remarked. "So you were up and in the halls?"
"I was up," I acknowledged, "and in the halls. May I ask where you
were?"
He paid no heed to the last sentence. "This complicates matters," said
he, "and yet perhaps it is as well. I understand you now, and in a few
minutes you will understand me. You thought it was Silly Rufus who was
buried last night. That was rather an awful thought, Miss Butterworth. I
wonder, with that in your mind, you look as well as you do this morning,
madam. Truly you are a wonderful woman--a very wonderful woman."
"A truce to compliments," I begged. "If you know as much as your words
imply of what went on in that ill-omened house last night, you ought to
show some degree of emotion yourself, for if it was not Silly Rufus who
was laid away under the Flower Parlor, who, then, was it? No one for
whom tears could openly be shed or of whose death public acknowledgment
could be made, or we would not be sitting here talking away at cross
purposes the morning after his burial."
"Tears are not shed or public acknowledgment made for the subject of a
half-crazy man's love for scientific investigation. It was no human
being whom you saw buried, madam, but a victim of Mr. Knollys' passion
for vivisection."
"You are playing with me," was my indignant answer; "outrageously and
inexcusably playing with me. Only a human being would be laid away in
such secrecy and with such manifestations of feeling as I was witness
to. You must think me in my dotage, or else----"
"We will take the rest of the sentence for granted," he dryly
interpolated. "You know that I can have no wish to insult your
intelligence, Miss Butterworth, and that if I advance a theory on my own
account I must have ample reasons for it. Now can you say the same for
yours? Can you adduce irrefutable proof that the body we buried last
night was that of a man? If you can, there is no more to be said, or,
rather, there is everything to be said, for this would give to the
transaction a very dreadful and tragic significance which at present I
am not disposed to ascribe to it."
Taken aback by his persistence, but determined not to acknowledge defeat
until forced to it, I stolidly replied: "You have made an assertion, and
it is for you to adduce proof. It will be time enough for me to talk
when your own theory is proved untenable."
He was not angry: fellow-feeling for my disappointment made him
unusually gentle. His voice was therefore very kind when he said:
"Madam, if you know it to have been a man, say so. I do not wish to
waste my time."
"I do not know it."
"Very well, then, I will tell you why I think my supposition true. Mr.
Knollys, as you probably have already discovered, is a man with a secret
passion for vivisection."
"Yes, I have discovered that."
"It is known to his family, and it is known to a very few others, but it
is not known to the world at large, not even to his fellow-villagers.'
"I can believe it," said I.
"His sisters, who are gentle girls, regard the matter as the
gentle-hearted usually do. They have tried in every way to influence him
to abandon it, but unsuccessfully so far, for he is not only entirely
unamenable to persuasion, but has a nature of such brutality he could
not live without some such excitement to help away his life in this
dreary house. All they can do, then, is to conceal these cruelties from
the eyes of the people who already execrate him for his many roughnesses
and the undoubted shadow under which he lives. Time was when I thought
this shadow had a substance worth our investigation, but a further
knowledge of his real fault and a completer knowledge of his sisters'
virtues turned my inquiries in a new direction, where I have found, as I
have told you, actual reason for arresting Mother Jane. Have you
anything to say against these conclusions? Cannot you see that all your
suspicions can be explained by the brother's cruel impulses and the
sisters' horror of having those impulses known?"
I thought a moment; then I cried out boldly: "No, I cannot, Mr. Gryce.
The anxiety, the fear, which I have seen depicted on these sisters'
faces for days might be explained perhaps by this theory; but the knot
of crape on the window-shutter, the open Bible in the room of
death--William's room, Mr. Gryce,--proclaim that it was a human being,
and nothing less, for whom Lucetta's sobs went up."
"I do not follow you," he said, moved for the first time from his
composure. "What do you mean by a knot of crape, and when was it you
obtained entrance into William's room?"
"Ah," I exclaimed in dry retort; "you are beginning to see that I have
something as interesting to report as yourself. Did you think me a
superficial egotist, without facts to back my assertions?"
"I should not have done you that injustice."
"I have penetrated, I think, deeper than even yourself, into William's
character. I think him capable--But do satisfy my curiosity on one
point first, Mr. Gryce. How came you to know as much as you do about
last night's proceedings? You could not have been in the house. Did
Mother Jane talk after she got back?"
