general excused himself, and North and Elizabeth were left alone. She
seated herself before the open fire of blazing hickory logs, whose
light, and that of the shaded lamps, filled the long room with a soft
radiance. She had never seemed so desirable to North as now when he was
about to leave her. He stood silent, leaning against the corner of the
chimneypiece, looking down on all her springlike radiance. Usually he
was neither preoccupied nor silent, but to-night he was both. The
thought that he was seeing her for the last time--Ah, this was the price
of all his folly! At length he spoke.
"I came to-night to say good-by, Elizabeth!"
She glanced up, startled.
"To say good-by?" she repeated.
He nodded gloomily.
"Do you mean that you are going to leave Mount Hope?" she asked slowly.
"Yes, to-night maybe."
Her glance no longer met his, but he was conscious that she had lost
something of her serenity.
"Are you sorry, Elizabeth?" he ventured.
To pass mutely out of her life had suddenly seemed an impossibility, and
his tenderness and yearning trembled in his voice. She answered
obliquely, by asking:
"Must you go?"
"I want to get away from Mount Hope. I want to leave it all,--all but
you, dear!" he said. "You haven't answered me, Elizabeth; will you
care?"
"I am sorry," she said slowly, and the light in her gray-blue eyes
darkened.
She heard the sigh that wasted itself on his lips.
"I am glad you can say that,--I wish you would look up!" he said
wistfully.
"Are you going to-night?" she questioned.
"Yes, but I am coming back. I shan't find that you have forgotten me
when I come, shall I, Elizabeth?"
She looked up quickly into his troubled face, and it was not the warm
firelight that brought the rich color in a sudden flame to her cheeks.
"I shall not forget you."
There was a determined gentleness in her speech and manner that gave him
courage.
"I haven't any right to talk to you in this way; I know I haven't,
but--Oh, I want you, Elizabeth!" And all at once he was on his knees
beside her, his arms about her. "Don't forget me, dear! I love you, I
Love you--I want you--Oh, I want you for my wife!"
The girl looked into the passionate face upturned to hers, and then her
head drooped. And so they remained long; his dark head resting in her
arms; her fair face against it.
"Why do you go, John?" she asked at length, out of the rich content of
their silence.
"I haven't any choice, dear heart; there isn't any place for me here. I
have thought it all over, and I know I am doing the wise thing,--I am
quite sure of this! I shall write you of everything that concerns me!"
he added hastily, as he heard the tread of the general's slippered feet
in the hall.
North released her hands as the general entered the room. Elizabeth sank
back in her chair. Her father glanced sharply at them, and North turned
toward him frankly.
"I am leaving on the midnight train, General, and I must say good-by; I
have to get a few things together for my trip!"
General Herbert glanced again at Elizabeth, but her face was averted and
he learned nothing from its expression.
"So you are going away! Well, North, I hope you will have a pleasant
trip,--better let me send you into town?"
And he reached for the bell-rope. North shook his head.
"I'll walk, thank you," he said briefly.
In silence he turned to Elizabeth and held out his hand. For an instant
she rested hers in it, a cold little hand that trembled; their eyes met
in a brief glance of perfect understanding, and then North turned from
her. The general followed him into the hall.
"It's stopped snowing, and you will have clear starlight for your walk
home,--the wind's gone down, too!" he said, as he opened the hall door.
"Don't come any farther, General Herbert!" said North.
But the general followed him into the stone arched vestibule.
"It's a fine night for your walk,--but you're quite sure you don't want
to be driven into town?"
"No, no,--good night." And North held out his hand.
"Good night."
North went down the carriageway, and Herbert reëntered the house.
North kept to the beaten path for a little while, then left it and
tramped out across the fields until he came to a strip of woodland that
grew along a stony hillside. He followed this ridge back a short
distance and presently emerged upon a sloping meadow that overhung a
narrow ravine. Not two hundred yards distant loomed Idle Hour, somber
and dark and massive. He found a stump on the edge of the woods and
brushed the snow from it, then drawing his overcoat closely about him,
he sat down and lit his pipe.
The windows of Idle Hour still showed their many lights. At his feet a
thread-like stream, swollen by the recent rains, splashed and murmured
ceaselessly. He sat there a long time silent and absorbed, watching the
lights, until at last they vanished from the drawing-room and the
library. Then other lights appeared behind curtained windows on the
second floor. These in their turn were extinguished, and Idle Hour sank
deeper into the shadows as the crescent moon slipped behind the horizon.
"God bless her!" North said aloud.
He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and retraced his steps to the drive.
