“She’s out with the dogs, and it’s getting late.”
To my intense surprise she stopped perfectly still.
“When did she go out?” she said sharply.
“At seven.
That’s almost three hours.”
She moved on again, but in silence.
The front door was open, and in the light from it I thought she looked rather pale.
At that moment however Wallie appeared in the doorway, and suddenly she brightened.
“I wouldn’t worry, Miss Bell.
She can take care of herself.
And she has a key!”
She glanced at me rather pertly, favored Wallie with a smile as she went in, greeting Judy with considerable manner—she seemed always to be afraid that Judy might patronize her—and teetered up the stairs on the high heels she affected.
Wallie gazed after her as she went up.
At the turn she paused. I saw her looking down at us intently, at Judy, at myself, at Wallie.
Mostly at Wallie.
“I wouldn’t worry about Miss Gittings,” she said.
“She’s sure to be all right.”
“You might see if she’s in her room, Mary,” Judy suggested.
“She may have come in while we were in the drawing room.”
We could hear her humming as she went on up the stairs, and, shortly after she called down to say that Sarah was not in her room but that it was unlocked.
“That’s queer,” said Judy.
“She always locks it, doesn’t she?”
We could hear a sort of ironic amusement in Mary’s voice as she replied. “Not so queer this evening,” she said.
“She knew I was out!
Her key’s in the door, on the outside, but she forgot to take it.”
I do not remember much about the hour between ten and eleven.
Wallie was not willing to go until Sarah returned, and Judy and he worked over the cabinet.
The house was very still.
For a time, as I sat in the library, I could hear Mary moving about on the third floor, drawing a bath—she was very fastidious in everything that pertained to herself—and finally going into her room and closing the door.
But by eleven Judy had given up all hope of a secret drawer in the cabinet and was yawning, and a few moments after that Wallie left and she wandered up to bed.
But I still waited in the library.
I had a queer sense of apprehension, but I laid it to the events of the evening, and after a time—I am no longer young, and I tire easily—I fell into a doze.
When I roused it was one in the morning, and Sarah had not come back.
She would have roused me if she had, and she would have put out the lights.
Nevertheless I went upstairs and opened her door.
The room was dark.
I called to her, cautiously, but there was no answer, and no stertorous breathing to show that she was asleep.
For the first time I was really alarmed about her.
I went downstairs again, stopping in my room for a wrap, and in the dining room for my rings, which I had almost forgotten.
Then I went out on the street.
The dog, or dogs, were still barking at intervals, and at last I started toward the sound.
Chapter Four
IT IS ONE OF the inevitable results of tragedy that one is always harking back to it, wondering what could have been done to avert it.
I find myself going over and over the events of that night, so simple in appearance, so dreadful in result.
Suppose I had turned on Sarah’s light that night? Would I have found her murderer in the room?
Was the faint sound I heard the movement of her curtain in the wind, as I had thought, or something much more terrible?
Again, instead of sending Joseph upstairs to search, what if I had had the police called and the house surrounded?
Still, what could I have done for Sarah?
Nothing.
Nothing at all.