THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE
By
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE
CHAPTER I
I TAKE A COUNTRY HOUSE:
This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind,
deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house
for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of
those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective
agencies happy and prosperous. For twenty years I had been
perfectly comfortable; for twenty years I had had the window-
boxes filled in the spring, the carpets lifted, the awnings put
up and the furniture covered with brown linen; for as many
summers I had said good-by to my friends, and, after watching
their perspiring hegira, had settled down to a delicious quiet in
town, where the mail comes three times a day, and the water
supply does not depend on a tank on the roof.
And then - the madness seized me. When I look back over the
months I spent at Sunnyside, I wonder that I survived at all. As
it is, I show the wear and tear of my harrowing experiences. I
have turned very gray - Liddy reminded me of it, only yesterday,
by saying that a little bluing in the rinse-water would make my
hair silvery, instead of a yellowish white. I hate to be
reminded of unpleasant things and I snapped her off.
"No," I said sharply, "I'm not going to use bluing at my time of
life, or starch, either."
Liddy's nerves are gone, she says, since that awful summer, but
she has enough left, goodness knows! And when she begins to go
around with a lump in her throat, all I have to do is to threaten
to return to Sunnyside, and she is frightened into a semblance of
cheerfulness, - from which you may judge that the summer there was
anything but a success.
The newspaper accounts have been so garbled and incomplete - one
of them mentioned me but once, and then only as the tenant at the
time the thing happened - that I feel it my due to tell what I
know. Mr. Jamieson, the detective, said himself he could never
have done without me, although he gave me little enough credit,
in print.
I shall have to go back several years - thirteen, to be exact - to
start my story. At that time my brother died, leaving me his two
children. Halsey was eleven then, and Gertrude was seven. All
the responsibilities of maternity were thrust upon me suddenly;
to perfect the profession of motherhood requires precisely as
many years as the child has lived, like the man who started to
carry the calf and ended by walking along with the bull on his
shoulders. However, I did the best I could. When Gertrude got
past the hair-ribbon age, and Halsey asked for a scarf-pin and
put on long trousers - and a wonderful help that was to the
darning. - I sent them away to good schools. After that, my
responsibility was chiefly postal, with three months every summer
in which to replenish their wardrobes, look over their lists of
acquaintances, and generally to take my foster-motherhood out of
its nine months' retirement in camphor.
I missed the summers with them when, somewhat later, at boarding-
school and college, the children spent much of their vacations
with friends. Gradually I found that my name signed to a check
was even more welcome than when signed to a letter, though I
wrote them at stated intervals. But when Halsey had finished
his electrical course and Gertrude her boarding-school, and both
came home to stay, things were suddenly changed. The winter
Gertrude came out was nothing but a succession of sitting up late
at night to bring her home from things, taking her to the
dressmakers between naps the next day, and discouraging
ineligible youths with either more money than brains, or more
brains than money. Also, I acquired a great many things: to say
lingerie for under-garments, "frocks" and "gowns" instead of
dresses, and that beardless sophomores are not college boys, but
college men. Halsey required less personal supervision, and as
they both got their mother's fortune that winter, my
responsibility became purely moral. Halsey bought a car, of
course, and I learned how to tie over my bonnet a gray baize
veil, and, after a time, never to stop to look at the dogs one
has run down. People are apt to be so unpleasant about their
dogs.
The additions to my education made me a properly equipped maiden
aunt, and by spring I was quite tractable. So when Halsey
suggested camping in the Adirondacks and Gertrude wanted Bar
Harbor, we compromised on a good country house with links near,
within motor distance of town and telephone distance of the
doctor. That was how we went to Sunnyside.
We went out to inspect the property, and it seemed to deserve its
name. Its cheerful appearance gave no indication whatever of
anything out of the ordinary. Only one thing seemed unusual to
me: the housekeeper, who had been left in charge, had moved from
the house to the gardener's lodge, a few days before. As the
lodge was far enough away from the house, it seemed to me that
either fire or thieves could complete their work of destruction
undisturbed. The property was an extensive one: the house on the
top of a hill, which sloped away in great stretches of green lawn
and clipped hedges, to the road; and across the valley, perhaps a
couple of miles away, was the Greenwood Club House. Gertrude and
Halsey were infatuated.
