Read Online Wall by Mary Roberts Rinehart - Free Book Online

almost exactly as I had left them.
    The bed had been slept on but not in, and beside it was the book Arthur had carried up, a box of matches and two cigarette stubs on an ash tray. The bathroom was untouched, no towel had been unfolded and the basin was dry—which did not sound like fastidious Arthur. But the hatchet was not in sight, and there was only one incongruous thing in the room, and I stood staring at it with complete bewilderment.
    On the bureau where he had left it the night before was Arthur’s soft felt hat.
    That and the hatchet utterly destroyed any comfortable theory that he had merely left the house early that morning, and that Lizzie had seen him taking a hurried departure against an early dawn. Something had driven Arthur out of the house that early morning. But what? It was absurd to think of the bells, although there was one in the hospital suite which was connected with Mother’s closed room.
    I was completely confused. William, diplomatically approached, had found all lower doors closed and locked. As a result I had to believe that for some unknown reason Arthur had left the house by his old method, leaving his hat and taking the hatchet with him! It was preposterous, and yet I knew somehow that it was true.
    Then where was he? What had happened to him?
    I was nearly frantic with anxiety. I remember that I smoothed the bed as well as I could and hid the hat under the mattress, but it was pure automatism. I was just in time at that, for Jordan appeared in the doorway at that minute. She had a wretched habit of wearing rubber-heeled shoes, and of appearing like a jack-in-the-box when she was not expected.
    “I was to say, miss,” she said stiffly, “that Doctor Jamieson is here to see Ellen, and would you go down?”
    She was not looking at me, however. She was staring past me into the room, with a sort of avid interest.
    “Lizzie says she saw a man running around the place last night, miss. She saw him under that light on the driveway, and he had a hatchet in his hand.”
    “I wish Lizzie would keep her mouth shut,” I said viciously.
    But I saw that she was uneasy. She looked pale, and for some reason I felt sorry for her. Sorry for the slave Juliette had made of her, sorry for the vicarious life she led. I patted her on the arm, and I have been glad since that I did.
    “There’s nothing to worry about,” I told her. “Probably Lizzie had a nightmare.”
    “I suppose I’m used to the city, miss,” she said, and shivered.
    Ellen was quieter when, having locked the rooms again, I went downstairs. Juliette was still out, and I had left Jordan on the second floor. It was only later, in the library, that the doctor asked any questions.
    “What’s all this nonsense about bells, Marcia?” he inquired. “And what about this man with a hatchet?”
    “I suppose Lizzie is getting old,” I said evasively. “As to the rest, you know how it is. An old house—”
    “Maggie says you left this hatchet in the quarantine room.”
    “I thought so. I may be mistaken. Or it may not be the same one.”
    Then he made my blood run cold, for he said: “Somebody up to Arthur’s old tricks with the trellis and the drain pipe, eh? I suppose Arthur himself wasn’t around?”
    “With a hatchet?” I said. “And with Juliette in the house?”
    “Well,” he said, and grinned. “If I were Arthur the conjunction wouldn’t be entirely surprising!”
    I should have told him then and there. He had looked after me all my life, in the summer, and he had often said that in case he ever became delirious he was to be shut in a sealed room. He knew too much about us all. Arthur’s insistence on secrecy, however, was still in my mind. I merely smiled, and soon after that he loaded his bag and folded himself—he was a tall thin man—into his always muddy car and drove away.
    It was after he had gone that I made a round of the grounds. But I found nothing. Mike showed me where the hatchet had been found, its head