XXII.
GUILT
Was he Wellgood? Sears? Who? A lover of the woman certainly; that was borne in
on us by the passion of his cry:
“Grizel! Grizel!”
But how here? and why such fury in Mr. Grey’s face and such amazement in that
of the inspector?
This question was not to be answered offhand. Mr. Grey, advancing, laid a
finger on the man’s shoulder. “Come,” said he, “we will have our conversation
in another room.”
The man, who, in dress and appearance looked oddly out of place in those
gorgeous rooms, shook off the stupor into which he had fallen and started to
follow the Englishman. A waiter crossed their track with the soup for our
table. Mr. Grey motioned him aside.
“Take that back,” said he. “I have some business to transact with this
gentleman before I eat. I’ll ring when I want you.”
Then they entered where I was. As the door closed I caught sight of the
inspector’s face turned earnestly toward me. In his eyes I read my duty, and
girded up my heart, as it were, to meet—what? In that moment it was
impossible to tell.
The next enlightened me. With a total ignoring of my presence, due probably to
his great excitement, Mr. Grey turned on his companion the moment he had closed
the door and, seizing him by the collar, cried:
“Fairbrother, you villain, why have you called on your wife like this? Are you
murderer as well as thief?”
Fairbrother! this man? Then who was he who was being nursed back to life on the
mountains beyond Santa Fe? Sears? Anything seemed possible in that moment.
Meanwhile, dropping his hand from the other’s throat as suddenly as he had
seized it, Mr. Grey caught up the stiletto from the table where he had flung
it, crying: “Do you recognize this?”
Ah, then I saw guilt!
In a silence worse than any cry, this so-called husband of the murdered woman,
the man on whom no suspicion had fallen, the man whom all had thought a
thousand miles away at the time of the deed, stared at the weapon thrust under
his eyes, while over his face passed all those expressions of fear, abhorrence
and detected guilt which, fool that I was, I had expected to see reflected in
response to the same test in Mr. Grey’s equable countenance.
The surprise and wonder of it held me chained to the spot. I was in a state of
stupefaction, so that I scarcely noted the broken fragments at my feet. But the
intruder noticed them. Wrenching his gaze from the stiletto which Mr. Grey
continued to hold out, he pointed to the broken cup and saucer, muttering:
“That is what startled me into this betrayal—the noise of breaking china.
I can not bear it since—”
He stopped, bit his lip and looked around him with an air of sudden bravado.
“Since you dropped the cups at your wife’s feet in Mr. Ramsdell’s alcove,”
finished Mr. Grey with admirable self-possession.
“I see that explanations from myself are not in order,” was the grim retort,
launched with the bitterest sarcasm. Then as the full weight of his position
crushed in on him, his face assumed an aspect startling to my unaccustomed
eyes, and, thrusting his hand into his pocket he drew forth a small box which
he placed in Mr. Grey’s hands.
“The Great Mogul,” he declared simply.
It was the first time I had heard this diamond so named.
Without a word that gentleman opened the box, took one look at the contents,
assumed a satisfied air, and carefully deposited the recovered gem in his own
pocket. As his eyes returned to the man before him, all the passion of the
latter burst forth.
“It was not for that I killed her!” cried he. “It was because she defied me and
flaunted her disobedience in my very face. I would do it again, yet—”
Here his voice broke and it was in a different tone and with a total change of
manner he added: “You stand appalled at my depravity. You have not lived my
life.” Then quickly and with a touch of sullenness: “You suspected me because
of the stiletto. It was a mistake, using that stiletto. Otherwise, the plan was
good. I doubt if you know now how I found my way into the alcove, possibly
under your very eyes; certainly, under the eyes of many who knew me.”
“I do not. It is enough that you entered it; that you confess your guilt.”
Here Mr. Grey stretched his hand toward the electric button.
“No, it is not enough.” The tone was fierce, authoritative. “Do not ring the
bell, not yet. I have a fancy to tell you how I managed that little affair.”
Glancing about, he caught up from a near-by table a small brass tray. Emptying
it of its contents, he turned on us with drawn-down features and an obsequious
air so opposed to his natural manner that it was as if another man stood before
us.
“Pardon my black tie,” he muttered, holding out the tray toward Mr. Grey.
Wellgood!
The room turned with me. It was he, then, the great financier, the
multimillionaire, the husband of the magnificent Grizel, who had entered Mr.
Ramsdell’s house as a waiter!
Mr. Grey did not show surprise, but he made a gesture, when instantly the tray
was thrown aside and the man resumed his ordinary aspect.
“I see you understand me,” he cried. “I who have played host at many a ball,
passed myself off that night as one of the waiters. I came and went and no one
noticed me. It is such a natural sight to see a waiter passing ices that my
going in and out of the alcove did not attract the least attention. I never
look at waiters when I attend balls. I never look higher than their trays. No
one looked at me higher than my tray. I held the stiletto under the tray and
when I struck her she threw up her hands and they hit the tray and the cups
fell. I have never been able to bear the sound of breaking china since. I loved
her—”
A gasp and he recovered himself.
“That is neither here nor there,” he muttered. “You summoned me under threat to
present myself at your door to-day. I have done so. I meant to restore you your
diamond, simply. It has become worthless to me. But fate exacted more. Surprise
forced my secret from me. That young lady with her damnable awkwardness has put
my head in a noose. But do not think to hold it there. I did not risk this
interview without precautions, I assure you, and when I leave this hotel it
will be as a free man.”
With one of his rapid changes, wonderful and inexplicable to me at the moment,
he turned toward me with a bow, saying courteously enough:
“We will excuse the young lady.”
Next moment the barrel of a pistol gleamed in his hand.
