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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1926-12-29, Page 7THE 43RUSSELS POST tftdAgitinlittee"401010411031All The edLamp (Copyright) be. ',gees Oahe peer. •ei , R, / by MARY ROBERTS RINEHART I hail no idea of the page o time; ten seconds or an hour Living stone may have stood beside me, TP IPT0I111-1 ma an hour, and Hien Green ough'e voice at the top of the stair WISP "All right. Careful below." Livingstone MOVOCI 'then, He mad 41(1 dash for .the red lamp anc turned it on. Hayward was not to be seen, and Halliday, revolver ir 11811(1, was starting for the cabinet. "More light," he called. "Light Quick!" I had a confused imoresion of Halliday, jerking the curt:Nina of the cabinet aside.; of somebody else there with him, both on guard, as le were, at the wall; of some sort of rapil movement, upatairs; of the door from the den .into the hell . being open whore it had been closed before, and of a crash somewhere not far away, as of a falling body, followed by ef sort of dreadful pause. - And all this in the time it toolc to get around the, chairs and to the wall switch near the door. And iL yeas than, in the shocked silence which followed the sound of filet fall, in the instant between my find- ing the switch and turning Mit that I will swear that 1 aw 011CQ more by the glow of the red lamp the figure at the foot of the stairs, looking up. Saw it nd recognized. it. Watch - it turn toward me with fixed and etaring eyes, felt the cold wind which suddenly eddied about me, all cl Iran. tically turning on the light, sew it fade like smoke into the empty air. I no knowledge of this passage, with - its ladder to the upper - floor. He n reached it by pure deduction. - "It had to be there," he efteoi mod- estly. "And it was," . : Up to the time young Goelon was attestor] at the kitchen door, how - O ewe, Halliday was frankly at sta. I That is, he had certain sumpicione, but that was all. He had discovered, for instance, that the cipher found in my garage was written on the 7ame sort of bond paper as thae used hy- Gordon by the simple expedient el! having Annie Cochran get him a sheet of it, on some exemee or other. But his actual case began, I he- lieve, with that attack on . Gordon. At least he began at that time defin- itely to associate the crimina: with the house. "There was something fishy about is the way he puts it. And with Bethel's .stery. to me, forced by his fear that the boy knew it was he Who had attacked him, the belief that it was "fishy" gained ground. "Gordon was knocked out," he says. t'And that ought to have been enough. But it was not. He was tied, too, tied while he was still un- conscious. Somebody wasn't taking a chance that he'd get back into the house very soon." It was that "play for time," as he. terms it, that made him suspicious. All this time, of course, be was ignorant of any uncle.rlying motive; he makes it clear that he simply be- gan, first to associate the crimes with the house, and then with Bethel. He kept going bark to his copy ol the unfinished letter, but: - "It didn't help much," he says quietly. "Only, there was murder indicated in it. And we wee) having murder." He lied three clues, two of them cereaie, one doubtful. The certain ones were the linen from the oar - hack of the boat, torn tom a eheet belonging to the main house, and the small agetion of the cieheie The one Ile was not certainaboue was ad: lens from an eyeglass, outeide the culvert. He began to watch the house; he "dbdn't get" Gordon in the situation at all; there was no situation there, really; nothing, that is, that ne could lay his hand on. But on ths night ealled him and he started toward Robinson's Point, as he came back toward the house he saw the figure er a man, cerminly not. Cordo,p, en- ter the house be the gun roem win - dew. When he got there the window was closed and locked. He was puzzled. He looked around for me., but I was not in sight. Still searching for me, he made a round of the house, and so was on the ter- race when I fired the shot. From that time( on he saw Bethelaomehow connected with the mystery, but only as the brains. "There was some devil's work afoot," he said. "But always 1 eame up against that paralysisof his. He had to have outside help." On the night in_ question, then, he was certain that this accomplice was :still in the house through all that followed; through Hayward's arrival and Stares. He was so certain- by that time of Gordon's innocence that Inc very nearly took him •into tL eon - Hence