“He brought a friend with him to stay over Sunday, Mr. Bailey.”
“Mr. John Bailey, the cashier of the Traders’ Bank I believe.” And I knew that some one at the Greenwood Club had told. “When did they leave?”
“Very early—I don’t know at just what time.”
Mr. Jamieson turned suddenly and looked at me.
“Please try to be more explicit,” he said. “You say your nephew and Mr. Bailey were in the house last night, and yet you and your niece, with some women-servants, found the body. Where was your nephew?”
I was entirely desperate by that time.
“I do not know,” I cried, “but be sure of this: Halsey knows nothing of this thing, and no amount of circumstantial evidence can make an innocent man guilty.”
“Sit down,” he said, pushing forward a chair. “There are some things I have to tell you, and, in return, please tell me all you know. Believe me, things always come out. In the first place, Mr. Armstrong was shot from above. The bullet was fired at close range, entered below the shoulder and came out, after passing through the heart, well down the back. In other words, I believe the murderer stood on the stairs and fired down. In the second place, I found on the edge of the billiard-table a charred cigar which had burned itself partly out, and a cigarette which had consumed itself to the cork tip. Neither one had been more than lighted, then put down and forgotten. Have you any idea what it was that made your nephew and Mr. Bailey leave their cigars and their game, take out the automobile without calling the chauffeur, and all this at—let me see certainly before three o’clock in the morning?”
“I don’t know,” I said; “but depend on it, Mr. Jamieson, Halsey will be back himself to explain everything.”
“I sincerely hope so,” he said. “Miss Innes, has it occurred to you that Mr. Bailey might know something of this?”
Gertrude had come downstairs and just as he spoke she came in. I saw her stop suddenly, as if she had been struck.
“He does not,” she said in a tone that was not her own. “Mr. Bailey and my brother know nothing of this. The murder was committed at three. They left the house at a quarter before three.”
“How do you know that?” Mr. Jamieson asked oddly. “Do you KNOW at what time they left?”
“I do,” Gertrude answered firmly. “At a quarter before three my brother and Mr. Bailey left the house, by the main entrance. I— was—there.”
“Gertrude,” I said excitedly, “you are dreaming! Why, at a quarter to three—”
“Listen,” she said. “At half-past two the downstairs telephone rang. I had not gone to sleep, and I heard it. Then I heard Halsey answer it, and in a few minutes he came upstairs and knocked at my door. We—we talked for a minute, then I put on my dressing-gown and slippers, and went downstairs with him. Mr. Bailey was in the billiard- room. We—we all talked together for perhaps ten minutes. Then it was decided that—that they should both go away—”
“Can’t you be more explicit?” Mr. Jamieson asked. “WHY did they go away?”
“I am only telling you what happened, not why it happened,” she said evenly. “Halsey went for the car, and instead of bringing it to the house and rousing people, he went by the lower road from the stable. Mr. Bailey was to meet him at the foot of the lawn. Mr. Bailey left—”
“Which way?” Mr. Jamieson asked sharply.
“By the main entrance. He left—it was a quarter to three. I know exactly.”
“The clock in the hall is stopped, Miss Innes,” said Jamieson. Nothing seemed to escape him.
“He looked at his watch,” she replied, and I could see Mr. Jamieson’s snap, as if he had made a discovery. As for myself, during the whole recital I had been plunged into the deepest amazement.
“Will you pardon me for a personal question?” The detective was a youngish man, and I thought he was somewhat embarrassed. “What are your—your relations with Mr. Bailey?”
Gertrude hesitated. Then she came over and put her hand lovingly in mine.
“I am engaged to marry him,” she said simply.
I had grown so accustomed to surprises that I could only gasp again, and as for Gertrude, the hand that lay in mine was burning with fever.
“And—after that,” Mr. Jamieson went on, “you went directly to bed?”
Gertrude hesitated.
“No,” she said finally. “I—I am not nervous, and after I had extinguished the light, I remembered something I had left in the billiard-room, and I felt my way back there through the darkness.”
“Will you tell me what it was you had forgotten?”
“I can not tell you,” she said slowly. “I—I did not leave the billiard-room at once—”
“Why?” The detective’s tone was imperative. “This is very important, Miss Innes.”
“I was crying,” Gertrude said in a low tone. “When the French clock in the drawing-room struck three, I got up, and then—I heard a step on the east porch, just outside the card-room. Some one with a key was working with the latch, and I thought, of course, of Halsey. When we took the house he called that his entrance, and he had carried a key for it ever since. The door opened and I was about to ask what he had forgotten, when there was a flash and a report. Some heavy body dropped, and, half crazed with terror and shock, I ran through the drawing-room and got upstairs—I scarcely remember how.”
She dropped into a chair, and I thought Mr. Jamieson must have finished. But he was not through.
“You certainly clear your brother and Mr. Bailey admirably,” he said. “The testimony is invaluable, especially in
