Liddy discovered the fresh break in the trunk-room wall while we were
at luncheon, and ran shrieking down the stairs. She maintained that,
as she entered, unseen hands had been digging at the plaster; that they
had stopped when she went in, and she had felt a gust of cold damp air.
In support of her story she carried in my wet and muddy boots, that I
had unluckily forgotten to hide, and held them out to the detective and
myself.
"What did I tell you?" she said dramatically. "Look at 'em. They're
yours, Miss Rachel--and covered with mud and soaked to the tops. I
tell you, you can scoff all you like; something has been wearing your
shoes. As sure as you sit there, there's the smell of the graveyard on
them. How do we know they weren't tramping through the Casanova
churchyard last night, and sitting on the graves!"
Mr. Jamieson almost choked to death. "I wouldn't be at all surprised
if they were doing that very thing, Liddy," he said, when he got his
breath. "They certainly look like it."
I think the detective had a plan, on which he was working, and which
was meant to be a coup. But things went so fast there was no time to
carry it into effect. The first thing that occurred was a message from
the Charity Hospital that Mrs. Watson was dying, and had asked for me.
I did not care much about going. There is a sort of melancholy
pleasure to be had out of a funeral, with its pomp and ceremony, but I
shrank from a death-bed. However, Liddy got out the black things and
the crape veil I keep for such occasions, and I went. I left Mr.
Jamieson and the day detective going over every inch of the circular
staircase, pounding, probing and measuring. I was inwardly elated to
think of the surprise I was going to give them that night; as it turned
out, I DID surprise them almost into spasms.
I drove from the train to the Charity Hospital, and was at once taken
to a ward. There, in a gray-walled room in a high iron bed, lay Mrs.
Watson. She was very weak, and she only opened her eyes and looked at
me when I sat down beside her. I was conscience-stricken. We had been
so engrossed that I had left this poor creature to die without even a
word of sympathy.
The nurse gave her a stimulant, and in a little while she was able to
talk. So broken and half-coherent, however, was her story that I shall
tell it in my own way. In an hour from the time I entered the Charity
Hospital, I had heard a sad and pitiful narrative, and had seen a woman
slip into the unconsciousness that is only a step from death.