By the bureau an open bag stood on a chair. There was nothing in this
but a book, one of the many treatises on self-development and the
achievement of spiritual calm and control. Poor Sybil! Bassett turned
away with a sick heart--had she found now what she had been striving
for?
The dressing-table was the only place in the room that her neat
arranging hand had not touched. It was covered with a litter of toilet
articles, cold-cream jars, rouge boxes, powders and scents, a silver
hand mirror, a pair of long white gloves. Williams picked up a bead
bag and opened it. It contained a wisp of handkerchief, a bunch of
keys, a lip-stick and a gold change purse. In the central compartment
were three five-dollar bills and in the gold purse one dollar and
thirty-five cents in coin.
“This couldn’t have been all the money she had,” he queried.
“Why not?” said Bassett. “I guess some of us haven’t that much. She
didn’t need any. All our expenses were paid and she was going straight
home. One of those bills was probably intended for Miss Pinkney.”
Nothing more came to light. The closets were empty, the bathroom
contained a few toilet articles and a nightgown and negligée hanging on
the door. Obviously a place swept clean for a coming departure by one
who had no premonition that that departure would be final.
They passed out and along the hall, Rawson wanting to see the
disposition of the passages and stairs. At the door next to Miss
Saunders’ he stopped, asking who occupied that room. It was vacant now
but had been Joe Tracy’s. He opened the door and looked in upon another
chintz-hung chamber, all signs of recent habitation removed that
morning by Miss Pinkney’s energetic hand. A steamer trunk in the corner
caught his attention and Bassett explained it was young Tracy’s trunk
which his sister was to take back to New York with her.
Beyond that the hall ran into the gallery passing under an arch of
carved wood. They traversed it, looking down into the richly colored
expanse of the room below, and fared on under a companion arch into the
last stretch of the hall. At the stair-head Rawson halted:
“Only two flights connecting with this floor, the one in the front by
the library and this. Now the top story--how do you get to that?”
Bassett showed them a staircase at the end of the hall. He had never
been up there himself, but some one, Mrs. Cornell, he thought, had.
It was the servants’ quarters and had not been occupied during their
stay, Miss Pinkney and her helper having had rooms on the gallery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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