The moment was critical. Mr. Grey stood directly in the line of fire, and the
audacious man who thus held him at his mercy was scarcely a foot from the door
leading into the hall. Marking the desperation of his look and the steadiness
of his finger on the trigger, I expected to see Mr. Grey recoil and the man
escape. But Mr. Grey held his own, though he made no move, and did not venture
to speak. Nerved by his courage, I summoned up all my own. This man must not
escape, nor must Mr. Grey suffer. The pistol directed against him must be
diverted to myself. Such amends were due one whose good name I had so deeply if
secretly insulted. I had but to scream, to call out for the inspector, but a
remembrance of the necessity we were now under of preserving our secret, of
keeping from Mr. Grey the fact that he had been under surveillance, was even at
that moment surrounded by the police, deterred me, and I threw myself toward
the bell instead, crying out that I would raise the house if he moved, and laid
my finger on the button.
The pistol swerved my way. The face above it smiled. I watched that smile.
Before it broadened to its full extent, I pressed the button.
Fairbrother stared, dropped his pistol, and burst forth with these two words:
“Brave girl!”
The tone I can never convey.
Then he made for the door.
As he laid his hand on the knob, he called back:
“I have been in worse straits than this!”
But he never had; when he opened the door, he found himself face to face with
the inspector.
XXIII.
THE GREAT MOGUL
Later, it was all explained. Mr. Grey, looking like another man, came into the
room where I was endeavoring to soothe his startled daughter and devour in
secret my own joy. Taking the sweet girl in his arms, he said, with a calm
ignoring of my presence, at which I secretly smiled:
“This is the happiest moment of my existence, Helen. I feel as if I had
recovered you from the brink of the grave.”
“Me? Why, I have never been so ill as that.”
“I know; but I have felt as if you were doomed ever since I heard, or thought I
heard, in this city, and under no ordinary circumstances, the peculiar cry
which haunts our house on the eve of any great misfortune. I shall not
apologize for my fears; you know that I have good cause for them, but to-day,
only to-day, I have heard from the lips of the most arrant knave I have ever
known, that this cry sprang from himself with intent to deceive me. He knew my
weakness; knew the cry; he was in Darlington Manor when Cecilia died; and,
wishing to startle me into dropping something which I held, made use of his
ventriloquial powers (he had been a mountebank once, poor wretch!) and with
such effect, that I have not been a happy man since, in spite of your daily
improvement and continued promise of recovery. But I am happy now, relieved and
joyful; and this miserable being,—would you like to hear his story? Are
you strong enough for anything so tragic? He is a thief and a murderer, but he
has feelings, and his life has been a curious one, and strangely interwoven
with ours. Do you care to hear about it? He is the man who stole our diamond.”
My patient uttered a little cry.
“Oh, tell me,” she entreated, excited, but not unhealthfully; while I was in an
anguish of curiosity I could with difficulty conceal.
Mr. Grey turned with courtesy toward me and asked if a few family details would
bore me. I smiled and assured him to the contrary. At which he settled himself
in the chair he liked best and began a tale which I will permit myself to
present to you complete and from other points of view than his own.
Some five years before, one of the great diamonds of the world was offered for
sale in an Eastern market. Mr. Grey, who stopped at no expense in the
gratification of his taste in this direction, immediately sent his agent to
Egypt to examine this stone. If the agent discovered it to be all that was
claimed for it, and within the reach of a wealthy commoner’s purse, he was to
buy it. Upon inspection, it was found to be all that was claimed, with one
exception. In the center of one of the facets was a flaw, but, as this was
considered to mark the diamond, and rather add to than detract from its value
as a traditional stone with many historical associations, it was finally
purchased by Mr. Grey and placed among his treasures in his manor-house in
Kent. Never a suspicious man, he took delight in exhibiting this acquisition to
such of his friends and acquaintances as were likely to feel any interest in
it, and it was not an uncommon thing for him to allow it to pass from hand to
hand while he pottered over his other treasures and displayed this and that to
such as had no eyes for the diamond.
It was after one such occasion that he found, on taking the stone in his hand
to replace it in the safe he had had built for it in one of his cabinets, that
it did not strike his eye with its usual force and brilliancy, and, on
examining it closely, he discovered the absence of the telltale flaw. Struck
with dismay, he submitted it to a still more rigid inspection, when he found
that what he held was not even a diamond, but a worthless bit of glass, which
had been substituted by some cunning knave for his invaluable gem.
For the moment his humiliation almost equaled his sense of loss; he had been so
often warned of the danger he ran in letting so priceless an object pass around
under all eyes but his own. His wife and friends had prophesied some such loss
as this, not once, but many times, and he had always laughed at their fears,
saying that he knew his friends, and there was not a scamp amongst them. But
now he saw it proved that even the intuition of a man well-versed in human
nature is not always infallible, and, ashamed of his past laxness and more
ashamed yet of the doubts which this experience called up in regard to all his
friends, he shut up the false stone with his usual care and buried his loss in
his own bosom, till he could sift his impressions and recall with some degree
of probability the circumstances under which this exchange could have been
made.
It had not been made that evening. Of this he was positive. The only persons
present on this occasion were friends of such standing and repute that
suspicion in their regard was simply monstrous. When and to whom, then, had he
shown the diamond last? Alas, it had been a long month since he had shown the
jewel. Cecilia, his youngest daughter, had died in the interim; therefore his
mind had not been on jewels. A month! time for his precious diamond to have
been carried back to the East! Time for it to have been recut! Surely it was
lost to him for ever, unless he could immediately locate the person who had
robbed him of it.
