The slight faltering observable in the latter word conveyed nothing to

these men.

“Mr. Cumberland,”--the district attorney was very serious,--“this hat

and this coat, old as they are, were worn into town from your house

that night. This we know, absolutely. We can even trace them to the

club-house.”

Mechanically, not spontaneously this time, the young man rose to his

feet, staring first at the man who had uttered these words, then at the

garments which Sweetwater still held in view. No anger now; he was too

deeply shaken for that, too shaken to answer at once--too shaken to be

quite the master of his own faculties. But he rallied after an interval

during which these three men devoured his face, each under his own

special anxiety, and read there possibly what each least wanted to see.

“I don’t know anything about it,” were the words with which Arthur

Cumberland sought to escape from the net which had been thus deftly

cast about him. “I didn’t wear the things. Anybody can tell you what

clothes I came home in. Ranelagh may have borrowed--”

“Ranelagh wore his own coat and hat. We will let the subject of apparel

drop, and come to a topic on which you may be better qualified to

speak. Mr. Cumberland, you have told us that you didn’t know at the

time, and can’t remember now, where you spent that night and most of

the next morning. All you can remember is that it was in some place

where they let you drink all you wished and leave when the fancy

took you, and not before. It was none of your usual haunts. This

seemed strange to your friends, at the time; but it is easier for us

to understand, now that you have told us what had occurred at your

home-table. You dreaded to have your sister know how soon you could

escape the influence of that moment. You wished to drink your fill and

leave your family none the wiser. Am I not right?”

“Yes; it’s plain enough, isn’t it? Why harp on that string? Don’t you

see that it maddens me? Do you want to drive me to drink again?”

The coroner interposed. He had been very willing to leave the burden of

this painful inquiry to the man who had no personal feelings to contend

with; but at this indignant cry he started forward, and, with an air of

fatherly persuasion, remarked kindly:

“You mustn’t mind the official tone, or the official persistence. There

is reason for all that Mr. Fox says. Answer him frankly, and this

inquiry will terminate speedily. We have no wish to harry you--only to

get at the truth.”

“The truth? I thought you had that pat enough. The truth? The truth

about what? Ranelagh or me? I should think it was about me, from the

kind of questions you ask.”

“It is, just now,” resumed the district attorney, as his colleague drew

back out of sight once more. “You cannot remember the saloon in which

you drank. That’s possible enough; but perhaps you can remember what

they gave you. Was it whiskey, rum, absinthe, or what?”

The question took his irritable listener by surprise. Arthur gasped,

and tried to steal some comfort from Coroner Perry’s eye. But that old

friend’s face was too much in shadow, and the young man was forced to

meet the district attorney’s eye, instead, and answer the district

attorney’s question.

“I drank--absinthe,” he cried, at last.

“From this bottle?” queried the other, motioning again to Sweetwater,

who now brought forward the bottle he had picked up in Cuthbert Road.

Arthur Cumberland glanced at the bottle the detective held up, saw the

label, saw the shape, and sank limply in his chair, his eyes starting,

his jaw falling.

“Where did you get that?” he asked, pulling himself together with a

sudden desperate self-possession that caused Sweetwater to cast a

quick significant glance at the coroner, as he withdrew to his corner,

leaving the bottle on the table.

“That,” answered the district attorney, “was picked up at a small hotel

on Cuthbert Road, just back of the markets.”

“I don’t know the place.”

“It’s not far from The Whispering Pines. In fact, you can see the

club-house from the front door of this hotel.”

“I don’t know the place, I tell you.”

“It’s not a high-class resort; not select enough by a long shot, to

have this brand of liquor in its cellar. They tell me that this is of

very choice quality. That very few private families, even, indulge in

it. That there were only two bottles of it left in the club-house when

the inventory was last taken, that those two bottles are now gone, and

that--”

“This is one of them? Is that what you want to say? Well, it may be for

all I know. I didn’t carry it there. I didn’t have the drinking of it.”

“We have seen the man and woman who keep that hotel. They will talk, if

they have to.”

“They will?” His dogged self-possession rather astonished them. “Well,

that ought to please you. I’ve nothing to do with the matter.”

A change had taken place in him. The irritability approaching to

violence, which had attended every speech and infused itself into every

movement since he came into the room, had left him. He spoke quietly,

and with a touch of irony in his tone. He seemed more the man, but not

a whit more prepossessing, and, if anything, less calculated to inspire

confidence. The district attorney showed that he was baffled, and Dr.

Perry moved uneasily in his seat, until Sweetwater, coming forward,

took up the cue and spoke for the first time since young Cumberland

entered the room.

“Then I have no doubt but you will do us this favour,” he volunteered,

in his pleasantest manner. “It’s not a long walk from here. Will you go

there in my company, with your coat-collar pulled up and your hat well

down over your eyes, and ask for a seat in the snuggery and show them

this bottle? They won’t know that it’s empty. The man is sharp and the

woman intelligent. They will see that you are a stranger, and admit you

readily. They are only shy of one man--the man who drank there on the

night of your sister’s murder.”

“You ’re a--” he began, with a touch of his old violence; but

realising, perhaps, that his fingers were in a trap, he modified his

manner again, and continued more quietly. “This is an odd request

to make. I begin to feel as if my word were doubted here; as if my

failings and reckless confession of the beastly way in which I spent

that night, were making you feel that I have no good in me and am at

once a liar and a sneak. I’m not. I won’t go with you to that low

drinking hell, unless you make me, but I’ll swear--”

“Don’t swear.” It is unnecessary to say who spoke. “We wouldn’t believe

you, and it would be only adding perjury to the rest.”

“You wouldn’t believe me?”

“No; we have reasons, my boy. There were two bottles.”

“Well?”

“The other has been found nearer your home.”

“That’s a trick. You’re all up to tricks--”

“Not in this case, Arthur. Let me entreat you in memory of your father

to be candid with us. We have arrested a man. He denies his guilt,

but can produce no witnesses in support of his assertions. Yet such

witnesses may exist. Indeed, we think that one such does exist. The man

who took the bottles from the club-house’s wine-vault did so within a

few minutes of the time when this crime was perpetrated on your sister.

He should be able to give valuable testimony for or against Elwood

Ranelagh. Now, you can see why we are in search of this witness and

why we think you can serve us in this secret and extraordinary matter.

If you can’t, say so; and we will desist from all further questions.

But this will not help you. It will only show that, in our opinion,

you have gained the rights of a man suspected of something more than

shirking his duty as an unknown and hitherto unsuspected witness.”

“This is awful!” Young Cumberland had risen to his feet and was swaying

to and fro before them like a man struck between the eyes by some

maddening blow.

“God! if I had only died that night!” he muttered, with his eyes upon

the floor and every muscle tense with the shock of this last calamity.

“Dr. Perry,” he moaned suddenly, stretching out one hand in entreaty,

and clutching at the table for support with the other, “let me go

for to-night. Let me think. My brain is all in a whirl. I’ll try to

answer to-morrow.” But even as he spoke he realised the futility of his

request. His eye had fallen again on the bottle, and, in its shape and

tell-tale label, he beheld a witness bound to testify against him if he

kept silent himself.

“Don’t answer,” he went on, holding fast to the table, but letting his

other hand fall. “I was always a fool. I’m nothing but a fool now. I

may as well own the truth, and be done with it. I was in the clubhouse.

I did rob the wine-vault; I did carry off the bottles to have a quiet

spree, and it was to some place on Cuthbert Road I went. But, when

I’ve admitted so much, I’ve admitted all. I saw nothing of my sister’s

murder; saw nothing of what went on in the rooms upstairs. I crept in

by the open window at the top of the kitchen stairs, and I came out by

the same. I only wanted the liquor, and when I got it, I slid out as

quickly as I could, and made my way over the golf-links to the Road.”

Wiping the sweat from his brow, he stood trembling. There was something

in the silence surrounding him which seemed to go to his heart; for

his free right hand rose unconsciously to his breast, and clung there.

Sweetwater began to wish himself a million of miles away from this

scene. This was not the enjoyable part of his work. This was the part

from which he always shrunk with overpowering distaste.

The district attorney’s voice sounded thin, almost piercing, as he made

this remark:

“You entered by an open window. Why didn’t you go in by the door?”

“I hadn’t the key. I had only abstracted the one which opens the

wine-vault. The rest I left on the ring. It was the sight of this key,

lying on our hall-table, which first gave me the idea. I feel like a

cad when I think of it, but that’s of no account now. All I really care

about is for you to believe what I tell you. I wasn’t mixed up in that

matter of my sister’s death. I didn’t know about it--I wish I had.

Adelaide might have been saved; we might all have been saved; _but it

was not to be._”

Flushed, he slowly sank back into his seat. No complaint, now, of being

in a hurry, or of his anxiety to regain his sick sister’s bedside.

He seemed to have forgotten those fears in the perturbations of the

moment. His mind and interest were here; everything else had grown dim

with distance.

“Did you try the front door?”

“What was the use? I knew it to be locked.”

“What was the use of trying the window? Wasn’t it also, presumably,

locked?”

The red mounted hot and feverish to his cheek.

“You’ll think me no better than a street urchin or something worse,” he

exclaimed. “I knew that window; I had been through it before. You can

move that lock with your knife-blade. I had calculated on entering that

way.”

“Mr. Ranelagh’s story receives confirmation,” commented the district

attorney, wheeling suddenly towards the coroner. “He says that he found

this window unlocked, when he approached it with the idea of escaping

that way.”

Arthur Cumberland remained unmoved.

The district attorney wheeled back.

“There were a number of bottles taken from the wine-vault; some half

dozen were left on the kitchen table. Why did you trouble yourself to

carry up so many?”

“Because my greed outran my convenience. I thought I could lug away an

armful, but there are limits to one’s ability. I realised this when I

remembered how far I had to go, and so left the greater part of them

behind.”

“Why, when you had a team ready to carry you?”

“A--I had no team.” But the denial cost him something. His cheek lost

its ruddiness, and took on a sickly white which did not leave it again

as long as the interview lasted.

“You had no team? How then did you manage to reach home in time to make

your way back to Cuthbert Road by half-past eleven?”

“I didn’t go home. I went straight across the golf-links. If fresh snow

hadn’t fallen, you would have seen my tracks all the way to Cuthbert

Road.”

“If fresh snow had not fallen, we should have known the whole story of

that night before an hour had passed. How did you carry those bottles?”

“In my overcoat pockets. These pockets,” he blurted out, clapping his

hands on either side of him.

“Had it begun to snow when you left the clubhouse?”

“No.”

“Was it dark?”

“I guess not; the links were bright as day, or I shouldn’t have got

over them as quickly as I did.”

“Quickly? How quickly?” The district attorney stole a glance at the

coroner, which made Sweetwater advance a step from his corner.

“I don’t know. I don’t understand these questions,” was the sullen

reply.

“You walked quickly. Does that mean you didn’t look back?”

“How, look back?”

“Your sister lit a candle in the small room where her coat was found.

This light should have been visible from the golf-links.”

“I didn’t see any light.”

He was almost rough in these answers. He was showing himself now at his

very worst.

A few more questions followed, but they were of minor import, and

aroused less violent feeling. The serious portion of the examination,

if thus it might be called, was over, and all parties showed the

reaction which follows all unnatural restraint or subdued excitement.

The coroner glanced meaningly at the district attorney, who, tapping

with his fingers on the table, hesitated for a moment before he finally

turned again upon Arthur Cumberland.

“You wish to return to your sister? You are at liberty to do so; I will

trouble you no more to-night. Your sleigh is at the door, I presume.”

The young man nodded, then rising slowly, looked first at the district

attorney, then at the coroner, with a glance of searching inquiry which

did not escape the watchful eye of Sweetwater, lurking in the rear.

There was no display of anger, scarcely of impatience, in him now. If

he spoke, they did not hear him; and when he moved, it was heavily and

with a drooping head. They watched him go, each as silent as he. The

coroner tried to speak, but succeeded no better than the boy himself.

When the door opened under his hand, they all showed relief, but were

startled back into their former attention by his turning suddenly in

the doorway with this final remark:

“What did you say about a bottle with a special label on it being found

at our house? It never was, or, if it was, some fellow has been playing

you a trick. I carried off those two bottles myself. One you see there;

the other is--I can’t tell where; but I didn’t take it home. That you

can bet on.”

One more look, followed by a heavy frown and a low growling sound in

his throat--which may have been his way of saying good-bye--and he was

gone.

Sweetwater came forward and shut the door; then the three men drew more

closely together, and the district attorney remarked:

“He is better at the house. I hadn’t the heart on your account, Dr.

Perry, to hurry matters faster than necessity compels. What a lout he

is! Pardon me, but what a lout he is to have had two such uncommon and

attractive sisters.”

“And such a father,” interposed the coroner.

“Just so--and such a father. Sweetwater? Hey! what’s the matter? You

don’t look satisfied. Didn’t I cover the ground?”

“Fully, sir, so far as I see now, but--”

“Well, well--out with it.”

“I don’t know what to out with. It’s all right but--I guess I’m a

fool, or tired, or something. Can I do anything more for you? If not,

I should like to hunt up a bunk. A night’s sleep will make a man of me

again.”

“Go then; that is, if Dr. Perry has no orders for you.”

“None. I want my sleep, too.” But Dr. Perry had not the aspect of one

who expects to get it.

