“I do not think so.” Jean hesitated. “When Monsieur sends him—which is but seldom, for nearly always I go,—he tucks up his queue and arrays himself in American attire, but to-day, as when he goes about his own affairs, he wore the ordinary dress of his country; not the magnificent embroidered robes of silk but the plain, dark dress one sees upon les Chinois everywhere. It is now two hours since he has gone.”
He turned once more to the stairs and this time McCarty made no effort to detain him. He waited until the houseman’s footsteps had died away in the hall below and a door had closed. Then he turned to where Dennis had been standing just behind him.
“Get that, Denny? I’m thinking—!” He paused, for he was talking to the empty air. Dennis had disappeared.
With a shrug McCarty mounted to the next floor but no one was visible and each of the several doors which he opened gave upon bedrooms furnished in different periods of the Italian and French monarchical régimes. He only knew that they seemed very handsome, if the rugs and draperies did look a bit faded and draggled to his eyes and the gilt tarnished, but about all there hung the aloof, cheerless air of apartments seldom tenanted.
The floor above was evidently cut up into many smaller rooms, for there were more doors closer together. Several of them were locked and the first which opened readily was that of a large room at the back, furnished merely with two chests of drawers and two matting covered cots heaped with cushions. Matting was laid upon the floor, a niche in the wall was hung with rich silk upon which a gorgeous dragon was emblazoned and lanterns were suspended from the ceiling. McCarty sniffed the faintly aromatic odor as of sandalwood which greeted him and knew that this must be the room Ching Lee shared with Fu Moy.
Closing the door he retraced his steps and tried another just at the head of the stairs. It opened into a room slightly smaller than the first but comfortably furnished in old oak with a bright rug on the floor and simple curtains at the two broad windows. Military brushes and other masculine toilet accessories were scattered on the dresser and a rack which hung beside it glowed with the rich, subdued colors of a score or more neckties and scarves. Across the foot of the bed lay a lounging robe of heavily quilted brocade but somewhat worn and frayed.
Was this where one of the Frenchmen slept or—? McCarty strode to the closet and flung the door wide. Suits of plain black alternated with others of conservative shades and material but far more expensive; a glance showed that they were much too large for the slender houseman, yet not sufficiently capacious to accommodate the chef’s rotund girth.
If this, then, were Hughes’ room could he have left any clue behind him which would point to his unknown enemy? A hasty examination of the closet revealed an empty whiskey bottle among the boots on the floor, but the pockets of the various garments contained merely small bills and newspaper clippings of racing results.
In the top drawer of the dresser McCarty came upon a stack of letters in different handwriting but all unmistakably feminine and sentimental in tone, couched in more or less illiterate terms. He took possession of them for reading at his leisure. The lower drawers contained only clothing and there were no other receptacles in the room which might have held papers but his experienced eye noted a slight unevenness in the surface of the rug near the head of the bed and turning it back he found a bank-book and a check-book fastened together with a rubber band.
These he pocketed also and then descended to the first bedroom floor where Dennis had deserted him, to discover that individual hovering uncertainly about the stairs’ head.