But this promised difficulties. He could not remember just what persons he had
entertained on that especial day in his little hall of cabinets, and, when he
did succeed in getting a list of them from his butler, he was by no means sure
that it included the full number of his guests. His own memory was execrable,
and, in short, he had but few facts to offer to the discreet agent sent up from
Scotland Yard one morning to hear his complaint and act secretly in his
interests. He could give him carte blanche to carry on his inquiries in the
diamond market, but little else. And while this seemed to satisfy the agent, it
did not lead to any gratifying result to himself, and he had thoroughly made up
his mind to swallow his loss and say nothing about it, when one day a young
cousin of his, living in great style in an adjoining county, informed him that
in some mysterious way he had lost from his collection of arms a unique and
highly-prized stiletto of Italian workmanship.
Startled by this coincidence, Mr. Grey ventured upon a question or two, which
led to his cousin’s confiding to him the fact that this article had disappeared
after a large supper given by him to a number of friends and gentlemen from
London. This piece of knowledge, still further coinciding with his own
experience, caused Mr. Grey to ask for a list of his guests, in the hope of
finding among them one who had been in his own house.
His cousin, quite unsuspicious of the motives underlying this request, hastened
to write out this list, and together they pored over the names, crossing out
such as were absolutely above suspicion. When they had reached the end of the
list, but two names remained uncrossed. One was that of a rattle-pated youth
who had come in the wake of a highly reputed connection of theirs, and the
other that of an American tourist who gave all the evidences of great wealth
and had presented letters to leading men in London which had insured him
attentions not usually accorded to foreigners. This man’s name was Fairbrother,
and, the moment Mr. Grey heard it, he recalled the fact that an American with a
peculiar name, but with a reputation for wealth, had been among his guests on
the suspected evening.
Hiding the effect produced upon him by this discovery, he placed his finger on
this name and begged his cousin to look up its owner’s antecedents and present
reputation in America; but, not content with this, he sent his own agent over
to New York—whither, as he soon learned, this gentleman had returned. The
result was an apparent vindication of the suspected American. He was found to
be a well-known citizen of the great metropolis, moving in the highest circles
and with a reputation for wealth won by an extraordinary business instinct.
To be sure, he had not always enjoyed these distinctions. Like many another
self-made man, he had risen from a menial position in a Western mining camp, to
be the owner of a mine himself, and so up through the various gradations of a
successful life to a position among the foremost business men of New York. In
all these changes he had maintained a name for honest, if not generous,
dealing. He lived in great style, had married and was known to have but one
extravagant fancy. This was for the unique and curious in art,—a taste
which, if report spoke true, cost him many thousands each year.
This last was the only clause in the report which pointed in any way toward
this man being the possible abstractor of the Great Mogul, as Mr. Grey’s famous
diamond was called, and the latter was too just a man and too much of a fancier
in this line himself to let a fact of this kind weigh against the favorable
nature of the rest. So he recalled his agent, double-locked his cabinets and
continued to confine his display of valuables to articles which did not suggest
jewels. Thus three years passed, when one day he heard mention made of a
wonderful diamond which had been seen in New York. From its description he
gathered that it must be the one surreptitiously abstracted from his cabinet,
and when, after some careful inquiries, he learned that the name of its
possessor was Fairbrother, he awoke to his old suspicions and determined to
probe this matter to the bottom. But secretly. He still had too much
consideration to attack a man in high position without full proof.
Knowing of no one he could trust with so delicate an inquiry as this had now
become, he decided to undertake it himself, and for this purpose embraced the
first opportunity to cross the water. He took his daughter with him because he
had resolved never to let his one remaining child out of his sight. But she
knew nothing of his plans or reason for travel. No one did. Indeed, only his
lawyer and the police were aware of the loss of his diamond.
His first surprise on landing was to learn that Mr. Fairbrother, of whose
marriage he had heard, had quarreled with his wife and that, in the separation
which had occurred, the diamond had fallen to her share and was consequently in
her possession at the present moment.
This changed matters, and Mr. Grey’s only thought now was to surprise her with
the diamond on her person and by one glance assure himself that it was indeed
the Great Mogul. Since Mrs. Fairbrother was reported to be a beautiful woman
and a great society belle, he saw no reason why he should not meet her
publicly, and that very soon. He therefore accepted invitations and attended
theaters and balls, though his daughter had suffered from her voyage and was
not able to accompany him. But alas! he soon learned that Mrs. Fairbrother was
never seen with her diamond and, one evening after an introduction at the
opera, that she never talked about it. So there he was, balked on the very
threshold of his enterprise, and, recognizing the fact, was preparing to take
his now seriously ailing daughter south, when he received an invitation to a
ball of such a select character that he decided to remain for it, in the hope
that Mrs. Fairbrother would be tempted to put on all her splendor for so
magnificent a function and thus gratify him with a sight of his own diamond.
During the days that intervened he saw her several times and very soon decided
that, in spite of her reticence in regard to this gem, she was not sufficiently
in her husband’s confidence to know the secret of its real ownership. This
encouraged him to attempt piquing her into wearing the diamond on this
occasion. He talked of precious stones and finally of his own, declaring that
he had a connoisseur’s eye for a fine diamond, but had seen none as yet in
America to compete with a specimen or two he had in his own cabinets. Her eye
flashed at this and, though she said nothing, he felt sure that her presence at
Mr. Ramsdell’s house would be enlivened by her great jewel.
So much for Mr. Grey’s attitude in this matter up to the night of the ball. It
is interesting enough, but that of Abner Fairbrother is more interesting still
and much more serious.
