
The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange
“Oh, don’t say things like that!” broke in the poor woman in a tone of great indignation. “I have done nothing anyone could call either foolish or wicked. I am simply very unfortunate, and being sensitive—But this isn’t telling the story. I’ll try to make it all clear; but if I do not, and show any confusion, stop me and help me out with questions. I—I—oh, where shall I begin?”
“With your first knowledge of this second will.”
“Thank you, thank you; now I can go on. One night, shortly after my brother had been given up by the physicians, I was called to his bedside for a confidential talk. As he had received that day a very large amount of money from the bank, I thought he was going to hand it over to me for Clement, but it was for something much more serious than this he had summoned me. When he was quite sure that we were alone and nobody anywhere within hearing, he told me that he had changed his mind as to the disposal of his property and that it was to Clement and his children, and not to Carlos, he was going to leave this house and the bulk of his money. That he had had a new will drawn up which he showed me—”
“Showed you?”
“Yes; he made me bring it to him from the safe where he kept it; and, feeble as he was, he was so interested in pointing out certain portions of it that he lifted himself in bed and was so strong and animated that I thought he was getting better. But it was a false strength due to the excitement of the moment, as I saw next day when he suddenly died.”
“You were saying that you brought the will to him from his safe. Where was the safe?”
“In the wall over his head. He gave me the key to open it. This key he took from under his pillow. I had no trouble in fitting it or in turning the lock.”
“And what happened after you looked at the will?”
“I put it back. He told me to. But the key I kept. He said I was not to part with it again till the time came for me to produce the will.”
“And when was that to be?”
“Immediately after the funeral, if it so happened that Carlos had arrived in time to attend it. But if for any reason he failed to be here, I was to let it lie till within three days of his return, when I was to take it out in the presence of a Mr. Delahunt who was to have full charge of it from that time. Oh, I remember all that well enough! and I meant most earnestly to carry out his wishes, but—”
“Go on, Mrs. Quintard, pray go on. What happened? Why couldn’t you do what he asked?”
“Because the will was gone when I went to take it out. There was nothing to show Mr. Delahunt but the empty shelf.”
“Oh, a theft! just a common theft! Someone overheard the talk you had with your brother. But how about the key? You had that?”
“Yes, I had that.”
“Then it was taken from you and returned? You must have been careless as to where you kept it—”
“No, I wore it on a chain about my neck. Though I had no reason to mistrust any one in the house, I felt that I could not guard this key too carefully. I even kept it on at night. In fact it never left me. It was still on my person when I went into the room with Mr. Delahunt. But the safe had been opened for all that.”
“There were two keys to it, then?”
“No; in giving me the key, my brother had strictly warned me not to lose it, as it had no duplicate.”
“Mrs. Quintard, have you a special confidant or maid?”
“Yes, my Hetty.”
“How much did she know about this key?”
“Nothing, but that it didn’t help the fit of my dress. Hetty has cared for me for years. There’s no more devoted woman in all New York, nor one who can be more relied upon to tell the truth. She is so honest with her tongue that I am bound to believe her even when she says—”
“What?”
“That it was I and nobody else who took the will out of the safe last night. That she saw me come from my brother’s room with a folded paper in my hand, pass with it into the library, and come out again without it. If this is so, then that will is somewhere in that great room. But we’ve looked in every conceivable place except the shelves, where it is useless to search. It would take days to go through them all, and meanwhile Carlos—”
“We will not wait for Carlos. We will begin work at once. But just one other question. How came Hetty to see you in your walk through the rooms? Did she follow you?”
“Yes. It’s—it’s not the first time I have walked in my sleep. Last night—but she will tell you. It’s a painful subject to me. I will send for her to meet us in the library.”
“Where you believe this document to lie hidden?”
“Yes.”
“I am anxious to see the room. It is upstairs, I believe.”
“Yes.”
She had risen and was moving rapidly toward the door. Violet eagerly followed her.
Let us accompany her in her passage up the palatial stairway, and realize the effect upon her of a splendour whose future ownership possibly depended entirely upon herself.
