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“It’s a pity he couldn’t use a piece of paper, Miss Louisa.”

“I’ll rub it out in the lavatory,” I said hastily, “and you will only have to press it.”

She took away the dishes and I was gathering up the cloth when she came back and said: “Old Mr. Lancaster has taken to his bed, miss. He had only a cup of black coffee this morning. And Ellen is threatening to leave. She doesn’t like the way the police went through her clothes yesterday.”

I remember standing there, the table cloth in my arms, and feeling that she wanted me to ask her something, that her return had been solely for that purpose. But her face was carefully blank.

“Listen, Annie,” I said at last, “if you know anything, anything whatever that the police ought to know, you should tell it.”

I realized at once that I had made a mistake. At the word “police” she stiffened.

“I don’t know anything, miss.”

“Not the police, then. Is there anything you can tell me? Anything out of the ordinary? Someone has committed a terrible crime, Annie. Do you want them to get away with it?”

“Maybe there’s plenty out of the ordinary been happening,” she said darkly. “But it hasn’t anything to do with that murder.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know it all right.”

“Annie,” I said desperately. “You can tell me this at least. Has it anything to do with Peggy at the Lancasters’?”

But her astonishment was so evident that I hastened to add: “Or with any of the maids there?”

All of which was most unfortunate, for she froze immediately and departed for the pantry with her head in the air.

It was after nine when I went to the Lancasters’ to ask Margaret what I was to do with the glove. Mother was asleep, and I slipped out without saying anything. I had not told George about the glove, but it was one of those cool mornings in August which with us sometimes turn into downright cold, and I could not run the risk of our furnace being lighted. That meant water in the radiator pans and discovery.

Cool as the wind was, however, the sun had come out and everything looked fresh and green after the night’s rain. Even the Lancaster house, white and immaculate, looked cheerful, and the only strange note was the officer on guard in front of it, and a camera man on the Common, trying to find some spot where the trees did not hide it completely, for a picture.

I met Mrs. Talbot at the walk, and I was shocked to see that she looked almost ravaged. For all her eccentricity she was in the main a cheerful woman, but even her voice had lost its vigor.

“I’m taking over some beef tea,” she said, “Mr. Lancaster is ill.”

We went in together; or rather I went in. She merely gave the jar of beef tea to Jennie and went away. Jennie admitted me without speech, and I saw a group of men in the library, to the left of the front door, as I entered the hall.

“I want to see Miss Margaret.”

“She’s in the morning room, miss.”

Margaret was there, fully and as usual carefully dressed, except that now she wore deep black. She did not hear me at first. She was sitting in front of her desk and staring at the wall above it, without moving. For the first time it occurred to me that morning that Margaret Lancaster was a handsome woman. I had known her so long that I dare say I had never considered her before. She had been like any familiar thing which, after years of familiarity, one does not see at all until some shock or change forces it on one’s attention.

Looking back as now I can, I realize that to a woman like Margaret Lancaster, good-looking, intelligent and restless, those years in that house must have been nothing less than a long martyrdom. She had never given up, as had Emily. She still dressed beautifully, and had her hair marcelled. I can remember that there was an almost fresh wave in it that morning and that her hands, spread out before her on the desk, were well kept and carefully manicured.

But she was also thoroughly poised. When at last she realized that it was I who had entered the room she turned quietly and looked at me.

“Close the door, Louisa. I want to talk to you.”

When I came back she indicated a chair close by her, and she lowered her voice.

“What did you do with it?”

I told her and she nodded.

“That ought to do, for a day or two. Later it will have to be burned, of course. I want you to burn it without opening the envelope, Louisa.”

“It opened itself.”

“Then you know what is in it?” She sat erect and stared at me, and two deep spots of color came into her cheeks.

I explained and she listened. But the explanation was plainly less important to her than the fact that I knew and had seen the glove. There was a long silence when I had finished. Then she made up her mind and turning to me put a hand on my knee.