The tip of his cane was up, and he frowned at it. Then the handle took
its place, and he gave it a good-natured smile.
"Miss Butterworth," said he, "I have not succeeded in making Mother Jane
at any time go beyond her numerical monologue. But you have been more
successful." And with a sudden marvellous change of expression, pose,
and manner he threw over his head my shawl, which had fallen to the
floor in my astonishment, and, rocking himself to and fro before me,
muttered grimly:
"Seventy! Twenty-eight! Ten! No more! I can count no more! Go."
"Mr. Gryce, it was you----"
"Whom you interviewed in Mother Jane's cottage with Mr. Knollys," he
finished. "And it was _I_ who helped to bury what you now declare, to my
real terror and astonishment, to have been a human being. Miss
Butterworth, what about the knot of crape? Tell me."
XXV
TRIFLES, BUT NOT TRIFLING
I was so astounded I hardly took in this final question.
_He_ had been the sixth party in the funeral cortege I had seen pause in
the Flower Parlor. Well, what might I not expect from this man next!
But I am methodical even under the greatest excitement and at the most
critical instants, as those who have read _That Affair Next Door_ have
had ample opportunity to know. Once having taken in the startling fact
he mentioned, I found it impossible to proceed to establish my
standpoint till I knew a little more about his.
"Wait," I said; "tell me first if I have ever seen the real Mother Jane;
or were you the person I saw stooping in the road, and of whom I bought
the pennyroyal?"
"No," he replied; "that was the old woman herself. My appearance in the
cottage dates from yesterday noon. I felt the need of being secretly
near you, and I also wished for an opportunity to examine this humble
interior unsuspected and unobserved. So I prevailed upon the old woman
to exchange places with me; she taking up her abode in the woods for the
night and I her old stool on the hearthstone. She was the more willing
to do this from the promise I gave her to watch out for Lizzie. That I
would don her own Sunday suit and personate her in her own home she
evidently did not suspect. Had not wit enough, I suppose. At the present
moment she is back in her old place."
I nodded my thanks for this explanation, but was not deterred from
pressing the point I was anxious to have elucidated.
"If," I went on to urge, "you took advantage of your disguise to act as
assistant in the burial which took place last night, you are in a much
better situation than myself to decide the question we are at present
considering. Was it because of any secret knowledge thus gained you
declare so positively that it was not a human being you helped lower in
its grave?"
"Partially. Having some skill in these disguises, especially where my
own infirmities can have full play, as in the case of this strong but
half-bent woman, I had no reason to think my own identity was suspected,
much less discovered. Therefore I could trust to what I saw and heard as
being just what Mother Jane herself would be allowed to see or hear
under the same circumstances. If, therefore, these young people and this
old crone had been, as you seem to think they are, in league for murder,
Lucetta would hardly have greeted me as she did when she came down to
meet me in the kitchen."
"And how was that? What did she say?"
"She said: 'Ah, Mother Jane, we have a piece of work for you. You are
strong, are you not?'"
"Humph!"
"And then she commiserated me a bit and gave me food which, upon my
word, I found hard to eat, though I had saved my appetite for the
occasion. Before she left me she bade me sit in the inglenook till she
wanted me, adding in Hannah's ear as she passed her: 'There is no use
trying to explain anything to her. Show her when the time comes what
there is to do and trust to her short memory to forget it before she
leaves the house. She could not understand my brother's propensity or
our shame in pandering to it. So attempt nothing, Hannah. Only keep the
money in her view.'"
"So, and that gave you no idea?"
"It gave me the idea I have imparted to you, or, rather, added to the
idea which had been instilled in me by others."
"And this idea was not affected by what you saw afterwards?"
"Not in the least--rather strengthened. Of the few words I overheard,
one was uttered in reference to yourself by Miss Knollys. She said: 'I
have locked Miss Butterworth again into her room. If she accuses me of
having done so, I shall tell her our whole story. Better she should know
the family's disgrace than imagine us guilty of crimes of which we are
utterly incapable.'"
"So! so!" I cried, "you heard that?"
