while he was closing the front door, so I whispered back, 'Here!' but
found voice for nothing further, for at that instant I heard a sound
proceeding from the depths of darkness in front of me, and was so struck
with terror that I fell back against the staircase, just as he passed me
and entered the room from which that stealthy noise had issued.
"'Darling!' he whispered, 'darling!' and went stumbling on in the void
of darkness before me, till suddenly by some power I cannot explain I
seemed to see, faintly but distinctly, and as if with my mind's eye
rather than with my bodily one.
"I perceived the shadowy form of a woman standing in the space before
him, and beheld him suddenly grasp her with what he meant to be a loving
cry, but which to my ears at that moment sounded strangely ferocious,
and after holding her a moment suddenly release her, at which she
uttered one low, curdling moan and sank at his feet. At the same instant
I heard a click, which I did not understand then, but which I now know
to have been the head of the hat-pin striking the register.
"Horrified past all power of speech and action, for I saw that he had
intended this blow for me, I cowered against the stairs, waiting for him
to pass out. This he did not do at once, though the delay must have been
short. He stopped long enough by the prostrate form to stir it with his
foot, probably to see if life was extinct, but no longer, yet it seemed
an eternity before I perceived him groping his way over the threshold;
an eternity in which every act of my life passed before me, and every
word and every expression with which he had beguiled me came to rack my
soul and made the horror of this mad awakening greater.
"No thought of her, or of the guilt with which he had forever damned his
soul, came to me in that first moment of misery. _My_ loss, _my_ escape,
and the danger in which I still stood if the least hint reached him of
the mistake he had made, filled my mind too entirely for me to dwell on
any less impersonal theme. His words, for he muttered several in that
short passage out, showed me in what a fools' paradise I had been
revelling, and how certainly I had turned his every thought towards
murder when I seized him in the street and proclaimed myself his wife.
The satisfaction with which he uttered, 'Well struck!' gave little hint
of remorse; and the gloating delight with which he added something about
the devil having assisted him to make it a safe blow as well as a deadly
one, was proof not only of his having used all his cunning in planning
this crime, but of his pleasure in its apparent success.
"That he continued in this frame of mind, and that he never lost
confidence in the precautions he had taken and in the mystery with which
the deed was surrounded, is apparent from the fact that he revisited the
Van Burnam office on the following morning, and hung again on its
accustomed nail the keys of the Gramercy Park house.
"When the front door had closed, and I knew that he had gone away in the
full belief that it was my form he had left lying behind him on that
midnight floor, all the accumulated terrors of the situation came to me
in full force, and I began to think of her as well as of myself, and
longed for courage to approach her or even the daring to call out for
help. But the thought that it was my husband who had committed this
crime held me tongue-tied, and though I soon began to move inch by inch
in her direction, it was some time before I could so far overcome my
terror as to enter the room where she lay.
"I had supposed, and still supposed (as was natural after seeing him
open the door with the keys he took from his pocket), that the house was
his, and the victim a member of his own household. But when, after
innumerable hesitations and a bodily shrinking that was little short of
torment, I managed to drag myself into the room and light a match which
I found on a farther mantel-shelf, I saw enough in the general
appearance of the rooms and of the figure at my feet to make me doubt
the truth of both these suppositions. Yet no other explanation came to
lighten the mystery of the occasion, and dazed as I was by the horror of
my position and the mortal dread I felt of the man who in one instant
had turned the heaven of my love into a hell of fathomless horrors, I
soon had eyes for the one fact only, that the woman lying before me was
sufficiently like myself to inspire me with the hope of preserving my
secret and keeping from my would-be slayer the knowledge of my having
escaped the doom he had prepared for me.
"For ascribe it to what motive you will, that was the one idea now
dominating my mind. I wanted him to believe me dead. I wanted to feel
that all connection between us was severed forever. He _had_ killed me.
By killing my love and faith in him he had murdered the better part of
myself, and I shrank with inconceivable horror from anything that would
bring me again under his eye, or force me to assert claims that it would
be the future business of my life to forget.
"When the first match went out I had not courage to light another, so I
crept away in the darkness to listen at the foot of the stairs. There
was no sound from above, and a terrifying sense began to pervade me that
I was in that house alone. Yet there was safety in the thought, and
opportunity for what I was planning, and finally, under the stress of
the purpose that was every moment developing within me, I went softly
up-stairs and listened at all the doors till I was certain that the
house was unoccupied. Then I came down and walked resolutely back into
the parlor, for I knew if I allowed any time to pass I could never again
summon up strength to cross its grisly threshold. Yet I did nothing for
hours but crouch in one of its dismal corners, waiting for morning. That
I did not go mad in that awful interval is a wonder. I must have been
near it more than once.