Sweetwater brightened. A few more words, some understanding as to the

morrow, and he was gone. The district attorney and the coroner still

sat, but very little passed between them. The clock overhead struck

the hour; both looked up but neither moved. Another fifteen minutes,

then the telephone rang. The coroner rose and lifted the receiver. The

message could be heard by both gentlemen, in the extreme quiet of this

midnight hour.

“Dr. Perry?”

“Yes, I’m listening.”

“He came in at a quarter to twelve, greatly agitated and very white.

I ran upon him in the lower hall, and he looked angry enough to knock

me down; but he simply let out a curse and passed straight up to his

sister’s room. I waited till he came out; then I managed to get hold of

the nurse and she told me this queer tale:

“He was all in a tremble when he came in, but she declares he had not

been drinking. He went immediately to the bedside; but his sister was

asleep, and he didn’t stay there, but went over where the nurse was,

and began to hang about her till suddenly she felt a twitch at her side

and, looking quickly, saw the little book she carries there, falling

back into place. He had lifted it, and probably read what she had

written in it during his absence.

“She was displeased, but he laughed when he saw that he had been caught

and said boldly: ‘You are keeping a record of my sister’s ravings.

Well, I think I’m as interested in them as you are, and have as much

right to read as you to write. Thank God! they are innocent enough.

Even you must acknowledge that,’ She made no answer, for they were

innocent enough; but she’ll keep the book away from him after this--of

that you may be sure.”

“And what is he doing now? Is he going into his own room to-night?”

“No. He went there but only to bring out his pillows. He will sleep in

the alcove.”

“Drink?”

“No, not a drop. He has ordered the whiskey locked up. I hear him

moaning sometimes to himself as if he missed it awfully, but not a

thimbleful has left the decanter.”

“Goodnight, Hexford.”

“Good night.”

“You heard?” This to the district attorney.

“Every word.”

Both went for their overcoats. Only on leaving did they speak again,

and then it was to say:

“At ten o’clock to-morrow morning.”

“At ten o’clock.”

XVIII

ON IT WAS WRITTEN--

Can this avail thee? Look to it!

_Prometheus Bound_.

The district attorney was right; Sweetwater was not happy. His night’s

rest had not benefited him. He had seemed natural enough when he first

appeared at the coroner’s office in the early morning, and equally

natural all through the lengthy conference which followed; but a half

hour later, any one who knew him well,--any of his fellow detectives in

New York; especially Mr. Gryce, who had almost fathered him since he

came among them, a raw and inexperienced recruit--would have seen at

first glance that his spirits were no longer at par, and that the cheer

he displayed in manner and look was entirely assumed, and likely to

disappear as soon as he found himself alone.

And it did so disappear. When, at two o’clock, he entered the

club-house grounds, it was without buoyancy or any of the natural

animation with which he usually went about his work. Each step seemed

weighted with thought, or, at least, heavy with inner dissatisfaction.

But his eye was as keen as ever, and he began to use that eye from the

moment he passed the gates. What was in his mind? Was he hunting for

new clews, or was he merely seeking to establish the old?

The officers on guard knew him, by this time, and let him pass hither,

thither, and where he would, unmolested. He walked up and down the

driveways, peering continuously at the well-trodden snow. He studied

the spaces between. He sauntered to the rear, and looked out over the

golf-links. Then he began to study the ground in this direction, as he

had already studied it in front. The few mutterings which left his lips

continued to speak of discontent. “If I had only had Clarke’s chance,

or even Hexford’s,” was among his complaints. “But what can I hope now?

The snow has been trampled till it is one solid cake of ice, to the

very edge of the golf-links. Beyond that, the distance is too great

for minute inspection. Yet it will have to be gone over, inch by inch,

before I shall feel satisfied. I must know how much of his story is to

be believed, and how much of it we can safely set aside.”

He ended by wandering down on the golf-links. Taking out his watch, he

satisfied himself that he had time for an experiment, and immediately

started for Cuthbert Road. An hour later, he came wandering back, on a

different line. He looked soured, disappointed. When near the building

again, he cast his eye over its rear, and gazed long and earnestly at

the window which had been pointed out to him as the one from which

a possible light had shone forth that night. There were no trees on

this side of the house--only vines. But the vines were bare of leaves

and offered no obstruction to his view. “If there had been a light

in that window, any one leaving this house by the rear would have

seen it, unless he had been drunk or a fool,” muttered Sweetwater, in

contemptuous comment to himself. “Arthur Cumberland’s story is one lie.

I’ll take the district attorney’s suggestion and return to New York

to-night. My work’s done here.”

Yet he hung about the links for a long time, and finally ended by

entering the house, and taking up his stand beneath the long, narrow

window of the closet overlooking the golf-links. With chin resting on

his arms, he stared out over the sill and sought from the space before

him, and from the intricacies of his own mind, the hint he lacked

to make this present solution of the case satisfactory to all his

instincts.

“Something is lacking.” Thus he blurted out after a look behind him

into the adjoining room of death. “I can’t say what; nor can I explain

my own unrest, or my disinclination to leave this spot. The district

attorney is satisfied, and so, I’m afraid is the coroner; but I’m not,

and I feel as guilty--”

Here he threw open the window for air, and, thrusting his head out,

glanced over the links, then aside at the pines, showing beyond the

line of the house on the southern end, and then out of mere idleness,

down at the ground beneath him. “As guilty,” he went on, “as Ranelagh

appears to be, and some one really is. I--”

Starting, he leaned farther out. What was that he saw in the vines--not

on the snow of the ground, but half way up in the tangle of small

branches clinging close to the stone of the lower story, just beneath

this window? He would see. Something that glistened, something that

could only have got there by falling from this window. Could he reach

it? No; he would have to climb up from below to do that. Well, that

was easy enough. With the thought, he rushed from the room. In another

minute he was beneath that window; had climbed, pulled, pushed his way

up; had found the little pocket of netted vines observable from above;

had thrust in his fingers and worked a small object out; had looked

at it, uttered an exclamation curious in its mixture of suppressed

emotions, and let himself down again into the midst of the two or three

men who had scented the adventure and hastened to be witnesses of its

outcome.

“A phial!” he exclaimed, “An empty phial, but--” Holding the little

bottle up between his thumb and forefinger, he turned it slowly about

until the label faced them.

On it was written one word, but it was a word which invariably carries

alarm with it.

That word was: _Poison_.

Sweetwater did not return to New York that night.

XIX

“IT’S NOT WHAT YOU WILL FIND”

I am not mad;--I would to heaven I were!

For then, ’tis like I should forget myself:

O, if I could, what grief should I forget!--

Preach some philosophy to make me mad,

For being not mad, but sensible of grief,

My reasonable part produces reason

How I may be delivered of these woes.

_King John_.

“I regret to disturb you, Arthur; but my business is of great

importance, and should be made known to you at once. This I say as a

friend. I might have waited for the report to have reached you from

hearsay, or through the evening papers; but I preferred to be the one

to tell you. You can understand why.”

Sullen and unmollified, the young man thus addressed eyed,

apprehensively, his father’s old friend, placed so unfortunately in his

regard, and morosely exclaimed:

“Out with it! I’m a poor hand at guessing. What has happened now?”

“A discovery. A somewhat serious one I fear; at least, it will force

the police to new action. Your sister may not have died entirely from

strangulation; other causes may have been at work!”

“Now, what do you mean by that?” Arthur Cumberland was under his own

roof and in presence of one who should have inspired his respect; but

he made no effort to hide the fury which these words called up. “I

should like to know what deviltry is in your minds now. Am I never to

have peace?”

“Peace and tragedy do not often run together,” came in the mild tones

of his would-be friend. “A great crime has taken place. All the members

of this family are involved--to say nothing of the man who lies, now,

under the odium of suspicion, in our common county jail. Peace can only

come with the complete clearing up of this crime, and the punishment

of the guilty. But the clearing up must antedate the punishment.

Mr. Ranelagh’s assertion that he found Miss Cumberland dead when he

approached her, may not be, as so many now believe, the reckless denial

of a criminal, disturbed in his act. It may have had a basis in fact.”

“I don’t believe it. Nothing will make me believe it,” stormed the

other, jumping up, and wildly pacing the drawing-room floor. “It is all

a scheme for saving the most popular man in society. Society! That for

society!” he shouted out, snapping his fingers. “He is president of the

club; the pet of women; the admired of all the dolts and gawks who are

taken with his style, his easy laughter, and his knack at getting at

men’s hearts. He won’t laugh so easily when he’s up before a jury for

murder; and he’ll never again fool women or bulldoze men, even if they

are weak enough to acquit him of this crime. Enough of the smirch will

stick to prevent that. If it doesn’t, I’ll--”

Again his hands went out in the horribly suggestive way they had done

at his sister’s funeral. The coroner sat appalled,--confused, almost

distracted between his doubts, his convictions, his sympathy for the

man and his recoil from the passions he would be only too ready to

pardon if he could feel quite sure of their real root and motive.

Cumberland may have felt the other’s silence, or he may have realised

the imprudence of his own fury; for he dropped his hands with an

impatient sigh, and blurted out:

“But you haven’t told me your discovery. It seems to me it is a little

late to make discoveries now.”

“This was brought about by the persistence of Sweetwater. He seems

to have an instinct for things. He was leaning out of the window at

the rear of the clubhouse--the window of that small room where your

sister’s coat was found--and he saw, caught in the vines beneath, a--”

“Why don’t you speak out? I cannot tell what he found unless you name

it.”

“A little bottle--an apothecary’s phial. It was labelled ‘Poison,’ and

it came from this house.”

Arthur Cumberland reeled; then he caught himself up and stood, staring,

with a very obvious intent of getting a grip on himself before he spoke.

The coroner waited, a slight flush deepening on his cheek.

“How do you know that phial came from this house?”

Dr. Perry looked up, astonished. He was prepared for the most frantic

ebullitions of wrath, for violence even; or for dull, stupid, blank

silence. But this calm, quiet questioning of fact took him by surprise.

He dropped his anxious look, and replied:

“It has been seen on the shelves by more than one of your servants.

Your sister kept it with her medicines, and the druggist with whom you

deal remembers selling it some time ago to a member of your family.”

“Which member? I don’t believe this story; I don’t believe any of

your--” He was fast verging on violence now.

“You will have to, Arthur. Facts are facts, and we cannot go against

them. The person who bought it was yourself. Perhaps you can recall the

circumstance now.”

“I cannot.” He did not seem to be quite master of himself. “I don’t

know half the things I do; at least, I didn’t use to. But what are

you coming to? What’s in your mind, and what are your intentions?

Something to shame us further, I’ve no doubt. You’re soft on Ranelagh

and don’t care how I feel, or how Carmel will feel when she comes to

herself--poor girl. Are you going to call it suicide? You can’t, with

those marks on her throat.”

“We’re going to carry out our investigations to the full. We’re going

to hold the autopsy, which we didn’t think necessary before. That’s

why I am here, Arthur. I thought it your due to know our intentions

in regard to this matter. If you wish to be present, you have only to

say so; if you do not, you may trust me to remember that she was your

father’s daughter, as well as my own highly esteemed friend.”

Shaken to the core, the young man sat down amid innumerable tokens of

the two near, if not dear, ones just mentioned; and for a moment had

nothing to say. Gone was his violence, gone his self-assertion, and

his insolent, captious attitude towards his visitor. The net had been

drawn too tightly, or the blow fallen too heavily. He was no longer a

man struggling with his misery, but a boy on whom had fallen a man’s

responsibilities, sufferings, and cares.

“My duty is here,” he said at last. “I cannot leave Carmel.”

“The autopsy will take place to-morrow. How is Carmel to-day?”

“No better.” The words came with a shudder. “Doctor, I’ve been a brute

to you. I am a brute! I have misused my life and have no strength with

which to meet trouble. What you propose to do with--with Adelaide is

horrible to me. I didn’t love her much while she was living; I broke

her heart and shamed her, from morning till night, every day of her

life; but good-for-nothing as I am and good-for-nothing as I’ve always

been, if I could save her body this last humiliation, I would willingly

die right here and now, and be done with it. Must this autopsy take

place?”

“It must.”

“Then--” He raised his arm; the blood swept up, dyeing his cheeks, his

brow, his very neck a vivid scarlet. “Tell them to lock up every bottle

the house holds, or I cannot answer for myself. I should like to drink

and drink till I knew nothing, cared for nothing, was a madman or a

beast.”

“You will not drink.” The coroner’s voice rang deep; he was greatly

moved. “You will not drink, and you will come to the office at five

o’clock to-morrow. We may have only good news to impart. We may find

nothing to complicate the situation.”

Arthur Cumberland shook his head. “It’s not what you will find--” said

he, and stopped, biting his lips and looking down.

The coroner uttered a few words of consolation forced from him by the

painfulness of the situation. The young man did not seem to hear them.

The only sign of life he gave was to rush away the moment the coroner

had taken his leave, and regain his seat within sight and hearing of

his still unconscious sister. As he did so, these words came to his

ears through the door which separated them:

“Flowers--I smell flowers! Lila, you always loved flowers; but I never

saw your hands so full of them.”

Arthur uttered a sharp cry; then, bowing his face upon his aims, he

broke into sobs which shook the table where he sat.

Twenty-four hours later, in the coroner’s office, sat an anxious group

discussing the great case and the possible revelations awaiting them.

The district attorney, Mr. Clifton, the chief of police, and one or two

others--among them Sweetwater--made up the group, and carried on the

conversation. Dr. Perry only was absent. He had undertaken to make the

autopsy and had been absent, for this purpose, several hours.

