A LOVE LETTER
“Look here, Esther,” said old Salt to his wife, “that’s a mighty curious
case over at Waring’s.”
“How you do talk! I should think that to you and me, knowing and loving
John Waring as we did, you’d have no doings with the curious part of it!
As for me, I don’t care who killed him. He’s dead, isn’t he? It can’t
bring him back to life to hang his murderer. And to my mind it’s
heathenish—all this detectiving and evidencing—or whatever they call it.
Whom do they suspect now? You?”
Adams looked at his wife with a mild reproach. “Woman all over! No sense
of justice, no righteous indignation. Don’t you know the murderer must be
found and punished? That is if it was a murder.”
“Of course it was! That blessed man never killed himself! And he about to
marry Emily Bates—a lady, if ever there was one!”
“Well, now you listen to me, Esther, and whatever you do, don’t go
babbling about this. They say the Jap, who vamoosed from the Waring
house, made a line of foot tracks in the snow. The snow’s crusted over,
you know, and those footprints are about as clear now as when they were
made.”
“Huh! footprints! Corinth is full of footprints.”
“Yes, but these—listen, Esther—these lead straight from the Waring house,
over to this house. And back again.”
“How can they?” Mrs. Adams looked mystified. “That Japanese didn’t come
over here.”
“You can’t say that he didn’t. And, look here, Esther, where’s Miss
Austin? What’s she doing?”
“Miss Austin? She’s in her room. She hasn’t been quite up to the mark for
a day or two, and she’s had her meals upstairs.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“A slight cold, she says. I can’t make her out, Salt. What’s she doing
here, anyway?”
“Don’t pester her, my dear. How you and Bascom do love to pick at that
girl! Why does she have to do anything?”
“It’s queer, though. And I hate a mystery.”
“Well, she is one—I grant you that. Have you told her about Doctor
Waring? Though I daresay it wouldn’t interest her.”
“And I daresay it would! Why, that girl cut his picture out of the paper,
and she did have one stuck up on her dresser, till I looked at it sort of
sharp like, and she put it away.”
“Poor child! Can’t even have a newspaper cutting, if she wants it! You’re
a tyrant, Esther! Don’t you ever try to boss me like that!”
The good-natured smile that passed between them, proved the unlikelihood
of this, and Old Salt went on. “I wish you’d tell her, wife, about the
tragedy. Seems like she ought to know.”
Mrs. Adams stared at him. “I’ll tell her, as a matter of course, but I
don’t know why you’re so anxious about it.”
“Good morning, Miss Austin,” the good lady said, soon after, “better this
morning?”
“Yes, thank you. My cold is almost entirely well.”
The girl was sitting by the window, in an easy chair. She had on a
Japanese dressing gown of quilted silk, embroidered with chrysanthemums,
and was listlessly gazing out across the snow covered field opposite.
The Adams house was on the outskirts of the little town, and separated by
a wide field from the Waring place.
“Heard the news about Doctor Waring?” Mrs. Adams said, in a casual tone,
but watching the girl closely.
“No; what is it?”
The words were simple, and the voice steady, but Miss Austin’s hands
clutched the arms of the chair, and her face turned perfectly white.
“Why, what ails you? You don’t know the man, do you?”
“I—I heard him lecture, you know. Tell me—what is the—the news?”
“He’s dead.” Mrs. Adams spoke bluntly on purpose. She had felt in a vague
way, that this strange person, this Miss Mystery, had more interest in
Doctor Waring than she admitted, and the landlady was determined to find
out.
To her own satisfaction she did find out, for the girl almost fainted.
She didn’t quite lose consciousness, indeed it was not so much a faint as
such a desperate effort to regain her poise, that it unnerved her.
“Now, now, Miss Austin, why do you take it so hard? He was a stranger to
you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes—yes, of course he was.”
“Why are you so disturbed then?”
“He was such a—such a fine man—” the girl’s stifled sobs impeded her
speech.
“Well, somebody killed him.”
At that, Miss Austin seemed turned to stone. “Killed him!” she whispered,
in accent of terror.
“Yes—or else he killed himself—they don’t feel sure.” Mrs. Adams, once
embarked on the narrative, told all she knew of the circumstances, and in
the exciting recital, almost forgot to watch the effect of the tale on
her listener.
But this effect was not entirely unnoted. At the partly open door, Old
Salt Adams, stood, eavesdropping, but with a kindly, anxious look on his
face, that boded no ill to any one.
