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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Slipper, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Golden Slipper
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green
+
+Posting Date: February 1, 2009 [EBook #3071]
+Release Date: February, 2002
+Last Updated: October 3, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN SLIPPER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lynn and Chris Hill
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+
+And Other Problems for Violet Strange
+
+By Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+
+     II THE SECOND BULLET
+
+     III THE INTANGIBLE CLEW
+
+     IV THE GROTTO SPECTRE
+
+     V THE DREAMING LADY
+
+     VI THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS
+
+     VII THE DOCTOR, HIS WIFE, AND THE CLOCK
+
+     VIII MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN
+
+     IX VIOLET’S OWN
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN SLIPPER AND OTHER PROBLEMS FOR VIOLET STRANGE
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM I THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+
+“She’s here! I thought she would be. She’s one of the three young ladies
+you see in the right-hand box near the proscenium.”
+
+The gentleman thus addressed--a man of middle age and a member of the
+most exclusive clubs--turned his opera glass toward the spot designated,
+and in some astonishment retorted:
+
+“She? Why those are the Misses Pratt and--”
+
+“Miss Violet Strange; no other.”
+
+“And do you mean to say--”
+
+“I do--”
+
+“That yon silly little chit, whose father I know, whose fortune I know,
+who is seen everywhere, and who is called one of the season’s belles is
+an agent of yours; a--a--”
+
+“No names here, please. You want a mystery solved. It is not a matter
+for the police--that is, as yet,--and so you come to me, and when I ask
+for the facts, I find that women and only women are involved, and that
+these women are not only young but one and all of the highest society.
+Is it a man’s work to go to the bottom of a combination like this? No.
+Sex against sex, and, if possible, youth against youth. Happily, I know
+such a person--a girl of gifts and extraordinarily well placed for the
+purpose. Why she uses her talents in this direction--why, with means
+enough to play the part natural to her as a successful debutante, she
+consents to occupy herself with social and other mysteries, you must ask
+her, not me. Enough that I promise you her aid if you want it. That is,
+if you can interest her. She will not work otherwise.”
+
+Mr. Driscoll again raised his opera glass.
+
+“But it’s a comedy face,” he commented. “It’s hard to associate
+intellectuality with such quaintness of expression. Are you sure of her
+discretion?”
+
+“Whom is she with?”
+
+“Abner Pratt, his wife, and daughters.”
+
+“Is he a man to entrust his affairs unadvisedly?”
+
+“Abner Pratt! Do you mean to say that she is anything more to him than
+his daughters’ guest?”
+
+“Judge. You see how merry they are. They were in deep trouble yesterday.
+You are witness to a celebration.”
+
+“And she?”
+
+“Don’t you observe how they are loading her with attentions? She’s
+too young to rouse such interest in a family of notably unsympathetic
+temperament for any other reason than that of gratitude.”
+
+“It’s hard to believe. But if what you hint is true, secure me an
+opportunity at once of talking to this youthful marvel. My affair is
+serious. The dinner I have mentioned comes off in three days and--”
+
+“I know. I recognize your need; but I think you had better enter Mr.
+Pratt’s box without my intervention. Miss Strange’s value to us will be
+impaired the moment her connection with us is discovered.”
+
+“Ah, there’s Ruthven! He will take me to Mr. Pratt’s box,” remarked
+Driscoll as the curtain fell on the second act. “Any suggestions before
+I go?”
+
+“Yes, and an important one. When you make your bow, touch your left
+shoulder with your right hand. It is a signal. She may respond to it;
+but if she does not, do not be discouraged. One of her idiosyncrasies is
+a theoretical dislike of her work. But once she gets interested, nothing
+will hold her back. That’s all, except this. In no event give away her
+secret. That’s part of the compact, you remember.”
+
+Driscoll nodded and left his seat for Ruthven’s box. When the curtain
+rose for the third time he could be seen sitting with the Misses Pratt
+and their vivacious young friend. A widower and still on the right side
+of fifty, his presence there did not pass unnoted, and curiosity
+was rife among certain onlookers as to which of the twin belles was
+responsible for this change in his well-known habits. Unfortunately,
+no opportunity was given him for showing. Other and younger men had
+followed his lead into the box, and they saw him forced upon the good
+graces of the fascinating but inconsequent Miss Strange whose rapid fire
+of talk he was hardly of a temperament to appreciate.
+
+Did he appear dissatisfied? Yes; but only one person in the opera house
+knew why. Miss Strange had shown no comprehension of or sympathy with
+his errand. Though she chatted amiably enough between duets and trios,
+she gave him no opportunity to express his wishes though she knew them
+well enough, owing to the signal he had given her.
+
+This might be in character but it hardly suited his views; and, being a
+man of resolution, he took advantage of an absorbing minute on the stage
+to lean forward and whisper in her ear:
+
+“It’s my daughter for whom I request your services; as fine a girl as
+any in this house. Give me a hearing. You certainly can manage it.”
+
+She was a small, slight woman whose naturally quaint appearance was
+accentuated by the extreme simplicity of her attire. In the tier upon
+tier of boxes rising before his eyes, no other personality could
+vie with hers in strangeness, or in the illusive quality of her
+ever-changing expression. She was vivacity incarnate and, to the
+ordinary observer, light as thistledown in fibre and in feeling. But not
+to all. To those who watched her long, there came moments--say when
+the music rose to heights of greatness--when the mouth so given over to
+laughter took on curves of the rarest sensibility, and a woman’s lofty
+soul shone through her odd, bewildering features.
+
+Driscoll had noted this, and consequently awaited her reply in secret
+hope.
+
+It came in the form of a question and only after an instant’s display of
+displeasure or possibly of pure nervous irritability.
+
+“What has she done?”
+
+“Nothing. But slander is in the air, and any day it may ripen into
+public accusation.”
+
+“Accusation of what?” Her tone was almost pettish.
+
+“Of--of theft,” he murmured. “On a great scale,” he emphasized, as the
+music rose to a crash.
+
+“Jewels?”
+
+“Inestimable ones. They are always returned by somebody. People say, by
+me.”
+
+“Ah!” The little lady’s hands grew steady,--they had been fluttering all
+over her lap. “I will see you to-morrow morning at my father’s house,”
+ she presently observed; and turned her full attention to the stage.
+
+Some three days after this Mr. Driscoll opened his house on the Hudson
+to notable guests. He had not desired the publicity of such an event,
+nor the opportunity it gave for an increase of the scandal secretly in
+circulation against his daughter. But the Ambassador and his wife were
+foreign and any evasion of the promised hospitality would be sure to be
+misunderstood; so the scheme was carried forward though with less eclat
+than possibly was expected.
+
+Among the lesser guests, who were mostly young and well acquainted with
+the house and its hospitality, there was one unique figure,--that of the
+lively Miss Strange, who, if personally unknown to Miss Driscoll, was so
+gifted with the qualities which tell on an occasion of this kind,
+that the stately young hostess hailed her presence with very obvious
+gratitude.
+
+The manner of their first meeting was singular, and of great interest
+to one of them at least. Miss Strange had come in an automobile and had
+been shown her room; but there was nobody to accompany her down-stairs
+afterward, and, finding herself alone in the great hall, she naturally
+moved toward the library, the door of which stood ajar. She had pushed
+this door half open before she noticed that the room was already
+occupied. As a consequence, she was made the unexpected observer of a
+beautiful picture of youth and love.
+
+A young man and a young woman were standing together in the glow of a
+blazing wood-fire. No word was to be heard, but in their faces, eloquent
+with passion, there shone something so deep and true that the chance
+intruder hesitated on the threshold, eager to lay this picture away in
+her mind with the other lovely and tragic memories now fast accumulating
+there. Then she drew back, and readvancing with a less noiseless foot,
+came into the full presence of Captain Holliday drawn up in all the
+pride of his military rank beside Alicia, the accomplished daughter of
+the house, who, if under a shadow as many whispered, wore that shadow as
+some women wear a crown.
+
+Miss Strange was struck with admiration, and turned upon them the
+brightest facet of her vivacious nature all the time she was saying to
+herself: “Does she know why I am here? Or does she look upon me only as
+an additional guest foisted upon her by a thoughtless parent?”
+
+There was nothing in the manner of her cordial but composed young
+hostess to show, and Miss Strange, with but one thought in mind since
+she had caught the light of feeling on the two faces confronting her,
+took the first opportunity that offered of running over the facts given
+her by Mr. Driscoll, to see if any reconcilement were possible between
+them and an innocence in which she must henceforth believe.
+
+They were certainly of a most damaging nature.
+
+Miss Driscoll and four other young ladies of her own station in life had
+formed themselves, some two years before, into a coterie of five,
+called The Inseparables. They lunched together, rode together, visited
+together. So close was the bond and their mutual dependence so evident,
+that it came to be the custom to invite the whole five whenever the
+size of the function warranted it. In fact, it was far from an uncommon
+occurrence to see them grouped at receptions or following one another
+down the aisles of churches or through the mazes of the dance at balls
+or assemblies. And no one demurred at this, for they were all handsome
+and attractive girls, till it began to be noticed that, coincident
+with their presence, some article of value was found missing from the
+dressing-room or from the tables where wedding gifts were displayed.
+Nothing was safe where they went, and though, in the course of time,
+each article found its way back to its owner in a manner as mysterious
+as its previous abstraction, the scandal grew and, whether with good
+reason or bad, finally settled about the person of Miss Driscoll, who
+was the showiest, least pecuniarily tempted, and most dignified in
+manner and speech of them all.
+
+Some instances had been given by way of further enlightenment. This is
+one: A theatre party was in progress. There were twelve in the party,
+five of whom were the Inseparables. In the course of the last act,
+another lady--in fact, their chaperon--missed her handkerchief, an
+almost priceless bit of lace. Positive that she had brought it with
+her into the box, she caused a careful search, but without the least
+success. Recalling certain whispers she had heard, she noted which of
+the five girls were with her in the box. They were Miss Driscoll,
+Miss Hughson, Miss Yates, and Miss Benedict. Miss West sat in the box
+adjoining.
+
+A fortnight later this handkerchief reappeared--and where? Among
+the cushions of a yellow satin couch in her own drawing-room. The
+Inseparables had just made their call and the three who had sat on the
+couch were Miss Driscoll, Miss Hughson, and Miss Benedict.
+
+The next instance seemed to point still more insistently toward the lady
+already named. Miss Yates had an expensive present to buy, and the whole
+five Inseparables went in an imposing group to Tiffany’s. A tray of
+rings was set before them. All examined and eagerly fingered the stock
+out of which Miss Yates presently chose a finely set emerald. She was
+leading her friends away when the clerk suddenly whispered in her
+ear, “I miss one of the rings.” Dismayed beyond speech, she turned and
+consulted the faces of her four companions who stared back at her with
+immovable serenity. But one of them was paler than usual, and this lady
+(it was Miss Driscoll) held her hands in her muff and did not offer to
+take them out. Miss Yates, whose father had completed a big “deal” the
+week before, wheeled round upon the clerk. “Charge it! charge it at its
+full value,” said she. “I buy both the rings.”
+
+And in three weeks the purloined ring came back to her, in a box of
+violets with no name attached.
+
+The third instance was a recent one, and had come to Mr. Driscoll’s
+ears directly from the lady suffering the loss. She was a woman of
+uncompromising integrity, who felt it her duty to make known to this
+gentleman the following facts: She had just left a studio reception, and
+was standing at the curb waiting for a taxicab to draw up, when a small
+boy--a street arab--darted toward her from the other side of the street,
+and thrusting into her hand something small and hard, cried breathlessly
+as he slipped away, “It’s yours, ma’am; you dropped it.” Astonished, for
+she had not been conscious of any loss, she looked down at her treasure
+trove and found it to be a small medallion which she sometimes wore on
+a chain at her belt. But she had not worn it that day, nor any day for
+weeks. Then she remembered. She had worn it a month before to a similar
+reception at this same studio. A number of young girls had stood about
+her admiring it--she remembered well who they were; the Inseparables,
+of course, and to please them she had slipped it from its chain.
+Then something had happened,--something which diverted her attention
+entirely,--and she had gone home without the medallion; had, in fact,
+forgotten it, only to recall its loss now. Placing it in her bag,
+she looked hastily about her. A crowd was at her back; nothing to be
+distinguished there. But in front, on the opposite side of the street,
+stood a club-house, and in one of its windows she perceived a solitary
+figure looking out. It was that of Miss Driscoll’s father. He could
+imagine her conclusion.
+
+In vain he denied all knowledge of the matter. She told him other
+stories which had come to her ears of thefts as mysterious, followed
+by restorations as peculiar as this one, finishing with, “It is your
+daughter, and people are beginning to say so.”
+
+And Miss Strange, brooding over these instances, would have said
+the same, but for Miss Driscoll’s absolute serenity of demeanour and
+complete abandonment to love. These seemed incompatible with guilt;
+these, whatever the appearances, proclaimed innocence--an innocence she
+was here to prove if fortune favoured and the really guilty person’s
+madness should again break forth.
+
+For madness it would be and nothing less, for any hand, even the most
+experienced, to draw attention to itself by a repetition of old tricks
+on an occasion so marked. Yet because it would take madness, and madness
+knows no law, she prepared herself for the contingency under a mask of
+girlish smiles which made her at once the delight and astonishment of
+her watchful and uneasy host.
+
+With the exception of the diamonds worn by the Ambassadress, there was
+but one jewel of consequence to be seen at the dinner that night; but
+how great was that consequence and with what splendour it invested the
+snowy neck it adorned!
+
+Miss Strange, in compliment to the noble foreigners, had put on one
+of her family heirlooms--a filigree pendant of extraordinary sapphires
+which had once belonged to Marie Antoinette. As its beauty flashed upon
+the women, and its value struck the host, the latter could not restrain
+himself from casting an anxious eye about the board in search of some
+token of the cupidity with which one person there must welcome this
+unexpected sight.
+
+Naturally his first glance fell upon Alicia, seated opposite to him at
+the other end of the table. But her eyes were elsewhere, and her smile
+for Captain Holliday, and the father’s gaze travelled on, taking up each
+young girl’s face in turn. All were contemplating Miss Strange and her
+jewels, and the cheeks of one were flushed and those of the others
+pale, but whether with dread or longing who could tell. Struck with
+foreboding, but alive to his duty as host, he forced his glances away,
+and did not even allow himself to question the motive or the wisdom of
+the temptation thus offered.
+
+Two hours later and the girls were all in one room. It was a custom of
+the Inseparables to meet for a chat before retiring, but always
+alone and in the room of one of their number. But this was a night of
+innovations; Violet was not only included, but the meeting was held in
+her room. Her way with girls was even more fruitful of result than her
+way with men. They might laugh at her, criticize her or even call her
+names significant of disdain, but they never left her long to herself or
+missed an opportunity to make the most of her irrepressible chatter.
+
+Her satisfaction at entering this charmed circle did not take from her
+piquancy, and story after story fell from her lips, as she fluttered
+about, now here now there, in her endless preparations for retirement.
+She had taken off her historic pendant after it had been duly admired
+and handled by all present, and, with the careless confidence of an
+assured ownership, thrown it down upon the end of her dresser, which, by
+the way, projected very close to the open window.
+
+“Are you going to leave your jewel there?” whispered a voice in her ear
+as a burst of laughter rang out in response to one of her sallies.
+
+Turning, with a simulation of round-eyed wonder, she met Miss Hughson’s
+earnest gaze with the careless rejoinder, “What’s the harm?” and went
+on with her story with all the reckless ease of a perfectly thoughtless
+nature.
+
+Miss Hughson abandoned her protest. How could she explain her reasons
+for it to one apparently uninitiated in the scandal associated with
+their especial clique.
+
+Yes, she left the jewel there; but she locked her door and quickly, so
+that they must all have heard her before reaching their rooms. Then she
+crossed to the window, which, like all on this side, opened on a balcony
+running the length of the house. She was aware of this balcony, also of
+the fact that only young ladies slept in the corridor communicating with
+it. But she was not quite sure that this one corridor accommodated
+them all. If one of them should room elsewhere! (Miss Driscoll, for
+instance). But no! the anxiety displayed for the safety of her jewel
+precluded that supposition. Their hostess, if none of the others, was
+within access of this room and its open window. But how about the rest?
+Perhaps the lights would tell. Eagerly the little schemer looked forth,
+and let her glances travel down the full length of the balcony. Two
+separate beams of light shot across it as she looked, and presently
+another, and, after some waiting, a fourth. But the fifth failed to
+appear. This troubled her, but not seriously. Two of the girls might be
+sleeping in one bed.
+
+Drawing her shade, she finished her preparations for the night; then
+with her kimono on, lifted the pendant and thrust it into a small box
+she had taken from her trunk. A curious smile, very unlike any she had
+shown to man or woman that day, gave a sarcastic lift to her lips, as
+with a slow and thoughtful manipulation of her dainty fingers she moved
+the jewel about in this small receptacle and then returned it, after one
+quick examining glance, to the very spot on the dresser from which she
+had taken it. “If only the madness is great enough!” that smile seemed
+to say. Truly, it was much to hope for, but a chance is a chance; and
+comforting herself with the thought, Miss Strange put out her light,
+and, with a hasty raising of the shade she had previously pulled down,
+took a final look at the prospect.
+
+Its aspect made her shudder. A low fog was rising from the meadows in
+the far distance, and its ghostliness under the moon woke all sorts of
+uncanny images in her excited mind. To escape them she crept into bed
+where she lay with her eyes on the end of her dresser. She had closed
+that half of the French window over which she had drawn the shade; but
+she had left ajar the one giving free access to the jewels; and when she
+was not watching the scintillation of her sapphires in the moonlight,
+she was dwelling in fixed attention on this narrow opening.
+
+But nothing happened, and two o’clock, then three o’clock struck,
+without a dimming of the blue scintillations on the end of her dresser.
+Then she suddenly sat up. Not that she heard anything new, but that a
+thought had come to her. “If an attempt is made,” so she murmured softly
+to herself, “it will be by--” She did not finish. Something--she
+could not call it sound--set her heart beating tumultuously, and
+listening--listening--watching--watching--she followed in her
+imagination the approach down the balcony of an almost inaudible step,
+not daring to move herself, it seemed so near, but waiting with eyes
+fixed, for the shadow which must fall across the shade she had failed
+to raise over that half of the swinging window she had so carefully left
+shut.
+
+At length she saw it projecting slowly across the slightly illuminated
+surface. Formless, save for the outreaching hand, it passed the
+casement’s edge, nearing with pauses and hesitations the open gap beyond
+through which the neglected sapphires beamed with steady lustre. Would
+she ever see the hand itself appear between the dresser and the window
+frame? Yes, there it comes,--small, delicate, and startlingly white,
+threading that gap--darting with the suddenness of a serpent’s tongue
+toward the dresser and disappearing again with the pendant in its
+clutch.
+
+As she realizes this,--she is but young, you know,--as she sees her bait
+taken and the hardly expected event fulfilled, her pent-up breath sped
+forth in a sigh which sent the intruder flying, and so startled herself
+that she sank back in terror on her pillow.
+
+The breakfast-call had sounded its musical chimes through the halls.
+The Ambassador and his wife had responded, so had most of the young
+gentlemen and ladies, but the daughter of the house was not amongst
+them, nor Miss Strange, whom one would naturally expect to see down
+first of all.
+
+These two absences puzzled Mr. Driscoll. What might they not portend?
+But his suspense, at least in one regard, was short. Before his guests
+were well seated, Miss Driscoll entered from the terrace in company with
+Captain Holliday. In her arms she carried a huge bunch of roses and
+was looking very beautiful. Her father’s heart warmed at the sight. No
+shadow from the night rested upon her.
+
+But Miss Strange!--where was she? He could not feel quite easy till he
+knew.
+
+“Have any of you seen Miss Strange?” he asked, as they sat down at
+table. And his eyes sought the Inseparables.
+
+Five lovely heads were shaken, some carelessly, some wonderingly, and
+one, with a quick, forced smile. But he was in no mood to discriminate,
+and he had beckoned one of the servants to him, when a step was heard at
+the door and the delinquent slid in and took her place, in a shamefaced
+manner suggestive of a cause deeper than mere tardiness. In fact, she
+had what might be called a frightened air, and stared into her plate,
+avoiding every eye, which was certainly not natural to her. What did
+it mean? and why, as she made a poor attempt at eating, did four of the
+Inseparables exchange glances of doubt and dismay and then concentrate
+their looks upon his daughter? That Alicia failed to notice this,
+but sat abloom above her roses now fastened in a great bunch upon her
+breast, offered him some comfort, yet, for all the volubility of his
+chief guests, the meal was a great trial to his patience, as well as a
+poor preparation for the hour when, the noble pair gone, he stepped into
+the library to find Miss Strange awaiting him with one hand behind her
+back and a piteous look on her infantile features.
+
+“O, Mr. Driscoll,” she began,--and then he saw that a group of anxious
+girls hovered in her rear--“my pendant! my beautiful pendant! It is
+gone! Somebody reached in from the balcony and took it from my dresser
+in the night. Of course, it was to frighten me; all of the girls told me
+not to leave it there. But I--I cannot make them give it back, and papa
+is so particular about this jewel that I’m afraid to go home. Won’t
+you tell them it’s no joke, and see that I get it again. I won’t be so
+careless another time.”
+
+Hardly believing his eyes, hardly believing his ears,--she was so
+perfectly the spoiled child detected in a fault--he looked sternly about
+upon the girls and bade them end the jest and produce the gems at once.
+
+But not one of them spoke, and not one of them moved; only his daughter
+grew pale until the roses seemed a mockery, and the steady stare of her
+large eyes was almost too much for him to bear.
+
+The anguish of this gave asperity to his manner, and in a strange,
+hoarse tone he loudly cried:
+
+“One of you did this. Which? If it was you, Alicia, speak. I am in no
+mood for nonsense. I want to know whose foot traversed the balcony and
+whose hand abstracted these jewels.”
+
+A continued silence, deepening into painful embarrassment for all.
+Mr. Driscoll eyed them in ill-concealed anguish, then turning to Miss
+Strange was still further thrown off his balance by seeing her pretty
+head droop and her gaze fall in confusion.
+
+“Oh! it’s easy enough to tell whose foot traversed the balcony,” she
+murmured. “It left this behind.” And drawing forward her hand, she
+held out to view a small gold-coloured slipper. “I found it outside my
+window,” she explained. “I hoped I should not have to show it.”
+
+A gasp of uncontrollable feeling from the surrounding group of girls,
+then absolute stillness.
+
+“I fail to recognize it,” observed Mr. Driscoll, taking it in his hand.
+“Whose slipper is this?” he asked in a manner not to be gainsaid.
+
+Still no reply, then as he continued to eye the girls one after another
+a voice--the last he expected to hear--spoke and his daughter cried:
+
+“It is mine. But it was not I who walked in it down the balcony.”
+
+“Alicia!”
+
+A month’s apprehension was in that cry. The silence, the pent-up emotion
+brooding in the air was intolerable. A fresh young laugh broke it.
+
+“Oh,” exclaimed a roguish voice, “I knew that you were all in it! But
+the especial one who wore the slipper and grabbed the pendant cannot
+hope to hide herself. Her finger-tips will give her away.”
+
+Amazement on every face and a convulsive movement in one half-hidden
+hand.
+
+“You see,” the airy little being went on, in her light way, “I have some
+awfully funny tricks. I am always being scolded for them, but somehow I
+don’t improve. One is to keep my jewelry bright with a strange foreign
+paste an old Frenchwoman once gave me in Paris. It’s of a vivid red,
+and stains the fingers dreadfully if you don’t take care. Not even water
+will take it off, see mine. I used that paste on my pendant last night
+just after you left me, and being awfully sleepy I didn’t stop to rub
+it off. If your finger-tips are not red, you never touched the pendant,
+Miss Driscoll. Oh, see! They are as white as milk.
+
+“But some one took the sapphires, and I owe that person a scolding, as
+well as myself. Was it you, Miss Hughson? You, Miss Yates? or--” and
+here she paused before Miss West, “Oh, you have your gloves on! You are
+the guilty one!” and her laugh rang out like a peal of bells, robbing
+her next sentence of even a suggestion of sarcasm. “Oh, what a
+sly-boots!” she cried. “How you have deceived me! Whoever would have
+thought you to be the one to play the mischief!”
+
+Who indeed! Of all the five, she was the one who was considered
+absolutely immune from suspicion ever since the night Mrs. Barnum’s
+handkerchief had been taken, and she not in the box. Eyes which had
+surveyed Miss Driscoll askance now rose in wonder toward hers,
+and failed to fall again because of the stoniness into which her
+delicately-carved features had settled.
+
+“Miss West, I know you will be glad to remove your gloves; Miss Strange
+certainly has a right to know her special tormentor,” spoke up her host
+in as natural a voice as his great relief would allow.
+
+But the cold, half-frozen woman remained without a movement. She was
+not deceived by the banter of the moment. She knew that to all of the
+others, if not to Peter Strange’s odd little daughter, it was the thief
+who was being spotted and brought thus hilariously to light. And her
+eyes grew hard, and her lips grey, and she failed to unglove the hands
+upon which all glances were concentrated.
+
+“You do not need to see my hands; I confess to taking the pendant.”
+
+“Caroline!”
+
+A heart overcome by shock had thrown up this cry. Miss West eyed her
+bosom-friend disdainfully.
+
+“Miss Strange has called it a jest,” she coldly commented. “Why should
+you suggest anything of a graver character?”
+
+Alicia brought thus to bay, and by one she had trusted most, stepped
+quickly forward, and quivering with vague doubts, aghast before
+unheard-of possibilities, she tremulously remarked:
+
+“We did not sleep together last night. You had to come into my room to
+get my slippers. Why did you do this? What was in your mind, Caroline?”
+
+A steady look, a low laugh choked with many emotions answered her.
+
+“Do you want me to reply, Alicia? Or shall we let it pass?”
+
+“Answer!”
+
+It was Mr. Driscoll who spoke. Alicia had shrunk back, almost to where a
+little figure was cowering with wide eyes fixed in something like terror
+on the aroused father’s face.
+
+“Then hear me,” murmured the girl, entrapped and suddenly desperate. “I
+wore Alicia’s slippers and I took the jewels, because it was time that
+an end should come to your mutual dissimulation. The love I once felt
+for her she has herself deliberately killed. I had a lover--she took
+him. I had faith in life, in honour, and in friendship. She destroyed
+all. A thief--she has dared to aspire to him! And you condoned her
+fault. You, with your craven restoration of her booty, thought the
+matter cleared and her a fit mate for a man of highest honour.”
+
+“Miss West,”--no one had ever heard that tone in Mr. Driscoll’s voice
+before, “before you say another word calculated to mislead these ladies,
+let me say that this hand never returned any one’s booty or had anything
+to do with the restoration of any abstracted article. You have been
+caught in a net, Miss West, from which you cannot escape by slandering
+my innocent daughter.”
+
+“Innocent!” All the tragedy latent in this peculiar girl’s nature blazed
+forth in the word. “Alicia, face me. Are you innocent? Who took the
+Dempsey corals, and that diamond from the Tiffany tray?”
+
+“It is not necessary for Alicia to answer,” the father interposed with
+not unnatural heat. “Miss West stands self-convicted.”
+
+“How about Lady Paget’s scarf? I was not there that night.”
+
+“You are a woman of wiles. That could be managed by one bent on an
+elaborate scheme of revenge.”
+
+“And so could the abstraction of Mrs. Barnum’s five-hundred-dollar
+handkerchief by one who sat in the next box,” chimed in Miss Hughson,
+edging away from the friend to whose honour she would have pinned her
+faith an hour before. “I remember now seeing her lean over the railing
+to adjust the old lady’s shawl.”
+
+With a start, Caroline West turned a tragic gaze upon the speaker.
+
+“You think me guilty of all because of what I did last night?”
+
+“Why shouldn’t I?”
+
+“And you, Anna?”
+
+“Alicia has my sympathy,” murmured Miss Benedict.
+
+Yet the wild girl persisted.
+
+“But I have told you my provocation. You cannot believe that I am guilty
+of her sin; not if you look at her as I am looking now.”
+
+But their glances hardly followed her pointing finger. Her friends--the
+comrades of her youth, the Inseparables with their secret oath--one and
+all held themselves aloof, struck by the perfidy they were only just
+beginning to take in. Smitten with despair, for these girls were her
+life, she gave one wild leap and sank on her knees before Alicia.
+
+“O speak!” she began. “Forgive me, and--”
+
+A tremble seized her throat; she ceased to speak and let fall her
+partially uplifted hands. The cheery sound of men’s voices had drifted
+in from the terrace, and the figure of Captain Holliday could be seen
+passing by. The shudder which shook Caroline West communicated itself to
+Alicia Driscoll, and the former rising quickly, the two women surveyed
+each other, possibly for the first time, with open soul and a complete
+understanding.
+
+“Caroline!” murmured the one.
+
+“Alicia!” pleaded the other.
+
+“Caroline, trust me,” said Alicia Driscoll in that moving voice of hers,
+which more than her beauty caught and retained all hearts. “You have
+served me ill, but it was not all undeserved. Girls,” she went on,
+eyeing both them and her father with the wistfulness of a breaking
+heart, “neither Caroline nor myself are worthy of Captain Holliday’s
+love. Caroline has told you her fault, but mine is perhaps a worse one.
+The ring--the scarf--the diamond pins--I took them all--took them if
+I did not retain them. A curse has been over my life--the curse of a
+longing I could not combat. But love was working a change in me. Since
+I have known Captain Holliday--but that’s all over. I was mad to think
+I could be happy with such memories in my life. I shall never marry
+now--or touch jewels again--my own or another’s. Father, father, you
+won’t go back on your girl! I couldn’t see Caroline suffer for what I
+have done. You will pardon me and help--help--”
+
+Her voice choked. She flung herself into her father’s arms; his head
+bent over hers, and for an instant not a soul in the room moved.
+Then Miss Hughson gave a spring and caught her by the hand. “We are
+inseparable,” said she, and kissed the hand, murmuring, “Now is our time
+to show it.”
+
+Then other lips fell upon those cold and trembling fingers, which seemed
+to warm under these embraces. And then a tear. It came from the hard eye
+of Caroline, and remained a sacred secret between the two.
+
+“You have your pendant?”
+
+Mr. Driscoll’s suffering eye shone down on Violet Strange’s uplifted
+face as she advanced to say good-bye preparatory to departure.
+
+“Yes,” she acknowledged, “but hardly, I fear, your gratitude.”
+
+And the answer astonished her.
+
+“I am not sure that the real Alicia will not make her father happier
+than the unreal one has ever done.”
+
+“And Captain Holliday?”
+
+“He may come to feel the same.”
+
+“Then I do not quit in disgrace?”
+
+“You depart with my thanks.”
+
+When a certain personage was told of the success of Miss Strange’s
+latest manoeuvre, he remarked: “The little one progresses. We shall have
+to give her a case of prime importance next.”
+
+END OF PROBLEM I
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM II. THE SECOND BULLET
+
+“You must see her.”
+
+“No. No.”
+
+“She’s a most unhappy woman. Husband and child both taken from her in a
+moment; and now, all means of living as well, unless some happy
+thought of yours--some inspiration of your genius--shows us a way of
+re-establishing her claims to the policy voided by this cry of suicide.”
+
+But the small wise head of Violet Strange continued its slow shake of
+decided refusal.
+
+“I’m sorry,” she protested, “but it’s quite out of my province. I’m too
+young to meddle with so serious a matter.”
+
+“Not when you can save a bereaved woman the only possible compensation
+left her by untoward fate?”
+
+“Let the police try their hand at that.”
+
+“They have had no success with the case.”
+
+“Or you?”
+
+“Nor I either.”
+
+“And you expect--”
+
+“Yes, Miss Strange. I expect you to find the missing bullet which will
+settle the fact that murder and not suicide ended George Hammond’s life.
+If you cannot, then a long litigation awaits this poor widow, ending, as
+such litigation usually does, in favour of the stronger party. There’s
+the alternative. If you once saw her--”
+
+“But that’s what I’m not willing to do. If I once saw her I should yield
+to her importunities and attempt the seemingly impossible. My instincts
+bid me say no. Give me something easier.”
+
+“Easier things are not so remunerative. There’s money in this affair, if
+the insurance company is forced to pay up. I can offer you--”
+
+“What?”
+
+There was eagerness in the tone despite her effort at nonchalance. The
+other smiled imperceptibly, and briefly named the sum.
+
+It was larger than she had expected. This her visitor saw by the way her
+eyelids fell and the peculiar stillness which, for an instant, held her
+vivacity in check.
+
+“And you think I can earn that?”
+
+Her eyes were fixed on his in an eagerness as honest as it was
+unrestrained.
+
+He could hardly conceal his amazement, her desire was so evident and the
+cause of it so difficult to understand. He knew she wanted money--that
+was her avowed reason for entering into this uncongenial work. But to
+want it so much! He glanced at her person; it was simply clad but very
+expensively--how expensively it was his business to know. Then he took
+in the room in which they sat. Simplicity again, but the simplicity of
+high art--the drawing-room of one rich enough to indulge in the final
+luxury of a highly cultivated taste, viz.: unostentatious elegance and
+the subjection of each carefully chosen ornament to the general effect.
+
+What did this favoured child of fortune lack that she could be reached
+by such a plea, when her whole being revolted from the nature of the
+task he offered her? It was a question not new to him; but one he had
+never heard answered and was not likely to hear answered now. But the
+fact remained that the consent he had thought dependent upon sympathetic
+interest could be reached much more readily by the promise of large
+emolument,--and he owned to a feeling of secret disappointment even
+while he recognized the value of the discovery.
+
+But his satisfaction in the latter, if satisfaction it were, was of
+very short duration. Almost immediately he observed a change in her. The
+sparkle which had shone in the eye whose depths he had never been able
+to penetrate, had dissipated itself in something like a tear and she
+spoke up in that vigorous tone no one but himself had ever heard, as she
+said:
+
+“No. The sum is a good one and I could use it; but I will not waste my
+energy on a case I do not believe in. The man shot himself. He was a
+speculator, and probably had good reason for his act. Even his wife
+acknowledges that he has lately had more losses than gains.”
+
+“See her. She has something to tell you which never got into the
+papers.”
+
+“You say that? You know that?”
+
+“On my honour, Miss Strange.”
+
+Violet pondered; then suddenly succumbed.
+
+“Let her come, then. Prompt to the hour. I will receive her at three.
+Later I have a tea and two party calls to make.”
+
+Her visitor rose to leave. He had been able to subdue all evidence of
+his extreme gratification, and now took on a formal air. In dismissing a
+guest, Miss Strange was invariably the society belle and that only. This
+he had come to recognize.
+
+The case (well known at the time) was, in the fewest possible words, as
+follows:
+
+On a sultry night in September, a young couple living in one of the
+large apartment houses in the extreme upper portion of Manhattan were so
+annoyed by the incessant crying of a child in the adjoining suite, that
+they got up, he to smoke, and she to sit in the window for a possible
+breath of cool air. They were congratulating themselves upon the wisdom
+they had shown in thus giving up all thought of sleep--for the child’s
+crying had not ceased--when (it may have been two o’clock and it may
+have been a little later) there came from somewhere near, the sharp and
+somewhat peculiar detonation of a pistol-shot.
+
+He thought it came from above; she, from the rear, and they were staring
+at each other in the helpless wonder of the moment, when they were
+struck by the silence. The baby had ceased to cry. All was as still
+in the adjoining apartment as in their own--too still--much too still.
+Their mutual stare turned to one of horror. “It came from there!”
+ whispered the wife. “Some accident has occurred to Mr. or Mrs.
+Hammond--we ought to go--”
+
+Her words--very tremulous ones--were broken by a shout from below. They
+were standing in their window and had evidently been seen by a passing
+policeman. “Anything wrong up there?” they heard him cry. Mr. Saunders
+immediately looked out. “Nothing wrong here,” he called down. (They were
+but two stories from the pavement.) “But I’m not so sure about the
+rear apartment. We thought we heard a shot. Hadn’t you better come up,
+officer? My wife is nervous about it. I’ll meet you at the stair-head
+and show you the way.”
+
+The officer nodded and stepped in. The young couple hastily donned some
+wraps, and, by the time he appeared on their floor, they were ready to
+accompany him.
+
+Meanwhile, no disturbance was apparent anywhere else in the house, until
+the policeman rang the bell of the Hammond apartment. Then, voices began
+to be heard, and doors to open above and below, but not the one before
+which the policeman stood.
+
+Another ring, and this time an insistent one;--and still no response.
+The officer’s hand was rising for the third time when there came a sound
+of fluttering from behind the panels against which he had laid his ear,
+and finally a choked voice uttering unintelligible words. Then a hand
+began to struggle with the lock, and the door, slowly opening, disclosed
+a woman clad in a hastily donned wrapper and giving every evidence of
+extreme fright.
+
+“Oh!” she exclaimed, seeing only the compassionate faces of her
+neighbours. “You heard it, too! a pistol-shot from there--there--my
+husband’s room. I have not dared to go--I--I--O, have mercy and see if
+anything is wrong! It is so still--so still, and only a moment ago the
+baby was crying. Mrs. Saunders, Mrs. Saunders, why is it so still?”
+
+She had fallen into her neighbour’s arms. The hand with which she had
+pointed out a certain door had sunk to her side and she appeared to be
+on the verge of collapse.
+
+The officer eyed her sternly, while noting her appearance, which was
+that of a woman hastily risen from bed.
+
+“Where were you?” he asked. “Not with your husband and child, or you
+would know what had happened there.”
+
+“I was sleeping down the hall,” she managed to gasp out. “I’m not
+well--I--Oh, why do you all stand still and do nothing? My baby’s in
+there. Go! go!” and, with sudden energy, she sprang upright, her eyes
+wide open and burning, her small well featured face white as the linen
+she sought to hide.
+
+The officer demurred no longer. In another instant he was trying the
+door at which she was again pointing.
+
+It was locked.
+
+Glancing back at the woman, now cowering almost to the floor, he pounded
+at the door and asked the man inside to open.
+
+No answer came back.
+
+With a sharp turn he glanced again at the wife.
+
+“You say that your husband is in this room?”
+
+She nodded, gasping faintly, “And the child!”
+
+He turned back, listened, then beckoned to Mr. Saunders. “We shall have
+to break our way in,” said he. “Put your shoulder well to the door.
+Now!”
+
+The hinges of the door creaked; the lock gave way (this special officer
+weighed two hundred and seventy-five, as he found out, next day), and a
+prolonged and sweeping crash told the rest.
+
+Mrs. Hammond gave a low cry; and, straining forward from where she
+crouched in terror on the floor, searched the faces of the two men for
+some hint of what they saw in the dimly-lighted space beyond. Something
+dreadful, something which made Mr. Saunders come rushing back with a
+shout:
+
+“Take her away! Take her to our apartment, Jennie. She must not see--”
+
+Not see! He realized the futility of his words as his gaze fell on the
+young woman who had risen up at his approach and now stood gazing at
+him without speech, without movement, but with a glare of terror in her
+eyes, which gave him his first realization of human misery.
+
+His own glance fell before it. If he had followed his instinct he would
+have fled the house rather than answer the question of her look and the
+attitude of her whole frozen body.
+
+Perhaps in mercy to his speechless terror, perhaps in mercy to herself,
+she was the one who at last found the word which voiced their mutual
+anguish.
+
+“Dead?”
+
+No answer. None was needed.
+
+“And my baby?”
+
+O, that cry! It curdled the hearts of all who heard it. It shook the
+souls of men and women both inside and outside the apartment; then all
+was forgotten in the wild rush she made. The wife and mother had
+flung herself upon the scene, and, side by side with the not unmoved
+policeman, stood looking down upon the desolation made in one fatal
+instant in her home and heart.
+
+They lay there together, both past help, both quite dead. The child
+had simply been strangled by the weight of his father’s arm which lay
+directly across the upturned little throat. But the father was a victim
+of the shot they had heard. There was blood on his breast, and a pistol
+in his hand.
+
+Suicide! The horrible truth was patent. No wonder they wanted to hold
+the young widow back. Her neighbour, Mrs. Saunders, crept in on tiptoe
+and put her arms about the swaying, fainting woman; but there was
+nothing to say--absolutely nothing.
+
+At least, they thought not. But when they saw her throw herself down,
+not by her husband, but by the child, and drag it out from under that
+strangling arm and hug and kiss it and call out wildly for a doctor, the
+officer endeavoured to interfere and yet could not find the heart to do
+so, though he knew the child was dead and should not, according to
+all the rules of the coroner’s office, be moved before that official
+arrived. Yet because no mother could be convinced of a fact like this,
+he let her sit with it on the floor and try all her little arts to
+revive it, while he gave orders to the janitor and waited himself for
+the arrival of doctor and coroner.
+
+She was still sitting there in wide-eyed misery, alternately fondling
+the little body and drawing back to consult its small set features for
+some sign of life, when the doctor came, and, after one look at the
+child, drew it softly from her arms and laid it quietly in the crib from
+which its father had evidently lifted it but a short time before. Then
+he turned back to her, and found her on her feet, upheld by her two
+friends. She had understood his action, and without a groan had accepted
+her fate. Indeed, she seemed incapable of any further speech or action.
+She was staring down at her husband’s body, which she, for the first
+time, seemed fully to see. Was her look one of grief or of resentment
+for the part he had played so unintentionally in her child’s death? It
+was hard to tell; and when, with slowly rising finger, she pointed to
+the pistol so tightly clutched in the other outstretched hand, no one
+there--and by this time the room was full--could foretell what her words
+would be when her tongue regained its usage and she could speak.
+
+What she did say was this:
+
+“Is there a bullet gone? Did he fire off that pistol?” A question so
+manifestly one of delirium that no one answered it, which seemed to
+surprise her, though she said nothing till her glance had passed
+all around the walls of the room to where a window stood open to the
+night,--its lower sash being entirely raised. “There! look there!” she
+cried, with a commanding accent, and, throwing up her hands, sank a dead
+weight into the arms of those supporting her.
+
+No one understood; but naturally more than one rushed to the window. An
+open space was before them. Here lay the fields not yet parcelled out
+into lots and built upon; but it was not upon these they looked, but
+upon the strong trellis which they found there, which, if it supported
+no vine, formed a veritable ladder between this window and the ground.
+
+Could she have meant to call attention to this fact; and were her words
+expressive of another idea than the obvious one of suicide?
+
+If so, to what lengths a woman’s imagination can go! Or so their
+combined looks seemed to proclaim, when to their utter astonishment they
+saw the officer, who had presented a calm appearance up till now, shift
+his position and with a surprised grunt direct their eyes to a portion
+of the wall just visible beyond the half-drawn curtains of the bed. The
+mirror hanging there showed a star-shaped breakage, such as follows the
+sharp impact of a bullet or a fiercely projected stone.
+
+“He fired two shots. One went wild; the other straight home.”
+
+It was the officer delivering his opinion.
+
+Mr. Saunders, returning from the distant room where he had assisted in
+carrying Mrs. Hammond, cast a look at the shattered glass, and remarked
+forcibly:
+
+“I heard but one; and I was sitting up, disturbed by that poor infant.
+Jennie, did you hear more than one shot?” he asked, turning toward his
+wife.
+
+“No,” she answered, but not with the readiness he had evidently
+expected. “I heard only one, but that was not quite usual in its tone.
+I’m used to guns,” she explained, turning to the officer. “My father
+was an army man, and he taught me very early to load and fire a pistol.
+There was a prolonged sound to this shot; something like an echo of
+itself, following close upon the first ping. Didn’t you notice that,
+Warren?”
+
+“I remember something of the kind,” her husband allowed.
+
+“He shot twice and quickly,” interposed the policeman, sententiously.
+“We shall find a spent bullet back of that mirror.”
+
+But when, upon the arrival of the coroner, an investigation was made of
+the mirror and the wall behind, no bullet was found either there or any
+where else in the room, save in the dead man’s breast. Nor had more than
+one been shot from his pistol, as five full chambers testified. The case
+which seemed so simple had its mysteries, but the assertion made by Mrs.
+Saunders no longer carried weight, nor was the evidence offered by the
+broken mirror considered as indubitably establishing the fact that a
+second shot had been fired in the room.
+
+Yet it was equally evident that the charge which had entered the dead
+speculator’s breast had not been delivered at the close range of the
+pistol found clutched in his hand. There were no powder-marks to be
+discerned on his pajama-jacket, or on the flesh beneath. Thus anomaly
+confronted anomaly, leaving open but one other theory: that the bullet
+found in Mr. Hammond’s breast came from the window and the one he shot
+went out of it. But this would necessitate his having shot his pistol
+from a point far removed from where he was found; and his wound was such
+as made it difficult to believe that he would stagger far, if at all,
+after its infliction.
+
+Yet, because the coroner was both conscientious and alert, he caused a
+most rigorous search to be made of the ground overlooked by the above
+mentioned window; a search in which the police joined, but which was
+without any result save that of rousing the attention of people in the
+neighbourhood and leading to a story being circulated of a man seen some
+time the night before crossing the fields in a great hurry. But as no
+further particulars were forthcoming, and not even a description of the
+man to be had, no emphasis would have been laid upon this story had it
+not transpired that the moment a report of it had come to Mrs. Hammond’s
+ears (why is there always some one to carry these reports?) she
+roused from the torpor into which she had fallen, and in wild fashion
+exclaimed:
+
+“I knew it! I expected it! He was shot through the window and by that
+wretch. He never shot himself.” Violent declarations which trailed off
+into the one continuous wail, “O, my baby! my poor baby!”
+
+Such words, even though the fruit of delirium, merited some sort of
+attention, or so this good coroner thought, and as soon as opportunity
+offered and she was sufficiently sane and quiet to respond to his
+questions, he asked her whom she had meant by that wretch, and what
+reason she had, or thought she had, of attributing her husband’s death
+to any other agency than his own disgust with life.
+
+And then it was that his sympathies, although greatly roused in her
+favour began to wane. She met the question with a cold stare followed by
+a few ambiguous words out of which he could make nothing. Had she said
+wretch? She did not remember. They must not be influenced by anything
+she might have uttered in her first grief. She was well-nigh insane at
+the time. But of one thing they might be sure: her husband had not shot
+himself; he was too much afraid of death for such an act. Besides, he
+was too happy. Whatever folks might say he was too fond of his family to
+wish to leave it.
+
+Nor did the coroner or any other official succeed in eliciting anything
+further from her. Even when she was asked, with cruel insistence,
+how she explained the fact that the baby was found lying on the floor
+instead of in its crib, her only answer was: “His father was trying to
+soothe it. The child was crying dreadfully, as you have heard from those
+who were kept awake by him that night, and my husband was carrying him
+about when the shot came which caused George to fall and overlay the
+baby in his struggles.”
+
+“Carrying a baby about with a loaded pistol in his hand?” came back in
+stern retort.
+
+She had no answer for this. She admitted when informed that the bullet
+extracted from her husband’s body had been found to correspond exactly
+with those remaining in the five chambers of the pistol taken from his
+hand, that he was not only the owner of this pistol but was in the habit
+of sleeping with it under his pillow; but, beyond that, nothing; and
+this reticence, as well as her manner which was cold and repellent, told
+against her.
+
+A verdict of suicide was rendered by the coroner’s jury, and the
+life-insurance company, in which Mr. Hammond had but lately insured
+himself for a large sum, taking advantage of the suicide clause embodied
+in the policy, announced its determination of not paying the same.
+
+Such was the situation, as known to Violet Strange and the general
+public, on the day she was asked to see Mrs. Hammond and learn what
+might alter her opinion as to the justice of this verdict and the stand
+taken by the Shuler Life Insurance Company.
+
+The clock on the mantel in Miss Strange’s rose-coloured boudoir had
+struck three, and Violet was gazing in some impatience at the door, when
+there came a gentle knock upon it, and the maid (one of the elderly, not
+youthful, kind) ushered in her expected visitor.
+
+“You are Mrs. Hammond?” she asked, in natural awe of the too black
+figure outlined so sharply against the deep pink of the sea-shell room.
+
+The answer was a slow lifting of the veil which shadowed the features
+she knew only from the cuts she had seen in newspapers.
+
+“You are--Miss Strange?” stammered her visitor; “the young lady who--”
+
+“I am,” chimed in a voice as ringing as it was sweet. “I am the person
+you have come here to see. And this is my home. But that does not make
+me less interested in the unhappy, or less desirous of serving them.
+Certainly you have met with the two greatest losses which can come to a
+woman--I know your story well enough to say that--; but what have you
+to tell me in proof that you should not lose your anticipated income as
+well? Something vital, I hope, else I cannot help you; something which
+you should have told the coroner’s jury--and did not.”
+
+The flush which was the sole answer these words called forth did not
+take from the refinement of the young widow’s expression, but rather
+added to it; Violet watched it in its ebb and flow and, seriously
+affected by it (why, she did not know, for Mrs. Hammond had made no
+other appeal either by look or gesture), pushed forward a chair and
+begged her visitor to be seated.
+
+“We can converse in perfect safety here,” she said. “When you feel quite
+equal to it, let me hear what you have to communicate. It will never go
+any further. I could not do the work I do if I felt it necessary to have
+a confidant.”
+
+“But you are so young and so--so--”
+
+“So inexperienced you would say and so evidently a member of what New
+Yorkers call ‘society.’ Do not let that trouble you. My inexperience is
+not likely to last long and my social pleasures are more apt to add to
+my efficiency than to detract from it.”
+
+With this Violet’s face broke into a smile. It was not the brilliant
+one so often seen upon her lips, but there was something in its quality
+which carried encouragement to the widow and led her to say with obvious
+eagerness:
+
+“You know the facts?”
+
+“I have read all the papers.”
+
+“I was not believed on the stand.”
+
+“It was your manner--”
+
+“I could not help my manner. I was keeping something back, and, being
+unused to deceit, I could not act quite naturally.”
+
+“Why did you keep something back? When you saw the unfavourable
+impression made by your reticence, why did you not speak up and frankly
+tell your story?”
+
+“Because I was ashamed. Because I thought it would hurt me more to speak
+than to keep silent. I do not think so now; but I did then--and so
+made my great mistake. You must remember not only the awful shock of my
+double loss, but the sense of guilt accompanying it; for my husband and
+I had quarreled that night, quarreled bitterly--that was why I had run
+away into another room and not because I was feeling ill and impatient
+of the baby’s fretful cries.”
+
+“So people have thought.” In saying this, Miss Strange was perhaps
+cruelly emphatic. “You wish to explain that quarrel? You think it will
+be doing any good to your cause to go into that matter with me now?”
+
+“I cannot say; but I must first clear my conscience and then try to
+convince you that quarrel or no quarrel, he never took his own life. He
+was not that kind. He had an abnormal fear of death. I do not like to
+say it but he was a physical coward. I have seen him turn pale at the
+least hint of danger. He could no more have turned that muzzle upon his
+own breast than he could have turned it upon his baby. Some other hand
+shot him, Miss Strange. Remember the open window, the shattered mirror;
+and I think I know that hand.”
+
+Her head had fallen forward on her breast. The emotion she showed was
+not so eloquent of grief as of deep personal shame.
+
+“You think you know the man?” In saying this, Violet’s voice sunk to a
+whisper. It was an accusation of murder she had just heard.
+
+“To my great distress, yes. When Mr. Hammond and I were married,” the
+widow now proceeded in a more determined tone, “there was another man--a
+very violent one--who vowed even at the church door that George and I
+should never live out two full years together. We have not. Our second
+anniversary would have been in November.”
+
+“But--”
+
+“Let me say this: the quarrel of which I speak was not serious enough to
+occasion any such act of despair on his part. A man would be mad to
+end his life on account of so slight a disagreement. It was not even on
+account of the person of whom I’ve just spoken, though that person had
+been mentioned between us earlier in the evening, Mr. Hammond having
+come across him face to face that very afternoon in the subway. Up to
+this time neither of us had seen or heard of him since our wedding-day.”
+
+“And you think this person whom you barely mentioned, so mindful of his
+old grudge that he sought out your domicile, and, with the intention of
+murder, climbed the trellis leading to your room and turned his pistol
+upon the shadowy figure which was all he could see in the semi-obscurity
+of a much lowered gas-jet?”
+
+“A man in the dark does not need a bright light to see his enemy when he
+is intent upon revenge.”
+
+Miss Strange altered her tone.
+
+“And your husband? You must acknowledge that he shot off his pistol
+whether the other did or not.”
+
+“It was in self-defence. He would shoot to save his own life--or the
+baby’s.”
+
+“Then he must have heard or seen--”
+
+“A man at the window.”
+
+“And would have shot there?”
+
+“Or tried to.”
+
+“Tried to?”
+
+“Yes; the other shot first--oh, I’ve thought it all out--causing my
+husband’s bullet to go wild. It was his which broke the mirror.”
+
+Violet’s eyes, bright as stars, suddenly narrowed.
+
+“And what happened then?” she asked. “Why cannot they find the bullet?”
+
+“Because it went out of the window;--glanced off and went out of the
+window.”
+
+Mrs. Hammond’s tone was triumphant; her look spirited and intense.
+
+Violet eyed her compassionately.
+
+“Would a bullet glancing off from a mirror, however hung, be apt to
+reach a window so far on the opposite side?”
+
+“I don’t know; I only know that it did,” was the contradictory, almost
+absurd, reply.
+
+“What was the cause of the quarrel you speak of between your husband and
+yourself? You see, I must know the exact truth and all the truth to be
+of any assistance to you.”
+
+“It was--it was about the care I gave, or didn’t give, the baby. I feel
+awfully to have to say it, but George did not think I did my full duty
+by the child. He said there was no need of its crying so; that if I gave
+it the proper attention it would not keep the neighbours and himself
+awake half the night. And I--I got angry and insisted that I did the
+best I could; that the child was naturally fretful and that if he wasn’t
+satisfied with my way of looking after it, he might try his. All of
+which was very wrong and unreasonable on my part, as witness the awful
+punishment which followed.”
+
+“And what made you get up and leave him?”
+
+“The growl he gave me in reply. When I heard that, I bounded out of bed
+and said I was going to the spare room to sleep; and if the baby cried
+he might just try what he could do himself to stop it.”
+
+“And he answered?”
+
+“This, just this--I shall never forget his words as long as I live--‘If
+you go, you need not expect me to let you in again no matter what
+happens.’”
+
+“He said that?”
+
+“And locked the door after me. You see I could not tell all that.”
+
+“It might have been better if you had. It was such a natural quarrel and
+so unprovocative of actual tragedy.”
+
+Mrs. Hammond was silent. It was not difficult to see that she had no
+very keen regrets for her husband personally. But then he was not a very
+estimable man nor in any respect her equal.
+
+“You were not happy with him,” Violet ventured to remark.
+
+“I was not a fully contented woman. But for all that he had no cause to
+complain of me except for the reason I have mentioned. I was not a
+very intelligent mother. But if the baby were living now--O, if he were
+living now--with what devotion I should care for him.”
+
+She was on her feet, her arms were raised, her face impassioned with
+feeling. Violet, gazing at her, heaved a little sigh. It was perhaps in
+keeping with the situation, perhaps extraneous to it, but whatever its
+source, it marked a change in her manner. With no further check upon her
+sympathy, she said very softly:
+
+“It is well with the child.”
+
+The mother stiffened, swayed, and then burst into wild weeping.
+
+“But not with me,” she cried, “not with me. I am desolate and bereft. I
+have not even a home in which to hide my grief and no prospect of one.”
+
+“But,” interposed Violet, “surely your husband left you something? You
+cannot be quite penniless?”
+
+“My husband left nothing,” was the answer, uttered without bitterness,
+but with all the hardness of fact. “He had debts. I shall pay those
+debts. When these and other necessary expenses are liquidated, there
+will be but little left. He made no secret of the fact that he lived
+close up to his means. That is why he was induced to take on a life
+insurance. Not a friend of his but knows his improvidence. I--I have not
+even jewels. I have only my determination and an absolute conviction as
+to the real nature of my husband’s death.”
+
+“What is the name of the man you secretly believe to have shot your
+husband from the trellis?”
+
+Mrs. Hammond told her.
+
+It was a new one to Violet. She said so and then asked:
+
+“What else can you tell me about him?”
+
+“Nothing, but that he is a very dark man and has a club-foot.”
+
+“Oh, what a mistake you’ve made.”
+
+“Mistake? Yes, I acknowledge that.”
+
+“I mean in not giving this last bit of information at once to the
+police. A man can be identified by such a defect. Even his footsteps can
+be traced. He might have been found that very day. Now, what have we to
+go upon?”
+
+“You are right, but not expecting to have any difficulty about the
+insurance money I thought it would be generous in me to keep still.
+Besides, this is only surmise on my part. I feel certain that my husband
+was shot by another hand than his own, but I know of no way of proving
+it. Do you?”
+
+Then Violet talked seriously with her, explaining how their only hope
+lay in the discovery of a second bullet in the room which had already
+been ransacked for this very purpose and without the shadow of a result.
+
+A tea, a musicale, and an evening dance kept Violet Strange in a whirl
+for the remainder of the day. No brighter eye nor more contagious wit
+lent brilliance to these occasions, but with the passing of the midnight
+hour no one who had seen her in the blaze of electric lights would have
+recognized this favoured child of fortune in the earnest figure sitting
+in the obscurity of an up-town apartment, studying the walls, the
+ceilings, and the floors by the dim light of a lowered gas-jet. Violet
+Strange in society was a very different person from Violet Strange under
+the tension of her secret and peculiar work.
+
+She had told them at home that she was going to spend the night with a
+friend; but only her old coachman knew who that friend was. Therefore a
+very natural sense of guilt mingled with her emotions at finding
+herself alone on a scene whose gruesome mystery she could solve only by
+identifying herself with the place and the man who had perished there.
+
+Dismissing from her mind all thought of self, she strove to think as he
+thought, and act as he acted on the night when he found himself (a man
+of but little courage) left in this room with an ailing child.
+
+At odds with himself, his wife, and possibly with the child screaming
+away in its crib, what would he be apt to do in his present emergency?
+Nothing at first, but as the screaming continued he would remember the
+old tales of fathers walking the floor at night with crying babies,
+and hasten to follow suit. Violet, in her anxiety to reach his inmost
+thought, crossed to where the crib had stood, and, taking that as a
+start, began pacing the room in search of the spot from which a bullet,
+if shot, would glance aside from the mirror in the direction of the
+window. (Not that she was ready to accept this theory of Mrs. Hammond,
+but that she did not wish to entirely dismiss it without putting it to
+the test.)
+
+She found it in an unexpected quarter of the room and much nearer
+the bed-head than where his body was found. This, which might seem to
+confuse matters, served, on the contrary to remove from the case one of
+its most serious difficulties. Standing here, he was within reach of the
+pillow under which his pistol lay hidden, and if startled, as his wife
+believed him to have been by a noise at the other end of the room, had
+but to crouch and reach behind him in order to find himself armed and
+ready for a possible intruder.
+
+Imitating his action in this as in other things, she had herself
+crouched low at the bedside and was on the point of withdrawing her hand
+from under the pillow, when a new surprise checked her movement and held
+her fixed in her position, with eyes staring straight at the adjoining
+wall. She had seen there what he must have seen in making this same
+turn--the dark bars of the opposite window-frame outlined in the
+mirror--and understood at once what had happened. In the nervousness and
+terror of the moment, George Hammond had mistaken this reflection of
+the window for the window itself, and shot impulsively at the man he
+undoubtedly saw covering him from the trellis without. But while this
+explained the shattering of the mirror, how about the other and still
+more vital question, of where the bullet went afterward? Was the angle
+at which it had been fired acute enough to send it out of a window
+diagonally opposed? No; even if the pistol had been held closer to the
+man firing it than she had reason to believe, the angle still would be
+oblique enough to carry it on to the further wall.
+
+But no sign of any such impact had been discovered on this wall.
+Consequently, the force of the bullet had been expended before reaching
+it, and when it fell--
+
+Here, her glance, slowly traveling along the floor, impetuously paused.
+It had reached the spot where the two bodies had been found, and
+unconsciously her eyes rested there, conjuring up the picture of the
+bleeding father and the strangled child. How piteous and how dreadful
+it all was. If she could only understand--Suddenly she rose straight
+up, staring and immovable in the dim light. Had the idea--the
+explanation--the only possible explanation covering the whole phenomena
+come to her at last?
+
+It would seem so, for as she so stood, a look of conviction settled over
+her features, and with this look, evidences of a horror which for all
+her fast accumulating knowledge of life and its possibilities made her
+appear very small and very helpless.
+
+A half-hour later, when Mrs. Hammond, in her anxiety at hearing nothing
+more from Miss Strange, opened the door of her room, it was to find,
+lying on the edge of the sill, the little detective’s card with these
+words hastily written across it:
+
+I do not feel as well as I could wish, and so have telephoned to my own
+coachman to come and take me home. I will either see or write you within
+a few days. But do not allow yourself to hope. I pray you do not allow
+yourself the least hope; the outcome is still very problematical.
+
+When Violet’s employer entered his office the next morning it was to
+find a veiled figure awaiting him which he at once recognized as that of
+his little deputy. She was slow in lifting her veil and when it finally
+came free he felt a momentary doubt as to his wisdom in giving her just
+such a matter as this to investigate. He was quite sure of his mistake
+when he saw her face, it was so drawn and pitiful.
+
+“You have failed,” said he.
+
+“Of that you must judge,” she answered; and drawing near she whispered
+in his ear.
+
+“No!” he cried in his amazement.
+
+“Think,” she murmured, “think. Only so can all the facts be accounted
+for.”
+
+“I will look into it; I will certainly look into it,” was his earnest
+reply. “If you are right--But never mind that. Go home and take a
+horseback ride in the Park. When I have news in regard to this I will
+let you know. Till then forget it all. Hear me, I charge you to forget
+everything but your balls and your parties.”
+
+And Violet obeyed him.
+
+Some few days after this, the following statement appeared in all the
+papers:
+
+“Owing to some remarkable work done by the firm of ---- & ----, the
+well-known private detective agency, the claim made by Mrs. George
+Hammond against the Shuler Life Insurance Company is likely to be
+allowed without further litigation. As our readers will remember, the
+contestant has insisted from the first that the bullet causing her
+husband’s death came from another pistol than the one found clutched in
+his own hand. But while reasons were not lacking to substantiate this
+assertion, the failure to discover more than the disputed track of a
+second bullet led to a verdict of suicide, and a refusal of the company
+to pay.
+
+“But now that bullet has been found. And where? In the most startling
+place in the world, viz.: in the larynx of the child found lying dead
+upon the floor beside his father, strangled as was supposed by the
+weight of that father’s arm. The theory is, and there seems to be none
+other, that the father, hearing a suspicious noise at the window, set
+down the child he was endeavouring to soothe and made for the bed and
+his own pistol, and, mistaking a reflection of the assassin for the
+assassin himself, sent his shot sidewise at a mirror just as the other
+let go the trigger which drove a similar bullet into his breast.
+The course of the one was straight and fatal and that of the other
+deflected. Striking the mirror at an oblique angle, the bullet fell to
+the floor where it was picked up by the crawling child, and, as was
+most natural, thrust at once into his mouth. Perhaps it felt hot to
+the little tongue; perhaps the child was simply frightened by some
+convulsive movement of the father who evidently spent his last moment in
+an endeavour to reach the child, but, whatever the cause, in the quick
+gasp it gave, the bullet was drawn into the larynx, strangling him.
+
+“That the father’s arm, in his last struggle, should have fallen
+directly across the little throat is one of those anomalies which
+confounds reason and misleads justice by stopping investigation at the
+very point where truth lies and mystery disappears.
+
+“Mrs. Hammond is to be congratulated that there are detectives who do
+not give too much credence to outward appearances.”
+
+We expect soon to hear of the capture of the man who sped home the
+death-dealing bullet.
+
+END OF PROBLEM II
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM III. AN INTANGIBLE CLUE
+
+“Have you studied the case?”
+
+“Not I.”
+
+“Not studied the case which for the last few days has provided the
+papers with such conspicuous headlines?”
+
+“I do not read the papers. I have not looked at one in a whole week.”
+
+“Miss Strange, your social engagements must be of a very pressing nature
+just now?”
+
+“They are.”
+
+“And your business sense in abeyance?”
+
+“How so?”
+
+“You would not ask if you had read the papers.”
+
+To this she made no reply save by a slight toss of her pretty head.
+If her employer felt nettled by this show of indifference, he did not
+betray it save by the rapidity of his tones as, without further preamble
+and possibly without real excuse, he proceeded to lay before her the
+case in question. “Last Tuesday night a woman was murdered in this city;
+an old woman, in a lonely house where she has lived for years. Perhaps
+you remember this house? It occupies a not inconspicuous site in
+Seventeenth Street--a house of the olden time?”
+
+“No, I do not remember.”
+
+The extreme carelessness of Miss Strange’s tone would have been fatal to
+her socially; but then, she would never have used it socially. This they
+both knew, yet he smiled with his customary indulgence.
+
+“Then I will describe it.”
+
+She looked around for a chair and sank into it. He did the same.
+
+“It has a fanlight over the front door.”
+
+She remained impassive.
+
+“And two old-fashioned strips of parti-coloured glass on either side.”
+
+“And a knocker between its panels which may bring money some day.”
+
+“Oh, you do remember! I thought you would, Miss Strange.”
+
+“Yes. Fanlights over doors are becoming very rare in New York.”
+
+“Very well, then. That house was the scene of Tuesday’s tragedy. The
+woman who has lived there in solitude for years was foully murdered.
+I have since heard that the people who knew her best have always
+anticipated some such violent end for her. She never allowed maid or
+friend to remain with her after five in the afternoon; yet she had
+money--some think a great deal--always in the house.”
+
+“I am interested in the house, not in her.”
+
+“Yet, she was a character--as full of whims and crotchets as a nut is
+of meat. Her death was horrible. She fought--her dress was torn from her
+body in rags. This happened, you see, before her hour for retiring;
+some think as early as six in the afternoon. And”--here he made a
+rapid gesture to catch Violet’s wandering attention--“in spite of
+this struggle; in spite of the fact that she was dragged from room
+to room--that her person was searched--and everything in the house
+searched--that drawers were pulled out of bureaus--doors wrenched off of
+cupboards--china smashed upon the floor--whole shelves denuded and not
+a spot from cellar to garret left unransacked, no direct clue to
+the perpetrator has been found--nothing that gives any idea of his
+personality save his display of strength and great cupidity. The police
+have even deigned to consult me,--an unusual procedure--but I could find
+nothing, either. Evidences of fiendish purpose abound--of relentless
+search--but no clue to the man himself. It’s uncommon, isn’t it, not to
+have any clue?”
+
+“I suppose so.” Miss Strange hated murders and it was with difficulty
+she could be brought to discuss them. But she was not going to be let
+off; not this time.
+
+“You see,” he proceeded insistently, “it’s not only mortifying to the
+police but disappointing to the press, especially as few reporters
+believe in the No-thoroughfare business. They say, and we cannot but
+agree with them, that no such struggle could take place and no such
+repeated goings to and fro through the house without some vestige being
+left by which to connect this crime with its daring perpetrator.”
+
+Still she stared down at her hands--those little hands so white and
+fluttering, so seemingly helpless under the weight of their many rings,
+and yet so slyly capable.
+
+“She must have queer neighbours,” came at last, from Miss Strange’s
+reluctant lips. “Didn’t they hear or see anything of all this?”
+
+“She has no neighbours--that is, after half-past five o’clock. There’s
+a printing establishment on one side of her, a deserted mansion on the
+other side, and nothing but warehouses back and front. There was no one
+to notice what took place in her small dwelling after the printing house
+was closed. She was the most courageous or the most foolish of women to
+remain there as she did. But nothing except death could budge her. She
+was born in the room where she died; was married in the one where she
+worked; saw husband, father, mother, and five sisters carried out
+in turn to their graves through the door with the fanlight over the
+top--and these memories held her.”
+
+“You are trying to interest me in the woman. Don’t.”
+
+“No, I’m not trying to interest you in her, only trying to explain her.
+There was another reason for her remaining where she did so long after
+all residents had left the block. She had a business.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“She embroidered monograms for fine ladies.”
+
+“She did? But you needn’t look at me like that. She never embroidered
+any for me.”
+
+“No? She did first-class work. I saw some of it. Miss Strange, if I
+could get you into that house for ten minutes--not to see her but to
+pick up the loose intangible thread which I am sure is floating around
+in it somewhere--wouldn’t you go?”
+
+Violet slowly rose--a movement which he followed to the letter.
+
+“Must I express in words the limit I have set for myself in our affair?”
+ she asked. “When, for reasons I have never thought myself called upon to
+explain, I consented to help you a little now and then with some matter
+where a woman’s tact and knowledge of the social world might tell
+without offence to herself or others, I never thought it would be
+necessary for me to state that temptation must stop with such cases,
+or that I should not be asked to touch the sordid or the bloody. But it
+seems I was mistaken, and that I must stoop to be explicit. The woman
+who was killed on Tuesday might have interested me greatly as an
+embroiderer, but as a victim, not at all. What do you see in me, or miss
+in me, that you should drag me into an atmosphere of low-down crime?”
+
+“Nothing, Miss Strange. You are by nature, as well as by breeding,
+very far removed from everything of the kind. But you will allow me to
+suggest that no crime is low-down which makes imperative demand upon
+the intellect and intuitive sense of its investigator. Only the most
+delicate touch can feel and hold the thread I’ve just spoken of, and you
+have the most delicate touch I know.”
+
+“Do not attempt to flatter me. I have no fancy for handling befouled
+spider webs. Besides, if I had--if such elusive filaments fascinated
+me--how could I, well-known in person and name, enter upon such a scene
+without prejudice to our mutual compact?”
+
+“Miss Strange”--she had reseated herself, but so far he had failed to
+follow her example (an ignoring of the subtle hint that her interest
+might yet be caught, which seemed to annoy her a trifle), “I should
+not even have suggested such a possibility had I not seen a way of
+introducing you there without risk to your position or mine. Among the
+boxes piled upon Mrs. Doolittle’s table--boxes of finished work, most
+of them addressed and ready for delivery--was one on which could be seen
+the name of--shall I mention it?”
+
+“Not mine? You don’t mean mine? That would be too odd--too ridiculously
+odd. I should not understand a coincidence of that kind; no, I should
+not, notwithstanding the fact that I have lately sent out such work to
+be done.”
+
+“Yet it was your name, very clearly and precisely written--your whole
+name, Miss Strange. I saw and read it myself.”
+
+“But I gave the order to Madame Pirot on Fifth Avenue. How came my
+things to be found in the house of this woman of whose horrible death we
+have been talking?”
+
+“Did you suppose that Madame Pirot did such work with her own
+hands?--or even had it done in her own establishment? Mrs. Doolittle was
+universally employed. She worked for a dozen firms. You will find the
+biggest names on most of her packages. But on this one--I allude to the
+one addressed to you--there was more to be seen than the name. These
+words were written on it in another hand. Send without opening. This
+struck the police as suspicious; sufficiently so, at least, for them
+to desire your presence at the house as soon as you can make it
+convenient.”
+
+“To open the box?”
+
+“Exactly.”
+
+The curl of Miss Strange’s disdainful lip was a sight to see.
+
+“You wrote those words yourself,” she coolly observed. “While someone’s
+back was turned, you whipped out your pencil and--”
+
+“Resorted to a very pardonable subterfuge highly conducive to the
+public’s good. But never mind that. Will you go?”
+
+Miss Strange became suddenly demure.
+
+“I suppose I must,” she grudgingly conceded. “However obtained, a
+summons from the police cannot be ignored even by Peter Strange’s
+daughter.”
+
+Another man might have displayed his triumph by smile or gesture; but
+this one had learned his role too well. He simply said:
+
+“Very good. Shall it be at once? I have a taxi at the door.”
+
+But she failed to see the necessity of any such hurry. With sudden
+dignity she replied:
+
+“That won’t do. If I go to this house it must be under suitable
+conditions. I shall have to ask my brother to accompany me.”
+
+“Your brother!”
+
+“Oh, he’s safe. He--he knows.”
+
+“Your brother knows?” Her visitor, with less control than usual,
+betrayed very openly his uneasiness.
+
+“He does and--approves. But that’s not what interests us now, only so
+far as it makes it possible for me to go with propriety to that dreadful
+house.”
+
+A formal bow from the other and the words:
+
+“They may expect you, then. Can you say when?”
+
+“Within the next hour. But it will be a useless concession on my part,”
+ she pettishly complained. “A place that has been gone over by a dozen
+detectives is apt to be brushed clean of its cobwebs, even if such ever
+existed.”
+
+“That’s the difficulty,” he acknowledged; and did not dare to add
+another word; she was at that particular moment so very much the great
+lady, and so little his confidential agent.
+
+He might have been less impressed, however, by this sudden assumption
+of manner, had he been so fortunate as to have seen how she employed the
+three quarters of an hour’s delay for which she had asked.
+
+She read those neglected newspapers, especially the one containing the
+following highly coloured narration of this ghastly crime:
+
+“A door ajar--an empty hall--a line of sinister looking blotches
+marking a guilty step diagonally across the flagging--silence--and an
+unmistakable odour repugnant to all humanity,--such were the indications
+which met the eyes of Officer O’Leary on his first round last night, and
+led to the discovery of a murder which will long thrill the city by its
+mystery and horror.
+
+“Both the house and the victim are well known.” Here followed a
+description of the same and of Mrs. Doolittle’s manner of life in
+her ancient home, which Violet hurriedly passed over to come to the
+following:
+
+“As far as one can judge from appearances, the crime happened in this
+wise: Mrs. Doolittle had been in her kitchen, as the tea-kettle found
+singing on the stove goes to prove, and was coming back through her
+bedroom, when the wretch, who had stolen in by the front door which, to
+save steps, she was unfortunately in the habit of leaving on the latch
+till all possibility of customers for the day was over, sprang upon her
+from behind and dealt her a swinging blow with the poker he had caught
+up from the hearthstone.
+
+“Whether the struggle which ensued followed immediately upon this first
+attack or came later, it will take medical experts to determine. But,
+whenever it did occur, the fierceness of its character is shown by the
+grip taken upon her throat and the traces of blood which are to be seen
+all over the house. If the wretch had lugged her into her workroom and
+thence to the kitchen, and thence back to the spot of first assault, the
+evidences could not have been more ghastly. Bits of her clothing torn
+off by a ruthless hand, lay scattered over all these floors. In her
+bedroom, where she finally breathed her last, there could be seen
+mingled with these a number of large but worthless glass beads; and
+close against one of the base-boards, the string which had held them, as
+shown by the few remaining beads still clinging to it. If in pulling the
+string from her neck he had hoped to light upon some valuable booty,
+his fury at his disappointment is evident. You can almost see the frenzy
+with which he flung the would-be necklace at the wall, and kicked about
+and stamped upon its rapidly rolling beads.
+
+“Booty! That was what he was after; to find and carry away the poor
+needlewoman’s supposed hoardings. If the scene baffles description--if,
+as some believe, he dragged her yet living from spot to spot, demanding
+information as to her places of concealment under threat of repeated
+blows, and, finally baffled, dealt the finishing stroke and proceeded on
+the search alone, no greater devastation could have taken place in this
+poor woman’s house or effects. Yet such was his precaution and care
+for himself that he left no finger-print behind him nor any other token
+which could lead to personal identification. Even though his footsteps
+could be traced in much the order I have mentioned, they were of so
+indeterminate and shapeless a character as to convey little to the
+intelligence of the investigator.
+
+“That these smears (they could not be called footprints) not only
+crossed the hall but appeared in more than one place on the staircase
+proves that he did not confine his search to the lower storey; and
+perhaps one of the most interesting features of the case lies in the
+indications given by these marks of the raging course he took through
+these upper rooms. As the accompanying diagram will show [we omit the
+diagram] he went first into the large front chamber, thence to the rear
+where we find two rooms, one unfinished and filled with accumulated
+stuff most of which he left lying loose upon the floor, and the other
+plastered, and containing a window opening upon an alley-way at the
+side, but empty of all furniture and without even a carpet on the bare
+boards.
+
+“Why he should have entered the latter place, and why, having entered
+he should have crossed to the window, will be plain to those who
+have studied the conditions. The front chamber windows were tightly
+shuttered, the attic ones cumbered with boxes and shielded from approach
+by old bureaus and discarded chairs. This one only was free and,
+although darkened by the proximity of the house neighbouring it across
+the alley, was the only spot on the storey where sufficient light could
+be had at this late hour for the examination of any object of whose
+value he was doubtful. That he had come across such an object and had
+brought it to this window for some such purpose is very satisfactorily
+demonstrated by the discovery of a worn out wallet of ancient make lying
+on the floor directly in front of this window--a proof of his cupidity
+but also proof of his ill-luck. For this wallet, when lifted and opened,
+was found to contain two hundred or more dollars in old bills, which, if
+not the full hoard of their industrious owner, was certainly worth the
+taking by one who had risked his neck for the sole purpose of theft.
+
+“This wallet, and the flight of the murderer without it, give to this
+affair, otherwise simply brutal, a dramatic interest which will be
+appreciated not only by the very able detectives already hot upon the
+chase, but by all other inquiring minds anxious to solve a mystery of
+which so estimable a woman has been the unfortunate victim. A problem is
+presented to the police--”
+
+There Violet stopped.
+
+When, not long after, the superb limousine of Peter Strange stopped
+before the little house in Seventeenth Street, it caused a veritable
+sensation, not only in the curiosity-mongers lingering on the sidewalk,
+but to the two persons within--the officer on guard and a belated
+reporter.
+
+Though dressed in her plainest suit, Violet Strange looked much too
+fashionable and far too young and thoughtless to be observed, without
+emotion, entering a scene of hideous and brutal crime. Even the young
+man who accompanied her promised to bring a most incongruous element
+into this atmosphere of guilt and horror, and, as the detective on guard
+whispered to the man beside him, might much better have been left behind
+in the car.
+
+But Violet was great for the proprieties and young Arthur followed her
+in.
+
+Her entrance was a coup du theatre. She had lifted her veil in crossing
+the sidewalk and her interesting features and general air of timidity
+were very fetching. As the man holding open the door noted the
+impression made upon his companion, he muttered with sly facetiousness:
+
+“You think you’ll show her nothing; but I’m ready to bet a fiver that
+she’ll want to see it all and that you’ll show it to her.”
+
+The detective’s grin was expressive, notwithstanding the shrug with
+which he tried to carry it off.
+
+And Violet? The hall into which she now stepped from the most vivid
+sunlight had never been considered even in its palmiest days as
+possessing cheer even of the stately kind. The ghastly green light
+infused through it by the coloured glass on either side of the doorway
+seemed to promise yet more dismal things beyond.
+
+“Must I go in there?” she asked, pointing, with an admirable simulation
+of nervous excitement, to a half-shut door at her left. “Is there where
+it happened? Arthur, do you suppose that there is where it happened?”
+
+“No, no, Miss,” the officer made haste to assure her. “If you are Miss
+Strange” (Violet bowed), “I need hardly say that the woman was struck in
+her bedroom. The door beside you leads into the parlour, or as she would
+have called it, her work-room. You needn’t be afraid of going in there.
+You will see nothing but the disorder of her boxes. They were pretty
+well pulled about. Not all of them though,” he added, watching her as
+closely as the dim light permitted. “There is one which gives no sign
+of having been tampered with. It was done up in wrapping paper and is
+addressed to you, which in itself would not have seemed worthy of
+our attention had not these lines been scribbled on it in a man’s
+handwriting: ‘Send without opening.’”
+
+“How odd!” exclaimed the little minx with widely opened eyes and an
+air of guileless innocence. “Whatever can it mean? Nothing serious I am
+sure, for the woman did not even know me. She was employed to do this
+work by Madame Pirot.”
+
+“Didn’t you know that it was to be done here?”
+
+“No. I thought Madame Pirot’s own girls did her embroidery for her.”
+
+“So that you were surprised--”
+
+“Wasn’t I!”
+
+“To get our message.”
+
+“I didn’t know what to make of it.”
+
+The earnest, half-injured look with which she uttered this disclaimer,
+did its appointed work. The detective accepted her for what she seemed
+and, oblivious to the reporter’s satirical gesture, crossed to the
+work-room door, which he threw wide open with the remark:
+
+“I should be glad to have you open that box in our presence. It is
+undoubtedly all right, but we wish to be sure. You know what the box
+should contain?”
+
+“Oh, yes, indeed; pillow-cases and sheets, with a big S embroidered on
+them.”
+
+“Very well. Shall I undo the string for you?”
+
+“I shall be much obliged,” said she, her eye flashing quickly about the
+room before settling down upon the knot he was deftly loosening.
+
+Her brother, gazing indifferently in from the doorway, hardly noticed
+this look; but the reporter at his back did, though he failed to detect
+its penetrating quality.
+
+“Your name is on the other side,” observed the detective as he drew away
+the string and turned the package over.
+
+The smile which just lifted the corner of her lips was not in answer to
+this remark, but to her recognition of her employer’s handwriting in the
+words under her name: Send without opening. She had not misjudged him.
+
+“The cover you may like to take off yourself,” suggested the officer, as
+he lifted the box out of its wrapper.
+
+“Oh, I don’t mind. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in embroidered
+linen. Or perhaps that is not what you are looking for?”
+
+No one answered. All were busy watching her whip off the lid and lift
+out the pile of sheets and pillow-cases with which the box was closely
+packed.
+
+“Shall I unfold them?” she asked.
+
+The detective nodded.
+
+Taking out the topmost sheet, she shook it open. Then the next and the
+next till she reached the bottom of the box. Nothing of a criminating
+nature came to light. The box as well as its contents was without
+mystery of any kind. This was not an unexpected result of course, but
+the smile with which she began to refold the pieces and throw them back
+into the box, revealed one of her dimples which was almost as dangerous
+to the casual observer as when it revealed both.
+
+“There,” she exclaimed, “you see! Household linen exactly as I said. Now
+may I go home?”
+
+“Certainly, Miss Strange.”
+
+The detective stole a sly glance at the reporter. She was not going in
+for the horrors then after all.
+
+But the reporter abated nothing of his knowing air, for while she spoke
+of going, she made no move towards doing so, but continued to look
+about the room till her glances finally settled on a long dark curtain
+shutting off an adjoining room.
+
+“There’s where she lies, I suppose,” she feelingly exclaimed. “And not
+one of you knows who killed her. Somehow, I cannot understand that. Why
+don’t you know when that’s what you’re hired for?” The innocence with
+which she uttered this was astonishing. The detective began to look
+sheepish and the reporter turned aside to hide his smile. Whether in
+another moment either would have spoken no one can say, for, with a
+mock consciousness of having said something foolish, she caught up her
+parasol from the table and made a start for the door.
+
+But of course she looked back.
+
+“I was wondering,” she recommenced, with a half wistful, half
+speculative air, “whether I should ask to have a peep at the place where
+it all happened.”
+
+The reporter chuckled behind the pencil-end he was chewing, but the
+officer maintained his solemn air, for which act of self-restraint
+he was undoubtedly grateful when in another minute she gave a quick
+impulsive shudder not altogether assumed, and vehemently added: “But I
+couldn’t stand the sight; no, I couldn’t! I’m an awful coward when it
+comes to things like that. Nothing in all the world would induce me
+to look at the woman or her room. But I should like--” here both
+her dimples came into play though she could not be said exactly to
+smile--“just one little look upstairs, where he went poking about so
+long without any fear it seems of being interrupted. Ever since I’ve
+read about it I have seen, in my mind, a picture of his wicked figure
+sneaking from room to room, tearing open drawers and flinging out the
+contents of closets just to find a little money--a little, little money!
+I shall not sleep to-night just for wondering how those high up attic
+rooms really look.”
+
+Who could dream that back of this display of mingled childishness and
+audacity there lay hidden purpose, intellect, and a keen knowledge
+of human nature. Not the two men who listened to this seemingly
+irresponsible chatter. To them she was a child to be humoured and humour
+her they did. The dainty feet which had already found their way to that
+gloomy staircase were allowed to ascend, followed it is true by those
+of the officer who did not dare to smile back at the reporter because of
+the brother’s watchful and none too conciliatory eye.
+
+At the stair head she paused to look back.
+
+“I don’t see those horrible marks which the papers describe as running
+all along the lower hall and up these stairs.”
+
+“No, Miss Strange; they have gradually been rubbed out, but you will
+find some still showing on these upper floors.”
+
+“Oh! oh! where? You frighten me--frighten me horribly! But--but--if you
+don’t mind, I should like to see.”
+
+Why should not a man on a tedious job amuse himself? Piloting her over
+to the small room in the rear, he pointed down at the boards. She gave
+one look and then stepped gingerly in.
+
+“Just look!” she cried; “a whole string of marks going straight from
+door to window. They have no shape, have they,--just blotches? I wonder
+why one of them is so much larger than the rest?”
+
+This was no new question. It was one which everybody who went into
+the room was sure to ask, there was such a difference in the size and
+appearance of the mark nearest the window. The reason--well, minds were
+divided about that, and no one had a satisfactory theory. The detective
+therefore kept discreetly silent.
+
+This did not seem to offend Miss Strange. On the contrary it gave her an
+opportunity to babble away to her heart’s content.
+
+“One, two, three, four, five, six,” she counted, with a shudder at every
+count. “And one of them bigger than the others.” She might have added,
+“It is the trail of one foot, and strangely, intermingled at that,” but
+she did not, though we may be quite sure that she noted the fact. “And
+where, just where did the old wallet fall? Here? or here?”
+
+She had moved as she spoke, so that in uttering the last “here,” she
+stood directly before the window. The surprise she received there nearly
+made her forget the part she was playing. From the character of the
+light in the room, she had expected, on looking out, to confront a
+near-by wall, but not a window in that wall. Yet that was what she saw
+directly facing her from across the old-fashioned alley separating
+this house from its neighbour; twelve unshuttered and uncurtained panes
+through which she caught a darkened view of a room almost as forlorn and
+devoid of furniture as the one in which she then stood.
+
+When quite sure of herself, she let a certain portion of her surprise
+appear.
+
+“Why, look!” she cried, “if you can’t see right in next door! What a
+lonesome-looking place! From its desolate appearance I should think the
+house quite empty.”
+
+“And it is. That’s the old Shaffer homestead. It’s been empty for a
+year.”
+
+“Oh, empty!” And she turned away, with the most inconsequent air in
+the world, crying out as her name rang up the stair, “There’s Arthur
+calling. I suppose he thinks I’ve been here long enough. I’m sure I’m
+very much obliged to you, officer. I really shouldn’t have slept a wink
+to-night, if I hadn’t been given a peep at these rooms, which I
+had imagined so different.” And with one additional glance over her
+shoulder, that seemed to penetrate both windows and the desolate space
+beyond, she ran quickly out and down in response to her brother’s
+reiterated call.
+
+“Drive quickly!--as quickly as the law allows, to Hiram Brown’s office
+in Duane Street.”
+
+Arrived at the address named, she went in alone to see Mr. Brown. He was
+her father’s lawyer and a family friend.
+
+Hardly waiting for his affectionate greeting, she cried out quickly.
+“Tell me how I can learn anything about the old Shaffer house in
+Seventeenth Street. Now, don’t look so surprised. I have very good
+reasons for my request and--and--I’m in an awful hurry.”
+
+“But--”
+
+“I know, I know; there’s been a dreadful tragedy next door to it; but
+it’s about the Shaffer house itself I want some information. Has it an
+agent, a--”
+
+“Of course it has an agent, and here is his name.”
+
+Mr. Brown presented her with a card on which he had hastily written both
+name and address.
+
+She thanked him, dropped him a mocking curtsey full of charm, whispered
+“Don’t tell father,” and was gone.
+
+Her manner to the man she next interviewed was very different. As soon
+as she saw him she subsided into her usual society manner. With just a
+touch of the conceit of the successful debutante, she announced herself
+as Miss Strange of Seventy-second Street. Her business with him was in
+regard to the possible renting of the Shaffer house. She had an old lady
+friend who was desirous of living downtown.
+
+In passing through Seventeenth Street, she had noticed that the old
+Shaffer house was standing empty and had been immediately struck with
+the advantages it possessed for her elderly friend’s occupancy. Could it
+be that the house was for rent? There was no sign on it to that effect,
+but--etc.
+
+His answer left her nothing to hope for.
+
+“It is going to be torn down,” he said.
+
+“Oh, what a pity!” she exclaimed. “Real colonial, isn’t it! I wish I
+could see the rooms inside before it is disturbed. Such doors and such
+dear old-fashioned mantelpieces as it must have! I just dote on the
+Colonial. It brings up such pictures of the old days; weddings,
+you know, and parties;--all so different from ours and so much more
+interesting.”
+
+Is it the chance shot that tells? Sometimes. Violet had no especial
+intention in what she said save as a prelude to a pending request,
+but nothing could have served her purpose better than that one word,
+wedding. The agent laughed and giving her his first indulgent look,
+remarked genially:
+
+“Romance is not confined to those ancient times. If you were to enter
+that house to-day you would come across evidences of a wedding as
+romantic as any which ever took place in all the seventy odd years of
+its existence. A man and a woman were married there day before yesterday
+who did their first courting under its roof forty years ago. He has been
+married twice and she once in the interval; but the old love held firm
+and now at the age of sixty and over they have come together to finish
+their days in peace and happiness. Or so we will hope.”
+
+“Married! married in that house and on the day that--”
+
+She caught herself up in time. He did not notice the break.
+
+“Yes, in memory of those old days of courtship, I suppose. They came
+here about five, got the keys, drove off, went through the ceremony in
+that empty house, returned the keys to me in my own apartment, took the
+steamer for Naples, and were on the sea before midnight. Do you not call
+that quick work as well as highly romantic?”
+
+“Very.” Miss Strange’s cheek had paled. It was apt to when she was
+greatly excited. “But I don’t understand,” she added, the moment after.
+“How could they do this and nobody know about it? I should have thought
+it would have got into the papers.”
+
+“They are quiet people. I don’t think they told their best friends. A
+simple announcement in the next day’s journals testified to the fact of
+their marriage, but that was all. I would not have felt at liberty to
+mention the circumstances myself, if the parties were not well on their
+way to Europe.”
+
+“Oh, how glad I am that you did tell me! Such a story of constancy and
+the hold which old associations have upon sensitive minds! But--”
+
+“Why, Miss? What’s the matter? You look very much disturbed.”
+
+“Don’t you remember? Haven’t you thought? Something else happened that
+very day and almost at the same time on that block. Something very
+dreadful--”
+
+“Mrs. Doolittle’s murder?”
+
+“Yes. It was as near as next door, wasn’t it? Oh, if this happy couple
+had known--”
+
+“But fortunately they didn’t. Nor are they likely to, till they reach
+the other side. You needn’t fear that their honeymoon will be spoiled
+that way.”
+
+“But they may have heard something or seen something before leaving the
+street. Did you notice how the gentleman looked when he returned you the
+keys?”
+
+“I did, and there was no cloud on his satisfaction.”
+
+“Oh, how you relieve me!” One--two dimples made their appearance in
+Miss Strange’s fresh, young cheeks. “Well! I wish them joy. Do you mind
+telling me their names? I cannot think of them as actual persons without
+knowing their names.”
+
+“The gentleman was Constantin Amidon; the lady, Marian Shaffer. You will
+have to think of them now as Mr. and Mrs. Amidon.”
+
+“And I will. Thank you, Mr. Hutton, thank you very much. Next to the
+pleasure of getting the house for my friend, is that of hearing this
+charming bit of news its connection.”
+
+She held out her hand and, as he took it, remarked:
+
+“They must have had a clergyman and witnesses.”
+
+“Undoubtedly.”
+
+“I wish I had been one of the witnesses,” she sighed sentimentally.
+
+“They were two old men.”
+
+“Oh, no! Don’t tell me that.”
+
+“Fogies; nothing less.”
+
+“But the clergyman? He must have been young. Surely there was some one
+there capable of appreciating the situation?”
+
+“I can’t say about that; I did not see the clergyman.”
+
+“Oh, well! it doesn’t matter.” Miss Strange’s manner was as nonchalant
+as it was charming. “We will think of him as being very young.”
+
+And with a merry toss of her head she flitted away.
+
+But she sobered very rapidly upon entering her limousine.
+
+“Hello!”
+
+“Ah, is that you?”
+
+“Yes, I want a Marconi sent.”
+
+“A Marconi?”
+
+“Yes, to the Cretic, which left dock the very night in which we are so
+deeply interested.”
+
+“Good. Whom to? The Captain?”
+
+“No, to a Mrs. Constantin Amidon. But first be sure there is such a
+passenger.”
+
+“Mrs.! What idea have you there?”
+
+“Excuse my not stating over the telephone. The message is to be to this
+effect. Did she at any time immediately before or after her marriage to
+Mr. Amidon get a glimpse of any one in the adjoining house? No remarks,
+please. I use the telephone because I am not ready to explain myself.
+If she did, let her send a written description to you of that person as
+soon as she reaches the Azores.”
+
+“You surprise me. May I not call or hope for a line from you early
+to-morrow?”
+
+“I shall be busy till you get your answer.”
+
+He hung up the receiver. He recognized the resolute tone.
+
+But the time came when the pending explanation was fully given to him.
+An answer had been returned from the steamer, favourable to Violet’s
+hopes. Mrs. Amidon had seen such a person and would send a full
+description of the same at the first opportunity. It was news to fill
+Violet’s heart with pride; the filament of a clue which had led to this
+great result had been so nearly invisible and had felt so like nothing
+in her grasp.
+
+To her employer she described it as follows:
+
+“When I hear or read of a case which contains any baffling features, I
+am apt to feel some hidden chord in my nature thrill to one fact in
+it and not to any of the others. In this case the single fact which
+appealed to my imagination was the dropping of the stolen wallet in that
+upstairs room. Why did the guilty man drop it? and why, having dropped
+it, did he not pick it up again? but one answer seemed possible. He had
+heard or seen something at the spot where it fell which not only alarmed
+him but sent him in flight from the house.”
+
+“Very good; and did you settle to your own mind the nature of that sound
+or that sight?”
+
+“I did.” Her manner was strangely businesslike. No show of dimples now.
+“Satisfied that if any possibility remained of my ever doing this, it
+would have to be on the exact place of this occurrence or not at all, I
+embraced your suggestion and visited the house.”
+
+“And that room no doubt.”
+
+“And that room. Women, somehow, seem to manage such things.”
+
+“So I’ve noticed, Miss Strange. And what was the result of your visit?
+What did you discover there?”
+
+“This: that one of the blood spots marking the criminal’s steps through
+the room was decidedly more pronounced than the rest; and, what was
+even more important, that the window out of which I was looking had its
+counterpart in the house on the opposite side of the alley. In gazing
+through the one I was gazing through the other; and not only that,
+but into the darkened area of the room beyond. Instantly I saw how the
+latter fact might be made to explain the former one. But before I say
+how, let me ask if it is quite settled among you that the smears on the
+floor and stairs mark the passage of the criminal’s footsteps!”
+
+“Certainly; and very bloody feet they must have been too. His shoes--or
+rather his one shoe--for the proof is plain that only the right one left
+its mark--must have become thoroughly saturated to carry its traces so
+far.”
+
+“Do you think that any amount of saturation would have done this? Or,
+if you are not ready to agree to that, that a shoe so covered with
+blood could have failed to leave behind it some hint of its shape, some
+imprint, however faint, of heel or toe? But nowhere did it do this. We
+see a smear--and that is all.”
+
+“You are right, Miss Strange; you are always right. And what do you
+gather from this?”
+
+She looked to see how much he expected from her, and, meeting an eye not
+quite as free from ironic suggestion as his words had led her to expect,
+faltered a little as she proceeded to say:
+
+“My opinion is a girl’s opinion, but such as it is you have the right
+to have it. From the indications mentioned I could draw but this
+conclusion: that the blood which accompanied the criminal’s footsteps
+was not carried through the house by his shoes;--he wore no shoes; he
+did not even wear stockings; probably he had none. For reasons which
+appealed to his judgment, he went about his wicked work barefoot; and it
+was the blood from his own veins and not from those of his victim which
+made the trail we have followed with so much interest. Do you forget
+those broken beads;--how he kicked them about and stamped upon them in
+his fury? One of them pierced the ball of his foot, and that so sharply
+that it not only spurted blood but kept on bleeding with every step he
+took. Otherwise, the trail would have been lost after his passage up the
+stairs.”
+
+“Fine!” There was no irony in the bureau-chief’s eye now. “You are
+progressing, Miss Strange. Allow me, I pray, to kiss your hand. It is
+a liberty I have never taken, but one which would greatly relieve my
+present stress of feeling.”
+
+She lifted her hand toward him, but it was in gesture, not in
+recognition of his homage.
+
+“Thank you,” said she, “but I claim no monopoly on deductions so simple
+as these. I have not the least doubt that not only yourself but every
+member of the force has made the same. But there is a little matter
+which may have escaped the police, may even have escaped you. To that
+I would now call your attention since through it I have been enabled,
+after a little necessary groping, to reach the open. You remember the
+one large blotch on the upper floor where the man dropped the wallet?
+That blotch, more or less commingled with a fainter one, possessed great
+significance for me from the first moment I saw it. How came his foot to
+bleed so much more profusely at that one spot than at any other? There
+could be but one answer: because here a surprise met him--a surprise
+so startling to him in his present state of mind, that he gave a
+quick spring backward, with the result that his wounded foot came down
+suddenly and forcibly instead of easily as in his previous wary tread.
+And what was the surprise? I made it my business to find out, and now
+I can tell you that it was the sight of a woman’s face staring upon him
+from the neighbouring house which he had probably been told was empty.
+The shock disturbed his judgment. He saw his crime discovered--his
+guilty secret read, and fled in unreasoning panic. He might better have
+held on to his wits. It was this display of fear which led me to search
+after its cause, and consequently to discover that at this especial hour
+more than one person had been in the Shaffer house; that, in fact, a
+marriage had been celebrated there under circumstances as romantic as
+any we read of in books, and that this marriage, privately carried out,
+had been followed by an immediate voyage of the happy couple on one of
+the White Star steamers. With the rest you are conversant. I do not need
+to say anything about what has followed the sending of that Marconi.”
+
+“But I am going to say something about your work in this matter, Miss
+Strange. The big detectives about here will have to look sharp if--”
+
+“Don’t, please! Not yet.” A smile softened the asperity of this
+interruption. “The man has yet to be caught and identified. Till that is
+done I cannot enjoy any one’s congratulations. And you will see that all
+this may not be so easy. If no one happened to meet the desperate wretch
+before he had an opportunity to retie his shoe-laces, there will be
+little for you or even for the police to go upon but his wounded foot,
+his undoubtedly carefully prepared alibi, and later, a woman’s confused
+description of a face seen but for a moment only and that under a
+personal excitement precluding minute attention. I should not be
+surprised if the whole thing came to nothing.”
+
+But it did not. As soon as the description was received from Mrs. Amidon
+(a description, by the way, which was unusually clear and precise, owing
+to the peculiar and contradictory features of the man), the police were
+able to recognize him among the many suspects always under their eye.
+Arrested, he pleaded, just as Miss Strange had foretold, an alibi of
+a seemingly unimpeachable character; but neither it, nor the plausible
+explanation with which he endeavoured to account for a freshly healed
+scar amid the callouses of his right foot, could stand before Mrs.
+Amidon’s unequivocal testimony that he was the same man she had seen in
+Mrs. Doolittle’s upper room on the afternoon of her own happiness and of
+that poor woman’s murder.
+
+The moment when, at his trial, the two faces again confronted each other
+across a space no wider than that which had separated them on the dread
+occasion in Seventeenth Street, is said to have been one of the most
+dramatic in the annals of that ancient court room.
+
+END OF PROBLEM III
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM IV. THE GROTTO SPECTRE
+
+Miss Strange was not often pensive--at least not at large functions
+or when under the public eye. But she certainly forgot herself at Mrs.
