Jake's hand closed in a nervous grip. Had the trigger been against his
finger at that moment it would doubtless have been snapped with some
satisfaction, so the barrel had been pointing at Hammersmith.
"Saw him distinctly," the coroner repeated. "Mr. Quimby's face is not to
be mistaken."
"If he saw him," retorted Jake, with unexpected cunning, "then the
flames had got a start. One don't see in the dark. They hadn't got much
of a start when I left. So he must have gone up to my room after I came
down."
"It was before the alarm was given; before Mr. Hammersmith here had
crawled out of his room window."
"I can't help that, sir. It was after I left the stable. You can't mix
me up with Quimby's doings."
"Can't we? Jake, you're no lawyer and you don't know how to manage a
lie. Make a clean breast of it. It may help you and it won't hurt
Quimby. Begin with the old lady's coming. What turned Quimby against
her? What's the plot?"
"I don't know of any plot. What Quimby told you is true. You needn't
expect me to contradict it!"
A leaden doggedness had taken the place of his whilom good nature.
Nothing is more difficult to contend with. Nothing is more dreaded by
the inquisitor. Hammersmith realised the difficulties of the situation
and repeated the gesture he had previously made toward the door leading
into an adjoining compartment. The coroner nodded as before and changed
the tone of his inquiry.
"Jake," he declared, "you are in a more serious position than you
realise. You may be devoted to Quimby, but there are others who are not.
A night such as you have been through quickens the conscience of women
if it does not that of men. One has been near death. The story of such a
woman is apt to be truthful. Do you want to hear it? I have no
objections to your doing so."
"What story? I don't know of any story. Women have easy tongues; they
talk even when they have nothing to say."
"This woman has something to say, or why should she have asked to be
confronted with you? Have her in, Mr. Hammersmith. I imagine that a
sight of this man will make her voluble."
A sneer from Jake; but when Hammersmith, crossing to the door I've just
mentioned, opened it and let in Huldah, this token of bravado gave way
to a very different expression and he exclaimed half ironically, half
caressingly:
"Why, she's my sweetheart! What can she have to say except that she was
mighty fortunate not to have been burned up in the fire last night?"
Doctor Golden and the detective crossed looks in some anxiety. They had
not been told of this relation between the two, either by the girl
herself or by the others. Gifted with a mighty close mouth, she had
nevertheless confided to Hammersmith that she could tell things and
would, if he brought her face to face with the man who tried to shoot
him while he was helping her down from the roof. Would her indignation
hold out under the insinuating smile with which the artful rascal
awaited her words? It gave every evidence of doing so, for her eye
flashed threateningly and her whole body showed the tension of extreme
feeling as she came hastily forward, and pausing just beyond the reach
of his arm, cried out:
"You had a hand in locking me in. You're tired of me. If you're not, why
did you fire those bullets my way? I was escaping and----"
Jake thrust in a quick word. "That was Quimby's move--locking your door.
He had some game up. I don't know what it was. I had nothing to do with
it."
This denial seemed to influence her. She looked at him and her breast
heaved. He was good to look at; he must have been more than that to one
of her restricted experience. Hammersmith trembled for the success of
their venture. Would this blond young giant's sturdy figure and
provoking smile prevail against the good sense which must tell her that
he was criminal to the core, and that neither his principle nor his love
were to be depended on? No, not yet. With a deepening flush, she flashed
out:
"You hadn't? You didn't want me dead? Why, then, those bullets? You
might have killed me as well as Mr. Hammersmith when you fired!"
"Huldah!" Astonishment and reproach in the tone and something more than
either in the look which accompanied it. Both were very artful and
betrayed resources not to be expected from one of his ordinarily
careless and good-humoured aspect. "You haven't heard what I've said
about that?"
"What could you say?"
"Why, the truth, Huldah. I saw you on the roof. The fire was near. I
thought that neither you nor the man helping you could escape. A death
of that kind is horrible. I loved you too well to see you suffer. My gun
was behind the barn door. I got it and fired out of mercy."
She gasped. So, in a way, did the two officials. The plea was so
specious, and its likely effect upon her so evident.
"Jake, can I believe you?" she murmured.
