seemed to point to a corner of the wall on which the portrait itself hung; to a shelf in the left-hand alcove by the fireplace. Both Mary and John ran eagerly to the corner and began to sight from finger to shelf and back again, to get a straight line from the pointing finger.

“I think it falls here” said John, touching a fat brown book labeled “Concordance,” on the fourth shelf from the bottom. “But I have looked behind all the books on this shelf. I know I have!”

“No, it doesn’t fall there,” said Mary. “I am sure she is pointing about here.” And she laid her hand on a row of green-and-gold volumes, whose titles she could hardly read in the dim light.

“‘Gems from the Poets,’” spelled John with difficulty. “Do you suppose she means these? And what does she want us to do, anyway? Let’s try this one.” He took down Volume I, which turned out to be “Gems from Marlowe,” a poet[89] of whom neither of them had even heard. John looked under the book, and examined the wall behind where it had stood, and began to look through the book itself, as carefully as possible. But Mary was searching farther. “I don’t think it is that one,” she said. “I think she is pointing farther along in the row.”

[89]

“Let’s try them all,” suggested John, seizing another volume,—“‘Gems from Beaumont and Fletcher’—whoever they are!” He flapped the leaves and looked in the space at the back where the cover was loose. But there was nothing unusual about that book. Meanwhile Mary was still drawing an imaginary line from the point of the portrait’s finger to the shelf in the corner.

“I am sure she is pointing here,” she said, laying her hand on the last volume in the row, which looked exactly like the others. “‘Gems from Shakespeare,’” she read the label on the back. “Yes, of course this ought to be the right one. She liked him best of all the poets, John. I believe this is it!”

Mary pulled the volume from the shelf eagerly. But when she held it in her hands she uttered a cry of surprise that made John drop the book he was flapping strenuously, and turn to her.

[90]“What is it, Mary?” he asked. “Have you found something?”

[90]

“Oh, John!” she whispered in the greatest excitement, “it isn’t a book at all! It is—something else! I think it is the Secret!”

 Prev. P 46/57 next