CHAPTER VII
"WATCH THEIR EYES"
AS Barry Odell reached the second floor he found himself confronting a woman he had not seen before; a servant evidently from her trim livery. She had just come from one of the side rooms, closing the door quietly behind her; but the detective caught the sound of sobbing and high-pitched feminine tones within, and he concluded it to be occupied by the chagrined Cissie.
The woman who stood regarding him with frank interest and curiosity was about thirty, thin to the point of angularity; and her sharp-chinned, sallow face baffled him with a sense of half recognition. He recalled what Miss Meade had told him of the lady's maid and spoke.
"You are Gerda?"
"Yes, sir," the woman replied quietly, without surprise; and there was an expectant look in her gray-green eyes.
"Come downstairs, please; I want to talk to you."
She followed him without a word to the drawing-room, where she stood before him, ignoring the chair toward which he had made a tentative gesture.
"How long have you been employed here?"
"Six months, sir. That is all."
"You were the personal maid of Mrs. Lorne and Miss Chalmers?"
"Yes, sir. And of the other ladies also when they required my services." She enunciated clearly but carefully, as if speaking in a language which was not her native one; and there was a slight staccato accent which she seemingly could not eliminate.
"You are French?"
She shook her head.
"Swiss, sir. I come from Zurich."
"Do you recall the day when Mrs. Lorne pricked her finger with her embroidery needle?"
"Perfectly, sir, but from the day after. I knew nothing of it until one morning when Madame awoke with her hand all inflamed and remembered herself about the accident with the embroidery needle on the previous day."
"She did not call the doctor immediately?"
"No, sir; not for three days, although Mees Meade implored her to do so. Mees Meade and I, we poulticed the hand and bandaged it; but it grew worse, until finally Madame consented to send for the doctor. After the nurses came I was not allowed in the room until just at the last, and then Madame was delirious."
Gerda had kept her curious light eyes steadily fixed on the detective's face, and although she replied readily, almost mechanically, to his questioning, the impression of hushed anticipation lingered.
"You know who I am, of course?"
Gerda bowed.
"The officer detective from Police Headquarters, is it not so? Otherwise I should not be talking of Madame."
"You understand that you must be perfectly frank with me?"
Once more she inclined her head.
"I desire only to aid in discovering the truth."
Odell eyed her with growing interest, and the consciousness of having seen her somewhere at some past time increased. Her diction was superior to that usually encountered in one in her position, and her bearing although perfectly respectful suggested a certain dignity equally incompatible.
"When did you first learn of the discovery of Mr. Chalmers's body last week?"
"When Mr. Lorne called me to attend Mees Meade after he had led her down from the room of poor Mr. Chalmers. But I knew there was trouble, terrible trouble before that, sir, when Mr. Lorne sent the butler, Peters, up to call the young gentleman."
"Where were you at the time?"
"In the room of Mees Cissie. She had just had her coffee and was preparing to get up. We heard Peters pass the door and then come stumbling down, crying out in a choked, frightened way. Mees Cissie wanted me to go and find out what had happened, but I could not, sir. The strength left me, and I sank down into a chair. We heard Mr. Lorne go up and Mr. Gene, but Mees Meade walks so softly that we did not know when she passed the door. I was still there in that chair when Mr. Lorne called to me."
"You remained in attendance on the ladies all the morning?" Odell's questions were becoming as mechanical as the replies. He could not force the woman's personality into a secondary place, and the sense of incongruity still prevailed.
"With Mees Meade until she had recovered her composure, sir. Afterward with Mees Cissie, who was hysterical. It was lunch-time before I descended to the servants' dining-room in the basement."
"Gerda, when was it that you first heard talk among the servants that there was something queer about these two deaths so close together?"
"Something queer, sir?" she repeated. "Do you mean that it might be a curse or fate or some strange mystery?"
Odell nodded.
"They were all discussing it when I entered the dining-room for lunch, sir; Peters and Marcelle, the cook, and Jane. They said it was not natural." She broke off with a shrug. "You must know the usual gossip of the—of our kind, sir. And it's not to be wondered at. Two deaths in a month in the same house and both from accident; it is enough to make anyone afraid to stay here."
She had retrieved her mistake but added another to it by too obviously straining for effect.
"You yourself did not take any stock in their superstitious fears, did you?" He deliberately adopted a more familiar tone, and she as instinctively withdrew from it.
"I felt uneasy, nervous, but I am not superstitious, sir."
"Then what made you feel uneasy?"
Again that little foreign shrug.
"I don't know, sir. Perhaps the gloom that hung over the house, the sorrow."
"Did you hear anything last night? Any sudden noise?"
"Yes, sir. I went to bed quite early, but I was still awake when I heard a faint crash far below. We sleep on the top floor, you know. This morning Peters told us of the picture that fell down. But that was after the accident to Mr. Lorne."
"At what time did Peters leave the house?"
1 don't know, sir, but it must have been before nine. He slipped away while the doctor was here attending to Mr. Lorne, and none of us saw him go. He didn't say a word to anybody, but just walked out; his things are all here in his room, Jane says. He was the most frightened of us all this week and kept saying that we would be murdered in our beds, but I don't think he meant it; he didn't exactly know what he was afraid of."
