The Chief Legatee | Page 5

and was with them when
she slipped away."
CHAPTER II
THE LADY IN NUMBER THREE
The boy was soon found and proved to be more observing in matters of
dress than Mr. Ransom. He described with apparent accuracy both the
color and cut of the garments worn by the lady who had flitted away so
mysteriously. The former was brown, all brown; and the latter was of
the tailor-made variety, very natty and becoming. "What you would call
'swell,'" was the comment, "if her walk hadn't spoiled the hang of it.
How she did walk! Her shoes must have hurt her most uncommon. I
never did see any one hobble so."
"How's that? She hobbled, and her husband didn't notice it?"
"Oh, he had hurried on ahead. She was behind him, and she walked like
this."
The pantomime was highly expressive.
"That's a point," muttered Gerridge. Then with a sharp look at the boy:

"Where were you that you didn't notice her when she slipped off?"
"Oh, but I did, sir. I was waiting for the clerk to give me the key, when
I saw her step back from the gentleman's side and, looking quickly
round to see if any one was noticing her, slide off into the
reception-room. I thought she wanted a drink of water out of the pitcher
on the center-table, but if she did, she didn't come back after she had
got it. None of us ever saw her again."
"Did you follow Mr. Ransom when he walked through those rooms?"
"No, sir; I stayed in the hall."
"Did the lady hobble when she slid thus mysteriously out of sight?"
"A little. Not so much as when she came in. But she wasn't at her ease,
sir. Her shoes were certainly too small."
"I think I will take a peep at those rooms now," Gerridge remarked to
the manager.
Mr. Loomis bowed, and together they crossed the office to the
reception-room door. The diagram of this portion of the hotel will give
you an idea of these connecting rooms.
[Illustration]
There are three of them, as you will see, all reception-rooms. Mr.
Ransom had passed through them all in looking for his wife. In No. 1
he found several ladies sitting and standing, all strangers. He
encountered no one in No. 2, and in No. 3 just one person, a lady in
street costume evidently waiting for some one. To this lady he had
addressed himself, asking if she had seen any one pass that way the
moment before. Her reply was a decided "No"; that she had been
waiting in that same room for several minutes and had seen no one.
This staggered him. It was as if his wife had dissolved into thin air.
True, she might have eluded him by slipping out into the hall by means
of door two at the moment he entered door one; and alert to this

possibility, he hastened back into the hall to look for her. But she was
nowhere visible, nor had she been observed leaving the building by the
man stationed at entrance A. But there was another exit, that of B. Had
she gone out that way? Mr. Ransom had taken pains to inquire and had
been assured by the man in charge that no lady had left by that door
during the last ten minutes. This he had insisted on, and when Mr.
Loomis and the detective came in their turn to question him on this
point he insisted on it again. The mystery seemed complete,--at least to
the manager. But the detective was not quite satisfied. He asked the
man if at any time that day, before or after Mrs. Ransom's
disappearance, he had swung the door open for a lady who walked lame.
The answer was decisive. "Yes; one who walked as if her shoes were
tight."
"When?"
"Oh a little while after the gentleman asked his questions."
"Was she dressed in brown?"
That he didn't know. He didn't look at ladies' dresses unless they were
something special.
"But she walked lame and she came from Room 3?"
Yes. He remembered that much.
Gerridge, with a nod to the manager, stepped into the open
compartment of the whirling door. "I'm off," said he. "Expect to hear
from me in two hours."
At twenty minutes to ten Mr. Ransom was called up on the telephone.
"One question, Mr. Ransom."
"Hello, who are you?"
"Gerridge."

"All right, go ahead."
"Did you see the face of the woman you spoke to in Room No. 3?"
"Of course. She was looking directly at me."
"You remember it? Could identify it if you saw it again?"
"Yes; that is--"
"That's all, good-by."
The circuit was cut off.
Another intolerable wait. Then there came a knock on the door and