Already One Attempt
“I won’t consent to any further chasing of this woman.”
It was Charles Matthewson who spoke, standing in front of his brother
in the library at Waterville, where the original interview regarding
Cranston had taken place. It was a long time since Charles had spoken
so positively to Henry, and the latter looked up half amused and half
irritated, yet with an ugly expression on his face.
“You have suddenly become very much concerned for this--woman. I’ll use
your polite term,” he said.
“I’ve suddenly become concerned for myself,” the other replied hotly.
“I know, as you do, that she and her--misfortune have nothing to do
with this murder; and I know, as you do, if you’ll stop to think a
moment, that it’s a cowardly piece of business for men to engage in to
hunt down a woman, simply because they may do so with the approval of
the hunters.”
Henry gave a low whistle.
“Who’s been talking to you? You’ve got a sudden conversion as to this
woman’s--misfortune.” He gave an ugly slur to that last word. “Time was
when you’d call it by another name.”
“Well, whether I would or not, Cranston’s got to be called off from
that line: and he’s got to be called off quick!”
“But Frank Hunter has been very insistent on this point. He seems to
have some reason for thinking it important,” Henry answered.
“Because he thinks that a sensation there will stop folks asking
questions nearer home. If he can raise a dust behind which he can
negotiate for those papers, he’s got all he’s looking for just now.”
“Perhaps you don’t feel any interest in those papers,” Henry answered.
“Interest or no interest, I’m not going to skulk any longer behind a
petticoat. I’m ashamed to have done it so long.”
“Good boy,” Henry said, making a motion as if to pat him on the
shoulder. “I ask again, who’s been stirring up your conscience?”
“Our mother,” said Charles simply.
Henry stopped in his act, and a new look came over his face.
“Does she think it unmanly?” he asked.
“She thinks it cowardly and mean,” Charles said strongly.
Not a sign of anger at these stinging words came into Henry’s face, but
instead the look of a child justly reproved.
“I guess she’s right, Charles,” he said. “I guess she’s right. I hadn’t
thought of it before, but it is mean and cowardly. I’ll call Cranston
off at once.”
“And Hunter?” Charles asked in his turn.
“He can find something else to raise a dust, or he can come out into
the open and fight; but he shan’t fight longer behind this woman’s
petticoat. I wish we hadn’t done it at all!”
“I’d give more than I can tell,” Charles answered, giving cry to that
bitterness of shame which, hidden in his heart, he dared not uncover.
“Yes,” said Henry; “to think that mother should call our act mean and
cowardly! I’d rather the old papers----” Then he stopped short.
“Has it ever occurred to you that the papers may have had something to
do with Wing’s death?” Charles asked.
“Hush up!” exclaimed Henry roughly. “There are some things a man
shouldn’t even dare think, much less say.”
“But--by God,” Charles answered, “there are some things a man can’t
help thinking and perhaps saying. I tell you, I’m not so certain I
wouldn’t have shot Wing myself for the sake of getting hold of those
papers!”
“And if you’re going to keep on talking this way, you might as well
have done it,” Henry answered bitterly. “I wouldn’t trust myself to
think such things as you’re saying.”
“But, Henry, think, just think----”
“I won’t,” the other shouted in a wild passion. “I won’t think, and
I forbid you to ask me to! The man is dead and the Lord only knows
into whose hands those papers have fallen. There’s only one thing I
keep thinking--thinking all the time,” and his voice dropped, while he
looked anxiously over his shoulder, as if he feared the very walls of
his library: “and that is that it was safer to have those papers in his
hands, so long as we knew that they were there, than it is to have them
in the hands of somebody--we don’t know who, for a purpose, we don’t
know what.”
Charles grew paler than Henry had ever seen him. There was a gasp in
his voice, as if he found breathing difficult, and he almost clutched
at his brother as he said:
“That means that you are afraid, as I am, that the papers had some
connection with his death, and you are trying to persuade yourself to
the contrary. A month ago, you’d have jumped at the chance of somebody
else having them, no matter who that somebody else might be: yet to-day
you try to make me think that you believe it has increased the danger.
_You know better._ I don’t care whose hands they’re in, we’re safer
than we were when Wing had them. Now it’s only a question of money.”
“Then why don’t we hear from them?”
“It would be so safe, with matters as they are, for any one to offer to
sell Wing’s papers,” sneered Charles.
“Suppose whoever’s got them makes copies of them?” Henry suggested.
“And you tell me not to think of these things!” Charles cried.
Henry Matthewson at once called Cranston off from the Bangor matter
and then sent for Frank Hunter. The latter came in the early evening,
uneasy, restless, and irritable. The mood was confirmed when he
discovered what had been done.
“It’s that, or let him go to Millbank and keep excitement alive there,”
he said. “Trafford strikes me as entirely capable of doing enough of
that.”
“As matters stand,” demanded Henry, regardless of the caution he had
given his brother, “do you know who were most likely to profit by
Wing’s death?”
“We were,” answered Frank coldly. “Do you think I’ve ever failed to
recognise that fact? I don’t do business that way.”
