There was. But there was something else just inside, too. I stared at a worn leather case, that pretended to be a prayer-book with a brass clasp and tarnished gilt edges, a case I had seen too often to make any mistake about. "By gad," I cried blankly. "Why, you've got old Thompson's cards!"
Macartney was poking at his wounded arm, and he winced. "Hurry up, will you? I can't stop this silly blood. Of course I have Thompson's cards; I can't help it if you think I'm an ass. I liked the old man, and I didn't fancy the Billy Joneses playing cribbage with the only thing in the world he cared for. I took the cards the day we buried him—saw them lying in the kitchen."
"I expect you needn't have worried about Billy," I commented absently. "He was going to give those cards to me, only he and I couldn't find them."
"Do come on," snapped Macartney. He was set-eyed as usual, but I guessed he was ashamed to have had me find him out in a sentimental weakness. "I'd have told you I had them if I'd known you cared. You can take the things now, if you want them."
It was not till that minute that I remembered Macartney could not know why I wanted them, nor anything about the sort of codicil I'd torn off the envelope of Thompson's letter to Dudley: for there had been nothing about cards in what he'd read in it, or in the letter itself. But as the remembrance of both things shot up in me, I didn't confide them to Macartney, any more than I had to Dudley himself. I had a queer sort of idea that if Thompson's pencilled scrawl had meant anything more than the wanderings of a distressed mind, I'd better get hold of it myself first. I said: "All right," and pocketed Thompson's cards. Then I did up Macartney's arm, and the two of us went up the road to Dudley. He and his dry nurse, Baker, who'd promptly arrived from the bunk house, stumped straight back to the assay office with Macartney to fuss over the men who'd been killed. I was making for my own room, to see if Thompson's resurrected cards would shed any light on his crazy scrawls, when I heard a poker drop in the living room. Somebody was in there, raking up the fire.
Charliet had gone after Macartney, with Dudley and Baker. I guessed Paulette had got up and was trying to start the fire,—for she was always working to keep things comfortable—if I haven't mentioned it—even for me. I once caught her darning my rags of socks and crying over them—the Lord knew why! I went in to stop her now—and it was I who stopped dead in the doorway. It was not Paulette inside: it was Marcia! Marcia in a velvet dressing gown, poking the ashes all over the hearth. I could have sworn I had seen Paulette burn the letter she had signed with Tatiana Paulina Valenka's name, but all the same the look of Marcia's back turned me sick. And her face turned me sicker as she flung around on me, with her fingers all ashes,—and Paulette's letter in her hand!
I kept back a curse at the raw fool that was me. I might have seen it was not a tightly folded wad of stiff paper I had watched burn up, but just the light torn scraps Paulette had thrown in with it. What was more, I had been alone with the thing under my very nose in the light ashes into which it must have sunk and never had the sense to burrow for it. It was too late even to snatch for it: Marcia had read it! She held it up to me now,—and Tatiana Paulina Valenka, black on the yellow of the scorched paper, hit me on the eyes.
"Who was right, Nicky Stretton?" she demanded triumphantly. "I told you I'd seen Paulette Brown before! Only I never thought of the Houston business. I could kill Dudley; how dare he bring me out here with a thief! I won't have her here another day."
"What thief?" I snapped. "I don't know what you mean! Why on earth are you poking in the ashes? What are you up for?"
"Only a Paulette Brown could stay asleep, with Dudley yelling at you and Macartney," scornfully. "But if you want to know what I was poking in the ashes for, I had no matches, and my fire was out, so I came in here for a log to light it up. And I found this!"