Odor of Violets, Baynard Kendrick [best short novels .txt] 📗

“You wanted to talk with me, I believe,” Norma began. “I’ll be glad to tell you all I can.”

“That’s awfully kind of you. I’m up here trying to help Mr. Tredwill locate his daughter. I’m wondering if her disappearance had any bearing on what happened to you.”

“To me?” she parried. Her trip to New York was uppermost in her thoughts. How much did this man know?

One of Maclain’s long fingers reached down to touch the dog beside him. Norma watched it, wondering if he’d noticed perturbation in her tone.

“Last night,” he said, “when that wardrobe was pushed on you.”

“Pushed on me?” She raised a hand to her forehead. “I’ve been puzzled about that all day. At first I thought it just fell.”

“It couldn’t have,” he assured her gravely. “Someone was hiding behind it and took the only chance of escaping discovery. Who did you think was there?”

She was silent for a while, finding the unfathomable blankness of his eyes disconcerting. The longer she kept him on her adventure in the workshop, the longer he’d postpone questions about what happened during the day.

“I thought it was one of the maids,” she said at last. “Something happened when I came in from the Carters’.”

“Tell me about it, please. There are many things I need to know.”

He sat unmoving while she related the incident of her glove in the downstairs hall. It was only necessary to remember that she had been at Bunny’s—not in New York. There was nothing implicating after she got home. Her story flowed easily.

“You say you were playing bridge with the Carters?” he inquired casually when she was finished.

“Yes.” Norma began twisting at the edge of the spread. “I didn’t get home until very late. They wanted me to spend the night on account of the storm, but Cheli was here alone.”

Maclain got up abruptly and Schnucke stood up beside him. Under her guidance he crossed to the windows. The draperies were drawn, but the Captain found them and pushed them aside. With his back to Norma he had the appearance of a man with sight staring out into a dark world covered with snow.

“You mentioned a package. I suppose that was a Christmas present from the Carters to you.”

“Yes,” said Norma. “I think that’s what Bella wanted to peek at down in the hall.”

“This was after two?”

“It was very late. It must have been well after two.”

“Were you asleep when Stacy telephoned?”

“No. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Why? You must have been upset about something to lie awake after such a long evening.”

“Too much bridge, I guess.” It was like answering some impersonal machine that couldn’t even see her smile.

“Stacy phoned about half-past four?”

“Maybe later.” Norma made an effort to sound thoughtful and sincere. “I can’t be sure.”

“Then Bella might have dropped your glove any time between two and half-past four.”

“Yes,” said Norma. “I suppose so.”

“That would give her plenty of time to open the package and look in it,” said Maclain. “Did she?”

Norma pressed her fingers hard above her eyes. Did the girl look in the package? What had that to do with it? He never followed a single line. What was he getting at now? She said: —

“Really, I don’t know.”

“You said you missed the glove when you picked up the package to bring it upstairs. I can tell in a moment, by feeling the wrappings, if it’s been opened before.” His friendly voice was lowered when he added, “If the package is here.”

“I put it away.” That sounded frightfully weak to her. She said more firmly, “It doesn’t make any difference, does it, Captain Maclain?”

“No.” The Captain turned and rested himself against the edge of the window sill. “Why, after leaving your gloves and package downstairs for two hours and a half, did you decide to bring them up when you answered Stacy’s call?”

Norma put a hand to her throat, feeling it would help her to answer steadily. “I saw that the glove was gone.”

“But you said you didn’t see that until you picked up the package. Why were you bringing that package upstairs, Mrs. Tredwill, after you answered the phone?”

“Does it make any difference?” Norma began to cry.

“None,” said Maclain. “Young Stacy is a most observant boy. The description he gave me of his vanished sister included a pair of galoshes that she wore into New York yesterday. Those galoshes are in her closet now. How did they get there, Mrs. Tredwill? The police will certainly want to know, and lying will weigh heavily on your conscience if that girl should die.”

Where hardness would have only stiffened her resistance, she broke completely under his sympathetic tone. The truth came sobbingly, but the welcome relief of telling it left her apathetically calm.

“You say your husband saw that notice in the paper yesterday morning?” he asked her when she was through.

“I think so. The paper was open to the column when I picked it up downstairs.”

“That’s strange,” said Maclain. “I thought he learned about that notice from me. I think I’ll go upstairs, Mrs. Tredwill, and talk with that servant girl.”

CHAPTER XV

DARKNESS AND blackness.

The blackness of the deepest mine, the lack of light which drives weak men mad in dungeons, was the world of Duncan Maclain.

There was no light in Norma’s room; no light in the hall; no light in the great house built on a Connecticut hill. Neither were there night and day—just time, and sound, and feeling, and sometimes taste and smell.

There were trust in a dog, footsteps to count, voices to remember, and the tingling feel of fabrics when sensitive fingers brushed against a wall.

Twenty paces.

Twenty yards.

Sixty feet.

“Left here, Schnucke!”

You remembered it the next time. If you forgot it, then Schnucke warned you—or, by yourself, you risked barked shins and a nasty tumble. You had to remember. It wasn’t nice when a blind man took a fall.

Paces and faces and talks and walks and what was said in Norma’s room—you had to remember it all. The faces you built by the