It fell to me to fetch Miss Tuttle. I was glad of this, as it gave me a

few minutes by myself in which to compose my mind and adjust my

thoughts to the new conditions opened up by the amazing facts which had

just come to light. But beyond the fact that Mrs. Jeffrey had been

answerable for the death which had occurred in the library at the time

of her marriage—that, in the words of the district attorney, she had

come to her husband with blood on her hands, my thoughts would not go;

confusion followed the least attempt to settle the vital question of

how far Miss Tuttle and Mr. Jeffrey had been involved in the earlier

crime and what the coming interview with these two would add to our

present knowledge. In my anxiety to have this question answered I

hastened my steps and was soon at the door of Miss Tuttle’s present

dwelling place.

I had not seen this lady since the inquest, and my heart beat high as I

sat awaiting her appearance in the dim little parlor where I had been

seated by the person who held her under secret surveillance. The scene

I had just been through, the uncertain nature of the relations held by

this beautiful woman both toward the crime just discovered and the one

long associated with her name, lent to these few moments of

anticipation an emotion which poorly prepared me for the touching sight

of the patient smile with which she presently entered.

But I doubt if she noticed my agitation. She was too much swayed by her

own. Advancing upon me in all the unconscious pride of her great

beauty, she tremulously remarked:

“You have a message for me. Is it from headquarters? Or has the

district attorney still more questions to ask?”

“I have a much more trying errand than that,” I hastened to say, with

some idea of preparing her for an experience that could not fail to be

one of exceptional trial. “For reasons which will be explained to you

by those in greater authority than myself, you are wanted at the house

where—” I could not help stammering under the light of her melancholy

eyes—“where I saw you once before,” I lamely concluded.

“The house in Waverley Avenue?” she objected wildly, with the first

signs of positive terror I had ever beheld in her.

I nodded, dropping my eyes. What call had I to penetrate the conscience

of this woman?

“Are they there? all there?” she presently asked again. “The police

and—and Mr. Jeffrey?”

“Madam,” I respectfully protested, “my duty is limited to conducting

you to the place named. A carriage is waiting. May I beg that you will

prepare yourself to go at once to Waverley Avenue?”

For answer she subjected me to a long and earnest look which I found it

impossible to evade. Then she hastened from the room, but with very

unsteady steps. Evidently the courage which had upborne her so long was

beginning to fail. Her very countenance was changed. Had she

recognized, as I meant she should, that the secret of the Moore house

was no longer a secret confined to her own breast and to that of her

unhappy brother-in-law?

When she returned ready for her ride this change in her spirits was

less observable, and by the time we had reached the house in Waverley

Avenue she had so far regained her old courage as to move and speak

with the calmness of despair if not of mental serenity.

The major was awaiting us at the door and bowed gravely before her

heavily veiled figure.

“Miss Tuttle,” he asked, without any preamble, the moment she was well

inside the house, “may I inquire of you here, and before I show you

what will excuse us for subjecting you to the distress of entering

these doors, whether your sister, Mrs. Jeffrey, had any other name or

was ever known by any other name than that of Veronica?”

“She was christened Antoinette, as well as Veronica; but the person in

whose memory the former name was given her was no honor to the family

and she very soon dropped it and was only known as Veronica. Oh, what

have I done?” she cried, awed and frightened by the silence which

followed the utterance of these simple words.

No one answered her. For the first time in her presence, the minds of

those who faced her were with another than herself. The bride! the

unhappy bride—no maiden but a wife! nay, a wife one minute, a widow the

next, and then again a newly-wedded bride before the husband lying

below was cold! What wonder that she shrank when her new-made

bridegroom’s lips approached her own! or that their honeymoon was a

disappointment! Or that the shadow which fell upon her on that evil day

never left her till she gave herself wholly up to its influence and

returned to die on the spot made awful by her own crime.

Before any of us were quite ready to speak, a tap at the door told us

that Durbin had arrived with Mr. Jeffrey. When they had been admitted

and the latter saw Miss Tuttle standing there, he, too, seemed to

realize that a turn had come in their affairs, and that courage rather

than endurance was the quality most demanded from him. Facing the small

group clustered in the dismal hall fraught with such unutterable

associations, he earnestly prayed:

“Do not keep me in suspense. Why am I summoned here?”

The reply was as grave as the occasion warranted.

“You are summoned to learn the murderous secret of these old walls, and

who it was that last made use of it. Do you feel inclined to hear these

details from my lips, or are you ready to state that you already know

the means by which so many persons, in times past as well as in times

present, have met death here? We do not require you to answer us.”

“I know the means,” he allowed, recognizing without doubt that the

crisis of crises had come, and that denial would be worse than useless.

“Then it only remains for us to acquaint you with the identity of the

person who last pressed the fatal spring. But perhaps you know that,

too?”

“I—” He paused; words were impossible to him; and in that pause his

eyes flashed helplessly in the direction of Miss Tuttle.

But the major was quick on his feet and was already between him and

that lady. This act forced from Mr. Jeffrey’s lips the following broken

sentence:

“I should—like—you—to—tell—me.” Great gasps came with each heavily

spoken word.

“Perhaps this morsel of lace will do it in a gentler manner than I

could,” responded the district attorney, opening his hand, in which lay

the scrap of lace that, an hour or so before, I had plucked away from

the boarding of that fatal closet.

Mr. Jeffrey eyed it and understood. His hands went up to his face and

he swayed to the point of falling. Miss Tuttle came quickly forward.

“Oh!” she moaned, as her eyes fell on the little white shred. “The

providence of God has found us out. We have suffered, labored and

denied in vain.”

“Yes,” came in dreary echo from the man none of us had understood till

now; “so great a crime could not be hid. God will have vengeance. What

are we that we should hope to avert it by any act or at any cost?”

The major, with his eyes fixed piercingly on this miserable man,

replied with one pregnant sentence:

“Then you forced your wife to suicide?”

“No,” he began; but before another word could follow, Miss Tuttle,

resplendent in beauty and beaming with new life, broke in with the

fervid cry:

“You wrong him and you wrong her by such a suggestion. It was not her

husband but her conscience that forced her to this retributive act.

What Mr. Jeffrey might have done had she proved obdurate and blind to

the enormity of her own guilt, I do not know. But that he is innocent

of so influencing her is proved by the shock he suffered at finding she

had taken her punishment into her own hands.”

“Mr. Jeffrey will please answer the question,” insisted the major.

Whereupon the latter, with great effort, but with the first appearance

of real candor yet seen in him, said earnestly:

“I did nothing to influence her. I was in no condition to do so. I was

benumbed—dead. When first she told me,—it was in some words muttered in

her sleep—I thought she was laboring under some fearful nightmare; but

when she persisted, and I questioned her, and found the horror true, I

was like a man turned instantly into stone, save for one intolerable

throb within. I am still so; everything passes by me like a dream. She

was so young, seemingly so innocent and light-hearted. I loved her!

Gentlemen, you have thought me guilty of my wife’s death,—this young

fairy-like creature to whom I ascribed all the virtues! and I was

willing, willing that you should think so, willing even to face the

distrust and opprobrium of the whole world,—and so was her sister, the

noble woman whom you see before you—rather than that the full horror of

her crime should be known and a name so dear be given up to execration.

We thought we could keep the secret—we felt that we _must_ keep the

secret—we took an oath—in French—in the carriage with the detectives

opposite us. _She_ kept it—God bless her! _I_ kept it. But it was all

useless—a tiny bit of lace is found hanging to a lifeless splinter, and

all our efforts, all the hopes and agony of weeks are gone for naught.

The world will soon know of her awful deed—and I—”

He still loved her! That was apparent in every look, in every word he

uttered. We marveled in awkward silence, and were glad when the major

said:

“The deed, as I take it, was an unpremeditated one on her part. Is that

why her honor was dearer to you than your own, and why you could risk

the reputation if not the life of the woman who you say sacrificed

herself to it?”

“Yes, it was unpremeditated; she hardly realized her act. If you must

know her heart through all this dreadful business, we have her words to

show you—words which she spent the last miserable day of her life in

writing. The few lines which I showed the captain and which have been

published to the world was an inclosure meant for the public eye. The

real letter, telling the whole terrible truth, I kept for myself and

for the sister who already knew her sin. Oh, we did everything we

could!” And he again moaned: “But it was in vain; quite in vain.”

There were no signs of subterfuge in him now, and we all, unless I

except Durbin, began to yield him credence. Durbin never gives credence

to anybody whose name he has once heard associated with crime.

“And this Pfeiffer was contracted to her? A man she had secretly

married while a school-girl and who at this very critical instant had

found his way to the house.”

“You shall read her letter. It was meant for me, for me only—but you

shall see it. I can not talk of him or of her crime. It is enough that

I have been unable to think of anything else since first those dreadful

words fell front her lips in sleep, thirty-six hours before she died.”

