Our reception was entirely different at Doctor Stewart’s. Taken into the bosom of the family at once, Flinders tied outside and nibbling the grass at the roadside, Gertrude and I drank some home-made elderberry wine and told briefly of the fire. Of the more serious part of the night’s experience, of course, we said nothing. But when at last we had left the family on the porch and the good doctor was untying our steed, I asked him the same question I had put to Doctor Walker.
“Shot!” he said. “Bless my soul, no. Why, what have you been doing up at the big house, Miss Innes?”
“Some one tried to enter the house during the fire, and was shot and slightly injured,” I said hastily. “Please don’t mention it; we wish to make as little of it as possible.”
There was one other possibility, and we tried that. At Casanova station I saw the station master, and asked him if any trains left Casanova between one o’clock and daylight. There was none until six A.M. The next question required more diplomacy.
“Did you notice on the six-o’clock train any person—any man—who limped a little?” I asked. “Please try to remember: we are trying to trace a man who was seen loitering around Sunnyside last night before the fire.”
He was all attention in a moment.
“I was up there myself at the fire,” he said volubly. “I’m a member of the volunteer company. First big fire we’ve had since the summer house burned over to the club golf links. My wife was sayin’ the other day, `Dave, you might as well ‘a’ saved the money in that there helmet and shirt.’ And here last night they came in handy. Rang that bell so hard I hadn’t time scarcely to get ‘em on.”
“And—did you see a man who limped?” Gertrude put in, as he stopped for breath.
“Not at the train, ma’m,” he said. “No such person got on here to-day. But I’ll tell you where I did see a man that limped. I didn’t wait till the fire company left; there’s a fast freight goes through at four forty-five, and I had to get down to the station. I seen there wasn’t much more to do anyhow at the fire—we’d got the flames under control”—Gertrude looked at me and smiled—“so I started down the hill. There was folks here and there goin’ home, and along by the path to the Country Club I seen two men. One was a short fellow. He was sitting on a big rock, his back to me, and he had something white in his hand, as if he was tying up his foot. After I’d gone on a piece I looked back, and he was hobbling on and—excuse me, miss—he was swearing something sickening.”
“Did they go toward the club?” Gertrude asked suddenly, leaning forward.
“No, miss. I think they came into the village. I didn’t get a look at their faces, but I know every chick and child in the place, and everybody knows me. When they didn’t shout at me—in my uniform, you know—I took it they were strangers.”
So all we had for our afternoon’s work was this: some one had been shot by the bullet that went through the door; he had not left the village, and he had not called in a physician. Also, Doctor Walker knew who Lucien Wallace was, and his very denial made me confident that, in that one direction at least, we were on the right track.
The thought that the detective would be there that night was the most cheering thing of all, and I think even Gertrude was glad of it. Driving home that afternoon, I saw her in the clear sunlight for the first time in several days, and I was startled to see how ill she looked. She was thin and colorless, and all her bright animation was gone.
“Gertrude,” I said, “I have been a very selfish old woman. You are going to leave this miserable house tonight. Annie Morton is going to Scotland next week, and you shall go right with her.”
To my surprise, she flushed painfully.
“I don’t want to go, Aunt Ray,” she said. “Don’t make me leave now.”
“You are losing your health and your good looks,” I said decidedly. “You should have a change.”
“I shan’t stir a foot.” She was equally decided. Then, more lightly: “Why, you and Liddy need me to arbitrate between you every day in the week.”
Perhaps I was growing suspicious of every one, but it seemed to me that Gertrude’s gaiety was forced and artificial. I watched her covertly during the rest of the drive, and I did not like the two spots of crimson in her pale cheeks. But I said nothing more about sending her to Scotland: I knew she would not go.
CHAPTER XXV
A VISIT FROM LOUISE
That day was destined to be an eventful one, for when I entered the house and found Eliza ensconced in the upper hall on a chair, with Mary Anne doing her best to stifle her with household ammonia, and Liddy rubbing her wrists—whatever good that is supposed to do—I knew that the ghost had been walking again, and this time in daylight.
Eliza was in a frenzy of fear. She clutched at my sleeve when I went close to her, and refused to let go until she had told her story. Coming just after the fire, the household was demoralized, and it was no surprise to me to find Alex and the under-gardener struggling downstairs with a heavy trunk between them.
“I didn’t want to do it, Miss Innes,” Alex said. “But she was so excited, I was afraid she would do as she said—drag it down herself, and scratch the staircase.”
I was trying to get my bonnet off and to keep the maids quiet at the same time. “Now, Eliza, when you have washed your face and stopped bawling,” I said, “come into my sitting-room and tell me what has happened.”
Liddy put away my things without speaking. The very set of her shoulders expressed disapproval.
“Well,” I said, when the silence became uncomfortable, “things seem to be warming up.”
Silence from Liddy, and a long sigh.
“If Eliza goes, I don’t know where to look for another cook.” More silence.
“Rosie is probably a good cook.” Sniff.
“Liddy,” I said at last, “don’t dare to deny that you are having the time of your life. You positively gloat in this excitement. You never looked better. It’s my opinion all this running around, and getting jolted out of a rut, has stirred up that torpid liver of yours.”
“It’s not myself I’m thinking about,” she said, goaded into speech. “Maybe my liver was torpid, and maybe it wasn’t; but I know this: I’ve got some feelings left, and to see you standing at the foot of that staircase shootin’ through the door—I’ll never be the same woman again.”
“Well, I’m glad of that—anything for a change,” I said. And in came Eliza, flanked by Rosie and Mary Anne.
Her story, broken with sobs and corrections from the other two, was this: At two o’clock (two-fifteen, Rosie insisted) she had gone upstairs to get a picture from her room to show Mary Anne. (A picture of a LADY, Mary Anne interposed.) She went up the servants’ staircase and along the corridor to her room, which lay between the trunk-room and the unfinished ball-room. She heard a sound as she went down the corridor, like some one moving furniture, but she was not nervous. She thought it might be men examining the house after the fire the night before, but she looked in the trunk-room and saw nobody.
She went into her room quietly. The noise had ceased, and everything was quiet. Then she sat down on the side of her bed, and, feeling faint—she was subject to spells—(“I told you that when I came, didn’t I, Rosie?” “Yes’m, indeed she did!”)—she put her head down on her pillow and—
“Took a nap. All right!” I said. “Go on.”
“When I came to, Miss Innes, sure as I’m sittin’ here, I thought I’d die. Somethin’ hit me on the face, and I set up, sudden. And then I seen the plaster drop, droppin’ from a little hole in the wall. And the first thing I knew, an iron bar that long” (fully two yards by her measure) “shot through that hole and tumbled on the bed. If I’d been still sleeping” (“Fainting,” corrected Rosie) “I’d ‘a’ been hit on the head and killed!”