BOOK IV

WHAT THE PINES WHISPERED

XXIX.--“I REMEMBERED THE ROOM”

XXX.--“CHOOSE”

XXXI.--“WERE HER HANDS CROSSED THEN?”

XXXII.--AND I HAD SAID NOTHING!

XXXIII.--THE ARROW OF DEATH

XXXIV.--“STEADY!”

XXXV.--“As IF IT WERE A MECCA”

XXXVI.--THE SURCHARGED MOMENT

BOOK ONE

SMOKE

I

THE HESITATING STEP

To have reared a towering scheme

Of happiness, and to behold it razed,

Were nothing: all men hope, and see their hopes

Frustrate, and grieve awhile, and hope anew;

But--

_A Blot in the ’Scutcheon._

The moon rode high; but ominous clouds were rushing towards it--clouds

heavy with snow. I watched these clouds as I drove recklessly,

desperately, over the winter roads. I had just missed the desire

of my life, the one precious treasure which I coveted with my

whole undisciplined heart, and not being what you call a man of

self-restraint, I was chafed by my defeat far beyond the bounds I have

usually set for myself.

The moon--with the wild skurry of clouds hastening to blot it out of

sight--seemed to mirror the chaos threatening my better impulses; and,

idly keeping it in view, I rode on, hardly conscious of my course till

the rapid recurrence of several well-known landmarks warned me that I

had taken the longest route home, and that in another moment I should

be skirting the grounds of The Whispering Pines, our country clubhouse.

_I_ had taken? Let me rather say, my horse; for he and I had traversed

this road many times together, and he had no means of knowing that the

season was over and the club-house closed. I did not think of it myself

at the moment, and was recklessly questioning whether I should not

drive in and end my disappointment in a wild carouse, when, the great

stack of chimneys coming suddenly into view against the broad disk of

the still unclouded moon, I perceived a thin trail of smoke soaring up

from their midst and realised, with a shock, that there should be no

such sign of life in a house I myself had closed, locked, and barred

that very day.

I was the president of the club and felt responsible. Pausing only long

enough to make sure that I had yielded to no delusion, and that fire of

some kind was burning on one of the club-house’s deserted hearths, I

turned in at the lower gateway. For reasons which I need not now state,

there were no bells attached to my cutter and consequently my approach

was noiseless. I was careful that it should be so, also careful to stop

short of the front door and leave my horse and sleigh in the black

depths of the pine-grove pressing up to the walls on either side. I was

sure that all was not as it should be inside these walls, but, as God

lives, I had no idea what was amiss or how deeply my own destiny was

involved in the step I was about to take.

Our club-house stands, as it may be necessary to remind you, on a

knoll thickly wooded with the ancient trees I have mentioned. These

trees--all pines and of a growth unusual and of an aspect well-nigh

hoary--extend only to the rear end of the house, where a wide stretch

of gently undulating ground opens at once upon the eye, suggesting to

all lovers of golf the admirable use to which it is put from early

spring to latest fall. Now, links, as well as parterres and driveways,

are lying under an even blanket of winter snow, and even the building,

with its picturesque gables and rows of be-diamonded windows, is

well-nigh indistinguishable in the shadows cast by the heavy pines,

which soar above it and twist their limbs over its roof and about its

forsaken corners, with a moan and a whisper always desolate to the

sensitive ear, but from this night on, simply appalling.

No other building stood within a half-mile in any direction. It was

veritably a country club, gay and full of life in the season, but

isolated and lonesome beyond description after winter had set in and

buried flower and leaf under a wide waste of untrodden snow.

I felt this isolation as I stepped from the edge of the trees and

prepared to cross the few feet of open space leading to the main door.

The sudden darkness instantly enveloping me, as the clouds, whose

advancing mass I had been watching, made their final rush upon the

moon, added its physical shock to this inner sense of desolation,

and, in some moods, I should have paused and thought twice before

attempting the door, behind which lurked the unknown with its naturally

accompanying suggestion of peril. But rage and disappointment, working

hotly within me, had left no space for fear. Rather rejoicing in the

doubtfulness of the adventure, I pushed my way over the snow until my

feet struck the steps. Here, instinct caused me to stop and glance

quickly up and down the building either way. Not a gleam of light met

my eye from the smallest scintillating pane. Was the house as soundless

as it was dark?

I listened but heard nothing. I listened again and still heard nothing.

Then I proceeded boldly up the steps and laid my hand on the door.

It was unlatched and yielded to my touch. Light or no light, sound

or no sound there was some one within. The fire which had sent its

attenuated streak of smoke up into the moonlit air, was burning yet on

one of the many hearths within, and before it I should presently see--

Whom?

What?

The question scarcely interested me.

Nevertheless I proceeded to enter and close the door carefully behind

me. As I did so, I cast an involuntary glance without. The sky was inky

and a few wandering flakes of the now rapidly advancing storm came

whirling in, biting my cheeks and stinging my forehead.

Once inside, I stopped short, possibly to listen again, possibly to

assure myself as to what I had best do next. The silence was profound.

Not a sound disturbed the great, empty building. My own footfall, as

I stirred, seemed to wake extraordinary echoes. I had moved but a few

steps, yet to my heightened senses, the noise seemed loud enough to

wake the dead. Instinctively I stopped and stood stock-still. There was

no answering cessation of movement. Darkness, silence everywhere. Yet

not quite absolute darkness. As my eyes grew accustomed to the place,

I found it possible to discern the outlines of the windows and locate

the stairs and the arches where the side halls opened. I was even able

to pick out the exact spot where the great antlers spread themselves

above the hatrack, and presently the rack itself came into view, with

its row of empty pegs, yesterday so full, to-day quite empty. That rack

interested me,--I hardly knew why,--and regardless of the noise I made,

I crossed over to it and ran my hand along the wall underneath. The

result was startling. A man’s coat and hat hung from one of the pegs.

I knew my business as president of this club. I also knew that no one

should be in the house at this time--that no one could be in it on any

honest errand. Some secret and sinister business must be at the bottom

of this mysterious intrusion immediately after the place had been

shut for the winter. Would this hat and coat identify the intruder?

I would strike a light and see. But this involved difficulties. The

gas had been turned off that very morning and I had no matches in my

pocket. But I remembered where they could be found. I had seen them

when I passed through the kitchen earlier in the day. They were very

accessible from the end of the hall where I stood. I had but to feel my

way through a passage or two and I should come to the kitchen door.

I began to move that way, and presently came creeping back, with a

match-box half full of matches in my hand. But I did not strike one

then. I had just made a move to do so, when the unmistakable sound of a

door opening somewhere in the house made me draw back into as quiet and

dark a place as I could find. This lay in the rear and at the right of

the staircase, and as the sound had appeared to come from above, it was

the most natural retreat that offered. And a good one I found it.

I had hardly taken up my stand when the darkness above gave way to a

faint glimmer, and a step became audible coming from some one of the

many small rooms in the second story, but so slowly and with such

evident hesitation that my imagination had ample time to work and fill

my mind with varying anticipations, each more disconcerting than the

last. Now I seemed to be listening to the movements of an intoxicated

man seeking an issue out of strange quarters, then to the wary approach

of one who had his own reasons for dread and was as conscious of my

presence as I was of his.

But the light, steadily increasing with each lagging but surely

advancing step, soon gave the lie to this latter supposition, since no

sane man, afraid of an ambush, would be likely to offer such odds to

the one lying in wait for him, as his own face illumined by a flaming

candle, and I was yielding to the bewilderment of the moment when the

uncertain step paused and a sob came faintly to my ears, wrung from

lips so stiff with human anguish that my fears took on new shape and

the event a significance which in my present mood of personal suffering

and preoccupation was anything but welcome. Indeed, I was coward

enough to contemplate flight and might in another moment have yielded

to the unworthy impulse if the sound of a second sigh had not struck

shudderingly on my ear, followed by the renewal of the step and the

almost immediate appearance on the stairs of a young girl holding a

candle in one hand and shielding her left cheek with the other.

Life offers few such shocks to any man, whatever his story or whatever

his temperament. I had been prepared by the sob I had heard to see

a woman, but not this woman. Nothing could have prepared me for an

encounter with this woman anywhere that night, after what had passed

between us and the wreck she had made of my life. But here! in a place

so remote and desolate I had hesitated to enter it myself! What was I

to think? How was I to reconcile so inconceivable a fact with what I

knew of her in the past, with what I hoped from her in the future.

To steady my thoughts and bring my whirling brain again under

control, I fixed my eyes on her well-known form and features as upon

a stranger’s whom I would understand and judge. I have called her a

woman and certainly I had loved her as such, but as, in this moment

of strange detachment, I watched her descend, swaying foot following

swaying foot falteringly down the stairs, I was able to see that only

the emotions which denaturalised her expression were a woman’s; that

her features, her pose, and the peculiar childlike contour of the

one cheek open to view were those of one whose yesterday was in the

playroom.

But beautiful! You do not often see such beauty. Under all the

disfigurement of an agitation so great as to daunt me and make me

question if I were its sole cause, her face shone with an individual

charm which marked her out as one of the few who are the making or

marring of men, sometimes of nations. This is the heritage she was

born to, this her lot, not to be shirked, not to be evaded even now

at her early age of seventeen. So much any one could see even in a

momentary scrutiny of her face and figure. But what was not so clear,

not even to myself with the consciousness of what had passed between

us during the last few hours, was why her heart should have so outrun

her years, and the emotion I beheld betray such shuddering depths. Some

grisly fear, some staring horror had met her in this strange retreat.

Simple grief speaks with a different language from that which I read in

her distorted features and tottering, slowly creeping form. What had

happened above? She had escaped me to run upon what? My lips refused

to ask, my limbs refused to move, and if I breathed at all, I did so

with such fierceness of restraint that her eyes never turned my way,

not even when she had reached the lowest step and paused for a moment

there, oscillating in pain or uncertainty. Her face was turned more

fully towards me now, and I had just begun to discern something in it

besides its tragic beauty, when she made a quick move and blew out

the candle she held. One moment that magical picture of superhuman

loveliness, then darkness, I might say silence, for I do not think

either of us so much as stirred for several instants. Then there came

a crash, followed by the sound of flying feet. She had flung the

candlestick out of her hand and was hurriedly crossing the hall. I

thought she was coming my way, and instinctively drew back against the

wall. But she stopped far short of me, and I heard her groping about,

then give a sudden spring towards the front door. It opened and the

wind soughed in. I felt the chill of snow upon my face, and realised

the tempest. Then all was quiet and dark again. She had slid quickly

out and the door had swung to behind her. Another instant and I heard

the click of the key as it turned in the lock, heard it and made no

outcry, such the spell, such the bewilderment of my faculties! But

once the act was accomplished and egress made difficult, nay, for the

moment, impossible, I felt all lesser emotions give way to an anxiety

which demanded immediate action, for the girl had gone out without

wraps or covering for her head, and my experience of the evening had

told me how cold it was. I must follow and find her and rescue her if

possible from the snow. The distance was long to town, the cold would

seize and perhaps prostrate her, after which, the wind and snow would

do the rest.

Throwing myself against the door, I shook it violently. It was

immovable. Then I flew to the windows. Their fastenings yielded readily

enough, but not the windows themselves; one had a broken cord, another

seemed glued to its frame, and I was still struggling with the latter

when I heard a sound which lifted the hair on my head and turned my

whole attention back to what lay behind and above me. There was still

some one in the house. I had forgotten everything in this apparition

of the woman I have described in a place so disassociated with any

conception I could possibly have of her whereabouts on this especial

evening. But this noise, short, sharp, but too distant to be altogether

recognisable, roused doubts which once awakened changed the whole tenor

of my thoughts and would not let me rest till I had probed the house

from top to bottom. To find Carmel Cumberland alone in this desolation

was a mystifying discovery to which I had found it hard enough to

reconcile myself. But Carmel here in company with another at the very

moment when I had expected the fruition of my own joy,--ah, that was to

open hell’s door in my breast; a possibility too intolerable to remain

unsettled for an instant. Though she had passed out before my eyes

in a drooping, almost agonised condition, not she, dear as she was,

and great as were my fears in her regard, was to be sought out first,

but the man! The man who was back of all this, possibly back of my

disappointment; the man whose work I may have witnessed, but at whose

identity I could not even guess.

Leaving the window, I groped my way along the wall until I reached the

rack where the man’s coat and hat hung. Whether it was my intention to

carry them away and hide them, in my anxiety to secure this intruder

and hold him to a bitter account for the misery he was causing me, or

whether I only meant to satisfy myself that they were the habiliments

of a stranger and not those of some sneaking member of the club, is of

little importance in the light of the fact which presently burst upon

me. The hat and coat were gone. Nothing hung from the rack. The wall

was free from end to end. She had taken these articles of male apparel

with her; she had not gone forth into the driving snow, unprotected,

but--

I did not know what to think. No acquaintanceship with her girlish

impulses, nothing that had occurred between us before or during this

night, had prepared me for a freak of this nature. I felt backward

along the wall; I felt forward; I even handled the pegs and counted

them as I passed to and fro, touching every one; but I could not alter

the fact. The groping she had done had been in this direction. She was

searching for this hat and coat (a man’s hat,--a derby, as I had been

careful to assure myself at the first handling) and, in them, she had

gone home as she had probably come, and there was no man in the case,

or if there were--

The doubt drove me to the staircase. Making no further effort to

unravel the puzzle which only beclouded my faculties, I began my wary

ascent. I had not the slightest fear, I was too full of cold rage for

that.