Then with the inconsistency of great anguish he suddenly broke forth

into the details he shrank from and cried “She muttered, lying there,

that she was no bigamist. That she had killed one husband before she

married the other. Killed him in the old house and by the method her

ancestors had taught her. And I, risen on my elbow, listened, with the

sweat oozing from my forehead, but not believing her, oh, not believing

her, any more than any one of you would believe such words uttered in a

dream by the darling of your heart. But when, with a long-drawn sigh,

she murmured, ‘Murderer!’ and raised her fists—tiny fists, hands which

I had kissed a thousand times—and shook them in the air, an awful

terror seized me, and I sought to grasp them and hold them down, but

was hindered by some nameless inner recoil under which I could not

speak, nor gasp, nor move. Of course, it was some dream-horror she was

laboring under, a nightmare of unimaginable acts and thoughts, but it

was one to hold me back; and when she lay quiet again and her face

resumed its old sweetness in the moonlight, I found myself staring at

her almost as if it were true—what she had said—that word—that awful

word which no woman could use with regard to herself, even in dreams,

unless—Something, an echo from the discordant chord in our two weeks’

married life, rose like the confirmation of a doubt in my shocked and

rebellious breast. From that hour till dawn nothing in that slowly

brightening room seemed real, not her face lying buried in its youthful

locks upon the pillow, not the objects well-known and well-prized by

which we were surrounded—not myself—most of all, not myself, unless the

icy dew oozing from the roots of my lifted hair was real, unless that

shape, fearsome, vague, but persistent, which hovered in the shadows

above us, drawing a line of eternal separation between me and my wife,

was a thing which could be caught and strangled and— Oh! I rave! I

chatter like a madman; but I did not rave that night. Nor did I rave

when, in the bright, broad sunlight, her eye slowly unclosed and she

started to see me bending so near her, but not with my usual kiss or

glad good morning. I could not question her then; I dared not. The

smile which slowly rose to her lips was too piteous—it showed

confidence. I waited till after breakfast. Then, while she was seated

where she could not see my face, I whispered the question: ‘Do you know

that you have had a horrible dream?’ She shrieked and turned. _I saw

her face and knew that what she had uttered in her sleep was true._’

“I have no remembrance of what I said to her. She tried to tell me how

she had been tempted and how she had not realized her own act, till the

moment I bent down to kiss her lips as her husband. But I did not stop

to listen—I could not. I flew immediately to Miss Tuttle with the

violent demand as to whether she knew that her sister was already a

wife when she married me, and when she cried out ‘No!’ and showed great

dismay, I broke forth with the dreadful tale and cowered in unmanly

anguish at her feet, and went mad and lost myself for a little while.

Then I went back to my wretched wife and asked her how the awful deed

had been done. She told me, and again I did not believe her and began

to look upon it all as some wild dream or the distempered fancies of a

disordered brain. This thought calmed me and I spoke gently to her and

even tried to take her hand. But she herself was raving now, and clung

about my knees, murmuring words of such anguish and contrition that my

worst fears returned and, only stopping to take the key of the Moore

house from my bureau, I left the house and wandered madly—I know not

where.

“I did not go back that day. I could not face her again till I knew how

much of her confession was fancy and how much was fact. I roamed the

streets, carrying that key from one end of the city to the other, and

at night I used it to open the house which she had declared contained

so dreadful a secret.

“I had bought candles on my way there but, forgetting to take them from

the store, I had no light with which to penetrate the horrible place

that even the moon refused to illumine. I realized this when once in,

but would not go back. All I have told about using matches to light me

to the southwest chamber is true, also my coming upon the old

candelabrum there, with a candle in one of its sockets. This candle I

lit, my sole reason for seeking this room being my desire to examine

the antique sketch for the words which she had said could be found

there.

“I had failed to bring a magnifying-glass with me, but my eyes are

phenomenally sharp. Knowing where to look, I was able to pick out

enough words here and there in the lines composing the hair, to feel

quite sure that my wife had neither deceived me nor been deceived as to

certain directions being embodied there in writing. Shaken in my last

lingering hope, but not yet quite convinced that these words pointed to

outrageous crime, I flew next to the closet and drew out the fatal

drawer.

“You have been there and know what the place is, but no one but myself

can ever realize what it was for me, still loving, still clinging to a

wild inconsequent belief in my wife, to grope in that mouth of hell for

the spring she had chattered about in her sleep, to find it, press it,

and then to hear, down in the dark of the fearsome recess, the sound of

something deadly strike against what I took to be the cushions of the

old settle standing at the edge of the library hearthstone.

“I think I must have fainted. For when I found myself possessed of

sufficient consciousness to withdraw from that hole of death, the

candle in the candelabrum was shorter by an inch than when I first

thrust my head into the gap made by the removed drawers. In putting

back the drawers I hit the candelabrum with my foot, upsetting it and

throwing out the burning candle. As the flames began to lick the

worm-eaten boarding of the floor a momentary impulse seized me to rush

away and leave the whole place to burn. But I did not. With a sudden

frenzy, I stamped out the flame, and then finding myself in darkness,

groped my way downstairs and out. If I entered the library I do not

remember it. Some lapses must be pardoned a man involved as I was.”

“But the fact which you dismiss so lightly is an important one,”

insisted the major. “We must know positively whether you entered this

room or not.”

“I have no recollection of doing so”

“Then you can not tell us whether the little table was standing there,

with the candelabrum upon it or—”

“I can tell you nothing about it.”

The major, after a long look at this suffering man, turned toward Miss

Tuttle.

“You must have loved your sister very much,” he sententiously remarked.

She flushed and for the first time her eyes fell from their

resting-place on Mr. Jeffrey’s face.

“I loved her reputation,” was her quiet answer, “and—” The rest died in

her throat.

But we all—such of us, I mean, who were possessed of the least

sensibility or insight, knew how that sentence sounded as finished in

her heart “and I loved _him_ who asked this sacrifice of me.”

Yet was her conduct not quite clear.

“And to save that reputation you tied the pistol to her wrist?”

insinuated the major.

“No,” was her vehement reply. “I never knew what I was tying to her. My

testimony in that regard was absolutely true. She held the pistol

concealed in the folds of her dress. I did not dream—I could not—that

she was contemplating any such end to the atrocious crime—to which she

had confessed. Her manner was too light, too airy and too frivolous—a

manner adopted, as I now see, to forestall all questions and hold back

all expressions of feeling on my part. ‘Tie these hanging ends of

ribbon to my wrist,’ were her words. ‘Tie them tight; a knot under and

a bow on top. I am going out— There, don’t say anything— What you want

to talk about will keep till tomorrow. For one night more I am going to

make merry—to—to enjoy myself.’ She was laughing. I thought her

horribly callous and trembled with such an unspeakable repulsion that I

had difficulty in making the knot. To speak at all would have been

impossible. Neither did I dare to look in her face. I was touching the

hand and _she_ kept on laughing—such a hollow laugh covering up such an

awful resolve! When she turned to give me that last injunction about

the note, this resolve glared still in her eyes.”

“And you never suspected?”

“Not for an instant. I did not do justice either to her misery or to

her conscience. I fear that I have never done her justice in anyway. I

thought her light, pleasure-loving. I did not know that it was assumed

to hide a terrible secret.”

“Then you had no knowledge of the contract she had entered into while a

school-girl?”

“Not in the least. Another woman, and not myself, had been her

confidante; a woman who has since died. No intimation of her first

unfortunate marriage had ever reached me till Mr. Jeffrey rushed in

upon me that Tuesday morning with her dreadful confession on his lips.”

The district attorney, who did not seem quite satisfied on a certain

point passed over by the major, now took the opportunity of saying:

“You assure us that you had no idea that this once lighthearted sister

of yours meditated suicide when she left you?”

“And I repeat it, sir.”

“Then why did you immediately go to Mr. Jeffrey’s drawer, where you

could have no business, unless it was to see if she had taken his

pistol with her?”

Miss Tuttle’s head fell and a soft flush broke through the pallor of

her cheek.

“Because I was thinking of _him_. Because I was terrified for _him_. He

had left the house the morning before in a half-maddened condition and

had not come back to sleep or eat since. I did not know what a man so

outraged in every sacred feeling of love and honor might be tempted to

do. I thought of suicide. I remembered the old house and how he had

said, ‘I don’t believe her. I don’t believe she ever did so

cold-blooded an act, or that any such dreadful machinery is in that

house. I never shall believe it till I have seen and handled it myself.

It is a nightmare, Cora. We are insane.’ I thought of this, sirs, and

when I went into her room, to change the place of the little note in

the book, I went to his bureau drawer, not to look for the pistol—I did

not think of that then,—but to see if the keys of the Moore house were

still there. I knew that they were kept in this drawer, for I had been

present in the room when they were brought in after the wedding. I had

also been short-sighted enough to conclude that if they were gone it

was he who had taken them. They were gone, and that was why I flew

immediately from the house to the old place in Waverley Avenue. I was

concerned for Mr. Jeffrey! I feared to find him there, demented or

dead.”

“But you had no key.”

“No. Mr. Jeffrey had taken one of them and my sister the other. But the

lack of a key or even of a light—for the missing candles were not taken

by me[1]—could not keep me at home after I was once convinced that he

had gone to this dreadful house. If I could not get in I could at least

hammer at the door or rouse the neighbors. Something must be done. I

did not think what; I merely flew.”

