The detective went away immediately, and to Gertrude and me was left the woman’s part, to watch and wait. By luncheon nothing had been found, and I was frantic. I went up-stairs to Halsey’s room finally, from sheer inability to sit across from Gertrude any longer, and meet her terror-filled eyes.
Liddy was in my dressing-room, suspiciously red-eyed, and trying to put a right sleeve in a left armhole of a new waist for me. I was too much shaken to scold.
“What name did that woman in the kitchen give?” she demanded, viciously ripping out the offending sleeve.
“Bliss. Mattie Bliss,” I replied.
“Bliss. M. B. Well, that’s not what she has on he suitcase. It is marked N. F. C.”
The new cook and her initials troubled me not at all. I put on my bonnet and sent for what the Casanova liveryman called a “stylish turnout.” Having once made up my mind to a course of action, I am not one to turn back. Warner drove me; he was plainly disgusted, and he steered the livery horse as he would the Dragon Fly, feeling uneasily with his left foot for the clutch, and working his right elbow at an imaginary horn every time a dog got in the way.
Warner had something on his mind, and after we had turned into the road, he voiced it.
“Miss Innes,” he said. “I overheard a part of a conversation yesterday that I didn’t understand. It wasn’t my business to understand it, for that matter. But I’ve been thinking all day that I’d better tell you. Yesterday afternoon, while you and Miss Gertrude were out driving, I had got the car in some sort of shape again after the fire, and I went to the library to call Mr. Innes to see it. I went into the living-room, where Miss Liddy said he was, and half-way across to the library I heard him talking to some one. He seemed to be walking up and down, and he was in a rage, I can tell you.”
“What did he say?”
“The first thing I heard was–excuse me, Miss Innes, but it’s what he said, `The damned rascal,’ he said, `I’ll see him in’– well, in hell was what he said, `in hell first.’ Then somebody else spoke up; it was a woman. She said, `I warned them, but they thought I would be afraid.'”
“A woman! Did you wait to see who it was?”
“I wasn’t spying, Miss Innes,” Warner said with dignity. “But the next thing caught my attention. She said, `I knew there was something wrong from the start. A man isn’t well one day, and dead the next, without some reason.’ I thought she was speaking of Thomas.”
“And you don’t know who it was!” I exclaimed. “Warner, you had the key to this whole occurrence in your hands, and did not use it!”
However, there was nothing to be done. I resolved to make inquiry when I got home, and in the meantime, my present errand absorbed me. This was nothing less than to see Louise Armstrong, and to attempt to drag from her what she knew, or suspected, of Halsey’s disappearance. But here, as in every, direction I turned, I was baffled.
A neat maid answered the bell, but she stood squarely in the doorway, and it was impossible to preserve one’s dignity and pass her.
“Miss Armstrong is very ill, and unable to see any one,” she said. I did not believe her.
“And Mrs. Armstrong–is she also ill?”
“She is with Miss Louise and can not be disturbed.”
“Tell her it is Miss Innes, and that it is a matter of the greatest importance.”
“It would be of no use, Miss Innes. My orders are positive.”
At that moment a heavy step sounded on the stairs. Past the maid’s white-strapped shoulder I could see a familiar thatch of gray hair, and in a moment I was face to face with Doctor Stewart. He was very grave, and his customary geniality was tinged with restraint.
“You are the very woman I want to see,” he said promptly. “Send away your trap, and let me drive you home. What is this about your nephew?”