The Ivory Snuff Box

by Frederic Arnold Kummer

During the drive, he began to formulate a plan, daring in its conception, extremely dangerous in its execution, yet one which, if carried out with courage and determination, promised success. He was perfecting in his mind the details of this plan when the carriage turned into the driveway at Dr. Hartmann's.

So occupied had he become with his thoughts that he failed to observe the figure of Grace, standing behind the maid in the open doorway; she disappeared into the reception-room before he had alighted from the cab. He went up to the servant, assumed an air of dignified assurance, and announced that he wished to see Dr. Hartmann at once.

The maid ushered him in, glanced into the parlor, observed Grace sitting there, apparently reading, and then throwing open the door to the left which gave admittance to the doctor's office, bade Duvall enter. The latter stepped in at once, without looking into the room across the hall. Had he done so, he would have observed his wife, whom he fully supposed to be quietly waiting for him in Paris, rise from her chair with a frightened face and start impulsively toward him.

For a moment Grace was on the point of calling out—she wanted to let Richard know that she was there. She wanted to see him—to talk to him, to realize the happiness of being once again in his presence. It had been, since their parting the day before, her constant thought. Then she suddenly realized that Monsieur Lefevre had warned her not to appear to recognize her husband, should she meet him in the course of her adventures. The thought checked her—she paused at the door of the reception-room and glanced down the hall.

The servant who had admitted Duvall had disappeared toward the rear of the house. Everything about her seemed quiet. She started across the hall, determined to enter the room into which Richard had just vanished, when she heard the sound of rapid footsteps approaching her. With a start she turned and again entered the parlor, assuming a careless manner she by no means felt.

She had scarcely seated herself in the chair by the fire, and opened her book, when she saw Dr. Hartmann appear in the hall and enter the door which led to the outer office.

Grace was undecided as to what she should do next. Her safest course, she ultimately concluded, was to do nothing. She remained quietly in her seat, pretending to read her book, but all the while watching, with anxious eyes, the door on the other side of the hall.

Richard Duvall, meanwhile, had entered the waiting room, his mind fully made up as to the course he was about to pursue. During the few moments which intervened, until the doctor's arrival, he looked keenly about the room, examining it in detail, fixing its entrances and exits firmly in his mind, so as to be prepared for any emergency which might arise.

The room was a large one. Along the side facing the entrance door, as well as that which fronted on the park, were big curtained windows, set in deep recesses, and between them, cases of books. At the far end of the room, toward the rear of the house, was another door. Duvall stole over to it, listened carefully, then slowly opened it and looked within. The room proved to be the doctor's private office, and he saw at once that it was built in a sort of ell, and could not be entered except through the room in which he stood. There was a door, it is true, in the right-hand wall, which had once given entrance to the hall, but against this a heavy instrument case, with glass doors, now stood.

Duvall withdrew his head and shoulders from the doorway, nodding to himself in a satisfied way, then noiselessly closed the door and returned to the center of the room.