There are times like that, when one's spirit is sick, sore, and lame, as

if it was a body, and it goes looking for a place to lie down where

nobody will disturb it, and it can feel its dizzy self going into a long

sleep. I'll never forget how sick my soul was then--sick of all the

false ways and selfishness and all the old scenes, and all big cities

and the flow of faces on the streets and the memory of our elegant

apartments in Paris, with their pale brocades at the windows and on the

furniture, and sick of the sordid surroundings in the cheap New York

boarding-house where the rheumatism had finally reached Welstoke's

heart, and the paper was peeling off the walls. I had always swallowed

the airs and graces of society people very hard, and many was the time

I'd wish to drop back among people like my father's family, who didn't

mind the smell of cooking and could get a night's sleep by laying a head

on a pillow and weren't bothered by frills. So, though it was plain

enough that nothing was left for me but to come down in the world, I was

not sorry, after all. I could see in the mirror that the easy life I

had led at first, and the worry and labor of foot that had come suddenly

on top of it, had made me fat of body and yet drawn and old of face. My

youth had gone, along with Madame Welstoke, and I had little regret for

it or for her.

Business was dreadfully poor then, and for the life of me I could not

get a hold on anything in the way of hotel housekeeper, or millinery, or

doctor's office-maid. For every position that offered, which was few,

there was a mob of women with their smirks and smiles and references in

white envelopes that they were trying to keep clean as the days went by.

Of course, I had no references at all, and small good would it do for me

to tell of my past experience. Besides, as I've often thought since, the

way I wore my hair and colored my cheeks, from the habits Welstoke had

taught me, was overdone, as all women get to overdoing the thing sooner

or later, and more particularly when they think their good looks is

threatened by the bleaching and yellowing and drying-up of the wrong

side of thirty-five. It's not a thing to help much in applying for work.

Anyway, the short of it was that after six weeks I had no job, for all

my walks in the heat to save carfare.

You have never felt the panic that comes when it seems as if Fate was

chewing away the strands of the rope that holds you to self-preservation;

it is a terrible thing and soon takes out of you all fancy notions. It

grabbed me by the neck and bent my pride and sent me off praying to

find a place through an employment agency. Cooking, washing and

ironing was good enough for me the minute I found my last dollar

staring up at me from the palm of this right hand. The fall had begun

to come on, and, believe it or not, as you like, I dreamed and dreamed

and dreamed of walking the streets at night, through the driving snow

of winter and down to the wharves and the river, with its cakes of ice

and its welcome. And when the first day I had gone to sit in the

intelligence room and a lady--she seemed like a blurred picture to me

and her questions were far away like the rumble of a train at

night--had hired me, I took my alligator bag that was left out of

the wreck of old elegance, and I stood up and tried to follow her

like a dog till she stopped me.

It was only when I'd met her later and was on the train bound for a

little town up the state, that I turned my eyes, kind of cautious, to

see who it was had hired me. You could not call her pretty, by any

means. She was tall and thin, and there was a prominent bone sticking

out at the back of her neck. Her shoulders sloped, too, and looked as if

they had been bent forward on purpose to squeeze her lungs together. Her

skin was a bit too yellow and her teeth too large and her lips too

shapeless. But the steel of people has nothing to do with the scabbard,

I'm thinking. Bodies are many a time disguises, and there was only one

place where that woman's self peeped through like a flower through the

dead coals on an ashheap. It was her eyes.

I never have seen the beat of her eyes for loveliness. No, I never have

seen two of them--gray they were--that could toss a God's blessing to

you so easy. They gave the lie to her cold lips and made you forget the

looks of her, because you knew she'd been made to wear ugliness to test

the sweetness of her soul.

I saw 'em when, from all the falseness and worry, all the paint and

powder and the mockery of big cities and the jest of money and all the

worry and bitterness of the end of my adventures, I felt the relief of

being nobody again and going in a home, whose ever it might be, and

being where there was trees and hard work and fewer human faces

streaming along and looking into yours, only to forget you forever. For

the first time since the day I believed I'd never meet Monty Cranch

again, my sight was all fogged with tears.

Probably she saw me. And if you'd know the kind of woman she was, I'll

tell you that the first I knew, her thin fingers was on my big hands,

and I looked up and there were those two eyes. The train was thumping

along through the meadows, but I heard her say, "There, there," very

soft and she never asked me one word about my past either then or ever

after. That was her kind of charity, and may God rest her soul!

Oh, when I look back on that day, I wonder how evil thoughts ever came

into my mind and how I could ever wish harm to the white house under the

big elms in the centre of the town, where among the business blocks it

stood very stubborn, and I wonder how I ever plotted wrong for her or

him that was her husband and met us that day at the iron gate.

We saw him reading a paper on the wide porch--a young man then, with a

big frame and a habit of looking out very solemn from under his eyebrows

and over big tortoise-shell glasses. But he had boyish, joking ways of

speech, as you know. He came down the walk between the plats of grass

that looked like two peaceful, green rugs spread in the midst of all the

noise and bustle of the town, and his long hands pulled up the latch and

he smiled at the woman as if he loved her. And she said to me in a very

proud and dignified way, "Judge Colfax, my husband."

That was the first time I ever set eyes on him, and in a quarter of a

century, beginning as he was then, a judge of county court, and ending,

as well you know, I never could see a change in his way of looking at

life. Civilization moves here and there and along with it ways and

means and customs and fashions and the looks of the buildings and the

furniture, but there is a saying of the Judge that comes back to me now.

"The way of vice, virtue, passions, and instincts of men is universal

and everlasting," he'd say, and as for himself, his eyes were watching

it all from too high a place for him to be jumping this way and that,

like one of the sheep running with the flock.

It showed on the inside of the house then, as it did the day he died in

this city. The look of it was the same then, with most everything that

was in it used for comfort and not for show, though in those first days

there was no end of ornaments, that was kept for memory's sake--a piece

of coral as big as your head brought back by Mrs. Colfax's father, who

had been a minister or something to Brazil, and spears from the South

Sea Islands, and two big blue biscuitware jars from China that had been

a wedding present to the Judge's mother from an importer of tea, who had

courted her and been rejected, and documents in frames which I can't

remember, except a commission in the army signed by a man named James

Madison, and a college degree, and a letter written by Jonathan Edwards

to a man dying of consumption. They were hard to keep clean, but I liked

those things because they reminded a body of the fact that days had gone

by when other people was living with their ambitions and loves, and

snoring at night, and pain in their wisdom teeth, and all forgotten now!

Anyway, you'd never know they had wealth, they lived so simply, and Mrs.

Colfax had even done much of her own housework. I was hired because a

baby was coming, and you can believe it was a happy house in those days,

with its peace and the sprinklers spraying water on the lawn in the last

hot days of the autumn, and the leaves rustling outside the kitchen

window, and the wife singing in her room upstairs, and the Judge looking

at her as she sat across the table at breakfast, with his eyes wide

open, because, whatever anybody else might think, he believed her the

most beautiful looking woman in the world.

I was happy, too, speaking generally. The only trouble was the training

that Madame Welstoke had given me. After a body has learned a little of

being shrewd like a snake, a cat, or a weasel, and looking on anybody as

fair game for blackmail or threats or health cures, it is very hard to

shut the cover down on them and never employ those methods any more. I

liked the Judge and I might say I loved his wife, but there was still

something in me that kept me watching for secrets or skeletons in the

closet, and little did I know then how my chance would come.

The baby was born in January,--a daughter--and as beautiful a little

creature as you would want to see, with red-brown hair and a pink mouth

hard to beat. Of course I've seen parents fond enough of children, but

never any so fond of one that their mouths were hushed as they looked at

her. The truth was that, as for Mrs. Colfax, she was so bound up in the

child that she suffered.

"Margaret," she said to me many a time, "a mother's heart has strange

instincts and, I fear, true ones. There is something that tells me that

little Julianna will never live."

"Hush, the nonsense!" I answered her, laughing at her white, frightened

face. "Trouble enough you'll have with her teething without borrowing

more from such things as Death! Look out the window, ma'am, at the snow

that covers everything, and be thankful that we are not having a green

winter."

"Something will happen," she said. And I believe it was her worry and

nervousness that kept her from getting her strength back and wore her

thinner and thinner. She would sit in her window that looked down the

slope to the river, with Julianna in her lap, and gaze out at the

melting snow, or, later, at the first peep of green in the meadows

between the two factories up and down the valley, and at those times I

would notice how tired and patient her face looked, though it would all

spring up into smiles when she heard the voice of the Judge, who had

come in the front door.

Then finally there came a night I remember well. It was about the full

moon in the early days of April, but a wind had come up with a lot of

clouds blowing across the sky. Maybe it was at ten o'clock--just after I

had gone to bed, anyway, and had got to sleep--when I heard the

screams--terrible, terrible screams. And I thought they were the screams

of a woman.

I jumped up, threw open my window, and tried to look through the night

toward the river. I could hear something splash once or twice in the

water, and then all was still--still as the grave.

You know how a body feels waked out of a sleep like that. Though it was

a warm breeze that blew and though I've never been timid, I was shaking

like a sheet of paper. It was a minute or two before I could get it out

of my mind that some one had been cut from ear to ear. Then I remembered

that they had told me that rowdy parties were often boating on the water

above the first dam, as the weather grew warmer, and when I listened and

heard no sound of any one else in the house stirring, I began to think

that my half-sleepy ears had exaggerated the sounds. And then, just as I

was about to close the window, a cloud rolled off the moon, and for a

second or two there was a great bath of light on the slope, and back of

the stable, among the old gnarled apple trees. There were a lot of queer

looking shadows among these trees, too, but none so queer as one.

This one shadow was different, for it was not still like the others, but

went stopping and starting and scuttling like a crab over the

grass--sometimes upright like a man and sometimes on all fours like a

beast. At last it stood up and ran from tree to tree in a swaying,

moving zigzag. I could see then that it was a man, but for the life of

me I could not remember where I'd seen his like. Then another cloud slid

over the moon and the night was as dark as velvet again.

You may be sure I passed a restless night. Perhaps the Judge saw it, for

when he came in from his regular early morning walk the next day,

looking very grave and solemn and troubled, he stared at me a minute

before he spoke.

"Margaret," said he, "you look overworked."

"Oh, no, sir," I said, half ashamed to tell of my fright.

"I'm glad to hear you say so," he answered. "I was about to ask you

whether you could add to your duties by taking full charge of Julianna."

"The baby!" said I. "Has anything happened to Mrs. Colfax?"

"No," he said, a bit excited, "but I'm going to send her away to-day. I

trust it will be soon enough. The doctor has been advising it this long

time. Mrs. Colfax is on the edge of nervous prostration, and the baby

should be taken from her now and put in your care while she is gone."

I think I must have shrunk back from him. I remembered the screams. I

could hear them again in my ears--terrible, terrible screams--at the

river.

"While she is gone!" I whispered.

"Yes," said he. "What ails you? You have heard the plan before."

"But the haste, sir," I said. "What is this dreadful hurry about?"

"Not so loud," said he. "You will hear the news soon enough. I may as

well tell you. But it must be kept from her at any cost until she is

away. A dreadful thing has happened--happened in the night,--not two

hundred yards from this house. A woman has been murdered."

"A woman!" I said. "Who?"

