THE OTHER HALF OF THE LINE
“Miss Innes,” the detective began, “what is your opinion of the figure
you saw on the east veranda the night you and your maid were in the
house alone?”
“It was a woman,” I said positively.
“And yet your maid affirms with equal positiveness that it was a man.”
“Nonsense,” I broke in. “Liddy had her eyes shut—she always shuts them
when she’s frightened.”
“And you never thought then that the intruder who came later that night
might be a woman—the woman, in fact, whom you saw on the veranda?”
“I had reasons for thinking it was a man,” I said, remembering the pearl
cuff-link.
“Now we are getting down to business. WHAT were your reasons for
thinking that?”
I hesitated.
“If you have any reason for believing that your midnight guest was Mr.
Armstrong, other than his visit here the next night, you ought to tell
me, Miss Innes. We can take nothing for granted. If, for instance, the
intruder who dropped the bar and scratched the staircase—you see, I
know about that—if this visitor was a woman, why should not the same
woman have come back the following night, met Mr. Armstrong on the
circular staircase, and in alarm shot him?”
“It was a man,” I reiterated. And then, because I could think of no
other reason for my statement, I told him about the pearl cuff-link. He
was intensely interested.
“Will you give me the link,” he said, when I finished, “or, at least,
let me see it? I consider it a most important clue.”
“Won’t the description do?”
“Not as well as the original.”
“Well, I’m very sorry,” I said, as calmly as I could, “I—the thing is
lost. It—it must have fallen out of a box on my dressing-table.”
Whatever he thought of my explanation, and I knew he doubted it, he
made no sign. He asked me to describe the link accurately, and I did
so, while he glanced at a list he took from his pocket.
“One set monogram cuff-links,” he read, “one set plain pearl links, one
set cuff-links, woman’s head set with diamonds and emeralds. There is
no mention of such a link as you describe, and yet, if your theory is
right, Mr. Armstrong must have taken back in his cuffs one complete
cuff-link, and a half, perhaps, of the other.”
The idea was new to me. If it had not been the murdered man who had
entered the house that night, who had it been?
“There are a number of strange things connected with this case,” the
detective went on. “Miss Gertrude Innes testified that she heard some
one fumbling with the lock, that the door opened, and that almost
immediately the shot was fired. Now, Miss Innes, here is the strange
part of that. Mr. Armstrong had no key with him. There was no key in
the lock, or on the floor. In other words, the evidence points
absolutely to this: Mr. Armstrong was admitted to the house from
within.”
“It is impossible,” I broke in. “Mr. Jamieson, do you know what your
words imply? Do you know that you are practically accusing Gertrude
Innes of admitting that man?”
“Not quite that,” he said, with his friendly smile. “In fact, Miss
Innes, I am quite certain she did not. But as long as I learn only
parts of the truth, from both you and her, what can I do? I know you
picked up something in the flower bed: you refuse to tell me what it
was. I know Miss Gertrude went back to the billiard-room to get
something, she refuses to say what. You suspect what happened to the
cuff-link, but you won’t tell me. So far, all I am sure of is this: I
do not believe Arnold Armstrong was the midnight visitor who so alarmed
you by dropping—shall we say, a golf-stick? And I believe that when he
did come he was admitted by some one in the house. Who knows—it may
have been—Liddy!”
I stirred my tea angrily.
“I have always heard,” I said dryly, “that undertakers’ assistants are
jovial young men. A man’s sense of humor seems to be in inverse
proportion to the gravity of his profession.”
“A man’s sense of humor is a barbarous and a cruel thing, Miss Innes,”
he admitted. “It is to the feminine as the hug of a bear is to the
scratch of—well;—anything with claws. Is that you, Thomas? Come in.”
Thomas Johnson stood in the doorway. He looked alarmed and
apprehensive, and suddenly I remembered the sealskin dressing-bag in
the lodge. Thomas came just inside the door and stood with his head
drooping, his eyes, under their shaggy gray brows, fixed on Mr.
Jamieson.
“Thomas,” said the detective, not unkindly, “I sent for you to tell us
what you told Sam Bohannon at the club, the day before Mr. Arnold was
found here, dead. Let me see. You came here Friday night to see Miss
Innes, didn’t you? And came to work here Saturday morning?”
For some unexplained reason Thomas looked relieved.
“Yas, sah,” he said. “You see it were like this: When Mistah Armstrong
and the fam’ly went away, Mis’ Watson an’ me, we was lef’ in charge
till the place was rented. Mis’ Watson, she’ve bin here a good while,
an’ she warn’ skeery. So she slep’ in the house. I’d bin havin’
tokens—I tol’ Mis’ Innes some of ’em—an’ I slep’ in the lodge. Then one
day Mis’ Watson, she came to me an’ she sez, sez she, ‘Thomas, you’ll
hev to sleep up in the big house. I’m too nervous to do it any more.’
