On their return to the living room, for the first time in her life Linda rang for Katy. She hesitated an instant before she did it. It would be establishing a relationship that never before had existed between them. She always had gone to Katy as she would have, gone to her mother. She would have gone to her now, but she wanted Katy to make her appearance and give her information without the possibility of previous discussion. Katy answered the bell almost at once. Linda went to her side and reached her arm across her shoulders.
“Katy,” she said, “this is Mr. Eugene Snow of San Francisco. He is interested in finding out exactly what became of that lost plan of Marian’s that we have looked for so carefully. Put on your thinking cap, old dear, and try to answer accurately any question that Mr. Snow may wish to ask you.”
Katy looked expectantly at Eugene Snow.
“In the meantime,” said Linda, “I’ll be excused and go bring round the Bear-cat.”
“I have only one question to ask you,” said Mr. Snow. “Can you recall whether, for any reason, there was a screen out of the guest-room window directly in front of which the reading table was standing the night Miss Marian occupied the room before leaving for San Francisco?”
“Sure there was,” answered Katy instantly in her richest, mellowest brogue.
She was taking the inventory she had been told to take. She was deciding, as instantly as Linda had done, that she liked this man. Years, appearance, everything about him appealed to Katy as being exactly right for Marian; and her cunning Irish mind was leaping and flying and tugging at the leash that thirty years of conventions had bound upon her.
“Sure,” she repeated, “the wildest santana that ever roared over us just caught that screen and landed it slam against the side of the garage, and it set inside for three days till I could get a workman to go up the outside and put it back. It had been out two days before the night Marian was here.”
“Did Miss Linda know about it?” asked Snow.
“Not that I know of,” said Katy. “She is a schoolgirl, you know, off early in the morning, back and up to her room, the busiest youngster the valley knows; and doin’ a dale of good she is, too. It was Miss Eileen that heard the screen ripped out and told me it was gone. She’s the one who looked after the housekapin’ and paid the bills. She knew all about it. If ’twould be helpin’ Miss Marian any about findin’ them plans we’ve ransacked the premises for, I couldn’t see any reason why Miss Eileen wouldn’t tell ye the same as I’m tellin’ ye, and her housekapin’ accounts and her cheque book would show she paid the carpenter, if it’s legal business you’re wantin’.”