Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 18, 1925 — page 48: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

198 to the library, “rather late.” She could not fix the time, exactly, but “ judged it to be around ten o'clock.” She did not know the man, personally or by virtue of his public office; merely that her nephew had told her that “he expected a gentle- man to call, and to call him down from his den when he came.” This she had done. Mr. Fitch was smok- ing when he came down, she recalled seeing him throw away the cigar, for he only smoked up in his den, and not in other parts of the house. “You saw Mr.. Fitch go into the li- brary?” cc Yes.” “This caller was already there?” ce Yes.” “Where did you go from there?” Mrs. Meredith explained that she went toward the rear of the house and down to the servants’ quarters on the lower floor, since the housekeeper and maid had “ an evening out; to see if everything was all right.” When she came up, she remem- bered that Mr. Fitch, at dinner, had said he wanted to take the seven o’clock train the following morning to the city; hence she went back downstairs to see that the “chops for breakfast and the cream for the cereal were in the ice chest”; that she then came upstairs again, paused to be sure the dining room table was already set; and when that was done, she went from the din- ing room, along the main hall upstairs. “Your nephew was still in the library with this caller, all of this time?” “So far as I know.” Myers paused. Then he asked: ‘‘ When you went upstairs, as you— Never mind that. Instead: Did you ever see this pis- tol, before?” Mrs. Meredith, through a mist of tears, identified it as “my nephew, Claude’s.” She had often seen it “on his bureau or in the top drawer, where he kept it for burglars.”” She did not know when she had last seen it; but she was rather sure that if it had been taken to the library, she would have seen it there, and quite sure that it was not there. “Now,” said Myers, “ when you went up and down stairs from the dining room to ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. the servants’ quarters, as you have testi- fied, did you see any one else in that part of the house?” “No. There was no one.” ‘* Any one between that part of the house and the library?” “Not that I saw.” “Tf there had been, would you have seen them?” “Tf they had been there when I came up, I probably would.” ** Who else was in the house, beside your nephew and his caller in the library, if any one?” “Only a guest of mine, Miss Dorothy Dale.” “Where was Miss Dale?” “When I went up from the library floor to the sleeping floor, I went back to her room to chat with her a minute. Miss Dale was then in her room, reclining in a Morris chair, reading a book.” She told of the guest room being situated about halfway between the front and rear of the mansion; of going back to her room, and of closing the door. Afterward, she heard a “loud ” sound from the library. Again the aged lady trembled. She seemed on the verge of a collapse. Myers, by a quick switch in the trend of her testi- mony, gave her new heart. “Was thére a rear stairway as well as the one you used, in the house?” “Yes, sir.” “How far from Miss Dale’s room?” * About thirty feet.” “ Leading from the corridor by which you entered her room?” “No, it is a servants’ stairway. To get to it from Miss Dale’s room, you have to go down the sleeping floor hall, through at least two rooms, out into another corridor and then you come on the rear stairway.” ‘“‘ Was it humanly possible in your opin- ion for Miss Dale to have left her room immediately after you left it, and, unseen by you, gone through the passages you have described, down the rear stairway, through and into the hall below, along it toward the front of the house and reached the library in the elapsed time before you returned to your room and heard this— report—did you say?” EOPMNIGL OOO KS (E@)