ESCAPED.
A few minutes after Ephraim Jenkins had left the house, and before his
wife had checked her tears and resumed her composure sufficiently to
present herself before Helen, Bryan Duval and Thornton Carey arrived.
They were accompanied by two persons of grave exterior and formal
manner, with that peculiar stamp upon them which distinguishes the
police-officer, whether of Scotland-yard, or the Rue Jérusalem, or the
Tombs; calm men, lean and inscrutable, to whom the atmosphere of crime
and difficulty was air naturally breathed, and on which they throve in
a not jubilant, but nevertheless satisfactory, sort of way.
'It gave me a dreadful turn, my dear,' said Mrs. Jenkins to Miss
Montressor, 'when they came in. I was just crossing the hall and going
up-stairs with baby, and I cannot tell you what a curious feeling it
was, and how glad I was my Ephraim was out of the house.'
'Why, what on earth had your Ephraim been doing, that you should be
afraid of two police-officers?' said Miss Montressor, who was not
easily impressed by sentimental imaginations.
'He hadn't been doing anything,' returned her sister rather
indignantly; 'but they had such an extraordinary manner about them, as
though everything in the place belonged to them, and after they came
in our souls were not our own, that I assure you I felt as if I had
been doing something that I might be taken up for, and every one of
the servants might have been stealing the plate, to judge by their
looks. As for Annette, she disappeared altogether. Mrs. Griswold
wanted her to find some keys for her, and I had to go up-stairs and
cause her to come out of her room, where she was double-locked in, as
if there were a warrant out for her.'
'Silly French idiot!' said Miss Montressor parenthetically. 'I should
rather like to have a look at these police-officers. I have seen our
magistrates at home, you know, at least some of them--beaks, they call
them--remarkably jolly and good-natured men, I thought.'
'Then, you see, you were not a prisoner, my dear,' said Mrs. Jenkins.
'Well, no more are you, nor any other people in the house. What a
set of geese you all are!'
'You're so strong-minded, Clara; and it is uncomfortable, and always
seems like bad luck somehow, when any of these people come about a
quiet, well-conducted house.'
'Ah,' said Miss Montressor, with a very genuine sigh, 'the bad luck
has come in here before the police, not with them, and it will stay
after them. Poor creature, how is she?'
'She received the gentlemen quite calm and quiet,' said Mrs. Jenkins;
'but of course I don't know anything, since I was only a minute in the
room.'
This short dialogue took place in Helen's boudoir, whither Mrs.
Jenkins had gone to seek her sister after she had ushered Helen's
ominous visitors into her husband's library, where she was awaiting
them. Miss Montressor had by this time awakened from her nap, greatly
refreshed and reinvigorated, and was looking very dainty and
captivating; she had arranged her hair by the aid of a pocket-comb and
a pocket-mirror which invariably accompanied her, together with a
cunningly-devised little casket containing pearl-powder, to the use of
which, to say the truth, she was too much addicted off the stage; and
she was now perfectly prepared to undergo a whole set of new
sensations with regard to the Griswold murder, for in that familiar
phrase had the at-first-vague calamity ranged itself in the minds of
Miss Montressor and Bryan Duval.
The interview between Helen Griswold, her two friends, and the police
officers lasted so long, that the grievous apprehension possessed Mrs.
Jenkins as to the effect which such sustained interrogation, with all
its horrors of assumption and actual pain, must produce on Helen's
enfeebled frame. To the acute and experienced eye of Mrs. Jenkins, who
had done a great deal in the way of nursing invalids in her time, and
who had that quick perception of illness natural to woman, however
uneducated, Helen's health had suffered much more severely under the
excruciating trial of the last three days than Thornton Carey or Bryan
Duval believed. In her very composure Mrs. Jenkins saw partly an
unnatural effort and partly physical exhaustion; she did not cry, or
scream, or throw herself about, or give way to any violent
demonstration of the suffering which was racking her, quite as much
because she was unable to do so, as because her good sense and her
resolution induced her to give as little trouble and inflict as little
distress upon the friends who were nobly endeavouring to aid her as
possible; but they perceived only one of these reasons for her
quietude.