[1] We afterwards found that these candles were never delivered at the

house at all; that they had been placed in the wrong basket and left

in a neighboring kitchen.

“Did you know that the house had two keys?”

“Not then.”

“But your sister did?”

“Probably.”

“And finding the only key, as you supposed, gone, you flew to the Moore

house?”

“Immediately.”

“And now what else?”

“I found the door unlocked.”

“That was done by Mrs. Jeffrey?”

“Yes, but I did not think of her then.”

“And you went in?”

“Yes; it was all dark, but I felt my way till I came to the gilded

pillars.”

“Why did you go there?”

“Because I felt—I knew—if he were anywhere in that house he would be

_there!_”

“And why did you stop?”

Her voice rose above its usual quiet pitch in shrill protest:

“You know! you know! I heard a pistol-shot from within, then a fall. I

don’t remember anything else. They say I went wandering about town.

Perhaps I did; it is all a blank to me—everything is a blank till the

policeman said that my sister was dead and I learned for the first time

that the shot I had heard in the Moore house was not the signal of his

death, but hers. Had I been myself when at that library door,” she

added, after a moment of silence, “I would have rushed in at the sound

of that shot and have received my sister’s dying breath.”

“Cora!” The cry was from Mr. Jeffrey, and seemed to be quite

involuntary. “In the weeks during which we have been kept from speaking

together I have turned all these events over in my mind till I longed

for any respite, even that of the grave. But in all my thinking I never

attributed this motive to your visit here. Will you forgive me?”

There was a new tone in his voice, a tone which no woman could hear

without emotion.

“You had other things to think of,” she said, and her lips trembled.

Never have I seen on the human face a more beautiful expression than I

saw on hers at that moment; nor do I think Mr. Jeffrey had either, for

as he marked it his own regard softened almost to tenderness.

The major had no time for sentimentalities. Turning to Mr. Jeffrey, he

said:

“One more question before we send for the letter which you say will

give us full insight into your wife’s crime. Do you remember what

occurred on the bridge at Georgetown just before you came into town

that night?”

He shook his head.

“Did you meet any one there?”

“I do not know.”

“Can you remember your state of mind?”

“I was facing the future.”

“And what did you see in the future?”

“Death. Death for her and death for me! A crime was on her soul and she

must die, and if she, then myself. I knew no other course. I could not

summon the police, point out my bride of a fortnight and, with the

declaration that she had been betrayed into killing a man, coldly

deliver her up to justice. Neither could I live at her side knowing the

guilty secret which parted us; or live anywhere in the world under this

same consciousness. Therefore, I meant to kill myself before another

sun rose. But she was more deeply stricken with a sense of her own

guilt than I realized. When I returned home for the pistol which was to

end our common misery I found that she had taken her punishment into

her own hands. This strangely affected me, but when I found that, in

doing this, she had remembered that I should have to face the world

after she was gone, and so left a few lines for me to show in

explanation of her act, my revolt against her received a check which

the reading of her letter only increased. But the lines she thus wrote

and left were not true lines. All her heart was mine, and if it was a

wicked heart she has atoned—”

He paused, quite overcome. Others amongst us were overcome, too, but

only for a moment. The following remark from the district attorney soon

recalled us to the practical aspects of the case.

“You have accounted for many facts not hitherto understood. But there

is still a very important one which neither yourself nor Miss Tuttle

has yet made plain. There was a candle on the scene of crime; it was

out when this officer arrived here. There was also one found burning in

the upstairs room, aside from the one you professedly used in your tour

of inspection there. Whence came those candles? And did your wife blow

out the one in the library herself, previous to the shooting, or was it

blown out afterward and by other lips?”

“These are questions which, as I have already said, I have no means of

answering,” repeated Mr. Jeffrey. “The courage which brought her here

may have led her to supply herself with light; and, hard as it is to

conceive, she may even have found nerve to blow out the light before

she lifted the pistol to her breast:”

The district attorney and the major looked unconvinced, and the latter,

turning toward Miss Tuttle, asked if she had any remark to make on the

subject.

But she could only repeat Mr. Jeffrey’s statement.

“These are questions _I_ can not answer either. I have said that I

stopped at the library door, which means that I saw nothing of what

passed within.”

Here the major asked where Mrs. Jeffrey’s letter was to be found. It

was Mr. Jeffrey who replied:

“Search in my room for a book with an outside cover of paper still on

it. You will probably find it on my table. The inner cover is red.

Bring that book here. Our secret is hidden in it.”

Durbin disappeared on this errand. I followed him as far as the door,

but I did not think it necessary to state that I had seen this book

lying on the table when I paid my second visit to Mr. Jeffrey’s room in

company with the coroner. The thought that my hand had been within

reach of this man’s secret so many weeks before was sufficiently

humiliating without being shared.

XXIV.

TANTALIZING TACTICS

I made my way to the front door, but returned almost immediately.

Drawing the major aside, I whispered a request, which led to a certain

small article being passed over to me, after which I sauntered out on

the stoop just in time to encounter the spruce but irate figure of Mr.

Moore, who had crossed from the opposite side.

“Ah!” said I. “Good morning!” and made him my most deferential bow.

He glared and Rudge glared from his place on the farther curb.

Evidently the police were not in favor with the occupants of the

cottage that morning.

“When is this to cease?” he curtly demanded. “When are these

early-morning trespasses upon an honest citizen’s property coming to an

end? I wake with a light heart, expecting that my house, which is

certainly as much mine as is any man’s in Washington, would be handed

over this very day for my habitation, when what do I see—one police

officer leaving the front door and another sunning himself in the

vestibule. How many more of you are within I do not presume to ask.

Some half-dozen, no doubt, and not one of you smart enough to wind up

this matter and have done with it.”

“Ah! I don’t know about that,” I drawled, and looked very wise.

His curiosity was aroused.

“Anything new?” he snapped.

“Possibly,” I returned, in a way to exasperate a saint.

He stepped on to the porch beside me. I was too abstracted to notice; I

was engaged in eying Rudge.

“Do you know,” said I, after an instant of what I meant should be one

of uncomfortable suspense on his part, “that I have a greater respect

than ever for that animal of yours since learning the very good reason

he has for refusing to cross the street?”

“Ha! what’s that?” he asked, with a quick look behind him at the

watchful brute straining toward him with nose over the gutter.

“He sees farther than we can. His eyes penetrate walls and partitions,”

I remarked. Then, carelessly and with the calm drawing forth of a

folded bit of paper which I held out toward him, I added: “By the way,

here is something of yours.”

His hand rose instinctively to take it; then dropped.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he remarked. “You have nothing of mine.”

“No? Then John Judson Moore had another brother.” And I thrust the

paper back into my pocket.

He followed it with his eye. It was the memorandum I had found in the

old book of memoirs plucked from the library shelf within, and he

recognized it for his and saw that I did also. But he failed to show

the white feather.

“You are good at ransacking,” he observed; “pity that it can not be

done to more purpose.”

I smiled and made a fresh start. With my hand thrust again into my

pocket, I remarked, without even so much as a glance at him:

“I fear that you do some injustice to the police. We are not such bad

fellows; neither do we waste as much time as you seem to think.” And

drawing out my hand, with the little filigree ball in it, I whirled the

latter innocently round and round on my finger. As it flashed under his

eye, I cast him a penetrating look.

He tried to carry the moment off successfully; I will give him so much

credit. But it was asking too much of his curiosity, and there was no

mistaking the eager glitter which lighted his glance as he saw within

his reach this article which a moment before he had probably regarded

as lost forever.

“For instance,” I went on, watching him furtively, though quite sure

from his very first look that he knew no more now of the secret of this

little ball than he knew when he jotted down the memorandum I had just

pocketed before his eyes, “a little thing—such a little thing as this,”

I repeated, giving the bauble another twist—“may lead to discoveries

such as no common search would yield in years. I do not say that it

has; but such a thing is possible, you know: who better?”

My nonchalance was too much for him. He surveyed me with covert

dislike, and dryly observed “Your opportunities have exceeded mine,

even with my own effects. That petty trinket which you have presumed to

flaunt in my face—and of whose value I am the worst judge in the world

since I have never had it in my hand—descended to me with the rest of

Mrs. Jeffrey’s property. Your conduct, therefore, strikes me in the

light of an impertinence, especially as no one could be supposed to

have more interest than myself in what has been for many years

recognized as a family talisman.”

“Ah,” I remarked. “You own to the memorandum then. It was made on the

spot, but without the benefit of the talisman.”

“I own to nothing,” he snapped. Then, realizing that denial in this

regard was fatal, he added more genially: “What do you mean by

memorandum? If you mean that recapitulation of old-time mysteries and

their accompanying features with which I once whiled away an idle hour,

I own to it, of course. Why shouldn’t I? It is only a proof of my

curiosity in regard to this old mystery which every member of my family

must feel. That curiosity has not been appeased. If it would not be

indiscreet on your part, may I now ask if you have found out what that

little golden ball of mine which you sport so freely before my eyes is

to be used in connection with?”