"Her name was Mary Chalmers," he said. "She was an actress. She and her

husband and their baby had come up from New York. She was found this

daybreak at the dam by one of the factory watchmen. There was an

overturned boat. The baby had been left asleep in the boarding-house

where they were staying, and the husband had been heard to say that he

would take her rowing on the river. He had been drinking. He was caught

trying to catch the early morning train, and was still so befuddled that

he could only say over and over again that he had no memory of where he

had been. He says he is not guilty and has sent for a lawyer. The

coroner has gone to the dam. That is the story and my wife must be

prevented from suspecting any of it. The man will probably be held. It

looks badly for him, and the case, if tried, will come before me. My

wife must be kept away until it is all over; she must not suffer the

morbid worry."

"Did any one hear screams on the river last night?" I asked, biting my

finger.

"Several heard them," he said, nodding.

I felt a great relief from that answer, for I had a dread of being

called as a witness and then and there I made up my mind that, come what

might, I would tell nothing. "What one sees to-morrow, and what one

didn't see yesterday, makes the road easy," Madame Welstoke had been

used to say, and I recalled her words and thought highly of their

wisdom. And yet I have many the time, wondered whether, if I had told of

the creature I had seen, scuttling like a crab over the grass in the

orchard, I might not have prevented the grisly prank that Fate has

played.

That afternoon my mistress, in spite of her gentle protests, was taken

to the train by the Judge and Doctor Turpin, who I've always remembered

as an old fool, trying to wipe the prickly heat off his forehead with a

red-bordered silk handkerchief. One of the neighbors, clinking with jet

beads till she sounded like a pitcher of ice water coming down the hall,

went on the journey to the mountain sanitarium with Mrs. Colfax, as a

sort of companion, and when all the fuss of the departure and the slam

of the old cab doors and the neighing of the livery-stable hearse horses

was over, I was left alone with the baby Julianna and the Judge.

The child was laying on its fat little naked back, kicking its feet at

me, when the father came upstairs.

"Please, sir," said I, "what is the news?"

"The inquest says drowning or blows on the head administered by a party

or parties unknown," he answered gravely. "John Chalmers, the husband,

acts like a heeled snake--violent and sinuous by turns. His lawyer has

waived all preliminary proceedings and, as luck will have it, we have a

clear docket to go to trial with a jury."

By afternoon the town was filled with reporters who had come up on the

midday train. From the back windows you could see them walking along the

banks of the river and talking with a man in a red shirt. And later I

learned he was the one who had gone out in a rowboat and found the poor

woman's silly hat, that, with its wet yellow roses and lavender veil,

had floated around amongst a clump of rushes. With night the city papers

came, full of accounts of the actress and how she had played in

melodramas, until finally she had played her farewell in a tragedy of

real life. One said her husband was going to prove an _alibi_; another

said he had no memory whatever of where he had been or what he had done

that evening; and still another paper said the woman had been seen to

quarrel with him and join a mysterious stranger, who was described as

being a hunchback of terrible ugliness. All three of those I saw said

the mystery might never be solved, but that new developments were

expected every minute by both the state police and the chief of the

local department.

"Margaret," said the Judge that evening at supper, as I was waiting on

him, "you must not be talking of this murder with any one. Remember that

you are employed in my home. Furthermore, I have old-fashioned notions,

and so, from now on, I have stopped the 'Morning Chronicle' from coming

to the house and I don't want any newspapers brought in until the trial

is over."

"And when will that be?" I asked.

"Soon, I hope," he answered. "The district attorney, I understand, has

conferred with the police again this afternoon, and believes he has

enough evidence to hang Chalmers and that no more can be gathered. For

some reason the defense is equally satisfied. Do you understand now?"

"Yes, sir," I said. "There won't be much delay."

"Not much delay," he repeated over after me, and his voice shook as I

never heard it shake before that minute.

"The beast!" I said.

"Hush," said he. "He must be found guilty first. But if he is--"

He stopped there, but I saw the light in his eyes and his long,

tight-clenched fingers turning white under the pressure, and I knew, if

he passed sentence on John Chalmers, what it would be.

That was the last word I ever heard from him before the trial was over,

and I had to be running over to the neighbors for all the news I got. A

reporter came to ask me one day if I had seen a strange man loafing in

the meadows the evening the thing happened. He was a red-haired,

freckled young man who kept pushing his hat, first to one side of his

head and then the other, and talking first to one side and then the

other of a pencil held in his teeth, so I could hardly hear a word he

said. But he told me that, following the case from the beginning, he

had been the one who had discovered that two weeks before the murder the

man had insured his wife's life in his own favor and that before he had

met and married her he had had a different name,--Mortimer Cross,--and

been a runner for a hotel in Bermuda, and lost the place because, in a

fit of anger, he had tried to knife a porter.

"The police haven't half covered this case," he said, with his green

eyes snapping. "I've got more evidence for my paper than they can get

for the State's case. I haven't slept four hours in forty-eight."

"Young man," said I, "how much do you get a week?"

He grinned.

"Twenty dollars," he said.

"You work like that for twenty dollars?" I asked.

"For twenty dollars!" said he. "What's the twenty dollars?"

"Well, then--" said I.

"It's the game!" he said. "But you don't understand."

"Don't I, though!" said I. And for days the old desire for adventure,

for all the crooked ways, came back to me and made me as restless as a

volcanic island, as Madame Welstoke used to say.

It was then I used to begin to hate the baby at times. I could have

loved one of my own, and the feeling that this one belonged to some one

else, and that I probably never would have the touch of hands that

belonged to me, haunted me like a gray worm crawling through my head.

Many a time as I would be dipping little Julianna into her bath, these

thoughts would come to my wicked mind, and, drying her, I'd dust the

powder over the pink body till the room looked like a flour-mill. I

wished the trial would hurry to come and go, so Mrs. Colfax, who was

writing such pathetic, patient letters about her baby, could return, and

I laid many a curse on the fat doctor for making so much fuss about her

nervous condition and for sending her away.

I could not go to the court and I had to pick up what I could of the

trial, as it went on, from gossip and reading of papers in my own room

after I had gone to bed. Sometimes I'd wheel Julianna down the street to

the court-house, and then I'd see men with fingers raised as if they

were all barristers, or imitating barristers, standing on the

court-house steps and whispering and talking and laughing, and the

sheriff, with a blue coat and mixed trousers and gray side whiskers,

sitting on a campstool under the big elm tree, like a man at an old

soldiers' home, and factory-girl witnesses, giggling as they went up and

disappeared into the dark corridors, and the drone of voices coming out

of the open windows, and perhaps the jury walking in pairs and acting

very important, with a deputy sheriff taking them over to the Lenox Café

for their lunch. The murder mystery had brought up a lot of curious

people from the city, and I remember one--a woman with folds of skin

under her chin and plenty of diamond rings--who wiped her eyes,

pretending there were tears in them.

"Where is the court-house?" she said to me, just as if she could not see

it. "_I_ was the woman's most _intimate_ friend _once_."

That was the way with most everybody. They did not like the thought of

the poor dead woman or the horror of it, but only the thought of being

important and knowing something about it that the next one did not know.

One girl in the town--a daughter of the biggest grocer and quite a

belle--could imitate the screams she had heard and did it over and over,

because she was begged by her girl friends, and so she was something of

a heroine and thought for still another reason to be a good person to

know.

The Judge was made of different stuff, I can tell you. We did not have

many criminal trials in our family, so to speak, and I think it must

have eaten well into his heart, for he was very silent and grave at

meals and never laughed, except when he came up to play with the baby

and ride the little thing, with its lolling head and big eyes, on his

knee.

It took over a week to finish the trial after they had begun it. They

had wanted to trace John Chalmers's history, but he would tell nothing

of it himself, and his past was a mystery, and there was a feeling among

those who discussed the case that this would be against him. In fact,

every one said he was surely guilty. He had misused his wife's life; he

was a drunkard and subject to fits of violence; he had asked his wife to

go rowing on the river at a season when it was still cold; she had

screamed; he was a good swimmer; there were signs of blows on her head;

he had rescued himself, but not her, and he had tried to run away from

the town without reporting her death. To be sure, he had been able to

show that he had been drinking, and evidence was brought to prove that

he had lost consciousness after getting out of the water, and that when

he had awakened he had asked a sleepy milkman where the police station

was and had been directed to the depot by mistake. According to his own

story, the boat had tipped over when the moon was behind a cloud and he

had lost all trace of his wife after her first struggle in the water.

But people laughed at this story, and as for myself, I wondered who was

the creature I had seen in the orchard, mixed up with the queer shadows

and running from tree to tree like a frightened ape. Little knowing what

was to happen, I wondered whether I should ever see John Chalmers, the

accused man, before the law had made way with him.

I never doubted that the law would hesitate, till the day the Judge came

home to dinner at six in the evening and told me that the case had been

in the jury's hands for three hours already. How well I remember the

long rays of the sun slanting over the slope, the songs of the wild

birds that had sneaked into the trees along the green back yards of our

dusty street, and how it came to me then that the world was too

beautiful to be befouled by the hates of little men, whose appetites

were no more important than the appetites of the caterpillars eating the

green foliage. But I could see the hates of men reflected in the Judge's

face.

"Surely they would not let him go, sir?" said I.

He only shook his head, and later he went out without once asking for

the baby, and I knew when I heard the gate slam that things had not gone

well at the court-house.

At eight o'clock that night I was on the porch when a man came tearing

up to the fence, almost fell off a bicycle, vaulted the rail, and came

running over the grass.

"Got a telephone?" he said.

"Yes," said I, with the answer frightened out of me.

"Gimme a match," said he. "I've gotter have a cigarette. Hold on, I got

one."

He lit it. In the flare I saw it was the red-haired, freckled reporter

and his green eyes was all alive again.

Before I could stop him, he had pushed his way ahead of me into the

Judge's study and was at the instrument.

"A line!" he gasped. "I want New York."

He was snapping at his cigarette like a wild thing, and, along with his

perspiration, ashes and sparks were dropping on the rug.

"Excuse me," he said. "I lost my prey!"

"What!" said I.

"Acquittal," said he. "The Judge was too damned conscientious in his

charge to the jury.--Come on, there, New York! Confound you, come on!

I've got to relay a message through to my paper."

"Acquittal?" I asked, trembling like a horse.

"Acquittal," he roared into the instrument. "This is Roddy. Five hours

out. Interview with Dugan, juryman, local plumber. Says strict charge of

judge did it. Prisoner gone down to River Flats with counsel. Drinking

with Fred Magurk in kitchen barroom. Refuses to talk. Rest of story

already gone by telegraph."

He turned around then and grinned as if it hurt him--as if he was

trying to hide some pain. I had lit the lamp and you cannot begin to

know how funny his white face looked under his bright red hair.

"Can I get a drink of water?" he said, choking, and then over he went

face foremost into the morris chair.

I ran into the kitchen and what with the water splashing in the sink, I

did not hear the Judge come in, and the first I knew about his being

there was when I went back into the library. There he stood, with his

tortoise-shell glasses in his long fingers, looking down at Mr. Roddy,

sitting weak and blinking in his chair.

"Sorry, Judge, to faint away like a queen dowager in your library," said

the reporter, with his everlasting American good nature. "But I came in

to use the first telephone I could find. I was a little tired. My name's

Roddy."

"Mr. Roddy," said Judge Colfax, holding out his hand, "I know of you

very well and of your work on this case."

"Too bad!" said Roddy,--"the outcome?"

"I express no opinion," the Judge answered in a weary voice.

"The prisoner lost no time in finding liquor again," said the other. "He

went to a bar before he went to his baby."

This reached the Judge. His eyes snapped. There was a low growling in

his throat.

"Margaret," said he to me, "bring this gentleman some brandy. You will

rest here a while, Mr. Roddy. I suppose you will not leave until the

eleven-thirty train."

"Thank you. I'm played out," said the reporter. "I thank you."

