Lonesome Road Read Free

words.
    “Something—yes—”
    “Then will you please tell me about it.”
    Miss Treherne dropped her brow upon her hand in such a fashion as to screen her eyes. When she spoke, it was in a low, even voice.
    “A day or two after the last letter I had a narrow escape from falling downstairs. I had been washing my dog, and I was carrying him. I didn’t want him to shake himself until I could get him downstairs, so I was hurrying. And just as I came to the top step my own maid, Louisa Barnet, caught me by the arm. ‘Oh, Miss Rachel!’ she said, and she pulled me back. We have been together since we were children and she is very devoted to me. I could see that she was white and shaking. She held on to me and said, ‘You’d have got your death if I hadn’t stopped you. I nearly got mine coming up, but you going down and your hands taken up with Neusel—oh, you wouldn’t have had a chance!’ I said, ‘What do you mean, Louie?’ and she said, ‘Look for yourself, Miss Rachel!’ ”
    “And what did you see?” inquired Miss Silver in an interested voice.
    “The stairs go down in a long, straight flight from a half-way landing. They are of oak and uncarpeted. I was on the landing when Louisa stopped me. I don’t allow the stairs to be too highly polished, but when I looked I could see that the first three treads were like glass. Louisa had just come up. She said her feet went from under her as if she had been on ice. She came down on her hands and knees, and just saved herself by catching at one of the banisters. With the dog in my arms I should have been quite helpless. I mightn’t have been killed, but I should certainly have been very badly hurt. The housemaid is a local girl, steady and not too bright. She said she had done the stairs just as usual.” Rachel Treherne gave the ghost of a laugh. “I’ve never had to complain of her polishing anything too much!”
    “And when did you come up those stairs yourself—or when had anyone else been up or down?”
    “Not all the afternoon so far as I know, but I didn’t want to make a fuss or ask questions. The house was full. I was in my room writing letters. My sister was resting. The girls were somewhere in the garden. Everyone else was out. I finished washing Neusel at half past four, and I shouldn’t think anyone had come up or down since three o’clock.”
    “Plenty of time to polish three steps,” observed Miss Silver.
    Rachel Treherne made no answer, but after a moment she went on speaking.
    “I shouldn’t have thought of it again if it hadn’t been for the letters. I tried very hard not to attach any importance to it, but I couldn’t get it off my mind. You see, the stairs would be done before breakfast, and if they had been like that all day, someone would have slipped on them long before half-past four. But if they were polished in the afternoon when everybody was out of the way, then it was done on purpose to make someone fall. And after those letters I couldn’t help thinking that I was the someone. I couldn’t get it off my mind.”
    “What polish had been used? Could you tell?”
    “Oh, yes. It was some the housekeeper got to try—a new stuff called Glasso, but I wouldn’t have it used on the floors because it made them too slippery.”
    There was another pause. Miss Silver laid down her knitting and wrote in the shiny exercise-book. Then she said,
    “Is that all?” and Rachel Treherne took her hand from her eyes and cried,
    “Oh, no—it isn’t!”
    Miss Silver gave a little cough.
    “It will be much easier if you will go straight on. What happened after that?”
    “Nothing for about a week. Then Louisa Barnet found the curtains on fire in my room. She beat the fire out, and there was not much damage done, but—it couldn’t have been an accident. There was no open flame in the room, or any way the curtains could have caught. I wasn’t in any real danger, I suppose, but it wasn’t a pleasant thing to happen on the top of