In the last stage of the search he encountered his greatest surprise. Looking under his own bed by the light of a pocket torch, he found that one of the six slats had been removed from its place and laid cross-ways upon the other five. The reason for this was apparent; it had been shortened by between four and five inches.
"Cut off with a pocket-knife," the old man mused; "crude work, like the shaping of the handle of that dagger—downstairs; same wood, too. And in my room, from my bed——
"I wonder——"
With a low whistle, expressive of incredulity, he put that new theory from him and went down to the library.
V
THE INTERVIEW WITH MRS. BRACE
Gratified, and yet puzzled, by the results of his search of the upstairs rooms, Hastings was fully awake to the necessity of his interviewing Mrs. Brace as soon as possible. Lally, the chauffeur, drove him back to Washington early that Sunday morning. It was characteristic of the old man that, as they went down the driveway, he looked back at Sloanehurst and felt keenly the sufferings of the people under its roof.
He was particularly drawn to Lucille Sloane, with whom he had had a second brief conference. While waiting for his coffee—nobody in the house had felt like breakfast—he had taken a chair at the southeast end of the front porch and, pulling a piece of soft wood and a knife from his Gargantuan coat-pockets, had fallen to whittling and thinking.—Whittling, he often said, enabled him to think clearly; it was to him what tobacco was to other men.