CHAPTER VIII
THE OTHER HALF OF THE LINE
"Miss Innes," the detective began, "what is your opinion of the figureyou saw on the east veranda the night you and your maid were in thehouse alone?"
"It was a woman," I said positively.
"And yet your maid affirms with equal positiveness that it was a man."
"Nonsense," I broke in. "Liddy had her eyes shut--she always shutsthem when she's frightened."
"And you never thought then that the intruder who came later that nightmight be a woman--the woman, in fact, whom you saw on the veranda?"
"I had reasons for thinking it was a man," I said remembering the pearlcuff-link.
"Now we are getting down to business. WHAT were your reasons forthinking that?"
I hesitated.
"If you have any reason for believing that your midnight guest was Mr.Armstrong, other than his visit here the next night, you ought to tellme, Miss Innes. We can take nothing for granted. If, for instance, theintruder who dropped the bar and scratched the staircase--you see, Iknow about that--if this visitor was a woman, why should not the samewoman have come back the following night, met Mr. Armstrong on thecircular staircase, and in alarm shot him?"
"It was a man," I reiterated. And then, because I could think of noother reason for my statement, I told him about the pearl cuff-link.He was intensely interested.
"Will you give me the link," he said, when I finished, "or, at least,let me see it? I consider it a most important clue."
"Won't the description do?"
"Not as well as the original."
"Well, I'm very sorry," I said, as calmly as I could, "I--the thing islost. It--it must have fallen out of a box on my dressing-table."
Whatever he thought of my explanation, and I knew he doubted it, hemade no sign. He asked me to describe the link accurately, and I didso, while he glanced at a list he took from his pocket.
"One set monogram cuff-links," he read, "one set plain pearl links, oneset cuff-links, woman's head set with diamonds and emeralds. There isno mention of such a link as you describe, and yet, if your theory isright, Mr. Armstrong must have taken back in his cuffs one completecuff-link, and a half, perhaps, of the other."
The idea was new to me. If it had not been the murdered man who hadentered the house that night, who had it been?
"There are a number of strange things connected with this case," thedetective went on. "Miss Gertrude Innes testified that she heard someone fumbling with the lock, that the door opened, and that almostimmediately the shot was fired. Now, Miss Innes, here is the strangepart of that. Mr. Armstrong had no key with him. There was no key inthe lock, or on the floor. In other words, the evidence pointsabsolutely to this: Mr. Armstrong was admitted to the house fromwithin."
"It is impossible," I broke in. "Mr. Jamieson, do you know what yourwords imply? Do you know that you are practically accusing GertrudeInnes of admitting that man?"
"Not quite that," he said, with his friendly smile. "In fact, MissInnes, I am quite certain she did not. But as long as I learn onlyparts of the truth, from both you and her, what can I do? I know youpicked up something in the flower bed: you refuse to tell me what itwas. I know Miss Gertrude went back to the billiard-room to getsomething, she refuses to say what. You suspect what happened to thecuff-link, but you won't tell me. So far, all I am sure of is this: Ido not believe Arnold Armstrong was the midnight visitor who so alarmedyou by dropping--shall we say, a golf-stick? And I believe that whenhe did come he was admitted by some one in the house. Who knows--itmay have been--Liddy!"
I stirred my tea angrily.
"I have always heard," I said dryly, "that undertakers' assistants arejovial young men. A man's sense of humor seems to be in inverseproportion to the gravity of his profession."
"A man's sense of humor is a barbarous and a cruel thing, Miss Innes,"he admitted. "It is to the feminine as the hug of a bear is to thescratch of--well;--anything with claws. Is that you, Thomas? Come in."
Thomas Johnson stood in the doorway. He looked alarmed andapprehensive, and suddenly I remembered the sealskin dressing-bag inthe lodge. Thomas came just inside the door and stood with his headdrooping, his eyes, under their shaggy gray brows, fixed on Mr.Jamieson.
"Thomas," said the detective, not unkindly, "I sent for you to tell uswhat you told Sam Bohannon at the club, the day before Mr. Arnold wasfound here, dead. Let me see. You came here Friday night to see MissInnes, didn't you? And came to work here Saturday morning?"
For some unexplained reason Thomas looked relieved.
"Yas, sah," he said. "You see it were like this: When MistahArmstrong and the fam'ly went away, Mis' Watson an' me, we was lef' incharge till the place was rented. Mis' Watson, she've bin here a goodwhile, an' she warn' skeery. So she slep' in the house. I'd binhavin' tokens--I tol' Mis' Innes some of 'em--an' I slep' in the lodge.Then one day Mis' Watson, she came to me an' she sez, sez she, 'Thomas,you'll hev to sleep up in the big house. I'm too nervous to do it anymore.' But I jes' reckon to myself that ef it's too skeery fer her,it's too skeery fer me. We had it, then, sho' nuff, and it ended upwith Mis' Watson stayin' in the lodge nights an' me lookin' fer work atde club."
