HIGH AND LOW.
At the foot of the stairs, Mr. Gryce excused himself, and calling in two
or three men whom he had left outside, had the valet removed before
taking Miss Butterworth back into the study. When all was quiet again,
and they found an opportunity to speak, Mr. Gryce remarked:
"One very important thing has been settled by the experiment we have
just made. Bartow is acquitted of participation in this crime."
"Then we can give our full attention to the young people. You have heard
nothing from them, I suppose?"
"No."
"Nor from the old man who laughed?"
"No."
Miss Butterworth looked disappointed.
"I thought--it seemed very probable--that the scrap of writing you found
would inform you who these were. If it was important enough for the
dying man to try to swallow it, it certainly should give some clew to
his assailant."
"Unfortunately, it does not do so. It was a veritable scrawl, madam,
running something like this: 'I return your daughter to you. She is
here. Neither she nor you will ever see me again. Remember Evelyn!' And
signed, 'Amos's son.'"
"Amos's son! That is Mr. Adams himself."
"So we have every reason to believe."
"Strange! Unaccountable! And the paper inscribed with these words was
found clinched between his teeth! Was the handwriting recognized?"
"Yes, as his own, if we can judge from the specimens we have seen of his
signature on the fly-leaves of his books."
"Well, mysteries deepen. And the retaining of this paper was so
important to him that even in his death throe he thrust it in this
strangest of all hiding-places, as being the only one that could be
considered safe from search. And the girl! Her first words on coming to
herself were: 'You have left that line of writing behind.' Mr. Gryce,
those words, few and inexplicable as they are, contain the key to the
whole situation. Will you repeat them again, if you please, sentence by
sentence?"
"With pleasure, madam; I have said them often enough to myself. First,
then: 'I return your daughter to you!'"
"So! Mr. Adams had some one's daughter in charge whom he returns. Whose
daughter? Not that young man's daughter, certainly, for that would
necessitate her being a small child. Besides, if these words had been
meant for his assailant, why make so remarkable an effort to hide them
from him?"
"Very true! I have said the same thing to myself."
"Yet, if not for him, for whom, then? For the old gentleman who came in
later?"
"It is possible; since hearing of him I have allowed myself to regard
this as among the possibilities, especially as the next words of this
strange communication are: 'She is here.' Now the only woman who was
there a few minutes previous to this old gentleman's visit was the
light-haired girl whom you saw carried out."
"Very true; but why do you reason as if this paper had just been
written? It might have been an old scrap, referring to past sorrows or
secrets."
"These words were written that afternoon. The paper on which they were
scrawled was torn from a sheet of letter paper lying on the desk, and
the pen with which they were inscribed--you must have noticed where it
lay, quite out of its natural place on the extreme edge of the table."
"Certainly, sir; but I had little idea of the significance we might come
to attach to it. These words are connected, then, with the girl I saw.
And she is not Evelyn or he would not have repeated in this note the
bird's catch-word, 'Remember Evelyn!' I wonder if she is Evelyn?"
proceeded Miss Butterworth, pointing to the one large picture which
adorned the wall.
"We may call her so for the nonce. So melancholy a face may well suggest
some painful family secret. But how explain the violent part played by
the young man, who is not mentioned in these abrupt and hastily penned
sentences! It is all a mystery, madam, a mystery which we are wasting
time to attempt to solve."
"Yet I hate to give it up without an effort. Those words, now. There
were some other words you have not repeated to me."
"They came before that injunction, 'Remember Evelyn!' They bespoke a
resolve. 'Neither she nor you will ever see me again.'"
"Ah! but these few words are very significant, Mr. Gryce. Could he have
dealt that blow himself? May he have been a suicide after all?"
"Madam, you have the right to inquire; but from Bartow's pantomime, you
must have perceived it is not a self-inflicted blow he mimics, but a
maddened thrust from an outraged hand. Let us keep to our first
conclusions; only--to be fair to every possibility--the condition of Mr.
Adams's affairs and the absence of all family papers and such documents
as may usually be found in a wealthy man's desk prove that he had made
some preparation for possible death. It may have come sooner than he
expected and in another way, but it was a thought he had indulged in,
and--madam, I have a confession to make also. I have not been quite fair
to my most valued colleague. The study--that most remarkable of
rooms--contains a secret which has not been imparted to you; a very
peculiar one, madam, which was revealed to me in a rather startling
manner. This room can be, or rather could be, cut off entirely from the
rest of the house; made a death-trap of, or rather a tomb, in which this
incomprehensible man may have intended to die. Look at this plate of
steel. It is worked by a mechanism which forces it across this open
doorway. I was behind that plate of steel the other night, and these
holes had to be made to let me out."
"Ha! You detectives have your experiences! I should not have enjoyed
spending that especial evening with you. But what an old-world tragedy
we are unearthing here! I declare"--and the good lady actually rubbed
her eyes--"I feel as if transported back to mediæval days. Who says we
are living in New York within sound of the cable car and the singing of
the telegraph wire?"
"Some men are perfectly capable of bringing the mediæval into Wall
Street. I think Mr. Adams was one of those men. Romanticism tinged all
his acts, even the death he died. Nor did it cease with his death. It
followed him to the tomb. Witness the cross we found lying on his
bosom."
"That was the act of another's hand, the result of another's
superstition. That shows the presence of a priest or a woman at the
moment he died."
"Yet," proceeded Mr. Gryce, with a somewhat wondering air, "he must have
had a grain of hard sense in his make-up. All his contrivances worked.
He was a mechanical genius, as well as a lover of mystery."
"An odd combination. Strange that we do not feel his spirit infecting
the very air of this study. I could almost wish it did. We might then be
led to grasp the key to this mystery."
"That," remarked Mr. Gryce, "can be done in only one way. You have
already pointed it out. We must trace the young couple who were present
at his death struggle. If they cannot be found the case is hopeless."
"And so," said she, "we come around to the point from which we
started--proof positive that we are lost in the woods." And Miss
Butterworth rose. She felt that for the time being she, at least, had
come to the end of her resources.
Mr. Gryce did not seek to detain her. Indeed, he appeared to be anxious
to leave the place himself. They, however, stopped long enough to cast
one final look around them. As they did so Miss Butterworth's finger
slowly rose.
"See!" said she, "you can hardly perceive from this side of the wall the
opening made by the removal of that picture on the stair landing.
Wouldn't you say that it was in the midst of those folds of dark-colored
tapestry up there?"
"Yes, I had already located that spot as the one. With the picture hung
up on the other side, it would be quite invisible."
"One needs to keep one's eyes moving in a case like this. That picture
must have been drawn aside several times while we were in this room. Yet
we failed to notice it."
"That was from not looking high enough. High and low, Mr. Gryce! What
goes on at the level of the eye is apparent to every one."
The smile with which he acknowledged this parting shot and prepared to
escort her to the door had less of irony than sadness in it. Was he
beginning to realize that years tell even on the most sagacious, and
that neither high places nor low would have escaped his attention a
dozen years before?