“Oh, don’t be a fool, of course it was found there. You can talk about it until you are blue in the gills, but I shall still believe him a poisoning——”
He was lacing up his shoes, and one of the laces broke with a snap. It was the last straw. “Curse him,” he cried. “You say how are we going to get through the time till Allport comes back? He’ll be damned lucky if he gets through without a broken neck.”
“And in heaven’s name what good would that do you?” I asked.
“Good, why the same sort of good that it does me to tell you that you’re nothing but a blinking fool. Clear out!”
I went. I felt that I was doing more harm than good, and that I almost deserved his description. My original estimate of his character had been correct. There were no grays for Kenneth.
On the landing I stood for a moment considering whether I would go back to my room and sit there till tea-time, or try to find some shady spot in the garden. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think. But there was another little surprise awaiting me. As I stood I heard a swishing noise on the stairs leading up to the floor above. It was too intermittent to have been made by one of the maids sweeping down. A shuffle and then a gentle pad-pad-pad and then another shuffle. My curiosity was aroused. I couldn’t make it out. I tiptoed along the landing to the foot of the stairs. It was Margaret; she was down on her hands and knees searching for something. She was patting the pile of the stair carpet and that had made the padding noise that had attracted my attention. There was a something feverish and urgent about the way she searched.
“Hello! lost anything?” I called out.
She stopped her search quite suddenly, and did not answer me at once. The pause was perhaps no longer than a second—but it was there. “Why, yes, I’ve dropped a sixpence—it’s so unlucky on the stairs, you know—and I think it must have rolled into a crack. I’ve just been up to tell Annie that Ethel wants her tea in her room. Never mind it, I’ll tell Annie to keep her eyes open for it.”
We went down-stairs, she to her bedroom, and I to the hall below, where I nearly ran full tilt into Annie at the top of the basement stairs.
I sauntered out into the garden and lighted my pipe. I had paced once along the lawn in the shade of the cedar and was retracing my steps toward the house, when Margaret came to meet me. “Have you seen Annie anywhere?” she queried.