The arrangement of rooms on the second floor was well known to me. I

understood every nook and corner and could find my way about the whole

place without a light. I took but one precaution--that of slipping off

my shoes at the foot of the stairs. I wished to surprise the intruder.

I was willing to resort to any expedient to accomplish this. The

matches I carried in my pocket would make this possible if once I heard

him breathing. I held my own breath as I stole softly up, and waited

for an instant at the top of the stairs to listen. There was an awesome

silence everywhere, and I was hesitating whether to attack the front

rooms first or to follow up a certain narrow hall leading to a rear

staircase, when I remembered the thin line of smoke which, rising from

one of the chimneys, had first attracted my attention to the house. In

that was my clue. There was but one room on this floor where a fire

could be lit. It lay a few feet beyond me down the narrow hall I have

just mentioned. Why had I trusted everything to my ears when my nose

would have been a better guide? As I took the few steps necessary, a

slight smell of smoke became very perceptible, and no longer in doubt

of my course, I pushed boldly on and entering the half-open door,

struck a match and peered anxiously about.

Emptiness here just as everywhere else. A few chairs, a dresser,--it

was a ladies’ dressing-room,--some smouldering ashes on the hearth, a

lounge piled up with cushions. But no person. The sound I had heard

had not issued from this room, yet something withheld me from seeking

further. Chilled to the bone, with teeth chattering in spite of myself,

I paused just inside the door, and when the match went out in my hand

remained shivering there in the darkness, a prey to sensations more

nearly approaching those of fear than any I had ever before experienced

in my whole life.

II

IT WAS SHE--SHE INDEED!

Look on death itself!--up, up, and see

The great doom’s visage!

_Macbeth_.

Why, I did not know. There seemed to be no reason for this excess of

feeling. I had no dread of attack; my apprehension was of another sort.

Besides, any attack here must come from the rear--from the open doorway

in which I stood--and my dread lay before me, in the room itself,

which, as I have already said, appeared to be totally empty. What

could occasion my doubts, and why did I not fly the place? There were

passage-ways yet to search, why linger here like a gaby in the dark

when perhaps the man I believed to be in hiding somewhere within these

walls, was improving the opportunity to escape?

If I asked myself this question, I did not answer it, but I doubt if

I asked it then. I had forgotten the intruder; the interest which had

carried me thus far had become lost in a fresher one of which the

beginning and ending lay hidden within the four walls I now stared

upon, unseeing. Not to see and yet to feel--did that make the horror?

If so, another lighted match must help me out. I struck one while the

thought was hot within me, and again took a look at the room.

I noted but one thing new, but that made me reel back till I was half

way into the hall. Then a certain dogged persistency I possess came to

my rescue, and I re-entered the room at a leap and stood before the

lounge and its pile of cushions. They were numerous,--all that the room

contained, and more! Chairs had been stripped, window-seats denuded,

and the whole collection disposed here in a set way which struck me as

unnatural. Was this the janitor’s idea? I hardly thought so, and was

about to pluck one of these cushions off, when that most unreasonable

horror seized me again and I found myself looking back over my shoulder

at the fireplace from which rose a fading streak of smoke which some

passing gust, perhaps, had blown out into the room.

I felt sick. Was it the smell? It was not that of burning wood, hardly

of burning paper, I--but here my second match went out.

Thoroughly roused now (you will say, by what?) I felt my way out of

the room and to the head of the staircase. I remembered the candle

and candlestick I had heard thrown down on the lower floor by Carmel

Cumberland. I would secure them and come back and settle these uncanny

doubts. It might be the veriest fool business, but my mind was

disturbed and must be set at ease. Nothing else seemed so important,

yet I was not without anxiety for the lovely and delicate woman

wandering the snow-covered roads in the teeth of a furious gale, any

more than I was dead to the fact that I should never forgive myself if

I allowed the man to escape whom I believed to be hiding somewhere in

the rear of this house.

I had a hunt for the candlestick and a still longer one for the candle,

but finally I recovered both, and, lighting the latter, felt myself,

for the first time, more or less master of the situation.

Rapidly regaining the room in which my interest was now centred, I set

the candlestick down on the dresser, and approached the lounge. Hardly

knowing what I feared, or what I expected to find, I tore off one of

the cushions and flung it behind me. More cushions were revealed--but

that was not all.

Escaping from the edge of one of them I saw a shiny tress of woman’s

hair. I gave a gasp and pulled off more cushions, then I fell on my

knees, struck down by the greatest horror which a man can feel. Death

lay before me--violent, uncalled-for death--and the victim was a woman.

But it was not that. Though the head was not yet revealed, I thought I

knew the woman and that she--Did seconds pass or many minutes before

I lifted that last cushion? I shall never know. It was an eternity

to me and I am not of a sentimental cast, but I have some sort of a

conscience and during that interval it awoke. It has never quite slept

since.

The cushion had not concealed the hands, but I did not look at them--I

did not dare. I must first see the face. But I did not twitch this

pillow off; I drew it aside slowly, as though held by the restraining

clutch of some one behind me. And I was so held, but not by what was

visible--rather by the terrors which gather in the soul at the summons

of some dreadful doom. I could not meet the certainty without some

preparation. I released another strand of hair; then the side of a

cheek, half buried out of sight in the loosened locks and bulging

pillows; then, with prayers to God for mercy, an icy brow; two staring

eyes--which having seen I let the cushion drop, for mercy was not to be

mine.

It was _she_, she, indeed! and judgment was glassed in the look I

met--judgment and nothing more kindly, however I might appeal to Heaven

for mercy or whatever the need of my fiercely startled and repentant

soul.

Dead! Adelaide! the woman I had planned to wrong that very night, and

who had thus wronged me! For a moment I could take in nothing but

this one astounding fact, then the how and the why woke in maddening

curiosity within me, and seizing the cushion, I dragged it aside and

stared down into the pitiful and accusing features thus revealed, as

though to tear from them the story of the crime which had released

me as I would not have been released, no, not to have had my heart’s

desire in all the fulness with which I had contemplated it a few short

hours before.

But beyond the ever accusing, protuberant stare, those features told

nothing; and steeling myself to the situation, I made what observation

I could of her condition and the surrounding circumstances. For this

was my betrothed wife. Whatever my intentions, however far my love had

strayed under the spell cast over me by her sister,--the young girl who

had just passed out,--Adelaide and I had been engaged for many months;

our wedding day was even set.

But that was all over now--ended as her life was ended: suddenly,

incomprehensibly, and by no stroke of God. Even the jewel on her finger

was gone, the token of our betrothal. This was to be expected. She

would be apt to take it off before committing herself to a fate that

proclaimed me a traitor to this symbol. I should see that ring again. I

should find it in a letter filled with bitter words. I would not think

of it or of them now. I would try to learn how she had committed this

act, whether by poison or--

It must have been by poison; no other means would suggest themselves

to one of her refined sense; but if so, why those marks on her neck,

growing darker and darker as I stared at them!

My senses reeled as I scrutinised those marks. Small, delicate but

deadly, they stared upon me from either side of her white neck till

nature could endure no more and I tottered back against the further

wall, beholding no longer room, nor lounge, nor recumbent body, but a

young girl’s exquisite face, set in lines which belied her seventeen

years, and made futile any attempt on my part at self-deception when my

reason inexorably demanded an explanation of this death. As suicide it

was comprehensible, as murder, not, unless--

And it had been murder!

I sank to the floor as I fully realised this.

III

“OPEN!”

PRINCE.--Bring forth the parties of suspicion.

FRIAR.--I am the greatest, as the time and place Doth make against me,

of this direful murder; And here I stand, both to impeach and purge.

Myself condemned and myself excused.

_Romeo and Juliet_.

I have mentioned poison as my first thought. It was a natural one, the

result undoubtedly of having noticed two small cordial glasses standing

on a little table over against the fireplace. When I was conscious

again of my own fears, I crossed to the table and peered into these

glasses. They were both empty. However, they had not been so long. In

each I found traces of anisette cordial, and though no bottle stood

near I was very confident that it could readily be found somewhere in

the room. What had preceded and followed the drinking of this cordial?

As I raised my head from bending over these glasses--not club glasses,

by the way--I caught sight of my face in the mantel mirror. It gave me

maddening thoughts. In this same mirror there had been reflected but a

little while before, two other faces, for a sight of whose expression

at that fatal moment I would gladly risk my soul.

How had _she_ looked--how that other? Would not the story of those

awful, those irrevocable moments be plain to my eye, if the quickly

responsive glass could but retain the impressions it receives and give

back at need what had once informed its surface with moving life!

I stared at the senseless glass, appealed to it with unreasoning

frenzy, as to something which could give up its secret if it

would, but only to meet my own features in every guise of fury and

despair--features I no longer knew--features which insensibly increased

my horror till I tore myself wildly from the spot, and cast about for

further clues to enlightenment, before yielding to the conviction which

was making a turmoil in mind, heart, and conscience. Alas! there was

but little more to see. A pair of curling-irons lay on the hearth,

but I had no sooner lifted them than I dropped them with a shudder of

unspeakable loathing, only to start at the noise they made in striking

the tiles. For it was the self-same noise I had heard when listening

from below. These tongs, set up against the side of the fireplace had

been jarred down by the forcible shutting of the large front door, and

no man other than myself was in the house, or had been in the house;

only the two women. But the time when this discovery would have brought

comfort was passed. Better a hundred times that a man--I had almost

said any man--should have been with them here, than that they should

be closeted together in a spot so secluded, with rancour and cause for

complaint in one heart, and a biting, deadly flame in the other, which

once reaching up must from its very nature leave behind it a corrosive

impress. I saw,-I felt,--but I did not desist from my investigations. A

stick or two still smouldered on the hearthstone. In the ashes lay some

scattered fragments of paper which crumbled at my touch. On the floor

in front I espied only a stray hair-pin; everything else was in place

throughout the room except the cushions and that horror on the lounge,

waiting the second look I had so far refrained from giving it.

That look I could no longer withhold. I must know the depth of the

gulf over which I hung. I must not wrong with a thought one who had

smiled upon me like an angel of light--a young girl, too, with the dew

of innocence on her beauty to every eye but mine and only not to mine

within--shall I say ten awful minutes? It seemed ages,--all of my life

and more. Yet that lovely breast had heaved not so many times since I

looked upon her as a deified mortal, and now two small spots on another

woman’s pulseless throat had drawn a veil of blood over that beauty,

and given to a child the attributes of a Medusa. Yet hope was not quite

stilled. I would look again and perhaps discover that my own eyes had

been at fault, that there were no marks, or if marks, not just the ones

my fancy had painted there.

Turning, I let my glance fall first on the feet. I had not noted them

before, and I was startled to see that the arctics in which they

were clad were filled all around with snow. She had walked then, as

the other was walking now; she, who detested every effort and was of

such delicate make that exertion of unusual kind could not readily be

associated with her. Had she come alone or in Carmel’s company, and if

in Carmel’s company, on what ostensible errand if not that of death?

Her dress, which was of dark wool, showed that she had changed her

garments for this trip. I had seen her at dinner, and this was not the

gown she had worn then--the gown in which she had confronted me during

those few intolerable minutes when I could not meet her eyes. Fatal

cowardice! A moment of realisation then and we might all have been

saved this horror of sin and death and shameful retribution.

And yet who knows? Not understanding what I saw, how could I measure

the might-have-beens! I would proceed with my task--note if she wore

the diamond brooch I had given her. No, she was without ornament; I had

never seen her so plainly clad. Might I draw a hope from this? Even

the pins which had fallen from her hair were such as she wore when

least adorned. Nothing spoke of the dinner party or of her having been

dragged here unaware; but all of previous intent and premeditation.

Surely hope was getting uppermost. If I had dreamed the marks--

But no! There they were, unmistakable and damning, just where the

breath struggles up. I put my own thumbs on these two dark spots to

see if--when what was it? A lightning stroke or a call of fate which

one must answer while sense remains? I felt my head pulled around by

some unseen force from behind, and met staring into mine through the

glass of the window a pair of burning eyes. Or was it fantasy? For in

another moment they were gone, nor was I in the condition just then to

dissociate the real from the unreal. But the possibility of a person

having seen me in this position before the dead was enough to startle

me to my feet, and though in another instant I became convinced that

I had been the victim of hallucination, I nevertheless made haste to

cross to the window and take a look through its dismal panes. A gale of

blinding snow was sweeping past, making all things indistinguishable,

but the absence of balcony outside was reassuring and I stepped hastily

back, asking myself for the first time what I should do and where I

should now go to ensure myself from being called as a witness to the

awful occurrence which had just taken place in this house. Should I go

home and by some sort of subterfuge now unthought of, try to deceive

my servants as to the time of my return, or attempt to create an alibi

elsewhere? Something I must do to save myself the anguish and Carmel

the danger of my testimony in this matter. She must never know, the

world must never know that I had seen her here.

I had lost at a blow everything that gives zest or meaning to life, but

I might still be spared the bottommost depth of misery--be saved the

utterance of the word which would sink that erring but delicate soul

into the hell yawning beneath her. It was my one thought now--though

I knew that the woman who had fallen victim to her childish hate had

loved me deeply and was well worth my avenging.

