The Circular Staircase

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER VII

  A SPRAINED ANKLE

  I was panic-stricken. As I ran along the corridor I was confident thatthe mysterious intruder and probable murderer had been found, and thathe lay dead or dying at the foot of the chute. I got down thestaircase somehow, and through the kitchen to the basement stairs. Mr.Jamieson had been before me, and the door stood open. Liddy wasstanding in the middle of the kitchen, holding a frying-pan by thehandle as a weapon.

  "Don't go down there," she yelled, when she saw me moving toward thebasement stairs. "Don't you do it, Miss Rachel. That Jamieson's downthere now. There's only trouble comes of hunting ghosts; they lead youinto bottomless pits and things like that. Oh, Miss Rachel, don't--" asI tried to get past her.

  She was interrupted by Mr. Jamieson's reappearance. He ran up thestairs two at a time, and his face was flushed and furious.

  "The whole place is locked," he said angrily. "Where's the laundry keykept?"

  "It's kept in the door," Liddy snapped. "That whole end of the cellaris kept locked, so nobody can get at the clothes, and then the key'sleft in the door? so that unless a thief was as blind as--as somedetectives, he could walk right in."

  "Liddy," I said sharply, "come down with us and turn on all the lights."

  She offered her resignation, as usual, on the spot, but I took her bythe arm, and she came along finally. She switched on all the lightsand pointed to a door just ahead.

  "That's the door," she said sulkily. "The key's in it."

  But the key was not in it. Mr. Jamieson shook it, but it was a heavydoor, well locked. And then he stooped and began punching around thekeyhole with the end of a lead-pencil. When he stood up his face wasexultant.

  "It's locked on the inside," he said in a low tone. "There is somebodyin there."

  "Lord have mercy!" gasped Liddy, and turned to run.

  "Liddy," I called, "go through the house at once and see who ismissing, or if any one is. We'll have to clear this thing at once.Mr. Jamieson, if you will watch here I will go to the lodge and findWarner. Thomas would be of no use. Together you may be able to forcethe door."

  "A good idea," he assented. "But--there are windows, of course, andthere is nothing to prevent whoever is in there from getting out thatway."

  "Then lock the door at the top of the basement stairs," I suggested,"and patrol the house from the outside."

  We agreed to this, and I had a feeling that the mystery of Sunnysidewas about to be solved. I ran down the steps and along the drive.Just at the corner I ran full tilt into somebody who seemed to be asmuch alarmed as I was. It was not until I had recoiled a step or twothat I recognized Gertrude, and she me.

  "Good gracious, Aunt Ray," she exclaimed, "what is the matter?"

  "There's somebody locked in the laundry," I panted. "Thatis--unless--you didn't see any one crossing the lawn or skulking aroundthe house, did you?"

  "I think we have mystery on the brain," Gertrude said wearily. "No, Ihaven't seen any one, except old Thomas, who looked for all the worldas if he had been ransacking the pantry. What have you locked in thelaundry?"

  "I can't wait to explain," I replied. "I must get Warner from thelodge. If you came out for air, you'd better put on your overshoes."And then I noticed that Gertrude was limping--not much, butsufficiently to make her progress very slow, and seemingly painful.

  "You have hurt yourself," I said sharply.

  "I fell over the carriage block," she explained. "I thought perhaps Imight see Halsey coming home. He--he ought to be here."

  I hurried on down the drive. The lodge was some distance from thehouse, in a grove of trees where the drive met the county road. Therewere two white stone pillars to mark the entrance, but the iron gates,once closed and tended by the lodge-keeper, now stood permanently open.The day of the motor-car had come; no one had time for closed gates andlodge-keepers. The lodge at Sunnyside was merely a sort ofsupplementary servants' quarters: it was as convenient in itsappointments as the big house and infinitely more cozy.

  As I went down the drive, my thoughts were busy. Who would it be thatMr. Jamieson had trapped in the cellar? Would we find a body or someone badly injured? Scarcely either. Whoever had fallen had been ableto lock the laundry door on the inside. If the fugitive had come fromoutside the house, how did he get in? If it was some member of thehousehold, who could it have been? And then--a feeling of horror almostoverwhelmed me. Gertrude! Gertrude and her injured ankle! Gertrudefound limping slowly up the drive when I had thought she was in bed!

  I tried to put the thought away, but it would not go. If Gertrude hadbeen on the circular staircase that night, why had she fled from Mr.Jamieson? The idea, puzzling as it was, seemed borne out by thiscircumstance. Whoever had taken refuge at the head of the stairs couldscarcely have been familiar with the house, or with the location of thechute. The mystery seemed to deepen constantly. What possibleconnection could there be between Halsey and Gertrude, and the murderof Arnold Armstrong? And yet, every way I turned I seemed to findsomething that pointed to such a connection.

  At the foot of the drive the road described a long, sloping,horseshoe-shaped curve around the lodge. There were lights there,streaming cheerfully out on to the trees, and from an upper room camewavering shadows, as if some one with a lamp was moving around. I hadcome almost silently in my evening slippers, and I had my secondcollision of the evening on the road just above the house. I ran fullinto a man in a long coat, who was standing in the shadow beside thedrive, with his back to me, watching the lighted windows.

