She went to the edge of the declivity that cut back to the garage and with a quick movement reversed the coat catching it by the skirts and shaking it vigorously.
CHAPTER XXVII
The Straight and Narrow
This served exactly the purpose Linda had intended. It dislodged the mouse nest and dropped it three feet below her level, but it did something else upon which Linda had no time to count. It emptied every pocket in the coat and sent the contents scattering down the rough declivity.
“Oh my gracious!” gasped Linda. “Look what I have done! Katy, come help me quickly; I have to gather up this stuff; but it’s no use; I’ll have to take it to Peter and tell him. I couldn’t put these things back in the pockets where his hand will reach for them, because I don’t know which came from inside and which came from out.”
Linda sprang down and began hastily gathering up everything she could see that had fallen from the coat pockets. She had almost finished when her fingers chanced upon a very soiled, befigured piece of paper whose impressed folds showed that it had been carried for some time in an inner pocket. As her fingers touched this paper her eyes narrowed, her breath came in a gasp. She looked at it a second, irresolute, then she glanced over the top of the declivity in the direction Peter had taken. He was standing in front of the building, discussing some matter with the contractor. He had not yet gone to the spring. Shielded by the embankment, with shaking fingers Linda opened the paper barely enough to see that it was Marian’s lost sheet of plans; but it was not as Marian had left it. It was scored deeply here and there with heavy lines suggestive of alterations, and the margin was fairly covered with fine figuring. Linda did not know Peter Morrison’s writing or figures. His articles had been typewritten and she had never seen his handwriting. She sat down suddenly on account of weakened knees, and gazed unseeingly down the length of Lilac Valley, her heart sick, her brain tormented. Suddenly she turned and studied the house.
“Before the Lord!” she gasped. “I thought there was something mighty familiar even about the skeleton of you! Oh, Peter, Peter, where did you get this, and how could you do it?”
For a while a mist blurred her eyes. She reached for the coat and started to replace the things she had gathered up, then she shut her lips tight.
“Best time to pull a tooth,” she said tersely to a terra cotta red manzanita bush, “is when it aches.”
When Peter returned from the spring he was faced by a trembling girl, colourless and trying hard to keep her voice steady. She held out the coat to him with one hand, the package of papers with the other, the folded drawing conspicuous on the top. With these she gestured toward the declivity.