+Provost’s musicale and that, too, without apparent reason. Had the music
+been of a high order one might have understood her abstraction; but it
+was of a decidedly mediocre quality, and Violet’s ear was much too fine
+and her musical sense too cultivated for her to be beguiled by anything
+less than the very best.
+
+Nor had she the excuse of a dull companion. Her escort for the evening
+was a man of unusual conversational powers; but she seemed to be almost
+oblivious of his presence; and when, through some passing courteous
+impulse, she did turn her ear his way, it was with just that tinge of
+preoccupation which betrays the divided mind.
+
+Were her thoughts with some secret problem yet unsolved? It would
+scarcely seem so from the gay remark with which she had left home. She
+was speaking to her brother and her words were: “I am going out to enjoy
+myself. I’ve not a care in the world. The slate is quite clean.” Yet she
+had never seemed more out of tune with her surroundings nor shown a mood
+further removed from trivial entertainment. What had happened to becloud
+her gaiety in the short time which had since elapsed?
+
+We can answer in a sentence.
+
+She had seen, among a group of young men in a distant doorway, one with
+a face so individual and of an expression so extraordinary that all
+interest in the people about her had stopped as a clock stops when the
+pendulum is held back. She could see nothing else, think of nothing
+else. Not that it was so very handsome--though no other had ever
+approached it in its power over her imagination--but because of its
+expression of haunting melancholy,--a melancholy so settled and so
+evidently the result of long-continued sorrow that her interest had been
+reached and her heartstrings shaken as never before in her whole life.
+
+She would never be the same Violet again.
+
+Yet moved as she undoubtedly was, she was not conscious of the least
+desire to know who the young man was, or even to be made acquainted with
+his story. She simply wanted to dream her dream undisturbed.
+
+It was therefore with a sense of unwelcome shock that, in the course of
+the reception following the programme, she perceived this fine young man
+approaching herself, with his right hand touching his left shoulder in
+the peculiar way which committed her to an interview with or without a
+formal introduction.
+
+Should she fly the ordeal? Be blind and deaf to whatever was significant
+in his action, and go her way before he reached her; thus keeping her
+dream intact? Impossible. His eye prevented that. His glance had caught
+hers and she felt forced to await his advance and give him her first
+spare moment.
+
+It came soon, and when it came she greeted him with a smile. It was the
+first she had ever bestowed in welcome of a confidence of whose tenor
+she was entirely ignorant.
+
+To her relief he showed his appreciation of the dazzling gift though he
+made no effort to return it. Scorning all preliminaries in his eagerness
+to discharge himself of a burden which was fast becoming intolerable, he
+addressed her at once in these words:
+
+“You are very good, Miss Strange, to receive me in this unconventional
+fashion. I am in that desperate state of mind which precludes etiquette.
+Will you listen to my petition? I am told--you know by whom--“(and he
+again touched his shoulder) “that you have resources of intelligence
+which especially fit you to meet the extraordinary difficulties of my
+position. May I beg you to exercise them in my behalf? No man would be
+more grateful if--But I see that you do not recognize me. I am Roger
+Upjohn. That I am admitted to this gathering is owing to the fact that
+our hostess knew and loved my mother. In my anxiety to meet you and
+proffer my plea, I was willing to brave the cold looks you have probably
+noticed on the faces of the people about us. But I have no right to
+subject you to criticism. I--”
+
+“Remain.” Violet’s voice was troubled, her self-possession disturbed;
+but there was a command in her tone which he was only too glad to obey.
+“I know the name” (who did not!) “and possibly my duty to myself should
+make me shun a confidence which may burden me without relieving you. But
+you have been sent to me by one whose behests I feel bound to respect
+and--”
+
+Mistrusting her voice, she stopped. The suffering which made itself
+apparent in the face before her appealed to her heart in a way to rob
+her of her judgment. She did not wish this to be seen, and so fell
+silent.
+
+He was quick to take advantage of her obvious embarrassment. “Should I
+have been sent to you if I had not first secured the confidence of the
+sender? You know the scandal attached to my name, some of it just, some
+of it very unjust. If you will grant me an interview to-morrow, I will
+make an endeavour to refute certain charges which I have hitherto let
+go unchallenged. Will you do me this favour? Will you listen in your own
+house to what I have to say?”
+
+Instinct cried out against any such concession on her part, bidding
+her beware of one who charmed without excellence and convinced without
+reason. But compassion urged compliance and compassion won the day.
+Though conscious of weakness,--she, Violet Strange on whom strong
+men had come to rely in critical hours calling for well-balanced
+judgment,--she did not let this concern her, or allow herself to indulge
+in useless regrets even after the first effect of his presence had
+passed and she had succeeded in recalling the facts which had cast a
+cloud about his name.
+
+Roger Upjohn was a widower, and the scandal affecting him was connected
+with his wife’s death.
+
+Though a degenerate in some respects, lacking the domineering
+presence, the strong mental qualities, and inflexible character of his
+progenitors, the wealthy Massachusetts Upjohns whose great place on the
+coast had a history as old as the State itself, he yet had gifts and
+attractions of his own which would have made him a worthy representative
+of his race, if only he had not fixed his affections on a woman so cold
+and heedless that she would have inspired universal aversion instead of
+love, had she not been dowered with the beauty and physical fascination
+which sometimes accompany a hard heart and a scheming brain. It was this
+beauty which had caught the lad; and one day, just as the careful father
+had mapped out a course of study calculated to make a man of his son,
+that son drove up to the gates with this lady whom he introduced as his
+wife.
+
+The shock, not of her beauty, though that was of the dazzling quality
+which catches a man in the throat and makes a slave of him while the
+first surprise lasts, but of the overthrow of all his hopes and plans,
+nearly prostrated Homer Upjohn. He saw, as most men did the moment
+judgment returned, that for all her satin skin and rosy flush, the
+wonder of her hair and the smile which pierced like arrows and warmed
+like wine, she was more likely to bring a curse into the house than a
+blessing.
+
+And so it proved. In less than a year the young husband had lost all his
+ambitions and many of his best impulses. No longer inclined to study,
+he spent his days in satisfying his wife’s whims and his evenings in
+carousing with the friends with which she had provided him. This in
+Boston whither they had fled from the old gentleman’s displeasure; but
+after their little son came the father insisted upon their returning
+home, which led to great deceptions, and precipitated a tragedy no one
+ever understood. They were natural gamblers--this couple--as all Boston
+society knew; and as Homer Upjohn loathed cards, they found life slow
+in the great house and grew correspondingly restless till they made
+a discovery--or shall I say a rediscovery--of the once famous grotto
+hidden in the rocks lining their portion of the coast. Here they found
+a retreat where they could hide themselves (often when they were thought
+to be abed and asleep) and play together for money or for a supper in
+the city or for anything else that foolish fancy suggested. This was
+while their little son remained an infant; later, they were less easily
+satisfied. Both craved company, excitement, and gambling on a large
+scale; so they took to inviting friends to meet them in this grotto
+which, through the agency of one old servant devoted to Roger to the
+point of folly, had been fitted up and lighted in a manner not only
+comfortable but luxurious. A small but sheltered haven hidden in the
+curve of the rocks made an approach by boat feasible at high tide;
+and at low the connection could be made by means of a path over the
+promontory in which this grotto lay concealed. The fortune which Roger
+had inherited from his mother made these excesses possible, but many
+thousands, let alone the few he could call his, soon disappeared under
+the witchery of an irresponsible woman, and the half-dozen friends who
+knew his secret had to stand by and see his ruin, without daring to
+utter a word to the one who alone could stay it. For Homer Upjohn was
+not a man to be approached lightly, nor was he one to listen to charges
+without ocular proof to support them; and this called for courage, more
+courage than was possessed by any one who knew them both.
+
+He was a hard man was Homer Upjohn, but with a heart of gold for those
+he loved. This, even his wary daughter-in-law was wise enough to detect,
+and for a long while after the birth of her child she besieged him with
+her coaxing ways and bewitching graces. But he never changed his first
+opinion of her, and once she became fully convinced of the folly of
+her efforts, she gave up all attempt to please him and showed an open
+indifference. This in time gradually extended till it embraced not only
+her child but her husband as well. Yes, it had come to that. His love no
+longer contented her. Her vanity had grown by what it daily fed on, and
+now called for the admiration of the fast men who sometimes came up
+from Boston to play with them in their unholy retreat. To win this, she
+dressed like some demon queen or witch, though it drove her husband into
+deeper play and threatened an exposure which would mean disaster not
+only to herself but to the whole family.
+
+In all this, as any one could see, Roger had been her slave and
+the willing victim of all her caprices. What was it, then, which so
+completely changed him that a separation began to be talked of and even
+its terms discussed? One rumour had it that the father had discovered
+the secret of the grotto and exacted this as a penalty from the son who
+had dishonoured him. Another, that Roger himself was the one to take the
+initiative in this matter: That, on returning unexpectedly from New York
+one evening and finding her missing from the house, he had traced her to
+the grotto where he came upon her playing a desperate game with the one
+man he had the greatest reason to distrust.
+
+But whatever the explanation of this sudden change in their relations,
+there is but little doubt that a legal separation between this
+ill-assorted couple was pending, when one bleak autumn morning she
+was discovered dead in her bed under circumstances peculiarly open to
+comment.
+
+The physicians who made out the certificate ascribed her death to
+heart-disease, symptoms of which had lately much alarmed the family
+doctor; but that a personal struggle of some kind had preceded the fatal
+attack was evident from the bruises which blackened her wrists. Had
+there been the like upon her throat it might have gone hard with the
+young husband who was known to be contemplating her dismissal from
+the house. But the discoloration of her wrists was all, and as bruised
+wrists do not kill and there was besides no evidence forthcoming of the
+two having spent one moment together for at least ten hours preceding
+the tragedy but rather full and satisfactory testimony to the contrary,
+the matter lapsed and all criminal proceedings were avoided.
+
+But not the scandal which always follows the unexplained. As time passed
+and the peculiar look which betrays the haunted soul gradually became
+visible in the young widower’s eyes, doubts arose and reports circulated
+which cast strange reflections upon the tragic end of his mistaken
+marriage. Stories of the disreputable use to which the old grotto
+had been put were mingled with vague hints of conjugal violence never
+properly investigated. The result was his general avoidance not only by
+the social set dominated by his high-minded father, but by his own less
+reputable coterie, which, however lax in its moral code, had very little
+use for a coward.
+
+Such was the gossip which had reached Violet’s ears in connection with
+this new client, prejudicing her altogether against him till she caught
+that beam of deep and concentrated suffering in his eye and recognized
+an innocence which ensured her sympathy and led her to grant him the
+interview for which he so earnestly entreated.
+
+He came prompt to the hour, and when she saw him again with the marks of
+a sleepless night upon him and all the signs of suffering intensified in
+his unusual countenance, she felt her heart sink within her in a way she
+failed to understand. A dread of what she was about to hear robbed her
+of all semblance of self-possession, and she stood like one in a dream
+as he uttered his first greetings and then paused to gather up his own
+moral strength before he began his story. When he did speak it was to
+say:
+
+“I find myself obliged to break a vow I have made to myself. You cannot
+understand my need unless I show you my heart. My trouble is not the one
+with which men have credited me. It has another source and is infinitely
+harder to bear. Personal dishonour I have deserved in a greater or less
+degree, but the trial which has come to me now involves a person more
+dear to me than myself, and is totally without alleviation unless you--”
+ He paused, choked, then recommenced abruptly: “My wife”--Violet held
+her breath--“was supposed to have died from heart-disease or--or
+some strange species of suicide. There were reasons for this
+conclusion--reasons which I accepted without serious question till some
+five weeks ago when I made a discovery which led me to fear--”
+
+The broken sentence hung suspended. Violet, notwithstanding his hurried
+gesture, could not restrain herself from stealing a look at his face. It
+was set in horror and, though partially turned aside, made an appeal
+to her compassion to fill the void made by his silence, without further
+suggestion from him.
+
+She did this by saying tentatively and with as little show of emotion as
+possible:
+
+“You feared that the event called for vengeance and that vengeance would
+mean increased suffering to yourself as well as to another?”
+
+“Yes; great suffering. But I may be under a most lamentable mistake. I
+am not sure of my conclusions. If my doubts have no real foundation--if
+they are simply the offspring of my own diseased imagination, what
+an insult to one I revere! What a horror of ingratitude and
+misunderstanding--”
+
+“Relate the facts,” came in startled tones from Violet. “They may
+enlighten us.”
+
+He gave one quick shudder, buried his face for one moment in his hands,
+then lifted it and spoke up quickly and with unexpected firmness:
+
+“I came here to do so and do so I will. But where begin? Miss Strange,
+you cannot be ignorant of the circumstances, open and avowed, which
+attended my wife’s death. But there were other and secret events in its
+connection which happily have been kept from the world, but which I must
+now disclose to you at any cost to my pride and so-called honour. This
+is the first one: On the morning preceding the day of Mrs. Upjohn’s
+death, an interview took place between us at which my father was
+present. You do not know my father, Miss Strange. A strong man and a
+stern one, with a hold upon old traditions which nothing can shake.
+If he has a weakness it is for my little boy Roger in whose promising
+traits he sees the one hope which has survived the shipwreck of all for
+which our name has stood. Knowing this, and realizing what the child’s
+presence in the house meant to his old age, I felt my heart turn sick
+with apprehension, when in the midst of the discussion as to the terms
+on which my wife would consent to a permanent separation, the little
+fellow came dancing into the room, his curls atoss and his whole face
+beaming with life and joy.
+
+“She had not mentioned the child, but I knew her well enough to be
+sure that at the first show of preference on his part for either his
+grandfather or myself, she would raise a claim to him which she would
+never relinquish. I dared not speak, but I met his eager looks with my
+most forbidding frown and hoped by this show of severity to hold him
+back. But his little heart was full and, ignoring her outstretched arms,
+he bounded towards mine with his most affectionate cry. She saw and
+uttered her ultimatum. The child should go with her or she would not
+consent to a separation. It was useless for us to talk; she had said her
+last word. The blow struck me hard, or so I thought, till I looked at my
+father. Never had I beheld such a change as that one moment had made in
+him. He stood as before; he faced us with the same silent reprobation;
+but his heart had run from him like water.
+
+“It was a sight to call up all my resources. To allow her to remain
+now, with my feelings towards her all changed and my father’s eyes fully
+opened to her stony nature, was impossible. Nor could I appeal to law.
+An open scandal was my father’s greatest dread and divorce proceedings
+his horror. The child would have to go unless I could find a way to
+influence her through her own nature. I knew of but one--do not look at
+me, Miss Strange. It was dishonouring to us both, and I’m horrified now
+when I think of it. But to me at that time it was natural enough as a
+last resort. There was but one debt which my wife ever paid, but one
+promise she ever kept. It was that made at the gaming-table. I offered,
+as soon as my father, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, had
+gone tottering from the room, to gamble with her for the child.
+
+“And she accepted.”
+
+The shame and humiliation expressed in this final whisper; the sudden
+darkness--for a storm was coming up--shook Violet to the soul. With
+strained gaze fixed on the man before her, now little more than a shadow
+in the prevailing gloom, she waited for him to resume, and waited
+in vain. The minutes passed, the darkness became intolerable, and
+instinctively her hand crept towards the electric button beneath which
+she was sitting. But she failed to press it. A tale so dark called for
+an atmosphere of its own kind. She would cast no light upon it. Yet she
+shivered as the silence continued, and started in uncontrollable dismay
+when at length her strange visitor rose, and still, without speaking,
+walked away from her to the other end of the room. Only so could he go
+on with the shameful tale; and presently she heard his voice once more
+in these words:
+
+“Our house is large and its rooms many; but for such work as we two
+contemplated there was but one spot where we could command absolute
+seclusion. You may have heard of it, a famous natural grotto hidden in
+our own portion of the coast and so fitted up as to form a retreat for
+our miserable selves when escape from my father’s eye seemed desirable.
+It was not easy of access, and no one, so far as we knew, had ever
+followed us there.
+
+“But to ensure ourselves against any possible interruption, we waited
+till the whole house was abed before we left it for the grotto. We went
+by boat and oh! the dip of those oars! I hear them yet. And the witchery
+of her face in the moonlight; and the mockery of her low fitful laugh!
+As I caught the sinister note in its silvery rise and fall, I knew what
+was before me if I failed to retain my composure. And I strove to
+hold it and to meet her calmness with stoicism and the taunt of her
+expression with a mask of immobility. But the effort was hopeless, and
+when the time came for dealing out the cards, my eyes were burning in
+their sockets and my hands shivering like leaves in a rising gale.
+
+“We played one game--and my wife lost. We played another--and my wife
+won. We played the third--and the fate I had foreseen from the first
+became mine. The luck was with her, and I had lost my boy!”
+
+A gasp--a pause, during which the thunder spoke and the lightning
+flashed,--then a hurried catching of his breath and the tale went on.
+
+“A burst of laughter, rising gaily above the boom of the sea, announced
+her victory--her laugh and the taunting words: ‘You play badly, Roger.
+The child is mine. Never fear that I shall fail to teach him to revere
+his father.’ Had I a word to throw back? No. When I realized anything
+but my dishonoured manhood, I found myself in the grotto’s mouth staring
+helplessly out upon the sea. The boat which had floated us in at high
+tide lay stranded but a few feet away, but I did not reach for it.
+Escape was quicker over the rocks, and I made for the rocks.
+
+“That it was a cowardly act to leave her there to find her way back
+alone at midnight by the same rough road I was taking, did not strike
+my mind for an instant. I was in flight from my own past; in flight from
+myself and the haunting dread of madness. When I awoke to reality again
+it was to find the small door, by which we had left the house, standing
+slightly ajar. I was troubled by this, for I was sure of having closed
+it. But the impression was brief, and entering, I went stumbling up to
+my room, leaving the way open behind me more from sheer inability to
+exercise my will than from any thought of her.
+
+“Miss Strange” (he had come out of the shadows and was standing now
+directly before her), “I must ask you to trust implicitly in what I tell
+you of my further experiences that fatal night. It was not necessary for
+me to pass my little son’s door in order to reach the room I was making
+for; but anguish took me there and held me glued to the panels for what
+seemed a long, long time. When I finally crept away it was to go to the
+room I had chosen in the top of the house, where I had my hour of hell
+and faced my desolated future. Did I hear anything meantime in the halls
+below? No. Did I even listen for the sound of her return? No. I was
+callous to everything, dead to everything but my own misery. I did not
+even heed the approach of morning, till suddenly, with a shrillness no
+ear could ignore, there rose, tearing through the silence of the house,
+that great scream from my wife’s room which announced the discovery of
+her body lying stark and cold in her bed.
+
+“They said I showed little feeling.” He had moved off again and spoke
+from somewhere in the shadows. “Do you wonder at this after such a
+manifest stroke by a benevolent Providence? My wife being dead, Roger
+was saved to us! It was the one song of my still undisciplined soul, and
+I had to assume coldness lest they should see the greatness of my joy.
+A wicked and guilty rejoicing you will say, and you are right. But I
+had no memory then of the part I had played in this fatality. I had
+forgotten my reckless flight from the grotto, which left her with no aid
+but that of her own triumphant spirit to help her over those treacherous
+rocks. The necessity for keeping secret this part of our disgraceful
+story led me to exert myself to keep it out of my own mind. It has only
+come back to me in all its force since a new horror, a new suspicion,
+has driven me to review carefully every incident of that awful night.
+
+“I was never a man of much logic, and when they came to me on that
+morning of which I have just spoken and took me in where she lay and
+pointed to her beautiful cold body stretched out in seeming peace under
+the satin coverlet, and then to the pile of dainty clothes lying neatly
+folded on a chair with just one fairy slipper on top, I shuddered at her
+fate but asked no questions, not even when one of the women of the house
+mentioned the circumstance of the single slipper and said that a search
+should be made for its mate. Nor was I as much impressed as one would
+naturally expect by the whisper dropped in my ear that something was
+the matter with her wrists. It is true that I lifted the lace they had
+carefully spread over them and examined the discoloration which extended
+like a ring about each pearly arm; but having no memories of any
+violence offered her (I had not so much as laid hand upon her in the
+grotto), these marks failed to rouse my interest. But--and now I must
+leap a year in my story--there came a time when both of these facts
+recurred to my mind with startling distinctness and clamoured for
+explanation.
+
+“I had risen above the shock which such a death following such events
+would naturally occasion even in one of my blunted sensibilities, and
+was striving to live a new life under the encouragement of my now fully
+reconciled father, when accident forced me to re-enter the grotto where
+I had never stepped foot since that night. A favourite dog in chase of
+some innocent prey had escaped the leash and run into its dim recesses
+and would not come out at my call. As I needed him immediately for the
+hunt, I followed him over the promontory and, swallowing my repugnance,
+slid into the grotto to get him. Better a plunge to my death from the
+height of the rocks towering above it. For there in a remote corner,
+lighted up by a reflection from the sea, I beheld my setter crouched
+above an object which in another moment I recognized as my dead
+wife’s missing slipper. Here! Not in the waters of the sea or in the
+interstices of the rocks outside, but here! Proof that she had never
+walked back to the house where she was found lying quietly in her bed;
+proof positive; for I knew the path too well and the more than usual
+tenderness of her feet.
+
+“How then, did she get there; and by whose agency? Was she living when
+she went, or was she already dead? A year had passed since that delicate
+shoe had borne her from the boat into these dim recesses; but it might
+have been only a day, so vividly did I live over in this moment of awful
+enlightenment all the events of the hour in which we sat there playing
+for the possession of our child. Again I saw her gleaming eyes, her
+rosy, working mouth, her slim, white hand, loaded with diamonds,
+clutching the cards. Again I heard the lap of the sea on the pebbles
+outside and smelt the odour of the wine she had poured out for us both.
+The bottle which had held it; the glass from which she had drunk lay now
+in pieces on the rocky floor. The whole scene was mine again and as I
+followed the event to its despairing close, I seemed to see my own wild
+figure springing away from her to the grotto’s mouth and so over the
+rocks. But here fancy faltered, caught by a quick recollection to which
+I had never given a thought till now. As I made my way along those
+rocks, a sound had struck my ear from where some stunted bushes made
+a shadow in the moonlight. The wind might have caused it or some small
+night creature hustling away at my approach; and to some such cause
+I must at the time have attributed it. But now, with brain fired by
+suspicion, it seemed more like the quick intake of a human breath. Some
+one had been lying there in wait, listening at the one loophole in the
+rocks where it was possible to hear what was said and done in the heart
+of the grotto. But who? who? and for what purpose this listening; and to
+what end did it lead?
+
+“Though I no longer loved even the memory of my wife, I felt my hair
+lift, as I asked myself these questions. There seemed to be but one
+logical answer to the last, and it was this: A struggle followed by
+death. The shoe fallen from her foot, the clothes found folded in her
+room (my wife was never orderly), and the dimly blackened wrists which
+were snow-white when she dealt the cards--all seemed to point to such
+a conclusion. She may have died from heart-failure, but a struggle had
+preceded her death, during which some man’s strong fingers had been
+locked about her wrists. And again the question rose, Whose?
+
+“If any place was ever hated by mortal man that grotto was hated by me.
+I loathed its walls, its floor, its every visible and invisible corner.
+To linger there--to look--almost tore my soul from my body; yet I did
+linger and did look and this is what I found by way of reward.
+
+“Behind a projecting ledge of stone from which a tattered rug still
+hung, I came upon two nails driven a few feet apart into a fissure of
+the rock. I had driven those nails myself long before for a certain
+gymnastic attachment much in vogue at the time, and on looking closer,
+I discovered hanging from them the rope-ends by which I was wont to
+pull myself about. So far there was nothing to rouse any but innocent
+reminiscences. But when I heard the dog’s low moan and saw him leap
+at the curled-up ends, and nose them with an eager look my way, I
+remembered the dark marks circling the wrists about which I had so often
+clasped my mother’s bracelets, and the world went black before me.
+
+“When consciousness returned--when I could once more move and see and
+think, I noted another fact. Cards were strewn about the floor, face up
+and in a fixed order as if laid in a mocking mood to be looked upon by
+reluctant eyes; and near the ominous half-circle they made, a cushion
+from the lounge, stained horribly with what I then thought to be blood,
+but which I afterwards found to be wine. Vengeance spoke in those ropes
+and in the carefully spread-out cards, and murder in the smothering
+pillow. The vengeance of one who had watched her corroding influence eat
+the life out of my honour and whose love for our little Roger was such
+that any deed which ensured his continued presence in the home appeared
+not only warrantable but obligatory. Alas! I knew of but one person
+in the whole world who could cherish feeling to this extent or possess
+sufficient will power to carry her lifeless body back to the house and
+lay it in her bed and give no sign of the abominable act from that day
+on to this.
+
+“Miss Strange, there are men who have a peculiar conception of duty. My
+father--”
+
+“You need not go on.” How gently, how tenderly our Violet spoke. “I
+understand your trouble--”
+
+Did she? She paused to ask herself if this were so, and he, deaf perhaps
+to her words, caught up his broken sentence and went on:
+
+“My father was in the hall the day I came staggering in from my visit to
+the grotto. No words passed, but our eyes met and from that hour I
+have seen death in his countenance and he has seen it in mine, like two
+opponents, each struck to the heart, who stand facing each other with
+simulated smiles till they fall. My father will drop first. He is
+old--very old since that day five weeks ago; and to see him die and not
+be sure--to see the grave close over a possible innocence, and I left
+here in ignorance of the blissful fact till my own eyes close forever,
+is more than I can hold up under; more than any son could. Cannot you
+help me then to a positive knowledge? Think! think! A woman’s mind is
+strangely penetrating, and yours, I am told, has an intuitive faculty
+more to be relied upon than the reasoning of men. It must suggest some
+means of confirming my doubts or of definitely ending them.”
+
+Then Violet stirred and looked about at him and finally found voice.
+
+“Tell me something about your father’s ways. What are his habits? Does
+he sleep well or is he wakeful at night?”
+
+“He has poor nights. I do not know how poor because I am not often with
+him. His valet, who has always been in our family, shares his room and
+acts as his constant nurse. He can watch over him better than I can; he
+has no distracting trouble on his mind.”
+
+“And little Roger? Does your father see much of little Roger? Does he
+fondle him and seem happy in his presence?”
+
+“Yes; yes. I have often wondered at it, but he does. They are great
+chums. It is a pleasure to see them together.”
+
+“And the child clings to him--shows no fear--sits on his lap or on
+the bed and plays as children do play with his beard or with his
+watch-chain?”
+
+“Yes. Only once have I seen my little chap shrink, and that was when my
+father gave him a look of unusual intensity,--looking for his mother in
+him perhaps.”
+
+“Mr. Upjohn, forgive me the question; it seems necessary. Does your
+father--or rather did your father before he fell ill--ever walk in the
+direction of the grotto or haunt in any way the rocks which surround
+it?”
+
+“I cannot say. The sea is there; he naturally loves the sea. But I have
+never seen him standing on the promontory.”
+
+“Which way do his windows look?”
+
+“Towards the sea.”
+
+“Therefore towards the promontory?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Can he see it from his bed?”
+
+“No. Perhaps that is the cause of a peculiar habit he has.”
+
+“What habit?”
+
+“Every night before he retires (he is not yet confined to his bed) he
+stands for a few minutes in his front window looking out. He says it’s
+his good-night to the ocean. When he no longer does this, we shall know
+that his end is very near.”
+
+The face of Violet began to clear. Rising, she turned on the electric
+light, and then, reseating herself, remarked with an aspect of quiet
+cheer:
+
+“I have two ideas; but they necessitate my presence at your place. You
+will not mind a visit? My brother will accompany me.”
+
+Roger Upjohn did not need to speak, hardly to make a gesture; his
+expression was so eloquent.
+
+She thanked him as if he had answered in words, adding with an air of
+gentle reserve: “Providence assists us in this matter. I am invited to
+Beverly next week to attend a wedding. I was intending to stay two days,
+but I will make it three and spend the extra one with you.”
+
+“What are your requirements, Miss Strange? I presume you have some.”
+
+Violet turned from the imposing portrait of Mr. Upjohn which she had
+been gravely contemplating, and met the troubled eye of her young host
+with an enigmatical flash of her own. But she made no answer in
+words. Instead, she lifted her right hand and ran one slender finger
+thoughtfully up the casing of the door near which they stood till it
+struck a nick in the old mahogany almost on a level with her head.
+
+“Is your son Roger old enough to reach so far?” she asked with another
+short look at him as she let her finger rest where it had struck the
+roughened wood. “I thought he was a little fellow.”
+
+“He is. That cut was made by--by my wife; a sample of her capricious
+willfulness. She wished to leave a record of herself in the substance
+of our house as well as in our lives. That nick marks her height. She
+laughed when she made it. ‘Till the walls cave in or burn,’ is what she
+said. And I thought her laugh and smile captivating.”
+
+Cutting short his own laugh which was much too sardonic for a lady’s
+ears, he made a move as if to lead the way into another portion of
+the room. But Violet failed to notice this, and lingering in quiet
+contemplation of this suggestive little nick,--the only blemish in a
+room of ancient colonial magnificence,--she thoughtfully remarked:
+
+“Then she was a small woman?” adding with seeming irrelevance--“like
+myself.”
+
+Roger winced. Something in the suggestion hurt him, and in the nod he
+gave there was an air of coldness which under ordinary circumstances
+would have deterred her from pursuing this subject further. But the
+circumstances were not ordinary, and she allowed herself to say:
+
+“Was she so very different from me,--in figure, I mean?”
+
+“No. Why do you ask? Shall we not join your brother on the terrace?”
+
+“Not till I have answered the question you put me a moment ago. You
+wished to know my requirements. One of the most important you have
+already fulfilled. You have given your servants a half-holiday and by
+so doing ensured to us full liberty of action. What else I need in the
+attempt I propose to make, you will find listed in this memorandum.” And
+taking a slip of paper from her bag, she offered it to him with a hand,
+the trembling of which he would have noted had he been freer in mind.
+
+As he read, she watched him, her fingers nervously clutching her throat.
+
+“Can you supply what I ask?” she faltered, as he failed to raise his
+eyes or make any move or even to utter the groan she saw surging up
+to his lips. “Will you?” she impetuously urged, as his fingers closed
+spasmodically on the paper, in evidence that he understood at last the
+trend of her daring purpose.
+
+The answer came slowly, but it came. “I will. But what--”
+
+Her hand rose in a pleading gesture.
+
+“Do not ask me, but take Arthur and myself into the garden and show us
+the flowers. Afterwards, I should like a glimpse of the sea.”
+
+He bowed and they joined Arthur who had already begun to stroll through
+the grounds.
+
+Violet was seldom at a loss for talk even at the most critical moments.
+But she was strangely tongue-tied on this occasion, as was Roger
+himself. Save for a few observations casually thrown out by Arthur, the
+three passed in a disquieting silence through pergola after pergola,
+and around beds gorgeous with every variety of fall flowers, till they
+turned a sharp corner and came in full view of the sea.
+
+“Ah!” fell in an admiring murmur from Violet’s lips as her eyes swept
+the horizon. Then as they settled on a mass of rock jutting out from
+the shore in a great curve, she leaned towards her host and softly
+whispered:
+
+“The promontory?”
+
+He nodded, and Violet ventured no farther, but stood for a little while
+gazing at the tumbled rocks. Then, with a quick look back at the house,
+she asked him to point out his father’s window.
+
+He did so, and as she noted how openly it faced the sea, her expression
+relaxed and her manner lost some of its constraint. As they turned to
+re-enter the house, she noticed an old man picking flowers from a vine
+clambering over one end of the piazza.
+
+“Who is that?” she asked.
+
+“Our oldest servant, and my father’s own man,” was Roger’s reply. “He is
+picking my father’s favourite flowers, a few late honeysuckles.”
+
+“How fortunate! Speak to him, Mr. Upjohn. Ask him how your father is
+this evening.”
+
+“Accompany me and I will; and do not be afraid to enter into
+conversation with him. He is the mildest of creatures and devoted to his
+patient. He likes nothing better than to talk about him.”
+
+Violet, with a meaning look at her brother, ran up the steps at Roger’s
+side. As she did so, the old man turned and Violet was astonished at the
+wistfulness with which he viewed her.
+
+“What a dear old creature!” she murmured. “See how he stares this way.
+You would think he knew me.”
+
+“He is glad to see a woman about the place. He has felt our
+isolation--Good evening, Abram. Let this young lady have a spray of your
+sweetest honeysuckle. And, Abram, before you go, how is Father to-night?
+Still sitting up?”
+
+“Yes, sir. He is very regular in his ways. Nine is his hour; not a
+minute before and not a minute later. I don’t have to look at the clock
+when he says: ‘There, Abram, I’ve sat up long enough.’”
+
+“When my father retires before his time or goes to bed without a final
+look at the sea, he will be a very sick man, Abram.”
+
+“That he will, Mr. Roger; that he will. But he’s very feeble to-night,
+very feeble. I noticed that he gave the boy fewer kisses than usual.
+Perhaps he was put out because the child was brought in a half-hour
+earlier than the stated time. He don’t like changes; you know that,
+Mr. Roger; he don’t like changes. I hardly dared to tell him that the
+servants were all going out in a bunch to-night.”
+
+“I’m sorry,” muttered Roger. “But he’ll forget it by to-morrow. I
+couldn’t bear to keep a single one from the concert. They’ll be back
+in good season and meantime we have you. Abram is worth half a dozen of
+them, Miss Strange. We shall miss nothing.”
+
+“Thank you, Mr. Roger, thank you,” faltered the old man. “I try to do my
+duty.” And with another wistful glance at Violet, who looked very sweet
+and youthful in the half-light, he pottered away.
+
+The silence which followed his departure was as painful to her as to
+Roger Upjohn. When she broke it it was with this decisive remark:
+
+“That man must not speak of me to your father. He must not even mention
+that you have a guest to-night. Run after him and tell him so. It is
+necessary that your father’s mind should not be taken up with present
+happenings. Run.”
+
+Roger made haste to obey her. When he came back she was on the point of
+joining her brother but stopped to utter a final injunction:
+
+“I shall leave the library, or wherever we may be sitting, just as the
+clock strikes half-past eight. Arthur will do the same, as by that time
+he will feel like smoking on the terrace. Do not follow either him or
+myself, but take your stand here on the piazza where you can get a
+full view of the right-hand wing without attracting any attention to
+yourself. When you hear the big clock in the hall strike nine, look up
+quickly at your father’s window. What you see may determine--oh, Arthur!
+still admiring the prospect? I do not wonder. But I find it chilly. Let
+us go in.”
+
+Roger Upjohn, sitting by himself in the library, was watching the hands
+of the mantel clock slowly approaching the hour of nine.
+
+Never had silence seemed more oppressive nor his sense of loneliness
+greater. Yet the boom of the ocean was distinct to the ear, and human
+presence no farther away than the terrace where Arthur Strange could be
+seen smoking out his cigar in solitude. The silence and the loneliness
+were in Roger’s own soul; and, in face of the expected revelation
+which would make or unmake his future, the desolation they wrought was
+measureless.
+
+To cut his suspense short, he rose at length and hurried out to the spot
+designated by Miss Strange as the best point from which to keep watch
+upon his father’s window. It was at the end of the piazza where the
+honeysuckle hung, and the odour of the blossoms, so pleasing to his
+father, well-nigh overpowered him not only by its sweetness but by the
+many memories it called up. Visions of that father as he looked at all
+stages of their relationship passed in a bewildering maze before him.
+He saw him as he appeared to his childish eyes in those early days of
+confidence when the loss of the mother cast them in mutual dependence
+upon each other. Then a sterner picture of the relentless parent who
+sees but one straight course to success in this world and the next. Then
+the teacher and the matured adviser; and then--oh, bitter change! the
+man whose hopes he had crossed--whose life he had undone, and all for
+her who now came stealing upon the scene with her slim, white, jewelled
+hand forever lifted up between them. And she! Had he ever seen her more
+clearly? Once more the dainty figure stepped from fairy-land, beauteous
+with every grace that can allure and finally destroy a man. And as he
+saw, he trembled and wished that these moments of awful waiting might
+pass and the test be over which would lay bare his father’s heart and
+justify his fears or dispel them forever.
+
+But the crisis, if crisis it was, was one of his own making and not to
+be hastened or evaded. With one quick glance at his father’s window, he
+turned in his impatience towards the sea whose restless and continuous
+moaning had at length struck his ear. What was in its call to-night that
+he should thus sway towards it as though drawn by some dread magnetic
+force? He had been born to the dashing of its waves and knew its
+every mood and all the passion of its song from frolicsome ripple to
+melancholy dirge. But there was something odd and inexplicable in
+its effect upon his spirit as he faced it at this hour. Grim and
+implacable--a sound rather than a sight--it seemed to hold within its
+invisible distances the image of his future fate. What this image was
+and why he should seek for it in this impenetrable void, he did not
+know. He felt himself held and was struggling with this influence as
+with an unknown enemy when there rang out, from the hall within, the
+preparatory chimes for which his ear was waiting, and then the nine slow
+strokes which signalized the moment when he was to look for his father’s
+presence at the window.
+
+Had he wished, he could not have forborne that look. Had his eyes been
+closing in death, or so he felt, the trembling lids would have burst
+apart at this call and the revelations it promised.
+
+And what did he see? What did that window hold for him?
+
+Nothing that he might not have seen there any night at this hour. His
+father’s figure drawn up behind the panes in wistful contemplation of
+the night. No visible change in his attitude, nothing forced or unusual
+in his manner. Even the hand, lifted to pull down the shade, moves
+with its familiar hesitation. In a moment more that shade will be down
+and--But no! the lifted hand falls back; the easy attitude becomes
+strained, fixed. He is staring now--not merely gazing out upon the
+wastes of sky and sea; and Roger, following the direction of his glance,
+stares also in breathless emotion at what those distances, but now so
+impenetrable, are giving to the eye.
+
+A spectre floating in the air above the promontory! The spectre of
+a woman--of his wife, clad, as she had been clad that fatal night!
+Outlined in supernatural light, it faces them with lifted arms showing
+the ends of rope dangling from either wrist. A sight awful to any eye,
+but to the man of guilty heart--
+
+Ah! it comes--the cry for which the agonized son had been listening! An
+old man’s shriek, hoarse with the remorse of sleepless nights and days
+of unimaginable regret and foreboding! It cuts the night. It cuts its
+way into his heart. He feels his senses failing him, yet he must glance
+once more at the window and see with his last conscious look--But what
+is this! a change has taken place in the picture and he beholds, not
+the distorted form of his father sinking back in shame and terror before
+this visible image of his secret sin, but that of another weak, old man
+falling to the floor behind his back! Abram! the attentive, seemingly
+harmless, guardian of the household! Abram! who had never spoken a word
+or given a look in any way suggestive of his having played any other
+part in the hideous drama of their lives than that of the humble and
+sympathetic servant!
+
+The shock was too great, the relief too absolute for credence. He, the
+listener at the grotto? He, the avenger of the family’s honour? He, the
+insurer of little Roger’s continuance with the family at a cost the one
+who loved him best would rather have died himself than pay? Yes! there
+is no misdoubting this old servitor’s attitude of abject appeal, or the
+meaning of Homer Upjohn’s joyfully uplifted countenance and outspreading
+arms. The servant begs for mercy from man, and the master is giving
+thanks to Heaven. Why giving thanks? Has he been the prey of cankering
+doubts also? Has the father dreaded to discover that in the son which
+the son has dreaded to discover in the father?
+
+It might easily be; and as Roger recognizes this truth and the
+full tragedy of their mutual lives, he drops to his knees amid the
+honeysuckles.
+
+“Violet, you are a wonder. But how did you dare?”
+
+This from Arthur as the two rode to the train in the early morning.
+
+The answer came a bit waveringly.
+
+“I do not know. I am astonished yet, at my own daring. Look at my hands.
+They have not ceased trembling since the moment you threw the light upon
+me on the rocks. The figure of old Mr. Upjohn in the window looked so
+august.”
+
+Arthur, with a short glance at the little hands she held out, shrugged
+his shoulders imperceptibly. It struck him that the tremulousness she
+complained of was due more to some parting word from their young host,
+than from prolonged awe at her own daring. But he made no remark to this
+effect, only observed:
+
+“Abram has confessed his guilt, I hear.”
+
+“Yes, and will die of it. The master will bury the man, and not the man
+the master.”
+
+“And Roger? Not the little fellow, but the father?”
+
+“We will not talk of him,” said she, her eyes seeking the sea where
+the sun in its rising was battling with a troop of lowering clouds and
+slowly gaining the victory.
+
+END OF PROBLEM IV
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM V. THE DREAMING LADY
+
+“And this is all you mean to tell me?”
+
+“I think you will find it quite enough, Miss Strange.”
+
+“Just the address--”
+
+“And this advice: that your call be speedy. Distracted nerves cannot
+wait.”
+
+Violet, across whose wonted piquancy there lay an indefinable shadow,
+eyed her employer with a doubtful air before turning away toward the
+door. She had asked him for a case to investigate (something she had
+never done before), and she had even gone so far as to particularize
+the sort of case she desired: “It must be an interesting one,” she had
+stipulated, “but different, quite different from the last one. It must
+not involve death or any kind of horror. If you have a case of subtlety
+without crime, one to engage my powers without depressing my spirits, I
+beg you to let me have it. I--I have not felt quite like myself since I
+came from Massachusetts.” Whereupon, without further comment, but with a
+smile she did not understand, he had handed her a small slip of paper on
+which he had scribbled an address. She should have felt satisfied, but
+for some reason she did not. She regarded him as capable of plunging her
+into an affair quite the reverse of what she felt herself in a condition
+to undertake.
+
+“I should like to know a little more,” she pursued, making a move to
+unfold the slip he had given her.
+
+But he stopped her with a gesture.
+
+“Read it in your limousine,” said he. “If you are disappointed then, let
+me know. But I think you will find yourself quite ready for your task.”
+
+“And my father?”
+
+“Would approve if he could be got to approve the business at all. You do
+not even need to take your brother with you.”
+
+“Oh, then, it’s with women only I have to deal?”
+
+“Read the address after you are headed up Fifth Avenue.”
+
+But when, with her doubts not yet entirely removed, she opened the small
+slip he had given her, the number inside suggested nothing but the
+fact that her destination lay somewhere near Eightieth Street. It was
+therefore with the keenest surprise she beheld her motor stop before
+the conspicuous house of the great financier whose late death had so
+affected the money-market. She had not had any acquaintance with this
+man herself, but she knew his house. Everyone knew that. It was one of
+the most princely in the whole city. C. Dudley Brooks had known how to
+spend his millions. Indeed, he had known how to do this so well that it
+was of him her father, also a financier of some note, had once said he
+was the only successful American he envied.
+
+She was expected; that she saw the instant the door was opened. This
+made her entrance easy--an entrance further brightened by the delightful
+glimpse of a child’s cherubic face looking at her from a distant
+doorway. It was an instantaneous vision, gone as soon as seen; but its
+effect was to rob the pillared spaces of the wonderful hallway of some
+of their chill, and to modify in some slight degree the formality of
+a service which demanded three men to usher her into a small
+reception-room not twenty feet from the door of entrance.
+
+Left in this secluded spot, she had time to ask herself what member of
+the household she would be called upon to meet, and was surprised to
+find that she did not even know of whom the household consisted. She
+was sure of the fact that Mr. Brooks had been a widower for many years
+before his death, but beyond that she knew nothing of his domestic life.
+His son--but was there a son? She had never heard any mention made of a
+younger Mr. Brooks, yet there was certainly some one of his connection
+who enjoyed the rights of an heir. Him she must be prepared to meet with
+a due composure, whatever astonishment he might show at the sight of a
+slip of a girl instead of the experienced detective he had every right
+to expect.
+
+But when the door opened to admit the person she was awaiting, the
+surprise was hers. It was a woman who stood before her, a woman and an
+oddity. Yet, in just what her oddity lay, Violet found it difficult to
+decide. Was it in the smoothness of her white locks drawn carefully down
+over her ears, or in the contrast afforded by her eager eyes and her
+weak and tremulous mouth? She was dressed in the heaviest of mourning
+and very expensively, but there was that in her bearing and expression
+which made it impossible to believe that she took any interest in her
+garments or even knew in which of her dresses she had been attired.
+
+“I am the person you have come here to see,” she said. “Your name is
+not unfamiliar to me, but you may not know mine. It is Quintard; Mrs.
+Quintard. I am in difficulty. I need assistance--secret assistance.
+I did not know where to go for it except to a detective agency; so I
+telephoned to the first one I saw advertised; and--and I was told to
+expect Miss Strange. But I didn’t think it would be you though I suppose
+it’s all right. You have come here for this purpose, haven’t you, though
+it does seem a little queer?”
+
+“Certainly, Mrs. Quintard; and if you will tell me--”
+
+“My dear, it’s just this--yes, I will sit down. Last week my brother
+died. You have heard of him no doubt, C. Dudley Brooks?”
+
+“Oh, yes; my father knew him--we all knew him by reputation. Do not
+hurry, Mrs. Quintard. I have sent my car away. You can take all the time
+you wish.”
+
+“No, no, I cannot. I’m in desperate haste. He--but let me go on with
+my story. My brother was a widower, with no children to inherit. That
+everybody knows. But his wife left behind her a son by a former husband,
+and this son of hers my brother had in a measure adopted, and even made
+his sole heir in a will he drew up during the lifetime of his wife.
+But when he found, as he very soon did, that this young man was not
+developing in a way to meet such great responsibilities, he made a new
+will--though unhappily without the knowledge of the family, or even of
+his most intimate friends--in which he gave the bulk of his great estate
+to his nephew Clement, who has bettered the promise of his youth and
+who besides has children of great beauty whom my brother had learned to
+love. And this will--this hoarded scrap of paper which means so much to
+us all, is lost! lost! and I--” here her voice which had risen almost to
+a scream, sank to a horrified whisper, “am the one who lost it.”
+
+“But there’s a copy of it somewhere--there is always a copy--”
+
+“Oh, but you haven’t heard all. My nephew is an invalid; has been an
+invalid for years--that’s why so little is known about him. He’s dying
+of consumption. The doctors hold out no hope for him, and now, with the
+fear preying upon him of leaving his wife and children penniless, he is
+wearing away so fast that any hour may see his end. And I have to meet
+his eyes--such pitiful eyes--and the look in them is killing me. Yet,
+I was not to blame. I could not help--Oh, Miss Strange,” she suddenly
+broke in with the inconsequence of extreme feeling, “the will is in the
+house! I never carried it off the floor where I sleep. Find it; find it,
+I pray, or--”
+
+The moment had come for Violet’s soft touch, for Violet’s encouraging
+word.
+
+“I will try,” she answered her.
+
+Mrs. Quintard grew calmer.
+
+“But, first,” the young girl continued, “I must know more about the
+conditions. Where is this nephew of yours--the man who is ill?”
+
+“In this house, where he has been for the last eight months.”
+
+“Was the child his of whom I caught a glimpse in the hall as I came in?”
+
+“Yes, and--”
+
+“I will fight for that child!” Violet cried out impulsively. “I am sure
+his father’s cause is good. Where is the other claimant--the one you
+designate as Carlos?”
+
+“Oh, there’s where the trouble is! Carlos is on the Mauretania, and she
+is due here in a couple of days. He comes from the East where he has
+been touring with his wife. Miss Strange, the lost will must be found
+before then, or the other will be opened and read and Carlos made
+master of this house, which would mean our quick departure and Clement’s
+certain death.”
+
+“Move a sick man?--a relative as low as you say he is? Oh no, Mrs.
+Quintard; no one would do that, were the house a cabin and its owners
+paupers.”
+
+“You do not know Carlos; you do not know his wife. We should not be
+given a week in which to pack. They have no children and they envy
+Clement who has. Our only hope lies in discovering the paper which gives
+us the right to remain here in face of all opposition. That or penury.
+Now you know my trouble.”
+
+“And it is trouble; one from which I shall make every effort to relieve
+you. But first let me ask if you are not worrying unnecessarily about
+this missing document? If it was drawn up by Mr. Brooks’s lawyer--”
+
+“But it was not,” that lady impetuously interrupted. “His lawyer is
+Carlos’s near relative, and has never been told of the change in my
+brother’s intentions. Clement (I am speaking now of my brother and not
+of my nephew) was a great money-getter, but when it came to standing up
+for his rights in domestic matters, he was more timid than a child. He
+was subject to his wife while she lived, and when she was gone, to her
+relatives, who are all of a dominating character. When he finally
+made up his mind to do us justice and eliminate Carlos, he went out of
+town--I wish I could remember where--and had this will drawn up by a
+stranger, whose name I cannot recall.”
+
+Her shaking tones, her nervous manner betrayed a weakness equalling, if
+not surpassing, that of the brother who dared in secret what he had not
+strength to acknowledge openly, and it was with some hesitation Violet
+prepared to ask those definite questions which would elucidate the cause
+and manner of a loss seemingly so important. She dreaded to hear some
+commonplace tale of inexcusable carelessness. Something subtler than
+this--the presence of some unsuspected agency opposed to young Clement’s
+interest; some partisan of Carlos; some secret undermining force in
+a house full of servants and dependants, seemed necessary for the
+development of so ordinary a situation into a drama justifying the
+exercise of her special powers.
+
+“I think I understand now your exact position in the house, as well as
+the value of the paper which you say you have lost. The next thing for
+me to hear is how you came to have charge of this paper, and under what
+circumstances you were led to mislay it. Do you not feel quite ready to
+tell me?”
+
+“Is--is that necessary?” Mrs. Quintard faltered.
+
+“Very,” replied Violet, watching her curiously.
+
+“I didn’t expect--that is, I hoped you would be able to point out, by
+some power we cannot of course explain, just the spot where the paper
+lies, without having to tell all that. Some people can, you know.”
+
+“Ah, I understand. You regarded me as unfit for practical work, and so
+credited me with occult powers. But that is where you made a mistake,
+Mrs. Quintard; I’m nothing if not practical. And let me add, that I’m as
+secret as the grave concerning what my clients tell me. If I am to be of
+any help to you, I must be made acquainted with every fact involved
+in the loss of this valuable paper. Relate the whole circumstance or
+dismiss me from the case. You can have done nothing more foolish or
+wrong than many--”
+
+“Oh, don’t say things like that!” broke in the poor woman in a tone of
+great indignation. “I have done nothing anyone could call either foolish
+or wicked. I am simply very unfortunate, and being sensitive--But this
+isn’t telling the story. I’ll try to make it all clear; but if I do
+not, and show any confusion, stop me and help me out with questions.
+I--I--oh, where shall I begin?”
+
+“With your first knowledge of this second will.”
+
+“Thank you, thank you; now I can go on. One night, shortly after my
+brother had been given up by the physicians, I was called to his bedside
+for a confidential talk. As he had received that day a very large amount
+of money from the bank, I thought he was going to hand it over to me
+for Clement, but it was for something much more serious than this he
+had summoned me. When he was quite sure that we were alone and nobody
+anywhere within hearing, he told me that he had changed his mind as
+to the disposal of his property and that it was to Clement and his
+children, and not to Carlos, he was going to leave this house and the
+bulk of his money. That he had had a new will drawn up which he showed
+me--”
+
+“Showed you?”
+
+“Yes; he made me bring it to him from the safe where he kept it; and,
+feeble as he was, he was so interested in pointing out certain portions
+of it that he lifted himself in bed and was so strong and animated that
+I thought he was getting better. But it was a false strength due to the
+excitement of the moment, as I saw next day when he suddenly died.”
+
+“You were saying that you brought the will to him from his safe. Where
+was the safe?”
+
+“In the wall over his head. He gave me the key to open it. This key he
+took from under his pillow. I had no trouble in fitting it or in turning
+the lock.”
+
+“And what happened after you looked at the will?”
+
+“I put it back. He told me to. But the key I kept. He said I was not to
+part with it again till the time came for me to produce the will.”
+
+“And when was that to be?”
+
+“Immediately after the funeral, if it so happened that Carlos had
+arrived in time to attend it. But if for any reason he failed to be
+here, I was to let it lie till within three days of his return, when
+I was to take it out in the presence of a Mr. Delahunt who was to have
+full charge of it from that time. Oh, I remember all that well enough!
+and I meant most earnestly to carry out his wishes, but--”
+
+“Go on, Mrs. Quintard, pray go on. What happened? Why couldn’t you do
+what he asked?”
+
+“Because the will was gone when I went to take it out. There was nothing
+to show Mr. Delahunt but the empty shelf.”
+
+“Oh, a theft! just a common theft! Someone overheard the talk you had
+with your brother. But how about the key? You had that?”
+
+“Yes, I had that.”
+
+“Then it was taken from you and returned? You must have been careless as
+to where you kept it--”
+
+“No, I wore it on a chain about my neck. Though I had no reason to
+mistrust any one in the house, I felt that I could not guard this key
+too carefully. I even kept it on at night. In fact it never left me. It
+was still on my person when I went into the room with Mr. Delahunt. But
+the safe had been opened for all that.”
+
+“There were two keys to it, then?”
+
+“No; in giving me the key, my brother had strictly warned me not to lose
+it, as it had no duplicate.”
+
+“Mrs. Quintard, have you a special confidant or maid?”
+
+“Yes, my Hetty.”
+
+“How much did she know about this key?”
+
+“Nothing, but that it didn’t help the fit of my dress. Hetty has cared
+for me for years. There’s no more devoted woman in all New York, nor one
+who can be more relied upon to tell the truth. She is so honest with her
+tongue that I am bound to believe her even when she says--”
+
+“What?”
+
+“That it was I and nobody else who took the will out of the safe last
+night. That she saw me come from my brother’s room with a folded paper
+in my hand, pass with it into the library, and come out again without
+it. If this is so, then that will is somewhere in that great room. But
+we’ve looked in every conceivable place except the shelves, where it
+is useless to search. It would take days to go through them all, and
+meanwhile Carlos--”
+
+“We will not wait for Carlos. We will begin work at once. But just
+one other question. How came Hetty to see you in your walk through the
+rooms? Did she follow you?”
+
+“Yes. It’s--it’s not the first time I have walked in my sleep. Last
+night--but she will tell you. It’s a painful subject to me. I will send
+for her to meet us in the library.”
+
+“Where you believe this document to lie hidden?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I am anxious to see the room. It is upstairs, I believe.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She had risen and was moving rapidly toward the door. Violet eagerly
+followed her.
+
+Let us accompany her in her passage up the palatial stairway, and
+realize the effect upon her of a splendour whose future ownership
+possibly depended entirely upon herself.
+
+It was a cold splendour. The merry voices of children were lacking in
+these great halls. Death past and to come infused the air with solemnity
+and mocked the pomp which yet appeared so much a part of the life here
+that one could hardly imagine the huge pillared spaces without it.
+
+To Violet, more or less accustomed to fine interiors, the chief interest
+of this one lay in its connection with the mystery then occupying her.
+Stopping for a moment on the stair, she inquired of Mrs. Quintard if the
+loss she so deplored had been made known to the servants, and was much
+relieved to find that, with the exception of Mr. Delahunt, she had not
+spoken of it to any one but Clement. “And he will never mention it,” she
+declared, “not even to his wife. She has troubles enough to bear without
+knowing how near she stood to a fortune.”
+
+“Oh, she will have her fortune!” Violet confidently replied. “In time,
+the lawyer who drew up the will will appear. But what you want is an
+immediate triumph over the cold Carlos, and I hope you may have it. Ah!”
+
+This expletive was a sigh of sheer surprise.
+
+Mrs. Quintard had unlocked the library door and Violet had been given
+her first glimpse of this, the finest room in New York.
+
+She remembered now that she had often heard it so characterized, and,
+indeed, had it been taken bodily from some historic abbey of the
+old world, it could not have expressed more fully, in structure and
+ornamentation, the Gothic idea at its best. All that it lacked were
+the associations of vanished centuries, and these, in a measure, were
+supplied to the imagination by the studied mellowness of its tints and
+the suggestion of age in its carvings.
+
+So much for the room itself, which was but a shell for holding the great
+treasure of valuable books ranged along every shelf. As Violet’s eyes
+sped over their ranks and thence to the five windows of deeply stained
+glass which faced her from the southern end, Mrs. Quintard indignantly
+exclaimed:
+
+“And Carlos would turn this into a billiard room!”
+
+“I do not like Carlos,” Violet returned hotly; then remembering herself,
+hastened to ask whether Mrs. Quintard was quite positive as to this room
+being the one in which she had hidden the precious document.
+
+“You had better talk to Hetty,” said that lady, as a stout woman of most
+prepossessing appearance entered their presence and paused respectfully
+just inside the doorway. “Hetty, you will answer any questions this
+young lady may put. If anyone can help us, she can. But first, what news
+from the sick-room?”
+
+“Nothing good. The doctor has just come for the third time today. Mrs.
+Brooks is crying and even the children are dumb with fear.”
+
+“I will go. I must see the doctor. I must tell him to keep Clement alive
+by any means till--”
+
+She did not wait to say what; but Violet understood and felt her heart
+grow heavy. Could it be that her employer considered this the gay and
+easy task she had asked for?
+
+The next minute she was putting her first question:
+
+“Hetty, what did you see in Mrs. Quintard’s action last night, to make
+you infer that she left the missing document in this room?”
+
+The woman’s eyes, which had been respectfully studying her face,
+brightened with a relief which made her communicative. With the
+self-possession of a perfectly candid nature, she inquiringly remarked:
+
+“My mistress has spoken of her infirmity?”
+
+“Yes, and very frankly.”
+
+“She walks in her sleep.”
+
+“So she said.”
+
+“And sometimes when others are asleep, and she is not.”
+
+“She did not tell me that.”
+
+“She is a very nervous woman and cannot always keep still when she
+rouses up at night. When I hear her rise, I get up too; but, never being
+quite sure whether she is sleeping or not, I am careful to follow her at
+a certain distance. Last night I was so far behind her that she had been
+to her brother’s room and left it before I saw her face.”
+
+“Where is his room and where is hers?”
+
+“Hers is in front on this same floor. Mr. Brooks’s is in the rear, and
+can be reached either by the hall or by passing through this room into a
+small one beyond, which we called his den.”
+
+“Describe your encounter. Where were you standing when you saw her
+first?”
+
+“In the den I have just mentioned. There was a bright light in the hall
+behind me and I could see her figure quite plainly. She was holding
+a folded paper clenched against her breast, and her movement was so
+mechanical that I was sure she was asleep. She was coming this way, and
+in another moment she entered this room. The door, which had been open,
+remained so, and in my anxiety I crept to it and looked in after her.
+There was no light burning here at that hour, but the moon was shining
+in in long rays of variously coloured light. If I had followed her--but
+I did not. I just stood and watched her long enough to see her pass
+through a blue ray, then through a green one, and then into, if not
+through, a red one. Expecting her to walk straight on, and having some
+fears of the staircase once she got into the hall, I hurried around to
+the door behind you there to head her off. But she had not yet left
+this room. I waited and waited and still she did not come. Fearing some
+accident, I finally ventured to approach the door and try it. It was
+locked. This alarmed me. She had never locked herself in anywhere before
+and I did not know what to make of it. Some persons would have shouted
+her name, but I had been warned against doing that, so I simply stood
+where I was, and eventually I heard the key turn in the lock and saw her
+come out. She was still walking stiffly, but her hands were empty and
+hanging at her side.”
+
+“And then?”
+
+“She went straight to her room and I after her. I was sure she was dead
+asleep by this time.”
+
+“And she was?”
+
+“Yes, Miss; but still full of what was on her mind. I know this because
+she stopped when she reached the bedside and began fumbling with the
+waist of her wrapper. It was for the key she was searching, and when her
+fingers encountered it hanging on the outside, she opened her wrapper
+and thrust it in on her bare skin.”
+
+“You saw her do all that?”
+
+“As plainly as I see you now. The light in her room was burning
+brightly.”
+
+“And after that?”
+
+“She got into bed. It was I who turned off the light.”
+
+“Has that wrapper of hers a pocket?”
+
+“No, Miss.”
+
+“Nor her gown?”
+
+“No, Miss.”
+
+“So she could not have brought the paper into her room concealed about
+her person?”
+
+“No, Miss; she left it here. It never passed beyond this doorway.”
+
+“But might she not have carried it back to some place of concealment in
+the rooms she had left?”
+
+The woman’s face changed and a slight flush showed through the natural
+brown of her cheeks.
+
+“No,” she disclaimed; “she could not have done that. I was careful to
+lock the library door behind her before I ran out into the hall.”
+
+“Then,” concluded Violet, with all the emphasis of conviction, “it is
+here, and nowhere else we must look for that document till we find it.”
+
+Thus assured of the first step in the task she had before her, Miss
+Strange settled down to business.
+
+The room, which towered to the height of two stories, was in the shape
+of a huge oval. This oval, separated into narrow divisions for the
+purpose of accommodating the shelves with which it was lined, narrowed
+as it rose above the great Gothic chimney-piece and the five gorgeous
+windows looking towards the south, till it met and was lost in the
+tracery of the ceiling, which was of that exquisite and soul-satisfying
+order which we see in the Henry VII chapel in Westminster Abbey. What
+break otherwise occurred in the circling round of books reaching thus
+thirty feet or more above the head was made by the two doors already
+spoken of and a narrow strip of wall at either end of the space occupied
+by the windows. No furniture was to be seen there except a couple of
+stalls taken from some old cathedral, which stood in the two bare places
+just mentioned.
+
+But within, on the extensive floor-space, several articles were grouped,
+and Violet, recognizing the possibilities which any one of them afforded
+for the concealment of so small an object as a folded document, decided
+to use method in her search, and to that end, mentally divided the space
+before her into four segments.
+
+The first took in the door, communicating with the suite ending in Mr.
+Brooks’s bedroom. A diagram of this segment will show that the only
+article of furniture in it was a cabinet.
+
+It was at this cabinet Miss Strange made her first stop.
+
+“You have looked this well through?” she asked as she bent over the
+glass case on top to examine the row of mediaeval missals displayed
+within in a manner to show their wonderful illuminations.
+
+“Not the case,” explained Hetty. “It is locked you see and no one has as
+yet succeeded in finding the key. But we searched the drawers underneath
+with the greatest care. Had we sifted the whole contents through our
+fingers, I could not be more certain that the paper is not there.”
+
+Violet stepped into the next segment.
+
+This was the one dominated by the huge fire-place. A rug lay before the
+hearth. To this Violet pointed.
+
+Quickly the woman answered: “We not only lifted it, but turned it over.”
+
+“And that box at the right?”
+
+“Is full of wood and wood only.”
+
+“Did you take out this wood?”
+
+“Every stick.”
+
+“And those ashes in the fire-place? Something has been burned there.”
+
+“Yes; but not lately. Besides, those ashes are all wood ashes. If the
+least bit of charred paper had been mixed with them, we should have
+considered the matter settled. But you can see for yourself that no such
+particle can be found.” While saying this, she had put the poker into
+Violet’s hand. “Rake them about, Miss, and make sure.”
+
+Violet did so, with the result that the poker was soon put back into
+place, and she herself down on her knees looking up the chimney.
+
+“Had she thrust it up there,” Hetty made haste to remark, “there would
+have been some signs of soot on her sleeves. They are white and very
+long and are always getting in her way when she tries to do anything.”
+
+Violet left the fire-place after a glance at the mantel-shelf on
+which nothing stood but a casket of open fretwork, and two coloured
+photographs mounted on small easels. The casket was too open to conceal
+anything and the photographs lifted too high above the shelf for even
+the smallest paper, let alone a document of any size, to hide behind
+them.
+
+The chairs, of which there were several in this part of the room, she
+passed with just an inquiring look. They were all of solid oak, without
+any attempt at upholstery, and although carved to match the stalls on
+the other side of the room, offered no place for search.
+
+Her delay in the third segment was brief. Here there was absolutely
+nothing but the door by which she had entered, and the books. As she
+flitted on, following the oval of the wall, a small frown appeared on
+her usually smooth forehead. She felt the oppression of the books--the
+countless books. If indeed, she should find herself obliged to go
+through them. What a hopeless outlook!
+
+But she had still a segment to consider, and after that the immense
+table occupying the centre of the room, a table which in its double
+capacity (for it was as much desk as table) gave more promise of holding
+the solution of the mystery than anything to which she had hitherto
+given her attention.
+
+The quarter in which she now stood was the most beautiful, and,
+possibly, the most precious of them all. In it blazed the five great
+windows which were the glory of the room; but there are no hiding-places
+in windows, and much as she revelled in colour, she dared not waste a
+moment on them. There was more hope for her in the towering stalls, with
+their possible drawers for books.
+
+But Hetty was before her in the attempt she made to lift the lids of the
+two great seats.
+
+“Nothing in either,” said she; and Violet, with a sigh, turned towards
+the table.
+
+This was an immense affair, made to accommodate itself to the shape of
+the room, but with a hollowed-out space on the window-side large enough
+to hold a chair for the sitter who would use its top as a desk. On it
+were various articles suitable to its double use. Without being crowded,
+it displayed a pile of magazines and pamphlets, boxes for stationery,
+a writing pad with its accompaniments, a lamp, and some few ornaments,
+among which was a large box, richly inlaid with pearl and ivory, the lid
+of which stood wide open.
+
+“Don’t touch,” admonished Violet, as Hetty stretched out her hand to
+move some little object aside. “You have already worked here busily in
+the search you made this morning.”
+
+“We handled everything.”
+
+“Did you go through these pamphlets?”
+
+“We shook open each one. We were especially particular here, since it
+was at this table I saw Mrs. Quintard stop.”
+
+“With head level or drooped?”
+
+“Drooped.”
+
+“Like one looking down, rather than up, or around?”
+
+“Yes. A ray of red light shone on her sleeve. It seemed to me the sleeve
+moved as though she were reaching out.”
+
+“Will you try to stand as she did and as nearly in the same place as
+possible?”
+
+Hetty glanced down at the table edge, marked where the gules dominated
+the blue and green, and moved to that spot, and paused with her head
+sinking slowly towards her breast.
+
+“Very good,” exclaimed Violet. “But the moon was probably in a very
+different position from what the sun is now.”
+
+“You are right; it was higher up; I chanced to notice it.”
+
+“Let me come,” said Violet.
+
+Hetty moved, and Violet took her place but in a spot a step or two
+farther front. This brought her very near to the centre of the table.
+Hanging her head, just as Hetty had done, she reached out her right
+hand.
+
+“Have you looked under this blotter?” she asked, pointing towards the
+pad she touched. “I mean, between the blotter and the frame which holds
+it?”
+
+“I certainly did,” answered Hetty, with some pride.
+
+Violet remained staring down. “Then you took off everything that was
+lying on it?”
+
+“Oh, yes.”
+
+Violet continued to stare down at the blotter. Then impetuously:
+
+“Put them back in their accustomed places.”
+
+Hetty obeyed.
+
+Violet continued to look at them, then slowly stretched out her hand,
+but soon let it fall again with an air of discouragement. Certainly
+the missing document was not in the ink-pot or the mucilage bottle.
+Yet something made her stoop again over the pad and subject it to the
+closest scrutiny.
+
+“If only nothing had been touched!” she inwardly sighed. But she let no
+sign of her discontent escape her lips, simply exclaiming as she glanced
+up at the towering spaces overhead: “The books! the books! Nothing
+remains but for you to call up all the servants, or get men from the
+outside and, beginning at one end--I should say the upper one--take down
+every book standing within reach of a woman of Mrs. Quintard’s height.”
+
+“Hear first what Mrs. Quintard has to say about that,” interrupted the
+woman as that lady entered in a flutter of emotion springing from more
+than one cause.
+
+“The young lady thinks that we should remove the books,” Hetty observed,
+as her mistress’s eye wandered to hers from Violet’s abstracted
+countenance.
+
+“Useless. If we were to undertake to do that, Carlos would be here
+before half the job was finished. Besides, Hetty must have told you my
+extreme aversion to nicely bound books. I will not say that when awake
+I never place my hand on one, but once in a state of somnambulism, when
+every natural whim has full control, I am sure that I never would. There
+is a reason for my prejudice. I was not always rich. I once was very
+poor. It was when I was first married and long before Clement had begun
+to make his fortune. I was so poor then that frequently I went hungry,
+and what was worse saw my little daughter cry for food. And why? Because
+my husband was a bibliomaniac. He would spend on fine editions what
+would have kept the family comfortable. It is hard to believe, isn’t
+it? I have seen him bring home a Grolier when the larder was as empty as
+that box; and it made me hate books so, especially those of extra fine
+binding, that I have to tear the covers off before I can find courage to
+read them.”
+
+O life! life! how fast Violet was learning it!
+
+“I can understand your idea, Mrs. Quintard, but as everything else has
+failed, I should make a mistake not to examine these shelves. It is just
+possible that we may be able to shorten the task very materially; that
+we may not have to call in help, even. To what extent have they been
+approached, or the books handled, since you discovered the loss of the
+paper we are looking for?”
+
+“Not at all. Neither of us went near them.” This from Hetty.
+
+“Nor any one else?”
+
+“No one else has been admitted to the room. We locked both doors the
+moment we felt satisfied that the will had been left here.”
+
+“That’s a relief. Now I may be able to do something. Hetty, you look
+like a very strong woman, and I, as you see, am very little. Would you
+mind lifting me up to these shelves? I want to look at them. Not at the
+books, but at the shelves themselves.”
+
+The wondering woman stooped and raised her to the level of the shelf she
+had pointed out. Violet peered closely at it and then at the ones just
+beneath.
+
+“Am I heavy?” she asked; “if not, let me see those on the other side of
+the door.”
+
+Hetty carried her over.
+
+Violet inspected each shelf as high as a woman of Mrs. Quintard’s
+stature could reach, and when on her feet again, knelt to inspect the
+ones below.
+
+“No one has touched or drawn anything from these shelves in twenty-four
+hours,” she declared. “The small accumulation of dust along their edges
+has not been disturbed at any point. It was very different with the
+table-top. That shows very plainly where you had moved things and where
+you had not.”
+
+“Was that what you were looking for? Well, I never!”
+
+Violet paid no heed; she was thinking and thinking very deeply.
+
+Hetty turned towards her mistress, then quickly back to Violet, whom she
+seized by the arm.
+
+“What’s the matter with Mrs. Quintard?” she hurriedly asked. “If it were
+night, I should think that she was in one of her spells.”
+
+Violet started and glanced where Hetty pointed. Mrs. Quintard was within
+a few feet of them, but as oblivious of their presence as though she
+stood alone in the room. Possibly, she thought she did. With fixed eyes
+and mechanical step she began to move straight towards the table, her
+whole appearance of a nature to make Hetty’s blood run cold, but to
+cause that of Violet’s to bound through her veins with renewed hope.
+
+“The one thing I could have wished!” she murmured under her breath. “She
+has fallen into a trance. She is again under the dominion of her idea.
+If we watch and do not disturb her she may repeat her action of last
+night, and herself show where she has put this precious document.”
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Quintard continued to advance. A moment more, and her
+smooth white locks caught the ruddy glow centred upon the chair standing
+in the hollow of the table. Words were leaving her lips, and her hand,
+reaching out over the blotter, groped among the articles scattered there
+till it settled on a large pair of shears.
+
+“Listen,” muttered Violet to the woman pressing close to her side. “You
+are acquainted with her voice; catch what she says if you can.”
+
+Hetty could not; an undistinguishable murmur was all that came to her
+ears.
+
+Violet took a step nearer. Mrs. Quintard’s hand had left the shears and
+was hovering uncertainly in the air. Her distress was evident. Her head,
+no longer steady on her shoulders, was turning this way and that, and
+her tones becoming inarticulate.
+
+“Paper! I want paper” burst from her lips in a shrill unnatural cry.
+
+But when they listened for more and watched to see the uncertain hand
+settle somewhere, she suddenly came to herself and turned upon them
+a startled glance, which speedily changed into one of the utmost
+perplexity.
+
+“What am I doing here?” she asked. “I have a feeling as if I had
+almost seen--almost touched--oh, it’s gone! and all is blank again. Why
+couldn’t I keep it till I knew--” Then she came wholly to herself and,
+forgetting even the doubts of a moment since, remarked to Violet in her
+old tremulous fashion:
+
+“You asked us to pull down the books? But you’ve evidently thought
+better of it.”
+
+“Yes, I have thought better of it.” Then, with a last desperate hope of
+re-arousing the visions lying somewhere back in Mrs. Quintard’s troubled
+brain, Violet ventured to observe: “This is likely to resolve itself
+into a psychological problem, Mrs. Quintard. Do you suppose that if
+you fell again into the condition of last night, you would repeat your
+action and so lead us yourself to where the will lies hidden?”
+
+“Possibly; but it may be weeks before I walk again in my sleep, and
+meanwhile Carlos will have arrived, and Clement, possibly, died. My
+nephew is so low that the doctor is coming back at midnight. Miss
+Strange, Clement is a man in a thousand. He says he wants to see you.
+Would you be willing to accompany me to his room for a moment? He will
+not make many more requests and I will take care that the interview is
+not prolonged.”
+
+“I will go willingly. But would it not be better to wait--”
+
+“Then you may never see him at all.”
+
+“Very well; but I wish I had some better news to give.”
+
+“That will come later. This house was never meant for Carlos. Hetty, you
+will stay here. Miss Strange, let us go now.”
+
+“You need not speak; just let him see you.”
+
+Violet nodded and followed Mrs. Quintard into the sick-room.
+
+The sight which met her eyes tried her young emotions deeply. Staring at
+her from the bed, she saw two piercing eyes over whose brilliance death
+as yet had gained no control. Clements’s soul was in that gaze; Clement
+halting at the brink of dissolution to sound the depths behind him for
+the hope which would make departure easy. Would he see in her, a mere
+slip of a girl dressed in fashionable clothes and bearing about her all
+the marks of social distinction, the sort of person needed for the
+task upon the success of which depended his darlings’ future? She could
+hardly expect it. Yet as she continued to meet his gaze with all the
+seriousness the moment demanded, she beheld those burning orbs lose
+some of their demand and the fingers, which had lain inert upon the
+bedspread, flutter gently and move as if to draw attention to his wife
+and the three beautiful children clustered at the foot-board.
+
+He had not spoken nor could she speak, but the solemnity with which she
+raised her right hand as to a listening Heaven called forth upon his
+lips what was possibly his last smile, and with the memory of this faint
+expression of confidence on his part, she left the room, to make her
+final attempt to solve the mystery of the missing document.
+
+Facing the elderly lady in the hall, she addressed her with the force
+and soberness of one leading a forlorn hope:
+
+“I want you to concentrate your mind upon what I have to say to you. Do
+you think you can do this?”
+
+“I will try,” replied the poor woman with a backward glance at the door
+which had just been closed upon her.
+
+“What we want,” said she, “is, as I stated before, an insight into the
+workings of your brain at the time you took the will from the safe.
+Try and follow what I have to say, Mrs. Quintard. Dreams are no
+longer regarded by scientists as prophecies of the future or even as
+spontaneous and irrelevant conditions of thought, but as reflections of
+a near past, which can almost without exception be traced back to the
+occurrences which caused them. Your action with the will had its birth
+in some previous line of thought afterwards forgotten. Let us try
+and find that thought. Recall, if you can, just what you did or read
+yesterday.”
+
+Mrs. Quintard looked frightened.
+
+“But, I have no memory,” she objected. “I forget quickly, so quickly
+that in order to fulfill my engagements I have to keep a memorandum of
+every day’s events. Yesterday? yesterday? What did I do yesterday? I
+went downtown for one thing, but I hardly know where.”
+
+“Perhaps your memorandum of yesterday’s doings will help you.”
+
+“I will get it. But it won’t give you the least help. I keep it only for
+my own eye, and--”
+
+“Never mind; let me see it.”
+
+And she waited impatiently for it to be put in her hands.
+
+But when she came to read the record of the last two days, this was all
+she found:
+
+Saturday: Mauretania nearly due. I must let Mr. Delahunt know today that
+he’s wanted here to-morrow. Hetty will try on my dresses. Says she has
+to alter them. Mrs. Peabody came to lunch, and we in such trouble! Had
+to go down street. Errand for Clement. The will, the will! I think of
+nothing else. Is it safe where it is? No peace of mind till to-morrow.
+Clement better this afternoon. Says he must live till Carlos gets
+back; not to triumph over him, but to do what he can to lessen his
+disappointment. My good Clement!
+
+So nervous, I went to pasting photographs, and was forgetting all my
+troubles when Hetty brought in another dress to try on.
+
+Quiet in the great house, during which the clock on the staircase sent
+forth seven musical peals. To Violet waiting alone in the library, they
+acted as a summons. She was just leaving the room, when the sound
+of hubbub in the hall below held her motionless in the doorway. An
+automobile had stopped in front, and several persons were entering the
+house, in a gay and unseemly fashion. As she stood listening, uncertain
+of her duty, she perceived the frenzied figure of Mrs. Quintard
+approaching. As she passed by, she dropped one word: “Carlos!” Then she
+went staggering on, to disappear a moment later down the stairway.
+
+This vision lost, another came. This time it was that of Clements’s
+wife leaning from the marble balustrade above, the shadow of approaching
+grief battling with the present terror in her perfect features. Then
+she too withdrew from view and Violet, left for the moment alone in the
+great hall, stepped back into the library and began to put on her hat.
+
+The lights had been turned up in the grand salon and it was in this
+scene of gorgeous colour that Mrs. Quintard came face to face with
+Carlos Pelacios. Those who were witness to her entrance say that
+she presented a noble appearance, as with the resolution of extreme
+desperation she stood waiting for his first angry attack.
+
+He, a short, thick-set, dark man, showing both in features and
+expression the Spanish blood of his paternal ancestors, started to
+address her in tones of violence, but changed his note, as he met her
+eye, to one simply sardonic.
+
+“You here!” he began. “I assure you, madame, that it is a pleasure which
+is not without its inconveniences. Did you not receive my cablegram
+requesting this house to be made ready for my occupancy?”
+
+“I did.”
+
+“Then why do I find guests here? They do not usually precede the arrival
+of their host.”
+
+“Clement is very ill--”
+
+“So much the greater reason that he should have been removed--”
+
+“You were not expected for two days yet. You cabled that you were coming
+on the Mauretania.”
+
+“Yes, I cabled that. Elisabetta,”--this to his wife standing silently in
+the background--“we will go to the Plaza for tonight. At three o’clock
+tomorrow we shall expect to find this house in readiness for our return.
+Later, if Mrs. Quintard desires to visit us we shall be pleased to
+receive her. But”--this to Mrs. Quintard herself--“you must come without
+Clement and the kids.”
+
+Mrs. Quintard’s rigid hand stole up to her throat.
+
+“Clement is dying. He is failing hourly,” she murmured. “He may not live
+till morning.”
+
+Even Carlos was taken aback by this. “Oh, well!” said he, “we will give
+you two days.”
+
+Mrs. Quintard gasped, then she walked straight up to him.
+
+“You will give us all the time his condition requires and more, much
+more. He is the real owner of this house, not you. My brother left a
+will bequeathing it to him. You are my nephew’s guests, and not he
+yours. As his representative I entreat you and your wife to remain here
+until you can find a home to your mind.”
+
+The silence seethed. Carlos had a temper of fire and so had his wife.
+But neither spoke, till he had gained sufficient control over himself to
+remark without undue rancour:
+
+“I did not think you had the wit to influence your brother to this
+extent; otherwise, I should have cut my travels short.” Then harshly:
+“Where is this will?”
+
+“It will be produced.” But the words faltered.
+
+Carlos glanced at the man standing behind his wife; then back at Mrs.
+Quintard.
+
+“Wills are not scribbled off on deathbeds; or if they are, it needs
+something more than a signature to legalize them. I don’t believe
+in this trick of a later will. Mr. Cavanagh”--here he indicated the
+gentleman accompanying them--“has done my father’s business for years,
+and he assured me that the paper he holds in his pocket is the first,
+last, and only expression of your brother’s wishes. If you are in a
+position to deny this, show us the document you mention; show us it at
+once, or inform us where and in whose hands it can be found.”
+
+“That, for--for reasons I cannot give, I must refuse to do at present.
+But I am ready to swear--”
+
+A mocking laugh cut her short. Did it issue from his lips or from those
+of his highstrung and unfeeling wife? It might have come from either;
+there was cause enough.
+
+“Oh!” she faltered, “may God have mercy!” and was sinking before their
+eyes, when she heard her name, called from the threshold, and, looking
+that way, saw Hetty beaming upon her, backed by a little figure with a
+face so radiant that instinctively her hand went out to grasp the folded
+sheet of paper Hetty was seeking to thrust upon her.
+
+“Ah!” she cried, in a great voice, “you will not have to wait, nor
+Clement either. Here is the will! The children have come into their
+own.” And she fell at their feet in a dead faint.
+
+“Where did you find it? Oh! where did you find it? I have waited a week
+to know. When, after Carlos’s sudden departure, I stood beside Clement’s
+death-bed and saw from the look he gave me that he could still feel and
+understand, I told him that you had succeeded in your task and that all
+was well with us. But I was not able to tell him how you had succeeded
+or in what place the will had been found; and he died, unknowing. But we
+may know, may we not, now that he is laid away and there is no more talk
+of our leaving this house?”
+
+Violet smiled, but very tenderly, and in a way not to offend the
+mourner. They were sitting in the library--the great library which was
+to remain in Clement’s family after all--and it amused her to follow the
+dreaming lady’s glances as they ran in irrepressible curiosity over the
+walls. Had Violet wished, she could have kept her secret forever. These
+eyes would never have discovered it.
+
+But she was of a sympathetic temperament, our Violet, so after a
+moment’s delay, during which she satisfied herself that little, if
+anything, had been touched in the room since her departure from it a
+week before, she quietly observed:
+
+“You were right in persisting that you hid it in this room. It was here
+I found it. Do you notice that photograph on the mantel which does not
+stand exactly straight on its easel?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Supposing you take it down. You can reach it, can you not?”
+
+“Oh, yes. But what--”
+
+“Lift it down, dear Mrs. Quintard; and then turn it round and look at
+its back.”
+
+Agitated and questioning, the lady did as she was bid, and at the first
+glance gave a cry of surprise, if not of understanding. The square
+of brown paper, acting as a backing to the picture, was slit across,
+disclosing a similar one behind it which was still intact.
+
+“Oh! was it hidden in here?” she asked.
+
+“Very completely,” assented Violet. “Pasted in out of sight by a lady
+who amuses herself with mounting and framing photographs. Usually, she
+is conscious of her work, but this time she performed her task in a
+dream.”
+
+Mrs. Quintard was all amazement.
+
+“I don’t remember touching these pictures,” she declared. “I never
+should have remembered. You are a wonderful person, Miss Strange. How
+came you to think these photographs might have two backings? There was
+nothing to show that this was so.”
+
+“I will tell you, Mrs. Quintard. You helped me.”
+
+“I helped you?”
+
+“Yes. You remember the memorandum you gave me? In it you mentioned
+pasting photographs. But this was not enough in itself to lead me to
+examine those on the mantel, if you had not given me another suggestion
+a little while before. We did not tell you this, Mrs. Quintard, at the
+time, but during the search we were making here that day, you had a
+lapse into that peculiar state which induces you to walk in your sleep.
+It was a short one, lasting but a moment, but in a moment one can speak,
+and, this you did--”
+
+“Spoke? I spoke?”
+
+“Yes, you uttered the word ‘paper!’ not the paper, but ‘paper!’ and
+reached out towards the shears. Though I had not much time to think of
+it then, afterwards upon reading your memorandum I recalled your words,
+and asked myself if it was not paper to cut, rather than to hide, you
+wanted. If it was to cut, and you were but repeating the experience
+of the night before, then the room should contain some remnants of cut
+paper. Had we seen any? Yes, in the basket, under the desk we had taken
+out and thrown back again a strip or so of wrapping paper, which, if my
+memory did not fail me, showed a clean-cut edge. To pull this strip out
+again and spread it flat upon the desk was the work of a minute, and
+what I saw led me to look all over the room, not now for the folded
+document, but for a square of brown paper, such as had been taken out
+of this larger sheet. Was I successful? Not for a long while, but when
+I came to the photographs on the mantel and saw how nearly they
+corresponded in shape and size to what I was looking for, I recalled
+again your fancy for mounting photographs and felt that the mystery was
+solved.
+
+“A glance at the back of one of them brought disappointment, but when I
+turned about its mate--You know what I found underneath the outer paper.
+You had laid the will against the original backing and simply pasted
+another one over it.
+
+“That the discovery came in time to cut short a very painful interview
+has made me joyful for a week.
+
+“And now may I see the children?”
+
+END OF PROBLEM V
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM VI. THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS
+
+Miss Strange was not in a responsive mood. This her employer had
+observed on first entering; yet he showed no hesitation in laying on
+the table behind which she had ensconced herself in the attitude of one
+besieged, an envelope thick with enclosed papers.
+
+“There,” said he. “Telephone me when you have read them.”
+
+“I shall not read them.”
+
+“No?” he smiled; and, repossessing himself of the envelope, he tore off
+one end, extracted the sheets with which it was filled, and laid them
+down still unfolded, in their former place on the table-top.
+
+The suggestiveness of the action caused the corners of Miss Srange’s
+delicate lips to twitch wistfully, before settling into an ironic smile.
+
+Calmly the other watched her.
+
+“I am on a vacation,” she loftily explained, as she finally met his
+studiously non-quizzical glance. “Oh, I know that I am in my own home!”
+ she petulantly acknowledged, as his gaze took in the room; “and that the
+automobile is at the door; and that I’m dressed for shopping. But for
+all that I’m on a vacation--a mental one,” she emphasized; “and business
+must wait. I haven’t got over the last affair,” she protested, as he
+maintained a discreet silence, “and the season is so gay just now--so
+many balls, so many--But that isn’t the worst. Father is beginning to
+wake up--and if he ever suspects--” A significant gesture ended this
+appeal.
+
+The personage knew her father--everyone did--and the wonder had always
+been that she dared run the risk of displeasing one so implacable.
+Though she was his favourite child, Peter Strange was known to be quite
+capable of cutting her off with a shilling, once his close, prejudiced
+mind conceived it to be his duty. And that he would so interpret the
+situation, if he ever came to learn the secret of his daughter’s fits
+of abstraction and the sly bank account she was slowly accumulating, the
+personage holding out this dangerous lure had no doubt at all. Yet he
+only smiled at her words and remarked in casual suggestion:
+
+“It’s out of town this time--‘way out. Your health certainly demands a
+change of air.”
+
+“My health is good. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as one may choose to
+look at it, it furnishes me with no excuse for an outing,” she steadily
+retorted, turning her back on the table.
+
+“Ah, excuse me!” the insidious voice apologized, “your paleness misled
+me. Surely a night or two’s change might be beneficial.”
+
+She gave him a quick side look, and began to adjust her boa.
+
+To this hint he paid no attention.
+
+“The affair is quite out of the ordinary,” he pursued in the tone of one
+rehearsing a part. But there he stopped. For some reason, not altogether
+apparent to the masculine mind, the pin of flashing stones (real stones)
+which held her hat in place had to be taken out and thrust back again,
+not once, but twice. It was to watch this performance he had paused.
+When he was ready to proceed, he took the musing tone of one marshalling
+facts for another’s enlightenment:
+
+“A woman of unknown instincts--”
+
+“Pshaw!” The end of the pin would strike against the comb holding
+Violet’s chestnut-coloured locks.
+
+“Living in a house as mysterious as the secret it contains. But--” here
+he allowed his patience apparently to forsake him, “I will bore you no
+longer. Go to your teas and balls; I will struggle with my dark affairs
+alone.”
+
+His hand went to the packet of papers she affected so ostentatiously to
+despise. He could be as nonchalant as she. But he did not lift them;
+he let them lie. Yet the young heiress had not made a movement or even
+turned the slightest glance his way.
+
+“A woman difficult to understand! A mysterious house--possibly a
+mysterious crime!”
+
+Thus Violet kept repeating in silent self-communion, as flushed with
+dancing she sat that evening in a highly-scented conservatory, dividing
+her attention between the compliments of her partner and the splash of
+a fountain bubbling in the heart of this mass of tropical foliage; and
+when some hours later she sat down in her chintz-furnished bedroom for
+a few minutes’ thought before retiring, it was to draw from a little oak
+box at her elbow the half-dozen or so folded sheets of closely written
+paper which had been left for her perusal by her persistent employer.
+
+Glancing first at the signature and finding it to be one already
+favourably known at the bar, she read with avidity the statement of
+events thus vouched for, finding them curious enough in all conscience
+to keep her awake for another full hour.
+
+We here subscribe it:
+
+I am a lawyer with an office in the Times Square Building. My business
+is mainly local, but sometimes I am called out of town, as witness the
+following summons received by me on the fifth of last October.
+
+DEAR SIR,--
+
+I wish to make my will. I am an invalid and cannot leave my room.
+Will you come to me? The enclosed reference will answer for my
+respectability. If it satisfies you and you decide to accommodate me,
+please hasten your visit; I have not many days to live. A carriage will
+meet you at Highland Station at any hour you designate. Telegraph reply.
+
+A. Postlethwaite, Gloom Cottage, ----, N. J.
+
+The reference given was a Mr. Weed of Eighty-sixth Street--a well-known
+man of unimpeachable reputation.
+
+Calling him up at his business office, I asked him what he could tell
+me about Mr. Postlethwaite of Gloom Cottage, ----, N. J. The answer
+astonished me:
+
+“There is no Mr. Postlethwaite to be found at that address. He died
+years ago. There is a Mrs. Postlethwaite--a confirmed paralytic. Do you
+mean her?”
+
+I glanced at the letter still lying open at the side of the telephone:
+
+“The signature reads A. Postlethwaite.”
+
+“Then it’s she. Her name is Arabella. She hates the name, being a woman
+of no sentiment. Uses her initials even on her cheques. What does she
+want of you?”
+
+“To draw her will.”
+
+“Oblige her. It’ll be experience for you.” And he slammed home the
+receiver.
+
+I decided to follow the suggestion so forcibly emphasized; and the next
+day saw me at Highland Station. A superannuated horse and a still more
+superannuated carriage awaited me--both too old to serve a busy man
+in these days of swift conveyance. Could this be a sample of the
+establishment I was about to enter? Then I remembered that the woman who
+had sent for me was a helpless invalid, and probably had no use for any
+sort of turnout.
+
+The driver was in keeping with the vehicle, and as noncommittal as the
+plodding beast he drove. If I ventured upon a remark, he gave me a
+long and curious look; if I went so far as to attack him with a direct
+question, he responded with a hitch of the shoulder or a dubious smile
+which conveyed nothing. Was he deaf or just unpleasant? I soon learned
+that he was not deaf; for suddenly, after a jog-trot of a mile or so
+through a wooded road which we had entered from the main highway, he
+drew in his horse, and, without glancing my way, spoke his first word:
+
+“This is where you get out. The house is back there in the bushes.”
+
+As no house was visible and the bushes rose in an unbroken barrier along
+the road, I stared at him in some doubt of his sanity.
+
+“But--” I began; a protest into which he at once broke, with the sharp
+direction:
+
+“Take the path. It’ll lead you straight to the front door.”
+
+“I don’t see any path.”
+
+For this he had no answer; and confident from his expression that it
+would be useless to expect anything further from him, I dropped a coin
+into his hand, and jumped to the ground. He was off before I could turn
+myself about.
+
+“‘Something is rotten in the State of Denmark,’” I quoted in startled
+comment to myself; and not knowing what else to do, stared down at the
+turf at my feet.
+
+A bit of flagging met my eye, protruding from a layer of thick moss.
+Farther on I espied another--the second, probably, of many. This, no
+doubt, was the path I had been bidden to follow, and without further
+thought on the subject, I plunged into the bushes which with difficulty
+I made give way before me.
+
+For a moment all further advance looked hopeless. A more tangled,
+uninviting approach to a so-called home, I had never seen outside of the
+tropics; and the complete neglect thus displayed should have prepared me
+for the appearance of the house I unexpectedly came upon, just as, the
+way seemed on the point of closing up before me.
+
+But nothing could well prepare one for a first view of Gloom Cottage.
+Its location in a hollow which had gradually filled itself up with
+trees and some kind of prickly brush, its deeply stained walls, once
+picturesque enough in their grouping but too deeply hidden now amid
+rotting boughs to produce any other effect than that of shrouded
+desolation, the sough of these same boughs as they rapped a devil’s
+tattoo against each other, and the absence of even the rising column of
+smoke which bespeaks domestic life wherever seen--all gave to one who
+remembered the cognomen Cottage and forgot the pre-cognomen of Gloom, a
+sense of buried life as sepulchral as that which emanates from the mouth
+of some freshly opened tomb.
+
+But these impressions, natural enough to my youth, were necessarily
+transient, and soon gave way to others more business-like. Perceiving
+the curve of an arch rising above the undergrowth still blocking my
+approach, I pushed my way resolutely through, and presently found myself
+stumbling upon the steps of an unexpectedly spacious domicile, built not
+of wood, as its name of Cottage had led me to expect, but of carefully
+cut stone which, while showing every mark of time, proclaimed itself
+one of those early, carefully erected Colonial residences which it
+takes more than a century to destroy, or even to wear to the point of
+dilapidation.
+
+Somewhat encouraged, though failing to detect any signs of active life
+in the heavily shuttered windows frowning upon me from either side, I
+ran up the steps and rang the bell which pulled as hard as if no hand
+had touched it in years.
+
+Then I waited.
+
+But not to ring again; for just as my hand was approaching the bell a
+second time, the door fell back and I beheld in the black gap before me
+the oldest man I had ever come upon in my whole life. He was so old
+I was astonished when his drawn lips opened and he asked if I was the
+lawyer from New York. I would as soon have expected a mummy to wag its
+tongue and utter English, he looked so thin and dried and removed from
+this life and all worldly concerns.
+
+But when I had answered his question and he had turned to marshal me
+down the hall towards a door I could dimly see standing open in the
+twilight of an absolutely sunless interior, I noticed that his step was
+not without some vigour, despite the feeble bend of his withered body
+and the incessant swaying of his head, which seemed to be continually
+saying No!
+
+“I will prepare madam,” he admonished me, after drawing a ponderous
+curtain two inches or less aside from one of the windows. “She is very
+ill, but she will see you.”
+
+The tone was senile, but it was the senility of an educated man, and as
+the cultivated accents wavered forth, my mind changed in, regard to the
+position he held in the house. Interested anew, I sought to give him
+another look, but he had already vanished through the doorway, and
+so noiselessly, it was more like a shadow’s flitting than a man’s
+withdrawal.
+
+The darkness in which I sat was absolute; but gradually, as I continued
+to look about me, the spaces lightened and certain details came out,
+which to my astonishment were of a character to show that the plain if
+substantial exterior of this house with its choked-up approaches and
+weedy gardens was no sample of what was to be found inside. Though the
+walls surrounding me were dismal because unlighted, they betrayed a
+splendour unusual in any country house. The frescoes and paintings were
+of an ancient order, dating from days when life and not death reigned in
+this isolated dwelling; but in them high art reigned supreme, an art
+so high and so finished that only great wealth, combined with the most
+cultivated taste, could have produced such effects. I was still absorbed
+in the wonder of it all, when the quiet voice of the old gentleman who
+had let me in reached me again from the doorway, and I heard:
+
+“Madam is ready for you. May I trouble you to accompany me to her room.”
+
+I rose with alacrity. I was anxious to see madam, if only to satisfy
+myself that she was as interesting as the house in which she was
+self-immured.
+
+I found her a great deal more so. But before I enter upon our interview,
+let me mention a fact which had attracted my attention in my passage to
+her room. During his absence my guide evidently had pulled aside other
+curtains than those of the room in which he had left me. The hall, no
+longer a tunnel of darkness, gave me a glimpse as we went by, of various
+secluded corners, and it seemed as if everywhere I looked I saw--a
+clock. I counted four before I reached the staircase, all standing on
+the floor and all of ancient make, though differing much in appearance
+and value. A fifth one rose grim and tall at the stair foot, and under
+an impulse I have never understood I stopped, when I reached it, to note
+the time. But it had paused in its task, and faced me with motionless
+hands and silent works--a fact which somehow startled me; perhaps,
+because just then I encountered the old man’s eye watching me with an
+expression as challenging as it was unintelligible.
+
+I had expected to see a woman in bed. I saw instead, a woman sitting up.
+You felt her influence the moment you entered her presence. She was not
+young; she was not beautiful;--never had been I should judge,--she had
+not even the usual marks about her of an ultra strong personality; but
+that her will was law, had always been, and would continue to be law
+so long as she lived, was patent to any eye at the first glance. She
+exacted obedience consciously and unconsciously, and she exacted it with
+charm. Some few people in the world possess this power. They frown, and
+the opposing will weakens; they smile, and all hearts succumb. I was
+hers from the moment I crossed the threshold till--But I will relate the
+happenings of that instant when it comes.
+
+She was alone, or so I thought, when I made my first bow to her stern
+but not unpleasing presence. Seated in a great chair, with a silver tray
+before her containing such little matters as she stood in hourly need
+of, she confronted me with a piercing gaze startling to behold in eyes
+so colourless. Then she smiled, and in obedience to that smile I seated
+myself in a chair placed very near her own. Was she too paralysed to
+express herself clearly? I waited in some anxiety till she spoke, when
+this fear vanished. Her voice betrayed the character her features failed
+to express. It was firm, resonant, and instinct with command. Not loud,
+but penetrating, and of a quality which made one listen with his heart
+as well as with his ears. What she said is immaterial. I was there for
+a certain purpose and we entered immediately upon the business of that
+purpose. She talked and I listened, mostly without comment. Only once
+did I interrupt her with a suggestion; and as this led to definite
+results, I will proceed to relate the occurrence in full.
+
+In the few hours remaining to me before leaving New York, I had learned
+(no matter how) some additional particulars concerning herself and
+family; and when after some minor bequests, she proceeded to name
+the parties to whom she desired to leave the bulk of her fortune, I
+ventured, with some astonishment at my own temerity, to remark:
+
+“But you have a young relative! Is she not to be included in this
+partition of your property?”
+
+A hush. Then a smile came to life on her stiff lips, such as is seldom
+seen, thank God, on the face of any woman, and I heard:
+
+“The young relative of whom you speak, is in the room. She has known for
+some time that I have no intention of leaving anything to her. There is,
+in fact, small chance of her ever needing it.”
+
+The latter sentence was a muttered one, but that it was loud enough to
+be heard in all parts of the room I was soon assured. For a quick sigh,
+which was almost a gasp, followed from a corner I had hitherto ignored,
+and upon glancing that way, I perceived, peering upon us from the
+shadows, the white face of a young girl in whose drawn features and
+wide, staring eyes I beheld such evidences of terror, that in an
+instant, whatever predilection I had hitherto felt for my client,
+vanished in distrust, if not positive aversion.
+
+I was still under the sway of this new impression, when Mrs.
+Postlethwaite’s voice rose again, this time addressing the young girl:
+
+“You may go,” she said, with such force in the command for all its
+honeyed modulation, that I expected to see its object fly the room in
+frightened obedience.
+
+But though the startled girl had lost none of the terror which had made
+her face like a mask, no power of movement remained to her. A picture
+of hopeless misery, she stood for one breathless moment, with her
+eyes fixed in unmistakable appeal on mine; then she began to sway so
+helplessly that I leaped with bounding heart to catch her. As she fell
+into my arms I heard her sigh as before. No common anguish spoke in that
+sigh. I had stumbled unwittingly upon a tragedy, to the meaning of which
+I held but a doubtful key.
+
+“She seems very ill,” I observed with some emphasis, as I turned to lay
+my helpless burden on a near-by sofa.
+
+“She’s doomed.”
+
+The words were spoken with gloom and with an attempt at commiseration
+which no longer rang true in my ears.
+
+“She is as sick a woman as I am myself,” continued Mrs. Postlethwaite.
+“That is why I made the remark I did, never imagining she would hear me
+at that distance. Do not put her down. My nurse will be here in a moment
+to relieve you of your burden.”
