Convinced that the way was clear she entered the library and was about to make herself comfortable in Mr. Fordyce’s own easy-chair, when the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps startled her, and she darted behind the long silken window curtains which effectually concealed her from view.
The curtains had barely fallen back into place when the hall door opened and Calderon Fordyce came in and walked over to the telephone. He was in much too great a hurry to observe his surroundings closely, and becoming absorbed in his conversation over the wire, never heard the faint rustle of the curtains as Kathryn Allen peered out between them into the room, drinking in every word she could overhear. She jerked her head out of sight as Fordyce hung up the receiver.
“Well, I’m blessed!” he exclaimed aloud. “I don’t want any more scenes; where in thunder did Janet put the evening paper?” But his search was unavailing, and he left the library still grumbling.
Kathryn allowed several minutes to elapse before she stirred from behind the curtains. Finally convinced that Calderon Fordyce was not likely to return at once, she went directly to his desk, and selecting pen and paper, scribbled rapidly:
Dear Joe,
They know, and have telephoned Calderon Fordyce. Get a taxi and wait for me around the corner. Don’t fail.
K. A.
She reread what she had written, then drawing out a folded paper from the same pocket which contained her nurse’s cap, she picked out a long envelope stamped with Calderon Fordyce’s house address, and wrote above it Marjorie Langdon’s name; then straightening out the folded paper, enclosed it in the envelope which she sealed and addressed, and making free with Calderon Fordyce’s stamp-book, soon had it ready for the mail.
“I think my ‘find’ will square accounts with both Marjorie Langdon and Chichester Barnard,” she murmured, with malicious fury. “He won’t marry me, and he shan’t marry her. God! how I—I—love him”—and the unhappy woman bowed her head in anguish. The fact that her habit of self-deception had magnified Barnard’s attentions to her did not soften the realization that he cared nothing for her. It was but another version of the moth and the flame, and pretty Kathryn, her wings singed, turned with sore heart to Joe as her haven of refuge. But even so she could neither forgive Barnard nor forget him.
Replacing the envelope in her pocket, she rearranged the displaced desk ornaments, and picking up the note addressed to Joe, left the room. No one saw her make her way into the men’s cloakroom on the ground floor, but once there she stuck Joe’s note on the mantel in plain view and sped into the hall. Not wishing to encounter any servant she entered the lift and shot up to the drawing-room floor. She made certain the way was clear before venturing down the hall to the Chinese room. Mrs. Fordyce had sent her there earlier in the evening to get the Evening Star, and she had used the private staircase to go and return. It would be the quickest way to reach her patient undetected.