"I have been asked, and Miss Butterworth has been asked, how in the
light of what we now know concerning this poor victim's presence there,
we account for her being in the darkness and showing so little terror at
our entrance and Mr. Stone's approach. _I_ account for it in this way:
Two half-burned matches were found in the parlor grate. One I flung
there; the other had probably been used by her to light the dining-room
gas. If this was still lighted when we drove up, as it may have been,
then, alarmed by the sound of the stopping coach, she had put it out,
with a vague idea of hiding herself till she knew whether it was the old
gentleman who was coming or only her suspicious and unreasonable
husband. If it was not lighted then, she was probably aroused from a
sleep on the parlor sofa, and was for the moment too dazed to cry out or
resent an embrace she had not time to understand before she succumbed to
the cruel stab that killed her. Miss Butterworth, however, thinks that
the poor creature took the intruder for Franklin till she heard my
voice, when she probably became so amazed that she was in a measure
paralyzed and found it impossible to move or cry out. As Miss
Butterworth is a woman of great discretion I should think her
explanation the truest, if I did not consider her a little prejudiced
against Mrs. Van Burnam.
"But to return to myself.
"With the first glimmer of light that came through the closed shutters I
rose and began my dreadful task. Upheld by a purpose as relentless as
that which drove the author of this horror into murder, I stripped the
body and put upon it my own clothing, with the one exception of the
shoes. Then, when I had re-dressed myself in hers, I steadied up my
heart and with one wild pull dragged down the cabinet upon her so that
her face might lose its traits and her identification become impossible.
"How I had strength to do this, and how I could contemplate the result
without shrieking, I cannot now imagine. Perhaps I was hardly human at
this crisis; perhaps something of the demon which had informed him in
his awful work had entered into my breast, making this thing possible. I
only know that I did what I have said and did it calmly. More than that,
that I had mind and judgment left to give to my own appearance.
Observing that the dress I had put on was of a conspicuous plaid, I
exchanged the skirt portion with the brown silk petticoat under it, and
when I observed that it hung below the other, as of course it would, I
went through the house till I came upon some pins with which I pinned it
up out of sight. Thus equipped, I was still a person to attract
attention, especially as I had no hat to put on; my own having fallen
from my head and been covered by the dead woman's body, which nothing
would induce me to move again.
"But I had confidence in my own powers to escape question, toned up as
I was in every nerve by the dreadfulness of my situation, and as soon as
I was in decent shape for flight, I opened the front door and prepared
to slip out.
"But here the intense dread I felt of my husband, a dread which had
actuated all my movements and sustained me in as harrowing a task as
ever woman performed, seized me with renewed force, and I quailed at the
prospect of entering the streets alone. Supposing he should be on the
stoop! Supposing he should be in an opposite window even! Could I
encounter him again and live? He was not far away, or so I felt. A
murderer, it is said, cannot help haunting the scene of his crime, and
if he should see me alive and well, what might I not expect from his
astonishment and alarm? I did not dare go out. But neither did I dare
remain, so after quaking for a good five minutes on the threshold, I
made one wild dash through the door.
"There was no one in sight, and I reached Broadway before I ran across
man or woman. Even then I got by without any one speaking to me, and,
favored by Providence, found a nook at the end of an alley-way, where I
remained undiscovered till it was late enough in the morning for me to
enter a shop and buy a hat.
"The rest of my movements are known. I found my way to Mrs. Desberger's,
this time without interruption; and from that place sought and found a
situation with Miss Althorpe.
"That her fate was in any way connected with mine, or that the Randolph
Stone she was engaged to marry was the John Randolph from whose clutches
I had just escaped, was, of course, unsuspected by me, and, incredible
as it may seem, continued to be unsuspected as long as I remained in the
house. There was reason for this. My duties were such as I could well
attend to in my own room, and feeling a horror of the world and
everything in it, I kept my room as much as possible, and never went out
of it when I knew that he was in the house. The very thought of love
awakened intolerable emotions in me, and much as I admired and revered
Miss Althorpe, I could not bring myself to meet or even talk of the man
to whom she was in expectation of being so soon united. There was
another thing of which I was ignorant, and that was the circumstances
which had invested with so much interest the crime of which I had been
witness. I did not know that the victim had been recognized, or that an
innocent man had been arrested for her murder. In fact I knew nothing
concerning the affair save what I had seen with my own eyes, no one
having mentioned the murder in my presence, and I having religiously
avoided the very sight of a paper for fear that I should see some
account of the horrible affair, and so lose what small remnants of
courage I still possessed.
