Part 8 (2/2)
”Perhaps so, later on. I do not feel like eating now. Can I take a look at my mother's room?”
”Why, yes. I suppose you know where it is?”
”Certainly; I often visited her there when she was not feeling well,”
He pa.s.sed out without another word, and was soon mounting the heavily-carpeted stairs. Once in the room, he closed the door tightly.
Coming up softly after him, Adam Adams tried the door and found it locked. More interested than ever, the detective, just avoiding Mrs.
Morse, who was pa.s.sing through the hallway, slipped Into the adjoining room, and finding, as he had imagined, a door between the two, applied his eye to the keyhole.
This might mean nothing, and it might mean everything. He saw Mrs.
Langmore's son moving around the dressing room precisely as he had moved around the library. He heard the bureau drawers opened and shut, and then heard the squeak of a small writing desk that stood in a corner, as the leaf was turned down. Then came a rattle of papers and a sudden subdued exclamation. The desk was closed again, and the man came out of the room, leaving the hall door partly open.
”Whatever he was looking for, he must have found it,” reasoned the detective. ”Now, what was it?”
He waited in the hallway and heard Thomas Ostrello enter the dining room. A minute later came the rattle of dishes. Then Mrs. Morse confronted him.
”Back again, I see,” she said rather sharply.
”Yes; I wish to have another talk with Miss Langmore,” he returned, and, brus.h.i.+ng her aside, knocked on the girl's door, and was admitted.
The woman pursed up her lips.
”How very important some of those city lawyers are,” she muttered.
”Think they know it all, I guess. Well, he'll have a job clearing her, if what Coroner Busby says is true.”
”Oh, I did not know you were coming back!” exclaimed Margaret. ”Has anything happened?”
”I want to know something about this, Miss Langmore,” and he brought out the torn and wet s.h.i.+rtwaist. ”Is it yours?”
”Oh, certainly; but where did it come from? And it is all torn, too!
It was almost new when I had it on last!”
”When was that?”
The girl thought for a moment, and then turned pale.
”On the morning that--that--”
”That the tragedy occurred?”
”Yes. I don't know what made me put it on, but I did.”
”And when did you take it off?”
”Why, let me see. Some time in the afternoon, I think. I--I fainted, and it got dirty, and so I put on another and threw this in the clothes closet.”
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