nor since.
He’s been breaking in ever since, while Uncle Jim has been locked up.
He didn’t find what he wanted on Sarah, so he—”
She was making a valiant effort, but I heard none of her testimony after Godfrey Lowell had read aloud the cipher itself.
Laura suddenly caught my arm.
“For God’s sake, Elizabeth!” she whispered.
“Didn’t Sarah tell you about the cabinet?”
“What about it?”
“Let’s get out of here.
We’ve got to get home.”
It took us some time, however, to escape from that crowded courtroom.
The very doorways and the halls outside them were filled, and when we finally reached the street, Robert had left his car and joined the morbid throng inside the building.
Laura was exasperated and almost tearful, and I was not much better.
It was Wallie who finally found him for us, and who went with us to the house.
I had my key, for all the servants were at the courthouse, and at first glance everything appeared to be as it should be.
On the way Laura made her explanation.
“I meant to write you,” she said, “but I had some buying for Sarah to do, and so I wrote her.
She was to tell you.
Why didn’t you tell me she had hidden something?
It’s in the cabinet, of course.”
It must have been forty minutes from the reading of the cipher to the time we turned into the drive.
Save for a natural urgency to get into the house and find the key to the mystery, I think none of us except Wallie realized the necessity for any haste.
And he had his own reasons for not stressing that.
He said very little during the drive.
I remember now that he was very white, and that he jerked his shoulder and head even more than usual.
But when I had unlocked the front door and opened it everything seemed quiet and in order.
The dogs came to meet us, Isabel with corpulent dignity, Jock effusively.
The servants were all at the courthouse, and the house was very still.
Laura turned at once to the drawing room on the left, and as I had restored the key to the cabinet some time before, she unlocked the center door without difficulty.
The cabinet is a fine example of Louis Fourteenth, of satinwood and kingswood.
It is really a small secretary; that is, a shelf draws out and forms a writing desk, and above are three doors.
The two outer doors are of glass, and behind this glass are my mother’s old Chelsea figures.
The center door, however, is solid, and on this is fastened a very handsome oval piece of ormolu.
It was the center door which Laura opened, and I then noticed for the first time that this ormolu was fastened to the walnut lining of the door inside by some dozen very small bronze rosettes, ostensibly covering the heads of the screws.
There was one in the center also, and thus they formed what might be interpreted as a clock dial.
“Five o’clock right, seven o’clock left, press on six,” said Laura, and did so.
“Give me your knife, Wallie.”
But Wallie’s knife had a broken point.
I remember that now, although it meant nothing to me at the time; I remember that, and that his hands were shaking when he tried to open it.