Miss Strange, thus appealed to, asked where the gentlemen were now.
She was told that they were still all together in the library; the
ladies had been sent home.
“Then let us go to them,” said Violet, hiding under a smile her great
fear that here was an affair which might very easily spell for her that
dismal word, failure.
So great was that fear that under all ordinary circumstances she would
have had no thought for anything else in the short interim between
this stating of the problem and her speedy entrance among the persons
involved. But the circumstances of this case were so far from ordinary,
or rather let me put it in this way, the setting of the case was so very
extraordinary, that she scarcely thought of the problem before her, in
her great interest in the house through whose rambling halls she was
being so carefully guided. So much that was tragic and heartrending had
occurred here. The Van Broecklyn name, the Van Broecklyn history, above
all the Van Broecklyn tradition, which made the house unique in the
country’s annals (of which more hereafter), all made an appeal to her
imagination, and centred her thoughts on what she saw about her. There
was door which no man ever opened--had never opened since Revolutionary
times--should she see it? Should she know it if she did see it? Then Mr.
Van Broecklyn himself! just to meet him, under any conditions and in
any place, was an event. But to meet him here, under the pall of his
own mystery! No wonder she had no words for her companions, or that
her thoughts clung to this anticipation in wonder and almost fearsome
delight.
His story was a well-known one. A bachelor and a misanthrope, he lived
absolutely alone save for a large entourage of servants, all men and
elderly ones at that. He never visited. Though he now and then, as on
this occasion, entertained certain persons under his roof, he declined
every invitation for himself, avoiding even, with equal strictness, all
evening amusements of whatever kind, which would detain him in the city
after ten at night. Perhaps this was to ensure no break in his rule of
life never to sleep out of his own bed. Though he was a man well over
fifty he had not spent, according to his own statement, but two nights
out of his own bed since his return from Europe in early boyhood, and
those were in obedience to a judicial summons which took him to Boston.
This was his main eccentricity, but he had another which is apparent
enough from what has already been said. He avoided women. If thrown in
with them during his short visits into town, he was invariably polite
and at times companionable, but he never sought them out, nor had
gossip, contrary to its usual habit, ever linked his name with one of
the sex.
Yet he was a man of more than ordinary attraction. His features were
fine and his figure impressive. He might have been the cynosure of all
eyes had he chosen to enter crowded drawing-rooms, or even to frequent
public assemblages, but having turned his back upon everything of the
kind in his youth, he had found it impossible to alter his habits with
advancing years; nor was he now expected to. The position he had taken
was respected. Leonard Van Broecklyn was no longer criticized.
Was there any explanation for this strangely self-centred life? Those
who knew him best seemed to think so. In the first place he had sprung
from an unfortunate stock. Events of unusual and tragic nature had
marked the family of both parents. Nor had his parents themselves
been exempt from this seeming fatality. Antagonistic in tastes and
temperament, they had dragged on an unhappy existence in the old home,
till both natures rebelled, and a separation ensued which not only
disunited their lives but sent them to opposite sides of the globe
never to return again. At least, that was the inference drawn from
the peculiar circumstances attending the event. On the morning of one
never-to-be-forgotten day, John Van Broecklyn, the grandfather of the
present representative of the family, found the following note from his
son lying on the library table:
“FATHER:
“Life in this house, or any house, with her is no longer endurable.
One of us must go. The mother should not be separated from her child.
Therefore it is I whom you will never see again. Forget me, but be
considerate of her and the boy.
“WILLIAM.”
Six hours later another note was found, this time from the wife:
“FATHER:
“Tied to a rotting corpse what does one do? Lop off one’s arm if
necessary to rid one of the contact. As all love between your son and
myself is dead, I can no longer live within the sound of his voice. As
this is his home, he is the one to remain in it. May our child reap the
benefit of his mother’s loss and his father’s affection.
“RHODA.”
