CHAPTER XVIII
Frances Candler waited until complete quiet reigned over the house. Then she noiselessly opened her door and peered up and down the darkened hallway.
A sudden thought came to her, as she stood there in the silence, and, slipping back to her room, she took first a hot-water bottle out of her nurse’s bag, and then a hypodermic syringe from its neat little morocco case. Miss Annie Seabrooke, she decided, had been making melancholy use of her knowledge of drugs. That enlightened young lady was, obviously, addicted to the use of morphine, for beside the syringe-case Frances found a little bottle bearing its telltale chemical formula: C17 H19 NO3.
She removed the screw-top from the graduated “barrel,” and in its place adjusted the glistening little hollow needle. Then she carefully filled the graduated tube with its innocent-looking liquid, and, wrapping the syringe in her pocket-handkerchief, thrust it into the bosom of her bodice. Many things lay ahead of her, and before the night was out even this might be of use. She devoutly hoped not—yet the present moment, she warned herself, was no time for hesitations and compunctious half-measures.
The hot-water bottle she carried openly in her hand, as she once more softly opened the door and crept out into the half-lighted hallway.
They had given her a room on the third floor, a concession, she imagined, to the established dignity of her profession. Most of the servants slept on the fourth floor. It had, accordingly, been by way of the front stairs that the bibulous English butler, with more than one sidelong blink of admiration had brought her up to her quarters for the night.
She felt that she would like to find the back stairway, the stairway by which the household servants came and went.
She moved forward softly, listening a second at doorways as she passed. It crept through her mind at that moment, incongruously enough, how like her own future lay this silent and unknown house, with its dark entanglement of possibilities, its network of unknown dangers and surprises, its staid and unbetraying doors behind which so much or so little might anywhere dwell.
Then she suddenly stood transfixed, panting a little. For the sound of approaching footsteps fell on her startled ear.
To turn and run was out of the question, for she had no knowledge of where or into what she might flee. To hesitate longer would be equally fatal. Instant action only could save her. As quick as thought she opened the door on her left, and stepped inside.
“Is it you, Adolph?” a whispered voice asked quietly, out of the gloom. It was a woman’s voice—she must have been a young woman, Frances commiseratively felt—a voice that was neither startled nor unhappy.
She stood, then, in one of the servants’ rooms. She pictured to herself the different faces she had seen below stairs, though in none of them could she remember any sign or hint of what she had now stumbled upon. But the pregnancy of that muffled question gave her a flashing consciousness of the wheels within even those inner wheels in the dark and complicated mills of life.
“Hsssssh!” said the intruder softly, as she quickly swung to the door, padding it with her hand.
She stood there, waiting until the steps passed by. They were brisk, businesslike steps, those of a woman, mingled with the tinkling of a chain of keys. She surmised that it was the housekeeper, on her last rounds for the night.
She realized the peril of another minute in the room. The wiring of the house, she had already noticed, with the quickness of an expert, was both thorough and modern. Any moment the turning of a bedside button might flood the room with brilliant light and leave her there, betrayed beyond redemption.
“Sssssssh!” she said again sharply, as though in warning, and a moment later dodged out through the door, going as noiselessly as she had come.
But the ground was now dangerous, she felt; and she was glad to escape to the comparative freedom of a wider hallway, running at right angles to the one she had just left. This surely led to the back stairs, she argued, as she groped her way steadily forward. She was even debating whether it would not be better to risk the fully-lighted front stairs, rather than lose time as she was doing, when her groping hands came in contact with the cool wood of the polished balustrade.
Her foot was on the carpeted second step, when she drew back, with a terrified catch of the breath.
The familiar click of the light-button had thrown the entire hall and stairway into dazzling light. A man stood at the foot of the stairs, in his slippered feet, with his hand still on the button. He had not yet seen her; but it was too late to escape.
It was the bibulous English butler who had shown her to her room. In a crook of his arm he carried a Sauterne bottle and a nearly empty champagne magnum, carefully recorked. It was plain, Frances argued, that he was pilfering a nightcap for himself. That gave her at least a shred of courage.
