The Step In The House

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 463, 19 September 1928, Page 5

The Step In The House

e By

Rina Ramsay

CHAPTER I. (Continued) “Off his mind!’’ she repeated. “Willing it away trom his only kin! And who’s to profit ?” She disappeared to the kitchen and brought him a cup of coffee, then took herself off to brew a solace fov herself.

Shortly the lawyer could be heard descending. He went down the passage and put his head in at the kitchen door.

“Don’t let Sam go to bed, Mrs. Beamish, I’ll want you both as witnesses when I've drawn it up.”

Then he came to the sitting-room, closed the door, and sat down Importantly at Harry Dodds' business desk. “What’s your Christian name, Richardson?” The doctor started. He had been half asleep. “Charles,” he said. “Oh, good Lord, don’t say he’s putting me in as executor or anything of that sort. I can't act—l can’t undertake it. I don’t know his affairs. Look here, Adams, you must stop it.” * The lawyer gave him an odd look “Humph,” he said, “I must carry out my instructions. He’s a queer old Party, Dodds. D’you know he owns half the town—and look at his per versity, sticking to that shop, cutting cheese with an apron tied round his middle! He says he made a sort of a will himself yesterday when he broke loose from his housekeeper and sot down into the shop—wanted to know if it would be valid —stuffed it in a drawer somewhere, he thinks. Idiotic! Only lawyers know what unsodly muddles their clients made. I advised him to let me draw up a Proper one, and he stopped fidgeting at once. I left him quite satisfied and drowsy.” He bent over his task importantly, emitting no legal formalities, coverJ ng, with professional diffuseivess, sheet after sheet of paper. For a little while the crackling of it was the nuly sound in the house. Then, coming distinct in the prevailing silence, the doctor heard someone walking on the landing upstairs. •t was a soft noise. A board creaked. It stopped. “What was that?” he said involuntarily aloud, and listened again. But Johnny Adams had finished. He was reading over what he had accomplished in a rapid mutter messages nnd tenements and the like. “There,” he said, “the old chap might to enjoy this. He’ll feel I have really made him secure. There’s nothing like legal phraseology to fix

Then again he looked hard and mysteriously at the other man. Professional secrecy was struggling in him w ith his natural inclination to blab. The hideous black monumental

clock on the chimney-piece struck two. Johnny Adams blotted the papers carefully, and took up his fountain pen. “Well,” he said, “I'd better collect these two and get this signing and witnessing done and clear away to my bed. It’s a dog's life, a family solicitors —and we get no surprises !” He passed out into the passage and made his way to the kitchen. It was the cheerfullest corner in that house, with its glittering copper pans and its shining range where the fire had been kept in all night. Sam Beamish was dozing in his wooden armchair, and Mrs. Beamish drinking her tea. The large black teapot stewing on the hob. “Now then,” said the lawyer briskly, "Are you two ready?” The old woman drained her teacup and set R down rattling in the saucer. Sara got up, blinking, and they both followed him, a small procession, up the narrow stairs. The big bedroom was very quiet. It -was rather a solemn room, furnished in dark mahogany, with old-fashioned hangings closing in the windows and looped round the Immense four-post bed. The gas jet over the chimneypiece flared as Johnny Adams turned it higher, and, in his mincing professional voice, addressed his client. He got no answer. He looked suddenly on the bed. There was something odd there. Old Dodd lay motionless with a pillow on his face. His cry called them into the room, called the doctor up from' downstairs. There was no doubt about it. The old man had been smothered without a struggle. There was no life in him. “Could it —could it have been an accident?” stammered Johnny Adams. “No,” said the doctor grimly. It was incomprehensible. He looked at the other three. Mrs. Beamish had uttered one loud scream and flung her apron over her head, and Sam stood with his mouth open and every vestige of colour wiped out of his ruddy old face. Young Adams, startled out of his cocksureness, stared from one to the other and then again with a kind of fascinated repulsion approaching panic, at the limp effigy on the bed. “Who else is in the house?” he was saying. His voice had dropped to a whisper.

“Oh, Missie —she’ll be frightened to death!” said Mrs. Beamish suddenly, and whisked on to the landing. Presently they heard her talking to someone above. “It was me screamed, Missie. Don’t come down. I’m an old silly, and there’s nothing the matter —Don’t come down ”

She spoke in the futile, unnatural key that nurses employ to hide dangerous things from children. Above her, leaning over the upper stairs, her face white in the shadows, her dress-ing-gown clutched round her as if just awakened from sleep, the girl was listening to the disturbance below; scared blue eyes asking for the truth, made it plain that she was not deceived. “Is he—dead” she asked. Mrs. Beamish held her tongue, and that ominous silence told her. She sank down on the stairs with a little shuddering sigh and hid her face in her hands. CHAPTER 11. The people were moving In knots of two and three at a time toward the old courthouse where the inquest was being held. In a small town like this, where the inhabitants had known each other all their lives, and where the occasional stranger settling among them was the subject of an eager curiosity that buzzed and hummed about him until the whole of his history was common property —there were few secrets. They all knew already that old Harry Dodds, who had obstinately stuck to the old-fashioned wine and provision shop that had been his father's and his grandfather’s, had done so partly to spite his half-sister Elizabeth, who had grander notions and had mortally affronted him on the only occasion when, after her marriage, he had gone to see her. They knew that Elizabeth had made a bad mistake in her marriage, that her husband had been made bankrupt, and that they had gone abroad after Dodds had refused to help them nearly twenty years ago. They knew, too, that the pale girl in black that Dicky the porter had directed up the street, and who had walked in on the old man, with his old servant’s connivance, without giving him time to have the door shut in her face, was the banned Elizabeth’s only daughter. For two days there had been hot discussion as to whether the old man’s obstinacy would be worn down by the girl’s blandishments. He hadn't turned her out. It was said he was divided between a relenting fondness that the sight of her had awakened, and a kind of rage at finding himself so weak. And he hadn’t long to make up his mind. The whole town knew that. It was the more horrifying that anyone should have been found to hurry him out of the world. They crowded into the dingy build-