the - next day, But lie was efraid of the boyieelle wa$ not de- pendable; Halliday hail an idea that "he was playing his own goine," Rut if this man was in the house flag night, where was he? Behind the curtains of the cabbie' somebody was .working, at the wall. Edith, very pale, was eupporting Jane, who still remained in her strange au to -hypnotic condition. Livingstone's arm was alms: hi$ wife. And this was the picture 'When Greenough came runn nee trime- phantly down the stairs,. the reward apparently in hie pocket, and saw es' there. He paid no attention to the rest of us, but stared at Living- stone with -eyes which could not be- lieve what they saw. "Good God!" he said. "Then who is in there?" He pointed to the wall behind the eabinet. Chapter III. The steps by Which Halliday solv- ed the murder at the main house, and with it the mystery which had preceded it, constitute an -interesting story in themselve,s. So eiertien wieg he that, by the time we were ready for the third seance, his material was already in the hands of the Dist:ter Attorney. And it was not the mater- ial he had given to Greenongh. For the solution of a portion of the mystery, then, one must geback to the main house, and consider the older .part of it. It is well known that many houses of that period were provided with hidden passages, by which the owners -hoped to escape the Excise. Such an attempt., many years ago, had cost George Pierce his 'life. Bat the passage leading from the old kitchen, now the den, to a closet in the room above it, had been block- ed up for many years. The builder was dead; by all the laws of chance time might have gone on and the passage remained undiscovered. In 1899, howeve'a, Eugenia Riggs 'bought the property, and in making repairs theold passage/was discover- ed. Although she -denies using it for fraudnlent purposes, neither Hal- liday nor 1 doubt that gbe did so. She points to the plastered wall ,its her defense, but Halliday assures me 'that it poetion of the base -board, hinged to swing out, but locked from wetild have 'allowed easy a•c- cees to the cabinet, But Halliday had at the beginnii g Letterheads Envelopes Billheads, And all kinds of Business Stationery printed a The Post Publishing Rouse, We will do. a job that will do credit to your business. Look over your stock of Office Stationery and if it requires replenishing eall its IV' telephone 81, The Post Publishing House Ith grew suspicious of the den, nfter that, and he found out threugh Slam the name of the builder who het: put in the panelling the den, Lor lbeele Horace. Tt was it long 1ut in the en I he learned mud !Ong. Teal ing the old base board prier to putibng up the panes, the builder bar happened on the old passage to the roof overhead, and he had tattled 11.°race Porter's attention Le it. It seems to halt appealed to the pour old chap; it be/longed, somehow to the room, with the artique stuff he was putting into it. He 'built in a sliding,panel; it was not a particul- arly skillful piece of Work, but it answered. And he kept his secret, at lbast from me. T doubt if he ever used it, untg Prohibition came in. Then, no think or himeeff, he put there a small and choice aupply of liquors, some of which we found later on. And ono 'bottle of which placed Helliflay itt fieeil of his life, it day Or so after the night I heel fired the shot Wee the hall. He had borrowed Annie, Coch- ran's key to the kitchen door, and alter midnight entered the holier: and went to the den, ,Although ho In re- Lieent about this portion of it, gather that the house was inn all it should be that night. "You know the sort of thing," hi, says. But, pressed as to that, he :Omit; that he was hearing small and Mex. plicable EOUTRIS from the library. Chairs seemed to move, and once he WAS tertriin that the curtain in the doorway behind him blew out _into the room. When he looked back over his shoulder, however, it wee Meter- ing as before.. Ile _had no _trouble in finding thfi penel, and as earefully as he could Ito stepped Inside, But he had touched one of the bottles and_ it fell (Won% "It ilidn't make much noise," Inc say, "but it was enough. He was awake, and paralysis or no paralysis., I hadn't time to move before be wee in the closet overhead, and opening the trap in the floor." He had not had time to mow, and even if he had, there wore thn in- fernal bottles all around him: So bp etood without breathing, waiting for he knew not what. - "Things; looked pretty poor," lie says. 