I had dinner served in the breakfast-room. Somehow the huge dining-room
depressed me, and Thomas, cheerful enough all day, allowed his spirits to go
down with the sun. He had a habit of watching the corners of the room, left
shadowy by the candles on the table, and altogether it was not a festive meal.
Dinner over I went into the living-room. I had three hours before the children
could possibly arrive, and I got out my knitting. I had brought along two dozen
pairs of slipper soles in assorted sizes—I always send knitted slippers
to the Old Ladies’ Home at Christmas—and now I sorted over the
wools with a grim determination not to think about the night before. But my
mind was not on my work: at the end of a half-hour I found I had put a row of
blue scallops on Eliza Klinefelter’s lavender slippers, and I put them
away.
I got out the cuff-link and went with it to the pantry. Thomas was wiping
silver and the air was heavy with tobacco smoke. I sniffed and looked around,
but there was no pipe to be seen.
“Thomas,” I said, “you have been smoking.”
“No, ma’m.” He was injured innocence itself.
“It’s on my coat, ma’m. Over at the club the
gentlemen—”
But Thomas did not finish. The pantry was suddenly filled with the odor of
singeing cloth. Thomas gave a clutch at his coat, whirled to the sink, filled a
tumbler with water and poured it into his right pocket with the celerity of
practice.
“Thomas,” I said, when he was sheepishly mopping the floor,
“smoking is a filthy and injurious habit. If you must smoke, you must;
but don’t stick a lighted pipe in your pocket again. Your skin’s
your own: you can blister it if you like. But this house is not mine, and I
don’t want a conflagration. Did you ever see this cuff-link
before?”
No, he never had, he said, but he looked at it oddly.
“I picked it up in the hall,” I added indifferently. The old
man’s eyes were shrewd under his bushy eyebrows.
“There’s strange goin’s-on here, Mis’ Innes,” he
said, shaking his head. “Somethin’s goin’ to happen, sure.
You ain’t took notice that the big clock in the hall is stopped, I
reckon?”
“Nonsense,” I said. “Clocks have to stop, don’t they,
if they’re not wound?”
“It’s wound up, all right, and it stopped at three o’clock
last night,” he answered solemnly. “More’n that, that there
clock ain’t stopped for fifteen years, not since Mr. Armstrong’s
first wife died. And that ain’t all,—no ma’m. Last
three nights I slep’ in this place, after the electrics went out I had a
token. My oil lamp was full of oil, but it kep’ goin’ out, do what
I would. Minute I shet my eyes, out that lamp’d go. There ain’t no
surer token of death. The Bible sez, Let yer light shine! When a hand
you can’t see puts yer light out, it means death, sure.”
The old man’s voice was full of conviction. In spite of myself I had a
chilly sensation in the small of my back, and I left him mumbling over his
dishes. Later on I heard a crash from the pantry, and Liddy reported that
Beulah, who is coal black, had darted in front of Thomas just as he picked up a
tray of dishes; that the bad omen had been too much for him, and he had dropped
the tray.
The chug of the automobile as it climbed the hill was the most welcome sound I
had heard for a long time, and with Gertrude and Halsey actually before me, my
troubles seemed over for good. Gertrude stood smiling in the hall, with her hat
quite over one ear, and her hair in every direction under her pink veil.
Gertrude is a very pretty girl, no matter how her hat is, and I was not
surprised when Halsey presented a good-looking young man, who bowed at me and
looked at Trude—that is the ridiculous nickname Gertrude brought from
school.
“I have brought a guest, Aunt Ray,” Halsey said. “I want you
to adopt him into your affections and your Saturday-to-Monday list. Let me
present John Bailey, only you must call him Jack. In twelve hours he’ll
be calling you ‘Aunt’: I know him.”
We shook hands, and I got a chance to look at Mr. Bailey; he was a tall fellow,
perhaps thirty, and he wore a small mustache. I remember wondering why: he
seemed to have a good mouth and when he smiled his teeth were above the
average. One never knows why certain men cling to a messy upper lip that must
get into things, any more than one understands some women building up their
hair on wire atrocities. Otherwise, he was very good to look at, stalwart and
tanned, with the direct gaze that I like. I am particular about Mr. Bailey,
because he was a prominent figure in what happened later.
Gertrude was tired with the trip and went up to bed very soon. I made up my
mind to tell them nothing; until the next day, and then to make as light of our
excitement as possible. After all, what had I to tell? An inquisitive face
peering in at a window; a crash in the night; a scratch or two on the stairs,
and half a cuff-button! As for Thomas and his forebodings, it was always my
belief that a negro is one part thief, one part pigment, and the rest
superstition.
It was Saturday night. The two men went to the billiard-room, and I could hear
them talking as I went up-stairs. It seemed that Halsey had stopped at the
Greenwood Club for gasolene and found Jack Bailey there, with the Sunday golf
crowd. Mr. Bailey had not been hard to persuade—probably Gertrude knew
why—and they had carried him off triumphantly. I roused Liddy to get them
something to eat—Thomas was beyond reach in the lodge—and paid no
attention to her evident terror of the kitchen regions. Then I went to bed. The
men were still in the billiard-room when I finally dozed off, and the last
thing I remember was the howl of a dog in front of the house. It wailed a
crescendo of woe that trailed off hopefully, only to break out afresh from a
new point of the compass.
At three o’clock in the morning I was roused by a revolver shot. The
sound seemed to come from just outside my door. For a moment I could not move.
Then—I heard Gertrude stirring in her room, and the next moment she had
thrown open the connecting door.
“O Aunt Ray! Aunt Ray!” she cried hysterically. “Some one has
been killed, killed!”
“Thieves,” I said shortly. “Thank goodness, there are some
men in the house to-night.” I was getting into my slippers and a
bath-robe, and Gertrude with shaking hands was lighting a lamp. Then we opened
the door into the hall, where, crowded on the upper landing of the stairs, the
maids, white-faced and trembling, were peering down, headed by Liddy. I was
greeted by a series of low screams and questions, and I tried to quiet them.
Gertrude had dropped on a chair and sat there limp and shivering.
I went at once across the hall to Halsey’s room and knocked; then I
pushed the door open. It was empty; the bed had not been occupied!
“He must be in Mr. Bailey’s room,” I said excitedly, and
followed by Liddy, we went there. Like Halsey’s, it had not been
occupied! Gertrude was on her feet now, but she leaned against the door for
support.
“They have been killed!” she gasped. Then she caught me by the arm
and dragged me toward the stairs. “They may only be hurt, and we must
find them,” she said, her eyes dilated with excitement.
I don’t remember how we got down the stairs: I do remember expecting
every moment to be killed. The cook was at the telephone up-stairs, calling the
Greenwood Club, and Liddy was behind me, afraid to come and not daring to stay
behind. We found the living-room and the drawing-room undisturbed. Somehow I
felt that whatever we found would be in the card-room or on the staircase, and
nothing but the fear that Halsey was in danger drove me on; with every step my
knees seemed to give way under me. Gertrude was ahead and in the card-room she
stopped, holding her candle high. Then she pointed silently to the doorway into
the hall beyond. Huddled there on the floor, face down, with his arms extended,
was a man.
Gertrude ran forward with a gasping sob. “Jack,” she cried,
“oh, Jack!”
Liddy had run, screaming, and the two of us were there alone. It was Gertrude
who turned him over, finally, until we could see his white face, and then she
drew a deep breath and dropped limply to her knees. It was the body of a man, a
gentleman, in a dinner coat and white waistcoat, stained now with
blood—the body of a man I had never seen before.
