I hid a love letter once from mother, in my can of tooth powder.”
Poor Florence’s tooth powder was on her washstand, but although with much difficulty and a pair of scissors Judy finally worked the top off, she found nothing there.
Then she examined the bottles on the dresser; one dark blue one interested her, but it contained an eye lotion and nothing else.
The wall paper—“she might have loosened the paper and then glued it back again”—showed no signs of being tampered with, and the baseboard was close to the wall.
She reached the clothes closet, then, by elimination, and with small hope.
“They’ll have done that first,” she said.
Apparently she was right.
No pocket, no lining, no hem of any garment revealed so much as a hint. Save one thing, which at first looked as though our search was useless.
There was an old pocketbook in the closet, and she brought it out and examined it.
“Look here!” she said.
“She’s carried something in this pocketbook, hidden.
See where she’s cut the lining and sewed it up again?”
“It’s not sewed now.”
“No,” she said slowly.
“Of course, if she transferred it to the blue bag—!”
But time was passing, and I was growing impatient.
The whole excursion seemed to me to be an impertinent meddling, and so I was about to say to Judy, when there came a sharp rap from the chandelier beneath our feet.
Neither one of us moved, and I know I hardly breathed.
Some one was coming up the stairs, moving very quietly.
The steps halted just outside the door, and I motioned wildly to Judy to turn out the light.
But in a moment they moved on again, toward the rear of the house, and I breathed again.
After that we locked the door, and Judy matter-of-factly went on with her search.
She was on the floor now, carefully inspecting Florence’s shoes.
“I used to hide my cigarettes in my slippers,” she stated.
“Mother raised hell about my smoking.
I’ll just look these over and then we’ll go.”
“And the sooner the better,” I retorted testily.
“If you think I’m enjoying this, I’m not.
I’ve never spent a night I enjoyed less.”
But she was paying no attention.
She had found, in a pair of flat black shoes, leather insoles designed to support the arches.
Glanced at casually each was a part of the shoe, but Judy’s sensitive well-manicured fingers were digging at one of them diligently.
“Flat feet, poor dear,” she said, and jerked out the insole.
It was, I believe a quite common affair of its sort, although I had never seen one before.
In the forward portion was a pocket, into which fitted a small pad of wood, designed to raise the forward arch.
Behind this Judy dug but a small scrap of paper, neatly folded.
I think we were both trembling when she drew it out and held it up.
But without opening it she dropped it inside the neck of her frock and finding a pin, fastened it there.
She wears so little underneath that this precaution was necessary.
“No time now to be curious, Elizabeth Jane,” she said.
“We have to get out of here, and to stall off Lily.”
Everything was still quiet as we relocked the door and went down.
Miss Sanderson was peering out of her door and beckoned us in, but Judy shook her head.
“They made a pretty clean sweep,” she said, “but thank you anyhow.
You’ve been very sweet to us.”
“He didn’t try to get in, did he?”
“Somebody stopped outside the door and then went on.
Who was it?”
“I couldn’t see.
It was a man though.