The Circular Staircase - Page 127/154

For the first time in twenty years, I kept my bed that day. Liddy was

alarmed to the point of hysteria, and sent for Doctor Stewart just

after breakfast. Gertrude spent the morning with me, reading

something--I forget what. I was too busy with my thoughts to listen.

I had said nothing to the two detectives. If Mr. Jamieson had been

there, I should have told him everything, but I could not go to these

strange men and tell them my niece had been missing in the middle of

the night; that she had not gone to bed at all; that while I was

searching for her through the house, I had met a stranger who, when I

fainted, had carried me into a room and left me there, to get better or

not, as it might happen.

The whole situation was terrible: had the issues been less vital, it

would have been absurd. Here we were, guarded day and night by private

detectives, with an extra man to watch the grounds, and yet we might as

well have lived in a Japanese paper house, for all the protection we

had.

And there was something else: the man I had met in the darkness had

been even more startled than I, and about his voice, when he muttered

his muffled exclamation, there was something vaguely familiar. All

that morning, while Gertrude read aloud, and Liddy watched for the

doctor, I was puzzling over that voice, without result.

And there were other things, too. I wondered what Gertrude's absence

from her room had to do with it all, or if it had any connection. I

tried to think that she had heard the rapping noises before I did and

gone to investigate, but I'm afraid I was a moral coward that day. I

could not ask her.

Perhaps the diversion was good for me. It took my mind from Halsey,

and the story we had heard the night before. The day, however, was a

long vigil, with every ring of the telephone full of possibilities.

Doctor Walker came up, some time just after luncheon, and asked for me.

"Go down and see him," I instructed Gertrude. "Tell him I am out--for

mercy's sake don't say I'm sick. Find out what he wants, and from this

time on, instruct the servants that he is not to be admitted. I loathe

that man."

Gertrude came back very soon, her face rather flushed.

"He came to ask us to get out," she said, picking up her book with a

jerk. "He says Louise Armstrong wants to come here, now that she is

recovering."

"And what did you say?"

"I said we were very sorry we could not leave, but we would be

delighted to have Louise come up here with us. He looked daggers at

me. And he wanted to know if we would recommend Eliza as a cook. He

has brought a patient, a man, out from town, and is increasing his

establishment--that's the way he put it."