The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart (mini ebook reader txt) 📕
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 amo
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“Thank God,” she said, in a shaking voice. “I thought it was you.”
I pointed to the door, and she understood.
“Call out the windows at the other end of the house,” I whispered. “Run. Tell them not to wait for anything.”
She went up the stairs at that, two at a time. Evidently she collided with the candle, for it went out, and I was left in darkness.
I was really astonishingly cool. I remember stepping over the chair and gluing my ear to the door, and I shall never forget feeling it give an inch or two there in the darkness, under a steady pressure from without. But the chair held, although I could hear an ominous cracking of one of the legs. And then, without the slightest warning, the card-room window broke with a crash. I had my finger on the trigger of the revolver, and as I jumped it went off, right through the door. Some one outside swore roundly, and for the first time I could hear what was said.
“Only a scratch… . Men are at the other end of the house… . Have the whole rat’s nest on us.” And a lot of profanity which I won’t write down. The voices were at the broken window now, and although I was trembling violently, I was determined that I would hold them until help came. I moved up the stairs until I could see into the card-room, or rather through it, to the window. As I looked a small man put his leg over the sill and stepped into the room. The curtain confused him for a moment; then he turned, not toward me, but toward the billiard-room door. I fired again, and something that was glass or china crashed to the ground. Then I ran up the stairs and along the corridor to the main staircase. Gertrude was standing there, trying to locate the shots, and I must have been a peculiar figure, with my hair in crimps, my dressing-gown flying, no slippers, and a revolver clutched in my hands I had no time to talk. There was the sound of footsteps in the lower hall, and some one bounded up the stairs.
I had gone Berserk, I think. I leaned over the stair-rail and fired again. Halsey, below, yelled at me.
“What are you doing up there?” he yelled. “You missed me by an inch.”
And then I collapsed and fainted. When I came around Liddy was rubbing my temples with eau de quinine, and the search was in full blast.
Well, the man was gone. The stable burned to the ground, while the crowd cheered at every falling rafter, and the volunteer fire department sprayed it with a garden hose. And in the house Alex and Halsey searched every corner of the lower floor, finding no one.
The truth of my story was shown by the broken window and the overturned chair. That the unknown had got upstairs was almost impossible. He had not used the main staircase, there was no way to the upper floor in the east wing, and Liddy had been at the window, in the west wing, where the servants’ stair went up. But we did not go to bed at all. Sam Bohannon and Warner helped in the search, and not a closet escaped scrutiny. Even the cellars were given a thorough overhauling, without result. The door in the east entry had a hole through it where my bullet had gone.
The hole slanted downward, and the bullet was embedded in the porch. Some reddish stains showed it had done execution.
“Somebody will walk lame,” Halsey said, when he had marked the course of the bullet. “It’s too low to have hit anything but a leg or foot.”
From that time on I watched every person I met for a limp, and to this day the man who halts in his walk is an object of suspicion to me. But Casanova had no lame men: the nearest approach to it was an old fellow who tended the safety gates at the railroad, and he, I learned on inquiry, had two artificial legs. Our man had gone, and the large and expensive stable at Sunnyside was a heap of smoking rafters and charred boards. Warner swore the fire was incendiary, and in view of the attempt to enter the house, there seemed to be no doubt of it.
If Halsey had only taken me fully into his confidence, through the whole affair, it would have been much simpler. If he had been altogether frank about Jack Bailey, and if the day after the fire he had told me what he suspected, there would have been no harrowing period for all of us, with the boy in danger. But young people refuse to profit by the experience of their elders, and sometimes the elders are the ones to suffer.
I was much used up the day after the fire, and Gertrude insisted on my going out. The machine was temporarily out of commission, and the carriage horses had been sent to a farm for the summer. Gertrude finally got a trap from the Casanova liveryman, and we went out. Just as we turned from the drive into the road we passed a woman. She had put down a small valise, and stood inspecting the house and grounds minutely. I should hardly have noticed her, had it not been for the fact that she had been horribly disfigured by smallpox.
“Ugh!” Gertrude said, when we had passed, “what a face! I shall dream of it tonight. Get up, Flinders.”
“Flinders?” I asked. “Is that the horse’s name?”
“It is.” She flicked the horse’s stubby mane with the whip. “He didn’t look like a livery horse, and the liveryman said he had bought him from the Armstrongs when they purchased a couple of motors and cut down the stable. Nice Flinders—good old boy!”
