The Circular Staircase, Mary Roberts Rinehart [best time to read books .txt] 📗

“No doubt,” I said absently. “Mr. Harton, I am going to ask you some questions, and I hope you will answer them. I feel that I am entitled to some knowledge, because I and my family are just now in a most ambiguous position.”

I don’t know whether he understood me or not: he took of his glasses and wiped them.

“I shall be very happy,” he said with old-fashioned courtesy.

“Thank you. Mr. Harton, did Mr. Arnold Armstrong know that Sunnyside had been rented?”

“I think—yes, he did. In fact, I myself told him about it.”

“And he knew who the tenants were?”

“Yes.”

“He had not been living with the family for some years, I believe?”

“No. Unfortunately, there had been trouble between Arnold and his father. For two years he had lived in town.”

“Then it would be unlikely that he came here last night to get possession of anything belonging to him?”

“I should think it hardly possible,” he admitted.

“To be perfectly frank, Miss Innes, I can not think of any reason whatever for his coming here as he did. He had been staying at the club-house across the valley for the last week, Jarvis tells me, but that only explains how he came here, not why. It is a most unfortunate family.”

He shook his head despondently, and I felt that this dried-up little man was the repository of much that he had not told me. I gave up trying to elicit any information from him, and we went together to view the body before it was taken to the city. It had been lifted on to the billiard-table and a sheet thrown over it; otherwise nothing had been touched. A soft hat lay beside it, and the collar of the dinner-coat was still turned up. The handsome, dissipated face of Arnold Armstrong, purged of its ugly lines, was now only pathetic. As we went in Mrs. Watson appeared at the card-room door.

“Come in, Mrs. Watson,” the lawyer said. But she shook her head and withdrew: she was the only one in the house who seemed to regret the dead man, and even she seemed rather shocked than sorry.

I went to the door at the foot of the circular staircase and opened it. 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!” Which left me pondering.

Before Mr. Harton left, he told me something of the Armstrong family. Paul Armstrong, the father, had been married twice. Arnold was a son by the first marriage. The second Mrs. Armstrong had been a widow, with a child, a little girl. This child, now perhaps twenty, was Louise Armstrong, having taken her stepfather’s name, and was at present in California with the family.

“They will probably return at once,” he concluded “sad part of my errand here to-day is to see if you will relinquish your lease here in their favor.”

“We would better wait and see if they wish to come,” I said. “It seems unlikely, and my town house is being remodeled.” At that he let the matter drop, but it came up unpleasantly enough, later.

At six o’clock the body was taken away, and at seven-thirty, after an early dinner, Mr. Harton went. Gertrude had not come down, and there was no news of Halsey. Mr. Jamieson had taken a lodging in the village, and I had not seen him since mid-afternoon. It was about nine o’clock, I think, when the bell rang and he was ushered into the living-room.

“Sit down,” I said grimly. “Have you found a clue that will incriminate me, Mr. Jamieson?”

He had the grace to look uncomfortable. “No,” he said. “If you had killed Mr. Armstrong, you would have left no clues. You would have had too much intelligence.”

After that we got along better. He was fishing in his pocket, and after a minute he brought out two scraps of paper. “I have been to the club-house,” he said, “and among Mr. Armstrong’s effects, I found these. One is curious; the other is puzzling.”

The first was a sheet of club note-paper, on which was written, over and over, the name “Halsey B. Innes.” It was Halsey’s flowing signature to a dot, but it lacked Halsey’s ease. The ones toward the bottom of the sheet were much better than the top ones. Mr. Jamieson smiled at my face.

“His old tricks,” he said. “That one is merely curious; this one, as I said before, is puzzling.”

The second scrap, folded and refolded into a compass so tiny that the writing had been partly obliterated, was part of a letter— the lower half of a sheet, not typed, but written in a cramped hand.

“–-by altering the plans for–-rooms, may be possible. The best way, in my opinion, would be to–-the plan for–-in one of the–-rooms–-chimney.”

That was all.

