When he came in Mr. Grant looked so old and frail that Hodge automatically offered him a chair. Mr. Buffingham, without being asked, dropped into one, too.
The lieutenant opened fire at once.
“Walk in your sleep, Mr. Grant?”
“I? No, certainly not.”
“Sure?”
“I am certain.”
“Mr. Buffingham here has had one of those sudden memory attacks always affecting people in this case. Didn’t bring it up before out of not wanting to get anyone in trouble. Says he heard someone walking Monday night, the night Mrs. Dacres was attacked. Someone who started at your door, walked down the hall and down the stairs.”
Mr. Grant turned his mild proud eyes on Mr. Buffingham; he appeared to ponder his answer before making it.
“That is perfectly true,” he said finally, quietly.
The lieutenant made a startled exclamation; whatever he’d expected, it couldn’t have been that quiet admission. I was dumbfounded, and I could see Hodge was the same. Mr. Grant talked on.
“I did walk down the hall. I walked along the upstairs hall, down the stairs, and then on down the cellar stairs. I did not say so the other day because it was entirely irrelevant. Nothing came of it.”
“You could have let me judge that,” barked the lieutenant. “Mind letting me in on why you took this stroll?”
“Not at all. It was something I heard.”
“So you heard things, too!”
“Well, I thought I did. Something rather peculiar. You’ll be amused, I know. I couldn’t imagine why anyone should be doing so at that time of night.” He spread his hands. “It was an extremely odd sound for that time of night. A brushing sound. The only thing I could liken it to is—sweeping.”
“Oh, so you heard sweeping.” The lieutenant’s voice bristled with withheld meanings.
“Impossible, of course, but that is the best description I can give.”
“You heard sweeping, and you didn’t say one word Tuesday, you didn’t say a word Wednesday!”
Mr. Grant blinked. “But it couldn’t have been important.”
“Couldn’t have been—couldn’t have been! When we know the person who attacked Mrs. Dacres swept the back cellar stairs that night!”
Surprise flitted across Mr. Grant’s face, and, I thought, mild gratification.
“Someone was sweeping? Then I was right!”
“Right? I’ll say you were right! Why, I ask again, didn’t you say so before?”
“This is the first time I have heard of back stairs being swept,” Mr. Grant pointed out, still mildly.
He had Lieutenant Strom. We all—I mean the lieutenant, Hodge, and I—opened our mouths to speak—and then shut them.
What, after all, was the use? There was every likelihood that Mr. Grant hadn’t heard. Certainly it hadn’t been brought out at his questioning yesterday, and Mr. Grant wasn’t given to gossiping with the others.
Mr. Buffingham just looked blank. He hadn’t looked surprised when the lieutenant had outlined the noises there must have been in the house Monday night—had he known before? And Mr. Waller. My mind sped back to the afternoon. He hadn’t shown surprise at the lieutenant’s reconstruction of the attack, either!
“I’ll be fried for an oyster,” the lieutenant said helplessly, while he got himself together. Step by step, then, he explained his theory of my attacker’s probable movements.
Mr. Grant nodded. “That fits in very nicely. I heard, as I say, this brushing sound. My interest, in view of the strange happenings in the house lately, was piqued. I would like to know who—but no matter. So I investigated. I walked to the cellar, very quietly, but could see nothing out of the way in the furnace room or in Mrs. Garr’s kitchen beyond, although I did not turn on the light there. As soon as I had left my room there was absolute stillness in the house. I then returned upstairs, thinking I must have been mistaken.”
“You didn’t think it your duty to warn the other inhabitants—Mrs. Dacres, for example?”
“Why, no. I—I thought her adequately protected. Chairs under doorknobs are excellent—”
“How do you know about the chairs under the doorknobs?”
“Why, I heard it.”
“You heard it?”
“Yes. I have neglected to state, perhaps, that it was while I was in the cellar that Mrs. Dacres and one other person—Mr. Kistler, of course—returned to the house. I heard the good-byes in the hall, and her report that everything was—er—okay was the expression, I believe. I heard the doors being locked, chairs being dragged and hooked under the knobs. Not concealed actions at all.”
He blinked at me, and I blushed for the rum, but he smiled kindly.
“Very evident. Very evident. Very normal, too. Naturally, I did not wish to be seen. I waited a few minutes before returning upstairs.”
He looked at the lieutenant’s suspicion as if he did not sense it. The lieutenant stared from Mr. Grant to Hodge, and then to me and around again, trying to form some judgment on this bewildering evidence.
“Sounds screwy to me,” he said; then strongly, as if he took his cue from himself, “Yes, and it is screwy, too! You’ll have to do a lot more explaining to get out of this, Grant. So you were around at three o’clock, eh?”
“I had no idea of the time.”
“But that’s when these folks came in!” He turned to Buffingham. “That doesn’t square with your story that you’d just come in.”
“I only said what it seemed like to me,” Mr. Buffingham replied thoughtfully. “I might have been reading a little longer. I might of laid awake a little longer. I wouldn’t know.”
“Nobody knows anything in this case,” the lieutenant snorted. “Grant, you didn’t go into that cellar because you heard a noise. You made that noise. That was you, sweeping those cellar stairs.”
I began to wonder if the lieutenant hadn’t left out a few details in his story of the murdering hitchhiker. I began to guess he had accused the first three hitchhikers, too, and struck pay dirt in the fourth. Certainly, his methods in this case had depended strongly on accusation of everyone who came under suspicion.
He didn’t strike pay dirt in Mr. Grant. He threatened, he cajoled, he made the same accusations over and over; Mr. Grant was firm. Mr.
