Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ Halsey was young, and illness was new to him. He straightened himself slowly, still watching her, and caught my arm.
“She’s dying, Aunt Ray!” he said huskily. “Dying! Why, she doesn’t know me!”
“Fudge!” I snapped, being apt to grow irritable when my sympathies are aroused. “She’s doing nothing of the sort,—and don’t pinch my arm. If you want something to do, go and choke Thomas.”
But at that moment Louise roused from her stupor to cough, and at the end of the paroxysm, as Rosie laid her back, exhausted, she knew us. That was all Halsey wanted; to him consciousness was recovery. ”

“ I was never more composed in my life. I remember planning, if I were not discovered, who would have my things. I knew Liddy would want my heliotrope poplin, and she’s a fright in lavender. Once or twice I heard mice in the partitions, and so I sat on the table, with my feet on the chair. I imagined I could hear the search going on through the house, and once some one came into the trunk-room; I could distinctly hear footsteps.
“In the chimney! In the chimney!” I called with all my might, and was rewarded by a piercing shriek from Liddy and the slam of the trunk-room door. ”

“ Jamieson looked slightly surprised. “I rather expected the car, but we got up all right.”
“You didn’t see him at all?” Louise demanded breathlessly.
Mr. Jamieson knew her at once, although he had not seen her before. She had kept to her rooms until the morning she left.
“No, Miss Armstrong,” he said. “I saw nothing of him. What is wrong?”
“Then we shall have to find him,” she asserted. “Every instant is precious. Mr. Jamieson, I have reason for believing that he is in danger, but I don’t know what it is. Only—he must be found.” ”

“ She is a very cruel and ungrateful girl.”
“She is a very sick girl,” he said gravely. “Neither you nor I can judge her until we know everything. Both she and her mother are ghosts of their former selves. Under all this, these two sudden deaths, this bank robbery, the invasions at Sunnyside and Halsey’s disappearance, there is some mystery that, mark my words, will come out some day. And when it does, we shall find Louise Armstrong a victim.” ”

“ I took a long breath, closed the door from the trunk-room into the hall—thank Heaven, I did not lock it—and pulling the mantel-door wide open, I stepped into the chimney-room. I had time to get a hazy view of a small portable safe, a common wooden table and a chair—then the mantel door swung to, and clicked behind me. I stood quite still for a moment, in the darkness, unable to comprehend what had happened. Then I turned and beat furiously at the door with my fists. It was closed and locked again, and my fingers in the darkness slid over a smooth wooden surface without a sign of a knob. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He said he would have to go back to the city the following day, and arranged with Halsey and Alex to guard the house.
Liddy came to me on Wednesday morning with her black silk apron held up like a bag, and her eyes big with virtuous wrath. It was the day of Thomas’ funeral in the village, and Alex and I were in the conservatory cutting flowers for the old man’s casket. Liddy is never so happy as when she is making herself wretched, and now her mouth drooped while her eyes were triumphant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gertrude rose angrily. “You are not even just!” she flamed. “You don’t know anything about it, and you condemn him!”
“I know that we have all lost a great deal of money,” I said. “I shall believe Mr. Bailey innocent the moment he is shown to be. You profess to know the truth, but you can not tell me! What am I to think?”
Halsey leaned over and patted my hand.
“You must take us on faith,” he said. “Jack Bailey hasn’t a penny that doesn’t belong to him; the guilty man will be known in a day or so.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ There was something I did not hear, then Halsey again.
“We could go away,” he was saying. “What does it matter about any one in the world but just the two of us? To be always together, like this, hand in hand; Louise—don’t tell me it isn’t going to be. I won’t believe you.”
“You don’t know; you don’t know,” Louise repeated dully. “Halsey, I care—you know that—but—not enough to marry you.” ”

“ Rosie had taken her courage in her hands, and coming in had turned up the light. It was only then that I knew. Fever-flushed, ill as she was, I recognized Louise Armstrong.
I stood gazing down at her in a stupor of amazement. Louise here, hiding at the lodge, ill and alone! Rosie came up to the bed and smoothed the white counterpane.
“I am afraid she is worse to-night,” she ventured at last. I put my hand on the sick girl’s forehead. It was burning with fever, and I turned to where Thomas lingered in the hallway. ”

“ I asked Louise, uncertain what to do. The girl seemed to shrink back among her pillows at the sound of his voice. I was vaguely irritated with her; there are few young fellows like Halsey—straightforward, honest, and willing to sacrifice everything for the one woman. I knew one once, more than thirty years ago, who was like that: he died a long time ago. And sometimes I take out his picture, with its cane and its queer silk hat, and look at it. But of late years it has grown too painful: he is always a boy—and I am an old woman. ”