"Why, it's everything you want," Halsey said "View, air, good
water and good roads. As for the house, it's big enough for a
hospital, if it has a Queen Anne front and a Mary Anne back,"
which was ridiculous: it was pure Elizabethan.
Of course we took the place; it was not my idea of comfort, being
much too large and sufficiently isolated to make the servant
question serious. But I give myself credit for this: whatever
has happened since, I never blamed Halsey and Gertrude for taking
me there. And another thing: if the series of catastrophes there
did nothing else, it taught me one thing - that somehow,
somewhere, from perhaps a half-civilized ancestor who wore a
sheepskin garment and trailed his food or his prey, I have in me
the instinct of the chase. Were I a man I should be a trapper of
criminals, trailing them as relentlessly as no doubt my sheepskin
ancestor did his wild boar. But being an unmarried woman, with
the handicap of my sex, my first acquaintance with crime will
probably be my last. Indeed, it came near enough to being my
last acquaintance with anything.
The property was owned by Paul Armstrong, the president of the
Traders' Bank, who at the time we took the house was in the west
with his wife and daughter, and a Doctor Walker, the Armstrong
family physician. Halsey knew Louise Armstrong, - had been rather
attentive to her the winter before, but as Halsey was always
attentive to somebody, I had not thought of it seriously,
although she was a charming girl. I knew of Mr. Armstrong only
through his connection with the bank, where the children's money
was largely invested, and through an ugly story about the son,
Arnold Armstrong, who was reported to have forged his father's
name, for a considerable amount, to some bank paper. However,
the story had had no interest for me.
I cleared Halsey and Gertrude away to a house party, and moved
out to Sunnyside the first of May. The roads were bad, but the
trees were in leaf, and there were still tulips in the borders
around the house. The arbutus was fragrant in the woods under
the dead leaves, and on the way from the station, a short mile,
while the car stuck in the mud, I found a bank showered with tiny
forget-me-nots. The birds - don't ask me what kind; they all look
alike to me, unless they have a hall mark of some bright color -
the birds were chirping in the hedges, and everything breathed of
peace. Liddy, who was born and bred on a brick pavement, got a
little bit down-spirited when the crickets began to chirp, or
scrape their legs together, or whatever it is they do, at
twilight.
The first night passed quietly enough. I have always been
grateful for that one night's peace; it shows what the country
might be, under favorable circumstances. Never after that night
did I put my head on my pillow with any assurance how long it
would be there; or on my shoulders, for that matter.
On the following morning Liddy and Mrs. Ralston, my own
housekeeper, had a difference of opinion, and Mrs. Ralston left
on the eleven train. Just after luncheon, Burke, the butler, was
taken unexpectedly with a pain in his right side, much worse when
I was within hearing distance, and by afternoon he was started
cityward. That night the cook's sister had a baby - the cook,
seeing indecision in my face, made it twins on second thought -
and, to be short, by noon the next day the household staff was
down to Liddy and myself. And this in a house with twenty-two
rooms and five baths!
Liddy wanted to go back to the city at once, but the milk-boy
said that Thomas Johnson, the Armstrongs' colored butler, was
working as a waiter at the Greenwood Club, and might come back.
I have the usual scruples about coercing people's servants away,
but few of us have any conscience regarding institutions or
corporations - witness the way we beat railroads and street-car
companies when we can - so I called up the club, and about eight
o'clock Thomas Johnson came to see me. Poor Thomas!
Well, it ended by my engaging Thomas on the spot, at outrageous
wages, and with permission to sleep in the gardener's lodge,
empty since the house was rented. The old man - he was white-
haired and a little stooped, but with an immense idea of his
personal dignity - gave me his reasons hesitatingly.
"I ain't sayin' nothin', Mis' Innes," he said, with his hand on
the door-knob, "but there's been goin's-on here this las' few
months as ain't natchal. 'Tain't one thing an' 'tain't another -
it's jest a door squealin' here, an' a winder closin' there, but
when doors an' winders gets to cuttin' up capers and there's
nobody nigh 'em, it's time Thomas Johnson sleeps somewhar's
else."
Liddy, who seemed to be never more than ten feet away from me
that night, and was afraid of her shadow in that great barn of a
place, screamed a little, and turned a yellow-green. But I am
not easily alarmed.