“Well?” I said, looking up. “There is nothing in that, is there? A man ought to be able to change the plan of his house without becoming an object of suspicion.”

“There is little in the paper itself,” he admitted; “but why should Arnold Armstrong carry that around, unless it meant something? He never built a house, you may be sure of that. If it is this house, it may mean anything, from a secret room—”

“To an extra bath-room,” I said scornfully. “Haven’t you a thumb-print, too?”

“I have,” he said with a smile, “and the print of a foot in a tulip bed, and a number of other things. The oddest part is, Miss Innes, that the thumb-mark is probably yours and the footprint certainly.”

His audacity was the only thing that saved me: his amused smile put me on my mettle, and I ripped out a perfectly good scallop before I answered.

“Why did I step into the tulip bed?” I asked with interest.

“You picked up something,” he said good-humoredly, “which you are going to tell me about later.”

“Am I, indeed?” I was politely curious. “With this remarkable insight of yours, I wish you would tell me where I shall find my four-thousand-dollar motor car.”

“I was just coming to that,” he said. “You will find it about thirty miles away, at Andrews Station, in a blacksmith shop, where it is being repaired.”

I laid down my knitting then and looked at him.

“And Halsey?” I managed to say.

“We are going to exchange information,” he said “I am going to tell you that, when you tell me what you picked up in the tulip bed.”

We looked steadily at each other: it was not an unfriendly stare; we were only measuring weapons. Then he smiled a little and got up.

“With your permission,” he said, “I am going to examine the card-room and the staircase again. You might think over my offer in the meantime.”

He went on through the drawing-room, and I listened to his footsteps growing gradually fainter. I dropped my pretense at knitting and, leaning back, I thought over the last forty-eight hours. Here was I, Rachel Innes, spinster, a granddaughter of old John Innes of Revolutionary days, a D. A. R., a Colonial Dame, mixed up with a vulgar and revolting crime, and even attempting to hoodwink the law! Certainly I had left the straight and narrow way.

I was roused by hearing Mr. Jamieson coming rapidly back through the drawing-room. He stopped at the door.

“Miss Innes,” he said quickly, “will you come with me and light the east corridor? I have fastened somebody in the small room at the head of the card-room stairs.”

I jumped! up at once.

“You mean—the murderer?” I gasped.

“Possibly,” he said quietly, as we hurried together up the stairs. “Some one was lurking on the staircase when I went back. I spoke; instead of an answer, whoever it was turned and ran up. I followed—it was dark—but as I turned the corner at the top a figure darted through this door and closed it. The bolt was on my side, and I pushed it forward. It is a closet, I think.” We were in the upper hall now. “If you will show me the electric switch, Miss Innes, you would better wait in your own room.”

Trembling as I was, I was determined to see that door opened. I hardly knew what I feared, but so many terrible and inexplicable things had happened that suspense was worse than certainty.

“I am perfectly cool,” I said, “and I am going to remain here.”

The lights flashed up along that end of the corridor, throwing the doors into relief. At the intersection of the small hallway with the larger, the circular staircase wound its way up, as if it had been an afterthought of the architect. And just around the corner, in the small corridor, was the door Mr. Jamieson had indicated. I was still unfamiliar with the house, and I did not remember the door. My heart was thumping wildly in my ears, but I nodded to him to go ahead. I was perhaps eight or ten feet away—and then he threw the bolt back.

“Come out,” he said quietly. There was no response. “Come— out,” he repeated. Then—I think he had a revolver, but I am not sure—he stepped aside and threw the door open.

From where I stood I could not see beyond the door, but I saw Mr. Jamieson’s face change and heard him mutter something, then he bolted down the stairs, three at a time. When my knees had stopped shaking, I moved forward, slowly, nervously, until I had a partial view of what was beyond the door. It seemed at first to be a closet, empty. Then I went close and examined it, to stop with a shudder. Where the floor should have been was black void and darkness, from which came the indescribable, damp smell of the cellars.

Mr. Jamieson had locked somebody in the clothes chute. As I leaned over I fancied I heard a groan—or was it the wind?