He had but turned from this into the public road when he heard the
clatter of wheels and the beat of hoofs, and a rapidly driven team swung
around a bend in the road in front of him. He stepped aside to let it
pass, but the driver pulled up abreast of him with a loud command to his
horses.
"Heard the news?" he asked, leaning out over the dash-board of his
buggy.
"What news?" asked North.
"Oh, I guess you haven't heard!" said the stranger. "Well, old man
McBride, the hardware merchant, is dead! Murdered!"
"Murdered!" cried North.
"Yes, sir,--murdered! They found him in his store this evening a little
after six. No one knows who did it. Well, good night, I thought maybe
you'd like to know. Awful, ain't it?"
CHAPTER EIGHT
A GAMBLER AT HOME
It was morning, and Mr. Gilmore sat by his cheerful open fire in that
front room of his, where by night were supposed to flourish those games
of chance which were such an offense to the "better element" in Mount
Hope. Mr. Gilmore was hardly a person of unexceptional taste, though he
had no suspicion of this fact, since he counted that room quite all that
any gentleman's parlor should be.
It was a large room furnished in dark velvet and heavy walnut. The red
velvet curtains at the windows, when drawn at night, permitted no ray of
light to escape; the carpet was a gorgeous Brussels affair, the like of
which both as to cost and enduring splendor was not to be found
elsewhere on any floor in Mount Hope. Seated as he then was, Gilmore
could look, if so disposed, at the reflection of his own dark but not
unhandsome face in a massive gilt-framed mirror that reached from
chimneypiece to ceiling; or, glancing about the room, his eyes could
dwell with genuine artistic pleasure on numerous copies in crayon of
French figure-studies; nor were the like of these to be found elsewhere
in Mount Hope.
Gilmore had quitted the McBride cottage some three hours before, and in
the interim had breakfasted well and napped abstemiously. Presently he
must repair to the court-house, where, it had already been intimated,
the coroner might wish to confer with him.
Marshall Langham he had not seen. He had expected to find him still in
his rooms, but the lawyer had left the key under the mat at the door,
presumably at an early hour. Gilmore wondered idly if Langham had not
made a point of getting away before he himself should arrive; he rather
thought so, and he smiled with cheerful malevolence at his own
reflection in the mirror.
Here his reveries were broken in on by the awkward shuffling of heavy
feet in the hallway, and then some one knocked loudly on his door.
Gilmore glanced hastily about to assure himself that the tell-tale
paraphernalia of his craft were nowhere visible, and that the room was
all he liked to fancy it--the parlor of a gentleman with sufficient
income and quiet taste.
"Come in," he called at last, without quitting his chair.
The door slowly opened and the crown of a battered cap first appeared,
then a long face streaked with coal-dust and grime and further decorated
about the chin by a violently red stubble of several days' growth. With
so much of himself showing; the new-comer paused on the threshold in
apparent doubt as to whether he would be permitted to enter, or ordered
to withdraw.
"Come in, Joe, and shut the door!" said Gilmore.
At his bidding the shoulders and trunk, and lastly the legs of a
slouching shambling man of forty-eight or fifty entered the room.
Closing the door Joe Montgomery slipped off one patched and ragged cloth
mitten and removed his battered cap.
"Well, what the devil do you want?" demanded Gilmore sharply.
Joe, shuffling and shambling, edged toward the grate.
"Boss, I want to drop a word with you!" he said in a husky voice. His
glance did not quite meet Gilmore's, but the moment Gilmore shifted his
gaze, that moment Joe's small, bright blue eyes sought the gambler's.
Gilmore and Joe Montgomery were distantly related, and while the latter
never presumed on the score of this remote connection, the gambler
himself tacitly admitted it by the help he now and then extended him,
for Montgomery's means of subsistence were at the best precarious. If he
had been called on to do so, he would have described himself as a
handy-man, since he lived by the doing of odd jobs. He cleaned carpets
in the spring; he cut lawns in the summer; in the fall he carried coal
into the cellars of Mount Hope, and in the winter he shoveled the snow
off Mount Hope's pavements; and at all times and in all seasons,
whether these industries flourished or languished, he drank.
He now established himself on Mr. Gilmore's hearth,--a necessity--for he
bent his hulking body and stuck his curly red head well into the grate;
then as he withdrew it, he passed the back of his hand across his
discolored lip.
"Excuse me, boss, I had to!" he apologized.
In Mr. Gilmore's presence Joe inclined toward a humble decency, for he
was vaguely aware that he was an unclean thing, and that only the
mysterious bond of blood gave him this rich and powerful patron.
