A TERRIBLE CRIME.
"Deep and dark the flowing river,
Close to the feet like a serpent glides;
Many a secret lost forever
The deep and beautiful water hides!"
Our Kathleen did not share the wakefulness of her relative.
On the contrary, a strange drowsiness stole over her as soon as she
entered the shabby little bedroom to which Mrs. Franklyn conducted her
with such alacrity.
"Get a good rest, that's a dear! and in the morning you shall see them
all," she said, wheedlingly; and giving Kathleen a cold little kiss on
the cheek, she retreated, leaving her guest alone.
Kathleen flung off her clothes, shivering in the fireless room, slipped
into her gown, and crept between the sheets, murmuring over her prayers
in the bed because it was too cold outside. Then, with the tears still
wet on her lashes, she fell into a heavy slumber.
Presently the door opened again noiselessly, and the old woman's head
was thrust inside the room. She gave a low grunt of satisfaction as she
heard the deep breathing of Kathleen, and closed the door.
Silence again in the old house; but if any one had been listening they
would have heard outside, in the chilly night, the stamp of the horses
that had brought the uncle and niece to this place. The cab was waiting
yet. Why, and for whom?
The night was intensely dark, it was freezing cold, and the driver did
not have to wait long.
The door opened softly in a little while, and a man and a woman stole
out bearing between them a figure wrapped up in a long cloak. They
pushed their dead or living burden, whichever it was, into the cab,
entered themselves, and were driven a long distance, until the low
murmur of a river rushing between its banks was distinctly heard. At a
quiet, unfrequented spot they came to a stop; the two people got out
again, and carried their burden to the river-bank; then there was a
thud, a splash, and then they turned away, their arms empty of the load
they had brought. In the silence and darkness of the wintry night a
terrible crime had been committed.
Alas! poor Kathleen, poor orphan-girl, the sport of a most malignant
fate! Heaven help thee now, drifting upon the dark, mysterious waves of
the gloomy river, beneath the pall of the ink-black heavens, unlighted
by either moon or star!
* * * * *
Meanwhile, the old man, locked into his room like a rat in a trap, was
bending all his feeble efforts toward releasing himself.
He feared to make an outcry, for he comprehended instinctively that
treachery lurked in the air of the old house, with its forbidding
mistress--treachery and danger to himself and helpless Kathleen.
He sunk back helplessly upon the bed, at first shaken and unnerved by
his terrible suspicions. Sweeping his hand across his brow, he muttered:
"My door was locked on the outside by design to bar me out from my
child--my bonny Kathleen. What have they done to her? or what are they
going to do?"
He crept cautiously to the window and pushed up the sash. Horrors! it
was barred across with iron as closely as a prison; and again he fell
to raving of treachery and danger.
"That woman was not Mrs. Franklyn. I did not believe at first that it
could be poor Zaidee's mother. She could not have changed so much in
seventeen years, I knew; yet I could not speak out then, lest I betray
myself. I thought I would wait for the developments of to-morrow. Alas!
it was a fatal resolve. We were decoyed here by the trick of some
deadly enemy, and every moment that I remain locked up here Kathleen is
in the most deadly peril. God in Heaven help me to escape, that I may
succor my poor child!"
Desperate with fears for Kathleen, he threw himself against the door
and shook it with all his might. The sounds rang through the house, but
no one came to release him. He shrieked aloud, but no voice replied to
his frantic calls.
In his misery an awful suspicion had come to him.
He remembered Kathleen's threat to Ivan Belmont, that she would send
him to prison unless she received the value of her stolen diamonds.
What if that villain had laid a deadly trap to decoy Kathleen to this
place and murder her to save himself the payment of that pitiful sum!
This affair looked like it. Perhaps she was already murdered--his
beautiful Kathleen, that he loved so dearly, and whom he had brought
here in his mistaken eagerness to get her away from Boston.
Searching frantically about, he perceived with joy an old rusty poker
beneath the iron fender of the fire-place. He seized it, and with the
strength of a madman wrenched the lock from the door. It flew open. He
was free.
Then ensued the most piteous search the world ever knew--the old man's
frantic search for missing Kathleen.
It was all in vain. The old house was empty, the girl was gone, the old
woman was gone, and the night-wind, as it sighed around the gables of
the lonely old house, did not whisper to him of the awful secret the
river hid.