Part 27 (1/2)
”Don't blindfold yourself, Claire,” she whispered. ”You must help Miss Ballister and me to play a joke on the others. You are to keep the bells rattling after we are gone. See? This way.”
With that she s.h.i.+fted the leathern loop from about Miss Ballister's neck and replaced it over Mrs. Hadley-Smith's head which bent forward to receive it. Smiling in appreciation of the proposed hoax the widow took a step or two.
”Watch!” whispered Miss Smith in Miss Ballister's ear. ”See how well the trick works. There--what did I tell you?”
For instantly all the players, deceived by the artifice, were falling back, huddling away from the fancied danger zone as Mrs. Hadley-Smith went toward them. In the same instant Miss Smith silently had opened the nearest door and, beckoning to Miss Ballister to follow her, was tiptoeing softly out into the empty hall. The door closed gently behind them.
Miss Ballister laughed a forced little laugh. She turned, presenting her back to Miss Smith.
”Now untie me, please do.” In her eagerness to be free she panted out the words.
”Surely,” agreed Miss Smith. ”But I think we should get entirely away, out of sight, before the bells stop ringing and the hoax begins to dawn on them. There's a little study right here at the end of the hall. Shall we go there and hide from them? I'll relieve you of that handkerchief then.”
”Yes, yes; but quickly, please!” Miss Ballister's note was insistent; you might call it pleading, certainly it was agitated. ”Being tied this way gives one such a trapped sort of feeling--it's horrid, really it is.
I'll never let any one tie my hands again so long as I live. It's enough to give one hysterics--honestly it is.
”I understand. Come on, then.”
With one hand slipped inside the curve of the other's elbow Miss Smith hurried her to the study door masked beneath the broad stairs, and opening it, ushered her into the inner room.
It contained an occupant: a smallish man with mild-looking gray eyes, who at their entrance rose up from where he sat, staring steadily at them. At sight of the unexpected stranger Miss Ballister halted. She uttered a shocked little exclamation and recoiled, pulling away from her escort as though she meant to flee back across the threshold. But her shoulders came against the solid panels.
The door so soon had been shut behind her, cutting off retreat.
”Well?” said the stranger.
Miss Smith stood away from the shrinking figure, leaving it quite alone.
”This is the woman,” she said, and suddenly her voice was accusing and hard. ”The stolen paper is in that necklace she is wearing round her neck.”
For proof of the truth of the charge Mullinix had only to look into their captive's face. Her first little fit of distress coming on her so suddenly while she was being bound had made her pale. Now her pallor was ghastly. Little blemishes under the skin stood out in blotches against its dead white, and out of the mask her eyes glared in a dumb terror.
She made no outcry, but her lips, stiff with fright, twisted to form words that would not come. Her shoulders heaved _as_--futilely--she strove to wrench her arms free. Then quickly her head sank forward and her knees began to bend under her.
”Mind--she's going to faint!” warned Mullinix.
Both of them sprang forward and together they eased the limp shape down upon the rug. She lay there at their feet, a pitiable little bundle. But there was no compa.s.sion, no mercifulness in their faces as they looked down at her.
Alongside the slumped form Miss Smith knelt down and felt for the clasp of the slender chain and undid it. She pressed the catch of the locket and opened it, and from the small receptacle revealed within, where a miniature might once have been, she took forth a tightly folded half sheet of yellow parchment paper, which had it been wadded into a ball would have made a sphere about the size of the kernel of a fair-sized filbert.
Mullinix grasped it eagerly, pressed it out flat and took one glance at the familiar signature, written below the close-set array of seemingly meaningless and unrelated letters.
”You win, young lady,” he said, and there was thanksgiving and congratulation in the way he said it. ”But how did you do it? How was it done?”
She looked up from where she was casting off the binding about the relaxed hands of the unconscious culprit.
”It wasn't hard--after the hints you gave me. I made up my mind yesterday that the paper would probably be hidden in a piece of jewelry--in a bracelet or under the setting of a ring possibly; or in a hair ornament possibly; and I followed that theory. Two tests that I made convinced me that Madame Ybanca was innocent; they quite eliminated Madame Ybanca from the equation. So I centred my efforts on this girl and she betrayed herself soon enough.”
”Betrayed herself, how?”
”An individual who has been temporarily deprived of sight will involuntarily keep his or her hands upon any precious object that is concealed about the person--I suppose you know that. And as I watched her after I had blindfolded her----”