"Well, you old sot!" said Gilmore pleasantly. "You haven't drunk
yourself to death since I saw you in McBride's last night?"
The handy-man gave him a wide toothless grin, and his bashful blue eyes
shifted, shuttle-wise, in their sockets until he was able to survey in
full the splendor of the apartment.
"Boss, you got a sure-enough well-dressed room; I never seen anything
that could hold a candle to it,--it's a bird!" He stole a shy abashed
glance at the pictures on the wall, but becoming aware that Gilmore was
watching him, he dropped his eyes in some confusion. "I reckon' them
female pictures cost a fortune!" he said.
"They cost enough!" rejoined Gilmore, and again Montgomery ventured a
covert glance in the direction of one of the works of art.
"I reckon it was summer-time!" he hinted modestly.
Gilmore laughed.
"How would you like one of them?" he asked.
Montgomery gave him a swift glance of alarm.
"No, boss, I'm a respectable married man, and if I lugged one of them
ladies home with me, my old woman wouldn't do a thing but raise hell!
Boss, they're raw; yes, sir, that's it--they're raw!" Then fearing he
had gone too far in an adverse criticism, he added, "Friends of yours,
boss?"
"Not all of them!" said Gilmore, with lazy amusement.
"Catched unawares?" hinted Montgomery. But Gilmore changed the subject
abruptly.
"Well, what did you come here for?" he demanded.
"I got a lot of things on my mind, boss! I been a-worryin' all morning
and then I thinks of you. 'Mr. Gilmore's the man to go to,' I tells
myself, and I quit my job and come here."
He stuck his head into the grate again, but this time without apology.
"I suppose you are in trouble?" said Gilmore, and his genial mood seemed
to chill suddenly.
"You're right, boss, I'm in a heap of trouble!"
"Well, then, clear out of here!" said Gilmore.
"Hold on, boss, it ain't that kind of trouble" interposed the handy-man
hastily.
"What do you want?"
"Advice."
Gilmore leaned back in his easy-chair and crossed his legs.
"Go on!" he ordered briefly.
"A handy-man like me doin' all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people is
sure to see some curious things, ain't he, boss?"
"Well?"
"I'm here to tell you what I seen, boss; and every word of it will be
God A'mighty's truth!"
"It had better be!" rejoined Gilmore quietly, but with significant
emphasis.
"I don't want no better friend than you been to me," said Montgomery in
a sudden burst of grateful candor. "You've paid two fines for me, and
you done what you could for me that time I was sent up, when old man
Murphy said he found me in his hen-house."
Gilmore nodded.
"I was outrageous put upon! The judge appointed that fellow Moxlow to
defend me! Say, it was a hell of a defense he put up, and I had a friend
who was willin' to swear he'd seen me in the alley back of Mike
Lonigan's saloon cleaning spittoons when old man Murphy said I was in
his chicken house; Moxlow said he wouldn't touch my case except on its
merits, and the only merit it had was that friend, ready and willin' to
swear to anything!" Montgomery shrugged his great slanting shoulders.
"He's too damn perpendicular!"
"He is," agreed Gilmore. "But what's this got to do with what you saw?"
"Not a thing; but it makes me sweat blood whenever I think of the trick
Moxlow served me,--it ain't as if I had no one but myself! I got a
family, see? _I_ can't afford to go to jail,--it ain't as if I was
single!"
"Get back to your starting-point, Joe!" said Gilmore.
"Who do you think killed old man McBride, boss?"
"How should I know?"
"You ain't got any ideas about that?" asked Montgomery.
Gilmore shot him a swift glance.
"I don't know whether I have or not," he replied.
"I have, boss."
"You?" His tone betrayed neither eagerness nor interest.
"That's what fetches me here, boss!" Joe replied, sinking his voice to a
whisper. "I got a damn good notion who killed old McBride; I could go
out on the street and put my hand on the man who done it!"
"You mustn't come here with these pipe dreams of yours, Joe; you have
been drunk and all this talk about the McBride murder's gone to your
head!" retorted Gilmore contemptuously.
"I hope I may die if I ain't as sober as you this minute, boss!"
returned the handy-man impressively.
"Well, what do you know--or think you know?" asked Gilmore with affected
indifference.
"Boss, did I ever lie to you?" demanded Montgomery.
"If you did I never found you out."
"And why? You never had no chance to find me out; for the reason that I
always tell you the almighty everlastin' truth!"
"Well?" prompted Mr. Gilmore.
