Anna Lang stood just inside the big hall door of Linwood House. She stood leaning on the door with her left hand, whilst with her right she held the catch that would slip the lock at a touch. She was listening intently. Behind her the house was dark except for the small lamp which burned beside the telephone. She had taken off her cap and veil and smoothed her shining black hair. It defined her head in close waves as formal and as natural as the marble ripple in the hair of some sculptured nymph.
She leaned against the door and listened intently. The moment she heard the car stop she pulled the catch and let the door swing in.
A man came up the steps with as much haste as a stoutish medical practitioner permits himself.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” said Anna.
Dr. Monk came into the hall.
“How is he?”
“I think he’s asleep. I’m so glad you’ve come. I was so frightened.”
“Well, well, I’ll just go up and see him.”
She went before him to the stairs and switched on the light on an upper landing.
“He didn’t remember anything about it when I got him back to bed.”
“Well, well, I’ll just go up and see him.”
She went up with him, and stood on the threshold of the large room where John Carthew lay sleeping quietly in a huge old-fashioned four-post bed. A nightlight burned on the double marble washstand. The room was shadowed, drowsy, and rather close behind the heavy crimson curtains which shut out the night air.
Dr. Monk went over to the bed. Anna held her breath. He mustn’t wake.
Presently Dr. Monk came back, motioned her out of the room, and shut the door.
“He seems all right,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”
Anna spoke what she had rehearsed, with her large dark eyes looking at him mournfully out of a colorless face. Suppose he didn’t believe her.
“He went to bed at ten. I read till after eleven. Then I went up to my room, and the servants shut up. I felt restless and hot, and after a bit I went downstairs and took a turn on the terrace. I suppose I was out half an hour. When I came in, I found my uncle’s door ajar, so I looked in to see if he was all right. He was lying in a faint just inside the door. I got some cold water, and he came round at once and let me help him to bed. He didn’t remember anything about it, and I thought I’d better call you up.”
“You’re sure he was unconscious?”
“Oh yes.”
“He seems quite all right”-in a puzzled tone.
They moved together to the head of the stairs. As they began to descend them, Anna said,
“You must be feeling that I’ve brought you out for nothing. I’m so sorry.”
“Not at all,” said Dr. Monk a little gruffly.
“If I ever have to come through the village at night, I always think how dead it is-as if it might have been dead a thousand years. I don’t suppose you saw a soul.”
Dr. Monk gave a malicious snort and rubbed his hands together.
“Then you suppose wrong, for I saw Car Fairfax.” He took a step down as he spoke, but Anna stood perfectly still above him, her hand on the banisters.
“Car? Car?” she said in a low voice.
“Car Fairfax,” said Dr. Monk, looking up at her with his small gray eyes. He had begun to feel distinctly less cross. He admired Anna a good deal, and was pleased at the effect of his speech.
“Car?” said Anna. “Car Fairfax -here!”
“Just outside Turner’s, holding a torch for a chauffeur who was doing something to a car. The man took the torch from him as I passed, and the light went right on Car’s face. It was Car all right.”
“Oh, don’t!” said Anna. She had begun to tremble very much, and the words were hardly audible.
“Why? What’s the matter?”
She shook her head.
They came down the rest of the flight into the hall.
“Dr. Monk-”
“What is it?”
“Do you think Car came here?”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know if I ought-oh, I must tell some one.”
“What is it?”
“I told you I went out. I came in because the library window was open.”
“You mean you left it open.”
“No-I didn’t go out that way. I went out through the garden door. It has a spring lock, and I had the key. It was shut all right, because I tried it, but the library window was ajar.”
“Do you think Mr. Carthew-”
“I don’t know what to think. Suppose he came down and let some one in, or suppose he heard some one in the library and got up. His room is just above. I don’t know what to think.”
“The window was open. Was anything disturbed?”
She hesitated. Then without speaking she crossed the hall and opened a door. Dr. Monk followed. She touched a switch, and the library sprang into view-a heavy, handsome room with maroon curtains and old, comfortable leather chairs.
“The curtains were drawn, but the door was open,” said Anna slowly.
