Part 19

She was in the drawing-room, now restored to its usual clutter of furniture and ornaments. I made my way around two tables, stepped over a hassock and under the leaves of an artificial palm, and shook her hand.

She was plainly excited. Never have I known a woman who, confined to a wheel-chair, lived so hard. She did not allow life to pass her windows, if I may put it that way. She called it in, and set it moving about her chair, herself the nucleus around which were enacted all sorts of small neighborhood dramas and romances. Her secretaries did not marry. She married them.

It is curious to look back and remember how Herbert and Sperry and myself had ignored this quality in her, in the Wells case. She was not to be ignored, as I discovered that afternoon.

“Sit down,” she said. “You look half sick, Horace.”

Nothing escapes her eyes, so I was careful to place myself with the lump on my head turned away from her. But I fancy she saw it, for her eyes twinkled.

“Horace! Horace!” she said. “How I have detested you all week!”

“I? You detested me?”

“Loathed you,” she said with unction. “You are cruel and ungrateful. Herbert has influenza, and does not count. And Sperry is in love--oh yes, I know it. I know a great many things. But you!”

I could only stare at her.

“The strange thing is,” she went on, “that I have known you for years, and never suspected your sense of humor. You’ll forgive me, I know, if I tell you that your lack of humor was to my mind the only flaw in an otherwise perfect character.”

“I am not aware--” I began stiffly. “I have always believed that I furnished to the Neighborhood Club its only leaven of humor.”

“Don’t spoil it,” she begged. “Don’t. If you could know how I have enjoyed it. All afternoon I have been chuckling. The fire-tongs, Horace. The fire-tongs!”

Then I knew that my wife had been to Mrs. Dane and I drew a long breath. “I assure you,” I said gravely, “that while doubtless I carried the wretched things home and--er--placed them where they were found, I have not the slightest recollection of it. And it is hardly amusing, is it?”

“Amusing!” she cried. “It’s delicious. It has made me a young woman again. Horace, if I could have seen your wife’s face when she found them, I would give cheerfully almost anything I possess.”

But underneath her mirth I knew there was something else. And, after all, she could convince my wife if she were convinced herself. I told the whole story--of the visit Sperry and I had made the night Arthur Wells was shot, and of what we discovered; of the clerk at the pharmacy and his statement, and even of the whiskey and its unfortunate effect--at which, I regret to say, she was vastly amused; and, last of all, of my experience the previous night in the deserted house.

She was very serious when I finished. Tea came, but we forgot to drink it. Her eyes flashed with excitement, her faded face flushed. And, with it all, as I look back, there was an air of suppressed excitement that seemed to have nothing to do with my narrative. I remembered it, however, when the denouement came the following week.

She was a remarkable woman. Even then she knew, or strongly suspected, the thing that the rest of us had missed, the x of the equation. But I think it only fair to record that she was in possession of facts which we did not have, and which she did not divulge until the end.

“You have been so ungenerous with me,” she said finally, “that I am tempted not to tell you why I sent for you. Of course, I know I am only a helpless old woman, and you men are people of affairs. But now and then I have a flash of intelligence. I’m going to tell you, but you don’t deserve it.”

She went down into the black silk bag at her side which was as much a part of her attire as the false front she wore with such careless abandon, and which, brown in color and indifferently waved, was invariably parting from its mooring. She drew out a newspaper clipping.

“On going over Clara’s notes,” she said, “I came to the conclusion, last Tuesday, that the matter of the missing handbag and the letters was important. More important, probably, than the mere record shows. Do you recall the note of distress in Miss Jeremy’s voice? It was almost a wail.”

I had noticed it.

“I have plenty of time to think,” she added, not without pathos. “There is only one Monday night in the week, and--the days are long. It occurred to me to try to trace that bag.”

“In what way?”

“How does any one trace lost articles?” she demanded. “By advertising, of course. Last Wednesday I advertised for the bag.”

I was too astonished to speak.

“I reasoned like this: If there was no such bag, there was no harm done. As a matter of fact, if there was no such bag, the chances were that we were all wrong, anyhow. If there was such a bag, I wanted it. Here is the advertisement as I inserted it.”

She gave me a small newspaper cutting

“Lost, a handbag containing private letters, car-tickets, etc. Liberal reward paid for its return. Please write to A 31, the Daily News.”