Her voice trailed away, and she stood regarding him in thoughtful silence. Ross was quite willing to be silent a little longer,[Pg 446] while he tried to find a reassuring form for his statement; he looked back at her, his lean face quite impassive, his mind working furiously.
“Yes?” said Mrs. Jones. “Miss Solway did think, for a time, that she might need some one to—advise her. But everything’s quite all right now.” She paused a moment. “She’ll be sorry to hear you’ve made the journey for nothing. She’ll appreciate your kindness, I’m sure. But everything’s quite all right now.”
“Oh, is it?” murmured Ross.
He found difficulty in suppressing a grim smile. Everything was all right now, was it, and he could run away home? He did not agree with Mrs. Jones.
“Yes,” she replied. “It was very kind of you to come, but—”
“Wait!” cried Ross, for she had turned away toward the sofa.
Without so much as turning her head, she went on a few steps, took the knitted scarf from her shoulders, and threw it over the end of the sofa. And he saw then that just the tip of the man’s fingers had been visible, and that the trailing end of the scarf covered them now. She knew!
“Well?” she asked, looking inquiringly at him through her spectacles. No; it was impossible; the whole thing was utterly impossible!
This sedate, respectable, gray-haired woman, this housekeeper who looked as if she would not overlook the smallest trace of dust in a corner, certainly, surely would not leave a dead man under her sofa.
She was stroking the cat, and the animal had assumed an expression of idiotic delight, pink tongue protruding a little, eyes half open. Would even a cat be so monstrously indifferent if—if what he thought he had seen under the sofa were really there?