WHERE IS HALSEY?
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 up-stairs,” 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 up-stairs, 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 up-stairs. 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 up-stairs
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 down-stairs 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 down-stairs. 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!