CHAPTER IV
LOST: A MEMORANDUM
Anna, the waitress, took one more comprehensive look around the prettily furnished boudoir to make sure that she had not overlooked the sugar bowl; it was certainly nowhere in sight. Anna paused on her way to the door leading to Judith’s bedroom, turned back and, picking up the breakfast tray, departed to her domain below stairs.
Judith, totally unaware that she had disturbed her mother’s excellent waitress by walking off in a moment of absent-mindedness with the sugar bowl, saw reflected in her long cheval glass the closing of the boudoir door, and crossing her bedroom, made certain, by a peep inside, that Anna had gone. With a quick turn of her wrist she shut the door and locked it. The suite which she and her husband occupied consisted of three rooms, the boudoir, their bedroom, and beyond that a large dressing room and bath. There was but one entrance to the suite—by way of the boudoir, which rendered their quarters absolutely private.
Judith perched herself on one of the twin beds, and, feeling underneath her pillow, pulled out a gold locket from which dangled the broken link of a gold chain. There was nothing extraordinary in the appearance of the locket, nothing to distinguish it from many other such ornaments, yet it held Judith’s gaze with the power of a snake-charmer. Twice she looked away from it, twice dropped it under the folds of the tossed back bedclothes, only to pick it up each time and tip it this way and that in the pink palm of her hand. Three times she crooked her fingers over the spring, but the pressure needed to open the locket was not forthcoming.
Suddenly Judith raised her eyes and scanned the bedroom—the glass-topped dressing table with its tortoise-shell, gold-initialed toilet set; the tall chiffonnier on which lay her husband’s military hair brushes and a framed photograph of Judith; the chaise longue with its numerous soft pillows, the comfortable chairs—Judith passed them over with scant attention, and gazed at the pictures on the walls, the draperies over the bow window and its broad seat, which added much to the attractiveness of her room, and lastly at a small leather box resembling a Kodak. The box was perched precariously near the edge of the mantel shelf. Judith walked over to it, jerked up the clasps and lifted the lid. She pushed aside the contents of the box and placed the locket underneath several coils of wire, then closing the box, set it behind the mantel clock. An inspection of the dial showed her that the hour hand was about to register ten o’clock.
The next moment Judith was seated before her dressing table and unbraiding her hair. It fell in a shower about her shoulders, the winter sunshine picking out the hidden strains of gold in its rich chestnut. A deep, deep sigh escaped Judith as she stared at her reflection in the mirror. It was a very lovely face that confronted her, not one to call forth a sigh from the observer. The delicately arched eyebrows, the tender, sensitive mouth, the brilliancy of the deep blue eyes—but enhanced by the shadows underneath them,—the long lashes, and the small shapely head all combined to win for Judith the title of “belle” when introduced three years before to Washington society.
Judith’s popularity had been a matter of unbounded gratification to her mother, whose ambition for a titled son-in-law was thereby encouraged and dinned into her husband’s ears, to his intense disgust, but in spite of his gruff reception of her suggestions, Robert Hale had seen to it that only the most eligible bachelors were invited to their home. Judith had signally failed to encourage any one of her many attentive cavaliers, and when taken to task by her mother, had responded that no man should be handicapped by a deaf wife and that she did not intend to marry; a statement which, in its quiet determination, had staggered her mother.
Judith had thrown herself heart and soul into war work, and though not accepted for service overseas on account of her deafness, she had won, through her efficiency and knowledge of languages, a position in the Department of State carrying great responsibilities, and she had retired from it, after the Armistice, with the commendation of the Department’s highest officials.
The hard work, the long hours, and the close confinement indoors to one accustomed, as Judith had been, to a life in the open, had resulted in a nervous collapse, and Doctor McLane, their family physician, had advised a complete change of environment. The medical dictum had come on the heels of a letter from the United States Consul at Tokio and his wife, asking Judith to make them a long promised visit, and within forty-eight hours all details of her trip across the continent with friends returning to their home in San Francisco after two years’ war work in Washington, had been arranged, and a cable was sent to Mr. and Mrs. Noyes in Tokio, notifying them to expect Judith on the next steamer.
And in Tokio, two weeks after her arrival, Judith had met Joseph Richards, major of the —th Regiment, invalided home from arduous service in Siberia with the A. E. F., and bearing on his broad breast ribbons denoting Russian, Japanese, and British decorations awarded for valor.