He called an officer from the next room.

“Has any one been here since my absence?”

“No, General.”

“Has any one passed through the hall?”

He had fully anticipated the answer, as the subaltern replied, “Only the women servants.”

He re-entered the room.  Closing the door, he again carefully examined the box, his table, the papers upon it, the chair before it, and even the Chinese matting on the floor, for any further indication of the pollen.  It hardly seemed possible that any one could have entered the room with the flower in their hand without scattering some of the tell-tale dust elsewhere; it was too large a flower to be worn on the breast or in the hair.  Again, no one would have dared to linger there long enough to have made an examination of the box, with an officer in the next room, and the sergeant passing.  The box had been removed, and the examination made elsewhere!

An idea seized him.  Miss Faulkner was still absent, the mulatto had apparently gone home.  He quickly mounted the staircase, but instead of entering his room, turned suddenly aside into the wing which had been reserved.  The first door yielded as he turned its knob gently and entered a room which he at once recognized as the “young lady’s boudoir.”  But the dusty and draped furniture had been rearranged and uncovered, and the apartment bore every sign of present use.  Yet, although there was unmistakable evidence of its being used by a person of taste and refinement, he was surprised to see that the garments hanging in an open press were such as were used by negro servants, and that a gaudy handkerchief such as housemaids used for turbans was lying on the pretty silk coverlet.  He did not linger over these details, but cast a rapid glance round the room.  Then his eyes became fixed on a fanciful writing-desk, which stood by the window.  For, in a handsome vase placed on its level top, and drooping on a portfolio below, hung a cluster of the very flowers that Miss Faulkner had carried!

CHAPTER IV.

It seemed plain to Brant that the dispatch-box had been conveyed here and opened for security on this desk, and in the hurry of examining the papers the flower had been jostled and the fallen grains of pollen overlooked by the spy.  There were one or two freckles of red on the desk, which made this accident appear the more probable.  But he was equally struck by another circumstance.  The desk stood immediately before the window.  As he glanced mechanically from it, he was surprised to see that it commanded an extensive view of the slope below the eminence on which the house stood, even beyond his furthest line of pickets.  The vase of flowers, each of which was nearly as large as a magnolia blossom, and striking in color, occupied a central position before it, and no doubt could be quite distinctly seen from a distance.  From this circumstance he could not resist the strong impression that this fateful and extraordinary blossom, carried by Miss Faulkner and the mulatto, and so strikingly “in evidence” at the window, was in some way a signal.  Obeying an impulse which he was conscious had a half superstitious foundation, he carefully lifted the vase from its position before the window, and placed it on a side table.  Then he cautiously slipped from the room.