Little by little the evidence comes out as to Miss Lyon’s drinking habits. Stromeyer’sⒶtextual note manⒺexplanatory note was here yesterday, and he spoke of an incident in this line, which occurred in the days when this house was being finally equipped inside for occupancy. He was here to put up window-shades and curtains. He heard Miss Lyon scream, and he ran into the room where she was. She seemed to be overmastered by hysterics, and cried out, “Hold my hands! hold my hands!” He held her hands.Ⓐtextual note A dozen workmen came running to see what the screaming was about, and there they found the dramatic situation which I have just described. Among the inflow was Lounsbury. He was calm; he knew Miss Lyon’s breed of hysterics; he had had experience of them before; and he knew what to do. He drew a flask of whisky and said, “Give her this, it will quiet her.”Ⓐtextual note It got a welcome reception.

Miss Lyon was drunk, and Lounsbury knew it. On another occasion when she was hysterically drunk, she demanded whisky, and they gave her a third of a glass, which emptied the bottle. She demanded more, and was told there was no more to be had immediately, because ClaudeⒺexplanatory note had the key of the wine-closet, and he was not about. She flew into a rage, and dashed the glass against the wall, and broke it. I think Lounsbury was present on that occasion, too, but I will ask him, and make sure.

When KatyⒶtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note, Claude, and Miss Lyon were completing the clearing out of the house in Fifth Avenue, in September of last year, Miss Lyon ran out of liquor, and demanded a fresh supply. There wasn’t any. She said she could not do this kind of work without the help of restoratives, and ordered Claude to fetch a bottle of Scotch whisky from the BrevoortⒺexplanatory note—which he did. By the testimony of Claude and KatyⒶtextual note, she finished that bottle before bedtime.

Stromeyer’sⒶtextual note young man said yesterday, that during the housebuilding—so the workmen said—Miss Lyon was not only pretty customarily and manifestly under the influence of liquor, but that she was quite generous with it with the men; in hurrying them up, she would encourage them with whisky, remarking that she herself found that she could work better with the help of a little stimulant of that kind.

A few days after she was discharged from here last springⒺexplanatory note, she visited the house one day, and before going asked Claude for a glass. He brought it, and also brought the whisky bottle, supposing she would want that also; but she said no, she had found brandy a better restorative when she was fagged than whisky. She produced a flask, and poured out a quantity measuring something more than a claret-glass, and drank it off neat, without water.

KatyⒶtextual note says Miss Lyon always kept a bottle of cocktails in her room, in a cupboard, both in New York, and here at Stormfield, and that a bottle lasted her only about a day, and [begin page 310] she was drinking a good deal of whisky, besides. Ashcroft was doing the same. Claude and KatyⒶtextual note say he was a liberal drinker.

In the sixty-two days of July and August of last year, this house ordered—and also consumed—forty-eight quarts of Scotch whisky. Yesterday I examined the guest-book, and found there the names of a couple of generous drinkers of Scotch whisky. Apparently one of them was here two days and two nights, and the other one night. It is possible that between them they drank three quarts. In that two months two other men were here, who drink Scotch whisky, but as they drink it only at dinner, with water, in the English fashion, their consumption of that kind of whisky was necessarily slender, and they were only here one or two days anyway. In those days I drank Scotch whisky once in every twenty-four hours; and always after I was in bed, and ready for sleep. I took the same quantity always, a liqueur-glassfulⒶtextual note. While in those days I probablyⒶtextual note consumed a quart of Scotch whisky in a fortnight, nowadays a quart lasts me a month. If we allow that three or four guests drank four bottles in those two months, and I four, that makes eight. Miss Lyon always kept the key of the wine-closet herself, after we moved into this house, and perhaps she, with the help of Ashcroft, would be able to explain what went with the other forty quarts of Scotch whisky consumed under this roof in the sixty-two days of July and August, 1908.

We had many a guest in those old times. Nowadays a number of them speak quite freely of Miss Lyon’s drunks, as observed by them; also they speak rather frankly of my dulness in not perceiving that she was a drunkard; and when they don’t speak of my dulness in this connection, they doubt that I am telling the strict truth when I say that I did not know that she was a heavy drinker. And so, no matter which attitude they take, I come out without a compliment. I don’t deny that I knew Miss Lyon to be a drinker, and that I knew it all of two years ago, but I did not know she was a heavy drinker. She came to my room with great frequency, both in the night and in the day, to borrow some of my whisky, saying she was out, and not feeling well, and my bottle was nearer than the wine-closetⒶtextual note. Now, inasmuchⒶtextual note as she is a convicted thief, and misused my check-book to steal money from me, it is quite likely, that upon a pinch she would steal whisky also. KatyⒶtextual note says Miss Lyon used to hold up my bottle, and say somebody had been filching from it, and that without doubt it was Teresa. Teresa was born and reared in a land of light winesⒺexplanatory note; circumstantial evidence points, not to her, but to Miss Lyon, as the whisky thief.