The Green Jacket/Chapter 11

seamstress went to the French window and stepped onto the terrace. Her arms and back were stiff from the unaccustomed work, and she moved them gently, freeing the muscles and drawing in deep breaths of fresh air. She paced once or twice across the terrace, thinking swiftly. The woman's look puzzled her; there had been something almost hostile in it as she turned away. But perhaps it was only imagination—a detective grew to think things significant that other people passed over as natural.

She returned to the sewing-room and gathered up the pile of mending, and taking the chintz bag on her arm went softly into the hall. There was no one in sight, and after a moment's hesitation she turned toward the stairs at the back of the house. She had decided to use sometimes one stair case, and sometimes the other. The servants would soon become accustomed to seeing her in different parts of the house. The sooner she established her habits, the better.

But she saw no one as she went up the stairs and along the wide corridor toward the front that led to Mrs. Mason's room. Through the open door she could see the pile of work—stockings and sheets and pillow-slips—laid out for her on the bed. But she passed the open door and went leisurely on to the big window at the end of the hall, and stood for a minute looking out into the grounds.

When she turned back slowly her glance fell on an open door at the right, and she checked a swift start of surprise. Instead of the chintz hangings and flowered wallpaper she expected to see, her gaze had encountered walls lined with books; leather bindings covered the walls from floor to ceiling, and books lay everywhere on tables and chairs. On either side the fireplace stood two great leather chairs, and between them a large writing-table. It was a man's room—the room of a man of scholarly and æsthetic taste.

The impression conveyed to her between the two steps with which she passed the open door could not have been more vivid had she seen the owner of the room himself sitting in one of the deep chairs before the fireplace. The room revealed a personality of unusual interest.

She passed down the hall, thinking swiftly. Nothing in Mrs. Mason's appearance had prepared her for the character of the house as a whole, and least of all for this room she had just glimpsed into. It was evidently the inmost possession of the man whose personality planned and dominated the whole. She recalled the owner of the house. There was something almost ascetic in the tall, thin figure she had seen at a distance; but the open door revealed a quiet charm and richness of interest in the life of the man who possessed it.

At the door of Mrs. Mason's room she paused with a swift glance up and down the hall. Then she stepped swiftly in, and crossed to the bed and laid down the pile of garments she carried on her arm. She looked back to the door; the key was in the lock; and as she stepped back and closed it, the lock shot noiselessly in place while her other hand released the handle of the door. Not a sound had broken the quiet, and her step on the floor was very light. She drew the two keys from the chintz bag on her arm and turned to the cabinet by the door, stooping softly to examine it. The lacquer-work about the escutcheon of the keyhole was unmarred by any scratch or any trace of tampering. Even under the glass she applied to it only the perfect finish of its age-worn surface was revealed. It was a beautiful specimen of early Japanese art, and her eye dwelt on it appreciatively before her fingers inserted the key and the door swung open on the multitude of drawers and little compartments with which it was filled.

Her eye ran quickly over the surface of the drawers. It paused at one on the right that showed a little dull in the full light of the window behind her. Her hand reached to it and drew it out, revealing a bronze jewel-case within. She lifted it noiselessly and carried it to the window and unlocked it. Brilliance and color flashed from the lifted tray. Diamonds glittered in pins and rings, and on one side a magnificent bracelet glowed with slumberous stones. They darted red, gleaming eyes as she lifted it and turned it in the light. She stood looking down at the wealth shining out from the box, thinking a little grimly of the foolishness that led women to keep such temptation for burglary always at hand, close to the very place they slept.

She glanced toward the bed, where the work for the new seamstress lay. She must not waste time. She had assured herself that what she expected was true—neither the cabinet nor the box itself had been tampered with. Whoever had removed the necklace from the box had had access to it at some time when the box was unlocked.

She removed the key, examining it carefully. It was a curious, foreign design—but a duplicate could easily have been made. She dropped it into the bag on her arm. Without doubt the box was self-locking. She reached her hand to the lid to close it, and stayed the hand. A sound light as air had caught her ear. She turned from the window and her glance ran quickly to the cabinet and to the door beside it. The silvered knob of the door was turning slowly, creeping breath by breath in a noiseless circle to the right. It came to a stop at last, and she could almost feel the tension and pressure of unseen fingers upon it. She held her breath, watching it retrace the circle and come to rest. She moved silently to the cabinet and replaced the box, locking the door upon it and dropping the key in her bag. Then with a single swift movement she had reached the door of the room and unlocked and thrown it back, stepping quickly into the hall.

There was no one in sight in either direction—no motion of drapery, no hint that some one had hurried swiftly down the hall; on either side the open doors led into vacant rooms. What might lurk in them—concealed by furniture, crouching behind the ample folds of chintz, she had no means of knowing and no time at present to determine. She gathered up her work from the bed and stepped into the hall, making her way quickly past the open doors. She did not glance into the rooms on either side as she passed them, and she did not return again to the upper floor. Whatever suspicion had been roused against her must have time to subside. And perhaps there was no suspicion. A curious maid may have seen the closed door, and tried the knob and gone away. Or the woman who had brought the tray to her

For the rest of the afternoon the seamstress sewed quietly in the room off the terrace. But her thoughts ranged the house, gathering up and focussing the impressions that had come to her out of its open, mysterious quiet, and each time her thought returned curiously to the woman who had admitted her in the morning, and who had served her luncheon, almost grudgingly, it seemed. Only once during the afternoon did she have a glimpse of her—when she came down the hall to the door at the end and stood for a moment gazing out as if looking for the return of the car. Then she disappeared into the back of the house, and Milly did not see her again. But the thought of her remained persistently, and at dinner-time when she brought in the tray and placed it on a table, Milly studied the downcast face with quick glance. There was nothing in the heavy, almost sullen, lines to reward her. The woman did not look at her or speak. Perhaps in the half-dimness, coming from the lighted hall, she had not seen her where she sat across the room. She went quickly out.

The gas was lighted through the lower rooms and Milly could see occasional figures come and go. A short, stout man, a little bent and bald, and wearing evening clothes, hovered in the distance. A trim maid came now and then and received instructions from him and went away on swift feet. Sitting in the dusk of her sewing-room, Milly watched the byplay and pondered on the ways of this strange household in which, with a butler and maid, the woman who had admitted her in the morning was detailed to make desserts and to carry meals to a sewing-woman who happened to be in the house. She glanced at the table where her dinner stood waiting, and rose and put away her work. She closed the doors into the hall before she lighted the gas and sat down to the ample dinner the woman had provided for her. Evidently her distrust, or dislike, of the new seamstress would not take the form of starvation diet for her.