If any one expected to see Miss Lloyd faint or collapse at this crisis
he must have been disappointed, and as I had confidently expected such
a scene, I was completely surprised at her quick recovery of
self-possession.
For an instant she had seemed stunned by my question, and her eyes had
wandered vaguely round the room, as if in a vain search for help.
Her glance returned to me, and in that instant I gave her an answering
look, which, quite involuntarily on my part, meant a grave and serious
offer of my best and bravest efforts in her behalf. Disingenuous she
might be, untruthful she might be, yes, even a criminal she might be,
but in any case I was her sworn ally forever. Not that I meant to defeat
the ends of justice, but I was ready to fight for her or with her, until
justice should defeat us. Of course she didn't know all this, though
I couldn't help hoping she read a little of it as my eyes looked into
hers. If so, she recognized it only by a swift withdrawal of her own
glance. Again she looked round at her various friends.
Then her eyes rested on Gregory Hall, and, though he gave her no
responsive glance, for some reason her poise returned like a flash. It
was as if she had been invigorated by a cold douche.
Determination fairly shone in her dark eyes, and her mouth showed a
more decided line than I had yet seen in its red curves, as with a cold,
almost hard voice she replied,
“I have no idea. We have many flowers in the house, always.”
“But I have learned from the servants that there were no other yellow
roses in the house yesterday.”
Miss Lloyd was not hesitant now. She replied quickly, and it was with an
almost eager haste that she said,
“Then I can only imagine that my uncle had some lady visitor in his
office late last evening.”
The girl's mood had changed utterly; her tone was almost flippant, and
more than one of the jurors looked at her in wonderment.
Mr. Porter, especially, cast an her a glance of fatherly solicitude, and
I was sure that he felt, as I did, that the strain was becoming too much
for her.
“I don't think you quite mean that, Florence,” he said; “you and I knew
your uncle too well to say such things.”
But the girl made no reply, and her beautiful mouth took on a hard line.
“It is not an impossible conjecture,” said Philip Crawford thoughtfully.
“If the bag does not belong to Florence, what more probable than that it
was left by its feminine owner? The same lady might have worn or carried
yellow roses.”
Perhaps it was because of my own desire to help her that these other men
had joined their efforts to mine to ease the way as much as possible.
The coroner looked a little uncomfortable, for he began to note the tide
of sympathy turning toward the troubled girl.
“Yellow roses do not necessarily imply a lady visitor,” he said, rather
more kindly. “A man in evening dress might have worn one.”
To his evident surprise, as well as to my own, this remark, intended to
be soothing, had quite the opposite effect.
“That is not at all probable,” said Miss Lloyd quite angrily. “Mr.
Porter was in the office last evening; if he was wearing a yellow rose
at the time, let him say so.”
“I was not,” said Mr. Porter quietly, but looking amazed at the sudden
outburst of the girl.
“Of course you weren't!” Miss Lloyd went on, still in the same excited
way. “Men don't wear roses nowadays, except perhaps at a ball; and,
anyway, the gold bag surely implies that a woman was there!”
“It seems to,” said Mr. Monroe; and then, unable longer to keep up her
brave resistance, Florence Lloyd fainted.
Mrs. Pierce wrung her hands and moaned in a helpless fashion. Elsa
started forward to attend her young mistress, but it was the two
neighbors who were jurors, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Porter, who carried the
unconscious girl from the room.
Gregory Hall looked concerned, but made no movement to aid, and I
marvelled afresh at such strange actions in a man betrothed to a
particularly beautiful woman.
Several women in the audience hurried from the room, and in a few
moments the two jurors returned.
“Miss Lloyd will soon be all right, I think,” said Mr. Porter to the
coroner. “My wife is with her, and one or two other ladies. I think we
may proceed with our work here.”
There was something about Mr. Lemuel Porter that made men accept his
dictum, and without further remark Mr. Monroe called the next witness,
Mr. Roswell Randolph, and a tall man, with an intellectual face, came
forward.
While the coroner was putting the formal and preliminary questions
to Mr. Randolph, Parmalee quietly drew my attention to a whispered
conversation going on between Elsa and Louis.
If this girl had fainted instead of Miss Lloyd, I should not have been
surprised for she seemed on the very verge of nervous collapse. She
seemed, too, to be accusing the man of something, which he vigorously
denied. The girl interested me far more than the Frenchman. Though of
the simple, rosy-cheeked type of German, she had an air of canniness and
subtlety that was at variance with her naive effect. I soon concluded
she was far more clever than most people thought, and Parmalee's
whispered words showed that he thought so too.
