The atmosphere was reeking with chloroform. The girl was in bed, apparently sleeping quietly. One arm was thrown up over her head, and the other lay relaxed on the white cover. A folded towel had been laid across her face, and when I jerked it away I saw she was breathing very slowly, stertorously, with her eyes partly open and fixed.
I threw up all the windows, before I roused the family, and as soon as Edith was in the room I telephoned for the doctor. I hardly remember what I did until he came: I know we tried to rouse Margery and failed, and I know that Fred went down-stairs and said the silver was intact and the back kitchen door open. And then the doctor came, and I was put out in the hall, and for an eternity, I walked up and down, eight steps one way, eight steps back, unable to think, unable even to hope.
Not until the doctor came out to me, and said she was better, and would I call a maid to make some strong black coffee, did I come out of my stupor. The chance of doing something, anything, made me determine to make the coffee myself. They still speak of that coffee at Fred's.
It was Edith who brought Mrs. Butler to my mind. Fred had maintained that she had fled before the intruders, and was probably in some closet or corner of the upper floor. I am afraid our solicitude was long in coming. It was almost an hour before we organized a searching party to look for her. Fred went up-stairs, and I took the lower floor.
It was I who found her, after all, lying full length on the grass in the little square yard back of the house. She was in a dead faint, and she was a much more difficult patient than Margery.
We could get no story from either of them that night. The two rooms had been ransacked, but apparently nothing had been stolen. Fred vowed he had locked and bolted the kitchen door, and that it had been opened from within.
It was a strange experience, that night intrusion into the house, without robbery as a motive. If Margery knew or suspected the reason for the outrage, she refused to say. As for Mrs. Butler, to mention the occurrence put her into hysteria. It was Fred who put forth the most startling theory of the lot.
"By George," he said the next morning when we had failed to find tracks in the yard, and Edith had reported every silver spoon in its place, "by George, it wouldn't surprise me if the lady in the grave clothes did it herself. There isn't anything a hysterical woman won't do to rouse your interest in her, if it begins to flag. How did any one get in through that kitchen door, when it was locked inside and bolted? I tell you, she opened it herself."