Five o’clock had struck, and they were momentarily looking for his

reappearance; but, when the door opened, as it did at this time, it was

to admit young Cumberland, whose white face and shaking limbs betrayed

his suspense and nervous anxiety.

He was welcomed coldly, but not impolitely, and sat down in very much

the same place he had occupied during his last visit, but in a very

different, and much more quiet state of mind. To Sweetwater, his aspect

was one of despair, but he made no remark upon it; only kept all his

senses alert for the coming moment, of so much importance to them all.

But even he failed to guess how important, until the door opened again,

and the coroner appeared, looking not so much depressed as stunned.

Picking out Arthur from the group, he advanced towards him with some

commonplace remark; but desisted suddenly and turned upon the others

instead.

“I have finished the autopsy,” said he. “I knew just what poison the

phial had held, and lost no time in my tests. A minute portion of

this drug, which is dangerous only in large quantities, was found

in the stomach of the deceased; but not enough to cause serious

trouble, and she died, as we had already decided, from the effect of

the murderous clutch upon her throat. But,” he went on sternly, as

young Cumberland moved, and showed signs of breaking in with one of

his violent invectives against the supposed assassin, “I made another

discovery of still greater purport. When we lifted the body out of its

resting-place, something beside withered flowers slid from her breast

and fell at our feet. The ring, gentlemen--the ring which Ranelagh says

was missing from her hand when he came upon her, and which certainly

was not on her finger when she was laid in the casket,--rolled to the

floor when we moved her. Here it is; there is one person here, at

least, who can identify it. But I do not ask that person to speak. That

we may well spare him.”

He laid the ring on the table, not too near Arthur, not within reach

of his hand, but close enough for him to see it. Then he sat down, and

hid his face in his hands. The last few days had told on him. He looked

older, by ten years, than he had at the beginning of the month.

The silence which followed these words and this action, was memorable

to everybody there concerned. Some had seen, and all had heard of young

Cumberland’s desperate interruption of the funeral, and the way his

hand had invaded the flowers which the children had cast in upon her

breast. As the picture, real or fancied, rose before their eyes, one

man rose and left his place at the table; then another, and presently

another. Even Charles Clifton drew back. The district attorney remained

where he was, and so did young Cumberland. The latter had reached out

his hand, but he had not touched the ring, and he sat thus, frozen.

What went on in his heart, no man there could guess, and he did not

enlighten them. When at last he looked up, it was with a dazed air and

an almost humble mien:

“Providence has me this time,” he muttered. “I don’t understand these

mysteries. You will have to deal with them as you think best.” His

eyes, still glued to the jewel, dilated and filled with fierce light

as he said this. “Damn the ring, and damn the man who gave it to her!

However it came into her casket, he’s at the bottom of the business,

just as he was at the bottom of her death. If you think anything else,

you will think a lie.”

Turning away, he made for the door. There was in his manner,

desperation approaching to bravado, but no man made the least effort to

detain him. Not till he was well out of the room did any one move, then

the district attorney raised his finger, and Arthur Cumberland did not

ride back to his home alone.

BOOK THREE

HIDDEN SURPRISES

XX

“HE OR YOU! THERE IS NO THIRD”

A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,

And yet I would not sleep Merciful powers!

Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature

Gives way to in repose.

_Macbeth_.

For several days I had been ill. They were merciful days to me since

I was far too weak for thought. Then there came a period of conscious

rest, then renewed interest in life and my own fate and reputation.

What had happened during this interval?

I had a confused memory of having seen Clifton’s face at my bedside,

but I was sure that no words had passed between us. When would he come

again? When should I hear about Carmel, and whether she were yet alive,

or mercifully dead, like her sister? I might read the papers, but they

had been carefully kept from me. Not one was in sight. The nurse would

undoubtedly give me the information I desired, but, kind as she had

been, I dreaded to consult a stranger about matters which involved my

very existence and every remaining hope. Yet I must know; for I could

not help thinking, now, and I dreaded to think amiss and pile up misery

for myself when I needed support and consolation.

I would risk one question, but no more. I would ask about the inquest.

Had it been held? If she said yes--ah, if she said yes!--I should know

that Carmel was dead; and the news, coming thus, would kill me. So I

asked nothing, and was lying in a sufficiently feverish condition when

the doctor came in, saw my state, and thinking to cheer me up, remarked

blandly:

“You are well enough this morning to hear good news. Do you recognise

the room you are in?”

“I’m in the hospital, am I not?”

“Hardly. You are in one of Mr. O’Hagen’s own rooms.” (Mr. O’Hagen was

the head keeper.) “You are detained, now, simply as a witness.”

I was struck to the heart; terrified in an instant.

“What? Why? What has happened?” I questioned, rapidly, half starting

up, then falling back on my pillow under his astonished eye.

“Nothing,” he parried, seeing his mistake, and resorting to the

soothing process. “They simply have had time to think. You’re not the

sort of man from which criminals are made.”

“That’s nonsense,” I retorted, reckless of his opinion, and mad to know

the truth, yet shrinking horribly from it. “Criminals are made from all

kinds of men; neither are the police so philosophical. Something has

occurred. But don’t tell me--” I protested inconsistently, as he opened

his lips. “Send for Mr. Clifton. He’s my friend; I can better bear--”

“Here he is,” said the doctor, as the door softly opened under the

nurse’s careful hand.

I looked up, saw Charles’s faithful face, and stretched out my hand

without speaking. Never had I needed a friend more, and never had I

been more constrained in my greeting. I feared to show my real heart,

my real fears, my real reason for not hailing my release, as every one

evidently expected me to!

With a gesture to the nurse, the doctor tiptoed out, muttering to

Clifton, as he passed, some word of warning or casual instruction. The

nurse followed, and Clifton, coming forward, took a seat at my side.

He was cheerful but not too cheerful; and the air of slight constraint

which tinged his manner, as much as it did mine, did not escape me.

“Well, old fellow,” he began--

My hand went up in entreaty.

“Tell me why they have withdrawn their suspicions. I’ve heard

nothing--read nothing--for days. I don’t understand this move.”

For reply, he laid his hand on mine.

“You’re stanch,” he began. “You have my regard, Elwood. Not many men

would have stood the racket and sacrificed themselves as you have done.

The fact is recognised, now, and your motive--”

I must have turned very white; for he stopped and sprang to his feet,

searching for some restorative.

I felt the need of blinding him to my condition. With an effort, which

shook me from head to foot, I lifted myself from the depths into which

his words had plunged me, and fighting for self-control, faltered

forth, feebly enough:

“Don’t be frightened. I’m all right again; I guess I’m not very strong

yet. Sit down; I don’t need anything.”

He turned and surveyed me carefully, and finding my colour restored,

reseated himself, and proceeded, more circumspectly:

“Perhaps I had better wait till to-morrow before I satisfy your

curiosity,” said he.

“And leave me to imagine all sorts of horrors? No! Tell me at once.

Is--is--has anything happened at the Cumberlands’?”

“Yes. What you feared has happened--No, no; Carmel is not dead. Did

you think I meant that? Forgive me. I should have remembered that you

had other causes for anxiety than the one weighing on our minds. She

is holding her own--just holding it--but that is something, in one so

young and naturally healthy.”

I could see that I baffled him. It could not be helped. I did not dare

to utter the question with which my whole soul was full. I could only

look my entreaty. He misunderstood it, as was natural enough.

“She does not know yet what is in store for her,” were his words;

and I could only lie still, and look at him helplessly, and try

not to show the despair that was sinking me deeper and deeper into

semi-unconsciousness. “When she comes to herself, she will have to

be told; but you will be on your feet, then, and will be allowed, no

doubt, to soften the blow for her by your comfort and counsel. The fact

that it must have been you, if not he--”

“_He!_” Did I shout it, or was the shout simply in my own mind? I

trembled as I rose on my elbow. I searched his face in terror of my

self-betrayal; but his showed only compassion and an eager desire to

clear the air between us by telling me the exact facts.

“Yes--Arthur. His guilt has not been proven; he has not even been

remanded; the sister’s case is too pitiful and Coroner Perry too

soft-hearted, where any of that family is involved. But no one doubts

his guilt, and he does not deny it himself. You know--probably no

one better--that he cannot very consistently do this, in face of

the evidence accumulated against him, evidence stronger in many

regards, than that accumulated against yourself. The ungrateful boy!

The--the--Pardon me, I don’t often indulge in invectives against

unhappy men who have their punishment before them, but I was thinking

of you and what you have suffered in this jail, where you have not

belonged--no, not for a day.”

“Don’t think of me.” The words came with a gasp. I was never so hard

put to it--not when I first realised that I had been seen with my

fingers on Adelaide’s throat. Arthur! A booby and a boor, but certainly

not the slayer of his sister, unless I had been woefully mistaken in

all that had taken place in that club-house previous to my entrance

into it on that fatal night. As I caught Clifton’s eye fixed upon me,

I repeated--though with more self-control, I hope: “Don’t think of me.

I’m not thinking of myself. You speak of evidence. What evidence? Give

me details. Don’t you see that I am burning with curiosity? I shan’t be

myself till I hear.”

This alarmed him.

“It’s a risk,” said he. “The doctor told me to be careful not to excite

you too much. But suspense is always more intolerable than certainty,

and you have heard too much to be left in ignorance of the rest.”

“Yes, yes,” I agreed feverishly, pressing his hand.

“It all came about through you,” he blundered on. “You told me of the

fellow you saw riding away from The Whispering Pines at the time you

entered the grounds. I passed the story on to the coroner, and he to

a New York detective they have put on this case. He and Arthur’s own

surly nature did the rest.”

I cringed where I lay. This was my work. The person who drove out

of the club-house grounds while I stood in the club-house hall was

Carmel--and the clew I had given, instead of baffling and confusing

them, had led directly to Arthur!

Seeing nothing peculiar--or at all events, giving no evidence of having

noted anything peculiar in my movement--Clifton went evenly on, pouring

into my astonished ears the whole long story of this detective’s

investigations.

I heard of his visit at the mechanic’s cottage and of the

identification of the hat marked by Eliza Simmons’s floury thumb,

with an old one of Arthur’s, fished out from one of the Cumberland

closets; then, as I lay dumb, in my secret dismay and perturbation, of

Arthur’s acknowledged visit to the club-house, and his abstraction of

the bottles, which to all minds save my own, perhaps, connected him

directly and well-nigh unmistakably, with the crime.

“The finger of God! Nothing else. Such coincidences cannot be natural,”

was my thought. And I braced myself to meet the further disclosures I

saw awaiting me.

But when these disclosures were made, and Arthur’s conduct at the

funeral was given its natural explanation by the finding of the

tell-tale ring in Adelaide’s casket, I was so affected, both by the

extraordinary nature of the facts and the doubtful position in which

they seemed to place one whom, even now, I found it difficult to

believe guilty of Adelaide’s death, that Clifton, aroused, in spite of

his own excitement, to a sudden realisation of my condition, bounded to

his feet and impetuously cried out:

“I had to tell you. It was your due and you would not have been

satisfied if I had not. But I fear that I rushed my narrative too

suddenly upon you; that you needed more preparation, and that the

greatest kindness I can show you now, is to leave before I do further

mischief.”

I believe I answered. I know that his idea of leaving was insupportable

to me. That I wanted him to stay until I had had time to think and

adjust myself to these new conditions. Instinctively, I did not

feel as certain of Arthur’s guilt as he did. My own case had taught

me the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence to settle a mooted

fact. Besides, I knew Arthur even better than I did his sisters. He

was as full of faults, and as lacking in amiable and reliable traits

as any fellow of my acquaintance. But he had not the inherent snap

which makes for crime. He lacked the vigour which,--God forgive me

the thought!--lay back of Carmers softer characteristics. I could not

imagine him guilty; I could, for all my love, imagine his sister so,

and did. The conviction would not leave my mind.

“Charles,” said I, at last, struggling for calmness, and succeeding

better in my task than either he or I expected; “what motive do

they assign for this deed? Why should Arthur follow Adelaide to the

club-house and kill her? Now, if he had followed me--”

“You were at dinner with them that night, and know what she did and

what she vowed about the wine. He was very angry. Though he dropped

his glass, and let it shiver on the board, he himself says that he was

desperately put out with her, and could only drown his mad emotions in

drink. He knew that she would hear of it if he went to any saloon in

town; so he stole the key from your bunch, and went to help himself

out of the club-house wine-vault. That’s how he came to be there. What

followed, who knows? He won’t tell, and we can only conjecture. The

ring, which she certainly wore that night, might give the secret away;

but it is not gifted with speech, though as a silent witness it is

exceedingly eloquent.”

The episode of the ring confused me. I could make nothing out of

it, could not connect it with what I myself knew of the confused

experiences of that night. But I could recall the dinner and the sullen

aspect, not unmixed with awe, with which this boy contemplated his

sister when his own glass fell from his nerveless fingers. My own heart

was not in the business; it was on the elopement I had planned; but I

could not help seeing what I have just mentioned, and it recurred to me

now with fatal distinctness. The awe was as great as the sullenness.

Did that offer a good foundation for crime? I disliked Arthur. I had

no use for the boy, and I wished with all my heart to detect guilt in

his actions, rather than in those of the woman I loved; but I could not

forget that tinge of awe on features too heavy to mirror very readily

the nicer feelings of the human soul. It would come up, and, under the

influence of this impression I said:

“Are you sure that he made no denial of this crime? That does not seem

like Arthur, guilty or innocent.”