"Boss," and again Montgomery dropped his voice to a confidential
whisper, "boss, I seen a man climb over old man McBride's shed yesterday
just before six. I seen him come up on top of the shed from the inside,
look all around, slide down to the eaves and drop into the alley, and
then streak off as if all hell was after him!"
Gilmore's features were under such admirable control that they betrayed
nothing of what was passing in his mind.
"Stuff!" he ejaculated at last, disdainfully.
"You think I lie, boss?" cried Montgomery, in an intense whisper.
"You know best about that," said Gilmore quietly.
"He come so close to me I could feel his breath in my face! Boss, he was
puffin' and pantin' and his breath burnt,--yes, sir, it burnt; and I
heard him say, 'Oh, my God!' like that, 'Oh, my God!'"
"And where were you when this happened?" demanded Gilmore with sudden
sternness.
Montgomery hesitated.
"What's that got to do with it, boss?"
"A whole lot; come, out with it. Where were you to see and hear all
this?"
"I was in White's woodshed," said Montgomery rather sullenly.
"Oh, ho, you were up to your old tricks!"
"He'll never miss it; I couldn't freeze to death; there's a livin'
comin' to me," said the handy-man doggedly.
"You'll probably have a try for it back of iron bars!" said Gilmore.
But it was plain that Montgomery did not enjoy Mr. Gilmore's humor.
"White's coal house is right acrost the alley from old McBride's shed.
You can go look, boss, if you don't believe me, and there's a small door
opening out on to the alley, where the coal is put in."
"All the same you should keep out of people's coal houses, or one of
these days you'll bring off more than you bargained for; say a load of
shot."
"Maybe you'd like to know who I seen come over that roof?" said the
handy-man impatiently.
"How many people have you told this yarn to already?" asked Gilmore, who
seemed more anxious to discredit the handy-man in his own eyes than
anything else.
"Not a living soul, boss; I guess I know enough to hang a man--"
"Pooh!" said Gilmore.
"You don't believe me?"
"Yes, I'll believe that you were stealing White's coal."
"Leave me tell it to you just as it happened, boss," said Montgomery.
"Then if you say I lie, I won't answer you back; we'll let it go at
that."
Gilmore appeared to consider for a moment, his look of mingled
indifference and contempt had quite passed away.
"I guess it sounds straight, Joe!" he said at length slowly.
"Why? Because it _is_ straight, every damn word of it, boss."
And as if to give emphasis to his words the handy-man swung out a grimy
fist and dropped it into an equally grimy palm.
"What did you do after that?" asked Gilmore.
"Not much. I laid low and presently lifted my sack of coal out and
ducked around to Lonigan's saloon. I went in there by the back door and
left my sack leanin' against the building. Mike wanted his mail and he
give me a drink of whisky if I'd take his keys and go to the post-office
for him; I'd just come into the Square when I run into Shrimp who was
tellin' how old man McBride was murdered. I went into the store and
found you there with Colonel Harbison, you remember, boss?" Gilmore
nodded and Montgomery continued. "I hadn't a chance to tell you what I'd
seen, and all night long I kept hearin' him say it!"
"Say what, Joe?"
"Say, 'Oh, my God!' like I told you, boss; I couldn't sleep for it,--I
wonder if he slept!"
"Joe," said the gambler, "I'll tell you something that I have only told
the sheriff. I was in Langham's office late yesterday and John North was
there; he left to go to McBride's. Conklin's been looking for him this
morning, but he can't find him, and no one seems to know what's become
of him. Do you follow me?"
"What's North got to do with it, boss?"
"How do you know it wasn't North you saw in the alley?" urged Gilmore.
"It were not!" said Joe Montgomery positively.
"You saw the man's face?"
"As plain as I see yours!"
"And you know the man?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll tell you who you saw," said the gambler coolly; "it was
Marshall Langham."
The handy-man swore a great oath.
"You've guessed it, boss! You've guessed it."
"It ain't a guess as it happens."
"Boss, do you mean to tell me you knew all along?" demanded Montgomery
incredulously.
"Yes."
"But what about North?"
"That's his lookout, let him clear himself."
Joe, shambling and shuffling, took a turn about the room.
"Boss, if it was me that stood in his boots the halter would be as good
as about my neck; they wouldn't give me no chance to clear myself,--they
wouldn't let me! Them smart lawyers would twist and turn everything I
said so that God A'mighty wouldn't know His own truth!"
"Well, you were in that alley, Joe; if you feel for him, I expect we
could somehow shift it to you!" said Gilmore.
