The Circular Staircase eBook

Mary Roberts Rinehart
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 266 pages of information about The Circular Staircase.

The Circular Staircase eBook

Mary Roberts Rinehart
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 266 pages of information about The Circular Staircase.

But I had only located the hidden room.  I was not in it, and no amount of pressing on the carving of the wooden mantels, no search of the floors for loose boards, none of the customary methods availed at all.  That there was a means of entrance, and probably a simple one, I could be certain.  But what?  What would I find if I did get in?  Was the detective right, and were the bonds and money from the Traders’ Bank there?  Or was our whole theory wrong?  Would not Paul Armstrong have taken his booty with him?  If he had not, and if Doctor Walker was in the secret, he would have known how to enter the chimney room.  Then—­who had dug the other hole in the false partition?

CHAPTER XXXII

ANNE WATSON’S STORY

Liddy discovered the fresh break in the trunk-room wall while we were at luncheon, and ran shrieking down the stairs.  She maintained that, as she entered, unseen hands had been digging at the plaster; that they had stopped when she went in, and she had felt a gust of cold damp air.  In support of her story she carried in my wet and muddy boots, that I had unluckily forgotten to hide, and held them out to the detective and myself.

“What did I tell you?” she said dramatically.  “Look at ’em.  They’re yours, Miss Rachel—­and covered with mud and soaked to the tops.  I tell you, you can scoff all you like; something has been wearing your shoes.  As sure as you sit there, there’s the smell of the graveyard on them.  How do we know they weren’t tramping through the Casanova churchyard last night, and sitting on the graves!”

Mr. Jamieson almost choked to death.  “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were doing that very thing, Liddy,” he said, when he got his breath.  “They certainly look like it.”

I think the detective had a plan, on which he was working, and which was meant to be a coup.  But things went so fast there was no time to carry it into effect.  The first thing that occurred was a message from the Charity Hospital that Mrs. Watson was dying, and had asked for me.  I did not care much about going.  There is a sort of melancholy pleasure to be had out of a funeral, with its pomp and ceremony, but I shrank from a death-bed.  However, Liddy got out the black things and the crape veil I keep for such occasions, and I went.  I left Mr. Jamieson and the day detective going over every inch of the circular staircase, pounding, probing and measuring.  I was inwardly elated to think of the surprise I was going to give them that night; as it turned out, I did surprise them almost into spasms.

I drove from the train to the Charity Hospital, and was at once taken to a ward.  There, in a gray-walled room in a high iron bed, lay Mrs. Watson.  She was very weak, and she only opened her eyes and looked at me when I sat down beside her.  I was conscience-stricken.  We had been so engrossed that I had left this poor creature to die without even a word of sympathy.

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Project Gutenberg
The Circular Staircase from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.