So she felt assured of doing well enough in her work with Summerlad. And if her mood was serious, when she alighted at the hotel and gave a bellboy her purchases, it was because she was thinking of nothing but her immediate purpose, which was to try on her costume all complete, with hat, boots, gloves and riding-crop, before a mirror, partly to make sure every detail was as it should be, but mostly to satisfy herself that she would look as fetching as she felt she must.
It wasn't till she found herself in the corridor leading to her suite that Lucinda remembered Nelly Marquis; she hadn't given the girl two thoughts since morning, and in all likelihood wouldn't have given her another had she not met the bellboy returning from delivering the parcels to her maid, and paused to tip him in front of the door to the corner room. Then, as he thanked her and passed on, she noticed that the door was slightly ajar, the room beyond dark with early dusk, and finally, where the light from the corridor struck in across the threshold, a white hand at rest upon the floor, a woman's hand, palm up, the fingers slightly contracted, absolutely still. A startling thing to see....
For a few seconds Lucinda stood entranced with premonitions of horror. Then she moved to the door and rapped on it gently. There was no response, the hand didn't stir. She called guardedly: "Miss Marquis!"—and when nobody answered laid hold of the knob. The door met a soft obstacle when less than half-open, and would yield no farther. The light now disclosed an arm bare to the elbow. With a shiver Lucinda stepped in and groped along the wall till her fingers found and turned the switch illuminating the central chandelier.
Nelly Marquis lay supine, breathing if at all so lightly that the movement of her bosom, beneath the ragged lace of a dingy pink silk négligé, was imperceptible. Her lids, half lowered, showed only the whites of rolled up eyes, her lips were parted and discoloured, her painted pallor was more ghastly even than it had been in the morning. On the evidence of her body's posture in relation to the partly opened door, she had been taken suddenly ill, had rushed to call for assistance, and had fallen in the act of turning the knob.
Lucinda shut the door, knelt, touched the girl's wrist, and found it icy cold. But her bosom was warm, the heart in it faintly but indisputably fluttering.
In relief and pity, she essayed to take the girl up in her arms and carry her to the bed, but found the dead weight too great.
Casting round at random for something in the nature of a restorative, smelling salts or the like, she saw nothing that would serve, at first, only a disarray of garments and other belongings characteristic of natures in which care for appearances and personal neatness has become atrophied through one cause or another—if it ever existed. But she noticed absently that one of the windows stood wide to the veranda, and went to close it and draw the shade before pursuing her search.
Then, in the bathroom, she found a bottle of aggressive toilet water and a pint flask of whiskey, half emptied.
Alternately moistening the pale lips with the whiskey and bathing the brows and temples with the pungent water, she observed for the first time a reddish bruise under the left eye, the mark of a blow, possibly sustained in falling. But there was nothing nearby that the girl could have struck to inflict such a hurt except the door-knob, and if she had struck this with such force she must have slammed the door.
It was puzzling....