"This apathy concerning a matter so important to myself, or rather this
almost frenzied determination to cut myself loose from my dreadful past,
may seem strange and unnatural; but it will seem stranger yet when I say
that for all these efforts I was haunted night and day by one small fact
connected with this past, which made forgetfulness impossible. I had
taken the rings from the hands of the dead woman as I had taken away her
clothes, and the possession of these valuables, probably because they
represented so much money, weighed on my conscience and made me feel
like a thief. The purse which I found in a pocket of the skirt I had put
on was a trouble to me, but the rings were a source of constant terror
and disturbance. I hid them finally in a ball of yarn I was using, but
even then I experienced but little peace, for they were not mine, and I
lacked the courage to avow it or seek out the person to whom they now
rightfully belonged.
"When, therefore, in the intervals of fever which attacked me in Miss
Althorpe's house, I overheard enough of a conversation between her and
Miss Butterworth to learn that the murdered woman had been a Mrs. Van
Burnam, and that her husband or relatives had an office somewhere
downtown, I was so seized by the instinct of restitution, that I took
the first opportunity that offered to leave my bed and hunt up these
people.
"That I would injure them in any way by secretly restoring these jewels,
I never dreamed. Indeed, I did not exercise my mind at all on the
subject, but only followed the instincts of my delirium; and while to
all appearance I showed all the cunning of an insane person, in the
pursuit of my purpose, I fail to remember now how I found my way to
Duane Street, or by what suggestion of my diseased brain I was induced
to slip these rings upon the hook attached to Mr. Van Burnam's desk.
Probably the mere utterance of this well-known name into the ears of the
passers-by was enough to obtain for me such directions as I needed, but
however that may be, the result was misapprehension, and the
complications which followed, serious.
"Of the emotion caused in me by the unaccountable discovery of my
connection with this crime I need not speak. The love which I at one
time felt for John Randolph had turned to gall and bitterness, but
enough sense of duty remained in my bruised and broken heart to keep me
from denouncing him to the police, till by a sudden stroke of fate or
Providence, I saw him in the carriage with Miss Althorpe, and realized
that he was not only the man with whom she was upon the point of allying
herself, but that it was to preserve his place in her regard and to
attain the lofty position promised by this union, he had attempted to
murder me, and had murdered another woman only less unfortunate and
miserable than myself.
"It was the last and bitterest blow that could come from his hand; and
though instinct led me to throw myself into the carriage before which I
stood, and thus escape a meeting which I felt I could never survive, I
was determined from that moment not only to save Miss Althorpe from an
alliance with this villain, but to revenge myself upon him in some
never-to-be-forgotten manner.
"That this revenge involved her in a public shame from which her angelic
goodness to me should have saved her, I regret now as deeply as even she
can wish. But the madness that was upon me made me blind to every other
consideration than that of the boundless hatred I bore him; and while I
can look for no forgiveness from her on that account, I still hope the
day will come when she will see that in spite of my momentary disregard
of her feelings, I cherish for her an affection that nothing can efface
or make other than the ruling passion of my life."
XLII.
WITH MISS BUTTERWORTH'S COMPLIMENTS.
They tell me that Mr. Gryce has never been quite the same man since the
clearing up of this mystery; that his confidence in his own powers is
shaken, and that he hints, more often than is agreeable to his
superiors, that when a man has passed his seventy-seventh year it is
time for him to give up active connection with police matters. _I_ do
not agree with him. His mistakes, if we may call them such, were not
those of failing faculties, but of a man made oversecure in his own
conclusions by a series of old successes. Had he listened to _me_--But I
will not pursue this suggestion. You will accuse me of egotism, an
imputation I cannot bear with equanimity and will not risk; modest
depreciation of myself being one of the chief attributes of my
character.[D]
Howard Van Burnam bore his release, as he had his arrest, with great
outward composure. Mr. Gryce's explanation of his motives in perjuring
himself before the Coroner was correct, and while the mass of people
wondered at that instinct of pride which led him to risk the imputation
of murder sooner than have the world accuse his wife of an unwomanly
action, there were others who understood his peculiarities, and thought
his conduct quite in keeping with what they knew of his warped and
over-sensitive nature.
That he has been greatly moved by the unmerited fate of his weak but
unfortunate wife, is evident from the sincerity with which he still
mourns her.
