it seemed to me that i had hardly dropped asleep before the children were in the room, clamoring.
“the goldfish are dead!” harry said, standing soberly by the bed. “they are all dead with their stummicks turned up.”
i sat up. my head ached violently.
“they can’t be dead, old chap.” i was feeling about for my kimono, but i remembered that when i had found my way back to the nursery after my fright on the back stairs i had lain down in my uniform. i crawled out, hardly able to stand. “we gave them fresh water yesterday, and——”
i had got to the aquarium. harry was right. the little darting flames of pink and gold were still. they floated about, rolling gently as freddie prodded them with a forefinger, dull eyed, pale bellies upturned. in his 39 cage above the little parrot watched out of a crooked eye.
i ran to the medicine closet in the bathroom. freddie had a weakness for administering medicine. i had only just rescued the parrot from the result of his curiosity and a headache tablet the day before.
“what did you give them?” i demanded.
“bread,” said freddie stoutly.
“only bread?”
“dirty bread,” harry put in. “i told him it was dirty.”
“where did you get it?”
“on the roof of the porte-cochère!”
shade of montessori! the rascals had been out on that sloping tin roof. it turned me rather sick to think of it.
accused, they admitted it frankly.
“i unlocked the window,” harry said, “and freddie got the bread. it was out in the gutter. he slipped once.”
“almost went over and made a squash on the pavement,” added freddie. “we gave the little fishes the bread for breakfast, and now they’re gone to god.”
the bread had contained poison, of course. even the two little snails that crawled over the sand in the aquarium were motionless. i sniffed the water. it had a slightly foreign odor. i did not recognize it.
panic seized me then. i wanted to get away and take the children with me. the situation was too hideous. but it was still early. i could only wait until the family roused. in the meantime, however, i made a nerve-racking excursion out on to the tin roof and down to the gutter. there was no more of the bread there. the 40 porte-cochère was at the side of the house. as i stood balancing myself perilously on the edge, summoning my courage to climb back to the window above, i suddenly remembered the guard mr. patton had promised and glanced toward the square.
the guard was still there. more than that, he was running across the street toward me. it was mr. patton himself. he brought up between the two houses with absolute fury in his face.
“go back!” he waved. “what are you doing out there anyhow? that roof’s as slippery as the devil!”
i turned meekly and crawled back with as much dignity as i could. i did not say anything. there was nothing i could bawl from the roof. i could only close and lock the window and hope that the people in the next house still slept. mr. patton must have gone shortly after, for i did not see him again.
i wondered if he had relieved the night watch, or if he could possibly have been on guard himself all that chilly april night.
mr. reed did not breakfast with us. i made a point of being cheerful before the children, and their mother was rested and brighter than i had seen her. but more than once i found her staring at me in a puzzled way. she asked me if i had slept.
“i wakened only once,” she said. “i thought i heard a crash of some sort. did you hear it?”
“what sort of a crash?” i evaded.
the children had forgotten the goldfish for a time. now they remembered and clamored their news to her.
“dead?” she said, and looked at me.
“poisoned,” i explained. “i shall nail the windows 41 over the porte-cochère shut, mrs. reed. the boys got out there early this morning and picked up something—bread, i believe. they fed it to the fish and—they are dead.”
all the light went out of her face. she looked tired and harassed as she got up.
“i wanted to nail the window,” she said vaguely, “but mr. reed—— suppose they had eaten that bread, miss adams, instead of giving it to the fish!”
the same thought had chilled me with horror. we gazed at each other over the unconscious heads of the children and my heart ached for her. i made a sudden resolution.
“when i first came,” i said to her, “i told you i wanted to help. that’s what i’m here for. but how am i to help either you or the children when i do not know what danger it is that threatens? it isn’t fair to you, or to them, or even to me.”
she was much shaken by the poison incident. i thought she wavered.
“are you afraid the children will be stolen?”
“oh, no.”
“or hurt in any way?” i was thinking of the bread on the roof.
“no.”
“but you are afraid of something?”
harry looked up suddenly.
“mother’s never afraid,” he said stoutly.
i sent them both in to see if the fish were still dead.
“there is something in the house downstairs that you are afraid of?” i persisted.
she took a step forward and caught my arm.
42
“i had no idea it would be like this, miss adams. i’m dying of fear!”
i had a quick vision of the swathed head on the back staircase, and some of my night’s terror came back to me. i believe we stared at each other with dilated pupils for a moment. then i asked:
“is it a real thing?—surely you can tell me this. are you afraid of a reality, or—is it something supernatural?” i was ashamed of the question. it sounded so absurd in the broad light of that april morning.
