ONE MYSTERY FOR ANOTHER
The most commonplace incident takes on a new appearance if the
attendant circumstances are unusual. There was no reason on earth why
Mrs. Watson should not have carried a blanket down the east wing
staircase, if she so desired. But to take a blanket down at eleven
o’clock at night, with every precaution as to noise, and, when
discovered, to fling it at Halsey and bolt—Halsey’s word, and a good
one—into the grounds,—this made the incident more than significant.
They moved slowly across the lawn and up the steps. Halsey was talking
quietly, and Mrs. Watson was looking down and listening. She was a
woman of a certain amount of dignity, most efficient, so far as I could
see, although Liddy would have found fault if she dared. But just now
Mrs. Watson’s face was an enigma. She was defiant, I think, under her
mask of submission, and she still showed the effect of nervous shock.
“Mrs. Watson,” I said severely, “will you be so good as to explain this
rather unusual occurrence?”
“I don’t think it so unusual, Miss Innes.” Her voice was deep and very
clear: just now it was somewhat tremulous. “I was taking a blanket down
to Thomas, who is—not well to-night, and I used this staircase, as
being nearer the path to the lodge. When—Mr. Innes called and then
rushed at me, I—I was alarmed, and flung the blanket at him.”
Halsey was examining the cut on his forehead in a small mirror on the
wall. It was not much of an injury, but it had bled freely, and his
appearance was rather terrifying.
“Thomas ill?” he said, over his shoulder. “Why, _I_ thought I saw
Thomas out there as you made that cyclonic break out of the door and
over the porch.”
I could see that under pretense of examining his injury he was watching
her through the mirror.
“Is this one of the servants’ blankets, Mrs. Watson?” I asked, holding
up its luxurious folds to the light.
“Everything else is locked away,” she replied. Which was true enough,
no doubt. I had rented the house without bed furnishings.
“If Thomas is ill,” Halsey said, “some member of the family ought to go
down to see him. You needn’t bother, Mrs. Watson. I will take the
blanket.”
She drew herself up quickly, as if in protest, but she found nothing to
say. She stood smoothing the folds of her dead black dress, her face as
white as chalk above it. Then she seemed to make up her mind.
“Very well, Mr. Innes,” she said. “Perhaps you would better go. I have
done all I could.”
And then she turned and went up the circular staircase, moving slowly
and with a certain dignity. Below, the three of us stared at one
another across the intervening white blanket.
“Upon my word,” Halsey broke out, “this place is a walking nightmare. I
have the feeling that we three outsiders who have paid our money for
the privilege of staying in this spook-factory, are living on the very
top of things. We’re on the lid, so to speak. Now and then we get a
sight of the things inside, but we are not a part of them.”
“Do you suppose,” Gertrude asked doubtfully, “that she really meant
that blanket for Thomas?”
“Thomas was standing beside that magnolia tree,” Halsey replied, “when
I ran after Mrs. Watson. It’s down to this, Aunt Ray. Rosie’s basket
and Mrs. Watson’s blanket can only mean one thing: there is somebody
hiding or being hidden in the lodge. It wouldn’t surprise me if we hold
the key to the whole situation now. Anyhow, I’m going to the lodge to
investigate.”
Gertrude wanted to go, too, but she looked so shaken that I insisted
she should not. I sent for Liddy to help her to bed, and then Halsey
and I started for the lodge. The grass was heavy with dew, and,
man-like, Halsey chose the shortest way across the lawn. Half-way,
however, he stopped.
“We’d better go by the drive,” he said. “This isn’t a lawn; it’s a
field. Where’s the gardener these days?”
“There isn’t any,” I said meekly. “We have been thankful enough, so
far, to have our meals prepared and served and the beds aired. The
gardener who belongs here is working at the club.”
“Remind me to-morrow to send out a man from town,” he said. “I know the
very fellow.”
I record this scrap of conversation, just as I have tried to put down
anything and everything that had a bearing on what followed, because
the gardener Halsey sent the next day played an important part in the
events of the next few weeks—events that culminated, as you know, by
stirring the country profoundly. At that time, however, I was busy
trying to keep my skirts dry, and paid little or no attention to what
seemed then a most trivial remark.
