said. She was going; she would not be judged
by earthly laws; and somewhere else perhaps Lucy would plead for her.
It was she who had crept down the circular staircase, drawn by a
magnet, that night Mr. Jamieson had heard some one there. Pursued, she
had fled madly, anywhere--through the first door she came to. She had
fallen down the clothes chute, and been saved by the basket beneath. I
could have cried with relief; then it had not been Gertrude, after all!

That was the story. Sad and tragic though it was, the very telling of
it seemed to relieve the dying woman. She did not know that Thomas was
dead, and I did not tell her. I promised to look after little Lucien,
and sat with her until the intervals of consciousness grew shorter and
finally ceased altogether. She died that night.

CHAPTER XXXIII

AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS

As I drove rapidly up to the house from Casanova Station in the hack, I
saw the detective Burns loitering across the street from the Walker
place. So Jamieson was putting the screws on--lightly now, but ready
to give them a twist or two, I felt certain, very soon.

The house was quiet. Two steps of the circular staircase had been
pried off, without result, and beyond a second message from Gertrude,
that Halsey insisted on coming home and they would arrive that night,
there was nothing new. Mr. Jamieson, having failed to locate the
secret room, had gone to the village. I learned afterwards that he
called at Doctor Walker's, under pretense of an attack of acute
indigestion, and before he left, had inquired about the evening trains
to the city. He said he had wasted a lot of time on the case, and a
good bit of the mystery was in my imagination! The doctor was under
the impression that the house was guarded day and night. Well, give a
place a reputation like that, and you don't need a guard at all,--thus
Jamieson. And sure enough, late in the afternoon, the two private
detectives, accompanied by Mr. Jamieson, walked down the main street of
Casanova and took a city-bound train.

That they got off at the next station and walked back again to
Sunnyside at dusk, was not known at the time. Personally, I knew
nothing of either move; I had other things to absorb me at that time.

Liddy brought me some tea while I rested after my trip, and on the tray
was a small book from the Casanova library. It was called The Unseen
World and had a cheerful cover on which a half-dozen sheeted f