“I have no patient,” I replied, startled.

“I will put it in a different way, then.  How is Miss Armstrong?”

“She—­she is doing very well,” I stammered.

“Good,” cheerfully.  “And our ghost?  Is it laid?”

“Mr. Jamieson,” I said suddenly, “I wish you would do one thing:  I wish you would come to Sunnyside and spend a few days there.  The ghost is not laid.  I want you to spend one night at least watching the circular staircase.  The murder of Arnold Armstrong was a beginning, not an end.”

He looked serious.

“Perhaps I can do it,” he said.  “I have been doing something else, but—­well, I will come out to-night.”

We were very silent during the trip back to Sunnyside.  I watched Gertrude closely and somewhat sadly.  To me there was one glaring flaw in her story, and it seemed to stand out for every one to see.  Arnold Armstrong had had no key, and yet she said she had locked the east door.  He must have been admitted from within the house; over and over I repeated it to myself.

That night, as gently as I could, I told Louise the story of her stepbrother’s death.  She sat in her big, pillow-filled chair, and heard me through without interruption.  It was clear that she was shocked beyond words:  if I had hoped to learn anything from her expression, I had failed.  She was as much in the dark as we were.

CHAPTER XVIII

A HOLE IN THE WALL

My taking the detective out to Sunnyside raised an unexpected storm of protest from Gertrude and Halsey.  I was not prepared for it, and I scarcely knew how to account for it.  To me Mr. Jamieson was far less formidable under my eyes where I knew what he was doing, than he was of in the city, twisting circumstances and motives to suit himself and learning what he wished to know, about events at Sunnyside, in some occult way.  I was glad enough to have him there, when excitements began to come thick and fast.

A new element was about to enter into affairs:  Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, would find Doctor Walker back in his green and white house in the village, and Louise’s attitude to him in the immediate future would signify Halsey’s happiness or wretchedness, as it might turn out.  Then, too, the return of her mother would mean, of course, that she would have to leave us, and I had become greatly attached to her.

From the day Mr. Jamieson came to Sunnyside there was a subtle change in Gertrude’s manner to me.  It was elusive, difficult to analyze, but it was there.  She was no longer frank with me, although I think her affection never wavered.  At the time I laid the change to the fact that I had forbidden all communication with John Bailey, and had refused to acknowledge any engagement between the two.  Gertrude spent much of her time wandering through the grounds, or taking long cross-country walks.  Halsey played golf at the Country Club day after day, and after Louise left, as she did the following week, Mr. Jamieson and I were much together.  He played a fair game of cribbage, but he cheated at solitaire.