Part 28 (2/2)
”How warm it is.”
Before I could reply, I heard some one coming down-stairs back of me, but not in time to turn.
”Elaine's dressing-table,” a voice whispered in my ear.
I turned suddenly. It was the gray friar. Before I could even reach out to grasp his robe, he was gone.
”Another nut!” I exclaimed involuntarily.
”Why, what did he say?” asked Elaine.
”Something about your dressing-table.”
”My dressing-table?” she repeated.
We ran quickly up the steps. Elaine's room showed every evidence of having been the scene of a struggle, as she went over to the table.
There she picked up a rose and under it a piece of paper on which were some words printed with pencil roughly.
”Look,” she cried, as I read with her:
Do honest a.s.sistants search safes?
Let no one see this but Jameson.
”What does it mean?” I asked.
”My safe!” she cried moving to a closet. As she opened the door, imagine our surprise at seeing Del Mar lying on the floor, bound and gagged before the open safe. ”Get my scissors on the dresser,” cried Elaine.
I did so, hastily cutting the cords that bound Del Mar.
”What does it all mean?” asked Elaine as he rose and stretched himself.
Still clutching his throat, as if it hurt, Del Mar choked, ”I found a man, a foreign agent, searching the safe. But he overcame me and escaped.”
”Oh--then that is what the--”
Elaine checked herself. She had been about to hand the note to Del Mar when an idea seemed to come to her. Instead, she crumpled it up and thrust it into her bosom.
On the street the bolero and the domino girl were hurrying away as fast as they could.
Meanwhile, the gray friar had overcome Del Mar, had bound and gagged him, and trust him into the closet. Then he wrote the note and laid it, with a rose from a vase, on Elaine's dressing-table before he, too, followed.
More than ever I was at a loss to make it out.
It was the day after the masquerade ball that a taxicab drove up to the Dodge house and a very trim but not over-dressed young lady was announced as ”Miss Bertholdi.”
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