  "What the hell!" he ejaculated furiously, and turned around. When hesaw me, however, he did not wait for any retort on my part. He fadedaway--this is not slang; he did--he absolutely disappeared in the duskwithout my getting more than a glimpse of his face. I had a vagueimpression of unfamiliar features and of a sort of cap with a visor.Then he was gone.

  I went to the lodge and rapped. It required two or three poundings tobring Thomas to the door, and he opened it only an inch or so.

  "Where is Warner?" I asked.

  "I--I think he's in bed, ma'm."

  "Get him up," I said, "and for goodness' sake open the door, Thomas.I'll wait for Warner."

  "It's kind o' close in here, ma'm," he said, obeying gingerly, anddisclosing a cool and comfortable looking interior. "Perhaps you'dkeer to set on the porch an' rest yo'self."

  It was so evident that Thomas did not want me inside that I went in.

  "Tell Warner he is needed in a hurry," I repeated, and turned into thelittle sitting-room. I could hear Thomas going up the stairs, couldhear him rouse Warner, and the steps of the chauffeur as he hurriedlydressed. But my attention was busy with the room below.

  On the center-table, open, was a sealskin traveling bag. It was filledwith gold-topped bottles and brushes, and it breathed opulence, luxury,femininity from every inch of surface. How did it get there? I wasstill asking myself the question when Warner came running down thestairs and into the room. He was completely but somewhat incongruouslydressed, and his open, boyish face looked abashed. He was a countryboy, absolutely frank and reliable, of fair education andintelligence--one of the small army of American youths who turn anatural aptitude for mechanics into the special field of theautomobile, and earn good salaries in a congenial occupation.

  "What is it, Miss Innes?" he asked anxiously.

  "There is some one locked in the laundry," I replied. "Mr. Jamiesonwants you to help him break the lock. Warner, whose bag is this?"

  He was in the doorway by this time, and he pretended not to hear.

  "Warner," I called, "come back here. Whose bag is this?"

  He stopped then, but he did not turn around.

  "It's--it belongs to Thomas," he said, and fled up the drive.

  To Thomas! A London bag with mirrors and cosmetic jars of which Thomascould not even have guessed the use! However, I put the bag in theback of my mind, which was fast becoming stored with anomalous andapparen
tly irreconcilable facts, and followed Warner to the house.

  Liddy had come back to the kitchen: the door to the basement stairs wasdouble-barred, and had a table pushed against it; and beside her on thetable was most of the kitchen paraphernalia.

  "Did you see if there was any one missing in the house?" I asked,ignoring the array of sauce-pans rolling-pins, and the poker of therange.

  "Rosie is missing," Liddy said with unction. She had objected toRosie, the parlor maid, from the start. "Mrs. Watson went into herroom, and found she had gone without her hat. People that trustthemselves a dozen miles from the city, in strange houses, withservants they don't know, needn't be surprised if they wake up somemorning and find their throats cut."

  After which carefully veiled sarcasm Liddy relapsed into gloom. Warnercame in then with a handful of small tools, and Mr. Jamieson went withhim to the basement. Oddly enough, I was not alarmed. With all myheart I wished for Halsey, but I was not frightened. At the door hewas to force, Warner put down his tools and looked at it. Then heturned the handle. Without the slightest difficulty the door opened,revealing the blackness of the drying-room beyond!

  Mr. Jamieson gave an exclamation of disgust.

  "Gone!" he said. "Confound such careless work! I might have known."

  It was true enough. We got the lights on finally and looked allthrough the three rooms that constituted this wing of the basement.Everything was quiet and empty. An explanation of how the fugitive hadescaped injury was found in a heaped-up basket of clothes under thechute. The basket had been overturned, but that was all. Mr. Jamiesonexamined the windows: one was unlocked, and offered an easy escape.The window or the door? Which way had the fugitive escaped? The doorseemed most probable, and I hoped it had been so. I could not haveborne, just then, to think that it was my poor Gertrude we had beenhounding through the darkness, and yet--I had met Gertrude not far fromthat very window.

  I went up-stairs at last, tired and depressed. Mrs. Watson and Liddywere making tea in the kitchen. In certain walks of life the tea-potis the refuge in times of stress, trouble or sickness: they give tea tothe dying and they put it in the baby's nursing bottle. Mrs. Watsonwas fixing a tray to be sent in to me, and when I asked her about Rosieshe confirmed her absence.

  "She's not here," she said; "but I would not think much of that, MissInnes. Rosie is a pretty young girl, and perhaps she has a sweetheart.It will be a good thing if she has. The maids stay much better whenthey have something like that to hold them here."

  Gertrude had gone back to her room, and while I was drinking my cup ofhot tea, Mr. Jamieson came in.

  "We might take up the conversation where we left off an hour and a halfago," he said. "But before we go on, I want to say this: The personwho escaped from the laundry was a woman with a foot of moderate sizeand well arched. She wore nothing but a stocking on her right foot,and, in spite of the unlocked door, she escaped by the window."

  And again I thought of Gertrude's sprained ankle. Was it the right orthe left?