For answer, he fumbled in his pocket and drew out a small object which
he held up before her between his fat forefinger and thumb. It was a
ring, a thin, plain hoop of gold worth possibly a couple of dollars, but
which in her eyes seemed to possess an incalculable value, for she had
no sooner seen it than her whole face flushed and a look of positive
delight supplanted the passionately aggrieved one with which she had
hitherto faced him.
"You had bought _that_?"
He smiled and returned it to his pocket.
"For you," he simply said.
The joy and pride with which she regarded him, despite the protesting
murmur of the discomfited Hammersmith, proved that the wily Jake had
been too much for them.
"You see!" This to Hammersmith, "Jake didn't mean any harm, only
kindness to us both. If you will let him go, I'll be more thankful than
when you helped me down off the roof. We're wanting to be married.
Didn't you see him show me the ring?"
It was for the coroner to answer.
"We'll let him go when we're assured that he means all that he says. I
haven't as good an opinion of him as you have. I think he's deceiving
you and that you are a very foolish girl to trust him. Men don't fire on
the women they love, for any reason. You'd better tell me what you have
against him."
"I haven't anything against him _now_."
"But you were going to tell us something----"
"I guess I was fooling."
"People are not apt to fool who have just been in terror of their
lives."
Her eyes sought the ground. "I'm just a hardworking girl," she muttered
almost sullenly. "What should I know about that man Quimby's dreadful
doings?"
"Dreadful? You call them dreadful?" It was Doctor Golden who spoke.
"He locked me in my room," she violently declared. "That wasn't done for
fun."
"And is that all you can tell us? Don't look at Jake. Look at me."
"But I don't know what to say. I don't even know what you want."
"I'll tell you. Your work in the house has been upstairs work, hasn't
it?"
"Yes, sir. I did up the rooms--some of them," she added cautiously.
"What rooms? Front rooms, rear rooms, or both?"
"Rooms in front; those on the third floor."
"But you sometimes went into the extension?"
"I've been down the hall."
"Haven't you been in any of the rooms there,--Number 3, for instance?"
"No, sir; my work didn't take me there."
"But you've heard of the room?"
"Yes, sir. The girls sometimes spoke of it. It had a bad name, and
wasn't often used. No girl liked to go there. A man was found dead in it
once. They said he killed his own self."
"Have you ever heard any one describe this room?"
"No, sir."
"Tell what paper was on the wall?"
"No, sir."
"Perhaps Jake here can help us. He's been in the room often."
"The paper was blue; you know that; you saw it yourselves yesterday,"
blurted forth the man thus appealed to.
"Always blue? Never any other colour that you remember?"
"No; but I've been in the house only ten years."
"Oh, is that all! And do you mean to say that this room has not been
redecorated in ten years?"
"How can I tell? I can't remember every time a room is repapered."
"You ought to remember this one."
"Why?"
"Because of a very curious circumstance connected with it."
"I don't know of any circumstance."
"You heard what Miss Demarest had to say about a room whose walls were
covered with muddy pink scrolls."
"Oh, she!" His shrug was very expressive. Huldah continued to look down.
"Miss Demarest seemed to know what she was talking about," pursued the
coroner in direct contradiction of the tone he had taken the day before.
"Her description was quite vivid. It would be strange now if those walls
had once been covered with just such paper as she described."
An ironic stare, followed by an incredulous smile from Jake; dead
silence and immobility on the part of Huldah.
"Was it?" shot from Doctor Golden's lips with all the vehemence of
conscious authority.
There was an instant's pause, during which Huldah's breast ceased its
regular rise and fall; then the clerk laughed sharply and cried with the
apparent lightness of a happy-go-lucky temperament:
"I should like to know if it was. I'd think it a very curious
quin--quin----What's the word? quincedence, or something like that."
"The deepest fellow I know," grumbled the baffled coroner into
Hammersmith's ear, as the latter stepped his way, "or just the most
simple." Then added aloud: "Lift up my coat there, please."
Hammersmith did so. The garment mentioned lay across a small table which
formed the sole furnishing of the place, and when Hammersmith raised it,
there appeared lying underneath several small pieces of plaster which
Doctor Golden immediately pointed out to Jake.
"Do you see these bits from a papered wall?" he asked. "They were torn
from that of Number 3, between the breaking out of the fire and Mr.