But I jes’ reckon to myself that ef it’s too skeery fer her, it’s too
skeery fer me. We had it, then, sho’ nuff, and it ended up with Mis’
Watson stayin’ in the lodge nights an’ me lookin’ fer work at de club.”
“Did Mrs. Watson say that anything had happened to alarm her?”
“No, sah. She was jes’ natchally skeered. Well, that was all, far’s I
know, until the night I come over to see Mis’ Innes. I come across the
valley, along the path from the club-house, and I goes home that way.
Down in the creek bottom I almost run into a man. He wuz standin’ with
his back to me, an’ he was workin’ with one of these yere electric
light things that fit in yer pocket. He was havin’ trouble—one minute
it’d flash out, an’ the nex’ it’d be gone. I hed a view of ’is white
dress shirt an’ tie, as I passed. I didn’t see his face. But I know it
warn’t Mr. Arnold. It was a taller man than Mr. Arnold. Beside that,
Mr. Arnold was playin’ cards when I got to the club-house, same’s he’d
been doin’ all day.”
“And the next morning you came back along the path,” pursued Mr.
Jamieson relentlessly.
“The nex’ mornin’ I come back along the path an’ down where I dun see
the man night befoh, I picked up this here.” The old man held out a
tiny object and Mr. Jamieson took it. Then he held it on his extended
palm for me to see. It was the other half of the pearl cuff-link!
But Mr. Jamieson was not quite through questioning him.
“And so you showed it to Sam, at the club, and asked him if he knew any
one who owned such a link, and Sam said—what?”
“Wal, Sam, he ’lowed he’d seen such a pair of cuff-buttons in a shirt
belongin’ to Mr. Bailey—Mr. Jack Bailey, sah.”
“I’ll keep this link, Thomas, for a while,” the detective said. “That’s
all I wanted to know. Good night.”
As Thomas shuffled out, Mr. Jamieson watched me sharply.
“You see, Miss Innes,” he said, “Mr. Bailey insists on mixing himself
with this thing. If Mr. Bailey came here that Friday night expecting to
meet Arnold Armstrong, and missed him—if, as I say, he had done this,
might he not, seeing him enter the following night, have struck him
down, as he had intended before?”
“But the motive?” I gasped.
“There could be motive proved, I think. Arnold Armstrong and John
Bailey have been enemies since the latter, as cashier of the Traders’
Bank, brought Arnold almost into the clutches of the law. Also, you
forget that both men have been paying attention to Miss Gertrude.
Bailey’s flight looks bad, too.”
“And you think Halsey helped him to escape?”
“Undoubtedly. Why, what could it be but flight? Miss Innes, let me
reconstruct that evening, as I see it. Bailey and Armstrong had
quarreled at the club. I learned this to-day. Your nephew brought
Bailey over. Prompted by jealous, insane fury, Armstrong followed,
coming across by the path. He entered the billiard-room wing—perhaps
rapping, and being admitted by your nephew. Just inside he was shot, by
some one on the circular staircase. The shot fired, your nephew and
Bailey left the house at once, going toward the automobile house. They
left by the lower road, which prevented them being heard, and when you
and Miss Gertrude got down-stairs everything was quiet.”
“But—Gertrude’s story,” I stammered.
“Miss Gertrude only brought forward her explanation the following
morning. I do not believe it, Miss Innes. It is the story of a loving
and ingenious woman.”
“And—this thing to-night?”
“May upset my whole view of the case. We must give the benefit of every
doubt, after all. We may, for instance, come back to the figure on the
porch: if it was a woman you saw that night through the window, we
might start with other premises. Or Mr. Innes’ explanation may turn us
in a new direction. It is possible that he shot Arnold Armstrong as a
burglar and then fled, frightened at what he had done. In any case,
however, I feel confident that the body was here when he left. Mr.
Armstrong left the club ostensibly for a moonlight saunter, about half
after eleven o’clock. It was three when the shot was fired.”
I leaned back bewildered. It seemed to me that the evening had been
full of significant happenings, had I only held the key. Had Gertrude
been the fugitive in the clothes chute? Who was the man on the drive
near the lodge, and whose gold-mounted dressing-bag had I seen in the
lodge sitting-room?
It was late when Mr. Jamieson finally got up to go. I went with him to
the door, and together we stood looking out over the valley. Below lay
the village of Casanova, with its Old World houses, its blossoming
trees and its peace. Above on the hill across the valley were the
lights of the Greenwood Club. It was even possible to see the curving
row of parallel lights that marked the carriage road. Rumors that I had
heard about the club came back—of drinking, of high play, and once, a
year ago, of a suicide under those very lights.
