The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1910-11-24

sAhiS w c@N hiS iilN
To so back to Paul Armstrong. At
the last moment his plans had been
frustrated. Sunnyside. with it's hoard
in the chimney room. had been rented
without his knowledge. Attempts to
dislodge me having failed, he was
driven to breaking into his own house.
The ladder in the chute, the burning
of the stable and the entrance through
the cardroom window-all were in the
course of a desperate attempt to get
into the chimney room.
Louise and her mother had, from
the first, been the great stumbling.
blocks. The plan had been to send
Louise away until it vas too late for
her to interfere, but she came back
to the hotel at C Just at the
wrong time. There was a terrible
scene. The girl was told that some
thing of the kind was necessary: that
the bank was about to close and her
stepfather would either avoid arrest
and disgrace in this way, or kill him
self. Fanny Armstrong was a weak
ling. but Louise was more difi cult to
manage She had no love for her step
father. but her devotion to her moth.
err was entire, self-sacrificing. Forced
into acquiescence by her mothers ap-
peals, overwhelmed by the situation,
the girl consented and fled.
From somewhere in Colorado she
sem an anonymous telegram to Jack
Bailey at the Traders bank. Trapped
as she was, she did not want to see
an innocent man arrested. The tele-
guam, received on Thursday, had sent
the cashier to the bank that night in
a frenzy.
Louise arrived at ~Sunnyside and
found the house rented. No knowing
what to do. she sent for Arnold at the
Greenwood club, and told him a little,
not all. She told him that there was
something wrong. and that the bank
was about to close. That his father
was responsible. or the conspiracy
she said nothing. To her surprise,
Arnold already knew, through Bailey
that night, that things were not right.
Moreover, he suspected what Louise
did not, that the money was hidden at
Sunnyside. He had a scrap of paper
that indicated a concealed room some.
where.
His inherited cupidity was aroused.
Eager to get Halsey and Jack Bailey
out of the house, he went up to the
east entry, and in the billiard room
gave the cashier what he had refused
earlier in the evening-the address of
Paul Armstrong In California and a
telegram which had been forwarded
to the club for Bailey, from DR.. Walk.
or. II was in response to m Bailey
had sent, and it said that Paul Arm.
strong was very i'll.
Bailey was almost desperate. He
decided to go west and find Paul Arm.
strong and to force him to %disgorge.
But the catastrophe at the bank &C
Cured sooner than he had expected.
On the moment of starting west, at
Andrews station. where Mr.. Jameson
had located the car he read that the
bank had closed, ard, going back, sur.
rendered himself.
John Bailey had known Paul Arm
strong intimately. He did not believe
that the money was gone; in fact, it
was hardly possible in the interval
since the securities had beer taken.
Where was it? And from some chance
remark let fall some months earlier
by Arnold Armstrong at a dinner,
Bailey felt sure there was a hidden
room at ~Sunnyside. He tried to see
the architect of the building, but, like
the contractor, If he knew of the
room, he refused any information. 1t
was Halsey's idea that join Bailey
come to the house as a gardener, and
pursue his Investigations as he could.
His smooth upper lip had been sufii-
cient disguise, with his change of
clothes. and a haircut by a country
barber.
So it was Alex, Jack Bailey, who
had been our ghost. Not only had he
alarmed Louise-and himself, he ad-
mitted-on the circular staircase, but
he a dug the hole in the trunkroom
wall, and later sent Eliza into hysteria.
The note Liddy had found in Ger
u III . Sti dD-D sShtl was lTOlIl Nun,
and 1t was he who had startled me
into uncO%nsciousness by the clothes
chute, and, with Gertrude's help, had
carried me to Louise's room. Ger
trude, | learned, had watched all
night beside me, in an extremity of
anxiety about me.
That old Thomas had seen his mas
ter, and thought he had seer the Sun
nyside ghost, there could be no doubt.
OF that story of Thomas, about see
ing Jack Bailey n the footpath be-
tween the club and Sunnyside, the
night Liddy and | heard the noise on
the circular staircase-that, too, was
right. On the night before Arnold
Armstrong was murdered, Jack Bailey
had made an attempt to search for
the secret room. He secured Arnold's
keys from his room at the club and
got into the house, armed with a golf
stick for sounding the walls. He ran
against the hamper at the head of
the stairs, caught his cuff-link in 1t,
and drnnnod tho 0n1fcfink NTH a