A Strange Disappearance, Anna Katharine Green [top romance novels .txt] 📗

Mrs. Daniels, for that was her name, took me at once up stairs to the third story back room. As we passed through the halls, I could not but notice how rich, though sombre were the old fashioned walls and heavily frescoed ceilings, so different in style and coloring from what we see now-a-days in our secret penetrations into Fifth Avenue mansions. Many as are the wealthy houses I have been called upon to enter in the line of my profession, I had never crossed the threshold of such an one as this before, and impervious as I am to any foolish sentimentalities, I felt a certain degree of awe at the thought of invading with police investigation, this home of ancient Knicker-bocker respectability. But once in the room of the missing girl, every consideration fled save that of professional pride and curiosity. For almost at first blush, I saw that whether Mrs. Daniels was correct or not in her surmises as to the manner of the girl’s disappearance, the fact that she had disappeared was likely to prove an affair of some importance. For, let me state the facts in the order in which I noticed them. The first thing that impressed me was, that whatever Mrs. Daniels called her, this was no sewing girl’s room into which I now stepped. Plain as was the furniture in comparison with the elaborate richness of the walls and ceiling, there were still scattered through the room, which was large even for a thirty foot house, articles of sufficient elegance to make the supposition that it was the abode of an ordinary seamstress open to suspicion, if no more.

Mrs. Daniels, seeing my look of surprise, hastened to provide some explanation. “It is the room which has always been devoted to sewing,” said she; “and when Emily came, I thought it would be easier to put up a bed here than to send her upstairs. She was a very nice girl and disarranged nothing.”

I glanced around on the writing-case lying open on a small table in the centre of the room, on the vase half full of partly withered roses, on the mantel-piece, the Shakespeare, and Macaulay’s History lying on the stand at my right, thought my own thoughts, but said nothing.

“You found the door locked this morning?” asked I, after a moment’s scrutiny of the room in which three facts had become manifest: first, that the girl had not occupied the bed the night before; second, that there had been some sort of struggle or surprise,—one of the curtains being violently torn as if grasped by an agitated hand, to say nothing of a chair lying upset on the floor with one of its legs broken; third, that the departure, strange as it may seem, had been by the window.

“Yes,” returned she; “but there is a passageway leading from my room to hers and it was by that means we entered. There was a chair placed against the door on this side but we easily pushed it away.”

I stepped to the window and looked out. Ah, it would not be so very difficult for a man to gain the street from that spot in a dark night, for the roof of the newly-erected extension was almost on a level with the window.

“Well,” said she anxiously, “couldn’t she have been got out that way?”

“More difficult things have been done,” said I; and was about to step out upon the roof when I bethought to inquire of Mrs. Daniels if any of the girl’s clothing was missing.

She immediately flew to the closets and thence to bureau drawers which she turned hastily over. “No, nothing is missing but a hat and cloak and—” She paused confusedly.

“And what?” I asked.

“Nothing,” returned she, hurriedly closing the bureau drawer; “only some little knick-knacks.”

“Knick-knacks!” quoth I. “If she stopped for knick-knacks, she couldn’t have gone in any very unwilling frame of mind.” And somewhat disgusted, I was about to throw up the whole affair and leave the room. But the indecision in Mrs. Daniels’ own face deterred me.

“I don’t understand it,” murmured she, drawing her hand across her eyes. “I don’t understand it. But,” she went on with even an increase in her old tone of heart-felt conviction, “no matter whether we understand it or not, the case is serious; I tell you so, and she must be found.”

I resolved to know the nature of that must, used as few women in her position would use it even under circumstances to all appearance more aggravated than these.

“Why, must?” said I. “If the girl went of her own accord as some things seem to show, why should you, no relative as you acknowledge, take the matter so to heart as to insist she shall be followed and brought back?”

She turned away, uneasily taking up and putting down some little matters on the table before her. “Is it not enough that I promise to pay for all expenses which a search will occasion, without my being forced to declare just why I should be willing to do so? Am I bound to tell you I love the girl? that I believe she has been taken away by foul means, and that to her great suffering and distress? that being fond of her and believing this, I am conscientious enough to put every means I possess at the command of those who will recover her?”

I was not satisfied with this but on that very account felt my enthusiasm revive.

“But Mr. Blake? Surely he is the one to take this interest if anybody.”

“I have before said,” returned she, paling however as she spoke, “that Mr. Blake takes very little interest in his servants.”

I cast another glance about the room. “How long have you been in this house?” asked I.

“I was in the service of Mr. Blake’s father and he died a year ago.”