She hesitated only the fraction of a second. Then she coldly and briskly descended the stairs, with her hot-water bottle in her hand.
The butler fell back a step or two at the sudden apparition, blinked at her unsteadily in the strong light, and made a gigantic effort to draw himself up.
Her first intention had been to march disdainfully past him; but this, she remembered, was out of the question. It was already midnight, or more, and for all his unsteadiness of limb he was, she knew, a shrewd and capable servant, well trained in his duties.
“Well, miss, what is it?” She could see him putting on his official attitude, just as he might draw on his serving-coat. The new nurse, apparently, took cold easily, for she still wore her galoshes.
“Which way do I go to the kitchen?” she demanded curtly.
“The kitchen, miss, is closed.” He was looking at her with his pale and beady little eyes. “What were you wanting?”
“I must have some hot water,” she answered, swaying her instruments of deliverance before her.
“There is a bathroom on your floor, miss, two doors to the right of your own door.” He spoke thickly but peremptorily. Frances could plainly see that he was not to be juggled with.
“I said hot water, not warm,” she retorted, almost angrily.
“You’ll find an electric heater in the bathroom, miss,” he added, more respectfully. She tried to wither him with a look, but it was unavailing. He even preceded her to her own door, turning the lights on and off as they went.
A moment later, as she stood biting the end of her fingers in mingled vexation and anxiety, she could hear the sound of running water. She wondered, dreadingly, if she was never to get rid of the man. As she waited she let down her hair.
The butler appeared with a steaming pitcher. He entered unsteadily, to her preoccupied “Come!” He looked at her over his shoulder as he put the steaming pitcher down, on her dresser.
“A damned fine girl!” he said to himself, as he looked at her for a second time, and seemed loath to leave. In fact, months afterward, he dilated to the second cook on the wonder of that chestnut hair, which now fairly blanketed the girl’s head and shoulders.
“Are you in pain, miss?” he asked anxiously, coming nearer to her. His attitude was cogent, and yet non-committal.
“No,” she said icily, and then she added, more discreetly, “No—not much.”
“Just—er—where does it seem to be?” he ventured, brazenly.
She was silent now, distraught with mingled revulsion and anxiety.
“Is it here, miss?” he persisted, with easy and masterful solicitude, reaching out as though to touch her with his intrepid and insolent hand. The woman drew back with a shudder, white to the very lips. This was the penalty, she told herself, for the ways she had fallen into! This was the possible degradation that even Durkin had been willing to lead her into!
She fell back from him, and stood against the wall, struggling to calm herself. For the feeling swept over her that she must scream aloud, to rend and scatter what seemed the choking mists of a nightmare. Yet her masterful tormentor, misjudging the source of her emotion, still stood blinking at her soulfully.
“Isn’t there anything I can do for you?” he wheedled, meltingly, yet militantly.
It would have been laughable, under other circumstances, Frances tried to make herself believe—this solicitous tenderness of an unmannerly English butler, placidly extending to her the gallantries of the servants’ quarters. Now, she saw only the perils of the situation.
“You can leave this room,” she said, steadily, in answer to his question. She saw the look of stolid revolt that swept over his face, and she could have wrung her hands, in the extremity of her fear.
“Won’t you want anything fetched, later?” he still persecuted her.
“Yes, yes,” she cried, desperately; “but not now!”
“When?” he demanded, wagging his head, sagely.
“The later the better!” she answered, slowly, with a final and desperate craftiness, pointing to the door.
A sudden flame of audacious heat crept into the bloated face before her. He would still have tarried an admiring moment or two, but she returned his gaze, unfalteringly, for thirty resolute seconds. He wavered, mumbled something in his throat, flung one final melting leer at her, and then turned and crept from the room, nursing his two bottles in the crook of his arm as he went.
“Oh, thank God, thank God!” she cried, with a throaty little sob.
Then a second shudder, as momentarily benumbing as a chill, swept over her from head to foot. A sudden passion to get out where she could breathe and move took its place—at whatever ultimate loss—only to get away from that house of engulfing horrors.
