Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ It seemed to me, all at once, that I knew the silhouette—that here again was the little old lady, but now without her key. My heart ceased pounding; I was able to think, to calculate. I wondered whether she would break the glass. I planned to let her get in if she could and then to cut off her retreat by advancing on her from behind. I was very calm by that time—rather exalted, I dare say, at my own bravery. I put the packet of beef cubes into my pocket in order to have both hands free. ”

“ A nurse gets under the very skin of the soul. She finds a mind surrendered, all the crooked little motives that have fired the guns of life revealed in their pitifulness. Even now, sometimes, it hurts me to look back.
It is five years since George L. Patton was shot in the leg during a raid on the Hengst Place, in Cherry run. He is at the head of one of the big private agencies now, but he was a county detective then; and Hengst shot him from a cupboard. Well, that does not matter particularly, except that Mr. Patton was brought to the hospital that night and I was given the case. ”

“ A parlor maid admitted me and led me upstairs to my room.
“Mr. March would like to see you in the library when you have taken off your things.”
I changed quickly into my uniform—all white, of course, with rubber-soled white shoes. With the familiar garb I was myself again. I could face anything, do anything. Clothes are queer things.
Mr. Mare turned when he he heard me at the door and rose.
“I am Mis Adams, the nurse,” I said. “Do you wish to see me?”
“Will you come in, Miss Adams? This Mr. Plummer. Have you seen Mrs. March?” ”

“ Illness follows crime—it does not always follow the criminal; but somebody goes down for fair. There is a breach in the wall. The doctor and the clergyman come in then. One way and another they get the story. There is nothing hidden from them. They get it but they do not want it. They cannot use it. The clergyman's vows and the medical man's legal status forbid their using their knowledge; but, where a few years ago there were only two, now each crisis, mental or physical, finds three—the trained nurse. ”

“ I can't imagine myself idle and rich and twenty. I can't imagine taking a taxicab when a street car would do, or having a lady's maid——”
Mr. Patton laid a hand on my arm.
“Did you ever hear Lincoln's story of the little Mississippi steamboat with a whistle so large that every time they blew it the boat stopped? No? Well, no matter. I don't want you to put yourself in her place; I want a little inside help—that's all. There's a curious story behind this case, Miss Adams. Get in there and get their confidence. They won't talk to me—too much family pride. Get the mother to talk. ”

“ Patton and I had had in the taxicab on our way back that evening.
“She's alive,” he had said; “and she is in the city—if that note is hers, and I think it is. I'll show it to the father and the other chap in the morning. Then she is in hiding. Why?”
I lay down on a couch at the foot of Mrs. March's bed, but did not get to sleep, for some reason. The slightest movement of my patient found me wide-eyed and alert. Small sounds were exaggerated. A regular footstep that seemed to ascend the stairs for hours turned out to be a drip from a bathroom tap. ”

“ The March house was an old-fashioned, rather stately residence. Instead of going upstairs to the drawing room there was a reception room opening into the lower hall. Behind that was a music room and, still farther back, a library.
At the very rear of the lower floor was a dining room, quite the largest in the house, extending as did the entire width of the building. In this room was a large bay window extending out into a city garden, and in the bay, shut off by tall plants, was a small table, where the family breakfasted and even, when alone, sometimes dined. ”

“ Patton the next evening as he had arranged. He fell into step beside me.
“How's it going?” he asked.
“I'm learning to be a first-rate lady's maid,” I said, rather peevishly I am afraid. “I massage, manicure and give scalp treatments, and I've got a smirk from trying to look cheerful. The experiment is a failure, Mr. Patton. I'm not nursing, for there's no real illness; and I'm not helping you any. And the dreadful decorum of the house gets me. If I were twenty, I'd run away, too. Nothing ever gets dusty or out of place. No door ever slams. ”