In voice, that most distinctive symptom, as well as in face, Helen
Griswold was changed; something was gone from both destined never to
return to them: the sweet clear _timbre_ in the former, the roundlike
brightness in the latter. In after years Helen was a handsomer woman
than she had been in those days of honoured and happy matronhood, in
her splendid home with the husband who was so devoted to her; but the
beauty of these latter years was of a different cast from that in
which he had taken such delight and it indicated a mind matured and a
heart strengthened, both results reached by a process of untold
severity.
That Helen would be very ill, so seriously ill that she would be
unable to think of anything except her bodily ailments for some time
after the immediate pressure of the actual business imposed upon her
by her calamity should have been removed, Mrs. Jenkins felt thoroughly
convinced, and therefore she was anxious that all the business which
could be got through to-day should be got through; and as the time
went on, and no sound of departing footsteps could be heard passing
the door from the boudoir, where she and Miss Montressor remained, she
was satisfied that they were going into all the matters connected with
Mr. Griswold's affairs within Helen's sphere of knowledge thoroughly
and at once.
In this supposition Mrs. Jenkins was perfectly correct. It had been
agreed between Bryan Duval and Thornton Carey that all the information
which could possibly be extracted from Mrs. Griswold should be
acquired on the present occasion; so that, if possible, she should not
again be troubled with the distressing presence of the judicial side
of the dreadful occurrence, but left to the tranquillising effect of
time and quiet.
So, when the four men were ushered into the presence of the young
widow, who received them in her husband's library, to enter which and
meddle with the papers to which she had never had, during his
lifetime, any access, gave her a pang of exceeding sharpness, they
found her, as Mrs. Jenkins had described her to her sister at an
earlier hour in the morning, very calm, but mortally pale.
Throughout the whole of that prolonged interview, under all the forms
interrogative, retrospective, speculative, and narrative which it
assumed, no change fell upon Helen's face, no tinge of colour touched
its waxen paleness; she was perfectly collected, and her natural
quickness of apprehension was entirely unimpeded, but her eyes had a
fixed vagueness and lightness, produced by overwhelming fatigue and
the influence of opiate. Her mechanical, unexcited manner, and patient
waiting and submission to the question-and-answer mood adopted by her
interlocutors, assisted them materially, and caused them no little
astonishment. A woman who always gave the exact answer to the exact
question, and never required to have it asked twice, was a novelty in
their experience; and as the examination, including in it all the
circumstances which had preceded Alston Griswold's departure,
progressed, it was plain that unless they could find a clue in the
information which they were receiving from Mrs. Griswold, that clue
must be sought for in a totally different set and combination of
circumstances, for there could be no doubt of the retentiveness and
accuracy of her memory and the unembarrassed plainness of her
statement of facts.
Copious notes were taken of her narrative of everything which had
occurred up to the eve of Alston Griswold's departure. She was closely
questioned as to his and her own social relations. Her statements on
that point were few and simple. She and her husband had a large
acquaintance but few friends, in the sense of habitual daily
intimates. It was not her taste to cultivate such, and Mr. Griswold,
though a man of very genial disposition, was almost as reserved and
home-loving as an Englishman; she could, in fact, indicate but one
intimacy on her husband's part of the nature and extent which the
questions put to her indicated--this intimacy existed in the person of
Trenton Warren.
At this point in Helen's statement Thornton Carey informed her for the
first time of the steps that had been taken in order to procure
Trenton Warren's attendance at New York, and his intervention in the
efforts which they were making to obtain a clue to the perpetrators of
the crime.