And so it was that, with many a queer thought in my head, I sat in the

kitchen rocker, listening to the mumble of their voices and waiting up

to see if they should want me for anything. And so it was, too, that at

last I found myself nodding with sleep, and started to go upstairs to

bed.

Call me superstitious if you like, but I know well enough that some of

us humans can feel the whisper of evil and terror before it reaches us.

It spoke to me on those dark back stairs with the moonlight shining on

the wall at the top, and I was brought up sharp and wide awake, when the

air rang with it as if it was a bell.

"You're half asleep, you old fool," I said, feeling the sweat start out

on my forehead, and I repeated it to myself when I was in my room and

turning down the bedclothes.

CHAPTER III

A VISITOR AT NIGHT

A nice breeze was blowing in from the meadows, cooling the hot night,

and finally, when I was laughing at my nervousness, I went to the window

and leaned on the sill. It was a very peaceful scene, I can tell you,

with that long stretch of grass and daisies and the water, and the

light, carried through the factory yard up the river, bobbing along as

the watchman passed one window after another. All but the apple trees!

They seemed as horrible as ever, and a dozen times I thought I saw men

without heads, or with long arms like apes, creeping and skulking from

one shadow to another. At last I felt my eyes sore with staring at them,

and I turned away.

Just then I heard the knocking at the back door. It was soft and careful

at first and then a little louder.

"Some one from up the street to ask me questions," said I, feeling my

way down the stairs, but then I caught the sound of something that I

thought was the mewing of a cat. If I had had any sense I would have

called to the Judge before I slid the bolt and opened the door.

The thing I saw was a little bundle of white clothing. At first it

looked so white it seemed to give off a light and I thought it was

hanging in the air. Then I saw two hands were holding it, and that it

was a child.

"I want to see the Judge," said a thick, evil voice. "I've got a joke

for him--the best joke he ever had played on him."

"And who are you?" I asked.

"Oh, he'll see me all well enough," said the man, with a heave of his

shoulders. "I'm John Chalmers!"

I could not speak. I stepped back and he came in. He must have heard the

voices in the study. But I can hardly say what happened. I only know

that I found myself standing behind him and that I saw him put the baby

into a chair and heard him cough.

The two men--the Judge and Mr. Roddy--looked up, and I never saw two

such faces.

"Stare!" said the terrible creature. "Well you may! Go ahead and stare,

for all the good it will do you. I know you both. Both of you wanted me

hung, didn't you? You're clever men--you two. But I'm cleverer than you.

The joke is on you."

"You came in?" asked the Judge in a whisper, as if he didn't believe his

eyes.

"Yes, and I'd have come in the front door if the people, with their

butterplate eyes, weren't watching me wherever I go. Oh, don't think I'm

crazy with drink. No! I'm clever."

The Judge and Mr. Roddy had stood up and the Judge could not seem to

find a word to say, but Mr. Roddy clenched his freckled fists.

"What yer want?" he said.

"I came to tell you," said Chalmers, "that the joke is on you. I didn't

expect the pleasure of seeing you, Roddy, my fine penny-a-liner. But

you're in this, too. The joke is on you. I've been acquitted."

"What of it?" the Judge said.

"I can't be tried twice for the same crime, can I? Didn't my lawyer tell

me? I guess I know my rights. Ho, ho, the joke is on you, Judge. I saw

your eyes looking at me for a week. I knew you would like to see me hung

and Roddy there,--he nearly got me. But I'm safe now--safe as you are."

The reporter laughed a little--a strange laugh.

"You killed her, after all?" he asked.

"Yes," answered the other in a husky and cheerful voice. "I did. That's

where the joke is on you. I did the trick! Me! And what have you two got

to say? Who takes the bacon--me or you?"

"You don't know what you say," the Judge cried.

"Yes, I do," roared the man. "I tell you I did the trick and got tried

once, and I'm free forever. There isn't anybody can touch me. I tell you

the joke is on you, because I did it."

I could see Mr. Roddy's green eyes grow narrow then. He turned to the

Judge.

"Is that so?" he asked. "He can't be arrested again?"

The Judge shook his head. I can see this minute how his face looked.

"Well," said Mr. Roddy, with a long sigh, "I'm beat! I've seen a lot of

criminals in my day. Some were very clever. The joke is on me, Chalmers,

for I'm obliged to say that you are the cleverest, slickest person I've

ever seen, and you beat me! I've a lot of respect for you, Chalmers.

Here's my fist--shake!"

The other walked to meet him and they clasped hands in the middle of the

room. It was only for a second; for as quick as a flash, Mr. Roddy

seemed to stiffen every muscle in his body. He pulled the other man

toward him with one arm and shot out his other fist. It made a dull

sound like a blow struck on a pan of dough. And the wretched murderer

slumped down onto the floor like a sack of bran, rolled over on his

back, and was still.

"There!" said Mr. Roddy, with his cheerful smile.

The Judge had jumped forward, too, with a shout.

"Just a minute, Judge," said the reporter. "Let me explain. You remember

that I found out that two years ago our clever friend was at Bridgeport.

That summer a girl was found in the park there--murdered. I was on the

case. They never found out who did it. Have we or have we not just heard

the confession of the man who killed her?"

"You mean to testify that this brute confessed to that other murder?"

asked the Judge, choking out the words. "You mean to hang this man for a

crime he never committed?"

"Why not?" asked Mr. Roddy. "It's between us and it can be done. It's

justice, isn't it?"

"My God!" said the Judge. He began to bite his knuckles as if he was

tempted sorely enough.

What made me step over to look at the unconscious man's face? I do not

know, unless it was the design of Fate. White it was--white and terrible

and stamped with evil and dissipation and fearful dreams. But there was

a smile on it as if the blow had been a caress, and that smile was still

the smile of a child who sees before it all the endless pleasures of

self-indulgence.

I felt the years slide back, I saw the mask of evil and folly torn away.

I was sitting again in a beautiful gown in the Trois Folies in Venice,

the wind was blowing the flowers on my table, the water in the canal

sounded through the lattice, a man was tearing tablecloths from their

places, dishes crashed, and then I saw the fellow's smile fly and his

face turn sober, and I heard his voice say, "What are _you_ doing here?"

as if he had known me for centuries. Because I knew then, in one look,

that John Chalmers and Monty Cranch were one. I had met him for the

second time--a wreck of a man--a murderer. But the mystery of a woman's

heart--!

"Well," I heard Mr. Roddy say, "are we going to hang him?"

"No," I cried, like a wild thing. "No, Judge. No! No! No!"

"And why not?" he asked, glaring at me.

"It's against your oath, sir," I said, like one inspired. "And it's

against honor to hang a creature with lies."

The Judge thought a long time, struggling with himself, until his face

was all drawn, but at last he touched the red-haired reporter on the

elbow.

"She is right," said he. "The incident is closed."

Something in his low voice was so ringing that for a moment none of us

spoke, and I could hear the drawn curtains at the window going

flap-flap-flap in the breeze.

At last the reporter looked at his watch. "Well, Judge," he said, with

his freckled smile, "I'm sorry you can't see it my way."

"You want to catch your train," the master replied quietly. "It's all

right. I have a revolver here in the drawer."

"Probably I'm the one he'll want to see, anyway," Mr. Roddy said in his

cool, joking way. "Quite a little drama? Good-night, sir."

"Good-night," said the Judge, without taking his eyes from the man on

the floor. "Good-night, Mr. Roddy."

I can remember how the door closed and how we heard the reporter's

footsteps go down the walk. Then came the click of the gate and after a

minute the toot of the train coming from far away and then the silence

of the night. Then out of the silence came the sound of Monty Cranch's

breathing, and then the curtains flapped again. But still the Judge

stood over the other man, thinking and thinking.

Finally I could not stand it any longer; I had to say something.

Anything would do. I pointed to the baby, sound asleep as a little

kitten in the chair.

"Have you seen her?" I asked.

"What!" he answered. "How did she come there? You brought her down?"

"That isn't Julianna," said I. "It's his!"

"His baby!" the Judge cried. "That man's baby!"

I nodded without speaking, for then, just as if Monty had heard his

name spoken, he rolled over onto his elbow and sat up. First he looked

at the Judge and then I saw that his eyes were turning toward me. I felt

my spine alive with a thousand needle pricks.

"Will he know me?" thought I.

He looked at me with the same surprised look--the same old look I

thought, but he only rubbed his neck with one hand and crept up and sat

in the big chair, and tried to look up into the Judge's face. He tried

to meet the eyes of the master. They were fixed on him. He could not

seem to meet the gaze. And there were the two men--one a wreck and a

murderer, the other made out of the finest steel. One bowed his head

with its mat of hair, the other looked down on him, pouring something on

him out of his soul.

"Well, I'm sober now," said Cranch, after a long time. "I know what

you're thinking. I know it all. I know it all."

"You are not human," whispered the Judge.

Can you say that certain words call up magic? I do not know. But those

words worked a miracle. In a second, like something bursting out of its

shell, the Monty Cranch I had treasured in my heart tossed off the

murderer, the drunkard, the worthless wretch who had been throttling him

and holding him locked up somewhere in that worn and tired body, and

came up to the surface like a drowning man struggling for life.

"Human?" he said in a clearing voice. "Human? Am I human? My God! that

is the curse of all of us--we're human. To be human is to be a man. To

be human is to be born. To be human is to have the blood and bone and

brain that you didn't make or choose. To be human is to be the son of

another without choice. To be human is to be the yesterday of your blood

and marked with a hundred yesterdays of others' evil."

He jumped up. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot.

"Am I responsible for what I am?" he roared. "Are any of us?"

The Judge looked frightened, I thought.

"Blood is blood," cried Monty, with the veins standing out on his

forehead. "That's why I brought the baby here. I wanted to kill her.

Blood is blood. There's mine in that chair--and it is me, and I am my

father and he was his father, and there's no escape, do you hear? I

wanted to kill her because I loved her, loved her, loved her!"

He fell back in the chair and covered his face with his hand and wept

like a child.

I looked at the Judge and I could have believed he was a bronze statue.

He never moved an eyelash. I could not see him breathe. He seemed a

metal figure and he frightened me and the child frightened me, because

it slept through it all so calm, so innocent--a little quiet thing.

"Well, Chalmers," said the Judge at last, "what do you mean to do?

You're going away. Are you going to leave your daughter here?"

Monty's head was bowed over so his face did not show, but I saw him

shiver just as if the Judge's words had blown across him with a draft as

cold as ice.

"I'm going to Idaho," he said. "I'm going away to-night. I've got to

leave the baby. You know that. Put it in an institution and don't let

the people know who its father was. Some day my blood will speak to it,

Judge, but half my trouble was knowing what I was."

"By inheritance," said the Judge.

"By inheritance," said Monty.

"You love this little daughter?" the Judge whispered.

Monty just shivered again and bowed his head. It was hard to believe he

was a murderer. Everything seemed like a dream, with Monty's chest

heaving and falling like the pulse of a body's own heart.

"You never want her to know of you--anything about you?" asked the

Judge.

"No," choked Monty. "Never!"

"Every man has good in him," said the Judge slowly. "You had better

go--now!"

Without a word, then, Monty got up and went. He did not rush off like

the reporter. He stopped and touched the baby's dirty little dress with

the tips of his fingers. And then he went, and the front door closed

slowly and creaked, and the screen door closed slowly and creaked, and

his shoes came down slowly on the walk and creaked, and the iron

gate-latch creaked. I went to the window and looked out one side of the

flapping curtain, and I saw Monty Cranch move along the fence and raise

his arms and stop and move again. In the moonlight, with its queer

shadows, he still looked like half man and half ape, scuttling away to

some place where everything is lost in nothing.

