The Circular Staircase eBook

It was very much of a disappointment.  I had expected a secret room, at the very least, and I think even Mr. Jamieson had fancied he might at last have a clue to the mystery.  There was evidently nothing more to be discovered:  Liddy reported that everything was serene among the servants, and that none of them had been disturbed by the noise.  The maddening thing, however, was that the nightly visitor had evidently more than one way of gaining access to the house, and we made arrangements to redouble our vigilance as to windows and doors that night.

Halsey was inclined to pooh-pooh the whole affair.  He said a break in the plaster might have occurred months ago and gone unnoticed, and that the dust had probably been stirred up the day before.  After all, we had to let it go at that, but we put in an uncomfortable Sunday.  Gertrude went to church, and Halsey took a long walk in the morning.  Louise was able to sit up, and she allowed Halsey and Liddy to assist her down-stairs late in the afternoon.  The east veranda was shady, green with vines and palms, cheerful with cushions and lounging chairs.  We put Louise in a steamer chair, and she sat there passively enough, her hands clasped in her lap.

We were very silent.  Halsey sat on the rail with a pipe, openly watching Louise, as she looked broodingly across the valley to the hills.  There was something baffling in the girl’s eyes; and gradually Halsey’s boyish features lost their glow at seeing her about again, and settled into grim lines.  He was like his father just then.

We sat until late afternoon, Halsey growing more and more moody.  Shortly before six, he got up and went into the house, and in a few minutes he came out and called me to the telephone.  It was Anna Whitcomb, in town, and she kept me for twenty minutes, telling me the children had had the measles, and how Madame Sweeny had botched her new gown.

When I finished, Liddy was behind me, her mouth a thin line.

“I wish you would try to look cheerful, Liddy,” I groaned, “your face would sour milk.”  But Liddy seldom replied to my gibes.  She folded her lips a little tighter.

“He called her up,” she said oracularly, “he called her up, and asked her to keep you at the telephone, so he could talk to Miss Louise.  A thankless child is Sharper than A serpent’s tooth.”

“Nonsense!” I said bruskly.  “I might have known enough to leave them.  It’s a long time since you and I were in love, Liddy, and—­we forget.”

Liddy sniffed.

“No man ever made a fool of me,” she replied virtuously.

“Well, something did,” I retorted.

CHAPTER XIX

CONCERNING THOMAS

“Mr. Jamieson,” I said, when we found ourselves alone after dinner that night, “the inquest yesterday seemed to me the merest recapitulation of things that were already known.  It developed nothing new beyond the story of Doctor Stewart’s, and that was volunteered.”