Flinders was certainly not a common name for a horse, and yet the youngster at Richfield had named his prancing, curly-haired little horse Flinders! It set me to thinking.
At my request Halsey had already sent word of the fire to the agent from whom we had secured the house. Also, he had called Mr. Jamieson by telephone, and somewhat guardedly had told him of the previous night’s events. Mr. Jamieson promised to come out that night, and to bring another man with him. I did not consider it necessary to notify Mrs. Armstrong, in the village. No doubt she knew of the fire, and in view of my refusal to give up the house, an interview would probably have been unpleasant enough. But as we passed Doctor Walker’s white and green house I thought of something.
“Stop here, Gertrude,” I said. “I am going to get out.”
“To see Louise?” she asked.
“No, I want to ask this young Walker something.”
She was curious, I knew, but I did not wait to explain. I went up the walk to the house, where a brass sign at the side announced the office, and went in. The reception-room was empty, but from the consulting-room beyond came the sound of two voices, not very amicable.
“It is an outrageous figure,” some one was storming. Then the doctor’s quiet tone, evidently not arguing, merely stating something. But I had not time to listen to some person probably disputing his bill, so I coughed. The voices ceased at once: a door closed somewhere, and the doctor entered from the hall of the house. He looked sufficiently surprised at seeing me.
“Good afternoon, Doctor,” I said formally. “I shall not keep you from your patient. I wish merely to ask you a question.”
“Won’t you sit down?”
“It will not be necessary. Doctor, has any one come to you, either early this morning or to-day, to have you treat a bullet wound?”
“Nothing so startling has happened to me,” he said. “A bullet wound! Things must be lively at Sunnyside.”
“I didn’t say it was at Sunnyside. But as it happens, it was. If any such case comes to you, will it be too much trouble for you to let me know?”
“I shall be only too happy,” he said. “I understand you have had a fire up there, too. A fire and shooting in one night is rather lively for a quiet place like that.”
“It is as quiet as a boiler-shop,” I replied, as I turned to go.
“And you are still going to stay?”
“Until I am burned out,” I responded. And then on my way down the steps, I turned around suddenly.
“Doctor,” I asked at a venture, “have you ever heard of a child named Lucien Wallace?”
Clever as he was, his face changed and stiffened. He was on his guard again in a moment.
“Lucien Wallace?” he repeated. “No, I think not. There are plenty of Wallaces around, but I don’t know any Lucien.”
I was as certain as possible that he did. People do not lie readily to me, and this man lied beyond a doubt. But there was nothing to be gained now; his defenses were up, and I left, half irritated and wholly baffled.
Our reception was entirely different at Doctor Stewart’s. Taken into the bosom of the family at once, Flinders tied outside and nibbling the grass at the roadside, Gertrude and I drank some home-made elderberry wine and told briefly of the fire. Of the more serious part of the night’s experience, of course, we said nothing. But when at last we had left the family on the porch and the good doctor was untying our steed, I asked him the same question I had put to Doctor Walker.
“Shot!” he said. “Bless my soul, no. Why, what have you been doing up at the big house, Miss Innes?”
“Some one tried to enter the house during the fire, and was shot and slightly injured,” I said hastily. “Please don’t mention it; we wish to make as little of it as possible.”
There was one other possibility, and we tried that. At Casanova station I saw the station master, and asked him if any trains left Casanova between one o’clock and daylight. There was none until six A.M. The next question required more diplomacy.
“Did you notice on the six-o’clock train any person—any man—who limped a little?” I asked. “Please try to remember: we are trying to trace a man who was seen loitering around Sunnyside last night before the fire.”
He was all attention in a moment.
“I was up there myself at the fire,” he said volubly. “I’m a member of the volunteer company. First big fire we’ve had since the summer house burned over to the club golf links. My wife was sayin’ the other day, `Dave, you might as well ‘a’ saved the money in that there helmet and shirt.’ And here last night they came in handy. Rang that bell so hard I hadn’t time scarcely to get ‘em on.”
“And—did you see a man who limped?” Gertrude put in, as he stopped for breath.
“Not at the train, ma’m,” he said. “No such person got on here to-day. But I’ll tell you where I did see a man that limped. I didn’t wait till the fire company left; there’s a fast freight goes through at four forty-five, and I had to get down to the station. I seen there wasn’t much more to do anyhow at the fire—we’d got the flames under control”—Gertrude looked at me and
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