“After we’d had dinner and spent the evening in Mr. Perkins’s library, the family went to bed, and I pretended to do the same. Instead of really going to bed, I waited my chance and slipped down the stairs into the dining-room, and got under the table. At eleven o’clock the maidservants went up to their rooms, and at quarter-past there wasn’t a light burning in the house. I sat there in the dining-room waiting, and just as the clock struck half-past eleven I heard a noise out on the stairs, and in less than half a minute a sulphur match was struck almost over my head under the table, and there stood the cook, her face livid as that of a dead person, and in her hand she held a candle, which she lit with the match. From where I was I could see everything she did, which was not much. She simply gathered up all the table fixings she could, and started down-stairs into the kitchen with ’em. Then I went up to Mr. Perkins’s room and called him. He put on his clothes and got out his revolver, when we stole down-stairs together, leaving Mrs. Perkins up-stairs, with her boy’s nurse and the waitress to keep her company.
“In a second we were in the laundry, which was as dark as the ace of spades, except where the light from four gas-jets in the kitchen streamed in through the half-open door. Mr. Perkins was for pouncing in on the cook at once, but I was after the rest of the gang as much as I was for the cook, and I persuaded him to wait; and, by thunder, we were paid for waiting. It was the queerest case I ever had.
“That woman—looking for all the world like a creature from some other part of the universe than this earth, her eyes burning like two huge coals, her checks as yellow and clear as so much wax, and her lips blue-white, with a great flaming red tongue sort of laid between them—worked like a slave cleaning the floor, polishing the range, and scrubbing the table. Then she dusted all the chairs, and, producing the missing table-cloth, she laid it snow-white upon the table. In two minutes more the lost china was brought to light out of the flour-barrel, polished off, and set upon the table—enough for twenty people. The dining-room things I had seen her take she arranged as tastefully as any one could want, and then the finest lay-out in the way of salads, cakes, fruits, and other good things I ever saw was brought in from the cellar. To do all this took a marvellously short time. It was five minutes of midnight went she got through, and then she devoted three minutes to looking after herself. She whisked out a small hand-glass and touched up her hair a bit. Then she washed her hands and pinned some roses on her dress, smiled a smile I can never forget in my life, and opened the kitchen door and went out.
“‘She’s going to give a supper!’ whispered Mr. Perkins.
“‘It looks like it,’ said I. ‘And a mighty fine one at that.’
“In a minute she came back with a pail, in which were four bottles of champagne, in her hand. This she took into the cellar, returning to the kitchen as the clock struck twelve.
“Then the queerest part began,” said the detective. “For ten minutes by the clock people were apparently arriving, though, as far as Mr. Perkins or I could see, there wasn’t a soul in the kitchen besides Margaret. She was talking away like one possessed. Every once in a while she’d stop in the middle of a sentence and rush to the door and shake hands with some, to us invisible, arrival. Then she’d walk in with them chatting and laughing. Several times she went through the motion of taking people’s hats, and finally, if we could judge from her actions, she had ’em all seated at the table. She passed salads all around, helping each guest herself. She sent them fruit and cakes, and then she brought out the wine, which she distributed in the same fashion. She also apologized because some ice-cream she had ordered hadn’t come.
“When the invisible guests appeared to have had all they could eat, she began the chatty part again, and never seemed to be disturbed but once, when she requested some one not to sing so loud for fear of disturbing the family.
“Altogether it was the weirdest and rummest thing I’d ever seen in my life. We watched it for one full hour, and then we quit because she did. At one o’clock she apparently bade her guests good-night, after which she gathered up and put away all the eatables there were left—and, of course, everything but what she had eaten herself still remained—cleaned all the dishes, restored them to their proper places in the dining-room pantry, and went back up-stairs to her room.
“Mr. Perkins and I didn’t know what to make of it. There wasn’t a thing stolen, and it was clear to my mind that I’d done the woman an injustice in connecting her with thieves. She was honest, except in so far as she had ordered all those salads and creams and things from time to time on Mr. Perkins’s account, which was easy enough for her to do, since Mrs. Perkins let her do the ordering. There was only one explanation of the matter. She was crazy, and I said so.