"Has my aunt gone?" she said.

Eleanor gave a short, mocking little laugh.

"I am afraid, for the time being at any rate," she said, "I must claim half of her. So I may tell you that our aunt is still in the drawing-room. But really I couldn't stand her any longer. So I fled and left her there."

"But--but, I thought she was being so nice to you," faltered Margaret, at a loss for a moment to know what Eleanor meant, "and that you had taken a great fancy to one another."

"Oh, she was all right," said Eleanor. "I should think she was what Americans would call just a lovely person. But somehow she made me feel such a sham and a fraud that I never want to see her again, and so I would have none of her kindness. Knowing that it was not meant for me, and that I was getting it under false pretences, I was--well--so rude that I don't expect she will ever want to see me again."

"Oh!" said Margaret, and she could not help feeling just a little bit pleased to hear that Eleanor had not found favour in Lady Strangways'

eyes. Certainly she did not deserve to after the way in which she had repelled all her overtures. Then, of a sudden, a disquieting thought came to her. "But oh, Eleanor," she said aghast, "can't you see that she will think that it is I, her real niece, who has been so rude to her? Oh, Eleanor, that is just as bad as, as----"

"As if she had fallen in love with me," said Eleanor, bursting out laughing. "Oh, Margaret, how transparent you are! I wonder you have been able to deceive all the Danvers family so long. But I must confess that I never thought how very unfavourably I was impressing your aunt with you.

Well, well, it can't be helped now. You will put matters straight some day."

"She reminded me so much of some one," said Margaret, pursuing her own train of thought; "but I cannot think of whom. And that is curious because I have seen so few people in my life, that I ought to remember whom it is that she resembles without any difficulty. It was her eyes that puzzled me most. Such beautiful eyes they are. And I am sure I know some one else who has eyes like them."

Eleanor glanced at Margaret and then began to laugh.

"Of course you do," she said, "and so do I. You see that person every time you look in the gla.s.s. It is you yourself who have Lady Strangways'

eyes, my dear Margaret."

CHAPTER XIII

HILARY TURNS DETECTIVE

"Eleanor," said Hilary, coming into the hall one afternoon with a couple of books in her hand, "if you are going out I want you to go to Smith's, please, and change these two library books for me."

It had been raining all day, and though the rain had now changed to a slight drizzle a thick mist creeping on from the sea had already blotted out the downs, and was hanging like a low cloud over the town. It was as cheerless an afternoon as could well be imagined, and Margaret who, suffering from a bad cold in her head, had not been out for a couple of days, hesitated a moment before replying. But the request was couched in such a peremptory tone that she did not quite like to refuse it. After all, since the children had gone away she was doing absolutely nothing in return for her board and lodging, and, since Hilary had forgotten that she was nursing a cold, it would have seemed ungracious to remind her of the fact.

But Hilary had not forgotten Margaret's cold. Had it been ten times as bad, however, she would still have despatched her on this errand. For the long-awaited, carefully planned-for moment when she could bring home Margaret's guilt to her had, in Hilary's confident estimation, at length arrived. A few minutes since, rummaging in the dressing-room next Margaret's room in search of some gloves that needed cleaning, she had chanced to espy under the bed the trunk in which the boys had hidden the Colonel's property. They had supposed it to belong to their mother, but Hilary knew that it was Eleanor's.

Rendered thoroughly uneasy by the continued stir that Colonel Baker was making about his loss, Jack and Noel had determined to smuggle his things out of their house and to deposit them somewhere in his garden, where he could easily find them, and to that end they had been trying, but without success so far, to open the trunk with various keys belonging to their mother. And it was the sight of these keys scattered about beside the trunk that had fired Hilary's detective ardour. What was Eleanor doing with her mother's keys? It could be for no good purpose that she had secreted them under the bed.

Without more ado, Hilary made up her mind to search that trunk. And the first thing to be done was to secure herself against interruption. So she invented an errand to take Eleanor out of the house for an hour or two.

The others were all down at the rink, and having seen Margaret start, Hilary sped up to the box-room, secured a few keys, and set to work.

Two or three keys were tried in vain, but the fourth turned easily in the lock, and with hands that fairly trembled with excitement, she threw back the lid. The tray was empty. She lifted it out, and as she did so gave vent to a little cry of triumph. For there, at the bottom, reposed a bundle tied up in a gold embroidered scarlet Indian tablecloth which any one in Seabourne who had read any recent numbers of the local papers would have recognised immediately as Colonel Baker's missing property.

