"Mola.s.ses breeds worms," Miss Let.i.tia said decisively. "So does pork.
And yet those children think Heaven means ham and mola.s.ses three times a day."
"You have had no news at all?" Miss Fleming said cautiously, her head bent over her work.
"None," I returned, under cover of the table linen to which Miss Let.i.tia"s mind had veered. "I have a good man working on it." As she glanced at me questioningly, "It needed a detective, Miss Fleming."
Evidently another day without news had lessened her distrust of the police, for she nodded acquiescence and went on with her sewing. Miss Let.i.tia"s monotonous monologue went on, and I gave it such attention as I might. For the lamps had been lighted, and with every movement of the girl across, I could see the gleaming of a diamond on her engagement finger.
"If I didn"t watch her, Jane would ruin them," said Miss Let.i.tia. "She gives "em apples when they keep their faces clean, and the bills for soap have gone up double. Soap once a day"s enough for a colored child.
Do you smell anything burning, Knox?"
I sniffed and lied, whereupon Miss Let.i.tia swept her black silk, her colored orphans and her majestic presence out of the room. As the door closed, Miss Fleming put down her sewing and rose. For the first time I saw how weary she looked.
"I do not dare to tell them, Mr. Knox," she said. "They are old, and they hate him anyhow. I couldn"t sleep last night. Suppose he should have gone back, and found the house closed!"
"He would telephone here at once, wouldn"t he?" I suggested.
"I suppose so, yes." She took up her sewing from the chair with a sigh.
"But I"m afraid he won"t come--not soon. I have hemmed tea towels for Aunt Let.i.tia to-day until I am frantic, and all day I have been wondering over something you said yesterday. You said, you remember, that you were not a detective, that some men could take nineteen from thirty-five and leave nothing. What did you mean?"
I was speechless for a moment.
"The fact is--I--you see," I blundered, "it was a--merely a figure of speech, a--speech of figures is more accurate,--" And then dinner was announced and I was saved. But although she said little or nothing during the meal, I caught her looking across at me once or twice in a bewildered, puzzled fashion. I could fairly see her revolving my detestable figures in her mind.
Miss Let.i.tia presided over the table in garrulous majesty. The two old ladies picked at their food, and Miss Jane had a spot of pink in each withered cheek. Margery Fleming made a brave pretense, but left her plate almost untouched. As for me, I ate a substantial masculine meal and half apologized for my appet.i.te, but Let.i.tia did not hear. She tore the board of managers to shreds with the roast, and denounced them with the salad. But Jane was all anxious hospitality.
"Please _do_ eat your dinner," she whispered. "I made the salad myself.
And I know what it takes to keep a big man going. Harry eats more than Let.i.tia and I together. Doesn"t he, Margery?"
"Harry?" I asked.
"Mrs. Stevens is an unmitigated fool. I said if they elected her president I"d not leave a penny to the home. That"s why I sent for you, Knox." And to the maid, "Tell Heppie to wash those cups in luke-warm water. They"re the best ones. And not to drink her coffee out of them.
She let her teeth slip and bit a piece out of one the last time."
Miss Jane leaned forward to me after a smiling glance at her niece across.
"Harry Wardrop, a cousin"s son, and--" she patted Margery"s hand with its ring--"soon to be something closer."
The girl"s face colored, but she returned Miss Jane"s gentle pressure.
"They put up an iron fence," Miss Let.i.tia reverted somberly to her grievance, "when a wooden one would have done. It was extravagance, ruinous extravagance."
"Harry stays with us when he is in Manchester," Miss Jane went on, nodding brightly across at Let.i.tia as if she, too, were d.a.m.ning the executive board. "Lately, he has been almost all the time in Plattsburg.
He is secretary to Margery"s father. It is a position of considerable responsibility, and we are very proud of him."
I had expected something of the sort, but the remainder of the meal had somehow lost its savor. There was a lull in the conversation while dessert was being brought in. Miss Jane sat quivering, watching her sister"s face for signs of trouble; the latter had subsided into muttered grumbling, and Miss Fleming sat, one hand on the table, staring absently at her engagement ring.