“it is a real danger,” she replied. then i think she decided that she had gone as far as she dared, and i went through the ceremony of letting her out and of locking the door behind her.
the day was warm. i threw up some of the windows and the boys and i played ball, using a rolled handkerchief. my part, being to sit on the floor with a newspaper folded into a bat and to bang at the handkerchief as it flew past me, became automatic after a time.
as i look back i see a pair of disordered young rascals in russian blouses and bare round knees doing a great deal of yelling and some very crooked throwing; a nurse sitting tailor fashion on the floor, alternately ducking to save her cap and making vigorous but ineffectual passes at the ball with her newspaper bat. and i see sunshine in the room and the dwarf parrot eating sugar out of his claw. and below, the fish in the aquarium floating belly-up with dull eyes.
mr. reed brought up our luncheon tray. he looked tired and depressed and avoided my eyes. i watched him while i spread the bread and butter for the children. he nailed shut the windows that opened on to the porte-cochère 43 roof and when he thought i was not looking he examined the registers in the wall to see if the gratings were closed. the boys put the dead fish in a box and made him promise a decent interment in the garden. they called on me for an epitaph, and i scrawled on top of the box:
these fish are dead
because a boy called fred
went out on a porch roof when he should
have been in bed.
i was much pleased with it. it seemed to me that an epitaph, which can do no good to the departed, should at least convey a moral. but to my horror freddie broke into loud wails and would not be comforted.
it was three o’clock, therefore, before they were both settled for their afternoon naps and i was free. i had determined to do one thing, and to do it in daylight—to examine the back staircase inch by inch. i knew i would be courting discovery, but the thing had to be done, and no power on earth would have made me essay such an investigation after dark.
it was all well enough for me to say to myself that there was a natural explanation; that this had been a human head, of a certainty; that something living and not spectral had slid over my foot in the darkness. i would not have gone back there again at night for youth, love or money. but i did not investigate the staircase that day, after all.
i made a curious discovery after the boys had settled down in their small white beds. a venturesome fly had 44 sailed in through an open window, and i was immediately in pursuit of him with my paper bat. driven from the cornice to the chandelier, harried here, swatted there, finally he took refuge inside the furnace register.
perhaps it is my training—i used to know how many million germs a fly packed about with it, and the generous benevolence with which it distributed them; i’ve forgotten—but the sight of a single fly maddens me. i said that to mr. patton once, and he asked what the sight of a married one would do. so i sat down by the register and waited. it was then that i made the curious discovery that the furnace belowstairs was burning, and burning hard. a fierce heat assailed me as i opened the grating. i drove the fly out of cover, but i had no time for him. the furnace going full on a warm spring day! it was strange.
perhaps i was stupid. perhaps the whole thing should have been clear to me. but it was not. i sat there bewildered and tried to figure it out. i went over it point by point:
the carpets up all over the house, lights going full all night and doors locked.
the cot at the top of the stairs and mrs. reed staring down.
the bolt outside my door to lock me in.
the death of chang.
mademoiselle locked in her room upstairs and begging for a priest.
the poison on the porch roof.
the head without a body on the staircase and the thing that slid over my foot.
the furnace going, and the thing i recognized as i 45 sat there beside the register—the unmistakable odor of burning cloth.
should i have known? i wonder. it looks so clear to me now.
i did not investigate the staircase, for the simple reason that my skeleton key, which unfastened the lock of the door at the rear of the second-floor hall, did not open the door. i did not understand at once and stood stupidly working with the lock. the door was bolted on the other side. i wandered as aimlessly as i could down the main staircase and tried the corresponding door on the lower floor. it, too, was locked. here was an impasse for sure. as far as i could discover the only other entrance to the back staircase was through the window with the iron grating.
as i turned to go back i saw my electric flash, badly broken, lying on a table in the hall. i did not claim it.
the lower floor seemed entirely deserted. the drawing room and library were in their usual disorder, undusted and bare of floor. the air everywhere was close and heavy; there was not a window open. i sauntered through the various rooms, picked up a book in the library as an excuse and tried the door of the room behind. it was locked. i thought at first that something moved behind it, but if anything lived there it did not stir again. and yet i had a vivid impression that just on the other side of the door ears as keen as mine were listening. it was broad day, but i backed away from the door and out into the wide hall. my nerves were still raw, no doubt, from the night before.
i was to meet mr. patton at half after seven that night, and when mrs. reed relieved me at seven i had 46 half an hour to myself. i spent it in beauregard gardens, with the dry fountain in the center. the place itself was charming, the trees still black but lightly fringed with new green, early spring flowers in the borders, neat paths and, bordering it all, the solid, dignified backs of the beauregard houses. i sat down on the coping of the fountain and surveyed the reed house. those windows above were mademoiselle’s. the shades were drawn, but no light came through or round them. the prisoner—for prisoner she was by every rule of bolt and lock—must be sitting in the dark. was she still begging for her priest? had she had any food? was she still listening inside her door for whatever it was that was “coming up”?
in all the other houses windows were open; curtains waved gently in the spring air; the cheerful signs of the dinner hour were evident near by—moving servants, a gleam of stately shirt bosom as a butler mixed a salad, a warm radiance of candle-light from dining room tables and the reflected glow of flowers. only the reed house stood gloomy, unlighted, almost sinister.
beauregard place dined early. it was one of the traditions, i believe. it liked to get to the theater or the opera early, and it believed in allowing the servants a little time in the evenings. so, although it was only something after seven, the evening rite of the table crumbs began to be observed. came a colored butler, bowed to me with a word of apology, and dumped the contents of a silver tray into the basin; came a pretty mulatto, flung her crumbs gracefully and smiled with a flash of teeth at the butler.
then for five minutes i was alone.
