“I was on the second floor.
It looked like rain and I was closing the windows.
I had finished that and was about to go down the back staircase when I felt that some one was behind me. But I never saw who it was.
The next thing I remember, madam, I was at the foot of the stairs, trying to crawl to the pantry.”
And this story of his was borne out by the fact that the maids later found blood on the stairs and a small pool at the bottom.
Doctor Simonds however did not place too much confidence in the story of the attack, when he came in that night to see me.
“Sure he was hurt,” he said, with that cheerful descent into the colloquial with which the medical profession soothes its fearful patients and its nervous women.
“Surest thing I ever saw.
It took four stitches to sew him up!
But why assault?
Why didn’t Joseph catch his rubber heel on something and pitch down those stairs of yours?
There are twenty odd metal-edged steps there, and every one got in a bit of work.”
“He says he felt that there was some one behind him.”
“Exactly.
He was stepping off as he turned to look; and why he didn’t break that stiff neck of his I don’t know.
It’s a marvel to me that he’s up and about.”
But Joseph stuck to his story.
He had been attacked by some one from the rear, armed either with a club or a chair.
And as we know now, he was right.
Joseph had indeed been murderously assaulted, and very possibly left for dead.
As it happened, it was during that call of Doctor Simonds’ that I first learned of the possibility that Howard had left a second will.
He had attended Howard during his illness at the Imperial the summer before, and expressed regret over his death.
“Of course it was bound to come,” he said.
“He knew it.
He was not a man you could deceive, and that attack he had here was a pretty bad one.
By the way, did he alter his will at that time?
Or do you know?”
“Alter it?
I don’t know, I’m sure.”
“He was thinking of it.
Walter had been very attentive to him, and they’d patched up a peace between them.
It was rather amusing, in a way.
Poor Miss Gittings hated Walter, and she would have kept him out if she could.”
“I hope he did change the will,” I said, thoughtfully.
“After all, his only son—”
“He may, and he may not.
I talked it over with Walter, and he said there would be hell to pay if it did happen.
He wasn’t sure, of course.
But he got me to give him a letter, to the effect that his father was capable of drawing such a document; ‘not under drugs, or mentally enfeebled.’” He laughed a little.
“Mentally enfeebled,” he said.
“If Howard Somers was mentally enfeebled I wish I had arterio-sclerosis!”
But Joseph’s injury had made me most uneasy.
What was the motive?
What had been gained by it?
I must confess that once again I considered the possibility of a killer who killed for the sheer lust of murder.
That day I bought a new revolver for Joseph, and moved him to a guest room on the second floor.
Before he retired I made the round of the house with him, and even of the garage and the cellars.
Then, with my own door locked, I was able to pass a quiet if not an easy night.
But again I did not sleep.
I lay in bed with a pencil and a sheet of paper, and tried that night to put together what we knew about this unknown.