"We can't do anything more to-night," said the Judge, touching my

shoulder. "Take the child upstairs."

"Yes, sir," said I.

"Stop!" he said huskily. "Let me look at her. What is in that body? What

is in that soul? What is it marked with? What a mystery!"

"It is, indeed," I answered.

"They look so much alike when they come into the world," he said,

talking to himself. "So much alike! I thought it was Julianna."

"And yet--" I said.

He wiped his tortoise-shell glasses as he looked at me and nodded.

"I shall not go to bed now," said he. "I shall stay down here. Give the

child clean clothing. And then to-morrow--"

I felt the warmth of the little body in the curve of my arm and whether

for its own sake or its father's, I do not know, but my heart was big

for it. In spite of my feeling and the water in my eyes, I shut my

teeth.

"To-morrow," I said.

How little we knew.

How little I knew, for after I had washed the child, laid it in the big

vacant bed, and blown out the candle, I remember I stood there in the

dark beside little Julianna's crib with my thoughts not on the child at

all. It was the ghost of Monty Cranch that walked this way and that in

front of me, sometimes looking into my eyes and saying, "What are _you_

doing here?" and other times running up through the meadow away from his

crime and again standing before a great shining Person and saying, "What

I am, I was born; what I am, I must be."

I went downstairs once that night and peeked in through the curtains.

The Judge was at his desk with his hands folded in his lap and his eyes

looking out from under his heavy eyebrows, as if he had the puzzle of

the world in front of him and was almost afraid. I thought of how tired

he must be and of what a day it had been for all of us.

At last a board squeaked on the stairs, reminding me of the late hour

and my aching body and burning eyes. So I went up to bed and tossed

about until I fell asleep.

I know I could not have slept very soundly. Little matters stick in the

memory if they are connected with such affairs. And so I remember half

waking to hear the slam of a blind and the howl of a wind that had

sprung up. Things were rattling everywhere with every gust of it--the

curtains, the papers on my bureau, the leaves on the trees outside, and

I pulled the sheet over my head and thought of how my father and mother

had gone down at sea, and fell into dreams of oceans of melted lead

hissing and steaming and red.

I think it was the shout of some man that woke me, but that is neither

here nor there. The house was afire! Yellow, dancing light and smoke

poured under the door like something turned out of a pail. With every

puff of the wind the trees in the orchard were all lit up and the flames

yelled as if they were a thousand men far away and shouting together.

Between the gusts you could hear the gentle snap and crackle and the

splitting of sap in wood and a body's own coughing when it tried to

breathe in the solid mass of smoke. There were shouts of people outside,

too, and the squeaking and scampering of rats through the walls. Out of

my window I could see one great cloud of red sparks. They had burst out

after a heat explosion and I heard the rattle and tinkle of a broken

window above the roar of the fire.

Of this terrible element I always had an unreasoning terror. Many a

sleepless night I spent when I was with Madame Welstoke, and all because

our rooms might happen to be high up in the hotel where we had put up.

You can believe that I forgot all and everything when I opened my door

and found that the little flames were already licking the wall on the

front stairs and smoke was rolling in great biscuit-shaped clouds

through the leaping pink light. I could not have told where I was,

whether in our house or city or another. And I only knew that I could

hear the voice of my old mistress saying, "Remember, if we do have

trouble, to cover your face with a wet towel and keep close to the

floor." It was senseless advice, because the fire, that must have

started in the Judge's study, kept blowing out into the hall through the

doorway, and then disappearing again like a waving silk flag. I opened

my mouth and screamed until my lungs were as flat as empty sacks.

I might have known that the Judge, if he were still in the library, was

not alive, and I might have noticed, as I went through his sleeping-room

to climb out on the roof of the front porch, that he had not been to bed

at all. But it was all a blank to me. I did not remember that there was

a Judge. Fire and its licking tongue was after me and I threw myself off

the hot tin roof and landed among the hydrangea bushes below. In a

second more I felt the cool grass of the lawn under my running feet, and

the first time that I felt my reasoning power come to me I found myself

wondering how I had stopped to button a skirt and throw a shawl around

my shoulders.

There were half a dozen men. Where they had come from I do not know.

They were rushing here and there across the lawn and vaulting the fence.

They did not seem to notice me at all. I heard one of them shout, "The

fire alarm won't work! You can't save the house!" Everything seemed

confused. Other people were coming down the street, running and

shouting, sparks burst out somewhere and whirled around and around in a

cloud, as if they were going up into the black sky on a spiral

staircase. The walls of the grocery and the Fidelity Building and the

Danforths' residence across the street were all lit up with the red

light, and a dash of flames, coming out our library window, shriveled up

a shrub that grew there as if it was made of dry tissue paper.

"How did it start?" yelled a man, shaking me.

I only opened my mouth and looked at him. He was the grocer. I had

ordered things from him every morning.

"Well, who was in the house?" he said.

"The Judge," I said.

"The Judge is in the house!" he began to roar. "The Judge is in the

house!"

It sounded exactly like the telephone when it says, "The line is busy,

please ring off," and it seemed to make the people run together in

little clusters and point and move across the lawn to where the sparks

were showering down, and then back, like a dog that wants to get a

chop-bone out of a hot grate.

Suddenly every one seemed to turn toward me, and in a minute all those

faces, pink and shiny, were around me.

"She got out!" they screamed and shouted. "Where's the Judge? Any one

else?"

"The Judge and the baby!" I cried and sat down on the grass.

"No!" shouted the depot master. "The Judge is all right. I just met him

walking over the bridge after the freight had gone through. It wasn't

twenty minutes ago. But you can't save a thing--not a stick of

furniture. The whole thing is gone from front to back on the ground

floor already!"

"Here's the Judge now! That's him running with the straw hat in his

hand," a woman shrieked, and ran out toward him with her hair flying

behind. I could see his tall figure, with its long legs, come hurdling

across the street. I could see his white face with the jaw square and

the lips pressed tight together.

"You!" he said, bending down. "Yes! Where's Julianna? Where's my baby?"

My head seemed to twist around like the clouds of pink smoke and the

whirl of hot air that tossed the hanging boughs of the trees. The

crackle and roar of the fire seemed to be going on in my skull. But I

managed to throw my head back and my hands out to show they were empty.

"God!" he cried.

The world went all black for me then, but I heard voices.

"Stop, Judge! Don't go! You'd never get out."

"Let go of me!"

"He's going into a furnace! Somebody stop him!"

"Look! Look! You'll never see _him_ again."

I opened my eyes. Judge Colfax's long lean body, with its sloping

shoulders, was in the doorway, as black as a tree against a sunset. I

saw him duck his head down as if he meant to plough a path through the

fire, and then a fat roll of smoke shut off all view of him.

"They're both gone--him and the baby!" roared the depot master. "Lost!

Both lost!"

The woman with the flying hair heard this and ran off again, screaming.

I listened to the piercing voice of her and the roar and the clanging of

bells. Horses came running up behind me, with heavy thuds of hoofs, and

voices in chorus went up with every leap of the fire. It was like a

delirium with the fever; and the grass, under my hands where I sat, felt

moist and cool.

Then all of a sudden the shouting and noise all seemed to stop at once,

so there was nothing but the snapping and crackle and hiss of the

flames, and a voice of a little boy cried out:--

"The Judge is climbing down the porch! He's got something in his arms!"

"It's the baby!" yelled the depot master, throwing his hat on the

ground. "He's saved the baby!"

I began to cry again, and wondered why the people did not cheer. There

was only a sort of mumble of little shouts and cries and oaths, and the

people fell to one side and the other, as the Judge came toward me.

"Come, Margaret," he said.

I looked up and saw he was all blackened with smoke and soot, except

where the sweat had run down in white streaks. His face was close to

mine.

"Come! Do you hear?" he said. "I don't believe she's hurt, but we must

see. We'll go across to the Danforths'. There is nothing to do here.

I've got Julianna!"

Just as if the fire was answering him, there came a great ripping and

roaring, as if something had given away and collapsed. A tower of flames

shot up out of the roof--a sort of bud of flame that opened into a great

flower with petals. It was horrible to see the shingles curl and fall in

a blazing stream down onto the ground, as if they were drops of hot

metal.

It stupefied me, perhaps; I cannot remember how we went to the

neighbor's house or who welcomed us or how we got into the room on the

second floor, with a candle burning on the bureau. I noticed how small

and ridiculous the flame was and laughed. Indeed, I think when I

laughed, I woke up--really woke from my sleep for the first time.

"I went for a walk," the Judge was saying. "I had a headache. I couldn't

sleep. I moved the lamp onto the card table. The curtain must have blown

into it. We must thank God. We were lucky, very lucky!"

He was pacing up and down there like a caged animal.

"I'm thankful Eleanor, my wife, wasn't at home," he went on, talking

very fast. "She has always been so delicate--had so much sorrow--so

much trouble. A shock would kill her--a shock like that. My God, we were

lucky!"

I got up and pushed the tangled hair back from my face.

"It's all right," he went on with a thick tongue. "Julianna is all

right--the little rascal is smoky, but all right. Blow the candle out.

It is getting light outside. It's dawn."

The child on the bed kicked its pink feet out from under its long

dresses and gave one of those gurgles to show it was awake. The sound

made me scream. I had just awakened from my stupidity.

"The other child!" I cried.

"The other!" he said. "What other?"

"The one he left," I whispered. "I had forgotten her."

"My God! so had I. I had only one thought," he cried out. "Only one

thought! And now Chalmers's wish has been granted. His--has--gone."

He sat down in a wicker rocking-chair and wiped his forehead with the

back of his hand.

"I never thought," he said again. "I didn't see it anywhere. I didn't

look for it. I found Julianna in the middle of the bed."

"Bed!"

[Illustration: IT MUST BE JULIANNA]

That was the only word I had. The light of sunrise had come. The

shouts in the street were far away.

"Why, yes," the Judge said. "I--did--I found--"

He stopped, he walked over to the infant and swept it into his arms. He

took it to the window and held it up to the light as a person looks at a

piece of dressgoods.

"Why, it must be Julianna," he whispered.

Then I heard noises in the back of his throat; he could not catch his

breath at first, and when he did, he gave a low groan that seemed to

have no end. The baby stared up at him and laughed. It was Monty

Cranch's child.

CHAPTER IV

A SUPPRESSION OF THE TRUTH

It was I who took it out of his arms and I who watched him go to the bed

and fall across it face downwards, and hide his eyes like a man who

cannot stand to see the light of day. If Fate ever played a fiendish

trick and punished a square and upright man, it had done it then! I did

not dare to speak to him. I did not dare to move. I laid the happy,

gurgling baby in my lap and sat there till I felt that every joint in my

body had grown tight in its socket.

Once they rapped on the door. The Judge did not move, so I opened it a

crack and motioned them away, and sat down again, watching the light

turn from pink to the glare of full day, and then a path of warm summer

sunlight stretch out across the rug and climb down the wall till it fell

onto a basin of water sitting on the floor, and the reflection jumped up

to dance its jigs on the ceiling.

I heard the Judge move often enough, but I did not know he was on his

feet until I looked up at last, and there he was standing in front of

me, with his wild eyes staring down at the child.

He pointed at the little thing with his long forefinger.

"Julianna," said he.

"You are mad, sir," I cried.

"No," said he. "My wife! It must be done to save her happiness. Yes! To

save her life."

"To save her?" I repeated after him.

"Yes, a lie," he whispered bitterly. "She has not seen the baby for

weeks and weeks."