“Then you mean to say that you have seen from the first that if men
looked for motives, they’d fasten on us?”
“I mean to say exactly that,” Frank Hunter answered; “and unless we can
dig up something that shows that somebody else was in as bad a position
as we, it will go hard with us, unless we can tire the detectives out
and make them give it up as a bad job.”
It was Henry Matthewson’s turn to look and feel uneasy. Born to
affluence, raised in wealth, and encouraged to high ambition, he had
already gone far for a young man, and it seemed a piteous thing that
in his own house, with his wife and children almost within call of his
voice, he should be told that unless men could be made to forget and
so abandon their interest in the Wing murder, it might go hard with
him--that he might become an object of suspicion.
“I don’t mean,” Hunter said, “that we are in any danger of being
convicted of Wing’s murder, or even of being arrested for it. That’s
way beyond reason. But how much better off would we be, if the
community should take up the suspicion that we were interested in
Wing’s death; that we procured it? The public is an unreasoning brute.
Look at poor Oldbeg!”
“Poor Oldbeg!” repeated Matthewson. “What in the name of thunder makes
you so tender of Oldbeg?”
“It is Charles more than I,” Hunter said, referring to his brother.
“He insists that the man is innocent; that there’s not a scintilla of
proof against him, and he won’t consent that the unreasoning whim of
the people shall do such injustice; and in fact, when I think that our
time may come at any moment, I can’t help feeling a good deal that way
myself.”
In the shrubbery outside the window a man, who had followed Hunter
from Millbank, listened and watched. He could hear nothing and see as
little, but hour after hour he kept his post, with dogged patience,
using a night to catch a single hint. Had Hunter known how closely he
was followed and watched, he would have been still more uneasy and
disturbed.
“What is it about this new corpse that’s been found at Millbank?”
Matthewson asked.
“Oh, merely a drowned logger. Nobody knows him and he’s been
unceremoniously put under ground. Nobody’d have thought anything of it
at any other time, for there’s never a spring that one or more of them
don’t turn up; but just now we are living on sensations, and it added
to the interest that Trafford was on hand and almost the first on the
spot.”
“Wasn’t it one of Trafford’s men who found it?” the other asked.
“So it’s said.”
“Was he looking for it, or for something else?” Matthewson persisted.
“What do you mean?”
“Why should Trafford have sent men to search the lower river, if he
didn’t expect to find something? Had some one disappeared? You say a
mere logger. What might Trafford say?”
“I believe you see a bogy every time you turn round,” Hunter said
impatiently.
“‘’Tis conscience doth make cowards of us all,’” Matthewson answered.
“I don’t like to be in this position. I don’t dare move to find the
papers, for fear in doing so I stir suspicions concerning Wing’s
death. I don’t dare leave the papers in the uncertain hands where they
are, lest they arouse the very same suspicions. It’s a nice position
for an innocent man to be in.”
The curiosity of the public, no longer fed on rumours and inquests,
had begun to flag, giving place to the inevitable sneers at the police
and detective force, with renewed predictions daily made that the
murder would remain an unsolved mystery. But for the occasional sight
of Trafford, and the expectation that the inquest might be reconvened
at almost any time, the village would already have begun to forget the
murdered man, so easily does a sensation fade into the commonplace.
But Trafford remained, or at least reappeared at unexpected moments,
like an uneasy spirit that found no rest. He was working now on two
murders, confident that if he found the perpetrator of the one, he
would solve both. It was an aid to him that the public accepted the
second as an accident, he alone having knowledge of the attempted
murder of himself which, unaccomplished, had brought this fate on the
unhappy wretch who was to be himself a murderer.
About this time, however, he had proof that he had not ceased to
interest some one. On returning to his room at the hotel one evening,
he found that it had been entered during his absence and a thorough
search of all his papers and luggage made. At first, he was inclined
to complain to the landlord, but this purpose passed as quickly as it
came, resulting in his taking apparently no notice of the affair.
It called to mind very forcibly, however, the tale that McManus had
told him of the rifling of Wing’s desk, and caused him to take a
professional view of the incident. He had said at the time that a pair
of trained eyes would have seen something of importance. He was thus
placed on his mettle to prove his boast. In fact, there was little to
see. It was evident that the intruder had come by a window opening on
to the roof of a long porch. A dusty footprint on the carpet under the
window, pointing inward, proved this, and Trafford was able to find
traces along the roof to a hall window, but the returning tracks were
not traceable. He was not so much offended at the liberty taken with
his property as by the implication on his sagacity, in the expectation
of finding anything he preferred should remain unfound.
He had his suspicions as to the person who had ransacked Wing’s desk,
and it was a satisfaction to be given an opportunity to test that
suspicion by this later act. If he could bring it home to the possible
culprit in the former case, he felt that a very considerable advance
would be made. It was true that the method smacked a trifle of seeking
facts with which to sustain a preconceived opinion, rather than
permitting facts to lead up to judgment; but strict adherence to rule
was not always possible, and this appeared a case in which exception
was to be made.