She was forcing the volubility, Odell could see; and gradually the look of anticipation was fading from her eyes. Could it be that he had actually seen her somewhere before; that she had recognized him and waited for the recognition to be mutual?He determined to throw out a feeler.
"Gerda, where did you work before coming here?"
"Nowhere. That is, I had been ill for a very long time." She hesitated, but the eager look had come back into her eyes. "Before that I had been maid for a lady here in town for some years."
"Who was she?"
The answer came slowly with a curious, studied evenness of tone.
"A Madame Gael."
"Not Mrs. Quincy Gael who was divorced?"
"Yes, sir. But the divorce came later, after I had been taken ill and gone away."
"Did you ever see or hear of a Mr. Farley Drew in her home?"
I read of him afterwards, sir, of course; but while I was there, oh, no. I did not know there was such a gentleman." She paused and then added with a curious veiled significance in her tone: "I have worked in various other places, sir, and I have not always been a lady's maid. Once, long before my illness, when I was strong and my nerves were steady, I was an attendant in a private sanitarium."
Odell studied her for a moment. Confound the woman! What was she trying to get at, anyway? He had never been in a sanitarium in his life, either professionally or as a patient. True, he had been in a hospital once, when he had been knifed in pinching Luigi Lombardo the Dago killer, but—
"What kind of a sanitarium?" he demanded.
The eagerness flashed out in her eyes then and she bent toward him and spoke rapidly in a low, meaning tone.
"For the insane, sir. Have you ever seen any crazy people? If you have you never can mistake them, no matter how clever and cunning they are. There is a look in their eyes that gives them away to those who know."
"I've never run up against a case of insanity." Odell's preconceived ideas were in chaos. Clearly the woman did not for a moment think that she recognized him, but she spoke with a purpose. Could it be that she was trying to give him a tip? Her eagerness, her hushed voice, and the light in her eyes showed that she was not talking idly. "Why are you telling me this, Gerda?"
The woman stepped back, and a spot of color came into her sallow cheeks.
"It—it might come in handy in your profession some time, sir. There are more crazy people loose in society and out of it than you would believe. No one realizes it; because the most dangerous kind are those who know them- selves that they are mad, and they hide it from other folks with the cunning that a sane mind wouldn't be capable of." She halted and drew a deep breath as if the subject were finished; but as he maintained a noncommittal silence and permitted his expression to register nothing more than a casual interest, she suddenly advanced once more until she stood close to his chair.
"Watch people's eyes, sir, when you are on a case. Watch their eyes. It isn't that they'll be wild and shifty necessarily, but if you'll study them long enough there'll be a time when even for just a second they'll let go like a curtain that's been held together and you'll get a peep at the diseased brain back of them. They may be crafty enough to outwit you a hundred times, and cunning enough to guard their actions and their speech so that you would be called crazy yourself if you were to accuse them of anything; but they can't always control their eyes! Remember that, sir, and it will maybe help you a little sometime."
She turned as if to go but he caught her wrist.
"Wait a minute, Gerda. You've got some particular reason for telling me this. Do you mean that you know something? That someone in this house is insane?"
"Hush! Oh, hush!" She drew back and he released her. "I meant nothing. I thought only to do you a kindness, to tell you something that I had learned which might at some future time be useful to you. Forgive me, sir, if I have been impertinent and let me go. I think Mees Meade is calling me."
"You think nothing of the kind," he retorted. "You're trying to tell me something, and you are afraid to come through with it. I could take you down to Headquarters and make you speak; but I won't, because you've volunteered this to me and I will keep quiet about it. I think you ought to finish what you've started, though. Tell me what's on your mind."
"Nothing," she repeated, still in hushed but vehement tones. "There is nothing on my mind, sir. I should not have spoken. You will let me depart now?"
Odell saw that there was nothing more to be gained from her at the time, either by bullying or cajolery, and he nodded reluctantly.
"All right, Gerda. If you have anything else you want to say to me any time just let me know, and I promise you I'll keep it to myself. Thank you for giving me the tip for future cases."
He had struck the right note, for at the door she turned and came slowly back.
"Remember, then, one thing that I have said to you, sir. Sometimes they are able to hide it so cleverly that you would be thought crazy yourself if you accused them without proof."
This time she left the room without looking back, and for a space he sat mentally going over their interview word for word. Her last admonition had made her attitude clear to him; she suspected someone but without actual knowledge, without proof. She also was convinced of that person's insanity, but whether that conviction came from mere intuition or expert knowledge of such cases remained to be seen. She might have lied about having been an attendant in a sanitarium; she looked quite capable of lying her soul away if it suited her purpose, yet unless she were a consummate actress she had been absolutely sincere m her warning. Her own gray-green eyes were strange, inscrutable except when alive with eagerness; they reminded him of those of some gaunt, famished cat. What a good, consistent hater she would be!
He aroused himself at last from his speculations and rang the bell. After an interval Jane, the buxom housemaid, appeared.