It was a cold splendour. The merry voices of children were lacking in these great halls. Death past and to come infused the air with solemnity and mocked the pomp which yet appeared so much a part of the life here that one could hardly imagine the huge pillared spaces without it.
To Violet, more or less accustomed to fine interiors, the chief interest of this one lay in its connection with the mystery then occupying her. Stopping for a moment on the stair, she inquired of Mrs. Quintard if the loss she so deplored had been made known to the servants, and was much relieved to find that, with the exception of Mr. Delahunt, she had not spoken of it to any one but Clement. “And he will never mention it,” she declared, “not even to his wife. She has troubles enough to bear without knowing how near she stood to a fortune.”
“Oh, she will have her fortune!” Violet confidently replied. “In time, the lawyer who drew up the will will appear. But what you want is an immediate triumph over the cold Carlos, and I hope you may have it. Ah!”
This expletive was a sigh of sheer surprise.
Mrs. Quintard had unlocked the library door and Violet had been given her first glimpse of this, the finest room in New York.
She remembered now that she had often heard it so characterized, and, indeed, had it been taken bodily from some historic abbey of the old world, it could not have expressed more fully, in structure and ornamentation, the Gothic idea at its best. All that it lacked were the associations of vanished centuries, and these, in a measure, were supplied to the imagination by the studied mellowness of its tints and the suggestion of age in its carvings.
So much for the room itself, which was but a shell for holding the great treasure of valuable books ranged along every shelf. As Violet’s eyes sped over their ranks and thence to the five windows of deeply stained glass which faced her from the southern end, Mrs. Quintard indignantly exclaimed:
“And Carlos would turn this into a billiard room!”
“I do not like Carlos,” Violet returned hotly; then remembering herself, hastened to ask whether Mrs. Quintard was quite positive as to this room being the one in which she had hidden the precious document.
“You had better talk to Hetty,” said that lady, as a stout woman of most prepossessing appearance entered their presence and paused respectfully just inside the doorway. “Hetty, you will answer any questions this young lady may put. If anyone can help us, she can. But first, what news from the sick-room?”
“Nothing good. The doctor has just come for the third time today. Mrs. Brooks is crying and even the children are dumb with fear.”
“I will go. I must see the doctor. I must tell him to keep Clement alive by any means till—”
She did not wait to say what; but Violet understood and felt her heart grow heavy. Could it be that her employer considered this the gay and easy task she had asked for?
The next minute she was putting her first question:
“Hetty, what did you see in Mrs. Quintard’s action last night, to make you infer that she left the missing document in this room?”
The woman’s eyes, which had been respectfully studying her face, brightened with a relief which made her communicative. With the self-possession of a perfectly candid nature, she inquiringly remarked:
“My mistress has spoken of her infirmity?”
“Yes, and very frankly.”
“She walks in her sleep.”
“So she said.”
“And sometimes when others are asleep, and she is not.”
“She did not tell me that.”
“She is a very nervous woman and cannot always keep still when she rouses up at night. When I hear her rise, I get up too; but, never being quite sure whether she is sleeping or not, I am careful to follow her at a certain distance. Last night I was so far behind her that she had been to her brother’s room and left it before I saw her face.”
“Where is his room and where is hers?”
“Hers is in front on this same floor. Mr. Brooks’s is in the rear, and can be reached either by the hall or by passing through this room into a small one beyond, which we called his den.”
“Describe your encounter. Where were you standing when you saw her first?”