I could not be the death of two women; the loss of one weighed heavily

enough upon my conscience. I would fly the place--I would leave this

ghastly find to tell its own story. The night was stormy, the hour

late, the spot a remote one, and the road to it but little used. I

could easily escape and when the morrow came--but it was the present I

must think of now, this hour, this moment. How came I to stay so long!

In feverish haste, I began to throw the pillows back over the quiet

limbs, the accusing face. Shudderingly I hid those eyes (I understood

their strange protuberance now) and recklessly bent on flight, was half

way across the floor when my feet were stayed--I wonder that my reason

was not unseated--by a sudden and tremendous attack on the great door

below, mingled with loud cries to open which ran thundering through the

house, calling up innumerable echoes from its dead and hidden corners.

It was the police. The wild night, the biting storm had been of no

avail. An alarm had reached headquarters, and all hope of escape on

my part was at an end. Yet because at such crises instinct rises

superior to reason, I blew out the candle and softly made my way into

the hall. I had remembered a window opening over a shed at the head of

the kitchen staircase. I could reach it from this rear hall by just

a turn or two, and once on that shed, a short leap would land me on

the ground; after which I could easily trust to the storm to conceal

my flight across the open golf-links. It was worth trying at least;

anything was better than being found in the house with my murdered

betrothed.

I had no reason to think that I was being sought, or that my presence

in this building was even suspected. It might well be that the police

were even ignorant of the tragedy awaiting them across the threshold

of the door they seemed intent on battering down. The gleam of a

candle burning in this closed-up house, or even the tale told by the

rising smoke, may have drawn them from the road to investigate. Such

coincidences had been. Such untoward happenings had misled people into

useless self-betrayal. My case was too desperate for such weakness.

Flight at this moment might save all; I would at least attempt it. The

door was shaking on its hinges; these intruders seemed determined to

enter.

With a spring I reached the window by which I hoped to escape, and

quickly raised it. A torrent of snow swept in, covering my face and

breast in a moment. It did something more: it cleared my brain, and I

remembered my poor horse standing in this blinding gale under cover

of the snow-packed pines. Every one knew my horse. I could commit no

greater folly than to flee by the rear fields while such a witness to

my presence remained in full view in front. With the sensation of a

trapped animal, I reclosed the window and cast about for a safe corner

where I could lie concealed until I learned what had brought these men

here and how much I really had to fear from their presence.

I had but little time in which to choose. The door below had just given

way and a party of at least three men were already stamping their feet

free from snow in the hall. I did not like the tone of their voices,

it was too low and steady to suit me. I had rather have heard drunken

cries or a burst of wild hilarity than these stern and purposeful

whispers. Men of resolution could have but one errand here. My doom

was closing round me. I could only put off the fatal moment. But it

was better to do this than to plunge headlong into the unknown fate

awaiting me.

I knew of a possible place of concealment. It was in the ballroom

not far from where I stood. I remembered the spot well. It was at

the top of a little staircase leading to the musicians’ gallery. A

balustrade guarded this gallery, supported by a boarding wide enough

to hide a man lying behind it at his full length. If the search I was

endeavouring to evade was not minute enough to lead them to look behind

this boarding, it would offer me the double advantage of concealment

and an unobstructed view of what went on in the hall, through the main

doorway opening directly opposite. I could reach this ballroom and

its terminal gallery without going around to this door. A smaller one

communicated directly with the corridor in which I was then lurking,

and towards this I now made my way with all the precaution suggested by

my desperate situation. No man ever moved more lightly. The shoes which

I had taken off in the lower hall were yet in my hand. I had caught

them up after replacing the cushions on Adelaide’s body. Even to my own

straining ears I made no perceptible sound. I reached the balcony and

had stretched myself out at full length behind the boarding, before the

men below had left the lower floor.

An interval of heart-torture and wearing suspense now followed. They

were ransacking the rooms below by the aid of their own lanterns, as I

could tell from their assured manner. That they had not made at once

for the scene of crime brought me some small sense of comfort, but not

much. They were too resolute in their movements and much too thorough

and methodical in their search, for me to dream of their confining

their investigations to the first floor. Unless I very much mistook

their purpose, I should soon hear them ascending the stairs, after

which, instinct, if not the faint smell of smoke still lingering in the

air, would lead them to the room where my poor Adelaide lay.

And thus it proved. More quickly than I expected, the total darkness

in which I lay, brightened under an advancing lantern, and I heard the

steps of two men coming down the hall. It was a steady if not rapid

approach, and I was quite prepared for their presence when they finally

reached the doorway opposite and stopped to look in at what must have

appeared to them a vast and empty space. They were officials, true

enough--one hasty glance through the balustrade assured me of that. I

even knew one of them by name--he was a sergeant of police and a highly

trustworthy man. But how they had been drawn to this place at a moment

so critical, I could not surmise. Do men of this stamp scent crime

as a hound scents out prey? They had the look of hounds. Even in the

momentary glimpse I got of them, I noted the tense and expectant look

with which they endeavoured to pierce the dim spaces between us. The

chase was on. It was something more than curiosity or a chance exercise

of their duty which had brought them here. Their object was definite,

and if the sight of the low gallery in which I lay, should suggest to

them all its possibilities as a hiding-place, I should know in just one

moment more what it is for the helpless quarry to feel the clutch of

the captor.

But the moment passed without any attempt at approach on their part,

and when I lifted my head again it was to catch a glimpse of their side

faces as they turned to look elsewhere for what they were plainly in

search of. An oath, muffled but stern, which was the first word above

a whisper that I had heard issue from their lips, told me that they

had reached _the_ room and had come upon the horror which lay there.

What would they say to it! Would they know who she was--her name,

her quality, her story--and respect her dead as they certainly must

have respected her living? I listened but caught only a low murmur

as they conferred together. I imagined their movements; saw them in

my mind’s eye leaning over that death-tenanted couch, pointing with

accusing finger at those two dark marks, and consulting each other with

side-long looks, as they passed from one detail of her appearance to

another. I even imagined them crossing the floor and lifting the two

cordial glasses just as I had done, and then slowly setting them down

again, with perhaps a lift of the brows or a suggestive shake of the

head; and maddened by my own intolerable position, drawn by a power I

felt it impossible to resist, I crept to my feet and took my staggering

way down the half-dozen steps of the gallery and thence along by the

left-hand wall towards the further doorway, and through it to where

these men stood weighing the chances in which my life and honour were

involved, and those of one other of whom I dared not think and would

not have these men think for all that was left me of hope and happiness.

It was dark in the ballroom, and it was only a little less so in the

corridor. All the light was in _that_ room; but I still slid along the

wall like a thief, with eyes set and ears agape for any chance word

which might reach me. Suddenly I heard one. It was this, uttered with a

decision which had the strange effect of lifting my head and making a

man of me again:

“That settles it. He will find it hard to escape after this.”

_He!_ I had been dreading to hear a _she_. Yet why? Who on God’s earth,

save myself, could know that Carmel had been within these woeful walls

to-night. _He!_ I never stopped to question who was meant by this

definite pronoun. I was not even conscious of caring very much. I was

in a coil of threatening troubles, but I was in it alone, and, greatly

relieved by the discovery, I drew myself up and stepped quickly forward

into the room where the two officials stood.

Their faces, as they wheeled sharply about and took in my shoeless

and more or less dishevelled figure, told me with an eloquence which

made my heart sink, the unfortunate impression which my presence made

upon them. It was but a fleeting look, for these men were both by

nature and training easy masters of themselves; but its language was

unmistakable and I knew that if I were to hold my own with them, I must

get all the support I could from the truth, save where it would involve

her--from the truth and my own consciousness of innocence, if I had any

such consciousness. I was not sure that I had, for my falseness had

precipitated this tragedy,--how I might never know, but a knowledge

of the how was not necessary to my self-condemnation. Nevertheless my

hands were clean of this murder, and allowing the surety of this fact

to take a foremost place in my mind, I faced these men and with real

feeling, but as little display of it as possible, I observed:

“You have come to my aid in a critical moment. This is my betrothed

wife--the woman I was to marry--and I find her lying here dead, in this

closed and lonely house. What does it mean? I know no more than you do.”

IV

THE ODD CANDLESTICK

It is a damned and a bloody work;

The graceless action of a heavy hand,

If that it be the work of any hand.

_King John_.

The two men eyed me quietly, then Hexford pointed to my shoeless feet

and sternly retorted:

“Permit us to doubt your last assertion. You seem to be in better

position than ourselves to explain the circumstances which puzzle you.”

They were right. It was for me to talk, not for them. I conceded the

point in these words:

“Perhaps--but you cannot always trust appearances. I can explain my

own presence here and the condition in which you find me, but I cannot

explain this tragedy, near and dear as Miss Cumberland was to me. I

did not know she was in the building, alive or dead. I came upon her

here covered with the cushions just as you found her. I have felt the

shock. I do not look like myself--I do not feel like myself; it was

enough--” Here real emotion seized me and I almost broke down. I was in

a position much more dreadful than any they could imagine or should be

allowed to.

Their silence led me to examine their faces. Hexford’s mouth had

settled into a stiff, straight line and the other man’s wore a cynical

smile I did not like. At this presage of the difficulties awaiting me,

I felt one strand of the rope sustaining me above this yawning gulf

of shame and ignominy crack and give way. Oh, for a better record in

the past!--a staff on which to lean in such an hour as this! But while

nothing serious clouded my name, I had more to blush for than to pride

myself upon in my career as prince of good fellows,--and these men knew

it, both of them, and let it weigh in the scale already tipped far off

its balance by coincidences which a better man than myself would have

found it embarrassing to explain. I recognised all this, I say, in the

momentary glance I cast at their stern and unresponsive figures; but

the courage which had served me in lesser extremities did not fail me

now, and, kneeling down before my dead betrothed, I kissed her cold

white hand with sincere compunction, before attempting the garbled and

probably totally incoherent story with which I endeavoured to explain

the inexplainable situation.

They listened--I will do them that much justice; but it was with such

an air of incredulity that my words fell with less and less continuity

and finally lost themselves in a confused stammer as I reached the

point where I pulled the cushions from the couch and made my ghastly

discovery.

“You see--see for yourselves--what confronted me. My betrothed--a

dainty, delicate woman--dead--alone--in this solitary, far-away

spot--the victim of what? I asked myself then--I ask myself now. I

cannot understand it--or those glasses yonder--or _those marks!”_ They

were black by this time--unmistakable--not to be ignored by them or by

me.

“We understand those marks, and you ought to,” came from the second

man, the one I did not know.

My head fell forward; my lips refused to speak the words. I saw as in

a flash, a picture of the one woman bending over the other; terror,

reproach, anguish in the eyes whose fixed stare would never more

leave my consciousness, an access of rage or some such sadden passion

animating the other whose every curve spoke tenderness, whose every

look up to this awful day had been as an angel’s look to me. The vision

was a maddening one. I shook myself free from it by starting to my

feet. “It’s--it’s--” I gasped.

“She has been strangled,” quoth Hexford, doggedly.

“A dog’s death,” mumbled the other.

My hands came together involuntarily. At that instant, with the memory

before me of the vision I have just described, I almost wished that it

had been _my_ hate, _my_ anger which had brought those tell-tale marks

out upon that livid skin. I should have suffered less. I should only

have had to pay the penalty of my crime and not be forced to think

of Carmel with terrible revulsion, as I was now thinking, minute by

minute, fight with it as I would.

“You had better sit down,” Hexford suddenly suggested, pushing a chair

my way. “Clarke, look up the telephone and ask for three more men. I am

going into this matter thoroughly. Perhaps you will tell us where the

telephone is,” he asked, turning my way.

It was some little time before I took in these words. When I did,

I became conscious of his keen look, also of a change in my own

expression. I had forgotten the telephone. It had not yet been taken

out. If only I had remembered this before these men came--I might have

saved--No, nothing could have saved her or me, except the snow, except

the snow. That may already have saved her. All this time I was trying

to tell where the telephone was.

That I succeeded at last I judged from the fact that the second man

left the room. As he did so, Hexford lit the candle. Idly watching,

for nothing now could make me look at the lounge again, I noticed the

candlestick. It was of brass and rare in style and workmanship--a

candlestick to be remembered; one of a pair perhaps. I felt my hair

stir as I took in the details of its shape and ornamentation. If its

mate were in her house--No, no, no! I would not have it so. I could

not control my emotion if I let my imagination stray too far. The

candlestick must be the property of the club. I had only forgotten. It

was bought when? While thinking, planning, I was conscious of Hexford’s

eyes fixed steadily upon me.

“Did you go into the kitchen in your wanderings below?” he asked.

“No,” I began, but seeing that I had made a mistake, I bungled and

added weakly: “Yes; after matches.”

“Only matches?”

“That’s all.”

“And did you get them?”

“Yes.”

“In the dark? You must have had trouble in finding them?”

“Not at all. Only safety matches are allowed here, and they are put in

a receptacle at the side of each door. I had but to open the kitchen

door, feel along the jamb, find this receptacle, and pull the box out.

I’m well used to all parts of the house.”

“And you did this?”

“I have said so.”

“May I ask which door you allude to?”

“The one communicating with the front hall.”

“Where did you light your first match?”

“Upstairs.”

“Not in the kitchen?”

“No, sir.”

“You are sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“That’s a pity. I thought you might be able to tell me how so many wine

and whiskey bottles came to be standing on the kitchen table.”

I stared at him, dazed. Then I remembered the two small glasses on

the little table across the room, and instinctively glanced at them.

But no whiskey had been drunk out of them--the odor of anisette is

unmistakable.

