“Leila said we’d some day find it in the last place we might guess,” Marjorie reminded cheerfully. She understood that Miss Hamilton’s disappointment at not having found the drawer was weighing heavily upon her.
The large square, airy chamber that had once been Brooke Hamilton’s contained few pieces of furniture. A four-poster mahogany bed, a highboy, a chest of drawers, one or two tables, three chairs and a night stand beside the bed completed the furnishings with the exception of one other bit of furniture. It was a plain, square-topped stand of shining mahogany that stood in a large bow window. Marjorie knew it to be Angela Vernon’s workstand. Miss Susanna had told her its pathetic history. Angela’s brother had given it to Brooke Hamilton as a memento of his fiancee soon after Angela’s sudden death. It contained bright silks and wools which she had loved to fashion into gifts for her dear ones, as well as an unfinished bit of embroidery and still another of fairy-like tatting.
Marjorie had once before begun a gentle search in the body of the stand, the top of which lifted. Miss Susanna had discouraged further search by declaring that there was no likelihood of finding it there. Entering the room of the departed master of Hamilton Arms that sunny afternoon the slowly descending sunlight in the west seemed to point golden fingers at the little stand.
“I’m going to look in the little stand again, Goldendede,” she called while Miss Susanna began a fussy ransacking of the highboy.
“Very well, but it’s a forlorn hope.”
Marjorie smiled to herself as she raised the lid of the stand and applied careful hands to the old-time handiwork of Brooke Hamilton’s sweetheart. Bereft of its treasures the two bare compartments of the stand showed no promise of either a secret compartment, or drawer.
She returned the contents with a little romantic breath. It would be fitting, she thought, to have found the drawer in the dear, cunning stand, once Angela Vernon’s.
“Nothing.” She shook her curly head as Miss Susanna glanced inquiringly toward her.
“No; it’s not much more than a toy stand, Marjorie. Would you mind moving it over here. It used always to be in the corner on the left of Uncle Brooke’s bed.”
“It’s heavier than one might believe,” Marjorie said as she grasped it firmly by the two front comers and lifted it. Of a sudden she heard an odd, whirring sound, something shot out of the stand, striking her smartly against the knees, sending her staggering backward. She uttered a startled cry as her downward glance caught the white of neatly-folded papers reposing in orderly fashion in a shallow drawer that had sprung open from the lower part of the box-like square which formed the compartments.