McIntyre, standing like her shadow, gazed in curiosity over her shoulder at the three men.
"How jolly to find you," cooed Mrs. Brewster. "And what a charming retreat! It"s much too nice to be occupied by men, only." She inclined her head in a little gracious bow to Ferguson and stepped inside.
"Have my chair," suggested Clymer hospitably as the pretty widow raised her lorgnette and scanned the Oriental hangings and lamps, and lastly, the white envelope which lay on the table, red seal uppermost, where Ferguson had placed it on her entrance.
"Are your daughters here, Colonel McIntyre?" asked Kent as he took a step toward the table. McIntyre"s answer was drowned in an outburst of cheering in the dining room and the rush of many feet. On common impulse Kent and the others turned toward the doorway and looked inside the dining room. Two officers of the French High Commission were being held on the shoulders of comrades and were delivering, as best they could amidst cheers and applause, their farewell to hospitable Washington.
As his companions brushed by him to join the gay throng in the center of the room, Kent turned back to pick up the envelope he had left lying on the table. It was gone.
In feverish haste Kent looked under the table, under the chairs, the lounge and its cushions, behind the draperies, and even under the rugs which covered the floor of the porch, and then rose and stared into the dining room. Which one of his companions had taken the envelope?
Outside the porch the beautiful trumpet vine, its st.u.r.dy trunk and thick branches reaching almost to the roof of the club building, rustled as in a high wind, and the branches swayed this way and that as a figure climbed swiftly down from the porch until, reaching the fence separating the club property from its neighbor"s, the man swung across it, no mean athletic feet, and taking advantage of each sheltering shadow, darted into the alley and from there down silent, deserted Nineteenth Street.
CHAPTER XI. HALF A TRUTH
Dancing was being resumed in the dining room as Kent appeared again in the doorway and he made his way as quickly as possible among the couples, going into all the rooms on that floor, but nowhere could he find Detective Ferguson. On emerging from the drawing room, he encountered the steward returning from downstairs.
"Have you seen Mr. Clymer?" he asked hurriedly.
"Yes, Mr. Kent; he just left the club, taking Detective Ferguson with him in his motor. Is there anything I can do?" added the steward observing Kent"s agitation.
"No, no, thanks. Say, where is Colonel McIntyre?" Kent gave up further pursuit of the detective, he could find him later at Headquarters. The steward looked among the dancers. "I don"t see him," he said, "But there is Mrs. Brewster dancing in the front room; the Colonel must be somewhere around. If I meet him, Mr. Kent, shall I tell him you are looking for him?"
"I will be greatly obliged if you will do so," replied Kent, and straightening his tie, he went in quest of the pretty widow. He had found her a merry chatter-box in the past, possibly he could gain valuable information from her. He found Mrs. Brewster just completing her dance with a fine looking Italian officer whose broad breast bore many military decorations.
"Dance the encore with me"--Kent could be very persuasive when he wished, and Mrs. Brewster dimpled with pleasure, but there was a faint indecision in her manner which he was quick to note. What prompted it? He had been on friendly terms with her; in fact, she had openly championed his cause, so Barbara had once told him, when Colonel McIntyre had made caustic remarks about his frequent calls at the McIntyre house.
"Just one turn," she said, as the foreigner bowed and withdrew. "I am feeling a little weary to-night--the strain of the inquest," she, added in explanation.
"Perhaps you would rather sit out the dance," he suggested. "There is an alcove in that window; oh, pshaw!" as a man and a girl took possession of the chairs.
"Never mind, we can roost on the stairs," Mrs. Brewster preceded him to the staircase leading to the third floor, and sat down, bracing her back very comfortably against the railing, while Kent seated himself at her feet on the lower step. "Extraordinary developments at the inquest this afternoon," he began, as she volunteered no remark. "To think of Jimmie Turnbull being poisoned!"
"It is unbelievable," she said, and her vehemence was a surprise to Kent; he knew her as all froth and bubble. What had brought the dark circles under her eyes and the unwonted seriousness in her manner?