Because, however, of this yielding to temptation, possibly, it troubled
him more to discover that the assumed trespasser on Wing’s desk could
by no means be the culprit in the present case, for it was beyond
controversy that the suspected individual had not been within many
miles of the Millbank hostelry at the hour of the intrusion. It might
be a touch of cunning, but the alibi was not to be questioned. None the
less, here was the fact that Wing’s desk was broken open because he
was believed to be in possession of certain papers of a compromising
character, and that when it was believed that these papers had come
into the possession of the detective, his room and papers were in turn
ransacked. That there was connection of cause and effect between the
facts was scarcely to be doubted, even though it was not as simple as
he had at first supposed to establish it.
Uncertainty as to the nature of the missing papers, and his inability
to secure any definite information, were the tantalising features of
the case. He questioned McManus only to find that his knowledge of the
matter was no less hazy. These papers had been seen by no one in the
office excepting in package. Whether they had been received by Wing
from Judge Parlin or not was unknown. There was a general understanding
that they had come from the judge, and that Wing had given a great deal
of attention to them, so that they had grown materially in his hands.
The scandal of the ransacking of the desk had caused a great deal of
excitement in the office and no little discussion, but this had brought
out no facts bearing on the subject-matter. That it involved some one
was guessed, but even this guess was wild and general, rather than
specific.
“Unless something of certainty is arrived at,” Trafford said, “it
will be impossible to delay the re-opening of the inquest more than a
week longer, and in the present temper of the public mind a verdict
implicating Oldbeg would not be impossible.”
He said it half musingly, as if rather talking to himself than
otherwise, and yet there was a look under the eyelids that would not
have been quite reassuring to a close observer. McManus did not seem to
note it, but took up the matter rather with Trafford’s own manner.
“But there the papers stand as the insurmountable difficulty. Oldbeg
could have no object in stealing them. He could scarcely have known of
their existence--that is, as papers of value. If the connection could
be made, it would be serious for him.”
“But it can’t be made,” Trafford said, as if he were waking from his
lethargic condition. “I’ve told you what kind of a man it was that did
this murder, and when the murderer is discovered, as discovered he will
be, you’ll find I’ve described him correctly. Those papers caused this
murder and caused it because they were a menace to some one. That some
one couldn’t have been Oldbeg----”
“Yet the public mind is impressed with Oldbeg’s guilt and, if I mistake
not, the jury is as well.”
“You overlook the fact that nothing regarding these papers has appeared
in the testimony.”
McManus looked up suddenly as the fact was recalled to him.
“That’s so,” he said. “We’ve discussed them so much that I had entirely
lost sight of the fact. Of course, that’ll free Oldbeg when it is
brought out in testimony.”
“If it is brought out,” Trafford said.
“But surely,” McManus urged; “you will not let so important a matter
pass--let alone the fact that it is the cause of injustice to Oldbeg,
who surely has suffered enough already.”
“Mr. McManus,” said Trafford solemnly; “I’m at work to find the
murderer of Mr. Wing. That’s the one purpose I have before me, and it
is what the best interests of the public demand. If Oldbeg or another
suffers unjustly for the moment, it is that the guilty man may suffer
in the end. I’m sorry for Oldbeg, but I’m not responsible for the turn
matters have taken. At present, the parties who are interested in these
papers believe I have them, and the work I’m doing requires them to
continue so to believe. I don’t conceive it to be my duty to produce at
the inquest testimony that will undeceive them.”
“Aren’t you taking a tremendous responsibility?” McManus asked.
“It’s my business to take responsibility. I’ve taken it often to the
extent of risking my life--I may do so again; but when there’s a
murderer at large and I’m set to find him, I don’t stop because my
life is endangered or because another is put to inconvenience. If
Oldbeg’s held for the murder, it’ll be inconvenient for him, but not so
inconvenient as it would be for me to be murdered because I’m on the
track of the right man.”
“And you are on the track of the right man?” McManus demanded.
“I’ve been on his track from the moment I entered that library and knew
that it had been searched by the man who fired the fatal bullet. I’ve
been on his track from that day to this, and I shall keep on it until I
catch up with him or he kills me; but as surely as that last happens,
he’ll swing. It isn’t given to any man to commit murder twice and cover
his tracks. If I go down, it’ll end in his going up.”
“But really, Mr. Trafford, you take this thing more seriously than I
imagined. You’re not in earnest in this talk of an attempt to murder
you!”
“So much in earnest that I never go out without thinking I may not come
back.”
“But why?”
“Because already one attempt has been made.”
“You astound me!” McManus exclaimed. “I agreed at the start to
co-operate with you so long as you had the case in hand, but,
certainly, I’m entitled to know something! Why do you say it’s because
you are supposed to have the papers? Might it not be simply to shield
the murderer? You leave the thing in a cloud that is”--he seemed
searching for a word--“disturbing.”
Trafford, however, refused to say more; but after McManus left, he sat
for a few moments as if asking himself if he had done wisely, and then
rousing up muttered:
“We’ll see how far that’ll carry!”