“Thank you very much,” said Dorothy. She turned the sleeping pup out of his bed, caught up the basket, and with Professor at her heels, ran lightly from the room.
Just outside the door she collided with Tunbridge, and Professor’s basket was jerked from her grasp.
“Oh, I’m so very sorry, Miss Jordan!” His acting was perfect. Dorothy knew that Mrs. Lawson was close behind them. Then as they both stooped to retrieve the basket their heads came close together. “Under your pillow!” It was hardly more than the breath of a whisper, but Dorothy caught the words, nodded her understanding, and stood up.
“I’m afraid I’m to blame, Tunbridge. I didn’t see you coming.”
“Not at all, Miss. It was my fault, entirely. Very clumsy of me I’m sure!”
From the corner of her eye Dorothy caught a glimpse of Laura Lawson watching them from the doorway.
“Don’t let it worry you, Tunbridge. I’m not hurt, neither is the basket. Professor will probably park himself on my pillow tonight, anyway. Puppies have a way of doing such things, you know. So it really wouldn’t matter much if you had smashed it.”
She gave him a nod, and picking up the dog made for the staircase.
“So instructions are waiting under my pillow,” she mused, as she slowly mounted the broad stair. The afternoon had been a pleasant one, but the evening, with those instructions ahead of her, portended to be something quite different. It had been so nice and cheerful, chatting round the tea table; so cozy sitting before the glowing logs, just talking of jolly things and forgetting all worry and responsibility. Of course, beyond the curtained windows, the blizzard howled. And it whipped the swirling snowflakes into disordered clouds with its arctic lash before it let them seek the shelter of their fellows in the drifts. She felt very much as though she too were a snowflake, tossed hither and thither on the storm of circumstance, to be whipped forward by the secret lash of underlying crime.
If she could only drop down on to her bed and sleep—and awake to find it all a bad dream! She sighed and went toward her door on the gallery. Her pillow held no peace for her tonight—nothing more nor less than detailed instructions as to how Tunbridge wished her to rob a safe. Why didn’t the man do his own stealing? Her part was to take Janet’s place out here, and kill suspicion in Laura Lawson. Well, she’d done that, hadn’t she? And now they loaded this other job on to her. It wasn’t fair. She had done enough—she’d—