She lingered at the gates as long as she thought prudent, her avid glance roving from point to point of the house, searching for signs of the servants about the place. She smiled grimly to herself as she recalled how often in her childhood days bright-eyed groups of “common kids” would pause on the sidewalk outside to peer wistfully through the iron interstices of the fence at the spring glory of crocuses, hyacinths and tulips which graced the Cairns’s garden beds in colorful, fragrant loveliness. How contemptuous she had been of the famished little beauty worshippers! Now she was “on the outside, looking in.” She was “on the wrong side of the fence.” She was “barred out” of the show shop as effectively as had been “those common kids.”
CHAPTER XIX.
A STRANGER IN THE HOUSE
Next day Leslie repeated the visit to her home. The second expedition to it was made in a small black car which she boldly requisitioned from a garage located not far from her father’s offices. There he kept several cars, immediate to the use of himself and one or two of his lieutenants.
The call Leslie had made at her father’s offices had proved advantageous to her. She had not only gained important information from Mr. Carrington, she had also received a fresh supply of temerity to bolster her for further daring deeds. She knew the manager of the garage to which she went only slightly. He had treated her request with the respect due Peter Cairns’s daughter. She calculated there was small possibility that the proprietor and her father would ever discuss her visit to the garage. She preferred that risk to the annoyance of being watched by a curious taxicab driver.
On the second occasion she was free to park her own car. She made one deliberate patrol of the block. Then paused before the gates. From a pocket of the leather motor coat she wore she pulled a heavy medium-sized brass key suspended from a brass ring. Without an instant’s hesitation she fitted the key to a fat brass padlock which secured the gates against intruders.
“Whuh-h-h!” Leslie blew a breath of relief. “Easiest thing I ever tried to do,” she murmured with satisfaction. “Wonder who’s home, or if anyone saw me?” She drew the key from the open padlock, fastened it in place from the inside of the gates through which she had just triumphantly passed and snapped it energetically back on guard. “This time,” she laughed her silent selfish laugh, “I’m on the inside, looking out.”
In spite of her bold manner and ready laughter Leslie was experiencing a certain amount of trepidation. She fought it down with all the sternness she could summon against herself. The night before, long after Doris and Mrs. Gaylord had retired, Leslie had sat at a little table in her room arranging the peculiar expedition to which she had now committed herself. She had drawn a sketchy little plan of the first and second floors of her home. With a lead pencil she had lightly traced on the plan precisely the course by which she would proceed when she had once passed through the vestibule of her home and had set foot in the great entrance hall with its lofty ceiling and grand stairway.
Knowing her father’s secretive nature she was reasonably sure that such of the servants as might be in the house knew nothing of the strained relations between herself and her father. Parsons, the steward, might be there, possibly the second cook and two or three of the maids. The others had probably been sent to the country house on Long Island which was never closed. When in or near New York, summer or winter, this was her father’s favorite haunt.
Leslie had resolved to brazen matters out, if, when she entered the house, she should suddenly encounter any of the servants. Her objective was a certain room on the second floor. It held something she wanted; needed; must have.