“He made none in my presence and I was in the coroner’s office when

the ring was produced from its secret hiding-place and set down before

him. There was no open accusation made, but he must have understood the

silence of all present. He acknowledged some days ago, when confronted

with the bottle found in Cuthbert Road, that he had taken both it and

another from the club-house just before the storm began to rage that

night.”

“The hour, the very hour!” I muttered.

“He entered and left by that upper hall window, or so he says; but he

is not to be believed in all his statements. Some of his declarations

we know to be false.”

“Which ones? Give me a specimen, Charlie. Mention something he has said

that you know to be false.”

“Well, it is hard to accuse a man of a direct lie. But he cannot be

telling the truth when he says that he crossed the links immediately to

Cuthbert Road, thus cutting out the ride home, of which we have such

extraordinary proof.”

Under the fear of betraying my thoughts, I hurriedly closed my eyes.

I was in an extraordinary position, myself. What seemed falsehood to

them, struck me as the absolute truth. Carmel had been the one to go

home; he, without doubt, had crossed the links, as he said. As this

conviction penetrated deeply and yet more deeply into my mind, I

shrank inexpressibly from the renewed mental struggle into which it

plunged me. To have suffered, myself,--to have fallen under the ban of

suspicion and the disgrace of arrest--had certainly been hard; but it

was nothing to beholding another in the same plight through my own rash

and ill-advised attempt to better my position and Carmel’s by what I

had considered a totally harmless subterfuge.

I shuddered as I anticipated the sleepless hours of silent debate which

lay before me. The voice which whispered that Arthur Cumberland was

not over-gifted with sensitiveness and would not feel the shame of his

position like another, did not carry with it an indisputable message,

and could not impose on my conscience for more than a passing moment.

The lout was human; and I could not stifle my convictions in his favour.

But Carmel!

I clenched my hands under the clothes. I wished it were not high

noon, but dark night; that Clifton would only arise or turn his eyes

away; that something or anything might happen to give me an instant

of solitary contemplation, without the threatening possibility of

beholding my thoughts and feelings reflected in another’s mind.

Was this review instantaneous, or the work of many minutes? Forced by

the doubt to open my eyes, I met Clifton’s full look turned watchfully

on me. The result was calming; even to my apprehensive gaze it betrayed

no new enlightenment. My struggle had been all within; no token of it

had reached him.

This he showed still more plainly when he spoke.

“There will be a close sifting of evidence at the inquest. You will

not enjoy this; but the situation, hard as it may prove, has certainly

improved so far as you are concerned. That should hasten your

convalescence.”

“Poor Arthur!” burst from my lips, and the cry was echoed in my heart.

Then, because I could no longer endure the pusillanimity which kept me

silent, I rose impulsively into a sitting posture, and, summoning all

my faculties into full play, endeavoured to put my finger on the one

weak point in the evidence thus raised against Carmel’s brother.

“What sort of a man would you make Arthur out to be, when you accuse

him of robbing the wine-vault on top of a murderous assault on his

sister?”

“I know. It argues a brute, but he--”

“Arthur Cumberland is selfish, unresponsive, and hard, but he is not a

brute. I’m disposed to give him the benefit of my good opinion to this

extent, Charlie; I cannot believe he first poisoned and then choked

that noble woman.”

Clifton drew himself up in his turn, astonishment battling with renewed

distrust.

“Either he or you, Ranelagh!” he exclaimed, firmly. “There is no third

person. This you must realise.”

XXI

CARMEL AWAKES

One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,

So fast they follow.

_Hamlet_.

Later, I asked myself many questions, and wandered into mazes of

speculation which only puzzled me and led nowhere. I remembered the

bottles; I remembered the ring. I went back, in fancy, to the hour of

my own entrance into the club-house, and, recalling each circumstance,

endeavoured to fit the facts of Arthur’s story with those of my own

experience.

Was he in the building when I first stepped into it? It was just

possible. I had been led to prevaricate as to the moment I entered the

lower gateway, and he may have done the same as to the hour he left by

the upper hall window. Whatever his denials on this or any subject, I

was convinced that he knew, as well as I, that Carmel had been in the

building with her sister, and was involved more or less personally in

the crime committed there. Might it not be simply as his accessory

after the fact? If only I could believe this! If my knowledge of him

and of her would allow me to hug this forlorn hope, and behold, in

this shock to her brain, and in her look and attitude on leaving the

club-house, only a sister’s horror at a wilful brother’s crime!

But one fact stood in the way of this--a fact which nothing but some

predetermined, underhanded purpose on her part could explain. She had

gone in disguise to The Whispering Pines, and she had returned home

in the same suspicious fashion. The wearing of her brother’s hat and

coat over her own womanly garments was no freak. There had been purpose

in it--a purpose which demanded secrecy. That Adelaide should have

accompanied her under these circumstances was a mystery. But then the

whole affair was a mystery, totally out of keeping, in all its details,

with the characters of these women, save--and what a fearful exception

I here make--the awful end, which, alas! bespoke the fiery rush and

impulse to destroy which marked Carmel’s unbridled rages.

Of a less emotional attack she would be as incapable as any other

good woman. Poison she would never use. Its presence there was due to

another’s forethought, another’s determination. But the poison had

not killed. Both glasses had been emptied, but--Ah! those glasses.

What explanation had the police, now, for those two emptied glasses?

They had hitherto supposed me to be the second person who had joined

Adelaide in this totally uncharacteristic drinking.

To whom did they now attribute this act? To Arthur, the brother whose

love for liquor in every form she had always decried, and had publicly

rebuked only a few hours before? Knowing nothing of Carmel having

been on the scene, they must ascribe this act either to him or to me;

and when they came to dwell upon this point more particularly--when

they came to study the exact character of the relations which had

always subsisted between Adelaide and her brother--they must see the

improbability of her drinking with him under any circumstances. Then

their thoughts would recur to me, and I should find myself again a

suspect. The monstrous suggestion that Arthur had brought the liquor

there himself, had poured it out and forced her to drink it, poison and

all, out of revenge for her action at the dinner-table a short time

before, did not occur to me then, but if it had, there were the three

glasses--he would not bring _three_; nor would Adelaide; nor, as I saw

it, would Carmel.

Chaos! However one looked at it, chaos! Only one fact was clear--that

Carmel knew the whole story and might communicate the same, if ever her

brain cleared and she could be brought to reveal the mysteries of that

hour. Did I desire such a consummation? Only God, who penetrates more

deeply than ourselves into the hidden regions of the human heart, could

tell. I only know that the fear and expectation of such an outcome made

my anguish for the next two weeks.

Would she live? Would she die? The question was on every tongue. The

crisis of her disease was approaching, and the next twenty-four hours

would decide her fate, and in consequence, my own, if not her brother

Arthur’s. As I contemplated the suspense of these twenty-four hours,

I revolted madly for the first time against the restrictions of my

prison. I wanted air, movement, the rush into danger, which my horse

or my automobile might afford. Anything which would drag my thoughts

from that sick room, and the anticipated stir of that lovely form

into conscious life and suffering. Her eyes--I could see her eyes

wakening upon the world again, after her long wandering in the unknown

and unimaginable intricacies of ungoverned thought and delirious

suggestion. Eyes of violet colour and infinite expression; eyes which

would make a man’s joy if they smiled on him in innocence; but which,

as I well knew, had burned more than once, in her short but strenuous

life, with fiery passions; and might, at the instant of waking, betray

this same unholy gleam under the curious gaze of the unsympathetic ones

set in watch over her.

What would her first word be? Whither would her first thought fly? To

Adelaide or to me; to Arthur or to her own frightened and appalled

self? I maddened as I dwelt upon the possibilities of this moment. I

envied Arthur; I envied the attendants; I envied even the servants in

the house. They would all know sooner than I. Carmel! Carmel!

Sending for Clifton, I begged him to keep himself in communication with

the house, or with the authorities. He promised to do what he could;

then, perceiving the state I was in, he related all he knew of present

conditions. No one was allowed in the sick room but the nurse and the

doctor. Even Arthur was denied admission, and was wearing himself

out in his own room as I was wearing myself out here, in restless

inactivity. He expected her to sink and never to recover consciousness,

and was loud in his expressions of rebellion against the men who

dared to keep him from her bedside when her life was trembling in the

balance. But the nurse had hopes and so had the doctor. As for Carmel’s

looks, they were greatly changed, but beautiful still in spite of the

cruel scar left by her fall against the burning bars of her sister’s

grate. No delirium disturbed the rigid immobility in which she now lay.

I could await her awakening with quiet confidence in the justice of God.

Thus Clifton, in his ignorance.

The day was a bleak one, dispiriting in itself even to those who could

go about the streets and lose themselves in their tasks and round of

duties. To me it was a dead blank, marked by such interruptions as

necessarily took place under the prison routine. The evening hours

which followed them were no better. The hands on my watch crawled. When

the door finally opened, it came as a shock. I seemed to be prepared

for anything but the termination of my suspense. I knew that it was

Clifton who entered, but I could not meet his eye. I dug my nails

into my palms, and waited for his first word. When it came, I felt my

spirits go down, down--I had thought them at their lowest ebb before.

He hesitated, and I started up:

“Tell me,” I cried. “Carmel is dead!”

“Not dead,” said he, “but silly. Her testimony is no more to be relied

upon than that of any other wandering mind.”

XXII

“BREAK IN THE GLASS!”

This inundation of mistempered humour

Rests by you only to be qualified.

_King John_.

It was some time before I learned the particulars of this awakening.

It had occurred at sunset. A level beam of light had shot across the

bed, and the nurse had moved to close the blind, when a low exclamation

from the doctor drew her back, to mark the first faint fluttering of

the snowy lids over the long-closed eyes. Afterwards she remembered

what a picture her youthful patient made, with the hue of renewed life

creeping into her cheeks, in faint reflection of the nest of roseate

colour in which she lay.

Carmel’s hair was dark; so were her exquisitely pencilled eye-brows,

and the long lashes which curled upward from her cheek. In her

surroundings of pink--warm pink, such as lives in the heart of the

sea-shell--their duskiness took on an added beauty; and nothing, not

even the long, dark scar running from eye to chin could rob the face

of its individuality and suggestion of charm. She was lovely; but it

was the loveliness of line and tint, just as a child is lovely. Soul

and mind were still asleep, but momentarily rousing, as all thought,

to conscious being--and, if to conscious being, then to conscious

suffering as well.

It was a solemn moment. If the man who loved her had been present--or

even her brother, who, sullen as he was, must have felt the tie of

close relationship rise superior even to his fears at an instant so

critical,--it would have been more solemn yet. But with the exception

of the doctor and possibly the nurse, only those interested in her as a

witness in the most perplexing case on the police annals, were grouped

in silent watchfulness about the room, waiting for the word or look

which might cut the Gordian knot which none of them, as yet, had been

able to untangle.

It came suddenly, as all great changes come. One moment her lids were

down, her face calm, her whole figure quiet in its statue-like repose;

the next, her big violet eyes had flashed open upon the world, and

lips and limbs were moving feebly, but certainly, in their suddenly

recovered freedom. It was then--and not at a later moment when

consciousness had fully regained its seat--that her face, to those who

stood nearest wore the aspect of an angel’s. What she saw, or what

vision remained to her from the mysterious world of which she had so

long been a part, none ever knew--nor could she, perhaps, have told.

But the rapture which informed her features and elevated her whole

expression but poorly prepared them for the change which followed her

first glance around on nurse and doctor. The beam which lay across

the bed had been no brighter than her eye during that first tremulous

instant of renewed life. But the clouds fell speedily and very

human feelings peered from between those lids as she murmured, half

petulantly:

“Why do you look at me so? Oh, I remember, I remember!”

And a flush, of which they little thought her weakened heart capable,

spread over her features, hiding the scar and shaming her white lips.

“What’s the matter?” she complained again, as she tried to raise her

hands, possibly to hide her face. “I cannot move as I used to do, and I

feel--I feel--”

“You have been ill,” came soothingly from the doctor. “You have been

in bed many days; now you are better and will soon be well. This is

your nurse.” He said nothing of the others, who were so placed behind

screens as to be invisible to her.

She continued to gaze, first at one, then at the other; confidently at

the doctor, doubtfully at the nurse. As she did so, the flush faded and

gave way to an anxious, troubled expression. Not just the expression

anticipated by those who believed that, with returning consciousness,

would come returning memory of the mysterious scene which had taken

place between herself and sister, or between her sister and her

brother, prior to Adelaide’s departure for The Whispering Pines. Had

they shared my knowledge--had they even so much as dreamed that their

patient had been the companion of one or both of the others in this

tragic escapade--how much greater would have been their wonder at the

character of this awakening.

“You have the same kind look for me as always,” were her next words,

as her glance finally settled on the doctor. “But hers--Bring me the

mirror,” she cried. “Let me see with my own eyes what I have now to

expect from every one who looks at me. I want to know before Lila comes

in. Why isn’t she here? Is she with--with--” She was breaking down, but

caught herself back with surprising courage, and almost smiled, I was

told. Then in the shrill tones which will not be denied, she demanded

again, “The mirror!”

Nurse Unwin brought it. Her patient evidently remembered the fall she

had had in her sister’s room, and possibly the smart to her cheek when

it touched the hot iron.

“I see only my forehead,” she complained, as the nurse held the mirror

before her. “Move it a little. Lower--lower,” she commanded. Then

suddenly “Oh!”