She had almost forgotten him, until the questions of the
police-officers respecting the daily habits and associates of her
husband had recalled him to her mind; the recollection arose even
while she was speaking of him, with a dreary wonder that a few days
ago a complication in her domestic history caused by him should have
seemed so serious, and have been struck into absolute nullity by the
undreaded calamity that had come to teach her how far facts might
outweigh fancies in terror and in pain. While the men were speaking to
her, asking her questions, to which she was giving almost mechanical
answers, her mind was busy with that interview between herself and
Trenton Warren, which now seemed hundreds of years old, and of
infinite unimportance; and she had suffered it to worry her, she had
thought about it and let it interfere with the frankness and
brightness of her very last communications with the husband who was
never to know a thought or word of hers more.
How she hated her folly, but doubly she hated the man who had inspired
it! What did it matter now--what could it really have mattered then?
Had she not allowed a chimera to take possession of her mind, to
intervene between her and that full confidence, that full
acquiescence, in every wish of Alston's that was due to him? Then
Helen's good sense told her that she must not allow feelings of this
kind to intrude just at present; that she was not in a fit state to
disentangle the real from the imaginary, or to weigh with the
scrupulous exactitude which it deserved the influence that that
interview had had upon her recent life. Then she said simply, in reply
to Thornton Carey's communication with regard to the telegram, 'I
suppose he has arrived?'
'No, he has not,' said Carey; 'and that forms one of the difficulties
in our way of proceeding just at present, besides constituting a very
vexatious delay in the information, which we hoped to have completed
by this time for transmission to Liverpool.'
'Where is he, then?'
'We don't know.'
'In what terms did he answer the telegram?'
'We have received no answer, and this puzzles us extremely.'
'Would you mind telling me,' asked Helen, 'in what words you put your
message?'
Thornton Carey took out his pocketbook, and read a memorandum of the
exact form of his despatch to Trenton Warren at Chicago.
Helen repeated it slowly, and then said, 'I am not so surprised at
your receiving no answer. It is best, gentlemen, though this is a
matter which cannot possibly have any bearing upon the subject into
which you are inquiring, that I should tell you at once, in justice to
Mr. Warren, who would otherwise seem to have acted a strange part with
regard to so intimate a friend as my Alston, that he did not extend
his friendship to me, and that Mr. Warren and I are not at present on
good terms. I therefore think it very likely that your having sent the
message in my name has occasioned him to take no notice of it. He
would not associate it with Alston, because he is in direct
communication, as he believes, with him, whereas he knows that I have
not been; so he would naturally suppose that any news affecting him in
any way would have been transmitted direct to Chicago, and therefore
his mind would be quite easy with regard to anything which might have
occurred here.'
Thornton Carey and Bryan Duval exchanged looks. They admired the
candour and the courage of this woman, who thus told a fact which
might naturally excite grave suspicions in the minds of the two
officers in her presence, grave suspicions of her own loyalty to her
dead husband, by the admission that, so far as this man's intimate
friendship was concerned, there had been a decided division of
interest between them.
The police-officers also exchanged looks, and probably each understood
the meaning of that of the other--they were not identical with those
of the two gentlemen. In that moment Helen Griswold put the end of the
thread into the hands of Justice; the ball was a long way off and
hidden in some windings of the mass, but the way to it would be found
by that hint.
'I think, gentlemen,' continued Helen, 'that if you believe Mr.
Warren's presence at New York to be indispensable to your arriving at
a true comprehension of my husband's affairs, you had better telegraph
to him again in the name of the police authorities.'
The two men bowed acquiescence.
'And tell him in the message quite distinctly what it is that has
occurred.'
'Certainly, Helen,' said Thornton Carey; 'this shall be done at once.
If you had been able to hear that I had already telegraphed for
Warren, or that I had anticipated any delay in his reply, I would have
told you, and thus a great many hours would have been saved. If I
telegraph immediately, at what hour could he leave Chicago, do you
know?' he said, addressing one of the police-officers.
'If he left to-night,' was the reply, 'we could not possibly see him
until Saturday morning. You must send your message at once, Mr. Carey,
and make it as pressing, conclusive, and indeed imperative, as may
be.'
