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.
“When Doctor Walker went away to California with the Armstrong family, there was talk in the town that when he came back he would be married to Miss Armstrong, and we all expected it. First thing I knew, I got a letter from him, in the west. He seemed to be excited, and he said Miss Armstrong had taken a sudden notion to go home and he sent me some money. I was to watch for her, to see if she went to Sunnyside, and wherever she was, not to lose sight of her until he got home. I traced her to the lodge, and I guess I scared you on the drive one night, Miss Innes.”
“And Rosie!” I ejaculated.
Riggs grinned sheepishly.
“I only wanted to make sure Miss Louise was there. Rosie started to run, and I tried to stop her and tell her some sort of a story to account for my being there. But she wouldn’t wait.”
“And the broken china—in the basket?”
“Well, broken china’s death to rubber tires,” he said. “I hadn’t any complaint against you people here, and the Dragon Fly was a good car.”
So Rosie’s highwayman was explained.
“Well, I telegraphed the doctor where Miss Louise was and I kept an eye on her. Just a day or so before they came home with the body, I got another letter, telling me to watch for a woman who had been pitted with smallpox. Her name was Carrington, and the doctor made things pretty strong. If I found any such woman loafing around, I was not to lose sight of her for a minute until the doctor got back.
“Well, I would have had my hands full, but the other woman didn’t show up for a good while, and when she did the doctor was home.”
“Riggs,” I asked suddenly, “did you get into this house a day or two after I took it, at night?”
“I did not, Miss Innes. I have never been in the house before. Well, the Carrington woman didn’t show up until the night Mr. Halsey disappeared. She came to the office late, and the doctor was out. She waited around, walking the floor and working herself into a passion. When the doctor didn’t come back, she was in an awful way. She wanted me to hunt him, and when he didn’t appear, she called him names; said he couldn’t fool her. There was murder being done, and she would see him swing for it.
“She struck me as being an ugly customer, and when she left, about eleven o’clock, and went across to the Armstrong place, I was not far behind her. She walked all around the house first, looking up at the windows. Then she rang the bell, and the minute the door was opened she was through it, and into the hall.”
“How long did she stay?”
“That’s the queer part of it,” Riggs said eagerly. “She didn’t come out that night at all. I went to bed at daylight, and that was the last I heard of her until the next day, when I saw her on a truck at the station, covered with a sheet. She’d been struck by the express and you would hardly have known her—dead, of course. I think she stayed all night in the Armstrong house, and the agent said she was crossing the track to take the up-train to town when the express struck her.”
“Another circle!” I exclaimed. “Then we are just where we started.”
“Not so bad as that, Miss Innes,” Riggs said eagerly. “Nina Carrington came from the town in California where Mr. Armstrong died. Why was the doctor so afraid of her? The Carrington woman knew something. I lived with Doctor Walker seven years, and I know him well. There are few things he is afraid of. I think he killed Mr. Armstrong out in the west somewhere, that’s what I think. What else he did I don’t know—but he dismissed me and pretty nearly throttled me—for telling Mr. Jamieson here about Mr. Innes’ having been at his office the night he disappeared, and about my hearing them quarreling.”
“What was it Warner overheard the woman say to Mr. Innes, in the library?” the detective asked me.
“She said `I knew there was something wrong from the start. A man isn’t well one day and dead the next without some reason.’”
How perfectly it all seemed to fit!
CHAPTER XXX
WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN
It was on Wednesday Riggs told us the story of his connection with some incidents that had been previously unexplained. Halsey had been gone since the Friday night before, and with the passage of each day I felt that his chances were lessening. I knew well enough that he might be carried thousands of miles in the box-car, locked in, perhaps, without water or food. I had read of cases where bodies had been found locked in cars on isolated sidings in the west, and my spirits went down with every hour.
His recovery was destined to be almost as sudden as his disappearance, and was due directly to the tramp Alex had brought to Sunnyside. It seems the man was grateful for his release, and when he learned some thing of Halsey’s whereabouts from another member of his fraternity—for it is a fraternity—he was prompt in letting us know.
On Wednesday evening Mr. Jamieson, who had been down at the Armstrong house trying to see Louise—and failing—was met near the gate at Sunnyside by an individual precisely as repulsive and unkempt as the one Alex had captured. The man knew the detective, and he gave him a piece of dirty paper, on which was scrawled the words —“He’s at City Hospital, Johnsville.” The tramp who brought the paper pretended to know nothing, except this: the paper had been passed along from a “hobo” in Johnsville, who seemed to know the information would be valuable to us.