Mr. Jamieson left, taking a short cut to the village, and I still stood
there. It must have been after eleven, and the monotonous tick of the
big clock on the stairs behind me was the only sound.
Then I was conscious that some one was running up the drive. In a
minute a woman darted into the area of light made by the open door, and
caught me by the arm. It was Rosie—Rosie in a state of collapse from
terror, and, not the least important, clutching one of my Coalport
plates and a silver spoon.
She stood staring into the darkness behind, still holding the plate. I
got her into the house and secured the plate; then I stood and looked
down at her where she crouched tremblingly against the doorway.
“Well,” I asked, “didn’t your young man enjoy his meal?”
She couldn’t speak. She looked at the spoon she still held—I wasn’t so
anxious about it: thank Heaven, it wouldn’t chip—and then she stared at
me.
“I appreciate your desire to have everything nice for him,” I went on,
“but the next time, you might take the Limoges china. It’s more easily
duplicated and less expensive.”
“I haven’t a young man—not here.” She had got her breath now, as I had
guessed she would. “I—I have been chased by a thief, Miss Innes.”
“Did he chase you out of the house and back again?” I asked.
Then Rosie began to cry—not silently, but noisily, hysterically.
I stopped her by giving her a good shake.
“What in the world is the matter with you?” I snapped. “Has the day of
good common sense gone by! Sit up and tell me the whole thing.” Rosie
sat up then, and sniffled.
“I was coming up the drive—” she began.
“You must start with when you went DOWN the drive, with my dishes and
my silver,” I interrupted, but, seeing more signs of hysteria, I gave
in. “Very well. You were coming up the drive—”
“I had a basket of—of silver and dishes on my arm and I was carrying
the plate, because—because I was afraid I’d break it. Part-way up the
road a man stepped out of the bushes, and held his arm like this,
spread out, so I couldn’t get past. He said—he said—‘Not so fast, young
lady; I want you to let me see what’s in that basket.’”
She got up in her excitement and took hold of my arm.
“It was like this, Miss Innes,” she said, “and say you was the man.
When he said that, I screamed and ducked under his arm like this. He
caught at the basket and I dropped it. I ran as fast as I could, and he
came after as far as the trees. Then he stopped. Oh, Miss Innes, it
must have been the man that killed that Mr. Armstrong!”
“Don’t be foolish,” I said. “Whoever killed Mr. Armstrong would put as
much space between himself and this house as he could. Go up to bed
now; and mind, if I hear of this story being repeated to the other
maids, I shall deduct from your wages for every broken dish I find in
the drive.”
I listened to Rosie as she went up-stairs, running past the shadowy
places and slamming her door. Then I sat down and looked at the
Coalport plate and the silver spoon. I had brought my own china and
silver, and, from all appearances, I would have little enough to take
back. But though I might jeer at Rosie as much as I wished, the fact
remained that some one had been on the drive that night who had no
business there. Although neither had Rosie, for that matter.
I could fancy Liddy’s face when she missed the extra pieces of
china—she had opposed Rosie from the start. If Liddy once finds a
prophecy fulfilled, especially an unpleasant one, she never allows me
to forget it. It seemed to me that it was absurd to leave that china
dotted along the road for her to spy the next morning; so with a sudden
resolution, I opened the door again and stepped out into the darkness.
As the door closed behind me I half regretted my impulse; then I shut
my teeth and went on.
I have never been a nervous woman, as I said before. Moreover, a minute
or two in the darkness enabled me to see things fairly well. Beulah
gave me rather a start by rubbing unexpectedly against my feet; then we
two, side by side, went down the drive.
There were no fragments of china, but where the grove began I picked up
a silver spoon. So far Rosie’s story was borne out: I began to wonder
if it were not indiscreet, to say the least, this midnight prowling in
a neighborhood with such a deservedly bad reputation. Then I saw
something gleaming, which proved to be the handle of a cup, and a step
or two farther on I found a V-shaped bit of a plate. But the most
surprising thing of all was to find the basket sitting comfortably
beside the road, with the rest of the broken crockery piled neatly
within, and a handful of small silver, spoons, forks, and the like, on
top! I could only stand and stare. Then Rosie’s story was true. But
where had Rosie carried her basket? And why had the thief, if he were a
thief, picked up the broken china out of the road and left it, with his
booty?
It was with my nearest approach to a nervous collapse that I heard the
familiar throbbing of an automobile engine. As it came closer I
recognized the outline of the Dragon Fly, and knew that Halsey had come
back.
Strange enough it must have seemed to Halsey, too, to come across me in
the middle of the night, with the skirt of my gray silk gown over my
shoulders to keep off the dew, holding a red and green basket under one
arm and a black cat under the other. What with relief and joy, I began
to cry, right there, and very nearly wiped my eyes on Beulah in the
excitement.