WHILE THE STABLES BURNED
About nine o’clock that night Liddy came into the living-room and
reported that one of the housemaids declared she had seen two men slip
around the corner of the stable. Gertrude had been sitting staring in
front of her, jumping at every sound. Now she turned on Liddy
pettishly.
“I declare, Liddy,” she said, “you are a bundle of nerves. What if
Eliza did see some men around the stable? It may have been Warner and
Alex.”
“Warner is in the kitchen, miss,” Liddy said with dignity. “And if you
had come through what I have, you would be a bundle of nerves, too.
Miss Rachel, I’d be thankful if you’d give me my month’s wages
to-morrow. I’ll be going to my sister’s.”
“Very well,” I said, to her evident amazement. “I will make out the
check. Warner can take you down to the noon train.”
Liddy’s face was really funny.
“You’ll have a nice time at your sister’s,” I went on. “Five children,
hasn’t she?”
“That’s it,” Liddy said, suddenly bursting into tears. “Send me away,
after all these years, and your new shawl only half done, and nobody
knowin’ how to fix the water for your bath.”
“It’s time I learned to prepare my own bath.” I was knitting
complacently. But Gertrude got up and put her arms around Liddy’s
shaking shoulders.
“You are two big babies,” she said soothingly. “Neither one of you
could get along for an hour without the other. So stop quarreling and
be good. Liddy, go right up and lay out Aunty’s night things. She is
going to bed early.”
After Liddy had gone I began to think about the men at the stable, and
I grew more and more anxious. Halsey was aimlessly knocking the
billiard-balls around in the billiard-room, and I called to him.
“Halsey,” I said when he sauntered in, “is there a policeman in
Casanova?”
“Constable,” he said laconically. “Veteran of the war, one arm; in
office to conciliate the G. A. R. element. Why?”
“Because I am uneasy to-night.” And I told him what Liddy had said. “Is
there any one you can think of who could be relied on to watch the
outside of the house to-night?”
“We might get Sam Bohannon from the club,” he said thoughtfully. “It
wouldn’t be a bad scheme. He’s a smart darky, and with his mouth shut
and his shirt-front covered, you couldn’t see him a yard off in the
dark.”
Halsey conferred with Alex, and the result, in an hour, was Sam. His
instructions were simple. There had been numerous attempts to break
into the house; it was the intention, not to drive intruders away, but
to capture them. If Sam saw anything suspicious outside, he was to tap
at the east entry, where Alex and Halsey were to alternate in keeping
watch through the night.
It was with a comfortable feeling of security that I went to bed that
night. The door between Gertrude’s rooms and mine had been opened, and,
with the doors into the hall bolted, we were safe enough. Although
Liddy persisted in her belief that doors would prove no obstacles to
our disturbers.
As before, Halsey watched the east entry from ten until two. He had an
eye to comfort, and he kept vigil in a heavy oak chair, very large and
deep. We went up-stairs rather early, and through the open door
Gertrude and I kept up a running fire of conversation. Liddy was
brushing my hair, and Gertrude was doing her own, with a long free
sweep of her strong round arms.
“Did you know Mrs. Armstrong and Louise are in the village?” she
called.
“No,” I replied, startled. “How did you hear it?”
“I met the oldest Stewart girl to-day, the doctor’s daughter, and she
told me they had not gone back to town after the funeral. They went
directly to that little yellow house next to Doctor Walker’s, and are
apparently settled there. They took the house furnished for the
summer.”
“Why, it’s a bandbox,” I said. “I can’t imagine Fanny Armstrong in such
a place.”
“It’s true, nevertheless. Ella Stewart says Mrs. Armstrong has aged
terribly, and looks as if she is hardly able to walk.”
I lay and thought over some of these things until midnight. The
electric lights went out then, fading slowly until there was only a
red-hot loop to be seen in the bulb, and then even that died away and
we were embarked on the darkness of another night.
Apparently only a few minutes elapsed, during which my eyes were
becoming accustomed to the darkness. Then I noticed that the windows
were reflecting a faint pinkish light; Liddy noticed it at the same
time, and I heard her jump up. At that moment Sam’s deep voice boomed
from somewhere just below.
“Fire!” he yelled. “The stable’s on fire!”
I could see him in the glare dancing up and down on the drive, and a
moment later Halsey joined him. Alex was awake and running down the
stairs, and in five minutes from the time the fire was discovered,
three of the maids were sitting on their trunks in the drive, although,
excepting a few sparks, there was no fire nearer than a hundred yards.
Gertrude seldom loses her presence of mind, and she ran to the
telephone. But by the time the Casanova volunteer fire department came
toiling up the hill the stable was a furnace, with the Dragon Fly safe
but blistered, in the road. Some gasolene exploded just as the
volunteer department got to work, which shook their nerves as well as
the burning building. The stable, being on a hill, was a torch to
attract the population from every direction. Rumor had it that
Sunnyside was burning, and it was amazing how many people threw
something over their night-clothes and flew to the conflagration. I
take it Casanova has few fires, and Sunnyside was furnishing the
people, in one way and another, the greatest excitement they had had
for years.
The stable was off the west wing. I hardly know how I came to think of
the circular staircase and the unguarded door at its foot. Liddy was
putting my clothes into sheets, preparatory to tossing them out the
window, when I found her, and I could hardly persuade her to stop.
