For those first moments, glued to the window, Lady McIntyre alternately watched the avenue leading to the house and watched the two strange men. She made no effort to disguise her perturbation at not having two pairs of eyes, the better to keep her poor little watch upon "dear Greta's things." "You don't, I suppose, expect to find anything contraband on her dressing-table," she said, as Singleton paused to run his eye over the glittering array. "You may know that's all right when I tell you Sir William and I gave her the toilet set last Christmas."
Singleton stooped to the faded photograph, an act as offensive in Napier's eyes as the next was in Lady McIntyre's—his attempt to open the little, inlaid bureau.
"That is her writing-table," said the lady, with dignity. "Of course it's locked. An engaged girl always locks her—"
"Yes; this, Grindley," Singleton said. And Grindley, moving like a soft brown shadow, was there with some bits of iron hanging keywise on a ring. Some of these slender "persuaders" were notched and some were hooked. There were also one or two pieces of wire.
Lady McIntyre identified these objects instantly in a horrified whisper as, "Burglar's tools!"
"Or that, first?" Singleton interrupted, with a nod at the screen.
"Yes, it's her box behind there," Lady McIntyre said, and clasped her hands. "But if you break that—a most queer lock—you can never mend it. And she'll know what we've—"
Mr. Grindley gave a slow head-shake. "American wardrobe trunk," he said, as though he had been tall enough to see over the close-set screen, and took no interest in what it hid. He inserted a steel object in the lock of the writing-table, and opened a flap as easily as if he'd had the key; more easily than if Lady McIntyre had had it.
"Her private letters!" she murmured with horror. "Love letters!"
Far more offensive, Napier was sure, than if Grindley had fallen upon the neat packets and loose papers with greedy curiosity, was the bored cursoriness, as it looked, of the inspection. Perhaps the other man was really going to read them through when he had—heavens above! What was he doing in Greta's cupboard?