The Circular Staircase - Page 4/154

On the following morning Liddy and Mrs. Ralston, my own housekeeper,

had a difference of opinion, and Mrs. Ralston left on the eleven train.

Just after luncheon, Burke, the butler, was taken unexpectedly with a

pain in his right side, much worse when I was within hearing distance,

and by afternoon he was started cityward. That night the cook's sister

had a baby--the cook, seeing indecision in my face, made it twins on

second thought--and, to be short, by noon the next day the household

staff was down to Liddy and myself. And this in a house with

twenty-two rooms and five baths!

Liddy wanted to go back to the city at once, but the milk-boy said that

Thomas Johnson, the Armstrongs' colored butler, was working as a waiter

at the Greenwood Club, and might come back. I have the usual scruples

about coercing people's servants away, but few of us have any

conscience regarding institutions or corporations--witness the way we

beat railroads and street-car companies when we can--so I called up the

club, and about eight o'clock Thomas Johnson came to see me. Poor

Thomas!

Well, it ended by my engaging Thomas on the spot, at outrageous wages,

and with permission to sleep in the gardener's lodge, empty since the

house was rented. The old man--he was white-haired and a little

stooped, but with an immense idea of his personal dignity--gave me his

reasons hesitatingly.

"I ain't sayin' nothin', Mis' Innes," he said, with his hand on the

door-knob, "but there's been goin's-on here this las' few months as

ain't natchal. 'Tain't one thing an' 'tain't another--it's jest a door

squealin' here, an' a winder closin' there, but when doors an' winders

gets to cuttin' up capers and there's nobody nigh 'em, it's time Thomas

Johnson sleeps somewhar's else."

Liddy, who seemed to be never more than ten feet away from me that

night, and was afraid of her shadow in that great barn of a place,

screamed a little, and turned a yellow-green. But I am not easily

alarmed.

It was entirely in vain; I represented to Thomas that we were alone,

and that he would have to stay in the house that night. He was politely

firm, but he would come over early the next morning, and if I gave him

a key, he would come in time to get some sort of breakfast. I stood on

the huge veranda and watched him shuffle along down the shadowy drive,

with mingled feelings--irritation at his cowardice and thankfulness at

getting him at all. I am not ashamed to say that I double-locked the

hall door when I went in.