Joan's Enemies/Chapter 8

HAT a blessing trousers must be!” murmured Miss Gosling, surmounting the sill with anything but agility. Safe once more on the floor of her room, she heaved a sigh of relief. Then hurriedly but quietly she lifted in the slim chair which had served as a precarious step between the sill and the ground, closed the window and drew down the Venetian blind. She switched on a light, rubbed her eyes and picked from the carpet the letter which she had thrown in before making her entrance. Blinkingly she read the superscription.

“How very extraordinary!” she said under her breath. “Dear me, I shall have more than ever to think about now! What a life it is, to be sure!”

It seemed to her that much time must have elapsed since that violent ringing had roused her from her communion with the darkness and caused her to make for the door. As a matter of fact, the whole adventure had occupied barely four minutes. On hearing the scared housemaid's summons to Joan, she had felt that her presence might be acceptable to the girl. But as she was about to pass the library door, a sound from within—a slight jingle—brought her to a standstill, all on the alert. Soon a second sound came to her pricked-up ears. She recognized it, faint though it was. Since her arrival at Elm House she had heard it on quite a number of occasions. There is no other sound just the same as that produced by the opening of a safe drawer.

Her hand, which had gone forth involuntarily, came back without having touched the door. Softly she returned to her room, noiselessly locked herself in and almost silently proceeded to get herself out of the window. Then with her outstretched hand touching the wall she moved along the strip of grass bordering the bed, cautiously and hopefully.

UT on reaching the corner of the house, she came face to face with disappointment. The blaze—it seemed a blaze to her—from the library window informed her that the blind was up. What madness, then, for her to attempt to play the spy in that direction! “H'm!” she muttered, recoiling, “what's to be done now?”

Indecision was not a failing of Griselda Gosling's, but for once she felt at a loss, standing there in the dark, peering furtively round the angle at that so-distant yet so-near glow of electric light.

Then a startling thing happened. Into the glow came a slender hand and wrist. The hand held a letter; the wrist bore a watch-bracelet which the spinster had admired earlier in the evening. The hand fluttered the letter, let it go and disappeared. Almost immediately thereafter the light went out. And as swiftly the spinster's indecision gave place to determination. “I must have that letter!”

And now it was in her hand!

She had seen the late Mr. Cran's big, clumsy writing often enough lately to know it on this envelope. The green-penciled date also had a familiar look: it was March 3, and the unusual formation of the “3” suggested Joan at once. Moreover, there was at the present moment a green pencil in the pen-tray on the library writing-table. Therefore it was not to be doubted that Miss Lottie Lismore had abstracted the letter from her friend's safe. But why?

Questions began to pour into the lively mind of Miss Griselda Gosling as she stood in her room staring at that envelope. Minutes flew past. What was her immediate duty? Take the letter straightway to Joan and confound the girl's false friend? Yes; but would that be the best way of getting at the meaning of the theft? Quite the reverse, she decided at once.

ISS GOSLING'S sense of expediency began an argument with her sense of duty. It was fated to be brief, however. A slight jarring sound intruded on the silence. Wheeling about, she perceived that behind the blind the window was being raised from the outside. Swiftly she stepped backward to the door, but not before two of the laths were turned flat and between them protruded a shining object—unmistakably, even to a spinster's eyes, a revolver.

“Kindly throw me that letter,” said a smooth voice.

Miss Gosling may have been afraid of the weapon, but the cool command had the odd effect of making her exceedingly angry. At the same time it flashed into her mind that of the thousand villains in her reading-experience, not one had actually fired at a woman.

“Certainly not!” she snapped.

“I will count three,” said the voice, “and then I will shoot. Stop! Don't you try to open that door!”

“I wasn't,” she retorted, letting fall the key. “The door's locked,” she added as with an awkward movement of her foot she pushed the key under it.

“The letter, quick!”

The letter, too, fell from Miss Gosling's fingers. Another awkward movement, and it had followed the key.

“Now shoot away!” she said faintly yet defiantly.

“Damn!” said the voice, no longer smooth. The revolver disappeared.

“Oh, for my smelling-salts!” she murmured after a minute had gone by without anything happening. “Thank heaven, he didn't fire—though I don't suppose he ever intended to..... wonder whether I can get the key back.”

ITH the help of her comb she was successful. She then opened the door and recovered the letter—scarcely a moment too soon. Her niece was coming from the hall and calling for her. Miss Gosling hid the letter in her dress, hoping she was not looking as pale as she felt.

“Have you had a visitor, Joan?” she managed to inquire.

Joan laughed. “Yes. I'm sorry you did not meet him—a police officer doing his best to make our flesh creep with stories of suspicious characters in the district. I'm afraid the maids will be giving notice..... Come in,” she added, as she switched on the library lights. “I've only got to lock up the safe. Fancy leaving it open like this, and the window open too, with those dreadful suspicious characters in the district!”

“Hadn't you better take the warning seriously and see whether your valuables in there are all right?”

“What nonsense!”

Miss Gosling moved toward her niece. “I'm afraid I sha'n't sleep unless I know for certain that everything is all right.”

“Oh, well, in that case—” Joan, much amused, unlocked and opened the right-hand drawer, ran through its contents and quickly counted some loose notes and gold. “Quite all right!” was her verdict. She transferred Lottie's packet to the back of the drawer before closing it.