Hammersmith's escape from the room. Come closer; you may look at them,
but keep your fingers off. You see that the coincidence you mentioned
holds."
Jake laughed again loudly, in a way he probably meant to express
derision; then he stood silent, gazing curiously down at the pieces
before him. The blue paper peeling away from the pink made it impossible
for him to deny that just such paper as Miss Demarest described had been
on the wall prior to the one they had all seen and remembered.[A]
[Footnote A: Hammersmith's first attempt to settle this fact must have
failed from his having chosen a spot for his experiment where the old
paper had been stripped away before the new was put on.]
"Well, I vum!" Jake finally broke out, turning and looking from one face
to another with a very obvious attempt to carry off the matter jovially.
"She must have a great eye; a--a--(another hard word! What is it now?)
Well! no matter. One of the kind what sees through the outside of things
to what's underneath. I always thought her queer, but not so queer as
that. I'd like to have that sort of power myself. Wouldn't you, Huldah?"
The girl, whose eye, as Hammersmith was careful to note, had hardly
dwelt for an instant on these bits, not so long by any means as a
woman's natural curiosity would seem to prompt, started as attention was
thus drawn to herself and attempted a sickly smile.
But the coroner had small appreciation for this attempted display of
humour, and motioning to Hammersmith to take her away, he subjected the
clerk to a second examination which, though much more searching and
rigorous than the first, resulted in the single discovery that for all
his specious love-making he cared no more for the girl than for one of
his old hats. This the coroner confided to Hammersmith when he came in
looking disconsolate at his own failure to elicit anything further from
the resolute Huldah.
"But you can't make her believe that now," whispered Hammersmith.
"Then we must trick him into showing her his real feelings."
"How would you set to work? He's warned, she's warned, and life if not
love is at stake."
"It don't look very promising," muttered Doctor Golden, "but----"
He was interrupted by a sudden sound of hubbub without.
"It's Quimby, Quimby!" declared Hammersmith in his sudden excitement.
But again he was mistaken. It was not the landlord, but his wife,
wild-eyed, dishevelled, with bits of straw in her hair from some
sheltering hayrick and in her hand a heavy gold chain which, as the
morning sun shone across it, showed sparkles of liquid clearness at
short intervals along its whole length.
Diamonds! Miss Thistlewaite's diamonds, and the woman who held them was
gibbering like an idiot!
The effect on Jake was remarkable. Uttering a piteous cry, he bounded
from their hands and fell at the woman's feet.
"Mother Quimby!" he moaned. "Mother Quimby!" and sought to kiss her hand
and wake some intelligence in her eye.
Meanwhile the coroner and Hammersmith looked on, astonished at these
evidences of real feeling. Then their eyes stole behind them, and
simultaneously both started back for the outhouse they had just left.
Huldah was standing in the doorway, surveying the group before her with
trembling, half-parted lips.
"Jealous!" muttered Hammersmith. "Providence has done our little trick
for us. She will talk now. Look! She's beckoning to us."
V
"Speak quickly. You'll never regret it, Huldah. He's no mate for you,
and you ought to know it. You have seen this paper covered with the pink
scrolls before?"
The coroner had again drawn aside his coat from the bits of plaster.
"Yes," she gasped, with quick glances at her lover through the open
doorway. "He never shed tears for me!" she exclaimed bitterly. "I didn't
know he could for anybody. Oh, I'll tell what I've kept quiet here," and
she struck her breast violently. "I wouldn't keep the truth back now if
the minister was waiting to marry us. He loves that old woman and he
doesn't love me. Hear him call her 'mother.' Are mothers dearer than
sweethearts? Oh, I'll tell! I don't know anything about the old lady,
but I do know that room 3 was repapered the night before last, and
secretly, by him. I didn't see him do it, nobody did, but this is how I
know: Some weeks ago I was hunting for something in the attic, when I
stumbled upon some rolls of old wall-paper lying in a little cubby-hole
under the eaves. The end of one of the rolls was torn and lay across the
floor. I couldn't help seeing it or remembering its colour. It was like
this, blue and striped. Exactly like it," she repeated, "just as shabby
and old-looking. The rain had poured in on it, and it was all mouldy and
stained. It smelt musty. I didn't give two thoughts to it then, but when
after the old lady's death I heard one of the girls say something in
the kitchen about a room being blue now which only a little while ago
was pink, I stole up into the attic to see if those rolls were still
there and found them every one gone. Oh, what is happening now?"
