The Circular Staircase - Page 105/154

"Good afternoon, Doctor," I said formally. "I shall not keep you from

your patient. I wish merely to ask you a question."

"Won't you sit down?"

"It will not be necessary. Doctor, has any one come to you, either

early this morning or to-day, to have you treat a bullet wound?"

"Nothing so startling has happened to me," he said. "A bullet wound!

Things must be lively at Sunnyside."

"I didn't say it was at Sunnyside. But as it happens, it was. If any

such case comes to you, will it be too much trouble for you to let me

know?"

"I shall be only too happy," he said. "I understand you have had a

fire up there, too. A fire and shooting in one night is rather lively

for a quiet place like that."

"It is as quiet as a boiler-shop," I replied, as I turned to go.

"And you are still going to stay?"

"Until I am burned out," I responded. And then on my way down the

steps, I turned around suddenly.

"Doctor," I asked at a venture, "have you ever heard of a child named

Lucien Wallace?"

Clever as he was, his face changed and stiffened. He was on his guard

again in a moment.

"Lucien Wallace?" he repeated. "No, I think not. There are plenty of

Wallaces around, but I don't know any Lucien."

I was as certain as possible that he did. People do not lie readily to

me, and this man lied beyond a doubt. But there was nothing to be

gained now; his defenses were up, and I left, half irritated and wholly

baffled.

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."