“There’s some things you can’t hold with hand cuffs, she was muttering thickly.
CHAPTER XXIX A SCRAP OF PAPER
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.”
“I wish him joy of Eliza,” I said tartly. “Did he ask for Halsey?”
“Yes. I told him that we were on the track last night, and that it was only a question of time. He said he was glad, although he didn’t appear to be, but he said not to be too sanguine.”
“Do you know what I believe?” I asked. “I believe, as firmly as I believe anything, that Doctor Walker knows something about Halsey, and that he could put his finger on him, if he wanted to.”
There were several things that day that bewildered me. About three o’clock Mr. Jamieson telephoned from the Casanova station and Warner went down to meet him. I got up and dressed hastily, and the detective was shown up to my sitting-room.
“No news?” I asked, as he entered. He tried to look encouraging, without success. I noticed that he looked tired and dusty, and, although he was ordinarily impeccable in his appearance, it was clear that he was at least two days from a razor.
“It won’t be long now, Miss Innes,” he said. “I have come out here on a peculiar errand, which I will tell you about later. First, I want to ask some questions. Did any one come out here yesterday to repair the telephone, and examine the wires on the roof?”