“She was just getting out of a machine as I came up. Miss Smith was with her, and they had their hands full of candy boxes. They were laughing. I made sure the boy had been found.”
“Not to my knowledge,” said the colonel. But in some excitement he walked into the parlor. The ladies had arrived; they stood in the center of the room while Randall took away the boxes.
“Candy for Archie,” explained Aunt Rebecca, and these were the first words to reach Rupert Winter’s ears. “I expect him to dinner.”
“Aunt Rebecca,” proclaimed Millicent, “I never have been one to complain, but there are limits to human endurance. I am a modern person, a civilized Episcopalian, accustomed to a regular and well-ordered life, and for the last few days I seem to have been living in a kind of medieval mystery, with kidnappers, and blood-stains, and, for anything I know, somebody ready to stick a knife into any one of us any time! You people may enjoy this sort of thing—you seem to—but I don’t. And I tell you frankly that I am going to apply to the police, not to any private detective inquiry office, as like as not in league with the criminals”—thus ungratefully did Mrs. Millicent slur the motives of her only truly interested auditor—“but real policemen. I shall apply—”
She did not tell where she should apply, the words being snapped out of her mouth by the sharp tinkle of the telephone bell.
Aunt Rebecca responded to the call. “Send him up,” was her answer to the inaudible questioner.
She laid down the receiver. Then she put it back. Then she stood up, her silver head in the air, her erect little figure held motionless.
Janet Smith’s dark eyes sought hers; her lips parted only to close firmly again.
Even the detective perceived the electric intensity of the moment, and Rupert shut his fists tight, with a quickened beating of the heart; but emotional vibrations did not disturb Mrs. Melville Winter’s poise. She continued her plaint.
“This present situation is unbearable, unprecedented and un—un—unexpected,” she declaimed, rather groping for a climax which escaped her. Aunt Rebecca raised her hand.