'I didn't know wheel he'd strike a match and see me. And it was good -night if he did!" But Bethel had no math, evident- ly. He stood listening -intently, and ire the darkness below Halliday held hie breath and waited. Thee Bethel moved. He left the trap door above open and went for a light, and Hal- liday crawled out and elosad the pane el quietly. From that time on, however, he knee* Bethel was -no more helpless than he was. He abandoeed the idea ol an accomplice, and ongentrated an the man himself. . . Annie Cochran was woeking with him; that is, she did what he asked her, althoug.h she seems not to have Ifeewn ate any time the dirertion in ettOch he was working. Her own iniad was already made up; She be - Levi cl Gordon to be gui' .y She made no protest, howeve: when he ested her to break Mr. Bethel's epee, tildes one ,early morning, and give him the !ragments. But she (Li it, rfefeeedng afterwards that ehe had thrown the pieces into the stove. Bethel was watchful and se:epic- lees by that time, and she had a bad time of it, but what is important here is that Halliday took the frag- ments into the city, and established beyond a doubt that they and the piece of a lens found near the cul- vert were Made :from the tame pre- scription. And he had no more than made Itis discovery, when Gordon, attempt- ing at last. the blackmail which he had been threatening, was out out of the way as quickly and ruthlesely as had been poor Peter. Carroway. "Twenty-four houre' Halliday oye bitterly, "end we would have saved him." But twenty-four hours later Beth- el had made good his escape, and everything was apparently over. But from that time Bethel at Beth- el sieased to exist for Halliday. . . . He was not working alone, how- ever. Very, early he had realized that he needed assistance, eeal assist. - lino, Annie Cochran's heln was al- ways of the below -stairs order. And he found the help he wanted after the night Gordon was attacked, be Hayward. As a . matter of fact, it was Hayward who went to him, "He wan worried about you, Skip-. per," I-Talliday says with a grin. "He cersidered it quite possible that the attempt to 'wrangle English litera- ture into too Many brain corrals might have driven you slightly mad." And breaks off to wonder, by ;love," if that's :where the English gag their collegiate term of Wong - /or! Go the night, then, when Cordon wee hurt, the 'doctor Was impuleively on his way to Halliday and the boat- 'Itt, came within an Men of heving you locked up act night" eeys Later on, he did go to ffaleday, and Halliday then and there enlisted him in his service. He was not shrewd, but ho was willing and earn- est, and from that time on ho was ueeful, He had started, presumably, on his vacation but actually en a voter different errand wheri the mur- der at the main house oecurrtd, and Halliday recalled him by wit°. Thit when he retuaned, it was, at request, to hide in the Liv- ingstone house. It was from there that lie came, at night, to assiat Hal - Nay in guatding the main house. And to provide, by the way, that SWOrrl statement of the Livingstonee butler, that after the murder they had concealed seine ono in the house, which three* Greenough so complete- ly off the track. .Ono perceives of course, that the LiVingstoluts had been brought •into the cam Dragged in, is :the way Halliday puts it: But after the lint conferenee between the doctor and himself ,they were in it, willy "Who," Halliday asked Hayward, referring to his• copy of any Miele Ilorave'S letter, "were likely co have aceese to ITorace Porter at rOghl."' "No one So ti 1 know. The Livingstones, imeeibly." "Thtbn the man who .fearm- i whil Inc was writing this letter might have been Livingetone " was ill that night. I wee with Mn1" "hen Livingstene's out," - eahl Halliday, and turned in a new (thee - Hon. "Some theory, some wigkedneee WAS put up to him. And it horrified and alarmed him, A man doeen't present such it theory without lead- ing up to it. Let's try this: what subject was most interesting Ilorace Porter during the last yeere, or Months of his life " "Spiritisria, I imagine.. I know he was working on it." "Alone A men doeen't; work that sort of thing alone, as a rule." "I'll ask Mre. Livingstone, if yoe like. She may know." And ask the Livingstones did. with the result, that Halliday got his first real clue, and elaborated the flaring theory which culminated in that fatal fall from the laddee, in the secret passage on that tragi e night of the 10th of September. . . All this time, of course, it remain- ed only a theory. Hayward scouted it at first, but came to it Meg on; the Livinotones