The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart (the alpha prince and his bride full story free TXT) 📗

path from the club-house, and I goes home that way. Down in the creek bottom I almost run into a man. He wuz standin’ with his back to me, an’ he was workin’ with one of these yere electric light things that fit in yer pocket. He was havin’ trouble—one minute it’d flash out, an’ the nex’ it’d be gone. I hed a view of ’is white dress shirt an’ tie, as I passed. I didn’t see his face. But I know it warn’t Mr. Arnold. It was a taller man than Mr. Arnold. Beside that, Mr. Arnold was playin’ cards when I got to the club-house, same’s he’d been doin’ all day.”

“And the next morning you came back along the path,” pursued Mr. Jamieson relentlessly.

“The nex’ mornin’ I come back along the path an’ down where I dun see the man night befoh, I picked up this here.” The old man held out a tiny object and Mr. Jamieson took it. Then he held it on his extended palm for me to see. It was the other half of the pearl cuff-link!

But Mr. Jamieson was not quite through questioning him.

“And so you showed it to Sam, at the club, and asked him if he knew any one who owned such a link, and Sam said—what?”

“Wal, Sam, he ’lowed he’d seen such a pair of cuff-buttons in a shirt belongin’ to Mr. Bailey—Mr. Jack Bailey, sah.”

“I’ll keep this link, Thomas, for a while,” the detective said. “That’s all I wanted to know. Good night.”

As Thomas shuffled out, Mr. Jamieson watched me sharply.

“You see, Miss Innes,” he said, “Mr. Bailey insists on mixing himself with this thing. If Mr. Bailey came here that Friday night expecting to meet Arnold Armstrong, and missed him—if, as I say, he had done this, might he not, seeing him enter the following night, have struck him down, as he had intended before?”

“But the motive?” I gasped.

“There could be motive proved, I think. Arnold Armstrong and John Bailey have been enemies since the latter, as cashier of the Traders’ Bank, brought Arnold almost into the clutches of the law. Also, you forget that both men have been paying attention to Miss Gertrude. Bailey’s flight looks bad, too.”

“And you think Halsey helped him to escape?”

“Undoubtedly. Why, what could it be but flight? Miss Innes, let me reconstruct that evening, as I see it. Bailey and Armstrong had quarreled at the club. I learned this to-day. Your nephew brought Bailey over. Prompted by jealous, insane fury, Armstrong followed, coming across by the path. He entered the billiard-room wing—perhaps rapping, and being admitted by your nephew. Just inside he was shot, by some one on the circular staircase. The shot fired, your nephew and Bailey left the house at once, going toward the automobile house. They left by the lower road, which prevented them being heard, and when you and Miss Gertrude got down-stairs everything was quiet.”

“But—Gertrude’s story,” I stammered.

“Miss Gertrude only brought forward her explanation the following morning. I do not believe it, Miss Innes. It is the story of a loving and ingenious woman.”

“And—this thing to-night?”

“May upset my whole view of the case. We must give the benefit of every doubt, after all. We may, for instance, come back to the figure on the porch: if it was a woman you saw that night through the window, we might start with other premises. Or Mr. Innes’ explanation may turn us in a new direction. It is possible that he shot Arnold Armstrong as a burglar and then fled, frightened at what he had done. In any case, however, I feel confident that the body was here when he left. Mr. Armstrong left the club ostensibly for a moonlight saunter, about half after eleven o’clock. It was three when the shot was fired.”

I leaned back bewildered. It seemed to me that the evening had been full of significant happenings, had I only held the key. Had Gertrude been the fugitive in the clothes chute? Who was the man on the drive near the lodge, and whose gold-mounted dressing-bag had I seen in the lodge sitting-room?

It was late when Mr. Jamieson finally got up to go. I went with him to the door, and together we stood looking out over the valley. Below lay the village of Casanova, with its Old World houses, its blossoming trees and its peace. Above on the hill across the valley were the lights of the Greenwood Club. It was even possible to see the curving row of parallel lights that marked the carriage road. Rumors that I had heard about the club came back—of drinking, of high play, and once, a year ago, of a suicide under those very lights.

Mr. Jamieson left, taking a short cut to the village, and I still stood there. It must have been after eleven, and the monotonous tick of the big clock on the stairs behind me was the only sound.

