"We are going to exchange information," he said
"I am going to tell you that, when you tell me what you picked up in the tulip bed."
We looked steadily at each other: it was not an unfriendly stare; we were only measuring weapons.
Then he smiled a little and got up.
"With your permission," he said, "I am going to examine the card-room and the staircase again.
You might think over my offer in the meantime."
He went on through the drawing-room, and I listened to his footsteps growing gradually fainter.
I dropped my pretense at knitting and, leaning back, I thought over the last forty-eight hours.
Here was I, Rachel Innes, spinster, a granddaughter of old John Innes of Revolutionary days, a D. A. R., a Colonial Dame, mixed up with a vulgar and revolting crime, and even attempting to hoodwink the law!
Certainly I had left the straight and narrow way.
I was roused by hearing Mr. Jamieson coming rapidly back through the drawing-room.
He stopped at the door.
"Miss Innes," he said quickly, "will you come with me and light the east corridor?
I have fastened somebody in the small room at the head of the card-room stairs."
I jumped! up at once. "You mean—the murderer?" I gasped.
"Possibly," he said quietly, as we hurried together up the stairs.
"Some one was lurking on the staircase when I went back.
I spoke; instead of an answer, whoever it was turned and ran up.
I followed—it was dark—but as I turned the corner at the top a figure darted through this door and closed it.
The bolt was on my side, and I pushed it forward.
It is a closet, I think."
We were in the upper hall now.
"If you will show me the electric switch, Miss Innes, you would better wait in your own room."
Trembling as I was, I was determined to see that door opened.
I hardly knew what I feared, but so many terrible and inexplicable things had happened that suspense was worse than certainty.
"I am perfectly cool," I said, "and I am going to remain here."
The lights flashed up along that end of the corridor, throwing the doors into relief.
At the intersection of the small hallway with the larger, the circular staircase wound its way up, as if it had been an afterthought of the architect.
And just around the corner, in the small corridor, was the door Mr. Jamieson had indicated.
I was still unfamiliar with the house, and I did not remember the door.
My heart was thumping wildly in my ears, but I nodded to him to go ahead.
I was perhaps eight or ten feet away—and then he threw the bolt back. "Come out," he said quietly.
There was no response.
"Come—out," he repeated.
Then—I think he had a revolver, but I am not sure—he stepped aside and threw the door open.
From where I stood I could not see beyond the door, but I saw Mr. Jamieson's face change and heard him mutter something, then he bolted down the stairs, three at a time.
When my knees had stopped shaking, I moved forward, slowly, nervously, until I had a partial view of what was beyond the door.
It seemed at first to be a closet, empty.
Then I went close and examined it, to stop with a shudder.
Where the floor should have been was black void and darkness, from which came the indescribable, damp smell of the cellars.
Mr. Jamieson had locked somebody in the clothes chute.
As I leaned over I fancied I heard a groan—or was it the wind?
CHAPTER VII A SPRAINED ANKLE
I was panic-stricken.
As I ran along the corridor I was confident that the mysterious intruder and probable murderer had been found, and that he lay dead or dying at the foot of the chute.
I got down the staircase somehow, and through the kitchen to the basement stairs.
Mr. Jamieson had been before me, and the door stood open.
Liddy was standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a frying-pan by the handle as a weapon.
"Don't go down there," she yelled, when she saw me moving toward the basement stairs.
"Don't you do it, Miss Rachel.