The Circular Staircase Read online

  CHAPTER II

  A LINK CUFF-BUTTON

  Liddy's knees seemed to give away under her. Without a sound she sankdown, leaving me staring at the window in petrified amazement. Liddybegan to moan under her breath, and in my excitement I reached down andshook her.

  "Stop it," I whispered. "It's only a woman--maybe a maid of theArmstrongs'. Get up and help me find the door." She groaned again."Very well," I said, "then I'll have to leave you here. I'm going."

  She moved at that, and, holding to my sleeve, we felt our way, withnumerous collisions, to the billiard-room, and from there to thedrawing-room. The lights came on then, and, with the long Frenchwindows unshuttered, I had a creepy feeling that each one sheltered apeering face. In fact, in the light of what happened afterward, I ampretty certain we were under surveillance during the entire ghostlyevening. We hurried over the rest of the locking-up and got upstairsas quickly as we could. I left the lights all on, and our footstepsechoed cavernously. Liddy had a stiff neck the next morning, fromlooking back over her shoulder, and she refused to go to bed.

  "Let me stay in your dressing-room, Miss Rachel," she begged. "If youdon't, I'll sit in the hall outside the door. I'm not going to bemurdered with my eyes shut."

  "If you're going to be murdered," I retorted, "it won't make anydifference whether they are shut or open. But you may stay in thedressing-room, if you will lie on the couch: when you sleep in a chairyou snore."

  She was too far gone to be indignant, but after a while she came to thedoor and looked in to where I was composing myself for sleep withDrummond's Spiritual Life.

  "That wasn't a woman, Miss Rachel," she said, with her shoes in herhand. "It was a man in a long coat."

  "What woman was a man?" I discouraged her without looking up, and shewent back to the couch.

  It was eleven o'clock when I finally prepared for bed. In spite of myassumption of indifference, I locked the door into the hall, andfinding the transom did not catch, I put a chair cautiously before thedoor--it was not necessary to rouse Liddy--and climbing up put on theledge of the transom a small dressing-mirror, so that any movement ofthe frame would send it crashing down. Then, secure in my precautions,I went to bed.

  I did not go to sleep at once. Liddy disturbed me just as I wasgrowing drowsy, by coming in and peering under the bed. She was afraidto speak, however, because of her previous snubbing, and went back,stopping in the doorway to sigh dismally.

  Somewhere down-stairs a clock with a chime sang away thehours--eleven-thirty, forty-five, twelve. And then the lights went outto stay. The Casanova Electric Company shuts up shop and goes home tobed at midnight: when one has a party, I believe it is customary to feethe company, which will drink hot coffee and keep awake a couple ofhours longer. But the lights were gone for good that night. Liddy hadgone to sleep, as I knew she would. She was a very unreliable person:always awake and ready to talk when she wasn't wanted and dozing off tosleep when she was. I called her once or twice, the only result beingan explosive snore that threatened her very windpipe--then I got up andlighted a bedroom candle.

  My bedroom and dressing room were above the big living-room on thefirst floor. On the second floor a long corridor ran the length of thehouse, with rooms opening from both sides. In the wings were smallcorridors crossing the main one--the plan was simplicity itself. Andjust as I got back into bed, I heard a sound from the east wing,apparently, that made me stop, frozen, with one bedroom slipper halfoff, and listen. It was a rattling metallic sound, and it reverberatedalong the empty halls like the crash of doom. It was for all the worldas if something heavy, perhaps a piece of steel, had rolled clatteringand jangling down the hard-wood stairs leading to the card-room.

  In the silence that followed Liddy stirred and snored again. I wasexasperated: first she kept me awake by silly alarms, then when she wasneeded she slept like Joe Jefferson, or Rip,--they are always the sameto me. I went in and aroused her, and I give her credit for being wideawake the minute I spoke.

  "Get up," I said, "if you don't want to be murdered in your bed."

  "Where? How?" she yelled vociferously, and jumped up.

  "There's somebody in the house," I said. "Get up. We'll have to getto the telephone."

  "Not out in the hall!" she gasped; "Oh, Miss Rachel, not out in thehall!" trying to hold me back. But I am a large woman and Liddy issmall. We got to the door, somehow, and Liddy held a brass andiron,which it was all she could do to lift, let alone brain anybody with. Ilistened, and, hearing nothing, opened the door a little and peeredinto the hall. It was a black void, full of terrible suggestion, andmy candle only emphasized the gloom. Liddy squealed and drew me backagain, and as the door slammed, the mirror I had put on the transomcame down and hit her on the head. That completed our demoralization.It was some time before I could persuade her she had not been attackedfrom behind by a burglar, and when she found the mirror smashed on thefloor she wasn't much better.

  "There's going to be a death!" she wailed. "Oh, Miss Rachel, there'sgoing to be a death!"

  "There will be," I said grimly, "if you don't keep quiet, Liddy Allen."

  And so we sat there until morning, wondering if the candle would lastuntil dawn, and arranging what trains we could take back to town. Ifwe had only stuck to that decision and gone back before it was too late!

  The sun came finally, and from my window I watched the trees along thedrive take shadowy form, gradually lose their ghostlike appearance,become gray and then green. The Greenwood Club showed itself a dab ofwhite against the hill across the valley, and an early robin or twohopped around in the dew. Not until the milk-boy and the sun came,about the same time, did I dare to open the door into the hall and lookaround. Everything was as we had left it. Trunks were heaped here andthere, ready for the trunk-room, and through an end window of stainedglass came a streak of red and yellow daylight that was eminentlycheerful. The milk-boy was pounding somewhere below, and the day hadbegun.