"Yes, madam, I heard that, and I do not think she knew she was dropping
that word into the ear of a detective, but on this point you are, of
course, at liberty to differ with me."
"I am not yet ready to avail myself of the privilege," I retorted. "What
else did these girls let fall in your hearing?"
"Not much. It was Hannah who led me into the upper hall, and Hannah who
by signs and signals rather than words showed me what was expected of
me. However, when, after the box was lowered into the cellar, Hannah was
drawing me away, Lucetta stepped up and whispered in her ear: 'Don't
give her the biggest coin. Give her the little one, or she may mistake
our reasons for secrecy. I wouldn't like even a fool to do that even for
the moment it would remain lodged in Mother Jane's mind.'"
"Well, well," I again cried, certainly puzzled, for these stray
expressions of the sisters were in a measure contradictory not only of
the suspicions I entertained, but of the facts which had seemingly come
to my attention.
Mr. Gryce, who was probably watching my face more closely than he did
the cane with whose movements he was apparently engrossed, stopped to
give a caressing rub to the knob of that same cane before remarking:
"One such peep behind the scenes is worth any amount of surmise expended
on the wrong side of the curtain. I let you share my knowledge because
it is your due. Now if you feel willing to explain what you mean by a
knot of crape on the shutter, I am at your service, madam."
I felt that it would be cruel to delay my story longer, and so I began
it. It was evidently more interesting than he expected, and as I dilated
upon the special features which had led me to believe that it was a
thinking, suffering mortal like ourselves who had been shut up in
William's room and afterwards buried in the cellar under the Flower
Parlor, I saw his face lengthen and doubt take the place of the quiet
assurance with which he had received my various intimations up to this
time. The cane was laid aside, and from the action of his right
forefinger on the palm of his left hand I judged that I was making no
small impression on his mind. When I had finished, he sat for a minute
silent; then he said:
"Thanks, Miss Butterworth; you have more than fulfilled my hopes. What
we buried was undoubtedly human, and the question now is, Who was it,
and of what death did he die?" Then, after a meaning pause: "_You_ think
it was Silly Rufus."
I will astonish you with my reply. "No," said I, "I do not. That is
where you make a mistake, Mr. Gryce."
XXVI
A POINT GAINED
He was surprised, for all his attempts to conceal it.
"No?" said he. "Who, then? You are becoming interesting, Miss
Butterworth."
This I thought I could afford to ignore.
"Yesterday," I proceeded, "I would have declared it to be Silly Rufus,
in the face of God and man, but after what I saw in William's room
during the hurried survey I gave it, I am inclined to doubt if the
explanation we have to give to this affair is so simple as that would
make it. Mr. Gryce, in one corner of that room, from which the victim
had so lately been carried, was a pair of shoes that could never have
been worn by any boy-tramp I have ever seen or known of."
"They were Loreen's, or possibly Lucetta's."
"No, Loreen and Lucetta both have trim feet, but these were the shoes of
a child of ten, very dainty at that, and of a cut and make worn by
women, or rather, I should say, by girls. Now, what do you make of
that?"
He did not seem to know what to make of it. Tap, tap went his finger on
his seasoned palm, and as I watched the slowness with which it fell, I
said to myself, "I have proposed a problem this time that will tax even
Mr. Gryce's powers of deduction."
And I had. It was minutes before he ventured an opinion, and then it was
with a shade of doubt in his tone that I acknowledge to have felt some
pride in producing.
"They were Lucetta's shoes. The emotions under which you labored--very
pardonable emotions, madam, considering the circumstances and the
hour----"
"Excuse me," said I. "We do not want to waste a moment. I was excited,
suitably and duly excited, or I would have been a stone. But I never
lose my head under excitement, nor do I part with my sense of
proportion. The shoes were not Lucetta's. She never wore any approaching
them in smallness since her tenth year."
"Has Simsbury a daughter? Has there not been a child about the house
some time to assist the cook in errands and so on?"
"No, or I should have seen her. Besides, how would the shoes of such a
person come into William's room?"
"Easily. Secrecy was required. You were not to be disturbed; so shoes
were taken off that quiet might result."
"Was Lucetta shoeless or William or even Mother Jane? You have not told
me that you were requested to walk in stocking feet up the hall. No, Mr.