+
+A tinkle accompanied these words. The resolute woman had stretched out
+a finger, of whose use she was not quite deprived, and touched a little
+bell standing on the tray before her, an inch or two from her hand.
+
+Pleased to obey her command, I paused at the sofa’s edge, and taking
+advantage of the momentary delay, studied the youthful countenance
+pressed unconsciously to my breast.
+
+It was one whose appeal lay less in its beauty, though that was of a
+touching quality, than in the story it told,--a story, which for some
+unaccountable reason--I did not pause to determine what one--I felt it
+to be my immediate duty to know. But I asked no questions then; I did
+not even venture a comment; and yielded her up with seeming readiness
+when a strong but none too intelligent woman came running in with arms
+outstretched to carry her off. When the door had closed upon these two,
+the silence of my client drew my attention back to herself.
+
+“I am waiting,” was her quiet observation, and without any further
+reference to what had just taken place under our eyes, she went on with
+the business previously occupying us.
+
+I was able to do my part without any too great display of my own
+disturbance. The clearness of my remarkable client’s instructions, the
+definiteness with which her mind was made up as to the disposal of every
+dollar of her vast property, made it easy for me to master each detail
+and make careful note of every wish. But this did not prevent the ebb
+and flow within me of an undercurrent of thought full of question and
+uneasiness. What had been the real purport of the scene to which I had
+just been made a surprised witness? The few, but certainly unusual,
+facts which had been given me in regard to the extraordinary relations
+existing between these two closely connected women will explain the
+intensity of my interest. Those facts shall be yours.
+
+Arabella Merwin, when young, was gifted with a peculiar fascination
+which, as we have seen, had not altogether vanished with age.
+Consequently she had many lovers, among them two brothers, Frank and
+Andrew Postlethwaite. The latter was the older, the handsomer, and the
+most prosperous (his name is remembered yet in connection with South
+American schemes of large importance), but it was Frank she married.
+
+That real love, ardent if unreasonable, lay at the bottom of her choice,
+is evident enough to those who followed the career of the young
+couple. But it was a jealous love which brooked no rival, and as Frank
+Postlethwaite was of an impulsive and erratic nature, scenes soon
+occurred between them which, while revealing the extraordinary force of
+the young wife’s character, led to no serious break till after her son
+was born, and this, notwithstanding the fact that Frank had long given
+up making a living, and that they were openly dependent on their wealthy
+brother, now fast approaching the millionaire status.
+
+This brother--the Peruvian King, as some called him--must have been
+an extraordinary man. Though cherishing his affection for the spirited
+Arabella to the point of remaining a bachelor for her sake, he betrayed
+none of the usual signs of disappointed love; but on the contrary made
+every effort to advance her happiness, not only by assuring to herself
+and husband an adequate income, but by doing all he could in other and
+less open ways to lessen any sense she might entertain of her mistake in
+preferring for her lifemate his self-centred and unstable brother. She
+should have adored him; but though she evinced gratitude enough, there
+is nothing to prove that she ever gave Frank Postlethwaite the least
+cause to cherish any other sentiment towards his brother than that of
+honest love and unqualified respect. Perhaps he never did cherish
+any other. Perhaps the change which everyone saw in the young couple
+immediately after the birth of their only child was due to another
+cause. Gossip is silent on this point. All that it insists upon is that
+from this time evidences of a growing estrangement between them became
+so obvious that even the indulgent Andrew could not blind himself to it;
+showing his sense of trouble, not by lessening their income, for that
+he doubled, but by spending more time in Peru and less in New York where
+the two were living.
+
+However,--and here we enter upon those details which I have ventured
+to characterize as uncommon, he was in this country and in the actual
+company of his brother when the accident occurred which terminated
+both their lives. It was the old story of a skidding motor, and Mrs.
+Postlethwaite, having been sent for in great haste to the small inn
+into which the two injured men had been carried, arrived only in time to
+witness their last moments. Frank died first and Andrew some few minutes
+later--an important fact, as was afterwards shown when the latter’s will
+came to be read.
+
+This will was a peculiar one. By its provisions the bulk of the King’s
+great property was left to his brother Frank, but with this especial
+stipulation that in case his brother failed to survive him, the full
+legacy as bequeathed to him should be given unconditionally to his
+widow. Frank’s demise, as I have already stated, preceded his brother’s
+by several minutes and consequently Arabella became the chief legatee;
+and that is how she obtained her millions. But--and here a startling
+feature comes in--when the will came to be administered, the secret
+underlying the break between Frank and his wife was brought to light by
+a revelation of the fact that he had practised a great deception upon
+her at the time of his marriage. Instead of being a bachelor as was
+currently believed, he was in reality a widower, and the father of a
+child. This fact, so long held secret, had become hers when her own
+child was born; and constituted as she was, she not only never forgave
+the father, but conceived such a hatred for the innocent object of their
+quarrel that she refused to admit its claims or even to acknowledge its
+existence.
+
+But later--after his death, in fact--she showed some sense of obligation
+towards one who under ordinary conditions would have shared her wealth.
+When the whole story became heard, and she discovered that this secret
+had been kept from his brother as well as from herself, and that
+consequently no provision had been made in any way for the child thus
+thrown directly upon her mercy, she did the generous thing and took the
+forsaken girl into her own home. But she never betrayed the least love
+for her, her whole heart being bound up in her boy, who was, as all
+agree, a prodigy of talent.
+
+But this boy, for all his promise and seeming strength of constitution,
+died when barely seven years old, and the desolate mother was left with
+nothing to fill her heart but the uncongenial daughter of her husband’s
+first wife. The fact that this child, slighted as it had hitherto been,
+would, in the event of her uncle having passed away before her father,
+have been the undisputed heiress of a large portion of the wealth now at
+the disposal of her arrogant step-mother, led many to expect, now
+that the boy was no more, that Mrs. Postlethwaite would proceed to
+acknowledge the little Helena as her heir, and give her that place in
+the household to which her natural claims entitled her.
+
+But no such result followed. The passion of grief into which the
+mother was thrown by the shipwreck of all her hopes left her hard and
+implacable, and when, as very soon happened, she fell a victim to the
+disease which tied her to her chair and made the wealth which had come
+to her by such a peculiar ordering of circumstances little else than a
+mockery even in her own eyes, it was upon this child she expended the
+full fund of her secret bitterness.
+
+And the child? What of her? How did she bear her unhappy fate when she
+grew old enough to realize it? With a resignation which was the wonder
+of all who knew her. No murmurs escaped her lips, nor was the devotion
+she invariably displayed to the exacting invalid who ruled her as well
+as all the rest of her household with a rod of iron ever disturbed by
+the least sign of reproach. Though the riches, which in those early days
+poured into the home in a measure far beyond the needs of its mistress,
+were expended in making the house beautiful rather than in making the
+one young life within it happy, she never was heard to utter so much as
+a wish to leave the walls within which fate had immured her. Content,
+or seemingly content, with the only home she knew, she never asked
+for change or demanded friends or amusements. Visitors ceased coming;
+desolation followed neglect. The garden, once a glory, succumbed to a
+riot of weeds and undesirable brush, till a towering wall seemed to be
+drawn about the house cutting it off from the activities of the world as
+it cut it off from the approach of sunshine by day, and the comfort of
+a star-lit heaven by night. And yet the young girl continued to smile,
+though with a pitifulness of late, which some thought betokened
+secret terror and others the wasting of a body too sensitive for such
+unwholesome seclusion.
+
+These were the facts, known if not consciously specialized, which gave
+to the latter part of my interview with Mrs. Postlethwaite a poignancy
+of interest which had never attended any of my former experiences. The
+peculiar attitude of Miss Postlethwaite towards her indurate tormentor
+awakened in my agitated mind something much deeper than curiosity,
+but when I strove to speak her name with the intent of inquiring more
+particularly into her condition, such a look confronted me from the
+steady eye immovably fixed upon my own, that my courage--or was it my
+natural precaution--bade me subdue the impulse and risk no attempt which
+might betray the depth of my interest in one so completely outside
+the scope of the present moment’s business. Perhaps Mrs. Postlethwaite
+appreciated my struggle; perhaps she was wholly blind to it. There was
+no reading the mind of this woman of sentimental name but inflexible
+nature, and realizing the fact more fully with every word she uttered I
+left her at last with no further betrayal of my feelings than might
+be evinced by the earnestness with which I promised to return for her
+signature at the earliest possible moment.
+
+This she had herself requested, saying as I rose:
+
+“I can still write my name if the paper is pushed carefully along under
+my hand. See to it that you come while the power remains to me.”
+
+I had hoped that in my passage downstairs I might run upon someone who
+would give me news of Miss Postlethwaite, but the woman who approached
+to conduct me downstairs was not of an appearance to invite confidence,
+and I felt forced to leave the house with my doubts unsatisfied.
+
+Two memories, equally distinct, followed me. One was a picture of Mrs.
+Postlethwaite’s fingers groping among her belongings on the little
+tray perched upon her lap, and another of the intent and strangely
+bent figure of the old man who had acted as my usher, listening to
+the ticking of one of the great clocks. So absorbed was he in this
+occupation that he not only failed to notice me when I went by, but he
+did not even lift his head at my cheery greeting. Such mysteries were
+too much for me, and led me to postpone my departure from town till I
+had sought out Mrs. Postlethwaite’s doctor and propounded to him one
+or two leading questions. First, would Mrs. Postlethwaite’s present
+condition be likely to hold good till Monday; and secondly, was the
+young lady living with her as ill as her step-mother said.
+
+He was a mild old man of the easy-going type, and the answers I got
+from him were far from satisfactory. Yet he showed some surprise when
+I mentioned the extent of Mrs. Postlethwaite’s anxiety about her
+step-daughter, and paused, in the dubious shaking of his head, to give
+me a short stare in which I read as much determination as perplexity.
+
+“I will look into Miss Postlethwaite’s case more particularly,” were his
+parting words. And with this one gleam of comfort I had to be content.
+
+Monday’s interview was a brief one and contained nothing worth
+repeating. Mrs. Postlethwaite listened with stoical satisfaction to the
+reading of the will I had drawn up, and upon its completion rang her
+bell for the two witnesses awaiting her summons, in an adjoining room.
+They were not of her household, but to all appearance honest villagers
+with but one noticeable characteristic, an overweening idea of Mrs.
+Postlethwaite’s importance. Perhaps the spell she had so liberally woven
+for others in other and happier days was felt by them at this hour. It
+would not be strange; I had almost fallen under it myself, so great was
+the fascination of her manner even in this wreck of her bodily
+powers, when triumph assured, she faced us all in a state of complete
+satisfaction.
+
+But before I was again quit of the place, all my doubts returned and in
+fuller force than ever. I had lingered in my going as much as decency
+would permit, hoping to hear a step on the stair or see a face in some
+doorway which would contradict Mrs. Postlethwaite’s cold assurance that
+Miss Postlethwaite was no better. But no such step did I hear, and no
+face did I see save the old, old one of the ancient friend or relative,
+whose bent frame seemed continually to haunt the halls. As before,
+he stood listening to the monotonous ticking of one of the clocks,
+muttering to himself and quite oblivious of my presence.
+
+However, this time I decided not to pass him without a more persistent
+attempt to gain his notice. Pausing at his side, I asked him in the
+friendly tone I thought best calculated to attract his attention, how
+Miss Postlethwaite was to-day. He was so intent upon his task, whatever
+that was, that while he turned my way, it was with a glance as blank as
+that of a stone image.
+
+“Listen!” he admonished me. “It still says No! No! I don’t think it will
+ever say anything else.”
+
+I stared at him in some consternation, then at the clock itself which
+was the tall one I had found run down at my first visit. There was
+nothing unusual in its quiet tick, so far as I could hear, and with a
+compassionate glance at the old man who had turned breathlessly again to
+listen, proceeded on my way without another word.
+
+The old fellow was daft. A century old, and daft.
+
+I had worked my way out through the vines which still encumbered the
+porch, and was taking my first steps down the walk, when some impulse
+made me turn and glance up at one of the windows.
+
+Did I bless the impulse? I thought I had every reason for doing so, when
+through a network of interlacing branches I beheld the young girl with
+whom my mind was wholly occupied, standing with her head thrust forward,
+watching the descent of something small and white which she had just
+released from her hand.
+
+A note! A note written by her and meant for me! With a grateful look in
+her direction (which was probably lost upon her as she had already drawn
+back out of sight), I sprang for it only to meet with disappointment.
+For it was no billet-doux I received from amid the clustering brush
+where it had fallen; but a small square of white cloth showing a line
+of fantastic embroidery. Annoyed beyond measure, I was about to fling it
+down again, when the thought that it had come from her hand deterred me,
+and I thrust it into my vest pocket. When I took it out again--which was
+soon after I had taken my seat in the car--I discovered what a mistake I
+should have made if I had followed my first impulse. For, upon examining
+the stitches more carefully, I perceived that what I had considered a
+mere decorative pattern was in fact a string of letters, and that these
+letters made words, and that these words were:
+
+IDONOTWANTTODIEBUTISURELYWILLIF
+
+Or, in plain writing:
+
+“I do not want to die, but I surely will if--”
+
+Finish the sentence for me. That is the problem I offer you. It is not a
+case for the police but one well worth your attention, if you succeed in
+reaching the heart of this mystery and saving this young girl.
+
+Only, let no delay occur. The doom, if doom it is, is immanent. Remember
+that the will is signed.
+
+“She is too small; I did not ask you to send me a midget.”
+
+Thus spoke Mrs. Postlethwaite to her doctor, as he introduced into her
+presence a little figure in nurse’s cap and apron. “You said I needed
+care,--more care than I was receiving. I answered that my old nurse
+could give it, and you objected that she or someone else must look after
+Miss Postlethwaite. I did not see the necessity, but I never contradict
+a doctor. So I yielded to your wishes, but not without the proviso (you
+remember that I made a proviso) that whatever sort of young woman you
+chose to introduce into this room, she should not be fresh from the
+training schools, and that she should be strong, silent, and capable.
+And you bring me this mite of a woman--is she a woman? she looks more
+like a child, of pleasing countenance enough, but who can no more lift
+me--”
+
+“Pardon me!” Little Miss Strange had advanced. “I think, if you will
+allow me the privilege, madam, that I can shift you into a much more
+comfortable position.” And with a deftness and ease certainly not to
+be expected from one of her slight physique, Violet raised the helpless
+invalid a trifle more upon her pillow.
+
+The act, its manner, and the smile accompanying it, could not fail to
+please, and undoubtedly did, though no word rewarded her from lips not
+much given to speech save when the occasion was imperative. But Mrs.
+Postlethwaite made no further objection to her presence, and, seeing
+this, the doctor’s countenance relaxed and he left the room with a much
+lighter step than that with which he had entered it.
+
+And thus it was that Violet Strange--an adept in more ways than
+one--became installed at the bedside of this mysterious woman, whose
+days, if numbered, still held possibilities of action which those
+interested in young Helena Postlethwaite’s fate would do well to
+recognize.
+
+Miss Strange had been at her post for two days, and had gathered up the
+following:
+
+That Mrs. Postlethwaite must be obeyed.
+
+That her step-daughter (who did not wish to die) would die if she knew
+it to be the wish of this domineering but apparently idolized woman.
+
+That the old man of the clocks, while senile in some regards, was very
+alert and quite youthful in others. If a century old--which she began
+greatly to doubt--he had the language and manner of one in his prime,
+when unaffected by the neighbourhood of the clocks, which seemed in
+some non-understandable way to exercise an occult influence over him. At
+table he was an entertaining host; but neither there nor elsewhere would
+he discuss the family, or dilate in any way upon the peculiarities of a
+household of which he manifestly regarded himself as the least important
+member. Yet no one knew them better, and when Violet became quite
+assured of this, as well as of the futility of looking for explanation
+of any kind from either of her two patients, she resolved upon an effort
+to surprise one from him.
+
+She went about it in this way. Noting his custom of making a complete
+round of the clocks each night after dinner, she took advantage of Mrs.
+Postlethwaite’s inclination to sleep at this hour, to follow him from
+clock to clock in the hope of overhearing some portion of the monologue
+with which he bent his head to the swinging pendulum, or put his ear
+to the hidden works. Soft-footed and discreet, she tripped along at his
+back, and at each pause he made, paused herself and turned her ear his
+way. The extreme darkness of the halls, which were more sombre by night
+than by day, favoured this attempt, and she was able, after a failure
+or two, to catch the No! no! no! no! which fell from his lips in seeming
+repetition of what he heard the most of them say.
+
+The satisfaction in his tone proved that the denial to which he
+listened, chimed in with his hopes and gave ease to his mind. But
+he looked his oldest when, after pausing at another of the many
+time-pieces, he echoed in answer to its special refrain, Yes! yes! yes!
+yes! and fled the spot with shaking body and a distracted air.
+
+The same fear and the same shrinking were observable in him as he
+returned from listening to the least conspicuous one, standing in a
+short corridor, where Violet could not follow him. But when, after
+a hesitation which enabled her to slip behind the curtain hiding the
+drawing-room door, he approached and laid his ear against the great
+one standing, as if on guard, at the foot of the stairs, she saw by
+the renewed vigour he displayed that there was comfort for him in its
+message, even before she caught the whisper with which he left it and
+proceeded to mount the stairs:
+
+“It says No! It always says No! I will heed it as the voice of Heaven.”
+
+But one conclusion could be the result of such an experiment to a mind
+like Violet’s. This partly touched old man not only held the key to the
+secret of this house, but was in a mood to divulge it if once he could
+be induced to hear command instead of dissuasion in the tick of this
+one large clock. But how could he be induced? Violet returned to Mrs.
+Postlethwaite’s bedside in a mood of extreme thoughtfulness.
+
+Another day passed, and she had not yet seen Miss Postlethwaite. She was
+hoping each hour to be sent on some errand to that young lady’s room,
+but no such opportunity was granted her. Once she ventured to ask the
+doctor, whose visits were now very frequent, what he thought of the
+young lady’s condition. But as this question was necessarily put in Mrs.
+Postlethwaite’s presence, the answer was naturally guarded, and possibly
+not altogether frank.
+
+“Our young lady is weaker,” he acknowledged. “Much weaker,” he added
+with marked emphasis and his most professional air, “or she would be
+here instead of in her own room. It grieves her not to be able to wait
+upon her generous benefactress.”
+
+The word fell heavily. Had it been used as a test? Violet gave him a
+look, though she had much rather have turned her discriminating eye upon
+the face staring up at them from the pillow. Had the alarm expressed by
+others communicated itself at last to the physician? Was the charm which
+had held him subservient to the mother, dissolving under the pitiable
+state of the child, and was he trying to aid the little detective-nurse
+in her effort to sound the mystery of her condition?
+
+His look expressed benevolence, but he took care not to meet the gaze of
+the woman he had just lauded, possibly because that gaze was fixed upon
+him in a way to tax his moral courage. The silence which ensued was
+broken by Mrs. Postlethwaite:
+
+“She will live--this poor Helena--how long?” she asked, with no break in
+her voice’s wonted music.
+
+The doctor hesitated, then with a candour hardly to be expected from
+him, answered:
+
+“I do not understand Miss Postlethwaite’s case. I should like, with your
+permission, to consult some New York physician.”
+
+“Indeed!”
+
+A single word, but as it left this woman’s thin lips Violet recoiled,
+and, perhaps, the doctor did. Rage can speak in one word as well as in
+a dozen, and the rage which spoke in this one was of no common order,
+though it was quickly suppressed, as was all other show of feeling when
+she added, with a touch of her old charm:
+
+“Of course you will do what you think best, as you know I never
+interfere with a doctor’s decisions. But” and here her natural
+ascendancy of tone and manner returned in all its potency, “it would
+kill me to know that a stranger was approaching Helena’s bedside. It
+would kill her. She’s too sensitive to survive such a shock.”
+
+Violet recalled the words worked with so much care by this young girl on
+a minute piece of linen, I do not want to die, and watched the doctor’s
+face for some sign of resolution. But embarrassment was all she saw
+there, and all she heard him say was the conventional reply:
+
+“I am doing all I can for her. We will wait another day and note the
+effect of my latest prescription.”
+
+Another day!
+
+The deathly calm which overspread Mrs. Postlethwaite’s features as this
+word left the physician’s lips warned Violet not to let another day go
+by without some action. But she made no remark, and, indeed, betrayed
+but little interest in anything beyond her own patient’s condition. That
+seemed to occupy her wholly. With consummate art she gave the appearance
+of being under Mrs. Postlethwaite’s complete thrall, and watched with
+fascinated eyes every movement of the one unstricken finger which could
+do so much.
+
+This little detective of ours could be an excellent actor when she
+chose.
+
+III
+
+To make the old man speak! To force this conscience-stricken but
+rebellious soul to reveal what the clock forbade! How could it be done?
+
+This continued to be Violet’s great problem. She pondered it so deeply
+during all the remainder of the day that a little pucker settled on her
+brow, which someone (I will not mention who) would have been pained to
+see. Mrs. Postlethwaite, if she noticed it at all, probably ascribed it
+to her anxieties as nurse, for never had Violet been more assiduous in
+her attentions. But Mrs. Postlethwaite was no longer the woman she had
+been, and possibly never noted it at all.
+
+At five o’clock Violet suddenly left the room. Slipping down into the
+lower hall, she went the round of the clocks herself, listening to every
+one. There was no perceptible difference in their tick. Satisfied of
+this and that it was simply the old man’s imagination which had supplied
+them each with separate speech, she paused before the huge one at the
+foot of the stairs,--the one whose dictate he had promised himself
+to follow,--and with an eye upon its broad, staring dial, muttered
+wistfully:
+
+“Oh! for an idea! For an idea!”
+
+Did this cumbrous relic of old-time precision turn traitor at this
+ingenuous plea? The dial continued to stare, the works to sing, but
+Violet’s face suddenly lost its perplexity. With a wary look about her
+and a listening ear turned towards the stair top, she stretched out her
+hand and pulled open the door guarding the pendulum, and peered in at
+the works, smiling slyly to herself as she pushed it back into place and
+retreated upstairs to the sick room.
+
+When the doctor came that night she had a quiet word with him outside
+Mrs. Postlethwaite’s door. Was that why he was on hand when old Mr.
+Dunbar stole from his room to make his nightly circuit of the halls
+below? Something quite beyond the ordinary was in the good physician’s
+mind, for the look he cast at the old man was quite unlike any he had
+ever bestowed upon him before, and when he spoke it was to say with
+marked urgency:
+
+“Our beautiful young lady will not live a week unless I get at the seat
+of her malady. Pray that I may be enabled to do so, Mr. Dunbar.”
+
+A blow to the aged man’s heart which called forth a feeble “Yes, yes,”
+ followed by a wild stare which imprinted itself upon the doctor’s
+memory as the look of one hopelessly old, who hears for the first time a
+distinct call from the grave which has long been awaiting him!
+
+A solitary lamp stood in the lower hall. As the old man picked his slow
+way down, its small, hesitating flame flared up as in a sudden gust,
+then sank down flickering and faint as if it, too, had heard a call
+which summoned it to extinction.
+
+No other sign of life was visible anywhere. Sunk in twilight shadows,
+the corridors branched away on either side to no place in particular and
+serving, to all appearance (as many must have thought in days gone by),
+as a mere hiding-place for clocks.
+
+To listen to their united hum, the old man paused, looking at first
+a little distraught, but settling at last into his usual self as he
+started forward upon his course. Did some whisper, hitherto unheard,
+warn him that it was the last time he would tread that weary round?
+Who can tell? He was trembling very much when with his task nearly
+completed, he stepped out again into the main hall and crept rather than
+walked back to the one great clock to whose dictum he made it a practice
+to listen last.
+
+Chattering the accustomed words, “They say Yes! They are all saying Yes!
+now; but this one will say No!” he bent his stiff old back and laid his
+ear to the unresponsive wood. But the time for no had passed. It was
+Yes! yes! yes! yes! now, and as his straining ears took in the word,
+he appeared to shrink where he stood and after a moment of anguished
+silence, broke forth into a low wail, amid whose lamentations one could
+hear:
+
+“The time has come! Even the clock she loves best bids me speak. Oh!
+Arabella, Arabella!”
+
+In his despair he had not noticed that the pendulum hung motionless,
+or that the hands stood at rest on the dial. If he had, he might have
+waited long enough to have seen the careful opening of the great clock’s
+tall door and the stepping forth of the little lady who had played so
+deftly upon his superstition.
+
+He was wandering the corridors like a helpless child, when a gentle hand
+fell on his arm and a soft voice whispered in his ear:
+
+“You have a story to tell. Will you tell it to me? It may save Miss
+Postlethwaite’s life.”
+
+Did he understand? Would he respond if he did; or would the shock of her
+appeal restore him to a sense of the danger attending disloyalty? For
+a moment she doubted the wisdom of this startling measure, then she saw
+that he had passed the point of surprise and that, stranger as she was,
+she had but to lead the way for him to follow, tell his story, and die.
+
+There was no light in the drawing-room when they entered. But old Mr.
+Dunbar did not seem to mind that. Indeed, he seemed to have lost all
+consciousness of present surroundings; he was even oblivious of her.
+This became quite evident when the lamp, in flaring up again in the
+hall, gave a momentary glimpse, of his crouching, half-kneeling figure.
+In the pleading gesture of his trembling, outreaching arms, Violet
+beheld an appeal, not to herself, but to some phantom of his
+imagination; and when he spoke, as he presently did, it was with the
+freedom of one to whom speech is life’s last boon, and the ear of the
+listener quite forgotten in the passion of confession long suppressed.
+
+“She has never loved me,” he began, “but I have always loved her. For
+me no other woman has ever existed, though I was sixty-five years of age
+when I first saw her, and had long given up the idea that there lived
+a woman who could sway me from my even life and fixed lines of duty.
+Sixty-five! and she a youthful bride! Was there ever such folly! Happily
+I realized it from the first, and piled ashes on my hidden flame.
+Perhaps that is why I adore her to this day and only give her over to
+reprobation because Fate is stronger than my age--stronger even than my
+love.
+
+“She is not a good woman, but I might have been a good man if I had
+never known the sin which drew a line of isolation about her, and within
+which I, and only I, have stood with her in silent companionship.
+What was this sin, and in what did it have its beginning? I think its
+beginning was in the passion she had for her husband. It was not the
+every-day passion of her sex in this land of equable affections, but
+one of foreign fierceness, jealousy, and insatiable demand. Yet he was a
+very ordinary man. I was once his tutor and I know. She came to know it
+too, when--but I am rushing on too fast, I have much to tell before I
+reach that point.
+
+“From the first, I was in their confidence. Not that either he or she
+put me there, but that I lived with them and was always around, and
+could not help seeing and hearing what went on between them. Why he
+continued to want me in the house and at his table, when I could no
+longer be of service to him, I have never known. Possibly habit explains
+all. He was accustomed to my presence and so was she; so accustomed they
+hardly noticed it, as happened one night, when after a little attempt
+at conversation, he threw down the book he had caught up and, addressing
+her by name, said without a glance my way, and quite as if he were alone
+with her:
+
+“‘Arabella, there is something I ought to tell you. I have tried to
+find the courage to do so many times before now but have always failed.
+Tonight I must.’ And then he made his great disclosure,--how, unknown
+to, his friends and the world, he was a widower when he married her, and
+the father of a living child.
+
+“With some women this might have passed with a measure of regret, and
+some possible contempt for his silence, but not so with her. She rose
+to her feet--I can see her yet--and for a moment stood facing him in the
+still, overpowering manner of one who feels the icy pang of hate enter
+where love has been. Never was moment more charged. I could not breathe
+while it lasted; and when at last she spoke, it was with an impetuosity
+of concentrated passion, hardly less dreadful than her silence had been.
+
+“‘You a father! A father already!’ she cried, all her sweetness
+swallowed up in ungovernable wrath. ‘You whom I expected to make so
+happy with a child? I curse you and your brat. I--’
+
+“He strove to placate her, to explain. But rage has no ears, and before
+I realized my own position, the scene became openly tempestuous. That
+her child should be second to another woman’s seemed to awaken demon
+instincts within her. When he ventured to hint that his little girl
+needed a mother’s care, her irony bit like corroding acid. He became
+speechless before it and had not a protest to raise when she declared
+that the secret he had kept so long and so successfully he must continue
+to keep to his dying day. That the child he had failed to own in his
+first wife’s lifetime should remain disowned in hers, and if possible be
+forgotten. She should never give the girl a thought nor acknowledge her
+in any way.
+
+“She was Fury embodied; but the fury was of that grand order which
+allures rather than repels. As I felt myself succumbing to its
+fascination and beheld how he was weakening under it even more
+perceptibly than myself, I started from my chair, and sought to glide
+away before I should hear him utter a fatal acquiescence.
+
+“But the movement I made unfortunately drew their attention to me, and
+after an instant of silent contemplation of my distracted countenance,
+Frank said, as though he were the elder by the forty years which
+separated us:
+
+“‘You have listened to Mrs. Postlethwaite’s wishes. You will respect
+them of course.’”
+
+That was all. He knew and she knew that I was to be trusted; but neither
+of them has ever known why.
+
+A month later her child came, and was welcomed as though it were the
+first to bear his name. It was a boy, and their satisfaction was so
+great that I looked to see their old affection revive. But it had been
+cleft at the root, and nothing could restore it to life. They loved the
+child; I have never seen evidence of greater parental passion than they
+both displayed, but there their feelings stopped. Towards each other
+they were cold. They did not even unite in worship of their treasure.
+They gloated over him and planned for him, but always apart. He was a
+child in a thousand, and as he developed, the mother especially,
+nursed all her energies for the purpose of ensuring for him a future
+commensurate with his talents. Never a very conscientious woman, and
+alive to the advantages of wealth as demonstrated by the power wielded
+by her rich brother-in-law, she associated all the boy’s prospects with
+money, great money, such money as Andrew had accumulated, and now had at
+his disposal for his natural heirs.
+
+“Hence came her great temptation,--a temptation to which she yielded, to
+the lasting trouble of us all. Of this I must now make confession though
+it kills me to do so, and will soon kill her. The deeds of the past
+do not remain buried, however deep we dig their graves, but rise in an
+awful resurrection when we are old--old--”
+
+Silence. Then a tremulous renewal of his painful speech.
+
+Violet held her breath to listen. Possibly the doctor, hidden in the
+darkest corner of the room, did so also.
+
+“I never knew how she became acquainted with the terms of her
+brother-in-law’s will. He certainly never confided them to her, and as
+certainly the lawyer who drew up the document never did. But that she
+was well aware of its tenor is as positive a fact as that I am the most
+wretched man alive tonight. Otherwise, why the darksome deed into which
+she was betrayed when both the brothers lay dying among strangers, of a
+dreadful accident?”
+
+“I was witness to that deed. I had accompanied her on her hurried
+ride and was at her side when she entered the inn where the two
+Postlethwaites lay. I was always at her side in great joy or in great
+trouble, though she professed no affection for me and gave me but scanty
+thanks.”
+
+“During our ride she had been silent and I had not disturbed that
+silence. I had much to think of. Should we find him living, or should
+we find him dead? If dead, would it sever the relations between us two?
+Would I ever ride with her again?”
+
+“When I was not dwelling on this theme, I was thinking of the parting
+look she gave her boy; a look which had some strange promise in it. What
+had that look meant and why did my flesh creep and my mind hover between
+dread and a fearsome curiosity when I recalled it? Alas! There was
+reason for all these sensations as I was soon to learn.
+
+“We found the inn seething with terror and the facts worse than had been
+represented in the telegram. Her husband was dying. She had come just in
+time to witness the end. This they told her before she had taken off
+her veil. If they had waited--if I had been given a full glimpse of her
+face--But it was hidden, and I could only judge of the nature of her
+emotions by the stern way in which she held herself.
+
+“‘Take me to him,’ was the quiet command, with which she met this
+disclosure. Then, before any of them could move:
+
+“‘And his brother, Mr. Andrew Postlethwaite? Is he fatally injured too?’
+
+“The reply was unequivocal. The doctors were uncertain which of the two
+would pass away first.
+
+“You must remember that at this time I was ignorant of the rich man’s
+will, and consequently of how the fate of a poor child of whom I had
+heard only one mention, hung in the balance at that awful moment. But in
+the breathlessness which seized Mrs. Postlethwaite at this sentence of
+double death, I realized from my knowledge of her that something more
+than grief was at prey upon her impenetrable heart, and shuddered to the
+core of my being when she repeated in that voice which was so terrible
+because so expressionless:
+
+“‘Take me to them.’”
+
+They were lying in one room, her husband nearest the door, the other
+in a small alcove some ten feet away. Both were unconscious; both were
+surrounded by groups of frightened attendants who fell back as she
+approached. A doctor stood at the bed-head of her husband, but as her
+eye met his he stepped aside with a shake of the head and left the place
+empty for her.
+
+“The action was significant. I saw that she understood what it meant,
+and with constricted heart watched her as she bent over the dying
+man and gazed into his wide-open eyes, already sightless and staring.
+Calculation was in her look and calculation only; and calculation, or
+something equally unintelligible, sent her next glance in the
+direction of his brother. What was in her mind? I could understand
+her indifference to Frank even at the crisis of his fate, but not the
+interest she showed in Andrew. It was an absorbing one, altering her
+whole expression. I no longer knew her for my dear young madam, and the
+jealousy I had never felt towards Frank rose to frantic resentment in my
+breast as I beheld what very likely might be a tardy recognition of the
+other’s well-known passion, forced into disclosure by the exigencies of
+the moment.
+
+“Alarmed by the strength of my feelings, and fearing an equal disclosure
+on my own part, I sought for a refuge from all eyes and found it in a
+little balcony opening out at my right. On to this balcony I stepped
+and found myself face to face with a star-lit heaven. Had I only been
+content with my isolation and the splendour of the spectacle spread out
+before me! But no, I must look back upon that bed and the solitary woman
+standing beside it! I must watch the settling of her body into rigidity
+as a voice rose from beside the other Postlethwaite saying, ‘It is a
+matter of minutes now,’ and then--and then--the slow creeping of her
+hand to her husband’s mouth, the outspreading of her palm across the
+livid lips--its steady clinging there, smothering the feeble gasps of
+one already moribund, till the quivering form grew still, and Frank
+Postlethwaite lay dead before my eyes!
+
+“I saw, and made no outcry, but she did, bringing the doctor back to her
+side with the startled exclamation:
+
+“‘Dead? I thought he had an hour’s life left in him, and he has passed
+before his brother.’
+
+“I thought it hate--the murderous impulse of a woman who sees her
+enemy at her mercy and can no longer restrain the passion of her
+long-cherished antagonism; and while something within me rebelled at the
+act, I could not betray her, though silence made a murderer of me too.
+I could not. Her spell was upon me as in another instant it was upon
+everyone else in the room. No suspicion of one so self-repressed in
+her sadness disturbed the universal sympathy; and encouraged by this
+blindness of the crowd, I vowed within myself never to reveal her
+secret. The man was dead, or as good as dead, when she touched him; and
+now that her hate was expended she would grow gentle and good.
+
+“But I knew the worthlessness of this hope as well as my misconception
+of her motive, when Frank’s child by another wife returned to my memory,
+and Bella’s sin stood exposed.”
+
+“But only to myself. I alone knew that the fortune now wholly hers, and
+in consequence her boy’s, had been won by a crime. That if her hand had
+fallen in comfort on her husband’s forehead instead of in pressure on
+his mouth, he would have outlived his brother long enough to have become
+owner of his millions; in which case a rightful portion would have been
+insured to his daughter, now left a penniless waif. The thought made my
+hair rise, as the proceedings over, I faced her and made my first and
+last effort to rid my conscience of its new and intolerable burden.
+
+“But the woman I had known and loved was no longer before me. The crown
+had touched her brows, and her charm which had been mainly sexual up to
+this hour had merged into an intellectual force, with which few men’s
+mentality could cope. Mine yielded at once to it. From the first
+instant, I knew that a slavery of spirit, as well as of heart, was
+henceforth to be mine.
+
+“She did not wait for me to speak; she had assumed the dictator’s
+attitude at once.
+
+“‘I know of what you are thinking,’” said she, “‘and it is a subject you
+may dismiss at once from your mind. Mr. Postlethwaite’s child by his
+first wife is coming to live with us. I have expressed my wishes in this
+regard to my lawyer, and there is nothing left to be said. You, with
+your close mouth and dependable nature, are to remain here as before,
+and occupy the same position towards my boy that you did towards his
+father. We shall move soon into a larger house, and the nature of our
+duties will be changed and their scope greatly increased; but I know
+that you can be trusted to enlarge with them and meet every requirement
+I shall see fit to make. Do not try to express your thanks. I see them
+in your face.’
+
+“Did she, or just the last feeble struggle my conscience was making to
+break the bonds in which she held me, and win back my own respect? I
+shall never know, for she left me on completion of this speech, not to
+resume the subject, then or ever.
+
+“But though I succumbed outwardly to her demands, I had not passed the
+point where inner conflict ends and peace begins. Her recognition of
+Helena and her reception into the family calmed me for a while, and gave
+me hope that all would yet be well. But I had never sounded the full
+bitterness of madam’s morbid heart, well as I thought I knew it. The
+hatred she had felt from the first for her husband’s child ripened into
+frenzied dislike when she found her a living image of the mother whose
+picture she had come across among Frank’s personal effects. To win a
+tear from those meek eyes instead of a smile to the sensitive lips was
+her daily play. She seemed to exult in the joy of impressing upon the
+girl by how little she had missed a great fortune, and I have often
+thought, much as I tried to keep my mind free from all extravagant and
+unnecessary fancies, that half of the money she spent in beautifying
+this house and maintaining art industries and even great charitable
+institutions was spent with the base purpose of demonstrating to this
+child the power of immense wealth, and in what ways she might expect to
+see her little brother expend the millions in which she had been denied
+all share.
+
+“I was so sure of this that one night while I was winding up the clocks
+with which Mrs. Postlethwaite in her fondness for old timepieces has
+filled the house, I stopped to look at the little figure toiling so
+wearily upstairs, to bed, without a mother’s kiss. There was an appeal
+in the small wistful face which smote my hard old heart, and possibly a
+tear welled up in my own eye when I turned back to my duty.”
+
+“Was that why I felt the hand of Providence upon me, when in my
+halt before the one clock to which any superstitious interest was
+attached--the great one at the foot of the stairs--I saw that it had
+stopped and at the one minute of all minutes in our wretched lives: Four
+minutes past two? The hour, the minute in which Frank Postlethwaite had
+gasped his last under the pressure of his wife’s hand! I knew it--the
+exact minute I mean--because Providence meant that I should know it.
+There had been a clock on the mantelpiece of the hotel room where he and
+his brother had died and I had seen her glance steal towards it at the
+instant she withdrew her palm from her husband’s lips. The stare of
+that dial and the position of its hands had lived still in my mind as I
+believed it did in hers.
+
+“Four minutes past two! How came our old timepiece here to stop at that
+exact moment on a day when Duty was making its last demand upon me to
+remember Frank’s unhappy child? There was no one to answer; but as I
+looked and looked, I felt the impulse of the moment strengthen into
+purpose to leave those hands undisturbed in their silent accusation. She
+might see, and, moved by the coincidence, tremble at her treatment of
+Helena.
+
+“But if this happened--if she saw and trembled--she gave no sign. The
+works were started up by some other hand, and the incident passed.
+But it left me with an idea. That clock soon had a way of stopping and
+always at that one instant of time. She was forced at length to notice
+it, and I remember, an occasion when she stood stock-still with her eyes
+on those hands, and failed to find the banister with her hand, though
+she groped for it in her frantic need for support.
+
+“But no command came from her to remove the worn-out piece, and soon its
+tricks, and every lesser thing, were forgotten in the crushing calamity
+which befell us in the sickness and death of little Richard.
+
+“Oh, those days and nights! And oh, the face of the mother when the
+doctors told her that the case was hopeless! I asked myself then, and I
+have asked myself a hundred times since, which of all the emotions I saw
+pictured there bit the deepest, and made the most lasting impression
+on her guilty heart? Was it remorse? If so, she showed no change in her
+attitude towards Helena, unless it was by an added bitterness. The sweet
+looks and gentle ways of Frank’s young daughter could not win against a
+hate sharpened by disappointment. Useless for me to hope for it. Release
+from the remorse of years was not to come in that way. As I realized
+this, I grew desperate and resorted again to the old trick of stopping
+the clock at the fatal hour. This time her guilty heart responded. She
+acknowledged the stab and let all her miseries appear. But how? In a way
+to wring my heart almost to madness, and not benefit the child at all.
+She had her first stroke that night. I had made her a helpless invalid.
+
+“That was eight years ago, and since then what? Stagnation. She lived
+with her memories, and I with mine. Helena only had a right to hope,
+and hope perhaps she did, till--Is that the great clock talking? Listen!
+They all talk, but I heed only the one. What does it say? Tell! tell!
+tell! Does it think I will be silent now when I come to my own guilt?
+That I will seek to hide my weakness when I could not hide her sin?”
+
+“Explain!” It was Violet speaking, and her tone was stern in its
+command. “Of what guilt do you speak? Not of guilt towards Helena; you
+pitied her too much--”
+
+“But I pitied my dear madam more. It was that which affected me and
+drew me into crime against my will. Besides, I did not know--not at
+first--what was in the little bowl of curds and cream I carried to the
+girl each day. She had eaten them in her step-mother’s room, and under
+her step-mother’s eye as long as she had strength to pass from room
+to room, and how was I to guess that it was not wholesome? Because
+she failed in health from day to day? Was not my dear madam failing in
+health also; and was there poison in her cup? Innocent at that time, why
+am I not innocent now? Because--Oh, I will tell it all; as though at the
+bar of God. I will tell all the secrets of that day.
+
+“She was sitting with her hand trembling on the tray from which I had
+just lifted the bowl she had bid me carry to Helena. I had seen her so
+a hundred times before, but not with just that look in her eyes, or just
+that air of desolation in her stony figure. Something made me speak;
+something made me ask if she were not quite so well as usual, and
+something made her reply with the dreadful truth that the doctor had
+given her just two months more to live. My fright and mad anguish
+stupefied me; for I was not prepared for this, no, not at all;--and
+unconsciously I stared down at the bowl I held, unable to breathe or
+move or even to meet her look.”
+
+As usual she misinterpreted my emotion.
+
+“‘Why do you stand like that?’ I heard her say in a tone of great
+irritation. ‘And why do you stare into that bowl? Do you think I mean
+to leave that child to walk these halls after I am carried out of them
+forever? Do you measure my hate by such a petty yard-stick as that? I
+tell you that I would rot above ground rather than enter it before she
+did?’
+
+“I had believed I knew this woman; but what soul ever knows another’s?
+What soul ever knows itself?
+
+“‘Bella!’ I cried; the first time I had ever presumed to address her
+so intimately. ‘Would you poison the girl?’ And from sheer weakness my
+fingers lost their clutch, and the bowl fell to the floor, breaking into
+a dozen pieces.
+
+“For a minute she stared down at these from over her tray, and then she
+remarked very low and very quietly:
+
+“‘Another bowl, Humphrey, and fresh curds from the kitchen. I will do
+the seasoning. The doses are too small to be skipped. You won’t?’--I had
+shaken my head--‘But you will! It will not be the first time you have
+gone down the hall with this mixture.’
+
+“‘But that was before I knew--’ I began.
+
+“‘And now that you do, you will go just the same.’ Then as I stood
+hesitating, a thousand memories overwhelming me in an instant, she added
+in a voice to tear the heart, ‘Do not make me hate the only being left
+in this world who understands and loves me.’
+
+“She was a helpless invalid, and I a broken man, but when that word
+‘love’ fell from her lips, I felt the blood start burning in my veins,
+and all the crust of habit and years of self-control loosen about my
+heart, and make me young again. What if her thoughts were dark and her
+wishes murderous! She was born to rule and sway men to her will even to
+their own undoing.”
+
+“‘I wish I might kiss your hand,’ was what I murmured, gazing at her
+white fingers groping over her tray.
+
+“‘You may,’ she answered, and hell became heaven to me for a brief
+instant. Then I lifted myself and went obediently about my task.
+
+“But puppet though I was, I was not utterly without sympathy. When I
+entered Helena’s room and saw how her startled eyes fell shrinkingly on
+the bowl I set down before her, my conscience leaped to life and I could
+not help saying:
+
+“‘Don’t you like the curds, Helena? Your brother used to love them very
+much.’
+
+“‘His were--’
+
+“‘What, Helena?’
+
+“‘What these are not,’ she murmured.
+
+“I stared at her, terror-stricken. So she knew, and yet did not seize
+the bowl and empty it out of the window! Instead, her hand moved slowly
+towards it and drew it into place before her.
+
+“‘Yet I must eat,’ she said, lifting her eyes to mine in a sort of
+patient despair, which yet was without accusation.
+
+“But my hand had instinctively gone to hers and grasped it.
+
+“‘Why must you eat it?’ I asked. ‘If--if you do not find it wholesome,
+why do you touch it?’
+
+“‘Because my step-mother expects me to,’ she cried, ‘and I have no other
+will than hers. When I was a little, little child, my father made me
+promise that if I ever came to live with her I would obey her simplest
+wish. And I always have. I will not disappoint the trust he put in me.’
+
+“‘Even if you die of it?’
+
+“I do not know whether I whispered these words or only thought them. She
+answered as though I had spoken.
+
+“‘I am not afraid to die. I am more afraid to live. She may ask me some
+day to do something I feel to be wrong.’
+
+“When I fled down the hall that night, I heard one of the small clocks
+speak to me. Tell! it cried, tell! tell! tell! tell! I rushed away from
+it with beaded forehead and rising hair.
+
+“Then another’s note piped up. No it droned. No! no! no! no! I stopped
+and took heart. Disgrace the woman I loved, on the brink of the
+grave? I--, who asked no other boon from heaven than to see her happy,
+gracious, and good? Impossible. I would obey the great clock’s voice;
+the others were mere chatterboxes.
+
+“But it has at last changed its tune, for some reason, quite changed
+its tune. Now, it is Yes! Yes! instead of No! and in obeying it I save
+Helena. But what of Bella? and O God, what of myself?”
+
+A sigh, a groan, then a long and heavy silence, into which there finally
+broke the pealing of the various clocks striking the hour. When all were
+still again and Violet had drawn aside the portiere, it was to see
+the old man on his knees, and between her and the thin streak of light
+entering from the hall, the figure of the doctor hastening to Helena’s
+bedside.
+
+When with inducements needless to name, they finally persuaded the young
+girl to leave her unholy habitation, it was in the arms which had upheld
+her once before, and to a life which promised to compensate her for her
+twenty years of loneliness and unsatisfied longing.
+
+But a black shadow yet remained which she must cross before reaching the
+sunshine!
+
+It lay at her step-mother’s door.
+
+In the plans made for Helena’s release, Mrs. Postlethwaite’s consent
+had not been obtained nor was she supposed to be acquainted with
+the doctor’s intentions towards the child whose death she was hourly
+awaiting.
+
+It was therefore with an astonishment, bordering on awe, that on their
+way downstairs, they saw the door of her room open and herself standing
+alone and upright on the threshold--she who had not been seen to take a
+step in years. In the wonder of this miracle of suddenly restored power,
+the little procession stopped,--the doctor with his hand upon the rail,
+the lover with his burden clasped yet more protectingly to his breast.
+That a little speech awaited them could be seen from the force and
+fury of the gaze which the indomitable woman bent upon the lax and
+half-unconscious figure she beheld thus sheltered and conveyed. Having
+but one arrow left in her exhausted quiver, she launched it straight
+at the innocent breast which had never harboured against her a defiant
+thought.
+
+“Ingrate!” was the word she hurled in a voice from which all its
+seductive music had gone forever. “Where are you going? Are they
+carrying you alive to your grave?”
+
+A moan from Helena’s pale lips, then silence. She had fainted at that
+barbed attack. But there was one there who dared to answer for her and
+he spoke relentlessly. It was the man who loved her.
+
+“No, madam. We are carrying her to safety. You must know what I mean by
+that. Let her go quietly and you may die in peace. Otherwise--”
+
+She interrupted him with a loud call, startling into life the echoes of
+that haunted hall:
+
+“Humphrey! Come to me, Humphrey!”
+
+But no Humphrey appeared.
+
+Another call, louder and more peremptory than before:
+
+“Humphrey! I say, Humphrey!”
+
+But the answer was the same--silence, and only silence. As the horror of
+this grew, the doctor spoke:
+
+“Mr. Humphrey Dunbar’s ears are closed to all earthly summons. He died
+last night at the very hour he said he would--four minutes after two.”
+
+“Four minutes after two!” It came from her lips in a whisper, but with
+a revelation of her broken heart and life. “Four minutes after two!”
+ And defiant to the last, her head rose, and for an instant, for a mere
+breath of time, they saw her as she had looked in her prime, regal in
+form, attitude, and expression; then the will which had sustained her
+through so much, faltered and succumbed, and with a final reiteration of
+the words “Four minutes after two!” she broke into a rattling laugh, and
+fell back into the arms of her old nurse.
+
+And below, one clock struck the hour and then another. But not the big
+one at the foot of the stairs. That still stood silent, with its hands
+pointing to the hour and minute of Frank Postlethwaite’s hastened death.
+
+END OF PROBLEM VI
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM VII. THE DOCTOR, HIS WIFE, AND THE CLOCK
+
+Violet had gone to her room. She had a task before her. That afternoon,
+a packet had been left at the door, which, from a certain letter
+scribbled in one corner, she knew to be from her employer. The contents
+of that packet must be read, and she had made herself comfortable with
+the intention of setting to work at once. But ten o’clock struck and
+then eleven before she could bring herself to give any attention to the
+manuscript awaiting her perusal. In her present mood, a quiet sitting by
+the fire, with her eyes upon the changeful flame, was preferable to the
+study of any affair her employer might send her. Yet, because she was
+conscious of the duty she thus openly neglected, she sat crouched over
+her desk with her hand on the mysterious packet, the string of which,
+however, she made no effort to loosen.
+
+What was she thinking of?
+
+We are not alone in our curiosity on this subject. Her brother Arthur,
+coming unperceived into the room, gives tokens of a similar interest.
+Never before had he seen her oblivious to an approaching step; and after
+a momentary contemplation of her absorbed figure, so girlishly sweet
+and yet so deeply intent, he advances to her side, and peering earnestly
+into her face, observes with a seriousness quite unusual to him:
+
+“Puss, you are looking worried,--not like yourself at all. I’ve noticed
+it for some time. What’s up. Getting tired of the business?”
+
+“No--not altogether--that is, it’s not that, if it’s anything. I’m not
+sure that it’s anything. I--”
+
+She had turned back to her desk and was pushing about the various
+articles with which it was plentifully bespread; but this did not
+hide the flush which had crept into her cheeks and even dyed the snowy
+whiteness of her neck. Arthur’s astonishment at this evidence of
+emotion was very great; but he said nothing, only watched her still more
+closely, as with a light laugh she regained her self-possession, and
+with the practical air of a philosopher uttered this trite remark:
+
+“Everyone has his sober moments. I was only thinking--”
+
+“Of some new case?”
+
+“Not exactly.” The words came softly but with a touch of mingled humour
+and gravity which made Arthur stare again.
+
+“See here, Puss!” he cried. His tone had changed. “I’ve just come up
+from the den. Father and I have had a row--a beastly row.”
+
+“A row? You and father? Oh, Arthur, I don’t like that. Don’t quarrel
+with father. Don’t, don’t. Some day he and I may have a serious
+difference about what I am doing. Don’t let him feel that he has lost us
+all.”
+
+“That’s all right, Puss; but I’ve got to think of you a bit. I can’t
+see you spoil all your good times with these police horrors and not
+do something to help. To-morrow I begin life as a salesman in Clarke &
+Stebbin’s. The salary is not great, but every little helps and I don’t
+dislike the business. But father does. He had rather see me loafing
+about town setting the fashions for fellows as idle as myself than soil
+my hands with handling merchandise. That’s why we quarreled. But don’t
+worry. Your name didn’t come up, or--or--you know whose. He hasn’t an
+idea of why I want to work--There, Violet there!”
+
+Two soft arms were around his neck and Violet was letting her heart out
+in a succession of sisterly kisses.
+
+“O, Arthur, you good, good boy! Together we’ll soon make up the amount,
+and then--”
+
+“Then what?”
+
+A sweet soft look robbed her face of its piquancy, but gave it an aspect
+of indescribable beauty quite new to Arthur’s eyes.
+
+Tapping his lips with a thoughtful forefinger, he asked:
+
+“Who was that sombre-looking chap I saw bowing to you as we came out of
+church last Sunday?”
+
+She awoke from her dreamy state with an astonishing quickness.
+
+“He? Surely you remember him. Have you forgotten that evening in
+Massachusetts--the grotto--and--”
+
+“Oh, it’s Upjohn, is it? Yes, I remember him. He’s fond of church, isn’t
+he? That is, when he’s in New York.”
+
+Her lips took a roguish curve then a very serious one; but she made no
+answer.
+
+“I have noticed that he’s always in his seat and always looking your
+way.”
+
+“That’s very odd of him,” she declared, her dimples coming and going in
+a most bewildering fashion. “I can’t imagine why he should do that.”
+
+“Nor I,--” retorted Arthur with a smile. “But he’s human, I suppose.
+Only do be careful, Violet. A man so melancholy will need a deal of
+cheering.”
+
+He was gone before he had fully finished this daring remark, and Violet,
+left again with her thoughts, lost her glowing colour but not her
+preoccupation. The hand which lay upon the packet already alluded to did
+not move for many minutes, and when she roused at last to the demands
+of her employer, it was with a start and a guilty look at the small gold
+clock ticking out its inexorable reminder.
+
+“He will want an answer the first thing in the morning,” she complained
+to herself. And opening the packet, she took out first a letter, and
+then a mass of typewritten manuscript.
+
+She began with the letter which was as characteristic of the writer as
+all the others she had had from his hand; as witness:
+
+You probably remember the Hasbrouck murder,--or, perhaps, you don’t;
+it being one of a time previous to your interest in such matters. But
+whether you remember it or not, I beg you to read the accompanying
+summary with due care and attention to business. When you have well
+mastered it with all its details, please communicate with me in any
+manner most convenient to yourself, for I shall have a word to say to
+you then, which you may be glad to hear, if as you have lately intimated
+you need to earn but one or two more substantial rewards in order to
+cry halt to the pursuit for which you have proved yourself so well
+qualified.
+
+The story, in deference to yourself as a young and much preoccupied
+woman, has been written in a way to interest. Though the work of an
+everyday police detective, you will find in it no lack of mystery or
+romance; and if at the end you perceive that it runs, as such cases
+frequently do, up against a perfectly blank wall, you must remember that
+openings can be made in walls, and that the loosening of one weak stone
+from its appointed place, sometimes leads to the downfall of all.
+
+So much for the letter.
+
+Laying it aside, with a shrug of her expressive shoulders, Violet took
+up the manuscript.
+
+Let us take it up too. It runs thus:
+
+On the 17th of July, 19--, a tragedy of no little interest occurred in
+one of the residences of the Colonnade in Lafayette Place.
+
+Mr. Hasbrouck, a well known and highly respected citizen, was attacked
+in his room by an unknown assailant, and shot dead before assistance
+could reach him. His murderer escaped, and the problem offered to the
+police was how to identify this person who, by some happy chance or
+by the exercise of the most remarkable forethought, had left no traces
+behind him, or any clue by which he could be followed.
+
+The details of the investigation which ended so unsatisfactorily are
+here given by the man sent from headquarters at the first alarm.
+
+When, some time after midnight on the date above mentioned, I reached
+Lafayette Place, I found the block lighted from end to end. Groups of
+excited men and women peered from the open doorways, and mingled their
+shadows with those of the huge pillars which adorn the front of this
+picturesque block of dwellings.
+
+The house in which the crime had been committed was near the centre of
+the row, and, long before I reached it, I had learned from more than one
+source that the alarm was first given to the street by a woman’s shriek,
+and secondly by the shouts of an old man-servant who had appeared, in
+a half-dressed condition, at the window of Mr. Hasbrouck’s room, crying
+“Murder! murder!”
+
+But when I had crossed the threshold, I was astonished at the paucity
+of facts to be gleaned from the inmates themselves. The old servant, who
+was the first to talk, had only this account of the crime to give:
+
+The family, which consisted of Mr. Hasbrouck, his wife, and three
+servants, had retired for the night at the usual hour and under the
+usual auspices. At eleven o’clock the lights were all extinguished, and
+the whole household asleep, with the possible exception of Mr. Hasbrouck
+himself, who, being a man of large business responsibilities, was
+frequently troubled with insomnia.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Hasbrouck woke with a start. Had she dreamed the words
+that were ringing in her ears, or had they been actually uttered in her
+hearing? They were short, sharp words, full of terror and menace, and
+she had nearly satisfied herself that she had imagined them, when there
+came, from somewhere near the door, a sound she neither understood nor
+could interpret, but which filled her with inexplicable terror, and made
+her afraid to breathe, or even to stretch forth her hand towards her
+husband, whom she supposed to be sleeping at her side. At length another
+strange sound, which she was sure was not due to her imagination, drove
+her to make an attempt to rouse him, when she was horrified to find that
+she was alone in bed, and her husband nowhere within reach.
+
+Filled now with something more than nervous apprehension, she flung
+herself to the floor, and tried to penetrate with frenzied glances,
+the surrounding darkness. But the blinds and shutters both having
+been carefully closed by Mr. Hasbrouck before retiring, she found this
+impossible, and she was about to sink in terror to the floor, when she
+heard a low gasp on the other side of the room followed by a suppressed
+cry.
+
+“God! what have I done!”
+
+The voice was a strange one, but before the fear aroused by this
+fact could culminate in a shriek of dismay, she caught the sound of
+retreating footsteps, and, eagerly listening, she heard them descend the
+stairs and depart by the front door.
+
+Had she known what had occurred--had there been no doubt in her mind as
+to what lay in the darkness on the other side of the room--it is likely
+that, at the noise caused by the closing front door, she would have made
+at once for the balcony that opened out from the window before which
+she was standing, and taken one look at the flying figure below. But her
+uncertainty as to what lay hidden from her by the darkness chained her
+feet to the floor, and there is no knowing when she would have moved, if
+a carriage had not at that moment passed down Astor Place, bringing with
+it a sense of companionship which broke the spell holding her, and gave
+her strength to light the gas which was in ready reach of her hand.
+
+As the sudden blaze illuminated the room, revealing in a burst the old
+familiar walls and well-known pieces of furniture, she felt for a moment
+as if released from some heavy nightmare and restored to the common
+experiences of life. But in another instant her former dread returned,
+and she found herself quaking at the prospect of passing around the foot
+of the bed into that part of the room which was as yet hidden from her
+eyes.
+
+But the desperation which comes with great crises finally drove her from
+her retreat; and, creeping slowly forward, she cast one glance at the
+floor before her, when she found her worst fears realized by the sight
+of the dead body of her husband lying prone before the open doorway,
+with a bullet-hole in his forehead.
+
+Her first impulse was to shriek, but, by a powerful exercise of will,
+she checked herself, and ringing frantically for the servants who
+slept on the top floor of the house, flew to the nearest window and
+endeavoured to open it. But the shutters had been bolted so securely by
+Mr. Hasbrouck, in his endeavour to shut out all light and sound, that by
+the time she had succeeded in unfastening them, all trace of the flying
+murderer had vanished from the street.
+
+Sick with grief and terror, she stepped back into the room just as the
+three frightened servants descended the stairs. As they appeared in the
+open doorway, she pointed at her husband’s inanimate form, and then, as
+if suddenly realizing in its full force the calamity which had befallen
+her, she threw up her arms, and sank forward to the floor in a dead
+faint.
+
+The two women rushed to her assistance, but the old butler, bounding
+over the bed, sprang to the window, and shrieked his alarm to the
+street.
+
+In the interim that followed, Mrs. Hasbrouck was revived, and the
+master’s body laid decently on the bed; but no pursuit was made, nor any
+inquiries started likely to assist me in establishing the identity of
+the assailant.
+
+Indeed, everyone both in the house and out, seemed dazed by the
+unexpected catastrophe, and as no one had any suspicions to offer as to
+the probable murderer, I had a difficult task before me.
+
+I began in the usual way, by inspecting the scene of the murder. I found
+nothing in the room, or in the condition of the body itself, which added
+an iota to the knowledge already obtained. That Mr. Hasbrouck had been
+in bed; that he had risen upon hearing a noise; and that he had been
+shot before reaching the door, were self-evident facts. But there was
+nothing to guide me further. The very simplicity of the circumstances
+caused a dearth of clues, which made the difficulty of procedure as
+great as any I had ever encountered.
+
+My search through the hall and down the stairs elicited nothing; and
+an investigation of the bolts and bars by which the house was secured,
+assured me that the assassin had either entered by the front door, or
+had already been secreted in the house when it was locked up for the
+night.
+
+“I shall have to trouble Mrs. Hasbrouck for a short interview,” I
+hereupon announced to the trembling old servant, who had followed me
+like a dog about the house.
+
+He made no demur, and in a few minutes I was ushered into the presence
+of the newly made widow, who sat quite alone, in a large chamber in
+the rear. As I crossed the threshold she looked up, and I encountered a
+good, plain face, without the shadow of guile in it.
+
+“Madam,” said I, “I have not come to disturb you. I will ask two or
+three questions only, and then leave you to your grief. I am told that
+some words came from the assassin before he delivered his fatal shot.
+Did you hear these distinctly enough to tell me what they were?”
+
+“I was sound asleep,” said she, “and dreamt, as I thought, that a
+fierce, strange voice cried somewhere to some one: ‘Ah! you did not
+expect me!’ But I dare not say that these words were really uttered to
+my husband, for he was not the man to call forth hate, and only a man
+in the extremity of passion could address such an exclamation in such a
+tone as rings in my memory in connection with the fatal shot which woke
+me.”
+
+“But that shot was not the work of a friend,” I argued. “If, as these
+words seem to prove, the assassin had some other motive than plunder in
+his assault, then your husband had an enemy, though you never suspected
+it.”
+
+“Impossible!” was her steady reply, uttered in the most convincing tone.
+“The man who shot him was a common burglar, and frightened at having
+been betrayed into murder, fled without looking for booty. I am sure I
+heard him cry out in terror and remorse: ‘God! what have I done!’”
+
+“Was that before you left the side of the bed?”
+
+“Yes; I did not move from my place till I heard the front door close. I
+was paralysed by fear and dread.”
+
+“Are you in the habit of trusting to the security of a latch-lock only
+in the fastening of your front door at night? I am told that the big key
+was not in the lock, and that the bolt at the bottom of the door was not
+drawn.”
+
+“The bolt at the bottom of the door is never drawn. Mr. Hasbrouck was
+so good a man that he never mistrusted any one. That is why the big lock
+was not fastened. The key, not working well, he took it some days ago to
+the locksmith, and when the latter failed to return it, he laughed,
+and said he thought no one would ever think of meddling with his front
+door.”
+
+“Is there more than one night-key to your house?” I now asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“And when did Mr. Hasbrouck last use his?”
+
+“To-night, when he came home from prayer meeting,” she answered, and
+burst into tears.
+
+Her grief was so real and her loss so recent that I hesitated to afflict
+her by further questions. So returning to the scene of the tragedy, I
+stepped out upon the balcony which ran in front. Soft voices instantly
+struck my ears. The neighbours on either side were grouped in front of
+their own windows, and were exchanging the remarks natural under the
+circumstances. I paused, as in duty bound, and listened. But I heard
+nothing worth recording, and would have instantly reentered the house,
+if I had not been impressed by the appearance of a very graceful woman
+who stood at my right. She was clinging to her husband, who was gazing
+at one of the pillars before him in a strange fixed way which astonished
+me till he attempted to move, and then I saw that he was blind.
+I remembered that there lived in this row a blind doctor, equally
+celebrated for his skill and for his uncommon personal attractions,
+and greatly interested not only by his affliction, but in the sympathy
+evinced by his young and affectionate wife, I stood still, till I heard
+her say in the soft and appealing tones of love:
+
+“Come in, Constant; you have heavy duties for to-morrow, and you should
+get a few hours’ rest if possible.”
+
+He came from the shadow of the pillar, and for one minute I saw his face
+with the lamplight shining full upon it. It was as regular of feature as
+a sculptured Adonis, and it was as white.
+
+“Sleep!” he repeated, in the measured tones of deep but suppressed
+feeling. “Sleep! with murder on the other side of the wall!” And he
+stretched out his arms in a dazed way that insensibly accentuated the
+horror I myself felt of the crime which had so lately taken place in the
+room behind me.
+
+She, noting the movement, took one of the groping hands in her own and
+drew him gently towards her.
+
+“This way,” she urged; and, guiding him into the house, she closed the
+window and drew down the shades.
+
+I have no excuse to offer for my curiosity, but the interest excited in
+me by this totally irrelevant episode was so great that I did not
+leave the neighbourhood till I had learned something of this remarkable
+couple.
+
+The story told me was very simple. Dr. Zabriskie had not been born
+blind, but had become so after a grievous illness which had stricken
+him down soon after he received his diploma. Instead of succumbing to an
+affliction which would have daunted most men, he expressed his intention
+of practising his profession, and soon became so successful in it that
+he found no difficulty in establishing himself in one of the best paying
+quarters of the city. Indeed, his intuition seemed to have developed in
+a remarkable degree after the loss of his sight, and he seldom, if ever,
+made a mistake in diagnosis. Considering this fact, and the personal
+attractions which gave him distinction, it was no wonder that he soon
+became a popular physician whose presence was a benefaction and whose
+word law.
+
+He had been engaged to be married at the time of his illness, and when
+he learned what was likely to be its result, had offered to release the
+young lady from all obligation to him. But she would not be released,
+and they were married. This had taken place some five years previous
+to Mr. Hasbrouck’s death, three of which had been spent by them in
+Lafayette Place.
+
+So much for the beautiful woman next door.
+
+There being absolutely no clue to the assailant of Mr. Hasbrouck, I
+naturally looked forward to the inquest for some evidence upon which to
+work. But there seemed to be no underlying facts to this tragedy. The
+most careful study into the habits and conduct of the deceased brought
+nothing to light save his general beneficence and rectitude, nor was
+there in his history or in that of his wife, any secret or hidden
+obligation calculated to provoke any such act of revenge as murder. Mrs.
+Hasbrouck’s surmise that the intruder was simply a burglar, and that she
+had rather imagined than heard the words which pointed to the shooting
+as a deed of vengeance, soon gained general credence.
+
+But though the police worked long and arduously in this new direction
+their efforts were without fruit and the case bids fair to remain an
+unsolvable mystery.
+
+That was all. As Violet dropped the last page from her hand, she
+recalled a certain phrase in her employer’s letter. “If at the end you
+come upon a perfectly blank wall--” Well, she had come upon this wall.
+Did he expect her to make an opening in it? Or had he already done so
+himself, and was merely testing her much vaunted discernment.
+
+Piqued by the thought, she carefully reread the manuscript, and when she
+had again reached its uncompromising end, she gave herself up to a few
+minutes of concentrated thought, then, taking a sheet of paper from the
+rack before her, she wrote upon it a single sentence, and folding the
+sheet, put it in an envelope which she left unaddressed. This done, she
+went to bed and slept like the child she really was.
+
+At an early hour the next morning she entered her employer’s office.
+Acknowledging with a nod his somewhat ceremonious bow, she handed him
+the envelope in which she had enclosed that one mysterious sentence.
+
+He took it with a smile, opened it offhand, glanced at what she had
+written, and flushed a vivid red.
+
+“You are a--brick,” he was going to say, but changed the last word to
+one more in keeping with her character and appearance. “Look here. I
+expected this from you and so prepared myself.” Taking out a similar
+piece of paper from his own pocket-book, he laid it down beside hers
+on the desk before him. It also held a single sentence and, barring
+a slight difference of expression, the one was the counterpart of the
+other. “The one loose stone,” he murmured.
+
+“Seen and noted by both.”
+
+“Why not?” he asked. Then as she glanced expectantly his way, he
+earnestly added: “Together we may be able to do something. The reward
+offered by Mrs. Hasbrouck for the detection of the murderer was a very
+large one. She is a woman of means. I have never heard of its being
+withdrawn.”
+
+“Then it never has been,” was Violet’s emphatic conclusion, her dimples
+enforcing the statement as only such dimples can. “But--what do you want
+of me in an affair of this kind? Something more than to help you locate
+the one possible clue to further enlightenment. You would not have
+mentioned the big reward just for that.”
+
+“Perhaps not. There is a sequel to the story I sent you. I have written
+it out, with my own hand. Take it home and read it at your leisure. When
+you see into what an unhappy maze my own inquiries have led me, possibly
+you will be glad to assist me in clearing up a situation which is
+inflicting great suffering on one whom you will be the first to pity.
+If so, a line mentioning the fact will be much appreciated by me.” And
+disregarding her startled look and the impetuous shaking of her head, he
+bowed her out with something more than his accustomed suavity but
+also with a seriousness which affected her in spite of herself and
+effectually held back the protest it was in her heart to make. She was
+glad of this when she read his story; but later on--
+
+However, it is not for me to intrude Violet, or Violet’s feelings into
+an affair which she is so anxious to forget. I shall therefore from
+this moment on, leave her as completely out of this tale of crime and
+retribution as is possible and keep a full record of her work. When she
+is necessary to the story, you will see her again. Meanwhile, read
+with her, this relation of her employer’s unhappy attempt to pursue an
+investigation so openly dropped by the police. You will perceive, from
+its general style and the accentuation put upon the human side of this
+sombre story, a likeness to the former manuscript which may prove to
+you, as it certainly did to Violet, to whose consideration she was
+indebted for the readableness of the policeman’s report, which in all
+probability had been a simple statement of facts.
+
+But there, I am speaking of Violet again. To prevent a further mischance
+of this nature, I will introduce at once the above mentioned account.
+
+II
+
+No man in all New York was ever more interested than myself in the
+Hasbrouck affair, when it was the one and only topic of interest at
+a period when news was unusually scarce. But, together with many such
+inexplicable mysteries, it had passed almost completely from my mind,
+when it was forcibly brought back, one day, by a walk I took through
+Lafayette Place.
+
+At sight of the long row of uniform buildings, with their pillared
+fronts and connecting balconies every detail of the crime which had
+filled the papers at the time with innumerable conjectures returned to
+me with extraordinary clearness, and, before I knew it, I found myself
+standing stockstill in the middle of the block with my eye raised to the
+Hasbrouck house and my ears--or rather my inner consciousness, for no
+one spoke I am sure--ringing with a question which, whether the echo of
+some old thought or the expression of a new one, so affected me by the
+promise it held of some hitherto unsuspected clue, that I hesitated
+whether to push this new inquiry then or there by an attempted interview
+with Mrs. Hasbrouck, or to wait till I had given it the thought which
+such a stirring of dead bones rightfully demanded.
+
+You know what that question was. I shall have communicated it to you, if
+you have not already guessed it, before perusing these lines:
+
+“Who uttered the scream which gave the first alarm of Mr. Hasbrouck’s
+violent death?”
+
+I was in a state of such excitement as I walked away--for I listened
+to my better judgment as to the inadvisability of my disturbing Mrs.
+Hasbrouck with these new inquiries--that the perspiration stood out on
+my forehead. The testimony she had given at the inquest recurred to me,
+and I remembered as distinctly as if she were then speaking, that she
+had expressly stated that she did not scream when confronted by the
+sight of her husband’s dead body. But someone had screamed and that
+very loudly. Who was it, then? One of the maids, startled by the sudden
+summons from below, or someone else--some involuntary witness of the
+crime, whose testimony had been suppressed at the inquest, by fear or
+influence?
+
+The possibility of having come upon a clue even at this late day so
+fired my ambition that I took the first opportunity of revisiting
+Lafayette Place. Choosing such persons as I thought most open to my
+questions, I learned that there were many who could testify to having
+heard a woman’s shrill scream on that memorable night, just prior to the
+alarm given by old Cyrus, but no one who could tell from whose lips it
+had come. One fact, however, was immediately settled. It had not been
+the result of the servant-women’s fears. Both of the girls were positive
+that they had uttered no sound, nor had they themselves heard any
+till Cyrus rushed to the window with his wild cries. As the scream,
+by whomever given, was uttered before they descended the stairs, I was
+convinced by these assurances that it had issued from one of the front
+windows, and not from the rear of the house, where their own rooms lay.
+Could it be that it had sprung from the adjoining dwelling, and that--
+
+I remembered who had lived there and was for ringing the bell at once.
+But, missing the doctor’s sign, I made inquiries and found that he had
+moved from the block. However, a doctor is soon found, and in less than
+fifteen, minutes I was at the door of his new home, where I asked, not
+for him, but for Mrs. Zabriskie.
+
+It required some courage to do this, for I had taken particular notice
+of the doctor’s wife at the inquest, and her beauty, at that time, had
+worn such an aspect of mingled sweetness and dignity that I hesitated
+to encounter it under any circumstances likely to disturb its pure
+serenity. But a clue once grasped cannot be lightly set aside by a true
+detective, and it would have taken more than a woman’s frowns to stop me
+at this point.
+
+However, it was not with frowns she received me, but with a display of
+emotion for which I was even less prepared. I had sent up my card and I
+saw it trembling in her hand as she entered the room. As she neared me,
+she glanced at it, and with a show of gentle indifference which did not
+in the least disguise her extreme anxiety, she courteously remarked:
+
+“Your name is an unfamiliar one to me. But you told my maid that your
+business was one of extreme importance, and so I have consented to see
+you. What can an agent from a private detective office have to say to
+me?”
+
+Startled by this evidence of the existence of some hidden skeleton in
+her own closet, I made an immediate attempt to reassure her.
+
+“Nothing which concerns you personally,” said I. “I simply wish to
+ask you a question in regard to a small matter connected with Mr.
+Hasbrouck’s violent death in Lafayette Place, a couple of years ago.
+You were living in the adjoining house at the time I believe, and it has
+occurred to me that you might on that account be able to settle a point
+which has never been fully cleared up.”
+
+Instead of showing the relief I expected, her pallor increased and her
+fine eyes, which had been fixed curiously upon me, sank in confusion to
+the floor.
+
+“Great heaven!” thought I. “She looks as if at one more word from me,
+she would fall at my feet in a faint. What is this I have stumbled
+upon!”
+
+“I do not see how you can have any question to ask me on that subject,”
+ she began with an effort at composure which for some reason disturbed
+me more than her previous open display of fear. “Yet if you have,” she
+continued, with a rapid change of manner that touched my heart in spite
+of myself, “I shall, of course, do my best to answer you.”
+
+There are women whose sweetest tones and most charming smiles only serve
+to awaken distrust in men of my calling; but Mrs. Zabriskie was not
+of this number. Her face was beautiful, but it was also candid in its
+expression, and beneath the agitation which palpably disturbed her, I
+was sure there lurked nothing either wicked or false. Yet I held fast by
+the clue which I had grasped as it were in the dark, and without knowing
+whither I was tending, much less whither I was leading her, I proceeded
+to say:
+
+“The question which I presume to put to you as the next door neighbour
+of Mr. Hasbrouck is this: Who was the woman who on the night of
+that gentleman’s assassination screamed out so loudly that the whole
+neighbourhood heard her?”
+
+The gasp she gave answered my question in a way she little realized, and
+struck as I was by the impalpable links that had led me to the threshold
+of this hitherto unsolvable mystery, I was about to press my advantage
+and ask another question, when she quickly started forward and laid her
+hand on my lips.
+
+Astonished, I looked at her inquiringly, but her head was turned
+aside, and her eyes, fixed upon the door, showed the greatest anxiety.
+Instantly I realized what she feared. Her husband was entering the
+house, and she dreaded lest his ears should catch a word of our
+conversation.
+
+Not knowing what was in her mind, and unable to realize the importance
+of the moment to her, I yet listened to the advance of her blind husband
+with an almost painful interest. Would he enter the room where we were,
+or would he pass immediately to his office in the rear? She seemed to
+wonder too, and almost held her breath as he neared the door, paused,
+and stood in the open doorway, with his ear turned towards us.
+
+As for myself, I remained perfectly still, gazing at his face in mingled
+surprise and apprehension. For besides its beauty, which was of a marked
+order, as I have already observed, it had a touching expression which
+irresistibly aroused both pity and interest in the spectator. This may
+have been the result of his affliction, or it may have sprung from some
+deeper cause; but, whatever its source, this look in his face produced a
+strong impression upon me and interested me at once in his personality.
+Would he enter; or would he pass on? Her look of silent appeal showed
+me in which direction her wishes lay, but while I answered her glance
+by complete silence, I was conscious in some indistinct way that the
+business I had undertaken would be better furthered by his entrance.
+
+The blind have often been said to possess a sixth sense in place of the
+one they have lost. Though I am sure we made no noise, I soon perceived
+that he was aware of our presence. Stepping hastily forward he said, in
+the high and vibrating tone of restrained passion:
+
+“Zulma, are you there?”
+
+For a moment I thought she did not mean to answer, but knowing doubtless
+from experience the impossibility of deceiving him, she answered with a
+cheerful assent, dropping her hand as she did so from before my lips.
+
+He heard the slight rustle which accompanied the movement, and a look
+I found it hard to comprehend flashed over his features, altering his
+expression so completely that he seemed another man.
+
+“You have someone with you,” he declared, advancing another step, but
+with none of the uncertainty which usually accompanies the movements
+of the blind. “Some dear friend,” he went on, with an almost sarcastic
+emphasis and a forced smile that had little of gaiety in it.
+
+The agitated and distressed blush which answered him could have but one
+interpretation. He suspected that her hand had been clasped in mine, and
+she perceived his thought and knew that I perceived it also.
+
+Drawing herself up, she moved towards him, saying in a sweet womanly
+tone:
+
+“It is no friend, Constant, not even an acquaintance. The person whom I
+now present to you is a representative from some detective agency. He is
+here upon a trivial errand which will soon be finished, when I will join
+you in the office.”
+
+I knew she was but taking a choice between two evils, that she would
+have saved her husband the knowledge of my calling as well as of my
+presence in the house, if her self-respect would have allowed it; but
+neither she nor I anticipated the effect which this introduction of
+myself in my business capacity would produce upon him.
+
+“A detective,” he repeated, staring with his sightless eyes, as if, in
+his eagerness to see, he half hoped his lost sense would return. “He can
+have no trivial errand here; he has been sent by God Himself to--”
+
+“Let me speak for you,” hastily interposed his wife, springing to his
+side and clasping his arm with a fervour that was equally expressive
+of appeal and command. Then turning to me, she explained: “Since Mr.
+Hasbrouck’s unaccountable death, my husband has been labouring under
+an hallucination which I have only to mention, for you to recognize its
+perfect absurdity. He thinks--oh! do not look like that, Constant; you
+know it is an hallucination which must vanish the moment we drag it into
+broad daylight--that he--he, the best man in all the world, was himself
+the assailant of Mr. Hasbrouck.”
+
+“Good God!”
+
+“I say nothing of the impossibility of this being so,” she went on in a
+fever of expostulation. “He is blind, and could not have delivered such
+a shot even if he had desired to; besides, he had no weapon. But the
+inconsistency of the thing speaks for itself, and should assure him that
+his mind is unbalanced and that he is merely suffering from a shock that
+was greater than we realized. He is a physician and has had many such
+instances in his own practice. Why, he was very much attached to Mr.
+Hasbrouck! They were the best of friends, and though he insists that he
+killed him, he cannot give any reason for the deed.”
+
+At these words the doctor’s face grew stern, and he spoke like an
+automaton repeating some fearful lesson:
+
+“I killed him. I went to his room and deliberately shot him. I had
+nothing against him, and my remorse is extreme. Arrest me and let me
+pay the penalty of my crime. It is the only way in which I can obtain
+peace.”
+
+Shocked beyond all power of self-control by this repetition of what she
+evidently considered the unhappy ravings of a madman, she let go his arm
+and turned upon me in frenzy.
+
+“Convince him!” she cried. “Convince him by your questions that he never
+could have done this fearful thing.”
+
+I was labouring under great excitement myself, for as a private agent
+with no official authority such as he evidently attributed to me in the
+blindness of his passion, I felt the incongruity of my position in the
+face of a matter of such tragic consequence. Besides, I agreed with her
+that he was in a distempered state of mind, and I hardly knew how
+to deal with one so fixed in his hallucination and with so much
+intelligence to support it. But the emergency was great, for he was
+holding out his wrists in the evident expectation of my taking him into
+instant custody; and the sight was killing his wife, who had sunk on the
+floor between us, in terror and anguish.
+
+“You say you killed Mr. Hasbrouck,” I began. “Where did you get your
+pistol, and what did you do with it after you left his house?”
+
+“My husband had no pistol; never had any pistol,” put in Mrs. Zabriskie,
+with vehement assertion. “If I had seen him with such a weapon--”
+
+“I threw it away. When I left the house, I cast it as far from me as
+possible, for I was frightened at what I had done, horribly frightened.”
+
+“No pistol was ever found,” I answered with a smile, forgetting for the
+moment that he could not see. “If such an instrument had been found in
+the street after a murder of such consequence, it certainly would have
+been brought to the police.”
+
+“You forget that a good pistol is valuable property,” he went on
+stolidly. “Someone came along before the general alarm was given; and
+seeing such a treasure lying on the sidewalk, picked it up and carried
+it off. Not being an honest man, he preferred to keep it to drawing the
+attention of the police upon himself.”
+
+“Hum, perhaps,” said I; “but where did you get it. Surely you can tell
+where you procured such a weapon, if, as your wife intimates, you did
+not own one.”
+
+“I bought it that selfsame night of a friend; a friend whom I will
+not name, since he resides no longer in this country. I--” He paused;
+intense passion was in his face; he turned towards his wife, and a low
+cry escaped him, which made her look up in fear.
+
+“I do not wish to go into any particulars,” said he. “God forsook me
+and I committed a horrible crime. When I am punished, perhaps peace will
+return to me and happiness to her. I would not wish her to suffer too
+long or too bitterly for my sin.”
+
+“Constant!” What love was in the cry! It seemed to move him and turn his
+thoughts for a moment into a different channel.
+
+“Poor child!” he murmured, stretching out his hands by an irresistible
+impulse towards her. But the change was but momentary, and he was soon
+again the stern and determined self-accuser. “Are you going to take me
+before a magistrate?” he asked. “If so, I have a few duties to perform
+which you are welcome to witness.”
+
+This was too much; I felt that the time had come for me to disabuse his
+mind of the impression he had unwittingly formed of me. I therefore said
+as considerately as I could:
+
+“You mistake my position, Dr. Zabriskie. Though a detective of some
+experience, I have no connection with the police and no right to intrude
+myself in a matter of such tragic importance. If, however, you are as
+anxious as you say to subject yourself to police examination, I will
+mention the same to the proper authorities, and leave them to take such
+action as they think best.”
+
+“That will be still more satisfactory to me,” said he; “for though I
+have many times contemplated giving myself up, I have still much to
+do before I can leave my home and practice without injury to others.
+Good-day; when you want me you will find me here.”
+
+He was gone, and the poor young wife was left crouching on the floor
+alone. Pitying her shame and terror, I ventured to remark that it was
+not an uncommon thing for a man to confess to a crime he had never
+committed, and assured her that the matter would be inquired into very
+carefully before any attempt was made upon his liberty.
+
+She thanked me, and slowly rising, tried to regain her equanimity; but
+the manner as well as the matter of her husband’s self-condemnation
+was too overwhelming in its nature for her to recover readily from her
+emotions.
+
+“I have long dreaded this,” she acknowledged. “For months I have
+foreseen that he would make some rash communication or insane avowal.
+If I had dared, I would have consulted some physician about this
+hallucination of his; but he was so sane on other points that I
+hesitated to give my dreadful secret to the world. I kept hoping that
+time and his daily pursuits would have their effect and restore him to
+himself. But his illusion grows, and now I fear that nothing will
+ever convince him that he did not commit the deed of which he accuses
+himself. If he were not blind I would have more hope, but the blind have
+so much time for brooding.”
+
+“I think he had better be indulged in his fancies for the present,” I
+ventured. “If he is labouring under an illusion it might be dangerous to
+cross him.”
+
+“If?” she echoed in an indescribable tone of amazement and dread. “Can
+you for a moment harbour the idea that he has spoken the truth?”
+
+“Madam,” I returned, with something of the cynicism of my calling, “what
+caused you to give such an unearthly scream just before this murder was
+made known to the neighbourhood?”
+
+She stared, paled, and finally began to tremble, not, as I now believe,
+at the insinuation latent in my words, but at the doubts which my
+question aroused in her own breast.
+
+“Did I?” she asked; then with a burst of candour which seemed
+inseparable from her nature, she continued: “Why do I try to mislead you
+or deceive myself? I did give a shriek just before the alarm was raised
+next door; but it was not from any knowledge I had of a crime having
+been committed, but because I unexpectedly saw before me my husband whom
+I supposed to be on his way to Poughkeepsie. He was looking very pale
+and strange, and for a moment I thought I stood face to face with his
+ghost. But he soon explained his appearance by saying that he had
+fallen from the train and had only been saved by a miracle from being
+dismembered; and I was just bemoaning his mishap and trying to calm him
+and myself, when that terrible shout was heard next door of ‘Murder!
+murder!’ Coming so soon after the shock he had himself experienced, it
+quite unnerved him, and I think we can date his mental disturbance from
+that moment. For he began immediately to take a morbid interest in the
+affair next door, though it was weeks, if not months, before he let a
+word fall of the nature of those you have just heard. Indeed it was
+not till I repeated to him some of the expressions he was continually
+letting fall in his sleep, that he commenced to accuse himself of crime
+and talk of retribution.”
+
+“You say that your husband frightened you on that night by appearing
+suddenly at the door when you thought him on his way to Poughkeepsie. Is
+Dr. Zabriskie in the habit of thus going and coming alone at an hour so
+late as this must have been?”
+
+“You forget that to the blind, night is less full of perils than the
+day. Often and often has my husband found his way to his patients’
+houses alone after midnight; but on this especial evening he had Leonard
+with him. Leonard was his chauffeur, and always accompanied him when he
+went any distance.”
+
+“Well, then,” said I, “all we have to do is to summon Leonard and hear
+what he has to say concerning this affair. He will surely know whether
+or not his master went into the house next door.”
+
+“Leonard has left us,” she said. “Dr. Zabriskie has another chauffeur
+now. Besides (I have nothing to conceal from you), Leonard was not with
+him when he returned to the house that evening or the doctor would not
+have been without his portmanteau till the next day. Something--I have
+never known what--caused them to separate, and that is why I have no
+answer to give the doctor when he accuses himself of committing a deed
+that night so wholly out of keeping with every other act of his life.”
+
+“And have you never asked Leonard why they separated and why he allowed
+his master to come home alone after the shock he had received at the
+station?”
+
+“I did not know there was any reason for my doing so till long after he
+had left us.”
+
+“And when did he leave?”
+
+“That I do not remember. A few weeks or possibly a few days after that
+dreadful night.”
+
+“And where is he now?”
+
+“Ah, that I have not the least means of knowing. But,” she objected, in
+sudden distrust, “what do you want of Leonard? If he did not follow Dr.
+Zabriskie to his own door, he could tell us nothing that would convince
+my husband that he is labouring under an illusion.”
+
+“But he might tell us something which would convince us that Dr.
+Zabriskie was not himself after the accident; that he--”
+
+“Hush!” came from her lips in imperious tones. “I will not believe that
+he shot Mr. Hasbrouck even if you prove him to have been insane at the
+time. How could he? My husband is blind. It would take a man of very
+keen sight to force himself into a house closed for the night, and kill
+a man in the dark at one shot.”
+
+“On the contrary, it is only a blind man who could do this,” cried a
+voice from the doorway. “Those who trust to eyesight must be able to
+catch a glimpse of the mark they aim at, and this room, as I have been
+told, was without a glimmer of light. But the blind trust to sound, and
+as Mr. Hasbrouck spoke--”
+
+“Oh!” burst from the horrified wife, “is there no one to stop him when
+he speaks like that?”
+
+III
+
+As you will see, this matter, so recklessly entered into, had proved
+to be of too serious a nature for me to pursue it farther without
+the cognizance of the police. Having a friend on the force in whose
+discretion I could rely, I took him into my confidence and asked for his
+advice. He pooh-poohed the doctor’s statements, but said that he would
+bring the matter to the attention of the superintendent and let me
+know the result. I agreed to this, and we parted with the mutual
+understanding that mum was the word till some official decision had been
+arrived at. I had not long to wait. At an early day he came in with the
+information that there had been, as might be expected, a division of
+opinion among his superiors as to the importance of Dr. Zabriskie’s
+so-called confession, but in one point they had been unanimous and that
+was the desirability of his appearing before them at Headquarters for
+a personal examination. As, however, in the mind of two out of three of
+them his condition was attributed entirely to acute mania, it had been
+thought best to employ as their emissary one in whom he had already
+confided and submitted his case to,--in other words, myself. The time
+was set for the next afternoon at the close of his usual office hours.
+
+He went without reluctance, his wife accompanying him. In the short time
+which elapsed between their leaving home and entering Headquarters,
+I embraced the opportunity of observing them, and I found the study
+equally exciting and interesting. His face was calm but hopeless, and
+his eye, dark and unfathomable, but neither frenzied nor uncertain. He
+spoke but once and listened to nothing, though now and then his wife
+moved as if to attract his attention, and once even stole her hand
+towards his, in the tender hope that he would feel its approach and
+accept her sympathy. But he was deaf as well as blind; and sat wrapped
+up in thoughts which she, I know, would have given worlds to penetrate.
+
+Her countenance was not without its mystery also. She showed in every
+lineament passionate concern and misery, and a deep tenderness from
+which the element of fear was not absent. But she, as well as he,
+betrayed that some misunderstanding deeper than any I had previously
+suspected drew its intangible veil between them and made the near
+proximity in which they sat at once a heart-piercing delight and an
+unspeakable pain. What was the misunderstanding; and what was the
+character of the fear that modified her every look of love in his
+direction? Her perfect indifference to my presence proved that it was
+not connected with the position in which he had placed himself towards
+the police by his voluntary confession of crime, nor could I thus
+interpret the expression, of frantic question which now and then
+contracted her features, as she raised her eyes towards his sightless
+orbs, and strove to read in his firm set lips the meaning of those
+assertions she could only ascribe to loss of reason.
+
+The stopping of the carriage seemed to awaken both from thoughts that
+separated rather than united them. He turned his face in her direction,
+and she stretching forth her hand, prepared to lead him from the
+carriage, without any of that display of timidity which had previously
+been evident in her manner.
+
+As his guide she seemed to fear nothing; as his lover, everything.
+
+“There is another and a deeper tragedy underlying the outward and
+obvious one,” was my inward conclusion, as I followed them into the
+presence of the gentlemen awaiting them.
+
+Dr. Zabriskie’s quiet appearance was in itself a shock to those who had
+anticipated the feverish unrest of a madman; so was his speech, which
+was calm, straightforward, and quietly determined.
+
+“I shot Mr. Hasbrouck,” was his steady affirmation, given without any
+show of frenzy or desperation. “If you ask me why I did it, I cannot
+answer; if you ask me how, I am ready to state all that I know
+concerning the matter.”
+
+“But, Dr. Zabriskie,” interposed one of the inspectors, “the why is the
+most important thing for us to consider just now. If you really desire
+to convince us that you committed this dreadful crime of killing a
+totally inoffensive man, you should give us some reason for an act so
+opposed to all your instincts and general conduct.”
+
+But the doctor continued unmoved:
+
+“I had no reason for murdering Mr. Hasbrouck. A hundred questions can
+elicit no other reply; you had better keep to the how.”
+
+A deep-drawn breath from the wife answered the looks of the three
+gentlemen to whom this suggestion was offered. “You see,” that breath
+seemed to protest, “that he is not in his right mind.”
+
+I began to waver in my own opinion, and yet the intuition which has
+served me in cases seemingly as impenetrable as this bade me beware of
+following the general judgment.
+
+“Ask him to inform you how he got into the house,” I whispered to
+Inspector D--, who sat nearest me.
+
+Immediately the inspector put the question which I had suggested:
+
+“By what means did you enter Mr. Hasbrouck’s house at so late an hour as
+this murder occurred?”
+
+The blind doctor’s head fell forward on his breast, and he hesitated for
+the first and only time.
+
+“You will not believe me,” said he; “but the door was ajar when I came
+to it. Such things make crime easy; it is the only excuse I have to
+offer for this dreadful deed.”
+
+The front door of a respectable citizen’s house ajar at half-past eleven
+at night! It was a statement that fixed in all minds the conviction of
+the speaker’s irresponsibility. Mrs. Zabriskie’s brow cleared, and
+her beauty became for a moment dazzling as she held out her hands in
+irrepressible relief towards those who were interrogating her husband.
+I alone kept my impassibility. A possible explanation of this crime
+had flashed like lightning across my mind; an explanation from which I
+inwardly recoiled, even while I felt forced to consider it.
+
+“Dr. Zabriskie,” remarked the inspector formerly mentioned as friendly
+to him, “such old servants as those kept by Mr. Hasbrouck do not leave
+the front door ajar at twelve o’clock at night.”
+
+“Yet ajar it was,” repeated the blind doctor, with quiet emphasis; “and
+finding it so, I went in. When I came out again, I closed it. Do you
+wish me to swear to what I say? If so, I am ready.”
+
+What reply could they give? To see this splendid-looking man, hallowed
+by an affliction so great that in itself it called forth the compassion
+of the most indifferent, accusing himself of a cold-blooded crime, in
+tones which sounded dispassionate because of the will forcing their
+utterance, was too painful in itself for any one to indulge in
+unnecessary words. Compassion took the place of curiosity, and each and
+all of us turned involuntary looks of pity upon the young wife pressing
+so eagerly to his side.
+
+“For a blind man,” ventured one, “the assault was both deft and certain.
+Are you accustomed to Mr. Hasbrouck’s house, that you found your way
+with so little difficulty to his bedroom?”
+
+“I am accustomed--” he began.
+
+But here his wife broke in with irrepressible passion:
+
+“He is not accustomed to that house. He has never been beyond the first
+floor. Why, why do you question him? Do you not see--”
+
+His hand was on her lips.
+
+“Hush!” he commanded. “You know my skill in moving about a house; how
+I sometimes deceive those who do not know me into believing that I can
+see, by the readiness with which I avoid obstacles and find my way even
+in strange and untried scenes. Do not try to make them think I am not
+in my right mind, or you will drive me into the very condition you
+attribute to me.”
+
+His face, rigid, cold, and set, looked like that of a mask. Hers, drawn
+with horror and filled with question that was fast taking the form of
+doubt, bespoke an awful tragedy from which more than one of us recoiled.
+
+“Can you shoot a man dead without seeing him?” asked the Superintendent,
+with painful effort.
+
+“Give me a pistol and I will show you,” was the quick reply.
+
+A low cry came from the wife. In a drawer near to every one of us there
+lay a pistol, but no one moved to take it out. There was a look in the
+doctor’s eye which made us fear to trust him with a pistol just then.
+
+“We will accept your assurance that you possess a skill beyond that of
+most men,” returned the Superintendent. And beckoning me forward, he
+whispered: “This is a case for the doctors and not for the police.
+Remove him quietly, and notify Dr. Southyard of what I say.”
+
+But Dr. Zabriskie, who seemed to have an almost supernatural acuteness
+of hearing, gave a violent start at this, and spoke up for the first
+time with real passion in his voice:
+
+“No, no, I pray you. I can bear anything but that. Remember, gentlemen,
+that I am blind; that I cannot see who is about me; that my life would
+be a torture if I felt myself surrounded by spies watching to catch some
+evidence of madness in me. Rather conviction at once, death, dishonour,
+and obloquy. These I have incurred. These I have brought upon myself by
+crime, but not this worse fate--oh! not this worse fate.”
+
+His passion was so intense and yet so confined within the bounds of
+decorum, that we felt strangely impressed by it. Only the wife stood
+transfixed, with the dread growing in her heart, till her white,
+waxen visage seemed even more terrible to contemplate than his
+passion-distorted one.
+
+“It is not strange that my wife thinks me demented,” the doctor
+continued, as if afraid of the silence that answered him. “But it is
+your business to discriminate, and you should know a sane man when you
+see him.”
+
+Inspector D---- no longer hesitated.
+
+“Very well,” said he, “give me the least proof that your assertions are
+true, and we will lay your case before the prosecuting attorney.”
+
+“Proof? Is not a man’s word--”
+
+“No man’s confession is worth much without some evidence to support
+it. In your case there is none. You cannot even produce the pistol with
+which you assert yourself to have committed the deed.”
+
+“True, true. I was frightened by what I had done, and the instinct of
+self-preservation led me to rid myself of the weapon in any way I could.
+But someone found this pistol; someone picked it up from the sidewalk of
+Lafayette Place on that fatal night. Advertise for it. Offer a reward.
+I will give you the money.” Suddenly he appeared to realize how all this
+sounded. “Alas!” cried he, “I know the story seems improbable; but it is
+not the probable things that happen in this life, as, you should know,
+who every day dig deep into the heart of human affairs.”
+
+Were these the ravings of insanity? I began to understand the wife’s
+terror.
+
+“I bought the pistol,” he went on, “of--alas! I cannot tell you his
+name. Everything is against me. I cannot adduce one proof; yet even she
+is beginning to fear that my story is true. I know it by her silence, a
+silence that yawns between us like a deep and unfathomable gulf.”
+
+But at these words her voice rang out with passionate vehemence.
+
+“No, no, it is false! I will never believe that your hands have been
+plunged in blood. You are my own pure-hearted Constant, cold, perhaps,
+and stern, but with no guilt upon your conscience save in your own wild
+imagination.”
+
+“Zulma, you are no friend to me,” he declared, pushing her gently aside.
+“Believe me innocent, but say nothing to lead these others to doubt my
+word.”
+
+And she said no more, but her looks spoke volumes.
+
+The result was that he was not detained, though he prayed for instant
+commitment. He seemed to dread his own home, and the surveillance to
+which he instinctively knew he would henceforth be subjected. To see him
+shrink from his wife’s hand as she strove to lead him from the room was
+sufficiently painful; but the feeling thus aroused was nothing to that
+with which we observed the keen and agonized expectancy of his look as
+he turned and listened for the steps of the officer who followed him.
+
+“From this time on I shall never know whether or not I am alone,” was
+his final observation as he left the building.
+
+Here is where the matter rests and here, Miss Strange, is where you come
+in. The police were for sending an expert alienist into the house; but
+agreeing with me, and, in fact, with the doctor himself, that if he were
+not already out of his mind, this would certainly make them so, they, at
+my earnest intercession, have left the next move to me.
+
+That move as you must by this time understand involves you. You have
+advantages for making Mrs. Zabriskie’s acquaintance of which I beg you
+to avail yourself. As friend or patient, you must win your way into that
+home? You must sound to its depths one or both of these two wretched
+hearts. Not so much now for any possible reward which may follow the
+elucidation of this mystery which has come so near being shelved, but
+for pity’s sake and the possible settlement of a question which is fast
+driving a lovely member of your sex distracted.
+
+May I rely on you? If so--
+
+Various instructions followed, over which Violet mused with a
+deprecatory shaking of her head till the little clock struck two. Why
+should she, already in a state of secret despondency, intrude herself
+into an affair at once so painful and so hopeless?
+
+IV
+
+But by morning her mood changed. The pathos of the situation had seized
+upon her in her dreams, and before the day was over, she was to be seen,
+as a prospective patient, in Dr. Zabriskie’s office. She had a slight
+complaint as her excuse, and she made the most of it. That is, at first,
+but as the personality of this extraordinary man began to make its
+usual impression, she found herself forgetting her own condition in the
+intensity of interest she felt in his. Indeed, she had to pull herself
+together more than once lest he should suspect the double nature of
+her errand, and she actually caught herself at times rejoicing in his
+affliction since it left her with only her voice to think of, in her
+hated but necessary task of deception.
