According to wage agreement she had the kitchen to herself; no one entered except on matters of necessity; no one lingered after her work was despatched. Madame came twice daily to confer with Patsy on intricacies of gestation, while she beamed upon her as a probationed soul might look upon the keeper of the keys of Paradise. But the days held more for Patsy than sauces and entrées and pastries; they held gossip as well. Soupçons were served up on loosened tongues, borne in through open window and swinging door—straight from the dining-room and my lady’s chamber. Most of it passed her ears, unheeded; it was but a droning accompaniment to her measuring, mixing, rolling, and baking—until news came at last that concerned herself—gossip of the Burgemans, father and son.
The butler and the parlor maid were cleaning the silver in the pantry—and the slide was raised. As transmitters of gossip they were more than usually concerned, for had not the butler at one time served in the house of Burgeman, and the maid dusted next door? Therefore every item of news was well ripened before it dropped from either tongue, and Patsy gathered them in with eager ears.
The master of Quality House happened to be a director of that bank on which the Burgeman check of ten thousand had been drawn. It had been the largest check drawn to cash presented at the bank; and the teller had confessed to the directors that he would never have paid over the money to any one except the old man’s son. In fact, he had been so much concerned over it afterward that he had called up the Burgeman office, and had been much relieved to have the assurance of the secretary that the check was certified and perfectly correct. Not a second thought would have been given to the matter had not the secretary’s resignation been made public the next day—the day Billy Burgeman disappeared.
Patsy’s ears fairly bristled with interest. “That’s news, if it is gossip. Where is the secretary now? And which of them has the ten thousand?”
The director had touched on the subject of the check the next day when business had demanded his presence at the Burgeman home. The result had been distinctly baffling. Not that the director could put his finger on any one suspicious point in the behavior of Burgeman, senior; but it left him with the distinct impression that the father was shielding the son.
“Aye, that’s what Billy said his father would do—shield him out of pride.” Patsy dusted the flour from her arms and stood motionless, thinking.
Burgeman, senior, had offered only one remark to the director, given cynically with a nervous jerking of the shoulders and twitching of the hands: “He was needing pocket-money, a small sum to keep him in shoe-laces and collar-buttons, I dare say. That’s the way rich men’s sons keep their fathers’ incomes from getting too cumbersome.”
Burgeman, senior, had been ill then—confined to his room; but the next day his condition had become alarming. He was now dying at his home in Arden and his son could not be found. These last two statements were not merely gossip, but facts.
Patsy listened impatiently to the parlor maid arguing the matter of Billy’s guilt with the butler. Their work was finished, and they were passing through the kitchen on their way to the servants’ hall.
“Of course he took it”—the maid’s tone was positive—“those rich men’s sons always are a bad lot.”