Free The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart Page A

brought down a revolver that night for Jack to take with him, what one did you bring? Mine?"
     
      Gertrude was defiant now.
     
      "No. Yours was loaded, and I was afraid of what Jack might do. I gave him one I have had for a year or two. It was empty."
     
      Halsey threw up both hands despairingly.
     
      "If that isn't like a girl!" he said. "Why didn't you do what I asked you to, Gertrude? You send Bailey off with an empty gun, and throw mine in a tulip bed, of all places on earth! Mine was a thirty-eight caliber. The inquest will show, of course, that the bullet that killed Armstrong was a thirty-eight. Then where shall I be?"
     
      "You forget," I broke in, "that I have the revolver, and that no one knows about it."
     
     
     
      But Gertrude had risen angrily.
     
      "I can not stand it; it is always with me," she cried. "Halsey, I did not throw your revolver into the tulip bed. I--think-- you--did it--yourself!"
     
      They stared at each other across the big library table, with young eyes all at once hard, suspicious. And then Gertrude held out both hands to him appealingly.
     
      "We must not," she said brokenly. "Just now, with so much at stake, it--is shameful. I know you are as ignorant as I am. Make me believe it, Halsey."
     
      Halsey soothed her as best he could, and the breach seemed healed. But long after I went to bed he sat down-stairs in the living-room alone, and I knew he was going over the case as he had learned it. Some things were clear to him that were dark to me. He knew, and Gertrude, too, why Jack Bailey and he had gone away that night, as they did. He knew where they had been for the last forty-eight hours, and why Jack Bailey had not returned with him. It seemed to me that without fuller confidence from both the children--they are always children to me--I should never be able to learn anything.
     
      As I was finally getting ready for bed, Halsey came up-stairs and knocked at my door. When I had got into a negligee--I used to say wrapper before Gertrude came back from school--I let him in. He stood in the doorway a moment, and then he went into agonies of silent mirth. I sat down on the side of the bed and waited in severe silence for him to stop, but he only seemed to grow worse.
     
      When he had recovered he took me by the elbow and pulled me in front of the mirror.
     
      "`How to be beautiful,'" he quoted. "`Advice to maids and matrons,' by Beatrice Fairfax!" And then I saw myself. I had neglected to remove my wrinkle eradicators, and I presume my appearance was odd. I believe that it is a woman's duty to care for her looks, but it is much like telling a necessary falsehood--one must not be found out. By the time I got them off Halsey was serious again, and I listened to his story.
     
      "Aunt Ray," he began, extinguishing his cigarette on the back of my ivory hair-brush, "I would give a lot to tell you the whole thing. But--I can't, for a day or so, anyhow. But one thing I might have told you a long time ago. If you had known it, you would not have suspected me for a moment of--of having anything to do with the attack on Arnold Armstrong. Goodness knows what I might do to a fellow like that, if there was enough provocation, and I had a gun in my hand--under ordinary circumstances. But--I care a great deal about Louise Armstrong, Aunt Ray. I hope to marry her some day. Is it likely I would kill her brother?"
     
      "Her stepbrother," I corrected. "No, of course, it isn't likely, or possible. Why didn't you tell me, Halsey?"
     
      "Well, there were two reasons," he said slowly.
     
      "One was that you had a girl already picked out for me--"
     
      "Nonsense," I broke in, and felt myself growing red. I had, indeed, one of the--but no matter.
     
      "And the second reason," he pursued, "was that the Armstrongs would have none