After Mr. Page had obtained the ruby from the safe last night, he had, for some reason, paused by this table before returning to Maillot in the library, and had laid the box thereon. Why? He had retained the candle, which he was at the time carrying, for there was no indication in the dust that he had temporarily relieved himself of that object. Had he turned aside to get something from the bed?—or maybe from the table?
The first mentioned, though unmade since it had last been slept in, was not disarranged in the way one would be obliged to disturb it in getting at the usual places of concealment, and it was hardly likely that Mr. Page would have taken the pains to obliterate any such indications.
As for the table, it had no drawer.
Pondering the matter, perhaps more than it warranted, I turned to the dresser. The only detail here worth a passing notice was a small pasteboard box containing a number of .38 calibre cartridges. Originally there had been fifty in the box. I counted them. Six were missing; just the number required to charge the cylinder of most revolvers of the same calibre. However, there was no revolver; nor did my entire examination of the apartment avail to bring one to light.
At last,—just as I was turning to leave the room,—I received a shock which, for the time being, fairly paralyzed me.
As I have already recorded, the room in which I now was occupied that portion of the ground floor immediately behind the conservatory, and in the wing containing the library—that is, the eastern wing, as the house fronted south. Two large windows, small-paned and opening on hinges, afforded light and ventilation. It was through one of these that my surprise came.
On entering the room I had drawn aside one of the blinds, and had done so without more than the most casual glance outward, because I had already thoroughly inspected the premises contiguous to the house.
But now, as I lifted my hand to draw the blind over the window again, I happened to look at the snow beneath the window. In a flash I froze, my outstretched hand remaining suspended in mid-air.
When Burke, Maillot, and I had been in this room an hour or so earlier, the snow was then like an unsullied tablet upon which no character had been written; but since that time—during the very minutes I had been busy in this room, perhaps—it had received a record. Somebody with unusually small feet—small enough to be a woman's—had walked around from the front of the house to the window. After looking in—possibly at me intent upon my investigation—the mysterious prowler had departed again, but not as he had come. The retreating footsteps extended away at a right angle from the house, and at a short distance disappeared among some shrubbery.
A moment's reflection made me feel sure that only my presence in the room had forestalled a rather perilous undertaking. Why should anybody want to look in, simply, and why adopt such a compromising means of entering, if the temptation had not been extraordinarily powerful?