“You carry the key to the wine-cellar?” he asked.

I considered a moment. I did not know what to make of bottles on the

kitchen table. These women and _bottles_! They abhorred wine; they

had reason to, God knows; T remembered the dinner and all that had

signalised it, and felt my confusion grow. But a question had been

asked, and I must answer it. It would not do for me to hesitate about a

matter of this kind. Only what was the question. Something about a key.

I had no key; the cellar had been ransacked without my help; should I

acknowledge this?

“The keys were given up by the janitor yesterday,” I managed to stammer

at last. “But I did not bring them here to-night. They are in my rooms

at home.”

I finished with a gasp. I had suddenly remembered that these keys were

not in my rooms. I had had them with me at Miss Cumberland’s and being

given to fooling with something when embarrassed, I had fooled with

them and dropped them while talking with Adelaide and watching Carmel.

I had meant to pick them up but I forgot and--

“You need say nothing more about it,” remarked Hexford. “I have no

right to question you at all.” And stepping across the room, he took

up the glasses one after the other and smelled of them. “Some sweet

stuff,” he remarked. “Cordial, I should say anisette. There wasn’t

anything like that on the kitchen table. Let us see what there is in

here,” he added, stepping into the adjoining small room into which I

had simply peered in my own investigation of the place.

As he did so, a keen blast blew in; a window in the adjoining room was

open. He cast me a hurried glance and with the door in his hand, made

the following remark:

“Your lady love--the victim here--could not have come through the snow

with no more clothing on her than we see now. She must have worn a hat

and coat or furs or something of that nature. Let us look for them.”

I rose, stumbling. I saw that he did not mean to leave me alone for a

moment. Indeed, I did not wish to be so left. Better any companionship

than that of my own thoughts and of her white upturned face. As I

followed him into this closet he pushed the door wide, pulling out an

electric torch as he did so. By its light we saw almost at first glance

the coat and hat he professed to seek, lying in a corner of the floor,

beside an overturned chair.

“Good!” left my companion’s lips. “That’s all straight. You recognise

these garments?”

I nodded, speechless. A thousand memories rushed upon me at the sight

of the long plush coat which I had so often buttoned about her, with

a troubled heart. How her eyes would seek mine as we stood thus close

together, searching, searching for the old love or the fancied love of

which the ashes only remained. Torment, all torment to remember now, as

Hexford must have seen, if the keenness of his intelligence equalled

that of his eye at this moment.

The window which stood open was a small one,-a mere slit in the wall;

but it let in a stream of zero air and I saw Hexford shiver as he

stepped towards it and looked out. But I felt hot rather than cold, and

when I instinctively put my hand to my forehead, it came away wet.

V

A SCRAP OF PAPER

Look to the lady:--

And when we have our naked frailties hid,

That suffer in exposure, let us meet,

And question this most bloody piece of work,

To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us;

In the great hand of God I stand; and, thence,

Against the undivulg’d pretence I fight

Of treasonous malice.

_Macbeth_.

Shortly after this, a fresh relay of police arrived and I could hear

the whole house being ransacked. I had found my shoes, and was sitting

in my own private room before a fire which had been lighted for me on

the hearth. I was in a state of stupor now, and if my body shook, as

it did from time to time, it was not from cold, nor do I think from

any special horror of mind or soul (I felt too dull for that), but in

response to the shuddering pines which pressed up close to the house

at this point and soughed and tapped at the walls and muttered among

themselves with an insistence which I could not ignore, notwithstanding

my many reasons for self-absorption.

The storm, which had been exceedingly fierce while it lasted, had

quieted down to a steady fall of snow. Had its mission been to serve as

a blanket to this crime by wiping out from the old snow all tell-tale

footsteps and such other records as simplify cases of this kind for the

detectives, it could not have happened more _apropos_ to the event.

From the complaints which had already reached my ears from the two

policemen, I was quite aware that even as early as their first arrival,

they had found a clean page where possibly a few minutes before the

whole secret of this tragedy may have been written in unmistakable

characters; and while this tilled me with relief in one way, it added

to my care in another, for the storm which could accomplish so much in

so short a time was a bitter one for a young girl to meet, and Carmel

must have met it at its worst, in her lonesome struggle homeward.

Where was she? Living or dead, where was she now and where was

Adelaide--the two women who for the last six weeks had filled my life

with so many unhallowed and conflicting emotions? The conjecture

passed incessantly through my brain, but it passed idly also and was

not answered even in thought. Indeed, I seemed incapable of sustaining

any line of thought for more than an instant, and when after an

indefinite length of time the door behind me opened, the look I turned

upon the gentleman who entered must have been a strange and far from

encouraging one.

He brought a lantern with him. So far the room had had no other

illumination than such as came from the fire, and when he had set this

lantern down on the mantel and turned to face me, I perceived, with

a sort of sluggish hope, that he was Dr. Perry, once a practising

physician and my father’s intimate friend, now a county official of no

ordinary intelligence and, what was better, of no ordinary feeling.

His attachment to my father had not descended to me and, for the

moment, he treated me like a stranger.

“I am the coroner of this district,” said he. “I have left my bed

to have a few words with you and learn if your detention here is

warranted. You are the president of this club, and the lady whose

violent death in this place I have been called upon to investigate, is

Miss Cumberland, your affianced wife?”

My assent, though hardly audible, was not to be misunderstood. Drawing

up a chair, he sat down and something in his manner which was not

wholly without sympathy, heartened me still more, dispelling some of

the cloudiness which had hitherto befogged my faculties.

“They have told me what you had to say in explanation of your presence

here where a crime of some nature has taken place. But I should

like to hear the story from your own lips. I feel that I owe you

this consideration. At all events, I am disposed to show it. This

is no common case of violence and the parties to it are not of the

common order. Miss Cumberland’s virtue and social standing no one

can question, while you are the son of a man who has deservedly been

regarded as an honour to the town. You have been intending to marry

Miss Cumberland?”

“Yes.” I looked the man directly in the eye. “Our wedding-day was set.”

“Did you love her? Pardon me; if I am to be of any benefit to you at

this crisis I must strike at the root of things. If you do not wish to

answer, say so, Mr. Ranelagh.”

“I do wish.” This was a lie, but what was I to do, knowing how

dangerous it would be for Carmel to have it publicly known where

my affections were really centred and what a secret tragedy of

heart-struggle and jealous passion underlay this open one of foul and

murderous death. “I am in no position to conceal anything from you. I

did love Miss Cumberland. We have been engaged for a year. She was a

woman of fortune but I am not without means of my own and could have

chosen a penniless girl and still been called prosperous.”

“I see, and she returned your love?”

“Sincerely.” Was the room light enough to reveal my guilty flush? She

had loved me only too well, too jealously, too absorbingly for her

happiness or mine.

“And the sister?”

It was gently but gravely put, and instantly I knew that our secret was

out, however safe we had considered it. This man was cognisant of it,

and if he, why not others! Why not the whole town! A danger which up to

this moment I had heard whispered only by the pines, was opening in a

gulf beneath our feet. Its imminence steadied me. I had kept my glance

on Coroner Perry, and I do not think it changed. My tone, I am quite

assured, was almost as quiet and grave as his as I made my reply in

these words:

“Her sister is her sister. I hardly think that either of us would be apt

to forget that. Have you heard otherwise, sir?”

He was prepared for equivocation, possibly for denial, but not for

attack. His manner changed and showed distrust and I saw that I had lost

rather than made by this venturous move.

“Is this your writing?” he suddenly asked, showing me a morsel of paper

which he had drawn from his vest pocket.

I looked, and felt that I now understood what the pines had been trying

to tell me for the last few hours. That compromising scrap of writing

had not been destroyed. It existed for her and my undoing! Then doubt

came. Fate could not juggle thus with human souls and purposes. I had

simply imagined myself to have recognised the words lengthening and

losing themselves in a blur before my eyes. Carmel was no fool even

if she had wild and demoniacal moments. This could not be my note to

her,--that fatal note which would make all denial of our mutual passion

unavailing.

“Is it your writing?” my watchful inquisitor repeated.

I looked again. The scrap was smaller than my note had been when it

left my hands. If it were the same, then some of the words were gone.

Were they the first ones or the last? It would make a difference in the

reading, or rather, in the conclusions to be drawn from what remained.

If only the mist would clear from before my eyes, or he would hold the

slip of paper nearer! The room was very dark. The--the--

“Is it your writing?” Coroner Perry asked for the third time.

There was no denying it. My writing was peculiar and quite

unmistakable. I should gain nothing by saying no.

“It looks like it,” I admitted reluctantly. “But I cannot be sure in

this light. May I ask what this bit of paper is and where you found it?”

“Its contents I think you know. As for the last question I think you

can answer that also if you will.”

Saying which, he quietly replaced the scrap of paper in his pocket-book.

I followed the action with my eyes. I caught a fresh glimpse of a

darkened edge, and realised the cause of the faint odour which I had

hitherto experienced without being conscious of it. The scrap had been

plucked out of the chimney. She had tried to burn it. I remembered the

fire and the smouldering bits of paper which crumbled at my touch. And

this one, this, the most important--the only important one of them all,

had flown, half-scorched, up the chimney and clung there within easy

reach.

The whole incident was plain to me, and I could even fix upon the

moment when Hexford or Clarke discovered this invaluable bit of

evidence. It was just before I burst in upon them from the ballroom,

and it was the undoubted occasion of the remark I then overheard:

“_This settles it. He cannot escape us now_.”

During the momentary silence which now ensued, I tried to remember the

exact words which had composed this note. They were few---sparks from

my very heart--I ought to be able to recollect them.

“To-night--10:30 train--we will be married at P----. Come, come, my

darling, my life. She will forgive when all is done. Hesitation will

only undo us. To-night at 10 30. Do not fail me. I shall never marry

any one but you.”

Was that all? I had an indistinct remembrance of having added some

wild and incoherent words of passionate affection affixed to her name.

_Her name_! But it may be that in the hurry and flurry of the moment,

these terms of endearment simply passed through my mind and found no

expression on paper. I could not be sure, any more than I could be

positive from the half glimpse I got of these lines, which portion had

been burned off,--the top in which the word _train_ occurred, or the

final words, emphasising a time of meeting and my determination to

marry no one but the person addressed. The first gone, the latter might

take on any sinister meaning. The latter gone, the first might prove a

safeguard, corroborating my statement that an errand had taken me into

town.

I was oppressed by the uncertainty of my position. Even if I carried

off this detail successfully, others of equal importance might be

awaiting explanation. My poor, maddened, guilt-haunted girl had made

the irreparable mistake of letting this note of mine fly unconsumed

up the chimney, and she might have made others equally incriminating.

It would be hard to find an alibi for her if suspicion once turned

her way. She had not met me at the train. The unknown but doubtless

easily-to-be-found man who had handed me her note could swear to that

fact.

Then the note itself! I had destroyed it, it is true, but its phrases

were so present to my mind--had been so branded into it by the terrors

of the tragedy which they appeared to foreshadow, that I had a dreadful

feeling that this man’s eye could read them there. I remember that

under the compelling power of this fancy, my hand rose to my brow

outspread and concealing, as if to interpose a barrier between him

and them. Is my folly past belief? Possibly. But then I have not told

you the words of this fatal communication. They were these--innocent,

if she were innocent, but how suggestive in the light of her probable

guilt:

“I cannot. Wait till to-morrow. Then you will see the depth of my love

for you--what I owe you--what I owe Adelaide.”

I should see!

I was seeing.

Suddenly I dropped my hand; a new thought had come to me. Had Carmel

been discovered on the road leading from this place?

You perceive that by this time I had become the prey of every

threatening possibility; even of that which made the present a

nightmare from which I should yet wake to old conditions and old

struggles, bad enough, God knows, but not like this--not like this.

Meantime I was conscious that not a look or movement of mine had escaped

the considerate but watchful eye of the man before me.

“You do not relish my questions,” he dryly observed. “Perhaps you would

rather tell your story without interruption. If so, I beg you to be as

explicit as possible. The circumstances are serious enough for perfect

candour on your part.”

He was wrong. They were too serious for that. Perfect candour would

involve Carmel. Seeming candour was all I could indulge in. I took a

quick resolve. I would appear to throw discretion to the winds; to

confide to him what men usually hold sacred; to risk my reputation as a

gentleman, rather than incur a suspicion which might involve others

more than it did myself. Perhaps I should yet win through and save her

from an ignominy she possibly deserved but which she must never receive

at my hands.

“I will give you an account of my evening,” said I. “It will not aid

you much, but will prove my good faith. You asked me a short time ago

if I loved the lady whom I was engaged to marry and whose dead body I

most unexpectedly came upon in this house some time before midnight. I

answered yes, and you showed that you doubted me. You were justified

in your doubts. I did love her once, or thought so, but my feelings

changed. A great temptation came into my life. Carmel returned from

school and--you know her beauty, her fascination. A week in her

presence, and marriage with Adelaide became impossible. But how evade

it? I only knew the coward’s way; to lure this inexperienced young

girl, fresh from school, into a runaway match. A change which now

became perceptible in Miss Cumberland’s manner, only egged me on. It

was not sufficiently marked in character to call for open explanation,

yet it was unmistakable to one on the watch as I was, and betokened

a day of speedy reckoning for which I was little prepared. I know

what the manly course would have been, but I preferred to skulk. I

acknowledge it now; it is the only retribution I have to offer for a

past I am ashamed of. Without losing one particle of my intention,

I governed more carefully my looks and actions, and thought I had

succeeded in blinding Adelaide to my real feelings and purpose. Whether

I did or not, I cannot say. I have no means of knowing now. She has

not been her natural self for these last few days, but she had other

causes for worry, and I have been willing enough to think that these

were the occasion of her restless ways and short, sharp speech and the

blankness with which she met all my attempts to soothe and encourage

her. This evening”--I choked at the word. The day had been one string

of extraordinary experiences, accumulating in intensity to the one

ghastly discovery which had overtopped and overwhelmed all the rest.

