The step on the stair

by Anna Katharine Green

I was approaching the Bartholomew mansion, and its spell was already upon me. An embodiment of beauty and of mystery! A glorious pile of masonry, hiding a secret on the solution of which my honor as a man and my hope as a lover seemed absolutely to depend.

There was a mob at either gate, dispersing slowly under the efforts of the police. To force my way through a crowd of irritated, antagonistic men and women collected perhaps for the purpose of intercepting me, required not courage, but a fool’s bravado. Between me and it I saw an open door. It belonged to a small shop where I had sometimes traded. I ventured to look in. The woman who usually stood behind the counter was not there, but her husband was and gave me a sharp look as I entered.

“I want nothing but a refuge,” I hastily announced. “The crowd below there will soon be gone. Will it incommode you if I remain here till the street is clear?”

“Yes, it will,” he rejoined abruptly, but with a twinkle of interest in his eye showing that his feelings were kindlier than his manner. “The better part of the crowd, you see, are coming this way and some of them are in a mood far from Christian.”

By “some of them,” I gathered that he meant his wife, and I stepped back.

“People have such a way of making up their minds before they see a thing out,” he muttered, slipping from behind the counter and shutting the door she had probably left open. “If you will come with me,” he added more cheerfully, “I will show you the only thing you can do if you don’t want a dozen women’s hands in your hair.”

And, crossing to the rear, he opened another door leading into the yard, where he pointed out a small garage, empty, as it chanced, of his Ford. “Step in there and when all is quiet yonder, you can slip into the street without difficulty. I shall know nothing about it.”

And with this ignominious episode associated with my return, I finally approached the house I had entered so often under very different auspices.

I had a latch-key in my pocket, but I did not choose to use it. I rang, instead. When the door opened I took a look at the man who held the knob in hand. Though he occupied the position of butler in the great establishment, and was therefore continually to be seen at meals, I did not know him very well—did not know him at all; for he was one of the machine-made kind whose perfect service left nothing to be desired, but of whose thoughts and wishes he gave no intimation unless it was to those he had known much longer than he had me.

Would he reveal himself in face of my intrusion? I was fully as curious as I was anxious to see. No; he was still the perfect servant and opened the door wide, without a gleam of hostility in his eye or any change in his usual manner.