“Read the papers,” I said; “read tomorrow’s papers, Mr. Moore; or,

better still, tonight’s. Perhaps they will inform you.”

He was as angry as I had expected him to be, but as this ire proved

conclusively that his strongest emotion had been curiosity rather than

fear, I felt assured of my ground, and turned to reenter the house. Mr.

Moore did not accompany me.

The major was standing in the hall. The others had evidently retreated

to the parlor.

“The man opposite knows what he knows,” said I; “but this does not

include the facts concerning the picture in the southwest chamber or

the devilish mechanism.”

“You are sure?”

“As positive as one of my inexperience can be. But, Major, I am equally

positive that he knows more than he should of Mrs. Jeffrey’s death. I

am even ready to state that in my belief he was in the house when it

occurred.”

“Has he acknowledged this?”

“Not at all.”

“Then what are your reasons for this belief?”

“They are many”

“Will you state them?”

“Gladly, if you will pardon the presumption. Some of my conclusions can

not be new to you. The truth is that I have possibly seen more of this

old man than my duty warranted, and I feel quite ready to declare that

he knows more of what has taken place in this house than he is ready to

avow. I am sure that he has often visited it in secret and knows about

a certain broken window as well as we do. I am also sure that he was

here on the night of Mrs. Jeffrey’s suicide. He was too little

surprised when I informed him of what had happened not to have had some

secret inkling of it beforehand, even if we had not the testimony of

the lighted candle and the book he so hurriedly replaced. Besides, he

is not the man to drag himself out at night for so simple a cause as

the one with which he endeavored to impose upon us. He knew what we

should find in this house.”

“Very good. If Mr. Jeffrey’s present explanations are true, these

deductions of yours are probably correct. But Mr. Moore’s denial has

been positive. I fear that it will turn out a mere question of

veracity.”

“Not necessarily,” I returned. “I think I see a way of forcing this man

to acknowledge that he was in or about this house on that fatal night.”

“You do?”

“Yes, sir; I do not want to boast, and I should be glad if you did not

oblige me to confide to you the means by which I hope to bring this

out. Only give me leave to insert an advertisement in both evening and

morning papers and in two days I will report failure or success.”

The major eyed me with an interest that made my heart thrill. Then he

quickly said: “You have earned the privilege; I will give you two

days.”

At this moment Durbin reappeared. As I heard his knock and turned to

open the door for him, I cast the major an entreating if not eloquent

look.

He smiled and waved his hand with friendly assurance. The state of

feeling between Durbin and myself was evidently well known to him.

My enemy entered with a jaunty air, which changed ever so slightly when

he saw me in close conference with the superintendent.

He had the book in his pocket. Taking it out, he handed it to the

major, with this remark:

“You won’t find anything there; the gent’s been fooling you.”

The major opened the book, shook it, looked under the cover, found

nothing, and crossed hastily to the drawing-room. We as hastily

followed him. The district attorney was talking with Miss Tuttle; Mr.

Jeffrey was nervously pacing the floor. The latter stopped as we all

entered and his eyes flashed to the book.

“Let me take it,” said he.

“It is absolutely empty,” remarked the major. “The letter has been

abstracted, probably without your knowledge.”

“I do not think so,” was Mr. Jeffrey’s unexpected retort. “Do you

suppose that I would intrust a secret, for the preservation of which I

was ready to risk life and honor, to the open pages of a book? When I

found myself threatened with all sorts of visits from the police and

realized that at any moment my effects might be ransacked, I sought a

hiding place for this letter, which no man without superhuman insight

could discover. Look!”

And, pulling off the outside wrapper, he inserted the point of his

penknife under the edge of the paper lining the inside cover and ripped

it off with a jerk.

“I pasted this here myself,” he cried, and showed us where between this

paper and the boards, in a place thinned out to hold it, there lay a

number of folded sheets, which, with a deep sigh, he handed over to the

major’s inspection. As he did so he remarked:

“I had rather have died any natural death than have had my miserable

wife’s secret known. But since the crime has come to light, this story

of her sin and her repentance may serve in some slight degree to

mitigate public opinion. She was sorely tempted and she succumbed; the

crime of her ancestors was in her blood.”

He again walked off. The major unfolded the sheets.

XXV.

WHO WILL TELL THE MAN INSIDE THERE

Later I saw this letter. It was like no other that has ever come under

my eye. Written at intervals, as her hand had power or her misery found

words, it bore on its face all the evidences of that restless,

suffering spirit which for thirty-six hours drove her in frenzy about

her room, and caused Loretta to say, in her effort to describe her

mistress’ face as it appeared to her at the end of this awful time: “It

was as if a blight had passed over it. Once gay and animated beyond the

power of any one to describe, it had become a ghost’s face, with the

glare of some awful resolve upon it.” I give this letter just as it was

written-disjointed paragraphs, broken sentences, unfinished words and

all. The breaks show where she laid down her pen, possibly for that

wild pacing of the floor which left such unmistakable signs behind it.

It opens abruptly:

“I killed him. I am all that I said I was, and you can never again give

me a thought save in the way of cursing and to bewail the day I came

into your life. But you can not hate me more than I hate myself, my

wicked self, who, seeing an obstacle in the way to happiness, stamped

it out of existence, and so forfeited all right to happiness forever.

“It was so easy! Had it been a hard thing to do; had it been necessary

to lay hand on knife or lift a pistol, I might have realized the act

and paused. But just a little spring which a child’s hand could

manage—Who, feeling for it, could help pressing it, if only to see—

“I was always a reckless girl, mad for pleasure and without any thought

of consequences. When school bored me, I took all my books out of my

desk, called upon my mates to do the same, and, stacking them up into a

sort of rostrum in a field where we played, first delivered an oration

from them in which reverence for my teachers had small part, then tore

them into pieces and burned them in full sight of my admiring

school-fellows. I was dismissed, but not with disgrace. Teachers and

scholars bewailed my departure, not because they liked me, or because

of any good they had found in me, but because my money had thrown

luster on them and on the whole establishment.

“This was when I was twelve, and it was on account of this reckless

escapade that I was sent west and kept so long from home and all my

flatterers. My guardian meant well by this, but in saving me from one

pitfall he plunged me into another. I grew up without Cora and also

without any idea of the requirements of my position or what I might

anticipate from the world when the time came for me to enter it. I knew

that I had money; so did those about me; but I had little or no idea of

the amount, nor what that money would do for me when I returned to

Washington. So, in an evil day, and when I was just eighteen, I fell in

love, or thought I did, with a man—(Oh, Francis, imagine it, now that I

have seen you!)—of sufficient attraction to satisfy one whose prospects

were limited to a contracted existence in some small town, but no more

fitted to content me after seeing Washington life than if he had been a

common farm hand or the most ordinary of clerks in a country store. But

I was young, ignorant and self-willed, and thought because my cheek

burned under his look that he was the man of men, and suited to be my

husband. That is, if I thought at all, which is not likely; for I was

in a feverish whirl, and just followed the impulse of the moment, which

was to be with him whenever I could without attracting the teacher’s

attention. And this, alas! was only too often, for he was the brother

of one of our storekeepers, a visitor in Owosso, and often in the store

where we girls went. Why the teachers did not notice how often we

needed things there, I do not know. But they did not, and matters went

on and—

“I can not write of those days, and you do not want to hear about them.

They seem impossible to me now, and almost as if it had all happened to

some one else, so completely have I forgotten the man except as the

source and cause of an immeasurable horror. Yet he was not bad himself;

only ordinary and humdrum. Indeed, I believe he was very good in ways,

or so his brother once assured me. We would not have been married in

the way we were if he had not wanted to go to the Klondike for the

purpose of making money and making it quickly, so that his means might

match mine.

“I do not know which of us two was most to blame for that marriage. He

urged it because he was going so far away and wanted to be sure of me.

I accepted it because it seemed to be romantic and because it pleased

me to have my own way in spite of my hard old guardian and the

teachers, who were always prying about, and the girls, who went silly

over him—for he was really handsome in his way—and who thought, (at

least many of them did,) that he cared for them when he cared only for

me.

“I have hated black eyes for a year. He had black eyes.

“I forgot Cora, or, rather, I did not let any remembrance of her hinder

me. She was a very shadowy person to me in those days. I had not seen

her since we were both children, and as for her letters—they were

almost a bore to me; she lived such a different life from mine and

wrote of so many things I had no interest in. On my knees I ask her

pardon now. I never understood her. I never understood myself. I was

light as thistledown and blown by every breeze. There came a gust one

day which blew me into the mouth of hell. I am hovering there yet and

am sinking, Francis, sinking—Save me! I love you—I—I—

“It was all planned by him—I have no head for such things. Sadie helped

him—Sadie was my friend—but Sadie had not much to say about it, for he

seemed to know just how to arrange it all so that no one at the

seminary should know or even suspect what had occurred till we got

ready to tell them. He did not even take his brother into his

confidence, for Wallace kept store and gossiped very much with his

customers. Besides, he was very busy just then selling out, for he was

going to the Klondike with William, and he had too much on his mind to

be bothered, or so William said. All this I must tell you or you will

never understand the temptation which assailed me when, having returned

to Washington, I awoke to my own position and the kind of men whom I

could now hope to meet. I was the wife—oh, the folly of it—but this was

known to so few, and those were so far removed, and one even—my friend

Sadie—being dead— Why not ignore the miserable secret ceremony and

cheat myself into believing myself free, and enjoy this world of

pleasure and fashion as Cora was enjoying it and—trust. Trust what? Why

the Klondike! That swallower-up of men. Why shouldn’t it swallow one

more— Oh, I know that it sounds hateful. But I was desperate; I had

seen _you_.

