Wiles of a Stranger by Joan Smith Page B

one. Not another soul was to be seen. I walked to the proper doorway, taking deep breaths to calm myself, I flung open the door, leveled the toy gun at the major’s chest and said—nothing.
    “Good evening, Miss Stacey. Do come in,” Morrison said, with a smiling look at the weapon. “Lucien, perhaps you will take your toy gun and run along to bed now. I want to talk to your governess.”
    “All right, Major,” he answered calmly. As he walked to me with his hand out for the gun, he said, “I was wrong, Miss Stacey. You are a spoilsport after all.”
    “Lucien, what’s going on here?” I demanded. There was no feeling of fright left in my escapade.
    “Me and the major were conducting an operation. You have spoiled everything.        As usual.”
    “Call your Uncle Charles at once. Find a footman to fetch him,” I ordered.       
    “Uncle Charles ain’t here. He went into town,” Lucien replied.
    “I didn’t hear him leave his room!”
    “Sometimes he sneaks down the back stairs, so Aunt Stella won’t know he is going to the tavern.”
    “Call your Aunt Stella then.”
    “All right,” he said, but with such a cunning little smile over my shoulder to his cohort that I knew he was not going to do it.
    “And close the door behind you, Lucien. Quietly,” Morrison added. This was done, with the utmost care, not making a sound.
    “I hope you have a good explanation for this, sir,” I charged, regarding my foe with what traces of dignity I could rally, after being disarmed by a child.
    “I might say the same to you,” Miss van-Stacey,” he answered, with an arch smile, enjoying the affair.
    My breath caught in my throat. How had he discovered my secret? And if he told, I would have to leave, before I was clamped into jail.
    “Are you not curious to know how I learned the truth?” he asked, in a conversational spirit.
    “The truth? Why, the truth is that I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about. My name is Stacey.”
    “Ah well, what’s in a name?” he asked, with a laughing shrug. “This note I have from Diamond Dutch addressed to his daughter will be of no interest to you then,” he went on, drawing a white rectangle from his inner pocket.
    I reached out for it, advancing towards him in my eagerness. He lifted it just above his head, with a mocking laugh. “Now, now, it would be improper for you to open Miss van Deusen’s letter, Miss Stacey.”
    I reached higher; he held it higher, until I was nearly in his arms, with both of us in some danger of toppling over backwards.
    “All right. You know who I am. I admit it,” I said, backing off. “Give me my letter.”
    “Couldn’t we play post office some more? The game was just becoming interesting.”
    “Please!” I said, my voice rising loud enough to frighten him into complying.
    He handed it over, and waited with his arms while I tore it open to read the miserable few lines my father had scrawled, obviously in haste, but in his own distinctive hand.
    “Mickey: Major Morrison is helping me. Do what he asks. Help him if you can, then go home. Say nothing to Beaudel.” It was signed with his initials.
    I looked up to see the major regarding me with a question on his face.
    “Well?” he asked.
    “You know what is in this note?”
    “I know what Dutch said he was going to put in it.”
    “You saw my father? What did he say? When did you see him?”
    “To answer your questions: yes, I saw him. When? Late this afternoon. He said he did not steal the diamonds. He also requested me to ask you to return home at once to London.”
    “Of course he didn’t steal them! How is he? Is he well?”
    “As well as can be expected, under the circumstances. He is not being starved or beaten, if that is your fear. Till he has stood trial, he will not be treated quite like a criminal. Oh, he said you are under no circumstances to go to the jail. A wise decision on his part. You may imagine the conclusion the law would jump