"She could never know," I cried, understanding what he meant. "That is

true, sir. No one could ever tell. The two of them were not different

anyway. But you--! You could never forget."

"I know," said he. "Yet it is my happiness against hers, and I have made

up my mind. No living soul can ever learn of this. I am safe there.

Chalmers will never come back. Nor could he ever know if he did. And

so--"

"But the blood," I said, trembling with the thought. "What of that?"

"God help us!" he answered, beating his knuckles on his jaws. "How can I

say? But, come what may, I have decided! That child is now Julianna!

Give her to me!"

He took the infant in his arms again, pressing it close to him, as if it

were a nettle which must be grasped with full courage to avoid the

pricks of its thousand barbs.

"What are you?" he whispered to the new Julianna. "What will you be?

What is your birthright?"

Well I remember his words, spoken in that half-broken voice; they asked

questions which have not been answered yet, I tell you! And yet little

attention I paid to them at the moment, for the mischief Welstoke had

taught me crept around me again. I could not look at the Judge with his

youth dropped off him, his voice and face ten years older and his eyes

grown more tender by the grief and love and sacrifice of an hour,

without turning away from him. Why? Because a voice from the grave was

whispering to me as cool as wet lettuce, to prove that the good or bad

of a soul does not end with death.

"Didn't I tell you that skeletons hang in all closets?" it said. "Now,

after this night, the Judge, to use a good old phrase, is quite in your

power. Bide your time, my dear. We women will come into our own again."

"Excuse me, sir," I said, aloud. "There was a locket on the child's

neck. Wouldn't it be well to remove it? It is marked with a name that

must be forgotten."

He looked at me gratefully as he fumbled at the trinket with his long,

smoke-blackened fingers, while I trembled with my desire to have it safe

in my own hands. It was the one thing left to prove the truth. I

believe my arms were stretched out for it, when there came a knock on

the door.

"You want some breakfast," said a voice. "You poor tired people!"

The Judge, jumping up, placed the little chain and locket on the window

sill. I saw it slide down the incline; the screen was up far enough to

let it through. It was gone! He gave an exclamation, but the next moment

the door had opened and the Danforth family were crowding in.

"Well, Colfax," said the old lawyer, "you're a lucky man. Everybody safe

and sound and a very ugly old colonial house burned flat to the ground,

with plenty of insurance. Now that you have the new appointment and are

going to leave town, it makes a very convenient sale for you."

"Hush!" said his daughter. "The hot coffee is more important. You had

better bring the baby down with you. We have sent for milk and

nursing-bottles. There, John, that is the baby. You've never seen it.

Wasn't I right? Isn't it pretty?"

"My God!" cried the Judge.

"What!" said they.

"I must be tired," he answered. "It has been a strain. It was nothing."

We went out onto the porch for a moment when we were below, and stood

out of sight behind the vines. The street was still crowded with

curious people, and there was a great black hole with the elm trees,

scorched brown, drooping over it--a hole filled with the ashes that were

all that was left of the home. Men were playing a hose into it and every

time they moved the stream, here or there, a great hiss and cloud of

vapor came up. Some one had hung the Judge's straw hat on a lilac bush

and there it advertised itself. But the Judge drew himself up and

stiffened his body and set his teeth, as he looked at that scene, and I

knew then he would not break down again, but would play the game he had

begun to the end.

Indeed, I felt his fingers at my sleeve.

"I shall slip away to get the locket," he whispered. "Do you understand?

Just a moment. Tell them I will be right back."

He went around the house and I into the hall.

"Judge Colfax will return in a minute," I explained.

"Of course!" said Miss Danforth. "We will wait for him."

The minutes passed. He did not come back.

"Where did you say he went?" asked the old barrister--or lawyer, as you

call them.

I shook my head and turned the baby onto my other arm. In a second more

I heard his voice on the porch.

"Margaret!" he called.

I went out to him.

His face showed his nervousness again. His fingers trembled as he took

the baby from me.

"Go! Look!" he whispered. "I cannot find it!"

This was my chance! I went. The grass below the window had grown long

and was matted down; people on the street were watching me and I did not

dare to drop on my knees for fear some well-meaning and unwelcome

assistance might come for the search. Nevertheless I pushed my toes, I

thought, over every inch of the ground below the window. I doubled and

redoubled the space. At last the Danforths' cook raised the screen.

"What are ye doing?" said she. "Come in. The baby's food is here

already."

What could I say? How could I avoid going? There was no way. But the

Judge had not found the locket. Nor had I.

But the Judge had other worries, I'm telling you. He feared the news of

the fire would reach his wife in some wrong way and he telegraphed her.

She answered by saying she was leaving for home. Brave woman that she

was! The telegram said, "It is worth the fire to feel the leap of the

heart when I know that you all were saved for me."

"Will she ever know?" he whispered, staring down at the laughing baby,

with its little pink, curved mouth. "Will she ever know? I did this for

her. God, tell me if I was right!"

"Be easy, sir," I said to him. "Have no fear. There is no one in the

world but you and me can tell the story of last night. After these weeks

and weeks your wife has been away, there is nobody but me or you who can

say this child is not--"

"Julianna," he choked.

"Yes, sir," said I.

I was right. What it cost the Judge's soul I do not know. But that the

lie he acted in the name of love was not discovered by the thin woman

and wife, whose only beauty was in the light of her eyes, I know very

well. The years that she lived--it was after we all came to this city,

when the Judge took his new office--were happy enough years for her.

Rare enough is the brand of devotion he gave to her; rare enough was the

beauty and sweetness of the girl that grew up calling her "Mother."

In all that time never a word did he say to me of what only he and I

knew, and I have often thought of what faith he must have had in human

goodness--what full, unchanging, constant, noble faith--to trust a

servant the way he seemed to trust me by his silence. I have believed

ever since that no man or animal can long be mean of soul under the

terrible presence of kindness and confidence. For all the trickery that

the inherited character of my mother and that Madame Welstoke had poured

into my nature was driven bit by bit out of my heart by the trust the

Judge put in me, and his looking upon me as a good and honest woman.

Long before my love for Julianna had grown strong, I knew that I never

could bring myself to use my knowledge of the Judge's secret to wring

money from him, or in fact for any other purpose than to feel sorrow for

what his fear of the future must have made him suffer.

I knew well enough how the blood of the daughter preyed upon his mind.

There is no child that, sooner or later and more than once, does not

come to a time of badness and stubbornness and mischief, and when those

times came to Julianna, the Judge would watch her as if he expected to

see her turn into a snake like magic in a fairy story. More than that,

for days he would be odd and silent, and when he thought no one was

looking at him, he would sit with his face in his hands, thinking and

brooding and afraid.

I found out, too, that he had tried to trace the father, John Chalmers,

back to the days when he wore his own name, and it may have been that

then he would have strived to go back to Monty's father and grandfather,

and so on, as far as he could go. I knew about it because one day I was

looking through his desk drawers--prying has always been a failing with

me!--and I found a letter from Mr. Roddy, the newspaper reporter, who I

had almost forgotten. Mr. Roddy said that he never had been able to find

anything of the murderer's history before the time he was employed in

Bermuda, and I know my heart jumped with pleasure, for I could not see

what good it would do for the Judge to know; and I felt, for some

reason, that the name of Cranch was one that both he and I would not

have smudged with the owner's misdeeds and folly. You may say that it

was strange that pictures of love--the love which came and went like the

shadow of a flying bird, flitting across a wall--should have still been

locked up in an old woman's heart. But they were there to be called

back, as they are now, with all their colors as clear and bright as the

pictures of Julianna's future that the Judge used to see pass before the

eyes of his fear.

At first I used to think that the master was principally in terror

because of the chance that some strange trick of fate would show his

wife the truth. The older and more beautiful and the more lovable and

affectionate the little daughter grew, and the weaker and whiter the

poor deceived woman, the worse the calamity would have been. Perhaps I

thought this was the Judge's fear, because of its being my own. I was

always feeling that the blow was about to fall, and I prayed that Mrs.

Colfax would no longer be living when it came.

But at last she was gone. She died when Julianna was eleven, and had

long braids of hair that would have been the envy of the mermaids, and

eyes that had begun to grow deep like pools of cool water, and a figure

that had begun to be something better than the stalkiness of a child.

Mrs. Colfax died with a little flickering smile one day, and the Judge

put his arms around her and then fell on his knees. She looked thin and

worn, but very happy.

"Sleep," he whispered to her.

And then he opened the door and called Julianna.

"You must not be afraid, dear," he said to her. "Death is here, but

Death is not terrible. See! She has smiled. We can tell that she knew

that we would see her again in a little while, can't we?"

"Why, yes," said Julianna. "For she never thought first of herself, but

of us."

Then the Judge put out his arms and held the girl close to him, so that

I knew a fresh love for her had come into his heart. Perhaps on account

of it he had more fear than ever. One day he brought home a book in a

green cover; I read the words on the back--"Some Aspects of Heredity."

Nor was that book the last of its kind he bought or sat reading till

late at night, with his pipe held in the crook of his long fingers and

his forehead drawn down into a scowl. I could tell he was wondering

about the mystery of that which goes creeping down from mother or father

to son and daughter, and on and on, like a starving mongrel dog that

slinks along after a person, dropping in the grass when a person speaks

cross to it, running away when a person turns and chases it, and then,

when it has been forgotten, a person looks around and there it is again,

skulking close behind. "And then," as Madame Welstoke used to say,

folding her hands, "if you call it 'Heredity,' it knows its name and

wags its tail!"

One would have said that the Judge always expected that some creature

like that would crawl up behind the girl. I used to imagine, when

Julianna came into the room, that he looked over her shoulder or behind

her, as if he expected to see it there with its grinning face. And,

moreover, I've seen him look at the soft, fine skin of her round

forearms, or the little curls of hair at the back of her neck, or the

lids of her eyes, when they were moist in summer, or the half moons on

the nails of her fingers, as if he might be able to see there some sign

of her birth or the first bruises made by this thing called "Heredity,"

that would say, if it could talk, "Come. Don't you feel the thrill of

my touch? You belong not to yourself, my dear, but to me."

I knew. And as the girl came into womanhood, and he saw, perhaps, that I

was watching her, too, I think he longed for sympathy and wanted the

relief of speech. Finally he spoke. It was late one night and he had his

hand on the stair rail, when he heard me locking the window in the hall.

He turned quickly.

"Margaret," he whispered.

"Yes, sir," I answered.

"Thank God, she is a woman and not a man," he said, out of a clear sky;

"for a woman is better protected against herself."

For a moment he seemed to be thinking; then he looked at the floor.

"Does Julianna ever take a glass of sherry or claret when I am not at

dinner?" he asked. "I thought it had gone quickly."

"Why, no!" I replied.

He nodded the way he did when he was satisfied--the way a toyshop

animal's head nods--less and less until it stops.

"I'm sorry I asked," he said. "Good-night."

What he had said was enough to show me that his imagination had been

sharpened and sharpened and sharpened. Perhaps you know how it is when

some one does not come back until late at night, and how, when you are

waiting, listening to the ticking of the clock, or the sounds of

footsteps or cab horses in the street, coming nearer and nearer and then

going farther and farther away, you can imagine all kinds of things like

highway robbery and accidents and hospitals, and the telephone seems

ready to jump at you with a piece of bad, bad news. So it was with him,

except that he did not see pictures of what had happened, but pictures

of what might come. I knew that he feared the character that might crop

out of the good and beautiful girl, and I thought sometimes, too, that

he still had fits of believing, though the past was buried under the

years, that sometime the ugly ghost of the truth would come rapping on

the window pane in the dead o' night.