It was entirely in vain; I represented to Thomas that we were
alone, and that he would have to stay in the house that night.
He was politely firm, but he would come over early the next
morning, and if I gave him a key, he would come in time to get
some sort of breakfast. I stood on the huge veranda and
watched him shuffle along down the shadowy drive, with mingled
feelings - irritation at his cowardice and thankfulness at getting
him at all. I am not ashamed to say that I double-locked the
hall door when I went in.
"You can lock up the rest of the house and go to bed, Liddy," I
said severely. "You give me the creeps standing there. A woman
of your age ought to have better sense." It usually braces Liddy
to mention her age: she owns to forty - which is absurd. Her
mother cooked for my grandfather, and Liddy must be at least as
old as I. But that night she refused to brace.
"You're not going to ask me to lock up, Miss Rachel!" she
quavered. "Why, there's a dozen French windows in the drawing-
room and the billiard-room wing, and every one opens on a porch.
And Mary Anne said that last night there was a man standing by
the stable when she locked the kitchen door."
"Mary Anne was a fool," I said sternly. "If there had been a man
there, she would have had him in the kitchen and been feeding him
what was left from dinner, inside of an hour, from force of
habit. Now don't be ridiculous. Lock up the house and go to
bed. I am going to read."
But Liddy set her lips tight and stood still.
"I'm not going to bed," she said. "I am going to pack up, and
to-morrow I am going to leave."
"You'll do nothing of the sort," I snapped. Liddy and I often
desire to part company, but never at the same time. "If you are
afraid, I will go with you, but for goodness' sake don't try to
hide behind me."
The house was a typical summer residence on an extensive scale.
Wherever possible, on the first floor, the architect had done
away with partitions, using arches and columns instead. The
effect was cool and spacious, but scarcely cozy. As Liddy and I
went from one window to another, our voices echoed back at us
uncomfortably. There was plenty of light - the electric plant
down in the village supplied us - but there were long vistas of
polished floor, and mirrors which reflected us from unexpected
corners, until I felt some of Liddy's foolishness communicate
itself to me.
The house was very long, a rectangle in general form, with the
main entrance in the center of the long side. The brick-paved
entry opened into a short hall to the right of which, separated
only by a row of pillars, was a huge living-room. Beyond that
was the drawing-room, and in the end, the billiard-room. Off
the billiard-room, in the extreme right wing, was a den, or
card-room, with a small hall opening on the east veranda, and
from there went up a narrow circular staircase. Halsey had
pointed it out with delight.
"Just look, Aunt Rachel," he said with a flourish. "The
architect that put up this joint was wise to a few things.
Arnold Armstrong and his friends could sit here and play cards
all night and stumble up to bed in the early morning, without
having the family send in a police call."
Liddy and I got as far as the card-room and turned on all the
lights. I tried the small entry door there, which opened on the
veranda, and examined the windows. Everything was secure, and
Liddy, a little less nervous now, had just pointed out to me the
disgracefully dusty condition of the hard-wood floor, when
suddenly the lights went out. We waited a moment; I think Liddy
was stunned with fright, or she would have screamed. And then I
clutched her by the arm and pointed to one of the windows opening
on the porch. The sudden change threw the window into relief, an
oblong of grayish light, and showed us a figure standing close,
peering in. As I looked it darted across the veranda and out of
sight in the darkness.
CHAPTER II
A LINK CUFF-BUTTON
Liddy's knees seemed to give away under her. Without a sound she
sank down, leaving me staring at the window in petrified
amazement. Liddy began to moan under her breath, and in my
excitement I reached down and shook her.
"Stop it," I whispered. "It's only a woman - maybe a maid of the
Armstrongs'. Get up and help me find the door." She groaned
again. "Very well," I said, "then I'll have to leave you here.
I'm going."
She moved at that, and, holding to my sleeve, we felt our way,
with numerous collisions, to the billiard-room, and from there to
the drawing-room. The lights came on then, and, with the long
French windows unshuttered, I had a creepy feeling that each one
sheltered a peering face. In fact, in the light of what happened
afterward, I am pretty certain we were under surveillance during
the entire ghostly evening. We hurried over the rest of
the locking-up and got upstairs as quickly as we could. I left
the lights all on, and our footsteps echoed cavernously. Liddy
had a stiff neck the next morning, from looking back over her
shoulder, and she refused to go to bed.
