Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/152

 The place was deserted. He did not need an inspection of the rooms to convince him that there was nobody in the house.

“Nobody alive, that is,” he commented to himself.

In one of the bedrooms he found the door of the closet open, and the scattered condition of the clothes, both in the closet and around the room persuaded him that the occupant or occupants had left in a hurry. The dresser top was swept bare of toilet articles, and lying on the floor was a timetable.

They had left in a hurry, certainly. So far, so good; but where did his employer come in here. Had he left with them? And if so, where had they gone?

The timetable gave him a slight hint. It was a railroad having its terminus in Norfolk, Virginia. He knew that in Virginia the Pomeroys had an estate, somewhere outside of Hampton, which is very near Norfolk. Had they gone down there?

Probably. But would Mr. Morley have gone down there with them so suddenly without leaving with him some word of his travels? He had to admit that, based on past performances, that was unlikely. At any rate, he had never done anything of that nature before.

This led to another train of thought. Was Valentine Morley with Miss Pomeroy? He had decided that his employer had been lured out of his house—certainly it wasn’t Miss Pomeroy who had done the luring. No, it was quite likely that Miss Pomeroy had departed without his master, for the simple reason that his master was somewhere else at the time.

But where? Eddie’s brow furrowed in thought. Who would find it necessary or expedient to lure Mr. Morley out of his house? Why, the man who wanted to steal the books. Who was that? Eddie’s brow