The Circular Staircase

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  A TRAMP AND THE TOOTHACHE

  The bitterness toward the dead president of the Traders' Bank seemed togrow with time. Never popular, his memory was execrated by people whohad lost nothing, but who were filled with disgust by constantlyhearing new stories of the man's grasping avarice. The Traders' hadbeen a favorite bank for small tradespeople, and in its savingsdepartment it had solicited the smallest deposits. People who hadthought to be self-supporting to the last found themselves confrontingthe poorhouse, their two or three hundred dollar savings wiped away.All bank failures have this element, however, and the directors weretrying to promise twenty per cent. on deposits.

  But, like everything else those days, the bank failure was almostforgotten by Gertrude and myself. We did not mention Jack Bailey: Ihad found nothing to change my impression of his guilt, and Gertrudeknew how I felt. As for the murder of the bank president's son, I wasof two minds. One day I thought Gertrude knew or at least suspectedthat Jack had done it; the next I feared that it had been Gertrudeherself, that night alone on the circular staircase. And then themother of Lucien Wallace would obtrude herself, and an almost equallygood case might be made against her. There were times, of course, whenI was disposed to throw all those suspicions aside, and fix definitelyon the unknown, whoever that might be.

  I had my greatest disappointment when it came to tracing NinaCarrington. The woman had gone without leaving a trace. Marked as shewas, it should have been easy to follow her, but she was not to befound. A description to one of the detectives, on my arrival at home,had started the ball rolling. But by night she had not been found. Itold Gertrude, then, about the telegram to Louise when she had been illbefore; about my visit to Doctor Walker, and my suspicions that MattieBliss and Nina Carrington were the same. She thought, as I did, thatthere was little doubt of it.

  I said nothing to her, however, of the detective's suspicions aboutAlex. Little things that I had not noticed at the time now came backto me. I had an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps Alex was a spy, andthat by taking him into the house I had played into the enemy's hand.But at eight o'clock that night Alex himself appeared, and with him astrange and repulsive individual. They made a queer pair, for Alex wasalmost as disreputable as the tramp, and he had a badly swollen eye.

  Gertrude had been sitting listlessly waiting for the evening messagefrom Mr. Jamieson, but when the singular pair came in, as they did,without ceremony, she jumped up and stood staring. Winters, thedetective who watched the house at night, followed them, and kept hiseyes sharply on Alex's prisoner. For that was the situation as itdeveloped.

  He was a tall lanky individual, ragged and dirty, and just now helooked both terrified and embarrassed. Alex was too much engrossed tobe either, and to this day I don't think I ever asked him why he wentoff without permission the day before.

  "Miss Innes," Alex began abruptly, "this man can tell us something veryimportant about the disappearance of Mr. Innes. I found him trying tosell this watch."

  He took a watch from his pocket and put it on the table. It wasHalsey's watch. I had given it to him on his twenty-first birthday: Iwas dumb with apprehension.

  "He says he had a pair of cuff-links also, but he sold them--"

  "Fer a dollar'n half," put in the disreputable individual hoarsely,with an eye on the detective.

  "He is not--dead?" I implored. The tramp cleared his throat.

  "No'm," he said huskily. "He was used up pretty bad, but he weren'tdead. He was comin' to hisself when I"--he stopped and looked at thedetective. "I didn't steal it, Mr. Winters," he whined. "I found itin the road, honest to God, I did."

  Mr. Winters paid no attention to him. He was watching Alex.

  "I'd better tell what he told me," Alex broke in. "It will be quicker.When Jamieson--when Mr. Jamieson calls up we can start him right. Mr.Winters, I found this man trying to sell that watch on Fifth Street.He offered it to me for three dollars."

  "How did you know the watch?" Winters snapped at him.

  "I had seen it before, many times. I used it at night when I waswatching at the foot of the staircase." The detective was satisfied."When he offered the watch to me, I knew it, and I pretended I wasgoing to buy it. We went into an alley and I got the watch." Thetramp shivered. It was plain how Alex had secured the watch. "Then--Igot the story from this fellow. He claims to have seen the wholeaffair. He says he was in an empty car--in the car the automobilestruck."

  The tramp broke in here, and told his story, with frequentinterpretations by Alex and Mr. Winters. He used a strange medley, inwhich familiar words took unfamiliar meanings, but it was graduallymade clear to us.

  On the night in question the tramp had been "pounding his ear"--thisstuck to me as being graphic--in an empty box-car along the siding atCasanova. The train was going west, and due to leave at dawn. Thetramp and the "brakey" were friendly, and things going well. About teno'clock, perhaps earlier, a terrific crash against the side of the carroused him. He tried to open the door, but could not move it. He gotout of the other side, and just as he did so, he heard some one groan.

  The habits of a lifetime made him cautious. He slipped on to thebumper of a car and peered through. An automobile had struck the car,and stood there on two wheels. The tail lights were burning, but theheadlights were out. Two men were stooping over some one who lay onthe ground. Then the taller of the two started on a dog-trot along thetrain looking for an empty. He found one four cars away and ran backagain. The two lifted the unconscious man into the empty box-car, and,getting in themselves, stayed for three or four minutes. When theycame out, after closing the sliding door, they cut up over the railroadembankment toward the town. One, the short one, seemed to limp.