"Let me stay in your dressing-room, Miss Rachel," she begged.
"If you don't, I'll sit in the hall outside the door. I'm not
going to be murdered with my eyes shut."
"If you're going to be murdered," I retorted, "it won't make any
difference whether they are shut or open. But you may stay in
the dressing-room, if you will lie on the couch: when you sleep
in a chair you snore."
She was too far gone to be indignant, but after a while she came
to the door and looked in to where I was composing myself for
sleep with Drummond's Spiritual Life.
"That wasn't a woman, Miss Rachel," she said, with her shoes in
her hand. "It was a man in a long coat."
"What woman was a man?" I discouraged her without looking up,
and she went back to the couch.
It was eleven o'clock when I finally prepared for bed. In
spite of my assumption of indifference, I locked the door into
the hall, and finding the transom did not catch, I put a chair
cautiously before the door - it was not necessary to rouse Liddy -
and climbing up put on the ledge of the transom a small dressing-
mirror, so that any movement of the frame would send it crashing
down. Then, secure in my precautions, I went to bed.
I did not go to sleep at once. Liddy disturbed me just as I was
growing drowsy, by coming in and peering under the bed. She was
afraid to speak, however, because of her previous snubbing, and
went back, stopping in the doorway to sigh dismally.
Somewhere down-stairs a clock with a chime sang away the hours -
eleven-thirty, forty-five, twelve. And then the lights went out
to stay. The Casanova Electric Company shuts up shop and goes
home to bed at midnight: when one has a party, I believe it is
customary to fee the company, which will drink hot coffee and
keep awake a couple of hours longer. But the lights were gone
for good that night. Liddy had gone to sleep, as I knew she
would. She was a very unreliable person: always awake and ready
to talk when she wasn't wanted and dozing off to sleep when
she was. I called her once or twice, the only result being
an explosive snore that threatened her very windpipe - then I got
up and lighted a bedroom candle.
My bedroom and dressing room were above the big living-room on
the first floor. On the second floor a long corridor ran the
length of the house, with rooms opening from both sides. In the
wings were small corridors crossing the main one - the plan was
simplicity itself. And just as I got back into bed, I heard a
sound from the east wing, apparently, that made me stop, frozen,
with one bedroom slipper half off, and listen. It was a rattling
metallic sound, and it reverberated along the empty halls like
the crash of doom. It was for all the world as if something
heavy, perhaps a piece of steel, had rolled clattering and
jangling down the hard-wood stairs leading to the card-room.
In the silence that followed Liddy stirred and snored again. I
was exasperated: first she kept me awake by silly alarms, then
when she was needed she slept like Joe Jefferson, or Rip, - they
are always the same to me. I went in and aroused her, and I give
her credit for being wide awake the minute I spoke.
"Get up," I said, "if you don't want to be murdered in your bed."
"Where? How?" she yelled vociferously, and jumped up.
"There's somebody in the house," I said. "Get up. We'll have to
get to the telephone."
"Not out in the hall!" she gasped; "Oh, Miss Rachel, not out in
the hall!" trying to hold me back. But I am a large woman and
Liddy is small. We got to the door, somehow, and Liddy held a
brass andiron, which it was all she could do to lift, let alone
brain anybody with. I listened, and, hearing nothing, opened the
door a little and peered into the hall. It was a black void,
full of terrible suggestion, and my candle only emphasized the
gloom. Liddy squealed and drew me back again, and as the door
slammed, the mirror I had put on the transom came down and hit
her on the head. That completed our demoralization. It was some
time before I could persuade her she had not been attacked from
behind by a burglar, and when she found the mirror smashed on the
floor she wasn't much better.
"There's going to be a death!" she wailed. "Oh, Miss Rachel,
there's going to be a death!"
"There will be," I said grimly, "if you don't keep quiet, Liddy
Allen."
And so we sat there until morning, wondering if the candle would
last until dawn, and arranging what trains we could take back to
town. If we had only stuck to that decision and gone back before
it was too late!
