Who had been locked in the clothes chute?
Some one unfamiliar with the house, evidently. Only two people missing from the household, Rosie and Gertrude. Rosie had been at the lodge. Therefore–but was it Gertrude? Might it not have been the mysterious intruder again?
Who had accosted Rosie on the drive?
Again–perhaps the nightly visitor. It seemed more likely some one who suspected a secret at the lodge. Was Louise under surveillance?
Who had passed Louise on the circular staircase?
Could it have been Thomas? The key to the east entry made this a possibility. But why was he there, if it were indeed he?
Who had made the hole in the trunk-room wall?
It was not vandalism. It had been done quietly, and with deliberate purpose. If I had only known how to read the purpose of that gaping aperture what I might have saved in anxiety and mental strain!
Why had Louise left her people and come home to hide at the lodge?
There was no answer, as yet, to this, or to the next questions.
Why did both she and Doctor Walker warn us away from the house?
Who was Lucien Wallace?
What did Thomas see in the shadows the night he died?
What was the meaning of the subtle change in Gertrude?
Was Jack Bailey an accomplice or a victim in the looting of the Traders’ Bank?
What all-powerful reason made Louise determine to marry Doctor Walker?
The examiners were still working on the books of the Traders’ Bank, and it was probable that several weeks would elapse before everything was cleared up. The firm of expert accountants who had examined the books some two months before testified that every bond, every piece of valuable paper, was there at that time. It had been shortly after their examination that the president, who had been in bad health, had gone to California. Mr. Bailey was still ill at the Knickerbocker, and in this, as in other ways, Gertrude’s conduct puzzled me. She seemed indifferent, refused to discuss matters pertaining to the bank, and never, to my knowledge, either wrote to him or went to see him.
Gradually I came to the conclusion that Gertrude, with the rest of the world, believed her lover guilty, and–although I believed it myself, for that matter–I was irritated by her indifference. Girls in my day did not meekly accept the public’s verdict as to the man they loved.
But presently something occurred that made me think that under Gertrude’s surface calm there was a seething flood of emotions.
Tuesday morning the detective made a careful search of the grounds, but he found nothing. In the afternoon he disappeared, and it was late that night when he came home. He said he would have to go back to the city the following day, and arranged with Halsey and Alex to guard the house.
Liddy came to me on Wednesday morning with her black silk apron held up like a bag, and her eyes big with virtuous wrath. It was the day of Thomas’ funeral in the village, and Alex and I were in the conservatory cutting flowers for the old man’s casket. Liddy is never so happy as when she is making herself wretched, and now her mouth drooped while her eyes were triumphant.
“I always said there were plenty of things going on here, right under our noses, that we couldn’t see,” she said, holding out her apron.
“I don’t see with my nose,” I remarked. “What have you got there?”
Liddy pushed aside a half-dozen geranium pots, and in the space thus cleared she dumped the contents of her apron–a handful of tiny bits of paper. Alex had stepped back, but I saw him watching her curiously.
“Wait a moment, Liddy,” I said. “You have been going through the library paper-basket again!”
Liddy was arranging her bits of paper with the skill of long practice and paid no attention.
“Did it ever occur to you,” I went on, putting my hand over the scraps, “that when people tear up their correspondence, it is for the express purpose of keeping it from being read?”
“If they wasn’t ashamed of it they wouldn’t take so much trouble, Miss Rachel,” Liddy said oracularly. “More than that, with things happening every day, I consider it my duty. If you don’t read and act on this, I shall give it to that Jamieson, and I’ll venture he’ll not go back to the city to-day.”