“I had one letter from him after he reached Alaska, but that was before

I left Owosso. I never got another. And I never wrote to him. He told

me not to do so until he could send me word how and where to write; but

when these directions came my heart had changed and my only wish was to

forget his existence. And I did forget it—almost. I rode and danced

with you and went hither and yon, lavishing money and time and heart on

the frivolities which came in my way, calling myself Veronica and

striving by these means to crush out every remembrance of the days when

I was known as Antoinette and Antoinette only. For the Klondike was far

and its weather bitter, and men were dying there every day, and no

letters came (I used to thank God for this), and I need not think—not

yet—whither I was tending. One thing only made me recall my real

position. That was when your eyes turned on mine—your true eyes, so

bright with confidence and pride. I wanted to meet them full, and when

I could not, I suddenly knew why, and suffered.

“Do you remember the night when we stood together on the balcony at the

Ocean View House and you laid your hand on my arm and wondered why I

persisted in looking at the moon instead of into your expectant face?

It was because the music then being played within recalled another

night and the pressure of another hand on my arm—a hand whose touch I

hoped never to feel again, but which at that moment was so much more

palpable than yours that I came near screaming aloud and telling you in

one rush of maddened emotion my whole abominable secret.

“I did not accept your attentions nor agree to marry you, without a

struggle. You know that. You can tell, as no one else can, how I held

back and asked for time and still for time, thus grieving you and

tearing my own breast till a day came—you remember the day when you

found me laughing like a mad woman in a circle of astonished friends?

You drew me aside and said words which I hardly waited for you to

finish, for at last I was free to love you, free to love and free to

say so. The morning paper had brought news. A telegraphic despatch from

Seattle told how a man had struggled into Nome, frozen, bleeding and

without accouterments or companion. It was with difficulty he had kept

his feet and turned in at the first tent he came to. Indeed, he had

only time to speak his name before he fell dead. This name was what

made this despatch important to me. It was William Pfeiffer. For me

there was but one William Pfeiffer in the Klondike—my husband—and he

was dead! That was why you found me laughing. But not in mirth. I am

not so bad as that; but because I could breathe again without feeling a

clutch about my throat. I did not know till then how nearly I had been

stifled.

“We were not long in marrying after that. I was terrified at delay, not

because I feared any contradiction of the report which had given this

glorious release, but because I dreaded lest some hint of my early

folly should reach you and dim the pride with which you regarded me. I

wanted to feel myself yours so closely and so dearly that you would not

mind if any one told you that I had once cared, or thought I had cared,

for another. The week of our marriage came; I was mad with gaiety and

ecstatic with hope. Nothing had occurred to mar my prospects. No letter

from Denver—no memento from the Klondike, no word even from Wallace,

who had gone north with his brother. Soon I should be called wife

again, but by lips I loved, and to whose language my heart thrilled.

The past, always vague, would soon be no more than a forgotten dream—an

episode quite closed. I could afford from this moment on to view life

like other girls and rejoice in my youth and the love which every day

was becoming more and more to me.

“But God had His eye upon me, and in the midst of my happiness and the

hurry of our final preparations His bolt fell. It struck me while I was

at the—don’t laugh; rather shudder—at the dressmaker’s shop in

Fourteenth Street. I was leaning over a table, chattering like a magpie

over the way I wanted a gown trimmed, when my eye fell on a scrap of

newspaper in which something had come rolled to madame. It was torn at

the edge, but on the bit lying under my eyes I saw my husband’s name,

William Pfeiffer, and that the paper was a Denver one. There was but

one William Pfeiffer in Denver—and he was my husband. And I

read—feeling nothing. Then I read again, and the world, my world, went

from under my feet; for the man who had fallen dead in the camp at Nome

was Wallace, William’s brother, and not William himself. William had

been left behind on the road by his more energetic brother, who had

pushed on for succor through the worst storm and under the worst

conditions possible even in that God-forsaken region. With the lost one

in mind, the one word that Wallace uttered in sight of rescue, was

William. A hope was expressed of finding the latter alive and a party

had started out—Did I read more? I do not think so. Perhaps there was

no more to read; here was where the paper was torn across. But it was

no matter. I had seen enough. It was Wallace who had fallen dead, and

while William might have perished also, and doubtless had, I had no

certainty of it. And my wedding day was set for Thursday.

“Why didn’t I tell Cora; why didn’t I tell you? Pride held my tongue;

besides, I had had time to think before I saw either of you, and to

reason a bit and to feel sure that if Wallace had been spent enough to

fall dead on reaching the camp, William could never have survived on

the open road. For Wallace was the stronger of the two and the most

hardy every way. Free I certainly was. Some later paper would assure me

of this. I would hunt them up and see—but I never did. I do not think I

dared. I was afraid I should see some account of his rescue. I was

afraid of being made certain of what was now but a possibility, and so

I did nothing. But for three nights I did not sleep.

“The caprice which had led me to choose the old Moore house to be

married in led me to plan dressing there on my wedding morning. It was

early when we started, Cora and I, for Waverley Avenue, but not too

early for the approaches to that dreadful house to be crowded with

people, eager to see the daring bride. Why I should have shrunk so from

that crowd I can not say. I trembled at sight of their faces and at the

sound of their voices, and if by chance a head was thrust forward

farther than the rest I cowered back instinctively and nearly screamed.

Did I dread to recognize a too familiar face? The paper I had seen bore

a date six months back. A man could arrive here from Alaska in that

time. Or was my conscience aroused at last and clamoring to be heard

when it was too late? On the corner of N Street the carriage suddenly

stopped. A man had crossed in front of it. I caught one glimpse of this

man and instantly the terrors of a lifetime were concentrated into one

instant of agonizing fear. It was William Pfeiffer. I knew the look; I

knew the gait. He was gone in a moment and the carriage rolled on. But

I knew my doom as well that minute as I did an hour later. My husband

was alive and he was here. He had escaped the perils of the Klondike

and wandered east to reclaim his recreant wife. There had been time for

him to do this since the rescue party left home in search of him; time

for him to recover, time for him to reach home, time for him to reach

the east. He had heard of my wedding; it was in all the papers, and I

should find him at the house when I got there, and you would know and

Cora would know, and the wedding would stop and my name be made a

by-word the world over. Instead of the joy awaiting me a moment since,

I should have to go away with him into some wilderness or distant place

of exile where my maiden name would never be heard, and all the

memories of this year of stolen delights be effaced. Oh, it was

horrible! And all in a minute! And Cora sat there, pale, calm and

beautiful as an angel, beaming on me with tender eyes whose expression

I have never understood! Hell in my heart,—and she, in happy ignorance

of this, brooding over my joy and smiling to herself while the soft

tears rose!

“You were waiting at the curb when I arrived, and I remember how my

heart stood still when you laid your hand on the carriage door and

confronted me with that light on your face I had never seen disturbed

since we first pledged ourselves to marry. Would he see it, too, and

come forward from the secret place where he held himself hidden? Was I

destined to behold a struggle in the streets, an unseemly contest of

words in sight of the door I had expected to enter so joyously? In

terror of such an event, I seized the hand which seemed my one refuge

in this hour of mortal trouble, and hastened into the house which, for

all its doleful history, had never received within its doors a heart

more burdened or rebellious. As this thought rushed over me, I came

near crying out, ‘The house of doom! The house of doom!’ I had thought

to brave its terrors and its crimes and it has avenged itself. But

instead of that, I pressed your hand with mine and smiled. O God! if

you could have seen what lay beneath that smile! For, with my entrance

beneath those fatal doors a thought had come. I remembered my heritage.

I remembered how I had been told by my father when I was a very little

girl,—I presume when he first felt the hand of death upon him,—that if

ever I was in great trouble,—very great trouble, he had said, where no

deliverance seemed possible—I was to open a little golden ball which he

showed me and take out what I should find inside and hold it close up

before a picture which had hung from time immemorial in the southwest

corner of this old house. He could not tell me what I should

encounter—there this I remember his saying—but something that would

assist me, something which had passed with good effect from father down

to child for many generations. Only, if I would be blessed in my

undertakings, I must not open the golden ball nor endeavor to find out

its mystery unless my trouble threatened death or some great disaster.