  The tramp was wary. He waited for ten minutes or so. Some women camedown a path to the road and inspected the automobile. When they hadgone, he crawled into the box-car and closed the door again. Then helighted a match. The figure of a man, unconscious, gagged, and withhis hands tied, lay far at the end.

  The tramp lost no time; he went through his pockets, found a littlemoney and the cuff-links, and took them. Then he loosened the gag--ithad been cruelly tight--and went his way, again closing the door of thebox-car. Outside on the road he found the watch. He got on the fastfreight east, some time after, and rode into the city. He had sold thecuff-links, but on offering the watch to Alex he had been "copped."

  The story, with its cold recital of villainy, was done. I hardly knewif I were more anxious, or less. That it was Halsey, there could be nodoubt. How badly he was hurt, how far he had been carried, were thequestions that demanded immediate answer. But it was the first realinformation we had had; my boy had not been murdered outright. Butinstead of vague terrors there was now the real fear that he might belying in some strange hospital receiving the casual attention commonlygiven to the charity cases. Even this, had we known it, would havebeen paradise to the terrible truth. I wake yet and feel myself coldand trembling with the horror of Halsey's situation for three daysafter his disappearance.

  Mr. Winters and Alex disposed of the tramp with a warning. It wasevident he had told us all he knew. We had occasion, within a day ortwo, to be doubly thankful that we had given him his freedom. When Mr.Jamieson telephoned that night we had news for him; he told me what Ihad not realized before--that it would not be possible to find Halseyat once, even with this clue. The cars by this time, three days, mightbe scattered over the Union.

  But he said to keep on hoping, that it was the best news we had had.And in the meantime, consumed with anxiety as we were, things werehappening at the house in rapid succession.

  We had one peaceful day--then Liddy took sick in the night. I went inwhen I heard her groaning, and found her with a hot-water bottle to herface, and her right cheek swollen until it was glassy.

  "Toothache?" I asked, not too gently. "You deserve it. A woman ofyour age, who would rather go around with an exposed nerve in her h
eadthan have the tooth pulled! It would be over in a moment."

  "So would hanging," Liddy protested, from behind the hot-water bottle.

  I was hunting around for cotton and laudanum.

  "You have a tooth just like it yourself, Miss Rachel," she whimpered."And I'm sure Doctor Boyle's been trying to take it out for years."

  There was no laudanum, and Liddy made a terrible fuss when I proposedcarbolic acid, just because I had put too much on the cotton once andburned her mouth. I'm sure it never did her any permanent harm;indeed, the doctor said afterward that living on liquid diet had been asplendid rest for her stomach. But she would have none of the acid,and she kept me awake groaning, so at last I got up and went toGertrude's door. To my surprise, it was locked.

  I went around by the hall and into her bedroom that way. The bed wasturned down, and her dressing-gown and night-dress lay ready in thelittle room next, but Gertrude was not there. She had not undressed.

  I don't know what terrible thoughts came to me in the minute I stoodthere. Through the door I could hear Liddy grumbling, with a squealnow and then when the pain stabbed harder. Then, automatically, I gotthe laudanum and went back to her.

  It was fully a half-hour before Liddy's groans subsided. At intervalsI went to the door into the hall and looked out, but I saw and heardnothing suspicious. Finally, when Liddy had dropped into a doze, Ieven ventured as far as the head of the circular staircase, but therefloated up to me only the even breathing of Winters, the nightdetective, sleeping just inside the entry. And then, far off, I heardthe rapping noise that had lured Louise down the staircase that othernight, two weeks before. It was over my head, and very faint--three orfour short muffled taps, a pause, and then again, stealthily repeated.

  The sound of Mr. Winters' breathing was comforting; with the thoughtthat there was help within call, something kept me from waking him. Idid not move for a moment; ridiculous things Liddy had said about aghost--I am not at all superstitious, except, perhaps, in the middle ofthe night, with everything dark--things like that came back to me.Almost beside me was the clothes chute. I could feel it, but I couldsee nothing. As I stood, listening intently, I heard a sound near me.It was vague, indefinite. Then it ceased; there was an uneasy movementand a grunt from the foot of the circular staircase, and silence again.

  I stood perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe.

  Then I knew I had been right. Some one was stealthily-passing the headof the staircase and coming toward me in the dark. I leaned againstthe wall for support--my knees were giving way. The steps were closenow, and suddenly I thought of Gertrude. Of course it was Gertrude. Iput out one hand in front of me, but I touched nothing. My voicealmost refused me, but I managed to gasp out, "Gertrude!"

  "Good Lord!" a man's voice exclaimed, just beside me. And then Icollapsed. I felt myself going, felt some one catch me, a horriblenausea--that was all I remembered.

  When I came to it was dawn. I was lying on the bed in Louise's room,with the cherub on the ceiling staring down at me, and there was ablanket from my own bed thrown over me. I felt weak and dizzy, but Imanaged to get up and totter to the door. At the foot of the circularstaircase Mr. Winters was still asleep. Hardly able to stand, I creptback to my room. The door into Gertrude's room was no longer locked:she was sleeping like a tired child. And in my dressing-room Liddyhugged a cold hot-water bottle, and mumbled in her sleep.

  "There's some things you can't hold with hand cuffs," she was mutteringthickly.