“ Finally, when Liddy had dropped into a doze, I even ventured as far as the head of the circular staircase, but there floated up to me only the even breathing of Winters, the night detective, sleeping just inside the entry. And then, far off, I heard the rapping noise that had lured Louise down the staircase that other night, two weeks before. It was over my head, and very faint—three or four short muffled taps, a pause, and then again, stealthily repeated.
The sound of Mr. Winters’ breathing was comforting; with the thought that there was help within call, something kept me from waking him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ LIDDY GIVES THE ALARM
The next day, Friday, Gertrude broke the news of her stepfather’s death to Louise. She did it as gently as she could, telling her first that he was very ill, and finally that he was dead. Louise received the news in the most unexpected manner, and when Gertrude came out to tell me how she had stood it, I think she was almost shocked.
“She just lay and stared at me, Aunt Ray,” she said. “Do you know, I believe she is glad, glad! And she is too honest to pretend anything else. What sort of man was Mr. Paul Armstrong, anyhow?” ”

“ If I could only have seen Halsey coming at his usual hare-brained clip up the drive, if I could have heard the throb of the motor, I would have felt that my troubles were over.
But there was nothing to be seen. The countryside lay sunny and quiet in its peaceful Sunday afternoon calm, and far down the drive Mr. Jamieson was walking slowly, stooping now and then, as if to examine the road. When I went back, Mr. Harton was furtively wiping his eyes.
“The prodigal has come home, Miss Innes,” he said. “How often the sins of the fathers are visited on the children!” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ You send Bailey off with an empty gun, and throw mine in a tulip bed, of all places on earth! Mine was a thirty-eight caliber. The inquest will show, of course, that the bullet that killed Armstrong was a thirty-eight. Then where shall I be?”
“You forget,” I broke in, “that I have the revolver, and that no one knows about it.”
But Gertrude had risen angrily.
“I can not stand it; it is always with me,” she cried. “Halsey, I did not throw your revolver into the tulip bed. I—think—you—did it—yourself!” ”

“ The day of the motor-car had come; no one had time for closed gates and lodge-keepers. The lodge at Sunnyside was merely a sort of supplementary servants’ quarters: it was as convenient in its appointments as the big house and infinitely more cozy.
As I went down the drive, my thoughts were busy. Who would it be that Mr. Jamieson had trapped in the cellar? Would we find a body or some one badly injured? Scarcely either. Whoever had fallen had been able to lock the laundry door on the inside. ”

“ Of my share in discovering the secret chamber they have been singularly silent. The inner history has never been told. Mr. Jamieson got all kinds of credit, and some of it he deserved, but if Jack Bailey, as Alex, had not traced Halsey and insisted on the disinterring of Paul Armstrong’s casket, if he had not suspected the truth from the start, where would the detective have been?
When Halsey learned the truth, he insisted on going the next morning, weak as he was, to Louise, and by night she was at Sunnyside, under Gertrude’s particular care, while her mother had gone to Barbara Fitzhugh’s. ”

“ That day was destined to be an eventful one, for when I entered the house and found Eliza ensconced in the upper hall on a chair, with Mary Anne doing her best to stifle her with household ammonia, and Liddy rubbing her wrists—whatever good that is supposed to do—I knew that the ghost had been walking again, and this time in daylight. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gertrude seldom loses her presence of mind, and she ran to the telephone. But by the time the Casanova volunteer fire department came toiling up the hill the stable was a furnace, with the Dragon Fly safe but blistered, in the road. Some gasolene exploded just as the volunteer department got to work, which shook their nerves as well as the burning building. The stable, being on a hill, was a torch to attract the population from every direction. Rumor had it that Sunnyside was burning, and it was amazing how many people threw something over their night-clothes and flew to the conflagration. ”

“ My mother and I have been surrounded for years with every indulgence everything that would make a display. But we have never had any money, Miss Innes; that must have been why mother rented this house. My stepfather pays our bills. It’s the most maddening, humiliating existence in the world. I would love honest poverty better.”
“Never mind,” I said; “when you and Halsey are married you can be as honest as you like, and you will certainly be poor.”
Halsey came to the door at that moment and I could hear him coaxing Liddy for admission to the sick room. ”

“ I said grimly. “In the meantime, I take no one on faith. The Inneses never do.”
Gertrude, who had been standing aloof at a window, turned suddenly. “But when the bonds are offered for sale, Halsey, won’t the thief be detected at once?”
Halsey turned with a superior smile.
“It wouldn’t be done that way,” he said. “They would be taken out of the vault by some one who had access to it, and used as collateral for a loan in another bank. It would be possible to realize eighty per cent. of their face value.” ”