And he noticed that the girl’s attention was wandering. She was pitifully
white, her face drawn and scared, and soon she exclaimed, with a burst of
nervous fury, “Stop! please stop! Leave the room, won’t you?”
It was not a command but an agonized entreaty. Mrs. Adams fairly jumped,
and alarmed as well as offended, she rose and started for the door, only
to meet her husband entering.
“Go downstairs, Esther,” he said, gravely, “I want to speak to Miss
Austin myself.”
Staring at one then at the other, and utterly routed by this unbelievable
turn of affairs, Mrs. Adams went.
Old Salt closed the room door, and turned to the trembling girl.
“Miss Austin,” he said kindly, “I like you, I want to help you—but I must
ask you to explain yourself a little. The people in my house call you
Miss Mystery. Why are you here? Why are you in Corinth at all?”
For a moment the girl seemed about to respond to his kindly, gentle
attitude and address. Then, something stayed her, and she let her lovely
face harden to a stony blankness, as she replied, “It is a bit intrusive,
but I’ve no reason not to tell. I am an art student, and I came here to
paint New England winter scenery.”
“Have you done much?”
“I haven’t been here quite a week yet—and I’ve been picking out available
bits—and for two days I’ve had a cold.”
“How did you get cold?” The voice was kind but it had a definite note, as
if desirous of an accurate answer.
Miss Mystery looked at him.
“How does any one get cold?” she said, trying to smile; “perhaps sitting
in a draught—perhaps by means of a germ. It is almost well now.”
“Perhaps by walking in the snow, and getting one’s feet wet,” Mr. Adams
suggested, and the girl turned frightened eyes on him.
“Don’t,” she breathed; “Mr. Adams, don’t!” Her voice was piteous her eyes
implored him to stop torturing her.
“Why, what’s the harm in my saying that?” he went on, inexorably. “You
wouldn’t go anywhere that you wouldn’t want known—would you—Miss
Mystery?”
He spoke the last two words in a meaning way, and the great dark eyes
faced him with the look of a stag at bay.
Then again, by a desperate effort the girl recovered herself, and said,
coldly,
“Please speak plainly, Mr. Adams. Is there a special meaning in your
words?”
“There is, Miss Austin. Perhaps I have no right to ask you why—but I do
ask you if you went over to Doctor Waring’s house, late in the
evening—night before last?”
“Sunday night, do you mean?”
Miss Mystery controlled her voice, but her hands were clenched and her
foot tapped the floor in her stifled excitement.
“Yes, Sunday night.”
“No; of course I did not go over there at night. I was there in the
afternoon, with Mrs. Bates and Mr. Payne.”
“I know that. And you then met Doctor Waring for the first time?”
“For the first time,” she spoke with downcast face.
“The first time in your life?”
“The first time in my life,” but if ever a statement carried its own
denial that one seemed to. The long dark lashes fell on the white cheeks.
The pale lips quivered, and if Anita Austin had been uttering deepest
perjury she could have shown no more convincing evidence of falsehood.
Yet old Salt looked at her benevolently. She was so young, so small, so
alone—and so mysterious.
“I can’t make you out,” he shook his head. “But I’m for you, Miss Austin.
That is,” he hedged, “unless I find out something definite against you. I
feel I ought to tell you, that you’ve enemies—yes,” as the girl looked up
surprised, “you’ve made enemies in this house. Small wonder—the way
you’ve acted! Now, why can’t you be chummy and sociable like?”
“Chummy? Sociable? With whom?”
“With all the boarders. There’s young Lockwood now—and there’s young
Tyler—”
“Yes, yes, I know. I will—Mr. Adams—I will try to be more sociable.
Now—as to—to Doctor Waring—why did he kill himself?”
Old Salt eyed her narrowly. “We don’t know that he did,” he began.
“But Mrs. Adams told me all the details”—she shuddered, “and if that room
he was in was so securely locked that they had to break in, how could it
be the work of—of another?”
“Well, Miss Austin, as they found a bad wound in the man’s neck, just
under his right ear, a wound that produced instant unconsciousness and
almost instant death, and as no weapon of any sort could be found in the
room, how could it have been suicide?”
“Which would you rather think it?” the strange girl asked, looking
gravely at him.
“Well, to me—I’m an old-fashioned chap—suicide always suggests cowardice,
and Doc Waring was no coward, that I’ll swear!”