Both were gone, and gone forever. Simultaneous in their departure, they
preserved each his own silence and sent no word back. If the one went
east and the other west, they may have met on the other side of the
globe, but never again in the home which sheltered their boy. For him
and for his grandfather they had sunk from sight in the great sea of
humanity, leaving them stranded on an isolated and mournful shore. The
grand-father steeled himself to the double loss, for the child’s sake;
but the boy of eleven succumbed. Few of the world’s great sufferers, of
whatever age or condition, have mourned as this child mourned, or shown
the effects of his grief so deeply or so long. Not till he had passed
his majority did the line, carved in one day in his baby forehead, lose
any of its intensity; and there are those who declare that even later
than that, the midnight stillness of the house was disturbed from time
to time by his muffled shriek of “Mother! Mother!”, sending the servants
from the house, and adding one more horror to the many which clung about
this accursed mansion.
Of this cry Violet had heard, and it was that and the door--But I have
already told you about the door which she was still looking for,
when her two companions suddenly halted, and she found herself on the
threshold of the library, in full view of Mr. Van Broecklyn and his two
guests.
Slight and fairy-like in figure, with an air of modest reserve more in
keeping with her youth and dainty dimpling beauty than with her errand,
her appearance produced an astonishment none of which the gentlemen were
able to disguise. This the clever detective, with a genius for social
problems and odd elusive cases! This darling of the ball-room in satin
and pearls! Mr. Spielhagen glanced at Mr. Cornell, and Mr. Cornell at
Mr. Spielhagen, and both at Mr. Upjohn, in very evident distrust. As for
Violet, she had eyes only for Mr. Van Broecklyn who stood before her in
a surprise equal to that of the others but with more restraint in its
expression.
She was not disappointed in him. She had expected to see a man, reserved
almost to the point of austerity. And she found his first look even more
awe-compelling than her imagination had pictured; so much so indeed,
that her resolution faltered, and she took a quick step backward; which
seeing, he smiled and her heart and hopes grew warm again. That he could
smile, and smile with absolute sweetness, was her great comfort when
later--But I am introducing you too hurriedly to the catastrophe. There
is much to be told first.
I pass over the preliminaries, and come at once to the moment when
Violet, having listened to a repetition of the full facts, stood with
downcast eyes before these gentlemen, complaining in some alarm to
herself: “They expect me to tell them now and without further search
or parley just where this missing page is. I shall have to balk that
expectation without losing their confidence. But how?”
Summoning up her courage and meeting each inquiring eye with a look
which seemed to carry a different message to each, she remarked very
quietly:
“This is not a matter to guess at. I must have time and I must look a
little deeper into the facts just given me. I presume that the table
I see over there is the one upon which Mr. Upjohn laid the manuscript
during Mr. Spielhagen’s unconsciousness.”
All nodded.
“Is it--I mean the table--in the same condition it was then? Has nothing
been taken from it except the manuscript?”
“Nothing.”
“Then the missing page is not there,” she smiled, pointing to its bare
top. A pause, during which she stood with her gaze fixed on the floor
before her. She was thinking and thinking hard.
Suddenly she came to a decision. Addressing Mr. Upjohn she asked if he
were quite sure that in taking the manuscript from Mr. Spielhagen’s hand
he had neither disarranged nor dropped one of its pages.
The answer was unequivocal.
“Then,” she declared, with quiet assurance and a steady meeting with her
own of every eye, “as the thirteenth page was not found among the others
when they were taken from this table, nor on the persons of either Mr.
Cornell or Mr. Spielhagen, it is still in that inner room.”
“Impossible!” came from every lip, each in a different tone. “That room
is absolutely empty.”
“May I have a look at its emptiness?” she asked, with a naive glance at
Mr. Van Broecklyn.
“There is positively nothing in the room but the chair Mr. Spielhagen
sat on,” objected that gentleman with a noticeable air of reluctance.
“Still, may I not have a look at it?” she persisted, with that disarming
smile she kept for great occasions.
Mr. Van Broecklyn bowed. He could not refuse a request so urged, but his
step was slow and his manner next to ungracious as he led the way to the
door of the adjoining room and threw it open.