The mood passed, with the passing of her fright, and she shook her tired nerves together with an effort. Then still once more she groped her way out through the darkness. Now, however, there was neither trepidation nor hesitancy in her silent movements, as she flitted through the hallway and passed like a shadow down the dark stairs.
She paused only once—at the door which she knew was Lydia Van Schaick’s bedroom. In an oriel window, opposite this door, was a little alcove fitted up with bookshelves, a highly polished writing-table, and two low-seated rattan lounging-chairs. On one end of the writing-table stood a flat silver vase holding a spray of roses; on the other end stood a desk-telephone transmitter and an oblong folio of green morocco, with “Telephone Addresses” stamped in gold on its richly tooled cover. All this Frances noticed with one quick glance, as, nursing the knob in her cautious fingers, she turned it slowly.
The door was securely locked, from the inside.
One chance remained to her—by way of the little white-tiled bathroom, which she had caught a glimpse of on her first journey up through the house. This bathroom, she knew, would open into the girl’s boudoir itself.
This door was unlocked. A moment later she was inside, and the door was closed behind her. She groped carefully across the tiled flooring until her finger-tips came in contact with the second door, which creaked a little at her touch, for it stood a few inches ajar.
This door she opened, inch by inch, in terror of that tiny hinge-creak. It was a sleeping-room, she knew, the moment she had crept inside; and it held a sleeper, for the air seemed laden with its subtle yet quite immaterial fragrance of warmth—vivified, as it were, with some intangible exhalation of its sleeping life.
She listened with strained attention, hoping to overhear the quiet and regular breathing of the sleeper. But no sound reached her ears.
Through the muffled darkness she could dimly make out the open doorway leading into what must be the girl’s sitting-room. In that room, Frances felt, would stand the chiffonier.
She felt her way to the foot of the bed. There she stood, strained second after second, still listening. No sound came from the sleeper. But, awed, for reasons that lay beyond the reach of her restless thought, she could feel the presence of the other life there, as distinctly as though the room had been steeped in noon-day light; and as she waited and listened there came to her a sense of the mystery of sleep, a feeling that, after all, this briefest midnight slumber was only a lighter and younger sister to that endless sleep of death itself.
Step by step, then, she crawled and edged her way into the second vault of black silence, feeling with outstretched fingers for each piece of furniture. The mirror-laden chiffonier, some womanly intuition told her, would stand between the two heavily curtained windows.
Her feelings had not misled her. It was a well-made piece of furniture, and the top drawer opened noiselessly. This was explored with light and feverish fingers, as a blind woman might explore it. But it held nothing but laces and scattered bits of jewelry, and filmy things she could not name and place.
The second drawer opened less readily, and a key had been left in the lock. She touched the little leather boxes, deciding that they must be jewel-cases, and methodic little layers of silk and linen, and a package or two of papers. Then her fingers fell on something cold, and hard, and purposeful. It was a woman’s little revolver, obviously, with a jeweled handle. She explored the trigger-guard and the safety-latch with studious fingers, and decided that it was a 32-calibre hammerless.
Then her startled hand went up to her lips, and she wheeled noiselessly about where she stood. It could not have been a sound that she heard. It was only a presence that had made itself felt, to some sixth sense in her.
No; it was nothing that she had heard or seen, but she leaned forward and studied the surrounding gloom intently, from side to side.
Acting under some quick subliminal impulse, she picked the little hammerless weapon up out of the drawer, with one hand, while her other hand explored its farther end. This exploring hand felt feverishly along the edges of what seemed a mother-of-pearl writing-portfolio, and rummaged quickly and deftly down among laces and silk, until her fingers came in contact with the glazed surface of a little oblong box.
There could be no two thoughts as to what that box was. It was the glove-box which held that particular package for which she had already dared so much.
An awakened and alert sixth sense still warned her of something ominous and imminent; but there was neither fear nor hesitation in her actions as she drew out the little oblong box and with quick fingers thrust it, along with the toy-like hammerless, into the bosom of her dress.
