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.