“This evening,” I falteringly continued, “I had set as the limit to my

endurance of the intolerable situation. During a minute of solitude

preceding the dinner at Miss Cumberland’s house on the Hill, I wrote a

few lines to her sister, urging her to trust me with her fate and meet

me at the station in time for the ten-thirty train. I meant to carry

her at once to P----, where I had a friend in the ministry who would at

once unite us in marriage. I was very peremptory, for my nerves were

giving way under the secret strain to which they had been subjected

for so long, and she herself was looking worn with her own silent and

uncommunicated conflict.

“To write this note was easy, but to deliver it involved difficulties.

Miss Cumberland’s eyes seemed to be more upon me than usual. Mine were

obliged to respond and Carmel seeing this, kept hers on her plate

or on the one other person seated at the table, her brother Arthur.

But the opportunity came as we all rose and passed together into the

drawing-room. Carmel fell into place at my side and I slipped the note

into her hand. She had not expected it and I fear that the action was

observed, for when I took my leave of Miss Cumberland shortly after,

I was struck by her expression. I had never seen such a look on her

face before, nor can I conceive of one presenting a more extraordinary

contrast to the few and commonplace words with which she bade me

good evening. I could not forget that look. I continued to see those

pinched features and burning eyes all the way home where I went to get

my grip-sack, and I saw them all the way to the station, though my

thoughts were with her sister and the joys I had planned for myself.

Man’s egotism, Dr. Perry. I neither knew Adelaide nor did I know the

girl whose love I had so over-estimated. She failed me, Dr. Perry. I

was met at the station not by herself, but by a letter--a few hurried

lines given me by an unknown man--in which she stated that I had asked

too much of her, that she could not so wrong her sister who had brought

her up and done everything for her since her mother died. I have not

that letter now, or I would show it to you. In my raging disappointment

I tore it up on the place where I received it, and threw the pieces

away. I had staked my whole future on one desperate throw and I had

lost. If I had had a pistol--” I stopped, warned by an uneasy movement

on the part of the man I addressed, that I had better not dilate too

much upon my feelings. Indeed, I had forgotten to whom I was talking. I

realised nothing, thought of nothing but the misery I was describing.

His action recalled me to the infinitely deeper misery of my present

situation, and conscious of the conclusions which might be drawn from

such impulsive utterances, I pulled myself together and proceeded to

finish my story with greater directness.

“I did not leave the station till the ten-thirty train had gone. I had

hopes, still, of seeing her, or possibly I dreaded the long ride back

to my apartments. It was from sheer preoccupation of mind that I drove

this way instead of straight out by Marshall Avenue. I had no intention

of stopping here; the club-house was formally closed yesterday, as you

may know, and I did not even have the keys with me. But, as I reached

the bend in the road where you get your first sight of the buildings, I

saw a thin streak of smoke rising from one of its chimneys, and anxious

as to its meaning, I drove in--”

“Wait, Mr. Ranelagh, I am sorry to interrupt you, but by which gate did

you enter?”

“By the lower one.”

“Was it snowing at this time?”

“Not yet. It was just before the clouds rushed upon the moon. I could

see everything quite plainly.”

My companion nodded and I went breathlessly on. Any question of his

staggered me. I was so ignorant of the facts at his command, of the facts

at any one’s command outside my own experience and observation, that the

simplest admission I made might lead directly to some clew of whose very

existence I was unaware. I was not even able to conjecture by what chance

or at whose suggestion the police had raided the place and discovered

the tragedy which had given point to that raid. No one had told me, and I

had met with no encouragement to ask. I felt myself sliding amid

pitfalls. My own act might precipitate the very doom I sought to avert.

Yet I must preserve my self-possession and answer all questions as

truthfully as possible lest I stumble into a web from which no skill of

my own or of another could extricate me.

“Fastening my horse to one of the pine trees in the thickest clump I

saw--he is there now, I suppose--I crept up to the house, and tried the

door. It was on the latch and I stole in. There was no light on the lower

floor, and after listening for any signs of life, I began to feel my way

about the house, searching for the intruder. As I did not wish to attract

attention to myself, I took off my shoes. I went through the lower rooms,

and then I came upstairs. It was some time before I reached the--the room

where a fire had been lit; but when I did I knew--not,” I hastily

corrected, as I caught his quick concentrated glance, “what had happened

or whom I should find there, but that this was the spot where the

intruder had been, possibly was now, and I determined to grapple with

him. What--what have I said?” I asked in anguish, as I caught a look on

the coroner’s face of irrepressible repulsion and disgust, slight and

soon gone but unmistakable so long as it lasted.

“Nothing,” he replied, “go on.”

But his tone, considerate as it had been from the first, did not deceive

me. I knew that I had been detected in some slip or prevarication. As I

had omitted all mention of the most serious part of my adventure--had

said nothing of my vision of Carmel or the terrible conclusions which her

presence there had awakened--my conscience was in a state of perturbation

which added greatly to my confusion. For a moment I did not know where I

stood, and I am afraid I betrayed a sense of my position. He had to

recall me to myself by an unimportant question or two before I could go

on. When I did proceed, it was with less connection of ideas and a haste

in speaking which was not due altogether to the harrowing nature of the

tale itself.

“I had matches in my pocket and I struck one,” I began. “Afterwards I lit

the candle. The emptiness of the room did not alarm me. I experienced the

sense of tragedy. Seeing the pillows heaped high and too regularly for

chance along a lounge ordinarily holding only two, I tore them off. I saw

a foot, a hand, a tress of bright hair. Even then I did not think of

_her_. Why should I? Not till I uncovered the face did I know the terrors

of my discovery, and then, the confusion of it all unmanned me and I fell

on my knees--”

“Go on! Go on!”

The impetuosity, the suspense in the words astounded me. I stared at the

coroner and lost the thread of my story--What had I to say more? How

account for what must be ever unaccountable to him, to the world, to my

own self, if in obedience to the demands of the situation I subdued my

own memory and blotted out all I had seen but that which it was safe to

confess to?

“There is no more to say,” I murmured. “The horror of that moment made a

chaos in my mind. I looked at the dead body of her who lay there as I

have looked at everything since; as I looked at the police when they

came--as I look at you now. But I know nothing. It is all a

phantasmagoria to me--with no more meaning than a nightmare. She is

dead--I know that--but beyond that, all is doubt--confusion--what the

world and all its passing show is to a blind man. I can neither

understand nor explain.”

VI

COMMENTS AND REFLECTIONS

There is no agony and no solace left;

Earth can console, Heaven can torment, no more

_Prometheus Unbound_

The coroner’s intent look which had more or less sustained me through

this ordeal, remained fixed upon my face as though he were still

anxious to see me exonerate myself. How much did he know? That was the

question. _How much did he know_?

Having no means of telling, I was forced to keep silent. I had revealed

all I dared to. As I came to this conclusion, his eyes fell and I knew

that the favorable minute had passed.

The question he now asked proved it.

“You say that you were not blind to surrounding objects, even if they

conveyed but little meaning to you. You must have seen, then, that the

room where Miss Cumberland lay contained two small cordial glasses,

both still moist with some liqueur.”

“I noticed that, yes.”

“Some one must have drunk with her?”

“I cannot contradict you.”

“Was Miss Cumberland fond of that sort of thing?”

“She detested liquor of all kinds. She never drank I never saw a woman

so averse to wine.” I spoke before I thought. I might better have been

less emphatic, but the mystery of those glasses had affected me from

the first. Neither she nor Carmel ever allowed themselves so much as a

social glass, yet those glasses had been drained. “Perhaps the cold--”

“There was a third glass. We found it in the adjoining closet. It had

not been used. That third glass has a meaning if only we could find it

out.”

A possibility which had risen in my mind faded at these words.

“Three glasses,” I dully repeated.

“And a small flask of cordial. The latter seems pure enough.”

“I cannot understand it.” The phrase had become stereotyped. No other

suggested itself to me.

“The problem would be simple enough if it were not for those-marks on

her neck. You saw those, too, I take it?”

“Yes. Who made them? What man--”

The lie, or rather the suggestion of a lie, flushed my face. I was

conscious of this, but it did not trouble me. I was panting for relief.

I could not rest till I knew the nature of the doubt in this man’s

mind. If these words, or any words I could use, would serve to surprise

his secret, then welcome the lie or suggestion of a lie. “It was a

brute’s act,” I went on, bungling with my sentences in anxiety to see

if my conclusions fitted in with his own. “_Who was the brute_? Do you

know, Dr. Perry?”

“There were three glasses in those rooms. Only two were drank from,”

he answered, steadily. “Tomorrow I may be in a position to answer your

question. I am not to-night.”

Why did I take heart? Not a change, not the flicker of one had passed

over his countenance at my utterance of the word _man_. Either his

official habit had stood him in wonderful stead, or the police had

failed so far to see any connection between this murder and the young

girl whose footprints, for all I knew, still lingered on the stairs.

Would the morrow arm them with completer knowledge? As I turned from

his retreating figure and flung myself down before the hearth, this was

the question I continually propounded to myself, in vain repetition.

Would the morrow reveal the fact that Adelaide’s young sister had been

with her in the hour of death, or would the fates propitiously aid her

in preserving this secret as they had already aided her in selecting

for the one man who shared it, him who of all others was bound by

honour and personal consideration for her not to divulge what he knew.

Thus the hours between two and seven passed when I fell into a fitful

sleep, from which I was rudely wakened by a loud rattle at my door,

followed by the entrance of the officer who had walked up and down the

corridor all night.

“The waggon is here,” said he. “Breakfast will be given you at the

station.”

To which Hexford, looking over his shoulder, added: “I’m sorry to say

that we have here the warrant for your arrest. Can I do anything for

you?”

“Warrant!” I burst out, “what do you want of a warrant? It is as a

witness you seek to detain me, I presume?”

“No,” was his brusque reply. “The charge upon which you are arrested is

one of murder. You will have to appear before a magistrate. I’m sorry

to be the one to tell you this, but the evidence against you is very

strong, and the police must do their duty.”

“But I am innocent, absolutely innocent,” I protested, the perspiration

starting from every pore as the full meaning of the charge burst upon

me. “What I have told you was correct. I, myself, found her dead--”

Hexford gave me a look.

“Don’t talk,” he kindly suggested. “Leave that to the lawyers.” Then,

as the other man turned aside for a moment, he whispered in my ear,

“It’s no go; one of our men saw you with your fingers on her throat. He

had clambered into a pine tree and the shade of the window was up. You

had better come quietly. Not a soul believes you innocent.”

This, then, was what had doomed me from the start; this, and that

partly burned letter. I understood now why the kind-hearted coroner,

who loved my father, had urged me to tell my tale, hoping that I would

explain this act and give him some opportunity to indulge in a doubt.

And I had failed to respond to the hint he had given me. The act

itself must appear so sinister and the impulse which drove me to it

so incomprehensible, without the heart-rending explanation I dare not

subjoin, that I never questioned the wisdom of silence in its regard.

Yet this silence had undone me. I had been seen fingering my dead

betrothed’s throat, and nothing I could now say or do would ever

convince people that she was dead before my hands touched her,

strangled by another’s clutch. One person only in the whole world would

know and feel how false this accusation was. And yesterday that one’s

trust in my guiltlessness would have thrown a ray of light upon the

deepest infamy which could befall me. But to-day there had settled over

that once innocent spirit, a cloud of too impenetrable a nature for any

light to struggle to and fro between us.

I could not contemplate that cloud. I could not dwell upon her misery,

or upon the revulsion of feeling which follows such impetuous acts. And

it had been an impetuous act--the result of one of her rages. I had

been told of these rages. I had even seen her in one. When they passed

she was her lovable self once more and very penitent and very downcast.

If all I feared were true, she was suffering acutely now. But I gave no

thought to this. I could dream of but one thing--how to save her from

the penalty of crime, a penalty I might be forced to suffer myself and

would prefer to suffer rather than see it fall upon one so young and so

angelically beautiful.

Turning to the officer next me, I put the question which had been

burning in my mind for hours:

“Tell me, how you came to know there was trouble here? What brought you

to this house? There can be nothing wrong in telling me that.”

“Well, if you don’t know--” he began.

“I do not,” I broke in.

“I guess you’d better wait till the chief has had a word with you.”

I suppressed all tokens of my disappointment, and by a not unnatural

reaction, perhaps, began to take in, and busy myself with, the very

considerations I had hitherto shunned. Where was Carmel, and how was

she enduring these awful hours? Had repentance come, and with it a

desire to own her guilt? Did she think of me and the effect this

unlooked-for death would have upon my feelings? That I should suffer

arrest for her crime could not have entered her mind. I had seen her,

but she had not seen me, in the dark hall which I must now traverse as

a prisoner and a suspect. No intimation of my dubious position or its

inevitable consequences had reached her yet. When it did, what would

she do? I did not know her well enough to tell. The attraction she

had felt for me had not been strong enough to lead her to accommodate

herself to my wishes and marry me off-hand, but it had been strong

enough to nerve her arm in whatever altercation she may have had with

her jealous-minded sister. It was the temper and not the strength

of the love which would tell in a strait like this. Would it prove

of a generous kind? Should I have to combat her desire to take upon

herself the full blame of her deed, with all its shames and penalties?