Gryce, the shoes were the shoes of a girl. I know it because it was
matched by a dress I saw hanging up in a sort of wardrobe."
"Ah! You looked into the wardrobe?"
"I did and felt justified in doing so. It was after I had spied the
shoes."
"Very good. And you saw a dress?"
"A little dress; a dress with a short skirt. It was of silk too; another
anomaly--and the color, I think, was blue, but I cannot swear to that
point. I was in great haste and took the briefest glance. But my brief
glances can be trusted, Mr. Gryce. That, I think, you are beginning to
know."
"Certainly," said he, "and as proof of it we will now act upon these two
premises--that the victim in whose burial I was an innocent partaker was
a human being and that this human being was a girl-child who came into
the house well dressed. Now where does that lead us? Into a maze, I
fear."
"We are accustomed to mazes," I observed.
"Yes," he answered somewhat gloomily, "but they are not exactly
desirable in this case. I want to find the Knollys family innocent."
"And I. But William's character, I fear, will make that impossible."
"But this girl? Who is she, and where did she come from? No girl has
been reported to us as missing from this neighborhood."
"I supposed not."
"A visitor--But no visitor could enter this house without it being known
far and wide. Why, I heard of your arrival here before I left the train
on which I followed you. Had we allowed ourselves to be influenced by
what the people about here say, we would have turned the Knollys house
inside out a week ago. But I don't believe in putting too much
confidence in the prejudice of country people. The idea they suggested,
and which you suggest without putting it too clearly into words, is much
too horrible to be acted upon without the best of reasons. Perhaps we
have found those reasons, yet I still feel like asking, Where did this
girl come from and how could she have become a prisoner in the Knollys
house without the knowledge of--Madam, have you met Mr. Trohm?"
The question was so sudden I had not time to collect myself. But perhaps
it was not necessary that I should, for the simple affirmation I used
seemed to satisfy Mr. Gryce, who went on to say:
"It is he who first summoned us here, and it is he who has the greatest
interest in locating the source of these disappearances, yet he has seen
no child come here."
"Mr. Trohm is not a spy," said I, but the remark, happily, fell
unheeded.
"No one has," he pursued. "We must give another turn to our
suppositions."
Suddenly a silence fell upon us both. His finger ceased to lay down the
law, and my gaze, which had been searching his face inquiringly, became
fixed. At the same moment and in much the same tone of voice we both
spoke, he saying, "Humph!" and I, "Ah!" as a prelude to the simultaneous
exclamation:
"The phantom coach!"
We were so pleased with this discovery that we allowed a moment to pass
in silent contemplation of each other's satisfaction. Then he quietly
added:
"Which on the evening preceding your arrival came from the mountains and
passed into Lost Man's Lane, from which no one ever saw it emerge."
"It was no phantom," I put in.
"It was their own old coach bringing to the house a fresh victim."
This sounded so startling we both sat still for a moment, lost in the
horror of it, then I spoke:
"People living in remote and isolated quarters like this are naturally
superstitious. The Knollys family know this, and, remembering the old
legend, forbore to contradict the conclusions of their neighbors.
Loreen's emotion when the topic was broached to her is explained by this
theory."
"It is not a pleasant one, but we cannot be wrong in contemplating it."
"Not at all. This apparition, as they call it, was seen by two persons;
therefore it was no apparition but a real coach. It came from the
mountains, that is, from the Mountain Station, and it glided--ah!"
"Well?"
"Mr. Gryce, it was its noiselessness that gave it its spectral
appearance. Now I remember a petty circumstance which I dare you to
match, in corroboration of our suspicions."
"You do?"
I could not repress a slight toss of my head. "Yes, I do," I repeated.
He smiled and made the slightest of deprecatory gestures.
"You have had advantages----" he began.
"And disadvantages," I finished, determined that he should award me my
full meed of praise. "You are probably not afraid of dogs. I am. You
could visit the stables."
"And did; but I found nothing there."
"I thought not!" I could not help the exclamation. It is so seldom one
can really triumph over this man. "Not having the cue, you would not be
apt to see what gives this whole thing away. I would never have thought
of it again if we had not had this talk. Is Mr. Simsbury a neat man?"
