“But most folks don’t use circling stairways much. They don’t know—”
“I do though. I work in a library. There are scores of circling stairways among the stacks and I know just how high each one is.”
“It is queer about that stairway,” Lucile breathed. “I must be going up. I’m getting chill sitting here.”
“Well, good-bye.” Mark Pence put out his hand and seized hers in a friendly grip. “Just remember I’m with you. If you ever need me, just whistle and I’ll come running.”
“Thanks—thanks—aw—awfully,” said Lucile, a strange catch in her throat.
Her eyes followed him until the boat’s prow had hidden him; then she hurried up the rope-ladder and into the cabin. She was shivering all over, whether from a chill or from nervous excitement she could not tell.
The other girls came in a few moments later. For an hour they sat in a corner, drinking hot chocolate and telling of their night’s adventures. Then they prepared themselves for the night’s rest.
For a long time after the others had retired, Florence sat in a huge upholstered chair, lights out, staring into the dark. She was thinking over the experiences of the past few weeks, trying to put them together in a geometric whole, just as an artist arranges the parts of a stained glass window.
“There’s Lucile’s experience in the old Spanish Mission,” she mused, “and my own in the museum. Then there’s Mark Pence’s visit to the old scow and the circular stairway. Then there’s the blue candlestick. It’s rare, mysterious and valuable. Why? The police are interested in it. Why? Then there’s the police-sergeant’s visit, and Lucile’s experience on the ice, and the two policemen visiting the old scow, and there’s that man on the bridge to-night, the two with the sled and the one sitting on the ice. It’s all mysterious, so it ought all to fit together somehow.”
For a long time she sat wrapped in deep thought. Then she started suddenly.