Such a trouble had indeed come to me, and—startling coincidence—I was

at this moment in the very house where this picture hung, and—more

startling fact yet—the golden ball needed to interpret its meaning was

round my neck—for with such jealousy was this family trinket always

guarded by its owner. Why then not test their combined effect? I

certainly needed help from some quarter. Never would William allow me

to be married to another while he lived. He would yet appear and I

should need thus great assistance (great enough to be transmitted from

father to son) as none of the Moores had needed it yet; though what it

was I did not know and did not even try to guess.

“Yet when I got to the room I did not drag out the filigree ball at

once nor even take more than one fearful side-long look at the picture.

In drawing off my glove I had seen his ring—the ring you had once asked

about. It was such a cheap affair; the only one he could get in that

obscure little town where we were married. I lied when you asked me if

it was a family jewel; lied but did not take it off, perhaps because it

clung so tightly, as if in remembrance of the vows it symbolized. But

now the very sight of it gave me a fright. With his ring on my finger I

could not defy him and swear his claim to be false the dream of a man

maddened by his experiences in the Klondike. It must come off. Then,

perhaps, I should feel myself a free woman. But it would not come off.

I struggled with it and tugged in vain; then I bethought me of using a

nail file to sever it. This I did, grinding and grinding at it till the

ring finally broke, and I could wrench it off and cast it away out of

sight and, as I hoped, out of my memory also. I breathed easier when

rid of this token, yet choked with terror whenever a step approached

the door. I was clad in my bridal dress, but not in my bridal veil or

ornaments, and naturally Cora, and then my maid, came to assist me. But

I would not let them in. I was set upon testing the secret of the

filigree ball and so preparing myself for what my conscience told me

lay between me and the ceremony arranged for high noon.

“I did not guess that the studying out of that picture would take so

long. The contents of the ball turned out to be a small

magnifying-glass, and the picture a maze of written words. I did not

decipher it all; I did not decipher the half. I did not need to. A

spirit of divination was given me in that awful hour which enabled me

to grasp its full meaning from the few sentences I did pick out. And

that meaning! It was horrible, inconceivable. Murder was taught; but

murder from a distance, and by an act too simple to awake revulsion.

Were the wraiths of my two ancestors who had played with the spring

hidden in the depths of this old closet, drawn up in mockery beside me

during the hour when I stood spellbound in the middle of the floor,

thinking of what I had just read, and listening—listening for something

less loud than the sound of carriages now beginning to roll up in front

or the stray notes of the band tuning up below?—less loud, but meaning

what? A step into the empty closet yawning so near—an effort with a

drawer—a—a— Do not ask me to recall it. I did not shudder when the

moment came and I stood there. Then I was cold as marble. But I shudder

now in thinking of it till soul and body seem separating, and the

horror which envelopes me gives me such a foretaste of hell that I

wonder I can contemplate the deed which, if it releases me from this

earthly anguish, will only plunge me into a possibly worse hereafter.

Yet I shall surely take my life before you see me again, and in that

old house. If it is despair I feel, then despair will take me there. If

it is repentance, then repentance will suffice to drive me to the one

expiation possible to me—to perish where I caused an innocent man to

perish, and so relieve you of a wife who was never worthy of you and

whom it would be your duty to denounce if she let another sun rise upon

her guilt.

“I did not stand there long between the wraiths of my murderous

ancestors. A message was shouted through the door—the message for which

my ears had been strained in dreadful anticipation for the last two

hours. A man named Pfeiffer wanted to see me before I went down to be

married. _A man named Pfeiffer!_

“I looked closely at the boy who delivered this message. He showed no

excitement, nor any feeling greater than impatience at being kept

waiting a minute or so at the door. Then I glanced beyond him, at the

people chatting in the hall. No alarm there; nothing but a very natural

surprise that the bride should keep so big a crowd waiting. I felt that

this fixed the event. He who had sent me this quiet message was true to

himself and to our old compact. He had not published below what would

have set the house in an uproar in a moment. He had left his secret to

be breathed into my ear alone. I could recall the moment he passed me

his word, and his firm look as he said, with his hand lifted to Heaven

‘You have been good to me and given me your precious self while I was

poor and a nobody. In return, I swear to keep our marriage a secret

till great success shows me to be worthy of you or till you with your

own lips express forgiveness of my failure and grant me leave to speak.

Nothing but death or your permission shall ever unseal my lips.’ When I

heard that he was dead I feared lest he might have spoken, but now that

I had seen him alive, I knew that in no other breast, save his, my own

and that of the unknown minister in an almost unknown town, dwelt any

knowledge of the fact which stood between me and the marriage which all

these people had come here to see. My confidence in his rectitude

determined me. Without conscious emotion, without fear even,—the ending

of suspense had ended all that,—I told the boy to seat the gentleman in

the library. Then—

“I am haunted now, I am haunted always, by one vision, horrible but

persistent. It will not leave me; it rises between us now; it has stood

between us ever since I left that house with the seal of your affection

on my lips. Last night it terrified me into unconscious speech. I

dreamed that I saw again, and plainly, what I caught but a shadowy

glimpse of in that murderous hour: a man’s form seated at the end of

the old settle, with his head leaning back, in silent contemplation.

His face was turned the other way—I thanked God for that—no, I did not

thank God; I never thought of God in that moment of my blind feeling

about for a chink and a spring in the wall. I thought only of your

impatience, and the people waiting, and the pleasure of days to come

when, free from this intolerable bond, I could keep my place at your

side and bear your name unreproved and taste to the full the awe and

delight of a passion such as few women ever feel, because few women

were ever loved by a man like you. Had my thoughts been elsewhere, my

fingers might have forgotten to fumble along that wall, and I had been

simply wretched today,—and innocent. Innocent! O, where in God’s

universe can I be made innocent again and fit to look in your face and

to love—heart-breaking thought—even to love you again?

“To turn and turn a miserable crank after those moments of frenzied

action and silence—that was the hard part—that was what tried my nerve

and first robbed me of calmness. But I dared not leave that fearful

thing dangling there; I had to wind. The machinery squeaked, and its

noise seemed to fill the house, but no one came nor did the door below

open. Sometimes I have wished that it had. I should not then have been

lured on and you would not have become involved in my ruin.

“I have heard many say that I looked radiant when I came down to be

married. The radiance was in their thoughts. Or if my face did shine,

and if I moved as if treading on air, it was because I had triumphed

over all difficulties and could pass down to the altar without fear of

that interrupting voice crying out: ‘I forbid! She is mine! The wife of

William Pfeiffer can not wed another!’ No such words could be dreaded

now. The lips which might have spoken them were dumb. I forgot that

fleshless lips gibber loudest, and that a lifetime, long or short, lay

before me, in which to hear them mumble and squeak their denunciation

and threats. Oh, but I have been wretched! At ball and dinner and dance

those lips have been ever at my ear, but most when we have sat alone

together; most then; Oh, most then!

“He is avenged; but you! Who will avenge you, and where will you ever

find happiness?

“To blot myself from your memory I would go down deeper into the vale

of suffering than ever I have gone yet. But no, no! do not quite forget

me. Remember me as you saw me one night—the night you took the flower

out of my hair and kissed it, saying that Washington held many

beautiful women, but that none of them save myself had ever had the

power to move your inmost heart-strings. Ah, low was your voice and

eloquent your eyes that hour, and I forgot,—for a moment I

forgot—everything but this pure love; and the heartbeat it called up

and the hope, never to be realized—that I should live to hear you

repeat the same sweet words in our old age, in just such a tone and

with just such a look. I was innocent at that moment, innocent and

good. I am willing that you should remember me as I was that night.

“When I think of him lying cold and dead in the grave I myself dug for

him, my heart is like stone, but when I think of _you_—

“I am afraid to die; but I am more afraid of failing in courage. I

shall have the pistol tied to me; this will make it seem inevitable to

use it. Oh! that the next twenty-four hours could be blotted out of

time! Such horror can not be. I was born for joy and gaiety; yet no

dismal depth of misery and fear has been spared me! But all on account

of my own act. I do not accuse God; I do not accuse man; I only accuse

myself, and my thoughtless grasping after pleasure.

“I want Cora to read this as well as you. She must know me dead as she

never knew me living. But I can not tell her that I have left a

confession behind me. She must come upon it unexpectedly, just as I

mean you to do. Only thus can it reach either of you with any power. If

I could but think of some excuse for sending her to the book where I

propose to hide it! that would give her a chance of reading it before

you do, and this would be best. She may know how to prepare or comfort

you—I hope so. Cora is a noble woman, but the secret which kept my

thoughts in such a whirl has held us apart.

“You did what I asked. You found a place for Rancher’s waiter in the

volunteer corps. Surprised as you were at the interest I expressed in

him, you honored my first request and said nothing. Would you have

shown the same anxious eagerness if you had known why I whispered those

few words to him from the carriage door? Why I could neither rest nor

sleep till he and the other boy were safely out of town?

“I must leave a line for you to show to people if they should wonder

why I killed myself so soon after my seemingly happy marriage. You will

find it in the same book with this letter. Some one will tell you to

look in the book—I can not write any more.

