Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/93

Rh dissatisfied woman, that had made her separate herself from her husband. The photographer's name was stamped in one corner, and the date—1894, the year after Alan had been born.

But Alan felt that the picture and the condition of her rooms across the hall did not shed any light on the relations between her and Benjamin Corvet; rather they obscured them; for his father neither had put the picture away from him and devoted her rooms to other uses, nor had he kept the rooms arranged and ready for her return and her picture so that he would see it. He would have done one or the other of these things, Alan thought, if it were she his father had wronged—or, at least, if it were only she.

Alan reclosed the case, and put the picture down; then he went into the room with the desk. He tried the cover of the desk, but it appeared to be locked; after looking around vainly for a key, he tried again, exerting a little more force, and this time the top went up easily, tearing away the metal plate into which the claws of the lock clasped and the two long screws which had held it. He examined the lock, surprised, and saw that the screws must have been merely set into the holes; scars showed where a chisel or some metal implement had been thrust in under the top to force it up. The pigeonholes and little drawers in the upper part of the desk, as he swiftly opened them, he found entirely empty. He hurried to the cabinet; the drawers of the cabinet too had been forced, and very recently; for the scars and the splinters of wood were clean and fresh. These drawers and the drawers in the lower part of the desk either were empty, or the papers in them had been disarranged and tumbled in confusion, as though some