"A neat man? Madam, what do you mean?"
"Something important, Mr. Gryce. If Mr. Simsbury is a neat man, he will
have thrown away the old rags which, I dare promise you, cumbered his
stable floor the morning after the phantom coach was seen to enter the
lane. If he is not, you may still find them there. One of them, I know,
you will not find. He pulled it off of his wheel with his whip the
afternoon he drove me down from the station. I can see the sly look he
gave me as he did it. It made no impression on me then, but now----"
"Madam, you have supplied the one link necessary to the establishment of
this theory. Allow me to felicitate you upon it. But whatever our
satisfaction may be from a professional standpoint, we cannot but feel
the unhappy nature of the responsibility incurred by these discoveries.
If this seemingly respectable family stooped to such subterfuge, going
to the length of winding rags around the wheels of their lumbering old
coach to make it noiseless, and even tying up their horse's feet for
this same purpose, they must have had a motive dark enough to warrant
your worst suspicions. And William was not the only one involved.
Simsbury, at least, had a hand in it, nor does it look as if the girls
were as innocent as we would like to consider them."
"I cannot stop to consider the girls," I declared. "I can no longer
consider the girls."
"Nor I," he gloomily assented. "Our duty requires us to sift this
matter, and it shall be sifted. We must first find if any child alighted
from the cars at the Mountain Station on that especial night, or, what
is more probable, from the little station at C., five miles farther back
in the mountains."
"And--" I urged, seeing that he had still something to say.
"We must make sure who lies buried under the floor of the room you call
the Flower Parlor. You may expect me at the Knollys house some time
to-day. I shall come quietly, but in my own proper person. You are not
to know me, and, unless you desire it, need not appear in the matter."
"I do not desire it."
"Then good-morning, Miss Butterworth. My respect for your abilities has
risen even higher than before. We part in a similar frame of mind for
once."
And this he expected me to regard as a compliment.
XXVII
THE TEXT WITNESSETH
I have a grim will when I choose to exert it. After Mr. Gryce left the
hotel, I took a cup of tea with the landlady and then made a round of
the stores. I bought dimity, sewing silk, and what not, as I said I
would, but this did not occupy me long (to the regret probably of the
country merchants, who expected to make a fool of me and found it a by
no means easy task), and was quite ready for William when he finally
drove up.
The ride home was a more or less silent one. I had conceived such a
horror of the man beside me, that talking for talk's sake was
impossible, while he was in a mood which it would be charity to call
non-communicative. It may be that my own reticence was at the bottom of
this, but I rather think not. The remark he made in passing Deacon
Spear's house showed that something more than spite was working in his
slow but vindictive brain.
"There's a man of your own sort," he cried. "You won't find him doing
anything out of the way; oh, no. Pity your visit wasn't paid there.
You'd have got a better impression of the lane."
To this I made no reply.
At Mr. Trohm's he spoke again:
"I suppose that you and Trohm had the devil of a say about Lucetta and
the rest of us. I don't know why, but the whole neighborhood seems to
feel they've a right to use our name as they choose. But it isn't going
to be so, long. We have played poor and pinched and starved all I'm
going to. I'm going to have a new horse, and Lucetta shall have a dress,
and that mighty quick too. I'm tired of all this shabbiness, and mean to
have a change."
I wanted to say, "No change yet; change under the present circumstances
would be the worst thing possible for you all," but I felt that this
would be treason to Mr. Gryce, and refrained, saying simply, as he
looked sideways at me for a word:
"Lucetta needs a new dress. That no one can deny. But you had better let
me get it for her, or perhaps that is what you mean."
The grunt which was my only answer might be interpreted in any way. I
took it, however, for assent.
As soon as I was relieved of his presence and found myself again with
the girls, I altered my whole manner and cried out in querulous tones:
"Mrs. Carter and I have had a difference." (This was true. We did have a
difference over our cup of tea. I did not think it necessary to say this
difference was a forced one. Some things we are perfectly justified in
keeping to ourselves.) "She remembers a certain verse in the New
Testament one way and I in another. We had not time to settle it by a
consultation with the sacred word, but I cannot rest till it is settled,
so will you bring your Bible to me, my dear, that I may look that verse
up?"