The Circular Staircase - Page 39/154

"Tell me everything, won't you, Halsey?" I begged. "Tell me where you

went that night, or rather morning, and why you went as you did. This

has been a terrible forty-eight hours for all of us."

He stood staring at me, and I could see the horror of the situation

dawning in his face.

"I can't tell you where I went, Aunt Ray," he said, after a moment.

"As to why, you will learn that soon enough. But Gertrude knows that

Jack and I left the house before this thing--this horrible

murder--occurred."

"Mr. Jamieson does not believe me," Gertrude said drearily. "Halsey, if

the worst comes, if they should arrest you, you must--tell."

"I shall tell nothing," he said with a new sternness in his voice.

"Aunt Ray, it was necessary for Jack and me to leave that night. I can

not tell you why--just yet. As to where we went, if I have to depend

on that as an alibi, I shall not tell. The whole thing is an

absurdity, a trumped-up charge that can not possibly be serious."

"Has Mr. Bailey gone back to the city," I demanded, "or to the club?"

"Neither," defiantly; "at the present moment I do not know where he is."

"Halsey," I asked gravely, leaning forward, "have you the slightest

suspicion who killed Arnold Armstrong? The police think he was

admitted from within, and that he was shot down from above, by someone

on the circular staircase."

"I know nothing of it," he maintained; but I fancied I caught a sudden

glance at Gertrude, a flash of something that died as it came.

As quietly, as calmly as I could, I went over the whole story, from the

night Liddy and I had been alone up to the strange experience of Rosie

and her pursuer. The basket still stood on the table, a mute witness

to this last mystifying occurrence.

"There is something else," I said hesitatingly, at the last. "Halsey, I

have never told this even to Gertrude, but the morning after the crime,

I found, in a tulip bed, a revolver. It--it was yours, Halsey."

For an appreciable moment Halsey stared at me. Then he turned to

Gertrude.

"My revolver, Trude!" he exclaimed. "Why, Jack took my revolver with

him, didn't he?"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake don't say that," I implored. "The detective

thinks possibly Jack Bailey came back, and--and the thing happened

then."

"He didn't come back," Halsey said sternly. "Gertrude, when you

brought down a revolver that night for Jack to take with him, what one

did you bring? Mine?"

Gertrude was defiant now.

"No. Yours was loaded, and I was afraid of what Jack might do. I gave

him one I have had for a year or two. It was empty."