She was still for a long time, during which the nurse carried off the

glass.

“I--I don’t like it,” she acknowledged quaintly to the doctor, as

he leaned over her with compassionate words. “I shall have to get

acquainted with myself all over again. And so I have been ill! I

shouldn’t have thought a little burn like that would make me ill. How

Adelaide must have worried.”

“Adelaide is--is not well herself. It distressed her to have been out

when you fell. Don’t you remember that she went out that night?”

“Did she? She was right. Adelaide must have every pleasure. She

had earned her good times. I must be the one to stay home now, and

look after things, and learn to be useful. I don’t expect anything

different. Call Adelaide, and let me tell her how--how satisfied I am.”

“But she’s ill. She cannot come. Wait till tomorrow, dear child. Rest

is what you need now. Take these few drops and go to sleep again, and

you’ll not know yourself to-morrow.”

“I don’t know myself now,” she repeated, glancing with slowly dilating

eyes at the medicine glass he proffered. “I can’t take it,” she

protested. “I forget now why, but I can’t take anything more from a

glass. I’ve promised not to, I think. Take it away; it makes me feel

queer. Where is Adelaide?”

Her memory was defective. She could not seem to take in what the doctor

told her. But he tried her again. Once more he spoke of illness as the

cause of Adelaide’s absence. Her attention wandered while he spoke of

it.

“How it did hurt!” she cried. “But I didn’t think much about it. I

thought only of--” Next moment her voice rose in a shriek, thin but

impetuous, and imbued with a note of excited feeling which made every

person there start. “There should be _two_,” she cried. “_Two_! Why is

there only one?”

This sounded like raving. The doctor’s face took on a look of concern,

and the nurse stirred uneasily.

“One is not enough! That is why Adelaide is not satisfied; why she does

not come and love and comfort me, as I expected her to. Tell her it is

not too late yet, not too late yet, not too late--”

The doctor’s hand was on her forehead. This “not too late,” whatever

she meant by it, was indescribably painful to the listeners, oppressed

as they were by the knowledge that Adelaide lay in her grave, and that

all fancies, all hopes, all meditated actions between these two were

now, so far as this world goes, forever at an end.

“Rest,” came in Dr. Carpenter’s most soothing tones. “Rest, my

little Carmel; forget everything and rest.” He thought he knew the

significance of her revolt from the glass he had offered her. She

remembered the scene at the Cumberland dinner-table on that fatal

night and shrank from anything that reminded her of it. Ordering the

medicine put in a cup, he offered it to her again, and she drank it

without question. As she quieted under its influence, the disappointed

listeners, now tip-toeing carefully from the room, heard her murmur in

final appeal:

“Cannot Adelaide spare one minute from--from her company downstairs, to

wish me health and kiss me good night?”

Was it weakness, or a settled inability to remember anything but that

which filled her own mind?

It proved to be a settled inability to take in any new ideas or even

to remember much beyond the completion of that dinner. As the days

passed and news of her condition came to me from time to time, I found

that she had not only forgotten what had passed between herself and

the rest of the family previous to their departure for the club-house,

but all that had afterwards occurred at The Whispering Pines, even to

her own presence there and the ride home. She could not even retain

in her mind for any appreciable length of time the idea of Adelaide’s

death. Even after Dr. Carpenter, with infinite precautions, revealed to

her the truth--not that Adelaide had been murdered, but that Adelaide

had passed away during the period of her own illness, Carmel gave but

one cry of grief, then immediately burst forth in her old complaint

that Adelaide neglected her. She had lost her happiness and hope, and

Adelaide would not spare her an hour.

This expression, when I heard of it, convinced me, as I believe it did

some others, that her act of self-denial in not humouring my whim and

flying from home and duty that night, had made a stronger impression on

her mind than all that came after.

She never asked for Arthur. This may have grieved him; but, according

to my faithful friend and attorney, it appeared to have the contrary

effect, and to bring him positive relief. When it was borne in on

him, as it was soon to be borne in on all, that her mind was not what

it was, and that the beautiful Carmel had lost something besides her

physical perfection in the awful calamity which had made shipwreck of

the whole family, he grew noticeably more cheerful and less suspicious

in his manner. Was it because the impending inquiry must go on without

her, and proceedings, which had halted till now, be pushed with all

possible speed to a finish? So those who watched him interpreted his

changed mood, with a result not favourable to him.

With this new shock of Carmel’s inability to explain her own part in

this tragedy and thus release my testimony and make me a man again

in my own eyes, I lost the sustaining power which had previously

held me up. I became apathetic; no longer counting the hours, and

thankful when they passed. Arthur had not been arrested; but he

understood--or allowed others to see that he understood, the reason

for the surveillance under which he was now strictly kept; and, though

he showed less patience than myself under the shameful suspicion which

this betokened, he did not break out into open conflict with the

authorities, nor did he protest his innocence, or take any other stand

than the one he had assumed from the first.

All this gave me much food for thought, but I declined to think. I

had made up my mind from the moment I realised Carmel’s condition,

that there was nothing for me to do till after the inquest. The

public investigation which this would involve, would show the trend

of popular opinion, and thus enlighten me as to my duty. Meanwhile, I

would keep to the old lines and do the best I could for myself without

revealing the fact of Carmel’s near interest in a matter she was in

no better condition to discuss now than when in a state of complete

unconsciousness.

Of that inquest, which was held in due course, I shall not say much.

Only one new fact was elicited by its means, and that of interest

solely as making clear how there came to be evidences of poison in

Adelaide’s stomach, without the quantity being great enough for more

than a temporary disturbance.

Maggie, the second girl, had something to say about this when the

phial which had held the poison was handed about for inspection. She

had handled that phial many times on the shelf where it was kept. Once

she had dropped it, and the cork coming out, some of the contents had

escaped. Frightened at the mishap, she had filled the phial up with

water, and put it, thus diluted, back on the shelf. No one had noticed

the difference, and she had forgotten all about the matter until now.

From her description, there must have been very little of the dangerous

drug left in the phial; and the conclusions of Dr. Perry’s autopsy

received a confirmation which ended, after a mass of testimony tending

rather to confuse than enlighten, the jury, in the non-committal

verdict:

Death by strangulation at the hands of some person unknown.

I had expected this. The evidence, pointing as it did in two opposing

directions, presented a problem which a coroner’s jury could hardly be

expected to solve. What followed, showed that not only they but the

police authorities as well, acknowledged the dilemma. I was allowed one

sweet half hour of freedom, then I was detained to await the action of

the grand jury, and so was Arthur.

When I was informed of this latter fact, I made a solemn vow to myself.

It was this: If it falls to my lot to be indicted for this murderous

offence, I will continue to keep my own counsel, as I have already

done, in face of lesser provocation and at less dangerous risk. But,

if I escape and a true bill should be found against Arthur, then

will I follow my better instinct, and reveal what I have hitherto

kept concealed, even if the torment of the betrayal drive me to

self-destruction afterwards. For I no longer cherished the smallest

doubt, that to Carmel’s sudden rage and to that alone, the death of

Adelaide was due.

My reason for this change from troubled to absolute conviction can be

easily explained. It dated from the inquest, and will best appear in

the relation of an interview I held with my attorney, Charles Clifton,

very soon after my second incarceration.

We had discussed the situation till there seemed to be nothing left to

discuss. I understood him, and he thought he understood me. He believed

Arthur guilty, and credited me with the same convictions. Thus only

could he explain my inconceivable reticence on certain points he was

very well assured I could make clear if I would. That he was not the

only man who had drawn these same conclusions from my attitude both

before and during the inquest, troubled me greatly and deeply disturbed

my conscience, but I could indulge in no protests--or, rather would

indulge in no protests--as yet. There was an unsolved doubt connected

with some facts which had come out at the inquest--or perhaps, I should

call it a circumstance not as yet fully explained--which disturbed me

more than did my conscience, and upon this circumstance I must have

light before I let my counsel leave me.

I introduced the topic thus:

“You remember the detached sentences taken down by the nurse during the

period of Carmel’s unconsciousness. They were regarded as senseless

ravings, and such they doubtless were; but there was one of them which

attracted my attention, and of which I should like an explanation. I

wish I had that woman’s little book here; I should like to read for

myself those wandering utterances.”

“You can,” was the unexpected and welcome reply. “I took them all down

in shorthand as they fell from Dr. Perry’s lips. I have not had time

since to transcribe them, but I can read some of them to you, if you

will give me an idea as to which ones you want.”

“Read the first--what she said on the day of the funeral. I do not

think the rest matter very much.”

Clifton took a paper from his pocket, and, after only a short delay,

read out these words:

“_December the fifth_: Her sister’s name, uttered many times and with

greatly varied expression--now in reproach, now in terror, now in what

seemed to me in tones of wild pleading and even despair. This continued

at intervals all through the day.

“At three P.M., just as people were gathering for the funeral, the

quick, glad cry: ‘I smell flowers, sweet, sweet flowers!’”

Alas! she did.

“At three-forty P.M., as the services neared their close, a violent

change took place in her appearance, and she uttered in shrill tones

those astonishing words which horrified all below and made us feel that

she had a clairvoyant knowledge of the closing of the casket, then

taking place:

“‘Break it open! Break it open! and see if her heart is there!’”

“Pause there,” I said; “that is what I mean. It was not the only time

she uttered that cry. If you will glance further down, you will come

across a second exclamation of the like character.”

“Yes; here it is. It was while the ubiquitous Sweetwater was mousing

about the room.”

“Read the very words he heard. I have a reason, Clifton. Humour me for

this once.”

“Certainly--no trouble. She cried, this time: ‘Break it open! Break the

glass and look in. Her heart should be there--her heart--her heart!

Horrible! but you insisted, Ranelagh.”

“I thought I heard that word glass,” I muttered, more to myself than to

him. Then, with a choking fear of giving away my thought, but unable to

resist the opportunity of settling my own fears, I asked: “Was there

glass in the casket lid?”

“No; there never is.”

“But she may have thought there was,” I suggested hastily. “I’m

much obliged to you, Clifton. I had to hear those sentences again.

Morbidness, no doubt; the experience of the last three weeks would

affect a stronger-minded man than myself.” Then before he could reply:

“What do you think the nurse meant by a violent change in her patient?”

“Why, she roused up, I suppose--moved, or made some wild or feverish

gesture.”

“That is what I should like to know. I may seem foolish and

unnecessarily exacting about trifles; but I would give a great deal to

learn precisely where she looked, and what she did at the moment she

uttered those wild words. Is the detective Sweetwater still in town?”

“I believe so. Came up for the inquest but goes back to-night.”

“See him, Clifton. Ask him to relate this scene. He was present, you

know. Get him to talk about it. You can, and without rousing his

suspicion, keen as they all say he is. And when he talks, listen

and remember what he says. But don’t ask questions. Do this for me,

Clifton. Some day I may be able to explain my request, but not now.”

“I’m at your service,” he replied; but he looked hurt at being thus set

to work in the dark, and I dared say nothing to ease the situation. I

did not dare even to prolong the conversation on this subject, or on

any other subject. In consequence, he departed speedily, and I spent

the afternoon wondering whether he would return before the day ended,

or leave me to the endurance of a night of suspense. I was spared this

final distress. He came in again towards evening, and this was what he

told me:

“I have seen Sweetwater, and was more fortunate in my interview than

I expected. He talked freely, and in the course of the conversation,

described the very occurrence in which you are so interested. Carmel

had been lying quietly previous to this outbreak, but suddenly started

into feverish life and, raising herself up in her bed, pointed straight

before her and uttered the words we have so often repeated. That’s all

there was to it, and I don’t see for my part, what you have gained by a

repetition of the same, or why you lay so much stress upon her gesture.

What she said was the thing, though even that is immaterial from a

legal point of view--which is the only view of any importance to you or

to me, at this juncture.”

“You’re a true friend to me,” I answered, “and never more so than in

this instance. Forgive me that I cannot show my appreciation of your

goodness, or thank you properly for your performance of an uncongenial

task. I am sunk deep in trouble. I’m not myself and cannot be till I

know what action will be taken by the grand jury.”

If he replied, I have no remembrance of it; neither do I recall his

leave-taking. But I was presently aware that I was alone and could

think out my hideous thought, undisturbed.

Carmel had pointed straight before her, shouting out: “Break in the

glass!”

I knew her room; I had been taken in there once by Adelaide, as a

sequence to a long conversation about Carmel, shortly after her first

return from school. Adelaide wished to show me the cabinet in the wall,

the cabinet at which Carmel undoubtedly pointed, if her bed stood as it

had stood then. It was not quite full, at that time. It did not contain

Adelaide’s heart among the other broken toys which Carmel had destroyed

with her own hand or foot, in her moments of frenzied passion--the

canary, that would not pick from her hand, the hat she hated, the bowl

which held only bread and milk when she wanted meat or cake. Adelaide

had kept them all, locked behind glass and in full view of the child’s

eyes night and day, that the shame of those past destructive moments

might guard her from their repetition and help her to understand her

temper and herself. I had always thought it cruel of Adelaide, one of

the evidences of the flint-like streak which ran through her otherwise

generous and upright nature. But its awful prophecy was what affected

me most now; for destruction had fallen on something more tender than

aught that cabinet held.

Adelaide’s heart! And Carmel acknowledged it--acknowledged that it

should be there, with what else she had trampled upon and crushed

in her white heat of rage. I could not doubt her guilt, after this.