“In the den I have just mentioned. There was a bright light in the hall behind me and I could see her figure quite plainly. She was holding a folded paper clenched against her breast, and her movement was so mechanical that I was sure she was asleep. She was coming this way, and in another moment she entered this room. The door, which had been open, remained so, and in my anxiety I crept to it and looked in after her. There was no light burning here at that hour, but the moon was shining in in long rays of variously coloured light. If I had followed her—but I did not. I just stood and watched her long enough to see her pass through a blue ray, then through a green one, and then into, if not through, a red one. Expecting her to walk straight on, and having some fears of the staircase once she got into the hall, I hurried around to the door behind you there to head her off. But she had not yet left this room. I waited and waited and still she did not come. Fearing some accident, I finally ventured to approach the door and try it. It was locked. This alarmed me. She had never locked herself in anywhere before and I did not know what to make of it. Some persons would have shouted her name, but I had been warned against doing that, so I simply stood where I was, and eventually I heard the key turn in the lock and saw her come out. She was still walking stiffly, but her hands were empty and hanging at her side.”
“And then?”
“She went straight to her room and I after her. I was sure she was dead asleep by this time.”
“And she was?”
“Yes, Miss; but still full of what was on her mind. I know this because she stopped when she reached the bedside and began fumbling with the waist of her wrapper. It was for the key she was searching, and when her fingers encountered it hanging on the outside, she opened her wrapper and thrust it in on her bare skin.”
“You saw her do all that?”
“As plainly as I see you now. The light in her room was burning brightly.”
“And after that?”
“She got into bed. It was I who turned off the light.”
“Has that wrapper of hers a pocket?”
“No, Miss.”
“Nor her gown?”
“No, Miss.”
“So she could not have brought the paper into her room concealed about her person?”
“No, Miss; she left it here. It never passed beyond this doorway.”
“But might she not have carried it back to some place of concealment in the rooms she had left?”
The woman’s face changed and a slight flush showed through the natural brown of her cheeks.
“No,” she disclaimed; “she could not have done that. I was careful to lock the library door behind her before I ran out into the hall.”
“Then,” concluded Violet, with all the emphasis of conviction, “it is here, and nowhere else we must look for that document till we find it.”
Thus assured of the first step in the task she had before her, Miss Strange settled down to business.
The room, which towered to the height of two stories, was in the shape of a huge oval. This oval, separated into narrow divisions for the purpose of accommodating the shelves with which it was lined, narrowed as it rose above the great Gothic chimney-piece and the five gorgeous windows looking towards the south, till it met and was lost in the tracery of the ceiling, which was of that exquisite and soul-satisfying order which we see in the Henry VII chapel in Westminster Abbey. What break otherwise occurred in the circling round of books reaching thus thirty feet or more above the head was made by the two doors already spoken of and a narrow strip of wall at either end of the space occupied by the windows. No furniture was to be seen there except a couple of stalls taken from some old cathedral, which stood in the two bare places just mentioned.
But within, on the extensive floor-space, several articles were grouped, and Violet, recognizing the possibilities which any one of them afforded for the concealment of so small an object as a folded document, decided to use method in her search, and to that end, mentally divided the space before her into four segments.
The first took in the door, communicating with the suite ending in Mr. Brooks’s bedroom. A diagram of this segment will show that the only article of furniture in it was a cabinet.
It was at this cabinet Miss Strange made her first stop.
“You have looked this well through?” she asked as she bent over the glass case on top to examine the row of mediaeval missals displayed within in a manner to show their wonderful illuminations.
“Not the case,” explained Hetty. “It is locked you see and no one has as yet succeeded in finding the key. But we searched the drawers underneath with the greatest care. Had we sifted the whole contents through our fingers, I could not be more certain that the paper is not there.”
Violet stepped into the next segment.
This was the one dominated by the huge fire-place. A rug lay before the hearth. To this Violet pointed.
Quickly the woman answered: “We not only lifted it, but turned it over.”
“And that box at the right?”
“Is full of wood and wood only.”
“Did you take out this wood?”
“Every stick.”
“And those ashes in the fire-place? Something has been burned there.”
“Yes; but not lately. Besides, those ashes are all wood ashes. If the least bit of charred paper had been mixed with them, we should have considered the matter settled. But you can see for yourself that no such particle can be found.” While saying this, she had put the poker into Violet’s hand. “Rake them about, Miss, and make sure.”
Violet did so, with the result that the poker was soon put back into place, and she herself down on her knees looking up the chimney.
