When Iris failed to respond to the summons for dinner, Miss Darrel waited a few moments and then took her own place at the table.
"Go and find Miss Clyde," she said to Agnes; "I do wish people would be prompt at meals, especially when they're guests."
Lucille never allowed any one of her household to forget that she was now mistress of Pellbrook, and she longed for the time when the mystery would be cleared up and she might be left to the possession of her new home.
Being Sunday, it was a case of midday dinner, and, as Iris was usually prompt, Lucille was surprised at the length of time Agnes remained out of the room. At last she returned with the word that she could not find Miss Clyde anywhere in the house. "But," she added, "maybe she went away in the little car that was here a while ago."
"I don't know whose it was, and I don't know that Miss Iris was in it, but I just caught sight of it as it whizzed through the gate."
"About an hour ago. I didn't think much about it. I saw a man driving it, and I think there was a lady on the back seat----"
"Agnes, you're crazy! Miss Clyde wouldn't go out anywhere on Sunday morning without telling me. She didn't go to church?"
"Oh, no, ma'am, it was much too late for that."
"Well, that was some stranger's car. You didn't see Iris in it?"
However, as there was no Iris on the premises, Lucille Darrel concluded she had gone off on some sudden and unexpected errand--perhaps to see Winston Bannard.
So Miss Darrel ate her dinner alone, with no feeling of alarm, but a slight annoyance at the episode.
She thought over the story Iris had told her of the intruder of the night before, and slowly a vague suggestion of something wrong shaped itself in her brain. She realized that if Iris had gone on an errand, or had gone for a ride with Roger Downing, or any other friend or caller, she would certainly have told Lucille she was going. For Iris was punctilious in her courtesy, and the two women really got along very well together. She called old Polly in and asked her what she thought about it.
"I don't know," and the cook shook her head. "I'd just been talking to her about that pin Mrs. Pell left to her----"
"Good heavens! Polly! That pin again? Why--what _is_ there about that pin? What do _you_ know of it?"