Whatever peace her forgetfulness had brought--whatever innocent longing

after Adelaide--the wild cry of those first few hours, ere yet the

impressions of her awful experience had succumbed to disease, revealed

her secret and showed the workings of her conscience. It had not been

understood; it had passed as an awesome episode. But for me, since

hearing of it, she stood evermore convicted out of her own mouth--that

lovely mouth which angels might kiss in her hours of joyous serenity;

but from whose caress friends would fly, when the passion reigned in

her heart and she must break, crush, kill, or go mad.

XXIII

AT TEN INSTEAD OF TWELVE

Forget the world around you. Meantime friendship

Shall keep strict vigils for you, anxious, active,

Only be manageable when that friendship

Points you the road to full accomplishment.

_Coleridge_.

“I don’t care a rush what you do to me. If you are so besotted by your

prejudices that you refuse to see the nose before your face; if you

don’t believe your own officer who swore he saw Ranelagh’s hands upon

my sister’s throat, then this world is all a jumble and it makes very

little difference to me whether I’m alive or dead.”

When these words of Arthur Cumberland were repeated to me, I echoed

them in my inmost soul. I, too, cared very little whether I lived or

died.

The grand jury reeled off its cases and finally took up ours. To the

last I hoped--sincerely I think--that I should be the man to suffer

indictment. But I hoped in vain. A true bill was brought against

Arthur, and his trial was set for the eighteenth of January.

The first use I made of my liberty was to visit Adelaide’s grave. In

that sacred place I could best review my past and gather strength for

the future. The future! Was it under my control? Did Arthur’s fate hang

upon my word? I believed so. But had I strength to speak that word? I

had expected to; I had seen my duty clearly enough before the sitting

of the grand jury. But now that Arthur was indicted--now that it was an

accepted fact that he would have to stand trial instead of myself, I

was conscious of such a recoil from my contemplated action that I lost

all confidence in myself and my stoical adherence to what I considered

the claims of justice.

Standing in the cemetery grounds with my eyes upon the snow-covered

mound beneath which lay the doubly injured Adelaide, I had it out with

myself, for good and all.

I trusted Arthur; I distrusted Carmel. But she had claims to

consideration, which he lacked. She was a woman. Her fall would mean

infinitely more to her than any disgrace to him. Even he had seemed to

recognise this. Miserable and half-hearted as his life had been, he had

shown himself man enough not to implicate his young sister in the crime

laid to his charge. What then was I that I should presume to disregard

his lead in the difficult maze in which we were both lost. Yet, because

of the self-restraint he manifested, he had my sympathy and when I left

the cemetery and took my mournful way back into town, it was with the

secret resolution to stand his friend if I saw the case really going

against him. Till then, I would consider the helpless girl, tongue-tied

by her condition, and injured enough already by my misplaced love and

its direful consequences.

The only change I now allowed myself was an occasional midnight stroll

up Huested Street. This was as near as I dared approach Carmel’s

windows. I feared some watchful police spy. Perhaps I feared my own

hardly-to-be-restrained longings.

Mr. Fulton’s house and extensive grounds lay between this street and

the dismal walls beyond the huge sycamore which lifted itself like a

beacon above the Cumberland estate. But I allowed myself the doubtful

pleasure of traversing this course, and this course only, and if I

obtained one glimpse through bush and tree of the spot whither all my

thoughts ran continuously, I went home satisfied.

This was before Carmel left with her nurse for Lakewood. After that

event, I turned my head no more, in taking my midnight stroll. I was

not told the day or hour of her departure. Happily, perhaps, for us

both, for I could never have kept away from the station. I should have

risked everything for one glimpse of her face, if only to satisfy

my own judgment as to whether she would ever recognise me again, or

remember what had occurred on that doleful night when the light of her

intellect set in the darkness of sin and trouble.

The police had the same idea, I think, for I heard later that she was

deliberately driven past The Whispering Pines, though the other road

was more direct and less free, if anything, from possible spectators.

They thought, no doubt, that a sight of the place might reawaken

whatever memories remained of the last desperate scene preceding her

brother and sister’s departure for this out-of-the-way spot. They

little knew how cruel was the test, or what a storm of realisation

might have overwhelmed her mind as her eye fell on those accursed

walls, peering from their bower of snow-laden, pines. But I did, and I

never rested till I learned how she had borne herself in her slow drive

by the two guarded gateways: merrily, it seems, and with no sign of the

remembrances I feared. The test, if it were meant for such, availed

them nothing; no more, indeed, than an encounter with her on the road,

or at the station would have availed me. For the veil she begged for

had shrouded her features completely, and it was only from her manner

that those who accompanied her, perceived her light-heartedness and

delight in this change.

One sentence, and one only, reached my ears of all she said before she

disappeared from town.

“If Adelaide were only going, too! But I suppose I shall meet her and

Mr. Ranelagh somewhere before my return. She must be very happy. But

not so peaceful as I am. She will see that when we meet. I can hardly

wait for the day.”

Words which set me thinking; but which I was bound to acknowledge

could be only the idle maunderings of a diseased mind from which all

impressions had fled, save those of innocence and futile hope.

One incident more before I enter upon the serious business of the

trial. I had no purpose in what I did. I merely followed the impulse

of the moment, as I had so often done before in my selfish and

thoughtless life, when I started one night for my walk at ten o’clock

instead of twelve. I went the old way; and the old longing recurring

at the one charmed spot on the road, I cast a quick look at the

towering sycamore and the desolated house beneath, which, short as it

was, roused feelings which kept my head lowered for the remainder of

my walk north and to the very moment, when, on my return, the same

chimneys and overhanging roofs came again into view through the wintry

branches. Then habit lifted my head, and I paused to look again, when

the low sound of a human voice, suppressed into a moan or sob, caused

me to glance about for the woman or child who had uttered this note

of sorrow. No one was in sight; but as I started to move on, I heard

my name uttered in choked tones from behind the hedge separating the

Fulton grounds from the city sidewalk.

I halted instantly. A lamp from the opposite side of the street threw

a broad illumination across the walk where I stood, but the gate-posts

behind threw a shadow. Had the voice issued from this isolated point of

darkness? I went back to see. A pitiful figure was crouching there, a

frail, agitated little being, whom I had no sooner recognised than my

manner instantly assumed an air of friendly interest, called out by her

timid and appealing attitude.

“Ella Fulton!” I exclaimed. “You wish to speak to me?”

“Hush!” she prayed, with a frightened gesture towards the house. “No

one knows I am here. Mamma thinks me in bed, and papa, who is out, may

come home any minute. Oh, Mr. Ranelagh, I’m in such misery and no one

but you can give me any help. I have watched you go by night after

night, and I have wanted to call out and beg you to come in and see me,

or let me go and meet you somewhere, and I have not dared, it was so

late. To-night you have come earlier, and I have slipped out and--O,

Elwood, you won’t think badly of me? It’s all about Arthur, and I shall

die if some one does not help me and tell me how I can reach him with a

message.”

As she spoke the last words, she caught at the gatepost which was too

broad and ponderous to offer her any hold. Gravely I held out my arm,

which she took; we were old friends and felt no necessity of standing

on any sort of ceremony.

“You don’t wish to bother,” was her sensitive cry. “You had rather not

stop; rather not listen to my troubles.”

Had I shown my feelings so plainly as that? I felt mortified. She was a

girl of puny physique and nervous manner--the last sort of person you

would expect Arthur Cumberland to admire or even to have patience with,

and the very last sort who could be expected to endure his rough ways,

or find anything congenial to herself in his dissipated and purposeless

life. But the freaks of youthful passion are endless, and it was

evident that they loved each other sincerely.

Her tremulous condition and meek complaint went to my heart,

notwithstanding my growing dread of any conversation between us on this

all-absorbing but equally peace-destroying topic. Reassuringly pressing

her hand, I was startled to find a small piece of paper clutched

convulsively within it.

“For Arthur,” she explained under her breath. “I thought you might find

some way of getting it to him. Father and mother are so prejudiced.

They have never liked him, and now they believe the very worst. They

would lock me up if they knew I was speaking to you about him. Mother

is very stern and says that all this nonsense between Arthur and

myself must stop. That we must never--no matter whether he is cleared

or--or--” Silence, then a little gasp, after which she added with an

emphasis which bespoke the death of every hope: “She is very decided

about it, Elwood.”

I hardly blamed the mother.

“I--I love Arthur. I don’t think him guilty and I would gladly stand by

him if they would let me. I want him to know this. I want him to get

such comfort as he can out of my belief and my desire to serve him.

I want to sacrifice myself. But I can’t, I can’t,” she moaned. “You

don’t know how mother frightens me. When she looks at me, the words

falter on my tongue and I feel as if it would be easier to die than to

acknowledge what is in my heart.”

I could believe her. Mrs. Fulton was a notable woman, whom many men

shrank from encountering needlessly. It was not her tongue, though

that could be bitter enough, but a certain way she had of infusing her

displeasure into attitude, tone, and manner, which insensibly sapped

your self-confidence and forced you to accept her bad opinion of you as

your rightful due. This, whether your judgment coincided with hers or

not.

“Yet your mother is your very best friend,” I ventured gently, with

a realisation of my responsibility which did not add much to my

self-possession.

She seemed startled.

“Not in this, not in this,” she objected, with a renewal of her anxious

glances, this time up and down the street. “I must get a word to

Arthur. I _must_.”

I saw that she had some deeper reason than appeared, for desiring

communication with him. I was debating how best to meet the situation

and set her right as to my ability to serve her, without breaking down

her spirit too seriously, when I felt her feverish hand pressing her

little note into my unwilling palm.

“Don’t read it,” she whispered, innocent of all offence and only

anxious to secure my good offices. “It’s for Arthur. I’ve used the

thinnest paper, so that you can secrete it in something he will be sure

to get. Don’t disappoint me. I was sorry for you, too, and glad when

they let you out. Both of you are old playmates of mine, but Arthur--”

I had to tell her; I had to dash her small hopes to the ground.

“Forgive me, Ella,” I said, “but I cannot carry him this message or

even get it to him secretly. I am watched myself; I know it, though I

have never really detected the man doing it.”

“Oh!” she ejaculated, terror-stricken at once. “Is there any one here,

behind these trees or in the street on the other side of the hedge-row?”

I hastened to reassure her.

“No, no. If I’ve been followed, it was not so near as that. I cannot do

what you ask for several reasons. Arthur will credit you with the best

of impulses without your incurring any such risk.”

“Yes, yes, but that’s not enough. What shall I do? What shall I do?”

I strove to help her.

“There is a man,” said I, “who sees him constantly and may be induced

to assure Arthur of your belief and continued interest in him. That man

is his lawyer, Mr. Moffat. Any one will tell you how to reach him.”

“No, no,” she disclaimed, hurriedly, breathlessly. “My last hope was in

you. You wouldn’t think the worse of me for--for what I’ve done; or let

mother know. I couldn’t tell a stranger even if he went right to Arthur

with it. I’m not made that way. I couldn’t stand the shame.” Drawing

back a step she wrung her small hands together, exclaiming, “What an

unhappy girl I am!” Then stepping up to my side, she whispered in my

ear: “There is something I could say which might--”

I stopped her. Right or wrong, I stopped her. I hadn’t the courage just

then to face the possibilities of what lay at the end of this simple

sentence. She possessed evidence, or thought she did, which might help

to clear Arthur. Evidence of what? Evidence which would implicate

Carmel? The very thought unnerved me.

“I had rather not be the recipient of this confidence if it is at

all important or at all in the line of testimony. Remember the man I

mentioned. He will be glad to hear of anything helpful to his client.”

Her distress mounted to passion.

“It’s--it’s something that will destroy my mother’s confidence in me.

I disobeyed her. I did what she would never have let me do if she had

known. I--I used to meet Arthur in the driveway back by the barns. I

had a key made to the little side door so that I could do it. I used

to meet him late. I would get up out of bed when mother was asleep,

and dress myself and sit at the window until I heard him come up

the street. Then I would steal down and catch him on his way to the

stables. I--I had a good reason for this, Elwood. He knew I would be

there, and it brought him home earlier and not quite so--so full of

liquor. If he was very bad, he would come up the other way and I would

sit waiting and crying till three o’clock struck, then creep into my

bed and try to sleep. Nights and nights I have done this. Nothing else

in life seemed so important, for it did hold him back a little. But not

so much as if he had loved me more. He loved me some, but he couldn’t

have loved me very much, or he would have sent me some word, or seen

me, if but for a minute, since Adelaide’s death. And he hasn’t, he

hasn’t! and that makes it harder for me to acknowledge the watch I kept

on him, and how I know he never went through our grounds for the second

time that night. He went once, about nine, but not later. I am certain

of this, for I was looking out for him till three in the morning. If he

came back and then returned afterwards to town, it was through his own

street, and that takes so long, he would never have been able to get

to the place they said he did at the time they have agreed upon. Oh! I

have studied every word of the case, to see if what I had to tell would

help him any. Father cannot bear to see me with a newspaper in my hand,

and mother comes and takes them out of my room; but I have managed to

read every word since they accused him of being at the club-house that

night, and I know that he needs some one to come out boldly in his

cause, and I want to be that some one, and I will be, too, whatever

happens to me, if--if I must,” she faintly added.