Or should I have the still deeper misery of finding her callous to

my position and welcoming any chance which diverted suspicion from

herself? Either supposition might be possible, according to my judgment

in this evil hour. All communication between us, in spite of our

ardent and ungovernable passion, had been so casual and so slight.

Looks, a whispered word or so, one furtive clasp in which our hands

seemed to grow together, were all I had to go upon as tests of her

feeling towards me. Her character I had judged from her face, which

was lovely. But faces deceive, and the loveliness of youth is not like

the loveliness of age--an absolute mirror of the soul within. Was not

Medusa captivating, for all her snaky locks? Hide those locks and one

might have thought her a Daphne.

What would relieve my doubts? As Hexford drew near me again on our way

to the head of the staircase, I summoned up courage to ask:

“Have you heard anything from the Hill? Has the news of this tragedy

been communicated to Miss Cumberland’s family, and if so, how are they

bearing this affliction?”

His lip curled, and for a minute he hesitated; then something in my

aspect or the straight-forward look I gave him, softened him and he

answered frankly, if coldly:

“Word has gone there, of course, but only the servants are affected by

it so far. Miss Cumberland, the younger, is very ill, and the boy--I

don’t know his name--has not shown up since last evening. He’s very

dissipated, they say, and may be in any one of the joints in the lower

part of the town.”

I stopped in dismay, clutching wildly at the railing of the stairs we

were descending. I had hardly heard the latter words, all my mind was

on what he had said first.

“Miss Carmel Cumberland ill?” I stammered, “too ill to be told?”

I was sufficiently master of myself to put it this way.

“Yes,” he rejoined, kindly, as he urged me down the very stairs I had

seen her descend in such a state of mind a few hours before. “A servant

who had been out late, heard the fall of some heavy body as she was

passing Miss Cumberland’s rooms, and rushing in found Miss Carmel, as

she called her, lying on the floor near the open fire. Her face had

struck the bars of the grate in falling, and she was badly burned. But

that was not all; she was delirious with fever, brought on, they think,

by anxiety about her sister, whose name she was constantly repeating.

They had a doctor for her and the whole house was up before ever the

word came of what had happened here.”

I thanked him with a look. I had no opportunity for more. Half a dozen

officers were standing about the front door, and in another moment I

was bustled into the conveyance provided and was being driven away from

the death-haunted spot.

I had heard the last whisper of those pines for many, many days. But

not in my dreams; it ever came back at night, sinister, awesome,

haunted with dead hopes and breathing of an ever doubtful future.

VII

CLIFTON ACCEPTS MY CASE

This hand of mine

Is yet a maiden and an innocent hand,

Not painted with the crimson spots of blood.

Within this bosom never enter’d yet

The dreadful motion of a murd’rous thought.

_King John_.

My first thought (when I could think at all) was this:

“She has some feeling, then! Her terror and remorse have maddened

her. I can dwell upon her image with pity.” The next, “Will they find

her wet clothes and discover that she was out last night?” The latter

possibility troubled me. My mind was the seat of strange contradictions.

As the day advanced and I began to realise that I, Elwood Ranelagh,

easy-going man of the world, but with traditions of respectable living

on both sides of my house and a list of friends of which any man might

be proud, was in a place of detention on the awful charge of murder, I

found that my keenest torment arose from the fact that I was shut off

from the instant knowledge of what was going on in the house where all

my thoughts, my fears, and shall I say it, latent hopes were centred.

To know Carmel ill and not to know how ill! To feel the threatening

arm of the law hovering constantly over her head and neither to know

the instant of its fall nor be given the least opportunity to divert

it. To realise that some small inadvertance on her part, some trivial

but incriminating object left about, some heedless murmur or burst of

unconscious frenzy might precipitate her doom, and I remain powerless,

bearing my share of suspicion and ignominy, it is true, but not the

chief share if matters befell as I have suggested, which they were

liable to do at any hour, nay, at any minute.

My examination before the magistrate held one element of comfort.

Nothing in its whole tenor went to show that, as yet, she was in the

least suspected of any participation in my so-called crime. But the

knowledge which came later, of how the police first learned of trouble

at the club-house did not add to this sense of relief, whatever

satisfaction it gave my curiosity. A cry of distress had come to them

over the telephone; a wild cry, in a woman’s choked and tremulous

voice: “Help at The Whispering Pines! Help!” That was all, or all they

revealed to me. In their endeavour to find out whether or not I was

present when this call was made, I learned the nature of their own

suspicions. They believed that Adelaide in some moment of prevision

had managed to reach the telephone and send out this message. But what

did I believe? What could I believe? All the incidents of the deadly

struggle which must have preceded the fatal culminating act, were

mysteries which my mind refused to penetrate. After hours of torturing

uncertainty, and an evening which was the miserable precursor of a

still more miserable night, I decided to drop conjecture and await the

enlightenment which must come with the morrow.

It was, therefore, in a condition of mingled dread and expectation that

I opened the paper which was brought me the next morning. Of the shock

which it gave me to see my own name blotting the page with suggestions

of hideous crime, I will not speak, but pass at once to the few gleams

of added knowledge I was able to gather from those abominable columns.

Arthur, the good-for-nothing brother, had returned from his wild

carouse and had taken affairs in charge with something like spirit

and a decent show of repentance for his own shortcomings and the mad

taste for liquor which had led him away from home that night. Carmel

was still ill, and likely to be so for many days to come. Her case was

diagnosed as one of brain fever and of a most dangerous type. Doctors

and nurses were busy at her bedside and little hope was held out of

her being able to tell soon, if ever, what she knew of her sister’s

departure from the house on that fatal evening. That her testimony

on this point would be invaluable was self-evident, for proofs were

plenty of her having haunted her sister’s rooms all the evening in a

condition of more or less delirium. She was alone in the house and this

may have added to her anxieties, all of the servants having gone to the

policemen’s ball. It was on their return in the early morning hours

that she had been discovered, lying ill and injured before her sister’s

fireplace.

One fact was mentioned which set me thinking. The keys of the

club-house had been found lying on a table in the side hall of the

Cumberland mansion--the keys which I have already mentioned as missing

from my pocket. An alarming discovery which might have acted as a

clew to the suspicious I feared, if their presence there had not been

explained by the waitress who had cleared the table after dinner.

Coming upon these keys lying on the floor beside one of the chairs,

she had carried them out into the hall and laid them where they would

be more readily seen. She had not recognised the keys, but had taken

it for granted that they belonged to Mr. Ranelagh who had dined at the

house that night.

They were my keys, and I have already related how I came to drop them

on the floor. Had they but stayed there! Adelaide, or was it Carmel,

might not have seen them and been led by some strange, if not tragic,

purpose, incomprehensible to us now and possibly never to find full

explanation, to enter the secret and forsaken spot where I later found

them, the one dead, the other fleeing in frenzy, but not in such a

thoughtless frenzy as to forget these keys or to fail to lock the

club-house door behind her. That she, on her return home, should have

had sufficient presence of mind to toss these keys down in the same

place from which she or her sister had taken them, argued well for

her clear-headedness up to that moment. The fever must have come on

later--a fever which with my knowledge of what had occurred at The

Whispering Pines, seemed the only natural outcome of the situation.

The next paragraph detailed a fact startling enough to rouse my deepest

interest. Zadok Brown, the Cumberlands’ coachman, declared that

Arthur’s cutter and what he called the grey mare had been out that

night. They were both in place when he returned to the stable towards

early morning, but the signs were unmistakable that both had been out

in the snow since he left the stable at about nine. He had locked the

stable-door at that time, but the key always hung in the kitchen where

any one could get it. This was on account of Arthur, who, if he wanted

to go out late, sometimes harnessed a horse himself. Zadok judged that

he had done so this night, though how the horse happened to be back and

in her stall and no Mr. Arthur in the house, it would take wiser heads

than his to explain. But he was sure the mare had been out.

There was some comment made on this, because Arthur had denied using

his cutter that night. He declared instead that he had gone out on foot

and designated the coachman’s tale as all bosh. “I was not the only one

who had a drop too much down-town,” was the dogged assertion with which

he met all questions on this subject. “I wouldn’t give a snap of my

finger for Zadok’s opinion on any subject, after five hours of dancing

and the necessary drinks. There were no signs of the mare having been

out when I got home.” As this was about noon the next day, his opinion

on this point could not be said to count for much.

As for myself, I felt inclined to believe that the mare had been out,

that one or both of the women had harnessed him and that it was by

these means they had reached The Whispering Pines. The night was too

cold, a storm too imminent, for them to have contemplated so long a

walk on a road so remote as that leading to the club-house. Arthur

was athletic but Adelaide was far from strong and never addicted to

walking under the most favourable conditions. Of all the mysteries

surrounding her dead presence in the club-house, the one which from

the first had struck me as the most inexplicable was the manner of her

reaching there. Now I could understand both that fact and how Carmel

had succeeded in returning in safety to her home. She had ridden both

ways--a theory which likewise explained how she came to wear a man’s

derby and possibly a man’s overcoat. With her skirts covered by a

bear-skin she would present a very fair figure of a man to any one who

chanced to pass her. This was desirable in her case. A man and woman

driving at a late hour through the city streets would attract little,

if any, attention, while two women might. Having no wish to attract

attention, they had resorted to subterfuge--or Carmel had; it was not

like Adelaide to do so. She was always perfectly open, both in manner

and speech.

These were my deductions drawn from my own knowledge. Would others who

had not my knowledge be in any wise influenced to draw the same? Would

the fact that the mare had been out during those mysterious hours when

everybody had appeared to be absent from the house, saving the one

young girl whom they afterwards found stark, staring mad with delirium,

serve to awaken suspicion of her close and personal connection with

this crime? There was nothing in this reporter’s article to show that

such an idea had dawned upon his mind, but the police are not readily

hoodwinked and I dreaded the result of their inquiries, if they chose

to follow this undoubted clew.

Yet, if they let this point slip, where should I be? Human nature is

human all the way through, and I could not help having moments when I

asked myself if this young girl were worth the sacrifice I contemplated

making for her? She was lovely to look at, amiable and of womanly

promise save at those rare and poignant moments when passion would

seize her in a gust which drove everything before it. But were any

of these considerations sufficient to justify me in letting my whole

manhood slip for the sake of one who, whatever the provocation, had

used the strength of her hands against the sister who had been as a

mother to her for so many years. That she had had provocation I did

not doubt. Adelaide, for all her virtues, was not an easy person to

deal with. Upright and perfectly sincere herself, she had no sympathy

with or commiseration for any lack of principle or any display of

selfishness in others. A little cold, a little reserved, a little

lacking in spontaneity, though always correct and always generous

in her gifts and often in her acts, her whole nature would rise at

any evidence of meanness or ingratitude, and though she said little,

you would feel her disapprobation through and through. She would

even change physically. Naturally pallid and of small inconspicuous

features, her eyes on these occasions would so flame and her whole

figure so dilate that she looked like another woman. I have seen her

brother, six feet in height and weighty for his years, cringe under her

few quiet words at these times till she absolutely seemed the taller

of the two. It was only in these moments she was handsome, and had I

loved her, I should probably have admired this passionate purity, this

intolerance of all that was small or selfish or unworthy a good woman’s

esteem. But not loving her, I had merely cherished a wholesome fear

of her displeasure, and could quite comprehend what a full display

of anger on her part might call up in her sensitive, already deeply

suffering sister. The scathing arraignment, the unbearable taunt--Well,

well, it was all dream-work, but I had time to dream and opportunity

for little else, and pictures, which till now I had sedulously kept in

the background of my imagination, would come to the front as I harped

on this topic and weighed in my disturbed mind the following question:

Should I continue the course which I had instinctively taken out of a

natural sense of chivalry, or face my calumniators with the truth and

leave my cause and hers to the justice of men, rather than to the slow

but righteous workings of Providence?

I struggled with the dilemma for hours, the more so, that I did not

stand alone in the world. I had relatives and I had friends, some of

whom had come to see me and gone away deeply grieved at my reticence.

I was swayed, too, by another consideration. I had deeply loved my

mother. She was dead, but I had her honour to think of. Should it

be said she had a murderer for her son? In the height of my inner

conflict, I had almost cried aloud the fierce denial which would arise

at this thought. But ere the word could leave my lips, such a vision

rose before me of a bewildering young face with wonderful eyes and

a smile too innocent for guile and too loving for hypocrisy, that I

forgot my late antagonistic feelings, forgot the claims of my dear,

dead mother, and even those of my own future. Such passion and such

devotion merited consideration from the man who had called them forth.

I would not slight the claims of my dead mother but I would give this

young girl a chance for her life. Let others ferret out the fact that

she had visited the club-house with her sister; I would not proclaim

it. It was enough for me to proclaim my innocence, and that I would do

to the last.

I was in this frame of mind when Charles Clifton called and was allowed

to see me. I had sent for him in one of my discouraged moods. He was

my friend, but he was also my legal adviser, and it was as such I

had summoned him, and it was as such he had now come. Cordial as our

relations had been--though he was hardly one of my ilk--I noted no

instinctive outstretching of his hand, and so did not reach out mine.

