MR. JOHN BAILEY APPEARS
I had dinner served in the breakfast-room. Somehow the huge dining-room
depressed me, and Thomas, cheerful enough all day, allowed his spirits
to go down with the sun. He had a habit of watching the corners of the
room, left shadowy by the candles on the table, and altogether it was
not a festive meal.
Dinner over I went into the living-room. I had three hours before the
children could possibly arrive, and I got out my knitting. I had
brought along two dozen pairs of slipper soles in assorted sizes—I
always send knitted slippers to the Old Ladies’ Home at Christmas—and
now I sorted over the wools with a grim determination not to think
about the night before. But my mind was not on my work: at the end of a
half-hour I found I had put a row of blue scallops on Eliza
Klinefelter’s lavender slippers, and I put them away.
I got out the cuff-link and went with it to the pantry. Thomas was
wiping silver and the air was heavy with tobacco smoke. I sniffed and
looked around, but there was no pipe to be seen.
“Thomas,” I said, “you have been smoking.”
“No, ma’m.” He was injured innocence itself. “It’s on my coat, ma’m.
Over at the club the gentlemen—”
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?”
No, he never had, he said, but he looked at it oddly.
“I picked it up in the hall,” I added indifferently. The old man’s eyes
were shrewd under his bushy eyebrows.
“There’s strange goin’s-on here, Mis’ Innes,” he said, shaking his
head. “Somethin’s goin’ to happen, sure. You ain’t took notice that the
big clock in the hall is stopped, I reckon?”
“Nonsense,” I said. “Clocks have to stop, don’t they, if they’re not
wound?”
“It’s wound up, all right, and it stopped at three o’clock last night,”
he answered solemnly. “More’n that, that there clock ain’t stopped for
fifteen years, not since Mr. Armstrong’s first wife died. And that
ain’t all,—no _ma’m_. Last three nights I slep’ in this place, after
the electrics went out I had a token. My oil lamp was full of oil, but
it kep’ goin’ out, do what I would. Minute I shet my eyes, out that
lamp’d go. There ain’t no surer token of death. The Bible sez, _Let yer
light shine!_ When a hand you can’t see puts yer light out, it means
death, sure.”
The old man’s voice was full of conviction. In spite of myself I had a
chilly sensation in the small of my back, and I left him mumbling over
his dishes. Later on I heard a crash from the pantry, and Liddy
reported that Beulah, who is coal black, had darted in front of Thomas
just as he picked up a tray of dishes; that the bad omen had been too
much for him, and he had dropped the tray.
The chug of the automobile as it climbed the hill was the most welcome
sound I had heard for a long time, and with Gertrude and Halsey
actually before me, my troubles seemed over for good. Gertrude stood
smiling in the hall, with her hat quite over one ear, and her hair in
every direction under her pink veil. Gertrude is a very pretty girl, no
matter how her hat is, and I was not surprised when Halsey presented a
good-looking young man, who bowed at me and looked at Trude—that is the
ridiculous nickname Gertrude brought from school.
“I have brought a guest, Aunt Ray,” Halsey said. “I want you to adopt
him into your affections and your Saturday-to-Monday list. Let me
present John Bailey, only you must call him Jack. In twelve hours he’ll
be calling you ‘Aunt’: I know him.”
We shook hands, and I got a chance to look at Mr. Bailey; he was a tall
fellow, perhaps thirty, and he wore a small mustache. I remember
wondering why: he seemed to have a good mouth and when he smiled his
teeth were above the average. One never knows why certain men cling to
a messy upper lip that must get into things, any more than one
understands some women building up their hair on wire atrocities.
Otherwise, he was very good to look at, stalwart and tanned, with the
direct gaze that I like. I am particular about Mr. Bailey, because he
was a prominent figure in what happened later.
Gertrude was tired with the trip and went up to bed very soon. I made
up my mind to tell them nothing until the next day, and then to make
as light of our excitement as possible. After all, what had I to tell?
An inquisitive face peering in at a window; a crash in the night; a
scratch or two on the stairs, and half a cuff-button! As for Thomas and
his forebodings, it was always my belief that a negro is one part
thief, one part pigment, and the rest superstition.
It was Saturday night. The two men went to the billiard-room, and I
could hear them talking as I went up-stairs. It seemed that Halsey had
stopped at the Greenwood Club for gasolene and found Jack Bailey there,
with the Sunday golf crowd. Mr. Bailey had not been hard to
persuade—probably Gertrude knew why—and they had carried him off
triumphantly. I roused Liddy to get them something to eat—Thomas was
beyond reach in the lodge—and paid no attention to her evident terror
of the kitchen regions. Then I went to bed. The men were still in the
billiard-room when I finally dozed off, and the last thing I remember
was the howl of a dog in front of the house. It wailed a crescendo of
woe that trailed off hopefully, only to break out afresh from a new
point of the compass.
At three o’clock in the morning I was roused by a revolver shot. The
sound seemed to come from just outside my door. For a moment I could
not move. Then—I heard Gertrude stirring in her room, and the next
moment she had thrown open the connecting door.
“O Aunt Ray! Aunt Ray!” she cried hysterically. “Some one has been
killed, killed!”
“Thieves,” I said shortly. “Thank goodness, there are some men in the
house to-night.” I was getting into my slippers and a bath-robe, and
Gertrude with shaking hands was lighting a lamp. Then we opened the
door into the hall, where, crowded on the upper landing of the stairs,
the maids, white-faced and trembling, were peering down, headed by
Liddy. I was greeted by a series of low screams and questions, and I
tried to quiet them.
Gertrude had dropped on a chair and sat there limp and shivering.
I went at once across the hall to Halsey’s room and knocked; then I
pushed the door open. It was empty; the bed had not been occupied!
“He must be in Mr. Bailey’s room,” I said excitedly, and followed by
Liddy, we went there. Like Halsey’s, it had not been occupied! Gertrude
was on her feet now, but she leaned against the door for support.
“They have been killed!” she gasped. Then she caught me by the arm and
dragged me toward the stairs. “They may only be hurt, and we must find
them,” she said, her eyes dilated with excitement.
I don’t remember how we got down the stairs: 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. Huddled there on the floor, face down, with his arms
extended, was a man.
Gertrude ran forward with a gasping sob. “Jack,” she cried, “oh, Jack!”
Liddy had run, screaming, and the two of us were there alone. It was
Gertrude who turned him over, finally, until we could see his white
face, and then she drew a deep breath and dropped limply to her knees.
It was the body of a man, a gentleman, in a dinner coat and white
waistcoat, stained now with blood—the body of a man I had never seen
before.