The Circular Staircase - Mary Roberts Rinehart (big screen ebook reader TXT) 📗

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 tonight, 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 downstairs, 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 upstairs, 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 tonight,” 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