“Certainly, ma’am,” quoth that gentleman, bowing with mock admiration to the gas-fixture. Then carelessly shifting his glance to the cleaning-cloth which Fanny held rather conspicuously in her hand, he repeated the question he had already put to Mrs. Daniels.
The girl, tossing her head just a trifle, at once replied:
“O she was good-looking enough, if that is what you mean, for them as likes a girl with cheeks as white as this cloth was afore I rubbed the spoons with it. As for her eyes, they was blacker than her hair, which was the Blackest I ever see. She had no flesh at all, and as for her figure—” Fanny glanced down on her own well developed person, and gave a shrug inexpressibly suggestive.
“Is this description true?” Mr. Gryce asked, seemingly of Mrs. Daniels, though his gaze rested with curious intentness on the girl’s head which was covered with a little cap.
“Sufficiently so,” returned Mrs. Daniels in a very low tone, however. Then with a sudden display of energy, “Emily’s figure is not what you would call plump. I have seen her—” She broke off as if a little startled at herself and motioned Fanny to go.
“Wait a moment,” interposed Mr. Gryce in his soft way. “You said the girl’s hair and eyes were dark; were they darker than yours?”
“O, yes sir;” replied the girl simpering, as she settled the ribbons on her cap.
“Let me see your hair.”
She took off her cap with a smile.
“Ha, very pretty, very pretty. And the other girls? You have other girls I suppose?”
“Two, sir;” returned Mrs. Daniels.
“How about their complexions? Are they lighter too than Emily’s?”
“Yes, sir; about like Fanny’s.”
Mr. Gryce spread his hand over his breast in a way that assured me of his satisfaction, and allowed the girl to go.
“We will now proceed to the yard,” said he. But at that moment the door of the front room opened and a gentleman stepped leisurely into the hall, whom at first glance I recognized as the master of the house. He was dressed for the street and had his hat in his hand. At the sight we all stood silent, Mrs. Daniels flushing up to the roots of her gray hair.
Mr. Blake is an elegant-looking man as you perhaps know; proud, reserved, and a trifle sombre. As he turned to come towards us, the light shining through the windows at our right, fell full upon his face, revealing such a self-absorbed and melancholy expression, I involuntarily drew back as if I had unwittingly intruded upon a great man’s privacy. Mr. Gryce on the contrary stepped forward.
“Mr. Blake, I believe,” said he, bowing in that deferential way he knows so well how to assume.
The gentleman, startled as it evidently seemed from a reverie, looked hastily up. Meeting Mr. Gryce’s bland smile, he returned the bow, but haughtily, and as it appeared in an abstracted way.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” proceeded my superior. “I am Mr. Gryce from the detective bureau. We were notified this morning that a girl in your employ had disappeared from your house last night in a somewhat strange and unusual way, and I just stepped over with my man here, to see if the matter is of sufficient importance to inquire into. With many apoligies for the intrusion, I stand obedient to your orders.”
With a frown expressive of annoyance, Mr. Blake glanced around and detecting Mrs. Daniels, said: “Did you consider the affair so serious as that?”
She nodded, seeming to find it difficult to speak.
He remained looking at her with an expression of some doubt. “I can hardly think,” said he, “such extreme measures were necessary; the girl will doubtless come back, or if not—” His shoulders gave a slight shrug and he took out his gloves.
“The difficulty seems to be,” quoth Mr. Gryce eyeing those gloves with his most intent and concentrated look, “that the girl did not go alone, but was helped away, or forced away, by parties who had previously broken into your house.”
“That is a strange circumstance,” remarked Mr. Blake, but still without any appearance of interest, “and if you are sure of what you say, demands, perhaps, some inquiry. I would not wish to put anything in the way of justice succoring the injured. But—” again he gave that slight shrug of the shoulders, indicative of doubt, if not indifference.
Mrs. Daniels trembled, and took a step forward. I thought she was going to speak, but instead of that she drew back again in her strange hesitating way.
Mr. Gryce did not seem to notice.
“Perhaps sir,” said he, “if you will step upstairs with me to the room occupied by this girl, I may be able to show you certain evidences which will convince you that our errand here is not one of presumption.”
“I am ready to concede that without troubling myself with proof,” observed the master of the house with the faintest show of asperity. “Yet if there is anything to see of a startling nature, perhaps I had best yield to your wishes. Whereabouts in the house is this girl’s room, Mrs. Daniels?”
“It is—I gave her the third story back, Mr. Blake;” replied that woman, nervously eyeing his face. “It was large and light for sewing, and she was so nice—”
He impatiently waved his hand on which he had by this time fitted his glove to a nicety, as if these details were an unnecessary bore to him, and motioned her to show the way. Instantly a new feeling appeared to seize her, that of alarm.
“I hardly think you need trouble Mr. Blake to go upstairs,” she murmured, turning towards Mr. Gryce. “I am sure when you tell him the Curtains were torn, and the chair upset, the window open and—”
But Mr. Gryce was already on the stairs with Mr. Blake, whom this small opposition seemed to have at once determined.
“O my God!” she murmured to herself, “who could have foreseen this.” And ignoring my presence with all the egotism of extreme agitation, she hurried past me to the room above, where I speedily joined her.
CHAPTER III
THE CONTENTS OF A BUREAU DRAWER
Mr. Blake was standing in the centre of the room when I entered, carelessly following with his eyes the motion of Mr. Gryce’s finger as that gentleman pointed with unwearying assiduity to the various little details that had struck us. His hat was still in his hand, and he presented a very formidable and imposing appearance, or so Mrs. Daniels appeared to think as she stood watching him from the corner, whither she had withdrawn herself.
“A forcible departure you see,” exclaimed Mr. Gryce; “she had not even time to gather up her clothes;” and with a sudden movement he stooped and pulled out one of the bureau drawers before the eyes of his nonchalant listener.
Immediately a smothered exclamation struck our ears, and Mrs. Daniels started forward.
“I pray, gentlemen,” she entreated, advancing in such a way as to place herself against the front of the bureau in a manner to preclude the opening of any more drawers, “that you will remember that a modest woman such as this girl was, would hardly like to have her clothing displayed before the eyes of strangers.”
Mr. Gryce instantly closed the drawer.
“You are right,” said he; “pardon the rough ways of a somewhat hardened officer of the law.”
She drew up closer to the bureau, still protecting it with her meagre but energetic form while her eyes rested with almost a savage expression upon the master of the house as if he, and not the detective, had been the aggressor whose advances she feared.
Mr. Blake did not return the look.
“If that is all you can show me, I think I will proceed to my appointment,” said he. “The matter does seem to be more serious than I thought, and if you judge it necessary to take any active measures, why, let no consideration of my great and inherent dislike to notoriety of any kind, interfere with what you consider your duty. As for the house, it is at your command, under Mrs. Daniels’ direction. Good morning.” And returning our bows with one singularly impressive for all its elegant carelessness, he at once withdrew.