His was indeed the hand which had abstracted the diamond from Mr. Grey’s
collection. Under ordinary conditions he was an honest man. He prized his good
name and would not willingly risk it, but he had little real conscience, and
once his passions were aroused nothing short of the object desired would
content him. At once forceful and subtle, he had at his command infinite
resources which his wandering and eventful life had heightened almost to the
point of genius. He saw this stone, and at once felt an inordinate desire to
possess it. He had coveted other men’s treasures before, but not as he coveted
this. What had been longing in other cases was mania in this. There was a woman
in America whom he loved. She was beautiful and she was splendor-loving. To see
her with this glory on her breast would be worth almost any risk which his
imagination could picture at the moment. Before the diamond had left his hand
he had made up his mind to have it for his own. He knew that it could not be
bought, so he set about obtaining it by an act he did not hesitate to
acknowledge to himself as criminal. But he did not act without precautions.
Having a keen eye and a proper sense or size and color, he carried away from
his first view of it a true image of the stone, and when he was next admitted
to Mr. Grey’s cabinet room he had provided the means for deceiving the owner
whose character he had sounded.
He might have failed in his daring attempt if he had not been favored by a
circumstance no one could have foreseen. A daughter of the house, Cecilia by
name, lay critically ill at the time, and Mr. Grey’s attention was more or less
distracted. Still the probabilities are that he would have noticed something
amiss with the stone when he came to restore it to its place, if, just as he
took it in his hand, there had not risen in the air outside a weird and wailing
cry which at once seized upon the imagination of the dozen gentlemen present,
and so nearly prostrated their host that he thrust the box he held unopened
into the safe and fell upon his knees, a totally unnerved man, crying:
“The banshee! the banshee! My daughter will die!”
Another hand than his locked the safe and dropped the key into the distracted
father’s pocket.
Thus a superhuman daring conjoined with a special intervention of fate had made
the enterprise a successful one; and Fairbrother, believing more than ever in
his star, carried this invaluable jewel back with him to New York. The
stiletto—well, the taking of that was a folly, for which he had never
ceased to blush. He had not stolen it; he would not steal so inconsiderable an
object. He had merely put it in his pocket when he saw it forgotten, passed
over, given to him, as it were. That the risk, contrary to that involved in the
taking of the diamond, was far in excess of the gratification obtained, he
realized almost immediately, but, having made the break, and acquired the
curio, he spared himself all further thought or the consequences, and presently
resumed his old life in New York, none the worse, to all appearances, for these
escapades from virtue and his usual course of fair and open dealing.
But he was soon the worse from jealousy of the wife which his new possession
had possibly won for him. She had answered all his expectations as mistress of
his home and the exponent of his wealth; and for a year, nay, for two, he had
been perfectly happy. Indeed, he had been more than that; he had been
triumphant, especially on that memorable evening when, after a cautious delay
of months, he had dared to pin that unapproachable sparkler to her breast and
present her thus bedecked to the smart set—her whom his talents, and
especially his far-reaching business talents, had made his own.
Recalling the old days of barter and sale across the pine counter in Colorado,
he felt that his star rode high, and for a time was satisfied with his wife’s
magnificence and the prestige she gave his establishment. But pride is not all,
even to a man of his daring ambition. Gradually he began to realize, first,
that she was indifferent to him, next, that she despised him, and, lastly, that
she hated him. She had dozens at her feet, any of whom was more agreeable to
her than her own husband; and, though he could not put his finger on any
definite fault, he soon wearied of a beauty that only glowed for others, and
made up his mind to part with her rather than let his heart be eaten out by
unappeasable longing for what his own good sense told him would never be his.
Yet, being naturally generous, he was satisfied with a separation, and, finding
it impossible to think of her as other than extravagantly fed, waited on and
clothed, he allowed her a good share of his fortune with the one proviso, that
she should not disgrace him. But the diamond she stole, or rather carried off
in her naturally high-handed manner with the rest of her jewels. He had never
given it to her. She knew the value he set on it, but not how he came by it,
and would have worn it quite freely if he had not very soon given her to
understand that the pleasure of doing so ceased when she left his house. As she
could not be seen with it without occasioning public remark, she was forced,
though much against her will, to heed his wishes, and enjoy its brilliancy in
private. But once, when he was out of town, she dared to appear with this
fortune on her breast, and again while on a visit West,—and her husband
heard of it.
Mr. Fairbrother had had the jewel set to suit him, not in Florence, as Sears
had said, but by a skilful workman he had picked up in great poverty in a
remote corner of Williamsburg. Always in dread of some complication, he had
provided himself with a second facsimile in paste, this time of an astonishing
brightness, and this facsimile he had had set precisely like the true stone.
Then he gave the workman a thousand dollars and sent him back to Switzerland.
This imitation in paste he showed nobody, but he kept it always in his pocket;
why, he hardly knew. Meantime, he had one confidant, not of his crime, but of
his sentiments toward his wife, and the determination he had secretly made to
proceed to extremities if she continued to disobey him.
This was a man of his own age or older, who had known him in his early days,
and had followed all his fortunes. He had been the master of Fairbrother then,
but he was his servant now, and as devoted to his interests as if they were his
own,—which, in a way, they were. For eighteen years he had stood at the
latter’s right hand, satisfied to look no further, but, for the last three, his
glances had strayed a foot or two beyond his master, and taken in his master’s
wife.
The feelings which this man had for Mrs. Fairbrother were peculiar. She was a
mere adjunct to her great lord, but she was a very gorgeous one, and, while he
could not imagine himself doing anything to thwart him whose bread he ate, and
to whose rise he had himself contributed, yet if he could remain true to him
without injuring he; he would account himself happy. The day came when he had
to decide between them, and, against all chances, against his own preconceived
notion of what he would do under these circumstances, he chose to consider her.
