Margaret must be told. It would be like stabbing her to tell her
all this. Mr. Slocum had lain awake long after midnight, appalled by
the calamity that was about to engulf them. At moments, as his
thought reverted to Margaret's illness early in the spring, he felt
that perhaps it would have been a mercy if she had died then. He had
left the candles burning; it was not until the wicks sunk down in the
sockets and went softly out that slumber fell upon him.
He was now sitting at the breakfast-table, absently crumbling bits
of bread beside his plate and leaving his coffee untouched. Margaret
glanced at him wistfully from time to time, and detected the restless
night in the deepened lines of his face.
The house had not been the same since Lemuel Shackford's death; he
had never crossed its threshold; Margaret had scarcely known him by
sight, and Mr. Slocum had not spoken to him for years; but Richard's
connection with the unfortunate old man had brought the tragic event
very close to Margaret and her father. Mr. Slocum was a person easily
depressed, but his depression this morning was so greatly in excess
of the presumable cause that Margaret began to be troubled.
"Papa, has anything happened?"
"No, nothing new has happened; but I am dreadfully disturbed by
some things which Mr. Taggett has been doing here in the village."
"I thought Mr. Taggett had gone."
"He did go; but he came back very quietly without anybody's
knowledge. I knew it, of course; but no one else, to speak of."
"What has he done to disturb you?"
"I want you to be a brave girl, Margaret,--will you promise that?"
"Why, yes," said Margaret, with an anxious look. "You frighten me
with your mysteriousness."
"I do not mean to be mysterious, but I don't quite know how to
tell you about Mr. Taggett. He has been working underground in this
matter of poor Shackford's death,--boring in the dark like a
mole,--and thinks he has discovered some strange things."
"Do you mean he thinks he has found out who killed Mr.
Shackford?"
"He believes he has fallen upon clews which will lead to that. The
strange things I alluded to are things which Richard will have to
explain."
"Richard? What has he to do with it?"
"Not much, I hope; but there are several matters which he will be
obliged to clear up in order to save himself from very great
annoyance. Mr. Taggett seems to think that--that"--
"Good heavens, papa! What does he think?"
"Margaret, he thinks that Richard knew something about the murder,
and has not told it."
"What could he know? Is that all?"
"No, that is not all. I am keeping the full truth from you, and it
is useless to do so. You must face it like a brave girl. Mr. Taggett
suspects Richard of being concerned, directly or indirectly, with the
crime."
The color went from Margaret's cheek for an instant. The statement
was too horrible and sudden not to startle her, but it was also too
absurd to have more than an instant's effect. Her quick recovery of
herself reassured Mr. Slocum. Would she meet Mr. Taggett's specific
charges with the like fortitude? Mr. Slocum himself had been
prostrated by them; he prayed to Heaven that Margaret might have more
strength than he, as indeed she had.
"The man has got together a lot of circumstantial evidence,"
continued Mr. Slocum cautiously; "some of it amounts to nothing,
being mere conjecture; but some of it will look badly for Richard, to
outsiders."
"Of course it is all a mistake," said Margaret, in nearly her
natural voice. "It ought to be easy to convince Mr. Taggett of that."
"I have not been able to convince him."
"But you will. What has possessed him to fall into such a
ridiculous error?"
"Mr. Taggett has written out everything at length in this
memorandum-book, and you must read it for yourself. There are
expressions and statements in these pages, Margaret, that will
necessarily shock you very much; but you should remember, as I tried
to while reading them, that Mr. Taggett has a heart of steel; without
it he would be unable to do his distressing work. The cold
impartiality with which he sifts and heaps up circumstances involving
the doom of a fellow-creature appears almost inhuman; but it is his
business. No, don't look at it here!" said Mr. Slocum, recoiling; he
had given the book to Margaret. "Take it into the other room, and
read it carefully by yourself. When you have finished, come back and
tell me what you think."
"But, papa, surely you"--
"I don't believe anything, Margaret! I don't know the true from
the false any more! I want you to help me out of my confusion, and
you cannot do it until you have read that book."
Margaret made no response, but passed into the parlor and closed
the folding-doors behind her.