"One of the men is trying to take the diamonds from the woman and she
won't let him. Her wits are evidently gone--frightened away by the
horrors of the night--or she wouldn't try to cling to what has branded
her at once as a thief."
The word seemed to pierce the girl. She stared out at her former
mistress, who was again being soothed by the clerk, and murmured
hoarsely:
"A thief! and he don't seem to mind, but is just as good to her! Oh, oh,
I once served a term myself for--for a smaller thing than that and I
thought that was why----Oh, sir, oh, sir, there's no mistake about the
paper. For I went looking about in the barrels and where they throw the
refuse, for bits to prove that this papering had been done in the night.
It seemed so wonderful to me that any one, even Jake, who is the
smartest man you ever saw, could do such a job as that and no one know.
And though I found nothing in the barrels, I did in the laundry stove.
It was full of burned paper, and some of it showed colour, and it was
just that musty old blue I had seen in the attic."
She paused with a terrified gasp; Jake was looking at her from the open
door.
"Oh, Jake!" she wailed out, "why weren't you true to me? Why did you
pretend to love me when you didn't?"
He gave her a look, then turned on his heel. He was very much subdued in
aspect and did not think to brush away the tear still glistening on his
cheek.
"I've said my last word to _you_," he quietly declared, then stood
silent a moment, with slowly labouring chest and an air of deepest
gloom. But, as his eye stole outside again, they saw the spirit melt
within him and simple human grief take the place of icy resolution. "She
was like a mother to me," he murmured. "And now they say she'll never be
herself again as long as she lives." Suddenly his head rose and he faced
the coroner.
"You're right," said he. "It's all up with me. No home, no sweetheart,
no missus. _She_ [there was no doubt as to whom he meant by that
tremulous _she_] was the only one I've ever cared for and she's just
shown herself a thief. I'm no better. This is our story."
I will not give it in his words, but in my own. It will be shorter and
possibly more intelligible.
The gang, if you may call it so, consisted of Quimby and these two, with
a servant or so in addition. Robbery was its aim; a discreet and none
too frequent spoliation of such of their patrons as lent themselves to
their schemes. Quimby was the head, his wife the soul of this business,
and Jake their devoted tool. The undermining of the latter's character
had been begun early; a very dangerous undermining, because it had for
one of its elements good humour and affectionate suggestion. At
fourteen he was ready for any crime, but he was mercifully kept out of
the worst till he was a full-grown man. Then he did his part. The affair
of the old woman was an unpremeditated one. It happened in this wise:
Miss Demarest's story had been true in every particular. Her mother
_was_ with her when she came to the house, and he, Jake, was the person
sitting far back in the shadows at the time the young lady registered.
There was nothing peculiar in the occurrence or in their behaviour
except the decided demand which Miss Demarest made for separate rooms.
This attracted his attention, for the house was pretty full and only one
room was available in the portion reserved for transients. What would
Quimby do? He couldn't send two women away, and he was entirely too
conciliatory and smooth to refuse a request made so peremptorily. Quimby
did nothing. He hemmed, hawed, and looked about for his wife. She was in
the inner office back of him, and, attracted by his uneasy movements,
showed herself. A whispered consultation followed, during which she cast
a glance Jake's way. He understood her instantly and lounged carelessly
forward. "Let them have Number 3," he said. "It's all fixed for the
night. I can sleep anywhere, on the settle here or even on the floor of
the inner office."
He had whispered these words, for the offer meant more than appeared.
Number 3 was never given to guests. It was little more than a closet
and was not even furnished. A cot had been put in that very afternoon,
but only to meet a special emergency. A long-impending conference was
going to be held between him and his employers subsequent to closing up
time, and he had planned this impromptu refuge to save himself a late
walk to the stable. At his offer to pass the same over to the Demarests,
the difficulty of the moment vanished. Miss Demarest was shown to the
one empty room in front, and the mother--as being the one less likely to
be governed by superstitious fears if it so happened that some rumour of
the undesirability of the haunted Number 3 should have reached them--to
the small closet so hastily prepared for the clerk. Mrs. Quimby
accompanied her, and afterward visited her again for the purpose of
carrying her a bowl and some water. It was then she encountered Miss
Demarest, who, anxious for a second and more affectionate good-night
from her mother, had been wandering the halls in a search for her room.