“ March stirred and opened her eyes.
“I hate to waken,” she said querulously. “It is only when I am asleep that I can forget, and even then I dream. Go out now, please, Walter; Miss Adams is going to use the vibrator.”
That afternoon at five o'clock Mr. Patton called me on the telephone for the first time.
“I think we have something,” he said. “When you go out for your walk tonight, dress for the street. There will be a taxicab at the corner and I shall be inside.” ”

“ She is the only servant I have not seen. And, as to dozing, does anybody dream a handbag with straps and buckles?”
He put a hand on my arm impressively.
“It may interest you to know,” he said, “that the cook is a young woman; I interviewed her myself. There is no person such as you describe in the house!”
“But why—at three in the morning——”
“Exactly,” he said dryly. “Why? That's for us to find out.”
He got a careful description of the old woman from me, and an account of her exit by the French door from the dining room into the garden. He was excited, for him, and rather triumphant. ”

“ In the lower walks of life people are more elemental. But get up higher. Crime exists there; but, instead of a passion, it Is a craft. In its detection it is brain, not intellect against brute force or instinct. If anything gives, it is the body. ”

“ Now, Miss Adams, here are the facts: You are going to the home of George March, the banker—you know the name probably—Mrs. March is your patient. She's not ill; she's hysterical and frightened—that's all. It's not a hard case.”
“It's the hardest sort of a case.”
“Well, you like work,” he replied cheerfully. “The family has been away for four months. Until a month ago Clare, the daughter, was with them. One month ago, on the third of September, Clare, who is an only child, twenty years old, left the country place in Maine for home. She traveled alone, leaving her maid in the country. ”

“ In the waitress's pantry, off the dining room, there were beef cubes. It seemed to me that if I drank a cup of bouillon I might sleep. As usual the light was burning in the lower hall. The dining room was dark—I no longer required a night supper—and the little table in the bay window was bare. A street light beyond the garden showed the window and the longer rectangle of the garden door. ”

“ These are long cases sometimes—but the longer the time the more sure I am that the girl is alive. Murder will out; it's self-limiting, like a case of measles. But take a girl who wants to stay hidden, and if she's intelligent, there's hardly any way to locate her. ”

“ And I have learned some things—not new, of course—that to be honest because one is untempted is to be strong with the strength of a child; that the great virtues often link arms with the great vices; that the big criminal thinks big thoughts. ”

“ Then call me. Mrs. March has requested me to see him.”
I took the letter and went upstairs, but I did not give it to Mrs. March at once. That night, while I made my coffee, I steamed open the envelope and read the contents. It was on pale lavender paper and was as follows:
“I implore you to see me as soon as posible. Come to the old place. I am up against it for sure. Don't let this go any longer! It's life or death with me!”
I made a careful copy of the note, even to the misspelled word, and sealed it again. Mr. March was out that night—a girl had been found in a hospital. ”

“ I glanced across the hall to Miss Clare's room, where a light burned every evening; where an ivory dressing set, with carved monogram, was spread on the toilet table; where every luxury a young woman could demand had been gathered together for her use. And I recalled the look in the face of the man downstairs as he gazed at her picture—the tragedy in the eyes of her father. How had she gone, and why? How and why?
III MY first night at the March house was marked by a disagreeable and rather mystifying occurrence. ”

“ The bay, walled off by palms and flowering oleanders in tubs, was dark and rather uninviting at that hour. I made no particular attempt to be silent, but I dare say it is a result of my training that I make no unnecessary noise.
One of the older nurses said to me once:
“When you go out on private duty, you'll have to fuss about your night supper generally. An orange and a glass of milk is about what most cooks set out. Keep them up to the mark. Insist on cold meat or sandwiches; and if there's an alcohol coffee pot, have them leave it ready. ”

“ Upset the ordinary routine of a family, have a robbery, an elopement or a murder, and somebody goes to bed, with a hired nurse in attendance. Fact isn't it?” I admitted it. “It's a fault of the tension people live under,” he went on. “Any extra strain and something snaps. And who is it who is in the very bosom of the family? You know it and I know. The nurse gets it all—the intimate details that the police miss ”

