"Do get on with your reading, Sophy," broke in Cecil impatiently.
Sophy took up the book again, and Anne Harding went to Tilda for a scarf, which she returned with and put over Sophy's shoulders.
As she left the room, finally this time, she glanced keenly at the empty fireplace. She thought she had a clue.
XXIII
That night, about one o'clock, as Chesney lay heavily asleep under the influence of two grains of morphia (he only dared to take these large doses when night was coming on), the little nurse, Brownie-like and cat-foot in her grey flannel wrapper and felt shoes, stole into the room. Gaynor slept in his master's dressing-room on a cot. Anne had been given a room just opposite. The night-light burned behind a screen as in London, and over the ceiling spread huge, grotesque shadows from chairs and tables—shadows that were a horror to Chesney, in the gruesome intervals between dose and dose. They seemed solid then, those shadows—informed with a weird life. They hung bat-like from his ceiling, waiting to drop down on him. Morphia gives the sick, unreasoning fear that comes only in dreams—the kind of fear that will seize one in such dreams—at the sight of a grey, spotted leaf shaken by a wind—or the slow opening of a door upon a void.
The little figure stood motionless a moment, listening towards the bed. Then it stole over, bending close to the sleeping man. With skilful light fingers Anne lifted one of the sleeper's heavy hands, then let it drop again upon the bedclothes. Chesney did not stir—his breathing did not change.
With a brisk movement of satisfaction, the nurse now drew a black, oblong object from the pocket of her dressing-gown, and going swiftly over to the fireplace, put the fender noiselessly aside, and knelt down on the hearth. She was sure, quite sure now, as sure as one could be of anything theoretically divined, that the hypodermic syringe and morphia were concealed somewhere in that chimney-place. She had looked there before, but not in the exhaustive way that she meant to look now. She had even felt along the shelf of the chimney-throat with her hands, but there had been nothing. Now, inch by inch, like a little Miss Sherlock Holmes, she meant to examine that cold, sooty cavity. The black tube in her hand was a small electric pocket-light, such as had just come in about that time. When she had looked before, she had used her bedroom candle. Now she meant to turn that bright, electric gleam on every inch of the brickwork and metal. Slowly she drew the pencil of light from side to side, lying flat, and beginning her search under the bars of the grate; then, crouching, she directed the ray higher, towards the bend of the chimney-throat, feeling, tapping, with her free hand as she did so. A fire had evidently been made there recently, probably on the day of Chesney's arrival; for, though the grate had been freshly polished only that morning and the housemaid's broom had swept the back of the chimney, yet a slight fluff of soot clung to it higher up. Anne touched this soot, pressing down her fingers firmly, delicately, feeling for some crevice, some loose bit of brick or iron. All was firm and cold. She sat back on her heels, disappointed. She looked—crouching there in her grey wrapper, with the short, black curls framing her thin, baffled little face—like some determined child who had decided to watch and surprise Santa Claus in his descent from the roof—and who had watched in vain. Then suddenly she knelt up again. Something had caught her clever eyes. She noticed—and at this, the well-regulated little timepiece of her heart began to tick hurriedly—yes, she had noticed that in one corner of the chimney-throat there was a broad, smooth place where the soot was quite worn away. The dark-red fire-brick showed plainly through. Anne passed the bright glow of light across this smooth patch very slowly. No; the bricks were not loose here. She held the light closer, gazing with eyes narrowed to the utmost intensity of vision. There was a little spot, or excrescence, on the brick near the seam of the corner. She had felt it with her finger-tips as she drew them lightly back and forth. She had thought this roughness merely a defect in one of the bricks. Now she touched it again—scraped it with her nail. Her nail made no sound against it. Then she pressed upon it. The nail sank in. It was perhaps a bit of putty left by the work-men. But then putty isn't used for building fireplaces; besides, the fire would have melted it long ago——
She began to feel all around it. Suddenly something in the angle, in the seam where the chimney-throat squared, caught her eye. It looked like a bit of black wire. She picked at it with her nail, and it yielded—like the string of a tightly strung guitar. All at once it flashed over the little detective. That rough lump was wax; it fixed the end of this black string in place. The string was taut, because it was held so—held by a weight at the other end probably. Anne did not know anything about the construction of chimney-throats—had she done so, the solution would have come to her sooner. But she guessed now that there must be a hollow behind the brickwork that faced her. She slid her hand up and forward. Yes, there was an empty space behind—the usual air-chamber in all well-built chimneys of which she had not known. Ah, now she had it! Carefully, very daintily, little by little, she began to pull up the fine black silk cord which, as she had guessed, passed from where its end was fixed in place by that lump of wax or putty down the back of the chimney-throat. It answered readily. She felt the weight on its other end scraping against the wall as she drew it up. In another moment she had it in her hand—a little parcel, wrapped in oiled paper. As she broke open the paper and looked down at the object in her hand, her face was a study of elfish triumph and unwilling admiration.
"What couldn't they do to the world, if they were as hideously clever at everything else as they are at hiding this stuff!" thought Anne Harding, referring to the tribe of morphinomaniacs as known to her experience.