There was nothing to note in this simple occurrence, and Mrs. Quimby
might have forgotten all about it if Miss Demarest had not made a
certain remark on leaving the room. The bareness and inhospitable aspect
of the place may have struck her, for she stopped in the doorway and,
looking back, exclaimed: "What ugly paper! Magenta, too, the one colour
my mother hates." This Mrs. Quimby remembered, for she also hated
magenta, and never went into this room if she could help it.
The business which kept them all up that night was one totally
disconnected with the Demarests or any one else in the house. A large
outstanding obligation was coming due which Quimby lacked the money to
meet. Something must be done with the stolen notes and jewelry which
they had accumulated in times past and had never found the will or
courage to dispose of. A choice must be made of what was salable. But
what choice? It was a question that opened the door to endless
controversy and possibly to a great difference of opinion; for in his
way Quimby was a miser of the worst type and cared less for what money
would do than for the sight and feeling of the money itself, while Mrs.
Quimby was even more tenacious in her passion for the trinkets and gems
which she looked upon as her part of the booty. Jake, on the contrary,
cared little for anything but the good of the couple to whom he had
attached himself. He wished Quimby to be satisfied, but not at Mrs.
Quimby's expense. He was really fond of the woman and he was resolved
that she should have no cause to grieve, even if he had to break with
the old man. Little did any of them foresee what the night really held
for them, or on what a jagged and unsuspected rock their frail bark was
about to split.
Shutting-up time came, and with it the usual midnight quiet. All the
doors had been locked and the curtains drawn over the windows and across
the glass doors of the office. They were determined to do what they had
never done before, lay out the loot and make a division. Quimby was
resolved to see the diamonds which his wife had kept hidden for so
long, and she, the securities, concerning the value of which he had
contradicted himself so often. Jake's presence would keep the peace;
they had no reason to fear any undue urging of his claims. All this he
knew, and he was not therefore surprised, only greatly excited, when,
after a last quiet look and some listening at the foot of the stairs,
Mr. Quimby beckoned him into the office and, telling him to lock the
door behind him, stepped around the bar to summon his wife. Jake never
knew how it happened. He flung the door to and locked it, as he thought,
but he must have turned the key too quickly, for the bolt of the lock
did not enter the jamb, as they afterward found. Meanwhile they felt
perfectly secure. The jewels were brought out of Mrs. Quimby's bedroom
and laid on the desk. The securities were soon laid beside them. They
had been concealed behind a movable brick at the side of the fireplace.
Then the discussion began, involving more or less heat and excitement.
How long this lasted no one ever knew. At half-past eleven no change of
attitude had taken place either in Quimby or his wife. At twelve the
only difference marked by Jake was the removal of the securities to
Quimby's breast pocket, and of the diamond-studded chain to Mrs.
Quimby's neck. The former were too large for the pocket, the latter too
brilliant for the dark calico background they blazed against. Jake, who
was no fool, noted both facts, but had no words for the situation. He
was absorbed, and he saw that Quimby was absorbed, in watching her
broad hand creeping over those diamonds and huddling them up in a
burning heap against her heart. There was fear in the action, fierce and
overmastering fear, and so there was in her eyes which, fixed and
glassy, stared over their shoulders at the wall behind, as though
something had reached out from that wall and struck at the very root of
her being. What did it mean? There was nothing in the room to affright
her. Had she gone daft? Or----
Suddenly they both felt the blood congeal in their own veins; each
turned to each a horrified face, then slowly and as if drawn by a power
supernatural and quite outside of their own will, their two heads turned
in the direction she was looking, and they beheld standing in their
midst a spectre--no, it was the figure of a living, breathing woman,
with eyes fastened on those jewels,--those well-known, much-advertised
jewels! So much they saw in that instant flash, then nothing! For
Quimby, in a frenzy of unreasoning fear, had taken the chair from under
him and had swung it at the figure. A lamp had stood on the bar top. It
was caught by the backward swing of the chair, overturned and quenched.
