It was then that I saw the light and went down-stairs. My unlucky stumble gave her warning enough to turn out the light. For the rest, the chase through the back hall, the dining-room and the pantry, had culminated in her escape up the back stairs, while I had fallen down the dumb-waiter shaft. She had run into Bella on the upper floor, Bella, who had almost fainted, and who knew her and kept her until morning, petting her and soothing her, and finally getting her into a troubled sleep.
That day she realized that she was being followed. When Edith's invitation came she accepted it at once, for the sake of losing herself and her papers, until she was ready to use them. It had disconcerted her to find Margery there, but she managed to get along. For several days everything had gone well: she was getting stronger again, ready for the second act of the play, prepared to blackmail Schwartz, and then expose him. She would have killed him later, probably; she wanted her measure full and running over, and so she would disgrace him first.
Then—Schwartz must have learned of the loss of the papers from the Fleming house, and guessed the rest. She felt sure he had known from the first who had killed Fleming. However that might be, he had had her room entered, Margery chloroformed in the connecting room, and her papers were taken from under her pillow while she was pretending anesthesia. She had followed the two men through the house and out the kitchen door, where she had fainted on the grass.
The next night, when she had retired early, leaving Margery and me down-stairs, it had been an excuse to slip out of the house. How she found that Schwartz was at the White Cat, how she got through the side entrance, we never knew. He had burned the papers before she got there, and when she tried to kill him, he had struck her hand aside.
When we were out in the cheerful light of day again, Burton turned his shrewd, blue eyes on me.
"Awful story, isn't it?" he said. "Those are primitive emotions, if you like. Do you know, Knox, there is only one explanation we haven't worked on for the rest of this mystery—I believe in my soul you carried off the old lady and the Russia leather bag yourself!"
CHAPTER XXVI
LOVERS AND A LETTER
At noon that day I telephoned to Margery.