Before the detective could find words to answer he had gone down the path and vanished in the darkness.
[CHAPTER XIII—MOLLY'S STORY]
One of the chief features of detective work is that you must be able to change your mind. That may not sound hard—especially when the owner of the mind happens to be a female—but believe me it's some stunt. You get pointed one way, and to have to shift and face round in another is candy for a weather vane but bread for a sleuth.
Well, that's what happened to me. In the week that followed my visit to the Whitneys I had to start out fresh on a new line of thought. I'd left the office pretty certain, as the others were, that the bond between Esther Maitland and Chapman Price was love, and before those seven days were gone I'd thrown that theory into the discard, rolled up my sleeves, taken a cinch in my belt, and set forth to blaze a new trail.
I came round to it slow at first and I came round through Mr. Ferguson. It was fine weather and when Bébita would go off with Annie, I'd curl up in my conning tower in the school room window and take observations. As I said before, it was a convenient place, just over Miss Maitland's study, deserted all afternoon, and with the Venetian blinds down against the sun, I could sit comfortable on my cushion and spy out between the slats.
The first thing that caught my attention was that Mr. Ferguson, who'd come over pretty nearly every day, wouldn't make straight for the front piazza which was the natural way to get there. Instead he'd take a slanting course across the garden, come up some steps to the terrace, and then walk slow past the study door. Sometimes he'd see Miss Maitland and stop for a chat, and sometimes she wouldn't be there and he'd go by. But each and every time, thinking no one was watching, he'd let a look come on his face that's common to the whole male sex when the one particular star is expected above the horizon. I guess the cave man got it when, club in hand, he was chasing the cave girl and Solomon with his six hundred wives must have had it stamped on his features so it came to be his habitual expression.
Though it was registered good and plain on Mr. Ferguson's countenance, I couldn't at first believe it. It was too like a novel, too like Cinderella and the Prince. Then, seeing it so frequent, I was convinced. I'd say to myself "Why not—a girl's a girl if she is a plutocrat's social secretary, and all men are free and equal when it comes to disposing of their young affections." The romance of it got me, gripped at my heart. I'd sit with my eye to the crack in the blinds staring down at him as he'd send that look out for her—that wonderful look, that look which gives you chills and fever, blind staggers and heart failure and you'd rather have than a blank check drawn to your order and signed by John Rockefeller. Oh, gee—I was a girl once myself—don't I know! I'd have been interested if it was just an ordinary love story, but it wasn't. It was a love story with a mystery for good measure; it was a love story that had Mrs. Price thrown in to complicate the plot; it was a love story that was all tangled up with other elements; and it was a love story that I only could see one side of.
For I couldn't get at her feelings at all. This was mostly because I hardly ever saw her with him. If she did happen to be there when he passed, she'd be either in her room or under the balcony roof and I couldn't see how she acted or hear what she said. Also she had such a hold on herself, had such a calm, reserved way with her, that you'd have to be a clairvoyant to get under her guard.
Any woman would have been thrilled but me, knowing what I did—can't you see my thoughts going round in wheels and whirligigs? If she reciprocated—and there's few that wouldn't or I don't know my own sex—what was she doing with Price? Was she a siren playing the two of them? Was she Mrs. Price's secret rival with both men? Was she the kind of vampire heroine they have in plays who can break up a burglar-proof home with one hand tied behind her? You wouldn't think it to look at her—but the more I hit the high spots of society the more I feel you can't tell people by the ordinary trade-marks.
Then one afternoon toward the end of the week I saw a little scene right under my window that lightened up the darkness. It gave me what I call facts; what the Whitneys, anyway Mr. George—but that belongs farther on.