HALSEY’S DISAPPEARANCE
Nothing that had gone before had been as bad as this. The murder and
Thomas’ sudden death we had been able to view in a detached sort of
way. But with Halsey’s disappearance everything was altered. Our little
circle, intact until now, was broken. We were no longer onlookers who
saw a battle passing around them. We were the center of action. Of
course, there was no time then to voice such an idea. My mind seemed
able to hold only one thought: that Halsey had been foully dealt with,
and that every minute lost might be fatal.
Mr. Jamieson came back about eight o’clock the next morning: he was
covered with mud, and his hat was gone. Altogether, we were a
sad-looking trio that gathered around a breakfast that no one could
eat. Over a cup of black coffee the detective told us what he had
learned of Halsey’s movements the night before. Up to a certain point
the car had made it easy enough to follow him. And I gathered that Mr.
Burns, the other detective, had followed a similar car for miles at
dawn, only to find it was a touring car on an endurance run.
“He left here about ten minutes after eight,” Mr. Jamieson said. “He
went alone, and at eight twenty he stopped at Doctor Walker’s. I went
to the doctor’s about midnight, but he had been called out on a case,
and had not come back at four o’clock. From the doctor’s it seems Mr.
Innes walked across the lawn to the cottage Mrs. Armstrong and her
daughter have taken. Mrs. Armstrong had retired, and he said perhaps a
dozen words to Miss Louise. She will not say what they were, but the
girl evidently suspects what has occurred. That is, she suspects foul
play, but she doesn’t know of what nature. Then, apparently, he started
directly for the station. He was going very fast—the flagman at the
Carol Street crossing says he saw the car pass. He knew the siren.
Along somewhere in the dark stretch between Carol Street and the depot
he evidently swerved suddenly—perhaps some one in the road—and went
full into the side of a freight. We found it there last night.”
“He might have been thrown under the train by the force of the shock,”
I said tremulously.
Gertrude shuddered.
“We examined every inch of track. There was—no sign.”
“But surely—he can’t be—gone!” I cried. “Aren’t there traces in the
mud—anything?”
“There is no mud—only dust. There has been no rain. And the footpath
there is of cinders. Miss Innes, I am inclined to think that he has met
with bad treatment, in the light of what has gone before. I do not
think he has been murdered.” I shrank from the word. “Burns is back in
the country, on a clue we got from the night clerk at the drug-store.
There will be two more men here by noon, and the city office is on the
lookout.”
“The creek?” Gertrude asked.
“The creek is shallow now. If it were swollen with rain, it would be
different. There is hardly any water in it. Now, Miss Innes,” he said,
turning to me, “I must ask you some questions. Had Mr. Halsey any
possible reason for going away like this, without warning?”
“None whatever.”
“He went away once before,” he persisted. “And you were as sure then.”
“He did not leave the Dragon Fly jammed into the side of a freight car
before.”
“No, but he left it for repairs in a blacksmith shop, a long distance
from here. Do you know if he had any enemies? Any one who might wish
him out of the way?”
“Not that I know of, unless—no, I can not think of any.”
“Was he in the habit of carrying money?”
“He never carried it far. No, he never had more than enough for current
expenses.”
Mr. Jamieson got up then and began to pace the room. It was an unwonted
concession to the occasion.
“Then I think we get at it by elimination. The chances are against
flight. If he was hurt, we find no trace of him. It looks almost like
an abduction. This young Doctor Walker—have you any idea why Mr. Innes
should have gone there last night?”
“I can not understand it,” Gertrude said thoughtfully. “I don’t think
he knew Doctor Walker at all, and—their relations could hardly have
been cordial, under the circumstances.”
Jamieson pricked up his ears, and little by little he drew from us the
unfortunate story of Halsey’s love affair, and the fact that Louise was
going to marry Doctor Walker.
Mr. Jamieson listened attentively.
“There are some interesting developments here,” he said thoughtfully.
