Part 17 (1/2)

Susan sipped her tea for a moment in silence.

”Where's Jathrop and Mr. Kettlewell?” she asked at length. ”Ain't they up yet?”

Mrs. Lathrop nodded. ”They start--” she began.

”You don't mean they've both lit out already?” asked Susan in surprise.

Then: ”I was hoping to see Mr. Kettlewell again. But it's a long journey back to New York, so I suppose they set off before light.”

Mrs. Lathrop nodded once more.

”Aren't--?” she questioned.

”I certainly am. I'm going to report the burglary at once. I've got a clue, and it ought to be easy enough to run down that burglar.” She drew from her bosom a rather damp handkerchief. ”That's what he left me to chew on for five hours,” she said, as she spread it out. ”And there's the clue right there in the corner.”

Mrs. Lathrop took it to the window and inspected it through her gla.s.ses.

The handkerchief was initialed with a ”K.”

The New Year came and January was pa.s.sing and, so far as Susan Clegg cared to divulge at least, there was no news of her burglar. It was noted, however, not only by Mrs. Lathrop, but by Mrs. Macy and Gran'ma Mullins, and indeed by all the ladies of the Sewing Society, that Miss Clegg had adopted an air of secretiveness concerning the matter that was quite foreign to her usual frank, unreserved communicativeness. But the curiosity provoked by this strangely unfamiliar att.i.tude was swallowed up in the sensational tidings which spread throughout the community shortly after. Without so much as a hint of warning, Susan Clegg had vanished between dark and dawn, leaving her house locked, bolted, and barred, the blinds drawn, and the shutters fast closed.

For once Mrs. Lathrop, thus deprived of her prop and her stay, evinced sufficient initiative to have the cellar door forced and a search of the premises made; a rumor having got abroad that the burglar had returned, this time more murderously inclined, and that Miss Clegg's mangled corpse would be found stiff and stark within her own darkened domicile.

To every one's infinite relief the search proved the rumor utterly unfounded; and it proved something more, as well. It proved that Susan's departure was plainly premeditated--”with malice prepense,” to quote Judge Fitch--since all her best clothes had gone with her. Whereupon sentiment switched to the opposite pole, and it was openly declared that Miss Clegg had gone after the burglar.

The wonder was of a magnitude calculated to extend far beyond the proverbial nine days, and it probably would have greatly exceeded that limit, had not the heroine of the affair chosen to cut it short of her own volition by reappearing quite as suddenly as she had vanished, at the end of a single week.

Mrs. Lathrop, looking across from her bedroom window as she arose from her night's sleep on the morning of the eighth day, was joyously startled to see the Clegg windows unshaded, and the house otherwise displaying signs of rehabitation. Nor did she have long to wait for the explanation of the mystery, which to the exclusion of everything else had filled her mind ever since her friend's going. With a shawl over her head and shoulders, she hastened through the pergola, and the next moment was facing her neighbor with glad eyes across four yards of kitchen floor s.p.a.ce.

”Oh, Susan! Such a fri--” These were her four and a half words of greeting.

”I knew it would,” Miss Clegg caught her up, beaming as Mrs. Lathrop couldn't remember ever to have seen her beam before. ”I knew it would frighten you all half to death, but when a thing's to be done, it's to be done, and there ain't no use s.h.i.+rking. I had to go, and I had to go quick, and I was never so glad of anything in my life, past or present, as that I went. Of course, it was all along of that burglary, as any fool might have guessed if they took the trouble. In the first place, I don't mind telling you now, I went straight to Mr. Weskin the morning after it happened, and I took him the clue and showed it to him. The way he spun around in his spinning chair was fit to make even a level-headed person like me dizzy. He examined the linen, and he examined the way the K was worked, and then he says, no it couldn't possibly be Mr.

Kimball's. Now, what _do_ you think of that? Just as if I ever suspected it was. I guess I know Mr. Kimball well enough to know him, even if he has got his head wrapped up in one of my new roller towels, and I told Lawyer Weskin so. Mr. Kimball, indeed! But Lawyer Weskin said as he didn't never hear of a burglar whose name commenced with K, and he didn't know a soul in these parts either, burglar or no burglar, whose name did, except Mr. Kimball. There's only one way to ferret out the perpetrator of a crime, he says, and that's by deduction, and the first rule of deduction is to guess what the K stands for. I never thought much of Lawyer Weskin, I'm free to admit that, but if he don't know nothing else, it's as clear as shooting that he does know about education. For in the end it worked out just as he said, and the Lord be praised for it.”

”You don't--” began Mrs. Lathrop in astonishment.

”I don't say as Mr. Kimball had a thing to do with it. I certainly don't. In the first place, Mr. Kimball would never dare to come to my house at such a hour of the morning, and in the second place Mr. Kimball never carried as fine a handkerchief as the one I chewed on. So that put it past Mr. Kimball. And the only other K I could possibly think of was old Mrs. Kitts over to Meadville, who could no more of got over here than could the king of the Sandwich Islands, whose name begins with K, too. There was the Kellys, of course, but the Kellys couldn't qualify neither, for they're too rich to need to do any burglarizing. Well, I can tell you, I soon come to a point where I didn't know where to turn, and I never would of turned neither, if it hadn't of been for a letter I got the day of the night I went away. You'd never guess in the world, Mrs. Lathrop, who that letter was from so I may as well tell you first as last. It was from Mr. Kettlewell.”

Mrs. Lathrop opened her mouth in astonishment, but no sound came forth.

”I knew it'ld surprise you, but it's as true as we're both standing in this kitchen at this minute. It was a very nice letter, and it said as how he had admired me from the first minute he saw me, but more particularly after he'd sat opposite to me at the table and eat my cranberry sauce. He said he'd always loved cranberry sauce, but as he felt he'd never tasted none until he tasted mine. I certainly never see a more complimentary letter than that letter of Mr. Kettlewell's. But it was the end of the letter where he signed his name that lit me up with the clear light of revelation. Until I see his name spelled out there in black and white, I never once believed it begun with a K. I'd thought all along as his name was Cattlewell, with a C. Far be it from me, Mrs.