'That's a long and serious delay,' said Bryan Duval. 'At what hour on
Saturday does the steamer sail for England?'
'It will be late next Saturday,' said Thornton; 'the tide doesn't
serve till five.'
'Lots of time,' returned Bryan Duval cheerfully. 'We shall have Mr.
Warren here in the middle of Friday night, interview him on Saturday
morning, and send our man by the mail.'
'Sharp practice, Mr. Duval,' said the police-officer who had spoken
before, 'but quite within possibility, provided Mr. Warren can put us
on the track so unerringly as it looks like.'
'Then, as it is clear that nothing more can be settled at present,'
said Thornton Carey, rising from his seat and approaching Helen, whose
hand he took gently in his own, 'I think, dear Helen, we may now
release you. You have told us everything which you can tell; you have
given us all the papers which poor Alston left here. Your immediate
concern with our wretched business has come to an end; we will leave
you to rest and peace.'
'Peace!' she interrupted, but her face was still unchanged, and no
tears came to refresh the dimness of her black eyes.
Bryan Duval and the two police-officers rose.
'Have you any further suggestion to make, madam?' asked the one who
had already spoken.
'No,' she replied faintly.
'Perhaps you will allow me to make one?' he continued.
She bowed acquiescence.
'Though your husband's letters from London have been, as you have
explained to us, entirely free from any allusion to business, they may
have contained indications which would escape your notice, but which
may be of much utility in our researches. Have you any objection to
confide them to us, in addition to the business papers you have
already given us?'
A large packet tied up with red tape lay on the table by the speaker's
elbow.
'I have not the slightest objection,' returned Helen. 'Every word he
wrote to me from England was, like himself, generous and affectionate,
and I cannot conceive that any such traces as you allude to exist in
them, but I will put neither my judgment nor my will against your
experience. Thornton, will you kindly ring for Annette?'
In reply to the summons Annette made her appearance, with a scared
expression of countenance and a tight hold of her skirts. She glanced
askance and fearful at the harmless-looking gentlemen, who were
standing bolt upright in front of her mistress's chair, and received
in silence Mrs. Griswold's order to bring her a certain green-morocco
casket which stood upon the little shelf at her bedside.
Silence was maintained during the few moments of Annette's absence.
She presently returned, and placed the casket on the table before Mrs.
Griswold, who opened it and took out a large packet of letters,
carefully arranged according to the date of their receipt, and tied
with pink ribbon.
'They are all there,' she said sadly, as she handed the packet to
Thornton Carey. 'I placed the last there on the day I expected to hear
from him again--I little thought that story was true.' Still her face
was unchanged and her eyes were tearless.
The quick eye of the police-officer had seen another object lying at
the bottom of the box from which Mrs. Griswold had taken her husband's
letters. It was a prettily-bound and gilt manuscript-book, with a
lock, indorsed in gold letters, 'My Journal.'
'I beg your pardon,' he said, advancing and laying his hand upon the
open box, as Helen stretched out hers for the purpose of closing it;
'may I ask if this journal is yours?'
'It is,' she replied simply; 'it is my journal since the day of my
husband's departure, kept at his request, written up for transmission
to him by every mail, and copied into this book.'
'Madam,' said the police-officer, 'I have a difficulty in expressing
the wish that you should confide this journal, not indeed to us, but
to your friends. The smallest and most unexpected particular of the
occurrences of your life and household at home may aid in this
investigation. We are at present all abroad, and we must neglect no
source of information within our reach. May I ask if you have recorded
visits made to you, letters received by you, and any reports or
impressions in any way connected with Mr. Griswold's business, of
which he unfortunately kept you in ignorance, which may have reached
you during his absence?'
