HALSEY MAKES A CAPTURE
It was about half-past eight when we left the dining-room, and still
engrossed with one subject, the failure of the bank and its attendant
evils, Halsey and I went out into the grounds for a stroll. Gertrude
followed us shortly. “The light was thickening,” to appropriate
Shakespeare’s description of twilight, and once again the tree-toads
and the crickets were making night throb with their tiny life. It was
almost oppressively lonely, in spite of its beauty, and I felt a
sickening pang of homesickness for my city at night—for the clatter of
horses’ feet on cemented paving, for the lights, the voices, the sound
of children playing. The country after dark oppresses me. The stars,
quite eclipsed in the city by the electric lights, here become
insistent, assertive. Whether I want to or not, I find myself looking
for the few I know by name, and feeling ridiculously new and small by
contrast—always an unpleasant sensation.
After Gertrude joined us, we avoided any further mention of the murder.
To Halsey, as to me, there was ever present, I am sure, the thought of
our conversation of the night before. As we strolled back and forth
along the drive, Mr. Jamieson emerged from the shadow of the trees.
“Good evening,” he said, managing to include Gertrude in his bow.
Gertrude had never been even ordinarily courteous to him, and she
nodded coldly. Halsey, however, was more cordial, although we were all
constrained enough. He and Gertrude went on together, leaving the
detective to walk with me. As soon as they were out of earshot, he
turned to me.
“Do you know, Miss Innes,” he said, “the deeper I go into this thing,
the more strange it seems to me. I am very sorry for Miss Gertrude. It
looks as if Bailey, whom she has tried so hard to save, is worse than a
rascal; and after her plucky fight for him, it seems hard.”
I looked through the dusk to where Gertrude’s light dinner dress
gleamed among the trees. She HAD made a plucky fight, poor child.
Whatever she might have been driven to do, I could find nothing but a
deep sympathy for her. If she had only come to me with the whole truth
then!
“Miss Innes,” Mr. Jamieson was saying, “in the last three days, have
you seen a—any suspicious figures around the grounds? Any—woman?”
“No,” I replied. “I have a houseful of maids that will bear watching,
one and all. But there has been no strange woman near the house or
Liddy would have seen her, you may be sure. She has a telescopic eye.”
Mr. Jamieson looked thoughtful.
“It may not amount to anything,” he said slowly. “It is difficult to
get any perspective on things around here, because every one down in
the village is sure he saw the murderer, either before or since the
crime. And half of them will stretch a point or two as to facts, to be
obliging. But the man who drives the hack down there tells a story that
may possibly prove to be important.”
“I have heard it, I think. Was it the one the parlor maid brought up
yesterday, about a ghost wringing its hands on the roof? Or perhaps
it’s the one the milk-boy heard: a tramp washing a dirty shirt,
presumably bloody, in the creek below the bridge?”
I could see the gleam of Mr. Jamieson’s teeth, as he smiled.
“Neither,” he said. “But Matthew Geist, which is our friend’s name,
claims that on Saturday night, at nine-thirty, a veiled lady—”
“I knew it would be a veiled lady,” I broke in.
“A veiled lady,” he persisted, “who was apparently young and beautiful,
engaged his hack and asked to be driven to Sunnyside. Near the gate,
however, she made him stop, in spite of his remonstrances, saying she
preferred to walk to the house. She paid him, and he left her there.
Now, Miss Innes, you had no such visitor, I believe?”
“None,” I said decidedly.
“Geist thought it might be a maid, as you had got a supply that day.
But he said her getting out near the gate puzzled him. Anyhow, we have
now one veiled lady, who, with the ghostly intruder of Friday night,
makes two assets that I hardly know what to do with.”
“It is mystifying,” I admitted, “although I can think of one possible
explanation. The path from the Greenwood Club to the village enters the
road near the lodge gate. A woman who wished to reach the Country Club,
unperceived, might choose such a method. There are plenty of women
there.”
I think this gave him something to ponder, for in a short time he said
good night and left. But I myself was far from satisfied. I was
determined, however, on one thing. If my suspicions—for I had
suspicions—were true, I would make my own investigations, and Mr.
Jamieson should learn only what was good for him to know.
We went back to the house, and Gertrude, who was more like herself
since her talk with Halsey, sat down at the mahogany desk in the
living-room to write a letter. Halsey prowled up and down the entire
east wing, now in the card-room, now in the billiard-room, and now and
then blowing his clouds of tobacco smoke among the pink and gold
hangings of the drawing-room. After a little I joined him in the
billiard-room, and together we went over the details of the discovery
of the body.
The card-room was quite dark. Where we sat, in the billiard-room, only
one of the side brackets was lighted, and we spoke in subdued tones, as
the hour and the subject seemed to demand. When I spoke of the figure
Liddy and I had seen on the porch through the card-room window Friday
night, Halsey sauntered into the darkened room, and together we stood
there, much as Liddy and I had done that other night.
The window was the same grayish rectangle in the blackness as before. A
few feet away in the hall was the spot where the body of Arnold
Armstrong had been found. I was a bit nervous, and I put my hand on
Halsey’s sleeve. Suddenly, from the top of the staircase above us came
the sound of a cautious footstep. At first I was not sure, but Halsey’s
attitude told me he had heard and was listening. The step, slow,
measured, infinitely cautious, was nearer now. Halsey tried to loosen
my fingers, but I was in a paralysis of fright.
The swish of a body against the curving rail, as if for guidance, was
plain enough, and now whoever it was had reached the foot of the
staircase and had caught a glimpse of our rigid silhouettes against the
billiard-room doorway. Halsey threw me off then and strode forward.
“Who is it?” he called imperiously, and took a half dozen rapid strides
toward the foot of the staircase. Then I heard him mutter something;
there was the crash of a falling body, the slam of the outer door, and,
for an instant, quiet. I screamed, I think. Then I remember turning on
the lights and finding Halsey, white with fury, trying to untangle
himself from something warm and fleecy. He had cut his forehead a
little on the lowest step of the stairs, and he was rather a ghastly
sight.
He flung the white object at me, and, jerking open the outer door,
raced into the darkness.
Gertrude had come on hearing the noise, and now we stood, staring at
each other over—of all things on earth—a white silk and wool blanket,
exquisitely fine! It was the most unghostly thing in the world, with
its lavender border and its faint scent. Gertrude was the first to
speak.
“Somebody—had it?” she asked.
“Yes. Halsey tried to stop whoever it was and fell. Gertrude, that
blanket is not mine. I have never seen it before.”
She held it up and looked at it: then she went to the door on to the
veranda and threw it open. Perhaps a hundred feet from the house were
two figures, that moved slowly toward us as we looked.
When they came within range of the light, I recognized Halsey, and with
him Mrs. Watson, the housekeeper.