Then, what good luck if I should discover the case containing the
treaty and go off with it before "J.M." came back! It was not his, and
he was a thief: therefore, I should be doing him no wrong and Maxine de
Renzie much good by taking it, if he had left it behind, not too well
hidden when he went out.
Guided in the darkness by a slight breeze which still came through the
window, though the door was now shut, I shuffled across the uncarpeted
floor, groping with hands held out before me as I moved.
In a moment I brushed against a table, then struck my shin on something
which proved to be the leg of a chair lying over-turned on the floor. I
pushed it out of the way, but had gone on no more than three or four
steps when I caught my foot in a rug which had got twisted in a heap
round the fallen chair. I disentangled myself from its coils, only to
slip and almost lose my balance by stepping into some spilled liquid
which lay thick and greasy on the bare boards.
The warm hopefulness which I had brought into this dark, silent room was
chilled and dying now.
"I'm afraid there's been a struggle here," I thought. And if there had
been a struggle--what of the treaty?
There seemed to be a good deal of the spilled liquid, for as I felt my
way along, more anxious than ever for light, the floor was still wet and
slippery; and then, in the midst of the puddle, I stumbled over a thing
that was heavy and soft to the touch of my foot.
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