47
it was nora, the girl we had met on the street, who came next. she saw me and came round to me with a little air of triumph.
“well, i’m back in the square again, after all, miss,” she said. “and a better place than the reeds. i don’t have the doilies to do.”
“i’m very glad you are settled again, nora.”
she lowered her voice.
“i’m just trying it out,” she observed. “the girl that left said i wouldn’t stay. she was scared off. there have been some queer doings—not that i believe in ghosts or anything like that. but my mother in the old country had the second-sight, and if there’s anything going on i’ll be right sure to see it.”
it took encouragement to get her story, and it was secondhand at that, of course. but it appeared that a state of panic had seized the beauregard servants. the alarm was all belowstairs and had been started by a cook who, coming in late and going to the basement to prepare herself a cup of tea, had found her kitchen door locked and a light going beyond. suspecting another maid of violating the tea canister she had gone soft-footed to the outside of the house and had distinctly seen a gray figure crouching in a corner of the room. she had called the butler, and they had made an examination of the entire basement without result. nothing was missing from the house.
“and that figure has been seen again and again, miss,” nora finished. “mckenna’s butler joseph saw it in this very spot, walking without a sound and the street light beyond there shining straight through it. over in the smythe house the laundress, coming in late and going 48 down to the basement to soak her clothes for the morning, met the thing on the basement staircase and fainted dead away.”
i had listened intently.
“what do they think it is?” i asked.
she shrugged her shoulders and picked up her tray.
“i’m not trying to say and i guess nobody is. but if there’s been a murder it’s pretty well known that the ghost walks about until the burial service is read and it’s properly buried.”
she glanced at the reed house.
“for instance,” she demanded, “where is mademoiselle?”
“she is alive,” i said rather sharply. “and even if what you say were true, what in the world would make her wander about the basements? it seems so silly, nora, a ghost haunting damp cellars and laundries with stationary tubs and all that.”
“well,” she contended, “it seems silly for them to sit on cold tombstones—and yet that’s where they generally sit, isn’t it?”
mr. patton listened gravely to my story that night.
“i don’t like it,” he said when i had finished. “of course the head on the staircase is nonsense. your nerves were ragged and our eyes play tricks on all of us. but as for the frenchwoman——”
“if you accept her you must accept the head,” i snapped. “it was there—it was a head without a body and it looked up at me.”
we were walking through a quiet street, and he bent over and caught my wrist.
49
“pulse racing,” he commented. “i’m going to take you away, that’s certain. i can’t afford to lose my best assistant. you’re too close, miss adams; you’ve lost your perspective.”
“i’ve lost my temper!” i retorted. “i shall not leave until i know what this thing is, unless you choose to ring the doorbell and tell them i’m a spy.”
he gave in when he saw that i was firm, but not without a final protest.
“i’m directly responsible for you to your friends,” he said. “there’s probably a young man somewhere who will come gunning for me if anything happens to you. and i don’t care to be gunned for. i get enough of that in my regular line.”
“there is no young man,” i said shortly.
“have you been able to see the cellars?”
“no, everything is locked off.”
“do you think the rear staircase goes all the way down?”
“i haven’t the slightest idea.”
“you are in the house. have you any suggestions as to the best method of getting into the house? is reed on guard all night?”
“i think he is.”
“it may interest you to know,” he said finally, “that i sent a reliable man to break in there last night quietly, and that he—couldn’t do it. he got a leg through a cellar window, and came near not getting it out again. reed was just inside in the dark.” he laughed a little, but i guessed that the thing galled him.
“i do not believe that he would have found anything if he had succeeded in getting in. there has been no 50 crime, mr. patton, i am sure of that. but there is a menace of some sort in the house.”
“then why does mrs. reed stay and keep the children if there is danger?”
“i believe she is afraid to leave him. there are times when i think that he is desperate.”
“does he ever leave the house?”
“i think not, unless——”
“yes?”
“unless he is the basement ghost of the other houses.”
he stopped in his slow walk and considered it.
“it’s possible. in that case i could have him waylaid tonight in the gardens and left there, tied. it would be a hold-up, you understand. the police have no excuse for coming in yet. or, if we found him breaking into one of the other houses we could get him there. he’d be released, of course, but it would give us time. i want to clean the thing up. i’m not easy while you are in that house.”
we agreed that i was to wait inside one of my windows that night, and that on a given signal i should go down and open the front door. the whole thing, of course, was contingent on mr. reed leaving the house some time that night. it was only a chance.
“the house is barred like a fortress,” mr. patton said as he left me. “the window with the grating is hopeless. we tried it last night.”