  Thomas Johnson came ambling up the drive about half-past six, and wecould hear him clattering around on the lower floor, opening shutters.I had to take Liddy to her room up-stairs, however,--she was quite sureshe would find something uncanny. In fact, when she did not, having nowthe courage of daylight, she was actually disappointed.

  Well, we did not go back to town that day.

  The discovery of a small picture fallen from the wall of thedrawing-room was quite sufficient to satisfy Liddy that the alarm hadbeen a false one, but I was anything but convinced. Allowing for mynerves and the fact that small noises magnify themselves at night,there was still no possibility that the picture had made the series ofsounds I heard. To prove it, however, I dropped it again. It fellwith a single muffled crash of its wooden frame, and incidentallyruined itself beyond repair. I justified myself by reflecting that ifthe Armstrongs chose to leave pictures in unsafe positions, and to renta house with a family ghost, the destruction of property was theirresponsibility, not mine.

  I warned Liddy not to mention what had happened to anybody, andtelephoned to town for servants. Then after a breakfast which did morecredit to Thomas' heart than his head, I went on a short tour ofinvestigation. The sounds had come from the east wing, and not withoutsome qualms I began there. At first I found nothing. Since then Ihave developed my powers of observation, but at that time I was anovice. The small card-room seemed undisturbed. I looked forfootprints, which is, I believe, the conventional thing to do, althoughmy experience has been that as clues both footprints and thumb-marksare more useful in fiction than in fact. But the stairs in that wingoffered something.

  At the top of the flight had been placed a tall wicker hamper, packed,with linen that had come from town. It stood at the edge of the topstep, almost barring passage, and on the step below it was a long freshscratch. For three steps the scratch was repeated, graduallydiminishing, as if some object had fallen, striking each one. Then forfour steps nothing. On the fifth step below was a round dent in thehar
d wood. That was all, and it seemed little enough, except that Iwas positive the marks had not been there the day before.

  It bore out my theory of the sound, which had been for all the worldlike the bumping of a metallic object down a flight of steps. The foursteps had been skipped. I reasoned that an iron bar, for instance,would do something of the sort,--strike two or three steps, end down,then turn over, jumping a few stairs, and landing with a thud.

  Iron bars, however, do not fall down-stairs in the middle of the nightalone. Coupled with the figure on the veranda the agency by which itclimbed might be assumed. But--and here was the thing that puzzled memost--the doors were all fastened that morning, the windows unmolested,and the particular door from the card-room to the veranda had acombination lock of which I held the key, and which had not beentampered with.

  I fixed on an attempt at burglary, as the most natural explanation--anattempt frustrated by the falling of the object, whatever it was, thathad roused me. Two things I could not understand: how the intruder hadescaped with everything locked, and why he had left the small silver,which, in the absence of a butler, had remained down-stairs over night.

  Under pretext of learning more about the place, Thomas Johnson led methrough the house and the cellars, without result. Everything was ingood order and repair; money had been spent lavishly on constructionand plumbing. The house was full of conveniences, and I had no reasonto repent my bargain, save the fact that, in the nature of things,night must come again. And other nights must follow--and we were a longway from a police-station.

  In the afternoon a hack came up from Casanova, with a fresh relay ofservants. The driver took them with a flourish to the servants'entrance, and drove around to the front of the house, where I wasawaiting him.

  "Two dollars," he said in reply to my question. "I don't charge fullrates, because, bringin' 'em up all summer as I do, it pays to make aspecial price. When they got off the train, I sez, sez I, 'There'sanother bunch for Sunnyside, cook, parlor maid and all.' Yes'm--sixsummers, and a new lot never less than once a month. They won't standfor the country and the lonesomeness, I reckon."

  But with the presence of the "bunch" of servants my courage revived,and late in the afternoon came a message from Gertrude that she andHalsey would arrive that night at about eleven o'clock, coming in thecar from Richfield. Things were looking up; and when Beulah, my cat, amost intelligent animal, found some early catnip on a bank near thehouse and rolled in it in a feline ecstasy, I decided that getting backto nature was the thing to do.

  While I was dressing for dinner, Liddy rapped at the door. She washardly herself yet, but privately I think she was worrying about thebroken mirror and its augury, more than anything else. When she came inshe was holding something in her hand, and she laid it on thedressing-table carefully.

  "I found it in the linen hamper," she said. "It must be Mr. Halsey's,but it seems queer how it got there."

  It was the half of a link cuff-button of unique design, and I looked atit carefully.

  "Where was it? In the bottom of the hamper?" I asked.

  "On the very top," she replied. "It's a mercy it didn't fall out onthe way."

  When Liddy had gone I examined the fragment attentively. I had neverseen it before, and I was certain it was not Halsey's. It was ofItalian workmanship, and consisted of a mother-of-pearl foundation,encrusted with tiny seed-pearls, strung on horsehair to hold them. Inthe center was a small ruby. The trinket was odd enough, but notintrinsically of great value. Its interest for me lay in this: Liddyhad found it lying in the top of the hamper which had blocked theeast-wing stairs.

  That afternoon the Armstrongs' housekeeper, a youngish good-lookingwoman, applied for Mrs. Ralston's place, and I was glad enough to takeher. She looked as though she might be equal to a dozen of Liddy, withher snapping black eyes and heavy jaw. Her name was Anne Watson, and Idined that evening for the first time in three days.