The Circular Staircase | Page 6

was a huge living-room. Beyond that was the drawing-room, and in the
end, the billiard-room. Off the billiard-room, in the extreme right wing,
was a den, or card-room, with a small hall opening on the east veranda,
and from there went up a narrow circular staircase. Halsey had pointed
it out with delight.
"Just look, Aunt Rachel," he said with a flourish. "The architect that put
up this joint was wise to a few things. Arnold Armstrong and his
friends could sit here and play cards all night and stumble up to bed in
the early morning, without having the family send in a police call."
Liddy and I got as far as the card-room and turned on all the lights. I
tried the small entry door there, which opened on the veranda, and
examined the windows. Everything was secure, and Liddy, a little less
nervous now, had just pointed out to me the disgracefully dusty
condition of the hard-wood floor, when suddenly the lights went out.

We waited a moment; I think Liddy was stunned with fright, or she
would have screamed. And then I clutched her by the arm and pointed
to one of the windows opening on the porch. The sudden change threw
the window into relief, an oblong of grayish light, and showed us a
figure standing close, peering in. As I looked it darted across the
veranda and out of sight in the darkness.
CHAPTER II
A LINK CUFF-BUTTON
Liddy's knees seemed to give away under her. Without a sound she
sank down, leaving me staring at the window in petrified amazement.
Liddy began to moan under her breath, and in my excitement I reached
down and shook her.
"Stop it," I whispered. "It's only a woman--maybe a maid of the
Armstrongs'. Get up and help me find the door." She groaned again.
"Very well," I said, "then I'll have to leave you here. I'm going."
She moved at that, and, holding to my sleeve, we felt our way, with
numerous collisions, to the billiard-room, and from there to the
drawing-room. The lights came on then, and, with the long French
windows unshuttered, I had a creepy feeling that each one sheltered a
peering face. In fact, in the light of what happened afterward, I am
pretty certain we were under surveillance during the entire ghostly
evening. We hurried over the rest of the locking-up and got upstairs as
quickly as we could. I left the lights all on, and our footsteps echoed
cavernously. Liddy had a stiff neck the next morning, from looking
back over her shoulder, and she refused to go to bed.
"Let me stay in your dressing-room, Miss Rachel," she begged. "If you
don't, I'll sit in the hall outside the door. I'm not going to be murdered
with my eyes shut."
"If you're going to be murdered," I retorted, "it won't make any
difference whether they are shut or open. But you may stay in the
dressing-room, if you will lie on the couch: when you sleep in a chair

you snore."
She was too far gone to be indignant, but after a while she came to the
door and looked in to where I was composing myself for sleep with
Drummond's Spiritual Life.
"That wasn't a woman, Miss Rachel," she said, with her shoes in her
hand. "It was a man in a long coat."
"What woman was a man?" I discouraged her without looking up, and
she went back to the couch.
It was eleven o'clock when I finally prepared for bed. In spite of my
assumption of indifference, I locked the door into the hall, and finding
the transom did not catch, I put a chair cautiously before the door--it
was not necessary to rouse Liddy-- and climbing up put on the ledge of
the transom a small dressing- mirror, so that any movement of the
frame would send it crashing down. Then, secure in my precautions, I
went to bed.
I did not go to sleep at once. Liddy disturbed me just as I was growing
drowsy, by coming in and peering under the bed. She was afraid to
speak, however, because of her previous snubbing, and went back,
stopping in the doorway to sigh dismally.
Somewhere down-stairs a clock with a chime sang away the hours--
eleven-thirty, forty-five, twelve. And then the lights went out to stay.
The Casanova Electric Company shuts up shop and goes home to bed
at midnight: when one has a party, I believe it is customary to fee the
company, which will drink hot coffee and keep awake a couple of
hours longer. But the lights were gone for good that night. Liddy had
gone to sleep, as I knew she would. She was a very unreliable person:
always awake and ready