“I want you to come with me, Liddy,” I said. “Bring a candle and a
couple of blankets.”
She lagged behind considerably when she saw me making for the east
wing, and at the top of the staircase she balked.
“I am not going down there,” she said firmly.
“There is no one guarding the door down there,” I explained. “Who
knows?—this may be a scheme to draw everybody away from this end of the
house, and let some one in here.”
The instant I had said it I was convinced I had hit on the explanation,
and that perhaps it was already too late. It seemed to me as I listened
that I heard stealthy footsteps on the east porch, but there was so
much shouting outside that it was impossible to tell. Liddy was on the
point of retreat.
“Very well,” I said, “then I shall go down alone. Run back to Mr.
Halsey’s room and get his revolver. Don’t shoot down the stairs if you
hear a noise: remember—I shall be down there. And hurry.”
I put the candle on the floor at the top of the staircase and took off
my bedroom slippers. Then I crept down the stairs, going very slowly,
and listening with all my ears. I was keyed to such a pitch that I felt
no fear: like the condemned who sleep and eat the night before
execution, I was no longer able to suffer apprehension. I was past
that. Just at the foot of the stairs I stubbed my toe against Halsey’s
big chair, and had to stand on one foot in a soundless agony until the
pain subsided to a dull ache. And then—I knew I was right. Some one had
put a key into the lock, and was turning it. For some reason it refused
to work, and the key was withdrawn. There was a muttering of voices
outside: I had only a second. Another trial, and the door would open.
The candle above made a faint gleam down the well-like staircase, and
at that moment, with a second, no more, to spare, I thought of a plan.
The heavy oak chair almost filled the space between the newel post and
the door. With a crash I had turned it on its side, wedging it against
the door, its legs against the stairs. I could hear a faint scream from
Liddy, at the crash, and then she came down the stairs on a run, with
the revolver held straight out in front of her.
“Thank God,” she said, in a shaking voice. “I thought it was you.”
I pointed to the door, and she understood.
“Call out the windows at the other end of the house,” I whispered.
“Run. Tell them not to wait for anything.”
She went up the stairs at that, two at a time. Evidently she collided
with the candle, for it went out, and I was left in darkness.
I was really astonishingly cool. I remember stepping over the chair and
gluing my ear to the door, and I shall never forget feeling it give an
inch or two there in the darkness, under a steady pressure from
without. But the chair held, although I could hear an ominous cracking
of one of the legs. And then, without the slightest warning, the
card-room window broke with a crash. I had my finger on the trigger of
the revolver, and as I jumped it went off, right through the door. Some
one outside swore roundly, and for the first time I could hear what was
said.
“Only a scratch. . . . Men are at the other end of the house. . . .
Have the whole rat’s nest on us.” And a lot of profanity which I won’t
write down. The voices were at the broken window now, and although I
was trembling violently, I was determined that I would hold them until
help came. I moved up the stairs until I could see into the card-room,
or rather through it, to the window. As I looked a small man put his
leg over the sill and stepped into the room. The curtain confused him
for a moment; then he turned, not toward me, but toward the
billiard-room door. I fired again, and something that was glass or
china crashed to the ground. Then I ran up the stairs and along the
corridor to the main staircase. Gertrude was standing there, trying to
locate the shots, and I must have been a peculiar figure, with my hair
in crimps, my dressing-gown flying, no slippers, and a revolver
clutched in my hands. I had no time to talk. There was the sound of
footsteps in the lower hall, and some one bounded up the stairs.
I had gone Berserk, I think. I leaned over the stair-rail and fired
again. Halsey, below, yelled at me.
“What are you doing up there?” he yelled. “You missed me by an inch.”
And then I collapsed and fainted. When I came around Liddy was rubbing
my temples with eau de quinine, and the search was in full blast.
Well, the man was gone. The stable burned to the ground, while the
crowd cheered at every falling rafter, and the volunteer fire
department sprayed it with a garden hose. And in the house Alex and
Halsey searched every corner of the lower floor, finding no one.
The truth of my story was shown by the broken window and the overturned
chair. That the unknown had got up-stairs was almost impossible. He had
not used the main staircase, there was no way to the upper floor in the
east wing, and Liddy had been at the window, in the west wing, where
the servants’ stair went up. But we did not go to bed at all. Sam
Bohannon and Warner helped in the search, and not a closet escaped
scrutiny. Even the cellars were given a thorough overhauling, without
result. The door in the east entry had a hole through it where my
bullet had gone.
The hole slanted downward, and the bullet was embedded in the porch.
Some reddish stains showed it had done execution.
“Somebody will walk lame,” Halsey said, when he had marked the course
of the bullet. “It’s too low to have hit anything but a leg or foot.”
From that time on I watched every person I met for a limp, and to this
day the man who halts in his walk is an object of suspicion to me. But
Casanova had no lame men: the nearest approach to it was an old fellow
who tended the safety gates at the railroad, and he, I learned on
inquiry, had two artificial legs. Our man had gone, and the large and
expensive stable at Sunnyside was a heap of smoking rafters and charred
boards. Warner swore the fire was incendiary, and in view of the
attempt to enter the house, there seemed to be no doubt of it.