“No, he was not—”
“How do you know?”
Miss Mystery started at the sudden question.
“I heard him lecture, you know,” she returned; “and, too, I saw him in
his home—Sunday afternoon—and he seemed a fine man—a fine man.”
“Well, Miss Austin,” Old Salt rose to go, “I’m free to confess you’re a
mystery to me. I consider myself a fair judge of men—yes, and of women,
but when a slip of a girl like you acts so strange, I can’t make it out.
Now, I happen to know—”
He paused at the panic-stricken look on her face, and lamely concluded;
“Never mind—I won’t tell.”
With which cryptic remark he went away.
“Well, what you been saying to her?” demanded his aggrieved spouse, as
the Adamses met in their own little sitting-room.
“Why, nothing,” Old Salt replied, and his troubled eyes looked at her
pleadingly. “I don’t think she’s wrong, Esther.”
“Well, I do. And maybe a whole lot wrong. Why, Saltonstall, Miss Bascom
says she _saw_ Miss Austin traipsing across the field late Sunday night.”
“She didn’t! I don’t believe a word of it! She’s a meddling old maid—a
snooping busybody!”
“There, now, you carry on like that because you’re afraid we will
discover something wrong about Miss Mystery.”
“Look here, Esther,” Adams spoke sternly; “you remember she’s a young
girl, without anybody to stand up for her, hereabouts. Now, you know what
a bobbery a few words can kick up. And we don’t want that poor child’s
name touched by a breath of idle gossip that isn’t true. I don’t believe
Liza Bascom saw her out on Sunday night! I don’t even believe she thought
she did!”
“Well, I believe it. Liza Bascom’s no fool—”
“She’s worse, she’s a knave! And she hates little Austin, and she’d say
anything, true or false, to harm the girl.”
“But, Salt, she says she saw Miss Austin, all in her fur coat and cap
going cross lots to the Waring house Sunday evening—late.”
“Can she prove it?”
“I don’t know about that. But she saw her.”
“How does she know it was Miss Austin? It might have been somebody who
looked like her.”
“You know those footprints.”
“The Jap’s?”
“You can’t say they’re the Jap’s. Miss Bascom says they’re the Austin
girl’s.”
“Esther!” Old Saltonstall Adams rose in his wrath, “you ought to be
ashamed of yourself to let that girl’s name get into the Waring matter at
all. Even if she did go out Sunday night, if Miss Bascom did see her, you
keep still about it. If that girl’s wrong, it’ll be discovered without
our help. If she isn’t, we must not be the ones to bring her into
notice.”
“She couldn’t be—be implicated—could she, Salt?”
“No!” he thundered. “Esther, you astound me. That Bascom woman has turned
your brain. She’s a viper, that’s what _she_ is!”
He stormed out of the room, and getting into his great coat, tramped down
to the village.
Gordon Lockwood was in his room. This was much to the annoyance of
Callie, the impatient chambermaid, who wanted to get her work done.
Lockwood was himself impatient to get over to the Waring house, for he
had much to do with the mass of incoming mail and the necessary
interviews with reporters and other callers.
Yet he tarried, in his pleasant bedroom at Mrs. Adams’, his door securely
locked, and his own attitude one of stupefaction.
For the hundredth time he reread the crumpled paper that he had taken
from the study waste-basket under the very nose of Detective Morton.
Had that sleuth been a little more worthy of his profession he never
would have allowed the bare-faced theft.
And now that Lockwood had it he scarce knew what to do with it.
And truly it was an astonishing missive.
For it read thus:
My darling Anita:
At the first glance of your brown eyes this afternoon, love was born in
my heart. Life is worth living—with you in the world! And yet—
That was all. The unfinished letter had been crumpled into a ball and
thrown in the basket. Had another been started—and completed? Had Anita
Austin received it—and was that why she kept to her room for two days?
Was she a—he hated the word! a vamp? Had she secretly become acquainted
with John Waring during her presence in Corinth, and had so charmed him
that he wrote to her thus? Or, had they known each other before? What a
mystery!
There was not the slightest doubt of the writing. Lockwood knew it as
well as he knew his own. And on top of all the other scraps in the
waste-basket it must have been the last missive the dead man wrote—or,
rather the last he threw away.