"Did Mrs. Watson say that anything had happened to alarm her?"
"No, sah. She was jes' natchally skeered. Well, that was all, far's Iknow, until the night I come over to see Mis' Innes. I come across thevalley, along the path from the club-house, and I goes home that way.Down in the creek bottom I almost run into a man. He wuz standin' withhis back to me, an' he was workin' with one of these yere electriclight things that fit in yer pocket. He was havin' trouble--one minuteit'd flash out, an' the nex' it'd be gone. I hed a view of 'is whitedress shirt an' tie, as I passed. I didn't see his face. But I knowit warn't Mr. Arnold. It was a taller man than Mr. Arnold. Besidethat, Mr. Arnold was playin' cards when I got to the club-house, same'she'd been doin' all day."
"And the next morning you came back along the path," pursued Mr.Jamieson relentlessly.
"The nex' mornin' I come back along the path an' down where I dun seethe man night befoh, I picked up this here." The old man held out atiny object and Mr. Jamieson took it. Then he held it on his extendedpalm for me to see. It was the other half of the pearl cuff-link!
But Mr. Jamieson was not quite through questioning him.
"And so you showed it to Sam, at the club, and asked him if he knew anyone who owned such a link, and Sam said--what?"
"Wal, Sam, he 'lowed he'd seen such a pair of cuff-buttons in a shirtbelongin' to Mr. Bailey--Mr. Jack Bailey, sah."
"I'll keep this link, Thomas, for a while," the detective said. "That'sall I wanted to know. Good night."
As Thomas shuffled out, Mr. Jamieson watched me sharply.
"You see, Miss Innes," he said, "Mr. Bailey insists on mixing himselfwith this thing. If Mr. Bailey came here that Friday night expectingto meet Arnold Armstrong, and missed him--if, as I say, he had donethis, might he not, seeing him enter the following night, have struckhim down, as he had intended before?"
"But the motive?" I gasped.
"There could be motive proved, I think. Arnold Armstrong and JohnBailey have been enemies since the latter, as cashier of the Traders'Bank, brought Arnold almost into the clutches of the law. Also, youforget that both men have been paying attention to Miss Gertrude.Bailey's flight looks bad, too."
"And you think Halsey helped him to escape?"
"Undoubtedly. Why, what could it be but flight? Miss Innes, let mereconstruct that evening, as I see it. Bailey and Armstrong hadquarreled at the club. I learned this to-day. Your nephew broughtBailey over. Prompted by jealous, insane fury, Armstrong followed,coming across by the path. He entered the billiard-room wing--perhapsrapping, and being admitted by your nephew. Just inside he was shot, bysome one on the circular staircase. The shot fired, your nephew andBailey left the house at once, going toward the automobile house. Theyleft by the lo
wer road, which prevented them being heard, and when youand Miss Gertrude got down-stairs everything was quiet."
"But--Gertrude's story," I stammered.
"Miss Gertrude only brought forward her explanation the followingmorning. I do not believe it, Miss Innes. It is the story of a lovingand ingenious woman."
"And--this thing to-night?"
"May upset my whole view of the case. We must give the benefit ofevery doubt, after all. We may, for instance, come back to the figureon the porch: if it was a woman you saw that night through the window,we might start with other premises. Or Mr. Innes' explanation may turnus in a new direction. It is possible that he shot Arnold Armstrong asa burglar and then fled, frightened at what he had done. In any case,however, I feel confident that the body was here when he left. Mr.Armstrong left the club ostensibly for a moonlight saunter, about halfafter eleven o'clock. It was three when the shot was fired."
I leaned back bewildered. It seemed to me that the evening had beenfull of significant happenings, had I only held the key. Had Gertrudebeen the fugitive in the clothes chute? Who was the man on the drivenear the lodge, and whose gold-mounted dressing-bag had I seen in thelodge sitting-room?
It was late when Mr. Jamieson finally got up to go. I went with him tothe door, and together we stood looking out over the valley. Below laythe village of Casanova, with its Old World houses, its blossomingtrees and its peace. Above on the hill across the valley were thelights of the Greenwood Club. It was even possible to see the curvingrow of parallel lights that marked the carriage road. Rumors that Ihad heard about the club came back--of drinking, of high play, andonce, a year ago, of a suicide under those very lights.
Mr. Jamieson left, taking a short cut to the village, and I still stoodthere. It must have been after eleven, and the monotonous tick of thebig clock on the stairs behind me was the only sound.
