The Window at the White Cat Part 16

When I could walk I put it on the mantel, its mate from the other end of the hearth beside it. Then I took my candle and went out into the hall.

My door, which I had left open, I found closed; nothing else was disturbed. The leather bag sat just inside, as Wardrop had left it.

Through Miss Maitland's transom were coming certain strangled and irregular sounds, now falsetto, now deep ba.s.s, that showed that worthy lady to be asleep. A glance down the staircase revealed Davidson, stretching in his chair and looking up at me.

"I'm frozen," he called up cautiously. "Throw me down a blanket or two, will you?"

I got a couple of blankets from my bed and took them down. He was examining his chair ruefully.

"There isn't any grip to this horsehair stuff," he complained. "Every time I doze off I dream I'm coasting down the old hill back on the farm, and when I wake up I'm sitting on the floor, with the end of my back bone bent like a hook."

He wrapped himself in the blankets and sat down again, taking the precaution this time to put his legs on another chair and thus anchor himself. Then he produced a couple of apples and a penknife and proceeded to pare and offer me one.

"Found 'em in the pantry," he said, biting into one. "I belong to the apple society. Eat one apple every day and keep healthy!" He stopped and stared intently at the apple. "I reckon I got a worm that time," he said, with less ardor.

"I'll get something to wash him down," I offered, rising, but he waved me back to my stair.

"Not on your life," he said with dignity. "Let him walk. How are things going up-stairs?"

"You didn't happen to be up there a little while ago, did you?" I questioned in turn.

"No. I've been kept busy trying to sit tight where I am. Why?"

"Some one came into my room and wakened me," I explained. "I heard a racket and when I got up I found a sh.e.l.l that I had put on the door-sill to keep the door open, in the middle of the room. I stepped on it."

He examined a piece of apple before putting it in his mouth. Then he turned a pair of shrewd eyes on me.

"That's funny," he said. "Anything in the room disturbed?"

"Nothing."

"Where's the sh.e.l.l now?"

"On the mantel. I didn't want to step on it again."

He thought for a minute, but his next remark was wholly facetious.

"No. I guess you won't step on it up there. Like the old woman: she says, 'Motorman, if I put my foot on the rail will I be electrocuted?'

And he says, 'No, madam, not unless you put your other foot on the trolley wire.'"

I got up impatiently. There was no humor in the situation that night for me.

"Some one had been in the room," I reiterated. "The door was closed, although I had left it open."

He finished his apple and proceeded with great gravity to drop the parings down the immaculate register in the floor beside his chair.

Then--

"I've only got one business here, Mr. Knox," he said in an undertone, "and you know what that is. But if it will relieve your mind of the thought that there was anything supernatural about your visitor, I'll tell you that it was Mr. Wardrop, and that to the best of my belief he was in your room, not once, but twice, in the last hour and a half. As far as that sh.e.l.l goes, it was I that kicked it, having gone up without my shoes."

I stared at him blankly.

"What could he have wanted?" I exclaimed. But with his revelation, Davidson's interest ceased; he drew the blanket up around his shoulders and s.h.i.+vered.

"Search me," he said and yawned.

I went back to bed, but not to sleep. I deliberately left the door wide open, but no intrusion occurred. Once I got up and glanced down the stairs. For all his apparent drowsiness, Davidson heard my cautious movements, and saluted me in a husky whisper.

"Have you got any quinine?" he said. "I'm sneezing my head off."

But I had none. I gave him a box of cigarettes, and after partially dressing, I threw myself across the bed to wait for daylight. I was roused by the sun beating on my face, to hear Miss Let.i.tia's tones from her room across.

"Nonsense," she was saying querulously. "Don't you suppose I can smell?

Do you think because I'm a little hard of hearing that I've lost my other senses? Somebody's been smoking."

"It's me," Heppie shouted. "I--"

"You?" Miss Let.i.tia snarled. "What are you smoking for? That ain't my s.h.i.+rt; it's my--"

"I ain't smokin'," yelled Heppie. "You won't let me tell you. I spilled vinegar on the stove; that's what you smell."

Miss Let.i.tia's sardonic chuckle came through the door.

"Vinegar," she said with scorn. "Next thing you'll be telling me it's vinegar that Harry and Mr. Knox carry around in little boxes in their pockets. You've pinned my cap to my scalp."

I hurried down-stairs to find Davidson gone. My blanket lay neatly folded, on the lower step, and the horsehair chairs were ranged along the wall as before. I looked around anxiously for telltale ashes, but there was none, save, at the edge of the spotless register, a trace.

Evidently they had followed the apple parings. It grew cold a day or so later, and Miss Let.i.tia had the furnace fired, and although it does not belong to my story, she and Heppie searched the house over to account for the odor of baking apples--a mystery that was never explained.

Wardrop did not appear at breakfast. Margery came down-stairs as Bella was bringing me my coffee, and dropped languidly into her chair. She looked tired and white.

"Another day!" she said wearily. "Did you ever live through such an eternity as the last thirty-six hours?"

I responded absently; the duty I had a.s.sumed hung heavy over me. I had a frantic impulse to s.h.i.+rk the whole thing: to go to Wardrop and tell him it was his responsibility, not mine, to make this sad-eyed girl sadder still. That as I had not his privilege of comforting her, neither should I shoulder his responsibility of telling her. But the issue was forced on me sooner than I had expected, for at that moment I saw the glaring head-lines of the morning paper, laid open at Wardrop's plate.

She must have followed my eyes, for we reached for it simultaneously.

She was nearer than I, and her quick eye caught the name. Then I put my hand over the heading and she flushed with indignation.

"You are not to read it now," I said, meeting her astonished gaze as best I could. "Please let me have it. I promise you I will give it to you--almost immediately."

"You are very rude," she said without relinquis.h.i.+ng the paper. "I saw a part of that; it is about my father!"

"Drink your coffee, please," I pleaded. "I will let you read it then. On my honor."

She looked at me; then she withdrew her hand and sat erect.

"How can you be so childis.h.!.+" she exclaimed. "If there is anything in that paper that it--will hurt me to learn, is a cup of coffee going to make it any easier?"

I gave up then. I had always thought that people heard bad news better when they had been fortified with something to eat, and I had a very distinct recollection that Fred had made Edith drink something--tea probably--before he told her that Billy had fallen off the back fence and would have to have a st.i.tch taken in his lip. Perhaps I should have offered Margery tea instead of coffee. But as it was, she sat, stonily erect, staring at the paper, and feeling that evasion would be useless, I told her what had happened, breaking the news as gently as I could.

I stood by her helplessly through the tearless agony that followed, and cursed myself for a blundering a.s.s. I had said that he had been accidentally shot, and I said it with the paper behind me, but she put the evasion aside bitterly.