This day came when, in the midst of growing complacency and an intense interest
in some new scheme which demanded all his powers, Abner Fairbrother learned
from the papers that Mr. Grey, of English Parliamentary fame, had arrived in
New York on an indefinite visit. As no cause was assigned for the visit beyond
a natural desire on the part of this eminent statesman to see this great
country, Mr. Fairbrother’s fears reached a sudden climax, and he saw himself
ruined and for ever disgraced if the diamond now so unhappily out of his hands
should fall under the eyes of its owner, whose seeming quiet under its loss had
not for a moment deceived him. Waiting only long enough to make sure that the
distinguished foreigner was likely to accept social attentions, and so in all
probability would be brought in contact with Mrs. Fairbrother, he sent her by
his devoted servant a peremptory message, in which he demanded back his
diamond; and, upon her refusing to heed this, followed it up by another, in
which he expressly stated that if she took it out of the safe deposit in which
he had been told she was wise enough to keep it, or wore it so much as once
during the next three months, she would pay for her presumption with her life.
This was no idle threat, though she chose to regard it as such, laughing in the
old servant’s face and declaring that she would run the risk if the notion
seized her. But the notion did not seem to seize her at once, and her husband
was beginning to take heart, when he heard of the great ball about to be given
by the Ramsdells and realized that if she were going to be tempted to wear the
diamond at all, it would be at this brilliant function given in honor of the
one man he had most cause to fear in the whole world.
Sears, seeing the emotion he was under, watched him closely. They had both been
on the point of starting for New Mexico to visit a mine in which Mr.
Fairbrother was interested, and he waited with inconceivable anxiety to see if
his master would change his plans. It was while he was in this condition of
mind that he was seen to shake his fist at Mrs. Fairbrother’s passing figure; a
menace naturally interpreted as directed against her, but which, if we know the
man, was rather the expression of his anger against the husband who could
rebuke and threaten so beautiful a creature. Meanwhile, Mr. Fairbrother’s
preparations went on and, three weeks before the ball, they started. Mr.
Fairbrother had business in Chicago and business in Denver. It was two weeks
and more before he reached La Junta. Sears counted the days. At La Junta they
had a long conversation; or rather Mr. Fairbrother talked and Sears listened.
The sum of what he said was this: He had made up his mind to have back his
diamond. He was going to New York to get it. He was going alone, and as he
wished no one to know that he had gone or that his plans had been in any way
interrupted, the other was to continue on to El Moro, and, passing himself off
as Fairbrother, hire a room at the hotel and shut himself up in it for ten days
on any plea his ingenuity might suggest. If at the end of that time Fairbrother
should rejoin him, well and good. They would go on together to Santa Fe. But if
for any reason the former should delay his return, then Sears was to exercise
his own judgment as to the length of time he should retain his borrowed
personality; also as to the advisability of pushing on to the mine and entering
on the work there, as had been planned between them.
Sears knew what all this meant. He understood what was in his master’s mind, as
well as if he had been taken into his full confidence, and openly accepted his
part of the business with seeming alacrity, even to the point of supplying
Fairbrother with suitable references as to the ability of one James Wellgood to
fill a waiter’s place at fashionable functions. It was not the first he had
given him. Seventeen years before he had written the same, minus the last
phrase. That was when he was the master and Fairbrother the man. But he did not
mean to play the part laid out for him, for all his apparent acquiescence. He
began by following the other’s instructions. He exchanged clothes with him and
other necessaries, and took the train for La Junta at or near the time that
Fairbrother started east. But once at El Moro—once registered there as
Abner Fairbrother from New York—he took a different course from the one
laid out for him,—a course which finally brought him into his master’s
wake and landed him at the same hour in New York.
This is what he did. Instead of shutting himself up in his room he expressed an
immediate desire to visit some neighboring mines, and, procuring a good horse,
started off at the first available moment. He rode north, lost himself in the
mountains, and wandered till he found a guide intelligent enough to lend
himself to his plans. To this guide he confided his horse for the few days he
intended to be gone, paying him well and promising him additional money if,
during his absence, he succeeded in circulating the report that he, Abner
Fairbrother, had gone deep into the mountains, bound for such and such a camp.
Having thus provided an alibi, not only for himself, but for his master, too,
in case he should need it, he took the direct road to the nearest railway
station, and started on his long ride east. He did not expect to overtake the
man he had been personating, but fortune was kinder than is usual in such
cases, and, owing to a delay caused by some accident to a freight train, he
arrived in Chicago within a couple of hours of Mr. Fairbrother, and started out
of that city on the same train. But not on the same car. Sears had caught a
glimpse of Fairbrother on the platform, and was careful to keep out of his
sight. This was easy enough. He bought a compartment in the sleeper and stayed
in it till they arrived at the Grand Central Station. Then he hastened out and,
fortune favoring him with another glimpse of the man in whose movements he was
so interested, followed him into the streets.
Fairbrother had shaved off his beard before leaving El Moro. Sears had shaved
his off on the train. Both were changed, the former the more, owing to a
peculiarity of his mouth which up till now he had always thought best to cover.
Sears, therefore, walked behind him without fear, and was almost at his heels
when this owner of one of New York’s most notable mansions, entered, with a
spruce air, the doors of a prominent caterer.
Understanding the plot now, and having everything to fear for his mistress, he
walked the streets for some hours in a state of great indecision. Then he went
up to her apartment. But he had no sooner come within sight of it than a sense
of disloyalty struck him and he slunk away, only to come sidling back when it
was too late and she had started for the ball.
Trembling with apprehension, but still strangely divided in his impulses,
wishing to serve master and mistress both, without disloyalty to the one or
injury to the other, he hesitated and argued with himself, till his fears for
the latter drove him to Mr. Ramsdell’s house.
The night was a stormy one. The heaviest snow of the season was falling with a
high gale blowing down the Sound. As he approached the house, which, as we
know, is one of the modern ones in the Riverside district, he felt his heart
fail him. But as he came nearer and got the full effect of glancing lights,
seductive music, and the cheery bustle of crowding carriages, he saw in his
mind’s eye such a picture of his beautiful mistress, threatened, unknown to
herself, in a quarter she little realized, that he lost all sense of what had
hitherto deterred him. Making then and there his great choice, he looked about
for the entrance, with the full intention of seeing and warning her.