The splintering of glass mingled its small sound with an ominous thud in
the thick darkness. It was the end of all things; the falling of an
impenetrable curtain over a horror half sensed, yet all the greater for
its mystery.
The silence--the terror--the unspeakable sense of doom which gripped
them all was not broken by a heart-beat. All listened for a stir, a
movement where they could see nothing. But the stillness remained
unbroken. The silence was absolute. The figure which they had believed
themselves to have seen had been a dream, an imagination of their
overwrought minds. It could not be otherwise. The door had been locked,
entrance was impossible; yet doubt held them powerless. The moments were
making years of themselves. To each came in a flash a review of every
earthly incident they had experienced, every wicked deed, every unholy
aspiration. Quimby gritted his teeth. It was the first sound which had
followed that thud and, slight as it was, it released them somewhat from
their awful tension. Jake felt that he could move now, and was about to
let forth his imprisoned breath when he felt the touch of icy fingers
trailing over his cheek, and started back with a curse. It was Mrs.
Quimby feeling about for him in the impenetrable darkness, and in
another moment he could hear her smothered whisper:
"Are you there, Jake?"
"Yes; where are you?"
"Here," said the woman, with an effort to keep her teeth from striking
together.
"For God's sake, a light!" came from the hollow darkness beyond.
It was Quimby's voice at last. Jake answered:
"No light for me. I'll stay where I am till daybreak."
"Get a light, you fool!" commanded Quimby, but not without a tremble in
his usually mild tone.
Hard breathing from Jake, but no other response, Quimby seemed to take a
step nearer, for his voice was almost at their ears now.
"Jake, you can have anything I've got so as you get a light now."
"There ain't nothing to light here. You broke the lamp."
Quiet for a moment, then Quimby muttered hoarsely:
"If you ain't scared out of your seven senses, you can go down cellar
and bring up that bit of candle 'longside the ale-barrels."
Into the cellar! Not Jake. The moving of the rickety table which his fat
hand had found and rested on spoke for him.
Another curse from Quimby. Then the woman, though with some hesitation,
said with more self-control than could be expected:
"I'll get it," and they heard her move away from _it_ toward the
trap-door behind the bar.
The two men made no objection. To her that cold, black cellar might seem
a refuge from the unseen horror centred here. It had not struck them so.
It had its own possibilities, and Jake wondered at her courage, as he
caught the sound of her groping advance and the sudden clatter and clink
of bottles as the door came up and struck the edge of the bar. There was
life and a suggestion of home in that clatter and clink, and all
breathed easier for a moment, but only for a moment. The something
lying there behind them, or was it almost under their feet, soon got its
hold again upon their fears, and Jake found himself standing
stock-still, listening both ways for that dreaded, or would it be
welcome, movement on the floor behind, and to the dragging sound of Mrs.
Quimby's skirt and petticoat as she made her first step down those
cellar-stairs. What an endless time it took! He could rush down there in
a minute, but she--she could not have reached the third step yet, for
that always creaked. Now it did creak. Then there was no sound for some
time, unless it was the panting of Quimby's breath somewhere over by the
bar. Then the stair creaked again. She must be nearly up.
"Here's matches and the candle," came in a hollow voice from the
trap-stairs.
A faint streak appeared for an instant against the dark, then
disappeared. Another; but no lasting light. The matches were too damp to
burn.
"Jake, ain't you got a match?" appealed the voice of Quimby in
half-choked accents.
After a bit of fumbling a small blaze shot up from where Jake stood. Its
sulphurous smell may have suggested to all, as it did to one, the
immeasurable distance of heaven at that moment, and the awful nearness
of hell. They could see now, but not one of them looked in the direction
where all their thoughts lay. Instead of that, they rolled their eyes on
each other, while the match burned slowly out: Mrs. Quimby from the
trap, her husband from the bar, and Jake. Suddenly he found words, and
his cry rang through the room:
"The candle! the candle! this is my only match. Where is the candle?"