+
+That she succeeded in this effort, even with one of his nice ear, was
+evident from the interested way in which he dilated upon her malady, and
+the minute instructions he was careful to give her--the physician being
+always uppermost in his strange dual nature, when he was in his office
+or at the bedside of the sick;--and had she not been a deep reader of
+the human soul she would have left his presence in simple wonder at his
+skill and entire absorption in an exacting profession.
+
+But as it was, she carried with her an image of subdued suffering, which
+drove her, from that moment on, to ask herself what she could do to aid
+him in his fight against his own illusion; for to associate such a man
+with a senseless and cruel murder was preposterous.
+
+What this wish, helped by no common determination, led her into, it was
+not in her mind to conceive. She was making her one great mistake, but
+as yet she was in happy ignorance of it, and pursued the course laid out
+for her without a doubt of the ultimate result.
+
+Having seen and made up her mind about the husband, she next sought to
+see and gauge the wife. That she succeeded in doing this by means of
+one of her sly little tricks is not to the point; but what followed in
+natural consequence is very much so. A mutual interest sprang up between
+them which led very speedily to actual friendship. Mrs. Zabriskie’s
+hungry heart opened to the sympathetic little being who clung to her in
+such evident admiration; while Violet, brought face to face with a real
+woman, succumbed to feelings which made it no imposition on her part to
+spend much of her leisure in Zulma Zabriskie’s company.
+
+The result were the following naive reports which drifted into her
+employer’s office from day to day, as this intimacy deepened.
+
+The doctor is settling into a deep melancholy, from which he tries to
+rise at times, but with only indifferent success. Yesterday he rode
+around to all his patients for the purpose of withdrawing his services
+on the plea of illness. But he still keeps his office open, and today
+I had the opportunity of witnessing his reception and treatment of the
+many sufferers who came to him for aid. I think he was conscious of
+my presence, though an attempt had been made to conceal it. For the
+listening look never left his face from the moment he entered the room,
+and once he rose and passed quickly from wall to wall, groping with
+out-stretched hands into every nook and corner, and barely escaping
+contact with the curtain behind which I was hidden. But if he suspected
+my presence, he showed no displeasure at it, wishing perhaps for a
+witness to his skill in the treatment of disease.
+
+And truly I never beheld a finer manifestation of practical insight
+in cases of a more or less baffling nature. He is certainly a most
+wonderful physician, and I feel bound to record that his mind is as
+clear for business as if no shadow had fallen upon it.
+
+Dr. Zabriskie loves his wife, but in a way torturing to himself and
+to her. If she is gone from the house he is wretched, and yet when she
+returns he often forbears to speak to her, or if he does speak it is
+with a constraint that hurts her more than his silence. I was present
+when she came in today. Her step, which had been eager on the stairway,
+flagged as she approached the room, and he naturally noted the change
+and gave his own interpretation to it. His face, which had been very
+pale, flushed suddenly, and a nervous trembling seized him which he
+sought in vain to hide. But by the time her tall and beautiful figure
+stood in the doorway, he was his usual self again in all but the
+expression of his eyes, which stared straight before him in an agony of
+longing only to be observed in those who have once seen.
+
+“Where have you been, Zulma?” he asked, as contrary to his wont, he
+moved to meet her.
+
+“To my mother’s, to Arnold & Constable’s, and to the hospital, as
+you requested,” was her quick answer, made without faltering or
+embarrassment.
+
+He stepped still nearer and took her hand, and as he did so my eye
+fell on his and I noted that his finger lay over her pulse in seeming
+unconsciousness.
+
+“Nowhere else?” he queried.
+
+She smiled the saddest kind of smile and shook her head; then,
+remembering that he could not see this movement, she cried in a wistful
+tone:
+
+“Nowhere else, Constant; I was too anxious to get back.”
+
+I expected him to drop her hand at this, but he did not; and his finger
+still rested on her pulse.
+
+“And whom did you see while you were gone?” he continued.
+
+She told him, naming over several names.
+
+“You must have enjoyed yourself,” was his cold comment, as he let go her
+hand and turned away. But his manner showed relief, and I could not but
+sympathize with the pitiable situation of a man who found himself forced
+into means like this for probing the heart of his young wife.
+
+Yet when I turned towards her, I realized that her position was but
+little happier than his. Tears are no strangers to her eyes, but those
+which welled up at this moment seemed to possess a bitterness that
+promised but little peace for her future. Yet she quickly dried them and
+busied herself with ministrations for his comfort.
+
+If I am any judge of woman, Zulma Zabriskie is superior to most of her
+sex. That her husband mistrusts her is evident, but whether this is the
+result of the stand she has taken in his regard, or only a manifestation
+of dementia, I have as yet been unable to determine. I dread to leave
+them alone together, and yet when I presume to suggest that she should
+be on her guard in her interviews with him, she smiles very placidly and
+tells me that nothing would give her greater joy than to see him lift
+his hand against her, for that would argue that he is not accountable
+for his deeds or assertions.
+
+Yet it would be a grief to see her injured by this passionate and
+unhappy man.
+
+You have said that you wanted all the details I could give; so I feel
+bound to say that Dr. Zabriskie tries to be considerate of his wife,
+though he often fails in the attempt. When she offers herself as his
+guide, or assists him with his mail or performs any of the many acts of
+kindness by which she continually manifests her sense of his affliction,
+he thanks her with courtesy and often with kindness, yet I know she
+would willingly exchange all his set phrases for one fond embrace or
+impulsive smile of affection. It would be too much to say that he is
+not in the full possession of his faculties, and yet upon what other
+hypothesis can we account for the inconsistencies of his conduct?
+
+I have before me two visions of mental suffering. At noon I passed the
+office door, and looking within, saw the figure of Dr. Zabriskie seated
+in his great chair, lost in thought or deep in those memories which make
+an abyss in one’s consciousness. His hands, which were clenched, rested
+upon the arms of his chair, and in one of them I detected a woman’s
+glove, which I had no difficulty in recognizing as one of the pair worn
+by his wife this morning. He held it as a tiger might hold his prey or a
+miser his gold, but his set features and sightless eyes betrayed that a
+conflict of emotions was being waged within him, among which tenderness
+had but little share.
+
+Though alive as he usually is to every sound, he was too absorbed at
+this moment to notice my presence, though I had taken no pains to
+approach quietly. I therefore stood for a full minute watching him, till
+an irresistible sense of the shame at thus spying upon a blind man in
+his moments of secret anguish compelled me to withdraw. But not before I
+saw his features relax in a storm of passionate feeling, as he rained
+kisses after kisses on the senseless kid he had so long held in his
+motionless grasp. Yet when an hour later he entered the dining-room on
+his wife’s arm, there was nothing in his manner to show that he had in
+any way changed in his attitude towards her.
+
+The other picture was more tragic still. I was seeking Mrs. Zabriskie in
+her own room, when I caught a fleeting vision of her tall form, with her
+arms thrown up over her head in a paroxysm of feeling which made her as
+oblivious to my presence as her husband had been several hours before.
+Were the words that escaped her lips “Thank God we have no children!”
+ or was this exclamation suggested to me by the passion and unrestrained
+impulse of her action?
+
+So much up to date. Interesting enough, or so her employer seemed
+to think, as he went hurriedly through the whole story, one special
+afternoon in his office, tapping each sheet as he laid it aside with his
+sagacious forefinger, as though he would say, “Enough! My theory still
+holds good; nothing contradictory here; on the contrary complete and
+undisputable confirmation of the one and only explanation of this
+astounding crime.”
+
+What was that theory; and in what way and through whose efforts had he
+been enabled to form one? The following notes may enlighten us. Though
+written in his own hand, and undoubtedly a memorandum of his own
+activities, he evidently thinks it worth while to reperuse them in
+connection with those he had just laid aside.
+
+We can do no better than read them also.
+
+We omit dates.
+
+Watched the Zabriskie mansion for five hours this morning, from the
+second story window of an adjoining hotel. Saw the doctor when he drove
+away on his round of visits, and saw him when he returned. A coloured
+man accompanied him.
+
+Today I followed Mrs. Zabriskie. She went first to a house in Washington
+Place where I am told her mother lives. Here she stayed some time, after
+which she drove down to Canal Street, where she did some shopping,
+and later stopped at the hospital, into which I took the liberty of
+following her. She seemed to know many there, and passed from cot to cot
+with a smile in which I alone discerned the sadness of a broken heart.
+When she left, I left also, without having learned anything beyond the
+fact that Mrs. Zabriskie is one who does her duty in sorrow as in joy.
+A rare, and trustworthy woman I should say, and yet her husband does not
+trust her. Why?
+
+I have spent this day in accumulating details in regard to Dr. and Mrs.
+Zabriskie’s life previous to the death of Mr. Hasbrouck. I learned from
+sources it would be unwise to quote just here, that Mrs. Zabriskie had
+not lacked enemies to charge her with coquetry; that while she had never
+sacrificed her dignity in public, more than one person had been heard to
+declare that Dr. Zabriskie was fortunate in being blind, since the sight
+of his wife’s beauty would have but poorly compensated him for the pain
+he would have suffered in seeing how that beauty was admired.
+
+That all gossip is more or less tinged with exaggeration I have no
+doubt, yet when a name is mentioned in connection with such stories,
+there is usually some truth at the bottom of them. And a name is
+mentioned in this case, though I do not think it worth my while to
+repeat it here; and loth as I am to recognize the fact, it is a name
+that carries with it doubts that might easily account for the husband’s
+jealousy. True, I have found no one who dares hint that she still
+continues to attract attention or to bestow smiles in any direction save
+where they legally belong. For since a certain memorable night which
+we all know, neither Dr. Zabriskie nor his wife have been seen save
+in their own domestic circle, and it is not into such scenes that this
+serpent, to whom I have just alluded, ever intrudes, nor is it in
+places of sorrow or suffering that his smile shines, or his fascinations
+flourish.
+
+And so one portion of my theory is proved to be sound. Dr. Zabriskie is
+jealous of his wife; whether with good cause or bad I am not prepared to
+decide; since her present attitude, clouded as it is by the tragedy in
+which she and her husband are both involved, must differ very much
+from that which she held when her life was unshadowed by doubt, and her
+admirers could be counted by the score.
+
+I have just found out where Leonard is. As he is in service some miles
+up the river, I shall have to be absent from my post for several hours,
+but I consider the game well worth the candle.
+
+Light at last. I have not only seen Leonard, but succeeded in making
+him talk. His story is substantially this: That on the night so often
+mentioned, he packed his master’s portmanteau at eight o’clock and at
+ten called a taxi and rode with the doctor to the Central station. He
+was told to buy tickets to Poughkeepsie where his master had been
+called in consultation, and having done this, hurried back to join Dr.
+Zabriskie on the platform. They had walked together as far as the cars,
+and Dr. Zabriskie was just stepping on to the train, when a man pushed
+himself hurriedly between them and whispered something into his master’s
+ear, which caused him to fall back and lose his footing. Dr. Zabriskie’s
+body slid half under the car, but he was withdrawn before any harm
+was done, though the cars gave a lurch at that moment which must have
+frightened him exceedingly, for his face was white when he rose to his
+feet, and when Leonard offered to assist him again on the train, he
+refused to go and said he would return home and not attempt to ride to
+Poughkeepsie that night.
+
+The gentleman, whom Leonard now saw to be Mr. Stanton, an intimate
+friend of Dr. Zabriskie, smiled very queerly at this, and taking the
+doctor’s arm led him back to his own auto. Leonard naturally followed
+them, but the doctor, hearing his steps, turned and bade him, in a
+very peremptory tone, to take the cars home, and then, as if on second
+thought, told him to go to Poughkeepsie in his stead and explain to the
+people there that he was too shaken up by his misstep to do his duty,
+and that he would be with them next morning. This seemed strange to
+Leonard, but he had no reasons for disobeying his master’s orders, and
+so rode to Poughkeepsie. But the doctor did not follow him the next day;
+on the contrary he telegraphed for him to return, and when he got back
+dismissed him with a month’s wages. This ended Leonard’s connection with
+the Zabriskie family.
+
+A simple story bearing out what the wife has already told us; but it
+furnishes a link which may prove invaluable. Mr. Stanton, whose first
+name is Theodore, knows the real reason why Dr. Zabriskie returned
+home on the night of the seventeenth of July, 19--. Mr. Stanton,
+consequently, is the man to see, and this shall be my business tomorrow.
+
+Checkmate! Theodore Stanton is not in this country. Though this points
+him out as the man from whom Dr. Zabriskie bought the pistol, it does
+not facilitate my work, which is becoming more and more difficult.
+
+Mr. Stanton’s whereabouts are not even known to his most intimate
+friends. He sailed from this country most unexpectedly on the eighteenth
+of July a year ago, which was the day after the murder of Mr. Hasbrouck.
+It looks like a flight, especially as he has failed to maintain open
+communication even with his relatives. Was he the man who shot Mr.
+Hasbrouck? No; but he was the man who put the pistol in Dr. Zabriskie’s
+hand that night, and whether he did this with purpose or not, was
+evidently so alarmed at the catastrophe which followed that he took the
+first outgoing steamer to Europe. So far, all is clear, but there are
+mysteries yet to be solved, which will require my utmost tact. What if I
+should seek out the gentleman with whose name that of Mrs. Zabriskie has
+been linked, and see if I can in any way connect him with Mr. Stanton or
+the events of that night.
+
+Eureka! I have discovered that Mr. Stanton cherished a mortal hatred
+for the gentleman above mentioned. It was a covert feeling, but no
+less deadly on that account; and while it never led him into any
+extravagances, it was of force sufficient to account for many a secret
+misfortune occurring to that gentleman. Now if I can prove that he is
+the Mephistopheles who whispered insinuations into the ear of our blind
+Faust, I may strike a fact that will lead me out of this maze.
+
+But how can I approach secrets so delicate without compromising the
+woman I feel bound to respect if only for the devoted love she manifests
+for her unhappy husband!
+
+I shall have to appeal to Joe Smithers. This is something which I always
+hate to do, but as long as he will take money, and as long as he is
+fertile in resources for obtaining the truth from people I am myself
+unable to reach, I must make use of his cupidity and his genius. He is
+an honourable fellow in one way, and never retails as gossip what he
+acquires for our use. How will he proceed in this case, and by what
+tactics will he gain the very delicate information which we need? I own
+that I am curious to see.
+
+I shall really have to put down at length the incidents of this night.
+I always knew that Joe Smithers was invaluable not only to myself but to
+the police, but I really did not know he possessed talents of so high
+an order. He wrote me this morning that he had succeeded in getting Mr.
+T--‘s promise to spend the evening with him, and advised me that if I
+desired to be present as well, his own servant would not be at home, and
+that an opener of bottles would be required.
+
+As I was very anxious to see Mr. T---- with my own eyes, I accepted
+this invitation to play the spy, and went at the proper hour to Mr.
+Smithers’s rooms. I found them picturesque in the extreme. Piles of
+books stacked here and there to the ceiling made nooks and corners which
+could be quite shut off by a couple of old pictures set into movable
+frames capable of swinging out or in at the whim or convenience of the
+owner.
+
+As I had use for the dark shadows cast by these pictures, I pulled
+them both out, and made such other arrangements as appeared likely to
+facilitate the purpose I had in view; then I sat down and waited for the
+two gentlemen who were expected to come in together.
+
+They arrived almost immediately, whereupon I rose and played my part
+with all necessary discretion. While ridding Mr. T---- of his overcoat,
+I stole a look at his face. It is not a handsome one, but it boasts of
+a gay, devil-may-care expression which doubtless makes it dangerous to
+many women, while his manners are especially attractive, and his voice
+the richest and most persuasive that I ever heard. I contrasted him,
+almost against my will, with Dr. Zabriskie, and decided that with most
+women the former’s undoubted fascinations of speech and bearing would
+outweigh the latter’s great beauty and mental endowments; but I doubted
+if they would with her.
+
+The conversation which immediately began was brilliant but desultory,
+for Mr. Smithers, with an airy lightness for which he is remarkable,
+introduced topic after topic, perhaps for the purpose of showing off Mr.
+T-’s versatility, and perhaps for the deeper and more sinister purpose
+of shaking the kaleidoscope of talk so thoroughly, that the real topic
+which we were met to discuss should not make an undue impression on the
+mind of his guest.
+
+Meanwhile one, two, three bottles passed, and I had the pleasure
+of seeing Joe Smithers’s eye grow calmer and that of Mr. T---- more
+brilliant and more uncertain. As the last bottle was being passed, Joe
+cast me a meaning glance, and the real business of the evening began.
+
+I shall not attempt to relate the half dozen failures which Joe made in
+endeavouring to elicit the facts we were in search of, without arousing
+the suspicion of his visitor. I am only going to relate the successful
+attempt. They had been talking now for some hours, and I, who had long
+before been waved aside from their immediate presence, was hiding my
+curiosity and growing excitement behind one of the pictures, when I
+suddenly heard Joe say:
+
+“He has the most remarkable memory I ever met. He can tell to a day when
+any notable event occurred.”
+
+“Pshaw!” answered his companion, who, by the way, was known to pride
+himself upon his own memory for dates, “I can state where I went and
+what I did on every day in the year. That may not embrace what you call
+‘notable events,’ but the memory required is all the more remarkable, is
+it not?”
+
+“Pooh!” was his friend’s provoking reply, “you are bluffing, Ben; I will
+never believe that.”
+
+Mr. T-, who had passed by this time into that stage of intoxication
+which makes persistence in an assertion a duty as well as a pleasure,
+threw back his head, and as the wreaths of smoke rose in airy spirals
+from his lips, reiterated his statement, and offered to submit to any
+test of his vaunted powers which the other might dictate.
+
+“You keep a diary--” began Joe.
+
+“Which at the present moment is at home,” completed the other.
+
+“Will you allow me to refer to it tomorrow, if I am suspicious of the
+accuracy of your recollections?”
+
+“Undoubtedly,” returned the other.
+
+“Very well, then, I will wager you a cool fifty that you cannot tell
+where you were between the hours of ten and eleven on a certain night
+which I will name.”
+
+“Done!” cried the other, bringing out his pocket-book and laying it on
+the table before him.
+
+Joe followed his example and then summoned me.
+
+“Write a date down here,” he commanded, pushing a piece of paper towards
+me, with a look keen as the flash of a blade. “Any date, man,” he added,
+as I appeared to hesitate in the embarrassment I thought natural under
+the circumstances. “Put down day, month, and year, only don’t go too far
+back; not farther than two years.”
+
+Smiling with the air of a flunkey admitted to the sports of his
+superiors, I wrote a line and laid it before Mr. Smithers, who at once
+pushed it with a careless gesture towards his companion. You can of
+course guess the date I made use of: July 17, 19--. Mr. T--, who had
+evidently looked upon this matter as mere play, flushed scarlet as he
+read these words, and for one instant looked as if he had rather fly the
+house than answer Joe Smithers’s nonchalant glance of inquiry.
+
+“I have given my word and will keep it,” he said at last, but with a
+look in my direction that sent me reluctantly back to my retreat. “I
+don’t suppose you want names,” he went on; “that is, if anything I have
+to tell is of a delicate nature?”
+
+“Oh, no,” answered the other, “only facts and places.”
+
+“I don’t think places are necessary either,” he returned. “I will tell
+you what I did and that must serve you. I did not promise to give number
+and street.”
+
+“Well, well,” Joe exclaimed; “earn your fifty, that is all. Show that
+you remember where you were on the night of”--and with an admirable show
+of indifference he pretended to consult the paper between them--“the
+seventeenth of July, two years ago, and I shall be satisfied.”
+
+“I was at the club for one thing,” said Mr. T-; “then I went to see a
+lady friend, where I stayed until eleven. She wore a blue muslin--What
+is that?”
+
+I had betrayed myself by a quick movement which sent a glass tumbler
+crashing to the floor. Zulma Zabriskie had worn a blue muslin on
+that same night. You will find it noted in the report given me by the
+policeman who saw her on their balcony.
+
+“That noise?” It was Joe who was speaking. “You don’t know Reuben as
+well as I do or you wouldn’t ask. It is his practice, I am sorry to say,
+to accentuate his pleasure in draining my bottles by dropping a glass at
+every third one.”
+
+Mr. T---- went on.
+
+“She was a married woman and I thought she loved me; but--and this is
+the greatest proof I can offer you that I am giving you a true account
+of that night--she had not the slightest idea of the extent of my
+passion, and only consented to see me at all because she thought,
+poor thing, that a word from her would set me straight, and rid her
+of attentions she evidently failed to appreciate. A sorry figure for a
+fellow like me to cut; but you caught me on the most detestable date in
+my calendar and--”
+
+There he ceased being interesting and I anxious. The secret of a crime
+for which there seemed to be no reasonable explanation is no longer a
+mystery to me. I have but to warn Miss Strange--
+
+He had got thus far when a sound in the room behind him led him to look
+up. A lady had entered; a lady heavily veiled and trembling with what
+appeared to be an intense excitement.
+
+He thought he knew the figure, but the person, whoever it was, stood so
+still and remained so silent, he hesitated to address her; which seeing,
+she pushed up her veil and all doubt vanished.
+
+It was Violet herself. In disregard of her usual practice she had
+come alone to the office. This meant urgency of some kind. Had she too
+sounded this mystery? No, or her aspect would not have worn this look
+of triumph. What had happened then? He made an instant endeavour to find
+out.
+
+“You have news,” he quietly remarked. “Good news, I should judge, by
+your very cheery smile.”
+
+“Yes; I think I have found the way of bringing Dr. Zabriskie to
+himself.”
+
+Astonished beyond measure, so little did these words harmonize with the
+impressions and conclusions at which he had just arrived, something
+very like doubt spoke in his voice as he answered with the simple
+exclamation:
+
+“You do!”
+
+“Yes. He is obsessed by a fixed idea, and must be given an opportunity
+to test the truth of that idea. The shock of finding it a false one
+may restore him to his normal condition. He believes that he shot Mr.
+Hasbrouck with no other guidance than his sense of hearing. Now if it
+can be proved that his hearing is an insufficient guide for such an act
+(as of course it is) the shock of the discovery may clear his brain of
+its cobwebs. Mrs. Zabriskie thinks so, and the police--”
+
+“What’s that? The police?”
+
+“Yes, Dr. Zabriskie would be taken before them again this morning. No
+entreaties on the part of his wife would prevail; he insisted upon his
+guilt and asked her to accompany him there; and the poor woman found
+herself forced to go. Of course he encountered again the same division
+of opinion among the men he talked with. Three out of the four judged
+him insane, which observing, he betrayed great agitation and reiterated
+his former wish to be allowed an opportunity to prove his sanity
+by showing his skill in shooting. This made an impression; and a
+disposition was shown to grant his request then and there. But Mrs.
+Zabriskie would not listen to this. She approved of the experiment but
+begged that it might be deferred till another day and then take place in
+some spot remote from the city. For some reason they heeded her, and
+she has just telephoned me that this attempt of his is to take place
+tomorrow in the New Jersey woods. I am sorry that this should have been
+put through without you; and when I tell you that the idea originated
+with me--that from some word I purposely let fall one day, they both
+conceived this plan of ending the uncertainty that was devouring their
+lives, you will understand my excitement and the need I have of your
+support. Tell me that I have done well. Do not show me such a face--you
+frighten me--”
+
+“I do not wish to frighten you. I merely wish to know just who are going
+on this expedition.”
+
+“Some members of the police, Dr. Zabriskie, his wife, and--and myself.
+She begged--”
+
+“You must not go.”
+
+“Why? The affair is to be kept secret. The doctor will shoot, fail--Oh!”
+ she suddenly broke in, alarmed by his expression, “you think he will not
+fail--”
+
+“I think that you had better heed my advice and stay out of it. The
+affair is now in the hands of the police, and your place is anywhere but
+where they are.”
+
+“But I go as her particular friend. They have given her the privilege
+of taking with her one of her own sex and she has chosen me. I shall not
+fail her. Father is away, and if the awful disappointment you suggest
+awaits her, there is all the more reason why she should have some
+sympathetic support?”
+
+This was so true, that the fresh protest he was about to utter died on
+his lips. Instead, he simply remarked as he bowed her out:
+
+“I foresee that we shall not work much longer together. You are nearing
+the end of your endurance.”
+
+He never forgot the smile she threw back at him.
+
+V
+
+There are some events which impress the human mind so deeply that their
+memory mingles with all after-experiences. Though Violet had made it a
+rule to forget as soon as possible the tragic episodes incident to the
+strange career upon which she had so mysteriously embarked, there was
+destined to be one scene, if not more, which she has never been able to
+dismiss at will.
+
+This was the sight which met her eyes from the bow of the small boat
+in which Dr. Zabriskie and his wife were rowed over to Jersey on the
+afternoon which saw the end of this most sombre drama.
+
+Though it was by no means late in the day, the sun was already sinking,
+and the bright red glare which filled the west and shone full upon
+the faces of the half dozen people before her added much to the tragic
+nature of the scene, though she was far from comprehending its full
+significance.
+
+The doctor sat with his wife in the stern and it was upon their faces
+Violet’s glance was fixed. The glare shone luridly on his sightless
+eyeballs, and as she noticed his unwinking lids, she realized as never
+before what it was to be blind in the midst of sunshine. His wife’s
+eyes, on the contrary, were lowered, but there was a look of hopeless
+misery in her colourless face which made her appearance infinitely
+pathetic, and Violet felt confident that if he could only have seen
+her, he would not have maintained the cold and unresponsive manner which
+chilled the words on his poor wife’s lips and made all advance on her
+part impossible.
+
+On the seat in front of them sat an inspector and from some quarter,
+possibly from under the inspector’s coat, there came the monotonous
+ticking of the small clock, which was to serve as a target for the blind
+man’s aim.
+
+This ticking was all Violet heard, though the river was alive with
+traffic and large and small boats were steaming by them on every side.
+And I am sure it was all that Mrs. Zabriskie heard also, as with hand
+pressed to her heart, and eyes fixed on the opposite shore, she waited
+for the event which was to determine whether the man she loved was a
+criminal or only a being afflicted of God and worthy of her unceasing
+care and devotion.
+
+As the sun cast its last scarlet gleam over the water, the boat
+grounded, and Violet was enabled to have one passing word with Mrs.
+Zabriskie. She hardly knew what she said but the look she received in
+return was like that of a frightened child.
+
+But there was always to be seen in Mrs. Zabriskie’s countenance this
+characteristic blending of the severe and the childlike, and beyond an
+added pang of pity for this beautiful but afflicted woman, Violet let
+the moment pass without giving it the weight it perhaps demanded.
+
+“The doctor and his wife had a long talk last night,” was whispered in
+her ear as she wound her way with the rest into the heart of the woods.
+With a start she turned and perceived her employer following close
+behind her. He had come by another boat.
+
+“But it did not seem to heal whatever breach lies between them,” he
+proceeded. Then, in a quick, anxious tone, he whispered: “Whatever
+happens, do not lift your veil. I thought I saw a reporter skulking in
+the rear.”
+
+“I will be careful,” Violet assured him, and could say no more, as they
+had already reached the ground which had been selected for this trial
+at arms, and the various members of the party were being placed in their
+several positions.
+
+The doctor, to whom light and darkness were alike, stood with his face
+towards the western glow, and at his side were grouped the inspector and
+the two physicians. On the arm of one of the latter hung Dr. Zabriskie’s
+overcoat, which he had taken off as soon as he reached the field.
+
+Mrs. Zabriskie stood at the other end of the opening near a tall stump,
+upon which it had been decided that the clock should be placed when the
+moment came for the doctor to show his skill. She had been accorded the
+privilege of setting the clock on this stump, and Violet saw it shining
+in her hand as she paused for a moment to glance back at the circle of
+gentlemen who were awaiting her movements. The hands of the clock stood
+at five minutes to five, though Violet scarcely noted it at the time,
+for Mrs. Zabriskie was passing her and had stopped to say:
+
+“If he is not himself, he cannot be trusted. Watch him carefully and see
+that he does no mischief to himself or others. Ask one of the inspectors
+to stand at his right hand, and stop him if he does not handle his
+pistol properly.”
+
+Violet promised, and she passed on, setting the clock upon the stump and
+immediately drawing back to a suitable distance at the right, where she
+stood, wrapped in her long dark cloak. Her face shone ghastly white,
+even in its environment of snow-covered boughs, and noting this, Violet
+wished the minutes fewer between the present moment and the hour of
+five, at which time he was to draw the trigger.
+
+“Dr. Zabriskie,” quoth the inspector, “we have endeavoured to make this
+trial a perfectly fair one. You are to have a shot at a small clock
+which has been placed within a suitable distance, and which you are
+expected to hit, guided only by the sound which it will make in striking
+the hour of five. Are you satisfied with the arrangement?”
+
+“Perfectly. Where is my wife?”
+
+“On the other side of the field some ten paces from the stump upon which
+the clock is fixed.” He bowed, and his face showed satisfaction.
+
+“May I expect the clock to strike soon?”
+
+“In less than five minutes,” was the answer.
+
+“Then let me have the pistol; I wish to become acquainted with its size
+and weight.”
+
+We glanced at each other, then across at her.
+
+She made a gesture; it was one of acquiescence.
+
+Immediately the inspector placed the weapon in the blind man’s hand.
+It was at once apparent that he understood the instrument, and Violet’s
+hopes which had been strong up to this moment, sank at his air of
+confidence.
+
+“Thank God I am blind this hour and cannot see her,” fell from his lips,
+then, before the echo of these words had died away, he raised his voice
+and observed calmly enough, considering that he was about to prove
+himself a criminal in order to save himself from being thought a madman:
+
+“Let no one move. I must have my ears free for catching the first stroke
+of the clock.” And he raised the pistol before him.
+
+There was a moment of torturing suspense and deep, unbroken silence.
+Violet’s eyes were on him so she did not watch the clock, but she was
+suddenly moved by some irresistible impulse to note how Mrs. Zabriskie
+was bearing herself at this critical moment, and casting a hurried
+glance in her direction she perceived her tall figure swaying from side
+to side, as if under an intolerable strain of feeling. Her eyes were on
+the clock, the hands of which seemed to creep with snail-like pace along
+the dial, when unexpectedly, and a full minute before the minute hand
+had reached the stroke of five, Violet caught a movement on her part,
+saw the flash of something round and white show for an instant against
+the darkness of her cloak, and was about to shriek warning to the
+doctor, when the shrill, quick stroke of a clock rang out on the frosty
+air, followed by the ping and flash of a pistol.
+
+A sound of shattered glass, followed by a suppressed cry, told the
+bystanders that the bullet had struck the mark, but before any one could
+move, or they could rid their eyes of the smoke which the wind had blown
+into their faces, there came another sound which made their hair stand
+on end and sent the blood back in terror to their hearts. Another clock
+was striking, which they now perceived was still standing upright on the
+stump where Mrs. Zabriskie had placed it.
+
+Whence came the clock, then, which had struck before the time and been
+shattered for its pains? One quick look told them. On the ground, ten
+paces to the right, lay Zulma Zabriskie, a broken clock at her side, and
+in her breast a bullet which was fast sapping the life from her sweet
+eyes.
+
+They had to tell him, there was such pleading in her looks; and never
+will any of the hearers forget the scream which rang from his lips as
+he realized the truth. Breaking from their midst, he rushed forward, and
+fell at her feet as if guided by some supernatural instinct.
+
+“Zulma,” he shrieked, “what is this? Were not my hands dyed deep enough
+in blood that you should make me answerable for your life also?”
+
+Her eyes were closed but she opened them. Looking long and steadily at
+his agonized face, she faltered forth:
+
+“It is not you who have killed me; it is your crime. Had you been
+innocent of Mr. Hasbrouck’s death your bullet would never have found my
+heart. Did you think I could survive the proof that you had killed that
+good man?”
+
+“I did it unwittingly. I--”
+
+“Hush!” she commanded, with an awful look, which happily he could not
+see. “I had another motive. I wished to prove to you, even at the cost
+of my life, that I loved you, had always loved you, and not--”
+
+It was now his turn to silence her. His hand crept to her lips, and his
+despairing face turned itself blindly towards those about them.
+
+“Go!” he cried; “leave us! Let me take a last farewell of my dying wife,
+without listeners or spectators.”
+
+Consulting the eye of her employer who stood close beside her, and
+seeing no hope in it, Violet fell slowly back. The others, followed, and
+the doctor was left alone with his wife. From the distant position
+they took, they saw her arms creep round his neck, saw her head fall
+confidingly on his breast, then silence settled upon them, and upon all
+nature, the gathering twilight deepening, till the last glow disappeared
+from the heavens above and from the circle of leafless trees which
+enclosed this tragedy from the outside world.
+
+But at last there came a stir, and Dr. Zabriskie, rising up before them
+with the dead body of his wife held closely to his breast, confronted
+them with a countenance so rapturous that he looked like a man
+transfigured.
+
+“I will carry her to the boat,” said he. “Not another hand shall
+touch her. She was my true wife, my true wife!” And he towered into an
+attitude of such dignity and passion that for a moment he took on heroic
+proportions and they forgot that he had just proved himself to have
+committed a cold-blooded and ghastly crime.
+
+The stars were shining when the party again took their seats in the
+boat; and if the scene of their crossing to Jersey was impressive, what
+shall be said of the return?
+
+The doctor, as before, sat in the stern, an awesome figure, upon which
+the moon shone with a white radiance that seemed to lift his face out
+of the surrounding darkness and set it like an image of frozen horror
+before their eyes. Against his breast he held the form of his dead wife,
+and now and then Violet saw him stoop as if he were listening for some
+token of life from her set lips. Then he would lift himself again with
+hopelessness stamped upon his features, only to lean forward in renewed
+hope that was again destined to disappointment.
+
+Violet had been so overcome by this tragic end to all her hopes, that
+her employer had been allowed to enter the boat with her. Seated at her
+side in the seat directly in front of the doctor, he watched with
+her these simple tokens of a breaking heart, saying nothing till they
+reached midstream, when true to his instincts for all his awe and
+compassion, he suddenly bent towards him and said:
+
+“Dr. Zabriskie, the mystery of your crime is no longer a mystery to me.
+Listen and see if I do not understand your temptation, and how you, a
+conscientious and God-fearing man, came to slay your innocent neighbour.
+
+“A friend of yours, or so he called himself, had for a long time filled
+your ears with tales tending to make you suspicious of your wife and
+jealous of a certain man whom I will not name. You knew that your friend
+had a grudge against this man, and so for many months turned a deaf ear
+to his insinuations. But finally some change which you detected in your
+wife’s bearing or conversation roused your own suspicions, and you
+began to doubt her truth and to curse your blindness, which in a measure
+rendered you helpless. The jealous fever grew and had risen to a high
+point when one night--a memorable night--this friend met you just as you
+were leaving town, and with cruel craft whispered in your ear that the
+man you hated was even then with your wife and that if you would return
+at once to your home you would find him in her company.
+
+“The demon that lurks at the heart of all men, good or bad, thereupon
+took complete possession of you, and you answered this false friend by
+saying that you would not return without a pistol. Whereupon he offered
+to take you to his house and give you his. You consented, and getting
+rid of your servant by sending him to Poughkeepsie with your excuses,
+you entered your friend’s automobile.
+
+“You say you bought the pistol, and perhaps you did, but, however
+that may be, you left his house with it in your pocket, and declining
+companionship, walked home, arriving at the Colonnade a little before
+midnight.
+
+“Ordinarily you have no difficulty in recognizing your own doorstep.
+But, being in a heated frame of mind, you walked faster than usual and
+so passed your own house and stopped at that of Mr. Hasbrouck, one door
+beyond. As the entrances of these houses are all alike, there was but
+one way by which you could have made yourself sure that you had reached
+your own dwelling, and that was by feeling for the doctor’s sign at the
+side of the door. But you never thought of that. Absorbed in dreams
+of vengeance, your sole impulse was to enter by the quickest means
+possible. Taking out your night key, you thrust it into the lock. It
+fitted, but it took strength to turn it, so much strength that the key
+was twisted and bent by the effort. But this incident, which would have
+attracted your attention at another time, was lost upon you at this
+moment. An entrance had been effected, and you were in too excited a
+frame of mind to notice at what cost, or to detect the small differences
+apparent in the atmosphere and furnishings of the two houses, trifles
+which would have arrested your attention under other circumstances, and
+made you pause before the upper floor had been reached.
+
+“It was while going up the stairs that you took out your pistol, so that
+by the time you arrived at the front room door you held it already drawn
+and cocked in your hand. For, being blind, you feared escape on the part
+of your victim, and so waited for nothing but the sound of a man’s voice
+before firing. When, therefore, the unfortunate Mr. Hasbrouck, roused by
+this sudden intrusion, advanced with an exclamation of astonishment,
+you pulled the trigger, and killed him on the spot. It must have been
+immediately upon his fall that you recognized from some word he uttered,
+or from some contact you may have had with your surroundings, that you
+were in the wrong house and had killed the wrong man; for you cried
+out, in evident remorse, ‘God! what have I done!’ and fled without
+approaching your victim.
+
+“Descending the stairs, you rushed from the house, closing the front
+door behind you and regaining your own without being seen. But here you
+found yourself baffled in your attempted escape, by two things. First,
+by the pistol you still held in your hand, and secondly, by the fact
+that the key upon which you depended for entering your own door was
+so twisted out of shape that you knew it would be useless for you to
+attempt to use it. What did you do in this emergency? You have already
+told us, though the story seemed so improbable at the time, you found
+nobody to believe it but myself. The pistol you flung far away from
+you down the pavement, from which, by one of those rare chances which
+sometimes happen in this world, it was presently picked up by some late
+passer-by of more or less doubtful character. The door offered less
+of an obstacle than you had anticipated; for when you turned again you
+found it, if I am not greatly mistaken, ajar, left so, as we have reason
+to believe, by one who had gone out of it but a few minutes before in a
+state which left him but little master of his actions. It was this fact
+which provided you with an answer when you were asked how you succeeded
+in getting into Mr. Hasbrouck’s house after the family had retired for
+the night.
+
+“Astonished at the coincidence, but hailing with gladness the
+deliverance which it offered, you went in and ascended at once into your
+wife’s presence; and it was from her lips, and not from those of Mrs.
+Hasbrouck, that the cry arose which startled the neighbourhood and
+prepared men’s minds for the tragic words which were shouted a moment
+later from the next house.
+
+“But she who uttered the scream knew of no tragedy save that which
+was taking place in her own breast. She had just repulsed a dastardly
+suitor, and seeing you enter so unexpectedly in a state of unaccountable
+horror and agitation, was naturally stricken with dismay, and thought
+she saw your ghost, or what was worse, a possible avenger; while you,
+having failed to kill the man you sought, and having killed a man
+you esteemed, let no surprise on her part lure you into any dangerous
+self-betrayal. You strove instead to soothe her, and even attempted to
+explain the excitement under which you laboured, by an account of your
+narrow escape at the station, till the sudden alarm from next door
+distracted her attention, and sent both your thoughts and hers in a
+different direction. Not till conscience had fully awakened and the
+horror of your act had had time to tell upon your sensitive nature, did
+you breathe forth those vague confessions, which, not being supported by
+the only explanations which would have made them credible, led her, as
+well as the police, to consider you affected in your mind. Your pride as
+a man and your consideration for her as a woman kept you silent, but did
+not keep the worm from preying upon your heart.
+
+“Am I not correct in my surmises, Dr. Zabriskie, and is not this the
+true explanation of your crime?”
+
+With a strange look, he lifted up his face.
+
+“Hush!” said he; “you will waken her. See how peacefully she sleeps! I
+should not like to have her wakened now, she is so tired, and I--I have
+not watched over her as I should.”
+
+Appalled at his gesture, his look, his tone, Violet drew back, and for a
+few minutes no sound was to be heard but the steady dip-dip of the oars
+and the lap-lap of the waters against the boat. Then there came a
+quick uprising, the swaying before her of something dark and tall and
+threatening, and before she could speak or move, or even stretch forth
+her hands to stay him, the seat before her was empty and darkness had
+filled the place where but an instant previous he had sat, a fearsome
+figure, erect and rigid as a sphinx.
+
+What little moonlight there was, only served to show a few rising
+bubbles, marking the spot where the unfortunate man had sunk with his
+much-loved burden. As the widening circles fled farther and farther out,
+the tide drifted the boat away, and the spot was lost which had seen the
+termination of one of earth’s saddest tragedies.
+
+END OF PROBLEM VII
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM VIII. MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN
+
+“One more! just one more well paying affair, and I promise to stop;
+really and truly to stop.”
+
+“But, Puss, why one more? You have earned the amount you set for
+yourself,--or very nearly,--and though my help is not great, in three
+months I can add enough--”
+
+“No, you cannot, Arthur. You are doing well; I appreciate it; in fact,
+I am just delighted to have you work for me in the way you do, but you
+cannot, in your present position, make enough in three months, or in
+six, to meet the situation as I see it. Enough does not satisfy me.
+The measure must be full, heaped up, and running over. Possible failure
+following promise must be provided for. Never must I feel myself called
+upon to do this kind of thing again. Besides, I have never got over the
+Zabriskie tragedy. It haunts me continually. Something new may help to
+put it out of my head. I feel guilty. I was responsible--”
+
+“No, Puss. I will not have it that you were responsible. Some such end
+was bound to follow a complication like that. Sooner or later he would
+have been driven to shoot himself--”
+
+“But not her.”
+
+“No, not her. But do you think she would have given those few minutes
+of perfect understanding with her blind husband for a few years more of
+miserable life?”
+
+Violet made no answer; she was too absorbed in her surprise. Was this
+Arthur? Had a few weeks’ work and a close connection with the really
+serious things of life made this change in him? Her face beamed at the
+thought, which seeing, but not understanding what underlay this evidence
+of joy, he bent and kissed her, saying with some of his old nonchalance:
+
+“Forget it, Violet; only don’t let any one or anything lead you to
+interest yourself in another affair of the kind. If you do, I shall have
+to consult a certain friend of yours as to the best way of stopping this
+folly. I mention no names. Oh! you need not look so frightened. Only
+behave; that’s all.”
+
+“He’s right,” she acknowledged to herself, as he sauntered away;
+“altogether right.”
+
+Yet because she wanted the extra money--
+
+The scene invited alarm,--that is, for so young a girl as Violet,
+surveying it from an automobile some time after the stroke of midnight.
+An unknown house at the end of a heavily shaded walk, in the open
+doorway of which could be seen the silhouette of a woman’s form leaning
+eagerly forward with arms outstretched in an appeal for help! It
+vanished while she looked, but the effect remained, holding her to
+her seat for one startled moment. This seemed strange, for she had
+anticipated adventure. One is not summoned from a private ball to ride a
+dozen miles into the country on an errand of investigation, without some
+expectation of encountering the mysterious and the tragic. But Violet
+Strange, for all her many experiences, was of a most susceptible nature,
+and for the instant in which that door stood open, with only the memory
+of that expectant figure to disturb the faintly lit vista of the
+hall beyond, she felt that grip upon the throat which comes from an
+indefinable fear which no words can explain and no plummet sound.
+
+But this soon passed. With the setting of her foot to ground, conditions
+changed and her emotions took on a more normal character. The figure of
+a man now stood in the place held by the vanished woman; and it was not
+only that of one she knew but that of one whom she trusted--a friend
+whose very presence gave her courage. With this recognition came a
+better understanding of the situation, and it was with a beaming eye and
+unclouded features that she tripped up the walk to meet the expectant
+figure and outstretched hand of Roger Upjohn.
+
+“You here!” she exclaimed, amid smiles and blushes, as he drew her into
+the hall.
+
+He at once launched forth into explanations mingled with apologies for
+the presumption he had shown in putting her to this inconvenience. There
+was trouble in the house--great trouble. Something had occurred for
+which an explanation must be found before morning, or the happiness
+and honour of more than one person now under this unhappy roof would be
+wrecked. He knew it was late--that she had been obliged to take a long
+and dreary ride alone, but her success with the problem which had once
+come near wrecking his own life had emboldened him to telephone to the
+office and--“But you are in ball-dress,” he cried in amazement. “Did you
+think--”
+
+“I came from a ball. Word reached me between the dances. I did not go
+home. I had been bidden to hurry.”
+
+He looked his appreciation, but when he spoke it was to say:
+
+“This is the situation. Miss Digby--”
+
+“The lady who is to be married tomorrow?”
+
+“Who hopes to be married tomorrow.”
+
+“How, hopes?”
+
+“Who will be married tomorrow, if a certain article lost in this house
+tonight can be found before any of the persons who have been dining here
+leave for their homes.”
+
+Violet uttered an exclamation.
+
+“Then, Mr. Cornell,” she began--
+
+“Mr. Cornell has our utmost confidence,” Roger hastened to interpose.
+“But the article missing is one which he might reasonably desire
+to possess and which he alone of all present had the opportunity of
+securing. You can therefore see why he, with his pride--the pride off
+a man not rich, engaged to marry a woman who is--should declare that
+unless his innocence is established before daybreak, the doors of St.
+Bartholomew will remain shut to-morrow.”
+
+“But the article lost--what is it?”
+
+“Miss Digby will give you the particulars. She is waiting to receive
+you,” he added with a gesture towards a half-open door at their right.
+
+Violet glanced that way, then cast her looks up and down the hall in
+which they stood.
+
+“Do you know that you have not told me in whose house I am? Not hers, I
+know. She lives in the city.”
+
+“And you are twelve miles from Harlem. Miss Strange, you are in the Van
+Broecklyn mansion, famous enough you will acknowledge. Have you never
+been here before?”
+
+“I have been by here, but I recognized nothing in the dark. What an
+exciting place for an investigation!”
+
+“And Mr. Van Broecklyn? Have you never met him?”
+
+“Once, when a child. He frightened me then.”
+
+“And may frighten you now; though I doubt it. Time has mellowed him.
+Besides, I have prepared him for what might otherwise occasion him some
+astonishment. Naturally he would not look for just the sort of lady
+investigator I am about to introduce to him.”
+
+She smiled. Violet Strange was a very charming young woman, as well as a
+keen prober of odd mysteries.
+
+The meeting between herself and Miss Digby was a sympathetic one. After
+the first inevitable shock which the latter felt at sight of the beauty
+and fashionable appearance of the mysterious little being who was to
+solve her difficulties, her glance, which, under other circumstances,
+might have lingered unduly upon the piquant features and exquisite
+dressing of the fairy-like figure before her, passed at once to Violet’s
+eyes, in whose steady depths beamed an intelligence quite at odds with
+the coquettish dimples which so often misled the casual observer in his
+estimation of a character singularly subtle and well-poised.
+
+As for the impression she herself made upon Violet, it was the same she
+made upon everyone. No one could look long at Florence Digby and not
+recognize the loftiness of her spirit and the generous nature of her
+impulses. In person she was tall and as she leaned to take Violet’s
+hand, the difference between them brought out the salient points in
+each, to the great admiration of the one onlooker.
+
+Meantime, for all her interest in the case in hand, Violet could not
+help casting a hurried look about her, in gratification of the curiosity
+incited by her entrance into a house signalized from its foundation by
+such a series of tragic events. The result was disappointing. The walls
+were plain, the furniture simple. Nothing suggestive in either, unless
+it was the fact that nothing was new, nothing modern. As it looked in
+the days of Burr and Hamilton so it looked to-day, even to the rather
+startling detail of candles which did duty on every side in place of
+gas.
+
+As Violet recalled the reason for this, the fascination of the past
+seized upon her imagination. There was no knowing where this might have
+carried her, had not the feverish gleam in Miss Digby’s eyes warned
+her that the present held its own excitement. Instantly, she was all
+attention and listening with undivided mind to that lady’s disclosures.
+
+They were brief and to the following effect:
+
+The dinner which had brought some half-dozen people together in this
+house had been given in celebration of her impending marriage. But it
+was also in a way meant as a compliment to one of the other guests, a
+Mr. Spielhagen, who, during the week, had succeeded in demonstrating to
+a few experts the value of a discovery he had made which would transform
+a great industry.
+
+In speaking of this discovery, Miss Digby did not go into particulars,
+the whole matter being far beyond her understanding; but in stating its
+value she openly acknowledged that it was in the line of Mr. Cornell’s
+own work, and one which involved calculations and a formula which, if
+prematurely disclosed, would invalidate the contract Mr. Spielhagen
+hoped to make, and thus destroy his present hopes.
+
+Of this formula but two copies existed. One was locked up in a safe
+deposit vault in Boston, the other he had brought into the house on
+his person, and it was the latter which was now missing, having been
+abstracted during the evening from a manuscript of sixteen or more
+sheets, under circumstances which she would now endeavour to relate.
+
+Mr. Van Broecklyn, their host, had in his melancholy life but one
+interest which could be at all absorbing. This was for explosives.
+As consequence, much of the talk at the dinner-table had been on Mr.
+Spielhagen’s discovery, and possible changes it might introduce into
+this especial industry. As these, worked out from a formula kept secret
+from the trade, could not but affect greatly Mr. Cornell’s interests,
+she found herself listening intently, when Mr. Van Broecklyn, with an
+apology for his interference, ventured to remark that if Mr. Spielhagen
+had made a valuable discovery in this line, so had he, and one which he
+had substantiated by many experiments. It was not a marketable one, such
+as Mr. Spielhagen’s was, but in his work upon the same, and in the tests
+which he had been led to make, he had discovered certain instances
+he would gladly name, which demanded exceptional procedure to be
+successful. If Mr. Spielhagen’s method did not allow for these
+exceptions, nor make suitable provision for them, then Mr. Spielhagen’s
+method would fail more times than it would succeed. Did it so allow and
+so provide? It would relieve him greatly to learn that it did.
+
+The answer came quickly. Yes, it did. But later and after some further
+conversation, Mr. Spielhagen’s confidence seemed to wane, and before
+they left the dinner-table, he openly declared his intention of looking
+over his manuscript again that very night, in order to be sure that the
+formula therein contained duly covered all the exceptions mentioned by
+Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+
+If Mr. Cornell’s countenance showed any change at this moment, she for
+one had not noticed it; but the bitterness with which he remarked upon
+the other’s good fortune in having discovered this formula of whose
+entire success he had no doubt, was apparent to everybody, and naturally
+gave point to the circumstances which a short time afterward associated
+him with the disappearance of the same.
+
+The ladies (there were two others besides herself) having withdrawn in
+a body to the music-room, the gentlemen all proceeded to the library to
+smoke. Here, conversation loosed from the one topic which had hitherto
+engrossed it, was proceeding briskly, when Mr. Spielhagen, with nervous
+gesture, impulsively looked about him and said:
+
+“I cannot rest till I have run through my thesis again. Where can I find
+a quiet spot? I won’t be long; I read very rapidly.”
+
+It was for Mr. Van Broecklyn to answer, but no word coming from him,
+every eye turned his way, only to find him sunk in one of those fits of
+abstraction so well known to his friends, and from which no one who has
+this strange man’s peace of mind at heart ever presumes to rouse him.
+
+What was to be done? These moods of their singular host sometimes lasted
+half an hour, and Mr. Spielhagen had not the appearance of a man of
+patience. Indeed he presently gave proof of the great uneasiness he was
+labouring under, for noticing a door standing ajar on the other side of
+the room, he remarked to those around him:
+
+“A den! and lighted! Do you see any objection to my shutting myself in
+there for a few minutes?”
+
+No one venturing to reply, he rose, and giving a slight push to the
+door, disclosed a small room exquisitely panelled and brightly lighted,
+but without one article of furniture in it, not even a chair.
+
+“The very place,” quoth Mr. Spielhagen, and lifting a light
+cane-bottomed chair from the many standing about, he carried it inside
+and shut the door behind him.
+
+Several minutes passed during which the man who had served at table
+entered with a tray on which were several small glasses evidently
+containing some choice liqueur. Finding his master fixed in one of his
+strange moods, he set the tray down and, pointing to one of the glasses,
+said:
+
+“That is for Mr. Van Broecklyn. It contains his usual quieting powder.”
+ And urging the gentlemen to help themselves, he quietly left the room.
+Mr. Upjohn lifted the glass nearest him, and Mr. Cornell seemed about to
+do the same when he suddenly reached forward and catching up one farther
+off started for the room in which Mr. Spielhagen had so deliberately
+secluded himself.
+
+Why he did all this--why, above all things, he should reach across the
+tray for a glass instead of taking the one under his hand, he can no
+more explain than why he has followed many another unhappy impulse.
+Nor did he understand the nervous start given by Mr. Spielhagen at his
+entrance, or the stare with which that gentleman took the glass from his
+hand and mechanically drank its contents, till he saw how his hand had
+stretched itself across the sheet of paper he was reading, in an open
+attempt to hide the lines visible between his fingers. Then indeed the
+intruder flushed and withdrew in great embarrassment, fully conscious
+of his indiscretion but not deeply disturbed till Mr. Van Broecklyn,
+suddenly arousing and glancing down at the tray placed very near his
+hand remarked in some surprise: “Dobbs seems to have forgotten me.” Then
+indeed, the unfortunate Mr. Cornell realized what he had done. It was
+the glass intended for his host which he had caught up and carried into
+the other room--the glass which he had been told contained a drug.
+Of what folly he had been guilty, and how tame would be any effort at
+excuse!
+
+Attempting none, he rose and with a hurried glance at Mr. Upjohn who
+flushed in sympathy at his distress, he crossed to the door he had
+lately closed upon Mr. Spielhagen. But feeling his shoulder touched
+as his hand pressed the knob, he turned to meet the eye of Mr. Van
+Broecklyn fixed upon him with an expression which utterly confounded
+him.
+
+“Where are you going?” that gentleman asked.
+
+The questioning tone, the severe look, expressive at once of displeasure
+and astonishment, were most disconcerting, but Mr. Cornell managed to
+stammer forth:
+
+“Mr. Spielhagen is in here consulting his thesis. When your man brought
+in the cordial, I was awkward enough to catch up your glass and carry it
+in to. Mr. Spielhagen. He drank it and I--I am anxious to see if it did
+him any harm.”
+
+As he uttered the last word he felt Mr. Van Broecklyn’s hand slip from
+his shoulder, but no word accompanied the action, nor did his host make
+the least move to follow him into the room.
+
+This was a matter of great regret to him later, as it left him for a
+moment out of the range of every eye, during which he says he simply
+stood in a state of shock at seeing Mr. Spielhagen still sitting there,
+manuscript in hand, but with head fallen forward and eyes closed; dead,
+asleep or--he hardly knew what; the sight so paralysed him.
+
+Whether or not this was the exact truth and the whole truth, Mr. Cornell
+certainly looked very unlike himself as he stepped back into Mr. Van
+Broecklyn’s presence; and he was only partially reassured when that
+gentleman protested that there was no real harm in the drug, and that
+Mr. Spielhagen would be all right if left to wake naturally and without
+shock. However, as his present attitude was one of great discomfort,
+they decided to carry him back and lay him on the library lounge. But
+before doing this, Mr. Upjohn drew from his flaccid grasp, the precious
+manuscript, and carrying it into the larger room placed it on a remote
+table, where it remained undisturbed till Mr. Spielhagen, suddenly
+coming to himself at the end of some fifteen minutes, missed the sheets
+from his hand, and bounding up, crossed the room to repossess himself of
+them.
+
+His face, as he lifted them up and rapidly ran through them with
+ever-accumulating anxiety, told them what they had to expect.
+
+The page containing the formula was gone!
+
+Violet now saw her problem.
+
+II
+
+There was no doubt about the loss I have mentioned; all could see that
+page 13 was not there. In vain a second handling of every sheet, the one
+so numbered was not to be found. Page 14 met the eye on the top of
+the pile, and page 12 finished it off at the bottom, but no page 13 in
+between, or anywhere else.
+
+Where had it vanished, and through whose agency had this misadventure
+occurred? No one could say, or, at least, no one there made any attempt
+to do so, though everybody started to look for it.
+
+But where look? The adjoining small room offered no facilities for
+hiding a cigar-end, much less a square of shining white paper. Bare
+walls, a bare floor, and a single chair for furniture, comprised all
+that was to be seen in this direction. Nor could the room in which they
+then stood be thought to hold it, unless it was on the person of some
+one of them. Could this be the explanation of the mystery? No man looked
+his doubts; but Mr. Cornell, possibly divining the general feeling,
+stepped up to Mr. Van Broecklyn and in a cool voice, but with the red
+burning hotly on either cheek, said, so as to be heard by everyone
+present:
+
+“I demand to be searched--at once and thoroughly.”
+
+A moment’s silence, then the common cry:
+
+“We will all be searched.”
+
+“Is Mr. Spielhagen sure that the missing page was with the others when
+he sat down in the adjoining room to read his thesis?” asked their
+perturbed host.
+
+“Very sure,” came the emphatic reply. “Indeed, I was just going through
+the formula itself when I fell asleep.”
+
+“You are ready to assert this?”
+
+“I am ready to swear it.”
+
+Mr. Cornell repeated his request.
+
+“I demand that you make a thorough search of my person. I must be
+cleared, and instantly, of every suspicion,” he gravely asserted, “or
+how can I marry Miss Digby to-morrow.”
+
+After that there was no further hesitation. One and all subjected
+themselves to the ordeal suggested; even Mr. Spielhagen. But this effort
+was as futile as the rest. The lost page was not found.
+
+What were they to think? What were they to do?
+
+There seemed to be nothing left to do, and yet some further attempt must
+be made towards the recovery of this important formula. Mr. Cornell’s
+marriage and Mr. Spielhagen’s business success both depended upon its
+being in the latter’s hands before six in the morning, when he was
+engaged to hand it over to a certain manufacturer sailing for Europe on
+an early steamer.
+
+Five hours!
+
+Had Mr. Van Broecklyn a suggestion to offer? No, he was as much at sea
+as the rest.
+
+Simultaneously look crossed look. Blankness was on every face.
+
+“Let us call the ladies,” suggested one.
+
+It was done, and however great the tension had been before, it was even
+greater when Miss Digby stepped upon the scene. But she was not a woman
+to be shaken from her poise even by a crisis of this importance. When
+the dilemma had been presented to her and the full situation grasped,
+she looked first at Mr. Cornell and then at Mr. Spielhagen, and quietly
+said:
+
+“There is but one explanation possible of this matter. Mr. Spielhagen
+will excuse me, but he is evidently mistaken in thinking that he saw the
+lost page among the rest. The condition into which he was thrown by the
+unaccustomed drug he had drank, made him liable to hallucinations. I
+have not the least doubt he thought he had been studying the formula
+at the time he dropped off to sleep. I have every confidence in
+the gentleman’s candour. But so have I in that of Mr. Cornell,” she
+supplemented, with a smile.
+
+An exclamation from Mr. Van Broecklyn and a subdued murmur from all but
+Mr. Spielhagen testified to the effect of this suggestion, and there
+is no saying what might have been the result if Mr. Cornell had not
+hurriedly put in this extraordinary and most unexpected protest:
+
+“Miss Digby has my gratitude,” said he, “for a confidence which I hope
+to prove to be deserved. But I must say this for Mr. Spielhagen. He was
+correct in stating that he was engaged in looking over his formula when
+I stepped into his presence with the glass of cordial. If you were not
+in a position to see the hurried way in which his hand instinctively
+spread itself over the page he was reading, I was; and if that does not
+seem conclusive to you, then I feel bound to state that in unconsciously
+following this movement of his, I plainly saw the number written on the
+top of the page, and that number was--13.”
+
+A loud exclamation, this time from Spielhagen himself, announced his
+gratitude and corresponding change of attitude toward the speaker.
+
+“Wherever that damned page has gone,” he protested, advancing towards
+Cornell with outstretched hand, “you have nothing to do with its
+disappearance.”
+
+Instantly all constraint fled, and every countenance took on a relieved
+expression. But the problem remained.
+
+Suddenly those very words passed some one’s lips, and with their
+utterance Mr. Upjohn remembered how at an extraordinary crisis in his
+own life he had been helped and an equally difficult problem settled,
+by a little lady secretly attached to a private detective agency. If she
+could only be found and hurried here before morning, all might yet be
+well. He would make the effort. Such wild schemes sometimes work. He
+telephoned to the office and--
+
+Was there anything else Miss Strange would like to know?
+
+III
+
+Miss Strange, thus appealed to, asked where the gentlemen were now.
+
+She was told that they were still all together in the library; the
+ladies had been sent home.
+
+“Then let us go to them,” said Violet, hiding under a smile her great
+fear that here was an affair which might very easily spell for her that
+dismal word, failure.
+
+So great was that fear that under all ordinary circumstances she would
+have had no thought for anything else in the short interim between
+this stating of the problem and her speedy entrance among the persons
+involved. But the circumstances of this case were so far from ordinary,
+or rather let me put it in this way, the setting of the case was so very
+extraordinary, that she scarcely thought of the problem before her, in
+her great interest in the house through whose rambling halls she was
+being so carefully guided. So much that was tragic and heartrending had
+occurred here. The Van Broecklyn name, the Van Broecklyn history, above
+all the Van Broecklyn tradition, which made the house unique in the
+country’s annals (of which more hereafter), all made an appeal to her
+imagination, and centred her thoughts on what she saw about her. There
+was door which no man ever opened--had never opened since Revolutionary
+times--should she see it? Should she know it if she did see it? Then Mr.
+Van Broecklyn himself! just to meet him, under any conditions and in
+any place, was an event. But to meet him here, under the pall of his
+own mystery! No wonder she had no words for her companions, or that
+her thoughts clung to this anticipation in wonder and almost fearsome
+delight.
+
+His story was a well-known one. A bachelor and a misanthrope, he lived
+absolutely alone save for a large entourage of servants, all men and
+elderly ones at that. He never visited. Though he now and then, as on
+this occasion, entertained certain persons under his roof, he declined
+every invitation for himself, avoiding even, with equal strictness, all
+evening amusements of whatever kind, which would detain him in the city
+after ten at night. Perhaps this was to ensure no break in his rule of
+life never to sleep out of his own bed. Though he was a man well over
+fifty he had not spent, according to his own statement, but two nights
+out of his own bed since his return from Europe in early boyhood, and
+those were in obedience to a judicial summons which took him to Boston.
+
+This was his main eccentricity, but he had another which is apparent
+enough from what has already been said. He avoided women. If thrown in
+with them during his short visits into town, he was invariably polite
+and at times companionable, but he never sought them out, nor had
+gossip, contrary to its usual habit, ever linked his name with one of
+the sex.
+
+Yet he was a man of more than ordinary attraction. His features were
+fine and his figure impressive. He might have been the cynosure of all
+eyes had he chosen to enter crowded drawing-rooms, or even to frequent
+public assemblages, but having turned his back upon everything of the
+kind in his youth, he had found it impossible to alter his habits with
+advancing years; nor was he now expected to. The position he had taken
+was respected. Leonard Van Broecklyn was no longer criticized.
+
+Was there any explanation for this strangely self-centred life? Those
+who knew him best seemed to think so. In the first place he had sprung
+from an unfortunate stock. Events of unusual and tragic nature had
+marked the family of both parents. Nor had his parents themselves
+been exempt from this seeming fatality. Antagonistic in tastes and
+temperament, they had dragged on an unhappy existence in the old home,
+till both natures rebelled, and a separation ensued which not only
+disunited their lives but sent them to opposite sides of the globe
+never to return again. At least, that was the inference drawn from
+the peculiar circumstances attending the event. On the morning of one
+never-to-be-forgotten day, John Van Broecklyn, the grandfather of the
+present representative of the family, found the following note from his
+son lying on the library table:
+
+“FATHER:
+
+“Life in this house, or any house, with her is no longer endurable.
+One of us must go. The mother should not be separated from her child.
+Therefore it is I whom you will never see again. Forget me, but be
+considerate of her and the boy.
+
+“WILLIAM.”
+
+Six hours later another note was found, this time from the wife:
+
+“FATHER:
+
+“Tied to a rotting corpse what does one do? Lop off one’s arm if
+necessary to rid one of the contact. As all love between your son and
+myself is dead, I can no longer live within the sound of his voice. As
+this is his home, he is the one to remain in it. May our child reap the
+benefit of his mother’s loss and his father’s affection.
+
+“RHODA.”
+
+Both were gone, and gone forever. Simultaneous in their departure, they
+preserved each his own silence and sent no word back. If the one went
+east and the other west, they may have met on the other side of the
+globe, but never again in the home which sheltered their boy. For him
+and for his grandfather they had sunk from sight in the great sea of
+humanity, leaving them stranded on an isolated and mournful shore. The
+grand-father steeled himself to the double loss, for the child’s sake;
+but the boy of eleven succumbed. Few of the world’s great sufferers, of
+whatever age or condition, have mourned as this child mourned, or shown
+the effects of his grief so deeply or so long. Not till he had passed
+his majority did the line, carved in one day in his baby forehead, lose
+any of its intensity; and there are those who declare that even later
+than that, the midnight stillness of the house was disturbed from time
+to time by his muffled shriek of “Mother! Mother!”, sending the servants
+from the house, and adding one more horror to the many which clung about
+this accursed mansion.
+
+Of this cry Violet had heard, and it was that and the door--But I have
+already told you about the door which she was still looking for,
+when her two companions suddenly halted, and she found herself on the
+threshold of the library, in full view of Mr. Van Broecklyn and his two
+guests.
+
+Slight and fairy-like in figure, with an air of modest reserve more in
+keeping with her youth and dainty dimpling beauty than with her errand,
+her appearance produced an astonishment none of which the gentlemen were
+able to disguise. This the clever detective, with a genius for social
+problems and odd elusive cases! This darling of the ball-room in satin
+and pearls! Mr. Spielhagen glanced at Mr. Cornell, and Mr. Cornell at
+Mr. Spielhagen, and both at Mr. Upjohn, in very evident distrust. As for
+Violet, she had eyes only for Mr. Van Broecklyn who stood before her in
+a surprise equal to that of the others but with more restraint in its
+expression.
+
+She was not disappointed in him. She had expected to see a man, reserved
+almost to the point of austerity. And she found his first look even more
+awe-compelling than her imagination had pictured; so much so indeed,
+that her resolution faltered, and she took a quick step backward; which
+seeing, he smiled and her heart and hopes grew warm again. That he could
+smile, and smile with absolute sweetness, was her great comfort when
+later--But I am introducing you too hurriedly to the catastrophe. There
+is much to be told first.
+
+I pass over the preliminaries, and come at once to the moment when
+Violet, having listened to a repetition of the full facts, stood with
+downcast eyes before these gentlemen, complaining in some alarm to
+herself: “They expect me to tell them now and without further search
+or parley just where this missing page is. I shall have to balk that
+expectation without losing their confidence. But how?”
+
+Summoning up her courage and meeting each inquiring eye with a look
+which seemed to carry a different message to each, she remarked very
+quietly:
+
+“This is not a matter to guess at. I must have time and I must look a
+little deeper into the facts just given me. I presume that the table
+I see over there is the one upon which Mr. Upjohn laid the manuscript
+during Mr. Spielhagen’s unconsciousness.”
+
+All nodded.
+
+“Is it--I mean the table--in the same condition it was then? Has nothing
+been taken from it except the manuscript?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Then the missing page is not there,” she smiled, pointing to its bare
+top. A pause, during which she stood with her gaze fixed on the floor
+before her. She was thinking and thinking hard.
+
+Suddenly she came to a decision. Addressing Mr. Upjohn she asked if he
+were quite sure that in taking the manuscript from Mr. Spielhagen’s hand
+he had neither disarranged nor dropped one of its pages.
+
+The answer was unequivocal.
+
+“Then,” she declared, with quiet assurance and a steady meeting with her
+own of every eye, “as the thirteenth page was not found among the others
+when they were taken from this table, nor on the persons of either Mr.
+Cornell or Mr. Spielhagen, it is still in that inner room.”
+
+“Impossible!” came from every lip, each in a different tone. “That room
+is absolutely empty.”
+
+“May I have a look at its emptiness?” she asked, with a naive glance at
+Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+
+“There is positively nothing in the room but the chair Mr. Spielhagen
+sat on,” objected that gentleman with a noticeable air of reluctance.
+
+“Still, may I not have a look at it?” she persisted, with that disarming
+smile she kept for great occasions.
+
+Mr. Van Broecklyn bowed. He could not refuse a request so urged, but his
+step was slow and his manner next to ungracious as he led the way to the
+door of the adjoining room and threw it open.
+
+Just what she had been told to expect! Bare walls and floors and an
+empty chair! Yet she did not instantly withdraw, but stood silently
+contemplating the panelled wainscoting surrounding her, as though she
+suspected it of containing some secret hiding-place not apparent to the
+eye.
+
+Mr. Van Broecklyn, noting this, hastened to say:
+
+“The walls are sound, Miss Strange. They contain no hidden cupboards.”
+
+“And that door?” she asked, pointing to a portion of the wainscoting so
+exactly like the rest that only the most experienced eye could detect
+the line of deeper colour which marked an opening.
+
+For an instant Mr. Van Broecklyn stood rigid, then the immovable pallor,
+which was one of his chief characteristics, gave way to a deep flush as
+he explained:
+
+“There was a door there once; but it has been permanently closed. With
+cement,” he forced himself to add, his countenance losing its evanescent
+colour till it shone ghastly again in the strong light.
+
+With difficulty Violet preserved her show of composure. “The door!” she
+murmured to herself. “I have found it. The great historic door!” But her
+tone was light as she ventured to say:
+
+“Then it can no longer be opened by your hand or any other?”
+
+“It could not be opened with an axe.”
+
+Violet sighed in the midst of her triumph. Her curiosity had
+been satisfied, but the problem she had been set to solve looked
+inexplicable. But she was not one to yield easily to discouragement.
+Marking the disappointment approaching to disdain in every eye but Mr.
+Upjohn’s, she drew herself up--(she had not far to draw) and made this
+final proposal.
+
+“A sheet of paper,” she remarked, “of the size of this one cannot be
+spirited away, or dissolved into thin air. It exists; it is here; and
+all we want is some happy thought in order to find it. I acknowledge
+that that happy thought has not come to me yet, but sometimes I get
+it in what may seem to you a very odd way. Forgetting myself, I try to
+assume the individuality of the person who has worked the mystery. If I
+can think with his thoughts, I possibly may follow him in his actions.
+In this case I should like to make believe for a few moments that I am
+Mr. Spielhagen” (with what a delicious smile she said this) “I should
+like to hold his thesis in my hand and be interrupted in my reading by
+Mr. Cornell offering his glass of cordial; then I should like to nod and
+slip off mentally into a deep sleep. Possibly in that sleep the dream
+may come which will clarify the whole situation. Will you humour me so
+far?”
+
+A ridiculous concession, but finally she had her way; the farce was
+enacted and they left her as she had requested them to do, alone with
+her dreams in the small room.
+
+Suddenly they heard her cry out, and in another moment she appeared
+before them, the picture of excitement.
+
+“Is this chair standing exactly as it did when Mr. Spielhagen occupied
+it?” she asked.
+
+“No,” said Mr. Upjohn, “it faced the other way.”
+
+She stepped back and twirled the chair about with her disengaged hand.
+
+“So?”
+
+Mr. Upjohn and Mr. Spielhagen both nodded, so did the others when she
+glanced at them.
+
+With a sign of ill-concealed satisfaction, she drew their attention to
+herself; then eagerly cried:
+
+“Gentlemen, look here!”
+
+Seating herself, she allowed her whole body to relax till she presented
+the picture of one calmly asleep. Then, as they continued to gaze at
+with fascinated eyes, not knowing what to expect, they saw something
+white escape from her lap and slide across the floor till it touched and
+was stayed by the wainscot. It was the top page of the manuscript she
+held, and as some inkling of the truth reached their astonished minds,
+she sprang impetuously to her feet and, pointing to the fallen sheet,
+cried:
+
+“Do you understand now? Look where it lies and then look here!”
+
+She had bounded towards the wall and was now on her knees pointing to
+the bottom of the wainscot, just a few inches to the left of the fallen
+page.
+
+“A crack!” she cried, “under what was once the door. It’s a very thin
+one, hardly perceptible to the eye. But see!” Here she laid her finger
+on the fallen paper and drawing it towards her, pushed it carefully
+against the lower edge of the wainscot. Half of it at once disappeared.
+
+“I could easily slip it all through,” she assured them, withdrawing
+the sheet and leaping to her feet in triumph. “You know now where the
+missing page lies, Mr. Spielhagen. All that remains is for Mr. Van
+Broecklyn to get it for you.”
+
+IV
+
+The cries of mingled astonishment and relief which greeted this simple
+elucidation of the mystery were broken by a curiously choked, almost
+unintelligible, cry. It came from the man thus appealed to, who,
+unnoticed by them all, had started at her first word and gradually, as
+action followed action, withdrawn himself till he now stood alone and in
+an attitude almost of defiance behind the large table in the centre of
+the library.
+
+“I am sorry,” he began, with a brusqueness which gradually toned
+down into a forced urbanity as he beheld every eye fixed upon him in
+amazement, “that circumstances forbid my being of assistance to you in
+this unfortunate matter. If the paper lies where you say, and I see no
+other explanation of its loss, I am afraid it will have to remain there
+for this night at least. The cement in which that door is embedded
+is thick as any wall; it would take men with pickaxes, possibly with
+dynamite, to make a breach there wide enough for any one to reach in.
+And we are far from any such help.”
+
+In the midst of the consternation caused by these words, the clock
+on the mantel behind his back rang out the hour. It was but a double
+stroke, but that meant two hours after midnight and had the effect of a
+knell in the hearts of those most interested.
+
+“But I am expected to give that formula into the hands of our manager
+before six o’clock in the morning. The steamer sails at a quarter
+after.”
+
+“Can’t you reproduce a copy of it from memory?” some one asked; “and
+insert it in its proper place among the pages you hold there?”
+
+“The paper would not be the same. That would lead to questions and the
+truth would come out. As the chief value of the process contained in
+that formula lies in its secrecy, no explanation I could give would
+relieve me from the suspicions which an acknowledgment of the existence
+of a third copy, however well hidden, would entail. I should lose my
+great opportunity.”
+
+Mr. Cornell’s state of mind can be imagined. In an access of mingled
+regret and despair, he cast a glance at Violet, who, with a nod of
+understanding, left the little room in which they still stood, and
+approached Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+
+Lifting up her head,--for he was very tall,--and instinctively rising on
+her toes the nearer to reach his ear, she asked in a cautious whisper:
+
+“Is there no other way of reaching that place?”
+
+She acknowledged afterwards, that for one moment her heart stood still
+from fear, such a change took place in his face, though she says he did
+not move a muscle. Then, just when she was expecting from him some harsh
+or forbidding word, he wheeled abruptly away from her and crossing to a
+window at his side, lifted the shade and looked out. When he returned,
+he was his usual self so far as she could see.
+
+“There is a way,” he now confided to her in a tone as low as her own,
+“but it can only be taken by a child.”
+
+“Not by me?” she asked, smiling down at her own childish proportions.
+
+For an instant he seemed taken aback, then she saw his hand begin to
+tremble and his lips twitch. Somehow--she knew not why--she began to
+pity him, and asked herself as she felt rather than saw the struggle in
+his mind, that here was a trouble which if once understood would greatly
+dwarf that of the two men in the room behind them.
+
+“I am discreet,” she whisperingly declared. “I have heard the history
+of that door--how it was against the tradition of the family to have
+it opened. There must have been some very dreadful reason. But old
+superstitions do not affect me, and if you will allow me to take the way
+you mention, I will follow your bidding exactly, and will not trouble
+myself about anything but the recovery of this paper, which must lie
+only a little way inside that blocked-up door.”
+
+Was his look one of rebuke at her presumption, or just the constrained
+expression of a perturbed mind? Probably, the latter, for while she
+watched him for some understanding of his mood, he reached out his hand
+and touched one of the satin folds crossing her shoulder.
+
+“You would soil this irretrievably,” said he.
+
+“There is stuff in the stores for another,” she smiled. Slowly his touch
+deepened into pressure. Watching him she saw the crust of some old fear
+or dominant superstition melt under her eyes, and was quite prepared,
+when he remarked, with what for him was a lightsome air:
+
+“I will buy the stuff, if you will dare the darkness and intricacies of
+our old cellar. I can give you no light. You will have to feel your way
+according to my direction.”
+
+“I am ready to dare anything.”
+
+He left her abruptly.
+
+“I will warn Miss Digby,” he called back. “She shall go with you as far
+as the cellar.”
+
+V
+
+Violet in her short career as an investigator of mysteries had been in
+many a situation calling for more than womanly nerve and courage. But
+never--or so it seemed to her at the time--had she experienced a greater
+depression of spirit than when she stood with Miss Digby before a small
+door at the extreme end of the cellar, and understood that here was her
+road--a road which once entered, she must take alone.
+
+First, it was such a small door! No child older than eleven could
+possibly squeeze through it. But she was of the size of a child of
+eleven and might possibly manage that difficulty.
+
+Secondly: there are always some unforeseen possibilities in every
+situation, and though she had listened carefully to Mr. Van Broecklyn’s
+directions and was sure that she knew them by heart, she wished she had
+kissed her father more tenderly in leaving him that night for the ball,
+and that she had not pouted so undutifully at some harsh stricture he
+had made. Did this mean fear? She despised the feeling if it did.
+
+Thirdly: She hated darkness. She knew this when she offered herself for
+this undertaking; but she was in a bright room at the moment and only
+imagined what she must now face as a reality. But one jet had been lit
+in the cellar and that near the entrance. Mr. Van Broecklyn seemed not
+to need light, even in his unfastening of the small door which Violet
+was sure had been protected by more than one lock.
+
+Doubt, shadow, and a solitary climb between unknown walls, with only
+a streak of light for her goal, and the clinging pressure of Florence
+Digby’s hand on her own for solace--surely the prospect was one to tax
+the courage of her young heart to its limit. But she had promised, and
+she would fulfill. So with a brave smile she stooped to the little door,
+and in another moment had started her journey.
+
+For journey the shortest distance may seem when every inch means a
+heart-throb and one grows old in traversing a foot. At first the way
+was easy; she had but to crawl up a slight incline with the comforting
+consciousness that two people were within reach of her voice, almost
+within sound of her beating heart. But presently she came to a turn,
+beyond which her fingers failed to reach any wall on her left. Then came
+a step up which she stumbled, and farther on a short flight, each tread
+of which she had been told to test before she ventured to climb it, lest
+the decay of innumerable years should have weakened the wood too much to
+bear her weight. One, two, three, four, five steps! Then a landing with
+an open space beyond. Half of her journey was done. Here she felt
+she could give a minute to drawing her breath naturally, if the air,
+unchanged in years, would allow her to do so. Besides, here she had been
+enjoined to do a certain thing and to do it according to instructions.
+Three matches had been given her and a little night candle. Denied all
+light up to now, it was at this point she was to light her candle and
+place it on the floor, so that in returning she should not miss the
+staircase and get a fall. She had promised to do this, and was only too
+happy to see a spark of light scintillate into life in the immeasurable
+darkness.
+
+She was now in a great room long closed to the world, where once
+officers in Colonial wars had feasted, and more than one council had
+been held. A room, too, which had seen more than one tragic happening,
+as its almost unparalleled isolation proclaimed. So much Mr. Van
+Broecklyn had told her; but she was warned to be careful in traversing
+it and not upon any pretext to swerve aside from the right-hand wall
+till she came to a huge mantelpiece. This passed, and a sharp corner
+turned, she ought to see somewhere in the dim spaces before her a streak
+of vivid light shining through the crack at the bottom of the blocked-up
+door. The paper should be somewhere near this streak.
+
+All simple, all easy of accomplishment, if only that streak of light
+were all she was likely to see or think of. If the horror which was
+gripping her throat should not take shape! If things would remain
+shrouded in impenetrable darkness, and not force themselves in shadowy
+suggestion upon her excited fancy! But the blackness of the passage-way
+through which she had just struggled was not to be found here. Whether
+it was the effect of that small flame flickering at the top of the
+staircase behind her, or of some change in her own powers of seeing,
+surely there was a difference in her present outlook. Tall shapes were
+becoming visible--the air was no longer blank--she could see--Then
+suddenly she saw why. In the wall high up on her right was a window.
+It was small and all but invisible, being covered on the outside with
+vines, and on the inside with the cobwebs of a century. But some small
+gleams from the star-light night came through, making phantasms out of
+ordinary things, which unseen were horrible enough, and half seen choked
+her heart with terror.
+
+“I cannot bear it,” she whispered to herself even while creeping
+forward, her hand upon the wall. “I will close my eyes” was her next
+thought. “I will make my own darkness,” and with a spasmodic forcing of
+her lids together, she continued to creep on, passing the mantelpiece,
+where she knocked against something which fell with an awful clatter.
+
+This sound, followed as it was by that of smothered voices from the
+excited group awaiting the result of her experiment from behind the
+impenetrable wall she should be nearing now if she had followed her
+instructions aright, freed her instantly from her fancies; and opening
+her eyes once more, she cast a look ahead, and to her delight, saw but a
+few steps away, the thin streak of bright light which marked the end of
+her journey.
+
+It took her but a moment after that to find the missing page, and
+picking it up in haste from the dusty floor, she turned herself quickly
+about and joyfully began to retrace her steps. Why then, was it that in
+the course of a few minutes more her voice suddenly broke into a wild,
+unearthly shriek, which ringing with terror burst the bounds of that
+dungeon-like room, and sank, a barbed shaft, into the breasts of those
+awaiting the result of her doubtful adventure, at either end of this
+dread no-thoroughfare.
+
+What had happened?
+
+If they had thought to look out, they would have seen that the
+moon--held in check by a bank of cloud occupying half the heavens--had
+suddenly burst its bounds and was sending long bars of revealing light
+into every uncurtained window.
+
+VI
+
+Florence Digby, in her short and sheltered life, had possibly never
+known any very great or deep emotion. But she touched the bottom of
+extreme terror at that moment, as with her ears still thrilling with
+Violet’s piercing cry, she turned to look at Mr. Van Broecklyn, and
+beheld the instantaneous wreck it had made of this seemingly strong
+man. Not till he came to lie in his coffin would he show a more ghastly
+countenance; and trembling herself almost to the point of falling,
+caught him by the arm and sought to read his face what had happened.
+Something disastrous she was sure; something which he had feared and was
+partially prepared for, yet which in happening had crushed him. Was it
+a pitfall into which the poor little lady had fallen? If so--But he is
+speaking--mumbling low words to himself. Some of them she can hear. He
+is reproaching himself--repeating over and over that he should never
+have taken such a chance; that he should have remembered her youth--the
+weakness of a young girl’s nerve. He had been mad, and now--and now--
+
+With the repetition of this word his murmuring ceased. All his energies
+were now absorbed in listening at the low door separating him from what
+he was agonizing to know--a door impossible to enter, impossible to
+enlarge--a barrier to all help--an opening whereby sound might pass but
+nothing else, save her own small body, now lying--where?
+
+“Is she hurt?” faltered Florence, stooping, herself, to listen. “Can you
+hear anything--anything?”
+
+For an instant he did not answer; every faculty was absorbed in the one
+sense; then slowly and in gasps he began to mutter:
+
+“I think--I hear--something. Her step--no, no, no step. All is as quiet
+as death; not a sound, not a breath--she has fainted. O God! O God! Why
+this calamity on top of all!”
+
+He had sprung to his feet at the utterance this invocation, but next
+moment was down on knees again, listening--listening.
+
+Never was silence more profound; they were hearkening for murmurs from a
+tomb. Florence began to sense the full horror of it all, and was swaying
+helplessly when Mr. Van Broecklyn impulsively lifted his hand in an
+admonitory Hush! and through the daze of her faculties a small far sound
+began to make itself heard, growing louder as she waited, then becoming
+faint again, then altogether ceasing only to renew itself once more,
+till it resolved into an approaching step, faltering in its course, but
+coming ever nearer and nearer.
+
+“She’s safe! She’s not hurt!” sprang from Florence’s lips in
+inexpressible relief; and expecting Mr. Van Broecklyn to show an equal
+joy, she turned towards him, with the cheerful cry,
+
+“Now if she has been so fortunate as to that missing page, we shall all
+be repaid for our fright.”
+
+A movement on his part, a shifting of position which brought him finally
+to his feet, but he gave no other proof of having heard her, nor did
+his countenance mirror her relief. “It is as if he dreaded, instead of
+hailed, her return,” was Florence’s inward comment as she watched him
+involuntarily recoil at each fresh token of Violet’s advance.
+
+Yet because this seemed so very unnatural, she persisted in her efforts
+to lighten the situation, and when he made no attempt to encourage
+Violet in her approach, she herself stooped and called out a cheerful
+welcome which must have rung sweetly in the poor little detective’s
+ears.
+
+A sorry sight was Violet, when, helped by Florence, she finally crawled
+into view through the narrow opening and stood once again on the cellar
+floor. Pale, trembling, and soiled with the dust of years, she presented
+a helpless figure enough, till the joy in Florence’s face recalled some
+of her spirit, and, glancing down at her hand in which a sheet of paper
+was visible, she asked for Mr. Spielhagen.
+
+“I’ve got the formula,” she said. “If you will bring him, I will hand it
+over to him here.”
+
+Not a word of her adventure; nor so much as one glance at Mr. Van
+Broecklyn, standing far back in the shadows.
+
+Nor was she more communicative, when, the formula restored and
+everything made right with Mr. Spielhagen, they all came together again
+in the library for a final word. “I was frightened by the silence
+and the darkness, and so cried out,” she explained in answer to their
+questions. “Any one would have done so who found himself alone in
+so musty a place,” she added, with an attempt at lightsomeness which
+deepened the pallor on Mr. Van Broecklyn’s cheek, already sufficiently
+noticeable to have been remarked upon by more than one.
+
+“No ghosts?” laughed Mr. Cornell, too happy in the return of his hopes
+to be fully sensible of the feelings of those about him. “No whispers
+from impalpable lips or touches from spectre hands? Nothing to explain
+the mystery of that room long shut up that even Mr. Van Broecklyn
+declares himself ignorant of its secret?”
+
+“Nothing,” returned Violet, showing her dimples in full force now.
+
+“If Miss Strange had any such experiences--if she has anything to tell
+worthy of so marked a curiosity, she will tell it now,” came from the
+gentleman just alluded to, in tones so stern and strange that all show
+of frivolity ceased on the instant. “Have you anything to tell, Miss
+Strange?”
+
+Greatly startled, she regarded him with widening eyes for a moment, then
+with a move towards the door, remarked, with a general look about her:
+
+“Mr. Van Broecklyn knows his own house, and doubtless can relate its
+histories if he will. I am a busy little body who having finished my
+work am now ready to return home, there to wait for the next problem
+which an indulgent fate may offer me.”
+
+She was near the threshold--she was about to take her leave, when
+suddenly she felt two hands fall on her shoulder, and turning, met the
+eyes of Mr. Van Broecklyn burning into her own.
+
+“You saw!” dropped in an almost inaudible whisper from his lips.
+
+The shiver which shook her answered him better than any word.
+
+With an exclamation of despair, he withdrew his hands, and facing the
+others now standing together in a startled group, he said, as soon as he
+could recover some of his self-possession:
+
+“I must ask for another hour of your company. I can no longer keep my
+sorrow to myself. A dividing line has just been drawn across my life,
+and I must have the sympathy of someone who knows my past, or I shall
+go mad in my self-imposed solitude. Come back, Miss Strange. You of all
+others have the prior right to hear.”
+
+VII
+
+“I shall have to begin,” said he, when they were all seated and ready to
+listen, “by giving you some idea, not so much of the family tradition,
+as of the effect of this tradition upon all who bore the name of Van
+Broecklyn. This is not the only house, even in America, which contains
+a room shut away from intrusion. In England there are many. But there is
+this difference between most of them and ours. No bars or locks forcibly
+held shut the door we were forbidden to open. The command was enough;
+that and the superstitious fear which such a command, attended by a long
+and unquestioning obedience, was likely to engender.
+
+“I know no more than you do why some early ancestor laid his ban upon
+this room. But from my earliest years I was given to understand that
+there was one latch in the house which was never to be lifted; that any
+fault would be forgiven sooner than that; that the honour of the whole
+family stood in the way of disobedience, and that I was to preserve that
+honour to my dying day. You will say that all this is fantastic, and
+wonder that sane people in these modern times should subject themselves
+to such a ridiculous restriction, especially when no good reason was
+alleged, and the very source of the tradition from which it sprung
+forgotten. You are right; but if you look long into human nature,
+you will see that the bonds which hold the firmest are not material
+ones--that an idea will make a man and mould a character--that it lies
+at the source of all heroisms and is to be courted or feared as the case
+may be.
+
+“For me it possessed a power proportionate to my loneliness. I don’t
+think there was ever a more lonely child. My father and mother were
+so unhappy in each other’s companionship that one or other of them was
+almost always away. But I saw little of either even when they were at
+home. The constraint in their attitude towards each other affected their
+conduct towards me. I have asked myself more than once if either of them
+had any real affection for me. To my father I spoke of her; to her
+of him; and never pleasurably. This I am forced to say, or you cannot
+understand my story. Would to God I could tell another tale! Would
+to God I had such memories as other men have of a father’s clasp, a
+mother’s kiss--but no! my grief, already profound, might have become
+abysmal. Perhaps it is best as it is; only, I might have been a
+different child, and made for myself a different fate--who knows.
+
+“As it was, I was thrown almost entirely upon my own resources for any
+amusement. This led me to a discovery I made one day. In a far part of
+the cellar behind some heavy casks, I found a little door. It was so
+low--so exactly fitted to my small body, that I had the greatest desire
+to enter it. But I could not get around the casks. At last an expedient
+occurred to me. We had an old servant who came nearer loving me than any
+one else. One day when I chanced to be alone in the cellar, I took out
+my ball and began throwing it about. Finally it landed behind the casks,
+and I ran with a beseeching cry to Michael, to move them.
+
+“It was a task requiring no little strength and address, but he managed,
+after a few herculean efforts, to shift them aside and I saw with
+delight, my way opened to that mysterious little door. But I did not
+approach it then; some instinct deterred me. But when the opportunity
+came for me to venture there alone, I did so, in the most adventurous
+spirit, and began my operations by sliding behind the casks and testing
+the handle of the little door. It turned, and after a pull or two the
+door yielded. With my heart in my mouth, I stooped and peered in. I
+could see nothing--a black hole and nothing more. This caused me a
+moment’s hesitation. I was afraid of the dark--had always been. But
+curiosity and the spirit of adventure triumphed. Saying to myself that I
+was Robinson Crusoe exploring the cave, I crawled in, only to find that
+I had gained nothing. It was as dark inside as it had looked to be from
+without.
+
+“There was no fun in this, so I crawled back, and when I tried the
+experiment again, it was with a bit of candle in my hand, and a
+surreptitious match or two. What I saw, when with a very trembling
+little hand I had lighted one of the matches, would have been
+disappointing to most boys, but not to me. The litter and old boards
+I saw in odd corners about me were full of possibilities, while in the
+dimness beyond I seemed to perceive a sort of staircase which might
+lead--I do not think I made any attempt to answer that question even
+in my own mind, but when, after some hesitation and a sense of great
+daring, I finally crept up those steps, I remember very well my
+sensation at finding myself in front of a narrow closed door. It
+suggested too vividly the one in Grandfather’s little room--the door in
+the wainscot which we were never to open. I had my first real trembling
+fit here, and at once fascinated and repelled by this obstruction I
+stumbled and lost my candle, which, going out in the fall, left me in
+total darkness and a very frightened state of mind. For my imagination
+which had been greatly stirred by my own vague thoughts of the forbidden
+room, immediately began to people the space about me with ghoulish
+figures. How should I escape them, how ever reach my own little room
+again undetected and in safety?
+
+“But these terrors, deep as they were, were nothing to the real fright
+which seized me when, the darkness finally braved, and the way found
+back into the bright, wide-open halls of the house, I became conscious
+of having dropped something besides the candle. My match-box was
+gone--not my match-box, but my grandfather’s which I had found lying on
+his table and carried off on this adventure, in all the confidence of
+irresponsible youth. To make use of it for a little while, trusting to
+his not missing it in the confusion I had noticed about the house that
+morning, was one thing; to lose it was another. It was no common
+box. Made of gold and cherished for some special reason well known to
+himself, I had often hear him say that some day I would appreciate its
+value, and be glad to own it. And I had left it in that hole and at
+any minute he might miss it--possibly ask for it! The day was one of
+torment. My mother was away or shut up in her room. My father--I don’t
+know just what thoughts I had about him. He was not to be seen either,
+and the servants cast strange looks at me when I spoke his name. But
+I little realized the blow which had just fallen upon the house in his
+definite departure, and only thought of my own trouble, and of how I
+should meet my grandfather’s eye when the hour came for him to draw me
+to his knee for his usual good-night.
+
+“That I was spared this ordeal for the first time this very night first
+comforted me, then added to my distress. He had discovered his loss and
+was angry. On the morrow he would ask me for the box and I would have
+to lie, for never could I find the courage to tell him where I had been.
+Such an act of presumption he would never forgive, or so I thought as
+I lay and shivered in my little bed. That his coldness, his neglect,
+sprang from the discovery just made that my mother as well as my father
+had just fled the house forever was as little known to me as the morning
+calamity. I had been given my usual tendance and was tucked safely into
+bed; but the gloom, the silence which presently settled upon the house
+had a very different explanation in my mind from the real one. My sin
+(for such it loomed large in my mind by this time) coloured the whole
+situation and accounted for every event.
+
+“At what hour I slipped from my bed on to the cold floor, I shall never
+know. To me it seemed to be in the dead of night; but I doubt if it were
+more than ten. So slowly creep away the moments to a wakeful child.
+I had made a great resolve. Awful as the prospect seemed to
+me,--frightened as I was by the very thought,--I had determined in
+my small mind to go down into the cellar, and into that midnight hole
+again, in search of the lost box. I would take a candle and matches,
+this time from my own mantel-shelf, and if everyone was asleep, as
+appeared from the deathly quiet of the house, I would be able to go and
+come without anybody ever being the wiser.
+
+“Dressing in the dark, I found my matches and my candle and, putting
+them in one of my pockets, softly opened my door and looked out. Nobody
+was stirring; every light was out except a solitary one in the lower
+hall. That this still burned conveyed no meaning to my mind. How could I
+know that the house was so still and the rooms dark because everyone was
+out searching for some clue to my mother’s flight? If I had looked at
+the clock--but I did not; I was too intent upon my errand, too filled
+with the fever of my desperate undertaking, to be affected by anything
+not bearing directly upon it.
+
+“Of the terror caused by my own shadow on the wall as I made the turn
+in the hall below, I have as keen a recollection today as though it
+happened yesterday. But that did not deter me; nothing deterred me, till
+safe in the cellar I crouched down behind the casks to get my breath
+again before entering the hole beyond.
+
+“I had made some noise in feeling my way around these casks, and I
+trembled lest these sounds had been heard upstairs! But this fear soon
+gave place to one far greater. Other sounds were making themselves
+heard. A din of small skurrying feet above, below, on every side of me!
+Rats! rats in the wall! rats on the cellar bottom! How I ever stirred
+from the spot I do not know, but when I did stir, it was to go forward,
+and enter the uncanny hole.
+
+“I had intended to light my candle when I got inside; but for some
+reason I went stumbling along in the dark, following the wall till I got
+to the steps where I had dropped the box. Here a light was necessary,
+but my hand did not go to my pocket. I thought it better to climb the
+steps first, and softly one foot found the tread and then another. I
+had only three more to climb and then my right hand, now feeling its
+way along the wall, would be free to strike a match. I climbed the three
+steps and was steadying myself against the door for a final plunge,
+when something happened--something so strange, so unexpected, and so
+incredible that I wonder I did not shriek aloud in my terror. The door
+was moving under my hand. It was slowly opening inward. I could feel the
+chill made by the widening crack. Moment by moment this chill increased;
+the gap was growing--a presence was there--a presence before which I sank
+in a small heap upon the landing. Would it advance? Had it feet--hands?
+Was it a presence which could be felt?
+
+“Whatever it was, it made no attempt to pass, and presently I lifted
+my head only to quake anew at the sound of a voice--a human voice--my
+mother’s voice--so near me that by putting out my arms I might have
+touched her.
+
+“She was speaking to my father. I knew from the tone. She was saying
+words which, little understood as they were, made such a havoc in my
+youthful mind that I have never forgotten the effect.
+
+“‘I have come!’ she said. ‘They think I have fled the house and are
+looking far and wide for me. We shall not be disturbed. Who would think
+looking of here for either you or me.’
+
+“Here! The word sank like a plummet in my breast. I had known for some
+few minutes that I was on the threshold of the forbidden room; but they
+were in it. I can scarcely make you understand the tumult which this
+awoke in my brain. Somehow, I had never thought that any such braving of
+the house’s law would be possible.
+
+“I heard my father’s answer, but it conveyed no meaning to me. I also
+realized that he spoke from a distance,--that he was at one end of
+the room while we were at the other. I was presently to have this idea
+confirmed, for while I was striving with all my might and main to
+subdue my very heart-throbs so that she would not hear me or suspect my
+presence, the darkness--I should rather say the blackness of the place
+yielded to a flash of lightning--heat lightning, all glare and no
+sound--and I caught an instantaneous vision of my father’s figure
+standing with gleaming things about him, which affected me at the moment
+as supernatural, but which, in later years, I decided to have been
+weapons hanging on a wall.
+
+“She saw him too, for she gave a quick laugh and said they would not
+need any candles; and then, there was another flash and I saw something
+in his hand and something in hers, and though I did not yet understand,
+I felt myself turning deathly sick and gave a choking gasp which was
+lost in the rush she made into the centre of the room, and the keenness
+of her swift low cry.
+
+“‘Garde-toi! for only one of us will ever leave this room alive!’
+
+“A duel! a duel to the death between this husband and wife--this father
+and mother--in this hole of dead tragedies and within the sight and
+hearing of their child! Has Satan ever devised a scheme more hideous for
+ruining the life of an eleven-year-old boy!
+
+“Not that I took it all in at once. I was too innocent and much too
+dazed to comprehend such hatred, much less the passions which engender
+it. I only knew that something horrible--something beyond the conception
+of my childish mind--was going to take place in the darkness before me;
+and the terror of it made me speechless; would to God it had made me
+deaf and blind and dead!
+
+“She had dashed from her corner and he had slid away from his, as the
+next fantastic glare which lit up the room showed me. It also showed
+the weapons in their hands, and for a moment I felt reassured when I saw
+that these were swords, for I had seen them before with foils in their
+hands practising for exercise, as they said, in the great garret. But
+the swords had buttons on them, and this time the tips were sharp and
+shone in the keen light.
+
+“An exclamation from her and a growl of rage from him were followed by
+movements I could scarcely hear, but which were terrifying from their
+very quiet. Then the sound of a clash. The swords had crossed.
+
+“Had the lightning flashed forth then, the end of one of them might
+have occurred. But the darkness remained undisturbed, and when the glare
+relit the great room again, they were already far apart. This called out
+a word from him; the one sentence he spoke--I can never forget it:
+
+“‘Rhoda, there is blood on your sleeve; I have wounded you. Shall we
+call it off and fly, as the poor creatures in there think we have, to
+the opposite ends of the earth?’
+
+“I almost spoke; I almost added my childish plea to his for them to
+stop--to remember me and stop. But not a muscle in my throat responded
+to my agonized effort. Her cold, clear ‘No!’ fell before my tongue was
+loosed or my heart freed from the ponderous weight crushing it.
+
+“‘I have vowed and I keep my promises,’ she went on in a tone quite
+strange to me. ‘What would either’s life be worth with the other alive
+and happy in this world.’
