The Black Box | Page 3

ascended to the top story and, using another key,
entered a large apartment wrapped in gloom until, as he crossed the
threshold, he touched the switches of the electric lights. One realised

then that this was a man of taste. The furniture and appointments of the
room were of dark oak. The panelled walls were hung with a few
choice engravings. There were books and papers about, a piano in the
corner. A door at the further end led into what seemed to be a
sleeping-apartment. Quest drew up an easy-chair to the wide-flung
window, touching a bell as he crossed the room. In a few moments the
door was opened and closed noiselessly. A young woman entered with
a little bundle of papers in her hand.
"Anything for me, Laura?" he asked.
"I don't believe you will think so, Mr. Quest," she answered calmly.
She drew a small table and a reading lamp to his side and stood quietly
waiting. Her eyes followed Quest's as he glanced through the letters,
her expression matched his. She was tall, dark, good-looking in a
massive way, with a splendid, almost unfeminine strength in her firm,
shapely mouth and brilliant eyes. Her manner was a little brusque but
her voice pleasant. She was one of those who had learnt the art of
silence.
The criminologist glanced through the papers quickly and sorted them
into two little heaps.
"Send these," he directed, "to the police-station. There is nothing in
them which calls for outside intervention. They are all matters which
had better take their normal course. To the others simply reply that the
matter they refer to does not interest me. No further enquiries?"
"Nothing, Mr. Quest."
She left the room almost noiselessly. Quest took down a volume from
the swinging book-case by his side, and drew the reading lamp a little
closer to his right shoulder. Before he opened the volume, however, he
looked for a few moments steadfastly out across the sea of roofs, the
network of telephone and telegraph wires, to where the lights of
Broadway seemed to eat their way into the sky. Around him, the night
life of the great city spread itself out in waves of gilded vice and black

and sordid crime. Its many voices fell upon deaf ears. Until long past
midnight, he sat engrossed in a scientific volume.
CHAPTER II
THE APARTMENT-HOUSE MYSTERY
1.
"This habit of becoming late for breakfast," Lady Ashleigh remarked,
as she set down the coffee-pot, "is growing upon your father."
Ella glanced up from a pile of correspondence through which she had
been looking a little negligently.
"When he comes," she said, "I shall tell him what Clyde says in his new
play--that unpunctuality for breakfast and overpunctuality for dinner
are two of the signs of advancing age."
"I shouldn't," her mother advised. "He hates anything that sounds like
an epigram, and I noticed that he avoided any allusion to his birthday
last month. Any news, dear?"
"None at all, mother. My correspondence is just the usual sort of
rubbish--invitations and gossip. Such a lot of invitations, by-the-bye."
"At your age," Lady Ashleigh declared, "that is the sort of
correspondence which you should find interesting."
Ella shook her head. She was a very beautiful young woman, but her
expression was a little more serious than her twenty-two years
warranted.
"You know I am not like that, mother," she protested. "I have found
one thing in life which interests me more than all this frivolous
business of amusing oneself. I shall never be happy--not really
happy--until I have settled down to study hard. My music is really the
only part of life which absolutely appeals to me."

Lady Ashleigh sighed.
"It seems so unnecessary," she murmured. "Since Esther was married
you are practically an only daughter, you are quite well off, and there
are so many young men who want to marry you."
Ella laughed gaily.
"That sort of thing may come later on, mother," she declared,--"I
suppose I am only human like the rest of us--but to me the greatest
thing in the whole world just now is music, my music. It is a little
wonderful, isn't it, to have a gift, a real gift, and to know it? Oh, why
doesn't Delarey make up his mind and let father know, as he
promised!... Here comes daddy, mum. Bother! He's going to shoot, and
I hoped he'd play golf with me."
Lord Ashleigh, who had stepped through some French windows at the
farther end of the terrace, paused for a few minutes to look around him.
There was certainly some excuse for his momentary absorption. The
morning, although it was late September, was perfectly fine and warm.
The cattle in the park which surrounded the house were already
gathered under the trees. In