Perhaps I can say, in spite of the fact that we never knew of a

certainty, that it did. We had cause to know that, barring the Judge and

me and Monty Cranch, wherever he might have been, a new and strange and

evil thing showed itself as the fourth possessor of our secret.

Julianna, in that year, had begun going to a new school--fashionable,

you might call it, and many is the time I have smiled, remembering how

it came about. The woman with the old-fashioned cameo brooch, who kept

it, did everything to invite the Judge to send his daughter there,

except to ask him outright, and afterward I heard she had rejoiced to

have the one she called "the best-born girl in all the city" at her

school, which she boasted, in the presence of her servants, was not made

like the others, with representatives of ten Eastern good families as

social bait for a hundred daughters, of Western quick millionaires.

I mention this because it was the beginning of times when Julianna was

being asked to other girls' houses and for nice harmless larks at fine

people's country-places, when vacations came. On one of these times when

she was away, a voice came whispering to us out of the past!

It was the Christmas season, bitter cold, and before I went to bed I

could hear the wind snapping the icicles off the edge of the library

balcony and sending them, like bits of broken goblets onto bricks and

crusted snow below. I could see the flash of them, too, as they went by

the light from the frosted windows in the kitchen basement, but nothing

else showed outside in the old walled garden, for it was as black as a

pocket.

Not later than ten I crawled up the stairs and stood for a minute in the

dining-room. I heard the scratch of the Judge's pen and knew he was hard

at work, and I remember, when I looked through the curtains, how I

thought of how old the Judge looked, with his hair already turning from

gray to white, and of how the youth of all of us hangs for a moment on

the edge and then slides away without any warning or place where a body

can put a finger and say, "It went at that moment." Perhaps I would have

stood there longer, but the Judge looked up and smiled, dry enough.

"You may think I am working," he said. "But I'm mostly engaged just now,

Margaret, exerting will power to overcome a foolish fancy."

"What is that, sir?" I asked.

"That somebody is watching me," he said. "I've turned around a dozen

times and left this seat twice already. It's an uncomfortable feeling,

but I've made up my mind not to look again."

"Not to look?" I cried.

"No. There's nothing there."

"Where?" I said.

"Below--in the garden or on the balcony," he answered; "somewhere

outside the window."

"Bless us, I'll look," I whispered, walking toward the back of the room.

It might have been my fancy or my own reflection, but whatever it was, I

thought I saw a dark and muffled thing move outside. It forced a scream

from me, and that one little cry was enough to bring the Judge up out of

his chair, knowing well enough without words that I had seen something.

"That's enough!" he said, his long legs striding toward the French

windows. "Stand back, Margaret. We'll look into this."

He tore the glass doors open, the bitter cold wind flickered the lamp,

and by some sensible instinct I pulled the cord of the oil burner. I

knew that as he stood on the balcony, looking, he could see nothing with

a light behind him. Furthermore, I did not move, because I knew that he

was listening, too. Both of us heard the scrape of something on the icy

garden walk, the moment the lights went out. Immediately after it the

Judge called to me.

"Look!" he said. "Isn't something moving there along the shrubs?"

"Yes," I whispered. "It's near the ground. It crawls."

"What do you want?" called the Judge to the moving thing. Then, although

he had no revolver at hand, he said, "Answer, or I'll shoot."

The only reply to this was the sound of breathing and one little cough

that sounded human. The Judge reached behind him with one long arm,

feeling around the little table by the window for some object. At last

his fingers closed on it and I knew he had the little bronze elephant

that now stands on the mantel, where Mrs. Estabrook turns it so it will

not show that it has lost its tail.

"We are a pair of old fools," said the Judge, as if he was not sure. "It

probably is a cat."

With these words he poised the bronze that was solid and must have

weighed two pounds, and hurled it into the garden. There was a sound of

striking flesh that a body can tell from all others. I heard it! And

then, quicker than I tell it, the sharp clear air was filled with a cry

which died away, as if it had flown up to the milky, starry sky and left

us listening to strange, inhuman groans coming up from the garden.

"My God!" cried the Judge. "I did not mean to hit it! It wasn't a cat!

It is something else."

"The kitchen!" I cried, and without stopping to close the doors against

the nipping cold, I led the way down the back stairs.

"No time for caution," he said. "Unbolt this door. See, it is writhing

there on the snow! It is a child!"

I believed at first that he was right. As we ran forward it seemed to be

a naked, half-starved child of six or seven years, wallowing in the snow

in some terrible agony. My heart jumped against my ribs as I saw it. I

stopped in my tracks and let the Judge go on alone.

In a second his voice rose in a tone that braced me like a glass of

brandy.

"See!" he cried. "Thank Heaven! It is only a poor, cringing dog--a

shaggy hound. Here, you poor beast. Did I hurt you? Come, Laddie, come,

boy!"

"Laddie" he had called him, and it was the same "Laddie" that lived

with us so long.

"Margaret!" cried the Judge, as he pulled the dirty creature into the

kitchen. "A light! The thing is half-starved. Bring some food upstairs

to the library."

The hound was licking his hand and cowering as if accustomed to abuse,

and from that night it was nearly six months before the old fellow got

his flesh and healthy coat of hair and his spirit back again. That

night, having eaten, it looked about the room, found the Judge, went to

him, and, laying his head in his lap, looked up at him out of his two

sorrowful eyes. I knew then, by the smile of the Judge's mouth and the

way he put on his tortoise-shell glasses, that "Laddie" would never be

sent away. Just then, though, the master, after he had looked at the dog

a minute, sprang up suddenly and stood staring at me with his mouth

twitching.

"What is it, sir?" I asked.

"The dog!" he said.

"Yes, sir," I said. "The dog--"

"The gate swings shut with a spring!" he said. "Some human being must

have opened the gate."

It was true! We looked at each other, and then the Judge laughed.

"Oh, well," said he carelessly, "if they want the dog they must come

and claim him with proceedings at law. Make a bed for him in the back

hall."

On my part, however, I was not satisfied so easily and many more

peaceful moments I would have had if I had never pried further as I did.

After all, I only asked one question and that early the next morning. In

the house next to ours a brick ell was built way out to the alleyway

along half the yard. The kitchen windows looked out on the passage.

There was a maid in that house,--a second girl, as they call them in

this country,--and I knew she was a great person for staying up late,

telling her own fortune with cards or reading a dream-book. She was

hanging clothes in the early sun, with her red hair bobbing up and down

above the sheets and napkins, when I stood on a chair and looked over

the wall.

"Busy early?" I said. "But I saw your light late last night. Did you by

any chance see anybody come in through our gate?"

"Only you," the stupid thing said. "At first I thought it was some other

woman, because, begging your pardon, you looked thin. But it was after

nine and I knew you'd not be having callers that late."

My tongue grew so dry it was hard to move it from the roof of my mouth,

and before I could put in a word she threw a handful of clothespins

into the basket and looked up again.

"When did you get a dog?" she asked. "I saw you had one with you."

"Dog!" I cried. "Oh, yes, the dog. That's the Judge's new dog."

I jumped down off the chair and looked up at the windows to be sure the

Judge was not looking at me.

"A woman!" I whispered.

With a hundred thoughts I went across the garden, looking in the snow

for a person's tracks. It had grown warmer, however. Water was dripping

from the roof, and if there had been any story in the snow, it had

thawed away. I walked along with my head down, thinking and wondering

whether I would tell the Judge. Mrs. Welstoke used to say, "Silence, my

dear, is the result of thinking. You might not suppose so, perhaps, but

why tell anything without a reason? People find out the good or bad news

soon enough without your help. If it's good, their appetite is the

sharper for it, and if it's bad, they have had just so much longer in

peace." I thought of these words and wondered, too, what use it would be

to worry the master. If evil was to come, it would come. And then, at

that moment, my eye lit on something that shone in a hollow of the snow.

"A piece of jewelry!" I said to myself, stooping for it. My fingers

never reached it in that attempt; instinct made them draw back as if the

object had been of red-hot metal. But it was not of red-hot metal. It

was of gold. It was a locket. It was the very locket and chain that had

been taken from the neck of Monty Cranch's baby!

"So!" I cried, starting back as if it had been a tarantula; "so it is

you! Found at last!"

CHAPTER V

AGAIN THE MOVING FIGURE

When it was in my fingers, I looked all about in a guilty way to see if

any one had seen me pick it up, and then, with the metal icy cold in my

hand, my head swam. I knew the meaning of my find. The thing had not

come out of its hiding to spring upon us of its own accord. Human hands

had preserved it, and human feet had brought it into the garden in the

dead of a winter night, and human fright had been the cause of leaving

it behind.

I had searched once for this trinket, with a plan to use it as a weapon

of evil, and now it was mine. It was mine, and yet all my love for the

Judge and Julianna, for whom I would have given my life, made me look

upon it as if it were a snake. My first thought was its destruction. I

wanted to throw it in the furnace. I longed to have an anvil and hammer,

so that I could beat it into a pulp of gold. I wished a crack in the

earth might open miles deep so I could drop it in.

I went into the kitchen where the cook was busy with her pastry, and up

to my own room. It was there I began to think sensibly. I believed that

whoever might want to come now and say, "I know. That is a murderer's

child," no longer would have the proof. I believed that Julianna was

safe again. So long as I had the locket and Monty Cranch was lost in the

depths of time and perhaps dead, no real harm, I thought, could come to

her. Often enough I had remembered the moment when Mr. Roddy had begged

the Judge to condemn Monty to death by an accusation of a crime he never

committed, and how I had said, perhaps, the words that prevented the

master from agreeing to the devilish plot. I had often wondered if I had

not been the cause of all the Judge's troubles by my speaking then. This

thought, for the moment, prevented me from hurrying downstairs in time

to catch the Judge before he went out. I could hear him hunting around

the corners for his grapevine stick, humming a tune.

"What good, after all, to tell?" said I to myself. "Just as he kept a

secret for the happiness of his wife, I will keep one for the sake of

his peace of mind."

I heard the front door close and knew that he had gone.

"If I took the locket to him," I thought, "what would he believe? Only

that I had had it in my possession all these years. After all, I am only

a servant. He would be suspicious. He would believe I had invented the

story of finding it in the yard. It would spoil all his trust in me and

that would break my heart."

So my thoughts went around and a week passed, in which there was not a

night that I did not sit in my bedroom window, looking out at the cold

garden and the black alley, expecting to see some one lurking there. A

hundred times I took the locket out of its hiding-place and wondered

what to do, and at last it came to me that the first question the Judge

would ask was why I had not told him at once. That was enough to clinch

the matter; until to-night the secret has been my own and you can blame

me or not, as you see fit.

It was painful enough for me--a lonely old maid--with nothing but

memories of a wasted girlhood and no one to help me see the right of

things. Many is the night I have wet my pillow with tears, being afraid

that I had always played the wrong part and would finally be the cause

of the ruin of those I had grown to love.

Of all those bad moments, none was more bitter than that when the Judge

told me that the day would come when Julianna must know the truth. To

this day I remember the study as it was then. Workmen had been

redecorating the walls, and all the furniture was moved into the centre

of the room, strips of paper were gathered into a tangled pile on the

floor, and in the middle of the confusion, the Judge was sitting in his

easy-chair, with his eyes looking a thousand miles away, and his lips

moving just enough to keep his old pipe alight. He looked up as I drew

the curtains.

"Don't light the lamp yet," he said. "You are a woman and I want to talk

to you."

"It's about Julianna," said I.

"Yes," said he, "about her. She is eighteen. Her birthday is scarcely a

week away. I suppose she will fall in love sometime?"