ing that was used once a week as a police court, and the rest of the time stood empty except when some busybodies, political or otherwise, took it into their heads to hold a public meeting. The coroner had come in from the larger town a few miles away; the jury, picked from among old Harry Dodds’s l’ellow--townsmen, looked at him rather helplessly. This dreadful thing was so foreign to their experience that they were a little dazed.

To Richardson, the doctor, looking on, it was astounding how the little grey-bearded man, insignificant to look at, got order out of chaos, and set everything in its fair course. There was something almost sinister in the practised manner In which he dealt with all these agitated and excited people, himself imperturbable, as if his hobby were sudden death.

The doctor himself was the first witness. He had to give medical testimony, to say definitely that his patient had been smothered by a pillow that had been plucked from under his head and pressed down upon his face. That was the material point of his evidence. Upon that statement hung the verdict. Until he had spoken half the people listening with suspended breath to what he had to say about it had felt that there must be some mis-

take; that the story that had gone round was incredible, some frightful exaggeration. There was a tremendous hush in the room as he described what he found when the lawyer’s shout had brought him up to the bedroom; as he gave his conclusions.

Then the coroner calle-.’ up the dead man’s lawyer, and Johnny Adams had the chance of focussing public attention upon himself. He wasn’t as popular in the place as the doctor. There was an idea that he was not a patch on his father; that he was too keen on horse racing and other sports, too gay altogether. But it couldn't be denied he was clever. The charitable gave him 10 years to marry and settle down, and calculated he would then be fit to hold the many public offices that his father had. They said he had a successful eye.

He hadn’t very much to say, but what he said was surprising. He had been called up in the middle of the night to see old Mr. Dodds. He had found his client in bed, very weak, but very intelligent,. He informed him he could not sleep until he had a certain matter off his mind. It seemed he had lately realised that in the event of his dying without making a will all his property

would go to his only surviving relative, whom he did not wish to inherit. He had already made an effort to continue a will embodying his intentions, but had been overtaken by exhaustion and was not clear what he had done with It or whether it would be valid. He, Adams, had advised him the best thing to do would be for him to draw up a proper will on the spot, apd have it signed, and witnessed and his client agreeing, he had gone downstairs to prepare the document. On returning to the bedroom, accompanied by the two old servants as witnesses, he had found the old man dead, and had at once called the doctor upstairs. No, he could not account for his client being in such haste, as he was not considered to be in very imminent danger, otherwise than by supposing there was some struggle in his mind, some fear of weakening in his determination to persist in disinheriting his relative. He had no enemies, no fear of anyone that he knew of. He had regarded this midnight summons as a crochet. Day and night were much alike to an invalid. As far as he knew there was no one in the house at the time besides himself and the doctor and the two old servants- and the relative in question. The will being unsigned, of course the relative would inherit. “And under the will?” he was asked.

“Under the will,” said Johnny Adams slowly, “with the exception of a sum of three hundred pounds specifically left to apprentice her to some trade —the relative took nothing. The whole of his property was left to Dr. Charles Richardson, his medical attendant.”

He glanced up as he brought that out, knowing what a sensation his words would make. They did. All along the room there was a shiver, an involuntary stirring among the listeners. All eyes were turned on the doctor. So that was the meaning of

Johnny’s hints, his mysterious manner —and the strange little speech of commiseration he had made to the doctor in the midst of that night’s turmoil. Richardson felt his brow hot. The poor old man! What could have possessed him? He composed himself to sit rigid under the thrilled stare of his friends and neighbours. Anyhow, the injustice hadn’t been perpetrated. The girl hadn’t been robbed for him. He had no need to number himself among those practitioners upon whom had lain the intolerable burden of refuting or living down an imputation of using their calling for base personal ends; men whose honour had been smudged by changes of undue influence, through the unaccountable whimsey of a patient. His first sentiment w-as one of immense relief.

For old Dbdds had indeed turned out to he very wealthy. Cunning investments had made him richer. It must have pleased his peculiar humour to keep his humble station and chuckle inwardly over the knowledge that —as Johnny Adams had put it —he owned half the town.

Richardson pulled himself together to listen further. Johnny had finished his evidence, and the two old servants were being asked searching questions the drift of which they probably only half understood. They didn’t know much. There was no stranger about that they knew of. Their master had : no enemy who would he likely to do ; him evil. They had seen and heard nothing untoward as they sat in the kitchen waiting to be called upstairs. Yes, it would perhaps be possible for : someone to slip into the house while Sam was fetching the lawyer and Miss : De Stair was gone for the doctor. The : door had been left unfastened so that Mrs. Beamish need not come down to let them in. Miss De Stair was only gone a few minutes, anyhow; the doctor had come at once. Sam had soon followed with the lawyer. After that it had been shut. Sam remembered how he had shut it, letting it click softly, not to make too much noise. It was only in these few minutes an intruder could have got in and hidden himself. (To be continued.)