Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Mystery fiction; Wills -- Fiction
“Oh, I’m all right,” he declared, pluckily, as he straightened from
his crumpled posture. “Don’t worry about me. Only--the room was so
close and so crowded and so noisy--and I felt dizzy--and I had to come
out here for a lungful of fresh air. I’ll go back presently.”
She hesitated, as though about to return to the others. But the sick
man looked so forlorn and weak she disliked to leave him alone. Yet,
knowing how sensitive he was in all things regarding his health, she
masked her intent under pretense of lingering for a chat.
“I wonder if it was really an ‘inside job,’” she hazarded. “If it was,
of course it must have been one of the servants. And I hate to believe
that. We know every one else concerned, and we know we are all honest.
That is, we know every one but the Moselys. And they couldn’t very well
have done it, could they?”
“They couldn’t have done it at all,” he said, emphatically. “I know.
Because you said they were the first people in the living room, waiting
for dinner. I came down nearly half an hour later. I had overslept.
When I changed to dinner clothes, I left my watch and my cash on my
chiffonier. They were stolen. The Moselys had been downstairs a long
time. And they didn’t go up again till they went after that dog fight.
And then they weren’t gone two minutes before they came rushing back
to tell us they’d been robbed. Not long enough for them to ransack
a single unfamiliar room, to say nothing of my room and Chase’s and
yours. No, we must leave the Moselys out of it.”
“Then it must be one of the servants, of course,” decided Doris.
“I wish I dared hope so,” muttered Clive, almost too low for her to
catch the words.
“What do you mean?” she asked in surprise.
“I mean,” he said, wretchedly, “I mean it would be better to find out
that one of them had robbed us than if-- Oh, I don’t mean anything at
all!” he ended, in sulky anticlimax.
She stared at him with wonder.
“I don’t understand you,” she said. “We’ve just proved it couldn’t
be any one but the servants, unless, of course, it was done by some
professional thief who got in. And that doesn’t seem likely.”
“No,” he said, shortly. “It doesn’t. It was done from the inside.
That’s proved.... Let’s talk about something else, shan’t we?”
But Doris’s curiosity was piqued by his eagerness to sheer away from
the theme.
“Tell me,” she insisted.
“Tell you what?” he countered, sullenly.
“Tell me whom you suspect,” returned Doris. “You suspect some one. I
know you do. Who is it?”
“I didn’t say I suspected any one,” he made troubled answer. “I’d
rather not talk about it at all, if you don’t mind.”
“But I _do_ mind,” she protested. “Why, Clive, all of us have been
living here in this corner of the Berkshires every summer since we were
born! We’ve all known one another all our lives. It’s--it’s a terrible
thing to feel that one of us may be a thief. Won’t you tell me whom you
suspect?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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