The sun came finally, and from my window I watched the trees
along the drive take shadowy form, gradually lose their ghostlike
appearance, become gray and then green. The Greenwood Club
showed itself a dab of white against the hill across the valley,
and an early robin or two hopped around in the dew. Not until
the milk-boy and the sun came, about the same time, did I dare to
open the door into the hall and look around. Everything was as
we had left it. Trunks were heaped here and there, ready for the
trunk-room, and through an end window of stained glass came a
streak of red and yellow daylight that was eminently cheerful.
The milk-boy was pounding somewhere below, and the day had begun.
Thomas Johnson came ambling up the drive about half-past six, and
we could hear him clattering around on the lower floor, opening
shutters. I had to take Liddy to her room up-stairs,
however, - she was quite sure she would find something uncanny.
In fact, when she did not, having now the courage of daylight,
she was actually disappointed.
Well, we did not go back to town that day.
The discovery of a small picture fallen from the wall of the
drawing-room was quite sufficient to satisfy Liddy that the alarm
had been a false one, but I was anything but convinced. Allowing
for my nerves and the fact that small noises magnify themselves
at night, there was still no possibility that the picture had
made the series of sounds I heard. To prove it, however, I
dropped it again. It fell with a single muffled crash of its
wooden frame, and incidentally ruined itself beyond repair. I
justified myself by reflecting that if the Armstrongs chose to
leave pictures in unsafe positions, and to rent a house with a
family ghost, the destruction of property was their
responsibility, not mine.
I warned Liddy not to mention what had happened to anybody, and
telephoned to town for servants. Then after a breakfast which
did more credit to Thomas' heart than his head, I went on a short
tour of investigation. The sounds had come from the east
wing, and not without some qualms I began there. At first I
found nothing. Since then I have developed my powers of
observation, but at that time I was a novice. The small card-
room seemed undisturbed. I looked for footprints, which is, I
believe, the conventional thing to do, although my experience has
been that as clues both footprints and thumb-marks are more
useful in fiction than in fact. But the stairs in that wing
offered something.
At the top of the flight had been placed a tall wicker hamper,
packed, with linen that had come from town. It stood at the edge
of the top step, almost barring passage, and on the step below it
was a long fresh scratch. For three steps the scratch was
repeated, gradually diminishing, as if some object had fallen,
striking each one. Then for four steps nothing. On the fifth
step below was a round dent in the hard wood. That was all, and
it seemed little enough, except that I was positive the marks had
not been there the day before.
It bore out my theory of the sound, which had been for all the
world like the bumping of a metallic object down a flight of
steps. The four steps had been skipped. I reasoned that an iron
bar, for instance, would do something of the sort, - strike
two or three steps, end down, then turn over, jumping a few
stairs, and landing with a thud.
Iron bars, however, do not fall down-stairs in the middle of the
night alone. Coupled with the figure on the veranda the agency
by which it climbed might be assumed. But - and here was the
thing that puzzled me most - the doors were all fastened that
morning, the windows unmolested, and the particular door from
the card-room to the veranda had a combination lock of which I
held the key, and which had not been tampered with.
I fixed on an attempt at burglary, as the most natural
explanation - an attempt frustrated by the falling of the object,
whatever it was, that had roused me. Two things I could not
understand: how the intruder had escaped with everything locked,
and why he had left the small silver, which, in the absence of a
butler, had remained down-stairs over night.
Under pretext of learning more about the place, Thomas Johnson
led me through the house and the cellars, without result.
Everything was in good order and repair; money had been spent
lavishly on construction and plumbing. The house was full of
conveniences, and I had no reason to repent my bargain, save
the fact that, in the nature of things, night must come again.
And other nights must follow - and we were a long way from a
police-station.
In the afternoon a hack came up from Casanova, with a fresh relay
of servants. The driver took them with a flourish to the
servants' entrance, and drove around to the front of the house,
where I was awaiting him.
"Two dollars," he said in reply to my question. "I don't charge
full rates, because, bringin' 'em up all summer as I do, it pays
to make a special price. When they got off the train, I sez, sez
I, `There's another bunch for Sunnyside, cook, parlor maid and
all.' Yes'm - six summers, and a new lot never less than once a
month. They won't stand for the country and the lonesomeness, I
reckon."
