The Black Box | Page 3

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 the far distance, the stubble fields stretched like patches of gold to ridges of pine-topped hills, and beyond to the distant sea. The breakfast table at which his wife and daughter were seated was arranged on the broad grey stone terrace, and, as he slowly approached, it seemed like an oasis of flowers and fruit and silver. A footman stood discreetly in the background. Half a dozen dogs of various breeds