offered a mere dif- ficult problem. "They didn't want to be involv- ed," Halliday says. "But 3Am-dad!. th's letter came I more or lees had them. And of course after: he'd tried to get into the Mato, and left the print of his hand on the window board, they had to come in. They'd denied any knowledge of the passage before that. But he knew it as weil as I did or better, and that" there was a chance old Bethel knew it too, •!ill had tied it." Thks letter of Edith's to which I have already referred, runs ae fol- lows, WEI4NESDAY, DEC. 29, 192e. "Dear Madam: `T have read your article with great interest, and would ° like to suggest that a good medium might be very useful under the circum- stames. "You have one of the best in the country in your vicinity. Sha has retired and ie new living water another name somewhere in the vic- inity of Oakville. I understand her husband has made considerable mon- ey, but she may, be willing to help in spite of that. "When I knew her she was :mown. es Eugenia Riggs, but thie was her maiden name, which she had retain- ed. Her husband's name is. Living- stone; I do not know. his initials. "She has abandoned the profeseen in which she made so great a SUCCPAS,r but I understand is still keenly in- terested." The better is not signed. . . Halliday did not require that knowledge; he had suspected it be- fore. But it gave him a lever. One. attempt hadalready been made by Bethel to get back into Hee Itouse, Time was getting short; before long we would have to go hack to the city, and although he knew by that time who and what Bethel was, he could prove nothing'. To go was to abandon the case. He could not secure the arrest of a man because his lettt prescription wa( the same as the murdereee. Or on tho strength of at unsigned book manuscrip left behind the wall of the den. He could not prove that Mag- gie Morrison had lied in the process of the experiment Gordon had pug- zied over, because the mud on the truck wheels corresponded with the red iron -clay of the lane into the main house, He could not prove his own interpretations of the abbrevia- tions S. and G, 'P. o biborally scat- tered through the diary. And he could net prove that it was Bethel who, looking for the broken lens in or near the culvert, had found my fountain pen there. A fact which Gordon had noted -in the journal as Tamils: have thennow, suee. W. P. was here last night and lefe his fountain pen." • But be could, through the Living. stone, teke a chance on peeving all these things.And, against Living - stone's protests. and fears, prave 11 he did. "As a matter of fact,'' he says, "they were in it bad position them. selyes, and they knew it. They lied to come over again!" Things were, Indeed, rather par- lous for the Livingstone. The but- ler's story had turned the suspicion of the police kward them. And on the night of my threatened arreet Halliday deliberately used them to avert that catastrophe. "As a matter of fatt,", ne says theerfully, "I gave the police a very pretty ease against theme It was all there; according to Grommet. TWO, to the hand-printi" But he held thorn oft—Ile had Ant what he wanted, • tattled the. pollee along a false trail and •wail free once more to travel alerile the true one. And in this Inc says, anfi believe, that his purpose wa$ not mereenary. "The situation Was peculiar," he eaye. "The slightest slip, the faint- eet suspicion and he wail off." And he goes back again to the f.ubtlety 171111 iinerinees of the er'min- al himself; so watchful, so wary, that throughout it had even been neces- eery to keep me in ignoranee. "You had to carry on, Shipper," he says. "In a way, the whole thing hung on you. Even then you nearly wrecked us ono.' Whieh was, he telh; me, the night of the second seance, when it,, crim- inal actually fell into the erap and entered the house. Livingstone was on guard upstairs that night, end ev- erything would have ended the I pro- bably. "But you spilled the beans!" he accuses Inc. From the first the seaneee wore devisNi for a purpose, and I gating that some of the phenomena were delibrately faked, in pureuit of that purpose. On the other hand Mrs. Livingstone has always "been firm in her statement that "things happen- ed" which she cannot 'explain. The sounds in the library, the lights and the arrival of the book on the table are among them. But, trickery -dr genuine psychic manifeetations, in the end they serv- ed their purpose. I called the third seance, and the mystery was solved. It is not surprising that my mem- ory of those last few moments ie a clouded, one; I was, of all then pre - :fent except the police, the only elle in complete ignorance of the mean- ing of what Was going on about me. Edith knew and was bravely taking her • risk with the others; even my dear Jane knew a. little; ite wonder iio h•nuirr.