“Bah!” said I to myself. “Some loiterer. He cannot be connected with the Estabrooks’ affairs.”
Yet, for some reason, feeling that I was watched, I determined to walk away again, and as I went I looked along the ground in the manner of one who has lost something. The cross-street was near and I turned it. I thought after a moment or two of waiting under the wall of the corner residence that I heard receding footbeats on the pavement; therefore, having allowed a minute or two to pass, I retraced my steps. The figure was no longer anywhere in sight. Holding my hat so that the ugly gusts of cold wind would not blow it away, I walked up the white steps of the Estabrook home and pressed the electric button which projected from a bronze disk. This disk, so the sense of touch indicated, had at one time been one of those Chinese carved metal mirrors and was now set into the stone. I remember how it spoke to me of the extents to which the metropolitan architects and decorators will go to appeal to the whims and pretensions of the rich, who, after all, are out of the same mould as other men so obscure and wretched that the money spent for such a capricious ornament would support a family of them for six months. Perhaps the irony of it is that, no matter how much wealth may protect one from the others, it can never protect one from himself. And then—I pressed the button again.
There were silk curtains within the long heavy glass panels on either side of the door, but had a light been lit within I could have seen it. The whole house, however, was dark, and only by chance did I catch the sly movement of one of the curtains and the glint of an eye, peeping out at me. Whoever its owner might be, he or she had crept across the tiled vestibule silently and was now behind the outer door conducting a covert investigation.
“An odd procedure for a house of a respectable, conservative family,” said I to myself, and without hesitating I rang again.
A light in the ceiling of the vestibule glowed forth immediately and I heard the movement of heavy metal locks and latches; the door swung back and I found myself standing before a middle-aged woman dressed in the black-and-white garb of well-trained servants.
This woman had a face that one may find sometimes among veteran nuns—a strong and kindly face, patient and self-subjugated—the face of the convent. But, of course, old family serving-women may have this same expression, for they too are nuns in a sense; in household rites they renounce the world, and if the spirit does not sour, little by little, they take wordless vows and obliterate themselves in service. This woman who stood before me, with skirts and apron blown about her substantial figure by the chill wind that poured into the vestibule, seemed at first to be one of them. It was only when I perceived that her eyes were filled with some guilty fear, and that her hands were half raised as if to ward off some impending danger, that I began to suspect that hers was one of those masks which hypocrisy and deceit grow upon the countenance of evil souls.
“I wish to see Mr. Estabrook,” said I.
“He is not at home. He is away.”
“Mrs. Estabrook.”
“She is not well, sir. She cannot see anybody.”