The Circular Staircase - Page 22/154

She dropped into a chair, and I thought Mr. Jamieson must have

finished. But he was not through.

"You certainly clear your brother and Mr. Bailey admirably," he said.

"The testimony is invaluable, especially in view of the fact that your

brother and Mr. Armstrong had, I believe, quarreled rather seriously

some time ago."

"Nonsense," I broke in. "Things are bad enough, Mr. Jamieson, without

inventing bad feeling where it doesn't exist. Gertrude, I don't think

Halsey knew the--the murdered man, did he?"

But Mr. Jamieson was sure of his ground.

"The quarrel, I believe," he persisted, "was about Mr. Armstrong's

conduct to you, Miss Gertrude. He had been paying you unwelcome

attentions."

And I had never seen the man!

When she nodded a "yes" I saw the tremendous possibilities involved.

If this detective could prove that Gertrude feared and disliked the

murdered man, and that Mr. Armstrong had been annoying and possibly

pursuing her with hateful attentions, all that, added to Gertrude's

confession of her presence in the billiard-room at the time of the

crime, looked strange, to say the least. The prominence of the family

assured a strenuous effort to find the murderer, and if we had nothing

worse to look forward to, we were sure of a distasteful publicity.

Mr. Jamieson shut his note-book with a snap, and thanked us.

"I have an idea," he said, apropos of nothing at all, "that at any rate

the ghost is laid here. Whatever the rappings have been--and the

colored man says they began when the family went west three months

ago--they are likely to stop now."

Which shows how much he knew about it. The ghost was not laid: with

the murder of Arnold Armstrong he, or it, only seemed to take on fresh

vigor.

Mr. Jamieson left then, and when Gertrude had gone up-stairs, as she

did at once, I sat and thought over what I had just heard. Her

engagement, once so engrossing a matter, paled now beside the

significance of her story. If Halsey and Jack Bailey had left before

the crime, how came Halsey's revolver in the tulip bed? What was the

mysterious cause of their sudden flight? What had Gertrude left in the

billiard-room? What was the significance of the cuff-link, and where

was it?