Appearances had been too strong against me for any such spontaneous

outburst from even my best friends. I realised that to expect otherwise

from him or from any other man would be to play the fool; and this was

no time for folly. The day for that was passed.

I was the first to speak.

“You see me where you have never thought to see a friend of yours. But

we won’t go into that. The police have good reasons for what they have

done and I presume feel justified in my commitment. Notwithstanding, I

am an innocent man so far as the attack made upon Miss Cumberland goes.

I had no hand in her murder, if murder it is found out to be. My story

which you have read in the papers and which I felt forced to give out,

possibly to my own shame and that of another whom I would fain have

saved, is an absolutely true one. I did not arrive at The Whispering

Pines until after Miss Cumberland was dead. To this I am ready to

swear and it is upon this fact you must rely, in any defence you may

hereafter be called upon to make in my regard.”

He listened as a lawyer would be apt to listen to such statements from

the man who had summoned him to his aid. But I saw that I had made no

impression on his convictions. He regarded me as a guilty man, and what

was more to the point no doubt, as one for whom no plea could be made

or any rational defence undertaken.

“You don’t believe me,” I went on, still without any great bitterness.

“I am not surprised at it, after what the man Clarke has said of seeing

me with my hands on her throat. Any man, friend or not, would take me

for a villain after that. But, Charles, to you I will confess what

cowardice kept me from owning to Dr. Perry at the proper, possibly at

the only proper moment, that I did this out of a wild desire to see

if those marks were really the marks of strangling fingers. I could

not believe that she had been so killed and, led away by my doubts, I

leaned over her and--You shall believe me, you must,” I insisted, as

I perceived his hard gaze remain unsoftened. “I don’t ask it of the

rest of the world. I hardly expect any one to give me credit for good

impulses or even for speaking the plain truth after the discovery which

has been made of my treacherous attitude towards these two virtuous and

devoted women. But you--if you are to act as my counsel--must take this

denial from me as gospel truth. I may disappoint you in other ways.

I may try you and often make you regret that you undertook my case,

but on this fact you may safely pin your faith. She was dead before I

touched her. Had the police spy whose testimony is likely to hang me,

climbed the tree a moment sooner than he did, he would have seen that.

Are you ready to take my case?”

Clifton is a fair fellow and I knew if he once accepted the fact I thus

urged upon him, he would work for me with all the skill and ability

my desperate situation demanded. I, therefore, watched him with great

anxiety for the least change in the constrained attitude and fixed,

unpromising gaze with which he had listened to me, and was conscious of

a great leap of heart as the set expression of his features relaxed,

and he responded almost warmly:

“I will take your case, Ranelagh. God help me to make it good against

all odds.”

I was conscious of few hopes, but some of the oppression under which I

laboured lifted at those words. I had assured one man of my innocence!

It was like a great rock in the weary desert. My sigh of relief bespoke

my feelings and I longed to take his hand, but the moment had not yet

come. Something was wanting to a perfect confidence between us, and I

was in too sensitive a frame of mind to risk the slightest rebuff.

He was ready to speak before I was. “Then, you had not been long on the

scene of crime when the police arrived?”

“I had been in the room but a few minutes. I do not know how long I was

searching the house.”

“The police say that fully twenty minutes elapsed between the time they

received Miss Cumberland’s appeal for help and their arrival at the

club-house. If you were there that long--”

“I cannot say. Moments are hours at such a crisis--I--”

My emotions were too much for me, and I confusedly stopped. He was

surveying me with the old distrust. In a moment I saw why.

“You are not open with me,” he protested. “Why should moments be hours

to you previous to the instant when you stripped those pillows from the

couch? You are not a fanciful man, nor have you any cowardly instincts.

Why were you in such a turmoil going through a house where you could

have expected to find nothing worse than some miserable sneak thief?”

This was a poser. I had laid myself open to suspicion by one

thoughtless admission, and what was worse, it was but the beginning

in all probability of many other possible mistakes. I had never taken

the trouble to measure my words and the whole truth being impossible,

I necessarily must make a slip now and then. He had better be warned

of this. I did not wish him to undertake my cause blindfolded. He must

understand its difficulties while believing in my innocence. Then,

if he chose to draw back, well and good. I should have to face the

situation alone.

“Charles,” said I, as soon as I could perfectly control my speech, “you

are quite just in your remark. I am not and can not be perfectly open

with you. I shall tell you no lies, but beyond that I cannot promise. I

am caught in a net not altogether of my own weaving. So far I will be

frank with you. A common question may trip me up, others find me free

and ready with my defence. You have chanced upon one of the former. I

was in a turmoil of mind from the moment of my entrance into that fatal

house, but I can give no reason for it unless I am, as you hinted, a

coward.”

He settled that supposition with a gesture I had rather not have seen.

It would be better for him to consider me a poltroon than to suspect my

real reasons for the agitation which I had acknowledged.

“You say you cannot be open with me. That means you have certain

memories connected with that night which you cannot divulge.”

“Right, Charles; but not memories of guilt--of active guilt, I mean.

This I have previously insisted on, and this is what you must believe.

I am not even an accessory before the fact. I am perfectly innocent so

far as Adelaide’s death is concerned. You may proceed on that basis

without fear. That is, if you continue to take an interest in my case.

If not, I shall be the last to blame you. Little honour is likely to

accrue to you from defending me.”

“I have accepted the case and I shall continue to interest myself in

it,” he assured me, with a dogged rather than genial persistence. “But

I should like to know what I am to work upon, if it cannot be shown

that her call for help came before you entered the building.”

“That would be the best defence possible, of course,” I replied; “but

neither from your standpoint nor mine is it a feasible one. I have no

proof of my assertion, I never looked at my watch from the time I left

the station till I found it run down this very morning. The club-house

clock has been out of order for some time and was not running. All I

know and can swear to about the length of time I was in that building

prior to the arrival of the police, is that it could not have been very

long, since she was not only dead and buried under those accumulated

cushions, but in a room some little distance from the telephone.”

“That will do for me,” said he, “but scarcely for those who are

prejudiced against you. Everything points so indisputably to your

guilt. The note which you say you wrote to Carmel to meet you at the

station looks very much more like one to Miss Cumberland to meet you at

the club-house.”

It was thus I first learned which part of this letter had been burned

off.[1]

[1] It was the top portion, leaving the rest to read:

_“Come, come my darling, my life. She will forgive when all is done.

Hesitation will only undo us. To-night at 10:30. I shall never marry

any one but you.”_

It was also evident that I had failed to add those expressions of

affection linked to Carmel’s name which had been in my mind and

awakened my keenest apprehension.

“Otherwise,” he pursued, “what could have taken her there? Everybody

who knew her will ask that. Such a night! so soon after seeing you!

It is a mystery any way, but one entirely inconceivable without some

such excuse for her. These lines said ‘Come!’ and she went, for reasons

which may be clear to you who were acquainted with her weak as well as

strong points. Went how? No one knows. By chance or by intention on

her part or yours, every servant was out of the house by nine o’clock,

and her brother, too. Only the sister remained, the sister whom you

profess to have urged to leave the town with you that very evening;

and she can tell us nothing,--may die without ever being able to do

so. Some shock to her feelings--you may know its character and you

may not--drove her from a state of apparent health into the wildest

delirium in a few hours. It was not your letter--if your story is true

about that letter--or she would have shown its effect immediately upon

receiving it; that is, in the early evening. And she did not. Helen,

one of the maids, declares that she saw her some time after you left

the house, and that she wore anything but a troubled look; that, in

fact, her countenance was beaming and so beautiful that, accustomed

as the girl was to her young mistress’s good looks, she was more than

struck by her appearance and spoke of it afterwards at the ball. A

telling circumstance against you, Ranelagh, not only contradicting your

own story but showing that her after condition sprang from some sudden

and extreme apprehension in connection with her sister. Did you speak?”

No, I had not spoken. I had nothing to say. I was too deeply shaken

by what he had just told me, to experience anything but the utmost

confusion of ideas. Carmel beaming and beautiful at an hour I had

supposed her suffering and full of struggle! I could not reconcile it

with the letter she had written me, or with that understanding with her

sister which ended so hideously in The Whispering Pines.

The lawyer, seeing my helpless state, proceeded with his presentation

of my case as it looked to unprejudiced eyes.

“Miss Cumberland comes to the club-house; so do you. You have not the

keys and so go searching about the building till you find an unlocked

window by which you both enter. There are those who say you purposely

left this window unfastened when you went about the house the day

before; that you dropped the keys in her house where they would be

sure to be found, and drove down to the station and stood about there

for a good half hour, in order to divert suspicion from yourself

afterwards and create an alibi in case it should be wanted. I do not

believe any of this myself, not since accepting your assurance of

innocence, but there are those who do believe it firmly and discern

in the whole affair a cool and premeditated murder. Your passion for

Carmel, while not generally known, has not passed unsuspected by your

or her intimates; and this in itself is enough to give colour to these

suspicions, even if you had not gone so far as to admit its power over

you and the extremes to which you were willing to go to secure the wife

you wished. So much for the situation as it appears to outsiders. Of

the circumstantial evidence which links you personally to this crime,

we have already spoken. It is very strong and apparently unassailable.

But truth is truth, and if you only felt free to bare your whole soul

to me as you now decline to do, I should not despair of finding some

weak link in the chain which seems so satisfactory to the police and, I

am forced to add, to the general public.”

“Charles--”

I was very near unbosoming myself to him at that moment. But I caught

myself back in time. While Carmel lay ill and unconscious, I would not

clear my name at her expense by so much as a suggestion.

“Charles,” I repeated, but in a different tone and with a different

purpose, “how do they account for the cordial that was drunk--the two

emptied glasses and the flask which were found in the adjacent closet?”

“It’s one of the affair’s conceded incongruities. Miss Cumberland is a

well-known temperance woman. Had the flask and glasses not come from

her house, you would get no one to believe that she had had anything to

do with them. Have you any hint to give on this point? It would be a

welcome addition to our case.”

Alas! I was as much puzzled by those emptied cordial glasses as he

was, and told him so; also by the presence of the third unused one.

As I dwelt in thought on the latter circumstance, I remembered the

observation which Coroner Perry had made concerning it.

“Coroner Perry speaks of a third and unused glass which was found

with the flask,” I ventured, tentatively. “He seemed to consider it

an important item, hiding some truth that would materially help this

case. What do you think, or rather, what is the general opinion on this

point?”

“I have not heard. I have seen the fact mentioned, but without comment.

It is a curious circumstance. I will make a note of it. You have no

suggestions to offer on the subject?”

“None.”

“The clew is a small one,” he smiled.

“So is the one offered by the array of bottles found on the kitchen

table; yet the latter may lead directly to the truth. Adelaide never

dug those out of the cellar where they were locked up, and I’m sure I

did not. Yet I suppose I’m given credit for doing so.”

“Naturally. The key to the wine-vault was the only key which was

lacking from the bunch left at Miss Cumberland’s. That it was used to

open the wine-vault door is evident from the fact that it was found in

the lock.”

This was discouraging. Everything was against me. If the whole affair

had been planned with an intent to inculpate me and me only, it

could not have been done with more attention to detail, nor could I

have found myself more completely enmeshed. Yet I knew, both from

circumstances and my own instinct that no such planning had occurred.

I was a victim, not of malice but of blind chance, or shall I say of

Providence? As to this one key having been slipped from the rest and

used to open the wine-vault for wine which nobody wanted and nobody

drank--this must be classed with the other incongruities which might

yet lead to my enlargement.

“You may add this coincidence to the other,” I conceded, after I had

gone thus far in my own mind. “I swear that I had nothing to do with

that key.”

Neither could I believe that it had been used or even carried there by

Adelaide or Carmel, though I knew that the full ring of keys had been

in their hands and that they had entered the building by means of one

of them. So assured was I of their innocence in this regard that the

idea which afterwards assumed such proportions in all our minds had, at

this moment, its first dawning in mine, as well as its first outward

expression.

“Some other man than myself was thirsty that night,” I firmly declared.

“We are getting on, Charles.”

Evidently he did not consider the pace a very fast one, but being a

cheerful fellow by nature, he simply expressed his dissatisfaction by

an imperceptible shrug.

“Do you know exactly what the club-house’s wine-vault contained?” he

asked.

“An inventory was given me by the steward the morning we closed. It

must be in my rooms.”

“Your rooms have been examined. You expected that, didn’t you? Probably

this inventory has been found. I don’t suppose it will help any.”

“How should it?”

“Very true; how should it! No thoroughfare there, of course.”

“No thoroughfare anywhere to-day,” I exclaimed. “To-morrow some

loop-hole of escape may suggest itself to me. I should like to sleep on

the matter. I--I should like to sleep on it.”

He saw that I had something in mind of which I had thus far given him

no intimation, and he waited anxiously for me to reconsider my last

words before he earnestly remarked:

“A day lost at a time like this is often a day never retrieved. Think

well before you bid me leave you, unenlightened as to the direction in

which you wish me to work.”

But I was not ready, not by any means ready, and he detected this when

I next spoke.

“I will see you to-morrow; any time to-morrow; meantime I will give you

a commission which you are at liberty to perform yourself or to entrust

to some capable detective. The letter, of which a portion remains,

_was_ written to Carmel, and she sent me a reply which was handed me

on the station platform by a man who was a perfect stranger to me. I

have hardly any memory of how the man looked, but it should be an easy

task to find him and if you cannot do that, the smallest scrap of the

note he gave me, and which unfortunately I tore up and scattered to the

winds, would prove my veracity in this one particular and so make it

easier for them to believe the rest.”

