They went upstairs.
“I’ll leave you,” he whispered. “You can manage?”
She nodded. He put the light on a bracket on the landing and ascended to the upper parts of the house. Rosie went into her bedroom. When she came out, wearing a hat, she noticed for the first time that the door of Pauline’s bedroom was not shut. She pushed it open very carefully, and peered in. A feeble reflection of the moonlight redeemed it from absolute obscurity, and Rosie perceived that the bed was unoccupied, that it had not even been slept in. Instantly her mind became full of suspicions. Had Pauline lied to her as she had lied to Pauline? Was her part in the plot of Mr. Jetsam discovered? No, impossible! And yet—Then she recollected having heard, or having thought that she had heard, the distant ringing of one of the service-bells in the house some time before Mr. Jetsam came downstairs. She had forgotten to mention this disturbing fact to Mr. Jetsam. Evidently he had not heard the ringing, or he would have questioned her about it. Supposing they were being watched, after all? And in any case where was Pauline? Pauline had given her to understand that she had retired to rest, and lo! the bed had not been touched! Full of tremors, she silently shut the door on the empty room.
She remembered Jetsam’s threat of what he should do if his plans failed, and she hesitated.
CHAPTER XXVII—The Photograph
Mr. Jetsam, having with an attentive ear heard the vague sound of the shutting of a door, came out a second time from the mysterious attic and descended the stairs. He was a man to omit no precautions, and every door that he passed he locked on the outside, not only on the servants’ floor, but on the first floor. He penetrated then to the ground-floor, and fastened not merely every door, but every window. At last he arrived at the front door.
“It’s a pity to lock her out,” he murmured to himself; “but what can I do? It would be madness to let her assist at the scene I have to go through. She expects to, but I must disappoint her.”
And he noiselessly bolted and locked the front door.