I had always understood that Franklin had never been told of the peril
in which his good name had stood for a few short hours. But since a
certain confidential conversation which took place between us one
evening, I have come to the conclusion that the police were not so
reticent as they made themselves out to be. In that conversation he
professed to thank me for certain good offices I had done him and his,
and waxing warm in his gratitude, confessed that without my interference
he would have found himself in a strait of no ordinary seriousness;
"For," said he, "there has been no over-statement of the feelings I
cherished toward my sister-in-law, nor was there any mistake made in
thinking that she uttered some very desperate threats against me during
the visit she paid me at my office on Monday. But I never thought of
ridding myself of her in any way. I only thought of keeping her and my
brother apart till I could escape the country. When therefore he came
into the office on Tuesday morning for the keys of our father's house, I
felt such a dread of the two meeting there, that I left immediately
after my brother for the place where she had told me she would await a
final message from me. I hoped to move her by one final plea, for I love
my brother sincerely, notwithstanding the wrong I once did him. I was
therefore with her in another place at the very time I was thought to be
with her at the Hotel D----, a fact which greatly hampered me, as you
can see, when I was requested by the police to give an account of how I
spent that day. When I left her it was to seek my brother. She had told
me of her deliberate intention of spending the night in the Gramercy
Park house; and as I saw no way of her doing this without my brother's
connivance, I started in search of him, meaning to stick to him when I
found him, and keep him away from her till that night was over. I was
not successful in my undertaking. He was locked in his rooms it seems,
packing up his effects for flight,--we always had the same instincts
even when boys,--and receiving no answer to my knock, I hastened away to
Gramercy Park to keep a watch over the house against my brother coming
there. This was early in the evening, and for hours afterwards I
wandered like a restless spirit in and out of those streets, meeting no
one I knew, not even my brother, though he was wandering about in very
much the same manner, and with very much the same apprehensions.
"The duplicity of the woman became very evident to me the next morning.
In my last interview with her she had shown no relenting in her purpose
towards me, but when I entered my office after this restless night in
the streets, I found lying on my desk her little hand-bag, which had
been sent down from Mrs. Parker's. In it was _the letter_, just as you
divined, Miss Butterworth. I had hardly got over the shock of this most
unexpected good fortune when the news came that a woman had been found
dead in my father's house. What was I to think? That it was she, of
course, and that my brother had been the man to let her in there. Miss
Butterworth," this is how he ended, "I make no demands upon you, as I
have made no demands upon the police, to keep the secret contained in
that letter from my much-abused brother. Or, rather, it is too late now
to keep it, for I have told him all there was to tell, myself, and he
has seen fit to overlook my fault, and to regard me with even more
affection than he did before this dreadful tragedy came to harrow up our
lives."
Do you wonder I like Franklin Van Burnam?
The Misses Van Burnam call upon me regularly, and when they say "_Dear
old thing!_" now, they mean it.
Of Miss Althorpe I cannot trust myself to speak. She was, and is, the
finest woman I know, and when the great shadow now hanging over her has
lost some of its impenetrability, she will be a useful one again, or I
do not rightly read the patient smile which makes her face so beautiful
in its sadness.
Olive Randolph has, at my request, taken up her abode in my house. The
charm which she seems to have exerted over others she has exerted over
me, and I doubt if I shall ever wish to part with her again. In return
she gives me an affection which I am now getting old enough to
appreciate. Her feeling for me and her gratitude to Miss Althorpe are
the only treasures left her out of the wreck of her life, and it shall
be my business to make them lasting ones.
The fate of Randolph Stone is too well known for me to enlarge upon it.
But before I bid farewell to his name, I must say that after that curt
confession of his, "Yes, I did it, in the way and for the motive she
alleged," I have often tried to imagine the contradictory feelings with
which he must have listened to the facts as they came out at the
inquest, and convinced, as he had every reason to be, that the victim
was his wife, heard his friend Howard not only accept her for his, but
insist that he was the man who accompanied her to that house of death.
He has never lifted the veil from those hours, and he never will, but I
would give much of the peace of mind which has lately come to me, to
know what his sensations were, not only at that time, but when, on the
evening, after the murder, he opened the papers and read that the woman
whom he had left for dead with her brain pierced by a hat-pin, had been
found on that same floor crushed under a fallen cabinet; and what
explanation he was ever able to make to himself for a fact so
inexplicable.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote D: My attention has been called to the fact that I have not
confessed whether it was owing to a mistake made by Mr. Gryce or myself,
that Franklin Van Burnam was identified as the man who had entered the
adjoining house on the night of the murder. Well, the truth is, neither
of us was to blame for that. The man I identified (it was while watching
the guests who attended Mrs. Van Burnam's funeral, you remember) was
really Mr. Stone; but owing to the fact that this latter gentleman had
lingered in the vestibule till he was joined by Franklin and that they
had finally entered together, some confusion was created in the mind of
the man on duty in the hall, so that when Mr. Gryce asked him who it was
that came in immediately after the four who arrived together, he
answered Mr. Franklin Van Burnam; being anxious to win his superior's
applause and considering that person much more likely to merit the
detective's attention than a mere friend of the family like Mr. Stone.
In punishment for this momentary display of egotism, he has been
discharged from the force, I believe.--A. B.]
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's That Affair Next Door, by Anna Katharine Green