“First of all,” she said. “I wanted that glove out of the house because it was Jim Wellington’s. I give you my word that that is true. And I give you my word that I found it here in the house, after he had gone. But I don’t believe for a minute that he—that he killed Mother. But he left the pair here two or three months ago, in the spring, and I dropped them into a table drawer in the hall. I always meant to tell him they were here, but I forgot. And I’m pretty sure he had no idea himself where he lost them. I had to get rid of that one last night; that’s all.”

It was my turn to sit silent for a time.

“Then anybody in the house might have known it was there?” I said finally.

She made a gesture.

“Anybody. And I can’t find the mate to it. I’m sure there were two.”

I got up, with an uneasy feeling that she had not told me all she knew.

“Very well,” I said. “Ill burn it. I’ll have to do it at night in the furnace.”

She nodded, and then leaned forward and put a hand on my arm. “I can only say this, Louisa,” she said in a low voice. “I believe that glove was deliberately planted where I found it, and that it was the most cruel and diabolical thing I have ever known.”

B
EFORE I LEFT I
inquired about Emily, and she gave me a quick hard glance.

“She’s all right,” she said. “Doctor Armstrong gave her a hypodermic last night, but I don’t think she slept much. It only dazed her.”

Emily was not asleep. As I went out I heard her voice in the upper hall querulously demanding some paste, and Peggy replying that there was none in the house.

“I’ll get you some, Miss Emily,” I called. She did not hear me, however, and so I started up the stairs. The men were still in the library at that time, and I recognized the voice of Mr. Lewis, who has been the attorney for most of the Crescent ever since I can remember. As I mounted I could hear Emily’s canary, singing gaily, and in the upper hall Peggy was using a carpet sweeper. It might have been any house in the Crescent on a sunny August morning, had it not been for a policeman in uniform, eyeing Peggy with admiration from his position outside Mrs. Lancaster’s bedroom door.

“Where is Miss Emily, Peggy?” I asked.

She glanced at the other.

“She’s in
there
, miss. There was a leak in the night, and they let her go in.”

I saw then that the door into the death chamber was open, and I went to it and glanced in.

The big bed had been stripped of its sheets and mattress, but apparently nothing else had been touched, except that the chest had been drawn out from under the bed and now rested on two chairs in the center of the room.

The leak was at once evident. The rain had seemingly come in from the third floor by the way of the roof, for the heavy paper was soaked and loose from ceiling to floor just beside the big bed. There was a pan on the floor to catch the water, and stretching over this Emily Lancaster was carefully patting the paper back into place. She had not heard me, for she did not turn until I spoke to the policeman.

“May I go in?”

“No, miss. Sorry, but it’s orders.”

Then Emily turned, and I was horrified by the change in her. Her face was simply raddled. Not only that; usually the perfection of neatness, she looked as though she had slept in her clothes. She still wore yesterday afternoon’s white dress, but it was incredibly wrinkled. When she came toward me she moved with the tottering gait of a very old woman.

“I’m afraid the paper is spoiled,” she said, as though that was the most vital matter in the world. “I’ve spoken to Father ever since Ellen reported the leak upstairs, and now it has come all the way through.”

She held out her hand to me, seemed to forget why, and turned back to look again at the paper.

“Even when it dries it will leave a stain,” she said. “It did it once before, but not so much. I fastened it back with thumb tacks, but now I’d like to glue it.”

It was rather dreadful, that escape of hers from reality to anything so unimportant. And she would not stop. She sent me down to Margaret to see if she had any paste, and Margaret gave it to me grimly.

“Still at it, is she? She’s been carrying on about it since seven this morning.”

“I suppose it gives her something to do.”

“There’s plenty to do, if she’d pull herself together. Tell her not to use that paste while the paper’s wet, and get her to bed if you can, Louisa.”

I did not manage all that, but I did coax her to bathe and lie down. She kept up an incessant rattle of empty talk all the time I was with her, and what with that and the singing of the bird I felt as though I were on the edge of hysteria myself. It was fortunate for my nerves that Doctor Armstrong came in just then, and seemed to grasp the situation without words from me.

