“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!
WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN
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.
