“Then it was taken from you and returned? You must have been careless as to where you kept it—”
“No, I wore it on a chain about my neck. Though I had no reason to mistrust any one in the house, I felt that I could not guard this key too carefully. I even kept it on at night. In fact it never left me. It was still on my person when I went into the room with Mr. Delahunt. But the safe had been opened for all that.”
“There were two keys to it, then?”
“No; in giving me the key, my brother had strictly warned me not to lose it, as it had no duplicate.”
“Mrs. Quintard, have you a special confidant or maid?”
“Yes, my Hetty.”
“How much did she know about this key?”
“Nothing, but that it didn’t help the fit of my dress. Hetty has cared for me for years. There’s no more devoted woman in all New York, nor one who can be more relied upon to tell the truth. She is so honest with her tongue that I am bound to believe her even when she says—”
“What?”
“That it was I and nobody else who took the will out of the safe last night. That she saw me come from my brother’s room with a folded paper in my hand, pass with it into the library, and come out again without it. If this is so, then that will is somewhere in that great room. But we’ve looked in every conceivable place except the shelves, where it is useless to search. It would take days to go through them all, and meanwhile Carlos—”