The step on the stair

by Anna Katharine Green

It had not always hung there. It had been brought from the den, as you will remember, when Uncle’s illness had become pronounced, taking the place of a painting which had been hung elsewhere. Flanked by windows on either side, it filled the wall-space up to where a table stood of size sufficient to answer for the serving of a meal. There were chairs here too and Orpha’s little basket standing on its three slender legs. The document might have been put under her work. But no, the woman would have found it there; or in the table drawer, or among the cushions of the couch filling the space between this corner and the fireplace. There were rugs all over the room but they must have been lifted; and as for the fireplace itself, not having had the sifting of the ashes, I must leave it unconsidered.

But not so the mantel or the winged chair dedicated solely to my Uncle’s use and always kept near the hearth. This was where I had last seen him, sitting in this chair close to the fire-dogs. The two wills were in his hands. Could one have fallen from its envelope and so into the flames,—the one he had meant to preserve,—the one which was not marked with a hastily scrawled cross? Mad questions to which there was no answer. Would that I might have been the man to sift those ashes! Or that I might yet be given the opportunity of looking behind the ancient painting which filled the large square above the mantel. I did not see how anything like a folded paper could have been lodged there; but not an inch from floor to ceiling would have escaped my inspection had I been fortunate enough or my claims been considered important enough to have entitled me to assist in the search.

Should I end this folly of a disturbed imagination? Forget the room for to-night and the whole gruesome tragedy? Could I, in reality, do this before I had only half circled the room? There was the desk,—the place of all others where he would naturally lock up a paper of value. But this was so obvious that probably not another article in the room had been more thoroughly overhauled or its contents more rigidly examined. If any of its drawers or compartments contained false backs or double bottoms, Edgar would be likely to know it. Up to the night of the ball, when in some way he forfeited a portion of our uncle’s regard, he had been, according to his own story, in his benefactor’s full confidence, even in matters connected with business and his most private transactions. The desk was negligible, if, as I sincerely believed, he had sought to conceal the will from Edgar, as temporarily from every one else.

But back of the desk there was a book-case, and books offer an excellent hiding-place. But that book-case was always locked, and the key to it, linked with that of the desk, kept safely to hand in the drawer inserted in his bed-head. The desk-key, of course, had come into use at the first moment of the search, but had that of the book-case? Possibly not.

I made a note of this doubt; and in my fancy moved on to the two rooms which completed my uncle’s suite towards the north. The study and a dressing closet! I say study and I say closet but both were large enough to merit the name of rooms. The dressing-closet was under the combined care of Wealthy and Clarke. They must be acquainted with every nook and corner of it. Wealthy had undoubtedly been consulted as to its contents, but had Clarke?

The study, since the time when Uncle’s condition became serious enough to have a nurse within call, had been occupied by Wealthy. Certainly he would have hidden nothing in her room which he wished kept from Edgar.

The fourth corner was negligible; so was the wall between it and a second passage-way which, like the one already described, led to a door opening into the main hall. Only, this one, necessitated like the other by the curious break between the old house and the new, held no cabinet or any place of concealment. It was the way of entrance most used by uncle when in health and by all the rest of us both then and later. Had he made use of it that night, for reaching the hall and some place beyond?

Hardly; but if he had, where would he have found a cubby-hole for the will, short of Edgar’s room or mine?

The closet indicated in the diagram of this room as offering another break in this eastern wall, was the next thing to engage my attention.

I had often seen it open and it held, according to my recollection, nothing but clothes. He had always been very methodical in his ways and each coat had its hook and every hat, not in constant use, its own box. The hooks ran along the back and along one of the sides; the other side was given up to shelves only wide enough to hold the boxes just alluded to and the long row of shoes, the number and similarity of which I found it hard to account for till I heard some one in speaking of petty economies and of how we all have them, mentioned this peculiar one of my uncle’s, which was to wear a different pair of shoes every day in the week.