But this, he presently perceived, was totally impracticable. He could neither
go to her nor expect her to come to him; meanwhile, time was passing, and if
his master was there—The thought made his head dizzy, and, situated as he
was, among the carriages, he might have been run over in his confusion if his
eyes had not suddenly fallen on a lighted window, the shade of which had been
inadvertently left up.
Within this window, which was only a few feet above his head, stood the glowing
image of a woman clad in pink and sparkling with jewels. Her face was turned
from him, but he recognized her splendor as that of the one woman who could
never be too gorgeous for his taste; and, alive to this unexpected opportunity,
he made for this window with the intention of shouting up to her and so
attracting her attention.
But this proved futile, and, driven at last to the end of his resources, he
tore out a slip of paper from his note-book and, in the dark and with the
blinding snow in his eyes, wrote the few broken sentences which he thought
would best warn her, without compromising his master. The means he took to
reach her with this note I have already related. As soon as he saw it in her
hands he fled the place and took the first train west. He was in a pitiable
condition, when, three days later, he reached the small station from which he
had originally set out. The haste, the exposure, the horror of the crime he had
failed to avert, had undermined his hitherto excellent constitution, and the
symptoms of a serious illness were beginning to make themselves manifest. But
he, like his indomitable master, possessed a great fund of energy and
willpower. He saw that if he was to save Abner Fairbrother (and now that Mrs.
Fairbrother was dead, his old master was all the world to him) he must make
Fairbrother’s alibi good by carrying on the deception as planned by the latter,
and getting as soon as possible to his camp in the New Mexico mountains. He
knew that he would have strength to do this and he went about it without
sparing himself.
Making his way into the mountains, he found the guide and his horse at the
place agreed upon and, paying the guide enough for his services to insure a
quiet tongue, rode back toward El Moro where he was met and sent on to Santa Fe
as already related.
Such is the real explanation of the well-nigh unintelligible scrawl found in
Mrs. Fairbrother’s hand after her death. As to the one which left Miss Grey’s
bedside for this same house, it was, alike in the writing and sending, the
loving freak of a very sick but tender-hearted girl. She had noted the look
with which Mr. Grey had left her, and, in her delirious state, thought that a
line in her own hand would convince him of her good condition and make it
possible for him to enjoy the evening. She was, however, too much afraid of her
nurse to write it openly, and though we never found that scrawl, it was
doubtless not very different in appearance from the one with which I had
confounded it. The man to whom it was intrusted stopped for too many warming
drinks on his way for it ever to reach Mr. Ramsdell’s house. He did not even
return home that night, and when he did put in an appearance the next morning,
he was dismissed.
This takes me back to the ball and Mrs. Fairbrother. She had never had much
fear of her husband till she received his old servant’s note in the peculiar
manner already mentioned. This, coming through the night and the wet and with
all the marks of hurry upon it, did impress her greatly and led her to take the
first means which offered of ridding herself of her dangerous ornament. The
story of this we know.
Meanwhile, a burning heart and a scheming brain were keeping up their deadly
work a few paces off under the impassive aspect and active movements of the
caterer’s newly-hired waiter. Abner Fairbrother, whose real character no one
had ever been able to sound, unless it was the man who had known him in his
days of struggle, was one of those dangerous men who can conceal under a still
brow and a noiseless manner the most violent passions and the most desperate
resolves. He was angry with his wife, who was deliberately jeopardizing his
good name, and he had come there to kill her if he found her flaunting the
diamond in Mr. Grey’s eyes; and though no one could have detected any change in
his look and manner as he passed through the room where these two were
standing, the doom of that fair woman was struck when he saw the eager scrutiny
and indescribable air of recognition with which this long-defrauded gentleman
eyed his own diamond.
He had meant to attack her openly, seize the diamond, fling it at Mr. Grey’s
feet, and then kill himself. That had been his plan. But when he found, after a
round or two among the guests, that nobody looked at him, and nobody recognized
the well-known millionaire in the automaton-like figure with the
formally-arranged whiskers and sleekly-combed hair, colder purposes intervened,
and he asked himself if it would not be possible to come upon her alone, strike
his blow, possess himself of the diamond, and make for parts unknown before his
identity could be discovered. He loved life even without the charm cast over it
by this woman. Its struggles and its hard-bought luxuries fascinated him. If
Mr. Grey suspected him, why, Mr. Grey was English, and he a resourceful
American. If it came to an issue, the subtle American would win if Mr. Grey
were not able to point to the flaw which marked this diamond as his own. And
this, Fairbrother had provided against, and would succeed in if he could hold
his passions in check and be ready with all his wit when matters reached a
climax.
Such were the thoughts and such the plans of the quiet, attentive man who, with
his tray laden with coffee and ices, came and went an unnoticed unit among
twenty other units similarly quiet and similarly attentive. He waited on lady
after lady, and when, on the reissuing of Mr. Durand from the alcove, he passed
in there with his tray and his two cups of coffee, nobody heeded and nobody
remembered.
It was all over in a minute, and he came out, still unnoted, and went to the
supper-room for more cups of coffee. But that minute had set its seal on his
heart for ever. She was sitting there alone with her side to the entrance, so
that he had to pass around in order to face her. Her elegance and a certain air
she had of remoteness from the scene of which she was the glowing center when
she smiled, awed him and made his hand loosen a little on the slender stiletto
he held close against the bottom of the tray. But such resolution does not
easily yield, and his fingers soon tightened again, this time with a deadly
grip.
