“Nixon I can trust not to speak of it.  Tell him to go.  You, I know, will remember only long enough to do for me what I have just asked.”

“Mrs. Packard, you may trust me.”  The earnest, confiding look, which for a moment disturbed the melancholy of her large eyes, touched me closely as I shut the door between us.

“Now what is the meaning of this mystery?” I asked myself after I had seen Nixon go downstairs, shaking his head and casting every now and then a suspicious glance behind him.  “It is not as trivial as it appears.  That laugh was tragedy to her, not comedy.”  And when I paused to recollect its tone I did not wonder at its effect upon her mind, strained as it undoubtedly was by some secret sorrow or perplexity.

And from whose lips had that laugh sprung?  Not from ghostly ones.  Such an explanation I could not accept, and how could Mrs. Packard?  From whose, then?  If I could settle this fact I might perhaps determine to what extent its effect was dependent upon its source.  The butler denied having even heard it.  Was this to be believed?  Did not this very denial prove that it was he and no other who had thus shocked the proprieties of this orderly household?  It certainly seemed so; yet where all was strange, this strange and incomprehensible denial of a self-evident fact by the vindictive Nixon might have its source in some motive unsuggested by the circumstances.  Certainly, Nixon’s mistress appeared to have a great deal of confidence in him.

I wished that more had been told me about the handsome secretary.  I wished that fate would give me another opportunity for seeing that gentleman and putting the same direct question to him I had put to Nixon.

Scarcely had this thought crossed my mind before a loud ring at the telephone disturbed the quiet below and I heard the secretary’s voice in reply.  A minute after he appeared at the foot of the stairs.  His aspect was one of embarrassment, and he peered aloft in a hesitating way, as if he hardly knew how to proceed.

Taking advantage of this hesitation, I ran softly down to meet him.

“Any message for Mrs. Packard?” I asked.

He looked relieved.

“Yes, from his Honor.  The mayor is unavoidably detained and may not be home till morning.”

“I will tell her.”  Then, as he reached for his overcoat, I risked all on one venture, and enlarging a little on the facts, said: 

“Excuse me, but was it you we heard laughing down-stairs a few minutes ago?  Mrs. Packard feared it might be some follower of the girls’.”

Pausing in the act of putting on his coat, he met my look with an air of some surprise.

“I am not given to laughing,” he remarked; “certainly not when alone.”

“But you heard this laugh?”

He shook his head.  His manner was perfectly courteous, almost cordial.

“If I did, it made no impression on my mind.  I am extremely busy just now, working up the mayor’s next speech.”  And with a smile and bow in every way suited to his fine appearance, he took his hat from the rack and left the house.