I was dumb, but not from lack of interest, God knows, or from

unsympathetic feeling for this brave-hearted girl. The significance

of the situation was what held me speechless. Here was help for

Arthur without my braving all the horrors of Carmel’s downfall by any

impulsive act of my own. For a moment, hope in one burning and renewing

flame soared high in my breast. I was willing to accept my release

in this way. I was willing to shift the load from my own back to the

delicate shoulders of this shrinking but ardent girl. Then reason

returned, if consideration halted, and I asked myself: “But is the

help she offers of any practical worth? Would her timid declarations,

trembling as she was between her awe of her parents and her desire to

serve the man she loved, weigh in the balance against the evidence

accumulated by the district attorney?”

It seemed doubtful. She would not be believed, and I should have to

back up her statement with my own hitherto suppressed testimony. It

was a hard case, any way I looked at it. A woman to be sacrificed

whichever course I took. Contemplating the tremulous, half-fainting

figure drooping in the shadows before me, such native chivalry as

remained to me, urged me to spare this little friend of mine, so

ungifted by nature, so innocent in intention, so sensitive and so

shrinking in temperament and habit. Then Carmel’s image rose before

me, glorious, impassioned, driven by the fierce onrush of some mighty

inherent force into violent deeds undreamed of by most women; but when

thus undriven, gentle in manner, elevated in thought, refined as only

a few rare characters are refined; and my heart stood still again

with doubt, and I could not say: “It is your duty to save him at all

hazards. Brave your father, brave your mother, brave public opinion and

possibly the wrecking of your whole future, but tell the truth, and rid

your days of doubt, your nights of remorse.” I could not say this. So

many things might happen to save Arthur, to save Carmel, to save the

little woman before me. I would trust that future, temporise a bit and

give such advice as would relieve us both from immediate fear without

compromising Arthur’s undoubted rights to justice.

Meanwhile, Ella Fulton had become distracted by new fears. The sound

of sleigh-bells could be heard on the hill. It might be her father.

Should she try to reach the house, or hide her small body, like a

trapped animal’s, on the dark side of the hedge? I was conscious of her

thoughts, shared her uncertainties, notwithstanding the struggle then

going on in my own mind. But I remained quiet and so did she, and the

sleigh ultimately flew past us up the road. The sigh which broke from

her lips as this terror subsided, brought my disordered thoughts to a

focus. I must not keep her longer. Something must be said at once. As

soon as she looked my way again, I spoke:

“Ella, this is no easy problem you have offered me. You are right in

thinking that this testimony of yours might be of benefit to Arthur,

and that you ought to give it in case of extremity. But I cannot advise

you to obtrude it yet. I understand what it would cost you, and the

sacrifice you would make is too great for the doubtful good which might

follow. Neither must you trust me to act for you in this matter. My

own position is too unstable for me to be of assistance to any one.

I can sympathise with you, possibly as no one else can; but I cannot

reach Arthur, either by word or by message. Your father is the man to

appeal to in case interference becomes necessary and you must speak.

You have not quite the same fear of him that you have of your mother.

Take him into your confidence--not now but later when things press and

you must have a friend. He’s a just man. You may shock his fatherly

susceptibilities, you may even lose some of his regard, but he will do

the right thing by you and Arthur. Have confidence that this is so, and

rest, little friend, in the hope and help it gives you. Will you?”

“I will try. I could only tell father on my knees, but I will do it

if--if I must,” she faltered out, unconsciously repeating her former

phrase. “Now, I must go. You have been good; only I asked too much.”

And with no other farewell she left me and disappeared up the walk.

I lingered till I heard the faint click of her key in the door she had

secretly made her own; then I moved on. As I did so, I heard a rustle

somewhere about me on street or lawn. I never knew whence it came,

but I felt assured that neither her fears nor mine had been quite

unfounded; that a listener had been posted somewhere near us and that

a part, if not all, we had said had been overheard. I was furious for

an instant, then the soothing thought came that possibly Providence had

ordained that the Gordian knot should be cut in just this way.

But the event bore no ostensible fruit. The week ended, and the case of

the People _against_ Arthur Cumberland was moved for trial.

XXIV

ALL THIS STOOD

It’s fit this royal session do proceed;

And that, without delay, their arguments

Be now produc’d and heard

_King Henry VIII_.

There was difficulty, as you will conceive, in selecting an

unprejudiced jury. But this once having been accomplished, the case

went quickly and smoothly on under the able guidance of the prosecuting

attorney.

I shall spare you the opening details, also much of the preliminary

testimony. Enough that at the close of the sixth day, the outlook was

a serious one for Arthur Cumberland. The prosecution appeared to be

making good its claims. The quiet and unexpectedly dignified way in

which, at the beginning, the defendant had faced the whole antagonistic

court-room, with the simple plea of “Not Guilty,” was being slowly but

surely forgotten in the accumulated proofs of his discontented life

under his sister’s dominating influence, his desire for independence

and a free use of the money held in trust for him by this sister

under their father’s will, the quarrels which such a situation would

naturally evoke between characters cast in such different moulds

and actuated by such opposing tastes and principles, and the final

culmination of the same at the dinner-table when Adelaide forced him,

as it were, to subscribe to her prohibition of all further use of

liquor in their house. Following this evidence of motive, came the

still more damaging one of opportunity. He was shown to have been in

the club-house at or near the time of Adelaide’s death. The matter of

the bottles was gone into and the event in Cuthbert Road. Then I was

called to the stand, and my testimony asked for.

I had prepared myself for the ordeal and faced it unflinchingly. That

I might keep intact the one point necessary to Carmel’s safety, I met

my inquisitors, now as before, with the utmost candour in all other

respects. Indeed, in one particular I was even more exact in my details

than at any previous examination. Anxious to explain my agitated and

hesitating advance through the club-house, prior to my discovery of

the crime which had been committed there, I acknowledged what I had

hitherto concealed, that in my first entrance into the building, I had

come upon a man’s derby hat and coat hanging in the lower hall, and

when questioned more minutely on the subject, allowed it to appear that

it was owing to the disappearance of these articles during my stay

upstairs, that I had been led into saying that some one had driven away

from The Whispering Pines before the coming of the police.

This, as you will see, was in open contradiction of my former

statements that I had _seen_ an unknown party, thus attired, driving

away through the upper gateway just as I entered by the lower. But it

was a contradiction which while noted by Mr. Moffat, failed to injure

me with the jury, and much less with the spectators. The impression

had become so firmly fixed in the public mind and in that of certain

officials as well, that my early hesitations and misstatements were

owing to a brotherly anxiety to distract attention from Arthur whose

clothing they believed me to have recognised in these articles I

have mentioned--that I rather gained than lost by what, under other

circumstances would have seriously damaged my testimony. That I should

prevaricate even to my own detriment, at a preliminary examination,

only to tell the truth openly and like a man when in court and under

the sanctity of an oath was, in the popular estimation, something to my

credit; and Mr. Moffat, whose chief recommendation as counsel lay in

his quick appreciation of the exigencies of the moment, did not press

me too sharply on this point when he came to his cross-examination.

But in other respects he drove me hard. An effort was made by him,

first of all, to discredit me as a witness. My lack of appreciation for

Adelaide and my secret but absorbing love for Carmel were inexorably

brought out: also the easy, happy-go-lucky tenor of my life, and

my dogged persistence in any course I thought consistent with my

happiness. My character was well known in this town of my birth, and

it would have been folly for me to attempt to gloss it over. I had not

even the desire to do so. If my sins exacted penance, I would pay it

here and now and to the full. Only Carmel should not suffer. I refused

to admit that she had given any evidences of returning my reckless

passion. My tongue would not speak the necessary words, and it was

not made to. It was not her character but mine which Mr. Moffat was

endeavouring to assail.

But though I was thus shown up for what I was, in a manner most public

and undesirable, neither the rulings of the court, nor the attitude of

the jury betrayed any loss of confidence in me as a credible witness,

and seeing this, the wily lawyer shifted his ground and confined

himself to an endeavour to shake me on certain definite and important

points. How were the pillows heaped upon the couch? What ones at top,

what ones at bottom? Which did I remove first, and why did I remove any

of them? What had I expected to find? These questions answered, the

still more-to-be-dreaded ones followed of just how my betrothed looked

at the moment I uncovered her face. Were the marks very plain upon her

throat? How plain; and what did I mean by saying that I felt forced to

lay my thumbs upon them? Was that a natural thing to do? Where was the

candle at that moment? How many feet away? A candle does not give much

light at that distance, was I sure that I saw those marks immediately;

that they were dark enough and visible enough to draw my eyes from her

face which would naturally attract my gaze first? It was horrible,

devilish, but I won through, only to meet the still more disturbing

question as to whether I saw any other evidences of strangulation

besides the marks. I could only mention the appearance of the eyes;

and when Mr. Moffat found that he could not shake me on this point,

he branched off into a less harrowing topic and cross-examined me in

regard to the ring. I had said that it was on her hand when I bade

good-bye to her in her own house, and that it was not there when I came

upon her dead. Had the fact made me curious to examine her hand? No.

Then I could not tell whether the finger on which she wore it gave any

evidence of this ring having been pulled off with violence? No. I could

not swear that in my opinion it was? I could not.

The small flask of cordial and the three glasses, one clean and the

others showing signs of having been used, were next taken up, but

with no result for the defence. I had told all I knew about these in

my direct examination; also about such matters as the bottles found

on the kitchen table, the leaving of my keys at the Cumberland house,

and the fact, well known, that the two bottles of wine left in the

wine-vault and tabulated by the steward as so left in the list found

in my apartments, were of an exclusive brand unlikely to be found

anywhere else in town. I could add nothing more, and, having spoken the

exact truth concerning them, from the very first, I ran no chance of

contradicting myself even under the close fire of the opposing counsel.

But there was a matter I dreaded to see him approach, and, which, I was

equally sure, with an insight unshared I believe by any one else in the

whole courtroom, was equally dreaded by the prisoner.

This was the presence in the club-house chimney of the half-burned

letter I had long ago been compelled, in my own defence, to acknowledge

having written to the victim’s young sister, Carmel Cumberland. As I

saw District Attorney Fox about to enter upon this topic, I gathered

myself together to meet the onslaught, for in this matter I could not

be strictly truthful, since the least slip on my part might awaken the

whole world to the fact that it could only have come there through the

agency of Carmel herself.

What Mr. Moffat thought of it--what he hoped to prove in the prisoner’s

behalf by raking this subject over--it was left for me to discover

later. The prisoner was an innocent man, in his eyes. I was not; and,

while the time had not come for him to make this openly apparent, he

was not above showing even now that the case contained a factor which

weakened the prosecution--a factor totally dissociated with the openly

accepted theory that the crime was simply the result of personal

cupidity and drunken spite.

And in this he was right. It did weaken it--weakened it to the point

of collapse, if the counsel for the defence had fully acted up to his

opportunity. But something withheld him. Just at the moment when I

feared the truth must come out, he hesitated and veered gradually away

from this subject. In his nervous pacings to and fro before the witness

stand, his eye had rested for a moment on Arthur’s, and with this

result. The situation was saved, but at a great loss to the defendant.

I began to cherish softened feelings towards Arthur Cumberland, from

this moment. Was it then, or later, that he began in his turn to

cherish new and less hostile feelings towards myself? He had hated me

and vowed my death if I escaped the fate he could now dimly see opening

out before himself; yet I could see that he was glad to see me slip

from my tormentor’s hands with my story unimpeached, and that he drew

his breath more deeply and with much more evidence of freedom, now that

my testimony had been thoroughly sifted and nothing had come to light

implicating Carmel. I even thought I caught a kindly gleam in his eye

as it met mine at this critical juncture, and by its light I understood

my man and what he hoped from me. He wished me at any risk to himself,

to unite with him in saving Carmel’s good name. That I should accede

to this; that I should respect his generous wishes and let him go to

unmerited destruction for even so imperative an obligation as we both

lay under, was a question for the morrow. I could not decide upon it

to-day--not while the smallest hope remained that he would yet escape

conviction by other means than the one which would wreck the life we

were both intent on saving.

Several short examinations followed mine, all telling in their nature,

all calculated to fix in the minds of the jury the following facts:

(Pray pardon the repetition. It is necessary to present the case to you

just as it stood at this period of my greatest struggle.)

1.--That Arthur, swayed by cupidity and moved to rage by the scene at

the dinner-table, had, by some unknown means of a more or less violent

character, prevailed upon Adelaide to accompany him to The Whispering

Pines, in the small cutter, to which, in the absence of every servant

about the place, he himself had harnessed the grey mare.

2.--That in preparation for this visit to a spot remote from

observation and closed against all visitors, they, still for some

unknown reason, had carried between them a candlestick and candle, a

flask of cordial, three glasses, and a small bottle marked “Poison”;

also some papers, letters, or scraps of correspondence, among them the

compromising line I had written to Carmel.

3.--That, while in this building, at an hour not yet settled, a second

altercation had arisen between them, or some attempt been made by

the brother which had alarmed Adelaide and sent her flying to the

telephone, in great agitation, with an appeal to the police for help.

This telephone was in a front room and the jury was led to judge

that she had gained access to it while her companion ransacked the

wine-vault and brought the six bottles of spirit up from the cellar.

4.--That her outcry had alarmed the prisoner in his turn, causing him

to leave most of the bottles below, and hasten up to the room, where he

completed the deed with which he had previously threatened her.