“I can not help writing. It is all that connects me now with life and

with you. But I have nothing more to say except, forgive—forgive—

“Do you think that God looks at his wretched ones differently from what

men do? That He will have tenderness for one so sorry—that He will even

find place— But my mother is there! my father! Oh, that makes it

fearful to go—to meet— But it was my father who led me into this—only

he did not know— There! I will think only of God.

“Good by—good by—good—”

That was all. It ended, as it began, without name and without date,—the

final heart-throbs of a soul, awakened to its own act when it was quite

too late. A piteous memorial which daunted each one of us as we read

it, and when finished, drew us all together in the hall out of the

sight and hearing of the two persons most intimately concerned in it.

Possibly because all had one thought—a thrilling one, which the major

was the first to give utterance to.

“The man she killed was buried under the name of Wallace. How’s that,

if he was her husband, William?”

An officer we had not before noted was standing near the front door. He

came forward at this and placed a second telegram in the

superintendent’s hand. It was from the same source as the one

previously received and appeared to settle this very question.

“I have just learned that the man married was not the one who kept

store in Owosso, but his brother William, who afterward died in

Klondike. It is Wallace whose death you are investigating.”

“What snarl is here?” asked the major.

“I think I understand,” I ventured to put in. “Her husband was the one

left on the road by the brother who staggered into camp for aid. He was

a weak man—the weaker of the two she said—and probably died, while

Wallace, after seemingly collapsing, recovered. This last she did not

know, having failed to read the whole of the newspaper slip which told

about it, and so when she saw some one with the Pfeiffer air and figure

and was told later that a Mr. Pfeiffer was waiting to see her, she took

it for granted that it was her husband, believing positively that

Wallace was dead. The latter, moreover, may have changed to look more

like his brother in the time that had elapsed.”

“A possible explanation which adds greatly to the tragic aspects of the

situation. She was probably a widow when she touched the fatal spring.

Who will tell the man inside there? It will be his crowning blow.”

XXVI.

RUDGE

I never saw any good reason for my changing the opinion just expressed.

Indeed, as time went on and a further investigation was made into the

life and character of these two brothers, I came to think that not only

had the unhappy Veronica mistaken the person of Wallace Pfeiffer for

that of her husband William, but also the nature of the message he sent

her and the motives which actuated it; that the interview he so

peremptorily demanded before she descended to her nuptials would, had

she but understood it properly, have yielded her an immeasurable

satisfaction instead of rousing in her alarmed breast the criminal

instincts of her race; that it was meant to do this; that he, knowing

William’s secret—a secret which the latter naturally would confide to

him at a moment so critical as that which witnessed their parting in

the desolate Klondike pass—had come, not to reproach her with her new

nuptials, but to relieve her mind in case she cherished the least doubt

of her full right to marry again, by assurances of her husband’s death

and of her own complete freedom. To this he may have intended to add

some final messages of love and confidence from the man she had been so

ready to forget; but nothing worse. Wallace Pfeiffer was incapable of

anything worse, and if she had only resigned herself to her seeming

fate and consented to see this man—

But to return to fact and leave speculation to the now doubly wretched

Jeffrey.

On the evening of the day which saw our first recognition of this crime

as the work of Veronica Moore, the following notice appeared in the

Star and all the other local journals:

“Any person who positively remembers passing through Waverley Avenue

between N and M Streets on the evening of May the eleventh at or near

the hour of a quarter past seven will confer a favor on the detective

force of the District by communicating the same to F. at the police

headquarters in C street.”

I was “F.,” and I was soon deep in business. But I was readily able to

identify those who came from curiosity, and as the persons who had

really fulfilled the conditions expressed in my advertisement were few,

an evening and morning’s work sufficed to sift the whole matter down to

the one man who could tell me just what I wanted to know. With this man

I went to the major, and as a result we all met later in the day at Mr.

Moore’s door.

This gentleman looked startled enough when he saw the number and

character of his visitors; but his grand air did not forsake him and

his welcome was both dignified and cordial. But I did not like the way

his eye rested on me.

But the slight venom visible in it at that moment was nothing to what

he afterwards displayed when at a slight growl from Rudge, who stood in

an attitude of offense in the doorway beyond, I drew the attention of

all to the dog by saying sharply:

“There is our witness, sirs. There is the dog who will not cross the

street even when his master calls him, but crouches on the edge of the

curb and waits with eager eyes but immovable body, till that master

comes back. Isn’t that so, Mr. Moore? Have I not heard you utter more

than one complaint in this regard?”

“I can not deny it,” was the stiff reply, “but what—”

I did not wait for him to finish.

“Mr. Correan,” I asked, “is this the animal you gassed between the

hours of seven and eight on the evening of May the eleventh, crouching

in front of this house with his nose to the curbstone?”

“It is; I noted him particularly; he seemed to be watching the opposite

house.”

Instantly I turned upon Mr. Moore.

“Is Rudge the dog to do that,” I asked, “if his master were not there?

Twice have I myself seen him in the self-same place and with the

self-same air of expectant attention, and both times you had crossed to

the house which you acknowledge he will approach no nearer than the

curb on this side of the street.”

“You have me,” was the short reply with which Mr. Moore gave up the

struggle. “Rudge, go back to your place. When you are wanted in the

court-room I will let you know.”

The smile with which he said this was sarcastic enough, but it was

sarcasm directed mainly against himself. We were not surprised when,

after some sharp persuasion on the part of the major, he launched into

the following recital of his secret relation to what he called the last

tragedy ever likely to occur in the Moore family.

“I never thought it wrong to be curious about the old place; I never

thought it wrong to be curious about its mysteries. I only considered

it wrong, or at all events ill judged, to annoy Veronica, in regard to

them, or to trouble her in any way about the means by which I might

effect an entrance into its walls. So I took the one that offered and

said nothing.

“I have visited the old house many times during my sojourn in this

little cottage. The last time was, as one of your number has so ably

discovered on the most memorable night in its history; the one in which

Mrs. Jeffrey’s remarkable death occurred there. The interest roused in

me by the unexpected recurrence of the old fatality attending the

library hearthstone reached its culmination when I perceived one night

the glint of a candle burning in the southwest chamber. I did not know

who was responsible for this light, but I strongly suspected it to be

Mr. Jeffrey; for who else would dare to light a candle in this disused

house without first seeing that all the shutters were fast? I did not

dislike Mr. Jeffrey or question his right to do this. Nevertheless I

was very angry. Though allied to a Moore he was not one himself and the

difference in our privileges affected me strongly. Consequently I

watched till he came out and upon positively recognizing his figure

vowed in my wrath and jealous indignation to visit the old house myself

on the following night and make one final attempt to learn the secret

which would again make me the equal of this man, if not his superior.

“It was early when I went; indeed it was not quite dark, but knowing

the gloom of those old halls and the almost impenetrable nature of the

darkness that settles over the library the moment the twilight set in,

I put in my pocket two or three candles, _the_ candles, sirs, about

which you have made such a coil. My errand was twofold. I wanted first

to see what Mr. Jeffrey had been up to the night before, and next, to

spend an hour over a certain book of old memoirs which in recalling the

past might explain the present. You remember a door leading into the

library from the rear room. It was by this door I entered, bringing

with me from the kitchen the chair you afterwards found there.

I knew where the volume of memoirs I speak of was to be found—you do,

too, I see—for it was my hand which had placed it in its present

concealment. Quite determined to reread such portions of it, as I had

long before marked as pertinent to the very attempt I had in mind, I

brought in the candelabrum from the parlor and drew out a table to hold

it. But I waited a few moments before taking down the book itself. I

wanted first to learn what Mr. Jeffrey had been doing upstairs the

night before. So leaving the light burning in the library, I proceeded

to the southwest chamber, holding an unlit candle in my hand, the light

feebly diffused through the halls from some upper windows being

sufficient for me to see my way. But in the chamber itself all was

dark.

“The wind had not yet risen and the shutter which a half-hour later

moved so restlessly on its creaking hinges, hugged the window so

tightly that I imagined Mr. Jeffrey had fastened it the night before.

Looking for some receptacle in which to set the candle I now lit, I

failed to find anything but an empty tumbler, so I made use of that.

Then I glanced about me, but seeing nothing worth my attention—Mrs.

Jeffrey’s wedding fixings did not interest me, and everything else

about the room looking natural except the overturned chair, which

struck me as immaterial. I hurried downstairs again, leaving the candle

burning behind me in case I should wish to return aloft after I had

refreshed my mind with what had been written about this old room.

“Not a sound disturbed the house as I seated myself to my reading in

front of the library shelves. I was as much alone under that desolate

roof as mortal could be with men anywhere within reach of him. I

enjoyed the solitude and was making a very pretty theory for myself on

a scrap of paper I tore from another old book when a noise suddenly

rose in front, which, slight as it was, was quite unmistakable to ears

trained in listening. Some one was unlocking the front door.

“Naturally I thought it to be Mr. Jeffrey returning for a second visit

to his wife’s house, and knowing what I might expect if he surprised me

on the premises, I restored the book hastily to its place and as

hastily blew out the candle. Then, with every intention of flight, I

backed toward the door by which I had entered. But some impulse

stronger than that of escape made me stop just before I reached it. I

could see nothing; the place was dark as Tophet; but I could listen.

