The Circular Staircase - Mary Roberts Rinehart (big screen ebook reader TXT) 📗
- Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
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The paper was the one he had found among Arnold Armstrong’s effects, and I read it again:
“–-by altering the plans for–-rooms, may be possible. The best way, in my opinion, would be to–-the plan for–-in one of the–-rooms–-chimney.”
“I think I understand,” I said slowly. “Some one is searching for the secret room, and the invaders—”
“And the holes in the plaster—”
“Have been in the progress of his—”
“Or her—investigations.”
“Her?” I asked.
“Miss Innes,” the detective said, getting up, “I believe that somewhere in the walls of this house is hidden some of the money, at least, from the Traders’ Bank. I believe, just as surely, that young Walker brought home from California the knowledge of something of the sort and, failing in his effort to reinstall Mrs. Armstrong and her daughter here, he, or a confederate, has tried to break into the house. On two occasions I think he succeeded.”
“On three, at least,” I corrected. And then I told him about the night before. “I have been thinking hard,” I concluded, “and I do not believe the man at the head of the circular staircase was Doctor Walker. I don’t think he could have got in, and the voice was not his.”
Mr. Jamieson got up and paced the floor, his hands behind him.
“There is something else that puzzles me,” he said, stepping before me. “Who and what is the woman Nina Carrington? If it was she who came here as Mattie Bliss, what did she tell Halsey that sent him racing to Doctor Walker’s, and then to Miss Armstrong? If we could find that woman we would have the whole thing.”
“Mr. Jamieson, did you ever think that Paul Armstrong might not have died a natural death?”
“That is the thing we are going to try to find out,” he replied. And then Gertrude came in, announcing a man below to see Mr. Jamieson.
“I want you present at this interview, Miss Innes,” he said. “May Riggs come up? He has left Doctor Walker and he has something he wants to tell us.”
Riggs came into the room diffidently, but Mr. Jamieson put him at his ease. He kept a careful eye on me, however, and slid into a chair by the door when he was asked to sit down.
“Now, Riggs,” began Mr. Jamieson kindly. “You are to say what you have to say before this lady.”
“You promised you’d keep it quiet, Mr. Jamieson.” Riggs plainly did not trust me. There was nothing friendly in the glance he turned on me.
“Yes, yes. You will be protected. But, first of all, did you bring what you promised?”
Riggs produced a roll of papers from under his coat, and handed them over. Mr. Jamieson examined them with lively satisfaction, and passed them to me. “The blue-prints of Sunnyside,” he said. “What did I tell you? Now, Riggs, we are ready.”
“I’d never have come to you, Mr. Jamieson,” he began, “if it hadn’t been for Miss Armstrong. When Mr. Innes was spirited away, like, and Miss Louise got sick because of it, I thought things had gone far enough. I’d done some things for the doctor before that wouldn’t just bear looking into, but I turned a bit squeamish.”
“Did you help with that?” I asked, leaning forward.
“No, ma’m. I didn’t even know of it until the next day, when it came out in the Casanova Weekly Ledger. But I know who did it, all right. I’d better start at the beginning.
“When Doctor Walker went away to California with the Armstrong family, there was talk in the town that when he came back he would be married to Miss Armstrong, and we all expected it. First thing I knew, I got a letter from him, in the west. He seemed to be excited, and he said Miss Armstrong had taken a sudden notion to go home and he sent me some money. I was to watch for her, to see if she went to Sunnyside, and wherever she was, not to lose sight of her until he got home. I traced her to the lodge, and I guess I scared you on the drive one night, Miss Innes.”
“And Rosie!” I ejaculated.
Riggs grinned sheepishly.
“I only wanted to make sure Miss Louise was there. Rosie started to run, and I tried to stop her and tell her some sort of a story to account for my being there. But she wouldn’t wait.”
“And the broken china—in the basket?”
“Well, broken china’s death to rubber tires,” he said. “I hadn’t any complaint against you people here, and the Dragon Fly was a good car.”
So Rosie’s highwayman was explained.
“Well, I telegraphed the doctor where Miss Louise was and I kept an eye on her. Just a day or so before they came home with the body, I got another letter, telling me to watch for a woman who had been pitted with smallpox. Her name was Carrington, and the doctor made things pretty strong. If I found any such woman loafing around, I was not to lose sight of her for a minute until the doctor got back.
“Well, I would have had my hands full, but the other woman didn’t show up for a good while, and when she did the doctor was home.”
“Riggs,” I asked suddenly, “did you get into this house a day or two after I took it, at night?”