Then I was conscious that some one was running up the drive. In a minute a woman darted into the area of light made by the open door, and caught me by the arm. It was Rosie—Rosie in a state of collapse from terror, and, not the least important, clutching one of my Coalport plates and a silver spoon.

She stood staring into the darkness behind, still holding the plate. I got her into the house and secured the plate; then I stood and looked down at her where she crouched tremblingly against the doorway.

“Well,” I asked, “didn’t your young man enjoy his meal?”

She couldn’t speak. She looked at the spoon she still held—I wasn’t so anxious about it: thank Heaven, it wouldn’t chip—and then she stared at me.

“I appreciate your desire to have everything nice for him,” I went on, “but the next time, you might take the Limoges china It’s more easily duplicated and less expensive.”

“I haven’t a young man—not here.” She had got her breath now, as I had guessed she would. “I—I have been chased by a thief, Miss Innes.”

“Did he chase you out of the house and back again?” I asked.

Then Rosie began to cry—not silently, but noisily, hysterically.

I stopped her by giving her a good shake.

“What in the world is the matter with you?” I snapped. “Has the day of good common sense gone by! Sit up and tell me the whole thing.” Rosie sat up then, and sniffled.

“I was coming up the drive—” she began.

“You must start with when you went DOWN the drive, with my dishes and my silver,” I interrupted, but, seeing more signs of hysteria, I gave in. “Very well. You were coming up the drive—”

“I had a basket of—of silver and dishes on my arm and I was carrying the plate, because—because I was afraid I’d break it. Part-way up the road a man stepped out of the bushes, and held his arm like this, spread out, so I couldn’t get past. He said—he said—‘Not so fast, young lady; I want you to let me see what’s in that basket.’”

She got up in her excitement and took hold of my arm.

“It was like this, Miss Innes,” she said, “and say you was the man. When he said that, I screamed and ducked under his arm like this. He caught at the basket and I dropped it. I ran as fast as I could, and he came after as far as the trees. Then he stopped. Oh, Miss Innes, it must have been the man that killed that Mr. Armstrong!”

“Don’t be foolish,” I said. “Whoever killed Mr. Armstrong would put as much space between himself and this house as he could. Go up to bed now; and mind, if I hear of this story being repeated to the other maids, I shall deduct from your wages for every broken dish I find in the drive.”

I listened to Rosie as she went up-stairs, running past the shadowy places and slamming her door. Then I sat down and looked at the Coalport plate and the silver spoon. I had brought my own china and silver, and, from all appearances, I would have little enough to take back. But though I might jeer at Rosie as much as I wished, the fact remained that some one had been on the drive that night who had no business there. Although neither had Rosie, for that matter.

I could fancy Liddy’s face when she missed the extra pieces of china—she had opposed Rosie from the start. If Liddy once finds a prophecy fulfilled, especially an unpleasant one, she never allows me to forget it. It seemed to me that it was absurd to leave that china dotted along the road for her to spy the next morning; so with a sudden resolution, I opened the door again and stepped out into the darkness. As the door closed behind me I half regretted my impulse; then I shut my teeth and went on.

I have never been a nervous woman, as I said before. Moreover, a minute or two in the darkness enabled me to see things fairly well. Beulah gave me rather a start by rubbing unexpectedly against my feet; then we two, side by side, went down the drive.

There were no fragments of china, but where the grove began I picked up a silver spoon. So far Rosie’s story was borne out: I began to wonder if it were not indiscreet, to say the least, this midnight prowling in a neighborhood with such a deservedly bad reputation. Then I saw something gleaming, which proved to be the handle of a cup, and a step or two farther on I found a V-shaped bit of a plate. But the most surprising thing of all was to find the basket sitting comfortably beside the road, with the rest of the broken crockery piled neatly within, and a handful of small silver, spoon, forks, and the like, on top! I could only stand and stare. Then Rosie’s story was true. But where had Rosie carried her basket? And why had the thief, if he were a thief, picked up the broken china out of the road and left it, with his booty?

It was with my nearest approach to a nervous collapse that I heard the familiar throbbing of an automobile engine. As it came closer I recognized the outline of the Dragon Fly, and knew that Halsey had come back.

Strange enough it must have seemed to Halsey, too, to come across me in the middle of the night, with the skirt of my gray silk gown over my shoulders to keep off the dew, holding a red and green basket under one arm and a black cat under the other. What with relief and joy, I began to cry, right there, and very nearly wiped my eyes on Beulah in the excitement.