+
+“He made no answer; and those subtle movements--shadows of movements
+I might almost call them--recommenced. Then there came a sudden cry,
+shrill and poignant--had Grandfather been in his room he would surely
+have heard it--and the flash coming almost simultaneously with its
+utterance, I saw what has haunted my sleep from that day to this, my
+father pinned against the wall, sword still in hand, and before him my
+mother, fiercely triumphant, her staring eyes fixed on his and--
+
+“Nature could bear no more; the band loosened from my throat; the
+oppression lifted from my breast long enough for me to give one wild
+wail and she turned, saw (heaven sent its flashes quickly at this
+moment) and recognizing my childish form, all the horror of her deed (or
+so I have fondly hoped) rose within her, and she gave a start and fell
+full upon the point upturned to receive her.
+
+“A groan; then a gasping sigh from him, and silence settled upon the
+room and upon my heart, and so far as I knew upon the whole created
+world.
+
+“That is my story, friends. Do you wonder that I have never been or
+lived like other men?”
+
+After a few moments of sympathetic silence, Mr. Van Broecklyn went on,
+to say:
+
+“I don’t think I ever had a moment’s doubt that my parents both lay dead
+on the floor of that great room. When I came to myself--which may have
+been soon, and may not have been for a long while--the lightning had
+ceased to flash, leaving the darkness stretching like a blank pall
+between me and that spot in which were concentrated all the terrors of
+which my imagination was capable. I dared not enter it. I dared not take
+one step that way. My instinct was to fly and hide my trembling body
+again in my own bed; and associated with this, in fact dominating it and
+making me old before my time, was another--never to tell; never to let
+any one, least of all my grandfather--know what that forbidden room now
+contained. I felt in an irresistible sort of way that my father’s and
+mother’s honour was at stake. Besides, terror held me back; I felt that
+I should die if I spoke. Childhood has such terrors and such heroisms.
+Silence often covers in such, abysses of thought and feeling which
+astonish us in later years. There is no suffering like a child’s,
+terrified by a secret which it dare not for some reason disclose.
+
+“Events aided me. When, in desperation to see once more the light and
+all the things which linked me to life--my little bed, the toys on the
+window-sill, my squirrel in its cage--I forced myself to retraverse the
+empty house, expecting at every turn to hear my father’s voice or come
+upon the image of my mother--yes, such was the confusion of my mind,
+though I knew well enough even then that they were dead and that I
+should never hear the one or see the other. I was so benumbed with the
+cold in my half-dressed condition, that I woke in a fever next morning
+after a terrible dream which forced from my lips the cry of ‘Mother!
+Mother!’--only that.
+
+“I was cautious even in delirium. This delirium and my flushed cheeks
+and shining eyes led them to be very careful of me. I was told that my
+mother was away from home; and when after two days of search they were
+quite sure that all effort to find either her or my father were likely
+to prove fruitless, that she had gone to Europe where we would follow
+her as soon as I was well. This promise, offering as it did, a prospect
+of immediate release from the terrors which were consuming me, had an
+extraordinary effect upon me. I got up out of my bed saying that I was
+well now and ready to start on the instant. The doctor, finding my pulse
+equable, and my whole condition wonder fully improved, and attributing
+it, as was natural, to my hope of soon joining my mother, advised
+my whim to be humoured and this hope kept active till travel and
+intercourse with children should give me strength and prepare me for
+the bitter truth ultimately awaiting me. They listened to him and
+in twenty-four hours our preparations were made. We saw the house
+closed--with what emotions surging in one small breast, I leave you to
+imagine--and then started on our long tour. For five years we wandered
+over the continent of Europe, my grandfather finding distraction, as
+well as myself, in foreign scenes and associations.
+
+“But return was inevitable. What I suffered on reentering this house,
+God and my sleepless pillow alone know. Had any discovery been made in
+our absence; or would it be made now that renovation and repairs of all
+kinds were necessary? Time finally answered me. My secret was safe
+and likely to continue so, and this fact once settled, life became
+endurable, if not cheerful. Since then I have spent only two nights out
+of this house, and they were unavoidable. When my grandfather died I had
+the wainscot door cemented in. It was done from this side and the
+cement painted to match the wood. No one opened the door nor have I
+ever crossed its threshold. Sometimes I think I have been foolish; and
+sometimes I know that I have been very wise. My reason has stood firm;
+how do I know that it would have done so if I had subjected myself to
+the possible discovery that one or both of them might have been saved if
+I had disclosed instead of concealed my adventure.”
+
+A pause during which white horror had shone on every face; then with a
+final glance at Violet, he said:
+
+“What sequel do you see to this story, Miss Strange? I can tell the
+past, I leave you to picture the future.”
+
+Rising, she let her eye travel from face to face till it rested on the
+one awaiting it, when she answered dreamily:
+
+“If some morning in the news column there should appear an account of
+the ancient and historic home of the Van Broecklyns having burned to the
+ground in the night, the whole country would mourn, and the city feel
+defrauded of one of its treasures. But there are five persons who would
+see in it the sequel which you ask for.”
+
+When this happened, as it did happen, some few weeks later, the
+astonishing discovery was made that no insurance had been put upon this
+house. Why was it that after such a loss Mr. Van Broecklyn seemed to
+renew his youth? It was a constant source of comment among his friends.
+
+END OF PROBLEM VIII
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM IX. VIOLET’S OWN
+
+“It has been too much for you?”
+
+“I am afraid so.”
+
+It was Roger Upjohn who had asked the question; it was Violet who
+answered. They had withdrawn from a crowd of dancers to a balcony,
+half-shaded, half open to the moon,--a balcony made, it would seem, for
+just such stolen interviews between waltzes.
+
+Now, as it happened, Roger’s face was in the shadow, but Violet’s in the
+full light. Very sweet it looked, very ethereal, but also a little wan.
+He noticed this and impetuously cried:
+
+“You are pale; and your hand! see, how it trembles!”
+
+Slowly withdrawing it from the rail where it had rested, she sent one
+quick glance his way and, in a low voice, said:
+
+“I have not slept since that night.”
+
+“Four days!” he murmured. Then, after a moment of silence, “You bore
+yourself so bravely at the time, I thought, or rather, I hoped, that
+success had made you forget the horror. I could not have slept myself,
+if I had known--”
+
+“It is part of the price I pay,” she broke in gently. “All good things
+have to be paid for. But I see--I realize that you do not consider
+what I am doing good. Though it helps other people--has helped you--you
+wonder why, with all the advantages I possess, I should meddle with
+matters so repugnant to a woman’s natural instincts.”
+
+Yes, he wondered. That was evident from his silence. Seeing her as she
+stood there, so quaintly pretty, so feminine in look and manner--in
+short, such a flower--it was but natural that he should marvel at the
+incongruity she had mentioned.
+
+“It has a strange, odd look,” she admitted, after a moment of troubled
+hesitation. “The most considerate person cannot but regard it as a
+display of egotism or of a most mercenary spirit. The cheque you sent
+me for what I was enabled to do for you in Massachusetts (the only one
+I have ever received which I have been tempted to refuse) shows to what
+extent you rated my help and my--my expectations. Had I been a poor girl
+struggling for subsistence, this generosity would have warmed my heart
+as a token of your desire to cut that struggle short. But taken with
+your knowledge of my home and its luxuries, it has often made me wonder
+what you thought.”
+
+“Shall I tell you?”
+
+He had stepped forward at this question and his countenance, hitherto
+concealed, became visible in the moonlight. She no longer recognized it.
+Transformed by feeling, it shone down upon her, instinct with all
+that is finest and best in masculine nature. Was she ready for this
+revelation of what she had nevertheless dreamed of for many more nights
+than four? She did not know, and instinctively drew herself back till it
+was she who now stood in the semi-obscurity made by the drooping vines.
+From this retreat, she faltered forth a very tremulous No, which in
+another moment was disavowed by a Yes so faint it was little more than a
+murmur, followed by a still fainter, Tell me.
+
+But he did not seem in any haste to obey, sweetly as her low-toned
+injunction must have sounded in his ears. On the contrary, he hesitated
+to speak, growing paler every minute as he sought to catch a glimpse of
+her downcast face so tantalizingly hidden from him. Did she recognize
+the nature of the feelings which held him back, or was she simply
+gathering up sufficient courage to plead her own cause? Whatever her
+reason, it was she, not he, who presently spoke saying as if no time had
+elapsed:
+
+“But first, I feel obliged to admit that it was money I wanted, that
+I had to have. Not for myself. I lack nothing and could have more if I
+wished. Father has never limited his generosity in any matter affecting
+myself, but--” She drew a deep breath and, coming out of the shadow,
+lifted a face to him so changed from its usual expression as to make him
+start. “I have a cause at heart--one which should appeal to my father
+and does not; and for that purpose I have sacrificed myself, in many
+ways, though--though I have not disliked my work up to this last
+attempt. Not really. I want to be honest and so must admit that much.
+I have even gloried (quietly and all by myself, of course) over the
+solution of a mystery which no one else seemed able to penetrate. I am
+made that way. I have known it ever since--but that is a story all by
+itself. Some day I may tell it to you, but not now.”
+
+“No, not now.” The emphasis sent the colour into her cheek but did not
+relieve his pallor. “Miss Strange, I have always felt, even in my worst
+days, that the man who for selfish ends brought a woman under the shadow
+of his own unhappy reputation was a man to be despised. And I think so
+still, and yet--and yet--nothing in the world but your own word or
+look can hold me back now from telling you that I love you--love you
+notwithstanding my unworthy past, my scarring memories, my all but
+blasted hopes. I do not expect any response; you are young; you are
+beautiful; you are gifted with every grace; but to speak,--to say over
+and over again, ‘I love you, I love you!’ eases my heart and makes my
+future more endurable. Oh, do not look at me like that unless--unless--”
+
+But the bright head did not fall, nor the tender gaze falter; and driven
+out of himself, Roger Upjohn was about to step passionately forward,
+when, seized by fresh compunction, he hoarsely cried:
+
+“It is not right. The balance dips too much my way. You bring me
+everything. I can give you nothing but what you already possess
+abundance--love, and money. Besides, your father--”
+
+She interrupted him with a glance at once arch and earnest.
+
+“I had a talk with Father this morning. He came to my room, and--and it
+was very near being serious. Someone had told him I was doing things on
+the sly which he had better look into; and of course he asked questions
+and--and I answered them. He wasn’t pleased--in fact he was very
+displeased,--I don’t think we can blame him for that--but we had no open
+break for I love him dearly, for all my opposing ways, and he saw that,
+and it helped, though he did say after I had given my promise to stop
+where I was and never to take up such work again, that--” here she stole
+a shy look at the face bent so eagerly towards her--“that I had lost my
+social status and need never hope now for the attentions of--of--well,
+of such men as he admires and puts faith in. So you see,” her dimples
+all showing, “that I am not such a very good match for an Upjohn of
+Massachusetts, even if he has a reputation to recover and an honourable
+name to achieve. The scale hangs more evenly than you think.”
+
+“Violet!”
+
+A mutual look, a moment of perfect silence, then a low whisper, airy as
+the breath of flowers rising from the garden below: “I have never known
+what happiness was till this moment. If you will take me with my story
+untold--”
+
+“Take you! take you!” The man’s whole yearning heart, the loss and
+bitterness of years, the hope and promise of the future, all spoke in
+that low, half-smothered exclamation. Violet’s blushes faded under its
+fervency, and only her spirit spoke, as leaning towards him, she laid
+her two hands in his, and said with all a woman’s earnestness:
+
+“I do not forget little Roger, or the father who I hope may have many
+more days before him in which to bid good-night to the sea. Such union
+as ours must be hallowed, because we have so many persons to make happy
+besides ourselves.”
+
+
+The evening before their marriage, Violet put a dozen folded sheets of
+closely written paper in his hand. They contained her story; let us read
+it with him.
+
+DEAR ROGER,--
+
+I could not have been more than seven years old, when one night I woke
+up shivering, at the sound of angry voices. A conversation which no
+child should ever have heard, was going on in the room where I lay. My
+father was talking to my sister--perhaps, you do not know that I have
+a sister; few of my personal friends do,--and the terror she evinced
+I could well understand but not his words nor the real cause of his
+displeasure.
+
+There are times even yet when the picture, forced upon my infantile
+consciousness at that moment of first awakening, comes back to me with
+all its original vividness. There was no light in the room save such as
+the moon made; but that was enough to reveal the passion burningly alive
+in either face, as, bending towards each other, she in supplication
+and he in a tempest of wrath which knew no bounds, he uttered and she
+listened to what I now know to have been a terrible arraignment.
+
+I may have an interesting countenance; you have told me so sometimes;
+but she--she was beautiful. My elder by ten years, she had stood in my
+mother’s stead to me for almost as long as I could remember, and as I
+saw her lovely features contorted with pain and her hands extended in
+a desperate plea to one who had never shown me anything but love, my
+throat closed sharply and I could not cry out though I wanted to, nor
+move head or foot though I longed with all my heart to bury myself in
+the pillows.
+
+For the words I heard were terrifying, little as I comprehended their
+full purport. He had surprised her talking from her window to someone
+down below, and after saying cruel things about that, he shouted out:
+“You have disgraced me, you have disgraced yourself, you have disgraced
+your brother and your little sister. Was it not enough that you should
+refuse to marry the good man I had picked out for you, that you should
+stoop to this low-down scoundrel--this--” I did not hear what else he
+called him, I was wondering so to whom she had been stooping; I had
+never seen her stoop except to tie my little shoes.
+
+But when she cried out as she did after an interval, “I love him! I
+love him!” then I listened again, for she spoke as though she were in
+dreadful pain, and I did not know that loving made one ill and unhappy.
+“And I am going to marry him,” I heard her add, standing up, as she said
+it, very straight and tall.
+
+Marry! I knew what that meant. A long aisle in a church; women in white
+and big music in the air behind. I had been flower-girl at a wedding
+once and had not forgotten. We had had ice cream and cake and--
+
+But my childish thoughts stopped short at the answer she received and
+all the words which followed--words which burned their way into my
+infantile brain and left scorched places in my memory which will never
+be eradicated. He spoke them--spoke them all; she never answered again
+after that once, and when he was gone did not move for a long time and
+when she did it was to lie down, stiff and straight, just as she had
+stood, on her bed alongside mine.
+
+I was frightened; so frightened, my little brass bed rattled under me. I
+wonder she did not hear it. But she heard nothing; and after awhile she
+was so still I fell asleep. But I woke again. Something hot had fallen
+on my cheek. I put up my hand to brush it away and did not know even
+when I felt my fingers wet that it was a tear from my sister-mother’s
+eye.
+
+For she was kneeling then; kneeling close beside me and her arm was over
+my small body; and the bed was shaking again but not this time with my
+tremors only. And I was sorry and cried too until I dropped off to sleep
+again with her arm still passionately embracing me.
+
+In the morning, she was gone.
+
+It must have been that very afternoon that Father came in where Arthur
+and I were trying to play,--trying, but not quite succeeding, for I had
+been telling Arthur, for whom I had a great respect in those days, what
+had happened the night before, and we had been wondering in our childish
+way if there would be a wedding after all, and a church full of people,
+and flowers, and kissing, and lots of good things to eat, and Arthur had
+said No, it was too expensive; that that was why Father was so angry;
+and comforted by the assertion, I was taking up my doll again, when the
+door opened and Father stepped in.
+
+It was a great event--any visit from him to the nursery--and we both
+dropped our toys and stood staring, not knowing whether he was going
+to be nice and kind as he sometimes was, or scold us as I had heard him
+scold our beautiful sister.
+
+Arthur showed at once what he thought, for without the least hesitation
+he took the one step which placed him in front of me, where he stood
+waiting with his two little fists hanging straight at his sides but
+manfully clenched in full readiness for attack. That this display of
+pigmy chivalry was not quite without its warrant is evident to me now,
+for Father did not look like himself or act like himself any more than
+he had the night before.
+
+However, we had no cause for fear. Having no suspicion of my having been
+awake during his terrible interview with Theresa, he saw only two lonely
+and forsaken children, interrupted in their play.
+
+Can I remember what he said to us? Not exactly, though Arthur and I
+often went over it choked whispers in some secret nook of the dreary old
+house; but his meaning--that we took in well enough. Theresa had left
+us. She would never come back. We were not to look out of the window for
+her, or run to the door when the bell rang. Our mother had left us too,
+a long time ago, and she lay in the cemetery where we sometimes carried
+flowers. Theresa was not in the cemetery, but we must think of her as
+there; though not as if she had any need of flowers. Having said this,
+he looked at us quietly for a minute. Arthur was trying very hard not to
+cry, but I was sobbing like the lost child I was, with my cheek against
+the floor where I had thrown myself when he said that awful thing about
+the cemetery. She there! my sister-mother there! I think he felt a
+little sorry for me; for he half stooped as if to lift me up. But he
+straightened again and said very sternly:
+
+“Now, children, listen to me. When God takes people to heaven and leaves
+us only their cold, dead bodies we carry flowers to their graves and
+talk about them some if not very much. But when people die because they
+love dark ways better than light, then we do not remember them with
+gifts and we do not talk about them. Your sister’s name has been spoken
+for the last time in this house. You, Arthur, are old enough to know
+what I mean when I say that I will never listen to another word about
+her from either you or Violet as long as you and I live. She is gone and
+nothing that is mine shall she ever touch again.
+
+“You hear me, Arthur; you hear me, Violet. Heed me, or you go too.”
+
+His aspect was terrible, so was his purpose; much more terrible than
+we realized at the time with our limited understanding and experience.
+Later, we came to know the full meaning of this black drop which had
+been infused into our lives. When we saw every picture of her destroyed
+which had been in the house; her name cut out from the leaves of books;
+the little tokens she had given us surreptitiously taken away, till not
+a vestige of her once beloved presence remained, we began to realize
+that we had indeed lost her.
+
+But children as young as we were then do not long retain the poignancy
+of their first griefs. Gradually my memories of that awful night ceased
+to disturb my dreams and I was sixteen before they were again recalled
+to me with any vividness, and then it was by accident. I had been
+strolling through a picture gallery and had stopped short to study more
+particularly one which had especially taken my fancy. There were two
+ladies sitting on a bench behind me and one of them was evidently very
+deaf, for their talk was loud, though I am sure they did not mean for
+me to hear, for they were discussing my family. That is, one of them had
+said:
+
+“That’s Violet Strange. She will never be the beauty her sister was; but
+perhaps that’s not to be deplored. Theresa made a great mess of it.”
+
+“That’s true. I hear that she and the Signor have been seen lately here
+in town. In poverty, of course. He hadn’t even as much go in him as the
+ordinary singing-master.”
+
+I suppose I should have hurried away, and left this barbed arrow to
+rankle where it fell. But I could not. I had never learned a word of
+Theresa’s fate and that word poverty, proving that she was alive and
+suffering, held me to my place to hear what more they might say of
+her who for years had been for me an indistinct figure bathed in cruel
+moonlight.
+
+“I have never approved of Peter Strange’s conduct at that time,” one of
+the voices now went on. “He didn’t handle her right. She had a lovely
+disposition and would have listened to him had he been more gentle with
+her. But it isn’t in him. I hope this one--”
+
+I didn’t hear the end of that. I had no interest in anything they might
+say about myself. It was of her I wanted to hear, of her. Weren’t they
+going to say anything more about my poor sister? Yes; it was a topic
+which interested both and presently I heard:
+
+“He’ll never do anything for her, no matter what happens; I’ve heard him
+say so. And Laura has vowed the same.” (Laura is our aunt.) “Besides,
+Theresa has a pride of her own quite equal to her father’s. She wouldn’t
+take anything from him now. She’d rather struggle on. I’m told--I don’t
+know how true it is--that she’s working in a department store; one of
+the Sixth Avenue ones. Oh, there’s Mrs. Vandegraff! Don’t you want to
+speak to her?”
+
+They moved off, leaving me still gazing with unseeing eyes at the
+picture before which I stood planted, and saying over and over in
+monotonous iteration, “One of the department stores in Sixth Avenue! One
+of the department stores in Sixth Avenue!”
+
+Which department store?
+
+I meant to find out.
+
+I do not know whether up till then I had had the least consciousness of
+possessing what is called the detective instinct. But, at the prospect
+of this quest, so much like that of the proverbial needle in a haystack,
+as I did not even know my sister’s married name and something within me
+forbade my asking it, I experienced an odd sense of elation followed
+by a certainty of success which in five minutes changed me from an
+irresponsible girl to a woman with a deliberate purpose in life.
+
+I am not going to write down here all the details of that search.
+Some day I may relate them to you, but not now. I looked first for
+a beautiful woman, for the straight, slim, and exquisite creature I
+remembered. I did not find her. Then I tried another course. Her figure
+might have changed in the ten years which had elapsed; so might her
+expression. I would look for a woman with beautiful dark eyes; time
+could not have altered them. I had forgotten the effect of constant
+weeping. And I saw many eyes, but not hers; not the ones I had seen
+smiling upon me as I lay in my crib before the days I was lifted to the
+dignity of the little brass bed. So I gave that up too and listened to
+the inner voice which said, “You must wait for her to recognize you. You
+can never hope to recognize her.” And it was by following this plan
+that I found her. I had arranged to have my name spoken aloud at every
+counter where I bargained; and oh, the bargains I sought, and the
+garments I had tried on! But I made little progress until one day, after
+my name had been uttered a little louder than usual I saw a woman turn
+from rearranging gowns on a hanger, and give me one look.
+
+I uttered a low cry and sprang impetuously, forward. Instantly she
+turned her back and went on hanging, or trying to hang up, gowns on
+the rack before her. Had I been mistaken? She was not the sister of
+my dreams, but there was something fine in her outline; something
+distinguished in the way she carried her head which--
+
+Next minute my last doubt fled! She had fallen her length on the floor
+and lay with her face buried in her hands in a dead faint.
+
+Oh, Roger, Roger, Roger! I had that dear head on my breast in a moment.
+I talked to her, I whispered prayers in her unconscious ear. I did
+everything I should not have done till they all thought me demented.
+When she came to, as she did under other ministrations than mine, I
+was for carrying her off in my limousine. But she shook her head with
+a gesture of such disapproval, that I realized I could not do that. The
+limousine was my father’s, and nothing of his was ever to be used for
+her again. I would call a cab; but she told me that she had not the
+money to pay for it and she would not take mine. Carfare she had; five
+cents would take her home. I need not worry.
+
+She smiled as she said this and for an instant I saw my dream-sister
+again in this weary half-disheartened woman. But the smile was a
+fleeting one, for this was to be her last day in the store; she had no
+talent as a saleswoman and was merely working out her week.
+
+I felt my heart sink heavily at this, for the evidences of poverty
+were plainly to be seen in her clothes and the thinness of her face and
+figure. How could I help? What could I do? I took her to a restaurant
+for food and talk, and before she would order, she looked into her
+purse, with the result that we had only a little toast and tea. It was
+all she could afford and I, with a hundred dollars in bills at that
+moment in my bag, could not offer her anything more though she was
+needing nourishment and dishes piled with savoury meats were going by us
+every moment.
+
+I think, if she had let me, I would have dared my father’s displeasure
+and been disobedient to his wishes by giving her one wholesome meal.
+But she was as resolute of mind as he, and, as she said afterwards,
+had chosen her course in life and must abide by it. My love she would
+accept. It took nothing from Father and gave her what her heart was
+pining for--had pined for for years. But nothing more--not another thing
+more. She would not even let me go home with her; and I knew why when
+her eyes fell at the searching look I gave her. Something would turn
+up, and when her husband’s health was better and she had found another
+position she would send me her address and then I could come and see
+her. As we walked out of the restaurant we ran against a gentleman
+I knew. He stopped me for a passing word and in that minute she
+disappeared. I did not try to follow her. I could get her street and
+number from the store where she had worked.
+
+But when I had done this and embraced the first opportunity which
+offered to visit her, I found that she had moved away in the interim,
+leaving everything behind in payment of her rent, except such small
+things as she and her husband could carry. This was discouraging as it
+left me without any clue by which to follow them. But I was determined
+not to yield to her desire for concealment in the difficult and
+disheartening task I now saw before me.
+
+Seeking advice from the man who has since become my employer, I entered
+upon this second search with a quiet resolution which admitted of no
+defeat. It took me six months, but I finally found her, and satisfied
+with knowing where she was, desisted from rushing in upon her, till I
+had caught one glimpse of her husband whom, in the last six months,
+I had heard described but had never seen. To understand her, it was
+perhaps necessary to understand him, and if I could not hope to do this
+offhand, I could not fail to get some idea of the man from even the most
+casual look.
+
+He was, as I soon learned, the fetcher and carrier of the small ménage;
+and the day came when I met him face to face in the street where they
+lived. Did he disappoint me; or did I see something in his appearance
+to justify her desertion of her father’s home and her present life of
+poverty? If I say Yes to the first question, I must also say it to the
+last. If handsome once, he was not handsome now; but with a personality
+such as his, this did not matter. He had that better thing--that
+greatest gift of the gods--charm. It was in his bearing, his movement,
+the regard of his weary eye; more than that it was in his very nature or
+it would have vanished long ago under disappointment and privation.
+
+But that was all there was to the man,--a golden net in which my
+sister’s youthful fancy had been caught and no doubt held meshed to
+this very day. I felt less like blaming her for her folly, after that
+instant’s view of him as we passed each other in the street. But, as I
+took time to think, I found myself growing sorrier and sorrier for her
+and yet, in a way, gladder and gladder, for the man was a physical wreck
+and would soon pass out of her life leaving her to my love and possibly
+to our father’s forgiveness.
+
+But I did not know Theresa. After her husband’s death, which occurred
+very soon, she let me come to her and we had a long talk. Shall I ever
+forget it or the sight of her beauty in that sordid room? For, account
+for it as you will, the loveliness which had fled under her sense of
+complete isolation had slowly regained its own with the recognition that
+she still had a place in the heart of her little sister. Not even the
+sorrow she felt for the loss of her suffering husband--and she did mourn
+him; this I am glad to say--could more than temporarily stay this. Six
+months of ease and wholesome food would make her--I hardly dared to
+think what. For I knew, without asking her, or she telling me, that
+she would accept neither; that she was as determined now, as ever that
+nothing which came directly or indirectly from Father should go to the
+rebuilding of her life. That she intended to start anew and work her way
+up to a place where I should be glad to see her she did say. But
+nothing more. She was still the sister-mother, loving, but sufficient to
+herself, though she had but ten dollars left in the world, as she showed
+me with a smile that made her beautiful as an angel.
+
+I can see that shabby little purse yet with its one poor greasy bill;--a
+sum to her but to me the price of a luncheon or a gift of flowers. How
+I longed, as I looked at it to tear every jewel from my poor, bedecked
+body and fling them one and all into her lap. I had worn them in
+profusion, though carefully hidden under my coat, in the hope that she
+would accept one of them at least, But she refused all, even such as had
+been gifts of friends and schoolmates, only humouring me this far, that
+she let me hang them for a few minutes about her neck and in her hair
+and then pull them all off again. But this one vision of her in the
+splendour she was born to comforted me. Henceforth in wearing them it
+would be of her and not of myself I should think.
+
+Well, I had to leave her and go home to my French and Italian lessons,
+my music-masters and all the luxuries of our father’s house. Should I
+ever see her again? I did not know; she had not promised. I could not go
+often into the quarter where she lived, without rousing suspicion;
+and she had bidden me not to come again for a month. So I waited, half
+fearing she would flit again before the month was up. But she did not.
+She was still there when--
+
+But I am going too fast. The meeting I was about to mention was a very
+memorable one to me, and I must describe it from the beginning. I had
+ridden in my own car as near as I dared to the street where she lived;
+the rest of the way I went on foot with one of the servants--a new
+one--following close behind me. I was not exactly afraid, but the
+actions of some of the people I had encountered at my former visit
+warned me to be a little careful for my father’s sake if not for my own.
+Her room--she had but one--was high up in a triangular court it was
+no pleasure to enter. But love and loyalty heed nothing but the object
+sought, and I was hunting about for the dark doorway which opened upon
+the staircase leading to her room when--and this was the great moment of
+my life--a sudden stream of melody floated down into that noisome court,
+which from its clearness, its accuracy, its richness, and its feeling
+startled me as I had never before been startled even by the first notes
+of the world’s greatest singers. What a voice for a place like this!
+What a voice for any place! Whose could it be? With a start, I stopped
+short, in the middle of that court, heedless of the crowd of pushing,
+shouting children who at once gathered about me. I had been struck by an
+old recollection. My sister used to sing. I remembered where her piano
+had stood in the great drawing-room. It had been carted away during
+those dreadful weeks and her music all burned; but the vision of her
+graceful figure bending over the keyboard was one not to be forgotten
+even by a thoughtless child. Could it be--oh, heaven! if this voice were
+hers! Her future was certain; she had but to sing.
+
+In a transport of hope I rushed for the dim entrance the children had
+pointed out and flew up to her room. As I reached it, I heard a trill as
+perfect as Tetrazzini’s. The singer was Theresa; there could be no more
+doubt. Theresa! exercising a grand voice as only a great artist would or
+could.
+
+The joy of it made me almost faint. I leaned against her door and
+sobbed. Then when I thought I could speak quite calmly, I went in.
+
+Roger, you must understand me now,--my desire for money and the means I
+have taken to obtain it. My sister had the makings of a prima-donna. Her
+husband, of whose ability I had formed so low an estimate, had trained
+her with consummate skill and judgment. All she needed was a year with
+some great maestro in the foreign atmosphere of art. But this meant
+money--not hundreds but thousands, and the one sure source to which we
+might rightfully look for any such amount was effectually closed to
+us. It is true we had relatives--an aunt on our mother’s side, and I
+mentioned her to Theresa. But she would not listen to the suggestion.
+She would take nothing from any one whom she would find it hard to face
+in case of failure. Love must go with an advance involving so much
+risk; love deep enough and strong enough to feel no loss save that of a
+defeated hope. In short, to be acceptable, the money must come from me,
+and as this was manifestly impossible, she considered the matter closed
+and began to talk of a position she had been offered in some choir. I
+let her talk, listening and not listening; for the idea had come to me
+that if in some way I could earn money, she might be induced to take it.
+Finally, I asked her. She laughed, letting her kisses answer me. But
+I did not laugh. If she had capabilities in one way, I had them in
+another.
+
+I went home to think.
+
+Two weeks later, I began, in a very quiet way to do certain work for the
+man who had helped me in my second search for Theresa. The money I have
+earned has been immense; since it was troubles of the rich I was given
+to settle, and I was almost always successful. Every cent has gone to
+her. She has been in Europe for a year and last week she made her debut.
+You read about it in the papers, but neither you nor any one else in
+this country but myself knew that under the name she chosen to assume,
+Theresa Strange, the long forgotten beauty, has recovered that place in
+the world, to which her love and genius entitle her.
+
+This is my story and hers. From now on, you are the third in the secret.
+Some day, my father will be the fourth. I think then, a new dawn of
+love will arise for us all, which will stay the whitening of his dear
+head--for I believe in him after all. Yesterday when he passed the wall
+where her picture once hung--no other has ever hung there--I saw him
+stop and look up, and, Roger, when he passed me a minute later, there
+was a tear in his hard eye.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s The Golden Slipper, by Anna Katharine Green
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Slipper, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Golden Slipper
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green
+
+Posting Date: February 1, 2009 [EBook #3071]
+Release Date: February, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN SLIPPER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lynn and Chris Hill
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+
+And Other Problems for Violet Strange
+
+By Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+
+     II THE SECOND BULLET
+
+     III THE INTANGIBLE CLEW
+
+     IV THE GROTTO SPECTRE
+
+     V THE DREAMING LADY
+
+     VI THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS
+
+     VII THE DOCTOR, HIS WIFE, AND THE CLOCK
+
+     VIII MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN
+
+     IX VIOLET'S OWN
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN SLIPPER AND OTHER PROBLEMS FOR VIOLET STRANGE
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM I THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+
+"She's here! I thought she would be. She's one of the three young ladies
+you see in the right-hand box near the proscenium."
+
+The gentleman thus addressed--a man of middle age and a member of the
+most exclusive clubs--turned his opera glass toward the spot designated,
+and in some astonishment retorted:
+
+"She? Why those are the Misses Pratt and--"
+
+"Miss Violet Strange; no other."
+
+"And do you mean to say--"
+
+"I do--"
+
+"That yon silly little chit, whose father I know, whose fortune I know,
+who is seen everywhere, and who is called one of the season's belles is
+an agent of yours; a--a--"
+
+"No names here, please. You want a mystery solved. It is not a matter
+for the police--that is, as yet,--and so you come to me, and when I ask
+for the facts, I find that women and only women are involved, and that
+these women are not only young but one and all of the highest society.
+Is it a man's work to go to the bottom of a combination like this? No.
+Sex against sex, and, if possible, youth against youth. Happily, I know
+such a person--a girl of gifts and extraordinarily well placed for the
+purpose. Why she uses her talents in this direction--why, with means
+enough to play the part natural to her as a successful debutante, she
+consents to occupy herself with social and other mysteries, you must ask
+her, not me. Enough that I promise you her aid if you want it. That is,
+if you can interest her. She will not work otherwise."
+
+Mr. Driscoll again raised his opera glass.
+
+"But it's a comedy face," he commented. "It's hard to associate
+intellectuality with such quaintness of expression. Are you sure of her
+discretion?"
+
+"Whom is she with?"
+
+"Abner Pratt, his wife, and daughters."
+
+"Is he a man to entrust his affairs unadvisedly?"
+
+"Abner Pratt! Do you mean to say that she is anything more to him than
+his daughters' guest?"
+
+"Judge. You see how merry they are. They were in deep trouble yesterday.
+You are witness to a celebration."
+
+"And she?"
+
+"Don't you observe how they are loading her with attentions? She's
+too young to rouse such interest in a family of notably unsympathetic
+temperament for any other reason than that of gratitude."
+
+"It's hard to believe. But if what you hint is true, secure me an
+opportunity at once of talking to this youthful marvel. My affair is
+serious. The dinner I have mentioned comes off in three days and--"
+
+"I know. I recognize your need; but I think you had better enter Mr.
+Pratt's box without my intervention. Miss Strange's value to us will be
+impaired the moment her connection with us is discovered."
+
+"Ah, there's Ruthven! He will take me to Mr. Pratt's box," remarked
+Driscoll as the curtain fell on the second act. "Any suggestions before
+I go?"
+
+"Yes, and an important one. When you make your bow, touch your left
+shoulder with your right hand. It is a signal. She may respond to it;
+but if she does not, do not be discouraged. One of her idiosyncrasies is
+a theoretical dislike of her work. But once she gets interested, nothing
+will hold her back. That's all, except this. In no event give away her
+secret. That's part of the compact, you remember."
+
+Driscoll nodded and left his seat for Ruthven's box. When the curtain
+rose for the third time he could be seen sitting with the Misses Pratt
+and their vivacious young friend. A widower and still on the right side
+of fifty, his presence there did not pass unnoted, and curiosity
+was rife among certain onlookers as to which of the twin belles was
+responsible for this change in his well-known habits. Unfortunately,
+no opportunity was given him for showing. Other and younger men had
+followed his lead into the box, and they saw him forced upon the good
+graces of the fascinating but inconsequent Miss Strange whose rapid fire
+of talk he was hardly of a temperament to appreciate.
+
+Did he appear dissatisfied? Yes; but only one person in the opera house
+knew why. Miss Strange had shown no comprehension of or sympathy with
+his errand. Though she chatted amiably enough between duets and trios,
+she gave him no opportunity to express his wishes though she knew them
+well enough, owing to the signal he had given her.
+
+This might be in character but it hardly suited his views; and, being a
+man of resolution, he took advantage of an absorbing minute on the stage
+to lean forward and whisper in her ear:
+
+"It's my daughter for whom I request your services; as fine a girl as
+any in this house. Give me a hearing. You certainly can manage it."
+
+She was a small, slight woman whose naturally quaint appearance was
+accentuated by the extreme simplicity of her attire. In the tier upon
+tier of boxes rising before his eyes, no other personality could
+vie with hers in strangeness, or in the illusive quality of her
+ever-changing expression. She was vivacity incarnate and, to the
+ordinary observer, light as thistledown in fibre and in feeling. But not
+to all. To those who watched her long, there came moments--say when
+the music rose to heights of greatness--when the mouth so given over to
+laughter took on curves of the rarest sensibility, and a woman's lofty
+soul shone through her odd, bewildering features.
+
+Driscoll had noted this, and consequently awaited her reply in secret
+hope.
+
+It came in the form of a question and only after an instant's display of
+displeasure or possibly of pure nervous irritability.
+
+"What has she done?"
+
+"Nothing. But slander is in the air, and any day it may ripen into
+public accusation."
+
+"Accusation of what?" Her tone was almost pettish.
+
+"Of--of theft," he murmured. "On a great scale," he emphasized, as the
+music rose to a crash.
+
+"Jewels?"
+
+"Inestimable ones. They are always returned by somebody. People say, by
+me."
+
+"Ah!" The little lady's hands grew steady,--they had been fluttering all
+over her lap. "I will see you to-morrow morning at my father's house,"
+she presently observed; and turned her full attention to the stage.
+
+Some three days after this Mr. Driscoll opened his house on the Hudson
+to notable guests. He had not desired the publicity of such an event,
+nor the opportunity it gave for an increase of the scandal secretly in
+circulation against his daughter. But the Ambassador and his wife were
+foreign and any evasion of the promised hospitality would be sure to be
+misunderstood; so the scheme was carried forward though with less eclat
+than possibly was expected.
+
+Among the lesser guests, who were mostly young and well acquainted with
+the house and its hospitality, there was one unique figure,--that of the
+lively Miss Strange, who, if personally unknown to Miss Driscoll, was so
+gifted with the qualities which tell on an occasion of this kind,
+that the stately young hostess hailed her presence with very obvious
+gratitude.
+
+The manner of their first meeting was singular, and of great interest
+to one of them at least. Miss Strange had come in an automobile and had
+been shown her room; but there was nobody to accompany her down-stairs
+afterward, and, finding herself alone in the great hall, she naturally
+moved toward the library, the door of which stood ajar. She had pushed
+this door half open before she noticed that the room was already
+occupied. As a consequence, she was made the unexpected observer of a
+beautiful picture of youth and love.
+
+A young man and a young woman were standing together in the glow of a
+blazing wood-fire. No word was to be heard, but in their faces, eloquent
+with passion, there shone something so deep and true that the chance
+intruder hesitated on the threshold, eager to lay this picture away in
+her mind with the other lovely and tragic memories now fast accumulating
+there. Then she drew back, and readvancing with a less noiseless foot,
+came into the full presence of Captain Holliday drawn up in all the
+pride of his military rank beside Alicia, the accomplished daughter of
+the house, who, if under a shadow as many whispered, wore that shadow as
+some women wear a crown.
+
+Miss Strange was struck with admiration, and turned upon them the
+brightest facet of her vivacious nature all the time she was saying to
+herself: "Does she know why I am here? Or does she look upon me only as
+an additional guest foisted upon her by a thoughtless parent?"
+
+There was nothing in the manner of her cordial but composed young
+hostess to show, and Miss Strange, with but one thought in mind since
+she had caught the light of feeling on the two faces confronting her,
+took the first opportunity that offered of running over the facts given
+her by Mr. Driscoll, to see if any reconcilement were possible between
+them and an innocence in which she must henceforth believe.
+
+They were certainly of a most damaging nature.
+
+Miss Driscoll and four other young ladies of her own station in life had
+formed themselves, some two years before, into a coterie of five,
+called The Inseparables. They lunched together, rode together, visited
+together. So close was the bond and their mutual dependence so evident,
+that it came to be the custom to invite the whole five whenever the
+size of the function warranted it. In fact, it was far from an uncommon
+occurrence to see them grouped at receptions or following one another
+down the aisles of churches or through the mazes of the dance at balls
+or assemblies. And no one demurred at this, for they were all handsome
+and attractive girls, till it began to be noticed that, coincident
+with their presence, some article of value was found missing from the
+dressing-room or from the tables where wedding gifts were displayed.
+Nothing was safe where they went, and though, in the course of time,
+each article found its way back to its owner in a manner as mysterious
+as its previous abstraction, the scandal grew and, whether with good
+reason or bad, finally settled about the person of Miss Driscoll, who
+was the showiest, least pecuniarily tempted, and most dignified in
+manner and speech of them all.
+
+Some instances had been given by way of further enlightenment. This is
+one: A theatre party was in progress. There were twelve in the party,
+five of whom were the Inseparables. In the course of the last act,
+another lady--in fact, their chaperon--missed her handkerchief, an
+almost priceless bit of lace. Positive that she had brought it with
+her into the box, she caused a careful search, but without the least
+success. Recalling certain whispers she had heard, she noted which of
+the five girls were with her in the box. They were Miss Driscoll,
+Miss Hughson, Miss Yates, and Miss Benedict. Miss West sat in the box
+adjoining.
+
+A fortnight later this handkerchief reappeared--and where? Among
+the cushions of a yellow satin couch in her own drawing-room. The
+Inseparables had just made their call and the three who had sat on the
+couch were Miss Driscoll, Miss Hughson, and Miss Benedict.
+
+The next instance seemed to point still more insistently toward the lady
+already named. Miss Yates had an expensive present to buy, and the whole
+five Inseparables went in an imposing group to Tiffany's. A tray of
+rings was set before them. All examined and eagerly fingered the stock
+out of which Miss Yates presently chose a finely set emerald. She was
+leading her friends away when the clerk suddenly whispered in her
+ear, "I miss one of the rings." Dismayed beyond speech, she turned and
+consulted the faces of her four companions who stared back at her with
+immovable serenity. But one of them was paler than usual, and this lady
+(it was Miss Driscoll) held her hands in her muff and did not offer to
+take them out. Miss Yates, whose father had completed a big "deal" the
+week before, wheeled round upon the clerk. "Charge it! charge it at its
+full value," said she. "I buy both the rings."
+
+And in three weeks the purloined ring came back to her, in a box of
+violets with no name attached.
+
+The third instance was a recent one, and had come to Mr. Driscoll's
+ears directly from the lady suffering the loss. She was a woman of
+uncompromising integrity, who felt it her duty to make known to this
+gentleman the following facts: She had just left a studio reception, and
+was standing at the curb waiting for a taxicab to draw up, when a small
+boy--a street arab--darted toward her from the other side of the street,
+and thrusting into her hand something small and hard, cried breathlessly
+as he slipped away, "It's yours, ma'am; you dropped it." Astonished, for
+she had not been conscious of any loss, she looked down at her treasure
+trove and found it to be a small medallion which she sometimes wore on
+a chain at her belt. But she had not worn it that day, nor any day for
+weeks. Then she remembered. She had worn it a month before to a similar
+reception at this same studio. A number of young girls had stood about
+her admiring it--she remembered well who they were; the Inseparables,
+of course, and to please them she had slipped it from its chain.
+Then something had happened,--something which diverted her attention
+entirely,--and she had gone home without the medallion; had, in fact,
+forgotten it, only to recall its loss now. Placing it in her bag,
+she looked hastily about her. A crowd was at her back; nothing to be
+distinguished there. But in front, on the opposite side of the street,
+stood a club-house, and in one of its windows she perceived a solitary
+figure looking out. It was that of Miss Driscoll's father. He could
+imagine her conclusion.
+
+In vain he denied all knowledge of the matter. She told him other
+stories which had come to her ears of thefts as mysterious, followed
+by restorations as peculiar as this one, finishing with, "It is your
+daughter, and people are beginning to say so."
+
+And Miss Strange, brooding over these instances, would have said
+the same, but for Miss Driscoll's absolute serenity of demeanour and
+complete abandonment to love. These seemed incompatible with guilt;
+these, whatever the appearances, proclaimed innocence--an innocence she
+was here to prove if fortune favoured and the really guilty person's
+madness should again break forth.
+
+For madness it would be and nothing less, for any hand, even the most
+experienced, to draw attention to itself by a repetition of old tricks
+on an occasion so marked. Yet because it would take madness, and madness
+knows no law, she prepared herself for the contingency under a mask of
+girlish smiles which made her at once the delight and astonishment of
+her watchful and uneasy host.
+
+With the exception of the diamonds worn by the Ambassadress, there was
+but one jewel of consequence to be seen at the dinner that night; but
+how great was that consequence and with what splendour it invested the
+snowy neck it adorned!
+
+Miss Strange, in compliment to the noble foreigners, had put on one
+of her family heirlooms--a filigree pendant of extraordinary sapphires
+which had once belonged to Marie Antoinette. As its beauty flashed upon
+the women, and its value struck the host, the latter could not restrain
+himself from casting an anxious eye about the board in search of some
+token of the cupidity with which one person there must welcome this
+unexpected sight.
+
+Naturally his first glance fell upon Alicia, seated opposite to him at
+the other end of the table. But her eyes were elsewhere, and her smile
+for Captain Holliday, and the father's gaze travelled on, taking up each
+young girl's face in turn. All were contemplating Miss Strange and her
+jewels, and the cheeks of one were flushed and those of the others
+pale, but whether with dread or longing who could tell. Struck with
+foreboding, but alive to his duty as host, he forced his glances away,
+and did not even allow himself to question the motive or the wisdom of
+the temptation thus offered.
+
+Two hours later and the girls were all in one room. It was a custom of
+the Inseparables to meet for a chat before retiring, but always
+alone and in the room of one of their number. But this was a night of
+innovations; Violet was not only included, but the meeting was held in
+her room. Her way with girls was even more fruitful of result than her
+way with men. They might laugh at her, criticize her or even call her
+names significant of disdain, but they never left her long to herself or
+missed an opportunity to make the most of her irrepressible chatter.
+
+Her satisfaction at entering this charmed circle did not take from her
+piquancy, and story after story fell from her lips, as she fluttered
+about, now here now there, in her endless preparations for retirement.
+She had taken off her historic pendant after it had been duly admired
+and handled by all present, and, with the careless confidence of an
+assured ownership, thrown it down upon the end of her dresser, which, by
+the way, projected very close to the open window.
+
+"Are you going to leave your jewel there?" whispered a voice in her ear
+as a burst of laughter rang out in response to one of her sallies.
+
+Turning, with a simulation of round-eyed wonder, she met Miss Hughson's
+earnest gaze with the careless rejoinder, "What's the harm?" and went
+on with her story with all the reckless ease of a perfectly thoughtless
+nature.
+
+Miss Hughson abandoned her protest. How could she explain her reasons
+for it to one apparently uninitiated in the scandal associated with
+their especial clique.
+
+Yes, she left the jewel there; but she locked her door and quickly, so
+that they must all have heard her before reaching their rooms. Then she
+crossed to the window, which, like all on this side, opened on a balcony
+running the length of the house. She was aware of this balcony, also of
+the fact that only young ladies slept in the corridor communicating with
+it. But she was not quite sure that this one corridor accommodated
+them all. If one of them should room elsewhere! (Miss Driscoll, for
+instance). But no! the anxiety displayed for the safety of her jewel
+precluded that supposition. Their hostess, if none of the others, was
+within access of this room and its open window. But how about the rest?
+Perhaps the lights would tell. Eagerly the little schemer looked forth,
+and let her glances travel down the full length of the balcony. Two
+separate beams of light shot across it as she looked, and presently
+another, and, after some waiting, a fourth. But the fifth failed to
+appear. This troubled her, but not seriously. Two of the girls might be
+sleeping in one bed.
+
+Drawing her shade, she finished her preparations for the night; then
+with her kimono on, lifted the pendant and thrust it into a small box
+she had taken from her trunk. A curious smile, very unlike any she had
+shown to man or woman that day, gave a sarcastic lift to her lips, as
+with a slow and thoughtful manipulation of her dainty fingers she moved
+the jewel about in this small receptacle and then returned it, after one
+quick examining glance, to the very spot on the dresser from which she
+had taken it. "If only the madness is great enough!" that smile seemed
+to say. Truly, it was much to hope for, but a chance is a chance; and
+comforting herself with the thought, Miss Strange put out her light,
+and, with a hasty raising of the shade she had previously pulled down,
+took a final look at the prospect.
+
+Its aspect made her shudder. A low fog was rising from the meadows in
+the far distance, and its ghostliness under the moon woke all sorts of
+uncanny images in her excited mind. To escape them she crept into bed
+where she lay with her eyes on the end of her dresser. She had closed
+that half of the French window over which she had drawn the shade; but
+she had left ajar the one giving free access to the jewels; and when she
+was not watching the scintillation of her sapphires in the moonlight,
+she was dwelling in fixed attention on this narrow opening.
+
+But nothing happened, and two o'clock, then three o'clock struck,
+without a dimming of the blue scintillations on the end of her dresser.
+Then she suddenly sat up. Not that she heard anything new, but that a
+thought had come to her. "If an attempt is made," so she murmured softly
+to herself, "it will be by--" She did not finish. Something--she
+could not call it sound--set her heart beating tumultuously, and
+listening--listening--watching--watching--she followed in her
+imagination the approach down the balcony of an almost inaudible step,
+not daring to move herself, it seemed so near, but waiting with eyes
+fixed, for the shadow which must fall across the shade she had failed
+to raise over that half of the swinging window she had so carefully left
+shut.
+
+At length she saw it projecting slowly across the slightly illuminated
+surface. Formless, save for the outreaching hand, it passed the
+casement's edge, nearing with pauses and hesitations the open gap beyond
+through which the neglected sapphires beamed with steady lustre. Would
+she ever see the hand itself appear between the dresser and the window
+frame? Yes, there it comes,--small, delicate, and startlingly white,
+threading that gap--darting with the suddenness of a serpent's tongue
+toward the dresser and disappearing again with the pendant in its
+clutch.
+
+As she realizes this,--she is but young, you know,--as she sees her bait
+taken and the hardly expected event fulfilled, her pent-up breath sped
+forth in a sigh which sent the intruder flying, and so startled herself
+that she sank back in terror on her pillow.
+
+The breakfast-call had sounded its musical chimes through the halls.
+The Ambassador and his wife had responded, so had most of the young
+gentlemen and ladies, but the daughter of the house was not amongst
+them, nor Miss Strange, whom one would naturally expect to see down
+first of all.
+
+These two absences puzzled Mr. Driscoll. What might they not portend?
+But his suspense, at least in one regard, was short. Before his guests
+were well seated, Miss Driscoll entered from the terrace in company with
+Captain Holliday. In her arms she carried a huge bunch of roses and
+was looking very beautiful. Her father's heart warmed at the sight. No
+shadow from the night rested upon her.
+
+But Miss Strange!--where was she? He could not feel quite easy till he
+knew.
+
+"Have any of you seen Miss Strange?" he asked, as they sat down at
+table. And his eyes sought the Inseparables.
+
+Five lovely heads were shaken, some carelessly, some wonderingly, and
+one, with a quick, forced smile. But he was in no mood to discriminate,
+and he had beckoned one of the servants to him, when a step was heard at
+the door and the delinquent slid in and took her place, in a shamefaced
+manner suggestive of a cause deeper than mere tardiness. In fact, she
+had what might be called a frightened air, and stared into her plate,
+avoiding every eye, which was certainly not natural to her. What did
+it mean? and why, as she made a poor attempt at eating, did four of the
+Inseparables exchange glances of doubt and dismay and then concentrate
+their looks upon his daughter? That Alicia failed to notice this,
+but sat abloom above her roses now fastened in a great bunch upon her
+breast, offered him some comfort, yet, for all the volubility of his
+chief guests, the meal was a great trial to his patience, as well as a
+poor preparation for the hour when, the noble pair gone, he stepped into
+the library to find Miss Strange awaiting him with one hand behind her
+back and a piteous look on her infantile features.
+
+"O, Mr. Driscoll," she began,--and then he saw that a group of anxious
+girls hovered in her rear--"my pendant! my beautiful pendant! It is
+gone! Somebody reached in from the balcony and took it from my dresser
+in the night. Of course, it was to frighten me; all of the girls told me
+not to leave it there. But I--I cannot make them give it back, and papa
+is so particular about this jewel that I'm afraid to go home. Won't
+you tell them it's no joke, and see that I get it again. I won't be so
+careless another time."
+
+Hardly believing his eyes, hardly believing his ears,--she was so
+perfectly the spoiled child detected in a fault--he looked sternly about
+upon the girls and bade them end the jest and produce the gems at once.
+
+But not one of them spoke, and not one of them moved; only his daughter
+grew pale until the roses seemed a mockery, and the steady stare of her
+large eyes was almost too much for him to bear.
+
+The anguish of this gave asperity to his manner, and in a strange,
+hoarse tone he loudly cried:
+
+"One of you did this. Which? If it was you, Alicia, speak. I am in no
+mood for nonsense. I want to know whose foot traversed the balcony and
+whose hand abstracted these jewels."
+
+A continued silence, deepening into painful embarrassment for all.
+Mr. Driscoll eyed them in ill-concealed anguish, then turning to Miss
+Strange was still further thrown off his balance by seeing her pretty
+head droop and her gaze fall in confusion.
+
+"Oh! it's easy enough to tell whose foot traversed the balcony," she
+murmured. "It left this behind." And drawing forward her hand, she
+held out to view a small gold-coloured slipper. "I found it outside my
+window," she explained. "I hoped I should not have to show it."
+
+A gasp of uncontrollable feeling from the surrounding group of girls,
+then absolute stillness.
+
+"I fail to recognize it," observed Mr. Driscoll, taking it in his hand.
+"Whose slipper is this?" he asked in a manner not to be gainsaid.
+
+Still no reply, then as he continued to eye the girls one after another
+a voice--the last he expected to hear--spoke and his daughter cried:
+
+"It is mine. But it was not I who walked in it down the balcony."
+
+"Alicia!"
+
+A month's apprehension was in that cry. The silence, the pent-up emotion
+brooding in the air was intolerable. A fresh young laugh broke it.
+
+"Oh," exclaimed a roguish voice, "I knew that you were all in it! But
+the especial one who wore the slipper and grabbed the pendant cannot
+hope to hide herself. Her finger-tips will give her away."
+
+Amazement on every face and a convulsive movement in one half-hidden
+hand.
+
+"You see," the airy little being went on, in her light way, "I have some
+awfully funny tricks. I am always being scolded for them, but somehow I
+don't improve. One is to keep my jewelry bright with a strange foreign
+paste an old Frenchwoman once gave me in Paris. It's of a vivid red,
+and stains the fingers dreadfully if you don't take care. Not even water
+will take it off, see mine. I used that paste on my pendant last night
+just after you left me, and being awfully sleepy I didn't stop to rub
+it off. If your finger-tips are not red, you never touched the pendant,
+Miss Driscoll. Oh, see! They are as white as milk.
+
+"But some one took the sapphires, and I owe that person a scolding, as
+well as myself. Was it you, Miss Hughson? You, Miss Yates? or--" and
+here she paused before Miss West, "Oh, you have your gloves on! You are
+the guilty one!" and her laugh rang out like a peal of bells, robbing
+her next sentence of even a suggestion of sarcasm. "Oh, what a
+sly-boots!" she cried. "How you have deceived me! Whoever would have
+thought you to be the one to play the mischief!"
+
+Who indeed! Of all the five, she was the one who was considered
+absolutely immune from suspicion ever since the night Mrs. Barnum's
+handkerchief had been taken, and she not in the box. Eyes which had
+surveyed Miss Driscoll askance now rose in wonder toward hers,
+and failed to fall again because of the stoniness into which her
+delicately-carved features had settled.
+
+"Miss West, I know you will be glad to remove your gloves; Miss Strange
+certainly has a right to know her special tormentor," spoke up her host
+in as natural a voice as his great relief would allow.
+
+But the cold, half-frozen woman remained without a movement. She was
+not deceived by the banter of the moment. She knew that to all of the
+others, if not to Peter Strange's odd little daughter, it was the thief
+who was being spotted and brought thus hilariously to light. And her
+eyes grew hard, and her lips grey, and she failed to unglove the hands
+upon which all glances were concentrated.
+
+"You do not need to see my hands; I confess to taking the pendant."
+
+"Caroline!"
+
+A heart overcome by shock had thrown up this cry. Miss West eyed her
+bosom-friend disdainfully.
+
+"Miss Strange has called it a jest," she coldly commented. "Why should
+you suggest anything of a graver character?"
+
+Alicia brought thus to bay, and by one she had trusted most, stepped
+quickly forward, and quivering with vague doubts, aghast before
+unheard-of possibilities, she tremulously remarked:
+
+"We did not sleep together last night. You had to come into my room to
+get my slippers. Why did you do this? What was in your mind, Caroline?"
+
+A steady look, a low laugh choked with many emotions answered her.
+
+"Do you want me to reply, Alicia? Or shall we let it pass?"
+
+"Answer!"
+
+It was Mr. Driscoll who spoke. Alicia had shrunk back, almost to where a
+little figure was cowering with wide eyes fixed in something like terror
+on the aroused father's face.
+
+"Then hear me," murmured the girl, entrapped and suddenly desperate. "I
+wore Alicia's slippers and I took the jewels, because it was time that
+an end should come to your mutual dissimulation. The love I once felt
+for her she has herself deliberately killed. I had a lover--she took
+him. I had faith in life, in honour, and in friendship. She destroyed
+all. A thief--she has dared to aspire to him! And you condoned her
+fault. You, with your craven restoration of her booty, thought the
+matter cleared and her a fit mate for a man of highest honour."
+
+"Miss West,"--no one had ever heard that tone in Mr. Driscoll's voice
+before, "before you say another word calculated to mislead these ladies,
+let me say that this hand never returned any one's booty or had anything
+to do with the restoration of any abstracted article. You have been
+caught in a net, Miss West, from which you cannot escape by slandering
+my innocent daughter."
+
+"Innocent!" All the tragedy latent in this peculiar girl's nature blazed
+forth in the word. "Alicia, face me. Are you innocent? Who took the
+Dempsey corals, and that diamond from the Tiffany tray?"
+
+"It is not necessary for Alicia to answer," the father interposed with
+not unnatural heat. "Miss West stands self-convicted."
+
+"How about Lady Paget's scarf? I was not there that night."
+
+"You are a woman of wiles. That could be managed by one bent on an
+elaborate scheme of revenge."
+
+"And so could the abstraction of Mrs. Barnum's five-hundred-dollar
+handkerchief by one who sat in the next box," chimed in Miss Hughson,
+edging away from the friend to whose honour she would have pinned her
+faith an hour before. "I remember now seeing her lean over the railing
+to adjust the old lady's shawl."
+
+With a start, Caroline West turned a tragic gaze upon the speaker.
+
+"You think me guilty of all because of what I did last night?"
+
+"Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"And you, Anna?"
+
+"Alicia has my sympathy," murmured Miss Benedict.
+
+Yet the wild girl persisted.
+
+"But I have told you my provocation. You cannot believe that I am guilty
+of her sin; not if you look at her as I am looking now."
+
+But their glances hardly followed her pointing finger. Her friends--the
+comrades of her youth, the Inseparables with their secret oath--one and
+all held themselves aloof, struck by the perfidy they were only just
+beginning to take in. Smitten with despair, for these girls were her
+life, she gave one wild leap and sank on her knees before Alicia.
+
+"O speak!" she began. "Forgive me, and--"
+
+A tremble seized her throat; she ceased to speak and let fall her
+partially uplifted hands. The cheery sound of men's voices had drifted
+in from the terrace, and the figure of Captain Holliday could be seen
+passing by. The shudder which shook Caroline West communicated itself to
+Alicia Driscoll, and the former rising quickly, the two women surveyed
+each other, possibly for the first time, with open soul and a complete
+understanding.
+
+"Caroline!" murmured the one.
+
+"Alicia!" pleaded the other.
+
+"Caroline, trust me," said Alicia Driscoll in that moving voice of hers,
+which more than her beauty caught and retained all hearts. "You have
+served me ill, but it was not all undeserved. Girls," she went on,
+eyeing both them and her father with the wistfulness of a breaking
+heart, "neither Caroline nor myself are worthy of Captain Holliday's
+love. Caroline has told you her fault, but mine is perhaps a worse one.
+The ring--the scarf--the diamond pins--I took them all--took them if
+I did not retain them. A curse has been over my life--the curse of a
+longing I could not combat. But love was working a change in me. Since
+I have known Captain Holliday--but that's all over. I was mad to think
+I could be happy with such memories in my life. I shall never marry
+now--or touch jewels again--my own or another's. Father, father, you
+won't go back on your girl! I couldn't see Caroline suffer for what I
+have done. You will pardon me and help--help--"
+
+Her voice choked. She flung herself into her father's arms; his head
+bent over hers, and for an instant not a soul in the room moved.
+Then Miss Hughson gave a spring and caught her by the hand. "We are
+inseparable," said she, and kissed the hand, murmuring, "Now is our time
+to show it."
+
+Then other lips fell upon those cold and trembling fingers, which seemed
+to warm under these embraces. And then a tear. It came from the hard eye
+of Caroline, and remained a sacred secret between the two.
+
+"You have your pendant?"
+
+Mr. Driscoll's suffering eye shone down on Violet Strange's uplifted
+face as she advanced to say good-bye preparatory to departure.
+
+"Yes," she acknowledged, "but hardly, I fear, your gratitude."
+
+And the answer astonished her.
+
+"I am not sure that the real Alicia will not make her father happier
+than the unreal one has ever done."
+
+"And Captain Holliday?"
+
+"He may come to feel the same."
+
+"Then I do not quit in disgrace?"
+
+"You depart with my thanks."
+
+When a certain personage was told of the success of Miss Strange's
+latest manoeuvre, he remarked: "The little one progresses. We shall have
+to give her a case of prime importance next."
+
+END OF PROBLEM I
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM II. THE SECOND BULLET
+
+"You must see her."
+
+"No. No."
+
+"She's a most unhappy woman. Husband and child both taken from her in a
+moment; and now, all means of living as well, unless some happy
+thought of yours--some inspiration of your genius--shows us a way of
+re-establishing her claims to the policy voided by this cry of suicide."
+
+But the small wise head of Violet Strange continued its slow shake of
+decided refusal.
+
+"I'm sorry," she protested, "but it's quite out of my province. I'm too
+young to meddle with so serious a matter."
+
+"Not when you can save a bereaved woman the only possible compensation
+left her by untoward fate?"
+
+"Let the police try their hand at that."
+
+"They have had no success with the case."
+
+"Or you?"
+
+"Nor I either."
+
+"And you expect--"
+
+"Yes, Miss Strange. I expect you to find the missing bullet which will
+settle the fact that murder and not suicide ended George Hammond's life.
+If you cannot, then a long litigation awaits this poor widow, ending, as
+such litigation usually does, in favour of the stronger party. There's
+the alternative. If you once saw her--"
+
+"But that's what I'm not willing to do. If I once saw her I should yield
+to her importunities and attempt the seemingly impossible. My instincts
+bid me say no. Give me something easier."
+
+"Easier things are not so remunerative. There's money in this affair, if
+the insurance company is forced to pay up. I can offer you--"
+
+"What?"
+
+There was eagerness in the tone despite her effort at nonchalance. The
+other smiled imperceptibly, and briefly named the sum.
+
+It was larger than she had expected. This her visitor saw by the way her
+eyelids fell and the peculiar stillness which, for an instant, held her
+vivacity in check.
+
+"And you think I can earn that?"
+
+Her eyes were fixed on his in an eagerness as honest as it was
+unrestrained.
+
+He could hardly conceal his amazement, her desire was so evident and the
+cause of it so difficult to understand. He knew she wanted money--that
+was her avowed reason for entering into this uncongenial work. But to
+want it so much! He glanced at her person; it was simply clad but very
+expensively--how expensively it was his business to know. Then he took
+in the room in which they sat. Simplicity again, but the simplicity of
+high art--the drawing-room of one rich enough to indulge in the final
+luxury of a highly cultivated taste, viz.: unostentatious elegance and
+the subjection of each carefully chosen ornament to the general effect.
+
+What did this favoured child of fortune lack that she could be reached
+by such a plea, when her whole being revolted from the nature of the
+task he offered her? It was a question not new to him; but one he had
+never heard answered and was not likely to hear answered now. But the
+fact remained that the consent he had thought dependent upon sympathetic
+interest could be reached much more readily by the promise of large
+emolument,--and he owned to a feeling of secret disappointment even
+while he recognized the value of the discovery.
+
+But his satisfaction in the latter, if satisfaction it were, was of
+very short duration. Almost immediately he observed a change in her. The
+sparkle which had shone in the eye whose depths he had never been able
+to penetrate, had dissipated itself in something like a tear and she
+spoke up in that vigorous tone no one but himself had ever heard, as she
+said:
+
+"No. The sum is a good one and I could use it; but I will not waste my
+energy on a case I do not believe in. The man shot himself. He was a
+speculator, and probably had good reason for his act. Even his wife
+acknowledges that he has lately had more losses than gains."
+
+"See her. She has something to tell you which never got into the
+papers."
+
+"You say that? You know that?"
+
+"On my honour, Miss Strange."
+
+Violet pondered; then suddenly succumbed.
+
+"Let her come, then. Prompt to the hour. I will receive her at three.
+Later I have a tea and two party calls to make."
+
+Her visitor rose to leave. He had been able to subdue all evidence of
+his extreme gratification, and now took on a formal air. In dismissing a
+guest, Miss Strange was invariably the society belle and that only. This
+he had come to recognize.
+
+The case (well known at the time) was, in the fewest possible words, as
+follows:
+
+On a sultry night in September, a young couple living in one of the
+large apartment houses in the extreme upper portion of Manhattan were so
+annoyed by the incessant crying of a child in the adjoining suite, that
+they got up, he to smoke, and she to sit in the window for a possible
+breath of cool air. They were congratulating themselves upon the wisdom
+they had shown in thus giving up all thought of sleep--for the child's
+crying had not ceased--when (it may have been two o'clock and it may
+have been a little later) there came from somewhere near, the sharp and
+somewhat peculiar detonation of a pistol-shot.
+
+He thought it came from above; she, from the rear, and they were staring
+at each other in the helpless wonder of the moment, when they were
+struck by the silence. The baby had ceased to cry. All was as still
+in the adjoining apartment as in their own--too still--much too still.
+Their mutual stare turned to one of horror. "It came from there!"
+whispered the wife. "Some accident has occurred to Mr. or Mrs.
+Hammond--we ought to go--"
+
+Her words--very tremulous ones--were broken by a shout from below. They
+were standing in their window and had evidently been seen by a passing
+policeman. "Anything wrong up there?" they heard him cry. Mr. Saunders
+immediately looked out. "Nothing wrong here," he called down. (They were
+but two stories from the pavement.) "But I'm not so sure about the
+rear apartment. We thought we heard a shot. Hadn't you better come up,
+officer? My wife is nervous about it. I'll meet you at the stair-head
+and show you the way."
+
+The officer nodded and stepped in. The young couple hastily donned some
+wraps, and, by the time he appeared on their floor, they were ready to
+accompany him.
+
+Meanwhile, no disturbance was apparent anywhere else in the house, until
+the policeman rang the bell of the Hammond apartment. Then, voices began
+to be heard, and doors to open above and below, but not the one before
+which the policeman stood.
+
+Another ring, and this time an insistent one;--and still no response.
+The officer's hand was rising for the third time when there came a sound
+of fluttering from behind the panels against which he had laid his ear,
+and finally a choked voice uttering unintelligible words. Then a hand
+began to struggle with the lock, and the door, slowly opening, disclosed
+a woman clad in a hastily donned wrapper and giving every evidence of
+extreme fright.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, seeing only the compassionate faces of her
+neighbours. "You heard it, too! a pistol-shot from there--there--my
+husband's room. I have not dared to go--I--I--O, have mercy and see if
+anything is wrong! It is so still--so still, and only a moment ago the
+baby was crying. Mrs. Saunders, Mrs. Saunders, why is it so still?"
+
+She had fallen into her neighbour's arms. The hand with which she had
+pointed out a certain door had sunk to her side and she appeared to be
+on the verge of collapse.
+
+The officer eyed her sternly, while noting her appearance, which was
+that of a woman hastily risen from bed.
+
+"Where were you?" he asked. "Not with your husband and child, or you
+would know what had happened there."
+
+"I was sleeping down the hall," she managed to gasp out. "I'm not
+well--I--Oh, why do you all stand still and do nothing? My baby's in
+there. Go! go!" and, with sudden energy, she sprang upright, her eyes
+wide open and burning, her small well featured face white as the linen
+she sought to hide.
+
+The officer demurred no longer. In another instant he was trying the
+door at which she was again pointing.
+
+It was locked.
+
+Glancing back at the woman, now cowering almost to the floor, he pounded
+at the door and asked the man inside to open.
+
+No answer came back.
+
+With a sharp turn he glanced again at the wife.
+
+"You say that your husband is in this room?"
+
+She nodded, gasping faintly, "And the child!"
+
+He turned back, listened, then beckoned to Mr. Saunders. "We shall have
+to break our way in," said he. "Put your shoulder well to the door.
+Now!"
+
+The hinges of the door creaked; the lock gave way (this special officer
+weighed two hundred and seventy-five, as he found out, next day), and a
+prolonged and sweeping crash told the rest.
+
+Mrs. Hammond gave a low cry; and, straining forward from where she
+crouched in terror on the floor, searched the faces of the two men for
+some hint of what they saw in the dimly-lighted space beyond. Something
+dreadful, something which made Mr. Saunders come rushing back with a
+shout:
+
+"Take her away! Take her to our apartment, Jennie. She must not see--"
+
+Not see! He realized the futility of his words as his gaze fell on the
+young woman who had risen up at his approach and now stood gazing at
+him without speech, without movement, but with a glare of terror in her
+eyes, which gave him his first realization of human misery.
+
+His own glance fell before it. If he had followed his instinct he would
+have fled the house rather than answer the question of her look and the
+attitude of her whole frozen body.
+
+Perhaps in mercy to his speechless terror, perhaps in mercy to herself,
+she was the one who at last found the word which voiced their mutual
+anguish.
+
+"Dead?"
+
+No answer. None was needed.
+
+"And my baby?"
+
+O, that cry! It curdled the hearts of all who heard it. It shook the
+souls of men and women both inside and outside the apartment; then all
+was forgotten in the wild rush she made. The wife and mother had
+flung herself upon the scene, and, side by side with the not unmoved
+policeman, stood looking down upon the desolation made in one fatal
+instant in her home and heart.
+
+They lay there together, both past help, both quite dead. The child
+had simply been strangled by the weight of his father's arm which lay
+directly across the upturned little throat. But the father was a victim
+of the shot they had heard. There was blood on his breast, and a pistol
+in his hand.
+
+Suicide! The horrible truth was patent. No wonder they wanted to hold
+the young widow back. Her neighbour, Mrs. Saunders, crept in on tiptoe
+and put her arms about the swaying, fainting woman; but there was
+nothing to say--absolutely nothing.
+
+At least, they thought not. But when they saw her throw herself down,
+not by her husband, but by the child, and drag it out from under that
+strangling arm and hug and kiss it and call out wildly for a doctor, the
+officer endeavoured to interfere and yet could not find the heart to do
+so, though he knew the child was dead and should not, according to
+all the rules of the coroner's office, be moved before that official
+arrived. Yet because no mother could be convinced of a fact like this,
+he let her sit with it on the floor and try all her little arts to
+revive it, while he gave orders to the janitor and waited himself for
+the arrival of doctor and coroner.
+
+She was still sitting there in wide-eyed misery, alternately fondling
+the little body and drawing back to consult its small set features for
+some sign of life, when the doctor came, and, after one look at the
+child, drew it softly from her arms and laid it quietly in the crib from
+which its father had evidently lifted it but a short time before. Then
+he turned back to her, and found her on her feet, upheld by her two
+friends. She had understood his action, and without a groan had accepted
+her fate. Indeed, she seemed incapable of any further speech or action.
+She was staring down at her husband's body, which she, for the first
+time, seemed fully to see. Was her look one of grief or of resentment
+for the part he had played so unintentionally in her child's death? It
+was hard to tell; and when, with slowly rising finger, she pointed to
+the pistol so tightly clutched in the other outstretched hand, no one
+there--and by this time the room was full--could foretell what her words
+would be when her tongue regained its usage and she could speak.
+
+What she did say was this:
+
+"Is there a bullet gone? Did he fire off that pistol?" A question so
+manifestly one of delirium that no one answered it, which seemed to
+surprise her, though she said nothing till her glance had passed
+all around the walls of the room to where a window stood open to the
+night,--its lower sash being entirely raised. "There! look there!" she
+cried, with a commanding accent, and, throwing up her hands, sank a dead
+weight into the arms of those supporting her.
+
+No one understood; but naturally more than one rushed to the window. An
+open space was before them. Here lay the fields not yet parcelled out
+into lots and built upon; but it was not upon these they looked, but
+upon the strong trellis which they found there, which, if it supported
+no vine, formed a veritable ladder between this window and the ground.
+
+Could she have meant to call attention to this fact; and were her words
+expressive of another idea than the obvious one of suicide?
+
+If so, to what lengths a woman's imagination can go! Or so their
+combined looks seemed to proclaim, when to their utter astonishment they
+saw the officer, who had presented a calm appearance up till now, shift
+his position and with a surprised grunt direct their eyes to a portion
+of the wall just visible beyond the half-drawn curtains of the bed. The
+mirror hanging there showed a star-shaped breakage, such as follows the
+sharp impact of a bullet or a fiercely projected stone.
+
+"He fired two shots. One went wild; the other straight home."
+
+It was the officer delivering his opinion.
+
+Mr. Saunders, returning from the distant room where he had assisted in
+carrying Mrs. Hammond, cast a look at the shattered glass, and remarked
+forcibly:
+
+"I heard but one; and I was sitting up, disturbed by that poor infant.
+Jennie, did you hear more than one shot?" he asked, turning toward his
+wife.
+
+"No," she answered, but not with the readiness he had evidently
+expected. "I heard only one, but that was not quite usual in its tone.
+I'm used to guns," she explained, turning to the officer. "My father
+was an army man, and he taught me very early to load and fire a pistol.
+There was a prolonged sound to this shot; something like an echo of
+itself, following close upon the first ping. Didn't you notice that,
+Warren?"
+
+"I remember something of the kind," her husband allowed.
+
+"He shot twice and quickly," interposed the policeman, sententiously.
+"We shall find a spent bullet back of that mirror."
+
+But when, upon the arrival of the coroner, an investigation was made of
+the mirror and the wall behind, no bullet was found either there or any
+where else in the room, save in the dead man's breast. Nor had more than
+one been shot from his pistol, as five full chambers testified. The case
+which seemed so simple had its mysteries, but the assertion made by Mrs.
+Saunders no longer carried weight, nor was the evidence offered by the
+broken mirror considered as indubitably establishing the fact that a
+second shot had been fired in the room.
+
+Yet it was equally evident that the charge which had entered the dead
+speculator's breast had not been delivered at the close range of the
+pistol found clutched in his hand. There were no powder-marks to be
+discerned on his pajama-jacket, or on the flesh beneath. Thus anomaly
+confronted anomaly, leaving open but one other theory: that the bullet
+found in Mr. Hammond's breast came from the window and the one he shot
+went out of it. But this would necessitate his having shot his pistol
+from a point far removed from where he was found; and his wound was such
+as made it difficult to believe that he would stagger far, if at all,
+after its infliction.
+
+Yet, because the coroner was both conscientious and alert, he caused a
+most rigorous search to be made of the ground overlooked by the above
+mentioned window; a search in which the police joined, but which was
+without any result save that of rousing the attention of people in the
+neighbourhood and leading to a story being circulated of a man seen some
+time the night before crossing the fields in a great hurry. But as no
+further particulars were forthcoming, and not even a description of the
+man to be had, no emphasis would have been laid upon this story had it
+not transpired that the moment a report of it had come to Mrs. Hammond's
+ears (why is there always some one to carry these reports?) she
+roused from the torpor into which she had fallen, and in wild fashion
+exclaimed:
+
+"I knew it! I expected it! He was shot through the window and by that
+wretch. He never shot himself." Violent declarations which trailed off
+into the one continuous wail, "O, my baby! my poor baby!"
+
+Such words, even though the fruit of delirium, merited some sort of
+attention, or so this good coroner thought, and as soon as opportunity
+offered and she was sufficiently sane and quiet to respond to his
+questions, he asked her whom she had meant by that wretch, and what
+reason she had, or thought she had, of attributing her husband's death
+to any other agency than his own disgust with life.
+
+And then it was that his sympathies, although greatly roused in her
+favour began to wane. She met the question with a cold stare followed by
+a few ambiguous words out of which he could make nothing. Had she said
+wretch? She did not remember. They must not be influenced by anything
+she might have uttered in her first grief. She was well-nigh insane at
+the time. But of one thing they might be sure: her husband had not shot
+himself; he was too much afraid of death for such an act. Besides, he
+was too happy. Whatever folks might say he was too fond of his family to
+wish to leave it.
+
+Nor did the coroner or any other official succeed in eliciting anything
+further from her. Even when she was asked, with cruel insistence,
+how she explained the fact that the baby was found lying on the floor
+instead of in its crib, her only answer was: "His father was trying to
+soothe it. The child was crying dreadfully, as you have heard from those
+who were kept awake by him that night, and my husband was carrying him
+about when the shot came which caused George to fall and overlay the
+baby in his struggles."
+
+"Carrying a baby about with a loaded pistol in his hand?" came back in
+stern retort.
+
+She had no answer for this. She admitted when informed that the bullet
+extracted from her husband's body had been found to correspond exactly
+with those remaining in the five chambers of the pistol taken from his
+hand, that he was not only the owner of this pistol but was in the habit
+of sleeping with it under his pillow; but, beyond that, nothing; and
+this reticence, as well as her manner which was cold and repellent, told
+against her.
+
+A verdict of suicide was rendered by the coroner's jury, and the
+life-insurance company, in which Mr. Hammond had but lately insured
+himself for a large sum, taking advantage of the suicide clause embodied
+in the policy, announced its determination of not paying the same.
+
+Such was the situation, as known to Violet Strange and the general
+public, on the day she was asked to see Mrs. Hammond and learn what
+might alter her opinion as to the justice of this verdict and the stand
+taken by the Shuler Life Insurance Company.
+
+The clock on the mantel in Miss Strange's rose-coloured boudoir had
+struck three, and Violet was gazing in some impatience at the door, when
+there came a gentle knock upon it, and the maid (one of the elderly, not
+youthful, kind) ushered in her expected visitor.
+
+"You are Mrs. Hammond?" she asked, in natural awe of the too black
+figure outlined so sharply against the deep pink of the sea-shell room.
+
+The answer was a slow lifting of the veil which shadowed the features
+she knew only from the cuts she had seen in newspapers.
+
+"You are--Miss Strange?" stammered her visitor; "the young lady who--"
+
+"I am," chimed in a voice as ringing as it was sweet. "I am the person
+you have come here to see. And this is my home. But that does not make
+me less interested in the unhappy, or less desirous of serving them.
+Certainly you have met with the two greatest losses which can come to a
+woman--I know your story well enough to say that--; but what have you
+to tell me in proof that you should not lose your anticipated income as
+well? Something vital, I hope, else I cannot help you; something which
+you should have told the coroner's jury--and did not."
+
+The flush which was the sole answer these words called forth did not
+take from the refinement of the young widow's expression, but rather
+added to it; Violet watched it in its ebb and flow and, seriously
+affected by it (why, she did not know, for Mrs. Hammond had made no
+other appeal either by look or gesture), pushed forward a chair and
+begged her visitor to be seated.
+
+"We can converse in perfect safety here," she said. "When you feel quite
+equal to it, let me hear what you have to communicate. It will never go
+any further. I could not do the work I do if I felt it necessary to have
+a confidant."
+
+"But you are so young and so--so--"
+
+"So inexperienced you would say and so evidently a member of what New
+Yorkers call 'society.' Do not let that trouble you. My inexperience is
+not likely to last long and my social pleasures are more apt to add to
+my efficiency than to detract from it."
+
+With this Violet's face broke into a smile. It was not the brilliant
+one so often seen upon her lips, but there was something in its quality
+which carried encouragement to the widow and led her to say with obvious
+eagerness:
+
+"You know the facts?"
+
+"I have read all the papers."
+
+"I was not believed on the stand."
+
+"It was your manner--"
+
+"I could not help my manner. I was keeping something back, and, being
+unused to deceit, I could not act quite naturally."
+
+"Why did you keep something back? When you saw the unfavourable
+impression made by your reticence, why did you not speak up and frankly
+tell your story?"
+
+"Because I was ashamed. Because I thought it would hurt me more to speak
+than to keep silent. I do not think so now; but I did then--and so
+made my great mistake. You must remember not only the awful shock of my
+double loss, but the sense of guilt accompanying it; for my husband and
+I had quarreled that night, quarreled bitterly--that was why I had run
+away into another room and not because I was feeling ill and impatient
+of the baby's fretful cries."
+
+"So people have thought." In saying this, Miss Strange was perhaps
+cruelly emphatic. "You wish to explain that quarrel? You think it will
+be doing any good to your cause to go into that matter with me now?"
+
+"I cannot say; but I must first clear my conscience and then try to
+convince you that quarrel or no quarrel, he never took his own life. He
+was not that kind. He had an abnormal fear of death. I do not like to
+say it but he was a physical coward. I have seen him turn pale at the
+least hint of danger. He could no more have turned that muzzle upon his
+own breast than he could have turned it upon his baby. Some other hand
+shot him, Miss Strange. Remember the open window, the shattered mirror;
+and I think I know that hand."
+
+Her head had fallen forward on her breast. The emotion she showed was
+not so eloquent of grief as of deep personal shame.
+
+"You think you know the man?" In saying this, Violet's voice sunk to a
+whisper. It was an accusation of murder she had just heard.
+
+"To my great distress, yes. When Mr. Hammond and I were married," the
+widow now proceeded in a more determined tone, "there was another man--a
+very violent one--who vowed even at the church door that George and I
+should never live out two full years together. We have not. Our second
+anniversary would have been in November."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Let me say this: the quarrel of which I speak was not serious enough to
+occasion any such act of despair on his part. A man would be mad to
+end his life on account of so slight a disagreement. It was not even on
+account of the person of whom I've just spoken, though that person had
+been mentioned between us earlier in the evening, Mr. Hammond having
+come across him face to face that very afternoon in the subway. Up to
+this time neither of us had seen or heard of him since our wedding-day."
+
+"And you think this person whom you barely mentioned, so mindful of his
+old grudge that he sought out your domicile, and, with the intention of
+murder, climbed the trellis leading to your room and turned his pistol
+upon the shadowy figure which was all he could see in the semi-obscurity
+of a much lowered gas-jet?"
+
+"A man in the dark does not need a bright light to see his enemy when he
+is intent upon revenge."
+
+Miss Strange altered her tone.
+
+"And your husband? You must acknowledge that he shot off his pistol
+whether the other did or not."
+
+"It was in self-defence. He would shoot to save his own life--or the
+baby's."
+
+"Then he must have heard or seen--"
+
+"A man at the window."
+
+"And would have shot there?"
+
+"Or tried to."
+
+"Tried to?"
+
+"Yes; the other shot first--oh, I've thought it all out--causing my
+husband's bullet to go wild. It was his which broke the mirror."
+
+Violet's eyes, bright as stars, suddenly narrowed.
+
+"And what happened then?" she asked. "Why cannot they find the bullet?"
+
+"Because it went out of the window;--glanced off and went out of the
+window."
+
+Mrs. Hammond's tone was triumphant; her look spirited and intense.
+
+Violet eyed her compassionately.
+
+"Would a bullet glancing off from a mirror, however hung, be apt to
+reach a window so far on the opposite side?"
+
+"I don't know; I only know that it did," was the contradictory, almost
+absurd, reply.
+
+"What was the cause of the quarrel you speak of between your husband and
+yourself? You see, I must know the exact truth and all the truth to be
+of any assistance to you."
+
+"It was--it was about the care I gave, or didn't give, the baby. I feel
+awfully to have to say it, but George did not think I did my full duty
+by the child. He said there was no need of its crying so; that if I gave
+it the proper attention it would not keep the neighbours and himself
+awake half the night. And I--I got angry and insisted that I did the
+best I could; that the child was naturally fretful and that if he wasn't
+satisfied with my way of looking after it, he might try his. All of
+which was very wrong and unreasonable on my part, as witness the awful
+punishment which followed."
+
+"And what made you get up and leave him?"
+
+"The growl he gave me in reply. When I heard that, I bounded out of bed
+and said I was going to the spare room to sleep; and if the baby cried
+he might just try what he could do himself to stop it."
+
+"And he answered?"
+
+"This, just this--I shall never forget his words as long as I live--'If
+you go, you need not expect me to let you in again no matter what
+happens.'"
+
+"He said that?"
+
+"And locked the door after me. You see I could not tell all that."
+
+"It might have been better if you had. It was such a natural quarrel and
+so unprovocative of actual tragedy."
+
+Mrs. Hammond was silent. It was not difficult to see that she had no
+very keen regrets for her husband personally. But then he was not a very
+estimable man nor in any respect her equal.
+
+"You were not happy with him," Violet ventured to remark.
+
+"I was not a fully contented woman. But for all that he had no cause to
+complain of me except for the reason I have mentioned. I was not a
+very intelligent mother. But if the baby were living now--O, if he were
+living now--with what devotion I should care for him."
+
+She was on her feet, her arms were raised, her face impassioned with
+feeling. Violet, gazing at her, heaved a little sigh. It was perhaps in
+keeping with the situation, perhaps extraneous to it, but whatever its
+source, it marked a change in her manner. With no further check upon her
+sympathy, she said very softly:
+
+"It is well with the child."
+
+The mother stiffened, swayed, and then burst into wild weeping.
+
+"But not with me," she cried, "not with me. I am desolate and bereft. I
+have not even a home in which to hide my grief and no prospect of one."
+
+"But," interposed Violet, "surely your husband left you something? You
+cannot be quite penniless?"
+
+"My husband left nothing," was the answer, uttered without bitterness,
+but with all the hardness of fact. "He had debts. I shall pay those
+debts. When these and other necessary expenses are liquidated, there
+will be but little left. He made no secret of the fact that he lived
+close up to his means. That is why he was induced to take on a life
+insurance. Not a friend of his but knows his improvidence. I--I have not
+even jewels. I have only my determination and an absolute conviction as
+to the real nature of my husband's death."
+
+"What is the name of the man you secretly believe to have shot your
+husband from the trellis?"
+
+Mrs. Hammond told her.
+
+It was a new one to Violet. She said so and then asked:
+
+"What else can you tell me about him?"
+
+"Nothing, but that he is a very dark man and has a club-foot."
+
+"Oh, what a mistake you've made."
+
+"Mistake? Yes, I acknowledge that."
+
+"I mean in not giving this last bit of information at once to the
+police. A man can be identified by such a defect. Even his footsteps can
+be traced. He might have been found that very day. Now, what have we to
+go upon?"
+
+"You are right, but not expecting to have any difficulty about the
+insurance money I thought it would be generous in me to keep still.
+Besides, this is only surmise on my part. I feel certain that my husband
+was shot by another hand than his own, but I know of no way of proving
+it. Do you?"
+
+Then Violet talked seriously with her, explaining how their only hope
+lay in the discovery of a second bullet in the room which had already
+been ransacked for this very purpose and without the shadow of a result.
+
+A tea, a musicale, and an evening dance kept Violet Strange in a whirl
+for the remainder of the day. No brighter eye nor more contagious wit
+lent brilliance to these occasions, but with the passing of the midnight
+hour no one who had seen her in the blaze of electric lights would have
+recognized this favoured child of fortune in the earnest figure sitting
+in the obscurity of an up-town apartment, studying the walls, the
+ceilings, and the floors by the dim light of a lowered gas-jet. Violet
+Strange in society was a very different person from Violet Strange under
+the tension of her secret and peculiar work.
+
+She had told them at home that she was going to spend the night with a
+friend; but only her old coachman knew who that friend was. Therefore a
+very natural sense of guilt mingled with her emotions at finding
+herself alone on a scene whose gruesome mystery she could solve only by
+identifying herself with the place and the man who had perished there.
+
+Dismissing from her mind all thought of self, she strove to think as he
+thought, and act as he acted on the night when he found himself (a man
+of but little courage) left in this room with an ailing child.
+
+At odds with himself, his wife, and possibly with the child screaming
+away in its crib, what would he be apt to do in his present emergency?
+Nothing at first, but as the screaming continued he would remember the
+old tales of fathers walking the floor at night with crying babies,
+and hasten to follow suit. Violet, in her anxiety to reach his inmost
+thought, crossed to where the crib had stood, and, taking that as a
+start, began pacing the room in search of the spot from which a bullet,
+if shot, would glance aside from the mirror in the direction of the
+window. (Not that she was ready to accept this theory of Mrs. Hammond,
+but that she did not wish to entirely dismiss it without putting it to
+the test.)
+
+She found it in an unexpected quarter of the room and much nearer
+the bed-head than where his body was found. This, which might seem to
+confuse matters, served, on the contrary to remove from the case one of
+its most serious difficulties. Standing here, he was within reach of the
+pillow under which his pistol lay hidden, and if startled, as his wife
+believed him to have been by a noise at the other end of the room, had
+but to crouch and reach behind him in order to find himself armed and
+ready for a possible intruder.
+
+Imitating his action in this as in other things, she had herself
+crouched low at the bedside and was on the point of withdrawing her hand
+from under the pillow, when a new surprise checked her movement and held
+her fixed in her position, with eyes staring straight at the adjoining
+wall. She had seen there what he must have seen in making this same
+turn--the dark bars of the opposite window-frame outlined in the
+mirror--and understood at once what had happened. In the nervousness and
+terror of the moment, George Hammond had mistaken this reflection of
+the window for the window itself, and shot impulsively at the man he
+undoubtedly saw covering him from the trellis without. But while this
+explained the shattering of the mirror, how about the other and still
+more vital question, of where the bullet went afterward? Was the angle
+at which it had been fired acute enough to send it out of a window
+diagonally opposed? No; even if the pistol had been held closer to the
+man firing it than she had reason to believe, the angle still would be
+oblique enough to carry it on to the further wall.
+
+But no sign of any such impact had been discovered on this wall.
+Consequently, the force of the bullet had been expended before reaching
+it, and when it fell--
+
+Here, her glance, slowly traveling along the floor, impetuously paused.
+It had reached the spot where the two bodies had been found, and
+unconsciously her eyes rested there, conjuring up the picture of the
+bleeding father and the strangled child. How piteous and how dreadful
+it all was. If she could only understand--Suddenly she rose straight
+up, staring and immovable in the dim light. Had the idea--the
+explanation--the only possible explanation covering the whole phenomena
+come to her at last?
+
+It would seem so, for as she so stood, a look of conviction settled over
+her features, and with this look, evidences of a horror which for all
+her fast accumulating knowledge of life and its possibilities made her
+appear very small and very helpless.
+
+A half-hour later, when Mrs. Hammond, in her anxiety at hearing nothing
+more from Miss Strange, opened the door of her room, it was to find,
+lying on the edge of the sill, the little detective's card with these
+words hastily written across it:
+
+I do not feel as well as I could wish, and so have telephoned to my own
+coachman to come and take me home. I will either see or write you within
+a few days. But do not allow yourself to hope. I pray you do not allow
+yourself the least hope; the outcome is still very problematical.
+
+When Violet's employer entered his office the next morning it was to
+find a veiled figure awaiting him which he at once recognized as that of
+his little deputy. She was slow in lifting her veil and when it finally
+came free he felt a momentary doubt as to his wisdom in giving her just
+such a matter as this to investigate. He was quite sure of his mistake
+when he saw her face, it was so drawn and pitiful.
+
+"You have failed," said he.
+
+"Of that you must judge," she answered; and drawing near she whispered
+in his ear.
+
+"No!" he cried in his amazement.
+
+"Think," she murmured, "think. Only so can all the facts be accounted
+for."
+
+"I will look into it; I will certainly look into it," was his earnest
+reply. "If you are right--But never mind that. Go home and take a
+horseback ride in the Park. When I have news in regard to this I will
+let you know. Till then forget it all. Hear me, I charge you to forget
+everything but your balls and your parties."
+
+And Violet obeyed him.
+
+Some few days after this, the following statement appeared in all the
+papers:
+
+"Owing to some remarkable work done by the firm of ---- & ----, the
+well-known private detective agency, the claim made by Mrs. George
+Hammond against the Shuler Life Insurance Company is likely to be
+allowed without further litigation. As our readers will remember, the
+contestant has insisted from the first that the bullet causing her
+husband's death came from another pistol than the one found clutched in
+his own hand. But while reasons were not lacking to substantiate this
+assertion, the failure to discover more than the disputed track of a
+second bullet led to a verdict of suicide, and a refusal of the company
+to pay.
+
+"But now that bullet has been found. And where? In the most startling
+place in the world, viz.: in the larynx of the child found lying dead
+upon the floor beside his father, strangled as was supposed by the
+weight of that father's arm. The theory is, and there seems to be none
+other, that the father, hearing a suspicious noise at the window, set
+down the child he was endeavouring to soothe and made for the bed and
+his own pistol, and, mistaking a reflection of the assassin for the
+assassin himself, sent his shot sidewise at a mirror just as the other
+let go the trigger which drove a similar bullet into his breast.
+The course of the one was straight and fatal and that of the other
+deflected. Striking the mirror at an oblique angle, the bullet fell to
+the floor where it was picked up by the crawling child, and, as was
+most natural, thrust at once into his mouth. Perhaps it felt hot to
+the little tongue; perhaps the child was simply frightened by some
+convulsive movement of the father who evidently spent his last moment in
+an endeavour to reach the child, but, whatever the cause, in the quick
+gasp it gave, the bullet was drawn into the larynx, strangling him.
+
+"That the father's arm, in his last struggle, should have fallen
+directly across the little throat is one of those anomalies which
+confounds reason and misleads justice by stopping investigation at the
+very point where truth lies and mystery disappears.
+
+"Mrs. Hammond is to be congratulated that there are detectives who do
+not give too much credence to outward appearances."
+
+We expect soon to hear of the capture of the man who sped home the
+death-dealing bullet.
+
+END OF PROBLEM II
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM III. AN INTANGIBLE CLUE
+
+"Have you studied the case?"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"Not studied the case which for the last few days has provided the
+papers with such conspicuous headlines?"
+
+"I do not read the papers. I have not looked at one in a whole week."
+
+"Miss Strange, your social engagements must be of a very pressing nature
+just now?"
+
+"They are."
+
+"And your business sense in abeyance?"
+
+"How so?"
+
+"You would not ask if you had read the papers."
+
+To this she made no reply save by a slight toss of her pretty head.
+If her employer felt nettled by this show of indifference, he did not
+betray it save by the rapidity of his tones as, without further preamble
+and possibly without real excuse, he proceeded to lay before her the
+case in question. "Last Tuesday night a woman was murdered in this city;
+an old woman, in a lonely house where she has lived for years. Perhaps
+you remember this house? It occupies a not inconspicuous site in
+Seventeenth Street--a house of the olden time?"
+
+"No, I do not remember."
+
+The extreme carelessness of Miss Strange's tone would have been fatal to
+her socially; but then, she would never have used it socially. This they
+both knew, yet he smiled with his customary indulgence.
+
+"Then I will describe it."
+
+She looked around for a chair and sank into it. He did the same.
+
+"It has a fanlight over the front door."
+
+She remained impassive.
+
+"And two old-fashioned strips of parti-coloured glass on either side."
+
+"And a knocker between its panels which may bring money some day."
+
+"Oh, you do remember! I thought you would, Miss Strange."
+
+"Yes. Fanlights over doors are becoming very rare in New York."
+
+"Very well, then. That house was the scene of Tuesday's tragedy. The
+woman who has lived there in solitude for years was foully murdered.
+I have since heard that the people who knew her best have always
+anticipated some such violent end for her. She never allowed maid or
+friend to remain with her after five in the afternoon; yet she had
+money--some think a great deal--always in the house."
+
+"I am interested in the house, not in her."
+
+"Yet, she was a character--as full of whims and crotchets as a nut is
+of meat. Her death was horrible. She fought--her dress was torn from her
+body in rags. This happened, you see, before her hour for retiring;
+some think as early as six in the afternoon. And"--here he made a
+rapid gesture to catch Violet's wandering attention--"in spite of
+this struggle; in spite of the fact that she was dragged from room
+to room--that her person was searched--and everything in the house
+searched--that drawers were pulled out of bureaus--doors wrenched off of
+cupboards--china smashed upon the floor--whole shelves denuded and not
+a spot from cellar to garret left unransacked, no direct clue to
+the perpetrator has been found--nothing that gives any idea of his
+personality save his display of strength and great cupidity. The police
+have even deigned to consult me,--an unusual procedure--but I could find
+nothing, either. Evidences of fiendish purpose abound--of relentless
+search--but no clue to the man himself. It's uncommon, isn't it, not to
+have any clue?"
+
+"I suppose so." Miss Strange hated murders and it was with difficulty
+she could be brought to discuss them. But she was not going to be let
+off; not this time.
+
+"You see," he proceeded insistently, "it's not only mortifying to the
+police but disappointing to the press, especially as few reporters
+believe in the No-thoroughfare business. They say, and we cannot but
+agree with them, that no such struggle could take place and no such
+repeated goings to and fro through the house without some vestige being
+left by which to connect this crime with its daring perpetrator."
+
+Still she stared down at her hands--those little hands so white and
+fluttering, so seemingly helpless under the weight of their many rings,
+and yet so slyly capable.
+
+"She must have queer neighbours," came at last, from Miss Strange's
+reluctant lips. "Didn't they hear or see anything of all this?"
+
+"She has no neighbours--that is, after half-past five o'clock. There's
+a printing establishment on one side of her, a deserted mansion on the
+other side, and nothing but warehouses back and front. There was no one
+to notice what took place in her small dwelling after the printing house
+was closed. She was the most courageous or the most foolish of women to
+remain there as she did. But nothing except death could budge her. She
+was born in the room where she died; was married in the one where she
+worked; saw husband, father, mother, and five sisters carried out
+in turn to their graves through the door with the fanlight over the
+top--and these memories held her."
+
+"You are trying to interest me in the woman. Don't."
+
+"No, I'm not trying to interest you in her, only trying to explain her.
+There was another reason for her remaining where she did so long after
+all residents had left the block. She had a business."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"She embroidered monograms for fine ladies."
+
+"She did? But you needn't look at me like that. She never embroidered
+any for me."
+
+"No? She did first-class work. I saw some of it. Miss Strange, if I
+could get you into that house for ten minutes--not to see her but to
+pick up the loose intangible thread which I am sure is floating around
+in it somewhere--wouldn't you go?"
+
+Violet slowly rose--a movement which he followed to the letter.
+
+"Must I express in words the limit I have set for myself in our affair?"
+she asked. "When, for reasons I have never thought myself called upon to
+explain, I consented to help you a little now and then with some matter
+where a woman's tact and knowledge of the social world might tell
+without offence to herself or others, I never thought it would be
+necessary for me to state that temptation must stop with such cases,
+or that I should not be asked to touch the sordid or the bloody. But it
+seems I was mistaken, and that I must stoop to be explicit. The woman
+who was killed on Tuesday might have interested me greatly as an
+embroiderer, but as a victim, not at all. What do you see in me, or miss
+in me, that you should drag me into an atmosphere of low-down crime?"
+
+"Nothing, Miss Strange. You are by nature, as well as by breeding,
+very far removed from everything of the kind. But you will allow me to
+suggest that no crime is low-down which makes imperative demand upon
+the intellect and intuitive sense of its investigator. Only the most
+delicate touch can feel and hold the thread I've just spoken of, and you
+have the most delicate touch I know."
+
+"Do not attempt to flatter me. I have no fancy for handling befouled
+spider webs. Besides, if I had--if such elusive filaments fascinated
+me--how could I, well-known in person and name, enter upon such a scene
+without prejudice to our mutual compact?"
+
+"Miss Strange"--she had reseated herself, but so far he had failed to
+follow her example (an ignoring of the subtle hint that her interest
+might yet be caught, which seemed to annoy her a trifle), "I should
+not even have suggested such a possibility had I not seen a way of
+introducing you there without risk to your position or mine. Among the
+boxes piled upon Mrs. Doolittle's table--boxes of finished work, most
+of them addressed and ready for delivery--was one on which could be seen
+the name of--shall I mention it?"
