The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart (mini ebook reader txt) 📕

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 upstairs,” 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 upstairs, 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 upstairs. 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 trouble last spring—something about the bank. And then, too—”

“Go on,” I said. “If there is anything more, I ought to know.”

“There’s nothing more,” he said evasively. “There’s just one thing we may bank on, Miss Innes. Any court in the country will acquit a man who kills an intruder in his house, at night. If Halsey—”

“Why, you don’t think Halsey did it!” I exclaimed. There was a queer feeling of physical nausea coming over me.

“No, no, not at all,” he said with forced cheerfulness. “Come, Miss Innes, you’re a ghost of yourself and I am going to help you upstairs and call your maid. This has been too much for you.”

Liddy helped me back to bed, and under the impression that I was in danger of freezing to death, put a hot-water bottle over my heart and another at my feet. Then she left me. It was early dawn now, and from voices under my window I surmised that Mr. Jarvis and his companions were searching the grounds. As for me, I lay in bed, with every faculty awake. Where had Halsey gone? How had he gone, and when? Before the murder, no doubt, but who would believe that? If either he or Jack Bailey had heard an intruder in the house and shot him—as they might have been justified in doing—why had they run away? The whole thing was unheard of, outrageous, and—impossible to ignore.

About six o’clock Gertrude came in. She was fully dressed, and I sat up nervously.

“Poor Aunty!” she said. “What a shocking night you have had!” She came over and sat down on the bed, and I saw she looked very tired and worn.

“Is there anything new?” I asked anxiously.

“Nothing. The car is gone, but Warner”—he is the chauffeur— “Warner is at the lodge and knows nothing about it.”

“Well,” I said, “if I ever get my hands on Halsey Innes, I shall not let go until I have told him a few things. When we get this cleared up, I am going back to the city to be quiet. One more night like the last two will end me. The peace of the country— fiddle sticks!”

Whereupon I told Gertrude of the noises the night before, and the figure on the veranda in the east wing. As an afterthought I brought out the pearl cuff-link.

“I have no doubt now,” I said, “that it was Arnold Armstrong the night before last, too. He had a key, no doubt, but why he should steal into his father’s house I can not imagine. He could have come with my permission, easily enough. Anyhow, whoever it was that night, left this little souvenir.”

Gertrude took one look at the cuff-link, and went as white as the pearls in it; she clutched at the foot of the bed, and stood staring. As for me, I was quite as astonished as she was.

“Where did—you—find it?” she asked finally, with a desperate effort at calm. And while I told her she stood looking out of the window with a look I could not fathom on her face. It was a relief when Mrs. Watson tapped at the door and brought me some tea and toast. The cook was in bed, completely demoralized, she reported, and Liddy, brave with the daylight, was looking for footprints around the house. Mrs. Watson herself was a wreck; she was blue-white around the lips, and she had one hand tied up.

She said she had fallen downstairs in her excitement. It was natural, of course, that the thing would shock her, having been the Armstrongs’ housekeeper for several years, and knowing Mr. Arnold well.

Gertrude had slipped out during my talk with Mrs. Watson, and I dressed and went downstairs. The billiard and card-rooms were locked until the coroner and the detectives got there, and the men from the club had gone back for more conventional clothing.

I could hear Thomas in the pantry, alternately wailing for Mr. Arnold, as he called him, and citing the tokens that had precursed the murder. The house seemed to choke me, and, slipping a shawl around me, I went out on the drive. At the corner by the east wing I met Liddy. Her skirts were draggled with dew to her knees, and her hair was still in crimps.

“Go right in and change your clothes,” I said sharply. “You’re a sight, and at your age!”

She had a golf-stick in her hand, and she said she had found it on the lawn. There was nothing unusual about it, but it occurred to me that a golf-stick with a metal end might have been the object that had scratched the stairs near the card-room. I took it from her, and sent her up for dry garments. Her daylight courage and self-importance, and her shuddering delight in the mystery, irritated me beyond words. After I left her I made a circuit of the building. Nothing seemed to be disturbed: the house looked as calm and peaceful in the morning sun as it had the day I had been coerced into taking it. There was nothing to show that inside had been mystery and violence and sudden death.

In one of the tulip beds back of the house an early blackbird was pecking viciously at something that glittered in the light. I picked my way gingerly over through the dew and stooped down: almost buried in the soft ground was a revolver! I scraped the earth off it with the tip of my shoe, and, picking it up, slipped it into my pocket. Not until I had got into my bedroom and double-locked the door did I venture to take it out and examine it. One look was all I needed. It was Halsey’s revolver. I had unpacked it the day before and put it on his shaving-stand, and there could be no mistake. His name was on a small silver plate on the handle.

I seemed to see a network closing around my boy, innocent as I knew he was. The revolver—I am afraid of them, but anxiety gave me courage to look through the barrel—the revolver had still two bullets in it. I could only breathe a prayer of thankfulness that I had found the revolver before any sharp-eyed detective had come around.

I decided to keep what clues I had, the cuff-link, the golf-stick and the revolver, in a secure place until I could see some reason for displaying them. The cuff-link had been dropped into a little filigree box on my toilet table. I opened the box and felt around for it. The box was empty—the cuff-link had disappeared!