# The Holladay Case (Detective Story Magazine)/Chapter 7
### CHAPTER VII.
#### The Mysterious Maid

A hundred thousand dollars!” ejaculated Mr. Royce, staring at his chief.
“A hundred thousand dollars! That's a good deal for a girl to give away in a lump, but she can afford it. Of course, we've nothing to do but carry out her instructions. I think both of us can guess what she intends doing with the money.”
The other nodded. I believed that I could guess, too. The money, of course, was intended for the other woman—she was not to suffer for her crime, after all. Miss Holladay seemed to me in no little danger of becoming an accessory after the fact.
“She seems really ill,” continued our senior. “She looks thinner and quite careworn. I commended her resolution to seek rest and quiet and change of scene.”
“When does she go, sir?” asked Mr. Royce in a subdued voice.
“The day after to-morrow, I think. She did not say definitely. In fact, she could talk very little. She's managed to catch cold—the grippe, I suppose—and was very hoarse. It would have been cruelty to make her talk, and I didn't try.”
He wheeled around to his desk, and then suddenly back again.
“By the way,” he said, “I saw the new maid. I can't say I wholly approve of her.”
He paused to weigh his words.
“She seems careful and devoted,” he went on, “but I don't like her eyes. They're too intense. I caught her two or three times watching me strangely. I can't imagine where Miss Holladay picked her up, or why she should have picked her up at all. She's French, of course—she speaks with a decided accent. About the money, I suppose we'd better sell a block of U. P. bonds. They're the least productive of her securities.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” agreed Mr. Royce, and the chief called up a broker and gave the necessary orders. Then he turned to other work, and the day passed without any further reference to Miss Holladay or her affairs.
The proceeds of the sale were brought to the office early the next afternoon, a small packet neatly sealed and docketed—one hundred thousand-dollar bills. Mr. Graham turned it aver in his hand.
“You'll take it to the house, of course, John,” he said to his partner. “Lester'd better go with you.”
So Mr. Royce placed the package in his pocket, a taxi was summoned, and we were off. The trip was made without incident, and at the end of half an hour we drew up before the old-styled brownstone Holladay mansion.
It had been Hiram Holladay's home for forty years, and he had never been willing to part with it. At this moment all the blinds were down and the house had a deserted look. We were admitted by a woman whom I knew instinctively to be the new maid, though she looked much less like a maid than like an elderly workingwoman of the middle class.
“We've brought the money Miss Holladay asked Mr. Graham for yesterday,” said Mr. Royce. “I'm John Royce, his partner,” and without answering the woman motioned us in. “Of course we must have a receipt for it,” he added. “I have it ready here, and she need only attach her signature.”
“Miss Holladay is too ill to see you, sir,” said the maid, with careful enunciation. “I will myself the paper take to her and get her signature.”
Mr. Royce hesitated a moment in perplexity. “I fear that won't do,” said Mr. Royce at last. “The sum is a considerable one, and must be given to Miss Holladay by me personally in the presence of this witness.”
It was the maid's turn to hesitate; I saw her lips tighten ominously.
“Very well, sir,” she said. “But I warn you, she is most nervous, and it has been forbidden her to talk.”
“She will not be called upon to talk,” retorted Mr. Royce curtly; and, without answering, the woman turned and led the way up the stair to her mistress' room.
Miss Holladay was lying back in a great chair with a bandage about her head, and even in the half light I could see how changed she was. She seemed much thinner and older, and coughed occasionally in a way that frightened me. Not grief alone, I told myself, could have caused this breakdown; it was the secret weighing upon her. My companion noted the change, too, a greater change, perhaps, than my eyes could perceive, and I saw how moved and shocked he was.
“I have brought the money,” Mr. Royce said as he handed her the package.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“Will you verify the amount?”
“Oh, no; that is not necessary.”
“I have a receipt here,” and he produced it and his fountain pen. “Please sign it.”
She took the pen with trembling fingers, laid the receipt upon the arm of the chair, and signed her name with painful slowness. Then she leaned back with a sigh of relief, and buried her face in her hands. Mr. Royce placed the receipt in his pocketbook, and stopped, hesitating. But the maid had opened the door and was awaiting us. Her mistress made no sign; there was no excuse to linger. We turned and followed the maid.
“Miss Holladay seems very ill,” said Mr. Royce, in a voice somewhat tremulous, as she paused before us in the lower hall.
“Yes, sir; ver' ill.”
The voice struck me as oddly familiar. I took advantage of the chance to look at her intently. Her hair was turning gray, her face was seamed with lines which only care and poverty could have graven there; and yet, beneath it all, I fancied I could detect a faded but living likeness to Hiram Holladay's daughter. I looked again—it was faint, uncertain—perhaps my overwrought nerves were deceiving me. For how could such a likeness possibly exist?
“She has a physician, of course?” asked my companion.
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“He has advised rest and quiet?”
“Yes, sit.”
“When do you leave for the country?”
“To-morrow or the next day after that, I think, sir.”
The door closed after us, and we went down the steps.
My chief gave Doctor Jenkinson a succinct account of Miss Holladay's illness and our visit. He even persuaded the physician to call at Miss Holladay's house. When pressed for an explanation Jenkinson was obviously confused.
“Frankly, Mr. Royce,” he said at last, “I don't know how to explain it. The most probable explanation is that Holladay is suffering from some form of dementia—perhaps only acute primary dementia, which is usually merely temporary—but which may easily grow serious, and even become permanent.”
The theory had occurred to me, and I saw from the expression of Mr. Royce's face that he, also, had thought of it.
“Is there no way that we can make sure?” he asked. “She may need to be saved from herself.”
“She may need it very badly,” agreed the doctor, nodding. “Yet, she is of legal age, and absolute mistress of her actions. There are no relatives to interfere—no intimate friends, even, that I know of. I see no way unless you, as her legal adviser, apply to the authorities for an inquest of lunacy.”
But Mr. Royce made an instant gesture of repugnance.
“Oh, that's absurd!” he cried. “We have no possible reason to take such action. It would offend her mortally.”
“No doubt,” assented the other. “So I fear that at present nothing can be done—things will just have to take their course till something more decided happens.”
“There's no tendency to mental disease in the family?” inquired Mr. Royce, after a moment.
“Not the slightest,” said the doctor emphatically. “Her father and mother were both sound and well balanced. Twenty-five years ago Holladay, who was then just working to the top in Wall Street, drove himself too hard, and had a touch of apoplexy. I made him take a long vacation, which he spent abroad with his wife. It was then, by the way, that his daughter was born. Since then he had been careful, and had never been bothered with a recurrence of the trouble. In fact, that's the only illness in the least serious I ever knew him to have.”
There was nothing more to be said, and we took our departure.
The week that followed was a perplexing one for me, and a miserable one for Royce. As I know now, he had written her half a dozen times, and had received not a single word of answer. For myself I had discovered one more development of the mystery. On the day following the delivery of the money, I had glanced through a Wall Street newspaper as I rode home on the car, and one item had attracted my attention. The brokerage firm of Swift & Currer had that day presented at the subtreasury the sum of one hundred thousand dollars in currency for conversion into gold. An inquiry at their office next morning elicited the fact that the exchange had been effected for the account of Miss Frances Holladay. It was done, of course, that the recipient of the money might remain beyond trace of the police.