“I beg pardon,” he said, as he reached me, “but I heard a window go up in that room, and then a heavy tool drop. It sounded like a sneak thief and I went to see. . . . The window was open, miss, and there is a bit of wood broken from the sill. I beg pardon if I did wrong, but there seemed to be no one about but the party of ladies and I thought immediate action necessary.”
I said it was all right and thanked him. And I found something he had not seen--and that was that the lock of the window was broken.
Someone had been there, and with intent fixed that window so it could be opened. It was the one which led out on the little iron grilled balcony. That was the night I set the trap. If I recall correctly, it was the night before Thanksgiving. But that doesn’t matter. What does matter was that five people wore bandages on their right hands the next day--so--how could I tell who had found the trap?
Nothing seemed to work out as I hoped it would, everything only made more confusion; and I felt--Madam Jumel smile!
Chapter XVI--All Sorts of Bruises
S. K. suggested the trap and I think he did not really believe that my bracelet was ever stolen, but thought that I imagined it was, because I was at that time half sick from nervous upset, which was not extraordinary, considering everything.
“Put a mouse-trap in the box,” he suggested, “and then, when you hear it shoot, you can get up and chase Madam Jumel’s ghost with a hair brush or a shoe tree.”
I said he was a silly thing and ignored the chase suggestion. But, on the way home I stopped at a small grocery and bought a mouse-trap, and S. K., laughing quite a little, paid for it. Then he asked me how he was to settle with the landlord that month, muttered a good deal about extravagant women, and went on to say that we could easily locate the thief, by the mouse-trap which would be clamped on his first finger.
“And,” he said, “if the thief is sufficiently prominent, he will start a style and everyone will be wearing them. Your aunt will be saying, ‘My dear, I’ve mislaid my mouse-trap and I’m late now! Where ever can it be!’ ” And we both laughed for half a block. It sounds silly, but S. K. imitates beautifully and I could just see Aunt Penelope running all over, hunting her mouse-trap, while Jane stood around holding her furs; and Ito and Amy helped hunt, and everyone got excited and hot; for that’s the way she does lose things and find them.
S. K. and I had been walking in the first snow-fall, which was a feathery, dry affair that clung and didn’t melt. It was really too cold to snow at all, and the gray sky that was full of it had a hard time letting it down to earth through the intense dry cold that made a wall. Your cheeks stung and grew pink and the flakes caught in your hair and on your clothes. S. K. said that snow was becoming to me and that I should always wear it and I replied that I would be charmed to in July.