Just what she had been told to expect! Bare walls and floors and an
empty chair! Yet she did not instantly withdraw, but stood silently
contemplating the panelled wainscoting surrounding her, as though she
suspected it of containing some secret hiding-place not apparent to the
eye.
Mr. Van Broecklyn, noting this, hastened to say:
“The walls are sound, Miss Strange. They contain no hidden cupboards.”
“And that door?” she asked, pointing to a portion of the wainscoting so
exactly like the rest that only the most experienced eye could detect
the line of deeper colour which marked an opening.
For an instant Mr. Van Broecklyn stood rigid, then the immovable pallor,
which was one of his chief characteristics, gave way to a deep flush as
he explained:
“There was a door there once; but it has been permanently closed. With
cement,” he forced himself to add, his countenance losing its evanescent
colour till it shone ghastly again in the strong light.
With difficulty Violet preserved her show of composure. “The door!” she
murmured to herself. “I have found it. The great historic door!” But her
tone was light as she ventured to say:
“Then it can no longer be opened by your hand or any other?”
“It could not be opened with an axe.”
Violet sighed in the midst of her triumph. Her curiosity had
been satisfied, but the problem she had been set to solve looked
inexplicable. But she was not one to yield easily to discouragement.
Marking the disappointment approaching to disdain in every eye but Mr.
Upjohn’s, she drew herself up--(she had not far to draw) and made this
final proposal.
“A sheet of paper,” she remarked, “of the size of this one cannot be
spirited away, or dissolved into thin air. It exists; it is here; and
all we want is some happy thought in order to find it. I acknowledge
that that happy thought has not come to me yet, but sometimes I get
it in what may seem to you a very odd way. Forgetting myself, I try to
assume the individuality of the person who has worked the mystery. If I
can think with his thoughts, I possibly may follow him in his actions.
In this case I should like to make believe for a few moments that I am
Mr. Spielhagen” (with what a delicious smile she said this) “I should
like to hold his thesis in my hand and be interrupted in my reading by
Mr. Cornell offering his glass of cordial; then I should like to nod and
slip off mentally into a deep sleep. Possibly in that sleep the dream
may come which will clarify the whole situation. Will you humour me so
far?”
A ridiculous concession, but finally she had her way; the farce was
enacted and they left her as she had requested them to do, alone with
her dreams in the small room.
Suddenly they heard her cry out, and in another moment she appeared
before them, the picture of excitement.
“Is this chair standing exactly as it did when Mr. Spielhagen occupied
it?” she asked.
“No,” said Mr. Upjohn, “it faced the other way.”
She stepped back and twirled the chair about with her disengaged hand.
“So?”
Mr. Upjohn and Mr. Spielhagen both nodded, so did the others when she
glanced at them.
With a sign of ill-concealed satisfaction, she drew their attention to
herself; then eagerly cried:
“Gentlemen, look here!”
Seating herself, she allowed her whole body to relax till she presented
the picture of one calmly asleep. Then, as they continued to gaze at
with fascinated eyes, not knowing what to expect, they saw something
white escape from her lap and slide across the floor till it touched and
was stayed by the wainscot. It was the top page of the manuscript she
held, and as some inkling of the truth reached their astonished minds,
she sprang impetuously to her feet and, pointing to the fallen sheet,
cried:
“Do you understand now? Look where it lies and then look here!”
She had bounded towards the wall and was now on her knees pointing to
the bottom of the wainscot, just a few inches to the left of the fallen
page.
“A crack!” she cried, “under what was once the door. It’s a very thin
one, hardly perceptible to the eye. But see!” Here she laid her finger
on the fallen paper and drawing it towards her, pushed it carefully
against the lower edge of the wainscot. Half of it at once disappeared.
“I could easily slip it all through,” she assured them, withdrawing
the sheet and leaping to her feet in triumph. “You know now where the
missing page lies, Mr. Spielhagen. All that remains is for Mr. Van
Broecklyn to get it for you.”