“The woman who claims to be the mother of Lucien Wallace has not come
back. Your nephew has apparently been spirited away. There is an
organized attempt being made to enter this house; in fact, it has been
entered. Witness the incident with the cook yesterday. And I have a new
piece of information.”
He looked carefully away from Gertrude. “Mr. John Bailey is not at his
Knickerbocker apartments, and I don’t know where he is. It’s a hash,
that’s what it is. It’s a Chinese puzzle. They won’t fit together,
unless—unless Mr. Bailey and your nephew have again—”
And once again Gertrude surprised me. “They are not together,” she said
hotly. “I—know where Mr. Bailey is, and my brother is not with him.”
The detective turned and looked at her keenly.
“Miss Gertrude,” he said, “if you and Miss Louise would only tell me
everything you know and surmise about this business, I should be able
to do a great many things. I believe I could find your brother, and I
might be able to—well, to do some other things.” But Gertrude’s glance
did not falter.
“Nothing that I know could help you to find Halsey,” she said
stubbornly. “I know absolutely as little of his disappearance as you
do, and I can only say this: I do not trust Doctor Walker. I think he
hated Halsey, and he would get rid of him if he could.”
“Perhaps you are right. In fact, I had some such theory myself. But
Doctor Walker went out late last night to a serious case in
Summitville, and is still there. Burns traced him there. We have made
guarded inquiry at the Greenwood Club, and through the village. There
is absolutely nothing to go on but this. On the embankment above the
railroad, at the point where we found the machine, is a small house. An
old woman and a daughter, who is very lame, live there. They say that
they distinctly heard the shock when the Dragon Fly hit the car, and
they went to the bottom of their garden and looked over. The automobile
was there; they could see the lights, and they thought someone had been
injured. It was very dark, but they could make out two figures,
standing together. The women were curious, and, leaving the fence, they
went back and by a roundabout path down to the road. When they got
there the car was still standing, the headlight broken and the bonnet
crushed, but there was no one to be seen.”
The detective went away immediately, and to Gertrude and me was left
the woman’s part, to watch and wait. By luncheon nothing had been
found, and I was frantic. I went up-stairs to Halsey’s room finally,
from sheer inability to sit across from Gertrude any longer, and meet
her terror-filled eyes.
Liddy was in my dressing-room, suspiciously red-eyed, and trying to put
a right sleeve in a left armhole of a new waist for me. I was too much
shaken to scold.
“What name did that woman in the kitchen give?” she demanded, viciously
ripping out the offending sleeve.
“Bliss. Mattie Bliss,” I replied.
“Bliss. M. B. Well, that’s not what she has on he suitcase. It is
marked N. F. C.”
The new cook and her initials troubled me not at all. I put on my
bonnet and sent for what the Casanova liveryman called a “stylish
turnout.” Having once made up my mind to a course of action, I am not
one to turn back. Warner drove me; he was plainly disgusted, and he
steered the livery horse as he would the Dragon Fly, feeling uneasily
with his left foot for the clutch, and working his right elbow at an
imaginary horn every time a dog got in the way.
Warner had something on his mind, and after we had turned into the
road, he voiced it.
“Miss Innes,” he said. “I overheard a part of a conversation yesterday
that I didn’t understand. It wasn’t my business to understand it, for
that matter. But I’ve been thinking all day that I’d better tell you.
Yesterday afternoon, while you and Miss Gertrude were out driving, I
had got the car in some sort of shape again after the fire, and I went
to the library to call Mr. Innes to see it. I went into the
living-room, where Miss Liddy said he was, and half-way across to the
library I heard him talking to some one. He seemed to be walking up and
down, and he was in a rage, I can tell you.”
“What did he say?”
“The first thing I heard was—excuse me, Miss Innes, but it’s what he
said, ‘The damned rascal,’ he said, ‘I’ll see him in’—well, in hell was
what he said, ‘in hell first.’ Then somebody else spoke up; it was a
woman. She said, ‘I warned them, but they thought I would be afraid.’”
“A woman! Did you wait to see who it was?”