He had expected to meet the flash of the diamond as he bent over her, and
dreaded doing so for fear it would attract his eye from her face and so cost
him the sight of that startled recognition which would give the desired point
to his revenge. But the tray, as he held it, shielded her breast from view, and
when he lowered it to strike his blow, he thought of nothing but aiming so
truly as to need no second blow. He had had his experience in those old years
in a mining camp, and he did not fear failure in this. What he did fear was her
utterance of some cry,—possibly his name. But she was stunned with
horror, and did not shriek,—horror of him whose eyes she met with her
glassy and staring ones as he slowly drew forth the weapon.
Why he drew it forth instead of leaving it in her breast he could not say.
Possibly because it gave him his moment of gloating revenge. When in another
instant, her hands flew up, and the tray tipped, and the china fell, the
revulsion came, and his eyes opened to two facts: the instrument of death was
still in his grasp, and the diamond, on whose possession he counted, was gone
from his wife’s breast.
It was a horrible moment. Voices could be heard approaching the
alcove,—laughing voices that in an instant would take on the note of
horror. And the music,—ah! how low it had sunk, as if to give place to
the dying murmur he now heard issuing from her lips. But he was a man of iron.
Thrusting the stiletto into the first place that offered, he drew the curtains
over the staring windows, then slid out with his tray, calm, speckless and
attentive as ever, dead to thought, dead to feeling, but aware, quite aware in
the secret depths of his being that something besides his wife had been killed
that night, and that sleep and peace of mind and all pleasure in the past were
gone for ever.
It was not he I saw enter the alcove and come out with news of the crime. He
left this role to one whose antecedents could better bear investigation. His
part was to play, with just the proper display of horror and curiosity, the
ordinary menial brought face to face with a crime in high life. He could do
this. He could even sustain his share in the gossip, and for this purpose kept
near the other waiters. The absence of the diamond was all that troubled him.
That brought him at times to the point of vertigo. Had Mr. Grey recognized and
claimed it? If so, he, Abner Fairbrother, must remain James Wellgood, the
waiter, indefinitely. This would require more belief in his star than ever he
had had yet. But as the moments passed, and no contradiction was given to the
universally-received impression that the same hand which had struck the blow
had taken the diamond, even this cause of anxiety left his breast and he faced
people with more and more courage till the moment when he suddenly heard that
the diamond had been found in the possession of a man perfectly strange to him,
and saw the inspector pass it over into the hands of Mr. Grey.
Instantly he realized that the crisis of his fate was on him. If Mr. Grey were
given time to identify this stone, he, Abner Fairbrother, was lost and the
diamond as well. Could he prevent this? There was but one way, and that way he
took. Making use of his ventriloquial powers—he had spent a year on the
public stage in those early days, playing just such tricks as these—he
raised the one cry which he knew would startle Mr. Grey more than any other in
the world, and when the diamond fell from his hand, as he knew it would, he
rushed forward and, in the act of picking it up, made that exchange which not
only baffled the suspicions of the statesman, but restored to him the diamond,
for whose possession he was now ready to barter half his remaining days.
Meanwhile Mr. Grey had had his own anxieties. During this whole long evening,
he had been sustained by the conviction that the diamond of which he had caught
but one passing glimpse was the Great Mogul of his once famous collection. So
sure was he of this, that at one moment he found himself tempted to enter the
alcove, demand a closer sight of the diamond and settle the question then and
there. He even went so far as to take in his hands the two cups of coffee which
should serve as his excuse for this intrusion, but his naturally chivalrous
instincts again intervened, and he set the cups down again—this I did not
see—and turned his steps toward the library with the intention of writing
her a note instead. But though he found paper and pen to hand, he could find no
words for so daring a request, and he came back into the hall, only to hear
that the woman he had contemplated addressing had just been murdered and her
great jewel stolen.
The shock was too much, and as there was no leaving the house then, he
retreated again to the library where he devoured his anxieties in silence till
hope revived again at sight of the diamond in the inspector’s hand, only to
vanish under the machinations of one he did not even recognize when he took the
false jewel from his hand.
The American had outwitted the Englishman and the triumph of evil was complete.
Or so it seemed. But if the Englishman is slow, he is sure. Thrown off the
track for the time being, Mr. Grey had only to see a picture of the stiletto in
the papers, to feel again that, despite all appearances, Fairbrother was really
not only at the bottom of the thefts from which his cousin and himself had
suffered, but of this frightful murder as well. He made no open move—he
was a stranger in a strange land and much disturbed, besides, by his fears for
his daughter—but he started a secret inquiry through his old valet, whom
he ran across in the street, and whose peculiar adaptability for this kind of
work he well knew.
The aim of these inquiries was to determine if the person, whom two physicians
and three assistants were endeavoring to nurse back to health on the top of a
wild plateau in a remote district of New Mexico, was the man he had once
entertained at his own board in England, and the adventures thus incurred would
make a story in itself. But the result seemed to justify them. Word came after
innumerable delays, very trying to Mr. Grey, that he was not the same, though
he bore the name of Fairbrother, and was considered by every one around there
to be Fairbrother. Mr. Grey, ignorant of the relations between the millionaire
master and his man which sometimes led to the latter’s personifying the former,
was confident of his own mistake and bitterly ashamed of his own suspicions.
But a second message set him right. A deception was being practised down in New
Mexico, and this was how his spy had found it out. Certain letters which went
into the sick tent were sent away again, and always to one address. He had
learned the address. It was that of James Wellgood, C—, Maine. If Mr.
Grey would look up this Wellgood he would doubtless learn something of the man
he was so interested in.
This gave Mr. Grey personally something to do, for he would trust no second
party with a message involving the honor of a possibly innocent man. As the
place was accessible by railroad and his duty clear, he took the journey
involved and succeeded in getting a glimpse in the manner we know of the man
James Wellgood. This time he recognized Fairbrother and, satisfied from the
circumstances of the moment that he would be making no mistake in accusing him
of having taken the Great Mogul, he intercepted him in his flight, as you have
already read, and demanded the immediate return of his great diamond.