'I do not think so,' said Helen. 'I know it is very full of gossiping
and trivial things, as well as of the daily occupations of my life;
but such as it is, Mr. Carey and Mr. Bryan Duval are perfectly at
liberty to read it, and, indeed, you gentlemen also, should you think
it well to do so. I had but a simple story to tell, and I have told it
simply.'
With the same gentleness, the same mechanical steadiness that had
marked her conduct throughout, Helen removed the manuscript-book from
the box, and handed it, not to Thornton Carey, but to Bryan Duval, who
received it from her hands in silence and with a bow. He was
infinitely touched by the whole scene, and by the almost solemn
simplicity of the young widow.
As had been arranged on their way, the two police-officers now took
leave of Mrs. Griswold, Thornton Carey and Bryan Duval remaining with
her for a few minutes after their departure. On leaving her they were
to go direct to the telegraph-office, to send the despatch in the
terms agreed upon to Trenton Warren.
'I fear you are extremely exhausted,' said Thornton Carey, when he and
Duval remained alone with Helen. 'This has been a most trying ordeal
for you; but I trust it will be the last.'
'There will be no need for my seeing Mr. Warren, will there?' said
Helen, in a low voice, her face for the first time changing and
assuming an expression of deep distress and anxiety. 'O Thornton, keep
that from me if you can!'
'I don't foresee that there will be any necessity at all for your
seeing him,' returned Thornton, 'if it is repugnant and unpleasant for
you to do so; and I need not say that we will make every effort to
extract such full information from him as to enable us to act without
any further reference either of him or ourselves to you. You know that
well, Helen, and therefore you will be prepared, in case we should
find it indispensable to bring him in contact with you, to acquiesce
in the necessity--will you not?'
'Of course I will. I have only asked you to spare if possible, and "if
possible" means not at the expense of avenging my Alston. I will bear
anything for that purpose, and few things could be more painful to me
than an interview with Trenton Warren.'
'I think I know why,' was Mr. Duval's comment upon her words and her
expression, spoken inwardly of course, and with the additional
reflection that he had known few stronger situations, with more to be
made out of them, than the present.
'What are you going to do for the rest of the day?' said Thornton
Carey. 'Are you going to try to sleep?'
'No,' she replied; 'I have had enough of unnatural sleep, and natural
sleep won't come to me just yet. I am going to see my child for a
while, as long as I can bear it, and Miss Montressor has been good
enough to promise to come to me.'
'Clara is a good soul,' said Bryan Duval parenthetically and heartily.
'Is she here now?'
'I think so,' said Mrs. Griswold. 'She promised Mrs. Jenkins that she
would come early, and I fear that she has been detained. Now that this
morning's work is over, you will not object, will you, Thornton,' she
said, raising her eyes to him with a look of dependence and
submission, from which he shrunk, so full was it of her helplessness
and her pain, 'that I should take to her who saw my Alston last? Do
you know, Mr. Duval,' she continued, turning to the actor, and
producing the same effect upon him by that infinitely pathetic look,
'I have been thinking that the very last person to whom he ever spoke
a friendly word must have been Miss Montressor or yourself--I wonder
which it was?'
'I don't remember, my dear Mrs. Griswold,' said Bryan, 'but I have no
doubt she will; women have fine memories for these small points, which
sometimes are of so much importance in their world of feeling. I don't
doubt that you will find hers faultless, and I am sure no friend of
yours will object to your talking it out now with this kind creature,
who feels for you, as I can bear witness, more than I thought it was
in her to feel. You have been very good and wonderfully composed
hitherto, and I confess I should not be sorry to hear that you had
given way to your feelings, and that all this composure was broken up
for a while at least. So Carey and I will go and work for you and do
our very best, and you must try and put this part of it out of your
mind for the present, knowing that you will not be disturbed or called
upon again unless it is a very desperate necessity indeed, and Clara
Montressor shall come and talk to you about your husband, and go over
every word he said to her; and, if I remember her account of it right,
there were few of them that were not about yourself.' With these words
he raised her hand respectfully to his lips, turned on his heel and
left the room, buttoning his tight-fitting frock-coat over the flat
manuscript volume which she had confided to him.
