I don’t remember how I came down that flight of stairs again. I sat on the W.C. letting the cold bring me back to my senses. Mr. Mostel after all—that genial man playing the worried father and betrayed employer so well. Had he paid someone to remove Katherine or had she been lured up to his office and dispatched right here? Until now I had dismissed the notion that I was dealing with a highly dangerous man.
“You took long enough, didn’t you,” Seedy Sam commented as I returned to my seat.
“Sorry, but I’m not feeling too well today,” I said, giving the phrase enough meaning to make him refrain from further questions.
At lunchtime I decided that my ill health was a good excuse for staying put and keeping an eye on the place.
“Aren’t you coming to eat?” Sadie asked me.
“No, thanks. I’ve got a piece of bread and cheese in my bag if I feel like eating anything at all,” I said.
“Do you want me to bring you something back from the café?” Sadie asked.
“I think it was their food that did it in the first place,” I said. “That stew yesterday.”
“It was bad. I couldn’t finish mine,” she said. “I didn’t even want to look at it. But I could bring you some noodle soup and a roll. It’s very nourishing.”
“Thanks, Sadie. You’re a pal, but I think I’ll survive,” I said. “You better get going or you’ll be at the back of the queue.”
She left. It was completely quiet in the sewing room. Even Seedy Sam had gone to have his lunch with the cutters and pressers downstairs. I nibbled nervously on my bread and cheese. I hadn’t had to lie about that one—I really did feel sick. Katherine’s locket in Mostel’s drawer. One day she disappeared and never came back. And if Mostel got wind that I was snooping, or was involved in starting a strike, then the same thing could happen to me. “Get out while you still can,” a voice whispered in my head.
I looked up as I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The half hour for lunch wouldn’t be over for fifteen more minutes and girls were not usually in a hurry to return. Sadie came into the room. She had flushed cheeks from the cold wind.
“Horrible food again. Be happy you didn’t order anything. I came back early—couldn’t stand the smell,” she said. “Now I need to go to the washroom myself.”
She went through the inner door without even pausing to take her shawl off. I heard the washroom door close, then another sound that had me up on my feet—it was the creak of floorboards. Sadie was going up the stairs to Mostel’s office. I gave her a head start and then I crept up the stairs after her. Mr. Mostel’s office door was closed. Cautiously I inched it open. The office was empty. I crept through into the back room beyond which the sample hands occupied when they were at work. Empty apart from bolts of cloth and a couple of forlorn dummies.
Could those creaking floorboards have been the product of my overactive imagination? I could have sworn I heard feet going up the stairs. But she couldn’t just have vanished. She must have heard me following her and be hiding, waiting for me to go downstairs again before she looked for the designs. I checked the drawer to see if she had maybe taken them already and was sitting somewhere, copying them furiously. But the folder still lay unopened in Mostel’s drawer.
I felt the back of my neck prickle. Where was she? I spent futile minutes turning over bolts of cloth to see if she was behind or under any of them. I was about to go downstairs again when I noticed a door I had overlooked. Mostel’s door had always been open as I had come up the stairs, concealing another door to the left of the little landing. This door was not properly shut. I pushed it open and found another short flight of stairs. I crept up it. It was dark and seemed to be leading to some kind of attic storage space. Bolts of cloth were stacked high on either side. It smelled musty. What on earth could Sadie want up here, unless she was doing what Mostel had dreaded and quietly helping herself to a few yards of trim?
Then I heard a girl’s voice whisper, “Wait. I think I hear something.”
And the whispered answer, “It’s okay. They’re all at lunch still.”
I went up the final steps, around the bolts of cloth, and stood staring at two frightened faces.
“Molly,” Sadie stammered. “What are you doing up here?”
“More to the point, what are you doing?” I asked, “and who is this?”
I stared at the other girl. She looked somehow familiar. She was staring back at me, frightened, poised for flight, and yet at the same time defiant.
“Don’t tell on us, please, Molly,” Sadie begged. “She had nowhere else to go. If they find her they’ll kill her.”
I came closer, trying to make out her features in the poor light.
“It’s all right, Sadie. I should go anyway. It’s not right for you to take risks for me,” said a very haughty English voice.