+
+"Not mine? You don't mean mine? That would be too odd--too ridiculously
+odd. I should not understand a coincidence of that kind; no, I should
+not, notwithstanding the fact that I have lately sent out such work to
+be done."
+
+"Yet it was your name, very clearly and precisely written--your whole
+name, Miss Strange. I saw and read it myself."
+
+"But I gave the order to Madame Pirot on Fifth Avenue. How came my
+things to be found in the house of this woman of whose horrible death we
+have been talking?"
+
+"Did you suppose that Madame Pirot did such work with her own
+hands?--or even had it done in her own establishment? Mrs. Doolittle was
+universally employed. She worked for a dozen firms. You will find the
+biggest names on most of her packages. But on this one--I allude to the
+one addressed to you--there was more to be seen than the name. These
+words were written on it in another hand. Send without opening. This
+struck the police as suspicious; sufficiently so, at least, for them
+to desire your presence at the house as soon as you can make it
+convenient."
+
+"To open the box?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+The curl of Miss Strange's disdainful lip was a sight to see.
+
+"You wrote those words yourself," she coolly observed. "While someone's
+back was turned, you whipped out your pencil and--"
+
+"Resorted to a very pardonable subterfuge highly conducive to the
+public's good. But never mind that. Will you go?"
+
+Miss Strange became suddenly demure.
+
+"I suppose I must," she grudgingly conceded. "However obtained, a
+summons from the police cannot be ignored even by Peter Strange's
+daughter."
+
+Another man might have displayed his triumph by smile or gesture; but
+this one had learned his role too well. He simply said:
+
+"Very good. Shall it be at once? I have a taxi at the door."
+
+But she failed to see the necessity of any such hurry. With sudden
+dignity she replied:
+
+"That won't do. If I go to this house it must be under suitable
+conditions. I shall have to ask my brother to accompany me."
+
+"Your brother!"
+
+"Oh, he's safe. He--he knows."
+
+"Your brother knows?" Her visitor, with less control than usual,
+betrayed very openly his uneasiness.
+
+"He does and--approves. But that's not what interests us now, only so
+far as it makes it possible for me to go with propriety to that dreadful
+house."
+
+A formal bow from the other and the words:
+
+"They may expect you, then. Can you say when?"
+
+"Within the next hour. But it will be a useless concession on my part,"
+she pettishly complained. "A place that has been gone over by a dozen
+detectives is apt to be brushed clean of its cobwebs, even if such ever
+existed."
+
+"That's the difficulty," he acknowledged; and did not dare to add
+another word; she was at that particular moment so very much the great
+lady, and so little his confidential agent.
+
+He might have been less impressed, however, by this sudden assumption
+of manner, had he been so fortunate as to have seen how she employed the
+three quarters of an hour's delay for which she had asked.
+
+She read those neglected newspapers, especially the one containing the
+following highly coloured narration of this ghastly crime:
+
+"A door ajar--an empty hall--a line of sinister looking blotches
+marking a guilty step diagonally across the flagging--silence--and an
+unmistakable odour repugnant to all humanity,--such were the indications
+which met the eyes of Officer O'Leary on his first round last night, and
+led to the discovery of a murder which will long thrill the city by its
+mystery and horror.
+
+"Both the house and the victim are well known." Here followed a
+description of the same and of Mrs. Doolittle's manner of life in
+her ancient home, which Violet hurriedly passed over to come to the
+following:
+
+"As far as one can judge from appearances, the crime happened in this
+wise: Mrs. Doolittle had been in her kitchen, as the tea-kettle found
+singing on the stove goes to prove, and was coming back through her
+bedroom, when the wretch, who had stolen in by the front door which, to
+save steps, she was unfortunately in the habit of leaving on the latch
+till all possibility of customers for the day was over, sprang upon her
+from behind and dealt her a swinging blow with the poker he had caught
+up from the hearthstone.
+
+"Whether the struggle which ensued followed immediately upon this first
+attack or came later, it will take medical experts to determine. But,
+whenever it did occur, the fierceness of its character is shown by the
+grip taken upon her throat and the traces of blood which are to be seen
+all over the house. If the wretch had lugged her into her workroom and
+thence to the kitchen, and thence back to the spot of first assault, the
+evidences could not have been more ghastly. Bits of her clothing torn
+off by a ruthless hand, lay scattered over all these floors. In her
+bedroom, where she finally breathed her last, there could be seen
+mingled with these a number of large but worthless glass beads; and
+close against one of the base-boards, the string which had held them, as
+shown by the few remaining beads still clinging to it. If in pulling the
+string from her neck he had hoped to light upon some valuable booty,
+his fury at his disappointment is evident. You can almost see the frenzy
+with which he flung the would-be necklace at the wall, and kicked about
+and stamped upon its rapidly rolling beads.
+
+"Booty! That was what he was after; to find and carry away the poor
+needlewoman's supposed hoardings. If the scene baffles description--if,
+as some believe, he dragged her yet living from spot to spot, demanding
+information as to her places of concealment under threat of repeated
+blows, and, finally baffled, dealt the finishing stroke and proceeded on
+the search alone, no greater devastation could have taken place in this
+poor woman's house or effects. Yet such was his precaution and care
+for himself that he left no finger-print behind him nor any other token
+which could lead to personal identification. Even though his footsteps
+could be traced in much the order I have mentioned, they were of so
+indeterminate and shapeless a character as to convey little to the
+intelligence of the investigator.
+
+"That these smears (they could not be called footprints) not only
+crossed the hall but appeared in more than one place on the staircase
+proves that he did not confine his search to the lower storey; and
+perhaps one of the most interesting features of the case lies in the
+indications given by these marks of the raging course he took through
+these upper rooms. As the accompanying diagram will show [we omit the
+diagram] he went first into the large front chamber, thence to the rear
+where we find two rooms, one unfinished and filled with accumulated
+stuff most of which he left lying loose upon the floor, and the other
+plastered, and containing a window opening upon an alley-way at the
+side, but empty of all furniture and without even a carpet on the bare
+boards.
+
+"Why he should have entered the latter place, and why, having entered
+he should have crossed to the window, will be plain to those who
+have studied the conditions. The front chamber windows were tightly
+shuttered, the attic ones cumbered with boxes and shielded from approach
+by old bureaus and discarded chairs. This one only was free and,
+although darkened by the proximity of the house neighbouring it across
+the alley, was the only spot on the storey where sufficient light could
+be had at this late hour for the examination of any object of whose
+value he was doubtful. That he had come across such an object and had
+brought it to this window for some such purpose is very satisfactorily
+demonstrated by the discovery of a worn out wallet of ancient make lying
+on the floor directly in front of this window--a proof of his cupidity
+but also proof of his ill-luck. For this wallet, when lifted and opened,
+was found to contain two hundred or more dollars in old bills, which, if
+not the full hoard of their industrious owner, was certainly worth the
+taking by one who had risked his neck for the sole purpose of theft.
+
+"This wallet, and the flight of the murderer without it, give to this
+affair, otherwise simply brutal, a dramatic interest which will be
+appreciated not only by the very able detectives already hot upon the
+chase, but by all other inquiring minds anxious to solve a mystery of
+which so estimable a woman has been the unfortunate victim. A problem is
+presented to the police--"
+
+There Violet stopped.
+
+When, not long after, the superb limousine of Peter Strange stopped
+before the little house in Seventeenth Street, it caused a veritable
+sensation, not only in the curiosity-mongers lingering on the sidewalk,
+but to the two persons within--the officer on guard and a belated
+reporter.
+
+Though dressed in her plainest suit, Violet Strange looked much too
+fashionable and far too young and thoughtless to be observed, without
+emotion, entering a scene of hideous and brutal crime. Even the young
+man who accompanied her promised to bring a most incongruous element
+into this atmosphere of guilt and horror, and, as the detective on guard
+whispered to the man beside him, might much better have been left behind
+in the car.
+
+But Violet was great for the proprieties and young Arthur followed her
+in.
+
+Her entrance was a coup du theatre. She had lifted her veil in crossing
+the sidewalk and her interesting features and general air of timidity
+were very fetching. As the man holding open the door noted the
+impression made upon his companion, he muttered with sly facetiousness:
+
+"You think you'll show her nothing; but I'm ready to bet a fiver that
+she'll want to see it all and that you'll show it to her."
+
+The detective's grin was expressive, notwithstanding the shrug with
+which he tried to carry it off.
+
+And Violet? The hall into which she now stepped from the most vivid
+sunlight had never been considered even in its palmiest days as
+possessing cheer even of the stately kind. The ghastly green light
+infused through it by the coloured glass on either side of the doorway
+seemed to promise yet more dismal things beyond.
+
+"Must I go in there?" she asked, pointing, with an admirable simulation
+of nervous excitement, to a half-shut door at her left. "Is there where
+it happened? Arthur, do you suppose that there is where it happened?"
+
+"No, no, Miss," the officer made haste to assure her. "If you are Miss
+Strange" (Violet bowed), "I need hardly say that the woman was struck in
+her bedroom. The door beside you leads into the parlour, or as she would
+have called it, her work-room. You needn't be afraid of going in there.
+You will see nothing but the disorder of her boxes. They were pretty
+well pulled about. Not all of them though," he added, watching her as
+closely as the dim light permitted. "There is one which gives no sign
+of having been tampered with. It was done up in wrapping paper and is
+addressed to you, which in itself would not have seemed worthy of
+our attention had not these lines been scribbled on it in a man's
+handwriting: 'Send without opening.'"
+
+"How odd!" exclaimed the little minx with widely opened eyes and an
+air of guileless innocence. "Whatever can it mean? Nothing serious I am
+sure, for the woman did not even know me. She was employed to do this
+work by Madame Pirot."
+
+"Didn't you know that it was to be done here?"
+
+"No. I thought Madame Pirot's own girls did her embroidery for her."
+
+"So that you were surprised--"
+
+"Wasn't I!"
+
+"To get our message."
+
+"I didn't know what to make of it."
+
+The earnest, half-injured look with which she uttered this disclaimer,
+did its appointed work. The detective accepted her for what she seemed
+and, oblivious to the reporter's satirical gesture, crossed to the
+work-room door, which he threw wide open with the remark:
+
+"I should be glad to have you open that box in our presence. It is
+undoubtedly all right, but we wish to be sure. You know what the box
+should contain?"
+
+"Oh, yes, indeed; pillow-cases and sheets, with a big S embroidered on
+them."
+
+"Very well. Shall I undo the string for you?"
+
+"I shall be much obliged," said she, her eye flashing quickly about the
+room before settling down upon the knot he was deftly loosening.
+
+Her brother, gazing indifferently in from the doorway, hardly noticed
+this look; but the reporter at his back did, though he failed to detect
+its penetrating quality.
+
+"Your name is on the other side," observed the detective as he drew away
+the string and turned the package over.
+
+The smile which just lifted the corner of her lips was not in answer to
+this remark, but to her recognition of her employer's handwriting in the
+words under her name: Send without opening. She had not misjudged him.
+
+"The cover you may like to take off yourself," suggested the officer, as
+he lifted the box out of its wrapper.
+
+"Oh, I don't mind. There's nothing to be ashamed of in embroidered
+linen. Or perhaps that is not what you are looking for?"
+
+No one answered. All were busy watching her whip off the lid and lift
+out the pile of sheets and pillow-cases with which the box was closely
+packed.
+
+"Shall I unfold them?" she asked.
+
+The detective nodded.
+
+Taking out the topmost sheet, she shook it open. Then the next and the
+next till she reached the bottom of the box. Nothing of a criminating
+nature came to light. The box as well as its contents was without
+mystery of any kind. This was not an unexpected result of course, but
+the smile with which she began to refold the pieces and throw them back
+into the box, revealed one of her dimples which was almost as dangerous
+to the casual observer as when it revealed both.
+
+"There," she exclaimed, "you see! Household linen exactly as I said. Now
+may I go home?"
+
+"Certainly, Miss Strange."
+
+The detective stole a sly glance at the reporter. She was not going in
+for the horrors then after all.
+
+But the reporter abated nothing of his knowing air, for while she spoke
+of going, she made no move towards doing so, but continued to look
+about the room till her glances finally settled on a long dark curtain
+shutting off an adjoining room.
+
+"There's where she lies, I suppose," she feelingly exclaimed. "And not
+one of you knows who killed her. Somehow, I cannot understand that. Why
+don't you know when that's what you're hired for?" The innocence with
+which she uttered this was astonishing. The detective began to look
+sheepish and the reporter turned aside to hide his smile. Whether in
+another moment either would have spoken no one can say, for, with a
+mock consciousness of having said something foolish, she caught up her
+parasol from the table and made a start for the door.
+
+But of course she looked back.
+
+"I was wondering," she recommenced, with a half wistful, half
+speculative air, "whether I should ask to have a peep at the place where
+it all happened."
+
+The reporter chuckled behind the pencil-end he was chewing, but the
+officer maintained his solemn air, for which act of self-restraint
+he was undoubtedly grateful when in another minute she gave a quick
+impulsive shudder not altogether assumed, and vehemently added: "But I
+couldn't stand the sight; no, I couldn't! I'm an awful coward when it
+comes to things like that. Nothing in all the world would induce me
+to look at the woman or her room. But I should like--" here both
+her dimples came into play though she could not be said exactly to
+smile--"just one little look upstairs, where he went poking about so
+long without any fear it seems of being interrupted. Ever since I've
+read about it I have seen, in my mind, a picture of his wicked figure
+sneaking from room to room, tearing open drawers and flinging out the
+contents of closets just to find a little money--a little, little money!
+I shall not sleep to-night just for wondering how those high up attic
+rooms really look."
+
+Who could dream that back of this display of mingled childishness and
+audacity there lay hidden purpose, intellect, and a keen knowledge
+of human nature. Not the two men who listened to this seemingly
+irresponsible chatter. To them she was a child to be humoured and humour
+her they did. The dainty feet which had already found their way to that
+gloomy staircase were allowed to ascend, followed it is true by those
+of the officer who did not dare to smile back at the reporter because of
+the brother's watchful and none too conciliatory eye.
+
+At the stair head she paused to look back.
+
+"I don't see those horrible marks which the papers describe as running
+all along the lower hall and up these stairs."
+
+"No, Miss Strange; they have gradually been rubbed out, but you will
+find some still showing on these upper floors."
+
+"Oh! oh! where? You frighten me--frighten me horribly! But--but--if you
+don't mind, I should like to see."
+
+Why should not a man on a tedious job amuse himself? Piloting her over
+to the small room in the rear, he pointed down at the boards. She gave
+one look and then stepped gingerly in.
+
+"Just look!" she cried; "a whole string of marks going straight from
+door to window. They have no shape, have they,--just blotches? I wonder
+why one of them is so much larger than the rest?"
+
+This was no new question. It was one which everybody who went into
+the room was sure to ask, there was such a difference in the size and
+appearance of the mark nearest the window. The reason--well, minds were
+divided about that, and no one had a satisfactory theory. The detective
+therefore kept discreetly silent.
+
+This did not seem to offend Miss Strange. On the contrary it gave her an
+opportunity to babble away to her heart's content.
+
+"One, two, three, four, five, six," she counted, with a shudder at every
+count. "And one of them bigger than the others." She might have added,
+"It is the trail of one foot, and strangely, intermingled at that," but
+she did not, though we may be quite sure that she noted the fact. "And
+where, just where did the old wallet fall? Here? or here?"
+
+She had moved as she spoke, so that in uttering the last "here," she
+stood directly before the window. The surprise she received there nearly
+made her forget the part she was playing. From the character of the
+light in the room, she had expected, on looking out, to confront a
+near-by wall, but not a window in that wall. Yet that was what she saw
+directly facing her from across the old-fashioned alley separating
+this house from its neighbour; twelve unshuttered and uncurtained panes
+through which she caught a darkened view of a room almost as forlorn and
+devoid of furniture as the one in which she then stood.
+
+When quite sure of herself, she let a certain portion of her surprise
+appear.
+
+"Why, look!" she cried, "if you can't see right in next door! What a
+lonesome-looking place! From its desolate appearance I should think the
+house quite empty."
+
+"And it is. That's the old Shaffer homestead. It's been empty for a
+year."
+
+"Oh, empty!" And she turned away, with the most inconsequent air in
+the world, crying out as her name rang up the stair, "There's Arthur
+calling. I suppose he thinks I've been here long enough. I'm sure I'm
+very much obliged to you, officer. I really shouldn't have slept a wink
+to-night, if I hadn't been given a peep at these rooms, which I
+had imagined so different." And with one additional glance over her
+shoulder, that seemed to penetrate both windows and the desolate space
+beyond, she ran quickly out and down in response to her brother's
+reiterated call.
+
+"Drive quickly!--as quickly as the law allows, to Hiram Brown's office
+in Duane Street."
+
+Arrived at the address named, she went in alone to see Mr. Brown. He was
+her father's lawyer and a family friend.
+
+Hardly waiting for his affectionate greeting, she cried out quickly.
+"Tell me how I can learn anything about the old Shaffer house in
+Seventeenth Street. Now, don't look so surprised. I have very good
+reasons for my request and--and--I'm in an awful hurry."
+
+"But--"
+
+"I know, I know; there's been a dreadful tragedy next door to it; but
+it's about the Shaffer house itself I want some information. Has it an
+agent, a--"
+
+"Of course it has an agent, and here is his name."
+
+Mr. Brown presented her with a card on which he had hastily written both
+name and address.
+
+She thanked him, dropped him a mocking curtsey full of charm, whispered
+"Don't tell father," and was gone.
+
+Her manner to the man she next interviewed was very different. As soon
+as she saw him she subsided into her usual society manner. With just a
+touch of the conceit of the successful debutante, she announced herself
+as Miss Strange of Seventy-second Street. Her business with him was in
+regard to the possible renting of the Shaffer house. She had an old lady
+friend who was desirous of living downtown.
+
+In passing through Seventeenth Street, she had noticed that the old
+Shaffer house was standing empty and had been immediately struck with
+the advantages it possessed for her elderly friend's occupancy. Could it
+be that the house was for rent? There was no sign on it to that effect,
+but--etc.
+
+His answer left her nothing to hope for.
+
+"It is going to be torn down," he said.
+
+"Oh, what a pity!" she exclaimed. "Real colonial, isn't it! I wish I
+could see the rooms inside before it is disturbed. Such doors and such
+dear old-fashioned mantelpieces as it must have! I just dote on the
+Colonial. It brings up such pictures of the old days; weddings,
+you know, and parties;--all so different from ours and so much more
+interesting."
+
+Is it the chance shot that tells? Sometimes. Violet had no especial
+intention in what she said save as a prelude to a pending request,
+but nothing could have served her purpose better than that one word,
+wedding. The agent laughed and giving her his first indulgent look,
+remarked genially:
+
+"Romance is not confined to those ancient times. If you were to enter
+that house to-day you would come across evidences of a wedding as
+romantic as any which ever took place in all the seventy odd years of
+its existence. A man and a woman were married there day before yesterday
+who did their first courting under its roof forty years ago. He has been
+married twice and she once in the interval; but the old love held firm
+and now at the age of sixty and over they have come together to finish
+their days in peace and happiness. Or so we will hope."
+
+"Married! married in that house and on the day that--"
+
+She caught herself up in time. He did not notice the break.
+
+"Yes, in memory of those old days of courtship, I suppose. They came
+here about five, got the keys, drove off, went through the ceremony in
+that empty house, returned the keys to me in my own apartment, took the
+steamer for Naples, and were on the sea before midnight. Do you not call
+that quick work as well as highly romantic?"
+
+"Very." Miss Strange's cheek had paled. It was apt to when she was
+greatly excited. "But I don't understand," she added, the moment after.
+"How could they do this and nobody know about it? I should have thought
+it would have got into the papers."
+
+"They are quiet people. I don't think they told their best friends. A
+simple announcement in the next day's journals testified to the fact of
+their marriage, but that was all. I would not have felt at liberty to
+mention the circumstances myself, if the parties were not well on their
+way to Europe."
+
+"Oh, how glad I am that you did tell me! Such a story of constancy and
+the hold which old associations have upon sensitive minds! But--"
+
+"Why, Miss? What's the matter? You look very much disturbed."
+
+"Don't you remember? Haven't you thought? Something else happened that
+very day and almost at the same time on that block. Something very
+dreadful--"
+
+"Mrs. Doolittle's murder?"
+
+"Yes. It was as near as next door, wasn't it? Oh, if this happy couple
+had known--"
+
+"But fortunately they didn't. Nor are they likely to, till they reach
+the other side. You needn't fear that their honeymoon will be spoiled
+that way."
+
+"But they may have heard something or seen something before leaving the
+street. Did you notice how the gentleman looked when he returned you the
+keys?"
+
+"I did, and there was no cloud on his satisfaction."
+
+"Oh, how you relieve me!" One--two dimples made their appearance in
+Miss Strange's fresh, young cheeks. "Well! I wish them joy. Do you mind
+telling me their names? I cannot think of them as actual persons without
+knowing their names."
+
+"The gentleman was Constantin Amidon; the lady, Marian Shaffer. You will
+have to think of them now as Mr. and Mrs. Amidon."
+
+"And I will. Thank you, Mr. Hutton, thank you very much. Next to the
+pleasure of getting the house for my friend, is that of hearing this
+charming bit of news its connection."
+
+She held out her hand and, as he took it, remarked:
+
+"They must have had a clergyman and witnesses."
+
+"Undoubtedly."
+
+"I wish I had been one of the witnesses," she sighed sentimentally.
+
+"They were two old men."
+
+"Oh, no! Don't tell me that."
+
+"Fogies; nothing less."
+
+"But the clergyman? He must have been young. Surely there was some one
+there capable of appreciating the situation?"
+
+"I can't say about that; I did not see the clergyman."
+
+"Oh, well! it doesn't matter." Miss Strange's manner was as nonchalant
+as it was charming. "We will think of him as being very young."
+
+And with a merry toss of her head she flitted away.
+
+But she sobered very rapidly upon entering her limousine.
+
+"Hello!"
+
+"Ah, is that you?"
+
+"Yes, I want a Marconi sent."
+
+"A Marconi?"
+
+"Yes, to the Cretic, which left dock the very night in which we are so
+deeply interested."
+
+"Good. Whom to? The Captain?"
+
+"No, to a Mrs. Constantin Amidon. But first be sure there is such a
+passenger."
+
+"Mrs.! What idea have you there?"
+
+"Excuse my not stating over the telephone. The message is to be to this
+effect. Did she at any time immediately before or after her marriage to
+Mr. Amidon get a glimpse of any one in the adjoining house? No remarks,
+please. I use the telephone because I am not ready to explain myself.
+If she did, let her send a written description to you of that person as
+soon as she reaches the Azores."
+
+"You surprise me. May I not call or hope for a line from you early
+to-morrow?"
+
+"I shall be busy till you get your answer."
+
+He hung up the receiver. He recognized the resolute tone.
+
+But the time came when the pending explanation was fully given to him.
+An answer had been returned from the steamer, favourable to Violet's
+hopes. Mrs. Amidon had seen such a person and would send a full
+description of the same at the first opportunity. It was news to fill
+Violet's heart with pride; the filament of a clue which had led to this
+great result had been so nearly invisible and had felt so like nothing
+in her grasp.
+
+To her employer she described it as follows:
+
+"When I hear or read of a case which contains any baffling features, I
+am apt to feel some hidden chord in my nature thrill to one fact in
+it and not to any of the others. In this case the single fact which
+appealed to my imagination was the dropping of the stolen wallet in that
+upstairs room. Why did the guilty man drop it? and why, having dropped
+it, did he not pick it up again? but one answer seemed possible. He had
+heard or seen something at the spot where it fell which not only alarmed
+him but sent him in flight from the house."
+
+"Very good; and did you settle to your own mind the nature of that sound
+or that sight?"
+
+"I did." Her manner was strangely businesslike. No show of dimples now.
+"Satisfied that if any possibility remained of my ever doing this, it
+would have to be on the exact place of this occurrence or not at all, I
+embraced your suggestion and visited the house."
+
+"And that room no doubt."
+
+"And that room. Women, somehow, seem to manage such things."
+
+"So I've noticed, Miss Strange. And what was the result of your visit?
+What did you discover there?"
+
+"This: that one of the blood spots marking the criminal's steps through
+the room was decidedly more pronounced than the rest; and, what was
+even more important, that the window out of which I was looking had its
+counterpart in the house on the opposite side of the alley. In gazing
+through the one I was gazing through the other; and not only that,
+but into the darkened area of the room beyond. Instantly I saw how the
+latter fact might be made to explain the former one. But before I say
+how, let me ask if it is quite settled among you that the smears on the
+floor and stairs mark the passage of the criminal's footsteps!"
+
+"Certainly; and very bloody feet they must have been too. His shoes--or
+rather his one shoe--for the proof is plain that only the right one left
+its mark--must have become thoroughly saturated to carry its traces so
+far."
+
+"Do you think that any amount of saturation would have done this? Or,
+if you are not ready to agree to that, that a shoe so covered with
+blood could have failed to leave behind it some hint of its shape, some
+imprint, however faint, of heel or toe? But nowhere did it do this. We
+see a smear--and that is all."
+
+"You are right, Miss Strange; you are always right. And what do you
+gather from this?"
+
+She looked to see how much he expected from her, and, meeting an eye not
+quite as free from ironic suggestion as his words had led her to expect,
+faltered a little as she proceeded to say:
+
+"My opinion is a girl's opinion, but such as it is you have the right
+to have it. From the indications mentioned I could draw but this
+conclusion: that the blood which accompanied the criminal's footsteps
+was not carried through the house by his shoes;--he wore no shoes; he
+did not even wear stockings; probably he had none. For reasons which
+appealed to his judgment, he went about his wicked work barefoot; and it
+was the blood from his own veins and not from those of his victim which
+made the trail we have followed with so much interest. Do you forget
+those broken beads;--how he kicked them about and stamped upon them in
+his fury? One of them pierced the ball of his foot, and that so sharply
+that it not only spurted blood but kept on bleeding with every step he
+took. Otherwise, the trail would have been lost after his passage up the
+stairs."
+
+"Fine!" There was no irony in the bureau-chief's eye now. "You are
+progressing, Miss Strange. Allow me, I pray, to kiss your hand. It is
+a liberty I have never taken, but one which would greatly relieve my
+present stress of feeling."
+
+She lifted her hand toward him, but it was in gesture, not in
+recognition of his homage.
+
+"Thank you," said she, "but I claim no monopoly on deductions so simple
+as these. I have not the least doubt that not only yourself but every
+member of the force has made the same. But there is a little matter
+which may have escaped the police, may even have escaped you. To that
+I would now call your attention since through it I have been enabled,
+after a little necessary groping, to reach the open. You remember the
+one large blotch on the upper floor where the man dropped the wallet?
+That blotch, more or less commingled with a fainter one, possessed great
+significance for me from the first moment I saw it. How came his foot to
+bleed so much more profusely at that one spot than at any other? There
+could be but one answer: because here a surprise met him--a surprise
+so startling to him in his present state of mind, that he gave a
+quick spring backward, with the result that his wounded foot came down
+suddenly and forcibly instead of easily as in his previous wary tread.
+And what was the surprise? I made it my business to find out, and now
+I can tell you that it was the sight of a woman's face staring upon him
+from the neighbouring house which he had probably been told was empty.
+The shock disturbed his judgment. He saw his crime discovered--his
+guilty secret read, and fled in unreasoning panic. He might better have
+held on to his wits. It was this display of fear which led me to search
+after its cause, and consequently to discover that at this especial hour
+more than one person had been in the Shaffer house; that, in fact, a
+marriage had been celebrated there under circumstances as romantic as
+any we read of in books, and that this marriage, privately carried out,
+had been followed by an immediate voyage of the happy couple on one of
+the White Star steamers. With the rest you are conversant. I do not need
+to say anything about what has followed the sending of that Marconi."
+
+"But I am going to say something about your work in this matter, Miss
+Strange. The big detectives about here will have to look sharp if--"
+
+"Don't, please! Not yet." A smile softened the asperity of this
+interruption. "The man has yet to be caught and identified. Till that is
+done I cannot enjoy any one's congratulations. And you will see that all
+this may not be so easy. If no one happened to meet the desperate wretch
+before he had an opportunity to retie his shoe-laces, there will be
+little for you or even for the police to go upon but his wounded foot,
+his undoubtedly carefully prepared alibi, and later, a woman's confused
+description of a face seen but for a moment only and that under a
+personal excitement precluding minute attention. I should not be
+surprised if the whole thing came to nothing."
+
+But it did not. As soon as the description was received from Mrs. Amidon
+(a description, by the way, which was unusually clear and precise, owing
+to the peculiar and contradictory features of the man), the police were
+able to recognize him among the many suspects always under their eye.
+Arrested, he pleaded, just as Miss Strange had foretold, an alibi of
+a seemingly unimpeachable character; but neither it, nor the plausible
+explanation with which he endeavoured to account for a freshly healed
+scar amid the callouses of his right foot, could stand before Mrs.
+Amidon's unequivocal testimony that he was the same man she had seen in
+Mrs. Doolittle's upper room on the afternoon of her own happiness and of
+that poor woman's murder.
+
+The moment when, at his trial, the two faces again confronted each other
+across a space no wider than that which had separated them on the dread
+occasion in Seventeenth Street, is said to have been one of the most
+dramatic in the annals of that ancient court room.
+
+END OF PROBLEM III
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM IV. THE GROTTO SPECTRE
+
+Miss Strange was not often pensive--at least not at large functions
+or when under the public eye. But she certainly forgot herself at Mrs.
+Provost's musicale and that, too, without apparent reason. Had the music
+been of a high order one might have understood her abstraction; but it
+was of a decidedly mediocre quality, and Violet's ear was much too fine
+and her musical sense too cultivated for her to be beguiled by anything
+less than the very best.
+
+Nor had she the excuse of a dull companion. Her escort for the evening
+was a man of unusual conversational powers; but she seemed to be almost
+oblivious of his presence; and when, through some passing courteous
+impulse, she did turn her ear his way, it was with just that tinge of
+preoccupation which betrays the divided mind.
+
+Were her thoughts with some secret problem yet unsolved? It would
+scarcely seem so from the gay remark with which she had left home. She
+was speaking to her brother and her words were: "I am going out to enjoy
+myself. I've not a care in the world. The slate is quite clean." Yet she
+had never seemed more out of tune with her surroundings nor shown a mood
+further removed from trivial entertainment. What had happened to becloud
+her gaiety in the short time which had since elapsed?
+
+We can answer in a sentence.
+
+She had seen, among a group of young men in a distant doorway, one with
+a face so individual and of an expression so extraordinary that all
+interest in the people about her had stopped as a clock stops when the
+pendulum is held back. She could see nothing else, think of nothing
+else. Not that it was so very handsome--though no other had ever
+approached it in its power over her imagination--but because of its
+expression of haunting melancholy,--a melancholy so settled and so
+evidently the result of long-continued sorrow that her interest had been
+reached and her heartstrings shaken as never before in her whole life.
+
+She would never be the same Violet again.
+
+Yet moved as she undoubtedly was, she was not conscious of the least
+desire to know who the young man was, or even to be made acquainted with
+his story. She simply wanted to dream her dream undisturbed.
+
+It was therefore with a sense of unwelcome shock that, in the course of
+the reception following the programme, she perceived this fine young man
+approaching herself, with his right hand touching his left shoulder in
+the peculiar way which committed her to an interview with or without a
+formal introduction.
+
+Should she fly the ordeal? Be blind and deaf to whatever was significant
+in his action, and go her way before he reached her; thus keeping her
+dream intact? Impossible. His eye prevented that. His glance had caught
+hers and she felt forced to await his advance and give him her first
+spare moment.
+
+It came soon, and when it came she greeted him with a smile. It was the
+first she had ever bestowed in welcome of a confidence of whose tenor
+she was entirely ignorant.
+
+To her relief he showed his appreciation of the dazzling gift though he
+made no effort to return it. Scorning all preliminaries in his eagerness
+to discharge himself of a burden which was fast becoming intolerable, he
+addressed her at once in these words:
+
+"You are very good, Miss Strange, to receive me in this unconventional
+fashion. I am in that desperate state of mind which precludes etiquette.
+Will you listen to my petition? I am told--you know by whom--"(and he
+again touched his shoulder) "that you have resources of intelligence
+which especially fit you to meet the extraordinary difficulties of my
+position. May I beg you to exercise them in my behalf? No man would be
+more grateful if--But I see that you do not recognize me. I am Roger
+Upjohn. That I am admitted to this gathering is owing to the fact that
+our hostess knew and loved my mother. In my anxiety to meet you and
+proffer my plea, I was willing to brave the cold looks you have probably
+noticed on the faces of the people about us. But I have no right to
+subject you to criticism. I--"
+
+"Remain." Violet's voice was troubled, her self-possession disturbed;
+but there was a command in her tone which he was only too glad to obey.
+"I know the name" (who did not!) "and possibly my duty to myself should
+make me shun a confidence which may burden me without relieving you. But
+you have been sent to me by one whose behests I feel bound to respect
+and--"
+
+Mistrusting her voice, she stopped. The suffering which made itself
+apparent in the face before her appealed to her heart in a way to rob
+her of her judgment. She did not wish this to be seen, and so fell
+silent.
+
+He was quick to take advantage of her obvious embarrassment. "Should I
+have been sent to you if I had not first secured the confidence of the
+sender? You know the scandal attached to my name, some of it just, some
+of it very unjust. If you will grant me an interview to-morrow, I will
+make an endeavour to refute certain charges which I have hitherto let
+go unchallenged. Will you do me this favour? Will you listen in your own
+house to what I have to say?"
+
+Instinct cried out against any such concession on her part, bidding
+her beware of one who charmed without excellence and convinced without
+reason. But compassion urged compliance and compassion won the day.
+Though conscious of weakness,--she, Violet Strange on whom strong
+men had come to rely in critical hours calling for well-balanced
+judgment,--she did not let this concern her, or allow herself to indulge
+in useless regrets even after the first effect of his presence had
+passed and she had succeeded in recalling the facts which had cast a
+cloud about his name.
+
+Roger Upjohn was a widower, and the scandal affecting him was connected
+with his wife's death.
+
+Though a degenerate in some respects, lacking the domineering
+presence, the strong mental qualities, and inflexible character of his
+progenitors, the wealthy Massachusetts Upjohns whose great place on the
+coast had a history as old as the State itself, he yet had gifts and
+attractions of his own which would have made him a worthy representative
+of his race, if only he had not fixed his affections on a woman so cold
+and heedless that she would have inspired universal aversion instead of
+love, had she not been dowered with the beauty and physical fascination
+which sometimes accompany a hard heart and a scheming brain. It was this
+beauty which had caught the lad; and one day, just as the careful father
+had mapped out a course of study calculated to make a man of his son,
+that son drove up to the gates with this lady whom he introduced as his
+wife.
+
+The shock, not of her beauty, though that was of the dazzling quality
+which catches a man in the throat and makes a slave of him while the
+first surprise lasts, but of the overthrow of all his hopes and plans,
+nearly prostrated Homer Upjohn. He saw, as most men did the moment
+judgment returned, that for all her satin skin and rosy flush, the
+wonder of her hair and the smile which pierced like arrows and warmed
+like wine, she was more likely to bring a curse into the house than a
+blessing.
+
+And so it proved. In less than a year the young husband had lost all his
+ambitions and many of his best impulses. No longer inclined to study,
+he spent his days in satisfying his wife's whims and his evenings in
+carousing with the friends with which she had provided him. This in
+Boston whither they had fled from the old gentleman's displeasure; but
+after their little son came the father insisted upon their returning
+home, which led to great deceptions, and precipitated a tragedy no one
+ever understood. They were natural gamblers--this couple--as all Boston
+society knew; and as Homer Upjohn loathed cards, they found life slow
+in the great house and grew correspondingly restless till they made
+a discovery--or shall I say a rediscovery--of the once famous grotto
+hidden in the rocks lining their portion of the coast. Here they found
+a retreat where they could hide themselves (often when they were thought
+to be abed and asleep) and play together for money or for a supper in
+the city or for anything else that foolish fancy suggested. This was
+while their little son remained an infant; later, they were less easily
+satisfied. Both craved company, excitement, and gambling on a large
+scale; so they took to inviting friends to meet them in this grotto
+which, through the agency of one old servant devoted to Roger to the
+point of folly, had been fitted up and lighted in a manner not only
+comfortable but luxurious. A small but sheltered haven hidden in the
+curve of the rocks made an approach by boat feasible at high tide;
+and at low the connection could be made by means of a path over the
+promontory in which this grotto lay concealed. The fortune which Roger
+had inherited from his mother made these excesses possible, but many
+thousands, let alone the few he could call his, soon disappeared under
+the witchery of an irresponsible woman, and the half-dozen friends who
+knew his secret had to stand by and see his ruin, without daring to
+utter a word to the one who alone could stay it. For Homer Upjohn was
+not a man to be approached lightly, nor was he one to listen to charges
+without ocular proof to support them; and this called for courage, more
+courage than was possessed by any one who knew them both.
+
+He was a hard man was Homer Upjohn, but with a heart of gold for those
+he loved. This, even his wary daughter-in-law was wise enough to detect,
+and for a long while after the birth of her child she besieged him with
+her coaxing ways and bewitching graces. But he never changed his first
+opinion of her, and once she became fully convinced of the folly of
+her efforts, she gave up all attempt to please him and showed an open
+indifference. This in time gradually extended till it embraced not only
+her child but her husband as well. Yes, it had come to that. His love no
+longer contented her. Her vanity had grown by what it daily fed on, and
+now called for the admiration of the fast men who sometimes came up
+from Boston to play with them in their unholy retreat. To win this, she
+dressed like some demon queen or witch, though it drove her husband into
+deeper play and threatened an exposure which would mean disaster not
+only to herself but to the whole family.
+
+In all this, as any one could see, Roger had been her slave and
+the willing victim of all her caprices. What was it, then, which so
+completely changed him that a separation began to be talked of and even
+its terms discussed? One rumour had it that the father had discovered
+the secret of the grotto and exacted this as a penalty from the son who
+had dishonoured him. Another, that Roger himself was the one to take the
+initiative in this matter: That, on returning unexpectedly from New York
+one evening and finding her missing from the house, he had traced her to
+the grotto where he came upon her playing a desperate game with the one
+man he had the greatest reason to distrust.
+
+But whatever the explanation of this sudden change in their relations,
+there is but little doubt that a legal separation between this
+ill-assorted couple was pending, when one bleak autumn morning she
+was discovered dead in her bed under circumstances peculiarly open to
+comment.
+
+The physicians who made out the certificate ascribed her death to
+heart-disease, symptoms of which had lately much alarmed the family
+doctor; but that a personal struggle of some kind had preceded the fatal
+attack was evident from the bruises which blackened her wrists. Had
+there been the like upon her throat it might have gone hard with the
+young husband who was known to be contemplating her dismissal from
+the house. But the discoloration of her wrists was all, and as bruised
+wrists do not kill and there was besides no evidence forthcoming of the
+two having spent one moment together for at least ten hours preceding
+the tragedy but rather full and satisfactory testimony to the contrary,
+the matter lapsed and all criminal proceedings were avoided.
+
+But not the scandal which always follows the unexplained. As time passed
+and the peculiar look which betrays the haunted soul gradually became
+visible in the young widower's eyes, doubts arose and reports circulated
+which cast strange reflections upon the tragic end of his mistaken
+marriage. Stories of the disreputable use to which the old grotto
+had been put were mingled with vague hints of conjugal violence never
+properly investigated. The result was his general avoidance not only by
+the social set dominated by his high-minded father, but by his own less
+reputable coterie, which, however lax in its moral code, had very little
+use for a coward.
+
+Such was the gossip which had reached Violet's ears in connection with
+this new client, prejudicing her altogether against him till she caught
+that beam of deep and concentrated suffering in his eye and recognized
+an innocence which ensured her sympathy and led her to grant him the
+interview for which he so earnestly entreated.
+
+He came prompt to the hour, and when she saw him again with the marks of
+a sleepless night upon him and all the signs of suffering intensified in
+his unusual countenance, she felt her heart sink within her in a way she
+failed to understand. A dread of what she was about to hear robbed her
+of all semblance of self-possession, and she stood like one in a dream
+as he uttered his first greetings and then paused to gather up his own
+moral strength before he began his story. When he did speak it was to
+say:
+
+"I find myself obliged to break a vow I have made to myself. You cannot
+understand my need unless I show you my heart. My trouble is not the one
+with which men have credited me. It has another source and is infinitely
+harder to bear. Personal dishonour I have deserved in a greater or less
+degree, but the trial which has come to me now involves a person more
+dear to me than myself, and is totally without alleviation unless you--"
+He paused, choked, then recommenced abruptly: "My wife"--Violet held
+her breath--"was supposed to have died from heart-disease or--or
+some strange species of suicide. There were reasons for this
+conclusion--reasons which I accepted without serious question till some
+five weeks ago when I made a discovery which led me to fear--"
+
+The broken sentence hung suspended. Violet, notwithstanding his hurried
+gesture, could not restrain herself from stealing a look at his face. It
+was set in horror and, though partially turned aside, made an appeal
+to her compassion to fill the void made by his silence, without further
+suggestion from him.
+
+She did this by saying tentatively and with as little show of emotion as
+possible:
+
+"You feared that the event called for vengeance and that vengeance would
+mean increased suffering to yourself as well as to another?"
+
+"Yes; great suffering. But I may be under a most lamentable mistake. I
+am not sure of my conclusions. If my doubts have no real foundation--if
+they are simply the offspring of my own diseased imagination, what
+an insult to one I revere! What a horror of ingratitude and
+misunderstanding--"
+
+"Relate the facts," came in startled tones from Violet. "They may
+enlighten us."
+
+He gave one quick shudder, buried his face for one moment in his hands,
+then lifted it and spoke up quickly and with unexpected firmness:
+
+"I came here to do so and do so I will. But where begin? Miss Strange,
+you cannot be ignorant of the circumstances, open and avowed, which
+attended my wife's death. But there were other and secret events in its
+connection which happily have been kept from the world, but which I must
+now disclose to you at any cost to my pride and so-called honour. This
+is the first one: On the morning preceding the day of Mrs. Upjohn's
+death, an interview took place between us at which my father was
+present. You do not know my father, Miss Strange. A strong man and a
+stern one, with a hold upon old traditions which nothing can shake.
+If he has a weakness it is for my little boy Roger in whose promising
+traits he sees the one hope which has survived the shipwreck of all for
+which our name has stood. Knowing this, and realizing what the child's
+presence in the house meant to his old age, I felt my heart turn sick
+with apprehension, when in the midst of the discussion as to the terms
+on which my wife would consent to a permanent separation, the little
+fellow came dancing into the room, his curls atoss and his whole face
+beaming with life and joy.
+
+"She had not mentioned the child, but I knew her well enough to be
+sure that at the first show of preference on his part for either his
+grandfather or myself, she would raise a claim to him which she would
+never relinquish. I dared not speak, but I met his eager looks with my
+most forbidding frown and hoped by this show of severity to hold him
+back. But his little heart was full and, ignoring her outstretched arms,
+he bounded towards mine with his most affectionate cry. She saw and
+uttered her ultimatum. The child should go with her or she would not
+consent to a separation. It was useless for us to talk; she had said her
+last word. The blow struck me hard, or so I thought, till I looked at my
+father. Never had I beheld such a change as that one moment had made in
+him. He stood as before; he faced us with the same silent reprobation;
+but his heart had run from him like water.
+
+"It was a sight to call up all my resources. To allow her to remain
+now, with my feelings towards her all changed and my father's eyes fully
+opened to her stony nature, was impossible. Nor could I appeal to law.
+An open scandal was my father's greatest dread and divorce proceedings
+his horror. The child would have to go unless I could find a way to
+influence her through her own nature. I knew of but one--do not look at
+me, Miss Strange. It was dishonouring to us both, and I'm horrified now
+when I think of it. But to me at that time it was natural enough as a
+last resort. There was but one debt which my wife ever paid, but one
+promise she ever kept. It was that made at the gaming-table. I offered,
+as soon as my father, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, had
+gone tottering from the room, to gamble with her for the child.
+
+"And she accepted."
+
+The shame and humiliation expressed in this final whisper; the sudden
+darkness--for a storm was coming up--shook Violet to the soul. With
+strained gaze fixed on the man before her, now little more than a shadow
+in the prevailing gloom, she waited for him to resume, and waited
+in vain. The minutes passed, the darkness became intolerable, and
+instinctively her hand crept towards the electric button beneath which
+she was sitting. But she failed to press it. A tale so dark called for
+an atmosphere of its own kind. She would cast no light upon it. Yet she
+shivered as the silence continued, and started in uncontrollable dismay
+when at length her strange visitor rose, and still, without speaking,
+walked away from her to the other end of the room. Only so could he go
+on with the shameful tale; and presently she heard his voice once more
+in these words:
+
+"Our house is large and its rooms many; but for such work as we two
+contemplated there was but one spot where we could command absolute
+seclusion. You may have heard of it, a famous natural grotto hidden in
+our own portion of the coast and so fitted up as to form a retreat for
+our miserable selves when escape from my father's eye seemed desirable.
+It was not easy of access, and no one, so far as we knew, had ever
+followed us there.
+
+"But to ensure ourselves against any possible interruption, we waited
+till the whole house was abed before we left it for the grotto. We went
+by boat and oh! the dip of those oars! I hear them yet. And the witchery
+of her face in the moonlight; and the mockery of her low fitful laugh!
+As I caught the sinister note in its silvery rise and fall, I knew what
+was before me if I failed to retain my composure. And I strove to
+hold it and to meet her calmness with stoicism and the taunt of her
+expression with a mask of immobility. But the effort was hopeless, and
+when the time came for dealing out the cards, my eyes were burning in
+their sockets and my hands shivering like leaves in a rising gale.
+
+"We played one game--and my wife lost. We played another--and my wife
+won. We played the third--and the fate I had foreseen from the first
+became mine. The luck was with her, and I had lost my boy!"
+
+A gasp--a pause, during which the thunder spoke and the lightning
+flashed,--then a hurried catching of his breath and the tale went on.
+
+"A burst of laughter, rising gaily above the boom of the sea, announced
+her victory--her laugh and the taunting words: 'You play badly, Roger.
+The child is mine. Never fear that I shall fail to teach him to revere
+his father.' Had I a word to throw back? No. When I realized anything
+but my dishonoured manhood, I found myself in the grotto's mouth staring
+helplessly out upon the sea. The boat which had floated us in at high
+tide lay stranded but a few feet away, but I did not reach for it.
+Escape was quicker over the rocks, and I made for the rocks.
+
+"That it was a cowardly act to leave her there to find her way back
+alone at midnight by the same rough road I was taking, did not strike
+my mind for an instant. I was in flight from my own past; in flight from
+myself and the haunting dread of madness. When I awoke to reality again
+it was to find the small door, by which we had left the house, standing
+slightly ajar. I was troubled by this, for I was sure of having closed
+it. But the impression was brief, and entering, I went stumbling up to
+my room, leaving the way open behind me more from sheer inability to
+exercise my will than from any thought of her.
+
+"Miss Strange" (he had come out of the shadows and was standing now
+directly before her), "I must ask you to trust implicitly in what I tell
+you of my further experiences that fatal night. It was not necessary for
+me to pass my little son's door in order to reach the room I was making
+for; but anguish took me there and held me glued to the panels for what
+seemed a long, long time. When I finally crept away it was to go to the
+room I had chosen in the top of the house, where I had my hour of hell
+and faced my desolated future. Did I hear anything meantime in the halls
+below? No. Did I even listen for the sound of her return? No. I was
+callous to everything, dead to everything but my own misery. I did not
+even heed the approach of morning, till suddenly, with a shrillness no
+ear could ignore, there rose, tearing through the silence of the house,
+that great scream from my wife's room which announced the discovery of
+her body lying stark and cold in her bed.
+
+"They said I showed little feeling." He had moved off again and spoke
+from somewhere in the shadows. "Do you wonder at this after such a
+manifest stroke by a benevolent Providence? My wife being dead, Roger
+was saved to us! It was the one song of my still undisciplined soul, and
+I had to assume coldness lest they should see the greatness of my joy.
+A wicked and guilty rejoicing you will say, and you are right. But I
+had no memory then of the part I had played in this fatality. I had
+forgotten my reckless flight from the grotto, which left her with no aid
+but that of her own triumphant spirit to help her over those treacherous
+rocks. The necessity for keeping secret this part of our disgraceful
+story led me to exert myself to keep it out of my own mind. It has only
+come back to me in all its force since a new horror, a new suspicion,
+has driven me to review carefully every incident of that awful night.
+
+"I was never a man of much logic, and when they came to me on that
+morning of which I have just spoken and took me in where she lay and
+pointed to her beautiful cold body stretched out in seeming peace under
+the satin coverlet, and then to the pile of dainty clothes lying neatly
+folded on a chair with just one fairy slipper on top, I shuddered at her
+fate but asked no questions, not even when one of the women of the house
+mentioned the circumstance of the single slipper and said that a search
+should be made for its mate. Nor was I as much impressed as one would
+naturally expect by the whisper dropped in my ear that something was
+the matter with her wrists. It is true that I lifted the lace they had
+carefully spread over them and examined the discoloration which extended
+like a ring about each pearly arm; but having no memories of any
+violence offered her (I had not so much as laid hand upon her in the
+grotto), these marks failed to rouse my interest. But--and now I must
+leap a year in my story--there came a time when both of these facts
+recurred to my mind with startling distinctness and clamoured for
+explanation.
+
+"I had risen above the shock which such a death following such events
+would naturally occasion even in one of my blunted sensibilities, and
+was striving to live a new life under the encouragement of my now fully
+reconciled father, when accident forced me to re-enter the grotto where
+I had never stepped foot since that night. A favourite dog in chase of
+some innocent prey had escaped the leash and run into its dim recesses
+and would not come out at my call. As I needed him immediately for the
+hunt, I followed him over the promontory and, swallowing my repugnance,
+slid into the grotto to get him. Better a plunge to my death from the
+height of the rocks towering above it. For there in a remote corner,
+lighted up by a reflection from the sea, I beheld my setter crouched
+above an object which in another moment I recognized as my dead
+wife's missing slipper. Here! Not in the waters of the sea or in the
+interstices of the rocks outside, but here! Proof that she had never
+walked back to the house where she was found lying quietly in her bed;
+proof positive; for I knew the path too well and the more than usual
+tenderness of her feet.
+
+"How then, did she get there; and by whose agency? Was she living when
+she went, or was she already dead? A year had passed since that delicate
+shoe had borne her from the boat into these dim recesses; but it might
+have been only a day, so vividly did I live over in this moment of awful
+enlightenment all the events of the hour in which we sat there playing
+for the possession of our child. Again I saw her gleaming eyes, her
+rosy, working mouth, her slim, white hand, loaded with diamonds,
+clutching the cards. Again I heard the lap of the sea on the pebbles
+outside and smelt the odour of the wine she had poured out for us both.
+The bottle which had held it; the glass from which she had drunk lay now
+in pieces on the rocky floor. The whole scene was mine again and as I
+followed the event to its despairing close, I seemed to see my own wild
+figure springing away from her to the grotto's mouth and so over the
+rocks. But here fancy faltered, caught by a quick recollection to which
+I had never given a thought till now. As I made my way along those
+rocks, a sound had struck my ear from where some stunted bushes made
+a shadow in the moonlight. The wind might have caused it or some small
+night creature hustling away at my approach; and to some such cause
+I must at the time have attributed it. But now, with brain fired by
+suspicion, it seemed more like the quick intake of a human breath. Some
+one had been lying there in wait, listening at the one loophole in the
+rocks where it was possible to hear what was said and done in the heart
+of the grotto. But who? who? and for what purpose this listening; and to
+what end did it lead?
+
+"Though I no longer loved even the memory of my wife, I felt my hair
+lift, as I asked myself these questions. There seemed to be but one
+logical answer to the last, and it was this: A struggle followed by
+death. The shoe fallen from her foot, the clothes found folded in her
+room (my wife was never orderly), and the dimly blackened wrists which
+were snow-white when she dealt the cards--all seemed to point to such
+a conclusion. She may have died from heart-failure, but a struggle had
+preceded her death, during which some man's strong fingers had been
+locked about her wrists. And again the question rose, Whose?
+
+"If any place was ever hated by mortal man that grotto was hated by me.
+I loathed its walls, its floor, its every visible and invisible corner.
+To linger there--to look--almost tore my soul from my body; yet I did
+linger and did look and this is what I found by way of reward.
+
+"Behind a projecting ledge of stone from which a tattered rug still
+hung, I came upon two nails driven a few feet apart into a fissure of
+the rock. I had driven those nails myself long before for a certain
+gymnastic attachment much in vogue at the time, and on looking closer,
+I discovered hanging from them the rope-ends by which I was wont to
+pull myself about. So far there was nothing to rouse any but innocent
+reminiscences. But when I heard the dog's low moan and saw him leap
+at the curled-up ends, and nose them with an eager look my way, I
+remembered the dark marks circling the wrists about which I had so often
+clasped my mother's bracelets, and the world went black before me.
+
+"When consciousness returned--when I could once more move and see and
+think, I noted another fact. Cards were strewn about the floor, face up
+and in a fixed order as if laid in a mocking mood to be looked upon by
+reluctant eyes; and near the ominous half-circle they made, a cushion
+from the lounge, stained horribly with what I then thought to be blood,
+but which I afterwards found to be wine. Vengeance spoke in those ropes
+and in the carefully spread-out cards, and murder in the smothering
+pillow. The vengeance of one who had watched her corroding influence eat
+the life out of my honour and whose love for our little Roger was such
+that any deed which ensured his continued presence in the home appeared
+not only warrantable but obligatory. Alas! I knew of but one person
+in the whole world who could cherish feeling to this extent or possess
+sufficient will power to carry her lifeless body back to the house and
+lay it in her bed and give no sign of the abominable act from that day
+on to this.
+
+"Miss Strange, there are men who have a peculiar conception of duty. My
+father--"
+
+"You need not go on." How gently, how tenderly our Violet spoke. "I
+understand your trouble--"
+
+Did she? She paused to ask herself if this were so, and he, deaf perhaps
+to her words, caught up his broken sentence and went on:
+
+"My father was in the hall the day I came staggering in from my visit to
+the grotto. No words passed, but our eyes met and from that hour I
+have seen death in his countenance and he has seen it in mine, like two
+opponents, each struck to the heart, who stand facing each other with
+simulated smiles till they fall. My father will drop first. He is
+old--very old since that day five weeks ago; and to see him die and not
+be sure--to see the grave close over a possible innocence, and I left
+here in ignorance of the blissful fact till my own eyes close forever,
+is more than I can hold up under; more than any son could. Cannot you
+help me then to a positive knowledge? Think! think! A woman's mind is
+strangely penetrating, and yours, I am told, has an intuitive faculty
+more to be relied upon than the reasoning of men. It must suggest some
+means of confirming my doubts or of definitely ending them."
+
+Then Violet stirred and looked about at him and finally found voice.
+
+"Tell me something about your father's ways. What are his habits? Does
+he sleep well or is he wakeful at night?"
+
+"He has poor nights. I do not know how poor because I am not often with
+him. His valet, who has always been in our family, shares his room and
+acts as his constant nurse. He can watch over him better than I can; he
+has no distracting trouble on his mind."
+
+"And little Roger? Does your father see much of little Roger? Does he
+fondle him and seem happy in his presence?"
+
+"Yes; yes. I have often wondered at it, but he does. They are great
+chums. It is a pleasure to see them together."
+
+"And the child clings to him--shows no fear--sits on his lap or on
+the bed and plays as children do play with his beard or with his
+watch-chain?"
+
+"Yes. Only once have I seen my little chap shrink, and that was when my
+father gave him a look of unusual intensity,--looking for his mother in
+him perhaps."
+
+"Mr. Upjohn, forgive me the question; it seems necessary. Does your
+father--or rather did your father before he fell ill--ever walk in the
+direction of the grotto or haunt in any way the rocks which surround
+it?"
+
+"I cannot say. The sea is there; he naturally loves the sea. But I have
+never seen him standing on the promontory."
+
+"Which way do his windows look?"
+
+"Towards the sea."
+
+"Therefore towards the promontory?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Can he see it from his bed?"
+
+"No. Perhaps that is the cause of a peculiar habit he has."
+
+"What habit?"
+
+"Every night before he retires (he is not yet confined to his bed) he
+stands for a few minutes in his front window looking out. He says it's
+his good-night to the ocean. When he no longer does this, we shall know
+that his end is very near."
+
+The face of Violet began to clear. Rising, she turned on the electric
+light, and then, reseating herself, remarked with an aspect of quiet
+cheer:
+
+"I have two ideas; but they necessitate my presence at your place. You
+will not mind a visit? My brother will accompany me."
+
+Roger Upjohn did not need to speak, hardly to make a gesture; his
+expression was so eloquent.
+
+She thanked him as if he had answered in words, adding with an air of
+gentle reserve: "Providence assists us in this matter. I am invited to
+Beverly next week to attend a wedding. I was intending to stay two days,
+but I will make it three and spend the extra one with you."
+
+"What are your requirements, Miss Strange? I presume you have some."
+
+Violet turned from the imposing portrait of Mr. Upjohn which she had
+been gravely contemplating, and met the troubled eye of her young host
+with an enigmatical flash of her own. But she made no answer in
+words. Instead, she lifted her right hand and ran one slender finger
+thoughtfully up the casing of the door near which they stood till it
+struck a nick in the old mahogany almost on a level with her head.
+
+"Is your son Roger old enough to reach so far?" she asked with another
+short look at him as she let her finger rest where it had struck the
+roughened wood. "I thought he was a little fellow."
+
+"He is. That cut was made by--by my wife; a sample of her capricious
+willfulness. She wished to leave a record of herself in the substance
+of our house as well as in our lives. That nick marks her height. She
+laughed when she made it. 'Till the walls cave in or burn,' is what she
+said. And I thought her laugh and smile captivating."
+
+Cutting short his own laugh which was much too sardonic for a lady's
+ears, he made a move as if to lead the way into another portion of
+the room. But Violet failed to notice this, and lingering in quiet
+contemplation of this suggestive little nick,--the only blemish in a
+room of ancient colonial magnificence,--she thoughtfully remarked:
+
+"Then she was a small woman?" adding with seeming irrelevance--"like
+myself."
+
+Roger winced. Something in the suggestion hurt him, and in the nod he
+gave there was an air of coldness which under ordinary circumstances
+would have deterred her from pursuing this subject further. But the
+circumstances were not ordinary, and she allowed herself to say:
+
+"Was she so very different from me,--in figure, I mean?"
+
+"No. Why do you ask? Shall we not join your brother on the terrace?"
+
+"Not till I have answered the question you put me a moment ago. You
+wished to know my requirements. One of the most important you have
+already fulfilled. You have given your servants a half-holiday and by
+so doing ensured to us full liberty of action. What else I need in the
+attempt I propose to make, you will find listed in this memorandum." And
+taking a slip of paper from her bag, she offered it to him with a hand,
+the trembling of which he would have noted had he been freer in mind.
+
+As he read, she watched him, her fingers nervously clutching her throat.
+
+"Can you supply what I ask?" she faltered, as he failed to raise his
+eyes or make any move or even to utter the groan she saw surging up
+to his lips. "Will you?" she impetuously urged, as his fingers closed
+spasmodically on the paper, in evidence that he understood at last the
+trend of her daring purpose.
+
+The answer came slowly, but it came. "I will. But what--"
+
+Her hand rose in a pleading gesture.
+
+"Do not ask me, but take Arthur and myself into the garden and show us
+the flowers. Afterwards, I should like a glimpse of the sea."
+
+He bowed and they joined Arthur who had already begun to stroll through
+the grounds.
+
+Violet was seldom at a loss for talk even at the most critical moments.
+But she was strangely tongue-tied on this occasion, as was Roger
+himself. Save for a few observations casually thrown out by Arthur, the
+three passed in a disquieting silence through pergola after pergola,
+and around beds gorgeous with every variety of fall flowers, till they
+turned a sharp corner and came in full view of the sea.
+
+"Ah!" fell in an admiring murmur from Violet's lips as her eyes swept
+the horizon. Then as they settled on a mass of rock jutting out from
+the shore in a great curve, she leaned towards her host and softly
+whispered:
+
+"The promontory?"
+
+He nodded, and Violet ventured no farther, but stood for a little while
+gazing at the tumbled rocks. Then, with a quick look back at the house,
+she asked him to point out his father's window.
+
+He did so, and as she noted how openly it faced the sea, her expression
+relaxed and her manner lost some of its constraint. As they turned to
+re-enter the house, she noticed an old man picking flowers from a vine
+clambering over one end of the piazza.
+
+"Who is that?" she asked.
+
+"Our oldest servant, and my father's own man," was Roger's reply. "He is
+picking my father's favourite flowers, a few late honeysuckles."
+
+"How fortunate! Speak to him, Mr. Upjohn. Ask him how your father is
+this evening."
+
+"Accompany me and I will; and do not be afraid to enter into
+conversation with him. He is the mildest of creatures and devoted to his
+patient. He likes nothing better than to talk about him."
+
+Violet, with a meaning look at her brother, ran up the steps at Roger's
+side. As she did so, the old man turned and Violet was astonished at the
+wistfulness with which he viewed her.
+
+"What a dear old creature!" she murmured. "See how he stares this way.
+You would think he knew me."
+
+"He is glad to see a woman about the place. He has felt our
+isolation--Good evening, Abram. Let this young lady have a spray of your
+sweetest honeysuckle. And, Abram, before you go, how is Father to-night?
+Still sitting up?"
+
+"Yes, sir. He is very regular in his ways. Nine is his hour; not a
+minute before and not a minute later. I don't have to look at the clock
+when he says: 'There, Abram, I've sat up long enough.'"
+
+"When my father retires before his time or goes to bed without a final
+look at the sea, he will be a very sick man, Abram."
+
+"That he will, Mr. Roger; that he will. But he's very feeble to-night,
+very feeble. I noticed that he gave the boy fewer kisses than usual.
+Perhaps he was put out because the child was brought in a half-hour
+earlier than the stated time. He don't like changes; you know that,
+Mr. Roger; he don't like changes. I hardly dared to tell him that the
+servants were all going out in a bunch to-night."
+
+"I'm sorry," muttered Roger. "But he'll forget it by to-morrow. I
+couldn't bear to keep a single one from the concert. They'll be back
+in good season and meantime we have you. Abram is worth half a dozen of
+them, Miss Strange. We shall miss nothing."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Roger, thank you," faltered the old man. "I try to do my
+duty." And with another wistful glance at Violet, who looked very sweet
+and youthful in the half-light, he pottered away.
+
+The silence which followed his departure was as painful to her as to
+Roger Upjohn. When she broke it it was with this decisive remark:
+
+"That man must not speak of me to your father. He must not even mention
+that you have a guest to-night. Run after him and tell him so. It is
+necessary that your father's mind should not be taken up with present
+happenings. Run."
+
+Roger made haste to obey her. When he came back she was on the point of
+joining her brother but stopped to utter a final injunction:
+
+"I shall leave the library, or wherever we may be sitting, just as the
+clock strikes half-past eight. Arthur will do the same, as by that time
+he will feel like smoking on the terrace. Do not follow either him or
+myself, but take your stand here on the piazza where you can get a
+full view of the right-hand wing without attracting any attention to
+yourself. When you hear the big clock in the hall strike nine, look up
+quickly at your father's window. What you see may determine--oh, Arthur!
+still admiring the prospect? I do not wonder. But I find it chilly. Let
+us go in."
+
+Roger Upjohn, sitting by himself in the library, was watching the hands
+of the mantel clock slowly approaching the hour of nine.
+
+Never had silence seemed more oppressive nor his sense of loneliness
+greater. Yet the boom of the ocean was distinct to the ear, and human
+presence no farther away than the terrace where Arthur Strange could be
+seen smoking out his cigar in solitude. The silence and the loneliness
+were in Roger's own soul; and, in face of the expected revelation
+which would make or unmake his future, the desolation they wrought was
+measureless.
+
+To cut his suspense short, he rose at length and hurried out to the spot
+designated by Miss Strange as the best point from which to keep watch
+upon his father's window. It was at the end of the piazza where the
+honeysuckle hung, and the odour of the blossoms, so pleasing to his
+father, well-nigh overpowered him not only by its sweetness but by the
+many memories it called up. Visions of that father as he looked at all
+stages of their relationship passed in a bewildering maze before him.
+He saw him as he appeared to his childish eyes in those early days of
+confidence when the loss of the mother cast them in mutual dependence
+upon each other. Then a sterner picture of the relentless parent who
+sees but one straight course to success in this world and the next. Then
+the teacher and the matured adviser; and then--oh, bitter change! the
+man whose hopes he had crossed--whose life he had undone, and all for
+her who now came stealing upon the scene with her slim, white, jewelled
+hand forever lifted up between them. And she! Had he ever seen her more
+clearly? Once more the dainty figure stepped from fairy-land, beauteous
+with every grace that can allure and finally destroy a man. And as he
+saw, he trembled and wished that these moments of awful waiting might
+pass and the test be over which would lay bare his father's heart and
+justify his fears or dispel them forever.
+
+But the crisis, if crisis it was, was one of his own making and not to
+be hastened or evaded. With one quick glance at his father's window, he
+turned in his impatience towards the sea whose restless and continuous
+moaning had at length struck his ear. What was in its call to-night that
+he should thus sway towards it as though drawn by some dread magnetic
+force? He had been born to the dashing of its waves and knew its
+every mood and all the passion of its song from frolicsome ripple to
+melancholy dirge. But there was something odd and inexplicable in
+its effect upon his spirit as he faced it at this hour. Grim and
+implacable--a sound rather than a sight--it seemed to hold within its
+invisible distances the image of his future fate. What this image was
+and why he should seek for it in this impenetrable void, he did not
+know. He felt himself held and was struggling with this influence as
+with an unknown enemy when there rang out, from the hall within, the
+preparatory chimes for which his ear was waiting, and then the nine slow
+strokes which signalized the moment when he was to look for his father's
+presence at the window.
+
+Had he wished, he could not have forborne that look. Had his eyes been
+closing in death, or so he felt, the trembling lids would have burst
+apart at this call and the revelations it promised.
+
+And what did he see? What did that window hold for him?
+
+Nothing that he might not have seen there any night at this hour. His
+father's figure drawn up behind the panes in wistful contemplation of
+the night. No visible change in his attitude, nothing forced or unusual
+in his manner. Even the hand, lifted to pull down the shade, moves
+with its familiar hesitation. In a moment more that shade will be down
+and--But no! the lifted hand falls back; the easy attitude becomes
+strained, fixed. He is staring now--not merely gazing out upon the
+wastes of sky and sea; and Roger, following the direction of his glance,
+stares also in breathless emotion at what those distances, but now so
+impenetrable, are giving to the eye.
+
+A spectre floating in the air above the promontory! The spectre of
+a woman--of his wife, clad, as she had been clad that fatal night!
+Outlined in supernatural light, it faces them with lifted arms showing
+the ends of rope dangling from either wrist. A sight awful to any eye,
+but to the man of guilty heart--
+
+Ah! it comes--the cry for which the agonized son had been listening! An
+old man's shriek, hoarse with the remorse of sleepless nights and days
+of unimaginable regret and foreboding! It cuts the night. It cuts its
+way into his heart. He feels his senses failing him, yet he must glance
+once more at the window and see with his last conscious look--But what
+is this! a change has taken place in the picture and he beholds, not
+the distorted form of his father sinking back in shame and terror before
+this visible image of his secret sin, but that of another weak, old man
+falling to the floor behind his back! Abram! the attentive, seemingly
+harmless, guardian of the household! Abram! who had never spoken a word
+or given a look in any way suggestive of his having played any other
+part in the hideous drama of their lives than that of the humble and
+sympathetic servant!
+
+The shock was too great, the relief too absolute for credence. He, the
+listener at the grotto? He, the avenger of the family's honour? He, the
+insurer of little Roger's continuance with the family at a cost the one
+who loved him best would rather have died himself than pay? Yes! there
+is no misdoubting this old servitor's attitude of abject appeal, or the
+meaning of Homer Upjohn's joyfully uplifted countenance and outspreading
+arms. The servant begs for mercy from man, and the master is giving
+thanks to Heaven. Why giving thanks? Has he been the prey of cankering
+doubts also? Has the father dreaded to discover that in the son which
+the son has dreaded to discover in the father?
+
+It might easily be; and as Roger recognizes this truth and the
+full tragedy of their mutual lives, he drops to his knees amid the
+honeysuckles.
+
+"Violet, you are a wonder. But how did you dare?"
+
+This from Arthur as the two rode to the train in the early morning.
+
+The answer came a bit waveringly.
+
+"I do not know. I am astonished yet, at my own daring. Look at my hands.
+They have not ceased trembling since the moment you threw the light upon
+me on the rocks. The figure of old Mr. Upjohn in the window looked so
+august."
+
+Arthur, with a short glance at the little hands she held out, shrugged
+his shoulders imperceptibly. It struck him that the tremulousness she
+complained of was due more to some parting word from their young host,
+than from prolonged awe at her own daring. But he made no remark to this
+effect, only observed:
+
+"Abram has confessed his guilt, I hear."
+
+"Yes, and will die of it. The master will bury the man, and not the man
+the master."
+
+"And Roger? Not the little fellow, but the father?"
+
+"We will not talk of him," said she, her eyes seeking the sea where
+the sun in its rising was battling with a troop of lowering clouds and
+slowly gaining the victory.
+
+END OF PROBLEM IV
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM V. THE DREAMING LADY
+
+"And this is all you mean to tell me?"
+
+"I think you will find it quite enough, Miss Strange."
+
+"Just the address--"
+
+"And this advice: that your call be speedy. Distracted nerves cannot
+wait."
+
+Violet, across whose wonted piquancy there lay an indefinable shadow,
+eyed her employer with a doubtful air before turning away toward the
+door. She had asked him for a case to investigate (something she had
+never done before), and she had even gone so far as to particularize
+the sort of case she desired: "It must be an interesting one," she had
+stipulated, "but different, quite different from the last one. It must
+not involve death or any kind of horror. If you have a case of subtlety
+without crime, one to engage my powers without depressing my spirits, I
+beg you to let me have it. I--I have not felt quite like myself since I
+came from Massachusetts." Whereupon, without further comment, but with a
+smile she did not understand, he had handed her a small slip of paper on
+which he had scribbled an address. She should have felt satisfied, but
+for some reason she did not. She regarded him as capable of plunging her
+into an affair quite the reverse of what she felt herself in a condition
+to undertake.
+
+"I should like to know a little more," she pursued, making a move to
+unfold the slip he had given her.
+
+But he stopped her with a gesture.
+
+"Read it in your limousine," said he. "If you are disappointed then, let
+me know. But I think you will find yourself quite ready for your task."
+
+"And my father?"
+
+"Would approve if he could be got to approve the business at all. You do
+not even need to take your brother with you."
+
+"Oh, then, it's with women only I have to deal?"
+
+"Read the address after you are headed up Fifth Avenue."
+
+But when, with her doubts not yet entirely removed, she opened the small
+slip he had given her, the number inside suggested nothing but the
+fact that her destination lay somewhere near Eightieth Street. It was
+therefore with the keenest surprise she beheld her motor stop before
+the conspicuous house of the great financier whose late death had so
+affected the money-market. She had not had any acquaintance with this
+man herself, but she knew his house. Everyone knew that. It was one of
+the most princely in the whole city. C. Dudley Brooks had known how to
+spend his millions. Indeed, he had known how to do this so well that it
+was of him her father, also a financier of some note, had once said he
+was the only successful American he envied.
+
+She was expected; that she saw the instant the door was opened. This
+made her entrance easy--an entrance further brightened by the delightful
+glimpse of a child's cherubic face looking at her from a distant
+doorway. It was an instantaneous vision, gone as soon as seen; but its
+effect was to rob the pillared spaces of the wonderful hallway of some
+of their chill, and to modify in some slight degree the formality of
+a service which demanded three men to usher her into a small
+reception-room not twenty feet from the door of entrance.
+
+Left in this secluded spot, she had time to ask herself what member of
+the household she would be called upon to meet, and was surprised to
+find that she did not even know of whom the household consisted. She
+was sure of the fact that Mr. Brooks had been a widower for many years
+before his death, but beyond that she knew nothing of his domestic life.
+His son--but was there a son? She had never heard any mention made of a
+younger Mr. Brooks, yet there was certainly some one of his connection
+who enjoyed the rights of an heir. Him she must be prepared to meet with
+a due composure, whatever astonishment he might show at the sight of a
+slip of a girl instead of the experienced detective he had every right
+to expect.
+
+But when the door opened to admit the person she was awaiting, the
+surprise was hers. It was a woman who stood before her, a woman and an
+oddity. Yet, in just what her oddity lay, Violet found it difficult to
+decide. Was it in the smoothness of her white locks drawn carefully down
+over her ears, or in the contrast afforded by her eager eyes and her
+weak and tremulous mouth? She was dressed in the heaviest of mourning
+and very expensively, but there was that in her bearing and expression
+which made it impossible to believe that she took any interest in her
+garments or even knew in which of her dresses she had been attired.
+
+"I am the person you have come here to see," she said. "Your name is
+not unfamiliar to me, but you may not know mine. It is Quintard; Mrs.
+Quintard. I am in difficulty. I need assistance--secret assistance.
+I did not know where to go for it except to a detective agency; so I
+telephoned to the first one I saw advertised; and--and I was told to
+expect Miss Strange. But I didn't think it would be you though I suppose
+it's all right. You have come here for this purpose, haven't you, though
+it does seem a little queer?"
+
+"Certainly, Mrs. Quintard; and if you will tell me--"
+
+"My dear, it's just this--yes, I will sit down. Last week my brother
+died. You have heard of him no doubt, C. Dudley Brooks?"
+
+"Oh, yes; my father knew him--we all knew him by reputation. Do not
+hurry, Mrs. Quintard. I have sent my car away. You can take all the time
+you wish."
+
+"No, no, I cannot. I'm in desperate haste. He--but let me go on with
+my story. My brother was a widower, with no children to inherit. That
+everybody knows. But his wife left behind her a son by a former husband,
+and this son of hers my brother had in a measure adopted, and even made
+his sole heir in a will he drew up during the lifetime of his wife.
+But when he found, as he very soon did, that this young man was not
+developing in a way to meet such great responsibilities, he made a new
+will--though unhappily without the knowledge of the family, or even of
+his most intimate friends--in which he gave the bulk of his great estate
+to his nephew Clement, who has bettered the promise of his youth and
+who besides has children of great beauty whom my brother had learned to
+love. And this will--this hoarded scrap of paper which means so much to
+us all, is lost! lost! and I--" here her voice which had risen almost to
+a scream, sank to a horrified whisper, "am the one who lost it."
+
+"But there's a copy of it somewhere--there is always a copy--"
+
+"Oh, but you haven't heard all. My nephew is an invalid; has been an
+invalid for years--that's why so little is known about him. He's dying
+of consumption. The doctors hold out no hope for him, and now, with the
+fear preying upon him of leaving his wife and children penniless, he is
+wearing away so fast that any hour may see his end. And I have to meet
+his eyes--such pitiful eyes--and the look in them is killing me. Yet,
+I was not to blame. I could not help--Oh, Miss Strange," she suddenly
+broke in with the inconsequence of extreme feeling, "the will is in the
+house! I never carried it off the floor where I sleep. Find it; find it,
+I pray, or--"
+
+The moment had come for Violet's soft touch, for Violet's encouraging
+word.
+
+"I will try," she answered her.
+
+Mrs. Quintard grew calmer.
+
+"But, first," the young girl continued, "I must know more about the
+conditions. Where is this nephew of yours--the man who is ill?"
+
+"In this house, where he has been for the last eight months."
+
+"Was the child his of whom I caught a glimpse in the hall as I came in?"
+
+"Yes, and--"
+
+"I will fight for that child!" Violet cried out impulsively. "I am sure
+his father's cause is good. Where is the other claimant--the one you
+designate as Carlos?"
+
+"Oh, there's where the trouble is! Carlos is on the Mauretania, and she
+is due here in a couple of days. He comes from the East where he has
+been touring with his wife. Miss Strange, the lost will must be found
+before then, or the other will be opened and read and Carlos made
+master of this house, which would mean our quick departure and Clement's
+certain death."
+
+"Move a sick man?--a relative as low as you say he is? Oh no, Mrs.
+Quintard; no one would do that, were the house a cabin and its owners
+paupers."
+
+"You do not know Carlos; you do not know his wife. We should not be
+given a week in which to pack. They have no children and they envy
+Clement who has. Our only hope lies in discovering the paper which gives
+us the right to remain here in face of all opposition. That or penury.
+Now you know my trouble."
+
+"And it is trouble; one from which I shall make every effort to relieve
+you. But first let me ask if you are not worrying unnecessarily about
+this missing document? If it was drawn up by Mr. Brooks's lawyer--"
+
+"But it was not," that lady impetuously interrupted. "His lawyer is
+Carlos's near relative, and has never been told of the change in my
+brother's intentions. Clement (I am speaking now of my brother and not
+of my nephew) was a great money-getter, but when it came to standing up
+for his rights in domestic matters, he was more timid than a child. He
+was subject to his wife while she lived, and when she was gone, to her
+relatives, who are all of a dominating character. When he finally
+made up his mind to do us justice and eliminate Carlos, he went out of
+town--I wish I could remember where--and had this will drawn up by a
+stranger, whose name I cannot recall."
+
+Her shaking tones, her nervous manner betrayed a weakness equalling, if
+not surpassing, that of the brother who dared in secret what he had not
+strength to acknowledge openly, and it was with some hesitation Violet
+prepared to ask those definite questions which would elucidate the cause
+and manner of a loss seemingly so important. She dreaded to hear some
+commonplace tale of inexcusable carelessness. Something subtler than
+this--the presence of some unsuspected agency opposed to young Clement's
+interest; some partisan of Carlos; some secret undermining force in
+a house full of servants and dependants, seemed necessary for the
+development of so ordinary a situation into a drama justifying the
+exercise of her special powers.
+
+"I think I understand now your exact position in the house, as well as
+the value of the paper which you say you have lost. The next thing for
+me to hear is how you came to have charge of this paper, and under what
+circumstances you were led to mislay it. Do you not feel quite ready to
+tell me?"
+
+"Is--is that necessary?" Mrs. Quintard faltered.
+
+"Very," replied Violet, watching her curiously.
+
+"I didn't expect--that is, I hoped you would be able to point out, by
+some power we cannot of course explain, just the spot where the paper
+lies, without having to tell all that. Some people can, you know."
+
+"Ah, I understand. You regarded me as unfit for practical work, and so
+credited me with occult powers. But that is where you made a mistake,
+Mrs. Quintard; I'm nothing if not practical. And let me add, that I'm as
+secret as the grave concerning what my clients tell me. If I am to be of
+any help to you, I must be made acquainted with every fact involved
+in the loss of this valuable paper. Relate the whole circumstance or
+dismiss me from the case. You can have done nothing more foolish or
+wrong than many--"
+
+"Oh, don't say things like that!" broke in the poor woman in a tone of
+great indignation. "I have done nothing anyone could call either foolish
+or wicked. I am simply very unfortunate, and being sensitive--But this
+isn't telling the story. I'll try to make it all clear; but if I do
+not, and show any confusion, stop me and help me out with questions.
+I--I--oh, where shall I begin?"
+
+"With your first knowledge of this second will."
+
+"Thank you, thank you; now I can go on. One night, shortly after my
+brother had been given up by the physicians, I was called to his bedside
+for a confidential talk. As he had received that day a very large amount
+of money from the bank, I thought he was going to hand it over to me
+for Clement, but it was for something much more serious than this he
+had summoned me. When he was quite sure that we were alone and nobody
+anywhere within hearing, he told me that he had changed his mind as
+to the disposal of his property and that it was to Clement and his
+children, and not to Carlos, he was going to leave this house and the
+bulk of his money. That he had had a new will drawn up which he showed
+me--"
+
+"Showed you?"
+
+"Yes; he made me bring it to him from the safe where he kept it; and,
+feeble as he was, he was so interested in pointing out certain portions
+of it that he lifted himself in bed and was so strong and animated that
+I thought he was getting better. But it was a false strength due to the
+excitement of the moment, as I saw next day when he suddenly died."
+
+"You were saying that you brought the will to him from his safe. Where
+was the safe?"
+
+"In the wall over his head. He gave me the key to open it. This key he
+took from under his pillow. I had no trouble in fitting it or in turning
+the lock."
+
+"And what happened after you looked at the will?"
+
+"I put it back. He told me to. But the key I kept. He said I was not to
+part with it again till the time came for me to produce the will."
+
+"And when was that to be?"
+
+"Immediately after the funeral, if it so happened that Carlos had
+arrived in time to attend it. But if for any reason he failed to be
+here, I was to let it lie till within three days of his return, when
+I was to take it out in the presence of a Mr. Delahunt who was to have
+full charge of it from that time. Oh, I remember all that well enough!
+and I meant most earnestly to carry out his wishes, but--"
+
+"Go on, Mrs. Quintard, pray go on. What happened? Why couldn't you do
+what he asked?"
+
+"Because the will was gone when I went to take it out. There was nothing
+to show Mr. Delahunt but the empty shelf."
+
+"Oh, a theft! just a common theft! Someone overheard the talk you had
+with your brother. But how about the key? You had that?"
+
+"Yes, I had that."
+
+"Then it was taken from you and returned? You must have been careless as
+to where you kept it--"
+
+"No, I wore it on a chain about my neck. Though I had no reason to
+mistrust any one in the house, I felt that I could not guard this key
+too carefully. I even kept it on at night. In fact it never left me. It
+was still on my person when I went into the room with Mr. Delahunt. But
+the safe had been opened for all that."
+
+"There were two keys to it, then?"
+
+"No; in giving me the key, my brother had strictly warned me not to lose
+it, as it had no duplicate."
+
+"Mrs. Quintard, have you a special confidant or maid?"
+
+"Yes, my Hetty."
+
+"How much did she know about this key?"
+
+"Nothing, but that it didn't help the fit of my dress. Hetty has cared
+for me for years. There's no more devoted woman in all New York, nor one
+who can be more relied upon to tell the truth. She is so honest with her
+tongue that I am bound to believe her even when she says--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"That it was I and nobody else who took the will out of the safe last
+night. That she saw me come from my brother's room with a folded paper
+in my hand, pass with it into the library, and come out again without
+it. If this is so, then that will is somewhere in that great room. But
+we've looked in every conceivable place except the shelves, where it
+is useless to search. It would take days to go through them all, and
+meanwhile Carlos--"
+
+"We will not wait for Carlos. We will begin work at once. But just
+one other question. How came Hetty to see you in your walk through the
+rooms? Did she follow you?"
+
+"Yes. It's--it's not the first time I have walked in my sleep. Last
+night--but she will tell you. It's a painful subject to me. I will send
+for her to meet us in the library."
+
+"Where you believe this document to lie hidden?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am anxious to see the room. It is upstairs, I believe."
+
+"Yes."
+
+She had risen and was moving rapidly toward the door. Violet eagerly
+followed her.
+
+Let us accompany her in her passage up the palatial stairway, and
+realize the effect upon her of a splendour whose future ownership
+possibly depended entirely upon herself.
+
+It was a cold splendour. The merry voices of children were lacking in
+these great halls. Death past and to come infused the air with solemnity
+and mocked the pomp which yet appeared so much a part of the life here
+that one could hardly imagine the huge pillared spaces without it.
+
+To Violet, more or less accustomed to fine interiors, the chief interest
+of this one lay in its connection with the mystery then occupying her.
+Stopping for a moment on the stair, she inquired of Mrs. Quintard if the
+loss she so deplored had been made known to the servants, and was much
+relieved to find that, with the exception of Mr. Delahunt, she had not
+spoken of it to any one but Clement. "And he will never mention it," she
+declared, "not even to his wife. She has troubles enough to bear without
+knowing how near she stood to a fortune."
+
+"Oh, she will have her fortune!" Violet confidently replied. "In time,
+the lawyer who drew up the will will appear. But what you want is an
+immediate triumph over the cold Carlos, and I hope you may have it. Ah!"
+
+This expletive was a sigh of sheer surprise.
+
+Mrs. Quintard had unlocked the library door and Violet had been given
+her first glimpse of this, the finest room in New York.
+
+She remembered now that she had often heard it so characterized, and,
+indeed, had it been taken bodily from some historic abbey of the
+old world, it could not have expressed more fully, in structure and
+ornamentation, the Gothic idea at its best. All that it lacked were
+the associations of vanished centuries, and these, in a measure, were
+supplied to the imagination by the studied mellowness of its tints and
+the suggestion of age in its carvings.
+
+So much for the room itself, which was but a shell for holding the great
+treasure of valuable books ranged along every shelf. As Violet's eyes
+sped over their ranks and thence to the five windows of deeply stained
+glass which faced her from the southern end, Mrs. Quintard indignantly
+exclaimed:
+
+"And Carlos would turn this into a billiard room!"
+
+"I do not like Carlos," Violet returned hotly; then remembering herself,
+hastened to ask whether Mrs. Quintard was quite positive as to this room
+being the one in which she had hidden the precious document.
+
+"You had better talk to Hetty," said that lady, as a stout woman of most
+prepossessing appearance entered their presence and paused respectfully
+just inside the doorway. "Hetty, you will answer any questions this
+young lady may put. If anyone can help us, she can. But first, what news
+from the sick-room?"
+
+"Nothing good. The doctor has just come for the third time today. Mrs.
+Brooks is crying and even the children are dumb with fear."
+
+"I will go. I must see the doctor. I must tell him to keep Clement alive
+by any means till--"
+
+She did not wait to say what; but Violet understood and felt her heart
+grow heavy. Could it be that her employer considered this the gay and
+easy task she had asked for?
+
+The next minute she was putting her first question:
+
+"Hetty, what did you see in Mrs. Quintard's action last night, to make
+you infer that she left the missing document in this room?"
+
+The woman's eyes, which had been respectfully studying her face,
+brightened with a relief which made her communicative. With the
+self-possession of a perfectly candid nature, she inquiringly remarked:
+
+"My mistress has spoken of her infirmity?"
+
+"Yes, and very frankly."
+
+"She walks in her sleep."
+
+"So she said."
+
+"And sometimes when others are asleep, and she is not."
+
+"She did not tell me that."
+
+"She is a very nervous woman and cannot always keep still when she
+rouses up at night. When I hear her rise, I get up too; but, never being
+quite sure whether she is sleeping or not, I am careful to follow her at
+a certain distance. Last night I was so far behind her that she had been
+to her brother's room and left it before I saw her face."
+
+"Where is his room and where is hers?"
+
+"Hers is in front on this same floor. Mr. Brooks's is in the rear, and
+can be reached either by the hall or by passing through this room into a
+small one beyond, which we called his den."
+
+"Describe your encounter. Where were you standing when you saw her
+first?"
+
+"In the den I have just mentioned. There was a bright light in the hall
+behind me and I could see her figure quite plainly. She was holding
+a folded paper clenched against her breast, and her movement was so
+mechanical that I was sure she was asleep. She was coming this way, and
+in another moment she entered this room. The door, which had been open,
+remained so, and in my anxiety I crept to it and looked in after her.
+There was no light burning here at that hour, but the moon was shining
+in in long rays of variously coloured light. If I had followed her--but
+I did not. I just stood and watched her long enough to see her pass
+through a blue ray, then through a green one, and then into, if not
+through, a red one. Expecting her to walk straight on, and having some
+fears of the staircase once she got into the hall, I hurried around to
+the door behind you there to head her off. But she had not yet left
+this room. I waited and waited and still she did not come. Fearing some
+accident, I finally ventured to approach the door and try it. It was
+locked. This alarmed me. She had never locked herself in anywhere before
+and I did not know what to make of it. Some persons would have shouted
+her name, but I had been warned against doing that, so I simply stood
+where I was, and eventually I heard the key turn in the lock and saw her
+come out. She was still walking stiffly, but her hands were empty and
+hanging at her side."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"She went straight to her room and I after her. I was sure she was dead
+asleep by this time."
+
+"And she was?"
+
+"Yes, Miss; but still full of what was on her mind. I know this because
+she stopped when she reached the bedside and began fumbling with the
+waist of her wrapper. It was for the key she was searching, and when her
+fingers encountered it hanging on the outside, she opened her wrapper
+and thrust it in on her bare skin."
+
+"You saw her do all that?"
+
+"As plainly as I see you now. The light in her room was burning
+brightly."
+
+"And after that?"
+
+"She got into bed. It was I who turned off the light."
+
+"Has that wrapper of hers a pocket?"
+
+"No, Miss."
+
+"Nor her gown?"
+
+"No, Miss."
+
+"So she could not have brought the paper into her room concealed about
+her person?"
+
+"No, Miss; she left it here. It never passed beyond this doorway."
+
+"But might she not have carried it back to some place of concealment in
+the rooms she had left?"
+
+The woman's face changed and a slight flush showed through the natural
+brown of her cheeks.
+
+"No," she disclaimed; "she could not have done that. I was careful to
+lock the library door behind her before I ran out into the hall."
+
+"Then," concluded Violet, with all the emphasis of conviction, "it is
+here, and nowhere else we must look for that document till we find it."
+
+Thus assured of the first step in the task she had before her, Miss
+Strange settled down to business.
+
+The room, which towered to the height of two stories, was in the shape
+of a huge oval. This oval, separated into narrow divisions for the
+purpose of accommodating the shelves with which it was lined, narrowed
+as it rose above the great Gothic chimney-piece and the five gorgeous
+windows looking towards the south, till it met and was lost in the
+tracery of the ceiling, which was of that exquisite and soul-satisfying
+order which we see in the Henry VII chapel in Westminster Abbey. What
+break otherwise occurred in the circling round of books reaching thus
+thirty feet or more above the head was made by the two doors already
+spoken of and a narrow strip of wall at either end of the space occupied
+by the windows. No furniture was to be seen there except a couple of
+stalls taken from some old cathedral, which stood in the two bare places
+just mentioned.
+
+But within, on the extensive floor-space, several articles were grouped,
+and Violet, recognizing the possibilities which any one of them afforded
+for the concealment of so small an object as a folded document, decided
+to use method in her search, and to that end, mentally divided the space
+before her into four segments.
+
+The first took in the door, communicating with the suite ending in Mr.
+Brooks's bedroom. A diagram of this segment will show that the only
+article of furniture in it was a cabinet.
+
+It was at this cabinet Miss Strange made her first stop.
+
+"You have looked this well through?" she asked as she bent over the
+glass case on top to examine the row of mediaeval missals displayed
+within in a manner to show their wonderful illuminations.
+
+"Not the case," explained Hetty. "It is locked you see and no one has as
+yet succeeded in finding the key. But we searched the drawers underneath
+with the greatest care. Had we sifted the whole contents through our
+fingers, I could not be more certain that the paper is not there."
+
+Violet stepped into the next segment.
+
+This was the one dominated by the huge fire-place. A rug lay before the
+hearth. To this Violet pointed.
+
+Quickly the woman answered: "We not only lifted it, but turned it over."
+
+"And that box at the right?"
+
+"Is full of wood and wood only."
+
+"Did you take out this wood?"
+
+"Every stick."
+
+"And those ashes in the fire-place? Something has been burned there."
+
+"Yes; but not lately. Besides, those ashes are all wood ashes. If the
+least bit of charred paper had been mixed with them, we should have
+considered the matter settled. But you can see for yourself that no such
+particle can be found." While saying this, she had put the poker into
+Violet's hand. "Rake them about, Miss, and make sure."
+
+Violet did so, with the result that the poker was soon put back into
+place, and she herself down on her knees looking up the chimney.
+
+"Had she thrust it up there," Hetty made haste to remark, "there would
+have been some signs of soot on her sleeves. They are white and very
+long and are always getting in her way when she tries to do anything."
+
+Violet left the fire-place after a glance at the mantel-shelf on
+which nothing stood but a casket of open fretwork, and two coloured
+photographs mounted on small easels. The casket was too open to conceal
+anything and the photographs lifted too high above the shelf for even
+the smallest paper, let alone a document of any size, to hide behind
+them.
+
+The chairs, of which there were several in this part of the room, she
+passed with just an inquiring look. They were all of solid oak, without
+any attempt at upholstery, and although carved to match the stalls on
+the other side of the room, offered no place for search.
+
+Her delay in the third segment was brief. Here there was absolutely
+nothing but the door by which she had entered, and the books. As she
+flitted on, following the oval of the wall, a small frown appeared on
+her usually smooth forehead. She felt the oppression of the books--the
+countless books. If indeed, she should find herself obliged to go
+through them. What a hopeless outlook!
+
+But she had still a segment to consider, and after that the immense
+table occupying the centre of the room, a table which in its double
+capacity (for it was as much desk as table) gave more promise of holding
+the solution of the mystery than anything to which she had hitherto
+given her attention.
+
+The quarter in which she now stood was the most beautiful, and,
+possibly, the most precious of them all. In it blazed the five great
+windows which were the glory of the room; but there are no hiding-places
+in windows, and much as she revelled in colour, she dared not waste a
+moment on them. There was more hope for her in the towering stalls, with
+their possible drawers for books.
+
+But Hetty was before her in the attempt she made to lift the lids of the
+two great seats.
+
+"Nothing in either," said she; and Violet, with a sigh, turned towards
+the table.
+
+This was an immense affair, made to accommodate itself to the shape of
+the room, but with a hollowed-out space on the window-side large enough
+to hold a chair for the sitter who would use its top as a desk. On it
+were various articles suitable to its double use. Without being crowded,
+it displayed a pile of magazines and pamphlets, boxes for stationery,
+a writing pad with its accompaniments, a lamp, and some few ornaments,
+among which was a large box, richly inlaid with pearl and ivory, the lid
+of which stood wide open.
+
+"Don't touch," admonished Violet, as Hetty stretched out her hand to
+move some little object aside. "You have already worked here busily in
+the search you made this morning."
+
+"We handled everything."
+
+"Did you go through these pamphlets?"
+
+"We shook open each one. We were especially particular here, since it
+was at this table I saw Mrs. Quintard stop."
+
+"With head level or drooped?"
+
+"Drooped."
+
+"Like one looking down, rather than up, or around?"
+
+"Yes. A ray of red light shone on her sleeve. It seemed to me the sleeve
+moved as though she were reaching out."
+
+"Will you try to stand as she did and as nearly in the same place as
+possible?"
+
+Hetty glanced down at the table edge, marked where the gules dominated
+the blue and green, and moved to that spot, and paused with her head
+sinking slowly towards her breast.
+
+"Very good," exclaimed Violet. "But the moon was probably in a very
+different position from what the sun is now."
+
+"You are right; it was higher up; I chanced to notice it."
+
+"Let me come," said Violet.
+
+Hetty moved, and Violet took her place but in a spot a step or two
+farther front. This brought her very near to the centre of the table.
+Hanging her head, just as Hetty had done, she reached out her right
+hand.
+
+"Have you looked under this blotter?" she asked, pointing towards the
+pad she touched. "I mean, between the blotter and the frame which holds
+it?"
+
+"I certainly did," answered Hetty, with some pride.
+
+Violet remained staring down. "Then you took off everything that was
+lying on it?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+Violet continued to stare down at the blotter. Then impetuously:
+
+"Put them back in their accustomed places."
+
+Hetty obeyed.
+
+Violet continued to look at them, then slowly stretched out her hand,
+but soon let it fall again with an air of discouragement. Certainly
+the missing document was not in the ink-pot or the mucilage bottle.
+Yet something made her stoop again over the pad and subject it to the
+closest scrutiny.
+
+"If only nothing had been touched!" she inwardly sighed. But she let no
+sign of her discontent escape her lips, simply exclaiming as she glanced
+up at the towering spaces overhead: "The books! the books! Nothing
+remains but for you to call up all the servants, or get men from the
+outside and, beginning at one end--I should say the upper one--take down
+every book standing within reach of a woman of Mrs. Quintard's height."
+
+"Hear first what Mrs. Quintard has to say about that," interrupted the
+woman as that lady entered in a flutter of emotion springing from more
+than one cause.
+
+"The young lady thinks that we should remove the books," Hetty observed,
+as her mistress's eye wandered to hers from Violet's abstracted
+countenance.
+
+"Useless. If we were to undertake to do that, Carlos would be here
+before half the job was finished. Besides, Hetty must have told you my
+extreme aversion to nicely bound books. I will not say that when awake
+I never place my hand on one, but once in a state of somnambulism, when
+every natural whim has full control, I am sure that I never would. There
+is a reason for my prejudice. I was not always rich. I once was very
+poor. It was when I was first married and long before Clement had begun
+to make his fortune. I was so poor then that frequently I went hungry,
+and what was worse saw my little daughter cry for food. And why? Because
+my husband was a bibliomaniac. He would spend on fine editions what
+would have kept the family comfortable. It is hard to believe, isn't
+it? I have seen him bring home a Grolier when the larder was as empty as
+that box; and it made me hate books so, especially those of extra fine
+binding, that I have to tear the covers off before I can find courage to
+read them."
+
+O life! life! how fast Violet was learning it!
+
+"I can understand your idea, Mrs. Quintard, but as everything else has
+failed, I should make a mistake not to examine these shelves. It is just
+possible that we may be able to shorten the task very materially; that
+we may not have to call in help, even. To what extent have they been
+approached, or the books handled, since you discovered the loss of the
+paper we are looking for?"
+
+"Not at all. Neither of us went near them." This from Hetty.
+
+"Nor any one else?"
+
+"No one else has been admitted to the room. We locked both doors the
+moment we felt satisfied that the will had been left here."
+
+"That's a relief. Now I may be able to do something. Hetty, you look
+like a very strong woman, and I, as you see, am very little. Would you
+mind lifting me up to these shelves? I want to look at them. Not at the
+books, but at the shelves themselves."
+
+The wondering woman stooped and raised her to the level of the shelf she
+had pointed out. Violet peered closely at it and then at the ones just
+beneath.
+
+"Am I heavy?" she asked; "if not, let me see those on the other side of
+the door."
+
+Hetty carried her over.
+
+Violet inspected each shelf as high as a woman of Mrs. Quintard's
+stature could reach, and when on her feet again, knelt to inspect the
+ones below.
+
+"No one has touched or drawn anything from these shelves in twenty-four
+hours," she declared. "The small accumulation of dust along their edges
+has not been disturbed at any point. It was very different with the
+table-top. That shows very plainly where you had moved things and where
+you had not."
+
+"Was that what you were looking for? Well, I never!"
+
+Violet paid no heed; she was thinking and thinking very deeply.
+
+Hetty turned towards her mistress, then quickly back to Violet, whom she
+seized by the arm.
+
+"What's the matter with Mrs. Quintard?" she hurriedly asked. "If it were
+night, I should think that she was in one of her spells."
+
+Violet started and glanced where Hetty pointed. Mrs. Quintard was within
+a few feet of them, but as oblivious of their presence as though she
+stood alone in the room. Possibly, she thought she did. With fixed eyes
+and mechanical step she began to move straight towards the table, her
+whole appearance of a nature to make Hetty's blood run cold, but to
+cause that of Violet's to bound through her veins with renewed hope.
+
+"The one thing I could have wished!" she murmured under her breath. "She
+has fallen into a trance. She is again under the dominion of her idea.
+If we watch and do not disturb her she may repeat her action of last
+night, and herself show where she has put this precious document."
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Quintard continued to advance. A moment more, and her
+smooth white locks caught the ruddy glow centred upon the chair standing
+in the hollow of the table. Words were leaving her lips, and her hand,
+reaching out over the blotter, groped among the articles scattered there
+till it settled on a large pair of shears.
+
+"Listen," muttered Violet to the woman pressing close to her side. "You
+are acquainted with her voice; catch what she says if you can."