“Something doing in the case of Dutch Elsa, eh?” he said; “she and
Johnny Frenchy have cooked up something between them.”
“Nothing of any importance, I fancy,” I returned, for Miss Lloyd's
swoon seemed to me a surrender, and I had little hope now of any other
direction in which to look.
But I resumed my attention to the coroner's inquiries of Mr. Randolph.
In answer to a few formal questions, he stated that he had been Mr.
Crawford's legal adviser for many years, and had entire charge of all
such matters as required legal attention.
“Did you draw up the late Mr. Crawford's will?” asked the coroner.
“Yes; after the death of his wife--about twelve years ago.”
“And what were the terms of that will?”
“Except for some minor bequests, the bulk of his fortune was bequeathed
to Miss Florence Lloyd.”
“Have you changed that will in any way, or drawn a later one?”
“No.”
It was by the merest chance that I was looking at Gregory Hall, as the
lawyer gave this answer.
It required no fine perception to understand the look of relief and
delight that fairly flooded his countenance. To be sure, it was quickly
suppressed, and his former mask of indifference and preoccupation
assumed, but I knew as well as if he had put it into words, that he had
trembled lest Miss Lloyd had been disinherited before her uncle had met
his death in the night.
This gave me many newThis gave me many new thoughts, but before I could formulate them, I
heard the coroner going on with his questions.
“Did Mr. Crawford visit you last evening?”
“Yes; he was at my house for perhaps half an hour or more between eight
and nine o'clock.”
“Did he refer to the subject of changing his will?”
“He did. That was his errand. He distinctly stated his intention of
making a new will, and asked me to come to his office this morning and
draw up the instrument.”
“But as that cannot now be done, the will in favor of Miss Lloyd still
stands?”
“It does,” said Mr. Randolph, “and I am glad of it. Miss Lloyd has been
brought up to look upon this inheritance as her own, and while I
would have used no undue emphasis, I should have tried to dissuade Mr.
Crawford from changing his will.”
“But before we consider the fortune or the will, we must proceed with
our task of bringing to light the murderer, and avenging Mr. Crawford's
death.”
“I trust you will do so, Mr. Coroner, and that speedily. But I may
say, if allowable, that you are on the wrong track when you allow your
suspicions to tend towards Florence Lloyd.”
“As your opinion, Mr. Randolph, of course that sentiment has some
weight, but as a man of law, yourself, you must know that such an
opinion must be proved before it can be really conclusive.”
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Randolph, with a deep sigh. “But let me beg
of you to look further in search of other indications before you press
too hard upon Miss Lloyd with the seeming clues you now have.”
I liked Mr. Randolph very much. Indeed it seemed to me that the men of
West Sedgwick were of a fine class as to both intellect and judgment,
and though Coroner Monroe was not a brilliant man, I began to realize
that he had some sterling qualities and was distinctly just and fair in
his decisions.
As for Gregory Hall, he seemed like a man free from a great anxiety.
Though still calm and reserved in appearance, he was less nervous,
and quietly awaited further developments. His attitude was not hard to
understand. Mr. Crawford had objected to his secretary's engagement to
his niece, and now Mr. Crawford's objections could no longer matter.
Again, it was not surprising that Mr. Hall should be glad to learn that
his fiancee was the heiress she had supposed herself to he. Even though
he were marrying the girl simply for love of her, a large fortune in
addition was by no means to be despised. At any rate, I concluded that
Gregory Hall thought so.
As often happened, Parmalee read my thoughts. “A fortune-hunter,” he
murmured, with a meaning glance at Hall.
I remembered that Mr. Carstairs, at the inn had said the same thing, and
I thoroughly believed it myself.
“Has he any means of his own?”
“No,” said Parmalee, “except his salary, which was a good one from Mr.
Crawford, but of course he's lost that now.”
“I don't feel drawn toward him. I suppose one would call him a gentleman
and yet he isn't manly.”
“He's a cad,” declared Parmalee; “any fortune hunter is a cad, and I
despise him.”
Although I tried to hold my mind impartially open regarding Mr. Hall,
I was conscious of an inclination to despise him myself. But I was also
honest enough to realize that my principal reason for despising him was
because he had won the hand of Florence Lloyd.