"Of course," I answered. "Women are not cast in her mould to be old

maids."

"Isn't it funny?" he said. "I just began to think of it yesterday. I

never realized. I thought we had at least ten years more before there

would be any chance. They are women before one can turn around! It is

surprising."

"It's terrible," I added.

"Yes," said he, "it's terrible! Because if any man won her, then I would

have to tell--"

He stopped there and shut his two fists.

"Tell the truth!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," said he. "I'd have to tell him. Could I let him be cheated?"

"Cheated!" I cried. "No man is good enough for her, that's what I

think!"

"I said cheated!" he answered roughly, as if he was trying to harden his

own feelings. "He would be putting dependence upon her inherited

characteristics, wouldn't he? And then, if anything ever cropped out in

her, if he didn't know, how could he understand her or forgive her or

help her?"

"Judge," said I, "you spoke of my being a woman. Well, sir, I am an

ignorant woman, but I know well enough that there are some things that

you and I had best leave alone--some things that God will take care of

by Himself."

At that his face screwed up in pain.

"Honor is honor!" he said, jumping up. "Truth is truth! And heredity is

heredity!"

He seized his hat and went into the hall and down the front steps and

off along the pavement with his long strides, like a man followed by a

fiend.

It was the last word he ever spoke on the subject until Mr. Estabrook

came into our life. Then I saw from the first how things were going.

When I caught the look on the girl's face as she watched the first man

in whom she had taken that special interest, and when I saw him--begging

your pardon--staring at her as if she were not real, I knew, with a sick

feeling in my heart and throat, that the day would come when he would

take her away from us.

It was like a panic to me. I could not stand it and I called the Judge.

I wanted to speak with him. I nodded and beckoned to him and tried to

show him what was going on, for though a mother has the eyes of a hawk,

a father is often blind. And I thought that night he was going out

without my having a chance to say a word. I went down to the kitchen and

then to the dark laundry, out of sight of the cook. I threw my apron

over my head and cried like an old fool from fright. It was in the midst

of it that I heard the gate-latch.

"The woman again!" I said to myself. "The strange woman! She feels

there's something wrong, too. She's come back!"

I could hear my own heart thumping as I stared out into the dark, wiping

my eyes to get the fog out of them. Minutes went by before I saw that it

was the Judge. He had come back to hear what I had to say, and I think

when I told him that he was as upset as I had been. Well I remember how

his voice trembled as he told me how he had written the paper telling

the whole secret, except for my knowing about it, to Julianna, in case

he should die, and how, then and there, I made up my mind that if God

would let me I would keep the girl from ever reading it. And to this day

she does not know that I loved her that much. What made me fail to do

this is something you are aware of already, just as you know all the

story of the marriage and a time of happiness before this new and

dreadful, dreadful thing, whatever it is, came to us.

Well enough for you, Mr. Estabrook, to notice the change in your wife.

It is well enough for you to wonder what has come to her and why she has

driven you out of your own house. But do not forget that I held her as a

baby in my arms and saw her grow into a woman, as free from guilt or

blame as any that ever lived. It may all be a mystery to you, sir. I

tell you it is all a hundred times more a mystery to me who know no more

of it than you, though in these terrible days I have been alone with

her, locked into a deserted house, with every other servant sent away

and the quiet of the grave over everything.

"Is it some of Monty Cranch's wild blood?" I have asked, and with that

question no end of others.

I asked them when her arm had been hurt, and was getting well in those

days when she seemed to be in a dream, with her silent thoughts and her

frightened face. For hours she would sit in the window at night, looking

out into the park, as you know, and daytimes, when you were away, many

is the time I have found her on her bed, shaking with her misery and

tears.

I asked those questions, too, when one night--a month ago--she came into

my bedroom, walking like a ghost in her bare feet.

"Margaret," she whispered, trembling, "I can't wake Mr. Estabrook. I

haven't the courage to. I want you to come to the front windows."

"Yes," said I. "What is the matter?"

"Oh, I don't know!" she cried. "Come. Come. He is there again!"

I had crept through the cold hall with her, and we kneeled down together

under the ledge. Moonlight was on the street. The shadows of the trees

moved back and forth slowly.

"Look! Now! Behind that post over the way!" she said, pinching my arm.

"Do you see him?"

"See who?" I gasped. "What is it? I see nothing."

"He stretched his hands out!" she cried. "He isn't real! You see

nothing?"

"Nothing," said I.

"I was afraid so!" she cried, and broke away from me and shut the door

of her own room in my face. Nor have I ever since been able to get a

word from her concerning that night.

It was about the same time I discovered that, though she almost never

left the house, she was telephoning for messenger boys when she thought

I was out of hearing. It set my curiosity on edge, I tell you. I began

to watch. And then I discovered she was sending out little envelopes and

getting little envelopes in return. All my old training with Mrs.

Welstoke came back to me; I made up my mind to be as sly as a weasel.

Finally my chance came.

I had been out to do some shopping and walked home across the park. Just

as I came within sight of the house, I saw a messenger boy come down our

steps. I ran as fast as my old limbs would carry me, until I caught up

with him.

"Little boy!" I said.

He looked around, half frightened and half impudent.

"There's been a mistake!" I told him. "Where did the lady tell you to

take the message."

"Why, to the man with the gold teeth," said he.

"There's a mistake in it," said I. "Give me the envelope."

He looked at me suspiciously.

"Not on yer life," he said. "You'll get me in trouble. I won't open it

for anybody."

"But there's money in it," I said.

"No, there ain't," he answered, feeling of the envelope. "I guess I can

tell!"

"Hold it up to the light, then," said I, for the sun was shining very

bright. "We'll see who is right."

He did this, and the writing was as plain as if written on the outside.

It was her own hand, too, though it was not signed.

"She must have some more," it said.

"Where does the man with the gold teeth live?" I asked, trying to smile

and look careless.

"I shan't say!" said the boy. "There is some funny business here. Let go

of me!"

He twisted himself away and ran off, looking over his shoulder to see if

I was following him.

I went back to the house then, and it was when I was in my room that I

heard the telephone bell and Mrs. Estabrook's soft voice talking very

low. I crept out and hung over the stair rail trying to listen. Any one

could tell in a second that the poor girl was in fright.

"Who was it?" she asked. "Did they learn anything from the boy? How long

ago?"

There was a pause.

"Can't you see how terrible it would be if any one knew about her?" she

said. "Do you believe she is being watched? You do! Detectives! I can't

talk any more--good-bye!"

That was what she said and for a week afterward she was walking through

the house, up and down each room, like a creature in a cage, listening

for every sound and nursing her head with her hands as if she were

afraid it would burst. She would sit down in a chair and then jump up

again, as if the place she had chosen to rest was red-hot. Every moment

she was with her husband she seemed to be holding herself in check, as

if he might read some terrible thing in her eyes. Then, all of a sudden,

she would get some message from outside and she would be peaceful again

and sigh and fold her beautiful hands.

You can see well enough that I was ready for something queer. But when

it came, it was so unaccountable that I could scarcely believe I wasn't

living in a dream. It was late one afternoon when I came down from my

room and found her talking through the crack of the front door to

somebody outside in the vestibule. I could hear the whisper of voices

and I thought the other person was a man. I can be sly when I want to,

so I did not go forward at all, but crept back and along the upper hall

to the window. After a minute or two I heard the door close and somebody

going down the steps. I had raised the screen already so that I could

lean out to see who it was.

For some reason I felt I should know the person. I had a horrid feeling

that it was somebody I had seen before. The name of Monty Cranch was

almost ready on my lips in spite of my old idea, which had never left

me, that I had seen him--at least in this world--for the last time.

Therefore it was almost a surprise to me to find that the man was as far

different from her father as butter from barley. Whoever the man might

be, he was tall and thin and had a white, disagreeable skin and a

nervous way of looking to right and left, holding his chin in his hands.

I never got a good look at his face. But once he turned up his head,

perhaps to look at the house. He had gold teeth--a whole front row of

them! This, perhaps, was the man the messenger boy had described--the

man to whom Mrs. Estabrook was addressing secret communications.

Certainly it was no one I had ever seen, and certainly, too, there was

something in that fleeting glance at the lower part of his face which

made me have no wish to see his ugly countenance again.

His visit, at any rate, set me to thinking more than ever, and that

night as I walked about the dining-room, serving the courses in place of

the maid who was away, I think I felt for the first time a doubt about

my mistress. She had always seemed to me like a creature of heaven, and

as I stood back of her chair, looking down upon those beautiful

shoulders and white arms and head of soft and shining hair, it was hard

to believe she was in some conspiracy of which she had kept her husband

in ignorance with the slyness of a snake. I felt sorry for him. So at

the moment of my first doubt of her, I found that pity--begging your

pardon!--had at last made me ready to forget that I had never liked him

or his cold ways, and ready to forgive the once he laid violent hands on

me. My mistress had not chosen to tell me anything and had acted toward

me as suspicious as if she had believed me capable of meaning evil to

her. She had turned my questions aside and reminded me of my place. I

suppose it was only human nature for me to lose sympathy with her and

begin to have it with the man who sat across the table from her, all in

the dark about the curious and perhaps terrible affairs that were

hanging over his home and always kind and patient and, I may

say,--begging your pardon!--innocent, too! It was during that meal that

I made up my mind to tell him all I knew. It seemed to me the best and

safest course; I would have taken it if he had stayed another day in the

house.

His going was a mystery to me. I only knew that Mrs. Estabrook said that

she had asked him to go and that he had gone. The front door had hardly

closed behind him that morning before she unlocked her room and called

to me to come to her. I shall never lose the picture of her face as I

saw it then. She was sitting in that big wing-chair which is covered

with the figured cretonne and her face was as white as a newly ironed

napkin. It was so white that it did not seem real, but more like the

face of some vision that comes and sits for a minute and fades away

before a little draft of air. Her hands were on the chair arms just

like the hands of those Egyptian kings, carved out of alabaster, that

you see in museums. She might have been one of those queens of great

empires in the old times. She might have heard the roar of battle and

seen the retreat of her army from the windows of the palace and had

plunged a thin little dagger into her breast so that she would not be

captured alive. It cut me to the heart to see how beautiful she was--and

how terrible!

"Margaret," she said to me, spacing off her words. "Margaret."

"Little girl!" I cried out, forgetting the passage of all the years. And

I fell on my knees beside her.

"Sh! Sh!" she said. "I need your help. It is a desperate matter. You

must be calm."

"And what shall I do?" I asked.

"This--as I tell you," she answered, her eyes fixed on mine. "Send every

one else out of the house--only before they go, I want everything taken

out of this room of mine--all the furniture, all the rugs, all the

pictures. I want the blinds drawn everywhere, the doors bolted. For

three weeks I want no person to come across the threshold. I want you to

stay that long indoors--in this house. Mr. Estabrook will not come back

during that time, and to all others I want you to say that he is away

and that I am away, too,--or ill,--or anything that will seem best to

you. I never want you to come near my locked door unless I call for

you."

"But, Mrs. Estabrook!" I cried, my lips all of a tremble.

"Wait," she said. There was a look in her eyes that seemed to go into me

like a knife. "Come to my door every morning. Bring a glass of milk.

Knock. If I do not answer, have the door broken down! That is all; do

you hear?"

"Mercy on us!" I cried. "Tell me what this means. Are you mad?"

She put her soft hand on my cheek for a second.

"No," said she, with a voice growing as hard as the rattling of wire

nails. "Do as I say. Do it for the sake of the lives of all of us!"