“Had she thrust it up there,” Hetty made haste to remark, “there would have been some signs of soot on her sleeves. They are white and very long and are always getting in her way when she tries to do anything.”
Violet left the fire-place after a glance at the mantel-shelf on which nothing stood but a casket of open fretwork, and two coloured photographs mounted on small easels. The casket was too open to conceal anything and the photographs lifted too high above the shelf for even the smallest paper, let alone a document of any size, to hide behind them.
The chairs, of which there were several in this part of the room, she passed with just an inquiring look. They were all of solid oak, without any attempt at upholstery, and although carved to match the stalls on the other side of the room, offered no place for search.
Her delay in the third segment was brief. Here there was absolutely nothing but the door by which she had entered, and the books. As she flitted on, following the oval of the wall, a small frown appeared on her usually smooth forehead. She felt the oppression of the books—the countless books. If indeed, she should find herself obliged to go through them. What a hopeless outlook!
But she had still a segment to consider, and after that the immense table occupying the centre of the room, a table which in its double capacity (for it was as much desk as table) gave more promise of holding the solution of the mystery than anything to which she had hitherto given her attention.
The quarter in which she now stood was the most beautiful, and, possibly, the most precious of them all. In it blazed the five great windows which were the glory of the room; but there are no hiding-places in windows, and much as she revelled in colour, she dared not waste a moment on them. There was more hope for her in the towering stalls, with their possible drawers for books.
But Hetty was before her in the attempt she made to lift the lids of the two great seats.
“Nothing in either,” said she; and Violet, with a sigh, turned towards the table.
This was an immense affair, made to accommodate itself to the shape of the room, but with a hollowed-out space on the window-side large enough to hold a chair for the sitter who would use its top as a desk. On it were various articles suitable to its double use. Without being crowded, it displayed a pile of magazines and pamphlets, boxes for stationery, a writing pad with its accompaniments, a lamp, and some few ornaments, among which was a large box, richly inlaid with pearl and ivory, the lid of which stood wide open.
“Don’t touch,” admonished Violet, as Hetty stretched out her hand to move some little object aside. “You have already worked here busily in the search you made this morning.”
“We handled everything.”
“Did you go through these pamphlets?”
“We shook open each one. We were especially particular here, since it was at this table I saw Mrs. Quintard stop.”
“With head level or drooped?”
“Drooped.”
“Like one looking down, rather than up, or around?”
“Yes. A ray of red light shone on her sleeve. It seemed to me the sleeve moved as though she were reaching out.”
“Will you try to stand as she did and as nearly in the same place as possible?”
Hetty glanced down at the table edge, marked where the gules dominated the blue and green, and moved to that spot, and paused with her head sinking slowly towards her breast.
“Very good,” exclaimed Violet. “But the moon was probably in a very different position from what the sun is now.”
“You are right; it was higher up; I chanced to notice it.”
“Let me come,” said Violet.
Hetty moved, and Violet took her place but in a spot a step or two farther front. This brought her very near to the centre of the table. Hanging her head, just as Hetty had done, she reached out her right hand.
“Have you looked under this blotter?” she asked, pointing towards the pad she touched. “I mean, between the blotter and the frame which holds it?”
“I certainly did,” answered Hetty, with some pride.
Violet remained staring down. “Then you took off everything that was lying on it?”
“Oh, yes.”
Violet continued to stare down at the blotter. Then impetuously:
“Put them back in their accustomed places.”
Hetty obeyed.
Violet continued to look at them, then slowly stretched out her hand, but soon let it fall again with an air of discouragement. Certainly the missing document was not in the ink-pot or the mucilage bottle. Yet something made her stoop again over the pad and subject it to the closest scrutiny.
“If only nothing had been touched!” she inwardly sighed. But she let no sign of her discontent escape her lips, simply exclaiming as she glanced up at the towering spaces overhead: “The books! the books! Nothing remains but for you to call up all the servants, or get men from the outside and, beginning at one end—I should say the upper one—take down every book standing within reach of a woman of Mrs. Quintard’s height.”