Quimby leaped forward and with shaking hand held the worn bit of candle
to the flame. It failed to ignite. The horrible, dreaded darkness was
about to close upon them again before--before----But another hand had
seized the candle. Mrs. Quimby has come forward, and as the match sends
up its last flicker, thrusts the wick against the flame and the candle
flares up. It is lighted.
Over it they give each other one final appealing stare. There's no help
for it now; they must look. Jake's head turned first, then Mrs. Quimby,
and then that of the real aggressor.
A simultaneous gasp from them all betrays the worst. It had been no
phantom called into being by their overtaxed nerves. A woman lay before
them, face downward on the hard floor. A woman dressed in black, with
hat on head and a little satchel clutched in one stiff, outstretched
hand. Miss Demarest's mother! The little old lady who had come into the
place four hours before!
With a muttered execration, Jake stepped over to her side and
endeavoured to raise her; but he instantly desisted, and looking up at
Quimby and his wife, moved his lips with the one fatal word which ends
all hope:
"Dead!"
They listened appalled, "Dead?" echoed the now terrified Quimby.
"Dead?" repeated his no less agitated wife.
Jake was the least overcome of the three. With another glance at the
motionless figure, he rose, and walking around the body, crossed to the
door and seeing what he had done to make entrance possible, cursed
himself and locked it properly. Meanwhile, Mrs. Quimby, with her eyes on
her husband, had backed slowly away till she had reached the desk,
against which she now stood with fierce and furious eyes, still
clutching at her chain.
Quimby watched her fascinated. He had never seen her look like this
before. What did it portend? They were soon to know.
"Coward!" fell from her lips, as she stared with unrelenting hate at her
husband. "An old woman who was not even conscious of what she saw! I'll
not stand for this killing, Jacob. You may count me out of this and the
chain, too. If you don't----" a threatening gesture finished the
sentence and the two men looking at her knew that they had come up
against a wall.
"Susan!" Was that Quimby speaking? "Susan, are you going back on me
now?"
She pointed at the motionless figure lying in its shrouding black like
an ineffaceable blot on the office floor, then at the securities showing
above the edge of his pocket.
"Were we not close enough to discovery, without drawing the attention of
the police by such an unnecessary murder? She was walking in her sleep.
I remember her eyes as she advanced toward me; there was no sight in
them."
"You lie!" It was the only word which Quimby found to ease the shock
which this simple statement caused him. But Jake saw from the nature of
the glance he shot at his poor old victim that her words had struck
home. His wife saw it, too, but it did not disturb the set line of her
determined mouth.
"You'll let me keep the chain," she said, "and you'll use your wits, now
that you have used your hand, to save yourself and myself from the
charge of murder."
Quimby, who was a man of great intelligence when his faculties were
undisturbed by anger or shock, knelt and turned his victim carefully
over so that her face was uppermost.
"It was not murder," he uttered in an indescribable tone after a few
minutes of cautious scrutiny. "The old lady fell and struck her
forehead. See! the bruise is scarcely perceptible. Had she been
younger----"
"A sudden death from any cause in this house at just this time is full
of danger for us," coldly broke in his wife.
The landlord rose to his feet, walked away to the window, dropped his
head, thought for a minute, and then slowly came back, glanced at the
woman again, at her dress, her gloved hands, and her little satchel.
"She didn't die in this house," fell from his lips in his most oily
accents. "She fell in the woods; the path is full of bared roots, and
there she must be found to-morrow morning. Jake, are you up to the
little game?"
Jake, who was drawing his first full breath, answered with a calm enough
nod, whereupon Quimby bade his wife to take a look outside and see if
the way was clear for them to carry the body out.
She did not move. He fell into a rage; an unusual thing for him.
"Bestir yourself! do as I bid you," he muttered.
Her eyes held his; her face took on the look he had learned to dread.
Finally she spoke:
"And the daughter! What about the daughter?"
Quimby stood silent; then with a sidelong leer, and in a tone smooth as
oil, but freighted with purpose, "The mother first; we'll look after the
daughter later."
Mrs. Quimby shivered; then as her hand spread itself over the precious
chain sparkling with the sinister gleam of serpent's eyes on her broad
bosom, she grimly muttered:
"How? I'm for no more risks, I tell you."
Jake took a step forward. He thought his master was about to rush upon
her. But he was only gathering up his faculties to meet the new problem
she had flung at him.
