Jessie Sherwood heaved over and buried her face in the pillow.
And in the silence that followed the groan of the bed she heard a sound that drove all other thoughts from her head.
It was the sound of a window being opened in the nursery.
She lay stiffly, listening.
The nursery was at the rear of the house, a corner room with two windows. One overlooked the driveway and gardens at the side, the other faced the sea. At the baby’s bedtime she had opened both windows wide, but when the breeze came up and she had had to get a quilt for herself, she had gone into the nursery to tuck an extra satin throw around the baby and shut the seaward window. The temperature had dropped so low that she had even removed the screen and pulled the driveway window most of the way down, leaving it open no more than three or four inches.
It seemed to her the sound had come from the driveway window.
There it was again.
Again!
They were short, soft, scrapy sounds, as if the window were being opened an inch or two at a time, little secretive upward nudges, with listening pauses between.
“Parents can’t be too careful about their children, especially if they’re rich...”
He had said that.
“A snatch case I investigated a few years...”
A kidnaper!
With a leap Jessie Sherwood was out of bed. She grabbed her robe, flung it over her cotton nightgown, and dashed through the communicating doorway into little Michael’s room.
In the faint glow of the baseboard nightlight she saw a man. He had one leg over the sill of the driveway window. The other was apparently braced against the top rung of a ladder. His head was cut off at the neck by the half-raised venetian blind. He was all flat and colorless. It was like seeing a lifesized cutout made of black paper.
Nurse Sherwood yelled and sprang to the crib. The figure in the window disappeared.
There was a great deal of confusion after that. Mr. Humffrey ran in buttoning his pajama coat over his gaunt, furry torso; Mrs. Humffrey flew by him, shrieking, to tear the baby from his nurse’s arms; Mrs. Lenihan, Mrs. Charbedeau, the two maids thronged the stairway from the third floor, pulling on assorted negligees and gasping questions; and the men’s quarters over the garage lit up. The baby wailed louder, Mrs. Humffrey shrieked harder, Mr. Humffrey roared demands for an explanation, and through the bedlam Jessie Sherwood tried to make herself heard. When she was finally able to communicate, and Alton Humffrey thrust his head out the window, the driveway was empty except for old Stallings and Henry Cullum, in pajamas and barefoot, looking up and asking wildly what was the matter.
A long ladder was leaning against the window.
“Search the grounds,” Alton Humffrey shouted to the two white-haired men below. “I’ll phone the gatehouse.”
When he came back he was fuming. “I don’t know what we pay those guards for. Either that imbecile Peterson was asleep or he’s drunk. Sarah, stop that, please. Give Michael to Miss Sherwood. You’re frightening him half to death.”
“Oh, Alton, suppose it was a kidnaper,” Sarah Humffrey said hysterically.
“Nonsense. It was some housebreaker, and Miss Sherwood scared him off. Here, let me have him.”
“I’ll take him, Mr. Humffrey,” Jessie Sherwood said. “Mrs. Lenihan, would you get me a bottle of formula from the refrigerator? I think, darlin’, we’ll make an exception tonight. But first let’s change this diaper...” She took the baby into the nursery bathroom and firmly shut the door.
When she came out with him, Alton Humffrey was alone in the nursery watching the bottle in the electric warmer.
“Is Michael all right?” he asked abruptly.
“He’s fine, Mr. Humffrey.”
“You’re sure it was a man?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nothing familiar about him?” His tone was odd.
“I really can’t say,” Jessie said quietly. “I didn’t see his face at all, and the rest of him was just a black silhouette against the moonlight. Mr. Humffrey, I don’t think it was a housebreaker.”
“You don’t?” He glanced at her sharply.
“Why should a housebreaker try to enter through an upper window? The windows aren’t locked downstairs.”
Alton Humffrey did not reply. Jessie took the bottle from the warmer, sat down in the rocker, and began to feed the baby.
“Mr. Humffrey?” It was Cullum, from below.
Humffrey strode to the window. “Yes?”
“No sign of a soul,” the chauffeur said. Stallings, beside him, nodded.
“You two had better get some clothes on and stay out there for a while.” He put the nursery screen with the animal cutouts on it before the window. Jessie noticed how careful he was not to touch the window.
When he turned back his brow was all knots.
“Don’t you think you’d better call the police, Mr. Humffrey?” Jessie murmured.
“Yes,” he said.
The telephone rang on the other side of the flimsy wall and the old man was instantly awake. He heard Abe Pearl’s sleepy growl say, “Yes?” and then, not sleepily at all, “I’ll go right over. Have Tinny and Borcher meet me there.”
When Chief Pearl let himself out of his bedroom, there was the old man in the hall in his robe, waiting.
“Dick. What are you doing up?”
“I heard the phone, Abe. Trouble?”
“Something funny over on Nair Island,” the big man grunted. “Maybe you’d like to sit in on it.”
“Nair Island,” Richard Queen said. “What kind of trouble?”
“Somebody tried to break into one of those millionaires’ homes. Kid’s nursery. Might be a snatch try.”
“It wouldn’t be at the Humffreys’, would it?”
“That’s right.” Abe Pearl stared.
“Anybody hurt?”
“No, he was scared off. But how did you know, Dick?”
“I’ll be with you in three minutes.”
The Humffrey house was lit up. They found one of Abe Pearl’s men examining the ladder in the driveway and another in the nursery talking to Humffrey and the nurse. The screen was around the crib now, and Sarah Humffrey was in the rocker, gnawing her lips but quieted down.
The old man and Jessie Sherwood glanced at each other once, then looked away. He remained in the background, listening, looking around. Her color was high, and she drew her robe more closely about her. It would have to be the cotton nightgown tonight! she thought. Why didn’t I wash out the orlon?
When they had repeated their stories, Chief Pearl went to the window.
“Is that your ladder, Mr. Humffrey?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it usually kept?”
“In the tool shed where Stallings, my gardener, keeps his equipment.”
“Take a look, Borcher.”
The detective went out.
Abe Pearl turned to Jessie. “This man,” he said. “Would you know him if you saw him again, Miss Sherwood?”
“I doubt it.”
“He didn’t say anything? Make any sound?”
“I didn’t hear anything but the window being slid up little by little. When I ran in he disappeared.”
“Did you hear a car?”
“No. I mean, I don’t recall.”
“Did you or didn’t you?”
Jessie felt herself growing hot. “I tell you I don’t know!”
“That’s all right,” Chief Pearl said. “People get excited.” He turned his back on her, and Richard Queen blinked. He knew what his friend was thinking: Tag the nurse as a possible question mark. Of course, Abe didn’t know her. He was surprised to find himself thinking of her as if he had known her for a long time. “Did you hear a car drive away, Mr. Humffrey?”