McKnight was puzzled, but he followed me obediently round to the kitchen entrance of the empty house. It was unlocked, as I had expected. While we climbed to the upper floor I retailed the events of the previous night.
“It’s the finest thing I ever heard of,” McKnight said, staring up at the ladder and the trap. “What a vaudeville skit it would make! Only you ought not to have put your foot on her hand. They don’t do it in the best circles.”
I wheeled on him impatiently.
“You don’t understand the situation at all, Richey!” I exclaimed. “What would you say if I tell you it was the hand of a lady? It was covered with rings.”
“A lady!” he repeated. “Why, I’d say it was a darned compromising situation, and that the less you say of it the better. Look here, Lawrence, I think you dreamed it. You’ve been in the house too much. I take it all back: you do need exercise.”
“She escaped through this door, I suppose,” I said as patiently as I could. “Evidently down the back staircase. We might as well go down that way.”
“According to the best precedents in these affairs, we should find a glove about here,” he said as we started down. But he was more impressed than he cared to own. He examined the dusty steps carefully, and once, when a bit of loose plaster fell just behind him, he started like a nervous woman.
“What I don’t understand is why you let her go,” he said, stopping once, puzzled. “You’re not usually quixotic.”
“When we get out into the country, Richey,” I replied gravely, “I am going to tell you another story, and if you don’t tell me I’m a fool and a craven, on the strength of it, you are no friend of mine.”
We stumbled through the twilight of the staircase into the blackness of the shuttered kitchen. The house had the moldy smell of closed buildings: even on that warm September morning it was damp and chilly. As we stepped into the sunshine McKnight gave a shiver.