Eddie Hughes stirred restlessly in his sleep and groaned once or twice, as a restless sleeper sometimes will. He opened his eyes and stared at the blackness of the room, listening with all his faculties, for some reason, straining his eardrums and his eyes to the fullest extent. He had a feeling that all was not well.
The house was silent as the grave; there was absolutely nothing stirring, but Eddie had an oppressed feeling—a feeling that something had gone on there while he was asleep. He had known such a feeling in the trenches—the sensation that something was due to happen, and generally it did happen, a midnight raid or a sudden air attack that was not written into the program. That was the sensation he had now, and he gave way to it by arising softly and opening his door quietly to peer out into the dim light of the hall at the end of which was the closed door of his master’s bedroom.
A draft breezed along the hall and made him uncomfortable in his thin pajamas. A window was open!
He contracted his brows. Of course there were windows open in the apartment, but none that should cause this draft, no matter how windy it was outside. The inference was plain; somebody had opened a window that was not generally open, and his mind traveled instantly back to the time when he had discovered the side window in the living room open—the time when Mr. Morley had been chloroformed.
Silently, noiselessly, Eddie crept along the hall, for some unknown reason hugging the wall. At the door, of the living room he paused, merging himself with the shadows. For a full minute he listened, hearing nothing. If there had been any one there he would surely have heard something—the sound of breathing, a board creaking underfoot, the soft pad of feet across thick rugs. It is not possible to move about in a room without leaving some trace for the auditory senses, some trail of movement. Sounds are comparative things, and the creaking of a board, however slight, is as audible in the stillness of the night as a pistol shot in broad daylight, if one is listening.
Softly Eddie entered the living room. Against the lightened darkness of the window his eye caught the delicate tracery of the lace curtains, not hanging quietly, as was their wont, but blowing inward slightly. He advanced to the window and inspected it. It was open.
He glanced around at the living room, which he could see dimly, now that his eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness. Nothing was disturbed, nothing had been moved. The room was as it always had been.
But not quite. There was a difference, nothing tangible, nothing that one could put his hand on, but there was a feeling of change in the air, a feeling that someone who did not belong had been there. Rooms are like persons; they have their moods, moods of happiness and of gloom, of rest and of restlessness; everyone who has a favorite room in his home knows this. Something of the mood of resentment that was in the living room enveloped Eddie’s senses, some emotion that a stranger, an intruder, had been there. Of course, there was the evidence of the open window, but he would have known, even without that.
He tiptoed out into the hall again and paused for a moment in front of his master’s door, listening for the regular breathing that he usually could hear at this time of the night. He heard nothing at all. He had slept soundly all through the visit of the chauffeur who had come to bear his master away, and consequently knew nothing of it, so there was something alarming in the fact that, along with the open window in the living room, he could not hear his employer breathing.
He placed his hand on the knob and tried it; it opened quietly, and he pushed the door open suddenly, out of patience with all this early morning mystery and tired of the obvious necessity for quiet. With a swift movement he switched on the light. The bed had not been slept on.
He surveyed the room hastily. Nothing had been disturbed, as in the living room.
“M-mm!” he reflected. “Something phoney about this—window open, Mr. Morley gone. He didn’t go through the window, I guess.” He considered this for a brief space, looking around the room for something which he had missed. He stepped quickly into the living room and glanced around quickly in there. His brow contracted in further worry.
The books were gone again.
He could not suppress an amused smile at this. “Like a bloomin’ game of ‘button, button, who’s got the button?’” he commented.
“That mysterious bird’s been here again—and gone,” he muttered to himself, and in the same breath cursed himself for his careless stupidity.
Of course he had come for the books—it was to be expected; it was positively stupid not to watch out for him. Yet it had not occurred to either of them, somehow. These were not things that happened in every day life, though they were common in books. One did not expect midnight visitors without hands, who came in when you weren’t looking and went just as silently. And yet it had occurred. He had come in and taken the books. It was as easy as that.
That being the case, where was his employer. It was not like him to go out again, when once he had come home for the night. In fact, he had told Eddie that he intended to go to bed in a few minutes, after he had made a cursory examination of the books. And now he was gone, and an examination proved to Eddie that he had taken his light fall coat and a hat. Evidently he had gone of his own free will.
Also, evidently, he had gone before the books had been stolen, because there was no sign of any struggle, and Eddie did not consider it possible that anybody could come in and gather up those books and make his escape without Mr. Morley’s being aware of it.
That led to another train of thought. Probably the intruder knew that he would not be home. That being the case, Eddie carried the idea a little further. Perhaps he had made sure that his employer would not be home by the simple expedient of calling him out on some cock and bull errand.
Where was he now? Perhaps he needed him.
“Might’ve knew what would happen, soon’s he got mixed up with a woman,” muttered Eddie. He had disapproved of this from the beginning, simply because there had been a woman in it. Adventures centering about women never do go off according to schedule. There is always something uncomfortable in them. “Female women, blast ’em!” he muttered again, and continued pondering upon the present whereabouts of Valentine Morley.
Eddie knew that there was just one kind of a mes¬ sage that could call Valentine Morley out at any time during the night—a message from Jessica Pomeroy— a good looking girl with trouble and sudden death in her eyes, he reflected. He dressed and, slipping an automatic into his side pocket, went out to interview the night man concerning any visitors with a message that his master might have had after he, Eddie, had retired.