He had not used the main staircase, there was no way
to the upper floor in the east wing, and Liddy had been at the
window, in the west wing, where the servants' stair went up. But
we did not go to bed at all. Sam Bohannon and Warner helped in
the search, and not a closet escaped scrutiny. Even the cellars
were given a thorough overhauling, without result. The door
in the east entry had a hole through it where my bullet had gone.
The hole slanted downward, and the bullet was embedded in the
porch. Some reddish stains showed it had done execution.
"Somebody will walk lame," Halsey said, when he had marked the
course of the bullet. "It's too low to have hit anything but a
leg or foot."
From that time on I watched every person I met for a limp, and to
this day the man who halts in his walk is an object of suspicion
to me. But Casanova had no lame men: the nearest approach to it
was an old fellow who tended the safety gates at the railroad,
and he, I learned on inquiry, had two artificial legs. Our man
had gone, and the large and expensive stable at Sunnyside was a
heap of smoking rafters and charred boards. Warner swore the
fire was incendiary, and in view of the attempt to enter the
house, there seemed to be no doubt of it.
CHAPTER XXIV
FLINDERS
If Halsey had only taken me fully into his confidence, through
the whole affair, it would have been much simpler. If he had
been altogether frank about Jack Bailey, and if the day after the
fire he had told me what he suspected, there would have been no
harrowing period for all of us, with the boy in danger.
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