And Fairbrother? We shall have to go back a little to bring his history up to
this critical instant.
When he realized the trend of public opinion; when he saw a perfectly innocent
man committed to the Tombs for his crime, he was first astonished and then
amused at what he continued to regard as the triumph of his star. But he did
not start for El Moro, wise as he felt it would be to do so. Something of the
fascination usual with criminals kept him near the scene of his
crime,—that, and an anxiety to see how Sears would conduct himself in the
Southwest. That Sears had followed him to New York, knew his crime, and was the
strongest witness against him, was as far from his thoughts as that he owed him
the warning which had all but balked him of his revenge. When therefore he read
in the papers that “Abner Fairbrother” had been found sick in his camp at Santa
Fe, he felt that nothing now stood in the way of his entering on the plans he
had framed for ultimate escape. On his departure from El Moro he had taken the
precaution of giving Sears the name of a certain small town on the coast of
Maine where his mail was to be sent in case of a great emergency. He had chosen
this town for two reasons. First, because he knew all about it, having had a
young man from there in his employ; secondly, because of its neighborhood to
the inlet where an old launch of his had been docked for the winter. Always
astute, always precautionary, he had given orders to have this launch floated
and provisioned, so that now he had only to send word to the captain, to have
at his command the best possible means of escape.
Meanwhile, he must make good his position in C—. He did it in the way we
know. Satisfied that the only danger he need fear was the discovery of the
fraud practised in New Mexico, he had confidence enough in Sears, even in his
present disabled state, to take his time and make himself solid with the people
of C—while waiting for the ice to disappear from the harbor. This
accomplished and cruising made possible, he took a flying trip to New York to
secure such papers and valuables as he wished to carry out of the country with
him. They were in safe deposit, but that safe deposit was in his strong room in
the center of his house in Eighty-sixth Street (a room which you will remember
in connection with Sweetwater’s adventure). To enter his own door with his own
latch-key, in the security and darkness of a stormy night, seemed to this
self-confident man a matter of no great risk. Nor did he find it so. He reached
his strong room, procured his securities and was leaving the house, without
having suffered an alarm, when some instinct of self-preservation suggested to
him the advisability of arming himself with a pistol. His own was in Maine, but
he remembered where Sears kept his; he had seen it often enough in that old
trunk he had brought with him from the Sierras. He accordingly went up stairs
to the steward’s room, found the pistol and became from that instant
invincible. But in restoring the articles he had pulled out he came across a
photograph of his wife and lost himself over it and went mad, as we have heard
the detective tell. That later, he should succeed in trapping this detective
and should leave the house without a qualm as to his fate shows what sort of
man he was in moments of extreme danger. I doubt, from what I have heard of him
since, if he ever gave two thoughts to the man after he had sprung the double
lock on him; which, considering his extreme ignorance of who his victim was or
what relation he bore to his own fate, was certainly remarkable.
Back again in C—, he made his final preparations for departure. He had
already communicated with the captain of the launch, who may or may not have
known his passenger’s real name. He says that he supposed him to be some agent
of Mr. Fairbrother’s; that among the first orders he received from that
gentleman was one to the effect that he was to follow the instructions of one
Wellgood as if they came from himself; that he had done so, and not till he had
Mr. Fairbrother on board had he known whom he was expected to carry into other
waters. However, there are many who do not believe the captain. Fairbrother had
a genius for rousing devotion in the men who worked for him, and probably this
man was another Sears.
To leave speculation, all was in train, then, and freedom but a quarter of a
mile away, when the boat he was in was stopped by another and he heard Mr.
Grey’s voice demanding the jewel.
The shock was severe and he had need of all the nerve which had hitherto made
his career so prosperous, to sustain the encounter with the calmness which
alone could carry off the situation. Declaring that the diamond was in New
York, he promised to restore it if the other would make the sacrifice worth
while by continuing to preserve his hitherto admirable silence concerning him:
Mr. Grey responded by granting him just twenty-four hours; and when Fairbrother
said the time was not long enough and allowed his hand to steal ominously to
his breast, he repeated still more decisively, “Twenty-four hours.”
The ex-miner honored bravery. Withdrawing his hand from his breast, he brought
out a note-book instead of a pistol and, in a tone fully as determined,
replied: “The diamond is in a place inaccessible to any one but myself. If you
will put your name to a promise not to betray me for the thirty-six hours I
ask, I will sign one to restore you the diamond before one-thirty o’clock on
Friday.”
“I will,” said Mr. Grey.
So the promises were written and duly exchanged. Mr. Grey returned to New York
and Fairbrother boarded his launch.
The diamond really was in New York, and to him it seemed more politic to use it
as a means of securing Mr. Grey’s permanent silence than to fly the country,
leaving a man behind him who knew his secret and could precipitate his doom
with a word. He would, therefore, go to New York, play his last great card and,
if he lost, be no worse off than he was now. He did not mean to lose.
But he had not calculated on any inherent weakness in himself,—had not
calculated on Providence. A dish tumbled and with it fell into chaos the fair
structure of his dreams. With the cry of “Grizel! Grizel!” he gave up his
secret, his hopes and his life. There was no retrieval possible after that. The
star of Abner Fairbrother had set.
Mr. Grey and his daughter learned very soon of my relations to Mr. Durand, but
through the precautions of the inspector and my own powers of self-control, no
suspicion has ever crossed their minds of the part I once played in the matter
of the stiletto.
This was amply proved by the invitation Mr. Durand and I have just received to
spend our honeymoon at Darlington Manor.