The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Roberts Rinehart - 25 Titles in One Edition. Mary Roberts Rinehart
seemed to accept her words, cynically, at their face value.
"No," he said, "but you know somebody who does." Dale hesitated, sought for a biting retort, found none. It did not matter; any respite, no matter how momentary, from these probing questions, would be a relief. She silently took one of the lighted candles and left the living-room to search for her aunt.
Left alone, the detective reflected for a moment, then picking up the one lighted candle that remained, commenced a systematic examination of the living-room. His methods were thorough, but if, when he came to the end of his quest, he had made any new discoveries, the reticent composure of his face did not betray the fact. When he had finished he turned patiently toward the billiard room—the little flame of his candle was swallowed up in its dark recesses—he closed the door of the living-room behind him. The storm was dying away now, but a few flashes of lightning still flickered, lighting up the darkness of the deserted living-room now and then with a harsh, brief glare.
A lightning flash—a shadow cast abruptly on the shade of one of the French windows, to disappear as abruptly as the flash was blotted out—the shadow of a man—a prowler—feeling his way through the lightning-slashed darkness to the terrace door. The detective? Brooks? The Bat? The lightning flash was too brief for any observer to have recognized the stealing shape—if any observer had been there.
But the lack of an observer was promptly remedied. Just as the shadowy shape reached the terrace door and its shadow-fingers closed over the knob, Lizzie entered the deserted living-room on stumbling feet. She was carrying a tray of dishes and food—some cold meat on a platter, a cup and saucer, a roll, a butter pat—and she walked slowly, with terror only one leap behind her and blank darkness ahead.
She had only reached the table and was preparing to deposit her tray and beat a shameful retreat, when a sound behind her made her turn. The key in the door from the terrace to the alcove had clicked. Paralyzed with fright she stared and waited, and the next moment a formless thing, a blacker shadow in a world of shadows, passed swiftly in and up the small staircase.
But not only a shadow. To Lizzie's terrified eyes it bore an eye, a single gleaming eye, just above the level of the stair rail, and this eye was turned on her.
It was too much. She dropped the tray on the table with a crash and gave vent to a piercing shriek that would have shamed the siren of a fire engine.
Miss Cornelia and Anderson, rushing in from the hall and the billiard room respectively, each with a lighted candle, found her gasping and clutching at the table for support.
"For the love of heaven, what's wrong?" cried Miss Cornelia irritatedly. The coffeepot she was carrying in her other hand spilled a portion of its boiling contents on Lizzie's shoe and Lizzie screamed anew and began to dance up and down on the uninjured foot.
"Oh, my foot—my foot!" she squealed hysterically. "My foot!"
Miss Cornelia tried to shake her back to her senses.
"My patience! Did you yell like that because you stubbed your toe?"
"You scalded it!" cried Lizzie wildly. "It went up the staircase!"
"Your toe went up the staircase?"
"No, no! An eye—an eye as big as a saucer! It ran right up that staircase—" She indicated the alcove with a trembling forefinger. Miss Cornelia put her coffeepot and her candle down on the table and opened her mouth to express her frank opinion of her factotum's sanity. But here the detective took charge.
"Now see here," he said with some sternness to the quaking Lizzie, "stop this racket and tell me what you saw!"
"A ghost!" persisted Lizzie, still hopping around on one leg. "It came right through that door and ran up the stairs—oh—" and she seemed prepared to scream again as Dale, white-faced, came in from the hall, followed by Billy and Brooks, the latter holding still another candle.
"Who screamed?" said Dale tensely.
"I did!" Lizzie wailed, "I saw a ghost!" She turned to Miss Cornelia. "I begged you not to come here," she vociferated. "I begged you on my bended knees. There's a graveyard not a quarter of a mile away."
"Yes, and one more scare like that, Lizzie Allen, and you'll have me lying in it," said her mistress unsympathetically. She moved up to examine the scene of Lizzie's ghostly misadventure, while Anderson began to interrogate its heroine.
"Now, Lizzie," he said, forcing himself to urbanity, "what did you really see?"
"I told you what I saw."
His manner grew somewhat threatening.
"You're not trying to frighten Miss Van Gorder into leaving this house and going back to the city?"
"Well, if I am," said Lizzie with grim, unconscious humor, "I'm giving myself an awful good scare, too, ain't I?"
The two glared at each other as Miss Cornelia returned from her survey of the alcove.
"Somebody who had a key could have got in here, Mr. Anderson," she said annoyedly. "That terrace door's been unbolted from the inside."
Lizzie groaned. "I told you so," she wailed. "I knew something was going to happen tonight. I heard rappings all over the house today, and the ouija-board spelled Bat!"
The detective recovered his poise. "I think I see the answer to your puzzle, Miss Van Gorder," he said, with a scornful glance at Lizzie. "A hysterical and not very reliable woman, anxious to go back to the city and terrified over and over by the shutting off of the electric lights."
If looks could slay, his characterization of Lizzie would have laid him dead at her feet at that instant. Miss Van Gorder considered his theory.
"I wonder," she said.
The detective rubbed his hands together more cheerfully.
"A good night's sleep and——" he began, but the irrepressible Lizzie interrupted him.
"My God, we're not going to bed, are we?" she said, with her eyes as big as saucers.
He gave her a kindly pat on the shoulder, which she obviously resented.
"You'll feel better in the morning," he said. "Lock your door and say your prayers, and leave the rest to me."
Lizzie muttered something inaudible and rebellious, but now Miss Cornelia added her protestations to his.
"That's very good advice," she said decisively. "You take her, Dale."
Reluctantly, with a dragging of feet and scared glances cast back over her shoulder, Lizzie allowed herself to be drawn toward the door and the main staircase by Dale. But she did not depart without one Parthian shot.
"I'm not going to bed!" she wailed as Dale's strong young arm helped her out into the hall. "Do you think I want to wake up in the morning with my throat cut?" Then the creaking of the stairs, and Dale's soothing voice reassuring her as she painfully clambered toward the third floor, announced that Lizzie, for some time at least, had been removed as an active factor from the puzzling equation of Cedarcrest.
Anderson confronted Miss Cornelia with certain relief.
"There are certain things I want to discuss with you, Miss Van Gorder," he said. "But they can wait until tomorrow morning."
Miss Cornelia glanced about the room. His manner was reassuring.
"Do you think all this—pure imagination?" she said.
"Don't you?"
She hesitated. "I'm not sure."
He laughed. "I'll tell you what I'll do. You go upstairs and go to bed comfortably. I'll make a careful search of the house before I settle down, and if I find anything at all suspicious, I'll promise to let you know."
She agreed to that, and after sending the Jap out for more coffee prepared to go upstairs.
Never had the thought of her own comfortable bed appealed to her so much. But, in spite of her weariness, she could not