The Circular Staircase | Page 7

to talk when she wasn't wanted and dozing off
to sleep when she was. I called her once or twice, the only result being
an explosive snore that threatened her very windpipe--then I got up and
lighted a bedroom candle.
My bedroom and dressing room were above the big living-room on the

first floor. On the second floor a long corridor ran the length of the
house, with rooms opening from both sides. In the wings were small
corridors crossing the main one--the plan was simplicity itself. And just
as I got back into bed, I heard a sound from the east wing, apparently,
that made me stop, frozen, with one bedroom slipper half off, and listen.
It was a rattling metallic sound, and it reverberated along the empty
halls like the crash of doom. It was for all the world as if something
heavy, perhaps a piece of steel, had rolled clattering and jangling down
the hard-wood stairs leading to the card-room.
In the silence that followed Liddy stirred and snored again. I was
exasperated: first she kept me awake by silly alarms, then when she
was needed she slept like Joe Jefferson, or Rip,--they are always the
same to me. I went in and aroused her, and I give her credit for being
wide awake the minute I spoke.
"Get up," I said, "if you don't want to be murdered in your bed."
"Where? How?" she yelled vociferously, and jumped up.
"There's somebody in the house," I said. "Get up. We'll have to get to
the telephone."
"Not out in the hall!" she gasped; "Oh, Miss Rachel, not out in the
hall!" trying to hold me back. But I am a large woman and Liddy is
small. We got to the door, somehow, and Liddy held a brass andiron,
which it was all she could do to lift, let alone brain anybody with. I
listened, and, hearing nothing, opened the door a little and peered into
the hall. It was a black void, full of terrible suggestion, and my candle
only emphasized the gloom. Liddy squealed and drew me back again,
and as the door slammed, the mirror I had put on the transom came
down and hit her on the head. That completed our demoralization. It
was some time before I could persuade her she had not been attacked
from behind by a burglar, and when she found the mirror smashed on
the floor she wasn't much better.
"There's going to be a death!" she wailed. "Oh, Miss Rachel, there's
going to be a death!"

"There will be," I said grimly, "if you don't keep quiet, Liddy Allen."
And so we sat there until morning, wondering if the candle would last
until dawn, and arranging what trains we could take back to town. If we
had only stuck to that decision and gone back before it was too late!
The sun came finally, and from my window I watched the trees along
the drive take shadowy form, gradually lose their ghostlike appearance,
become gray and then green. The Greenwood Club showed itself a dab
of white against the hill across the valley, and an early robin or two
hopped around in the dew. Not until the milk-boy and the sun came,
about the same time, did I dare to open the door into the hall and look
around. Everything was as we had left it. Trunks were heaped here and
there, ready for the trunk-room, and through an end window of stained
glass came a streak of red and yellow daylight that was eminently
cheerful. The milk-boy was pounding somewhere below, and the day
had begun.
Thomas Johnson came ambling up the drive about half-past six, and we
could hear him clattering around on the lower floor, opening shutters. I
had to take Liddy to her room up-stairs, however,--she was quite sure
she would find something uncanny. In fact, when she did not, having
now the courage of daylight, she was actually disappointed.
Well, we did not go back to town that day.
The discovery of a small picture fallen from the wall of the
drawing-room was quite sufficient to satisfy Liddy that the alarm had
been a false one, but I was anything but convinced. Allowing for my
nerves and the fact that small noises magnify themselves at night, there
was still no possibility that the picture had made the series of sounds I
heard. To prove it, however, I dropped it again. It fell with a single
muffled crash of its wooden frame, and incidentally ruined itself
beyond repair. I justified myself by reflecting that if the Armstrongs
chose to leave pictures in unsafe positions, and to rent a house with a
family ghost, the destruction of property was their responsibility, not
mine.

I warned Liddy not to