Arnold Armstrong and his father rested side by side in the Casanova churchyard, and at the Zion African Church, on the hill, a new mound marked the last resting-place of poor Thomas.
Louise was with her mother in town, and, beyond a polite note of thanks to me, we had heard nothing from her. Doctor Walker had taken up his practice again, and we saw him now and then flying past along the road, always at top speed. The murder of Arnold Armstrong was still unavenged, and I remained firm in the position I had taken—to stay at Sunnyside until the thing was at least partly cleared.
And yet, for all its quiet, it was on Wednesday night that perhaps the boldest attempt was made to enter the house. On Thursday afternoon the laundress sent word she would like to speak to me, and I saw her in my private sitting-room, a small room beyond the dressing-room.
Mary Anne was embarrassed. She had rolled down her sleeves and tied a white apron around her waist, and she stood making folds in it with fingers that were red and shiny from her soap-suds.
“Well, Mary,” I said encouragingly, “what’s the matter? Don’t dare to tell me the soap is out.”
“No, ma’m, Miss Innes.” She had a nervous habit of looking first at my one eye and then at the other, her own optics shifting ceaselessly, right eye, left eye, right eye, until I found myself doing the same thing. “No, ma’m. I was askin’ did you want the ladder left up the clothes chute?”
“The what?” I screeched, and was sorry the next minute. Seeing her suspicions were verified, Mary Anne had gone white, and stood with her eyes shifting more wildly than ever.
“There’s a ladder up the clothes chute, Miss Innes,” she said. “It’s up that tight I can’t move it, and I didn’t like to ask for help until I spoke to you.”
It was useless to dissemble; Mary Anne knew now as well as I did that the ladder had no business to be there. I did the best I could, however. I put her on the defensive at once.
“Then you didn’t lock the laundry last night?”
“I locked it tight, and put the key in the kitchen on its nail.”
“Very well, then you forgot a window.”
Mary Anne hesitated.
“Yes’m,” she said at last. “I thought I locked them all, but there was one open this morning.”
I went out of the room and down the hall, followed by Mary Anne. The door into the clothes chute was securely bolted, and when I opened it I saw the evidence of the woman’s story. A pruning-ladder had been brought from where it had lain against the stable and now stood upright in the clothes shaft, its end resting against the wall between the first and second floors.
I turned to Mary.
“This is due to your carelessness,” I said. “If we had all been murdered in our beds it would have been your fault.” She shivered. “Now, not a word of this through the house, and send Alex to me.”
The effect on Alex was to make him apoplectic with rage, and with it all I fancied there was an element of satisfaction. As I look back, so many things are plain to me that I wonder I could not see at the time. It is all known now, and yet the whole thing was so remarkable that perhaps my stupidity was excusable.
Alex leaned down the chute and examined the ladder carefully.
“It is caught,” he said with a grim smile. “The fools, to have left a warning like that! The only trouble is, Miss Innes, they won’t be apt to come back for a while.”
“I shouldn’t regard that in the light of a calamity,” I replied.
Until late that evening Halsey and Alex worked at the chute. They forced down the ladder at last, and put a new bolt on the door. As for myself, I sat and wondered if I had a deadly enemy, intent on my destruction.
I was growing more and more nervous. Liddy had given up all pretense at bravery, and slept regularly in my dressing-room on the couch, with a prayer-book and a game knife from the kitchen under her pillow, thus preparing for both the natural and the supernatural. That was the way things stood that Thursday night, when I myself took a hand in the struggle.
CHAPTER XXIII
WHILE THE STABLES BURNED
About nine o’clock that night Liddy came into the living-room and reported that one of the housemaids declared she had seen two men slip around the corner of the stable. Gertrude had been sitting staring in front of her, jumping at every sound. Now she turned on Liddy pettishly.
“I declare, Liddy,” she said, “you are a bundle of nerves. What if Eliza did see some men around the stable? It may have been Warner and Alex.”
“Warner is in the kitchen, miss,” Liddy said with dignity. “And if you had come through what I have, you would be a bundle of nerves, too. Miss Rachel, I’d be thankful if you’d give me my month’s wages to-morrow. I’ll be going to my sister’s.”
“Very well,” I said, to her evident amazement. “I will make out the check. Warner can take you down to the noon train.”
Liddy’s face was really funny.
“You’ll have a nice time at your sister’s,” I went on. “Five children, hasn’t she?”
“That’s it,” Liddy said, suddenly bursting into tears. “Send me away, after all these years, and your new shawl only half done, and nobody knowin’ how to fix the water for your bath.”
“It’s time I learned to prepare my own bath.” I was knitting complacently. But Gertrude got up and put her arms around Liddy’s shaking shoulders.
“You are two big babies,” she said soothingly. “Neither one of you could get along for an hour without the other. So stop quarreling and be good. Liddy, go right up and lay out Aunty’s night things. She is going to bed