Then she took three stealthy steps forward—and once again caught her breath sharply.
“Somebody is in this room!”
The intruder and thief fell back, step by step, gropingly, until she touched the chiffonier once more.
“Somebody is in this room!”
It was a woman’s voice that broke in on the black silence, a quiet but sternly challenging voice, tremulous with agitation, yet strident with the triumph of conviction, and with resolute courage.
“Who is here?”
Frances Candler did not move. She stood there, breathing a little heavily, watching. For now that sudden challenge neither thrilled nor agitated her. Consciousness, in some way, refused to react. Her tired nerves had already been strained to their uttermost; nothing now could stir her dormant senses.
Then she felt the sudden patter of bare feet on the floor.
Still she waited, wondering what this movement could mean. And, as she had felt at other times, in moments of dire peril, a sense of detached and disembodied personality seized her—a feeling that the mind had slipped its sheath of the body and was standing on watch beyond and above her. She suddenly heard the sound of a key being withdrawn. It was from the door leading into the hallway. Then, almost before she realized what it meant, the bedroom door had been slammed shut, a second key had rattled and clicked decisively in its lock—and she was a prisoner!
A moment later she caught the sound of the signal-bell in the alcove.
“Central, quickly, give me the Sixty-Seventh Street police station!” It was the same clear and determined young voice that had spoken from the doorway.
There was a silence of only a few seconds. Then Frances heard the girl give her name and house number. This she had to repeat twice, apparently, to the sleepy sergeant.
“There is a burglar in this house. Send an officer here, please, at once!”
A chill douche of apprehension seemed to restore Frances to her senses. She ran across the room and groped feverishly along the wall for the electric-light button. She could find none. But on the chiffonier was a drop-globe, and with one quick turn of the wrist the room was flooded with tinted light.
The prisoner first verified her fears; there was no possible avenue of escape by way of the windows. These, she saw at once, were out of the question.
So she stopped in front of the mirror, thinking quickly and lucidly; and for the second time that night she decided to let down her hair. She could twist the bank-notes up into a little rope, and pin her thick braids closely over them, and no one might think to search for them there. It was a slender thread, but on that thread still hung her only hope.
She tore open her dress and flung the cover from the precious glove-box, scattering the gloves about in her feverish search.
The box held nothing. The money was not there. It had been taken and hidden elsewhere. And she might never have known, until it was too late!
Then methodically and more coolly she made a second search throughout the now lighted room. But nowhere could she find the package she needed. And, after all it was too late! And in a sort of tidal wave of deluging apprehension, she suddenly understood what life from that hour forward was worth to her.
She set to work to rearrange the chiffonier, inappositely and vacuously. She even did what she could to put the room once more in order. This accomplished, she took up her hot-water bottle, and still told herself that she must not give up. Then she seated herself in a little white-and-gold rocker, and waited, quietly blazing out through her jungle of danger each different narrow avenue of expediency.
“Poor Jim!” she murmured, under her breath, with one dry sob.
The hum of voices came to her from the hallway—the servants, obviously, had been awakened. She could hear the footsteps come to a stop without, and the shuffling of slippered feet on the hardwood floor. Then came the drone of excited whisperings, the creak and jar of the doors opening and closing.
Then, remote and muffled and far-away, sounded the sharp ringing of a bell. Somebody out in the hallway gasped a relieved, “Thank heaven!”
Frances looked at herself in the mirror, adjusting her hair, and taking note of the two little circles of scarlet that had deepened and spread across her feverish cheeks.
Then she sat down once more, and swung the hot-water bottle from her forefinger, and waited.
She heard the dull thud of the front door closing and a moment later the sound of quick footsteps on the stairs.
She looked about the comfortable, rose-tinted room, with its gilded Louis clock, with its womanish signs and tokens, with its nest-like warmth and softness; she looked about her slowly and comprehensively, as though she had been taking her last view of life.
Then she rose and went to the door, for the police had arrived.