(1 hot. snwItn,: Actually, out of ' the confusion, only two pictures roman, in my mind: -....efee One was of Greenough staring at Livingstone, and then jerking avid° the curtains of the cabinet, where ,Halliclay and Hayward had opened the panel and after turning on the red globe hanging there, were stoop- ing over a body at the bottom of the hiriTter. other is of the figure at the _foot of the stairs. I know now that it could not have been there; that it was lying, flofid of a broken neck, at the root ef the ladder. I have tward all the theoriee but I menet reemicile them with the fact, How could 1 have imaginer; !t? I did not know then who ,out Mehl._ th'wall. ;inot a spiritiet. but fence in ',very man's He comea to him iho orn, experienve wbieli he ean explain by no law of nature as he u then!. To every man his ghost, and to me mine In the dim light of the ;eel lamp dead though he was behind the panel, I will swear that I saw Cameron, ali- AS Simon Bethel, standing at the foot ef the Attire and looking up. Chapter' IV. 'Who are we to judge him? If a .man .sincerely believes that there is no death, the taking of life to prove it must seem a trivial thing. HP may feel, and from -his book manuscript hastily hidden behend the wall of the den we gather he did feel, that the security of the indivichf ual counted as nothing against the proof of survival to the hurnen race. But that he was entirely sane, in those last months, none of us can be- lieve. Cruelty is a symptom of the borderland between sanity end mad- ness; so too is the weakening of what we cell the Herd instinct. It is well known at the University that for the year previous to hie death he had been distinctly anti -social. Certainly, tee), he fulfilled the ax- iom that ineanity is the exaggeratjon of one particular mental activity. And that he combined this --Angle ex- aggeration with a high grade of in- telligence only proves the close re - between mndnes ganil gonins: Kant, unable to work if not gazing at a ruined tewer; Hawthorne, cutting lip his bits of paper; Wagneee per,- odecal violences. The very audacity of his disguise, the consistency with vehich he lived tie part lie was playine, po.nts to ity: during the day 014 Simon Bethel •dragging his helpiees foot arid with- out effort holding his within -cad hand - to ite spastic contraetion; at night, a. the active Cameron, making his exits on his nocturnal adventures by the. P00 room window; wanderieg afoot ineredible dietanees; watehing the, - door of G.ortion's roam and loeking' him bp; beerning from me of Hattie - day'e interest in the ease and treeing to burn him out; very early realieing the t.inharas,:nn,.nt of Inv own pr- enel, at the Lodge, and warning me away by that letter from Salem, Ohio. (To lie Continued), C. C. RAMAGE, D.D.S., L.D.S. BRUSSELS, ONT, Graduate Royal College of Dental Surgeons and Honor Graduate 'Uni- versity of Toronto. Dentistry in all its branches. Office Over Standard Bank, Phone 200 aL/44tev a. biztroxv AGENT FOR fire, Automobile an Wind Ins. COMPANIES For Brussels and vicinity Phone 647 JAMES M'FADZEAN Agent Howick Mutual Fire Insurance Commit Also Hartford Windstorm and Tomah Insurance Phone 42 Box 1 Turni?erry Street Brusse/, JNO. SUPIERLAND & 804 LIMITED gelPkte AVT.11,6.16 _ . D. M. SCOTT aZIVONSIXIJ avemee.rmige PRICES MODERATE F07cteri'v71,;gg`tTlIg any PerSt71 :°N2sfla r. T. M'RAE 01., MO 9, p, , $, M. 0. H,, Village of Brussels Physician, Surgeon, Acconoher Office at residence. opposite Melt tile Church. William street. w.nat I believe is caneu dissaciation; tr. AL SZAW,ESigt toward the lost there ee ims to haBARRISTER, SOLICITOR,ve CONVEYANCER, NOTARY PUBLIC been a genuine duality of pereonal- LECKIE BLOCK - BRUSSELS W Ad rth Selling is rth Telling Advertise what you are doing. Advertise what you expect to do. Advertise your old goods and move the -rt, Aivertise your new goods and sell them before they get old. Advertise to hold old trade. Advertise to get new trade. Advertise when busin-ss is good to make it better. Advertise when business is poor to keep it from getting. worse. Advertising is not a "cure-all." Advertising is a preventative. Advertising does not push, it pulls. Advertising to pay,tnust be consistent Ind persistent. THE BRUSSEL ,TraqE. 1,10,(tt uoz.49.f,