“Now see here, Emily,” he said sternly. “You stop talking and take this medicine. I told you to take it last night. After that Louisa here will draw your shades and settle you. And get rid of that damned bird, Lou.”

“I’m used to him,” Emily protested.

“I could get used to a riveting machine,” the doctor retorted, “but I don’t intend to. Out he goes.”

He handed the cage to me and I carried it into the back wing of the house and left it in one of the guest rooms. It seemed the obvious thing to do at the time, but I still have moments when I waken and think of the cheerful little creature, and that by not looking at its seed and water cup I signed its death warrant that day. Perhaps another death warrant too, but that does not bear thinking about.

When I came back the doctor met me in the hall and asked me to stay for a while.

“Margaret is arranging for the funeral,” he said, “and all of them have got the inquest to go through tomorrow morning. If you’ll be about in case the old gentleman needs anything it will help.”

I was astonished, when I went back into Emily’s room, to find that she was already asleep. Evidently Margaret had been right, and she had not. slept much during the night.

That left the upper hall to the policeman and myself. Peggy having disappeared, he had taken a morning paper from his pocket, and sitting on the front window sill, was doing a crossword puzzle. I was about to get a chair from Margaret’s room to place outside Mr. Lancaster’s door when I heard the men below leave the library and start up the stairs. The Inspector came first, followed by Sullivan, the detective; then Mr. Lewis, who nodded to me, and a strange dark man carrying a shabby valise.

They were very quiet. They filed along and into Mrs. Lancaster’s room, and it was Inspector Briggs who spoke: “That’s the box, Johnny.”

When I tiptoed forward they were gathered about it, and no one noticed me at all. The dark man, Johnny, produced a bunch of keys, tried them in turn, selected one and filed at it, and then in a businesslike manner stepped back and said:

“That does it. All right, chief.”

I could not see into the box, but I could see the Inspector’s face, and I am certain he was disappointed.

“All here, apparently,” he said. “Is there anybody about to show this to?”

“I represent the family,” Mr. Lewis said rather pompously.

“Ever see this before? Know how much is in it?”

“No, but—”

“Get somebody, Sullivan.”

I moved away from the door just in time, and a few minutes later the detective returned with Margaret. She gave a look into the chest, and her expression changed from one of apprehension to relief.

“It’s there, then,” she said. “Well, all I can say is, thank God.”

The Inspector eyed her quickly.

“Why?”

“Because now we know,” she said. “There was no motive. Someone got into the house, that’s all.”

But Sullivan had bent slightly and was prodding something with a finger.

“Any objection to opening one of these bags, chief?” he asked.

Margaret answered, instead.

“Not unless my father is present,” she said, “and I don’t want to disturb him just now.”

I saw Sullivan and the Inspector exchange a glance, but nothing more was said about opening anything. Instead the Inspector asked her about the method used when the money was put into the chest.

“It was very simple,” she said. “We all disapproved, of course, but sometimes one or the other of us would be in the room. Jim Wellington got the gold for Mother, and currency when gold was scarce. She had accounts in different banks, and most of them would give only a little gold at a time. He brought it out in these bags, and Mother would count it out on the bed.

“After that she would put the gold back into the sack, and twist the wire around the neck of the sack. Or—when it was bank notes—into one of those brown envelopes. After that, whichever it was, Jim would put it into chest.”

“How did he do that?”

“Well, at first he would put the box on two chairs, as it is now. But it got pretty hard. After that he simply dragged it out from under the bed. Mother would give him the key, and he would raise the lid and place the money inside.”

“You don’t know how much there is, I suppose?”

“Not exactly. Jim said once that five thousand dollars weighed over eighteen pounds, and that he didn’t like carrying so much at once anyhow. Something might happen to it. Then the banks objected, too. He hated the whole business. He brought less at a time after that. He’s the only one who would know exactly, if he kept a record; as I’m sure he did. I imagine she had between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars, but that is only a guess.”