But with the presence of the "bunch" of servants my courage
revived, and late in the afternoon came a message from Gertrude
that she and Halsey would arrive that night at about eleven
o'clock, coming in the car from Richfield. Things were looking
up; and when Beulah, my cat, a most intelligent animal, found
some early catnip on a bank near the house and rolled in it
in a feline ecstasy, I decided that getting back to nature was
the thing to do.
While I was dressing for dinner, Liddy rapped at the door. She
was hardly herself yet, but privately I think she was worrying
about the broken mirror and its augury, more than anything else.
When she came in she was holding something in her hand, and she
laid it on the dressing-table carefully.
"I found it in the linen hamper," she said. "It must be Mr.
Halsey's, but it seems queer how it got there."
It was the half of a link cuff-button of unique design, and I
looked at it carefully.
"Where was it? In the bottom of the hamper?" I asked.
"On the very top," she replied. "It's a mercy it didn't fall out
on the way."
When Liddy had gone I examined the fragment attentively. I had
never seen it before, and I was certain it was not Halsey's. It
was of Italian workmanship, and consisted of a mother-of-pearl
foundation, encrusted with tiny seed-pearls, strung on horsehair
to hold them. In the center was a small ruby. The trinket was
odd enough, but not intrinsically of great value. Its
interest for me lay in this: Liddy had found it lying in the top
of the hamper which had blocked the east-wing stairs.
That afternoon the Armstrongs' housekeeper, a youngish good-
looking woman, applied for Mrs. Ralston's place, and I was glad
enough to take her. She looked as though she might be equal to a
dozen of Liddy, with her snapping black eyes and heavy jaw. Her
name was Anne Watson, and I dined that evening for the first time
in three days.
CHAPTER III
MR. JOHN BAILEY APPEARS
I had dinner served in the breakfast-room. Somehow the huge
dining-room depressed me, and Thomas, cheerful enough all day,
allowed his spirits to go down with the sun. He had a habit of
watching the corners of the room, left shadowy by the candles on
the table, and altogether it was not a festive meal.
Dinner over I went into the living-room. I had three hours
before the children could possibly arrive, and I got out my
knitting. I had brought along two dozen pairs of slipper soles
in assorted sizes - I always send knitted slippers to the Old
Ladies' Home at Christmas - and now I sorted over the wools with a
grim determination not to think about the night before. But my
mind was not on my work: at the end of a half-hour I found I had
put a row of blue scallops on Eliza Klinefelter's lavender
slippers, and I put them away.
I got out the cuff-link and went with it to the pantry. Thomas
was wiping silver and the air was heavy with tobacco smoke. I
sniffed and looked around, but there was no pipe to be seen.
"Thomas," I said, "you have been smoking."
"No, ma'm." He was injured innocence itself. "It's on my coat,
ma'm. Over at the club the gentlemen - "
But Thomas did not finish. The pantry was suddenly filled with
the odor of singeing cloth. Thomas gave a clutch at his coat,
whirled to the sink, filled a tumbler with water and poured it
into his right pocket with the celerity of practice.
"Thomas," I said, when he was sheepishly mopping the floor,
"smoking is a filthy and injurious habit. If you must smoke, you
must; but don't stick a lighted pipe in your pocket again. Your
skin's your own: you can blister it if you like. But this house
is not mine, and I don't want a conflagration. Did you ever see
this cuff-link before?"
No, he never had, he said, but he looked at it oddly.
"I picked it up in the hall," I added indifferently. The old
man's eyes were shrewd under his bushy eyebrows.
"There's strange goin's-on here, Mis' Innes," he said, shaking
his head. "Somethin's goin' to happen, sure. You ain't took
notice that the big clock in the hall is stopped, I reckon?"
"Nonsense," I said. "Clocks have to stop, don't they, if they're
not wound?"
"It's wound up, all right, and it stopped at three o'clock last
night," he answered solemnly. "More'n that, that there clock
ain't stopped for fifteen years, not since Mr. Armstrong's first
wife died. And that ain't all, - no MA'M. Last three nights I
slep' in this place, after the electrics went out I had a token.
My oil lamp was full of oil, but it kep' goin' out, do what I
would. Minute I shet my eyes, out that lamp'd go. There ain't
no surer token of death. The Bible sez, LET YER LIGHT SHINE!
When a hand you can't see puts yer light out, it means death,
sure."