His eye lightened. I presume the prospect of making any practical

attempt in my behalf was welcome.

“One thing more,” I now added. “My ring was missing from Miss

Cumberland’s hand when I took away those pillows. I have reason to

think--or it is natural for me to think--that she planned to return

it to me by some messenger or in some letter. Do you know if such

messenger or such letter has been received at my apartments? Have you

heard anything about this ring? It was a notable one and not to be

confounded with any other. Any one who knew us or who had ever remarked

it on her hand would be able to identify it.”

“I have heard the ring mentioned,” he replied, “I have even heard that

the police are interested in finding it; but I have not heard that they

have been successful. You encourage me much by assuring me that it was

missing from her hand when you first saw her. That ring may prove our

most valuable clew.”

“Yes, but you must also remember that she may have taken it off before

she started for the club-house.”

“That is very true.”

“You do not know whether they have looked for it at her home?”

“I do not.”

“Will you find out, and will you see that I get all my letters?”

“I certainly will, but you must not expect to receive the latter

unopened.”

“I suppose not.”

I said this with more cheerfulness than he evidently expected. My heart

had been lightened of one load. The ring had not been discovered on

Carmel as I had secretly feared.

“I will take good care of your interests from now on,” he remarked, in

a tone much more natural than any he had before used. “Be hopeful and

show a brave front to the district attorney when he comes to interview

you. I hear that he is expected home to-morrow. If you are innocent,

you can face him and his whole office with calm assurance.” Which

showed how little he understood my real position.

There was comfort in this very thought, however, and I quietly remarked

that I did not despair.

“And I _will_ not,” he emphasised, rising with an assumption of ease

which left him as he remained hesitating before me.

It was my moment of advantage, and I improved it by proffering a

request which had been more or less in my mind during the whole of this

prolonged colloquy.

First thanking him for his disinterestedness, I remarked that he had

shown me so much consideration as a lawyer, that I now felt emboldened

to ask something from him as my friend.

“You are free,” said I; “I am not. Miss Cumberland will be buried

before I leave these four walls. I hate to think of her going to

her grave without one token from the man to whom she has been only

too good and who, whatever outrage he may have planned to her

feelings, is not without reverence for her character and a heartfelt

repentance for whatever he may have done to grieve her. Charles, a

few flowers,--white--no wreath, just a few which can be placed on her

breast or in her hand. You need not say whom they are from. It would

seem a mockery to any one but her. Lilies, Charles. I shall feel

happier to know that they are there. Will you do this for me?”

“I will.”

“That is all.”

Instinctively he held out his hand. I dropped mine in it; there was a

slight pressure, some few more murmured words and he was gone.

I slept that night.

VIII

A CHANCE! I TAKE IT

I entreat you then

From one that so imperfectly conjects,

You’d take no notice; nor build yourself a trouble

Out of his scattering and unsure observance:

It were not for your quiet, nor your good,

Nor for my manhood, honesty or wisdom,

To let you know my thoughts.

_Othello_

I slept, though a question of no small importance was agitating my

mind, demanding instant consideration and a definite answer before I

again saw this friend and adviser. I woke to ask if the suggestion

which had come to me in our brief conversation about the bottles taken

from the wine-vault, was the promising one it had then appeared, or

only a fool’s trick bound to end in disaster. I weighed the matter in

every conceivable way, and ended by trusting to the instinct which

impelled me to have resource to the one and only means by which the

scent might be diverted from its original course, confusion be sown in

the minds of the police, and Carmel, as well as myself, be saved from

the pit gaping to receive us.

This was my plan. I would acknowledge to having seen a horse and cutter

leave the club-house by the upper gateway, simultaneously with my

entrance through the lower one. I would even describe the appearance

of the person driving this cutter. No one by the greatest stretch of

imagination would be apt to associate this description with Carmel;

but it might set the authorities thinking, and if by any good chance

a cutter containing a person wearing a derby hat and a coat with an

extra high collar should have been seen on this portion of the road, or

if, as I earnestly hoped, the snow had left any signs of another horse

having been tethered in the clump of trees opposite the one where I

had concealed my own, enough of the truth might be furnished to divide

public opinion and start fresh inquiry.

That a woman’s form had sought concealment under these masculine

habiliments would not, could not, strike anybody’s mind. Nothing in

the crime had suggested a woman’s presence, much less a woman’s active

agency.

On the contrary, all the appearances, save such as I believed known to

myself alone, spoke so openly of a man’s strength, a man’s methods,

a man’s appetite, and a man’s brutal daring that the suspicion which

had naturally fallen on myself as the one and only person implicated,

would in shifting pass straight to another man, and, if he could not

be found, return to me, or be lost in a maze of speculation. This

seemed so evident after a long and close study of the situation that

I was ready with my confession when Mr. Clifton next came. I had even

forestalled it in a short interview forced upon me by the assistant

district attorney and Chief Hudson. That it had made an altogether

greater impression upon the latter than I had expected, gave me

additional courage when I came to discuss this new line of defence with

the young lawyer. I was even able to tell him that, to all appearance,

my long silence on a point so favourable to my own interests had not

militated against me to the extent one would expect from men so alive

to the subterfuges and plausible inventions of suspected criminals.

“Chief Hudson believes me, late as my statement is. I saw it in his

eye.” Thus I went on. “And the assistant district attorney, too. At

least, the latter is willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, which

was more than I expected. What do you suppose has happened? Some new

discovery on their part? If so, I ought to know what it is. Believe me,

Charles, I ought to know what it is.”

“I have heard of no new discovery,” he coldly replied, not quite

pleased, as I could see, either with my words or my manner. “An old one

may have served your purpose. If another cutter besides yours passed

through the club-house grounds at the time you mention, it left tracks

which all the fury of the storm would not have entirely obliterated

in the fifteen minutes elapsing between that time and the arrival of

the police. Perhaps they remember these tracks, and if you had been

entirely frank that night--”

“I know, I know,” I put in, “but I wasn’t. Lay it to my confusion

of mind--to the great shock I had received, to anything but my own

blood-guiltiness, and take up the matter as it now stands. Can’t

you follow up my suggestion? A witness can certainly be found who

encountered that cutter and its occupant somewhere on the long stretch

of open road between The Whispering Pines and the resident district.”

“Possibly. It would help. You have not asked for news from the Hill.”

The trembling which seized and shook me at these words testified to the

shock they gave me. “Carmel!” I cried. “She is worse--dead!”

“No. She’s not worse and she’s not dead. But the doctors say it will

be weeks before they can allow a question of any importance to be put

to her. You can see what that will do for us. Her testimony is too

important to the case to be ignored. A delay will follow which may or

may not be favourable to you. I am inclined to think now that it will

redound to your interests. You are ready to swear to the sleigh you

speak of; that you saw it leave the club-house grounds and turn north?”

“Quite ready; but you must not ask me to describe or in any way to

identify its occupant. I saw nothing but the hat and coat I have told

you about. It was just before the moon went under a cloud, or I could

not have seen that much.”

Is it so hard to preserve a natural aspect in telling or suggesting a

lie that Charles’s look should change as I uttered the last sentence? I

do not easily flush, and since my self-control had been called upon by

the dreadful experiences of the last few days, I had learned to conceal

all other manifestations of feeling except under some exceptional

shock. But a lie embodied in so many words, never came easy to my

lips, and I suppose my voice fell, for his glance became suddenly

penetrating, and his voice slightly sarcastic as he remarked:

“Those clouds obscured more than the moon, I fancy. I only wish that

they had not risen between you and me. This is the blindest case that

has ever been put in my hands. All the more credit to me if I see you

through it, I suppose; but--”

“Tell me,” I broke in, with equal desire to cut these recriminations

short and to learn what was going on at the Cumberland house, “have

you been to the Hill or seen anybody who has? Can’t you give me some

details of--of Carmel’s condition; of the sort of nurse who cares for

her, and how Arthur conducts himself under this double affliction?”

“I was there last night. Miss Clifford was in the house and received

me. She told me that Arthur’s state of mind was pitiful. He was never

a very affectionate brother, you know, but now they cannot get him

away from Carmel’s door. He sits or stands all day just outside the

threshold and casts jealous and beseeching looks at those who are

allowed to enter. They say you wouldn’t know him. I tried to get him to

come down and see me, but he wouldn’t leave his post.”

“Doesn’t he grieve for Adelaide? I always thought that of the two she

had the greater influence over him.”

“Yes, but they cannot get him to enter the place where she lies. His

duty is to the living, he says; at least, his anxiety is there. He

starts at every cry Carmel utters.”

“She--cries out--then?”

“Very often. I could hear her from where I sat downstairs.”

“And what does she say?”

“The one thing constantly. ‘Lila! Lila!’ Nothing more.”

I kept my face in shadow. If he saw it at all, it must have looked as

cold and hard as stone. After a moment, I went on with my queries:

“Does he--Arthur--mention me at all?”

“I did not discuss you greatly with Miss Clifford. I saw that she was

prejudiced, and I preferred not to risk an argument; but she let fall

this much: that Arthur felt very hard towards you and loudly insisted

upon your guilt. She seemed to think him justified in this. You don’t

mind my telling you? It is better for you to know what is being said

about you in town.”

I understood his motive. He was trying to drive me into giving him my

full confidence. But I would not be driven. I simply retorted quietly

but in a way to stop all such future attempts:

“Miss Clifford is a very good girl and a true friend of the whole

Cumberland family; but she is not the most discriminating person in the

world, and even if she were, her opinion would not turn me from the

course I have laid out for myself. Does the doctor--Dr. Carpenter, I

presume,--venture to say how long Carmel’s present delirium will hold?”

“He cannot, not knowing its real cause. Carmel fell ill before the

news of her sister’s death arrived at the house, you remember. Some

frightful scene must have occurred between the two, previous to

Adelaide’s departure for The Whispering Pines. What that scene was can

only be told by Carmel and for her account we must wait. Happily you

have an alibi which will serve you in this instance. You were at the

station during the time we are speaking of.”

“Has that been proved?”

“Yes; several men saw you there.”

“And the gentleman who brought me the--her letter?” It was more than

difficult for me to speak Carmel’s name. “He has not come forward?”

“Not yet; not to my knowledge, at least.”

“And the ring?”

“No news.”

“The nurse--you have told me nothing about her,” I now urged, reverting

to the topic of gravest interest to me. “Is she any one we know or an

importation of the doctor’s?”

“I did not busy myself with that. She’s a competent woman, of course. I

suppose that is what you mean?”

Could I tell him that this was not what I meant at all--that it was

her qualities as woman rather than her qualifications as nurse which

were important in this case? If she were of a suspicious, prying

disposition, given to weighing every word and marking every gesture of

a delirious patient, what might we not fear from her circumspection

when Carmel’s memory asserted itself and she grew more precise in the

frenzy which now exhausted itself in unintelligible cries, or the

ceaseless repetition of her sister’s name. The question seemed of such

importance to me that I was tempted to give expression to my secret

apprehension on this score, but I bethought myself in time and passed

the matter over with the final remark:

“Watch her, watch them all, and bring me each and every detail of the

poor girl’s sickness. You will never regret humouring me in this. You

ordered the flowers for--Adelaide?”

“Yes; lilies, as you requested.”

A short silence, then I observed:

“There will be no autopsy the papers say. The evidences of death by

strangulation are too well defined.”

“Very true. Yet I wonder at their laxity in this. There were signs of

some other agency having been at work also. Those two empty glasses

smelling of cordial--innocent perhaps--yet--”

“Don’t! I can bear no more to-day. I shall be stronger to-morrow.”

Another feeler turned aside. His cheek showed his displeasure, but the

words were kind enough with which he speedily took his leave and left

me to solitude and a long night of maddening thought.

BOOK TWO

SWEETWATER TO THE FRONT

IX

“WE KNOW OF NO SUCH LETTER”

O, he sits high in all the people’s hearts;

And that, which would appear offence in us,

His countenance like richest alchemy

Will change to virtue, and to worthiness.

_Julius Caesar_.

“And you still hold him?”

“Yes, but with growing uncertainty. He’s one of those fellows who

affect your judgment in spite of yourself. Handsome beyond the

ordinary, a finished gentleman and all that, he has, in addition to

these advantages, a way with him that goes straight to the heart in

spite of prejudice and the claims of conscience. That’s a dangerous

factor in a case like this. It hampers a man in the exercise of his

duties. You may escape the fascination, probably will; but at least you

will understand my present position and why I telephoned to New York

for an expert detective to help us on this job. I wish to give the son

of my old friend a chance.”

The man whom Coroner Perry thus addressed, leaned back in his chair and

quietly replied:

“You’re right; not because he’s the son of your old friend, a handsome

fellow and all that, but for the reason that every man should have his

full chance, whatever the appearances against him. Personally, I have

no fear of my judgment being affected by his attractions. I’ve had to

do with too many handsome scamps for that. But I shall be as just to

him as you will, simply because it seems an incredibly brutal crime for

a gentleman to commit, and also because I lay greater stress than you

do on the two or three minor points which seem to favour his latest

declaration, that a man had preceded him in his visit to this lonely

club-house,--a man whom he had himself seen leaving the grounds in a

cutter just as he entered by the opposite driveway.”