The room was high. There were two windows-long French windows, opening to the ground, as Dr. Monk well knew. Between the windows stood a large mahogany bureau with a cupboard above and three drawers below. The top drawer was not quite shut.
Dr. Monk walked across and looked at it.
“That drawer-”
“I know.”
“Did you look to see if anything’s missing?”
“I didn’t like to. I-I was frightened.”
“Well, you’d better see now.” He pulled out the drawer.
“Doesn’t keep valuables here, I suppose-does he? Hullo! Some one’s been rummaging!”
The papers in the drawer had been turned over. A check book lay open across them.
“Hullo!” said Dr. Monk again. “Hullo, hullo! Some one’s been up to something-yes, by Jove, they have!”
Anna tried to push the. drawer in, but her hand shook. She leaned against the desk and said in a choking voice,
“Oh-don’t!”
Dr. Monk glanced at her sharply.
“Would you know if anything had been taken?”
He pulled down the flap of the bureau and exposed more confusion. There was a row of pigeonholes above the desk. Everything had been bundled out of them-papers, a timetable, pencils, an old pen, a bunch of seals, stamps, and some neatly docketed bills; whilst, across the tangle, stretched a light chain ending in a bunch of keys.
Anna exclaimed and caught it up. The keys fell jangling against the wood.
Dr. Monk looked at her. Those big eyes of hers were brimming over with fear. Odd. He would never have suspected her of being easily frightened. She was as white as a sheet of paper. Those very beautiful lips of hers had lost all their red.
Dr. Monk admired Miss Lang more than a little. He was fifty, and a very comfortable bachelor. He didn’t want to marry any one, but Anna made him feel agreeably young. Her pallor and her distress moved him dangerously; he didn’t feel at all sure that he might not commit himself in some way if she went on looking at him like that. Dangerous- very dangerous. But how agreeable. Lovely woman. Midnight. Danger. The position of consoling friend-
“My dear Miss Anna-” said Dr. Monk. He said it warmly and with a slight tremor in his voice.
Anna’s eyes came to his face. Then suddenly her lashes fell; a shiver went over her. She gathered up the keys and, turning, shut the bureau top with a jerky movement. There was an awkward silence. She broke it at last, speaking in a low voice and not looking at him.
“You won’t-tell any one-will you?”
“My dear Miss Anna-” said Dr. Monk again.
“I shall have to tell my uncle,” she said. “I wish I needn’t, but I must.”
He felt more and more puzzled.
“Is anything missing here?” There must be some reason for this extraordinary agitation of hers.
“I don’t know.” Then, with an abrupt change of voice, “Are you sure that it was Car whom you saw?”
“Oh, quite sure.”
Was she changing the subject? Or did she mean-what did she mean? Some of her color had come back.
“I’m keeping you, and it’s most dreadfully late. Goodnight.”
This was dismissal. He accepted it with a sense of danger averted. He might have made a fool of himself in another minute. It was, somehow, disappointing not to have had the chance. He felt a little dashed as he said good-night and stepped out into the dark. But before he reached the car Anna called him back.
“Dr. Monk!”
He could see her only as a soft black shadow against the dimly lighted hall. She stood in the half open door and spoke quick and low.
“Did he look ill?”
“Who?”
“Car.”
“Bless me-no! Why should he? I only saw him for a moment. I thought he looked a bit thin.”
“You didn’t think he was ill?”
“Has he been ill?”
“I don’t know.” She opened the door wider and slipped across the step. “Dr. Monk-”
“What is it?”
“You won’t-you won’t tell any one you saw him?”
Now why should she ask him that?
Her hand touched his arm just for a moment.
“Please.”
“But why?”
“But I can’t tell you. You won’t tell any one-will you?”
Dr. Monk said he wouldn’t, and then went off wondering why she had asked him that, and what in the world Car Fairfax was doing in Linwood at that hour of night, or at any hour, if he wasn’t seeing his uncle. Then quite suddenly the keys, Mr. Carthew’s swoon, the ransacked bureau, and Anna’s frightened eyes rushed together in his protesting mind and supplied an answer which upset him a good deal.