“Hullo!” said Miss Barton’s voice, cautiously, from below.
“The other door’s locked, and the key gone.”
“That’s awkward. If either of us goes, somebody may come out. And if we yell for help there’ll be an uproar.”
“That’s about the size of it,” said Harriet.
“Well, listen; I’ll try and get in through one of the ground floor windows They all seem to be latched, but I might break a pane of glass.”
Harriet waited. Presently she heard a faint tinkle. Then there was a pause and presently the sound of a moving sash. There was a longer pause. Harriet came back into the Fiction Library and pulled the table away from the door. In about six or seven minutes’ time she saw the door handle move and heard a tap on the other side of the oak. She stooped to the key-hole, and called “What’s up?” and bent her ear to listen. “Nobody here,” said Miss Barton’s voice on the other side. “Keys gone. And the most ghastly mess-up.”
“I’ll come round.”
She hurried back through the Hall and round to the front of the Library Here she found the window that Miss Barton had opened, climbed through and ran on up the stairs into the Library.
“Well!”, said Harriet.
The New Library was a handsome, lofty room, with six bays on the South side, lit by as many windows running nearly from the floor to the ceiling. On the North side, the wall was windowless, and shelved to a height of ten feet. Above this was a space of blank wall, along which it would be possible, at some future time, to run an extra gallery when the books should become too many for the existent shelving. This blank space had been adorned by Miss Burrows and her party with a series of engravings, such as every academic community possesses, representing the Parthenon, the Colosseum, Trajan’s Column and other topographical and classical subjects.
All the books in the room had been dragged out and flung on the floor, by the simple expedient of removing the shelves bodily. The pictures had been thrown down. And the blank wall space thus exposed had been adorned with a frieze of drawings, roughly executed in brown paint, and with inscriptions in letters a foot high, all of the most unseemly sort. A pair of library steps and a pot of paint with a wide brush in it stood triumphantly in the midst of the wreckage, to show how the transformation had been accomplished.
“That’s torn it,” said Harriet.
“Yes,” said Miss Barton. “A very nice reception for Lord Oakapple.” There was an odd note in her voice-almost of satisfaction. Harriet looked sharply at her.
“What are you going to do? What does one do? Go over the place with a magnifying glass? or send for the police?”
“Neither,” said Harriet. She considered for a moment.
“The first thing,” she said, “is to send for the Dean. The next is to find either the original keys or a spare set. The third, is to clean off these filthy inscriptions before anybody sees them. And the fourth is to get the room straight before twelve o’clock. There’s plenty of time. Will you be good enough to wake the Dean and bring her with you. In the meantime, I’ll have a look round for clues. We can discuss afterwards who did the job and how she got out. Please make haste.”
“H’m!” said the Fellow. “I like people who know their own minds.” She went with surprising promptness.
“Her dressing-gown is all over paint,” said Harriet aloud to herself, “but she may have got it climbing in.” She went downstairs and examined the open window. “Yes, here’s where she scrambled over the wet radiator. I expect I’m marked too. Yes, I am. Nothing to show whether it all came from there. Damp footmarks-hers and mine, no doubt. Wait a moment.”
She traced the damp marks up to the top of the stairs, where they grew faint and ceased. She could find no third set; but the footmarks of the intruder would probably have had time to dry. Whoever it was must have begun operations very soon after midnight at latest. The paint had splashed about a good deal; if it were possible to search the whole college for paint-stained clothing, well and good. But it would cause a terrific scandal. Miss Hudson-had she shown any marks of paint anywhere? Harriet thought not. She looked about her again, and realized unexpectedly that she had the lights full on, and that the curtains were drawn open. If anybody was looking across from one of the other buildings, the interior of the room would show up like a lighted stage. She snapped the lights off, and drew the curtains again carefully before putting them on again.
“Yes,” she said. “I see. That was the idea. The curtains were drawn while the job was done. Then the lights were turned off and the curtains opened. Then the artist escaped, leaving the doors locked. In the morning, everything would look quite ordinary from the outside. Who would have been the first to try and come in? An early scout, to do a final clean-round? She would find the door locked, think Miss Burrows had left it like that, and probably do nothing about it. Miss Burrows would probably have come up first. When? A little after Chapel, or a little before. She would not have been able to get in. Time would have been wasted hunting for the keys. When anybody did get in, it would have been two late to straighten things up. Everybody would have been about. The Chancellor-?”
Miss Burrows would have been the first to come up. She had also been the last to leave, and was the person who knew best where the paint pots had been put. Would she have wrecked her own job, any more than Miss Lydgate would have wrecked her own proofs? How far was that psychological premise sound? One would surely damage anything in the world, except one’s own work. But on the other hand, if one were cunning enough to see that people would think exactly that, then one would promptly take the precaution of seeing that one’s own work did suffer.
Harriet moved slowly about the Library. There was a big splash of paint on the parquet. And at the edge of it-oh, yes! it would be very useful to hunt the place over for paint-stained clothes. But here was evidence that the culprit had worn no slippers. Why should she have worn anything? The radiators on this floor were working at full blast, and a complete absence of clothing would be not merely politic out comfortable.
And how had the person got away? Neither Miss Hudson (if she was to be trusted) nor Harriet had met anyone on the way up. But there had been plenty of time for escape, after the lights were put out. A stealthy figure creeping away under the Hall archway could not have been seen from the far side of the Old Quad. Or, if it came to that, there might quite well have been somebody lurking in the Hall while Harriet and Miss Hudson were talking in the passage.
“I’ve mucked it a bit,” said Harriet. “I ought to have turned on the Hall lights to make sure.”
Miss Barton re-entered with the Dean, who took one look round and said “Mercy!” She looked like a stout little mandarin, with her long red pigtail and quilted blue dressing-gown sprawled over with green-and-scarlet dragons. “What idiots we were not to expect it. Of course, the obvious thing! If we’d only thought about it, Miss Burrows could have locked up before she went. And what do we do now?”
“My first reaction,” said Harriet, “is turpentine. And the second is Padgett.”
“My dear, you are perfectly right. Padgett will cope. He always does. Like charity, he never fails. What a mercy you people spotted what was going on. As soon as we get these disgusting inscriptions cleaned off, we can put on a coat of quick-drying distemper or something, or paper the wall over and-goodness! I don’t know where the turpentine will come from unless the painters have left a lot. It’ll need a young bath. But Padgett will manage.”
“I’ll run over and get him,” said Harriet “and at the same time I’ll collar Miss Burrows. We’ll have to get these books back into place. What’s the time? Five to four. I think it can be done all right. Will you hold the fort till I come back?”