“Yes,” I said promptly; “but it was not the telephone. He said the wiring might have caused the fire at the stable. I went up with him myself, but he only looked around.”
Mr. Jamieson smiled.
“Good for you!” he applauded. “Don’t allow any one in the house that you don’t trust, and don’t trust anybody. All are not electricians who wear rubber gloves.”
He refused to explain further, but he got a slip of paper out of his pocketbook and opened it carefully.
“Listen,” he said. “You heard this before and scoffed. In the light of recent developments I want you to read it again. You are a clever woman, Miss Innes. Just as surely as I sit here, there is something in this house that is wanted very anxiously by a number of people. The lines are closing up, Miss Innes.”
The paper was the one he had found among Arnold Armstrong’s effects, and I read it again:
“—-by altering the plans for—-rooms, may be possible. The best way, in my opinion, would be to—-the plan for—-in one of the—-rooms—-chimney.”
“I think I understand,” I said slowly. “Some one is searching for the secret room, and the invaders–”
“And the holes in the plaster–”
“Have been in the progress of his–”
“Or her–investigations.”
“Her?” I asked.
“Miss Innes,” the detective said, getting up, “I believe that somewhere in the walls of this house is hidden some of the money, at least, from the Traders’ Bank. I believe, just as surely, that young Walker brought home from California the knowledge of something of the sort and, failing in his effort to reinstall Mrs. Armstrong and her daughter here, he, or a confederate, has tried to break into the house. On two occasions I think he succeeded.”
“On three, at least,” I corrected. And then I told him about the night before. “I have been thinking hard,” I concluded, “and I do not believe the man at the head of the circular staircase was Doctor Walker. I don’t think he could have got in, and the voice was not his.”
Mr. Jamieson got up and paced the floor, his hands behind him.
“There is something else that puzzles me,” he said, stepping before me. “Who and what is the woman Nina Carrington? If it was she who came here as Mattie Bliss, what did she tell Halsey that sent him racing to Doctor Walker’s, and then to Miss Armstrong? If we could find that woman we would have the whole thing.”
“Mr. Jamieson, did you ever think that Paul Armstrong might not have died a natural death?”
“That is the thing we are going to try to find out,” he replied. And then Gertrude came in, announcing a man below to see Mr. Jamieson.
“I want you present at this interview, Miss Innes,” he said. “May Riggs come up? He has left Doctor Walker and he has something he wants to tell us.”
Riggs came into the room diffidently, but Mr. Jamieson put him at his ease. He kept a careful eye on me, however, and slid into a chair by the door when he was asked to sit down.
“Now, Riggs,” began Mr. Jamieson kindly. “You are to say what you have to say before this lady.”
“You promised you’d keep it quiet, Mr. Jamieson.” Riggs plainly did not trust me. There was nothing friendly in the glance he turned on me.
“Yes, yes. You will be protected. But, first of all, did you bring what you promised?”
Riggs produced a roll of papers from under his coat, and handed them over. Mr. Jamieson examined them with lively satisfaction, and passed them to me. “The blue-prints of Sunnyside,” he said. “What did I tell you? Now, Riggs, we are ready.”
“I’d never have come to you, Mr. Jamieson,” he began, “if it hadn’t been for Miss Armstrong. When Mr. Innes was spirited away, like, and Miss Louise got sick because of it, I thought things had gone far enough. I’d done some things for the doctor before that wouldn’t just bear looking into, but I turned a bit squeamish.”
“Did you help with that?” I asked, leaning forward.
“No, ma’m. I didn’t even know of it until the next day, when it came out in the Casanova Weekly Ledger. But I know who did it, all right. I’d better start at the beginning.