"The girl's a mere child; we shall have no difficulty with her," he
muttered broodingly. "Who saw these two come in?"
Then it came out that no one but themselves had been present at their
arrival. Further consultation developed that the use to which Number 3
had been put was known to but one of the maids, who could easily be
silenced. Whereupon Quimby told his scheme. Mrs. Quimby was satisfied,
and he and Jake prepared to carry it out.
The sensations of the next half-hour, as told by Jake, would make your
flesh creep. They did not dare to carry a lamp to light the gruesome
task, and well as they knew the way, the possibilities of a stumble or a
fall against some one of the many trees they had to pass filled them
with constant terror. They did stumble once, and the low cry Jake
uttered caused them new fears. Was that a window they heard flying up?
No; but something moved in the bushes. They were sure of this and
guiltily shook in their shoes; but nothing advanced out of the shadows,
and they went on.
But the worst was when they had to turn their backs upon the body left
lying face downward in the cold, damp woods. Men of no compassion,
unreached by ordinary sympathies, they felt the furtive skulking back,
step by step, along ways commonplace enough in the daytime, but begirt
with terrors now and full of demoniac suggestion.
The sight of a single thread of light marking the door left ajar for
them by Mrs. Quimby was a beacon of hope which was not even disturbed by
the sight of her wild figure walking in a circle round and round the
office, the stump of candle dripping unheeded over her fingers, and her
eyes almost as sightless as those of the form left in the woods.
"Susan!" exclaimed her husband, laying hand on her.
She paused at once. The presence of the two men had restored her
self-possession.
But all was not well yet. Jake drew Quimby's attention to the register
where the two names of mother and daughter could be seen in plain black
and white.
"Oh, that's nothing!" exclaimed the landlord, and, taking out his knife,
he ripped the leaf out, together with the corresponding one in the back.
"The devil's on our side all right, or why did she pass over the space
at the bottom of the page and write their two names at the top of the
next one?"
He started, for his wife had clutched his arm.
"Yes, the devil's on our side thus far," said she, "but here he stops. I
have just remembered something that will upset our whole plan and
possibly hang us. Miss Demarest visited her mother in Number 3 and
noticed the room well, and particularly the paper. Now if she is able to
describe that paper, it might not be so easy for us to have our story
believed."
For a minute all stood aghast, then Jake quietly remarked: "It is now
one by the clock. If you can find me some of that old blue paper I once
chucked under the eaves in the front attic, I will engage to have it on
those four walls before daylight. Bring the raggedest rolls you can
find. If it shouldn't be dry to the touch when they come to see it
to-morrow, it must look so stained and old that no one will think of
laying hand on it. I'll go make the paste."
As Jake was one of the quickest and most precise of workers at anything
he understood, this astonishing offer struck the other two as quite
feasible. The paper was procured, the furniture moved back, and a
transformation made in the room in question which astonished even those
concerned in it. Dawn rose upon the completed work and, the
self-possession of all three having been restored with the burning up of
such scraps as remained after the four walls were covered, they each
went to their several beds for a half-hour of possible rest. Jake's was
in Number 3. He has never said what that half-hour was to him!
The rest we know. The scheme did not fully succeed, owing to the
interest awakened in one man's mind by the beauty and seeming truth of
Miss Demarest. Investigation followed which roused the landlord to the
danger threatening them from the curiosity of Hammersmith, and it being
neck or nothing with him, he planned the deeper crime of burning up room
and occupant before further discoveries could be made. What became of
him in the turmoil which followed, no one could tell, not even Jake.
They had been together in Jake's room before the latter ran out with his
gun, but beyond that the clerk knew nothing. Of Mrs. Quimby he could
tell more. She had not been taken into their confidence regarding the
fire, some small grains of humanity remaining in her which they feared
might upset their scheme. She had only been given some pretext for
locking Huldah in her room, and it was undoubtedly her horror at her own
deed when she saw to what it had committed her which unsettled her brain
and made her a gibbering idiot for life.
Or was it some secret knowledge of her husband's fate, unknown to
others? We cannot tell, for no sign nor word of Jacob Quimby ever came
to dispel the mystery of his disappearance.
And this is the story of Three Forks Tavern and the room numbered 3.