The person—Mr. Jeffrey, or some other—was coming my way and in perfect

darkness. I could hear the faltering steps—the fingers dragging along

the walls; then a rustle as of skirts, proving the intruder to be a

woman—a fact which greatly surprised me—then a long drawn sigh or gasp.

“The last determined me. The situation was too intense for me to leave

without first learning who the woman was who in terror and shrinking

dared to drag her half resisting feet through these empty halls and

into a place cursed with such unwholesome memories. I did not think of

Veronica. No one looks for a butterfly in the depths of a dungeon. But

I did think of Miss Tuttle—that woman of resolute will. Without

attempting to imaging the reason for her presence, I stood my ground

and harkened till the heavy mahogany door at the other end of the room

began to swing in by jerks under the faint and tremulous push of a

terrified hand. Then there came silence—a long silence—followed by a

moan so agonized that I realized that whatever was the cause of this

panting woman’s presence here, it was due to no mere errand of

curiosity. This whetted my purpose. Anything done in this house was in

a way done to me; so I remained quiet and watched. But the sounds which

now and then came from the remote corner upon which my attention was

concentrated were very eloquent.

“I heard sighs and bitter groans, with now and then a murmured prayer,

broken by a low wailing, in which I caught the name of Francis. And

still, possibly on account of the utterance of this name, I thought the

woman near me to be Miss Tuttle, and even went so far as to imagine the

cause of her suffering if not the nature of her retribution. Words

succeeded cries and I caught phrases expressive of fear and some sort

of agonized hesitation. Once these broken ejaculations were interrupted

by a dull sound. Something had dropped to the bare floor. We shall

never know what it was, but I have no doubt that it was the pistol, and

that the marks of dust to be found on the connecting ribbon were made

by her own fingers in taking it again in her hand. (You will remember

that these same fingers had but a few minutes previous groped their way

along the walls.) For her voice soon took a different tone, and such

unintelligible phrases as these could be heard issuing from her partly

paralyzed lips:

“‘I must!—I can never meet his eye again alive. He would despise— Brave

enough to—to—another’s blood—coward—when—own. Oh, God! forgive!’ Then

another silence during which I almost made up my mind to interfere,

then a loud report and a flash so startling and unexpected that I

recoiled, during which the room leaped into sudden view—she

too—Veronica—with baby face drawn and set like a woman’s—then darkness

again and a heavy fall which shook the floor, if not my hard old heart.

The flash and that fall enlightened me. I had just witnessed the

suicide of the last Moore saving myself; a suicide for which I was

totally unprepared and one which I do not yet understand.

“I did not go over to her. She was as dead when she fell as she ever

would be. In the flash which lit everything, I had seen where her

pistol was pointed. Why disturb her then? Nor did I return upstairs. I

had small interest now in anything but my own escape from a situation

more or less compromising.

“Do you blame me for this? I was her heir and I was where I had no

legal right to be. Do you think that I was called upon to publish my

shame and tell how I lingered there while my own niece shot herself

before my eyes? That shot made me a millionaire. This certainly was

excitement enough for one day—besides, I did not leave her there

neglected. I notified you later—after I had got my breath and had found

some excuse. That wasn’t enough? Ah, I see that _you_ are all models of

courage and magnanimity. You would have laid yourselves open to every

reproach rather than let a little necessary perjury pass your lips. But

I am no model. I am simply an old man who has been too hardly dealt

with for seventy long years to possess every virtue. I made a mistake—I

see it now—trusted a dog when I shouldn’t—but if Rudge had not seen

ghosts—well, what now?”

We had, one and all, with an involuntary impulse, turned our backs upon

him.

“What are you doing?” he hotly demanded.

“Only what all Washington will do tomorrow, and afterwards the whole

world,” gravely returned the major. Then, as an ejaculation escaped the

astonished millionaire, he impressively added: “A perjury which allows

an innocent man and woman to remain under the suspicion of murder for

five weeks is one which not only the law has a right to punish, but

which all society will condemn. Henceforth you will find yourself under

a ban, Mr. Moore.”[1]

My story ends here. The matter never came before the grand jury.

Suicide had been proved, and there the affair rested. Of myself it is

enough to add that I sometimes call in Durbin to help me in a big case.

[1] Time amply verified this prophecy. Mr. Moore is living in great

style in the Moore house, and drives horses which are conspicuous even

in Washington. But no one accepts his invitations, and he is as much

of a recluse in his present mansion as he ever was in the humble

cottage in which his days of penury were spent.

XXVII.

“YOU HAVE COME! YOU HAVE SOUGHT ME!”

These are some words from a letter written a few months after the

foregoing by one Mrs. Edward Truscott to a friend in New York:

“Edinburgh, May 7th, 1900.

“Dear Louisa:—You have always accused me of seeing more and hearing

more than any other person of your acquaintance. Perhaps I am fortunate

in that respect. Certainly I have been favored today with an adventure

of some interest which I make haste to relate to you.

“Being anxious to take home with me some sketches of the exquisite

ornamentation in the Rosslyn chapel about which I wrote you so

enthusiastically the other day, I took advantage of Edward’s absence

this morning to visit the place again and this time alone. The sky was

clear and the air balmy, and as I approached the spot from the near-by

station I was not surprised to see another woman straying quietly about

the exterior of the chapel gazing at walls which, interesting as they

are, are but a rough shell hiding the incomparable beauties within. I

noticed this lady; I could not help it. She was one to attract any eye.

Seldom have I seen such grace, such beauty, and both infused by such

melancholy. Her sadness added wonderfully to her charm, and I found it

hard enough to pass her with the single glance allowable to a stranger,

especially as she gave evidence of being one of my own countrywomen:

“However, I saw no alternative, and once within the charmed edifice,

forgot everything in the congenial task I had set for myself. For some

reason the chapel was deserted at this moment by all but me. As the

special scroll-work I wanted was in a crypt down a short flight of

steps at the right of the altar, I was completely hidden from view to

any one entering above and was enjoying both my seclusion and the

opportunity it gave me of carrying out my purpose unwatched when I

heard a light step above and realized that the exquisite beauty which

had so awakened my admiration had at last found its perfect setting.

Such a face amid such exquisite surroundings was a rare sight, and

interested as I always am in artistic effects I was about to pocket

pencil and pad and make my way up to where she moved among the carved

pillars when I heard a soft sigh above and caught the rustle of her

dress as she sat down upon a bench at the head of the steps near which

I stood. Somehow that sigh deterred me. I hesitated to break in upon a

melancholy so invincible that even the sight of all this loveliness

could not charm it away, and in that moment of hesitation something

occurred above which fixed me to my place in irrepressible curiosity.

“Another step had entered the open door of the chapel—a man’s

step—eager and with a purpose in it eloquent of something deeper than a

mere tourist’s interest in this loveliest of interiors. The cry which

escaped her lips, the tone in which he breathed her name in his hurried

advance, convinced me that this was a meeting of two lovers after a

long heart-break and that I should mar the supreme moment of their

lives by intruding into it the unwelcome presence of a stranger. So I

lingered where I was and thus heard what passed between them at this

moment of all moments ire their lives.

“It was she who spoke first.

“‘Francis, you have come! You have sought me!’

“To which he replied in choked accents which yet could not conceal the

inexpressible elation of his heart:

“‘Yes I have come, I have sought you. Why did you fly? Did you not see

that my whole soul was turning to you as it never turned even to—to her

in the best days of our unshaken love; and that I could never rest till

I found you and told you how the eyes which have once been blind enjoy

a passion of seeing unknown to others—a passion which makes the object

seem so dear—so dear—’

“He paused, perhaps to look at her, perhaps to recover his own

self-possession, and I caught the echo of a sigh of such utter content

and triumph from her lips that I was surprised when in another moment

she exclaimed in a tone so thrilling that I am sure no common

circumstances had separated this pair:

“‘Have we a right to happiness while she— Oh, Francis, I can not! She

loved you. It was her love for you which drove her—’

“‘Cora!’ came with a sort of loving authority, ‘we have buried our

erring one and passionately as I loved her, she is no more mine, but

God’s. Let her woeful spirit rest. You who suffered, supported—who

sacrificed all that woman holds dear to save what, in the nature of

things, could not be saved—have more than right to happiness if it is

in my power to give it to you; I, who have failed in so much, but never

in anything more than in not seeing where true worth and real beauty

lay. Cora, there is but one hand which can lift the shadow from my

life. That hand I am holding now—do not draw it away—it is my anchor,

my hope. I dare not confront life without the promise it holds out. I

should be a wreck—’

“His emotion stopped him and there was silence; then I heard him utter

solemnly, as befitted the place: ‘Thank God!’ and I knew that she had

turned her wonderful eyes upon him or nestled her hand in his clasp as

only a loving woman may.

“The next moment I heard them draw away and leave the place.

“Do you wonder that I long to know who they are and what their story is

and whom they meant by ‘the erring one?’”