After an absence of half an hour she reentered the breakfast room,
and laid Mr. Taggett's diary on the table beside her father, who had
not moved from his place during the interval. Margaret's manner was
collected, but it was evident, by the dark circles under her eyes,
and the set, colorless lips, that that half hour had been a cruel
thirty minutes to her. In Margaret's self-possession Mr. Slocum
recognized, not for the first time, the cropping out of an ancestral
trait which had somehow managed to avoid him in its wayward descent.
"Well?" he questioned, looking earnestly at Margaret, and catching
a kind of comfort from her confident bearing.
"It is Mr. Taggett's trade to find somebody guilty," said
Margaret, "and he has been very ingenious and very merciless. He was
plainly at his wits' ends to sustain his reputation, and would not
have hesitated to sacrifice any one rather than wholly fail."
"But you have been crying, Margaret."
"How could I see Richard dragged down in the dust in this fashion,
and not be mortified and indignant?"
"You don't believe anything at all of this?"
"Do _you?"_ asked Margaret, looking through and through him.
"I confess I am troubled."
"If you doubt Richard for a second," said Margaret, with a slight
quiver of her lip, "that will be the bitterest part of it to me."
"I don't give any more credit to Mr. Taggett's general charges
than you do, Margaret; but I understand their gravity better. A
perfectly guiltless man, one able with a single word to establish his
innocence, is necessarily crushed at first by an accusation of this
kind. Now, can Richard set these matters right with a single word? I
am afraid he has a world of difficulty before him."
"When he returns he will explain everything. How can you question
it?"
"I do not wish to; but there are two things in Mr. Taggett's story
which stagger me. The motive for the destruction of Shackford's
papers,--that's not plain; the box of matches is a puerility unworthy
of a clever man like Mr. Taggett, and as to the chisel he found, why,
there are a hundred broken chisels in the village, and probably a
score of them broken in precisely the same manner; but, Margaret, did
Richard ever breathe a word to you of that quarrel with his cousin?"
"No."
"He never mentioned it to me either. As matters stood between you
and him, nothing was more natural than that he should have spoken of
it to you,--so natural that his silence is positively strange."
"He may have considered it too unimportant. Mr. Shackford always
abused Richard; it was nothing new. Then, again, Richard is very
proud, and perhaps he did not care to come to us just at that time
with family grievances. Besides, how do we know they quarreled? The
village is full of gossip."
"I am certain there was a quarrel; it was only necessary for those
two to meet to insure that. I distinctly remember the forenoon when
Richard went to Welch's Court; it was the day he discharged Torrini."
A little cloud passed over Margaret's countenance.
"They undoubtedly had angry words together," continued Mr. Slocum,
"and we are forced to accept the Hennessey girl's statement. The
reason you suggest for Richard's not saying anything on the subject
may suffice for us, but it will scarcely satisfy disinterested
persons, and doesn't at all cover another circumstance which must be
taken in the same connection."
"What circumstance?"
"His silence in regard to Lemuel Shackford's note,--a note written
the day before the murder, and making an appointment for the very
night of it."
The girl looked steadily at her father.
"Margaret!" exclaimed Mr. Slocum, his face illuminated with a
flickering hope as he met her untroubled gaze, "did Richard tell
_you?"_
"No," replied Margaret.
"Then he told no one," said Mr. Slocum, with the light fading out
of his features again. "It was madness in him to conceal the fact. He
should not have lost a moment, after the death of his cousin, in
making that letter public. It ought instantly to have been placed in
Coroner Whidden's hands. Richard's action is inconceivable,
unless--unless"--
"Do not say it!" cried Margaret. "I should never forgive you!"
In recapitulating the points of Mr. Taggett's accusation, Mr.
Slocum had treated most of them as trivial; but he had not been
sincere. He knew that that broken chisel had no duplicate in
Stillwater, and that the finding of it in Richard's closet was a
black fact. Mr. Slocum had also glossed over the quarrel; but that
letter!--the likelihood that Richard kept the appointment, and his
absolute silence concerning it,--here was a grim thing which no
sophistry could dispose of. It would be wronging Margaret to deceive
her as to the vital seriousness of Richard's position.