He had stood in the corridor little more than a minute when Thornton
Carey joined him. They went down-stairs and out of the house without
exchanging a word; but when they had reached the street, they fell
into close consultation, and walked away towards the telegraph station
arm in arm.
From her long interview with Helen Griswold, which came to an end
barely in time to enable Miss Montressor to get back to the hotel for
dinner, that kind-hearted celebrity returned very deeply affected. The
simplicity of Helen's life and mind, the quiet and matter-of-course
devotion to her duties, and her great courage and submission in her
trouble, affected the actress strangely, giving her glimpses of
realities in life and heroism in character to be found in everyday
spheres and commonplace actions of which she had entertained no
previous conception.
She and Bryan Duval had a long talk that night after the performance
at the Varieties about Helen Griswold. In the interval Bryan Duval had
peeped into the pages of the manuscript volume which she had confided
to him, but which, together with the letters written by Alston
Griswold to his wife during his residence in England, it had been
arranged was to be formally examined by himself and Thornton Carey on
the following day.
Until the arrival of Trenton Warren this was all that could be done,
and neither Duval nor Carey cared to meet before the appointed time.
The delay was trying them a good deal, and though their expectations
of success in ultimately bringing the murderer to justice were not
affected by it, they both felt considerable weariness and strong
inclination to be alone. This did not, however, interfere with the
curiosity with which Bryan Duval heard Miss Montressor's account of
the hours which she had passed with Helen Griswold. Bryan Duval was
accustomed to reading between the lines; he had read between the lines
of Helen's innocent, unsophisticated, and perfectly sincere record of
her life under its past and its present aspects, and he had formed a
theory of her mind, conduct, and future singularly near the truth,
though he believed implicitly that she was entirely unconscious that
any such indications as he had extracted from it were contained in the
simple annals of her girlhood and her married life, which had been
continued in her journal literally up to the day of its unconscious
close.
On this point he said not one word to Miss Montressor, nor did he then
confide to Thornton Carey even the last of his impressions of Helen's
journal when they came to discuss it. He bestowed many words of
good-humoured approval upon the actress for her womanly kindness and
sympathy with Mrs. Griswold, and when they parted, Miss Montressor
carried away with her a not unpleasant impression that Bryan Duval
entertained rather a higher opinion of her as an individual than he
had previously done; an impression which was perfectly well founded,
and had arisen quite as much to the surprise as to the pleasure of Mr.
Duval, who entertained but a low estimate of human nature in general,
and was much too philosophical to exclude the types with which he was
most familiar and most closely allied.
Thornton Carey had gone straight home after the despatch of the
telegram, which, as agreed upon, he had couched in most decisive words
and supported with the authority of emanation from the police
magnates. He strove hard to turn his mind away from the subject of his
grave preoccupation during the evening, reading resolutely on one of
his old lines of study, and resolved to rest his faculties thoroughly
in order to recommence his work upon the morrow with brightness and
efficiency.
Most of the visitors to the hotel in which he was staying had
breakfasted before he came down to the dining-room, only a few almost
as belated as himself were finishing their meal. He stopped in the
hall as usual, and bought his morning supply of journalistic
literature, and having seated himself and called for his coffee, he
turned the pages of the _New York Herald_ with but languid interest,
which, however, was changed into vehement excitement by the very first
announcement in the long list of latest intelligences which met his
eye, stated in the largest capitals, and with all the emblems which
indicate the record of a great disaster.
Twenty minutes later, Thornton Carey was at Helen Griswold's door,
which was opened to him as usual by the faithful Jim, to whose
astonishment Mr. Carey addressed to him, instead of his ordinary
inquiry as to the condition of Mrs. Griswold, the abrupt question,
'Have any newspapers come today?'
'They have come, sir,' said Jim; 'have got them here.'
'Has Mrs. Griswold seen them?'
