The
House
Opposite
A Mystery
By
Elizabeth Kent
[Illustration]
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1903
COPYRIGHT 1902
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Published, August, 1902
Reprinted, January, 1903; March, 1903; October, 1903
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
THROUGH MY NEIGHBOUR'S WINDOWS 1
CHAPTER II
I AM INVOLVED IN THE CASE 7
CHAPTER III
A CORONER'S INQUEST 25
CHAPTER IV
UNWILLING WITNESSES 36
CHAPTER V
MRS. ATKINS HOLDS SOMETHING BACK 49
CHAPTER VI
A LETTER AND ITS ANSWER 66
CHAPTER VII
MR. MERRITT INSTRUCTS ME 72
CHAPTER VIII
AN IDENTIFICATION 93
CHAPTER IX
I INSTRUCT MR. MERRITT 107
CHAPTER X
THE MISSING HAT 129
CHAPTER XI
MADAME ARGOT'S MAD HUSBAND 148
CHAPTER XII
A PROFESSIONAL VISIT OUT OF TOWN 160
CHAPTER XIII
MR. AND MRS. ATKINS AT HOME 179
CHAPTER XIV
MY HYSTERICAL PATIENT 198
CHAPTER XV
A SUDDEN FLIGHT 208
CHAPTER XVI
THAT TACTLESS DETECTIVE 220
CHAPTER XVII
ONE WOMAN EXONERATED 231
CHAPTER XVIII
THE TRUTH OF THE WHOLE MATTER 249
THE HOUSE OPPOSITE
CHAPTER I
THROUGH MY NEIGHBOUR'S WINDOWS
What I am about to relate occurred but a few years ago--in the summer
of '99, in fact. You may remember that the heat that year was something
fearful. Even old New Yorkers, inured by the sufferings of many summers,
were overcome by it, and everyone who could, fled from the city. On
the particular August day when this story begins, the temperature had
been even more unbearable than usual, and approaching night brought
no perceptible relief. After dining with Burton (a young doctor like
myself), we spent the evening wandering about town trying to discover
a cool spot.
At last, thoroughly exhausted by our vain search, I decided to turn in,
hoping to sleep from sheer fatigue; but one glance at my stuffy little
bedroom discouraged me. Dragging a divan before the window of the front
room, I composed myself for the night with what resignation I could
muster.
I found, however, that the light and noise from the street kept me
awake; so, giving up sleep as a bad job, I decided to try my luck on the
roof. Arming myself with a rug and a pipe, I stole softly upstairs. It
was a beautiful starlight night, and after spreading my rug against a
chimney and lighting my pipe I concluded that things really might be
worse.
Across the street loomed the great Rosemere apartment-house, and I noted
with surprise that, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour and of
the season, several lights were still burning there. From two windows
directly opposite, and on a level with me, light filtered dimly through
lowered shades, and I wondered what possible motive people could have
for shutting out the little air there was on such a night. My neighbours
must be uncommonly suspicious, I thought, to fear observation from so
unlikely a place as my roof; and yet that was the only spot from which
they could by any chance be overlooked.
The only other light in the building shone clear and unobstructed
through the open windows of the corresponding room two floors higher up.
I was too far below to be able to look into this room, but I caught a
suggestion of sumptuous satin hangings and could distinguish the tops of
heavy gilt frames and of some flowering plants and palms.
As I sat idly looking upwards at these latter windows, my attention was
suddenly arrested by the violent movement of one of the lace curtains.
It was rolled into a cord by some unseen person who was presumably on
the floor, and then dragged across the window. A dark object, which I
took to be a human head, moved up and down among the palms, one of which
fell with an audible crash. At the same moment I heard a woman's voice
raised in a cry of terror. I leaped to my feet in great excitement, but
nothing further occurred.
After a minute or so the curtain fell back into its accustomed folds,
and I distinctly saw a man moving swiftly away from the window
supporting on his shoulder a fair-haired woman. Soon afterwards the
lights in this room were extinguished, to be followed almost immediately
by the illumination of the floor above.
What I had just seen and heard would not have surprised me in a
tenement, but that such scenes could take place in a respectable house
like the Rosemere, inhabited largely by fashionable people, was indeed
startling. Who could the couple be? And what could have happened?
Had the man, coming home drunk, proceeded to beat the woman and been
partially sobered by her cry; or was the woman subject to hysteria, or
even insane? I remembered that the apartments were what are commonly
known as double-deckers. That is to say: each one contained two
floors, connected by a private staircase--the living rooms below, the
bedrooms above. So I concluded, from seeing a light in what was in all
probability a bedroom, that the struggle, or whatever the commotion had
been, was over, and that the victim and her assailant, or perhaps the
patient and her nurse, had gone quietly, and I trusted amicably, to bed.
Still ruminating over these different conjectures, I heard a
neighbouring clock strike two. I now noticed for the first time signs of
life in the lower apartment which I first mentioned; shadows, reflected
on the blinds, moved swiftly to and fro, and, growing gigantic,
vanished.
But not for long. Soon they reappeared, and the shades were at last
drawn up. I had now an unobstructed view of the room, which proved to
be a drawing-room, as I had already surmised. It was dismantled for the
summer, and the pictures and furniture were hidden under brown holland.
A man leant against the window with his head bowed down, in an attitude
expressive of complete exhaustion or of great grief. It was too dark
for me to distinguish his features; but I noticed that he was tall and
dark, with a youthful, athletic figure.
After standing there a few minutes, he turned away. His actions now
struck me as most singular. He crawled on the floor, disappeared under
sofas, and finally moved even the heavy pieces of furniture from their
places. However valuable the thing which he had evidently lost might be,
yet 2 A.M. seemed hardly the hour in which to undertake a search for it.
Meanwhile, my attention had been a good deal distracted from the man by
observing a woman in one of the bedrooms of the floor immediately above,
and consequently belonging to the same suite. When I first caught sight
of her, the room was already ablaze with light and she was standing by
the window, gazing out into the darkness. At last, as if overcome by her
emotions, she threw up her hands in a gesture of despair, and, kneeling
down with her elbows on the window sill, buried her head in her arms.
Her hair was so dark that, as she knelt there against the light, it was
undistinguishable from her black dress.
I don't know how long she stayed in this position, but the man below had
given up his search and turned out the lights long before she moved.
Finally, she rose slowly up, a tall black-robed figure, and disappeared
into the back of the room. I waited for some time hoping to see her
again, but as she remained invisible and nothing further happened, and
the approaching dawn held out hopes of a more bearable temperature
below, I decided to return to my divan; but the last thing I saw before
descending was that solitary light, keeping its silent vigil in the
great black building.