“I did not, Miss Innes. I have never been in the house before. Well, the Carrington woman didn’t show up until the night Mr. Halsey disappeared. She came to the office late, and the doctor was out. She waited around, walking the floor and working herself into a passion. When the doctor didn’t come back, she was in an awful way. She wanted me to hunt him, and when he didn’t appear, she called him names; said he couldn’t fool her. There was murder being done, and she would see him swing for it.
“She struck me as being an ugly customer, and when she left, about eleven o’clock, and went across to the Armstrong place, I was not far behind her. She walked all around the house first, looking up at the windows. Then she rang the bell, and the minute the door was opened she was through it, and into the hall.”
“How long did she stay?”
“That’s the queer part of it,” Riggs said eagerly. “She didn’t come out that night at all. I went to bed at daylight, and that was the last I heard of her until the next day, when I saw her on a truck at the station, covered with a sheet. She’d been struck by the express and you would hardly have known her—dead, of course. I think she stayed all night in the Armstrong house, and the agent said she was crossing the track to take the up-train to town when the express struck her.”
“Another circle!” I exclaimed. “Then we are just where we started.”
“Not so bad as that, Miss Innes,” Riggs said eagerly. “Nina Carrington came from the town in California where Mr. Armstrong died. Why was the doctor so afraid of her? The Carrington woman knew something. I lived with Doctor Walker seven years, and I know him well. There are few things he is afraid of. I think he killed Mr. Armstrong out in the west somewhere, that’s what I think. What else he did I don’t know—but he dismissed me and pretty nearly throttled me—for telling Mr. Jamieson here about Mr. Innes’ having been at his office the night he disappeared, and about my hearing them quarreling.”
“What was it Warner overheard the woman say to Mr. Innes, in the library?” the detective asked me.
“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.’”
How perfectly it all seemed to fit!
It was on Wednesday Riggs told us the story of his connection with some incidents that had been previously unexplained. Halsey had been gone since the Friday night before, and with the passage of each day I felt that his chances were lessening. I knew well enough that he might be carried thousands of miles in the box-car, locked in, perhaps, without water or food. I had read of cases where bodies had been found locked in cars on isolated sidings in the west, and my spirits went down with every hour.
His recovery was destined to be almost as sudden as his disappearance, and was due directly to the tramp Alex had brought to Sunnyside. It seems the man was grateful for his release, and when he learned some thing of Halsey’s whereabouts from another member of his fraternity—for it is a fraternity—he was prompt in letting us know.
On Wednesday evening Mr. Jamieson, who had been down at the Armstrong house trying to see Louise—and failing—was met near the gate at Sunnyside by an individual precisely as repulsive and unkempt as the one Alex had captured. The man knew the detective, and he gave him a piece of dirty paper, on which was scrawled the words—“He’s at City Hospital, Johnsville.” The tramp who brought the paper pretended to know nothing, except this: the paper had been passed along from a “hobo” in Johnsville, who seemed to know the information would be valuable to us.
Again the long distance telephone came into requisition. Mr. Jamieson called the hospital, while we crowded around him. And when there was no longer any doubt that it was Halsey, and that he would probably recover, we all laughed and cried together. I am sure I kissed Liddy, and I have had terrible moments since when I seem to remember kissing Mr. Jamieson, too, in the excitement.
Anyhow, by eleven o’clock that night Gertrude was on her way to Johnsville, three hundred and eighty miles away, accompanied by Rosie. The domestic force was now down to Mary Anne and Liddy, with the under-gardener’s wife coming every day to help out. Fortunately, Warner and the detectives were keeping bachelor hall in the lodge. Out of deference to Liddy they washed their dishes once a day, and they concocted queer messes, according to their several abilities. They had one triumph that they ate regularly for breakfast, and that clung to their clothes and their hair the rest of the day. It was bacon, hardtack and onions, fried together. They were almost pathetically grateful, however, I noticed, for an occasional broiled tenderloin.
It was not until Gertrude and Rosie had gone and Sunnyside had settled down for the night, with Winters at the foot of the staircase, that Mr. Jamieson broached a subject he had evidently planned before he came.
“Miss Innes,” he said, stopping me as I was about to go to my room upstairs, “how are your nerves tonight?”
“I have none,” I said happily. “With Halsey found, my troubles have gone.”
“I mean,” he persisted, “do you feel as though you could go through with something rather unusual?”
“The most unusual thing I can think of would be a peaceful night. But if anything is going to occur, don’t dare to let me miss it.”
“Something is going to occur,” he said. “And you’re the only woman I can think of that I can take along.” He looked at his watch. “Don’t ask me any questions, Miss Innes. Put on heavy shoes, and some old dark clothes, and make up your mind not to be surprised at anything.”
Liddy was sleeping the sleep of the just when I went upstairs, and I hunted out my things
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