Along the drive I showed Halsey where I had found Rosie’s basket with
the bits of broken china piled inside. He was rather skeptical.
“Warner probably,” he said when I had finished. “Began it as a joke on
Rosie, and ended by picking up the broken china out of the road,
knowing it would play hob with the tires of the car.” Which shows how
near one can come to the truth, and yet miss it altogether.
At the lodge everything was quiet. There was a light in the
sitting-room down-stairs, and a faint gleam, as if from a shaded lamp,
in one of the upper rooms. Halsey stopped and examined the lodge with
calculating eyes.
“I don’t know, Aunt Ray,” he said dubiously; “this is hardly a woman’s
affair. If there’s a scrap of any kind, you hike for the timber.” Which
was Halsey’s solicitous care for me, put into vernacular.
“I shall stay right here,” I said, and crossing the small veranda, now
shaded and fragrant with honeysuckle, I hammered the knocker on the
door.
Thomas opened the door himself—Thomas, fully dressed and in his
customary health. I had the blanket over my arm.
“I brought the blanket, Thomas,” I said; “I am sorry you are so ill.”
The old man stood staring at me and then at the blanket. His confusion
under other circumstances would have been ludicrous.
“What! Not ill?” Halsey said from the step. “Thomas, I’m afraid you’ve
been malingering.”
Thomas seemed to have been debating something with himself. Now he
stepped out on the porch and closed the door gently behind him.
“I reckon you bettah come in, Mis’ Innes,” he said, speaking
cautiously. “It’s got so I dunno what to do, and it’s boun’ to come out
some time er ruther.”
He threw the door open then, and I stepped inside, Halsey close behind.
In the sitting-room the old negro turned with quiet dignity to Halsey.
“You bettah sit down, sah,” he said. “It’s a place for a woman, sah.”
Things were not turning out the way Halsey expected. He sat down on the
center-table, with his hands thrust in his pockets, and watched me as I
followed Thomas up the narrow stairs. At the top a woman was standing,
and a second glance showed me it was Rosie.
She shrank back a little, but I said nothing. And then Thomas motioned
to a partly open door, and I went in.
The lodge boasted three bedrooms up-stairs, all comfortably furnished.
In this one, the largest and airiest, a night lamp was burning, and by
its light I could make out a plain white metal bed. A girl was asleep
there—or in a half stupor, for she muttered something now and then.
Rosie had taken her courage in her hands, and coming in had turned up
the light. It was only then that I knew. Fever-flushed, ill as she was,
I recognized Louise Armstrong.
I stood gazing down at her in a stupor of amazement. Louise here,
hiding at the lodge, ill and alone! Rosie came up to the bed and
smoothed the white counterpane.
“I am afraid she is worse to-night,” she ventured at last. I put my
hand on the sick girl’s forehead. It was burning with fever, and I
turned to where Thomas lingered in the hallway.
“Will you tell me what you mean, Thomas Johnson, by not telling me this
before?” I demanded indignantly.
Thomas quailed.
“Mis’ Louise wouldn’ let me,” he said earnestly. “I wanted to. She
ought to ’a’ had a doctor the night she came, but she wouldn’ hear to
it. Is she—is she very bad, Mis’ Innes?”
“Bad enough,” I said coldly. “Send Mr. Innes up.”
Halsey came up the stairs slowly, looking rather interested and
inclined to be amused. For a moment he could not see anything
distinctly in the darkened room; he stopped, glanced at Rosie and at
me, and then his eyes fell on the restless head on the pillow.
I think he felt who it was before he really saw her; he crossed the
room in a couple of strides and bent over the bed.
“Louise!” he said softly; but she did not reply, and her eyes showed no
recognition. Halsey was young, and illness was new to him. He
straightened himself slowly, still watching her, and caught my arm.
“She’s dying, Aunt Ray!” he said huskily. “Dying! Why, she doesn’t know
me!”
“Fudge!” I snapped, being apt to grow irritable when my sympathies are
aroused. “She’s doing nothing of the sort,—and don’t pinch my arm. If
you want something to do, go and choke Thomas.”