The handy-man slouched to the hearth again.
"None of that, boss!" he cried. "I've told you what took me there, so
none of that!"
His voice shook with suppressed feeling, as he stood there scowling down
on the gambler.
"Sit down, Joe!" said Mr. Gilmore, unruffled.
Reluctantly the handy-man sank into the chair indicated.
"Now you old sot," began the gambler, "you listen to me! I suppose if
they could shift suspicion so that it would appear you had had something
to do with the old man's murder, it would take Moxlow and the judge and
any decent jury no time at all to hang you; for who would care a damn
whether you were hanged or not! But you needn't worry, I'm going to
manage this thing for you, I'm going to see that you don't get into
trouble. Now, listen, you're to let well enough alone. North is already
under suspicion apparently. All right, we'll help that suspicion along.
If you have anything to tell, you'll say that the man who came over that
shed looked like North!"
"Boss, I won't say a word about the shed or the alley!"
"Oh, yes you will, Joe! The man looked like North,--you remember, at the
time you thought he looked like North, and you thought you recognized
his voice when he spoke, and you thought it was North's voice. He had on
a black derby hat and a dark brown overcoat; don't forget that, Joe, for
we are going to furnish young Mr. North with a bunch of worries."
The handy-man looked at him doubtfully, sullenly.
"I don't want to hang _him_, he's always treated _me_ white enough,
though I never liked him to hurt."
Gilmore laughed unpleasantly.
"Oh, there's no chance of that, your evidence won't hang him, but it
will give him a whole lot to think about; and Langham's a pretty decent
fellow; if you treat him right, he'll keep you drunk for the rest of
your days; you'll own him body and soul."
"A ignorant man like me couldn't go up against a sharp lawyer like Marsh
Langham! Do you know what'd happen to me? I'll tell you; I'd get so
damned well fixed I'd never look at daylight except through jail
windows; that's the trick I'd serve myself, boss."
"I'll take that off your hands," said Gilmore.
"And what do you get out of it, boss?" inquired the astute Mr.
Montgomery.
"You'll have to put your trust in my benevolence, Joe!" said the
gambler. "But I am willing to admit I want to see North put where he'll
have every inducement to attend strictly to his own business!"
CHAPTER NINE
THE STAR WITNESS
It was between nine and ten o'clock when Marshall Langham reached his
office. He scarcely had time to remove his hat and overcoat when a
policeman entered the room and handed him a note. It was a hasty scrawl
from Moxlow who wished him to come at once to the court-house.
As Moxlow's messenger quitted the room Langham leaned against his desk
with set lips and drawn face; this was but the beginning of the ordeal
through which he must pass! Then slowly he resumed his hat and overcoat.
The prosecuting attorney's office was on the second floor of the
court-house, at the back of the building, and its windows overlooked the
court-house yard.
On the steps and in the long corridors, men stood about, discussing the
murder. Langham pushed his way resolutely through these groups and
mounted the stairs. Moxlow's door was locked, as he found when he tried
to open it, but in response to his knock a bolt was drawn and a
policeman swung open the door, closing it the instant Marshall had
entered.
Langham glanced around. Doctor Taylor--the coroner--was seated before
the desk; aside from this official Colonel Harbison, Andy Gilmore,
Shrimplin, Moxlow, Mr. Allison, the mayor, Conklin, the sheriff, and two
policemen were present.
"Thank you, that is all, Mr. Gilmore," the coroner had said as Langham
entered the room.
He turned and motioned one of the policemen to place a chair for the
prosecuting attorney beside his own at the desk.
"As you know, Mr. Moxlow," the coroner began, "these gentlemen, Mr.
Shrimplin, Colonel Harbison and Mr. Gilmore, were the first to view the
murdered man. Later I was summoned, and with the sheriff spent the
greater part of the night in making an examination of the building. We
found no clue. The murderer had gone without leaving any trace of his
passing. It is probable he entered by the front door, which Mr.
Shrimplin found open, and left by the side door, which was also open,
but the crowd gathered so quickly both in the yard and in the street,
that it has been useless to look for footprints in the freshly fallen
snow. One point is quite clear, however, and that is the hour when the
crime was committed. We can fix that almost to a certainty. The murderer
did his work between half past five and six o'clock. Mr. Shrimplin has
just informed us that the only person he saw on the Square, until he met
Colonel Harbison, was John North, whom he encountered within a block of
McBride's store and with whom he spoke. While Mr. Shrimplin stopped to
speak with Mr. North the town bell rang the hour--six o'clock."
The coroner paused.