A key clicked in the terrace door - a voice swore muffledly at the rain. Dale lowered her revolver slowly. It was Richard Fleming - come to meet her here, instead of down by the drive.
She had telephoned him on an impulse. But now, as she looked at him in the light of her single candle, she wondered if this rather dissipated, rather foppish young man about town, in his early thirties, could possibly understand and appreciate the motives that had driven her to seek his aid. Still, it was for Jack! She clenched her teeth and resolved to go through with the plan mapped out in her mind. It might be a desperate expedient but she had nowhere else to turn!
Fleming shut the terrace door behind him and moved down from the alcove, trying to shake the rain from his coat.
"Did I frighten you?"
"Oh, Mr. Fleming - yes!" Dale laid her aunt's revolver down on the table. Fleming perceived her nervousness and made a gesture of apology.
"I'm sorry," he said, "I rapped but nobody seemed to hear me, so I used my key."
"You're wet through - I'm sorry," said Dale with mechanical politeness.
He smiled. "Oh, no." He stripped off his cap and raincoat and placed them on a chair, brushing himself off as he did so with finicky little movements of his hands.
"Reggie Beresford brought me over in his car," he said. "He's waiting down the drive." Dale decided not to waste words in the usual commonplaces of social greeting.
"Mr. Fleming, I'm in dreadful trouble!" she said, facing him squarely, with a courageous appeal in her eyes.
He made a polite movement. "Oh, I say! That's too bad." She plunged on. "You know the Union Bank closed today." He laughed lightly.
"Yes, I know it! I didn't have anything in it - or any other bank for that matter," he admitted ruefully, "but I hate to see the old thing go to smash."
Dale wondered which angle was best from which to present her appeal.
"Well, even if you haven't lost anything in this bank failure, a lot of your friends have - surely?" she went on.
"I'll say so!" said Fleming, debonairly. "Beresford is sitting down the road in his Packard now writhing with pain!"
Dale hesitated; Fleming's lightness seemed so incorrigible that, for a moment, she was on the verge of giving her project up entirely. Then, "Waster or not - he's the only man who can help us!" she told herself and continued.
"Lots of awfully poor people are going to suffer, too," she said wistfully. Fleming chuckled, dismissing the poor with a wave of his hand.
"Oh, well, the poor are always in trouble," he said with airy heartlessness. "They specialize in suffering."
He extracted a monogrammed cigarette from a thin gold case.
"But look here," he went on, moving closer to Dale, "you didn't send for me to discuss this hypothetical poor depositor, did you? Mind if I smoke?"
"No." He lit his cigarette and puffed at it with enjoyment while Dale paused, summoning up her courage. Finally the words came in a rush.
"Mr. Fleming, I'm going to say something rather brutal. Please don't mind. I'm merely - desperate! You see, I happen to be engaged to the cashier, Jack Bailey - "
Fleming whistled. "I see! And he's beat it!" Dale blazed with indignation.
"He has not! I'm going to tell you something. He's here, now, in this house - " she continued fierily, all her defenses thrown aside. "My aunt thinks he's a new gardener. He is here, Mr. Fleming, because he knows he didn't take the money, and the only person who could have done it was - your uncle!"
Dick Fleming dropped his cigarette in a convenient ash tray and crushed it out there, absently, not seeming to notice whether it scorched his fingers or not. He rose and took a turn about the room. Then he came back to Dale.
"That's a pretty strong indictment to bring against a dead man," he said slowly, seriously. "It's true!" Dale insisted stubbornly, giving him glance for glance.
Fleming nodded.
"All right.”
He smiled - a smile that Dale didn't like.
"Suppose it's true - where do I come in?" he said. "You don't think I know where the money is?"
"No," admitted Dale, "but I think you might help to find it."
She went swiftly over to the hall door and listened tensely for an instant. Then she came back to Fleming.
"If anybody comes in - you've just come to get something of yours," she said in a low voice. He nodded understandingly. She dropped her voice still lower.
"Do you know anything about a Hidden Room in this house?" she asked. Dick Fleming stared at her for a moment. Then he burst into laughter.
"A Hidden Room - that's rich!" he said, still laughing. "Never heard of it! Now, let me get this straight. The idea is - a Hidden Room - and the money is in it - is that it?"
Dale nodded a "Yes."
"The architect who built this house told Jack Bailey that he had built a Hidden Room in it," she persisted.
For a moment Dick Fleming stared at her as if he could not believe his ears. Then, slowly, his expression changed. Beneath the well-fed, debonair mask of the clubman about town, other lines appeared - lines of avarice and calculation - wolf-marks, betokening the craft and petty ruthlessness of the small soul within the gentlemanly shell. His eyes took on a shifty, uncertain stare - they no longer looked at Dale - their gaze seemed turned inward, beholding a visioned treasure, a glittering pile of gold. And yet, the change in his look was not so pronounced as to give Dale pause - she felt a vague uneasiness steal over her, true - but it would have taken a shrewd and long-experienced woman of the world to read the secret behind Fleming's eyes at first glance - and Dale, for all her courage and common sense, was a young and headstrong girl.
She watched him, puzzled, wondering why he made no comment on her last statement. "Do you know where there are any blue-prints of the house?" she asked at last.
An odd light glittered in Fleming's eyes for a moment. Then it vanished - he held himself in check - the casual idler again.
"blue-prints?" He seemed to think it over. "Why - there may be some. Have you looked in the old secretary in the library? My uncle used to keep all sorts of papers there," he said with apparent helpfulness.
"Why, don't you remember - you locked it when we took the house."
"So I did." Fleming took out his key ring, selected a key. "Suppose you go and Look," he said. "Don't you think I'd better stay here?"
"Oh, yes - " said Dale, blinded to everything else by the rising hope in her heart. "Oh, I can hardly thank you enough!" and before he could even reply, she had taken the key and was hurrying toward the hall