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Updated: May 6, 2025
Maillot's hands closed spasmodically; his teeth clicked together; and he slewed round like a released spring. Next instant, had it not been for the intervening stairs and Stodger's and my quick interposition of our bodies between the two men, matters certainly would have gone hard with the private secretary.
Stodger's hearing may not have been remarkably acute, but if my life depended upon shutting that door so close behind him and not attracting his attention, why, I should have hesitated long before essaying the performance. To have the ruby lifted from under the very noses of the watchers while they were wide awake, too would in all truth be a sorry ending of our search for it.
Carefully and systematically, we went over every inch of space I don't know how many times I had done so since the murder but found absolutely nothing that was not already familiar to me. It was miserably aggravating that every search I undertook in this house of mystery should prove fruitless. Yet, we could find nothing whatever to serve as a reply to Stodger's pertinent question.
Before I closed the door, however, I tersely charged Miss Belle to give me as soon as possible the explanation of the mystery. The door closed, I turned upon my unoffending associate rather angrily, I 'm ashamed to say; but Stodger's good-nature was imperturbable. He could tell me absolutely nothing that threw light upon whatever terrifying experience Miss Cooper had undergone.
She caught her breath sharply; the color came quickly to her cheeks, a tender light to the blue eyes. She put her hands confidently into mine. "What has happened to you?" she asked, standing away from me and staring with perplexed solicitude at the testimony of Stodger's barbarous surgery. I had forgotten all about the red-hot poker. "A mere scratch a nothing," I made light of it.
But I must be vigilant, always alert; there would be little sleep for me until I had this extraordinary gem safe in my hands. So I remained with the undertaker's men until they departed with the body. As I turned to reënter the house Stodger's portly form hove into view. He dropped into one of the library's big easy-chairs. "Whew!" he gasped.
The distant cockcrow rings clear and high, floors creak, the very timbers of the house complain, and mice scurry in the walls. It was such a stillness that enveloped us. Even Stodger's irrepressible good-humor failed to cheer.
While it was my first duty, therefore, to discover the murderer, I saw no reason why I should not at the same time find the well-nigh priceless gem, inasmuch as I hoped that the latter would point definitely to the former. The ruby had disappeared between eleven o'clock last night and the time of Stodger's arrival shortly before three in the morning.
"Tell me what you have learned," returned I. Things usually acquire a more comprehensible aspect when you have a few facts by which to measure and weigh them, and I wanted to hear Stodger's story. "Yip!" he cried cheerily. "Might as well sit here as anywhere else; nobody to disturb us." Weighted as he was with surplus flesh, his agility was amazing.
The snow bore other tracks besides Stodger's and mine tracks pointing toward the house instead of away from it. They were fresh, made since the snow ceased. I advanced a little farther into the yard, where the tracks had not been obliterated by pedestrians on the sidewalk, and soon comprehended that they had been made by two men. Were they in the house now? And if so, who were they?
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