“I wasn’t spying, Miss Innes,” Warner said with dignity. “But the next
thing caught my attention. She said, ‘I knew there was something wrong
from the start. A man isn’t well one day, and dead the next, without
some reason.’ I thought she was speaking of Thomas.”
“And you don’t know who it was!” I exclaimed. “Warner, you had the key
to this whole occurrence in your hands, and did not use it!”
However, there was nothing to be done. I resolved to make inquiry when
I got home, and in the meantime, my present errand absorbed me. This
was nothing less than to see Louise Armstrong, and to attempt to drag
from her what she knew, or suspected, of Halsey’s disappearance. But
here, as in every direction I turned, I was baffled.
A neat maid answered the bell, but she stood squarely in the doorway,
and it was impossible to preserve one’s dignity and pass her.
“Miss Armstrong is very ill, and unable to see any one,” she said. I
did not believe her.
“And Mrs. Armstrong—is she also ill?”
“She is with Miss Louise and can not be disturbed.”
“Tell her it is Miss Innes, and that it is a matter of the greatest
importance.”
“It would be of no use, Miss Innes. My orders are positive.”
At that moment a heavy step sounded on the stairs. Past the maid’s
white-strapped shoulder I could see a familiar thatch of gray hair, and
in a moment I was face to face with Doctor Stewart. He was very grave,
and his customary geniality was tinged with restraint.
“You are the very woman I want to see,” he said promptly. “Send away
your trap, and let me drive you home. What is this about your nephew?”
“He has disappeared, doctor. Not only that, but there is every evidence
that he has been either abducted, or—” I could not finish. The doctor
helped me into his capacious buggy in silence. Until we had got a
little distance he did not speak; then he turned and looked at me.
“Now tell me about it,” he said. He heard me through without speaking.
“And you think Louise knows something?” he said when I had finished. “I
don’t—in fact, I am sure of it. The best evidence of it is this: she
asked me if he had been heard from, or if anything had been learned.
She won’t allow Walker in the room, and she made me promise to see you
and tell you this: don’t give up the search for him. Find him, and find
him soon. He is living.”
“Well,” I said, “if she knows that, she knows more. She is a very cruel
and ungrateful girl.”
“She is a very sick girl,” he said gravely. “Neither you nor I can
judge her until we know everything. Both she and her mother are ghosts
of their former selves. Under all this, these two sudden deaths, this
bank robbery, the invasions at Sunnyside and Halsey’s disappearance,
there is some mystery that, mark my words, will come out some day. And
when it does, we shall find Louise Armstrong a victim.”
I had not noticed where we were going, but now I saw we were beside the
railroad, and from a knot of men standing beside the track I divined
that it was here the car had been found. The siding, however, was
empty. Except a few bits of splintered wood on the ground, there was no
sign of the accident.
“Where is the freight car that was rammed?” the doctor asked a
bystander.
“It was taken away at daylight, when the train was moved.”
There was nothing to be gained. He pointed out the house on the
embankment where the old lady and her daughter had heard the crash and
seen two figures beside the car. Then we drove slowly home. I had the
doctor put me down at the gate, and I walked to the house—past the
lodge where we had found Louise, and, later, poor Thomas; up the drive
where I had seen a man watching the lodge and where, later, Rosie had
been frightened; past the east entrance, where so short a time before
the most obstinate effort had been made to enter the house, and where,
that night two weeks ago, Liddy and I had seen the strange woman. Not
far from the west wing lay the blackened ruins of the stables. I felt
like a ruin myself, as I paused on the broad veranda before I entered
the house.
Two private detectives had arrived in my absence, and it was a relief
to turn over to them the responsibility of the house and grounds. Mr.
Jamieson, they said, had arranged for more to assist in the search for
the missing man, and at that time the country was being scoured in all
directions.
The household staff was again depleted that afternoon. Liddy was
waiting to tell me that the new cook had gone, bag and baggage, without
waiting to be paid. No one had admitted the visitor whom Warner had
heard in the library, unless, possibly, the missing cook. Again I was
working in a circle.