Literally pouncing upon it, Hilary dragged it out of the trunk and untied the four knotted corners, when out fell the tumbled contents of the Colonel's plate-basket--the big morocco case which contained his family miniatures, his Etruscan bronze vase, and his collection of gold coins.

All things considered, Hilary took her astonishing discovery very calmly.

After all, it was only what she had been expecting. Her chief sensation at that moment was one of surprise that the trunk did not also contain the proceeds of the two other robberies. Probably, however, they would be found in Miss Carson's bedroom. Had she not been so obsessed by the idea that Miss Carson was the burglar with whose exploits the town had been ringing of late, Hilary might have hesitated before taking the step of searching the room of a girl who was, to all intents and purposes, a guest in their house. But the idea that she was doing anything disgraceful never occurred to her. The zeal of the amateur detective was far too strong upon her to leave room for reflections of that sort. She opened the door of Margaret's bedroom and went in. The room was exquisitely neat, for not only had habits of tidiness been inculcated in Margaret since she was old enough to fold a garment, but the s.p.a.cious bedroom allotted to her at The Cedars, with its big mahogany hanging wardrobes and its deep chest of drawers, contained so much more room than she needed that there would have been no excuse for any one to have been untidy.

At first it seemed to Hilary that her search here was going to be unrewarded; the cupboards and drawers in which Margaret kept her dresses were soon searched through and revealed nothing at all of a suspicious nature. The two top drawers then underwent an examination, and the orderly little piles of veils and handkerchiefs were ruthlessly tumbled about by Hilary's eager hands. But all in vain. There was no vestige of a proof here that Miss Carson had had a hand in the two first burglaries as well as in the last. Feeling baffled and quite unreasonably indignant, Hilary turned her attention next to the dressing-table. The toilet articles on it were few and simple, and Hilary was about to turn away, when her eyes were caught by Margaret's gold watch and chain, which were hanging on a small velvet stand. The watch was an old-fashioned one, with an open gold face, and the long slender chain was also of gold.

Attached to it were a watch-key and a very small steel key.

Hilary remembered that Miss Carson invariably wore the watch and chain, so that this small key evidently fitted something that she was careful always to keep locked up. As Hilary picked up this key the chain slid away from it, and she saw that the spring of the swivel was broken. That accounted, then, for the fact that Miss Carson was not wearing her watch, as she usually did. And when she left it on the dressing-table she had evidently forgotten that she was leaving the little key, which as a rule she was so careful to wear, lying about too.

Criminals, Hilary reflected with immense satisfaction as she picked up the key, always did forget important things of that sort. Now what did that little key fit? Evidently some bag or some small box which contained something that it behoved her to keep carefully concealed from every eye but her own. Now, where could that bag or box be, Hilary wondered, as she glanced round the room. Were there any drawers or cupboards that she had not yet thoroughly searched? Yes, there was the big bottom drawer in the wardrobe, in which Miss Carson kept her hats. She had looked into it once, but seeing that it apparently contained nothing but the few simple hats that the holiday governess owned, had pushed it to again. But now, feeling that that cursory glance had not been sufficient, Hilary knelt down before the wardrobe, and putting her hand to the back of the drawer, pulled out Margaret's morocco dressing-bag. It was the work of a moment only to fit the key in the lock, and then its contents were at the mercy of her prying eyes. But beyond the leather-covered case that Margaret had shown to Eleanor in the train the bag was empty, and Hilary, who had expected to find it crammed full of jewellery, experienced a sharp pang of disappointment. But when she opened the case and saw the pearl-studded locket and the beautiful row of pearls that formed its chain, her face brightened. The initials "M. A." on the back of the locket, to say nothing of the fine, copper-plate inscription, "For my daughter Margaret," that ran round the narrow gold setting of the miniature, were, of course, conclusive proof that it did not belong to Miss Carson. Hilary remembered, too, the handkerchief embroidered with those same incriminating initials which Miss Carson had one day dropped in the garden. Though it seemed to Hilary an unimportant matter now, she yet looked upon it as a link in the long chain of circ.u.mstantial evidence which she alone and unaided had forged against Miss Carson. Really, she thought, she had a right to be proud of herself, for had she not shown more intelligence and ac.u.men in the detection of the Seabourne burglaries than every police official in the town. How every one would admire her skill! Her portraits might possibly appear in the ill.u.s.trated papers, and as for the local papers, they would, of course, print long accounts of the marvellous way in which, working quite alone, she had succeeded in unravelling the mystery that had baffled the whole of the Seabourne police.

