"It is impossible," I broke in. "Mr. Jamieson, do you know what your
words imply? Do you know that you are practically accusing Gertrude
Innes of admitting that man?"
"Not quite that," he said, with his friendly smile. "In fact, Miss
Innes, I am quite certain she did not. But as long as I learn only
parts of the truth, from both you and her, what can I do? I know you
picked up something in the flower bed: you refuse to tell me what it
was. I know Miss Gertrude went back to the billiard-room to get
something, she refuses to say what. You suspect what happened to the
cuff-link, but you won't tell me. So far, all I am sure of is this: I
do not believe Arnold Armstrong was the midnight visitor who so alarmed
you by dropping--shall we say, a golf-stick? And I believe that when
he did come he was admitted by some one in the house. Who knows--it
may have been--Liddy!"
I stirred my tea angrily.
"I have always heard," I said dryly, "that undertakers' assistants are
jovial young men. A man's sense of humor seems to be in inverse
proportion to the gravity of his profession."
"A man's sense of humor is a barbarous and a cruel thing, Miss Innes,"
he admitted. "It is to the feminine as the hug of a bear is to the
scratch of--well;--anything with claws. Is that you, Thomas? Come in."
Thomas Johnson stood in the doorway. He looked alarmed and
apprehensive, and suddenly I remembered the sealskin dressing-bag in
the lodge. Thomas came just inside the door and stood with his head
drooping, his eyes, under their shaggy gray brows, fixed on Mr.
Jamieson.
"Thomas," said the detective, not unkindly, "I sent for you to tell us
what you told Sam Bohannon at the club, the day before Mr. Arnold was
found here, dead. Let me see. You came here Friday night to see Miss
Innes, didn't you? And came to work here Saturday morning?"
For some unexplained reason Thomas looked relieved.
"Yas, sah," he said. "You see it were like this: When Mistah
Armstrong and the fam'ly went away, Mis' Watson an' me, we was lef' in
charge till the place was rented. Mis' Watson, she've bin here a good
while, an' she warn' skeery. So she slep' in the house. I'd bin
havin' tokens--I tol' Mis' Innes some of 'em--an' I slep' in the lodge.
Then one day Mis' Watson, she came to me an' she sez, sez she, 'Thomas,
you'll hev to sleep up in the big house. I'm too nervous to do it any
more.' But I jes' reckon to myself that ef it's too skeery fer her,
it's too skeery fer me. We had it, then, sho' nuff, and it ended up
with Mis' Watson stayin' in the lodge nights an' me lookin' fer work at
de club."