+
+Hetty could not; an undistinguishable murmur was all that came to her
+ears.
+
+Violet took a step nearer. Mrs. Quintard's hand had left the shears and
+was hovering uncertainly in the air. Her distress was evident. Her head,
+no longer steady on her shoulders, was turning this way and that, and
+her tones becoming inarticulate.
+
+"Paper! I want paper" burst from her lips in a shrill unnatural cry.
+
+But when they listened for more and watched to see the uncertain hand
+settle somewhere, she suddenly came to herself and turned upon them
+a startled glance, which speedily changed into one of the utmost
+perplexity.
+
+"What am I doing here?" she asked. "I have a feeling as if I had
+almost seen--almost touched--oh, it's gone! and all is blank again. Why
+couldn't I keep it till I knew--" Then she came wholly to herself and,
+forgetting even the doubts of a moment since, remarked to Violet in her
+old tremulous fashion:
+
+"You asked us to pull down the books? But you've evidently thought
+better of it."
+
+"Yes, I have thought better of it." Then, with a last desperate hope of
+re-arousing the visions lying somewhere back in Mrs. Quintard's troubled
+brain, Violet ventured to observe: "This is likely to resolve itself
+into a psychological problem, Mrs. Quintard. Do you suppose that if
+you fell again into the condition of last night, you would repeat your
+action and so lead us yourself to where the will lies hidden?"
+
+"Possibly; but it may be weeks before I walk again in my sleep, and
+meanwhile Carlos will have arrived, and Clement, possibly, died. My
+nephew is so low that the doctor is coming back at midnight. Miss
+Strange, Clement is a man in a thousand. He says he wants to see you.
+Would you be willing to accompany me to his room for a moment? He will
+not make many more requests and I will take care that the interview is
+not prolonged."
+
+"I will go willingly. But would it not be better to wait--"
+
+"Then you may never see him at all."
+
+"Very well; but I wish I had some better news to give."
+
+"That will come later. This house was never meant for Carlos. Hetty, you
+will stay here. Miss Strange, let us go now."
+
+"You need not speak; just let him see you."
+
+Violet nodded and followed Mrs. Quintard into the sick-room.
+
+The sight which met her eyes tried her young emotions deeply. Staring at
+her from the bed, she saw two piercing eyes over whose brilliance death
+as yet had gained no control. Clements's soul was in that gaze; Clement
+halting at the brink of dissolution to sound the depths behind him for
+the hope which would make departure easy. Would he see in her, a mere
+slip of a girl dressed in fashionable clothes and bearing about her all
+the marks of social distinction, the sort of person needed for the
+task upon the success of which depended his darlings' future? She could
+hardly expect it. Yet as she continued to meet his gaze with all the
+seriousness the moment demanded, she beheld those burning orbs lose
+some of their demand and the fingers, which had lain inert upon the
+bedspread, flutter gently and move as if to draw attention to his wife
+and the three beautiful children clustered at the foot-board.
+
+He had not spoken nor could she speak, but the solemnity with which she
+raised her right hand as to a listening Heaven called forth upon his
+lips what was possibly his last smile, and with the memory of this faint
+expression of confidence on his part, she left the room, to make her
+final attempt to solve the mystery of the missing document.
+
+Facing the elderly lady in the hall, she addressed her with the force
+and soberness of one leading a forlorn hope:
+
+"I want you to concentrate your mind upon what I have to say to you. Do
+you think you can do this?"
+
+"I will try," replied the poor woman with a backward glance at the door
+which had just been closed upon her.
+
+"What we want," said she, "is, as I stated before, an insight into the
+workings of your brain at the time you took the will from the safe.
+Try and follow what I have to say, Mrs. Quintard. Dreams are no
+longer regarded by scientists as prophecies of the future or even as
+spontaneous and irrelevant conditions of thought, but as reflections of
+a near past, which can almost without exception be traced back to the
+occurrences which caused them. Your action with the will had its birth
+in some previous line of thought afterwards forgotten. Let us try
+and find that thought. Recall, if you can, just what you did or read
+yesterday."
+
+Mrs. Quintard looked frightened.
+
+"But, I have no memory," she objected. "I forget quickly, so quickly
+that in order to fulfill my engagements I have to keep a memorandum of
+every day's events. Yesterday? yesterday? What did I do yesterday? I
+went downtown for one thing, but I hardly know where."
+
+"Perhaps your memorandum of yesterday's doings will help you."
+
+"I will get it. But it won't give you the least help. I keep it only for
+my own eye, and--"
+
+"Never mind; let me see it."
+
+And she waited impatiently for it to be put in her hands.
+
+But when she came to read the record of the last two days, this was all
+she found:
+
+Saturday: Mauretania nearly due. I must let Mr. Delahunt know today that
+he's wanted here to-morrow. Hetty will try on my dresses. Says she has
+to alter them. Mrs. Peabody came to lunch, and we in such trouble! Had
+to go down street. Errand for Clement. The will, the will! I think of
+nothing else. Is it safe where it is? No peace of mind till to-morrow.
+Clement better this afternoon. Says he must live till Carlos gets
+back; not to triumph over him, but to do what he can to lessen his
+disappointment. My good Clement!
+
+So nervous, I went to pasting photographs, and was forgetting all my
+troubles when Hetty brought in another dress to try on.
+
+Quiet in the great house, during which the clock on the staircase sent
+forth seven musical peals. To Violet waiting alone in the library, they
+acted as a summons. She was just leaving the room, when the sound
+of hubbub in the hall below held her motionless in the doorway. An
+automobile had stopped in front, and several persons were entering the
+house, in a gay and unseemly fashion. As she stood listening, uncertain
+of her duty, she perceived the frenzied figure of Mrs. Quintard
+approaching. As she passed by, she dropped one word: "Carlos!" Then she
+went staggering on, to disappear a moment later down the stairway.
+
+This vision lost, another came. This time it was that of Clements's
+wife leaning from the marble balustrade above, the shadow of approaching
+grief battling with the present terror in her perfect features. Then
+she too withdrew from view and Violet, left for the moment alone in the
+great hall, stepped back into the library and began to put on her hat.
+
+The lights had been turned up in the grand salon and it was in this
+scene of gorgeous colour that Mrs. Quintard came face to face with
+Carlos Pelacios. Those who were witness to her entrance say that
+she presented a noble appearance, as with the resolution of extreme
+desperation she stood waiting for his first angry attack.
+
+He, a short, thick-set, dark man, showing both in features and
+expression the Spanish blood of his paternal ancestors, started to
+address her in tones of violence, but changed his note, as he met her
+eye, to one simply sardonic.
+
+"You here!" he began. "I assure you, madame, that it is a pleasure which
+is not without its inconveniences. Did you not receive my cablegram
+requesting this house to be made ready for my occupancy?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Then why do I find guests here? They do not usually precede the arrival
+of their host."
+
+"Clement is very ill--"
+
+"So much the greater reason that he should have been removed--"
+
+"You were not expected for two days yet. You cabled that you were coming
+on the Mauretania."
+
+"Yes, I cabled that. Elisabetta,"--this to his wife standing silently in
+the background--"we will go to the Plaza for tonight. At three o'clock
+tomorrow we shall expect to find this house in readiness for our return.
+Later, if Mrs. Quintard desires to visit us we shall be pleased to
+receive her. But"--this to Mrs. Quintard herself--"you must come without
+Clement and the kids."
+
+Mrs. Quintard's rigid hand stole up to her throat.
+
+"Clement is dying. He is failing hourly," she murmured. "He may not live
+till morning."
+
+Even Carlos was taken aback by this. "Oh, well!" said he, "we will give
+you two days."
+
+Mrs. Quintard gasped, then she walked straight up to him.
+
+"You will give us all the time his condition requires and more, much
+more. He is the real owner of this house, not you. My brother left a
+will bequeathing it to him. You are my nephew's guests, and not he
+yours. As his representative I entreat you and your wife to remain here
+until you can find a home to your mind."
+
+The silence seethed. Carlos had a temper of fire and so had his wife.
+But neither spoke, till he had gained sufficient control over himself to
+remark without undue rancour:
+
+"I did not think you had the wit to influence your brother to this
+extent; otherwise, I should have cut my travels short." Then harshly:
+"Where is this will?"
+
+"It will be produced." But the words faltered.
+
+Carlos glanced at the man standing behind his wife; then back at Mrs.
+Quintard.
+
+"Wills are not scribbled off on deathbeds; or if they are, it needs
+something more than a signature to legalize them. I don't believe
+in this trick of a later will. Mr. Cavanagh"--here he indicated the
+gentleman accompanying them--"has done my father's business for years,
+and he assured me that the paper he holds in his pocket is the first,
+last, and only expression of your brother's wishes. If you are in a
+position to deny this, show us the document you mention; show us it at
+once, or inform us where and in whose hands it can be found."
+
+"That, for--for reasons I cannot give, I must refuse to do at present.
+But I am ready to swear--"
+
+A mocking laugh cut her short. Did it issue from his lips or from those
+of his highstrung and unfeeling wife? It might have come from either;
+there was cause enough.
+
+"Oh!" she faltered, "may God have mercy!" and was sinking before their
+eyes, when she heard her name, called from the threshold, and, looking
+that way, saw Hetty beaming upon her, backed by a little figure with a
+face so radiant that instinctively her hand went out to grasp the folded
+sheet of paper Hetty was seeking to thrust upon her.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, in a great voice, "you will not have to wait, nor
+Clement either. Here is the will! The children have come into their
+own." And she fell at their feet in a dead faint.
+
+"Where did you find it? Oh! where did you find it? I have waited a week
+to know. When, after Carlos's sudden departure, I stood beside Clement's
+death-bed and saw from the look he gave me that he could still feel and
+understand, I told him that you had succeeded in your task and that all
+was well with us. But I was not able to tell him how you had succeeded
+or in what place the will had been found; and he died, unknowing. But we
+may know, may we not, now that he is laid away and there is no more talk
+of our leaving this house?"
+
+Violet smiled, but very tenderly, and in a way not to offend the
+mourner. They were sitting in the library--the great library which was
+to remain in Clement's family after all--and it amused her to follow the
+dreaming lady's glances as they ran in irrepressible curiosity over the
+walls. Had Violet wished, she could have kept her secret forever. These
+eyes would never have discovered it.
+
+But she was of a sympathetic temperament, our Violet, so after a
+moment's delay, during which she satisfied herself that little, if
+anything, had been touched in the room since her departure from it a
+week before, she quietly observed:
+
+"You were right in persisting that you hid it in this room. It was here
+I found it. Do you notice that photograph on the mantel which does not
+stand exactly straight on its easel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Supposing you take it down. You can reach it, can you not?"
+
+"Oh, yes. But what--"
+
+"Lift it down, dear Mrs. Quintard; and then turn it round and look at
+its back."
+
+Agitated and questioning, the lady did as she was bid, and at the first
+glance gave a cry of surprise, if not of understanding. The square
+of brown paper, acting as a backing to the picture, was slit across,
+disclosing a similar one behind it which was still intact.
+
+"Oh! was it hidden in here?" she asked.
+
+"Very completely," assented Violet. "Pasted in out of sight by a lady
+who amuses herself with mounting and framing photographs. Usually, she
+is conscious of her work, but this time she performed her task in a
+dream."
+
+Mrs. Quintard was all amazement.
+
+"I don't remember touching these pictures," she declared. "I never
+should have remembered. You are a wonderful person, Miss Strange. How
+came you to think these photographs might have two backings? There was
+nothing to show that this was so."
+
+"I will tell you, Mrs. Quintard. You helped me."
+
+"I helped you?"
+
+"Yes. You remember the memorandum you gave me? In it you mentioned
+pasting photographs. But this was not enough in itself to lead me to
+examine those on the mantel, if you had not given me another suggestion
+a little while before. We did not tell you this, Mrs. Quintard, at the
+time, but during the search we were making here that day, you had a
+lapse into that peculiar state which induces you to walk in your sleep.
+It was a short one, lasting but a moment, but in a moment one can speak,
+and, this you did--"
+
+"Spoke? I spoke?"
+
+"Yes, you uttered the word 'paper!' not the paper, but 'paper!' and
+reached out towards the shears. Though I had not much time to think of
+it then, afterwards upon reading your memorandum I recalled your words,
+and asked myself if it was not paper to cut, rather than to hide, you
+wanted. If it was to cut, and you were but repeating the experience
+of the night before, then the room should contain some remnants of cut
+paper. Had we seen any? Yes, in the basket, under the desk we had taken
+out and thrown back again a strip or so of wrapping paper, which, if my
+memory did not fail me, showed a clean-cut edge. To pull this strip out
+again and spread it flat upon the desk was the work of a minute, and
+what I saw led me to look all over the room, not now for the folded
+document, but for a square of brown paper, such as had been taken out
+of this larger sheet. Was I successful? Not for a long while, but when
+I came to the photographs on the mantel and saw how nearly they
+corresponded in shape and size to what I was looking for, I recalled
+again your fancy for mounting photographs and felt that the mystery was
+solved.
+
+"A glance at the back of one of them brought disappointment, but when I
+turned about its mate--You know what I found underneath the outer paper.
+You had laid the will against the original backing and simply pasted
+another one over it.
+
+"That the discovery came in time to cut short a very painful interview
+has made me joyful for a week.
+
+"And now may I see the children?"
+
+END OF PROBLEM V
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM VI. THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS
+
+Miss Strange was not in a responsive mood. This her employer had
+observed on first entering; yet he showed no hesitation in laying on
+the table behind which she had ensconced herself in the attitude of one
+besieged, an envelope thick with enclosed papers.
+
+"There," said he. "Telephone me when you have read them."
+
+"I shall not read them."
+
+"No?" he smiled; and, repossessing himself of the envelope, he tore off
+one end, extracted the sheets with which it was filled, and laid them
+down still unfolded, in their former place on the table-top.
+
+The suggestiveness of the action caused the corners of Miss Srange's
+delicate lips to twitch wistfully, before settling into an ironic smile.
+
+Calmly the other watched her.
+
+"I am on a vacation," she loftily explained, as she finally met his
+studiously non-quizzical glance. "Oh, I know that I am in my own home!"
+she petulantly acknowledged, as his gaze took in the room; "and that the
+automobile is at the door; and that I'm dressed for shopping. But for
+all that I'm on a vacation--a mental one," she emphasized; "and business
+must wait. I haven't got over the last affair," she protested, as he
+maintained a discreet silence, "and the season is so gay just now--so
+many balls, so many--But that isn't the worst. Father is beginning to
+wake up--and if he ever suspects--" A significant gesture ended this
+appeal.
+
+The personage knew her father--everyone did--and the wonder had always
+been that she dared run the risk of displeasing one so implacable.
+Though she was his favourite child, Peter Strange was known to be quite
+capable of cutting her off with a shilling, once his close, prejudiced
+mind conceived it to be his duty. And that he would so interpret the
+situation, if he ever came to learn the secret of his daughter's fits
+of abstraction and the sly bank account she was slowly accumulating, the
+personage holding out this dangerous lure had no doubt at all. Yet he
+only smiled at her words and remarked in casual suggestion:
+
+"It's out of town this time--'way out. Your health certainly demands a
+change of air."
+
+"My health is good. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as one may choose to
+look at it, it furnishes me with no excuse for an outing," she steadily
+retorted, turning her back on the table.
+
+"Ah, excuse me!" the insidious voice apologized, "your paleness misled
+me. Surely a night or two's change might be beneficial."
+
+She gave him a quick side look, and began to adjust her boa.
+
+To this hint he paid no attention.
+
+"The affair is quite out of the ordinary," he pursued in the tone of one
+rehearsing a part. But there he stopped. For some reason, not altogether
+apparent to the masculine mind, the pin of flashing stones (real stones)
+which held her hat in place had to be taken out and thrust back again,
+not once, but twice. It was to watch this performance he had paused.
+When he was ready to proceed, he took the musing tone of one marshalling
+facts for another's enlightenment:
+
+"A woman of unknown instincts--"
+
+"Pshaw!" The end of the pin would strike against the comb holding
+Violet's chestnut-coloured locks.
+
+"Living in a house as mysterious as the secret it contains. But--" here
+he allowed his patience apparently to forsake him, "I will bore you no
+longer. Go to your teas and balls; I will struggle with my dark affairs
+alone."
+
+His hand went to the packet of papers she affected so ostentatiously to
+despise. He could be as nonchalant as she. But he did not lift them;
+he let them lie. Yet the young heiress had not made a movement or even
+turned the slightest glance his way.
+
+"A woman difficult to understand! A mysterious house--possibly a
+mysterious crime!"
+
+Thus Violet kept repeating in silent self-communion, as flushed with
+dancing she sat that evening in a highly-scented conservatory, dividing
+her attention between the compliments of her partner and the splash of
+a fountain bubbling in the heart of this mass of tropical foliage; and
+when some hours later she sat down in her chintz-furnished bedroom for
+a few minutes' thought before retiring, it was to draw from a little oak
+box at her elbow the half-dozen or so folded sheets of closely written
+paper which had been left for her perusal by her persistent employer.
+
+Glancing first at the signature and finding it to be one already
+favourably known at the bar, she read with avidity the statement of
+events thus vouched for, finding them curious enough in all conscience
+to keep her awake for another full hour.
+
+We here subscribe it:
+
+I am a lawyer with an office in the Times Square Building. My business
+is mainly local, but sometimes I am called out of town, as witness the
+following summons received by me on the fifth of last October.
+
+DEAR SIR,--
+
+I wish to make my will. I am an invalid and cannot leave my room.
+Will you come to me? The enclosed reference will answer for my
+respectability. If it satisfies you and you decide to accommodate me,
+please hasten your visit; I have not many days to live. A carriage will
+meet you at Highland Station at any hour you designate. Telegraph reply.
+
+A. Postlethwaite, Gloom Cottage, ----, N. J.
+
+The reference given was a Mr. Weed of Eighty-sixth Street--a well-known
+man of unimpeachable reputation.
+
+Calling him up at his business office, I asked him what he could tell
+me about Mr. Postlethwaite of Gloom Cottage, ----, N. J. The answer
+astonished me:
+
+"There is no Mr. Postlethwaite to be found at that address. He died
+years ago. There is a Mrs. Postlethwaite--a confirmed paralytic. Do you
+mean her?"
+
+I glanced at the letter still lying open at the side of the telephone:
+
+"The signature reads A. Postlethwaite."
+
+"Then it's she. Her name is Arabella. She hates the name, being a woman
+of no sentiment. Uses her initials even on her cheques. What does she
+want of you?"
+
+"To draw her will."
+
+"Oblige her. It'll be experience for you." And he slammed home the
+receiver.
+
+I decided to follow the suggestion so forcibly emphasized; and the next
+day saw me at Highland Station. A superannuated horse and a still more
+superannuated carriage awaited me--both too old to serve a busy man
+in these days of swift conveyance. Could this be a sample of the
+establishment I was about to enter? Then I remembered that the woman who
+had sent for me was a helpless invalid, and probably had no use for any
+sort of turnout.
+
+The driver was in keeping with the vehicle, and as noncommittal as the
+plodding beast he drove. If I ventured upon a remark, he gave me a
+long and curious look; if I went so far as to attack him with a direct
+question, he responded with a hitch of the shoulder or a dubious smile
+which conveyed nothing. Was he deaf or just unpleasant? I soon learned
+that he was not deaf; for suddenly, after a jog-trot of a mile or so
+through a wooded road which we had entered from the main highway, he
+drew in his horse, and, without glancing my way, spoke his first word:
+
+"This is where you get out. The house is back there in the bushes."
+
+As no house was visible and the bushes rose in an unbroken barrier along
+the road, I stared at him in some doubt of his sanity.
+
+"But--" I began; a protest into which he at once broke, with the sharp
+direction:
+
+"Take the path. It'll lead you straight to the front door."
+
+"I don't see any path."
+
+For this he had no answer; and confident from his expression that it
+would be useless to expect anything further from him, I dropped a coin
+into his hand, and jumped to the ground. He was off before I could turn
+myself about.
+
+"'Something is rotten in the State of Denmark,'" I quoted in startled
+comment to myself; and not knowing what else to do, stared down at the
+turf at my feet.
+
+A bit of flagging met my eye, protruding from a layer of thick moss.
+Farther on I espied another--the second, probably, of many. This, no
+doubt, was the path I had been bidden to follow, and without further
+thought on the subject, I plunged into the bushes which with difficulty
+I made give way before me.
+
+For a moment all further advance looked hopeless. A more tangled,
+uninviting approach to a so-called home, I had never seen outside of the
+tropics; and the complete neglect thus displayed should have prepared me
+for the appearance of the house I unexpectedly came upon, just as, the
+way seemed on the point of closing up before me.
+
+But nothing could well prepare one for a first view of Gloom Cottage.
+Its location in a hollow which had gradually filled itself up with
+trees and some kind of prickly brush, its deeply stained walls, once
+picturesque enough in their grouping but too deeply hidden now amid
+rotting boughs to produce any other effect than that of shrouded
+desolation, the sough of these same boughs as they rapped a devil's
+tattoo against each other, and the absence of even the rising column of
+smoke which bespeaks domestic life wherever seen--all gave to one who
+remembered the cognomen Cottage and forgot the pre-cognomen of Gloom, a
+sense of buried life as sepulchral as that which emanates from the mouth
+of some freshly opened tomb.
+
+But these impressions, natural enough to my youth, were necessarily
+transient, and soon gave way to others more business-like. Perceiving
+the curve of an arch rising above the undergrowth still blocking my
+approach, I pushed my way resolutely through, and presently found myself
+stumbling upon the steps of an unexpectedly spacious domicile, built not
+of wood, as its name of Cottage had led me to expect, but of carefully
+cut stone which, while showing every mark of time, proclaimed itself
+one of those early, carefully erected Colonial residences which it
+takes more than a century to destroy, or even to wear to the point of
+dilapidation.
+
+Somewhat encouraged, though failing to detect any signs of active life
+in the heavily shuttered windows frowning upon me from either side, I
+ran up the steps and rang the bell which pulled as hard as if no hand
+had touched it in years.
+
+Then I waited.
+
+But not to ring again; for just as my hand was approaching the bell a
+second time, the door fell back and I beheld in the black gap before me
+the oldest man I had ever come upon in my whole life. He was so old
+I was astonished when his drawn lips opened and he asked if I was the
+lawyer from New York. I would as soon have expected a mummy to wag its
+tongue and utter English, he looked so thin and dried and removed from
+this life and all worldly concerns.
+
+But when I had answered his question and he had turned to marshal me
+down the hall towards a door I could dimly see standing open in the
+twilight of an absolutely sunless interior, I noticed that his step was
+not without some vigour, despite the feeble bend of his withered body
+and the incessant swaying of his head, which seemed to be continually
+saying No!
+
+"I will prepare madam," he admonished me, after drawing a ponderous
+curtain two inches or less aside from one of the windows. "She is very
+ill, but she will see you."
+
+The tone was senile, but it was the senility of an educated man, and as
+the cultivated accents wavered forth, my mind changed in, regard to the
+position he held in the house. Interested anew, I sought to give him
+another look, but he had already vanished through the doorway, and
+so noiselessly, it was more like a shadow's flitting than a man's
+withdrawal.
+
+The darkness in which I sat was absolute; but gradually, as I continued
+to look about me, the spaces lightened and certain details came out,
+which to my astonishment were of a character to show that the plain if
+substantial exterior of this house with its choked-up approaches and
+weedy gardens was no sample of what was to be found inside. Though the
+walls surrounding me were dismal because unlighted, they betrayed a
+splendour unusual in any country house. The frescoes and paintings were
+of an ancient order, dating from days when life and not death reigned in
+this isolated dwelling; but in them high art reigned supreme, an art
+so high and so finished that only great wealth, combined with the most
+cultivated taste, could have produced such effects. I was still absorbed
+in the wonder of it all, when the quiet voice of the old gentleman who
+had let me in reached me again from the doorway, and I heard:
+
+"Madam is ready for you. May I trouble you to accompany me to her room."
+
+I rose with alacrity. I was anxious to see madam, if only to satisfy
+myself that she was as interesting as the house in which she was
+self-immured.
+
+I found her a great deal more so. But before I enter upon our interview,
+let me mention a fact which had attracted my attention in my passage to
+her room. During his absence my guide evidently had pulled aside other
+curtains than those of the room in which he had left me. The hall, no
+longer a tunnel of darkness, gave me a glimpse as we went by, of various
+secluded corners, and it seemed as if everywhere I looked I saw--a
+clock. I counted four before I reached the staircase, all standing on
+the floor and all of ancient make, though differing much in appearance
+and value. A fifth one rose grim and tall at the stair foot, and under
+an impulse I have never understood I stopped, when I reached it, to note
+the time. But it had paused in its task, and faced me with motionless
+hands and silent works--a fact which somehow startled me; perhaps,
+because just then I encountered the old man's eye watching me with an
+expression as challenging as it was unintelligible.
+
+I had expected to see a woman in bed. I saw instead, a woman sitting up.
+You felt her influence the moment you entered her presence. She was not
+young; she was not beautiful;--never had been I should judge,--she had
+not even the usual marks about her of an ultra strong personality; but
+that her will was law, had always been, and would continue to be law
+so long as she lived, was patent to any eye at the first glance. She
+exacted obedience consciously and unconsciously, and she exacted it with
+charm. Some few people in the world possess this power. They frown, and
+the opposing will weakens; they smile, and all hearts succumb. I was
+hers from the moment I crossed the threshold till--But I will relate the
+happenings of that instant when it comes.
+
+She was alone, or so I thought, when I made my first bow to her stern
+but not unpleasing presence. Seated in a great chair, with a silver tray
+before her containing such little matters as she stood in hourly need
+of, she confronted me with a piercing gaze startling to behold in eyes
+so colourless. Then she smiled, and in obedience to that smile I seated
+myself in a chair placed very near her own. Was she too paralysed to
+express herself clearly? I waited in some anxiety till she spoke, when
+this fear vanished. Her voice betrayed the character her features failed
+to express. It was firm, resonant, and instinct with command. Not loud,
+but penetrating, and of a quality which made one listen with his heart
+as well as with his ears. What she said is immaterial. I was there for
+a certain purpose and we entered immediately upon the business of that
+purpose. She talked and I listened, mostly without comment. Only once
+did I interrupt her with a suggestion; and as this led to definite
+results, I will proceed to relate the occurrence in full.
+
+In the few hours remaining to me before leaving New York, I had learned
+(no matter how) some additional particulars concerning herself and
+family; and when after some minor bequests, she proceeded to name
+the parties to whom she desired to leave the bulk of her fortune, I
+ventured, with some astonishment at my own temerity, to remark:
+
+"But you have a young relative! Is she not to be included in this
+partition of your property?"
+
+A hush. Then a smile came to life on her stiff lips, such as is seldom
+seen, thank God, on the face of any woman, and I heard:
+
+"The young relative of whom you speak, is in the room. She has known for
+some time that I have no intention of leaving anything to her. There is,
+in fact, small chance of her ever needing it."
+
+The latter sentence was a muttered one, but that it was loud enough to
+be heard in all parts of the room I was soon assured. For a quick sigh,
+which was almost a gasp, followed from a corner I had hitherto ignored,
+and upon glancing that way, I perceived, peering upon us from the
+shadows, the white face of a young girl in whose drawn features and
+wide, staring eyes I beheld such evidences of terror, that in an
+instant, whatever predilection I had hitherto felt for my client,
+vanished in distrust, if not positive aversion.
+
+I was still under the sway of this new impression, when Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's voice rose again, this time addressing the young girl:
+
+"You may go," she said, with such force in the command for all its
+honeyed modulation, that I expected to see its object fly the room in
+frightened obedience.
+
+But though the startled girl had lost none of the terror which had made
+her face like a mask, no power of movement remained to her. A picture
+of hopeless misery, she stood for one breathless moment, with her
+eyes fixed in unmistakable appeal on mine; then she began to sway so
+helplessly that I leaped with bounding heart to catch her. As she fell
+into my arms I heard her sigh as before. No common anguish spoke in that
+sigh. I had stumbled unwittingly upon a tragedy, to the meaning of which
+I held but a doubtful key.
+
+"She seems very ill," I observed with some emphasis, as I turned to lay
+my helpless burden on a near-by sofa.
+
+"She's doomed."
+
+The words were spoken with gloom and with an attempt at commiseration
+which no longer rang true in my ears.
+
+"She is as sick a woman as I am myself," continued Mrs. Postlethwaite.
+"That is why I made the remark I did, never imagining she would hear me
+at that distance. Do not put her down. My nurse will be here in a moment
+to relieve you of your burden."
+
+A tinkle accompanied these words. The resolute woman had stretched out
+a finger, of whose use she was not quite deprived, and touched a little
+bell standing on the tray before her, an inch or two from her hand.
+
+Pleased to obey her command, I paused at the sofa's edge, and taking
+advantage of the momentary delay, studied the youthful countenance
+pressed unconsciously to my breast.
+
+It was one whose appeal lay less in its beauty, though that was of a
+touching quality, than in the story it told,--a story, which for some
+unaccountable reason--I did not pause to determine what one--I felt it
+to be my immediate duty to know. But I asked no questions then; I did
+not even venture a comment; and yielded her up with seeming readiness
+when a strong but none too intelligent woman came running in with arms
+outstretched to carry her off. When the door had closed upon these two,
+the silence of my client drew my attention back to herself.
+
+"I am waiting," was her quiet observation, and without any further
+reference to what had just taken place under our eyes, she went on with
+the business previously occupying us.
+
+I was able to do my part without any too great display of my own
+disturbance. The clearness of my remarkable client's instructions, the
+definiteness with which her mind was made up as to the disposal of every
+dollar of her vast property, made it easy for me to master each detail
+and make careful note of every wish. But this did not prevent the ebb
+and flow within me of an undercurrent of thought full of question and
+uneasiness. What had been the real purport of the scene to which I had
+just been made a surprised witness? The few, but certainly unusual,
+facts which had been given me in regard to the extraordinary relations
+existing between these two closely connected women will explain the
+intensity of my interest. Those facts shall be yours.
+
+Arabella Merwin, when young, was gifted with a peculiar fascination
+which, as we have seen, had not altogether vanished with age.
+Consequently she had many lovers, among them two brothers, Frank and
+Andrew Postlethwaite. The latter was the older, the handsomer, and the
+most prosperous (his name is remembered yet in connection with South
+American schemes of large importance), but it was Frank she married.
+
+That real love, ardent if unreasonable, lay at the bottom of her choice,
+is evident enough to those who followed the career of the young
+couple. But it was a jealous love which brooked no rival, and as Frank
+Postlethwaite was of an impulsive and erratic nature, scenes soon
+occurred between them which, while revealing the extraordinary force of
+the young wife's character, led to no serious break till after her son
+was born, and this, notwithstanding the fact that Frank had long given
+up making a living, and that they were openly dependent on their wealthy
+brother, now fast approaching the millionaire status.
+
+This brother--the Peruvian King, as some called him--must have been
+an extraordinary man. Though cherishing his affection for the spirited
+Arabella to the point of remaining a bachelor for her sake, he betrayed
+none of the usual signs of disappointed love; but on the contrary made
+every effort to advance her happiness, not only by assuring to herself
+and husband an adequate income, but by doing all he could in other and
+less open ways to lessen any sense she might entertain of her mistake in
+preferring for her lifemate his self-centred and unstable brother. She
+should have adored him; but though she evinced gratitude enough, there
+is nothing to prove that she ever gave Frank Postlethwaite the least
+cause to cherish any other sentiment towards his brother than that of
+honest love and unqualified respect. Perhaps he never did cherish
+any other. Perhaps the change which everyone saw in the young couple
+immediately after the birth of their only child was due to another
+cause. Gossip is silent on this point. All that it insists upon is that
+from this time evidences of a growing estrangement between them became
+so obvious that even the indulgent Andrew could not blind himself to it;
+showing his sense of trouble, not by lessening their income, for that
+he doubled, but by spending more time in Peru and less in New York where
+the two were living.
+
+However,--and here we enter upon those details which I have ventured
+to characterize as uncommon, he was in this country and in the actual
+company of his brother when the accident occurred which terminated
+both their lives. It was the old story of a skidding motor, and Mrs.
+Postlethwaite, having been sent for in great haste to the small inn
+into which the two injured men had been carried, arrived only in time to
+witness their last moments. Frank died first and Andrew some few minutes
+later--an important fact, as was afterwards shown when the latter's will
+came to be read.
+
+This will was a peculiar one. By its provisions the bulk of the King's
+great property was left to his brother Frank, but with this especial
+stipulation that in case his brother failed to survive him, the full
+legacy as bequeathed to him should be given unconditionally to his
+widow. Frank's demise, as I have already stated, preceded his brother's
+by several minutes and consequently Arabella became the chief legatee;
+and that is how she obtained her millions. But--and here a startling
+feature comes in--when the will came to be administered, the secret
+underlying the break between Frank and his wife was brought to light by
+a revelation of the fact that he had practised a great deception upon
+her at the time of his marriage. Instead of being a bachelor as was
+currently believed, he was in reality a widower, and the father of a
+child. This fact, so long held secret, had become hers when her own
+child was born; and constituted as she was, she not only never forgave
+the father, but conceived such a hatred for the innocent object of their
+quarrel that she refused to admit its claims or even to acknowledge its
+existence.
+
+But later--after his death, in fact--she showed some sense of obligation
+towards one who under ordinary conditions would have shared her wealth.
+When the whole story became heard, and she discovered that this secret
+had been kept from his brother as well as from herself, and that
+consequently no provision had been made in any way for the child thus
+thrown directly upon her mercy, she did the generous thing and took the
+forsaken girl into her own home. But she never betrayed the least love
+for her, her whole heart being bound up in her boy, who was, as all
+agree, a prodigy of talent.
+
+But this boy, for all his promise and seeming strength of constitution,
+died when barely seven years old, and the desolate mother was left with
+nothing to fill her heart but the uncongenial daughter of her husband's
+first wife. The fact that this child, slighted as it had hitherto been,
+would, in the event of her uncle having passed away before her father,
+have been the undisputed heiress of a large portion of the wealth now at
+the disposal of her arrogant step-mother, led many to expect, now
+that the boy was no more, that Mrs. Postlethwaite would proceed to
+acknowledge the little Helena as her heir, and give her that place in
+the household to which her natural claims entitled her.
+
+But no such result followed. The passion of grief into which the
+mother was thrown by the shipwreck of all her hopes left her hard and
+implacable, and when, as very soon happened, she fell a victim to the
+disease which tied her to her chair and made the wealth which had come
+to her by such a peculiar ordering of circumstances little else than a
+mockery even in her own eyes, it was upon this child she expended the
+full fund of her secret bitterness.
+
+And the child? What of her? How did she bear her unhappy fate when she
+grew old enough to realize it? With a resignation which was the wonder
+of all who knew her. No murmurs escaped her lips, nor was the devotion
+she invariably displayed to the exacting invalid who ruled her as well
+as all the rest of her household with a rod of iron ever disturbed by
+the least sign of reproach. Though the riches, which in those early days
+poured into the home in a measure far beyond the needs of its mistress,
+were expended in making the house beautiful rather than in making the
+one young life within it happy, she never was heard to utter so much as
+a wish to leave the walls within which fate had immured her. Content,
+or seemingly content, with the only home she knew, she never asked
+for change or demanded friends or amusements. Visitors ceased coming;
+desolation followed neglect. The garden, once a glory, succumbed to a
+riot of weeds and undesirable brush, till a towering wall seemed to be
+drawn about the house cutting it off from the activities of the world as
+it cut it off from the approach of sunshine by day, and the comfort of
+a star-lit heaven by night. And yet the young girl continued to smile,
+though with a pitifulness of late, which some thought betokened
+secret terror and others the wasting of a body too sensitive for such
+unwholesome seclusion.
+
+These were the facts, known if not consciously specialized, which gave
+to the latter part of my interview with Mrs. Postlethwaite a poignancy
+of interest which had never attended any of my former experiences. The
+peculiar attitude of Miss Postlethwaite towards her indurate tormentor
+awakened in my agitated mind something much deeper than curiosity,
+but when I strove to speak her name with the intent of inquiring more
+particularly into her condition, such a look confronted me from the
+steady eye immovably fixed upon my own, that my courage--or was it my
+natural precaution--bade me subdue the impulse and risk no attempt which
+might betray the depth of my interest in one so completely outside
+the scope of the present moment's business. Perhaps Mrs. Postlethwaite
+appreciated my struggle; perhaps she was wholly blind to it. There was
+no reading the mind of this woman of sentimental name but inflexible
+nature, and realizing the fact more fully with every word she uttered I
+left her at last with no further betrayal of my feelings than might
+be evinced by the earnestness with which I promised to return for her
+signature at the earliest possible moment.
+
+This she had herself requested, saying as I rose:
+
+"I can still write my name if the paper is pushed carefully along under
+my hand. See to it that you come while the power remains to me."
+
+I had hoped that in my passage downstairs I might run upon someone who
+would give me news of Miss Postlethwaite, but the woman who approached
+to conduct me downstairs was not of an appearance to invite confidence,
+and I felt forced to leave the house with my doubts unsatisfied.
+
+Two memories, equally distinct, followed me. One was a picture of Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's fingers groping among her belongings on the little
+tray perched upon her lap, and another of the intent and strangely
+bent figure of the old man who had acted as my usher, listening to
+the ticking of one of the great clocks. So absorbed was he in this
+occupation that he not only failed to notice me when I went by, but he
+did not even lift his head at my cheery greeting. Such mysteries were
+too much for me, and led me to postpone my departure from town till I
+had sought out Mrs. Postlethwaite's doctor and propounded to him one
+or two leading questions. First, would Mrs. Postlethwaite's present
+condition be likely to hold good till Monday; and secondly, was the
+young lady living with her as ill as her step-mother said.
+
+He was a mild old man of the easy-going type, and the answers I got
+from him were far from satisfactory. Yet he showed some surprise when
+I mentioned the extent of Mrs. Postlethwaite's anxiety about her
+step-daughter, and paused, in the dubious shaking of his head, to give
+me a short stare in which I read as much determination as perplexity.
+
+"I will look into Miss Postlethwaite's case more particularly," were his
+parting words. And with this one gleam of comfort I had to be content.
+
+Monday's interview was a brief one and contained nothing worth
+repeating. Mrs. Postlethwaite listened with stoical satisfaction to the
+reading of the will I had drawn up, and upon its completion rang her
+bell for the two witnesses awaiting her summons, in an adjoining room.
+They were not of her household, but to all appearance honest villagers
+with but one noticeable characteristic, an overweening idea of Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's importance. Perhaps the spell she had so liberally woven
+for others in other and happier days was felt by them at this hour. It
+would not be strange; I had almost fallen under it myself, so great was
+the fascination of her manner even in this wreck of her bodily
+powers, when triumph assured, she faced us all in a state of complete
+satisfaction.
+
+But before I was again quit of the place, all my doubts returned and in
+fuller force than ever. I had lingered in my going as much as decency
+would permit, hoping to hear a step on the stair or see a face in some
+doorway which would contradict Mrs. Postlethwaite's cold assurance that
+Miss Postlethwaite was no better. But no such step did I hear, and no
+face did I see save the old, old one of the ancient friend or relative,
+whose bent frame seemed continually to haunt the halls. As before,
+he stood listening to the monotonous ticking of one of the clocks,
+muttering to himself and quite oblivious of my presence.
+
+However, this time I decided not to pass him without a more persistent
+attempt to gain his notice. Pausing at his side, I asked him in the
+friendly tone I thought best calculated to attract his attention, how
+Miss Postlethwaite was to-day. He was so intent upon his task, whatever
+that was, that while he turned my way, it was with a glance as blank as
+that of a stone image.
+
+"Listen!" he admonished me. "It still says No! No! I don't think it will
+ever say anything else."
+
+I stared at him in some consternation, then at the clock itself which
+was the tall one I had found run down at my first visit. There was
+nothing unusual in its quiet tick, so far as I could hear, and with a
+compassionate glance at the old man who had turned breathlessly again to
+listen, proceeded on my way without another word.
+
+The old fellow was daft. A century old, and daft.
+
+I had worked my way out through the vines which still encumbered the
+porch, and was taking my first steps down the walk, when some impulse
+made me turn and glance up at one of the windows.
+
+Did I bless the impulse? I thought I had every reason for doing so, when
+through a network of interlacing branches I beheld the young girl with
+whom my mind was wholly occupied, standing with her head thrust forward,
+watching the descent of something small and white which she had just
+released from her hand.
+
+A note! A note written by her and meant for me! With a grateful look in
+her direction (which was probably lost upon her as she had already drawn
+back out of sight), I sprang for it only to meet with disappointment.
+For it was no billet-doux I received from amid the clustering brush
+where it had fallen; but a small square of white cloth showing a line
+of fantastic embroidery. Annoyed beyond measure, I was about to fling it
+down again, when the thought that it had come from her hand deterred me,
+and I thrust it into my vest pocket. When I took it out again--which was
+soon after I had taken my seat in the car--I discovered what a mistake I
+should have made if I had followed my first impulse. For, upon examining
+the stitches more carefully, I perceived that what I had considered a
+mere decorative pattern was in fact a string of letters, and that these
+letters made words, and that these words were:
+
+IDONOTWANTTODIEBUTISURELYWILLIF
+
+Or, in plain writing:
+
+"I do not want to die, but I surely will if--"
+
+Finish the sentence for me. That is the problem I offer you. It is not a
+case for the police but one well worth your attention, if you succeed in
+reaching the heart of this mystery and saving this young girl.
+
+Only, let no delay occur. The doom, if doom it is, is immanent. Remember
+that the will is signed.
+
+"She is too small; I did not ask you to send me a midget."
+
+Thus spoke Mrs. Postlethwaite to her doctor, as he introduced into her
+presence a little figure in nurse's cap and apron. "You said I needed
+care,--more care than I was receiving. I answered that my old nurse
+could give it, and you objected that she or someone else must look after
+Miss Postlethwaite. I did not see the necessity, but I never contradict
+a doctor. So I yielded to your wishes, but not without the proviso (you
+remember that I made a proviso) that whatever sort of young woman you
+chose to introduce into this room, she should not be fresh from the
+training schools, and that she should be strong, silent, and capable.
+And you bring me this mite of a woman--is she a woman? she looks more
+like a child, of pleasing countenance enough, but who can no more lift
+me--"
+
+"Pardon me!" Little Miss Strange had advanced. "I think, if you will
+allow me the privilege, madam, that I can shift you into a much more
+comfortable position." And with a deftness and ease certainly not to
+be expected from one of her slight physique, Violet raised the helpless
+invalid a trifle more upon her pillow.
+
+The act, its manner, and the smile accompanying it, could not fail to
+please, and undoubtedly did, though no word rewarded her from lips not
+much given to speech save when the occasion was imperative. But Mrs.
+Postlethwaite made no further objection to her presence, and, seeing
+this, the doctor's countenance relaxed and he left the room with a much
+lighter step than that with which he had entered it.
+
+And thus it was that Violet Strange--an adept in more ways than
+one--became installed at the bedside of this mysterious woman, whose
+days, if numbered, still held possibilities of action which those
+interested in young Helena Postlethwaite's fate would do well to
+recognize.
+
+Miss Strange had been at her post for two days, and had gathered up the
+following:
+
+That Mrs. Postlethwaite must be obeyed.
+
+That her step-daughter (who did not wish to die) would die if she knew
+it to be the wish of this domineering but apparently idolized woman.
+
+That the old man of the clocks, while senile in some regards, was very
+alert and quite youthful in others. If a century old--which she began
+greatly to doubt--he had the language and manner of one in his prime,
+when unaffected by the neighbourhood of the clocks, which seemed in
+some non-understandable way to exercise an occult influence over him. At
+table he was an entertaining host; but neither there nor elsewhere would
+he discuss the family, or dilate in any way upon the peculiarities of a
+household of which he manifestly regarded himself as the least important
+member. Yet no one knew them better, and when Violet became quite
+assured of this, as well as of the futility of looking for explanation
+of any kind from either of her two patients, she resolved upon an effort
+to surprise one from him.
+
+She went about it in this way. Noting his custom of making a complete
+round of the clocks each night after dinner, she took advantage of Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's inclination to sleep at this hour, to follow him from
+clock to clock in the hope of overhearing some portion of the monologue
+with which he bent his head to the swinging pendulum, or put his ear
+to the hidden works. Soft-footed and discreet, she tripped along at his
+back, and at each pause he made, paused herself and turned her ear his
+way. The extreme darkness of the halls, which were more sombre by night
+than by day, favoured this attempt, and she was able, after a failure
+or two, to catch the No! no! no! no! which fell from his lips in seeming
+repetition of what he heard the most of them say.
+
+The satisfaction in his tone proved that the denial to which he
+listened, chimed in with his hopes and gave ease to his mind. But
+he looked his oldest when, after pausing at another of the many
+time-pieces, he echoed in answer to its special refrain, Yes! yes! yes!
+yes! and fled the spot with shaking body and a distracted air.
+
+The same fear and the same shrinking were observable in him as he
+returned from listening to the least conspicuous one, standing in a
+short corridor, where Violet could not follow him. But when, after
+a hesitation which enabled her to slip behind the curtain hiding the
+drawing-room door, he approached and laid his ear against the great
+one standing, as if on guard, at the foot of the stairs, she saw by
+the renewed vigour he displayed that there was comfort for him in its
+message, even before she caught the whisper with which he left it and
+proceeded to mount the stairs:
+
+"It says No! It always says No! I will heed it as the voice of Heaven."
+
+But one conclusion could be the result of such an experiment to a mind
+like Violet's. This partly touched old man not only held the key to the
+secret of this house, but was in a mood to divulge it if once he could
+be induced to hear command instead of dissuasion in the tick of this
+one large clock. But how could he be induced? Violet returned to Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's bedside in a mood of extreme thoughtfulness.
+
+Another day passed, and she had not yet seen Miss Postlethwaite. She was
+hoping each hour to be sent on some errand to that young lady's room,
+but no such opportunity was granted her. Once she ventured to ask the
+doctor, whose visits were now very frequent, what he thought of the
+young lady's condition. But as this question was necessarily put in Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's presence, the answer was naturally guarded, and possibly
+not altogether frank.
+
+"Our young lady is weaker," he acknowledged. "Much weaker," he added
+with marked emphasis and his most professional air, "or she would be
+here instead of in her own room. It grieves her not to be able to wait
+upon her generous benefactress."
+
+The word fell heavily. Had it been used as a test? Violet gave him a
+look, though she had much rather have turned her discriminating eye upon
+the face staring up at them from the pillow. Had the alarm expressed by
+others communicated itself at last to the physician? Was the charm which
+had held him subservient to the mother, dissolving under the pitiable
+state of the child, and was he trying to aid the little detective-nurse
+in her effort to sound the mystery of her condition?
+
+His look expressed benevolence, but he took care not to meet the gaze of
+the woman he had just lauded, possibly because that gaze was fixed upon
+him in a way to tax his moral courage. The silence which ensued was
+broken by Mrs. Postlethwaite:
+
+"She will live--this poor Helena--how long?" she asked, with no break in
+her voice's wonted music.
+
+The doctor hesitated, then with a candour hardly to be expected from
+him, answered:
+
+"I do not understand Miss Postlethwaite's case. I should like, with your
+permission, to consult some New York physician."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+A single word, but as it left this woman's thin lips Violet recoiled,
+and, perhaps, the doctor did. Rage can speak in one word as well as in
+a dozen, and the rage which spoke in this one was of no common order,
+though it was quickly suppressed, as was all other show of feeling when
+she added, with a touch of her old charm:
+
+"Of course you will do what you think best, as you know I never
+interfere with a doctor's decisions. But" and here her natural
+ascendancy of tone and manner returned in all its potency, "it would
+kill me to know that a stranger was approaching Helena's bedside. It
+would kill her. She's too sensitive to survive such a shock."
+
+Violet recalled the words worked with so much care by this young girl on
+a minute piece of linen, I do not want to die, and watched the doctor's
+face for some sign of resolution. But embarrassment was all she saw
+there, and all she heard him say was the conventional reply:
+
+"I am doing all I can for her. We will wait another day and note the
+effect of my latest prescription."
+
+Another day!
+
+The deathly calm which overspread Mrs. Postlethwaite's features as this
+word left the physician's lips warned Violet not to let another day go
+by without some action. But she made no remark, and, indeed, betrayed
+but little interest in anything beyond her own patient's condition. That
+seemed to occupy her wholly. With consummate art she gave the appearance
+of being under Mrs. Postlethwaite's complete thrall, and watched with
+fascinated eyes every movement of the one unstricken finger which could
+do so much.
+
+This little detective of ours could be an excellent actor when she
+chose.
+
+III
+
+To make the old man speak! To force this conscience-stricken but
+rebellious soul to reveal what the clock forbade! How could it be done?
+
+This continued to be Violet's great problem. She pondered it so deeply
+during all the remainder of the day that a little pucker settled on her
+brow, which someone (I will not mention who) would have been pained to
+see. Mrs. Postlethwaite, if she noticed it at all, probably ascribed it
+to her anxieties as nurse, for never had Violet been more assiduous in
+her attentions. But Mrs. Postlethwaite was no longer the woman she had
+been, and possibly never noted it at all.
+
+At five o'clock Violet suddenly left the room. Slipping down into the
+lower hall, she went the round of the clocks herself, listening to every
+one. There was no perceptible difference in their tick. Satisfied of
+this and that it was simply the old man's imagination which had supplied
+them each with separate speech, she paused before the huge one at the
+foot of the stairs,--the one whose dictate he had promised himself
+to follow,--and with an eye upon its broad, staring dial, muttered
+wistfully:
+
+"Oh! for an idea! For an idea!"
+
+Did this cumbrous relic of old-time precision turn traitor at this
+ingenuous plea? The dial continued to stare, the works to sing, but
+Violet's face suddenly lost its perplexity. With a wary look about her
+and a listening ear turned towards the stair top, she stretched out her
+hand and pulled open the door guarding the pendulum, and peered in at
+the works, smiling slyly to herself as she pushed it back into place and
+retreated upstairs to the sick room.
+
+When the doctor came that night she had a quiet word with him outside
+Mrs. Postlethwaite's door. Was that why he was on hand when old Mr.
+Dunbar stole from his room to make his nightly circuit of the halls
+below? Something quite beyond the ordinary was in the good physician's
+mind, for the look he cast at the old man was quite unlike any he had
+ever bestowed upon him before, and when he spoke it was to say with
+marked urgency:
+
+"Our beautiful young lady will not live a week unless I get at the seat
+of her malady. Pray that I may be enabled to do so, Mr. Dunbar."
+
+A blow to the aged man's heart which called forth a feeble "Yes, yes,"
+followed by a wild stare which imprinted itself upon the doctor's
+memory as the look of one hopelessly old, who hears for the first time a
+distinct call from the grave which has long been awaiting him!
+
+A solitary lamp stood in the lower hall. As the old man picked his slow
+way down, its small, hesitating flame flared up as in a sudden gust,
+then sank down flickering and faint as if it, too, had heard a call
+which summoned it to extinction.
+
+No other sign of life was visible anywhere. Sunk in twilight shadows,
+the corridors branched away on either side to no place in particular and
+serving, to all appearance (as many must have thought in days gone by),
+as a mere hiding-place for clocks.
+
+To listen to their united hum, the old man paused, looking at first
+a little distraught, but settling at last into his usual self as he
+started forward upon his course. Did some whisper, hitherto unheard,
+warn him that it was the last time he would tread that weary round?
+Who can tell? He was trembling very much when with his task nearly
+completed, he stepped out again into the main hall and crept rather than
+walked back to the one great clock to whose dictum he made it a practice
+to listen last.
+
+Chattering the accustomed words, "They say Yes! They are all saying Yes!
+now; but this one will say No!" he bent his stiff old back and laid his
+ear to the unresponsive wood. But the time for no had passed. It was
+Yes! yes! yes! yes! now, and as his straining ears took in the word,
+he appeared to shrink where he stood and after a moment of anguished
+silence, broke forth into a low wail, amid whose lamentations one could
+hear:
+
+"The time has come! Even the clock she loves best bids me speak. Oh!
+Arabella, Arabella!"
+
+In his despair he had not noticed that the pendulum hung motionless,
+or that the hands stood at rest on the dial. If he had, he might have
+waited long enough to have seen the careful opening of the great clock's
+tall door and the stepping forth of the little lady who had played so
+deftly upon his superstition.
+
+He was wandering the corridors like a helpless child, when a gentle hand
+fell on his arm and a soft voice whispered in his ear:
+
+"You have a story to tell. Will you tell it to me? It may save Miss
+Postlethwaite's life."
+
+Did he understand? Would he respond if he did; or would the shock of her
+appeal restore him to a sense of the danger attending disloyalty? For
+a moment she doubted the wisdom of this startling measure, then she saw
+that he had passed the point of surprise and that, stranger as she was,
+she had but to lead the way for him to follow, tell his story, and die.
+
+There was no light in the drawing-room when they entered. But old Mr.
+Dunbar did not seem to mind that. Indeed, he seemed to have lost all
+consciousness of present surroundings; he was even oblivious of her.
+This became quite evident when the lamp, in flaring up again in the
+hall, gave a momentary glimpse, of his crouching, half-kneeling figure.
+In the pleading gesture of his trembling, outreaching arms, Violet
+beheld an appeal, not to herself, but to some phantom of his
+imagination; and when he spoke, as he presently did, it was with the
+freedom of one to whom speech is life's last boon, and the ear of the
+listener quite forgotten in the passion of confession long suppressed.
+
+"She has never loved me," he began, "but I have always loved her. For
+me no other woman has ever existed, though I was sixty-five years of age
+when I first saw her, and had long given up the idea that there lived
+a woman who could sway me from my even life and fixed lines of duty.
+Sixty-five! and she a youthful bride! Was there ever such folly! Happily
+I realized it from the first, and piled ashes on my hidden flame.
+Perhaps that is why I adore her to this day and only give her over to
+reprobation because Fate is stronger than my age--stronger even than my
+love.
+
+"She is not a good woman, but I might have been a good man if I had
+never known the sin which drew a line of isolation about her, and within
+which I, and only I, have stood with her in silent companionship.
+What was this sin, and in what did it have its beginning? I think its
+beginning was in the passion she had for her husband. It was not the
+every-day passion of her sex in this land of equable affections, but
+one of foreign fierceness, jealousy, and insatiable demand. Yet he was a
+very ordinary man. I was once his tutor and I know. She came to know it
+too, when--but I am rushing on too fast, I have much to tell before I
+reach that point.
+
+"From the first, I was in their confidence. Not that either he or she
+put me there, but that I lived with them and was always around, and
+could not help seeing and hearing what went on between them. Why he
+continued to want me in the house and at his table, when I could no
+longer be of service to him, I have never known. Possibly habit explains
+all. He was accustomed to my presence and so was she; so accustomed they
+hardly noticed it, as happened one night, when after a little attempt
+at conversation, he threw down the book he had caught up and, addressing
+her by name, said without a glance my way, and quite as if he were alone
+with her:
+
+"'Arabella, there is something I ought to tell you. I have tried to
+find the courage to do so many times before now but have always failed.
+Tonight I must.' And then he made his great disclosure,--how, unknown
+to, his friends and the world, he was a widower when he married her, and
+the father of a living child.
+
+"With some women this might have passed with a measure of regret, and
+some possible contempt for his silence, but not so with her. She rose
+to her feet--I can see her yet--and for a moment stood facing him in the
+still, overpowering manner of one who feels the icy pang of hate enter
+where love has been. Never was moment more charged. I could not breathe
+while it lasted; and when at last she spoke, it was with an impetuosity
+of concentrated passion, hardly less dreadful than her silence had been.
+
+"'You a father! A father already!' she cried, all her sweetness
+swallowed up in ungovernable wrath. 'You whom I expected to make so
+happy with a child? I curse you and your brat. I--'
+
+"He strove to placate her, to explain. But rage has no ears, and before
+I realized my own position, the scene became openly tempestuous. That
+her child should be second to another woman's seemed to awaken demon
+instincts within her. When he ventured to hint that his little girl
+needed a mother's care, her irony bit like corroding acid. He became
+speechless before it and had not a protest to raise when she declared
+that the secret he had kept so long and so successfully he must continue
+to keep to his dying day. That the child he had failed to own in his
+first wife's lifetime should remain disowned in hers, and if possible be
+forgotten. She should never give the girl a thought nor acknowledge her
+in any way.
+
+"She was Fury embodied; but the fury was of that grand order which
+allures rather than repels. As I felt myself succumbing to its
+fascination and beheld how he was weakening under it even more
+perceptibly than myself, I started from my chair, and sought to glide
+away before I should hear him utter a fatal acquiescence.
+
+"But the movement I made unfortunately drew their attention to me, and
+after an instant of silent contemplation of my distracted countenance,
+Frank said, as though he were the elder by the forty years which
+separated us:
+
+"'You have listened to Mrs. Postlethwaite's wishes. You will respect
+them of course.'"
+
+That was all. He knew and she knew that I was to be trusted; but neither
+of them has ever known why.
+
+A month later her child came, and was welcomed as though it were the
+first to bear his name. It was a boy, and their satisfaction was so
+great that I looked to see their old affection revive. But it had been
+cleft at the root, and nothing could restore it to life. They loved the
+child; I have never seen evidence of greater parental passion than they
+both displayed, but there their feelings stopped. Towards each other
+they were cold. They did not even unite in worship of their treasure.
+They gloated over him and planned for him, but always apart. He was a
+child in a thousand, and as he developed, the mother especially,
+nursed all her energies for the purpose of ensuring for him a future
+commensurate with his talents. Never a very conscientious woman, and
+alive to the advantages of wealth as demonstrated by the power wielded
+by her rich brother-in-law, she associated all the boy's prospects with
+money, great money, such money as Andrew had accumulated, and now had at
+his disposal for his natural heirs.
+
+"Hence came her great temptation,--a temptation to which she yielded, to
+the lasting trouble of us all. Of this I must now make confession though
+it kills me to do so, and will soon kill her. The deeds of the past
+do not remain buried, however deep we dig their graves, but rise in an
+awful resurrection when we are old--old--"
+
+Silence. Then a tremulous renewal of his painful speech.
+
+Violet held her breath to listen. Possibly the doctor, hidden in the
+darkest corner of the room, did so also.
+
+"I never knew how she became acquainted with the terms of her
+brother-in-law's will. He certainly never confided them to her, and as
+certainly the lawyer who drew up the document never did. But that she
+was well aware of its tenor is as positive a fact as that I am the most
+wretched man alive tonight. Otherwise, why the darksome deed into which
+she was betrayed when both the brothers lay dying among strangers, of a
+dreadful accident?"
+
+"I was witness to that deed. I had accompanied her on her hurried
+ride and was at her side when she entered the inn where the two
+Postlethwaites lay. I was always at her side in great joy or in great
+trouble, though she professed no affection for me and gave me but scanty
+thanks."
+
+"During our ride she had been silent and I had not disturbed that
+silence. I had much to think of. Should we find him living, or should
+we find him dead? If dead, would it sever the relations between us two?
+Would I ever ride with her again?"
+
+"When I was not dwelling on this theme, I was thinking of the parting
+look she gave her boy; a look which had some strange promise in it. What
+had that look meant and why did my flesh creep and my mind hover between
+dread and a fearsome curiosity when I recalled it? Alas! There was
+reason for all these sensations as I was soon to learn.
+
+"We found the inn seething with terror and the facts worse than had been
+represented in the telegram. Her husband was dying. She had come just in
+time to witness the end. This they told her before she had taken off
+her veil. If they had waited--if I had been given a full glimpse of her
+face--But it was hidden, and I could only judge of the nature of her
+emotions by the stern way in which she held herself.
+
+"'Take me to him,' was the quiet command, with which she met this
+disclosure. Then, before any of them could move:
+
+"'And his brother, Mr. Andrew Postlethwaite? Is he fatally injured too?'
+
+"The reply was unequivocal. The doctors were uncertain which of the two
+would pass away first.
+
+"You must remember that at this time I was ignorant of the rich man's
+will, and consequently of how the fate of a poor child of whom I had
+heard only one mention, hung in the balance at that awful moment. But in
+the breathlessness which seized Mrs. Postlethwaite at this sentence of
+double death, I realized from my knowledge of her that something more
+than grief was at prey upon her impenetrable heart, and shuddered to the
+core of my being when she repeated in that voice which was so terrible
+because so expressionless:
+
+"'Take me to them.'"
+
+They were lying in one room, her husband nearest the door, the other
+in a small alcove some ten feet away. Both were unconscious; both were
+surrounded by groups of frightened attendants who fell back as she
+approached. A doctor stood at the bed-head of her husband, but as her
+eye met his he stepped aside with a shake of the head and left the place
+empty for her.
+
+"The action was significant. I saw that she understood what it meant,
+and with constricted heart watched her as she bent over the dying
+man and gazed into his wide-open eyes, already sightless and staring.
+Calculation was in her look and calculation only; and calculation, or
+something equally unintelligible, sent her next glance in the
+direction of his brother. What was in her mind? I could understand
+her indifference to Frank even at the crisis of his fate, but not the
+interest she showed in Andrew. It was an absorbing one, altering her
+whole expression. I no longer knew her for my dear young madam, and the
+jealousy I had never felt towards Frank rose to frantic resentment in my
+breast as I beheld what very likely might be a tardy recognition of the
+other's well-known passion, forced into disclosure by the exigencies of
+the moment.
+
+"Alarmed by the strength of my feelings, and fearing an equal disclosure
+on my own part, I sought for a refuge from all eyes and found it in a
+little balcony opening out at my right. On to this balcony I stepped
+and found myself face to face with a star-lit heaven. Had I only been
+content with my isolation and the splendour of the spectacle spread out
+before me! But no, I must look back upon that bed and the solitary woman
+standing beside it! I must watch the settling of her body into rigidity
+as a voice rose from beside the other Postlethwaite saying, 'It is a
+matter of minutes now,' and then--and then--the slow creeping of her
+hand to her husband's mouth, the outspreading of her palm across the
+livid lips--its steady clinging there, smothering the feeble gasps of
+one already moribund, till the quivering form grew still, and Frank
+Postlethwaite lay dead before my eyes!
+
+"I saw, and made no outcry, but she did, bringing the doctor back to her
+side with the startled exclamation:
+
+"'Dead? I thought he had an hour's life left in him, and he has passed
+before his brother.'
+
+"I thought it hate--the murderous impulse of a woman who sees her
+enemy at her mercy and can no longer restrain the passion of her
+long-cherished antagonism; and while something within me rebelled at the
+act, I could not betray her, though silence made a murderer of me too.
+I could not. Her spell was upon me as in another instant it was upon
+everyone else in the room. No suspicion of one so self-repressed in
+her sadness disturbed the universal sympathy; and encouraged by this
+blindness of the crowd, I vowed within myself never to reveal her
+secret. The man was dead, or as good as dead, when she touched him; and
+now that her hate was expended she would grow gentle and good.
+
+"But I knew the worthlessness of this hope as well as my misconception
+of her motive, when Frank's child by another wife returned to my memory,
+and Bella's sin stood exposed."
+
+"But only to myself. I alone knew that the fortune now wholly hers, and
+in consequence her boy's, had been won by a crime. That if her hand had
+fallen in comfort on her husband's forehead instead of in pressure on
+his mouth, he would have outlived his brother long enough to have become
+owner of his millions; in which case a rightful portion would have been
+insured to his daughter, now left a penniless waif. The thought made my
+hair rise, as the proceedings over, I faced her and made my first and
+last effort to rid my conscience of its new and intolerable burden.
+
+"But the woman I had known and loved was no longer before me. The crown
+had touched her brows, and her charm which had been mainly sexual up to
+this hour had merged into an intellectual force, with which few men's
+mentality could cope. Mine yielded at once to it. From the first
+instant, I knew that a slavery of spirit, as well as of heart, was
+henceforth to be mine.
+
+"She did not wait for me to speak; she had assumed the dictator's
+attitude at once.
+
+"'I know of what you are thinking,'" said she, "'and it is a subject you
+may dismiss at once from your mind. Mr. Postlethwaite's child by his
+first wife is coming to live with us. I have expressed my wishes in this
+regard to my lawyer, and there is nothing left to be said. You, with
+your close mouth and dependable nature, are to remain here as before,
+and occupy the same position towards my boy that you did towards his
+father. We shall move soon into a larger house, and the nature of our
+duties will be changed and their scope greatly increased; but I know
+that you can be trusted to enlarge with them and meet every requirement
+I shall see fit to make. Do not try to express your thanks. I see them
+in your face.'
+
+"Did she, or just the last feeble struggle my conscience was making to
+break the bonds in which she held me, and win back my own respect? I
+shall never know, for she left me on completion of this speech, not to
+resume the subject, then or ever.
+
+"But though I succumbed outwardly to her demands, I had not passed the
+point where inner conflict ends and peace begins. Her recognition of
+Helena and her reception into the family calmed me for a while, and gave
+me hope that all would yet be well. But I had never sounded the full
+bitterness of madam's morbid heart, well as I thought I knew it. The
+hatred she had felt from the first for her husband's child ripened into
+frenzied dislike when she found her a living image of the mother whose
+picture she had come across among Frank's personal effects. To win a
+tear from those meek eyes instead of a smile to the sensitive lips was
+her daily play. She seemed to exult in the joy of impressing upon the
+girl by how little she had missed a great fortune, and I have often
+thought, much as I tried to keep my mind free from all extravagant and
+unnecessary fancies, that half of the money she spent in beautifying
+this house and maintaining art industries and even great charitable
+institutions was spent with the base purpose of demonstrating to this
+child the power of immense wealth, and in what ways she might expect to
+see her little brother expend the millions in which she had been denied
+all share.
+
+"I was so sure of this that one night while I was winding up the clocks
+with which Mrs. Postlethwaite in her fondness for old timepieces has
+filled the house, I stopped to look at the little figure toiling so
+wearily upstairs, to bed, without a mother's kiss. There was an appeal
+in the small wistful face which smote my hard old heart, and possibly a
+tear welled up in my own eye when I turned back to my duty."
+
+"Was that why I felt the hand of Providence upon me, when in my
+halt before the one clock to which any superstitious interest was
+attached--the great one at the foot of the stairs--I saw that it had
+stopped and at the one minute of all minutes in our wretched lives: Four
+minutes past two? The hour, the minute in which Frank Postlethwaite had
+gasped his last under the pressure of his wife's hand! I knew it--the
+exact minute I mean--because Providence meant that I should know it.
+There had been a clock on the mantelpiece of the hotel room where he and
+his brother had died and I had seen her glance steal towards it at the
+instant she withdrew her palm from her husband's lips. The stare of
+that dial and the position of its hands had lived still in my mind as I
+believed it did in hers.
+
+"Four minutes past two! How came our old timepiece here to stop at that
+exact moment on a day when Duty was making its last demand upon me to
+remember Frank's unhappy child? There was no one to answer; but as I
+looked and looked, I felt the impulse of the moment strengthen into
+purpose to leave those hands undisturbed in their silent accusation. She
+might see, and, moved by the coincidence, tremble at her treatment of
+Helena.
+
+"But if this happened--if she saw and trembled--she gave no sign. The
+works were started up by some other hand, and the incident passed.
+But it left me with an idea. That clock soon had a way of stopping and
+always at that one instant of time. She was forced at length to notice
+it, and I remember, an occasion when she stood stock-still with her eyes
+on those hands, and failed to find the banister with her hand, though
+she groped for it in her frantic need for support.
+
+"But no command came from her to remove the worn-out piece, and soon its
+tricks, and every lesser thing, were forgotten in the crushing calamity
+which befell us in the sickness and death of little Richard.
+
+"Oh, those days and nights! And oh, the face of the mother when the
+doctors told her that the case was hopeless! I asked myself then, and I
+have asked myself a hundred times since, which of all the emotions I saw
+pictured there bit the deepest, and made the most lasting impression
+on her guilty heart? Was it remorse? If so, she showed no change in her
+attitude towards Helena, unless it was by an added bitterness. The sweet
+looks and gentle ways of Frank's young daughter could not win against a
+hate sharpened by disappointment. Useless for me to hope for it. Release
+from the remorse of years was not to come in that way. As I realized
+this, I grew desperate and resorted again to the old trick of stopping
+the clock at the fatal hour. This time her guilty heart responded. She
+acknowledged the stab and let all her miseries appear. But how? In a way
+to wring my heart almost to madness, and not benefit the child at all.
+She had her first stroke that night. I had made her a helpless invalid.
+
+"That was eight years ago, and since then what? Stagnation. She lived
+with her memories, and I with mine. Helena only had a right to hope,
+and hope perhaps she did, till--Is that the great clock talking? Listen!
+They all talk, but I heed only the one. What does it say? Tell! tell!
+tell! Does it think I will be silent now when I come to my own guilt?
+That I will seek to hide my weakness when I could not hide her sin?"
+
+"Explain!" It was Violet speaking, and her tone was stern in its
+command. "Of what guilt do you speak? Not of guilt towards Helena; you
+pitied her too much--"
+
+"But I pitied my dear madam more. It was that which affected me and
+drew me into crime against my will. Besides, I did not know--not at
+first--what was in the little bowl of curds and cream I carried to the
+girl each day. She had eaten them in her step-mother's room, and under
+her step-mother's eye as long as she had strength to pass from room
+to room, and how was I to guess that it was not wholesome? Because
+she failed in health from day to day? Was not my dear madam failing in
+health also; and was there poison in her cup? Innocent at that time, why
+am I not innocent now? Because--Oh, I will tell it all; as though at the
+bar of God. I will tell all the secrets of that day.
+
+"She was sitting with her hand trembling on the tray from which I had
+just lifted the bowl she had bid me carry to Helena. I had seen her so
+a hundred times before, but not with just that look in her eyes, or just
+that air of desolation in her stony figure. Something made me speak;
+something made me ask if she were not quite so well as usual, and
+something made her reply with the dreadful truth that the doctor had
+given her just two months more to live. My fright and mad anguish
+stupefied me; for I was not prepared for this, no, not at all;--and
+unconsciously I stared down at the bowl I held, unable to breathe or
+move or even to meet her look."
+
+As usual she misinterpreted my emotion.
+
+"'Why do you stand like that?' I heard her say in a tone of great
+irritation. 'And why do you stare into that bowl? Do you think I mean
+to leave that child to walk these halls after I am carried out of them
+forever? Do you measure my hate by such a petty yard-stick as that? I
+tell you that I would rot above ground rather than enter it before she
+did?'
+
+"I had believed I knew this woman; but what soul ever knows another's?
+What soul ever knows itself?
+
+"'Bella!' I cried; the first time I had ever presumed to address her
+so intimately. 'Would you poison the girl?' And from sheer weakness my
+fingers lost their clutch, and the bowl fell to the floor, breaking into
+a dozen pieces.
+
+"For a minute she stared down at these from over her tray, and then she
+remarked very low and very quietly:
+
+"'Another bowl, Humphrey, and fresh curds from the kitchen. I will do
+the seasoning. The doses are too small to be skipped. You won't?'--I had
+shaken my head--'But you will! It will not be the first time you have
+gone down the hall with this mixture.'
+
+"'But that was before I knew--' I began.
+
+"'And now that you do, you will go just the same.' Then as I stood
+hesitating, a thousand memories overwhelming me in an instant, she added
+in a voice to tear the heart, 'Do not make me hate the only being left
+in this world who understands and loves me.'
+
+"She was a helpless invalid, and I a broken man, but when that word
+'love' fell from her lips, I felt the blood start burning in my veins,
+and all the crust of habit and years of self-control loosen about my
+heart, and make me young again. What if her thoughts were dark and her
+wishes murderous! She was born to rule and sway men to her will even to
+their own undoing."
+
+"'I wish I might kiss your hand,' was what I murmured, gazing at her
+white fingers groping over her tray.
+
+"'You may,' she answered, and hell became heaven to me for a brief
+instant. Then I lifted myself and went obediently about my task.
+
+"But puppet though I was, I was not utterly without sympathy. When I
+entered Helena's room and saw how her startled eyes fell shrinkingly on
+the bowl I set down before her, my conscience leaped to life and I could
+not help saying:
+
+"'Don't you like the curds, Helena? Your brother used to love them very
+much.'
+
+"'His were--'
+
+"'What, Helena?'
+
+"'What these are not,' she murmured.
+
+"I stared at her, terror-stricken. So she knew, and yet did not seize
+the bowl and empty it out of the window! Instead, her hand moved slowly
+towards it and drew it into place before her.
+
+"'Yet I must eat,' she said, lifting her eyes to mine in a sort of
+patient despair, which yet was without accusation.
+
+"But my hand had instinctively gone to hers and grasped it.
+
+"'Why must you eat it?' I asked. 'If--if you do not find it wholesome,
+why do you touch it?'
+
+"'Because my step-mother expects me to,' she cried, 'and I have no other
+will than hers. When I was a little, little child, my father made me
+promise that if I ever came to live with her I would obey her simplest
+wish. And I always have. I will not disappoint the trust he put in me.'
+
+"'Even if you die of it?'
+
+"I do not know whether I whispered these words or only thought them. She
+answered as though I had spoken.
+
+"'I am not afraid to die. I am more afraid to live. She may ask me some
+day to do something I feel to be wrong.'
+
+"When I fled down the hall that night, I heard one of the small clocks
+speak to me. Tell! it cried, tell! tell! tell! tell! I rushed away from
+it with beaded forehead and rising hair.
+
+"Then another's note piped up. No it droned. No! no! no! no! I stopped
+and took heart. Disgrace the woman I loved, on the brink of the
+grave? I--, who asked no other boon from heaven than to see her happy,
+gracious, and good? Impossible. I would obey the great clock's voice;
+the others were mere chatterboxes.
+
+"But it has at last changed its tune, for some reason, quite changed
+its tune. Now, it is Yes! Yes! instead of No! and in obeying it I save
+Helena. But what of Bella? and O God, what of myself?"
+
+A sigh, a groan, then a long and heavy silence, into which there finally
+broke the pealing of the various clocks striking the hour. When all were
+still again and Violet had drawn aside the portiere, it was to see
+the old man on his knees, and between her and the thin streak of light
+entering from the hall, the figure of the doctor hastening to Helena's
+bedside.
+
+When with inducements needless to name, they finally persuaded the young
+girl to leave her unholy habitation, it was in the arms which had upheld
+her once before, and to a life which promised to compensate her for her
+twenty years of loneliness and unsatisfied longing.
+
+But a black shadow yet remained which she must cross before reaching the
+sunshine!
+
+It lay at her step-mother's door.
+
+In the plans made for Helena's release, Mrs. Postlethwaite's consent
+had not been obtained nor was she supposed to be acquainted with
+the doctor's intentions towards the child whose death she was hourly
+awaiting.
+
+It was therefore with an astonishment, bordering on awe, that on their
+way downstairs, they saw the door of her room open and herself standing
+alone and upright on the threshold--she who had not been seen to take a
+step in years. In the wonder of this miracle of suddenly restored power,
+the little procession stopped,--the doctor with his hand upon the rail,
+the lover with his burden clasped yet more protectingly to his breast.
+That a little speech awaited them could be seen from the force and
+fury of the gaze which the indomitable woman bent upon the lax and
+half-unconscious figure she beheld thus sheltered and conveyed. Having
+but one arrow left in her exhausted quiver, she launched it straight
+at the innocent breast which had never harboured against her a defiant
+thought.
+
+"Ingrate!" was the word she hurled in a voice from which all its
+seductive music had gone forever. "Where are you going? Are they
+carrying you alive to your grave?"
+
+A moan from Helena's pale lips, then silence. She had fainted at that
+barbed attack. But there was one there who dared to answer for her and
+he spoke relentlessly. It was the man who loved her.
+
+"No, madam. We are carrying her to safety. You must know what I mean by
+that. Let her go quietly and you may die in peace. Otherwise--"
+
+She interrupted him with a loud call, startling into life the echoes of
+that haunted hall:
+
+"Humphrey! Come to me, Humphrey!"
+
+But no Humphrey appeared.
+
+Another call, louder and more peremptory than before:
+
+"Humphrey! I say, Humphrey!"
+
+But the answer was the same--silence, and only silence. As the horror of
+this grew, the doctor spoke:
+
+"Mr. Humphrey Dunbar's ears are closed to all earthly summons. He died
+last night at the very hour he said he would--four minutes after two."
+
+"Four minutes after two!" It came from her lips in a whisper, but with
+a revelation of her broken heart and life. "Four minutes after two!"
+And defiant to the last, her head rose, and for an instant, for a mere
+breath of time, they saw her as she had looked in her prime, regal in
+form, attitude, and expression; then the will which had sustained her
+through so much, faltered and succumbed, and with a final reiteration of
+the words "Four minutes after two!" she broke into a rattling laugh, and
+fell back into the arms of her old nurse.
+
+And below, one clock struck the hour and then another. But not the big
+one at the foot of the stairs. That still stood silent, with its hands
+pointing to the hour and minute of Frank Postlethwaite's hastened death.
+
+END OF PROBLEM VI
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM VII. THE DOCTOR, HIS WIFE, AND THE CLOCK
+
+Violet had gone to her room. She had a task before her. That afternoon,
+a packet had been left at the door, which, from a certain letter
+scribbled in one corner, she knew to be from her employer. The contents
+of that packet must be read, and she had made herself comfortable with
+the intention of setting to work at once. But ten o'clock struck and
+then eleven before she could bring herself to give any attention to the
+manuscript awaiting her perusal. In her present mood, a quiet sitting by
+the fire, with her eyes upon the changeful flame, was preferable to the
+study of any affair her employer might send her. Yet, because she was
+conscious of the duty she thus openly neglected, she sat crouched over
+her desk with her hand on the mysterious packet, the string of which,
+however, she made no effort to loosen.
+
+What was she thinking of?
+
+We are not alone in our curiosity on this subject. Her brother Arthur,
+coming unperceived into the room, gives tokens of a similar interest.
+Never before had he seen her oblivious to an approaching step; and after
+a momentary contemplation of her absorbed figure, so girlishly sweet
+and yet so deeply intent, he advances to her side, and peering earnestly
+into her face, observes with a seriousness quite unusual to him:
+
+"Puss, you are looking worried,--not like yourself at all. I've noticed
+it for some time. What's up. Getting tired of the business?"
+
+"No--not altogether--that is, it's not that, if it's anything. I'm not
+sure that it's anything. I--"
+
+She had turned back to her desk and was pushing about the various
+articles with which it was plentifully bespread; but this did not
+hide the flush which had crept into her cheeks and even dyed the snowy
+whiteness of her neck. Arthur's astonishment at this evidence of
+emotion was very great; but he said nothing, only watched her still more
+closely, as with a light laugh she regained her self-possession, and
+with the practical air of a philosopher uttered this trite remark:
+
+"Everyone has his sober moments. I was only thinking--"
+
+"Of some new case?"
+
+"Not exactly." The words came softly but with a touch of mingled humour
+and gravity which made Arthur stare again.
+
+"See here, Puss!" he cried. His tone had changed. "I've just come up
+from the den. Father and I have had a row--a beastly row."
+
+"A row? You and father? Oh, Arthur, I don't like that. Don't quarrel
+with father. Don't, don't. Some day he and I may have a serious
+difference about what I am doing. Don't let him feel that he has lost us
+all."
+
+"That's all right, Puss; but I've got to think of you a bit. I can't
+see you spoil all your good times with these police horrors and not
+do something to help. To-morrow I begin life as a salesman in Clarke &
+Stebbin's. The salary is not great, but every little helps and I don't
+dislike the business. But father does. He had rather see me loafing
+about town setting the fashions for fellows as idle as myself than soil
+my hands with handling merchandise. That's why we quarreled. But don't
+worry. Your name didn't come up, or--or--you know whose. He hasn't an
+idea of why I want to work--There, Violet there!"
+
+Two soft arms were around his neck and Violet was letting her heart out
+in a succession of sisterly kisses.
+
+"O, Arthur, you good, good boy! Together we'll soon make up the amount,
+and then--"
+
+"Then what?"
+
+A sweet soft look robbed her face of its piquancy, but gave it an aspect
+of indescribable beauty quite new to Arthur's eyes.
+
+Tapping his lips with a thoughtful forefinger, he asked:
+
+"Who was that sombre-looking chap I saw bowing to you as we came out of
+church last Sunday?"
+
+She awoke from her dreamy state with an astonishing quickness.
+
+"He? Surely you remember him. Have you forgotten that evening in
+Massachusetts--the grotto--and--"
+
+"Oh, it's Upjohn, is it? Yes, I remember him. He's fond of church, isn't
+he? That is, when he's in New York."
+
+Her lips took a roguish curve then a very serious one; but she made no
+answer.
+
+"I have noticed that he's always in his seat and always looking your
+way."
+
+"That's very odd of him," she declared, her dimples coming and going in
+a most bewildering fashion. "I can't imagine why he should do that."
+
+"Nor I,--" retorted Arthur with a smile. "But he's human, I suppose.
+Only do be careful, Violet. A man so melancholy will need a deal of
+cheering."
+
+He was gone before he had fully finished this daring remark, and Violet,
+left again with her thoughts, lost her glowing colour but not her
+preoccupation. The hand which lay upon the packet already alluded to did
+not move for many minutes, and when she roused at last to the demands
+of her employer, it was with a start and a guilty look at the small gold
+clock ticking out its inexorable reminder.
+
+"He will want an answer the first thing in the morning," she complained
+to herself. And opening the packet, she took out first a letter, and
+then a mass of typewritten manuscript.
+
+She began with the letter which was as characteristic of the writer as
+all the others she had had from his hand; as witness:
+
+You probably remember the Hasbrouck murder,--or, perhaps, you don't;
+it being one of a time previous to your interest in such matters. But
+whether you remember it or not, I beg you to read the accompanying
+summary with due care and attention to business. When you have well
+mastered it with all its details, please communicate with me in any
+manner most convenient to yourself, for I shall have a word to say to
+you then, which you may be glad to hear, if as you have lately intimated
+you need to earn but one or two more substantial rewards in order to
+cry halt to the pursuit for which you have proved yourself so well
+qualified.
+
+The story, in deference to yourself as a young and much preoccupied
+woman, has been written in a way to interest. Though the work of an
+everyday police detective, you will find in it no lack of mystery or
+romance; and if at the end you perceive that it runs, as such cases
+frequently do, up against a perfectly blank wall, you must remember that
+openings can be made in walls, and that the loosening of one weak stone
+from its appointed place, sometimes leads to the downfall of all.
+
+So much for the letter.
+
+Laying it aside, with a shrug of her expressive shoulders, Violet took
+up the manuscript.
+
+Let us take it up too. It runs thus:
+
+On the 17th of July, 19--, a tragedy of no little interest occurred in
+one of the residences of the Colonnade in Lafayette Place.
+
+Mr. Hasbrouck, a well known and highly respected citizen, was attacked
+in his room by an unknown assailant, and shot dead before assistance
+could reach him. His murderer escaped, and the problem offered to the
+police was how to identify this person who, by some happy chance or
+by the exercise of the most remarkable forethought, had left no traces
+behind him, or any clue by which he could be followed.
+
+The details of the investigation which ended so unsatisfactorily are
+here given by the man sent from headquarters at the first alarm.
+
+When, some time after midnight on the date above mentioned, I reached
+Lafayette Place, I found the block lighted from end to end. Groups of
+excited men and women peered from the open doorways, and mingled their
+shadows with those of the huge pillars which adorn the front of this
+picturesque block of dwellings.
+
+The house in which the crime had been committed was near the centre of
+the row, and, long before I reached it, I had learned from more than one
+source that the alarm was first given to the street by a woman's shriek,
+and secondly by the shouts of an old man-servant who had appeared, in
+a half-dressed condition, at the window of Mr. Hasbrouck's room, crying
+"Murder! murder!"
+
+But when I had crossed the threshold, I was astonished at the paucity
+of facts to be gleaned from the inmates themselves. The old servant, who
+was the first to talk, had only this account of the crime to give:
+
+The family, which consisted of Mr. Hasbrouck, his wife, and three
+servants, had retired for the night at the usual hour and under the
+usual auspices. At eleven o'clock the lights were all extinguished, and
+the whole household asleep, with the possible exception of Mr. Hasbrouck
+himself, who, being a man of large business responsibilities, was
+frequently troubled with insomnia.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Hasbrouck woke with a start. Had she dreamed the words
+that were ringing in her ears, or had they been actually uttered in her
+hearing? They were short, sharp words, full of terror and menace, and
+she had nearly satisfied herself that she had imagined them, when there
+came, from somewhere near the door, a sound she neither understood nor
+could interpret, but which filled her with inexplicable terror, and made
+her afraid to breathe, or even to stretch forth her hand towards her
+husband, whom she supposed to be sleeping at her side. At length another
+strange sound, which she was sure was not due to her imagination, drove
+her to make an attempt to rouse him, when she was horrified to find that
+she was alone in bed, and her husband nowhere within reach.
+
+Filled now with something more than nervous apprehension, she flung
+herself to the floor, and tried to penetrate with frenzied glances,
+the surrounding darkness. But the blinds and shutters both having
+been carefully closed by Mr. Hasbrouck before retiring, she found this
+impossible, and she was about to sink in terror to the floor, when she
+heard a low gasp on the other side of the room followed by a suppressed
+cry.
+
+"God! what have I done!"
+
+The voice was a strange one, but before the fear aroused by this
+fact could culminate in a shriek of dismay, she caught the sound of
+retreating footsteps, and, eagerly listening, she heard them descend the
+stairs and depart by the front door.
+
+Had she known what had occurred--had there been no doubt in her mind as
+to what lay in the darkness on the other side of the room--it is likely
+that, at the noise caused by the closing front door, she would have made
+at once for the balcony that opened out from the window before which
+she was standing, and taken one look at the flying figure below. But her
+uncertainty as to what lay hidden from her by the darkness chained her
+feet to the floor, and there is no knowing when she would have moved, if
+a carriage had not at that moment passed down Astor Place, bringing with
+it a sense of companionship which broke the spell holding her, and gave
+her strength to light the gas which was in ready reach of her hand.
+
+As the sudden blaze illuminated the room, revealing in a burst the old
+familiar walls and well-known pieces of furniture, she felt for a moment
+as if released from some heavy nightmare and restored to the common
+experiences of life. But in another instant her former dread returned,
+and she found herself quaking at the prospect of passing around the foot
+of the bed into that part of the room which was as yet hidden from her
+eyes.
+
+But the desperation which comes with great crises finally drove her from
+her retreat; and, creeping slowly forward, she cast one glance at the
+floor before her, when she found her worst fears realized by the sight
+of the dead body of her husband lying prone before the open doorway,
+with a bullet-hole in his forehead.
+
+Her first impulse was to shriek, but, by a powerful exercise of will,
+she checked herself, and ringing frantically for the servants who
+slept on the top floor of the house, flew to the nearest window and
+endeavoured to open it. But the shutters had been bolted so securely by
+Mr. Hasbrouck, in his endeavour to shut out all light and sound, that by
+the time she had succeeded in unfastening them, all trace of the flying
+murderer had vanished from the street.
+
+Sick with grief and terror, she stepped back into the room just as the
+three frightened servants descended the stairs. As they appeared in the
+open doorway, she pointed at her husband's inanimate form, and then, as
+if suddenly realizing in its full force the calamity which had befallen
+her, she threw up her arms, and sank forward to the floor in a dead
+faint.
+
+The two women rushed to her assistance, but the old butler, bounding
+over the bed, sprang to the window, and shrieked his alarm to the
+street.
+
+In the interim that followed, Mrs. Hasbrouck was revived, and the
+master's body laid decently on the bed; but no pursuit was made, nor any
+inquiries started likely to assist me in establishing the identity of
+the assailant.
+
+Indeed, everyone both in the house and out, seemed dazed by the
+unexpected catastrophe, and as no one had any suspicions to offer as to
+the probable murderer, I had a difficult task before me.
+
+I began in the usual way, by inspecting the scene of the murder. I found
+nothing in the room, or in the condition of the body itself, which added
+an iota to the knowledge already obtained. That Mr. Hasbrouck had been
+in bed; that he had risen upon hearing a noise; and that he had been
+shot before reaching the door, were self-evident facts. But there was
+nothing to guide me further. The very simplicity of the circumstances
+caused a dearth of clues, which made the difficulty of procedure as
+great as any I had ever encountered.
+
+My search through the hall and down the stairs elicited nothing; and
+an investigation of the bolts and bars by which the house was secured,
+assured me that the assassin had either entered by the front door, or
+had already been secreted in the house when it was locked up for the
+night.
+
+"I shall have to trouble Mrs. Hasbrouck for a short interview," I
+hereupon announced to the trembling old servant, who had followed me
+like a dog about the house.
+
+He made no demur, and in a few minutes I was ushered into the presence
+of the newly made widow, who sat quite alone, in a large chamber in
+the rear. As I crossed the threshold she looked up, and I encountered a
+good, plain face, without the shadow of guile in it.
+
+"Madam," said I, "I have not come to disturb you. I will ask two or
+three questions only, and then leave you to your grief. I am told that
+some words came from the assassin before he delivered his fatal shot.
+Did you hear these distinctly enough to tell me what they were?"
+
+"I was sound asleep," said she, "and dreamt, as I thought, that a
+fierce, strange voice cried somewhere to some one: 'Ah! you did not
+expect me!' But I dare not say that these words were really uttered to
+my husband, for he was not the man to call forth hate, and only a man
+in the extremity of passion could address such an exclamation in such a
+tone as rings in my memory in connection with the fatal shot which woke
+me."
+
+"But that shot was not the work of a friend," I argued. "If, as these
+words seem to prove, the assassin had some other motive than plunder in
+his assault, then your husband had an enemy, though you never suspected
+it."
+
+"Impossible!" was her steady reply, uttered in the most convincing tone.
+"The man who shot him was a common burglar, and frightened at having
+been betrayed into murder, fled without looking for booty. I am sure I
+heard him cry out in terror and remorse: 'God! what have I done!'"
+
+"Was that before you left the side of the bed?"
+
+"Yes; I did not move from my place till I heard the front door close. I
+was paralysed by fear and dread."
+
+"Are you in the habit of trusting to the security of a latch-lock only
+in the fastening of your front door at night? I am told that the big key
+was not in the lock, and that the bolt at the bottom of the door was not
+drawn."
+
+"The bolt at the bottom of the door is never drawn. Mr. Hasbrouck was
+so good a man that he never mistrusted any one. That is why the big lock
+was not fastened. The key, not working well, he took it some days ago to
+the locksmith, and when the latter failed to return it, he laughed,
+and said he thought no one would ever think of meddling with his front
+door."
+
+"Is there more than one night-key to your house?" I now asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"And when did Mr. Hasbrouck last use his?"
+
+"To-night, when he came home from prayer meeting," she answered, and
+burst into tears.
+
+Her grief was so real and her loss so recent that I hesitated to afflict
+her by further questions. So returning to the scene of the tragedy, I
+stepped out upon the balcony which ran in front. Soft voices instantly
+struck my ears. The neighbours on either side were grouped in front of
+their own windows, and were exchanging the remarks natural under the
+circumstances. I paused, as in duty bound, and listened. But I heard
+nothing worth recording, and would have instantly reentered the house,
+if I had not been impressed by the appearance of a very graceful woman
+who stood at my right. She was clinging to her husband, who was gazing
+at one of the pillars before him in a strange fixed way which astonished
+me till he attempted to move, and then I saw that he was blind.
+I remembered that there lived in this row a blind doctor, equally
+celebrated for his skill and for his uncommon personal attractions,
+and greatly interested not only by his affliction, but in the sympathy
+evinced by his young and affectionate wife, I stood still, till I heard
+her say in the soft and appealing tones of love:
+
+"Come in, Constant; you have heavy duties for to-morrow, and you should
+get a few hours' rest if possible."
+
+He came from the shadow of the pillar, and for one minute I saw his face
+with the lamplight shining full upon it. It was as regular of feature as
+a sculptured Adonis, and it was as white.
+
+"Sleep!" he repeated, in the measured tones of deep but suppressed
+feeling. "Sleep! with murder on the other side of the wall!" And he
+stretched out his arms in a dazed way that insensibly accentuated the
+horror I myself felt of the crime which had so lately taken place in the
+room behind me.
+
+She, noting the movement, took one of the groping hands in her own and
+drew him gently towards her.
+
+"This way," she urged; and, guiding him into the house, she closed the
+window and drew down the shades.
+
+I have no excuse to offer for my curiosity, but the interest excited in
+me by this totally irrelevant episode was so great that I did not
+leave the neighbourhood till I had learned something of this remarkable
+couple.
+
+The story told me was very simple. Dr. Zabriskie had not been born
+blind, but had become so after a grievous illness which had stricken
+him down soon after he received his diploma. Instead of succumbing to an
+affliction which would have daunted most men, he expressed his intention
+of practising his profession, and soon became so successful in it that
+he found no difficulty in establishing himself in one of the best paying
+quarters of the city. Indeed, his intuition seemed to have developed in
+a remarkable degree after the loss of his sight, and he seldom, if ever,
+made a mistake in diagnosis. Considering this fact, and the personal
+attractions which gave him distinction, it was no wonder that he soon
+became a popular physician whose presence was a benefaction and whose
+word law.
+
+He had been engaged to be married at the time of his illness, and when
+he learned what was likely to be its result, had offered to release the
+young lady from all obligation to him. But she would not be released,
+and they were married. This had taken place some five years previous
+to Mr. Hasbrouck's death, three of which had been spent by them in
+Lafayette Place.
+
+So much for the beautiful woman next door.
+
+There being absolutely no clue to the assailant of Mr. Hasbrouck, I
+naturally looked forward to the inquest for some evidence upon which to
+work. But there seemed to be no underlying facts to this tragedy. The
+most careful study into the habits and conduct of the deceased brought
+nothing to light save his general beneficence and rectitude, nor was
+there in his history or in that of his wife, any secret or hidden
+obligation calculated to provoke any such act of revenge as murder. Mrs.
+Hasbrouck's surmise that the intruder was simply a burglar, and that she
+had rather imagined than heard the words which pointed to the shooting
+as a deed of vengeance, soon gained general credence.
+
+But though the police worked long and arduously in this new direction
+their efforts were without fruit and the case bids fair to remain an
+unsolvable mystery.
+
+That was all. As Violet dropped the last page from her hand, she
+recalled a certain phrase in her employer's letter. "If at the end you
+come upon a perfectly blank wall--" Well, she had come upon this wall.
+Did he expect her to make an opening in it? Or had he already done so
+himself, and was merely testing her much vaunted discernment.
+
+Piqued by the thought, she carefully reread the manuscript, and when she
+had again reached its uncompromising end, she gave herself up to a few
+minutes of concentrated thought, then, taking a sheet of paper from the
+rack before her, she wrote upon it a single sentence, and folding the
+sheet, put it in an envelope which she left unaddressed. This done, she
+went to bed and slept like the child she really was.
+
+At an early hour the next morning she entered her employer's office.
+Acknowledging with a nod his somewhat ceremonious bow, she handed him
+the envelope in which she had enclosed that one mysterious sentence.
+
+He took it with a smile, opened it offhand, glanced at what she had
+written, and flushed a vivid red.
+
+"You are a--brick," he was going to say, but changed the last word to
+one more in keeping with her character and appearance. "Look here. I
+expected this from you and so prepared myself." Taking out a similar
+piece of paper from his own pocket-book, he laid it down beside hers
+on the desk before him. It also held a single sentence and, barring
+a slight difference of expression, the one was the counterpart of the
+other. "The one loose stone," he murmured.
+
+"Seen and noted by both."
+
+"Why not?" he asked. Then as she glanced expectantly his way, he
+earnestly added: "Together we may be able to do something. The reward
+offered by Mrs. Hasbrouck for the detection of the murderer was a very
+large one. She is a woman of means. I have never heard of its being
+withdrawn."
+
+"Then it never has been," was Violet's emphatic conclusion, her dimples
+enforcing the statement as only such dimples can. "But--what do you want
+of me in an affair of this kind? Something more than to help you locate
+the one possible clue to further enlightenment. You would not have
+mentioned the big reward just for that."
+
+"Perhaps not. There is a sequel to the story I sent you. I have written
+it out, with my own hand. Take it home and read it at your leisure. When
+you see into what an unhappy maze my own inquiries have led me, possibly
+you will be glad to assist me in clearing up a situation which is
+inflicting great suffering on one whom you will be the first to pity.
+If so, a line mentioning the fact will be much appreciated by me." And
+disregarding her startled look and the impetuous shaking of her head, he
+bowed her out with something more than his accustomed suavity but
+also with a seriousness which affected her in spite of herself and
+effectually held back the protest it was in her heart to make. She was
+glad of this when she read his story; but later on--
+
+However, it is not for me to intrude Violet, or Violet's feelings into
+an affair which she is so anxious to forget. I shall therefore from
+this moment on, leave her as completely out of this tale of crime and
+retribution as is possible and keep a full record of her work. When she
+is necessary to the story, you will see her again. Meanwhile, read
+with her, this relation of her employer's unhappy attempt to pursue an
+investigation so openly dropped by the police. You will perceive, from
+its general style and the accentuation put upon the human side of this
+sombre story, a likeness to the former manuscript which may prove to
+you, as it certainly did to Violet, to whose consideration she was
+indebted for the readableness of the policeman's report, which in all
+probability had been a simple statement of facts.
+
+But there, I am speaking of Violet again. To prevent a further mischance
+of this nature, I will introduce at once the above mentioned account.
+
+II
+
+No man in all New York was ever more interested than myself in the
+Hasbrouck affair, when it was the one and only topic of interest at
+a period when news was unusually scarce. But, together with many such
+inexplicable mysteries, it had passed almost completely from my mind,
+when it was forcibly brought back, one day, by a walk I took through
+Lafayette Place.
+
+At sight of the long row of uniform buildings, with their pillared
+fronts and connecting balconies every detail of the crime which had
+filled the papers at the time with innumerable conjectures returned to
+me with extraordinary clearness, and, before I knew it, I found myself
+standing stockstill in the middle of the block with my eye raised to the
+Hasbrouck house and my ears--or rather my inner consciousness, for no
+one spoke I am sure--ringing with a question which, whether the echo of
+some old thought or the expression of a new one, so affected me by the
+promise it held of some hitherto unsuspected clue, that I hesitated
+whether to push this new inquiry then or there by an attempted interview
+with Mrs. Hasbrouck, or to wait till I had given it the thought which
+such a stirring of dead bones rightfully demanded.
+
+You know what that question was. I shall have communicated it to you, if
+you have not already guessed it, before perusing these lines:
+
+"Who uttered the scream which gave the first alarm of Mr. Hasbrouck's
+violent death?"
+
+I was in a state of such excitement as I walked away--for I listened
+to my better judgment as to the inadvisability of my disturbing Mrs.
+Hasbrouck with these new inquiries--that the perspiration stood out on
+my forehead. The testimony she had given at the inquest recurred to me,
+and I remembered as distinctly as if she were then speaking, that she
+had expressly stated that she did not scream when confronted by the
+sight of her husband's dead body. But someone had screamed and that
+very loudly. Who was it, then? One of the maids, startled by the sudden
+summons from below, or someone else--some involuntary witness of the
+crime, whose testimony had been suppressed at the inquest, by fear or
+influence?
+
+The possibility of having come upon a clue even at this late day so
+fired my ambition that I took the first opportunity of revisiting
+Lafayette Place. Choosing such persons as I thought most open to my
+questions, I learned that there were many who could testify to having
+heard a woman's shrill scream on that memorable night, just prior to the
+alarm given by old Cyrus, but no one who could tell from whose lips it
+had come. One fact, however, was immediately settled. It had not been
+the result of the servant-women's fears. Both of the girls were positive
+that they had uttered no sound, nor had they themselves heard any
+till Cyrus rushed to the window with his wild cries. As the scream,
+by whomever given, was uttered before they descended the stairs, I was
+convinced by these assurances that it had issued from one of the front
+windows, and not from the rear of the house, where their own rooms lay.
