A secondary hall led away from the first, and through this he came at once to the rooms which had evidently been set apart for Dorothy and her husband. The room which he knew was supposed to be his own contained nothing save comfortable furnishings. He therefore went at once to Dorothy's apartments.
She occupied a suite of three rooms—one of them large, the others small. Exquisite order was apparent in all, combined with signs of a dainty, cultured taste. It seemed a sacrilege to search her possessions, and he made no attempt to do so. Indeed, he gained nothing from his quick, keen survey of the place, save a sense of her beauty and refinement as expressed in the features of her "nest." He felt himself warranted in opening a closet, into which he cast a comprehensive glance.
It seemed well filled with hanging gowns, but several hooks were empty.
On a shelf high up was a suit-case, empty, since it weighed almost nothing as he lifted up the end. He took it down, found marks where fingers had disturbed the dust upon its lid, then stood on a chair, examined the shelf, and became aware that a second case had been removed, as shown by the absence of accumulated dust, which had gathered all about the place it had formerly occupied.
Replacing the case he had taken from the shelf, he closed the closet, in possession of the fact that some preparation, at least, had been made against some sort of a journey. He was certain the empty hooks had been stripped of garments for the flight, but whether by Dorothy herself or by her relatives he could not, of course, determine.
He repaired at once to the rooms farther back, which the Robinsons had occupied. When he switched on the lights in the first one entered, he knew it had been the old man's place of refuge, for certain signs of the occupancy of Mr. Robinson were not lacking.
It reeked of stale cigar-smoke, which would hang in the curtains for a week. It was very untidy. There were many indications that old Robinson had quitted in haste. On the table were ash-trays, old cigar-stumps, matches, burned and new; magazines, hairpins, a tooth-brush, and two calf-bound volumes of a legal aspect. One was a lawyer's treatise on wills, the other a history of broken testaments, statistical as well as narrative.
The closet here supplied nothing of value to Garrison when he gave it a brief inspection. At the end of the room was a door that stood slightly ajar. It led to the next apartment—the room to which Theodore had been assigned. Garrison soon discovered the electric button and flooded the place with light.
The apartment was quite irregular. The far end had two windows, overlooking the court at the rear—the hollow of the block. These were both in an alcove, between two in-jutting partitions. One partition was the common result of building a closet into the room. The other was constructed to accommodate a staircase at the back of the house, leading to the quarters below.
Disorder was again the rule, for a litter of papers, neckties, soiled collars, and ends of cigarettes, with perfumes, toilet requisites, and beer bottles seemed strewn promiscuously on everything capable of receiving a burden.