And as Hilary sat there pluming herself on her cleverness and lost in the pleasant dreams of the fame that would be shortly hers, the door opened, and Margaret, who had only just come back and was still in her outdoor things, walked into her bedroom.

It was not until she had advanced some way into the room that she saw Hilary, and then Margaret came to a sudden halt in sheer amazement at the scene that greeted her. Her astonished gaze travelled from Hilary round her room, with its disordered aspect, its open cupboards and ransacked drawers, and then she looked again at Hilary, who, with the open morocco case in her hand, met her eyes defiantly.

"Will you tell me, please, what you mean by this conduct, Hilary?" she said, feeling almost too amazed to be angry.

"Oh yes, I will tell you fast enough," Hilary said, who had been as taken aback by Margaret's sudden entry as the latter had been to find her there, and who, considerably to her own surprise and annoyance, was conscious of a distinct feeling of shame at the position in which she had been caught. But as she scrambled to her feet and faced Margaret she shook off that feeling. After all, it was for the latter to feel ashamed, not for her.

"You are found out," she said slowly and emphatically. "I have found you out."

"So," Margaret thought then, "it had come at last. Hilary, poking among her possessions, had somehow discovered her real name. Oh, poor Eleanor!

What would happen to her now?"

"You ask me what I mean by coming into your room; but that's nothing. It is for you to explain how you dared to come into our house, a thief and a burglar like you. But I," throwing out her arm dramatically, "have unmasked you."

If Hilary had not been too excited by the vigour of her own denunciation to notice Margaret's expression, she might have been bewildered by the look of very decided relief which succeeded to the one of startled dismay with which Margaret had listened to the beginning of her speech. What Hilary had discovered, or fancied she had discovered, really did not matter as long as her secret and Eleanor's was safe.

"Please give me that case at once," she said; "I am afraid, if you wave it about like that, you will drop it, and I value it very much. You had no right to come into my room and meddle with my things, and poke and pry in all my drawers."

"Meddle, and poke, and pry! How dare you use such words to me?" cried Hilary, all the more furiously because the objectionable words contained a sting of truth. "And your things, indeed! I suppose you will say next that this is your necklace and your miniature?"

"Certainly I will," said Margaret with spirit, and without seeing at first whither this admission would lead her. "That is a miniature of my mother; and if you will read the inscription you will see that she gave it to me."

"A fine story," said Hilary contemptuously; "only your name doesn't happen to be Margaret, nor does your surname begin with an 'A.' Ah! you forget that, I think, when you said that your mother gave it to you."

Truly, Margaret had forgotten that, and she met Hilary's triumphant gaze with an expression akin to dismay. She had got herself suddenly into an awkward corner. If she persisted in saying that the miniature and pearls were hers, Hilary would find out that she was pa.s.sing under an a.s.sumed name; whereas, on the other hand, if she did not a.s.sert her ownership of them, she would lay herself open to the charge that she had stolen them.

It was a perplexing situation, and she hardly knew whether to be relieved or not, when she found, as she speedily did, that Hilary had quite made up her mind that she was a thief.

"You are discovered, I tell you," said Hilary. "I know you belong to the gang of burglars that have been robbing people's houses here during the last six weeks. Come into the dressing-room, and you will see how useless it is to brazen matters out like this."

The fact that Margaret was totally unprepared to see her trunk, that she believed to be empty and pushed away beneath the bed, standing out in the middle of the room, half full of silver, had of course been antic.i.p.ated by Hilary, who enjoyed her surprise to the full. But the anger that was mingled with Miss Carson's astonishment was, of course, a sham, and Hilary treated it with the contempt she was so convinced that it deserved.

"Did you put all those things in my trunk?" Margaret said indignantly.

"What does it mean? Those are the things that were stolen from Colonel Baker's house. I recognise the description of the Indian tablecloth."

"Of course you do," said Hilary with a sneer, "seeing that you stole it to wrap the things in, thief and burglar that you are!"

"Do you really mean that you seriously believe I am a burglar?" Margaret said, and, to Hilary's intense disgust, who felt that this flippant conduct robbed her in some way of her triumph, she went off into a perfect peal of laughter.

"Oh, you are too funny! And do you think that I broke into Walker's shop, too, and also carried off the actress's jewels?"

"Oh, you may laugh if you like," said Hilary furiously. She would have liked to have seen Margaret tremble before her as a criminal should tremble, but she supposed she was too hardened. "But it is a joke that will land you in prison to-night. I am now going down to tell mother all about the sort of person we have in the house, and so that you shan't escape before the police come to take you, I am going to lock you in here."