“That little jewel-case on the shelf,” pursued the other, pointing.

“Don't keep jewels there.”

“Have you no valuables in the other drawer?”

“Nothing that would appeal to a burglar.”

“Better look, and then I'll perhaps sleep without having a nightmare.”

“You are determined that I shall have a fearful night, at any rate,” said the girl lightly: But she became graver while she removed the bunch from the right drawer and fitted a key in.the left. She drew open the latter and shut and locked it again. “Yes, yes, all right there also,” she murmured, proceeding to close the ponderous door.

Now though the left-hand drawer had remained open for but a bare instant, Miss Gosling's bright eyes had discerned a yellow envelope bearing the words: “Letter for Douglas Grant.” In order to conceal her excitement, she moved over to the window. For a moment she peered out; then she turned to retrace her steps. As she did so, her eye was caught by a tiny thing on the dark, polished flooring at her feet. She picked it up and appeared to drop it out of the window.

HE strolled idly toward the fireplace, and a glance at the several glasses of flowers informed her that there was no yellow rose in the room. At the same time her faculty of observation reminded her that the only yellow roses in the garden grew almost under her bedroom window.

So, after all, somebody had entered the library by the window—somebody's shoe in all likelihood had conveyed the yellow petal now hidden in her hand from the place where it fell to the place where she found it. Surely it was her duty to tell Joan everything forthwith. Yes, but—well, she would “sleep on it” first.

A couple of maids came in to close the shutters.

“Let's go to the drawing-room,” said Joan, after they had very willingly performed the office and retired. “Lottie's taxi will be here presently. She has become quite nervous, poor girl. This heat is absurd so late in the year—not that it worries me.”

“I've been feeling a bit upset myself to-night,” the spinster remarked, still uneasy lest she should be looking ghastly.

“Then we'll have a room upstairs made ready for you at once. After that policeman's warning—”

“Please, no! I'd rather be stuffy than change my bed. I'm not in the least nervous.”

ELL?” demanded Lismore, wheeling upon his daughter as her taxi sped away.

She clutched his arm, whispering:

“I didn't find out anything about a telegram, though I did my best and all you told me, but I found a letter addressed to Douglas Grant—to be destroyed in six months; and I dropped it out of the window. And oh, I wish—”

“Thank God!” exclaimed Harold Lismore, and no doubt he meant it.

An hour later he dashed panting into the office.

“Congratulations, Stormont! You are a most wonderful fellow! I'll never doubt you again—never! But I've lived ten years this evening, so you'll forgive my impatience. I've no doubt you have the contents of the thing by heart by this time. For heaven's sake, let me have a sight of it!” Flushed and unsteady, he stood looking down on the slight, dapper figure in the easy-chair.

Stormont met his gaze with a cool, faint smile.

“I'm so sorry to disappoint you, Lismore,” he said, “but as it happens, I haven't got the letter.”

Lismore's foolish laugh was followed by a dead silence lasting for many seconds. Then the large face purpled, and in a bellow come the word:

“Liar!”

“Don't be silly,” remarked Stormont. “I haven't so much as touched the letter. I have merely seen it in another's hand.”

“Lottie told me she put it out of the window for you, and I—I believe my daughter.”

“Quite right! Miss Lismore dropped it from the window, but ill-luck intervened in the shape of a friend of yours. You had better take a seat.”

ISMORE stumbled to the opposite chair, and Stormont told of Miss Gosling, her capture of the letter and his attempt to get it from her.

When he had ended, Lismore said heavily: “So we are discovered and ruined, thanks to your want of foresight. You ought to have arranged things so that—”

“Don't drivel. For myself, I don't feel that I have fallen under suspicion at all; and as for you, there may still be a way out. You have simply got to manage your daughter. She was acting blindly in the interests of a young man whom she believes to have been done out of his rights, and whose friend was waiting in the garden—”

“Sacrifice my daughter!”

“You have already done so.”

“Damn you, Stormont!”

“I have already asked you to refrain from being silly. Let us understand each other. We still want that platinum, don't we?”

“The platinum! Stormont, it's out of reach now—now and forever!” groaned Lismore.

“Not at all! We have at least two chances left. First, we may yet secure the letter—”

“You've gone crazy. It is back in the safe by now, and do you imagine we or Lottie will ever get another opportunity there?”

“If it's back in the safe, I shouldn't wonder.” From the side-pockets of his jacket Stormont drew forth two flat metal boxes.

“It was a huge risk, but immediately after the encounter with your friend Miss Gosling I managed to enter the library and obtained impressions—my hands were fairly steady, I assure you—of the keys.”

“Good Lord!” muttered Lismore in grudging admiration, “And the other chance?”

“Douglas Grant's return.”

“You mean we should at least get our shares of the platinum?”

Stormont, gazing at the boxes, ignored the question. “Douglas Grant,” he said slowly, “will be home within three weeks from now.”

Lismore sprang to his feet. “How on earth can you know? What have you been doing behind my back?”

“Working for your good. Sit down. Don't gesticulate. You wouldn't earn ten dollars a week on the stage. In the safe was a little jewel-box. I piled on the risk by stopping thirty seconds longer to look into it. There was a telegram from Grant. I heard a door open near at hand, but I read it. He is in Canada. Been ill. But he leaves for New York soon.”