Then too she “didn’t want to be mixed up in any trouble.”
She might lose her position, and in addition she had a childish fear of the police.
“If they knew I’d been up there—”
She went to sleep finally, but at seven she went up the stairs again and opened the door.
The room had been straightened.
It looked better.
“Not just right, you know.
But things were put away.
The way the police found it.”
“And what do you think now?” Judy inquired. She had lighted a cigarette and was offering one to “Lily.” “Oh, may I?
I’d love to.
We aren’t supposed to smoke here, but every now and then I open a window and—It rests one, I think.”
“Yes, it does rest one,” said Judy politely.
“And now what were those people after?
Have you any idea?”
“Not really.
But she was in a lawyer’s office, and they get some queer things sometimes.
Letters, you know, and so on.
If she had something like that it might explain a lot.
It had to be something small, or they’d have found it.
But I’m sure I don’t know where it is, if it’s there.”
“Oh, you’ve looked?” said Judy.
“Yes.
The room’s kept locked, but my key fits it.
I suppose it’s hardly the correct thing, but she was a friend of mine—”
Her eyes filled with tears, and Judy patted her heavy shoulder.
“Of course it was the correct thing.
Perfectly correct.
As a matter of fact I’d like to go up myself and look around.
You don’t mind, do you?”
Miss Sanderson not only did not mind, but looked rather gratified.
“I’ll wait down here with the curler,” she said with a conspiratorial air, “and if I hear anything I’ll rap on the chandelier.”
I was all for waiting below, but Judy took me with her, maintaining that the very sight of me would remove her from the sneak thief class if we were discovered, and at last I consented.
Nevertheless, I was frankly trembling when we started up the stairs.
Miss Sanderson had preceded us, creeping up with a stealth which gave the entire procedure a clandestine appearance which was disquieting, to say the least.
After unlocking the door, however, she left us as noiselessly as we had come, and Judy moved the key from the outside to the inside of the door.
As we stood there in the darkness I think even Judy was uneasy, and I know that I felt like a criminal.
The house was exceedingly quiet.
Mrs. Bassett, Miss Sanderson had said, slept at the rear of the floor, but she was ill, had been for some time.
And whatever was the mysterious life of the women behind the closed doors around us, it was conducted in silence.
Judy drew the shades before she turned on the light, and then the two of us gazed at this strange room, from which Florence Gunther had started out in a checked frock and a blue coat and with a blue bag on her arm, to a sudden and unaccountable death.
It was neat now, very orderly, the daybed covered with the imitation Indian rug, her clothing still in its closet, her shoes in a row underneath.
Practical shoes, flat heeled, without coquetry, each with its wooden tree.
Judy looked depressed and angry.
“She had so little,” she said.
“Why not have let her alone?”
But she was businesslike, too.
“No use looking in the obvious places,” she announced. “They’ll have seen to that. Something small.
I suppose the police took it for granted that they got it, whatever it was.
But if Lily is right—! If I wanted to hide a paper here, where would I put it?