"She has not, sir, at least not without my knowing, and I daresay she didn't want to risk that. Aline, though—that's a woman I never could stick, sir, I don't mind telling you!—Aline has been prowling around the end of the hall near your room a couple of times. I caught her at it, and she pretended to be looking out of the window."
"You think she was trying to get into my room?" Roger asked thoughtfully.
"I'm pretty sure of it, sir."
Roger drank his coffee in silence, mentally reviewing this information.
"There is another little thing I've noticed, sir," Chalmers continued. "There are a number of keys gone from doors about the house. I've counted seven missing, and I could take my oath they were in the locks earlier in the evening. There's never any reason for taking them out."
"Then you think Aline has taken them to see if any of them will open my door?"
"That's it, sir. I could have told her there's no two keys alike in this house," he added grimly. "She came to me very friendly like at about ten o'clock, and tried to pump me to find out what I knew. Had the nurse come to, and was she able to talk yet? Was it true she had staggered in so drunk she couldn't see proper, and had fallen in a heap on the floor? Things like that, sir. Not much change she got out of me. I shut her up in no time, sir. I knew what she was after."
Hours passed. Roger sat on alone in the half-lighted room, analysing his impressions and going over in his mind the whole course of his father's illness, from the moment he had entered the house. To save his life he could not think of one suspicious circumstance, nothing that appeared even particularly unusual. Yet, no! What about that cablegram which was never sent? With a start he recalled it, wondering how it could have slipped his memory till now. What if Thérèse had had another and more vital reason than he had thought of for keeping him away? Was it possible she had been afraid to have him in the house? It was a fact that he alone knew her relations with Holliday, he alone had always to an annoying extent seen through her. He recalled with a feeling akin to nausea her recent attempts to placate him, to turn him from an enemy into an ally. Had she done that in order to blind him the more completely to what was going on? The idea suggested a degree of calculating inhumanity appalling to contemplate. He lived over again the moment when she had clung to him caressingly and pressed her perfumed cheek against his breast…. How could he have been such an utter fool? He set his teeth with a feeling of intolerable disgust….
A smothered scream from the bed caused him to start up.
Esther had suddenly sat up in bed, bolt-upright, her eyes glazed with terror, one thin hand clapped over her open mouth.