If Thomas had suspected, he had never told.
When she found the hand Arnold had injured was growing
worse, she gave the address of Lucien at Richfield
to the old man, and almost a hundred dollars.
The money was for Lucien’s board until she
recovered. She had sent for me to ask me if I
would try to interest the Armstrongs in the child.
When she found herself growing worse, she had written
to Mrs. Armstrong, telling her nothing but that Arnold’s
legitimate child was at Richfield, and imploring her
to recognize him. She was dying: the boy
was an Armstrong, and entitled to his father’s
share of the estate. The papers were in her
trunk at Sunnyside, with letters from the dead man
that would prove what she said. She was going;
she would not be judged by earthly laws; and somewhere
else perhaps Lucy would plead for her. It was
she who had crept down the circular staircase, drawn
by a magnet, that night Mr. Jamieson had heard some
one there. Pursued, she had fled madly, anywhere—through
the first door she came to. She had fallen down
the clothes chute, and been saved by the basket beneath.
I could have cried with relief; then it had not been
Gertrude, after all!
That was the story. Sad and tragic though it
was, the very telling of it seemed to relieve the
dying woman. She did not know that Thomas was
dead, and I did not tell her. I promised to
look after little Lucien, and sat with her until the
intervals of consciousness grew shorter and finally
ceased altogether. She died that night.
CHAPTER XXXIII
AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS
As I drove rapidly up to the house from Casanova Station
in the hack, I saw the detective Burns loitering across
the street from the Walker place. So Jamieson
was putting the screws on—lightly now,
but ready to give them a twist or two, I felt certain,
very soon.
The house was quiet. Two steps of the circular
staircase had been pried off, without result, and
beyond a second message from Gertrude, that Halsey
insisted on coming home and they would arrive that
night, there was nothing new. Mr. Jamieson, having
failed to locate the secret room, had gone to the village.
I learned afterwards that he called at Doctor Walker’s,
under pretense of an attack of acute indigestion,
and before he left, had inquired about the evening
trains to the city. He said he had wasted a
lot of time on the case, and a good bit of the mystery
was in my imagination! The doctor was under
the impression that the house was guarded day and night.
Well, give a place a reputation like that, and you
don’t need a guard at all,—thus Jamieson.
And sure enough, late in the afternoon, the two private
detectives, accompanied by Mr. Jamieson, walked down
the main street of Casanova and took a city-bound train.
That they got off at the next station and walked back
again to Sunnyside at dusk, was not known at the time.
Personally, I knew nothing of either move; I had
other things to absorb me at that time.
