Late that night Thane was telling John how Enoch died and how his
remains were to be disposed of. He had to tell someone. It was a weight
on his mind and he was tormented with misgivings about his own conduct.
When he came to the key he remembered having it in his pocket still and
produced it associatively. John took it out of his hand and continued
to regard it thoughtfully long after the narrative was finished.
“Was I right?” Thane asked, anxiously.
“Admirable!” said John, a little off the point as it seemed to Thane.
He added thoughtfully: “The fate that amuses itself with our lives knew
what it wanted when it tangled you in.”
“Seems there’s a lot as I don’t know,” said Thane, a faint edge to his
voice.
“It’s hard to get at,” said John. He continued: “This place, if you
know, was founded by General Woolwine, my great grandfather, whose
partner was a younger man named Christopher Gib, this Enoch’s father.”
So he began, as if opening a book. Some of it was missing, parts were
illegible, yet the shape of the drama stood vividly forth. When he came
to the end--to where the invisible writing stopped,--it was sudden and
for a moment bewildering, almost as if they had forgotten who they
were and had been unexpectedly let down in the middle of a story. They
sat a while musing.
“To be continued by the three of us,” said John. “I should like to know
what is in that room.”
“Let’s go see,” said Thane.
He had come to the hotel only to talk to John and was returning to the
mansion. John went with him.
Enoch’s body lay where it was in the second floor bed chamber. They
passed it without stopping and went on to the third floor. On the
landing was a little table with a lighted glass lamp, which John took
up.
“That would be it,” he said, indicating a certain doorway. The key
fitted the lock, but to their surprise the bolt was already drawn. John
held the light. Thane went first. He had but crossed the threshold
when he started back, recoiled rather, with a movement so sudden
and involuntary that John immediately behind him was thrown off his
balance, and dropped the lamp, which burst and harmlessly petered out.
They were then in darkness. There was no other light on that floor.
“Match,” said Thane, now standing quietly.
John had matches and he divided them by a sense of touch. Each struck
one and held it out.
What had startled Thane was the figure of a woman. As they saw her now
in the flickering light of their matches she stood at the other side
of the room, her back to the wall, facing them. John recognized her
at once as the woman who met him in the front doorway, holding an oil
light over her head, the night he came seeking Agnes and encountered
Enoch at the gate. She was dishevelled. Her thick black hair had fallen
on one side and her face was distorted and swollen from weeping.
Her eyes were alight with a kind of wild animal defiance. As they
approached her she began to move along the wall, sideways, her arms a
little spread. In one hand she held a coil of small rope.
“Who are you?” Thane asked.
She did not speak, but continued slowly to edge along the wall, staring
at them angrily. They lit fresh matches from the dying ones and pursued
her in this way, asking her who she was and what she did there, and
she answered only with that wild look, until with more presence
of mind than they were able to summon she had worked herself to a
position between them and the open door. Their matches gave out and she
disappeared in the dark. They heard her go down the back stairway.
“We’ll have to get a light,” said John.
They groped their way downstairs, both absurdly unnerved, found some
candles and returned to the room. Both had the same thought. From what
they had glimpsed of the interior in the light of their matches by a
kind of marginal vision it seemed quite empty. And so it was. There was
no trace of what had been there, except dust, which on the floor showed
evidence of much moving about. The only object of any kind was a key
that evidently the woman had dropped. It was a duplicate of the one
in Thane’s possession. They examined the room with silent curiosity.
The walls gave a dead, solid sound to the rap of their knuckles. The
windows were double and grated inside with iron bars.
Now they went in search of the woman, knowing nothing about her, not
even her name. She was probably the housekeeper. Agnes would know. But
they hated to disturb Agnes. She was at the other side of the mansion
and it was very late. Besides, they had a feeling that the sequel might
be distressing.
The woman had vanished. They could find no trace of her, nor could they
raise any servants indoors, for the reason afterward disclosed that
latterly Enoch’s ménage had consisted of three persons,--housekeeper,
gardener and stable man.
“Let’s try the stable,” John suggested. “There must be somebody alive.”
On their way to the stable they stared curiously at a great unsightly
heap of ashes, still smoking and glowing in spots, on the back terrace,
as if a miscellaneous lot of things had been gathered hastily together
and burned.
“Strange place for a fire,” said Thane, with an unspoken intuition that
John shared.
The stable-man was sitting up, smoking, with the look of a man whose
eyes have seen more than mind can grasp. He knew Thane and seemed
comforted by the advent of human society.
“Nobody in the house. What’s the matter?” Thane asked.
“I ain’t the housekeeper,” said the stable-man. “No, thank God, I ain’t
her. She’s on her way.”
“Way where?”
“Wherever,” he said, with the air of a man who for cause has newly
resolved not to meddle with things that will be.
“What do you know about her?” John asked.
They had only to listen and piece it together. He was full of it.
The woman’s name was Ann Sibthorp and she came from nobody knew
where,--most likely from some place where they had ceased to speak well
of her. She had been Enoch’s housekeeper for many years and at last his
only house servant. She was not a woman you could get acquainted with.
You wouldn’t if you could. So it wasn’t that anybody cared, but that
she gave herself airs about her station, became oppressive and drove
the help away. She did much that Enoch probably knew nothing about. Yet
she had her way, even with him, and it got so nobody dared to cross
her. For several days she had been going strange. When the old man died
she seemed to lose her mind. She looked without seeing. There was no
sense in her eyes. A little while before dark she began to carry things
from the house and pile them out there on the terrace. He could not
say exactly what they were,--some pieces of furniture, a chair, a bed
no doubt; yes, and some clothes, a pair of white slippers and little
what-not objects. When he saw her pouring oil on them he protested. She
didn’t hear him. She wasn’t natural and he was afraid to do anything
except to draw a lot of water in case something caught fire. Then she
lighted the pile and watched it burn, fairly standing in the flames,
poking them with a stick, rubbing her hands in them, taking on like
a witch. It made a God-fearing person sick to see her. After that she
went in and he didn’t see her again until just now when she rushed out
of the house and disappeared among the trees.
“She’s a going to do herself a damage, that woman,” he predicted,
calmly. “Found this in the edge of the ashes,” he remembered, drawing
from his pocket a small square brown case, badly singed at one corner.
“Maybe you would know what it is.”
It was a daguerreotype in a faded leather case. Thane opened it and
held it for John to see in the light of the stable lantern.
“I recognize it,” said John. Thane gave it to him.
That was all from the stable-man. And that was all that was ever known
about Ann Sibthorp. She was never seen again, dead or alive.
“You know the picture?” Thane asked, as they were parting at the gate.
“It’s a portrait of my mother,” John answered.
“Esther that you just told me about?”
“Yes.”