Halsey, however, was more cordial, although we were all constrained enough.
He and Gertrude went on together, leaving the detective to walk with me.
As soon as they were out of earshot, he turned to me.
"Do you know, Miss Innes," he said, "the deeper I go into this thing, the more strange it seems to me.
I am very sorry for Miss Gertrude.
It looks as if Bailey, whom she has tried so hard to save, is worse than a rascal; and after her plucky fight for him, it seems hard."
I looked through the dusk to where Gertrude's light dinner dress gleamed among the trees.
She HAD made a plucky fight, poor child.
Whatever she might have been driven to do, I could find nothing but a deep sympathy for her.
If she had only come to me with the whole truth then!
"Miss Innes," Mr. Jamieson was saying, "in the last three days, have you seen a—any suspicious figures around the grounds?
Any—woman?"
"No," I replied.
"I have a houseful of maids that will bear watching, one and all.
But there has been no strange woman near the house or Liddy would have seen her, you may be sure.
She has a telescopic eye."
Mr. Jamieson looked thoughtful.
"It may not amount to anything," he said slowly.
"It is difficult to get any perspective on things around here, because every one down in the village is sure he saw the murderer, either before or since the crime.
And half of them will stretch a point or two as to facts, to be obliging.
But the man who drives the hack down there tells a story that may possibly prove to be important."
"I have heard it, I think.
Was it the one the parlor maid brought up yesterday, about a ghost wringing its hands on the roof?
Or perhaps it's the one the milk-boy heard: a tramp washing a dirty shirt, presumably bloody, in the creek below the bridge?"
I could see the gleam of Mr. Jamieson's teeth, as he smiled.
"Neither," he said.
"But Matthew Geist, which is our friend's name, claims that on Saturday night, at nine-thirty, a veiled lady—"
"I knew it would be a veiled lady," I broke in.
"A veiled lady," he persisted, "who was apparently young and beautiful, engaged his hack and asked to be driven to Sunnyside.
Near the gate, however, she made him stop, in spite of his remonstrances, saying she preferred to walk to the house. She paid him, and he left her there.
Now, Miss Innes, you had no such visitor, I believe?"
"None," I said decidedly.
"Geist thought it might be a maid, as you had got a supply that day.
But he said her getting out near the gate puzzled him.
Anyhow, we have now one veiled lady, who, with the ghostly intruder of Friday night, makes two assets that I hardly know what to do with."
"It is mystifying," I admitted, "although I can think of one possible explanation.
The path from the Greenwood Club to the village enters the road near the lodge gate.
A woman who wished to reach the Country Club, unperceived, might choose such a method.
There are plenty of women there."
I think this gave him something to ponder, for in a short time he said good night and left.
But I myself was far from satisfied.
I was determined, however, on one thing. If my suspicions—for I had suspicions—were true, I would make my own investigations, and Mr. Jamieson should learn only what was good for him to know.
We went back to the house, and Gertrude, who was more like herself since her talk with Halsey, sat down at the mahogany desk in the living-room to write a letter.
Halsey prowled up and down the entire east wing, now in the card-room, now in the billiard-room, and now and then blowing his clouds of tobacco smoke among the pink and gold hangings of the drawing-room.
After a little I joined him in the billiard-room, and together we went over the details of the discovery of the body.
The card-room was quite dark.
Where we sat, in the billiard-room, only one of the side brackets was lighted, and we spoke in subdued tones, as the hour and the subject seemed to demand.
When I spoke of the figure Liddy and I had seen on the porch through the card-room window Friday night, Halsey sauntered into the darkened room, and together we stood there, much as Liddy and I had done that other night.
The window was the same grayish rectangle in the blackness as before.
A few feet away in the hall was the spot where the body of Arnold Armstrong had been found.