This meant he had been writing it on the Sunday evening. Then, Lockwood
reasoned, knowing the routine, if he had written another, which he
completed and addressed, it would, in natural course, have been put with
the letters for the mail, and would have been posted by Ito that next
morning.
What an oversight, never to have asked Ito about that matter.
It was an inviolable custom for the butler to take all letters laid on a
certain small table, and put them in the pillar box, early in the
morning.
Had Ito done this? It must be inquired into.
But far more absorbing was the actual letter before him. How could it be
possible that John Waring, the dignified scholar, the confirmed bachelor,
should have loved this mystery girl?
Yet, even as he formulated the question, Gordon Lockwood knew the answer.
He knew that from his own point of view it would not be impossible or
even difficult for any man with two eyes in his head to love that
fascinating, enchanting personality.
And as he pondered, he knew that he loved her himself. Yes, had loved her
almost from the moment he first saw her. Certainly from the time he sat
behind her at the lecture, and counted the queer little ball fringes in
the back of her dainty gown.
Those fringes! Lockwood gave a groan as a sudden thought came to him.
He jumped up, and with a determined air, set about burning the
inexplicable letter that John Waring had written and thrown away.
In the empty fireplace of the old-fashioned room, Lockwood touched a
match to the sheet and burned it to an ash.
Then he went over to the Waring house.
It was an hour or so later that Callie reported to Miss Bascom.
“Queer goin’s on,” the girl said, rolling her eyes at her eager listener,
“Mr. Lockwood, now, he burnt some papers, and Miss Austin, too, she burnt
some papers.”
“What’s queer about that?” snapped Miss Bascom, who had hoped for
something more sensational.
“Well, it’s sorta strange they’re both burnin’ paper at the same time.
And both so sly about it. Mr. Lockwood he kep’ lookin’ back at the
fireplace as he went outa the door, and Miss Austin, she jumped like she
was shot, when I come in suddenly an’ found her stoopin’ over the
fireplace. An’ too, Miss Bascom, whatever else she burnt, she burnt that
picture she had of Doctor Waring.”
“Did she have his picture?”
“Yep, one Mr. Lockwood guv her, after Nora carried off the one she cut
out of a paper.”
“What in the world did that girl want of Doctor Waring’s picture?”
“I dunno, ma’am. What they call hero-worship, I guess. Just like I’ve got
some several pictures of Harold Massinger, that man who plays Caveman in
the Movies! My, but he’s handsome!”
“And so Miss Austin burned a photograph of John Waring?”
“Yes, ma’am. And you know they’re kinda hard to burn. Anyways, she was a
kneelin’ by the fireplace an’ the picture was smokin’ like everything.”
“‘Lemme help you miss,’ I says, as polite as could be—“and watcha think,
she snatched back, and says, ‘You lemme lone. Get outahere!’ or somethin’
like that. Oh, she was mad all right.”
“She has a high temper, hasn’t she?”
“Yes’m, there’s no denyin’ she has. Then again, she’s sweet as pie, and
nice an’ gentle. She’s a queer makeup, I will say.”
“There, Callie, that will do; don’t gossip,” and Miss Bascom, sure she
had learned all the maid had to tell, went downstairs to tell it to Mrs.
Adams.
The landlady seemed less receptive than usual, being still mindful of her
husband’s admonitions. But Miss Bascom’s story of the burnt photograph
roused her curiosity to highest pitch.
“There’s something queer about that girl,” Mrs. Adams opined, and the
other more than agreed.
“Let’s go up and talk to her,” Miss Bascom suggested, and after a
moment’s hesitation, Mrs. Adams went.
The landlady tapped lightly at the door, but there was no response.
“Go right in,” the other whispered, and go in they did.
Miss Mystery lay on the couch, her eyes closed, her cheeks still wet with
tears. She did not move, and after a moment’s glance to assure herself
the girl was sound asleep, Miss Bascom audaciously opened one of the
small top drawers of the dresser.
Mrs. Adams gasped, and frantically made motions of remonstrance, but
swiftly fingering among the veils and handkerchiefs, Miss Bascom drew out
a large roll of bills, held by an elastic band.
Anita Austin’s eyes flew open, and after one staring glance at the
intrusive woman, she jumped from the couch and flew at her like a small
but very active tiger.
“How dare you!” she cried, snatching the money from Miss Bascom’s hand,
even as that elated person was unrolling it.
And from inside the roll, down on the painted floor, fell a ruby
stickpin.