“Hear first what Mrs. Quintard has to say about that,” interrupted the woman as that lady entered in a flutter of emotion springing from more than one cause.
“The young lady thinks that we should remove the books,” Hetty observed, as her mistress’s eye wandered to hers from Violet’s abstracted countenance.
“Useless. If we were to undertake to do that, Carlos would be here before half the job was finished. Besides, Hetty must have told you my extreme aversion to nicely bound books. I will not say that when awake I never place my hand on one, but once in a state of somnambulism, when every natural whim has full control, I am sure that I never would. There is a reason for my prejudice. I was not always rich. I once was very poor. It was when I was first married and long before Clement had begun to make his fortune. I was so poor then that frequently I went hungry, and what was worse saw my little daughter cry for food. And why? Because my husband was a bibliomaniac. He would spend on fine editions what would have kept the family comfortable. It is hard to believe, isn’t it? I have seen him bring home a Grolier when the larder was as empty as that box; and it made me hate books so, especially those of extra fine binding, that I have to tear the covers off before I can find courage to read them.”
O life! life! how fast Violet was learning it!
“I can understand your idea, Mrs. Quintard, but as everything else has failed, I should make a mistake not to examine these shelves. It is just possible that we may be able to shorten the task very materially; that we may not have to call in help, even. To what extent have they been approached, or the books handled, since you discovered the loss of the paper we are looking for?”
“Not at all. Neither of us went near them.” This from Hetty.
“Nor any one else?”
“No one else has been admitted to the room. We locked both doors the moment we felt satisfied that the will had been left here.”
“That’s a relief. Now I may be able to do something. Hetty, you look like a very strong woman, and I, as you see, am very little. Would you mind lifting me up to these shelves? I want to look at them. Not at the books, but at the shelves themselves.”
The wondering woman stooped and raised her to the level of the shelf she had pointed out. Violet peered closely at it and then at the ones just beneath.
“Am I heavy?” she asked; “if not, let me see those on the other side of the door.”
Hetty carried her over.
Violet inspected each shelf as high as a woman of Mrs. Quintard’s stature could reach, and when on her feet again, knelt to inspect the ones below.
“No one has touched or drawn anything from these shelves in twenty-four hours,” she declared. “The small accumulation of dust along their edges has not been disturbed at any point. It was very different with the table-top. That shows very plainly where you had moved things and where you had not.”
“Was that what you were looking for? Well, I never!”
Violet paid no heed; she was thinking and thinking very deeply.
Hetty turned towards her mistress, then quickly back to Violet, whom she seized by the arm.
“What’s the matter with Mrs. Quintard?” she hurriedly asked. “If it were night, I should think that she was in one of her spells.”
Violet started and glanced where Hetty pointed. Mrs. Quintard was within a few feet of them, but as oblivious of their presence as though she stood alone in the room. Possibly, she thought she did. With fixed eyes and mechanical step she began to move straight towards the table, her whole appearance of a nature to make Hetty’s blood run cold, but to cause that of Violet’s to bound through her veins with renewed hope.
“The one thing I could have wished!” she murmured under her breath. “She has fallen into a trance. She is again under the dominion of her idea. If we watch and do not disturb her she may repeat her action of last night, and herself show where she has put this precious document.”
Meanwhile Mrs. Quintard continued to advance. A moment more, and her smooth white locks caught the ruddy glow centred upon the chair standing in the hollow of the table. Words were leaving her lips, and her hand, reaching out over the blotter, groped among the articles scattered there till it settled on a large pair of shears.
“Listen,” muttered Violet to the woman pressing close to her side. “You are acquainted with her voice; catch what she says if you can.”
Hetty could not; an undistinguishable murmur was all that came to her ears.
Violet took a step nearer. Mrs. Quintard’s hand had left the shears and was hovering uncertainly in the air. Her distress was evident. Her head, no longer steady on her shoulders, was turning this way and that, and her tones becoming inarticulate.