“ March's flushed directions, as she sat up in bed, I went round with great bunches of keys, verifying lists, looking up laces, locating furs. Such jewelry as she had about was safe.
As for the old lady with the jet on her bonnet, with the dolman and the buckled handbag—none of the family had ever known such a person. She answered no description, fitted into no place. Family and servants alike disclaimed her.
Life has a curious way of picking up threads and dropping them. The romantic young man with the blond hair, the little old lady with the limp, came and went ”

“ I I HAVE broken down in health lately—nothing serious; but a nurse lasts only so long, and during the last five years I have been under a double strain. Caring for for the sick has been only a part of it The other?
Well, put it like this: The world's pretty crowded after all. We are always touching elbows, and there's never a deviation from the usual, the normal, that is not felt all the way down the line. Stand a row of dominoes on edge and knock down the end one. Do you see? And generally somebody goes down for fair. We do not know much about it among the poor ”

“ It is a shabby, quaint old bag, about eight inches long, round-bellied, brown with wear. It still contains what was in it when Mr. Patton found it—a cotton handkerchief, marked with a J; two keys—one a house-door key, the other a flat one; a scrawled note in a soiled lavender envelope; a newspaper clipping of a sale of blankets.
It is one of my most painful memories that for a month I examined that newspaper cutting frequently and that I failed entirely to grasp the significance of the reverse side. We all have a mental blind spot. That was mine.
Clare March was missing. That was my case ”

“ Set the general public looking—that's the way to get information. You get a million clews worth nothing, and out of the lot one that helps. But you know these people. They won't listen to any publicity. They have only one argument—if she is dead publicity won't help her, and if she is alive it will hurt her. ”

“ She will talk to you about Clare—about Miss March. Reassure her if you can. Be certain that Miss March will be found soon.”
“I will do what I can. Has the doctor left any orders?”
“Very few. She is to be soothed. There's a bromide, I believe. Her maid has the instructions.”
There was nothing for me in that glimpse of the two men most nearly concerned—two gentlemen unaffectedly distressed and under great strain in a quiet, well-ordered house. It looked like poor material, from Mr. Patton's point of view. Mr. March followed me into the hall. “If you need anything, let me know, Miss Adams. ”

“ And do not jump to conclusions; it is fatal in this business.”
I knew the bag at once when I saw it. Surely no other bag of that size in the city had two straps fastened with steel buckles. The handles of two of the other bags had been cut off, but the heavy leather handle of this one was entire.
“This is the one you mean, of course. Yes, it looks like the one the old lady carried; but there may be others. It is foreign, isn't it?” ”

“ Patton drew out the communication inside and watched me as I read it. It was hardly decipherable and was written on a piece of wrapping paper:
“Am all right. Clare.”
I stared at it.
“Interesting, isn't it?” commented Mr. Patton. “Did she write it or didn't she? If she's all right, why isn't she home? Why do all our little communications arrive in lavender envelopes? Who's the old lady? What was she doing in the house that night? What's the answer?”
“That could be the key to the garden door,” I said dully.
IV THE doctor made a late call that night and dismissed Mrs. March as a patient. ”

“ He went quietly to the dressing table, returning with the photograph of Clare that stood there.
“You nurses know a lot about people,” he said. “That's your business. You're a psychologist even if you don't realize it. I've watched you with Mrs. March. Now what do you read in that picture?” ”

“ Her business is bodies, doctors' orders, nourishments; but unless she's a fool she ends by holding the family secret in the hollow of her hand. It worries her. She needs her hands. She gets rid of it as soon as she can and forgets it. She is safe ”

“ He unfastened the bag and emptied onto a table a tin spectacle case, as quaint as the bag; two keys, one for a patent lock, the other an ordinary house key. Last of all he drew from a pocket inside the bag a soiled and creased lavender envelope, stamped and ready for mailing. It was addressed in pencil to Mrs. March and had been opened. Mr. ”