What with the excitement of the discovery, the walk home under the
stars in wet shoes and draggled skirts, and getting up-stairs and
undressed without rousing Liddy, I was completely used up. What to do
with my boots was the greatest puzzle of all, there being no place in
the house safe from Liddy, until I decided to slip upstairs the next
morning and drop them into the hole the "ghost" had made in the
trunk-room wall.
I went asleep as soon as I reached this decision, and in my dreams I
lived over again the events of the night. Again I saw the group around
the silent figure on the grass, and again, as had happened at the
grave, I heard Alex's voice, tense and triumphant: "Then we've got them," he said. Only, in my dreams, he said it over
and over until he seemed to shriek it in my ears.
I wakened early, in spite of my fatigue, and lay there thinking. Who
was Alex? I no longer believed that he was a gardener. Who was the
man whose body we had resurrected? And where was Paul Armstrong?
Probably living safely in some extraditionless country on the fortune
he had stolen. Did Louise and her mother know of the shameful and
wicked deception? What had Thomas known, and Mrs. Watson? Who was
Nina Carrington?
This last question, it seemed to me, was answered. In some way the
woman had learned of the substitution, and had tried to use her
knowledge for blackmail. Nina Carrington's own story died with her,
but, however it happened, it was clear that she had carried her
knowledge to Halsey the afternoon Gertrude and I were looking for clues
to the man I had shot on the east veranda. Halsey had been half crazed
by what he heard; it was evident that Louise was marrying Doctor Walker
to keep the shameful secret, for her mother's sake. Halsey, always
reckless, had gone at once to Doctor Walker and denounced him. There
had been a scene, and he left on his way to the station to meet and
notify Mr. Jamieson of what he had learned. The doctor was active
mentally and physically. Accompanied perhaps by Riggs, who had shown
himself not overscrupulous until he quarreled with his employer, he had
gone across to the railroad embankment, and, by jumping in front of the
car, had caused Halsey to swerve. The rest of the story we knew.
That was my reconstructed theory of that afternoon and evening: it was
almost correct--not quite.
There was a telegram that morning from Gertrude.
"Halsey conscious and improving. Probably home in day or so.
GERTRUDE."
With Halsey found and improving in health, and with at last something
to work on, I began that day, Thursday, with fresh courage. As Mr.
Jamieson had said, the lines were closing up. That I was to be caught
and almost finished in the closing was happily unknown to us all.