"Jane, there will be two men here presently to hang that picture in the library. Let me know when they come."
"Ye—yes, sir." Jane bobbed her head and prepared to retire from his presence with obvious haste.
"Here, wait a minute. I want to talk to you."
Her rosy cheeks blanched.
"Yes, sir." There was a distinct quaver in her tones.
"How long have you been employed here?"
"Three y-years, sir, and never a better mistress than the poor lady that's gone could a girl have!" This was easy ground and she breathed more freely.
"Who was the lady's maid before Gerda came?"
"Margaret McGrath, though she called herself Marguerite. She was a nice girl, sir, friendly and didn't give herself no airs. She left to get married to—"
"So she was nicer than Gerda, eh?" Odell regarded her quizzically, and she tossed her head.
"That stuck-up thing? You'd think she was a lady herself the way she goes along with her head in the air, and the cold politeness of her, as if the rest of us was nothing but dirt beneath her feet!" Jane's color had returned, and now it deepened with resentment. "It ain't such a grand job to be a lady's maid; I've known some housekeepers that was more free and pleasant to get along with, and I don't care if you go and tell her I said so. Didn't even want to room with me when she came, but got Mrs. Lorne to give her a room to herself. She won't be here long, though, now the poor mistress is gone."
"Why?" asked Odell.
"Because she's no good as a personal maid. I heard Miss Cissie say so herself. Anybody can mend lace and keep things picked up; but she's such a blockhead she can't even take messages over the 'phone for Miss Cissie, and she has to attend to it for herself. Miss Cissie complained about it to her mother only a few days before the poor lady hurt herself with that needle, but Mrs. Lorne liked her and wouldn't hear of sending her away. I guess things'll be different now."
It was evident that the affronted Jane would be quite willing to continue the subject indefinitely, but the detective had learned what he wanted to know and promptly took advantage of the opening which offered.
"What was the needle like which caused Mrs. Lorne's illness? Did you see it?"
"Indeed I did, sir." Jane visibly swelled with importance. "Wasn't it me went and got it when the doctor asked to see it? Miss Meade came out of the sickroom and told me to go get it, and I did; but I wrapped my hand up good in a towel before 1 touched it, sir, as you may believe. There it was, sticking into the work she'd dropped as innocent as if it wasn't the cause of what was going to be the poor lady's death. It had become unthreaded from the red silk, but it was right in place for the next stitch. I gave it to Doctor Adams myself, and then he sent me back for some of the embroidery silk and I got that too."
"Jane, when Mr. Chalmers died last week, who told you of it?"
"Peters, sir. It was too early for me to do the rooms upstairs and I'd cleaned all the parlor floor and was down in the kitchen when he came as white as a sheet and told us. I was like to faint, sir, and I haven't got the black fear off me yet! I'd be giving notice but for Miss Meade; she's so kind of helpless that I couldn't bear to leave her in the lurch, but I'm more scared than ever now."
"Why?"
Well, that picture falling always means death, sure; and the way accidents have been happening in the family looks like there was a curse on it, sir. There's a dog that comes and howls under the windows every night and fair gives me the creeps."
"That's all nonsense, Jane. Did you hear anything last night; not only when the picture fell but afterward, late in the night?"
"I did not, sir, thanks be!" She crossed herself devoutly; then her round, vacuous blue eyes opened wide upon the detective. "I heard nothing from the time I laid my head on the pillow at nine o'clock until the alarm clock went off. I was dusting the parlor here when Mr. Lorne came tumbling down the stairs."
"Why didn't you go out to help him?"
"Because I was too scared to move," Jane responded frankly. "After they'd got him in the library I crept out and down to the kitchen."
"You were scared, eh? Just because Mr. Lorne fell downstairs?" Odell's tone was scornful and Jane bridled beneath it.
"After the deaths and all, it's no wonder I was. I thought he was dead too, and it put me in a panic If it's all nonsense, sir, as you say, why is it that the police are here?"
He laughed at the impudent thrust.
"To put a stop to the silly notions you've all got. Jane, that morning when young Mr. Chalmers died, who cleaned up his room and the bathroom after the undertaker had gone?"
Jane's color ebbed in her cheeks.
"I did, sir; me and the cook together, for I wouldn't have gone into that room alone for all the money in the world." She shuddered. "We didn't wait for the undertaker either; as soon as the doctor came and the med—medical examiner, I think you call it—and made out papers as to how the poor young gentleman had died, the body was carried into one of the guest-rooms across the hall, and me and the cook started in on the bathroom. It was fairly ghastly, sir. There was blood everywhere—"
She was evidently going on with a gruesome relish, but the detective interrupted her.
"Did you notice any on the tub?"
"Yes, sir. The marks of poor Mr. Julian's hands covered with it, where he'd tried to keep himself up."
"Both hands, Jane? Are you sure of it?"
"Yes, sir, both hands. I remember because I called the cook's attention to them. Some of them was blurred, but there was one place where his two hands had grabbed the edge of the tub side by side. Cook can tell you, sir. There was the mark of both hands, plain."