Lexy was silent for a moment. Then, just as she was about to speak, her quick ear caught a very unwelcome sound—the sound of a horse’s trot. She turned away and went back through the window into the room. Dr. Quelton was coming home. She couldn’t wait to find out what Muriel Quelton had meant. Once more she was compelled to do the best she could amid a fog of misunderstanding.
“Lexy—take it—the top drawer—of the bureau—for you.”
That was what she thought Mrs. Quelton had said, and she acted upon that premise. She crossed the room to the bureau, and opened the top drawer. In the dim light that filled the shuttered room she could not see very clearly; but, as far as she could ascertain, there was nothing in the drawer except some neatly folded silk stockings, a satin glove case, some little odds and ends of ribbons, and a pile of handkerchiefs. She looked into the glove case—nothing there but gloves. There was nothing hidden away among the stockings, nothing among the ribbons.
She heard the front door close and a step begin to mount the stairs, deliberate and heavy, in the quiet house. In haste she went at the pile of handkerchiefs. There were dozens of them, all of fine white linen, all with a “2” embroidered in one corner—very uninteresting handkerchiefs, Lexy thought; but halfway through the pile she came upon one that she had seen before.
It was so familiar to her that at first she was not startled or even surprised. It was a handkerchief that she had embroidered for Caroline Enderby.
She took it up and looked at it with a frown. Then she heard Dr. Quelton’s step in the hall outside. She tucked the handkerchief in her belt, and tried to close the drawer, but it stuck. Her heart was beating wildly, her knees felt weak. He would find her there, like a thief!
But the footsteps went on past the door. She waited for a moment, and then went noiselessly across to the door, opened it, looked up and down the empty corridor, and ran, like a hare, back to her own room.
Caroline’s handkerchief! Was that what Mrs. Quelton had meant her to find? Or had she discovered it by accident? Did it mean that Mrs. Quelton was at heart her ally? Or was this little square of linen all that was left of Caroline?
Lexy took it out of her belt and looked at it again, and her tears fell on it. Whatever else it might imply, it told her clearly enough that her friend had been there. Poor Caroline—the helpless little captive who had left her prison to be lost in the strange world outside—had come here, and she had brought with her the handkerchief that Lexy had embroidered for her. It had come now into Lexy’s hand, a mute and pitiful emissary, whose message she could not understand.
“What shall I do?” she thought. “Oh, what must I do? Perhaps it’s time for the police. Perhaps, if I show this to Captain[Pg 354] Grey, he’ll believe me. There must be some one, somewhere, who’ll believe me and help me!”