'No, sir; no paper has been taken up to her room these two days. There
is no more news of Mr. Griswold, is there? They haven't caught those
villains?'
'Good heavens, no; if they had I should want her to see the papers,
not to have them kept from her. Give me that one out of your hand,
Jim'--it was also a copy of the _Herald_--'and go up-stairs at once,
see if Mrs. Griswold is up, and say I beg her most particularly to see
me.'
Jim obeyed with alacrity, and Thornton Carey followed him closely up
the long staircase, halting only in the corridor which led to Helen's
room. It was her voice that replied to Jim's knock, bidding him come
in, and he heard her say, in reply to the servant's inquiry, 'Mr.
Carey? I thought it was understood he would not require to see me
to-day. Something new must have happened. Show him in at once.'
Helen met him almost at the door, and immediately accosted him. 'What
have you come to tell me, Thornton? Do not be afraid; my child is
saved,' she laid her hand upon the snow-white curtains of the bassinet
in which the infant was sleeping as she spoke, 'and my husband is
gone. Fate can hardly harm me sorely any more. Come in and tell me at
once.'
Thornton followed her into the room, and noticed that Mrs. Jenkins was
busy at the dressing-table with some little matters of the child's
toilet. Helen had been up early, was fully dressed, and about to
breakfast in her dressing-room. She looked better than on the previous
day, and before Thornton answered her eager questions, he insisted
upon knowing what sort of night she had passed, and whether she had
taken a proper quantity of food.
These questions he put to Mrs. Jenkins, who answered both
satisfactorily. 'Come, come,' said Helen, interrupting and
remonstrating, 'you have something to say. Again I ask you tell me at
once--what is it? Does Mr. Warren refuse to assist us, even when he is
not asked by me? Is he so false to his friendship with Alston, or does
he carry his resentment into refusing to aid in punishing his
murderer?'
She seated herself on a small sofa by the fireplace, and pointed to
the chair near her, which Thornton Carey took. As they were now
placed, she faced the dressing-table at which Mrs. Jenkins was
engaged, the child's cradle was on her right hand, the chair occupied
by Thornton Carey on her left.
Mrs. Jenkins paused slightly in her occupation, and asked, 'Shall I
leave the room?'
'Certainly not,' replied Helen. 'I have no secrets from you.'
'Pray do not go, Mrs. Jenkins,' said Thornton earnestly: he infinitely
dreaded the effect of the news he had come to tell Helen Griswold, and
eagerly caught at the chance of that efficient person's presence in.
case she should be quite overcome by it. 'The fact is, my dear Helen,'
he went on, glancing at Mrs. Jenkins, and by a stealthy gesture of his
hand drawing her attention to what he was about to say, and her
vigilance for Helen, 'an unexpected obstacle to our thorough
investigation of Griswold's affairs has arisen. It comes, as you have
divined so quickly, from Chicago.'
At the mention of the word Mrs. Jenkins started irrepressibly, came a
step or two forward, holding some toilet article unconsciously in her
hand, and in evident undisguised suspense upon Thornton Carey's words.
'The newspapers too,' he went on, 'contain intelligence of an accident
upon the railway between New York and Chicago. We had no reason to
suppose that Trenton Warren had left Chicago, or was either at New
York or in the vicinity at any time within several weeks, but it may
have been so, and his absence from Chicago would account otherwise
than as you accounted for it, for his having returned no answer to our
first telegram. Whatever may have been the cause, there is no doubt
that he was in the train to which this serious accident occurred last
night on his way from New York to Chicago. I regret to tell you that
the accident was a very serious one, and that among the list of
passengers killed is the name of Trenton Warren.
'This is another blow for you, my dear Helen,' he continued, as she
sank back in her chair, and clasped her hands.
But at that instant Mrs. Jenkins sprang towards him with a piercing
scream and crying out, 'No, no! for me--for me!' fell down senseless
at Helen's feet.