Go she did, but with much fear and trembling.
She might have spared herself all this trembling, for there was no one in the dark passage.
But what was this? The row of coat hooks were all empty save one, her own, and on that hook—what could it mean?—on that hook hung not her own too frankly thin and threadbare coat, but a magnificent thing of midnight blue and white. It was the cape with the white fox collar worn by the mystery woman.
Even as her hand touched the fox skin she knew it was far more costly than she had thought.
“It’s over my coat,” she breathed. “I’ve only to leave it.”
This, she found, was not true. Her coat had vanished. The cape had been left in its stead and, as if to further perplex and alarm her, the midnight blue unfolded, revealing a superb lining of Siberian squirrel.
“Oh!” Lucile exclaimed as her trembling fingers dropped to her side and she fled the place.
One consoling thought flashed across her mind. Rennie had not yet left for the night. Rennie, the tall and slim, with a thread of gray in her black hair, who had been in the department for no one knew how long—Rennie would know what to do. The instant she was told all that had happened she would say what the very next step must be.
“The instant she is told,” Lucile whispered to herself. Then suddenly she realized that she did not wish to tell all she had seen.
“Not just yet, at any rate,” she told herself. “I’m not supposed to have seen it. I want time to think. I’ll tell Rennie only what I am supposed to know—that my coat has been taken and this cape left in its stead.”