Then I was conscious that some one was running up the drive. In aminute a woman darted into the area of light made by the open door, andcaught me by the arm. It was Rosie--Rosie in a state of collapse fromterror, and, not the least important, clutching one of my Coalportplates and a silver spoon.
She stood staring into the darkness behind, still holding the plate. Igot her into the house and secured the plate; then I stood and lookeddown at her where she crouched tremblingly against the doorway.
"Well," I asked, "didn't your young man enjoy his meal?"
She couldn't speak. She looked at the spoon she still held--I wasn'tso anxious about it: thank Heaven, it wouldn't chip--and then shestared at me.
"I appreciate your desire to have everything nice for him," I went on,"but the next time, you might take the Limoges china It's more easilyduplicated and less expensive."
"I haven't a young man--not here." She had got her breath now, as Ihad guessed she would. "I--I have been chased by a thief, Miss Innes."
"Did he chase you out of the house and back again?" I asked.
Then Rosie began to cry--not silently, but noisily, hysterically.
I stopped her by giving her a good shake.
"What in the world is the matter with you?" I snapped. "Has the day ofgood common sense gone by! Sit up and tell me the whole thing." Rosiesat up then, and sniffled.
"I was coming up the drive--" she began.
"You must start with when you went DOWN the drive, with my dishes andmy silver," I interrupted, but, seeing more signs of hysteria, I gavein. "Very well. You were coming up the drive--"
"I had a basket of--of silver and dishes on my arm and I was carryingthe plate, because--because I was afraid I'd break it. Part-way up theroad a man stepped out of the bushes, and held his arm like this,spread out, so I couldn't get past. He said--he said--'Not so fast,young lady; I want you to let me see what's in that basket.'"
She got up in her excitement and took hold of my arm.
"It was like this, Miss Innes," she said, "and say you was the man.When he said that, I screamed and ducked under his arm like this. Hecaught at the basket and I dropped it. I ran as fast as I could, andhe came after as far as the trees. Then he stopped. Oh, Miss Innes,it must have been the man that killed that Mr. Armstrong!"
"Don't be foolish," I said. "Whoever killed Mr. Armstrong would put asmuch space between himself and this house as he could. Go up to bednow; and mind, if I hear of this story being repeated to the othermaids, I shall deduct from your wages for every broken dish I find inthe drive."
I listened to Rosie as she went up-stairs, running past the shadowyplaces and slamming her door. Then I sat down and looked at theCoalport plate and the silver spoon. I had brought my own china andsilver, and, from all appearances, I would have little enough to takeback. But though I might jeer at Rosie as much as I wished, the factremained that some one had been on the drive that night who had nobusiness there. Although neither had Rosie, for that matter.
I could fancy Liddy's face when she missed the extra pieces ofchina--she had opposed Rosie from the start. If Liddy once finds aprophecy fulfilled, especially an unpleasant one, she never allows meto forget it. It seemed to me that it was absurd to leave that chinadotted along the road for her to spy the next morning; so with a suddenresolution, I opened the door again and stepped out into the darkness.As the door closed behind me I half regretted my impulse; then I shutmy teeth and went on.
I have never been a nervous woman, as I said before. Moreover, aminute or two in the darkness enabled me to see things fairly well.Beulah gave me rather a start by rubbing unexpectedly against my feet;then we two, side by side, went down the drive.
There were no fragments of china, but where the grove began I picked upa silver spoon. So far Rosie's story was borne out: I began to wonderif it were not indiscreet, to say the least, this midnight prowling ina neighborhood with such a deservedly bad reputation. Then I sawsomething gleaming, which proved to be the handle of a cup, and a stepor two farther on I found a V-shaped bit of a plate. But the mostsurprising thing of all was to find the basket sitting comfortablybeside the road, with the rest of the broken crockery piled neatlywithin, and a handful of small silver, spoon, forks, and the like, ontop! I could only stand and stare. Then Rosie's story was true. Butwhere had Rosie carried her basket? And why had the thief, if he werea thief, picked up the broken china out of the road and left it, withhis booty?
It was with my nearest approach to a nervous collapse that I heard thefamiliar throbbing of an automobile engine. As it came closer Irecognized the outline of the Dragon Fly, and knew that Halsey had comeback.
Strange enough it must have seemed to Halsey, too, to come across me inthe middle of the night, with the skirt of my gray silk gown over myshoulders to keep off the dew, holding a red and green basket under onearm and a black cat under the other. What with relief and joy, I beganto cry, right there, and very nearly wiped my eyes on Beulah in theexcitement.
The Circular Staircase Page 8