But at that moment Louise roused from her stupor to cough, and at the
end of the paroxysm, as Rosie laid her back, exhausted, she knew us.
That was all Halsey wanted; to him consciousness was recovery. He
dropped on his knees beside the bed, and tried to tell her she was all
right, and we would bring her around in a hurry, and how beautiful she
looked—only to break down utterly and have to stop. And at that I came
to my senses, and put him out.
“This instant!” I ordered, as he hesitated. “And send Rosie here.”
He did not go far. He sat on the top step of the stairs, only leaving
to telephone for a doctor, and getting in everybody’s way in his
eagerness to fetch and carry. I got him away finally, by sending him to
fix up the car as a sort of ambulance, in case the doctor would allow
the sick girl to be moved. He sent Gertrude down to the lodge loaded
with all manner of impossible things, including an armful of Turkish
towels and a box of mustard plasters, and as the two girls had known
each other somewhat before, Louise brightened perceptibly when she saw
her.
When the doctor from Englewood—the Casanova doctor, Doctor Walker,
being away—had started for Sunnyside, and I had got Thomas to stop
trying to explain what he did not understand himself, I had a long talk
with the old man, and this is what I learned.
On Saturday evening before, about ten o’clock, he had been reading in
the sitting-room down-stairs, when some one rapped at the door. The old
man was alone, Warner not having arrived, and at first he was uncertain
about opening the door. He did so finally, and was amazed at being
confronted by Louise Armstrong. Thomas was an old family servant,
having been with the present Mrs. Armstrong since she was a child, and
he was overwhelmed at seeing Louise. He saw that she was excited and
tired, and he drew her into the sitting-room and made her sit down.
After a while he went to the house and brought Mrs. Watson, and they
talked until late. The old man said Louise was in trouble, and seemed
frightened. Mrs. Watson made some tea and took it to the lodge, but
Louise made them both promise to keep her presence a secret. She had
not known that Sunnyside was rented, and whatever her trouble was, this
complicated things. She seemed puzzled. Her stepfather and her mother
were still in California—that was all she would say about them. Why she
had run away no one could imagine. Mr. Arnold Armstrong was at the
Greenwood Club, and at last Thomas, not knowing what else to do, went
over there along the path. It was almost midnight. Part-way over he met
Armstrong himself and brought him to the lodge. Mrs. Watson had gone to
the house for some bed-linen, it having been arranged that under the
circumstances Louise would be better at the lodge until morning. Arnold
Armstrong and Louise had a long conference, during which he was heard
to storm and become very violent. When he left it was after two. He had
gone up to the house—Thomas did not know why—and at three o’clock he
was shot at the foot of the circular staircase.
The following morning Louise had been ill. She had asked for Arnold,
and was told he had left town. Thomas had not the moral courage to tell
her of the crime. She refused a doctor, and shrank morbidly from having
her presence known. Mrs. Watson and Thomas had had their hands full,
and at last Rosie had been enlisted to help them. She carried necessary
provisions—little enough—to the lodge, and helped to keep the secret.
Thomas told me quite frankly that he had been anxious to keep Louise’s
presence hidden for this reason: they had all seen Arnold Armstrong
that night, and he, himself, for one, was known to have had no very
friendly feeling for the dead man. As to the reason for Louise’s flight
from California, or why she had not gone to the Fitzhughs’, or to some
of her people in town, he had no more information than I had. With the
death of her stepfather and the prospect of the immediate return of the
family, things had become more and more impossible. I gathered that
Thomas was as relieved as I at the turn events had taken. No, she did
not know of either of the deaths in the family.
Taken all around, I had only substituted one mystery for another.
If I knew now why Rosie had taken the basket of dishes, I did not know
who had spoken to her and followed her along the drive. If I knew that
Louise was in the lodge, I did not know why she was there. If I knew
that Arnold Armstrong had spent some time in the lodge the night before
he was murdered, I was no nearer the solution of the crime. Who was the
midnight intruder who had so alarmed Liddy and myself? Who had fallen
down the clothes chute? Was Gertrude’s lover a villain or a victim?
Time was to answer all these things.