XXVII
WHEN BEVERLEY CAME HOME
When Clo had shut the taxi door almost in Beverley's face, and had given the chauffeur orders to drive on, she had said to herself, "Angel will be so surprised she won't know what to do for a minute. And by the time she pulls herself together, she'll realize it's too late to stop me."
The girl had judged well. Beverley shrank back from the slammed door with a jump of the nerves. Then she guessed what Clo meant to do. She was in the act of tapping to stop the chauffeur, and tell him to turn, when the question seemed to ask itself aloud in her brain, "What good will it do for you to go back?"
Before she could reach Clo, if she returned to the hotel now, the girl would have learned the secret of Peterson's room. When she saw what Beverley had seen, she would know that there was nothing to be done with a dead man. She would slip away to avoid being mixed up in the business of the murder. She would not risk being caught. The girl was too sensible, and she had plenty of money as well as brains. She had shown herself equal to desperate emergencies. She would be equal to this. She was so quick-witted that she would know what to do, and how to do it. Beverley let the chauffeur drive on. He went to the corner where he had been hailed by his two passengers. There he stopped, and Beverley got out. She paid him; and making a pretence of examining her change in the light of a street lamp, stood still until the taxi had turned and shot out of sight. Then, with the bag of jewels which Clo had tossed into her lap, she walked home. Her latch-key opened the door of the flat, she entered her boudoir, and fell into a chair, sitting as still as the dead Peterson had sat. It was not much past ten o'clock.
Five minutes later she took off hat and cloak, and peeped into her bedroom to see if her maid were there. But the room was empty, and she put away the gray mantle and toque where she had found them. She did not forget to toss carelessly upon her bed the hat she had worn in the afternoon, and a pair of white gloves; then she rang for her maid who came almost at once. She had gone out, Beverley explained quietly, to help Miss Riley transact a little matter of business.
It was eleven-thirty when Léontine bade her mistress good-night and softly closed the bedroom door. She had noticed nothing strange in the manner of Madame, except an unusual lack of vitality.
Left alone, Beverley opened the door of the big, bare room. "Clo," she called softly.
No answer. She switched on the light. No one was there, and Beverley hurried on to the little room beyond, which had been Sister Lake's. It, too, was empty. Something grave, perhaps terrible, had detained the girl.
"She won't come—she won't come at all." Beverley said aloud. "What shall I do?" She could not abandon the fragile child who loved her, who had stood by her with wonderful strength and courage throughout this dreadful day. Yet what was there she could do?