"Why, why did he hide it!" Mr. Slocum persisted.
"I do not see that he really hid it, papa. He shut the note in a
book lying openly on the table,--a dictionary, to which any one in
the household was likely to go. You think Mr. Taggett a person of
great acuteness."
"He is a very intelligent person, Margaret."
"He appears to me very short-sighted. If Richard were the dreadful
man Mr. Taggett supposes, that paper would have been burnt, and not
left for the first comer to pick up. I scorn myself for stooping to
the suggestion!"
"There is something in the idea," said Mr. Slocum slowly. "But why
did Richard never mention the note,--to you, or to me, or to
anybody?"
"He had a sufficient reason, you may be sure. Oh, papa, how ready
you are to believe evil of him!"
"I am not, God knows!"
"How you cling to this story of the letter! Suppose it turns out
to be some old letter, written two or three years ago? You could
never look Richard in the face again."
"Unfortunately, Shackford dated it. It is useless for us to
blindfold ourselves, Margaret. Richard has managed in some way to get
himself into a very perilous situation, and we cannot help him by
shutting our eyes. You misconceive me if you imagine I think him
capable of coolly plotting his cousin's death; but it is not outside
the limits of the possible that what has happened a thousand times
may have happened once more. Men less impulsive than Richard"--
"I will not listen to it!" interrupted Margaret, drawing herself
up. "When Richard returns he will explain the matter to you,--not to
me. If I required a word of denial from him, I should care very
little whether he was innocent or not."
Mr. Slocum threw a terrified glance at his daughter. Her lofty
faith sent a chill to his heart. What would be the result of a fall
from such a height? He almost wished Margaret had something less of
that ancestral confidence and obstinacy the lack of which in his own
composition he had so often deplored.
"We are not to speak of this to Richard," he said, after a
protracted pause; "at least not until Mr. Taggett considers it best.
I have pledged myself to something like that."
"Has Richard been informed of Mr. Taggett's singular proceeding?"
asked Margaret, freezingly.
"Not yet; nothing is to be done until Mr. Taggett returns from New
York, and then Richard will at once have an opportunity of clearing
himself."
"It would have spared us all much pain and misunderstanding if he
had been sent for in the first instance. Did he know that this person
was here in the yard?"
"The plan was talked over before Richard left; the details were
arranged afterwards. He heartily approved of the plan."
A leisurely and not altogether saint-like smile crept into the
corners of Margaret's mouth.
"Yes, he approved of the plan," repeated Mr. Slocum. "Perhaps
he"--Here Mr. Slocum checked himself, and left the sentence flying at
loose ends. Perhaps Richard had looked with favor upon a method of
inquiry which was so likely to lead to no result. But Mr. Slocum did
not venture to finish the suggestion. He had never seen Margaret so
imperious and intractable; it was impossible to reason or to talk
frankly with her. He remained silent, sitting with one arm thrown
dejectedly across the back of the chair.
Presently his abject attitude and expression began to touch
Margaret; there was something that appealed to her in the thin gray
hair fallowing over his forehead. Her eyes softened as they rested
upon him, and a pitying little tremor came to her under lip.
"Papa," she said, stooping to his side, with a sudden rosy bloom
in her cheeks, "I have all the proof I want that Richard knew nothing
of this dreadful business."
"You have proof!" exclaimed Mr. Slocum, starting from his seat.
"Yes. The morning Richard went to New York"--Margaret hesitated.
"Well!"
"He put his arm around me and kissed me."
"Well!"
"Well?" repeated Margaret. "Could Richard have done that,--could
he have so much as laid his hand upon me--if--if"--
Mr. Slocum sunk back in the chair with a kind of groan.
"Papa, you do not know him!"
"Oh, Margaret, I am afraid that that is not the kind of evidence
to clear Richard in Mr. Taggett's eyes."
"Then Richard's word must do it," she said haughtily. "He will be
home to-night."
"Yes, he is to return to-night," said Mr. Slocum, looking away
from her.