Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/215

 was the row of three brass-lipped letter boxes with the buttons beside them, with the cards of the tenants of the first and second floor and, on top, the card with the name of Mrs. Russell. The sight made Marjorie sicken, but she pressed the third button.

Almost immediately—in contrast with that night—the buzzer at the lock announced that the catch was being released and she pushed open the door and climbed the stairs up which Billy and Gregg and she had run. But her sensations now suddenly jumped from repeating her terrors of that night; and she thought of her father treading this stair carpet on previous occasions, sometimes with Mrs. Russell beside him—doubtless—and sometimes arriving alone; and her mind attacked wretched details such as whether he carried a key to the door below and to that ahead or whether he had always rung to be admitted.

The door at the top swung back when Marjorie reached the third floor and, catching breath as she looked in, she confronted a large, competent-looking matron of gray-haired fifty.

"Come in!" this woman instantly invited and Marjorie entered and let the matron close the door. Marjorie glanced toward the bedroom where her father had been carried after he was shot; for a moment she was in the grip of her emotions when she found him there unconscious and apparently dying; then they let go of her and her mind, without bidding, jumped again.

"Who are you?" she demanded of the woman.

"Who did you come to see?" the matron returned. There was almost nothing distinctive about her; just woman, about a hundred and sixty pounds in a brown, "stout" size, ready-made suit; broad sensible shoes; big hands, clean but marked by work. Her face was