The old man's voice was full of conviction. In spite of myself I
had a chilly sensation in the small of my back, and I left him
mumbling over his dishes. Later on I heard a crash from the
pantry, and Liddy reported that Beulah, who is coal black, had
darted in front of Thomas just as he picked up a tray of dishes;
that the bad omen had been too much for him, and he had
dropped the tray.
The chug of the automobile as it climbed the hill was the most
welcome sound I had heard for a long time, and with Gertrude and
Halsey actually before me, my troubles seemed over for good.
Gertrude stood smiling in the hall, with her hat quite over one
ear, and her hair in every direction under her pink veil.
Gertrude is a very pretty girl, no matter how her hat is, and I
was not surprised when Halsey presented a good-looking young man,
who bowed at me and looked at Trude - that is the ridiculous
nickname Gertrude brought from school.
"I have brought a guest, Aunt Ray," Halsey said. "I want you to
adopt him into your affections and your Saturday-to-Monday list.
Let me present John Bailey, only you must call him Jack. In
twelve hours he'll be calling you `Aunt': I know him."
We shook hands, and I got a chance to look at Mr. Bailey; he was
a tall fellow, perhaps thirty, and he wore a small mustache. I
remember wondering why: he seemed to have a good mouth and when
he smiled his teeth were above the average. One never knows why
certain men cling to a messy upper lip that must get into
things, any more than one understands some women building up
their hair on wire atrocities. Otherwise, he was very good to
look at, stalwart and tanned, with the direct gaze that I like.
I am particular about Mr. Bailey, because he was a prominent
figure in what happened later.
Gertrude was tired with the trip and went up to bed very soon. I
made up my mind to tell them nothing; until the next day, and
then to make as light of our excitement as possible. After all,
what had I to tell? An inquisitive face peering in at a window;
a crash in the night; a scratch or two on the stairs, and half a
cuff-button! As for Thomas and his forebodings, it was always my
belief that a negro is one part thief, one part pigment, and the
rest superstition.
It was Saturday night. The two men went to the billiard-room,
and I could hear them talking as I went up-stairs. It seemed
that Halsey had stopped at the Greenwood Club for gasolene and
found Jack Bailey there, with the Sunday golf crowd. Mr. Bailey
had not been hard to persuade - probably Gertrude knew why - and
they had carried him off triumphantly. I roused Liddy to get
them something to eat - Thomas was beyond reach in the lodge - and
paid no attention to her evident terror of the kitchen
regions. Then I went to bed. The men were still in the
billiard-room when I finally dozed off, and the last thing I
remember was the howl of a dog in front of the house. It wailed
a crescendo of woe that trailed off hopefully, only to break out
afresh from a new point of the compass.
At three o'clock in the morning I was roused by a revolver shot.
The sound seemed to come from just outside my door. For a moment
I could not move. Then - I heard Gertrude stirring in her room,
and the next moment she had thrown open the connecting door.
"O Aunt Ray! Aunt Ray!" she cried hysterically. "Some one has
been killed, killed!"
"Thieves," I said shortly. "Thank goodness, there are some men
in the house to-night." I was getting into my slippers and a
bath-robe, and Gertrude with shaking hands was lighting a lamp.
Then we opened the door into the hall, where, crowded on the
upper landing of the stairs, the maids, white-faced and
trembling, were peering down, headed by Liddy. I was greeted by
a series of low screams and questions, and I tried to quiet them.
Gertrude had dropped on a chair and sat there limp and shivering.
I went at once across the hall to Halsey's room and knocked; then
I pushed the door open. It was empty; the bed had not been
occupied!
"He must be in Mr. Bailey's room," I said excitedly, and followed
by Liddy, we went there. Like Halsey's, it had not been
occupied! Gertrude was on her feet now, but she leaned against
the door for support.
"They have been killed!" she gasped. Then she caught me by the
arm and dragged me toward the stairs. "They may only be hurt,
and we must find them," she said, her eyes dilated with
excitement.
