Part 13 (1/2)

He stood facing us, thoughtfully stroking his chin, as a very pretty and pet.i.te maid nervously entered and stood facing us in the doorway.

”Come in, Juanita,” encouraged Edwards. ”I want you to tell these gentlemen just what you told me about discovering that Madame had gone--and anything else that you may recall now.”

”It was Juanita who discovered that Madame was gone, you know,” put in Waldon.

”How did you discover it?” prompted Craig.

”It was very hot,” replied the maid, ”and often on hot nights I would come in and fan Madame since she was so wakeful. Last night I went to the door and knocked. There was no reply. I called to her, 'Madame, madame.' Still there was no answer. The worst I supposed was that she had fainted. I continued to call.”

”The door was locked?” inquired Kennedy.

”Yes, sir. My call aroused the others on the boat. Dr. Jermyn came and he broke open the door with his shoulder. But the room was empty.

Madame was gone.”

”How about the windows?” asked Kennedy.

”Open. They were always open these nights. Sometimes Madame would sit by the window when there was not much breeze.”

”I should like to see the room,” remarked Craig, with an inquiring glance at Edwards.

”Certainly,” he answered, leading the way down a corridor.

Mrs. Edwards' room was on the starboard side, with wide windows instead of portholes. It was furnished magnificently and there was little about it that suggested the nautical, except the view from the window.

”The bed had not been slept in,” Edwards remarked as we looked about curiously.

Kennedy walked over quickly to the wide series of windows before which was a leather-cus.h.i.+oned window seat almost level with the window, several feet above the level of the water. It was by this window, evidently, that Juanita meant that Mrs. Edwards often sat. It was a delightful position, but I could readily see that it would be comparatively easy for anyone accidentally or purposely to fall.

”I think myself,” Waldon remarked to Kennedy, ”that it must have been from the open window that she made her way to the outside. It seems that all agree that the door was locked, while the window was wide open.”

”There had been no sound--no cry to alarm you?” shot out Kennedy suddenly to Juanita.

”No, sir, nothing. I could not sleep myself, and I thought of Madame.”

”You heard nothing?” he asked of Dr. Jermyn.

”Nothing until I heard the maid call,” he replied briefly.

Mentally I ran over again Kennedy's first list of possibilities--taken off by another boat, accident, drugs, suicide, murder.

Was there, I asked myself, sufficient reason for suicide? The letter seemed to me to show too proud a spirit for that. In fact the last sentence seemed to show that she was contemplating the surest method of revenge, rather than surrender. As for accident, why should a person fall overboard from a large houseboat into a perfectly calm harbor?

Then, too, there had been no outcry. Somehow, I could not seem to fit any of the theories in with the facts. Evidently it was like many another case, one in which we, as yet, had insufficient data for a conclusion.

Suddenly I recalled the theory that Waldon himself had advanced regarding the wireless, either from the boat itself or from the wireless station. For the moment, at least, it seemed plausible that she might have been seated at the window, that she might have been affected by escaped wireless, or by electrolysis. I knew that some physicians had described a disease which they attributed to wireless, a sort of anemia with a marked diminution in the number of red corpuscles in the blood, due partly to the over etherization of the air by reason of the alternating currents used to generate the waves.

”I should like now to inspect the little wireless plant you have here on the Lucie,” remarked Kennedy. ”I noticed the mast as we were approaching a few minutes ago.”

I had turned at the sound of his voice in time to catch Edwards and Dr.

Jermyn eyeing each other furtively. Did they know about the letter, after all, I wondered? Was each in doubt about just how much the other knew?