I believed then that she was sane. There was something in her eyes, as I

have said, that would have tamed a tiger. I got up. I did everything she

had asked. The furnishings were all moved out of her room until it

looked as bare as a place to rent in December. There was nothing on the

floor but a mattress and a chair, which were left by her directions. I

sent the servants away with instructions to come back after three weeks'

time. At last, when all was done and I was alone, walking through the

house like a sour-faced ghost, I climbed the stairs to her door. It was

locked! I have not caught sight of her face since!

I cannot tell any one what I have been through in these days of waiting.

I only know it has been like a terrible dream--like those dreams that

make the perspiration come out on the forehead with the struggle to wake

or cry out or toss the smothering thing from off a body's lungs and

heart. And till now, in spite of all, I have been faithful enough to my

trust.

I have turned away all the visitors that came. I have gone each morning

to my mistress's door for orders that were spoken through the panels. I

have walked up and down the silent rooms below, day after day, or sat in

the library trying to read and listening to the tread of some one in

that awful room above, with every hour dragging as if the hands of the

clock on the mantel were slipping back almost as fast as they moved

forward. Then the steps would stop and the clock would go on with its

everlasting ticking. And if I listened hard, I could hear the big clock

in the hall take up the tune like a duet. Then the one in the front room

above would join in, then the one in the kitchen, until there was such a

clamor of ticking that it would drive a body to distraction with a sound

like a hundred typewriters all going at once.

I have heard voices, too. Voices seemed to be whispering in the hall as

if some one were welcoming people at a funeral, voices seemed to be

chatting in the basement, and again there would be a murmur like a

rabble of voices all talking together in a room far away. Often it was

more than a fancy, I can tell you. I heard real voices in the room of my

mistress.

I began to have the idea that it was not my mistress's voice alone.

There seemed to be another in argument with her. There seemed to be a

strange voice speaking in an undertone--a voice I thought I never had

heard before. I crept up along the hall and listened. Everything was

still. But in spite of all, I began to feel that there was more than one

person on the other side of those thick white panels. I knew it was

folly to suppose such a thing, but I began to have the idea that

another--a woman or a talkative child--was with her behind the locked

door.

Once this impossible idea took hold of me, I did all I could to get a

peep within the room. I had been bringing the meals, that were not

enough to keep a kitten alive, to the crack she would open to take them

in. Believe me, that the very first time I tried to poke my head around

where I could see, that practice stopped, and my mistress, in a dull and

heavy voice, told me to leave everything on the floor and go away. It

seemed that she had grown suspicious. It seemed that she had something

to conceal. I brooded over the strangeness of it all until I began to

wonder how this other person, whatever or whoever it might be, had ever

entered the house. I even began to wonder whether creatures could be

drawn from the air and put into the form of flesh and blood.

Finally came my chance to look. Three days ago, at about eleven o'clock

in the morning, I heard the lock of her door slide over and a moment

later she called to me. It was long after I had done her errand and had

gone away that I began to be haunted by the thought that there had been

no sound of the lock turning again. I heard the voices. I thought of the

possibility that I might now softly open the door.

"A look! A look!" I heard my own tongue saying, as I tiptoed up the

stairs and as I twisted the door knob by little turns, each one no more

than the width of a hair.

I had been right about the lock. I discovered it at last when the door

yielded. I looked in through a narrow crack. On the far side of the

bare, dim room was my mistress on her knees, her clasped hands resting

on the floor in front of her. She had not heard me and she seemed to be

writhing as if in pain. Her skin was as pale as death. The whole picture

gave a body the feeling that she had been thrown forward by some strong

hand. I felt sure at that moment that I had not been mistaken--that

some other person was there. I almost believed I saw its shadow falling

across the floor. But after I had looked from one end to the other of

the chamber, I knew at last that no one else was there.

If I had dared to speak I would have done so, but I felt that a word

would be like dynamite, and would tear the silent house into a pile of

smoking bricks and plaster. I felt sure it would act like an earthquake,

toppling the house over into the street. I felt that a word would be

like the roaring voice of some strange god that would send everything

off in thin vapor. I felt I must shut the door, and I went away

remembering the words of my Julianna, "If I do not answer some morning

when you knock, have the door broken in!" and my heart jumped again with

new fear. It was the fear of some other person who seemed to be in the

house, unseen and hidden from my eyes. For in spite of my peep into the

room, I felt that it was still there.

And now you have heard all! I have told everything--all that I

know--things that many a time I have sworn to myself to take through my

lonesome life unspoken to the grave.

BOOK V

THE MAN WITH THE WHITE TEETH

CHAPTER I

BLADES OF GRASS

When Margaret Murchie, sitting in the interior of the limousine, with

the arc light playing through the thousand raindrops on the window pane

spotting a face lined with the strength of a stolid old maid, had

finished her narrative, there was no sound but that of the storm

mourning down the avenue. Estabrook sat with his forehead in his hands.

I had had enough experience in my practice with those who are struggling

to overcome a great shock, not to speak until some word from him had

disclosed the effect that Margaret's story had produced. His face was

hidden, but his fingers moved on his temples as if he were grinding some

substance there into powder. When at last he raised his head, his

expression astounded me. It had, I thought, softened rather than

hardened. A little patient smile almost concealed the fear that looked

out of his eyes.

"The daughter of a murderer?" he asked, touching my knee.

What could I say?

"She must be in some distress, Doctor?" he whispered.

I nodded.

It was then that the true Estabrook went tearing up through the crust of

custom, manners, traditions, egotism, smugness, and self-love. From the

depths of his personality, the man for whom I have since that moment had

a deep regard, then called his soul and it came. He leaned forward and

looked through the misty glass in the door, across the wind-swept

street, at the dripping front of his home, at the dim light that burned

there.

"God, sir!" he said, turning on me with his teeth set like those of a

fighting animal. "What's all this to me? I love her! She's mine! She's

the most beautiful--the best woman in all the world!"

Margaret Murchie shivered.

After a moment Estabrook's hands were both clutching my sleeve.

"You'll stand by now?" he said, looking up into my face. "I can't ask

any one else. You can see that. You'll help? What shall we do?"

"Depend on me," I answered him. "We must be careful. Wait! Just let me

review these facts. The first move must be for us to send Margaret back

into the house. Do you suppose your wife knows she is out of it?"

"I don't believe so," said he. "I watched the window all the time we

were taking Margaret into this limousine. The curtains never moved."

"Good!" I cried. "Now, Miss Murchie, listen to what I say. How often

does your mistress call you during the day?"

"Every three or four hours, I think, sir."

"Very well. Take this umbrella and go back. Use Mr. Estabrook's key.

Enter as quietly as possible. Say nothing to any one. If your mistress

should allow more than five hours to go by without calling you, go to

her door and knock. If there is no answer, telephone my office. You

mustn't allow a second of delay. It will mean danger."

Estabrook listened to these instructions with staring eyes.

"You know something!" he cried. "Tell me!"

I shook my head, opened the door, and the old servant, getting out, went

waddling off across the street, her dress flapping in the wet wind.

"Come, Mr. Chauffeur!" I said to him. "You are to spend the night with

me. To-morrow--"

"To-morrow?"

"Exactly," said I brusquely.

"And what then?"

"To-morrow I shall search for truth lying hidden among blades of grass!"

said I. "In the mean time all the sleep I can pile into you may count

more than you know!"

I had spoken with a note of authority because each moment I feared that

he would become stubborn. I feared that, taking offense at my theories,

he would reject my services and plunge into some folly at the moment

when a most delicate balance between good and evil, life and death,

safety and danger, might be overthrown on the side of terrible calamity.

I was thankful when he once more showed himself tractable by climbing on

the driver's seat and turning our course homeward. It was the small

hours of morning that found me under the lamp in my study, giving the

distracted young man a narcotic. When his head was nodding, he struggled

once to open his eyes.

"I don't understand--anything--blades of grass--or anything," he

asserted sleepily, as I closed his door.

Exhaustion had brought its childlike petulance, but I knew that

drowsiness would do its work, and that he was now safely stowed away for

at least ten hours. He would not interfere with my plans before noon.

For a few moments that night I sat on the edge of my own bed.

"What if I am right?" I whispered to myself. "What a drama! What a peep

into the unexplored corners of our souls!"

I went to the window. An early milk cart clattered along the

thoroughfare with a figure nodding on its seat. When the mud-spattered

white horse had reached a circle of light shed from the lamp on the

street corner, the figure arose and, looking up at the stars in the

rifts of the sky, pulled off and folded a rubber coat. The storm had

blown away.

"He does a simple little act," I said to myself as I watched the figure

seat itself again. "His thoughts may be as simple. But the consequences

of either! Who can say? Life itself is all on one side of a blue wall!"

* * * * *

Physicians, however, make good detectives. I mention this not to point

out my own case particularly, but merely to call your attention to the

fact that a good surgeon or practitioner has a training in those

qualities of mind which produce a great solver of mysteries. A good

physician must develop the powers of observation. In any physical

disorder, knowing the cause, he must forecast the effect, or with the

evidences of some effect before him, he must deduce the cause. Above all

he must keep his mind from jumping at false conclusions, even though

these conclusions are in line with all his former experiences.

Physicians learn these principles by their mistakes in following clues.

A good diagnostician has in him the material for an immortal police

inspector. I speak modestly, and yet I must say that the next morning

proved that I was not mistaken in these theories.

Before nine o'clock I had arrived at the Marburys'. The banker himself

opened the door.

"Doctor!" he cried, his face drawn out of its mask of eternal shrewdness

and suspicion by a beaming smile, "what can I say? How can we ever show

our gratitude?"

"Not so fast!" I reproved him. "There is danger in too much optimism.

The disease is treacherous."

"But Miss Peters, the nurse--she sees it, too! There can be no doubt.

Our little Virginia is saved! You have done it!"

I shook my head.

"Not I."

"Not you? Who, then?"

"Marbury," said I, "I am just beginning to learn that there are other

contagions than those of the body. Can we be sure, my good sir, that

fear is not a disease? Do we know that love is not an infection? Can the

criminal's gloves, saturated with his personality, be safe for the hands

of an honest man? Don't we weaken by rubbing elbows with the weak? Are

there not contagious germs of thought?"

He raised his eyebrows. Finance he knew well. Otherwise he was a stupid

man.

"I do not believe I follow you," he said nervously. "I was speaking of

Virginia. She is so much better!"

I bowed to him politely, and, instead of entering the open door,

descended the steps.

"You're not coming in?" he exclaimed.

"Not yet," said I. "To tell you the truth, I am looking in that grass

plot next door for something dropped there. I see that no one has

disturbed the grass. It has not even been cut. Hello! What's this?"

I had reached down, picked up a metal cylinder and showed it to him.

"It looks like a rifle cartridge--one of those murderous steel-nosed

bullet affairs," said he.

"Something even more dangerous!" said I, thrusting it into my pocket.

"Much more dangerous! Possibly you will believe that I am

ungracious--rather odd as it were--not to mention its name."

He shook his head. The mask of the polite student of percents had

returned; he became formally polite.

"Not at all," he answered, adjusting his black tie. "I had rather hoped

you would stay to see my daughter."

"Another crisis prevents," I said, bowing at the door of my car. But the

banker had turned his back.

"Where now, sir?" asked my chauffeur.

"The old Museum of Natural History."

"All cobblestones in those streets, sir," he said as we leaped forward

again.

This was true. We fairly jounced our way to the old brownstone

structure, which sat with such pathetic dignity on the square of

discouraged grass, frowning at the surrounding tenements. The sign

advertising the waxworks and "Collection of Criminology" still hung at

the door of the lower floor.

"Tell me," said I to the freckled girl who sold admissions, "is the Man

with the Rolling Eye still here?"