5.--That poison having failed, he resorted to strangulation; after

which--or before--came the robbery of her ring, the piling up of the

cushions over the body in a vain endeavour to hide the deed, or to

prolong the search for the victim. Then the departure--the locking of

the front door behind the perpetrator; the flight of the grey horse and

cutter through the blinding storm; the blowing off of the driver’s hat;

the identification of the same by means of the flour-mark left on its

brim by the mechanic’s wife; the presence of a portion of one of the

two abstracted bottles in the stable where the horse was put up; and

the appearance of Arthur with the other bottle at the door of the inn

in Cuthbert Road, just as the clock was striking half-past eleven.

This latter fact might have been regarded as proving an alibi, owing

to the length of road between the Cumberland house and the place just

mentioned, if there had not been a short cut to town open to him by

means of a door in the wall separating the Cumberland and Fulton

grounds--a door which was found unlocked, and with the key in it, by

Zadok Brown, the coachman, when he came home about three next morning.

All this stood; not an item of this testimony could be shaken. Most of

it was true; some of it false; but what was false, so unassailable by

any ordinary means, that, as I have already said, the clouds seemed

settling heavily over Arthur Cumberland when, at the end of the sixth

day, the proceedings closed.

The night that followed was a heavy one for me. Then came the fateful

morrow, and, after that, the day of days destined to make a life-long

impression on all who attended this trial.

XXV

“I AM INNOCENT”

All is oblique,

There’s nothing level in our cursed natures,

But direct villainy. Therefore, be abhorred

All feasts, societies, and throngs of men!

His semblable, yea, himself, Timon disdains.

_Timon of Athens_.

I was early in my seat. Feeling the momentousness of the occasion--for

this day must decide my action for or against the prisoner--I searched

the faces of the jury, of the several counsel, and of the judge. I was

anxious to know what I had to expect from them, in case my conscience

got the better of my devotion to Carmel’s interests and led me into

that declaration of the real facts which was forever faltering on my

tongue, without having, as yet, received the final impetus which could

only end in speech.

To give him his rightful precedence, the judge showed an impenetrable

countenance but little changed from that with which he had faced

us all from the start. He, like most of the men involved in these

proceedings, had been a close friend of the prisoner’s father, and, in

his capacity of judge in this momentous trial, had had to contend with

his personal predilections, possibly with concealed sympathies, if not

with equally well-concealed prejudices. This had lent to his aspect a

sternness never observable in it before; but no man, even the captious

Mr. Moffat, had seriously questioned his rulings; and, whatever the

cost to himself, he had, up to this time, held the scales of justice so

evenly that it would have taken an audacious mind to have ventured on

an interpretation of his real attitude or mental leaning in this case.

From this imposing presence, nobly sustained by a well-proportioned

figure and a head and face indicative of intellect and every kindly

attribute, I turned to gaze upon Mr. Fox and his colleagues. One spirit

seemed to animate them--confidence in their case, and unqualified

satisfaction at its present status.

I was conscious of a certain ironic impulse to smile, as I noted the

eager whisper and the bustle of preparation with which they settled

upon their next witness and prepared to open their batteries upon him.

How easily I could call down that high look, and into what a turmoil I

could throw them all by an ingenuous demand to be recalled to the stand!

But the psychological moment had not yet come, and I subdued the

momentary impulse and proceeded with my scrutiny of the people about

me. The jury looked tired, with the exception of one especially alert

little man who drank in even the most uninteresting details with

avidity. But they all had good faces, and none could doubt their

interest, or that they were fully alive to the significance of the

occasion.

Mr. Moffat, leading counsel for the defendant, was a spare man of

unusual height, modified a little, and only a little, by the forward

droop of his shoulders. Nervous in manner, quick, short, sometimes

rasping in speech, he had the changeful eye and mobile expression of

a very sensitive nature; and from him, if from any one, I might hope

to learn how much or how little Arthur had to fear from the day’s

proceedings. But Mr. Moffat’s countenance was not as readable as usual.

He looked preoccupied--a strange thing for him; and, instead of keeping

his eye on the witness, as was his habitual practice, he allowed it

to wander over the sea of heads before him, with a curious expectant

interest which aroused my own curiosity, and led me to hunt about for

its cause.

My first glance was unproductive. I saw only the usual public, such as

had confronted us the whole week, with curious and increasing interest.

But as I searched further, I discerned in an inconspicuous corner, the

bowed head, veiled almost beyond recognition, of Ella Fulton. It was

her first appearance in court. Each day I had anticipated her presence,

and each day I had failed to see my anticipations realised. But she

was here now, and so were her father and her cold and dominating

mother; and, beholding her thus accompanied, I fancied I understood Mr.

Moffat’s poorly concealed excitement. But another glance at Mrs. Fulton

assured me that I was mistaken in this hasty surmise. No such serious

purpose, as I feared, lay back of their presence here to-day. Curiosity

alone explained it; and as I realised what this meant, and how little

understanding it betokened of the fierce struggle then going on in the

timid breast of their distracted child, a sickening sense of my own

responsibility drove Carmel’s beauty, and Carmel’s claims temporarily

from my mind, and following the direction of Ella’s thoughts, if not

her glances, I sought in the face of the prisoner a recognition of her

presence, if not of the promise this presence brought him.

His eye had just fallen on her. I was assured of this by the sudden

softening of his expression--the first real softening I had ever seen

in it. It was but a momentary flash, but it was unmistakable in its

character, as was his speedy return to his former stolidity. Whatever

his thoughts were at sight of his little sweetheart, he meant to hide

them even from his counsel--most of all from his counsel, I decided

after further contemplation of them both. If Mr. Moffat still showed

nervousness, it was for some other reason than anxiety about this

little body hiding from sight behind the proudly held figures of father

and mother.

The opening testimony of the day, while not vital, was favourable to

the prosecution in that it showed Arthur’s conduct since the murder

to have been inconsistent with perfect innocence. His belated return

at noon the next day, raging against the man who had been found in

an incriminating position on the scene of crime, while at the same

time failing to betray his own presence there till driven to it by

accumulating circumstances and the persistent inquiries of the police;

the care he took to avoid drink, though constant tippling was habitual

to him and formed the great cause of quarrel between himself and the

murdered Adelaide; his haunting of Carmel’s door and anxious listening

for any words she might let fall in her delirium; the suspicion which

he constantly betrayed of the nurse when for any reason he was led to

conclude that she had heard something which he had not; his behaviour

at the funeral and finally his action in demanding to have the

casket-lid removed that he might look again at the face he had made no

effort to gaze upon when opportunity offered and time and place were

seemly: these facts and many more were brought forward in grim array

against the prisoner, with but little opposition from his counsel and

small betrayal of feeling on the part of Arthur himself. His stolid

face had remained stolid even when the ring which had fallen out of his

sister’s casket was shown to the jury and the connection made between

its presence there and the intrusion of his hand into the same, on

the occasion above mentioned. This once thoughtless, pleasure-loving,

and hopelessly dissipated boy had not miscalculated his nerve. It

was sufficient for an ordeal which might have tried the courage and

self-possession of the most hardened criminal.

Then came the great event of the day, in anticipation of which the

court-room had been packed, and every heart within it awakened by slow

degrees to a state of great nervous expectancy. The prosecution rested

and the junior counsel for the defence opened his case to the jury.

If I had hoped for any startling disclosure, calculated to establish

his client’s alleged alibi, or otherwise to free the same from the

definite charge of murder, I had reason to be greatly disappointed by

this maiden effort of a young and inexperienced lawyer. If not exactly

weak, there was an unexpected vagueness in its statements which seemed

quite out of keeping with the emphatic declaration which he made of the

prisoner’s innocence.

Even Arthur was sensible of the bad effect made by this preliminary

address. More than once during its delivery and notably at its

conclusion, he turned to Mr. Moffat, with a bitter remark, which was

not without effect on that gentleman’s cheek, and at once called forth

a retort stinging enough to cause Arthur to sink back into his place,

with the first sign of restlessness I had observed in him.

“Moffat is sly. Moffat has something up his sleeve. I will wait till

he sees fit to show it,” was my thought; then, as I caught a wild and

pleading look from Ella, I added in positive assertion to myself, “And

so must she.”

Answering her unspoken appeal with an admonitory shake of the head,

I carelessly let my fingers rest upon my mouth until I saw that she

understood me and was prepared to follow my lead for a little while

longer.

My satisfaction at this was curtailed by the calling of Arthur

Cumberland to the stand to witness in his own defence.

I had dreaded this contingency. I saw that for some reason, both his

counsel and associate counsel, were not without their own misgivings as

to the result of their somewhat doubtful experiment.

A change was observable in this degenerate son of the Cumberlands since

many there had confronted him face to face. Physically he was improved.

Enough time had elapsed since his sudden dropping of old habits, for

him to have risen above its first effects and to have acquired that

tone of personal dignity which follows a successful issue to any moral

conflict. But otherwise the difference was such as to arouse doubt as

to the real man lurking behind his dogged, uncommunicative manner.

Even with the knowledge of his motives which I believed myself to

possess, I was at a loss to understand his indifference to self and the

immobility of manner he maintained under all circumstances and during

every fluctuation which took place in the presentation of his case, or

in the temper of the people surrounding him. I felt that beyond the

one fact that he could be relied upon to protect Carmel’s name and

Carmel’s character, even to the jeopardising of his case, he was not

to be counted on, and might yet startle many of us, and most notably

of all, the little woman waiting to hear what he had to say in his own

defence before she threw herself into the breach and made that devoted

attempt to save him, in his own despite, which had been my terror from

the first and was my terror now.

Perjury! but not in his own defence--rather in opposition to it--that

is what his counsel had to fear; and I wondered if they knew it.

My attention became absorbed in the puzzle. Carmel’s fate, if not

Ella’s--and certainly my own--hung upon the issue. This I knew, and

this I faced, calmly, but very surely, as, the preliminary questions

having been answered, Mr. Moffat proceeded.

The witness’s name having been demanded and given and some other

preliminary formalities gone through, he was asked:

“Mr. Cumberland, did you have any quarrel with your sister during the

afternoon or evening of December the second?”

“I did.” Then, as if not satisfied with this simple statement, he

blurted forth: “And it wasn’t the first. I hated the discipline she

imposed upon me, and the disapproval she showed of my ways and the

manner in which I chose to spend my money.”

A straightforward expression of feeling, but hardly a judicious one.

Judge Edwards glanced, in some surprise, from Mr. Moffat to the daring

man who could choose thus to usher in his defence; and then, forgetting

his own emotions, in his instinctive desire for order, rapped sharply

with his gavel in correction of the audible expression of a like

feeling on the part of the expectant audience.

Mr. Moffat, apparently unaffected by this result of his daring move,

pursued his course, with the quiet determination of one who sees his

goal and is working deliberately towards it.

“Do you mind particularising? Of what did she especially disapprove in

your conduct or way of spending money?”

“She disapproved of my fondness for drink. She didn’t like my late

hours, or the condition in which I frequently came home. I did not like

her expressions of displeasure, or the way she frequently cut me short

when I wanted to have a good time with my friends. We never agreed. I

made her suffer often and unnecessarily. I regret it now; she was a

better sister to me than I could then understand.”

This was uttered slowly and with a quiet emphasis which reawakened that

excited hum the judge had been at such pains to quell a moment before.

But he did not quell it now; he seemed to have forgotten his duty in

the strong interest called up by these admissions from the tongue of

the most imperturbable prisoner he had had before him in years.

Mr. Moffat, with an eye on District Attorney Fox, who had shown his

surprise at the trend the examination was taking by a slight indication

of uneasiness, grateful enough, no doubt, to the daring counsellor,

went on with his examination:

“Mr. Cumberland, will you tell us when you first felt this change of

opinion in regard to your sister?”

Mr. Fox leaped to his feet. Then he slowly reseated himself. Evidently

he thought it best to let the prisoner have his full say. Possibly he

may have regretted his leniency the next moment when, with a solemn

lowering of his head, Arthur answered:

“When I saw my home desolated in one dreadful night. With one sister

dead in the house, the victim of violence, and another delirious from

fright or some other analogous cause, I had ample time to think--and I

used that time. That’s all.”

Simple words, read or repeated; but in that crowded court-room, with

every ear strained to catch the lie which seemed the only refuge for

the man so hemmed in by circumstance, these words, uttered without the

least attempt at effect, fell with a force which gave new life to such

as wished to see this man acquitted.

His counsel, as if anxious to take advantage of this very expectation

to heighten the effect of what followed, proceeded immediately to

inquire:

“When did you see your sister Adelaide for the last time alive?”

A searching question. What would be his reply?

A very quiet one.

“That night at the dinner-table. When I left the room, I turned to

look at her. She was not looking at me; so I slammed the door and went

upstairs. In an hour or so, I had left the house to get a drink. I got

the drink, but I never saw Adelaide again till I saw her in her coffin.”

This blunt denial of the crime for which he stood there arraigned, fell

on my heart with a weight which showed me how inextinguishable is the

hope we cherish deep down under all surface convictions. I had been

unconscious of this hope, but it was there. It seemed to die a double

death at these words. For I believed him! Courage is needed for a lie.

There were no signs visible in him, as yet, of his having drawn upon

this last resource of the despairing. I should know it when he did; he

could not hide the subtle change from me.

To others, this declaration came with greater or less force, according

as it was viewed in the light of a dramatic trick of Mr. Moffat’s, or

as the natural outburst of a man fighting for his life in his own way

and with his own weapons. I could not catch the eye of Ella cowering

low in her seat, so could not judge what tender chords had been struck

in her sensitive breast by these two assertions so dramatically offset

against each other--the one, his antagonism to the dead; the other, his

freedom from the crime in which that antagonism was supposed to have

culminated.