"Unbelievable, yes," he agreed gravely. "But true; the autopsy ended all doubt."
"You mean it developed doubt," she corrected, and a sigh accompanied the words. "Have the police any clew to the guilty man?"
"I don"t know, I"m sure," Kent spoke with caution.
"You don"t?" Her voice was a little sharp. "Didn"t Detective Ferguson give you any news when talking to you on the porch?"
"So you recognized the detective?"
"I? No; I have never seen him before"--she nodded gayly to an acquaintance pa.s.sing through the hall. "Colonel McIntyre told me his name. It was so odd to meet a man here not in evening clothes that I had to ask who he was."
"Ferguson came to bring me some papers about a personal matter,"
explained Kent. He turned so as to face her. "Did you see a white envelope lying on the table when you walked out on the porch?"
She bowed her head absently, her foot keeping time to the inspiring music played by the orchestra stationed on the stair landing just above where they sat. "You left it lying on the table."
"Yes, so I did," replied Kent. "And I believe I was so ungallant as to bolt into the dining room in front of you. Please accept my apologies."
Behind her fan, which she used with languid grace, the widow watched him.
"We all bolted together," she responded, "and are equally guilty--"
"Of what?" questioned a voice from the background, and looking up Kent saw Colonel McIntyre standing on the step above Mrs. Brewster. The music had ceased and in the lull their conversation had been distinctly audible.
"Guilty of curiosity," finished the widow.
"Colonel de Geofroy"s farewell speech was very amusing, did you not think so?"
"I did not stay to hear it," Kent confessed. "I had to return to the porch and get my envelope."
"You were a long time about it," commented McIntyre, sitting down by Mrs. Brewster and possessing himself of her fan. "I waited to tell you that Helen and Barbara were worn out after the inquest and so stayed at home to-night, but you didn"t show up."
"Neither did the envelope," retorted Kent, and as his companions looked at him, he added. "It had disappeared off the table."
"Probably blew away," suggested McIntyre. "I noticed a strong current of air from the dining room, and two of the windows inclosing the porch were open.
"That"s hardly possible," Kent replied skeptically. "The envelope weighed at least two ounces; it would have taken quite a gale to budge it."
McIntyre turned red. "Are you insinuating that one of us walked off with your envelope, Kent?" he demanded angrily. Mrs. Brewster stayed him as he was about to rise.
"Did you not say that Detective Ferguson brought you the envelope, Mr.
Kent?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Then what more likely than that he carried it off again?" She smiled amusedly as Kent"s expression altered. "Why not ask the detective?"
Her suggestion held a grain of truth. Suppose Ferguson had not believed his statement that the papers in the envelope were his personal property and had taken the envelope away to examine it at his leisure? The thought brought Kent to his feet.
"Good night, Mrs. Sherlock Holmes," he said jestingly, "I"ll follow your advice"--There was no opportunity to say more, for several men had discovered the widow"s perch on the stairs and came to claim their dances. Over their heads McIntyre watched Kent stride downstairs, then stooping over he picked up Mrs. Brewster"s fan and sat down to patiently await her return.
Kent"s pursuit of the detective took longer than he had antic.i.p.ated, and it was after midnight before he finally located him at the office of the Chief of Detectives in the District Building. "I"ve called for the envelope you took from my safe early this evening," he began without preface, hardly waiting for the latter"s surprised greeting.
"Why, Mr. Kent, I left it lying on the porch table at the club,"
declared Ferguson. "Didn"t you take it?"
"No." Kent"s worried expression returned. "Like a fool I forgot the envelope when that cheering broke out in the dining room and rushed to find out what it was about; when I returned to the porch the envelope was gone.
"Disappeared?" questioned Ferguson in astonishment.
"Disappeared absolutely; I searched the porch thoroughly and couldn"t find a trace of it," Kent explained. "And in spite of McIntyre"s contention that it might have blown out of the window, I am certain it did not."