I don't remember how we got down the stairs: I do remember
expecting every moment to be killed. The cook was at the
telephone up-stairs, calling the Greenwood Club, and Liddy was
behind me, afraid to come and not daring to stay behind. We
found the living-room and the drawing-room undisturbed. Somehow
I felt that whatever we found would be in the card-room or on the
staircase, and nothing but the fear that Halsey was in danger
drove me on; with every step my knees seemed to give way under
me. Gertrude was ahead and in the card-room she stopped, holding
her candle high. Then she pointed silently to the doorway
into the hall beyond. Huddled there on the floor, face down,
with his arms extended, was a man.
Gertrude ran forward with a gasping sob. "Jack," she cried, "oh,
Jack!"
Liddy had run, screaming, and the two of us were there alone. It
was Gertrude who turned him over, finally, until we could see his
white face, and then she drew a deep breath and dropped limply to
her knees. It was the body of a man, a gentleman, in a dinner
coat and white waistcoat, stained now with blood - the body of a
man I had never seen before.
CHAPTER IV
WHERE IS HALSEY?
Gertrude gazed at the face in a kind of fascination. Then she
put out her hands blindly, and I thought she was going to faint.
"He has killed him!" she muttered almost inarticulately; and at
that, because my nerves were going, I gave her a good shake.
"What do you mean?" I said frantically. There was a depth of
grief and conviction in her tone that was worse than anything she
could have said. The shake braced her, anyhow, and she seemed to
pull herself together. But not another word would she say: she
stood gazing down at that gruesome figure on the floor, while
Liddy, ashamed of her flight and afraid to come back alone, drove
before her three terrified women-servants into the drawing-room,
which was as near as any of them would venture.
Once in the drawing-room, Gertrude collapsed and went from one
fainting spell into another. I had all I could do to keep Liddy
from drowning her with cold water, and the maids huddled in a
corner, as much use as so many sheep. In a short time, although
it seemed hours, a car came rushing up, and Anne Watson, who had
waited to dress, opened the door. Three men from the Greenwood
Club, in all kinds of costumes, hurried in. I recognized a Mr.
Jarvis, but the others were strangers.
"What's wrong?" the Jarvis man asked - and we made a strange
picture, no doubt. "Nobody hurt, is there?" He was looking at
Gertrude.
"Worse than that, Mr. Jarvis," I said. "I think it is murder."
At the word there was a commotion. The cook began to cry, and
Mrs. Watson knocked over a chair. The men were visibly
impressed.
"Not any member of the family?" Mr. Jarvis asked, when he had got
his breath.
"No," I said; and motioning Liddy to look after Gertrude, I led
the way with a lamp to the card-room door. One of the men gave
an exclamation, and they all hurried across the room. Mr. Jarvis
took the lamp from me - I remember that - and then, feeling
myself getting dizzy and light-headed, I closed my eyes. When I
opened them their brief examination was over, and Mr. Jarvis was
trying to put me in a chair.
"You must get up-stairs," he said firmly, "you and Miss Gertrude,
too. This has been a terrible shock. In his own home, too."
I stared at him without comprehension. "Who is it?" I asked with
difficulty. There was a band drawn tight around my throat.
"It is Arnold Armstrong," he said, looking at me oddly, "and he
has been murdered in his father's house."
After a minute I gathered myself together and Mr. Jarvis helped
me into the living-room. Liddy had got Gertrude up-stairs, and
the two strange men from the club stayed with the body. The
reaction from the shock and strain was tremendous: I was
collapsed - and then Mr. Jarvis asked me a question that brought
back my wandering faculties.
"Where is Halsey?" he asked.
"Halsey!" Suddenly Gertrude's stricken face rose before me the
empty rooms up-stairs. Where was Halsey?
"He was here, wasn't he?" Mr. Jarvis persisted. "He stopped at
the club on his way over."
"I - don't know where he is," I said feebly.
One of the men from the club came in, asked for the telephone,
and I could hear him excitedly talking, saying something about
coroners and detectives. Mr. Jarvis leaned over to me.
"Why don't you trust me, Miss Innes?" he said. "If I can do
anything I will. But tell me the whole thing."
I did, finally, from the beginning, and when I told of Jack
Bailey's being in the house that night, he gave a long whistle.
"I wish they were both here," he said when I finished. "Whatever
mad prank took them away, it would look better if they were here.
Especially - "
"Especially what?"
"Especially since Jack Bailey and Arnold Armstrong were
notoriously bad friends. It was Bailey who got Arnold into