In the Onyx Lobby by Carolyn wells

Author:Carolyn wells
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

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CHAPTER X

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Seek the Women

LATE THAT NIGHT,—IN FACT IT was about midnight, when the onyx lobby was practically deserted save for an occasional late home-comer,—the two detectives arrived for a confab with Bob Moore.

This greatly pleased the night porter for he hoped to be looked upon as a sort of assistant detective, and felt sure he could be of valuable help.

“You know, Moore,” Gibbs began, “there are people who are looking askance at you, with a sort of half-formed suspicion that you know more about this thing than you have told. But I don’t think that,—at least, I think you are willing to tell all you know, if you haven’t already done so. How about it?”

“Why, it’s this way, Mr Gibbs. I am ready to tell all I know, and I think I have done so, but you can’t expect me to tell what I suspect or surmise or imagine. Can you, now? It might lose my place for me. Also, I might injure an innocent person.”

“I think,” spoke up Corson, “you ought to tell us anything you suspect; it need go no further and if your suspicions are mistaken ones, they can’t harm the innocent.”

“Well, then, I’ve got my eye on two of the chambermaids. They are great chums, and one is on the seventh and eighth floors, the other on the ninth and tenth. But floors don’t matter; they chum around with each other. Well, these two are the most canny old hens you ever knew. They’re no chickens, and they have an eye out for the main chance all the time. I mean they toady to the people who are rich or generous and they scamp their work in places where they’re not ‘remembered.’ Also they’re specially attentive to the work of gentlemen who live alone. Why, Sir Herbert’s rooms were kept as neat as a bandbox. And Mr Goodwin and Mr Vail,—they’re both up on the tenth,—their rooms are immaculate. And yet, there’s the Prall place neglected, ‘cause Miss Prall don’t believe much in fees, and as for the Everetts, why, she says she can’t get anything tended to!”

“Doesn’t she ‘remember’ the housemaid, either?”

“Some; but in her case, it’s more her sharp tongue and her fussy ways. Miss Prall, now, she’s on the outs with Mrs Everett,—I know that,—but she’s decent-spoken to the maids. Only, she’s stingy. Well, what I’m getting at is, those two chambermaids are regular devils, if you ask me, and though Sir Herbert Binney was generous enough when he liked the work people, he didn’t like his chambermaid, and he was as ugly as Cain to her. Used to call her down for the least thing and laid her out cold if she sauced him back.”

“Then you think the ‘women’ might have referred to these two maids?”

“That’s just it. I only think it may have done so. I’ve no evidence except that they are more the type of women it seems possible to suspect. These little girls,—it don’t seem’s if they could manage the deed.

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