"You look like a fool in that cap, Jane," volunteered Let.i.tia, while the plates were being brought in. "What"s for dessert?"
"Ice-cream," called Miss Jane, over the table.
"Well, you needn"t," snapped Let.i.tia, "I can hear you well enough. You told me it was junket."
"I said ice-cream, and you said it would be all right," poor Jane shrieked. "If you drink a cup of hot water after it, it won"t hurt you."
"Fiddle," Let.i.tia snapped unpleasantly. "I"m not going to freeze my stomach and then thaw it out like a drain pipe. Tell Heppie to put my ice-cream on the stove."
So we waited until Miss Let.i.tia"s had been heated, and was brought in, sicklied over with pale hues, not of thought, but of confectioners"
dyes. Miss Let.i.tia ate it resignedly. "Like as not I"ll break out, I did the last time," she said gloomily. "I only hope I don"t break out in colors."
The meal was over finally, but if I had hoped for another word alone with Margery Fleming that evening, I was foredoomed to disappointment.
Let.i.tia sent the girl, not ungently, to bed, and ordered Jane out of the room with a single curt gesture toward the door.
"You"d better wash those cups yourself, Jane," she said. "I don"t see any sense anyhow in getting out the best china unless there"s real company. Besides, I"m going to talk business."
Poor, meek, spiritless Miss Jane! The situation was absurd in spite of its pathos. She confided to me once that never in her sixty-five years of life had she bought herself a gown, or chosen the dinner. She was snubbed with painstaking perseverance, and sent out of the room when subjects requiring frank handling were under discussion. She was as unsophisticated as a child of ten, as unworldly as a baby, as--well, poor Miss Jane, again.
When the door had closed behind her, Miss Let.i.tia listened for a moment, got up suddenly and crossing the room with amazing swiftness for her years, pounced on the k.n.o.b and threw it open again. But the pa.s.sage was empty; Miss Jane"s slim little figure was disappearing into the kitchen.
The older sister watched her out of sight, and then returned to her sofa without deigning explanation.
"I didn"t want to see you about the will, Mr. Knox," she began without prelude. "The will can wait. I ain"t going to die just yet--not if I know anything. But although I think you"d look a heap better and more responsible if you wore some hair on your face, still in most things I think you"re a man of sense. And you"re not too young. That"s why I didn"t send for Harry Wardrop; he"s too young."
I winced at that. Miss Let.i.tia leaned forward and put her bony hand on my knee.
"I"ve been robbed," she announced in a half whisper, and straightened to watch the effect of her words.
"Indeed!" I said, properly thunderstruck. I _was_ surprised. I had always believed that only the use of the fourth dimension in s.p.a.ce would enable any one, not desired, to gain access to the Maitland house. "Of money?"
"Not money, although I had a good bit in the house." This also I knew.
It was said of Miss Let.i.tia that when money came into her possession it went out of circulation.
"Not--the pearls?" I asked.
She answered my question with another.
"When you had those pearls appraised for me at the jewelers last year, how many were there?"
"Not quite one hundred. I think--yes, ninety-eight."
"Exactly," she corroborated, in triumph. "They belonged to my mother.
Margery"s mother got some of them. That"s a good many years ago, young man. They are worth more than they were then--a great deal more."
"Twenty-two thousand dollars," I repeated. "You remember, Miss Let.i.tia, that I protested vigorously at the time against your keeping them in the house."
Miss Let.i.tia ignored this, but before she went on she repeated again her cat-like pouncing at the door, only to find the hall empty as before.
This time when she sat down it was knee to knee with me.
"Yesterday morning," she said gravely, "I got down the box; they have always been kept in the small safe in the top of my closet. When Jane found a picture of my niece, Margery Fleming, in Harry"s room, I thought it likely there was some truth in the gossip Jane heard about the two, and--if there was going to be a wedding--why, the pearls were to go to Margery anyhow. But--I found the door of the safe unlocked and a little bit open--and ten of the pearls were gone!"