+Could it be that it had sprung from the adjoining dwelling, and that--
+
+I remembered who had lived there and was for ringing the bell at once.
+But, missing the doctor's sign, I made inquiries and found that he had
+moved from the block. However, a doctor is soon found, and in less than
+fifteen, minutes I was at the door of his new home, where I asked, not
+for him, but for Mrs. Zabriskie.
+
+It required some courage to do this, for I had taken particular notice
+of the doctor's wife at the inquest, and her beauty, at that time, had
+worn such an aspect of mingled sweetness and dignity that I hesitated
+to encounter it under any circumstances likely to disturb its pure
+serenity. But a clue once grasped cannot be lightly set aside by a true
+detective, and it would have taken more than a woman's frowns to stop me
+at this point.
+
+However, it was not with frowns she received me, but with a display of
+emotion for which I was even less prepared. I had sent up my card and I
+saw it trembling in her hand as she entered the room. As she neared me,
+she glanced at it, and with a show of gentle indifference which did not
+in the least disguise her extreme anxiety, she courteously remarked:
+
+"Your name is an unfamiliar one to me. But you told my maid that your
+business was one of extreme importance, and so I have consented to see
+you. What can an agent from a private detective office have to say to
+me?"
+
+Startled by this evidence of the existence of some hidden skeleton in
+her own closet, I made an immediate attempt to reassure her.
+
+"Nothing which concerns you personally," said I. "I simply wish to
+ask you a question in regard to a small matter connected with Mr.
+Hasbrouck's violent death in Lafayette Place, a couple of years ago.
+You were living in the adjoining house at the time I believe, and it has
+occurred to me that you might on that account be able to settle a point
+which has never been fully cleared up."
+
+Instead of showing the relief I expected, her pallor increased and her
+fine eyes, which had been fixed curiously upon me, sank in confusion to
+the floor.
+
+"Great heaven!" thought I. "She looks as if at one more word from me,
+she would fall at my feet in a faint. What is this I have stumbled
+upon!"
+
+"I do not see how you can have any question to ask me on that subject,"
+she began with an effort at composure which for some reason disturbed
+me more than her previous open display of fear. "Yet if you have," she
+continued, with a rapid change of manner that touched my heart in spite
+of myself, "I shall, of course, do my best to answer you."
+
+There are women whose sweetest tones and most charming smiles only serve
+to awaken distrust in men of my calling; but Mrs. Zabriskie was not
+of this number. Her face was beautiful, but it was also candid in its
+expression, and beneath the agitation which palpably disturbed her, I
+was sure there lurked nothing either wicked or false. Yet I held fast by
+the clue which I had grasped as it were in the dark, and without knowing
+whither I was tending, much less whither I was leading her, I proceeded
+to say:
+
+"The question which I presume to put to you as the next door neighbour
+of Mr. Hasbrouck is this: Who was the woman who on the night of
+that gentleman's assassination screamed out so loudly that the whole
+neighbourhood heard her?"
+
+The gasp she gave answered my question in a way she little realized, and
+struck as I was by the impalpable links that had led me to the threshold
+of this hitherto unsolvable mystery, I was about to press my advantage
+and ask another question, when she quickly started forward and laid her
+hand on my lips.
+
+Astonished, I looked at her inquiringly, but her head was turned
+aside, and her eyes, fixed upon the door, showed the greatest anxiety.
+Instantly I realized what she feared. Her husband was entering the
+house, and she dreaded lest his ears should catch a word of our
+conversation.
+
+Not knowing what was in her mind, and unable to realize the importance
+of the moment to her, I yet listened to the advance of her blind husband
+with an almost painful interest. Would he enter the room where we were,
+or would he pass immediately to his office in the rear? She seemed to
+wonder too, and almost held her breath as he neared the door, paused,
+and stood in the open doorway, with his ear turned towards us.
+
+As for myself, I remained perfectly still, gazing at his face in mingled
+surprise and apprehension. For besides its beauty, which was of a marked
+order, as I have already observed, it had a touching expression which
+irresistibly aroused both pity and interest in the spectator. This may
+have been the result of his affliction, or it may have sprung from some
+deeper cause; but, whatever its source, this look in his face produced a
+strong impression upon me and interested me at once in his personality.
+Would he enter; or would he pass on? Her look of silent appeal showed
+me in which direction her wishes lay, but while I answered her glance
+by complete silence, I was conscious in some indistinct way that the
+business I had undertaken would be better furthered by his entrance.
+
+The blind have often been said to possess a sixth sense in place of the
+one they have lost. Though I am sure we made no noise, I soon perceived
+that he was aware of our presence. Stepping hastily forward he said, in
+the high and vibrating tone of restrained passion:
+
+"Zulma, are you there?"
+
+For a moment I thought she did not mean to answer, but knowing doubtless
+from experience the impossibility of deceiving him, she answered with a
+cheerful assent, dropping her hand as she did so from before my lips.
+
+He heard the slight rustle which accompanied the movement, and a look
+I found it hard to comprehend flashed over his features, altering his
+expression so completely that he seemed another man.
+
+"You have someone with you," he declared, advancing another step, but
+with none of the uncertainty which usually accompanies the movements
+of the blind. "Some dear friend," he went on, with an almost sarcastic
+emphasis and a forced smile that had little of gaiety in it.
+
+The agitated and distressed blush which answered him could have but one
+interpretation. He suspected that her hand had been clasped in mine, and
+she perceived his thought and knew that I perceived it also.
+
+Drawing herself up, she moved towards him, saying in a sweet womanly
+tone:
+
+"It is no friend, Constant, not even an acquaintance. The person whom I
+now present to you is a representative from some detective agency. He is
+here upon a trivial errand which will soon be finished, when I will join
+you in the office."
+
+I knew she was but taking a choice between two evils, that she would
+have saved her husband the knowledge of my calling as well as of my
+presence in the house, if her self-respect would have allowed it; but
+neither she nor I anticipated the effect which this introduction of
+myself in my business capacity would produce upon him.
+
+"A detective," he repeated, staring with his sightless eyes, as if, in
+his eagerness to see, he half hoped his lost sense would return. "He can
+have no trivial errand here; he has been sent by God Himself to--"
+
+"Let me speak for you," hastily interposed his wife, springing to his
+side and clasping his arm with a fervour that was equally expressive
+of appeal and command. Then turning to me, she explained: "Since Mr.
+Hasbrouck's unaccountable death, my husband has been labouring under
+an hallucination which I have only to mention, for you to recognize its
+perfect absurdity. He thinks--oh! do not look like that, Constant; you
+know it is an hallucination which must vanish the moment we drag it into
+broad daylight--that he--he, the best man in all the world, was himself
+the assailant of Mr. Hasbrouck."
+
+"Good God!"
+
+"I say nothing of the impossibility of this being so," she went on in a
+fever of expostulation. "He is blind, and could not have delivered such
+a shot even if he had desired to; besides, he had no weapon. But the
+inconsistency of the thing speaks for itself, and should assure him that
+his mind is unbalanced and that he is merely suffering from a shock that
+was greater than we realized. He is a physician and has had many such
+instances in his own practice. Why, he was very much attached to Mr.
+Hasbrouck! They were the best of friends, and though he insists that he
+killed him, he cannot give any reason for the deed."
+
+At these words the doctor's face grew stern, and he spoke like an
+automaton repeating some fearful lesson:
+
+"I killed him. I went to his room and deliberately shot him. I had
+nothing against him, and my remorse is extreme. Arrest me and let me
+pay the penalty of my crime. It is the only way in which I can obtain
+peace."
+
+Shocked beyond all power of self-control by this repetition of what she
+evidently considered the unhappy ravings of a madman, she let go his arm
+and turned upon me in frenzy.
+
+"Convince him!" she cried. "Convince him by your questions that he never
+could have done this fearful thing."
+
+I was labouring under great excitement myself, for as a private agent
+with no official authority such as he evidently attributed to me in the
+blindness of his passion, I felt the incongruity of my position in the
+face of a matter of such tragic consequence. Besides, I agreed with her
+that he was in a distempered state of mind, and I hardly knew how
+to deal with one so fixed in his hallucination and with so much
+intelligence to support it. But the emergency was great, for he was
+holding out his wrists in the evident expectation of my taking him into
+instant custody; and the sight was killing his wife, who had sunk on the
+floor between us, in terror and anguish.
+
+"You say you killed Mr. Hasbrouck," I began. "Where did you get your
+pistol, and what did you do with it after you left his house?"
+
+"My husband had no pistol; never had any pistol," put in Mrs. Zabriskie,
+with vehement assertion. "If I had seen him with such a weapon--"
+
+"I threw it away. When I left the house, I cast it as far from me as
+possible, for I was frightened at what I had done, horribly frightened."
+
+"No pistol was ever found," I answered with a smile, forgetting for the
+moment that he could not see. "If such an instrument had been found in
+the street after a murder of such consequence, it certainly would have
+been brought to the police."
+
+"You forget that a good pistol is valuable property," he went on
+stolidly. "Someone came along before the general alarm was given; and
+seeing such a treasure lying on the sidewalk, picked it up and carried
+it off. Not being an honest man, he preferred to keep it to drawing the
+attention of the police upon himself."
+
+"Hum, perhaps," said I; "but where did you get it. Surely you can tell
+where you procured such a weapon, if, as your wife intimates, you did
+not own one."
+
+"I bought it that selfsame night of a friend; a friend whom I will
+not name, since he resides no longer in this country. I--" He paused;
+intense passion was in his face; he turned towards his wife, and a low
+cry escaped him, which made her look up in fear.
+
+"I do not wish to go into any particulars," said he. "God forsook me
+and I committed a horrible crime. When I am punished, perhaps peace will
+return to me and happiness to her. I would not wish her to suffer too
+long or too bitterly for my sin."
+
+"Constant!" What love was in the cry! It seemed to move him and turn his
+thoughts for a moment into a different channel.
+
+"Poor child!" he murmured, stretching out his hands by an irresistible
+impulse towards her. But the change was but momentary, and he was soon
+again the stern and determined self-accuser. "Are you going to take me
+before a magistrate?" he asked. "If so, I have a few duties to perform
+which you are welcome to witness."
+
+This was too much; I felt that the time had come for me to disabuse his
+mind of the impression he had unwittingly formed of me. I therefore said
+as considerately as I could:
+
+"You mistake my position, Dr. Zabriskie. Though a detective of some
+experience, I have no connection with the police and no right to intrude
+myself in a matter of such tragic importance. If, however, you are as
+anxious as you say to subject yourself to police examination, I will
+mention the same to the proper authorities, and leave them to take such
+action as they think best."
+
+"That will be still more satisfactory to me," said he; "for though I
+have many times contemplated giving myself up, I have still much to
+do before I can leave my home and practice without injury to others.
+Good-day; when you want me you will find me here."
+
+He was gone, and the poor young wife was left crouching on the floor
+alone. Pitying her shame and terror, I ventured to remark that it was
+not an uncommon thing for a man to confess to a crime he had never
+committed, and assured her that the matter would be inquired into very
+carefully before any attempt was made upon his liberty.
+
+She thanked me, and slowly rising, tried to regain her equanimity; but
+the manner as well as the matter of her husband's self-condemnation
+was too overwhelming in its nature for her to recover readily from her
+emotions.
+
+"I have long dreaded this," she acknowledged. "For months I have
+foreseen that he would make some rash communication or insane avowal.
+If I had dared, I would have consulted some physician about this
+hallucination of his; but he was so sane on other points that I
+hesitated to give my dreadful secret to the world. I kept hoping that
+time and his daily pursuits would have their effect and restore him to
+himself. But his illusion grows, and now I fear that nothing will
+ever convince him that he did not commit the deed of which he accuses
+himself. If he were not blind I would have more hope, but the blind have
+so much time for brooding."
+
+"I think he had better be indulged in his fancies for the present," I
+ventured. "If he is labouring under an illusion it might be dangerous to
+cross him."
+
+"If?" she echoed in an indescribable tone of amazement and dread. "Can
+you for a moment harbour the idea that he has spoken the truth?"
+
+"Madam," I returned, with something of the cynicism of my calling, "what
+caused you to give such an unearthly scream just before this murder was
+made known to the neighbourhood?"
+
+She stared, paled, and finally began to tremble, not, as I now believe,
+at the insinuation latent in my words, but at the doubts which my
+question aroused in her own breast.
+
+"Did I?" she asked; then with a burst of candour which seemed
+inseparable from her nature, she continued: "Why do I try to mislead you
+or deceive myself? I did give a shriek just before the alarm was raised
+next door; but it was not from any knowledge I had of a crime having
+been committed, but because I unexpectedly saw before me my husband whom
+I supposed to be on his way to Poughkeepsie. He was looking very pale
+and strange, and for a moment I thought I stood face to face with his
+ghost. But he soon explained his appearance by saying that he had
+fallen from the train and had only been saved by a miracle from being
+dismembered; and I was just bemoaning his mishap and trying to calm him
+and myself, when that terrible shout was heard next door of 'Murder!
+murder!' Coming so soon after the shock he had himself experienced, it
+quite unnerved him, and I think we can date his mental disturbance from
+that moment. For he began immediately to take a morbid interest in the
+affair next door, though it was weeks, if not months, before he let a
+word fall of the nature of those you have just heard. Indeed it was
+not till I repeated to him some of the expressions he was continually
+letting fall in his sleep, that he commenced to accuse himself of crime
+and talk of retribution."
+
+"You say that your husband frightened you on that night by appearing
+suddenly at the door when you thought him on his way to Poughkeepsie. Is
+Dr. Zabriskie in the habit of thus going and coming alone at an hour so
+late as this must have been?"
+
+"You forget that to the blind, night is less full of perils than the
+day. Often and often has my husband found his way to his patients'
+houses alone after midnight; but on this especial evening he had Leonard
+with him. Leonard was his chauffeur, and always accompanied him when he
+went any distance."
+
+"Well, then," said I, "all we have to do is to summon Leonard and hear
+what he has to say concerning this affair. He will surely know whether
+or not his master went into the house next door."
+
+"Leonard has left us," she said. "Dr. Zabriskie has another chauffeur
+now. Besides (I have nothing to conceal from you), Leonard was not with
+him when he returned to the house that evening or the doctor would not
+have been without his portmanteau till the next day. Something--I have
+never known what--caused them to separate, and that is why I have no
+answer to give the doctor when he accuses himself of committing a deed
+that night so wholly out of keeping with every other act of his life."
+
+"And have you never asked Leonard why they separated and why he allowed
+his master to come home alone after the shock he had received at the
+station?"
+
+"I did not know there was any reason for my doing so till long after he
+had left us."
+
+"And when did he leave?"
+
+"That I do not remember. A few weeks or possibly a few days after that
+dreadful night."
+
+"And where is he now?"
+
+"Ah, that I have not the least means of knowing. But," she objected, in
+sudden distrust, "what do you want of Leonard? If he did not follow Dr.
+Zabriskie to his own door, he could tell us nothing that would convince
+my husband that he is labouring under an illusion."
+
+"But he might tell us something which would convince us that Dr.
+Zabriskie was not himself after the accident; that he--"
+
+"Hush!" came from her lips in imperious tones. "I will not believe that
+he shot Mr. Hasbrouck even if you prove him to have been insane at the
+time. How could he? My husband is blind. It would take a man of very
+keen sight to force himself into a house closed for the night, and kill
+a man in the dark at one shot."
+
+"On the contrary, it is only a blind man who could do this," cried a
+voice from the doorway. "Those who trust to eyesight must be able to
+catch a glimpse of the mark they aim at, and this room, as I have been
+told, was without a glimmer of light. But the blind trust to sound, and
+as Mr. Hasbrouck spoke--"
+
+"Oh!" burst from the horrified wife, "is there no one to stop him when
+he speaks like that?"
+
+III
+
+As you will see, this matter, so recklessly entered into, had proved
+to be of too serious a nature for me to pursue it farther without
+the cognizance of the police. Having a friend on the force in whose
+discretion I could rely, I took him into my confidence and asked for his
+advice. He pooh-poohed the doctor's statements, but said that he would
+bring the matter to the attention of the superintendent and let me
+know the result. I agreed to this, and we parted with the mutual
+understanding that mum was the word till some official decision had been
+arrived at. I had not long to wait. At an early day he came in with the
+information that there had been, as might be expected, a division of
+opinion among his superiors as to the importance of Dr. Zabriskie's
+so-called confession, but in one point they had been unanimous and that
+was the desirability of his appearing before them at Headquarters for
+a personal examination. As, however, in the mind of two out of three of
+them his condition was attributed entirely to acute mania, it had been
+thought best to employ as their emissary one in whom he had already
+confided and submitted his case to,--in other words, myself. The time
+was set for the next afternoon at the close of his usual office hours.
+
+He went without reluctance, his wife accompanying him. In the short time
+which elapsed between their leaving home and entering Headquarters,
+I embraced the opportunity of observing them, and I found the study
+equally exciting and interesting. His face was calm but hopeless, and
+his eye, dark and unfathomable, but neither frenzied nor uncertain. He
+spoke but once and listened to nothing, though now and then his wife
+moved as if to attract his attention, and once even stole her hand
+towards his, in the tender hope that he would feel its approach and
+accept her sympathy. But he was deaf as well as blind; and sat wrapped
+up in thoughts which she, I know, would have given worlds to penetrate.
+
+Her countenance was not without its mystery also. She showed in every
+lineament passionate concern and misery, and a deep tenderness from
+which the element of fear was not absent. But she, as well as he,
+betrayed that some misunderstanding deeper than any I had previously
+suspected drew its intangible veil between them and made the near
+proximity in which they sat at once a heart-piercing delight and an
+unspeakable pain. What was the misunderstanding; and what was the
+character of the fear that modified her every look of love in his
+direction? Her perfect indifference to my presence proved that it was
+not connected with the position in which he had placed himself towards
+the police by his voluntary confession of crime, nor could I thus
+interpret the expression, of frantic question which now and then
+contracted her features, as she raised her eyes towards his sightless
+orbs, and strove to read in his firm set lips the meaning of those
+assertions she could only ascribe to loss of reason.
+
+The stopping of the carriage seemed to awaken both from thoughts that
+separated rather than united them. He turned his face in her direction,
+and she stretching forth her hand, prepared to lead him from the
+carriage, without any of that display of timidity which had previously
+been evident in her manner.
+
+As his guide she seemed to fear nothing; as his lover, everything.
+
+"There is another and a deeper tragedy underlying the outward and
+obvious one," was my inward conclusion, as I followed them into the
+presence of the gentlemen awaiting them.
+
+Dr. Zabriskie's quiet appearance was in itself a shock to those who had
+anticipated the feverish unrest of a madman; so was his speech, which
+was calm, straightforward, and quietly determined.
+
+"I shot Mr. Hasbrouck," was his steady affirmation, given without any
+show of frenzy or desperation. "If you ask me why I did it, I cannot
+answer; if you ask me how, I am ready to state all that I know
+concerning the matter."
+
+"But, Dr. Zabriskie," interposed one of the inspectors, "the why is the
+most important thing for us to consider just now. If you really desire
+to convince us that you committed this dreadful crime of killing a
+totally inoffensive man, you should give us some reason for an act so
+opposed to all your instincts and general conduct."
+
+But the doctor continued unmoved:
+
+"I had no reason for murdering Mr. Hasbrouck. A hundred questions can
+elicit no other reply; you had better keep to the how."
+
+A deep-drawn breath from the wife answered the looks of the three
+gentlemen to whom this suggestion was offered. "You see," that breath
+seemed to protest, "that he is not in his right mind."
+
+I began to waver in my own opinion, and yet the intuition which has
+served me in cases seemingly as impenetrable as this bade me beware of
+following the general judgment.
+
+"Ask him to inform you how he got into the house," I whispered to
+Inspector D--, who sat nearest me.
+
+Immediately the inspector put the question which I had suggested:
+
+"By what means did you enter Mr. Hasbrouck's house at so late an hour as
+this murder occurred?"
+
+The blind doctor's head fell forward on his breast, and he hesitated for
+the first and only time.
+
+"You will not believe me," said he; "but the door was ajar when I came
+to it. Such things make crime easy; it is the only excuse I have to
+offer for this dreadful deed."
+
+The front door of a respectable citizen's house ajar at half-past eleven
+at night! It was a statement that fixed in all minds the conviction of
+the speaker's irresponsibility. Mrs. Zabriskie's brow cleared, and
+her beauty became for a moment dazzling as she held out her hands in
+irrepressible relief towards those who were interrogating her husband.
+I alone kept my impassibility. A possible explanation of this crime
+had flashed like lightning across my mind; an explanation from which I
+inwardly recoiled, even while I felt forced to consider it.
+
+"Dr. Zabriskie," remarked the inspector formerly mentioned as friendly
+to him, "such old servants as those kept by Mr. Hasbrouck do not leave
+the front door ajar at twelve o'clock at night."
+
+"Yet ajar it was," repeated the blind doctor, with quiet emphasis; "and
+finding it so, I went in. When I came out again, I closed it. Do you
+wish me to swear to what I say? If so, I am ready."
+
+What reply could they give? To see this splendid-looking man, hallowed
+by an affliction so great that in itself it called forth the compassion
+of the most indifferent, accusing himself of a cold-blooded crime, in
+tones which sounded dispassionate because of the will forcing their
+utterance, was too painful in itself for any one to indulge in
+unnecessary words. Compassion took the place of curiosity, and each and
+all of us turned involuntary looks of pity upon the young wife pressing
+so eagerly to his side.
+
+"For a blind man," ventured one, "the assault was both deft and certain.
+Are you accustomed to Mr. Hasbrouck's house, that you found your way
+with so little difficulty to his bedroom?"
+
+"I am accustomed--" he began.
+
+But here his wife broke in with irrepressible passion:
+
+"He is not accustomed to that house. He has never been beyond the first
+floor. Why, why do you question him? Do you not see--"
+
+His hand was on her lips.
+
+"Hush!" he commanded. "You know my skill in moving about a house; how
+I sometimes deceive those who do not know me into believing that I can
+see, by the readiness with which I avoid obstacles and find my way even
+in strange and untried scenes. Do not try to make them think I am not
+in my right mind, or you will drive me into the very condition you
+attribute to me."
+
+His face, rigid, cold, and set, looked like that of a mask. Hers, drawn
+with horror and filled with question that was fast taking the form of
+doubt, bespoke an awful tragedy from which more than one of us recoiled.
+
+"Can you shoot a man dead without seeing him?" asked the Superintendent,
+with painful effort.
+
+"Give me a pistol and I will show you," was the quick reply.
+
+A low cry came from the wife. In a drawer near to every one of us there
+lay a pistol, but no one moved to take it out. There was a look in the
+doctor's eye which made us fear to trust him with a pistol just then.
+
+"We will accept your assurance that you possess a skill beyond that of
+most men," returned the Superintendent. And beckoning me forward, he
+whispered: "This is a case for the doctors and not for the police.
+Remove him quietly, and notify Dr. Southyard of what I say."
+
+But Dr. Zabriskie, who seemed to have an almost supernatural acuteness
+of hearing, gave a violent start at this, and spoke up for the first
+time with real passion in his voice:
+
+"No, no, I pray you. I can bear anything but that. Remember, gentlemen,
+that I am blind; that I cannot see who is about me; that my life would
+be a torture if I felt myself surrounded by spies watching to catch some
+evidence of madness in me. Rather conviction at once, death, dishonour,
+and obloquy. These I have incurred. These I have brought upon myself by
+crime, but not this worse fate--oh! not this worse fate."
+
+His passion was so intense and yet so confined within the bounds of
+decorum, that we felt strangely impressed by it. Only the wife stood
+transfixed, with the dread growing in her heart, till her white,
+waxen visage seemed even more terrible to contemplate than his
+passion-distorted one.
+
+"It is not strange that my wife thinks me demented," the doctor
+continued, as if afraid of the silence that answered him. "But it is
+your business to discriminate, and you should know a sane man when you
+see him."
+
+Inspector D---- no longer hesitated.
+
+"Very well," said he, "give me the least proof that your assertions are
+true, and we will lay your case before the prosecuting attorney."
+
+"Proof? Is not a man's word--"
+
+"No man's confession is worth much without some evidence to support
+it. In your case there is none. You cannot even produce the pistol with
+which you assert yourself to have committed the deed."
+
+"True, true. I was frightened by what I had done, and the instinct of
+self-preservation led me to rid myself of the weapon in any way I could.
+But someone found this pistol; someone picked it up from the sidewalk of
+Lafayette Place on that fatal night. Advertise for it. Offer a reward.
+I will give you the money." Suddenly he appeared to realize how all this
+sounded. "Alas!" cried he, "I know the story seems improbable; but it is
+not the probable things that happen in this life, as, you should know,
+who every day dig deep into the heart of human affairs."
+
+Were these the ravings of insanity? I began to understand the wife's
+terror.
+
+"I bought the pistol," he went on, "of--alas! I cannot tell you his
+name. Everything is against me. I cannot adduce one proof; yet even she
+is beginning to fear that my story is true. I know it by her silence, a
+silence that yawns between us like a deep and unfathomable gulf."
+
+But at these words her voice rang out with passionate vehemence.
+
+"No, no, it is false! I will never believe that your hands have been
+plunged in blood. You are my own pure-hearted Constant, cold, perhaps,
+and stern, but with no guilt upon your conscience save in your own wild
+imagination."
+
+"Zulma, you are no friend to me," he declared, pushing her gently aside.
+"Believe me innocent, but say nothing to lead these others to doubt my
+word."
+
+And she said no more, but her looks spoke volumes.
+
+The result was that he was not detained, though he prayed for instant
+commitment. He seemed to dread his own home, and the surveillance to
+which he instinctively knew he would henceforth be subjected. To see him
+shrink from his wife's hand as she strove to lead him from the room was
+sufficiently painful; but the feeling thus aroused was nothing to that
+with which we observed the keen and agonized expectancy of his look as
+he turned and listened for the steps of the officer who followed him.
+
+"From this time on I shall never know whether or not I am alone," was
+his final observation as he left the building.
+
+Here is where the matter rests and here, Miss Strange, is where you come
+in. The police were for sending an expert alienist into the house; but
+agreeing with me, and, in fact, with the doctor himself, that if he were
+not already out of his mind, this would certainly make them so, they, at
+my earnest intercession, have left the next move to me.
+
+That move as you must by this time understand involves you. You have
+advantages for making Mrs. Zabriskie's acquaintance of which I beg you
+to avail yourself. As friend or patient, you must win your way into that
+home? You must sound to its depths one or both of these two wretched
+hearts. Not so much now for any possible reward which may follow the
+elucidation of this mystery which has come so near being shelved, but
+for pity's sake and the possible settlement of a question which is fast
+driving a lovely member of your sex distracted.
+
+May I rely on you? If so--
+
+Various instructions followed, over which Violet mused with a
+deprecatory shaking of her head till the little clock struck two. Why
+should she, already in a state of secret despondency, intrude herself
+into an affair at once so painful and so hopeless?
+
+IV
+
+But by morning her mood changed. The pathos of the situation had seized
+upon her in her dreams, and before the day was over, she was to be seen,
+as a prospective patient, in Dr. Zabriskie's office. She had a slight
+complaint as her excuse, and she made the most of it. That is, at first,
+but as the personality of this extraordinary man began to make its
+usual impression, she found herself forgetting her own condition in the
+intensity of interest she felt in his. Indeed, she had to pull herself
+together more than once lest he should suspect the double nature of
+her errand, and she actually caught herself at times rejoicing in his
+affliction since it left her with only her voice to think of, in her
+hated but necessary task of deception.
+
+That she succeeded in this effort, even with one of his nice ear, was
+evident from the interested way in which he dilated upon her malady, and
+the minute instructions he was careful to give her--the physician being
+always uppermost in his strange dual nature, when he was in his office
+or at the bedside of the sick;--and had she not been a deep reader of
+the human soul she would have left his presence in simple wonder at his
+skill and entire absorption in an exacting profession.
+
+But as it was, she carried with her an image of subdued suffering, which
+drove her, from that moment on, to ask herself what she could do to aid
+him in his fight against his own illusion; for to associate such a man
+with a senseless and cruel murder was preposterous.
+
+What this wish, helped by no common determination, led her into, it was
+not in her mind to conceive. She was making her one great mistake, but
+as yet she was in happy ignorance of it, and pursued the course laid out
+for her without a doubt of the ultimate result.
+
+Having seen and made up her mind about the husband, she next sought to
+see and gauge the wife. That she succeeded in doing this by means of
+one of her sly little tricks is not to the point; but what followed in
+natural consequence is very much so. A mutual interest sprang up between
+them which led very speedily to actual friendship. Mrs. Zabriskie's
+hungry heart opened to the sympathetic little being who clung to her in
+such evident admiration; while Violet, brought face to face with a real
+woman, succumbed to feelings which made it no imposition on her part to
+spend much of her leisure in Zulma Zabriskie's company.
+
+The result were the following naive reports which drifted into her
+employer's office from day to day, as this intimacy deepened.
+
+The doctor is settling into a deep melancholy, from which he tries to
+rise at times, but with only indifferent success. Yesterday he rode
+around to all his patients for the purpose of withdrawing his services
+on the plea of illness. But he still keeps his office open, and today
+I had the opportunity of witnessing his reception and treatment of the
+many sufferers who came to him for aid. I think he was conscious of
+my presence, though an attempt had been made to conceal it. For the
+listening look never left his face from the moment he entered the room,
+and once he rose and passed quickly from wall to wall, groping with
+out-stretched hands into every nook and corner, and barely escaping
+contact with the curtain behind which I was hidden. But if he suspected
+my presence, he showed no displeasure at it, wishing perhaps for a
+witness to his skill in the treatment of disease.
+
+And truly I never beheld a finer manifestation of practical insight
+in cases of a more or less baffling nature. He is certainly a most
+wonderful physician, and I feel bound to record that his mind is as
+clear for business as if no shadow had fallen upon it.
+
+Dr. Zabriskie loves his wife, but in a way torturing to himself and
+to her. If she is gone from the house he is wretched, and yet when she
+returns he often forbears to speak to her, or if he does speak it is
+with a constraint that hurts her more than his silence. I was present
+when she came in today. Her step, which had been eager on the stairway,
+flagged as she approached the room, and he naturally noted the change
+and gave his own interpretation to it. His face, which had been very
+pale, flushed suddenly, and a nervous trembling seized him which he
+sought in vain to hide. But by the time her tall and beautiful figure
+stood in the doorway, he was his usual self again in all but the
+expression of his eyes, which stared straight before him in an agony of
+longing only to be observed in those who have once seen.
+
+"Where have you been, Zulma?" he asked, as contrary to his wont, he
+moved to meet her.
+
+"To my mother's, to Arnold & Constable's, and to the hospital, as
+you requested," was her quick answer, made without faltering or
+embarrassment.
+
+He stepped still nearer and took her hand, and as he did so my eye
+fell on his and I noted that his finger lay over her pulse in seeming
+unconsciousness.
+
+"Nowhere else?" he queried.
+
+She smiled the saddest kind of smile and shook her head; then,
+remembering that he could not see this movement, she cried in a wistful
+tone:
+
+"Nowhere else, Constant; I was too anxious to get back."
+
+I expected him to drop her hand at this, but he did not; and his finger
+still rested on her pulse.
+
+"And whom did you see while you were gone?" he continued.
+
+She told him, naming over several names.
+
+"You must have enjoyed yourself," was his cold comment, as he let go her
+hand and turned away. But his manner showed relief, and I could not but
+sympathize with the pitiable situation of a man who found himself forced
+into means like this for probing the heart of his young wife.
+
+Yet when I turned towards her, I realized that her position was but
+little happier than his. Tears are no strangers to her eyes, but those
+which welled up at this moment seemed to possess a bitterness that
+promised but little peace for her future. Yet she quickly dried them and
+busied herself with ministrations for his comfort.
+
+If I am any judge of woman, Zulma Zabriskie is superior to most of her
+sex. That her husband mistrusts her is evident, but whether this is the
+result of the stand she has taken in his regard, or only a manifestation
+of dementia, I have as yet been unable to determine. I dread to leave
+them alone together, and yet when I presume to suggest that she should
+be on her guard in her interviews with him, she smiles very placidly and
+tells me that nothing would give her greater joy than to see him lift
+his hand against her, for that would argue that he is not accountable
+for his deeds or assertions.
+
+Yet it would be a grief to see her injured by this passionate and
+unhappy man.
+
+You have said that you wanted all the details I could give; so I feel
+bound to say that Dr. Zabriskie tries to be considerate of his wife,
+though he often fails in the attempt. When she offers herself as his
+guide, or assists him with his mail or performs any of the many acts of
+kindness by which she continually manifests her sense of his affliction,
+he thanks her with courtesy and often with kindness, yet I know she
+would willingly exchange all his set phrases for one fond embrace or
+impulsive smile of affection. It would be too much to say that he is
+not in the full possession of his faculties, and yet upon what other
+hypothesis can we account for the inconsistencies of his conduct?
+
+I have before me two visions of mental suffering. At noon I passed the
+office door, and looking within, saw the figure of Dr. Zabriskie seated
+in his great chair, lost in thought or deep in those memories which make
+an abyss in one's consciousness. His hands, which were clenched, rested
+upon the arms of his chair, and in one of them I detected a woman's
+glove, which I had no difficulty in recognizing as one of the pair worn
+by his wife this morning. He held it as a tiger might hold his prey or a
+miser his gold, but his set features and sightless eyes betrayed that a
+conflict of emotions was being waged within him, among which tenderness
+had but little share.
+
+Though alive as he usually is to every sound, he was too absorbed at
+this moment to notice my presence, though I had taken no pains to
+approach quietly. I therefore stood for a full minute watching him, till
+an irresistible sense of the shame at thus spying upon a blind man in
+his moments of secret anguish compelled me to withdraw. But not before I
+saw his features relax in a storm of passionate feeling, as he rained
+kisses after kisses on the senseless kid he had so long held in his
+motionless grasp. Yet when an hour later he entered the dining-room on
+his wife's arm, there was nothing in his manner to show that he had in
+any way changed in his attitude towards her.
+
+The other picture was more tragic still. I was seeking Mrs. Zabriskie in
+her own room, when I caught a fleeting vision of her tall form, with her
+arms thrown up over her head in a paroxysm of feeling which made her as
+oblivious to my presence as her husband had been several hours before.
+Were the words that escaped her lips "Thank God we have no children!"
+or was this exclamation suggested to me by the passion and unrestrained
+impulse of her action?
+
+So much up to date. Interesting enough, or so her employer seemed
+to think, as he went hurriedly through the whole story, one special
+afternoon in his office, tapping each sheet as he laid it aside with his
+sagacious forefinger, as though he would say, "Enough! My theory still
+holds good; nothing contradictory here; on the contrary complete and
+undisputable confirmation of the one and only explanation of this
+astounding crime."
+
+What was that theory; and in what way and through whose efforts had he
+been enabled to form one? The following notes may enlighten us. Though
+written in his own hand, and undoubtedly a memorandum of his own
+activities, he evidently thinks it worth while to reperuse them in
+connection with those he had just laid aside.
+
+We can do no better than read them also.
+
+We omit dates.
+
+Watched the Zabriskie mansion for five hours this morning, from the
+second story window of an adjoining hotel. Saw the doctor when he drove
+away on his round of visits, and saw him when he returned. A coloured
+man accompanied him.
+
+Today I followed Mrs. Zabriskie. She went first to a house in Washington
+Place where I am told her mother lives. Here she stayed some time, after
+which she drove down to Canal Street, where she did some shopping,
+and later stopped at the hospital, into which I took the liberty of
+following her. She seemed to know many there, and passed from cot to cot
+with a smile in which I alone discerned the sadness of a broken heart.
+When she left, I left also, without having learned anything beyond the
+fact that Mrs. Zabriskie is one who does her duty in sorrow as in joy.
+A rare, and trustworthy woman I should say, and yet her husband does not
+trust her. Why?
+
+I have spent this day in accumulating details in regard to Dr. and Mrs.
+Zabriskie's life previous to the death of Mr. Hasbrouck. I learned from
+sources it would be unwise to quote just here, that Mrs. Zabriskie had
+not lacked enemies to charge her with coquetry; that while she had never
+sacrificed her dignity in public, more than one person had been heard to
+declare that Dr. Zabriskie was fortunate in being blind, since the sight
+of his wife's beauty would have but poorly compensated him for the pain
+he would have suffered in seeing how that beauty was admired.
+
+That all gossip is more or less tinged with exaggeration I have no
+doubt, yet when a name is mentioned in connection with such stories,
+there is usually some truth at the bottom of them. And a name is
+mentioned in this case, though I do not think it worth my while to
+repeat it here; and loth as I am to recognize the fact, it is a name
+that carries with it doubts that might easily account for the husband's
+jealousy. True, I have found no one who dares hint that she still
+continues to attract attention or to bestow smiles in any direction save
+where they legally belong. For since a certain memorable night which
+we all know, neither Dr. Zabriskie nor his wife have been seen save
+in their own domestic circle, and it is not into such scenes that this
+serpent, to whom I have just alluded, ever intrudes, nor is it in
+places of sorrow or suffering that his smile shines, or his fascinations
+flourish.
+
+And so one portion of my theory is proved to be sound. Dr. Zabriskie is
+jealous of his wife; whether with good cause or bad I am not prepared to
+decide; since her present attitude, clouded as it is by the tragedy in
+which she and her husband are both involved, must differ very much
+from that which she held when her life was unshadowed by doubt, and her
+admirers could be counted by the score.
+
+I have just found out where Leonard is. As he is in service some miles
+up the river, I shall have to be absent from my post for several hours,
+but I consider the game well worth the candle.
+
+Light at last. I have not only seen Leonard, but succeeded in making
+him talk. His story is substantially this: That on the night so often
+mentioned, he packed his master's portmanteau at eight o'clock and at
+ten called a taxi and rode with the doctor to the Central station. He
+was told to buy tickets to Poughkeepsie where his master had been
+called in consultation, and having done this, hurried back to join Dr.
+Zabriskie on the platform. They had walked together as far as the cars,
+and Dr. Zabriskie was just stepping on to the train, when a man pushed
+himself hurriedly between them and whispered something into his master's
+ear, which caused him to fall back and lose his footing. Dr. Zabriskie's
+body slid half under the car, but he was withdrawn before any harm
+was done, though the cars gave a lurch at that moment which must have
+frightened him exceedingly, for his face was white when he rose to his
+feet, and when Leonard offered to assist him again on the train, he
+refused to go and said he would return home and not attempt to ride to
+Poughkeepsie that night.
+
+The gentleman, whom Leonard now saw to be Mr. Stanton, an intimate
+friend of Dr. Zabriskie, smiled very queerly at this, and taking the
+doctor's arm led him back to his own auto. Leonard naturally followed
+them, but the doctor, hearing his steps, turned and bade him, in a
+very peremptory tone, to take the cars home, and then, as if on second
+thought, told him to go to Poughkeepsie in his stead and explain to the
+people there that he was too shaken up by his misstep to do his duty,
+and that he would be with them next morning. This seemed strange to
+Leonard, but he had no reasons for disobeying his master's orders, and
+so rode to Poughkeepsie. But the doctor did not follow him the next day;
+on the contrary he telegraphed for him to return, and when he got back
+dismissed him with a month's wages. This ended Leonard's connection with
+the Zabriskie family.
+
+A simple story bearing out what the wife has already told us; but it
+furnishes a link which may prove invaluable. Mr. Stanton, whose first
+name is Theodore, knows the real reason why Dr. Zabriskie returned
+home on the night of the seventeenth of July, 19--. Mr. Stanton,
+consequently, is the man to see, and this shall be my business tomorrow.
+
+Checkmate! Theodore Stanton is not in this country. Though this points
+him out as the man from whom Dr. Zabriskie bought the pistol, it does
+not facilitate my work, which is becoming more and more difficult.
+
+Mr. Stanton's whereabouts are not even known to his most intimate
+friends. He sailed from this country most unexpectedly on the eighteenth
+of July a year ago, which was the day after the murder of Mr. Hasbrouck.
+It looks like a flight, especially as he has failed to maintain open
+communication even with his relatives. Was he the man who shot Mr.
+Hasbrouck? No; but he was the man who put the pistol in Dr. Zabriskie's
+hand that night, and whether he did this with purpose or not, was
+evidently so alarmed at the catastrophe which followed that he took the
+first outgoing steamer to Europe. So far, all is clear, but there are
+mysteries yet to be solved, which will require my utmost tact. What if I
+should seek out the gentleman with whose name that of Mrs. Zabriskie has
+been linked, and see if I can in any way connect him with Mr. Stanton or
+the events of that night.
+
+Eureka! I have discovered that Mr. Stanton cherished a mortal hatred
+for the gentleman above mentioned. It was a covert feeling, but no
+less deadly on that account; and while it never led him into any
+extravagances, it was of force sufficient to account for many a secret
+misfortune occurring to that gentleman. Now if I can prove that he is
+the Mephistopheles who whispered insinuations into the ear of our blind
+Faust, I may strike a fact that will lead me out of this maze.
+
+But how can I approach secrets so delicate without compromising the
+woman I feel bound to respect if only for the devoted love she manifests
+for her unhappy husband!
+
+I shall have to appeal to Joe Smithers. This is something which I always
+hate to do, but as long as he will take money, and as long as he is
+fertile in resources for obtaining the truth from people I am myself
+unable to reach, I must make use of his cupidity and his genius. He is
+an honourable fellow in one way, and never retails as gossip what he
+acquires for our use. How will he proceed in this case, and by what
+tactics will he gain the very delicate information which we need? I own
+that I am curious to see.
+
+I shall really have to put down at length the incidents of this night.
+I always knew that Joe Smithers was invaluable not only to myself but to
+the police, but I really did not know he possessed talents of so high
+an order. He wrote me this morning that he had succeeded in getting Mr.
+T--'s promise to spend the evening with him, and advised me that if I
+desired to be present as well, his own servant would not be at home, and
+that an opener of bottles would be required.
+
+As I was very anxious to see Mr. T---- with my own eyes, I accepted
+this invitation to play the spy, and went at the proper hour to Mr.
+Smithers's rooms. I found them picturesque in the extreme. Piles of
+books stacked here and there to the ceiling made nooks and corners which
+could be quite shut off by a couple of old pictures set into movable
+frames capable of swinging out or in at the whim or convenience of the
+owner.
+
+As I had use for the dark shadows cast by these pictures, I pulled
+them both out, and made such other arrangements as appeared likely to
+facilitate the purpose I had in view; then I sat down and waited for the
+two gentlemen who were expected to come in together.
+
+They arrived almost immediately, whereupon I rose and played my part
+with all necessary discretion. While ridding Mr. T---- of his overcoat,
+I stole a look at his face. It is not a handsome one, but it boasts of
+a gay, devil-may-care expression which doubtless makes it dangerous to
+many women, while his manners are especially attractive, and his voice
+the richest and most persuasive that I ever heard. I contrasted him,
+almost against my will, with Dr. Zabriskie, and decided that with most
+women the former's undoubted fascinations of speech and bearing would
+outweigh the latter's great beauty and mental endowments; but I doubted
+if they would with her.
+
+The conversation which immediately began was brilliant but desultory,
+for Mr. Smithers, with an airy lightness for which he is remarkable,
+introduced topic after topic, perhaps for the purpose of showing off Mr.
+T-'s versatility, and perhaps for the deeper and more sinister purpose
+of shaking the kaleidoscope of talk so thoroughly, that the real topic
+which we were met to discuss should not make an undue impression on the
+mind of his guest.
+
+Meanwhile one, two, three bottles passed, and I had the pleasure
+of seeing Joe Smithers's eye grow calmer and that of Mr. T---- more
+brilliant and more uncertain. As the last bottle was being passed, Joe
+cast me a meaning glance, and the real business of the evening began.
+
+I shall not attempt to relate the half dozen failures which Joe made in
+endeavouring to elicit the facts we were in search of, without arousing
+the suspicion of his visitor. I am only going to relate the successful
+attempt. They had been talking now for some hours, and I, who had long
+before been waved aside from their immediate presence, was hiding my
+curiosity and growing excitement behind one of the pictures, when I
+suddenly heard Joe say:
+
+"He has the most remarkable memory I ever met. He can tell to a day when
+any notable event occurred."
+
+"Pshaw!" answered his companion, who, by the way, was known to pride
+himself upon his own memory for dates, "I can state where I went and
+what I did on every day in the year. That may not embrace what you call
+'notable events,' but the memory required is all the more remarkable, is
+it not?"
+
+"Pooh!" was his friend's provoking reply, "you are bluffing, Ben; I will
+never believe that."
+
+Mr. T-, who had passed by this time into that stage of intoxication
+which makes persistence in an assertion a duty as well as a pleasure,
+threw back his head, and as the wreaths of smoke rose in airy spirals
+from his lips, reiterated his statement, and offered to submit to any
+test of his vaunted powers which the other might dictate.
+
+"You keep a diary--" began Joe.
+
+"Which at the present moment is at home," completed the other.
+
+"Will you allow me to refer to it tomorrow, if I am suspicious of the
+accuracy of your recollections?"
+
+"Undoubtedly," returned the other.
+
+"Very well, then, I will wager you a cool fifty that you cannot tell
+where you were between the hours of ten and eleven on a certain night
+which I will name."
+
+"Done!" cried the other, bringing out his pocket-book and laying it on
+the table before him.
+
+Joe followed his example and then summoned me.
+
+"Write a date down here," he commanded, pushing a piece of paper towards
+me, with a look keen as the flash of a blade. "Any date, man," he added,
+as I appeared to hesitate in the embarrassment I thought natural under
+the circumstances. "Put down day, month, and year, only don't go too far
+back; not farther than two years."
+
+Smiling with the air of a flunkey admitted to the sports of his
+superiors, I wrote a line and laid it before Mr. Smithers, who at once
+pushed it with a careless gesture towards his companion. You can of
+course guess the date I made use of: July 17, 19--. Mr. T--, who had
+evidently looked upon this matter as mere play, flushed scarlet as he
+read these words, and for one instant looked as if he had rather fly the
+house than answer Joe Smithers's nonchalant glance of inquiry.
+
+"I have given my word and will keep it," he said at last, but with a
+look in my direction that sent me reluctantly back to my retreat. "I
+don't suppose you want names," he went on; "that is, if anything I have
+to tell is of a delicate nature?"
+
+"Oh, no," answered the other, "only facts and places."
+
+"I don't think places are necessary either," he returned. "I will tell
+you what I did and that must serve you. I did not promise to give number
+and street."
+
+"Well, well," Joe exclaimed; "earn your fifty, that is all. Show that
+you remember where you were on the night of"--and with an admirable show
+of indifference he pretended to consult the paper between them--"the
+seventeenth of July, two years ago, and I shall be satisfied."
+
+"I was at the club for one thing," said Mr. T-; "then I went to see a
+lady friend, where I stayed until eleven. She wore a blue muslin--What
+is that?"
+
+I had betrayed myself by a quick movement which sent a glass tumbler
+crashing to the floor. Zulma Zabriskie had worn a blue muslin on
+that same night. You will find it noted in the report given me by the
+policeman who saw her on their balcony.
+
+"That noise?" It was Joe who was speaking. "You don't know Reuben as
+well as I do or you wouldn't ask. It is his practice, I am sorry to say,
+to accentuate his pleasure in draining my bottles by dropping a glass at
+every third one."
+
+Mr. T---- went on.
+
+"She was a married woman and I thought she loved me; but--and this is
+the greatest proof I can offer you that I am giving you a true account
+of that night--she had not the slightest idea of the extent of my
+passion, and only consented to see me at all because she thought,
+poor thing, that a word from her would set me straight, and rid her
+of attentions she evidently failed to appreciate. A sorry figure for a
+fellow like me to cut; but you caught me on the most detestable date in
+my calendar and--"
+
+There he ceased being interesting and I anxious. The secret of a crime
+for which there seemed to be no reasonable explanation is no longer a
+mystery to me. I have but to warn Miss Strange--
+
+He had got thus far when a sound in the room behind him led him to look
+up. A lady had entered; a lady heavily veiled and trembling with what
+appeared to be an intense excitement.
+
+He thought he knew the figure, but the person, whoever it was, stood so
+still and remained so silent, he hesitated to address her; which seeing,
+she pushed up her veil and all doubt vanished.
+
+It was Violet herself. In disregard of her usual practice she had
+come alone to the office. This meant urgency of some kind. Had she too
+sounded this mystery? No, or her aspect would not have worn this look
+of triumph. What had happened then? He made an instant endeavour to find
+out.
+
+"You have news," he quietly remarked. "Good news, I should judge, by
+your very cheery smile."
+
+"Yes; I think I have found the way of bringing Dr. Zabriskie to
+himself."
+
+Astonished beyond measure, so little did these words harmonize with the
+impressions and conclusions at which he had just arrived, something
+very like doubt spoke in his voice as he answered with the simple
+exclamation:
+
+"You do!"
+
+"Yes. He is obsessed by a fixed idea, and must be given an opportunity
+to test the truth of that idea. The shock of finding it a false one
+may restore him to his normal condition. He believes that he shot Mr.
+Hasbrouck with no other guidance than his sense of hearing. Now if it
+can be proved that his hearing is an insufficient guide for such an act
+(as of course it is) the shock of the discovery may clear his brain of
+its cobwebs. Mrs. Zabriskie thinks so, and the police--"
+
+"What's that? The police?"
+
+"Yes, Dr. Zabriskie would be taken before them again this morning. No
+entreaties on the part of his wife would prevail; he insisted upon his
+guilt and asked her to accompany him there; and the poor woman found
+herself forced to go. Of course he encountered again the same division
+of opinion among the men he talked with. Three out of the four judged
+him insane, which observing, he betrayed great agitation and reiterated
+his former wish to be allowed an opportunity to prove his sanity
+by showing his skill in shooting. This made an impression; and a
+disposition was shown to grant his request then and there. But Mrs.
+Zabriskie would not listen to this. She approved of the experiment but
+begged that it might be deferred till another day and then take place in
+some spot remote from the city. For some reason they heeded her, and
+she has just telephoned me that this attempt of his is to take place
+tomorrow in the New Jersey woods. I am sorry that this should have been
+put through without you; and when I tell you that the idea originated
+with me--that from some word I purposely let fall one day, they both
+conceived this plan of ending the uncertainty that was devouring their
+lives, you will understand my excitement and the need I have of your
+support. Tell me that I have done well. Do not show me such a face--you
+frighten me--"
+
+"I do not wish to frighten you. I merely wish to know just who are going
+on this expedition."
+
+"Some members of the police, Dr. Zabriskie, his wife, and--and myself.
+She begged--"
+
+"You must not go."
+
+"Why? The affair is to be kept secret. The doctor will shoot, fail--Oh!"
+she suddenly broke in, alarmed by his expression, "you think he will not
+fail--"
+
+"I think that you had better heed my advice and stay out of it. The
+affair is now in the hands of the police, and your place is anywhere but
+where they are."
+
+"But I go as her particular friend. They have given her the privilege
+of taking with her one of her own sex and she has chosen me. I shall not
+fail her. Father is away, and if the awful disappointment you suggest
+awaits her, there is all the more reason why she should have some
+sympathetic support?"
+
+This was so true, that the fresh protest he was about to utter died on
+his lips. Instead, he simply remarked as he bowed her out:
+
+"I foresee that we shall not work much longer together. You are nearing
+the end of your endurance."
+
+He never forgot the smile she threw back at him.
+
+V
+
+There are some events which impress the human mind so deeply that their
+memory mingles with all after-experiences. Though Violet had made it a
+rule to forget as soon as possible the tragic episodes incident to the
+strange career upon which she had so mysteriously embarked, there was
+destined to be one scene, if not more, which she has never been able to
+dismiss at will.
+
+This was the sight which met her eyes from the bow of the small boat
+in which Dr. Zabriskie and his wife were rowed over to Jersey on the
+afternoon which saw the end of this most sombre drama.
+
+Though it was by no means late in the day, the sun was already sinking,
+and the bright red glare which filled the west and shone full upon
+the faces of the half dozen people before her added much to the tragic
+nature of the scene, though she was far from comprehending its full
+significance.
+
+The doctor sat with his wife in the stern and it was upon their faces
+Violet's glance was fixed. The glare shone luridly on his sightless
+eyeballs, and as she noticed his unwinking lids, she realized as never
+before what it was to be blind in the midst of sunshine. His wife's
+eyes, on the contrary, were lowered, but there was a look of hopeless
+misery in her colourless face which made her appearance infinitely
+pathetic, and Violet felt confident that if he could only have seen
+her, he would not have maintained the cold and unresponsive manner which
+chilled the words on his poor wife's lips and made all advance on her
+part impossible.
+
+On the seat in front of them sat an inspector and from some quarter,
+possibly from under the inspector's coat, there came the monotonous
+ticking of the small clock, which was to serve as a target for the blind
+man's aim.
+
+This ticking was all Violet heard, though the river was alive with
+traffic and large and small boats were steaming by them on every side.
+And I am sure it was all that Mrs. Zabriskie heard also, as with hand
+pressed to her heart, and eyes fixed on the opposite shore, she waited
+for the event which was to determine whether the man she loved was a
+criminal or only a being afflicted of God and worthy of her unceasing
+care and devotion.
+
+As the sun cast its last scarlet gleam over the water, the boat
+grounded, and Violet was enabled to have one passing word with Mrs.
+Zabriskie. She hardly knew what she said but the look she received in
+return was like that of a frightened child.
+
+But there was always to be seen in Mrs. Zabriskie's countenance this
+characteristic blending of the severe and the childlike, and beyond an
+added pang of pity for this beautiful but afflicted woman, Violet let
+the moment pass without giving it the weight it perhaps demanded.
+
+"The doctor and his wife had a long talk last night," was whispered in
+her ear as she wound her way with the rest into the heart of the woods.
+With a start she turned and perceived her employer following close
+behind her. He had come by another boat.
+
+"But it did not seem to heal whatever breach lies between them," he
+proceeded. Then, in a quick, anxious tone, he whispered: "Whatever
+happens, do not lift your veil. I thought I saw a reporter skulking in
+the rear."
+
+"I will be careful," Violet assured him, and could say no more, as they
+had already reached the ground which had been selected for this trial
+at arms, and the various members of the party were being placed in their
+several positions.
+
+The doctor, to whom light and darkness were alike, stood with his face
+towards the western glow, and at his side were grouped the inspector and
+the two physicians. On the arm of one of the latter hung Dr. Zabriskie's
+overcoat, which he had taken off as soon as he reached the field.
+
+Mrs. Zabriskie stood at the other end of the opening near a tall stump,
+upon which it had been decided that the clock should be placed when the
+moment came for the doctor to show his skill. She had been accorded the
+privilege of setting the clock on this stump, and Violet saw it shining
+in her hand as she paused for a moment to glance back at the circle of
+gentlemen who were awaiting her movements. The hands of the clock stood
+at five minutes to five, though Violet scarcely noted it at the time,
+for Mrs. Zabriskie was passing her and had stopped to say:
+
+"If he is not himself, he cannot be trusted. Watch him carefully and see
+that he does no mischief to himself or others. Ask one of the inspectors
+to stand at his right hand, and stop him if he does not handle his
+pistol properly."
+
+Violet promised, and she passed on, setting the clock upon the stump and
+immediately drawing back to a suitable distance at the right, where she
+stood, wrapped in her long dark cloak. Her face shone ghastly white,
+even in its environment of snow-covered boughs, and noting this, Violet
+wished the minutes fewer between the present moment and the hour of
+five, at which time he was to draw the trigger.
+
+"Dr. Zabriskie," quoth the inspector, "we have endeavoured to make this
+trial a perfectly fair one. You are to have a shot at a small clock
+which has been placed within a suitable distance, and which you are
+expected to hit, guided only by the sound which it will make in striking
+the hour of five. Are you satisfied with the arrangement?"
+
+"Perfectly. Where is my wife?"
+
+"On the other side of the field some ten paces from the stump upon which
+the clock is fixed." He bowed, and his face showed satisfaction.
+
+"May I expect the clock to strike soon?"
+
+"In less than five minutes," was the answer.
+
+"Then let me have the pistol; I wish to become acquainted with its size
+and weight."
+
+We glanced at each other, then across at her.
+
+She made a gesture; it was one of acquiescence.
+
+Immediately the inspector placed the weapon in the blind man's hand.
+It was at once apparent that he understood the instrument, and Violet's
+hopes which had been strong up to this moment, sank at his air of
+confidence.
+
+"Thank God I am blind this hour and cannot see her," fell from his lips,
+then, before the echo of these words had died away, he raised his voice
+and observed calmly enough, considering that he was about to prove
+himself a criminal in order to save himself from being thought a madman:
+
+"Let no one move. I must have my ears free for catching the first stroke
+of the clock." And he raised the pistol before him.
+
+There was a moment of torturing suspense and deep, unbroken silence.
+Violet's eyes were on him so she did not watch the clock, but she was
+suddenly moved by some irresistible impulse to note how Mrs. Zabriskie
+was bearing herself at this critical moment, and casting a hurried
+glance in her direction she perceived her tall figure swaying from side
+to side, as if under an intolerable strain of feeling. Her eyes were on
+the clock, the hands of which seemed to creep with snail-like pace along
+the dial, when unexpectedly, and a full minute before the minute hand
+had reached the stroke of five, Violet caught a movement on her part,
+saw the flash of something round and white show for an instant against
+the darkness of her cloak, and was about to shriek warning to the
+doctor, when the shrill, quick stroke of a clock rang out on the frosty
+air, followed by the ping and flash of a pistol.
+
+A sound of shattered glass, followed by a suppressed cry, told the
+bystanders that the bullet had struck the mark, but before any one could
+move, or they could rid their eyes of the smoke which the wind had blown
+into their faces, there came another sound which made their hair stand
+on end and sent the blood back in terror to their hearts. Another clock
+was striking, which they now perceived was still standing upright on the
+stump where Mrs. Zabriskie had placed it.
+
+Whence came the clock, then, which had struck before the time and been
+shattered for its pains? One quick look told them. On the ground, ten
+paces to the right, lay Zulma Zabriskie, a broken clock at her side, and
+in her breast a bullet which was fast sapping the life from her sweet
+eyes.
+
+They had to tell him, there was such pleading in her looks; and never
+will any of the hearers forget the scream which rang from his lips as
+he realized the truth. Breaking from their midst, he rushed forward, and
+fell at her feet as if guided by some supernatural instinct.
+
+"Zulma," he shrieked, "what is this? Were not my hands dyed deep enough
+in blood that you should make me answerable for your life also?"
+
+Her eyes were closed but she opened them. Looking long and steadily at
+his agonized face, she faltered forth:
+
+"It is not you who have killed me; it is your crime. Had you been
+innocent of Mr. Hasbrouck's death your bullet would never have found my
+heart. Did you think I could survive the proof that you had killed that
+good man?"
+
+"I did it unwittingly. I--"
+
+"Hush!" she commanded, with an awful look, which happily he could not
+see. "I had another motive. I wished to prove to you, even at the cost
+of my life, that I loved you, had always loved you, and not--"
+
+It was now his turn to silence her. His hand crept to her lips, and his
+despairing face turned itself blindly towards those about them.
+
+"Go!" he cried; "leave us! Let me take a last farewell of my dying wife,
+without listeners or spectators."
+
+Consulting the eye of her employer who stood close beside her, and
+seeing no hope in it, Violet fell slowly back. The others, followed, and
+the doctor was left alone with his wife. From the distant position
+they took, they saw her arms creep round his neck, saw her head fall
+confidingly on his breast, then silence settled upon them, and upon all
+nature, the gathering twilight deepening, till the last glow disappeared
+from the heavens above and from the circle of leafless trees which
+enclosed this tragedy from the outside world.
+
+But at last there came a stir, and Dr. Zabriskie, rising up before them
+with the dead body of his wife held closely to his breast, confronted
+them with a countenance so rapturous that he looked like a man
+transfigured.
+
+"I will carry her to the boat," said he. "Not another hand shall
+touch her. She was my true wife, my true wife!" And he towered into an
+attitude of such dignity and passion that for a moment he took on heroic
+proportions and they forgot that he had just proved himself to have
+committed a cold-blooded and ghastly crime.
+
+The stars were shining when the party again took their seats in the
+boat; and if the scene of their crossing to Jersey was impressive, what
+shall be said of the return?
+
+The doctor, as before, sat in the stern, an awesome figure, upon which
+the moon shone with a white radiance that seemed to lift his face out
+of the surrounding darkness and set it like an image of frozen horror
+before their eyes. Against his breast he held the form of his dead wife,
+and now and then Violet saw him stoop as if he were listening for some
+token of life from her set lips. Then he would lift himself again with
+hopelessness stamped upon his features, only to lean forward in renewed
+hope that was again destined to disappointment.
+
+Violet had been so overcome by this tragic end to all her hopes, that
+her employer had been allowed to enter the boat with her. Seated at her
+side in the seat directly in front of the doctor, he watched with
+her these simple tokens of a breaking heart, saying nothing till they
+reached midstream, when true to his instincts for all his awe and
+compassion, he suddenly bent towards him and said:
+
+"Dr. Zabriskie, the mystery of your crime is no longer a mystery to me.
+Listen and see if I do not understand your temptation, and how you, a
+conscientious and God-fearing man, came to slay your innocent neighbour.
+
+"A friend of yours, or so he called himself, had for a long time filled
+your ears with tales tending to make you suspicious of your wife and
+jealous of a certain man whom I will not name. You knew that your friend
+had a grudge against this man, and so for many months turned a deaf ear
+to his insinuations. But finally some change which you detected in your
+wife's bearing or conversation roused your own suspicions, and you
+began to doubt her truth and to curse your blindness, which in a measure
+rendered you helpless. The jealous fever grew and had risen to a high
+point when one night--a memorable night--this friend met you just as you
+were leaving town, and with cruel craft whispered in your ear that the
+man you hated was even then with your wife and that if you would return
+at once to your home you would find him in her company.
+
+"The demon that lurks at the heart of all men, good or bad, thereupon
+took complete possession of you, and you answered this false friend by
+saying that you would not return without a pistol. Whereupon he offered
+to take you to his house and give you his. You consented, and getting
+rid of your servant by sending him to Poughkeepsie with your excuses,
+you entered your friend's automobile.
+
+"You say you bought the pistol, and perhaps you did, but, however
+that may be, you left his house with it in your pocket, and declining
+companionship, walked home, arriving at the Colonnade a little before
+midnight.
+
+"Ordinarily you have no difficulty in recognizing your own doorstep.
+But, being in a heated frame of mind, you walked faster than usual and
+so passed your own house and stopped at that of Mr. Hasbrouck, one door
+beyond. As the entrances of these houses are all alike, there was but
+one way by which you could have made yourself sure that you had reached
+your own dwelling, and that was by feeling for the doctor's sign at the
+side of the door. But you never thought of that. Absorbed in dreams
+of vengeance, your sole impulse was to enter by the quickest means
+possible. Taking out your night key, you thrust it into the lock. It
+fitted, but it took strength to turn it, so much strength that the key
+was twisted and bent by the effort. But this incident, which would have
+attracted your attention at another time, was lost upon you at this
+moment. An entrance had been effected, and you were in too excited a
+frame of mind to notice at what cost, or to detect the small differences
+apparent in the atmosphere and furnishings of the two houses, trifles
+which would have arrested your attention under other circumstances, and
+made you pause before the upper floor had been reached.
+
+"It was while going up the stairs that you took out your pistol, so that
+by the time you arrived at the front room door you held it already drawn
+and cocked in your hand. For, being blind, you feared escape on the part
+of your victim, and so waited for nothing but the sound of a man's voice
+before firing. When, therefore, the unfortunate Mr. Hasbrouck, roused by
+this sudden intrusion, advanced with an exclamation of astonishment,
+you pulled the trigger, and killed him on the spot. It must have been
+immediately upon his fall that you recognized from some word he uttered,
+or from some contact you may have had with your surroundings, that you
+were in the wrong house and had killed the wrong man; for you cried
+out, in evident remorse, 'God! what have I done!' and fled without
+approaching your victim.
+
+"Descending the stairs, you rushed from the house, closing the front
+door behind you and regaining your own without being seen. But here you
+found yourself baffled in your attempted escape, by two things. First,
+by the pistol you still held in your hand, and secondly, by the fact
+that the key upon which you depended for entering your own door was
+so twisted out of shape that you knew it would be useless for you to
+attempt to use it. What did you do in this emergency? You have already
+told us, though the story seemed so improbable at the time, you found
+nobody to believe it but myself. The pistol you flung far away from
+you down the pavement, from which, by one of those rare chances which
+sometimes happen in this world, it was presently picked up by some late
+passer-by of more or less doubtful character. The door offered less
+of an obstacle than you had anticipated; for when you turned again you
+found it, if I am not greatly mistaken, ajar, left so, as we have reason
+to believe, by one who had gone out of it but a few minutes before in a
+state which left him but little master of his actions. It was this fact
+which provided you with an answer when you were asked how you succeeded
+in getting into Mr. Hasbrouck's house after the family had retired for
+the night.
+
+"Astonished at the coincidence, but hailing with gladness the
+deliverance which it offered, you went in and ascended at once into your
+wife's presence; and it was from her lips, and not from those of Mrs.
+Hasbrouck, that the cry arose which startled the neighbourhood and
+prepared men's minds for the tragic words which were shouted a moment
+later from the next house.
+
+"But she who uttered the scream knew of no tragedy save that which
+was taking place in her own breast. She had just repulsed a dastardly
+suitor, and seeing you enter so unexpectedly in a state of unaccountable
+horror and agitation, was naturally stricken with dismay, and thought
+she saw your ghost, or what was worse, a possible avenger; while you,
+having failed to kill the man you sought, and having killed a man
+you esteemed, let no surprise on her part lure you into any dangerous
+self-betrayal. You strove instead to soothe her, and even attempted to
+explain the excitement under which you laboured, by an account of your
+narrow escape at the station, till the sudden alarm from next door
+distracted her attention, and sent both your thoughts and hers in a
+different direction. Not till conscience had fully awakened and the
+horror of your act had had time to tell upon your sensitive nature, did
+you breathe forth those vague confessions, which, not being supported by
+the only explanations which would have made them credible, led her, as
+well as the police, to consider you affected in your mind. Your pride as
+a man and your consideration for her as a woman kept you silent, but did
+not keep the worm from preying upon your heart.
+
+"Am I not correct in my surmises, Dr. Zabriskie, and is not this the
+true explanation of your crime?"
+
+With a strange look, he lifted up his face.
+
+"Hush!" said he; "you will waken her. See how peacefully she sleeps! I
+should not like to have her wakened now, she is so tired, and I--I have
+not watched over her as I should."
+
+Appalled at his gesture, his look, his tone, Violet drew back, and for a
+few minutes no sound was to be heard but the steady dip-dip of the oars
+and the lap-lap of the waters against the boat. Then there came a
+quick uprising, the swaying before her of something dark and tall and
+threatening, and before she could speak or move, or even stretch forth
+her hands to stay him, the seat before her was empty and darkness had
+filled the place where but an instant previous he had sat, a fearsome
+figure, erect and rigid as a sphinx.
+
+What little moonlight there was, only served to show a few rising
+bubbles, marking the spot where the unfortunate man had sunk with his
+much-loved burden. As the widening circles fled farther and farther out,
+the tide drifted the boat away, and the spot was lost which had seen the
+termination of one of earth's saddest tragedies.
+
+END OF PROBLEM VII
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM VIII. MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN
+
+"One more! just one more well paying affair, and I promise to stop;
+really and truly to stop."
+
+"But, Puss, why one more? You have earned the amount you set for
+yourself,--or very nearly,--and though my help is not great, in three
+months I can add enough--"
+
+"No, you cannot, Arthur. You are doing well; I appreciate it; in fact,
+I am just delighted to have you work for me in the way you do, but you
+cannot, in your present position, make enough in three months, or in
+six, to meet the situation as I see it. Enough does not satisfy me.
+The measure must be full, heaped up, and running over. Possible failure
+following promise must be provided for. Never must I feel myself called
+upon to do this kind of thing again. Besides, I have never got over the
+Zabriskie tragedy. It haunts me continually. Something new may help to
+put it out of my head. I feel guilty. I was responsible--"
+
+"No, Puss. I will not have it that you were responsible. Some such end
+was bound to follow a complication like that. Sooner or later he would
+have been driven to shoot himself--"
+
+"But not her."
+
+"No, not her. But do you think she would have given those few minutes
+of perfect understanding with her blind husband for a few years more of
+miserable life?"
+
+Violet made no answer; she was too absorbed in her surprise. Was this
+Arthur? Had a few weeks' work and a close connection with the really
+serious things of life made this change in him? Her face beamed at the
+thought, which seeing, but not understanding what underlay this evidence
+of joy, he bent and kissed her, saying with some of his old nonchalance:
+
+"Forget it, Violet; only don't let any one or anything lead you to
+interest yourself in another affair of the kind. If you do, I shall have
+to consult a certain friend of yours as to the best way of stopping this
+folly. I mention no names. Oh! you need not look so frightened. Only
+behave; that's all."
+
+"He's right," she acknowledged to herself, as he sauntered away;
+"altogether right."
+
+Yet because she wanted the extra money--
+
+The scene invited alarm,--that is, for so young a girl as Violet,
+surveying it from an automobile some time after the stroke of midnight.
+An unknown house at the end of a heavily shaded walk, in the open
+doorway of which could be seen the silhouette of a woman's form leaning
+eagerly forward with arms outstretched in an appeal for help! It
+vanished while she looked, but the effect remained, holding her to
+her seat for one startled moment. This seemed strange, for she had
+anticipated adventure. One is not summoned from a private ball to ride a
+dozen miles into the country on an errand of investigation, without some
+expectation of encountering the mysterious and the tragic. But Violet
+Strange, for all her many experiences, was of a most susceptible nature,
+and for the instant in which that door stood open, with only the memory
+of that expectant figure to disturb the faintly lit vista of the
+hall beyond, she felt that grip upon the throat which comes from an
+indefinable fear which no words can explain and no plummet sound.
+
+But this soon passed. With the setting of her foot to ground, conditions
+changed and her emotions took on a more normal character. The figure of
+a man now stood in the place held by the vanished woman; and it was not
+only that of one she knew but that of one whom she trusted--a friend
+whose very presence gave her courage. With this recognition came a
+better understanding of the situation, and it was with a beaming eye and
+unclouded features that she tripped up the walk to meet the expectant
+figure and outstretched hand of Roger Upjohn.
+
+"You here!" she exclaimed, amid smiles and blushes, as he drew her into
+the hall.
+
+He at once launched forth into explanations mingled with apologies for
+the presumption he had shown in putting her to this inconvenience. There
+was trouble in the house--great trouble. Something had occurred for
+which an explanation must be found before morning, or the happiness
+and honour of more than one person now under this unhappy roof would be
+wrecked. He knew it was late--that she had been obliged to take a long
+and dreary ride alone, but her success with the problem which had once
+come near wrecking his own life had emboldened him to telephone to the
+office and--"But you are in ball-dress," he cried in amazement. "Did you
+think--"
+
+"I came from a ball. Word reached me between the dances. I did not go
+home. I had been bidden to hurry."
+
+He looked his appreciation, but when he spoke it was to say:
+
+"This is the situation. Miss Digby--"
+
+"The lady who is to be married tomorrow?"
+
+"Who hopes to be married tomorrow."
+
+"How, hopes?"
+
+"Who will be married tomorrow, if a certain article lost in this house
+tonight can be found before any of the persons who have been dining here
+leave for their homes."
+
+Violet uttered an exclamation.
+
+"Then, Mr. Cornell," she began--
+
+"Mr. Cornell has our utmost confidence," Roger hastened to interpose.
+"But the article missing is one which he might reasonably desire
+to possess and which he alone of all present had the opportunity of
+securing. You can therefore see why he, with his pride--the pride off
+a man not rich, engaged to marry a woman who is--should declare that
+unless his innocence is established before daybreak, the doors of St.
+Bartholomew will remain shut to-morrow."
+
+"But the article lost--what is it?"
+
+"Miss Digby will give you the particulars. She is waiting to receive
+you," he added with a gesture towards a half-open door at their right.
+
+Violet glanced that way, then cast her looks up and down the hall in
+which they stood.
+
+"Do you know that you have not told me in whose house I am? Not hers, I
+know. She lives in the city."
+
+"And you are twelve miles from Harlem. Miss Strange, you are in the Van
+Broecklyn mansion, famous enough you will acknowledge. Have you never
+been here before?"
+
+"I have been by here, but I recognized nothing in the dark. What an
+exciting place for an investigation!"
+
+"And Mr. Van Broecklyn? Have you never met him?"
+
+"Once, when a child. He frightened me then."
+
+"And may frighten you now; though I doubt it. Time has mellowed him.
+Besides, I have prepared him for what might otherwise occasion him some
+astonishment. Naturally he would not look for just the sort of lady
+investigator I am about to introduce to him."
+
+She smiled. Violet Strange was a very charming young woman, as well as a
+keen prober of odd mysteries.
+
+The meeting between herself and Miss Digby was a sympathetic one. After
+the first inevitable shock which the latter felt at sight of the beauty
+and fashionable appearance of the mysterious little being who was to
+solve her difficulties, her glance, which, under other circumstances,
+might have lingered unduly upon the piquant features and exquisite
+dressing of the fairy-like figure before her, passed at once to Violet's
+eyes, in whose steady depths beamed an intelligence quite at odds with
+the coquettish dimples which so often misled the casual observer in his
+estimation of a character singularly subtle and well-poised.
+
+As for the impression she herself made upon Violet, it was the same she
+made upon everyone. No one could look long at Florence Digby and not
+recognize the loftiness of her spirit and the generous nature of her
+impulses. In person she was tall and as she leaned to take Violet's
+hand, the difference between them brought out the salient points in
+each, to the great admiration of the one onlooker.
+
+Meantime, for all her interest in the case in hand, Violet could not
+help casting a hurried look about her, in gratification of the curiosity
+incited by her entrance into a house signalized from its foundation by
+such a series of tragic events. The result was disappointing. The walls
+were plain, the furniture simple. Nothing suggestive in either, unless
+it was the fact that nothing was new, nothing modern. As it looked in
+the days of Burr and Hamilton so it looked to-day, even to the rather
+startling detail of candles which did duty on every side in place of
+gas.
+
+As Violet recalled the reason for this, the fascination of the past
+seized upon her imagination. There was no knowing where this might have
+carried her, had not the feverish gleam in Miss Digby's eyes warned
+her that the present held its own excitement. Instantly, she was all
+attention and listening with undivided mind to that lady's disclosures.
+
+They were brief and to the following effect:
+
+The dinner which had brought some half-dozen people together in this
+house had been given in celebration of her impending marriage. But it
+was also in a way meant as a compliment to one of the other guests, a
+Mr. Spielhagen, who, during the week, had succeeded in demonstrating to
+a few experts the value of a discovery he had made which would transform
+a great industry.
+
+In speaking of this discovery, Miss Digby did not go into particulars,
+the whole matter being far beyond her understanding; but in stating its
+value she openly acknowledged that it was in the line of Mr. Cornell's
+own work, and one which involved calculations and a formula which, if
+prematurely disclosed, would invalidate the contract Mr. Spielhagen
+hoped to make, and thus destroy his present hopes.
+
+Of this formula but two copies existed. One was locked up in a safe
+deposit vault in Boston, the other he had brought into the house on
+his person, and it was the latter which was now missing, having been
+abstracted during the evening from a manuscript of sixteen or more
+sheets, under circumstances which she would now endeavour to relate.
+
+Mr. Van Broecklyn, their host, had in his melancholy life but one
+interest which could be at all absorbing. This was for explosives.
+As consequence, much of the talk at the dinner-table had been on Mr.
+Spielhagen's discovery, and possible changes it might introduce into
+this especial industry. As these, worked out from a formula kept secret
+from the trade, could not but affect greatly Mr. Cornell's interests,
+she found herself listening intently, when Mr. Van Broecklyn, with an
+apology for his interference, ventured to remark that if Mr. Spielhagen
+had made a valuable discovery in this line, so had he, and one which he
+had substantiated by many experiments. It was not a marketable one, such
+as Mr. Spielhagen's was, but in his work upon the same, and in the tests
+which he had been led to make, he had discovered certain instances
+he would gladly name, which demanded exceptional procedure to be
+successful. If Mr. Spielhagen's method did not allow for these
+exceptions, nor make suitable provision for them, then Mr. Spielhagen's
+method would fail more times than it would succeed. Did it so allow and
+so provide? It would relieve him greatly to learn that it did.
+
+The answer came quickly. Yes, it did. But later and after some further
+conversation, Mr. Spielhagen's confidence seemed to wane, and before
+they left the dinner-table, he openly declared his intention of looking
+over his manuscript again that very night, in order to be sure that the
+formula therein contained duly covered all the exceptions mentioned by
+Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+
+If Mr. Cornell's countenance showed any change at this moment, she for
+one had not noticed it; but the bitterness with which he remarked upon
+the other's good fortune in having discovered this formula of whose
+entire success he had no doubt, was apparent to everybody, and naturally
+gave point to the circumstances which a short time afterward associated
+him with the disappearance of the same.
+
+The ladies (there were two others besides herself) having withdrawn in
+a body to the music-room, the gentlemen all proceeded to the library to
+smoke. Here, conversation loosed from the one topic which had hitherto
+engrossed it, was proceeding briskly, when Mr. Spielhagen, with nervous
+gesture, impulsively looked about him and said:
+
+"I cannot rest till I have run through my thesis again. Where can I find
+a quiet spot? I won't be long; I read very rapidly."
+
+It was for Mr. Van Broecklyn to answer, but no word coming from him,
+every eye turned his way, only to find him sunk in one of those fits of
+abstraction so well known to his friends, and from which no one who has
+this strange man's peace of mind at heart ever presumes to rouse him.
+
+What was to be done? These moods of their singular host sometimes lasted
+half an hour, and Mr. Spielhagen had not the appearance of a man of
+patience. Indeed he presently gave proof of the great uneasiness he was
+labouring under, for noticing a door standing ajar on the other side of
+the room, he remarked to those around him:
+
+"A den! and lighted! Do you see any objection to my shutting myself in
+there for a few minutes?"
+
+No one venturing to reply, he rose, and giving a slight push to the
+door, disclosed a small room exquisitely panelled and brightly lighted,
+but without one article of furniture in it, not even a chair.
+
+"The very place," quoth Mr. Spielhagen, and lifting a light
+cane-bottomed chair from the many standing about, he carried it inside
+and shut the door behind him.
+
+Several minutes passed during which the man who had served at table
+entered with a tray on which were several small glasses evidently
+containing some choice liqueur. Finding his master fixed in one of his
+strange moods, he set the tray down and, pointing to one of the glasses,
+said:
+
+"That is for Mr. Van Broecklyn. It contains his usual quieting powder."
+And urging the gentlemen to help themselves, he quietly left the room.
+Mr. Upjohn lifted the glass nearest him, and Mr. Cornell seemed about to
+do the same when he suddenly reached forward and catching up one farther
+off started for the room in which Mr. Spielhagen had so deliberately
+secluded himself.
+
+Why he did all this--why, above all things, he should reach across the
+tray for a glass instead of taking the one under his hand, he can no
+more explain than why he has followed many another unhappy impulse.
+Nor did he understand the nervous start given by Mr. Spielhagen at his
+entrance, or the stare with which that gentleman took the glass from his
+hand and mechanically drank its contents, till he saw how his hand had
+stretched itself across the sheet of paper he was reading, in an open
+attempt to hide the lines visible between his fingers. Then indeed the
+intruder flushed and withdrew in great embarrassment, fully conscious
+of his indiscretion but not deeply disturbed till Mr. Van Broecklyn,
+suddenly arousing and glancing down at the tray placed very near his
+hand remarked in some surprise: "Dobbs seems to have forgotten me." Then
+indeed, the unfortunate Mr. Cornell realized what he had done. It was
+the glass intended for his host which he had caught up and carried into
+the other room--the glass which he had been told contained a drug.
+Of what folly he had been guilty, and how tame would be any effort at
+excuse!
+
+Attempting none, he rose and with a hurried glance at Mr. Upjohn who
+flushed in sympathy at his distress, he crossed to the door he had
+lately closed upon Mr. Spielhagen. But feeling his shoulder touched
+as his hand pressed the knob, he turned to meet the eye of Mr. Van
+Broecklyn fixed upon him with an expression which utterly confounded
+him.
+
+"Where are you going?" that gentleman asked.
+
+The questioning tone, the severe look, expressive at once of displeasure
+and astonishment, were most disconcerting, but Mr. Cornell managed to
+stammer forth:
+
+"Mr. Spielhagen is in here consulting his thesis. When your man brought
+in the cordial, I was awkward enough to catch up your glass and carry it
+in to. Mr. Spielhagen. He drank it and I--I am anxious to see if it did
+him any harm."
+
+As he uttered the last word he felt Mr. Van Broecklyn's hand slip from
+his shoulder, but no word accompanied the action, nor did his host make
+the least move to follow him into the room.
+
+This was a matter of great regret to him later, as it left him for a
+moment out of the range of every eye, during which he says he simply
+stood in a state of shock at seeing Mr. Spielhagen still sitting there,
+manuscript in hand, but with head fallen forward and eyes closed; dead,
+asleep or--he hardly knew what; the sight so paralysed him.
+
+Whether or not this was the exact truth and the whole truth, Mr. Cornell
+certainly looked very unlike himself as he stepped back into Mr. Van
+Broecklyn's presence; and he was only partially reassured when that
+gentleman protested that there was no real harm in the drug, and that
+Mr. Spielhagen would be all right if left to wake naturally and without
+shock. However, as his present attitude was one of great discomfort,
+they decided to carry him back and lay him on the library lounge. But
+before doing this, Mr. Upjohn drew from his flaccid grasp, the precious
+manuscript, and carrying it into the larger room placed it on a remote
+table, where it remained undisturbed till Mr. Spielhagen, suddenly
+coming to himself at the end of some fifteen minutes, missed the sheets
+from his hand, and bounding up, crossed the room to repossess himself of
+them.
+
+His face, as he lifted them up and rapidly ran through them with
+ever-accumulating anxiety, told them what they had to expect.
+
+The page containing the formula was gone!
+
+Violet now saw her problem.
+
+II
+
+There was no doubt about the loss I have mentioned; all could see that
+page 13 was not there. In vain a second handling of every sheet, the one
+so numbered was not to be found. Page 14 met the eye on the top of
+the pile, and page 12 finished it off at the bottom, but no page 13 in
+between, or anywhere else.
+
+Where had it vanished, and through whose agency had this misadventure
+occurred? No one could say, or, at least, no one there made any attempt
+to do so, though everybody started to look for it.
+
+But where look? The adjoining small room offered no facilities for
+hiding a cigar-end, much less a square of shining white paper. Bare
+walls, a bare floor, and a single chair for furniture, comprised all
+that was to be seen in this direction. Nor could the room in which they
+then stood be thought to hold it, unless it was on the person of some
+one of them. Could this be the explanation of the mystery? No man looked
+his doubts; but Mr. Cornell, possibly divining the general feeling,
+stepped up to Mr. Van Broecklyn and in a cool voice, but with the red
+burning hotly on either cheek, said, so as to be heard by everyone
+present:
+
+"I demand to be searched--at once and thoroughly."
+
+A moment's silence, then the common cry:
+
+"We will all be searched."
+
+"Is Mr. Spielhagen sure that the missing page was with the others when
+he sat down in the adjoining room to read his thesis?" asked their
+perturbed host.
+
+"Very sure," came the emphatic reply. "Indeed, I was just going through
+the formula itself when I fell asleep."
+
+"You are ready to assert this?"
+
+"I am ready to swear it."
+
+Mr. Cornell repeated his request.
+
+"I demand that you make a thorough search of my person. I must be
+cleared, and instantly, of every suspicion," he gravely asserted, "or
+how can I marry Miss Digby to-morrow."
+
+After that there was no further hesitation. One and all subjected
+themselves to the ordeal suggested; even Mr. Spielhagen. But this effort
+was as futile as the rest. The lost page was not found.
+
+What were they to think? What were they to do?
+
+There seemed to be nothing left to do, and yet some further attempt must
+be made towards the recovery of this important formula. Mr. Cornell's
+marriage and Mr. Spielhagen's business success both depended upon its
+being in the latter's hands before six in the morning, when he was
+engaged to hand it over to a certain manufacturer sailing for Europe on
+an early steamer.
+
+Five hours!
+
+Had Mr. Van Broecklyn a suggestion to offer? No, he was as much at sea
+as the rest.
+
+Simultaneously look crossed look. Blankness was on every face.
+
+"Let us call the ladies," suggested one.
+
+It was done, and however great the tension had been before, it was even
+greater when Miss Digby stepped upon the scene. But she was not a woman
+to be shaken from her poise even by a crisis of this importance. When
+the dilemma had been presented to her and the full situation grasped,
+she looked first at Mr. Cornell and then at Mr. Spielhagen, and quietly
+said:
+
+"There is but one explanation possible of this matter. Mr. Spielhagen
+will excuse me, but he is evidently mistaken in thinking that he saw the
+lost page among the rest. The condition into which he was thrown by the
+unaccustomed drug he had drank, made him liable to hallucinations. I
+have not the least doubt he thought he had been studying the formula
+at the time he dropped off to sleep. I have every confidence in
+the gentleman's candour. But so have I in that of Mr. Cornell," she
+supplemented, with a smile.
+
+An exclamation from Mr. Van Broecklyn and a subdued murmur from all but
+Mr. Spielhagen testified to the effect of this suggestion, and there
+is no saying what might have been the result if Mr. Cornell had not
+hurriedly put in this extraordinary and most unexpected protest:
+
+"Miss Digby has my gratitude," said he, "for a confidence which I hope
+to prove to be deserved. But I must say this for Mr. Spielhagen. He was
+correct in stating that he was engaged in looking over his formula when
+I stepped into his presence with the glass of cordial. If you were not
+in a position to see the hurried way in which his hand instinctively
+spread itself over the page he was reading, I was; and if that does not
+seem conclusive to you, then I feel bound to state that in unconsciously
+following this movement of his, I plainly saw the number written on the
+top of the page, and that number was--13."
+
+A loud exclamation, this time from Spielhagen himself, announced his
+gratitude and corresponding change of attitude toward the speaker.
+
+"Wherever that damned page has gone," he protested, advancing towards
+Cornell with outstretched hand, "you have nothing to do with its
+disappearance."
+
+Instantly all constraint fled, and every countenance took on a relieved
+expression. But the problem remained.
+
+Suddenly those very words passed some one's lips, and with their
+utterance Mr. Upjohn remembered how at an extraordinary crisis in his
+own life he had been helped and an equally difficult problem settled,
+by a little lady secretly attached to a private detective agency. If she
+could only be found and hurried here before morning, all might yet be
+well. He would make the effort. Such wild schemes sometimes work. He
+telephoned to the office and--
+
+Was there anything else Miss Strange would like to know?
+
+III
+
+Miss Strange, thus appealed to, asked where the gentlemen were now.
+
+She was told that they were still all together in the library; the
+ladies had been sent home.
+
+"Then let us go to them," said Violet, hiding under a smile her great
+fear that here was an affair which might very easily spell for her that
+dismal word, failure.
+
+So great was that fear that under all ordinary circumstances she would
+have had no thought for anything else in the short interim between
+this stating of the problem and her speedy entrance among the persons
+involved. But the circumstances of this case were so far from ordinary,
+or rather let me put it in this way, the setting of the case was so very
+extraordinary, that she scarcely thought of the problem before her, in
+her great interest in the house through whose rambling halls she was
+being so carefully guided. So much that was tragic and heartrending had
+occurred here. The Van Broecklyn name, the Van Broecklyn history, above
+all the Van Broecklyn tradition, which made the house unique in the
+country's annals (of which more hereafter), all made an appeal to her
+imagination, and centred her thoughts on what she saw about her. There
+was door which no man ever opened--had never opened since Revolutionary
+times--should she see it? Should she know it if she did see it? Then Mr.
+Van Broecklyn himself! just to meet him, under any conditions and in
+any place, was an event. But to meet him here, under the pall of his
+own mystery! No wonder she had no words for her companions, or that
+her thoughts clung to this anticipation in wonder and almost fearsome
+delight.
+
+His story was a well-known one. A bachelor and a misanthrope, he lived
+absolutely alone save for a large entourage of servants, all men and
+elderly ones at that. He never visited. Though he now and then, as on
+this occasion, entertained certain persons under his roof, he declined
+every invitation for himself, avoiding even, with equal strictness, all
+evening amusements of whatever kind, which would detain him in the city
+after ten at night. Perhaps this was to ensure no break in his rule of
+life never to sleep out of his own bed. Though he was a man well over
+fifty he had not spent, according to his own statement, but two nights
+out of his own bed since his return from Europe in early boyhood, and
+those were in obedience to a judicial summons which took him to Boston.
+
+This was his main eccentricity, but he had another which is apparent
+enough from what has already been said. He avoided women. If thrown in
+with them during his short visits into town, he was invariably polite
+and at times companionable, but he never sought them out, nor had
+gossip, contrary to its usual habit, ever linked his name with one of
+the sex.
+
+Yet he was a man of more than ordinary attraction. His features were
+fine and his figure impressive. He might have been the cynosure of all
+eyes had he chosen to enter crowded drawing-rooms, or even to frequent
+public assemblages, but having turned his back upon everything of the
+kind in his youth, he had found it impossible to alter his habits with
+advancing years; nor was he now expected to. The position he had taken
+was respected. Leonard Van Broecklyn was no longer criticized.
+
+Was there any explanation for this strangely self-centred life? Those
+who knew him best seemed to think so. In the first place he had sprung
+from an unfortunate stock. Events of unusual and tragic nature had
+marked the family of both parents. Nor had his parents themselves
+been exempt from this seeming fatality. Antagonistic in tastes and
+temperament, they had dragged on an unhappy existence in the old home,
+till both natures rebelled, and a separation ensued which not only
+disunited their lives but sent them to opposite sides of the globe
+never to return again. At least, that was the inference drawn from
+the peculiar circumstances attending the event. On the morning of one
+never-to-be-forgotten day, John Van Broecklyn, the grandfather of the
+present representative of the family, found the following note from his
+son lying on the library table:
+
+"FATHER:
+
+"Life in this house, or any house, with her is no longer endurable.
+One of us must go. The mother should not be separated from her child.
+Therefore it is I whom you will never see again. Forget me, but be
+considerate of her and the boy.
+
+"WILLIAM."
+
+Six hours later another note was found, this time from the wife:
+
+"FATHER:
+
+"Tied to a rotting corpse what does one do? Lop off one's arm if
+necessary to rid one of the contact. As all love between your son and
+myself is dead, I can no longer live within the sound of his voice. As
+this is his home, he is the one to remain in it. May our child reap the
+benefit of his mother's loss and his father's affection.
+
+"RHODA."
+
+Both were gone, and gone forever. Simultaneous in their departure, they
+preserved each his own silence and sent no word back. If the one went
+east and the other west, they may have met on the other side of the
+globe, but never again in the home which sheltered their boy. For him
+and for his grandfather they had sunk from sight in the great sea of
+humanity, leaving them stranded on an isolated and mournful shore. The
+grand-father steeled himself to the double loss, for the child's sake;
+but the boy of eleven succumbed. Few of the world's great sufferers, of
+whatever age or condition, have mourned as this child mourned, or shown
+the effects of his grief so deeply or so long. Not till he had passed
+his majority did the line, carved in one day in his baby forehead, lose
+any of its intensity; and there are those who declare that even later
+than that, the midnight stillness of the house was disturbed from time
+to time by his muffled shriek of "Mother! Mother!", sending the servants
+from the house, and adding one more horror to the many which clung about
+this accursed mansion.
+
+Of this cry Violet had heard, and it was that and the door--But I have
+already told you about the door which she was still looking for,
+when her two companions suddenly halted, and she found herself on the
+threshold of the library, in full view of Mr. Van Broecklyn and his two
+guests.
+
+Slight and fairy-like in figure, with an air of modest reserve more in
+keeping with her youth and dainty dimpling beauty than with her errand,
+her appearance produced an astonishment none of which the gentlemen were
+able to disguise. This the clever detective, with a genius for social
+problems and odd elusive cases! This darling of the ball-room in satin
+and pearls! Mr. Spielhagen glanced at Mr. Cornell, and Mr. Cornell at
+Mr. Spielhagen, and both at Mr. Upjohn, in very evident distrust. As for
+Violet, she had eyes only for Mr. Van Broecklyn who stood before her in
+a surprise equal to that of the others but with more restraint in its
+expression.
+
+She was not disappointed in him. She had expected to see a man, reserved
+almost to the point of austerity. And she found his first look even more
+awe-compelling than her imagination had pictured; so much so indeed,
+that her resolution faltered, and she took a quick step backward; which
+seeing, he smiled and her heart and hopes grew warm again. That he could
+smile, and smile with absolute sweetness, was her great comfort when
+later--But I am introducing you too hurriedly to the catastrophe. There
+is much to be told first.
+
+I pass over the preliminaries, and come at once to the moment when
+Violet, having listened to a repetition of the full facts, stood with
+downcast eyes before these gentlemen, complaining in some alarm to
+herself: "They expect me to tell them now and without further search
+or parley just where this missing page is. I shall have to balk that
+expectation without losing their confidence. But how?"
+
+Summoning up her courage and meeting each inquiring eye with a look
+which seemed to carry a different message to each, she remarked very
+quietly:
+
+"This is not a matter to guess at. I must have time and I must look a
+little deeper into the facts just given me. I presume that the table
+I see over there is the one upon which Mr. Upjohn laid the manuscript
+during Mr. Spielhagen's unconsciousness."
+
+All nodded.
+
+"Is it--I mean the table--in the same condition it was then? Has nothing
+been taken from it except the manuscript?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Then the missing page is not there," she smiled, pointing to its bare
+top. A pause, during which she stood with her gaze fixed on the floor
+before her. She was thinking and thinking hard.
+
+Suddenly she came to a decision. Addressing Mr. Upjohn she asked if he
+were quite sure that in taking the manuscript from Mr. Spielhagen's hand
+he had neither disarranged nor dropped one of its pages.
+
+The answer was unequivocal.
+
+"Then," she declared, with quiet assurance and a steady meeting with her
+own of every eye, "as the thirteenth page was not found among the others
+when they were taken from this table, nor on the persons of either Mr.
+Cornell or Mr. Spielhagen, it is still in that inner room."
+
+"Impossible!" came from every lip, each in a different tone. "That room
+is absolutely empty."
+
+"May I have a look at its emptiness?" she asked, with a naive glance at
+Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+
+"There is positively nothing in the room but the chair Mr. Spielhagen
+sat on," objected that gentleman with a noticeable air of reluctance.
+
+"Still, may I not have a look at it?" she persisted, with that disarming
+smile she kept for great occasions.
+
+Mr. Van Broecklyn bowed. He could not refuse a request so urged, but his
+step was slow and his manner next to ungracious as he led the way to the
+door of the adjoining room and threw it open.
+
+Just what she had been told to expect! Bare walls and floors and an
+empty chair! Yet she did not instantly withdraw, but stood silently
+contemplating the panelled wainscoting surrounding her, as though she
+suspected it of containing some secret hiding-place not apparent to the
+eye.
+
+Mr. Van Broecklyn, noting this, hastened to say:
+
+"The walls are sound, Miss Strange. They contain no hidden cupboards."
+
+"And that door?" she asked, pointing to a portion of the wainscoting so
+exactly like the rest that only the most experienced eye could detect
+the line of deeper colour which marked an opening.
+
+For an instant Mr. Van Broecklyn stood rigid, then the immovable pallor,
+which was one of his chief characteristics, gave way to a deep flush as
+he explained:
+
+"There was a door there once; but it has been permanently closed. With
+cement," he forced himself to add, his countenance losing its evanescent
+colour till it shone ghastly again in the strong light.
+
+With difficulty Violet preserved her show of composure. "The door!" she
+murmured to herself. "I have found it. The great historic door!" But her
+tone was light as she ventured to say:
+
+"Then it can no longer be opened by your hand or any other?"
+
+"It could not be opened with an axe."
+
+Violet sighed in the midst of her triumph. Her curiosity had
+been satisfied, but the problem she had been set to solve looked
+inexplicable. But she was not one to yield easily to discouragement.
+Marking the disappointment approaching to disdain in every eye but Mr.
+Upjohn's, she drew herself up--(she had not far to draw) and made this
+final proposal.
+
+"A sheet of paper," she remarked, "of the size of this one cannot be
+spirited away, or dissolved into thin air. It exists; it is here; and
+all we want is some happy thought in order to find it. I acknowledge
+that that happy thought has not come to me yet, but sometimes I get
+it in what may seem to you a very odd way. Forgetting myself, I try to
+assume the individuality of the person who has worked the mystery. If I
+can think with his thoughts, I possibly may follow him in his actions.
+In this case I should like to make believe for a few moments that I am
+Mr. Spielhagen" (with what a delicious smile she said this) "I should
+like to hold his thesis in my hand and be interrupted in my reading by
+Mr. Cornell offering his glass of cordial; then I should like to nod and
+slip off mentally into a deep sleep. Possibly in that sleep the dream
+may come which will clarify the whole situation. Will you humour me so
+far?"
+
+A ridiculous concession, but finally she had her way; the farce was
+enacted and they left her as she had requested them to do, alone with
+her dreams in the small room.
+
+Suddenly they heard her cry out, and in another moment she appeared
+before them, the picture of excitement.
+
+"Is this chair standing exactly as it did when Mr. Spielhagen occupied
+it?" she asked.
+
+"No," said Mr. Upjohn, "it faced the other way."
+
+She stepped back and twirled the chair about with her disengaged hand.
+
+"So?"
+
+Mr. Upjohn and Mr. Spielhagen both nodded, so did the others when she
+glanced at them.
+
+With a sign of ill-concealed satisfaction, she drew their attention to
+herself; then eagerly cried:
+
+"Gentlemen, look here!"
+
+Seating herself, she allowed her whole body to relax till she presented
+the picture of one calmly asleep. Then, as they continued to gaze at
+with fascinated eyes, not knowing what to expect, they saw something
+white escape from her lap and slide across the floor till it touched and
+was stayed by the wainscot. It was the top page of the manuscript she
+held, and as some inkling of the truth reached their astonished minds,
+she sprang impetuously to her feet and, pointing to the fallen sheet,
+cried:
+
+"Do you understand now? Look where it lies and then look here!"
+
+She had bounded towards the wall and was now on her knees pointing to
+the bottom of the wainscot, just a few inches to the left of the fallen
+page.
+
+"A crack!" she cried, "under what was once the door. It's a very thin
+one, hardly perceptible to the eye. But see!" Here she laid her finger
+on the fallen paper and drawing it towards her, pushed it carefully
+against the lower edge of the wainscot. Half of it at once disappeared.
+
+"I could easily slip it all through," she assured them, withdrawing
+the sheet and leaping to her feet in triumph. "You know now where the
+missing page lies, Mr. Spielhagen. All that remains is for Mr. Van
+Broecklyn to get it for you."
+
+IV
+
+The cries of mingled astonishment and relief which greeted this simple
+elucidation of the mystery were broken by a curiously choked, almost
+unintelligible, cry. It came from the man thus appealed to, who,
+unnoticed by them all, had started at her first word and gradually, as
+action followed action, withdrawn himself till he now stood alone and in
+an attitude almost of defiance behind the large table in the centre of
+the library.
+
+"I am sorry," he began, with a brusqueness which gradually toned
+down into a forced urbanity as he beheld every eye fixed upon him in
+amazement, "that circumstances forbid my being of assistance to you in
+this unfortunate matter. If the paper lies where you say, and I see no
+other explanation of its loss, I am afraid it will have to remain there
+for this night at least. The cement in which that door is embedded
+is thick as any wall; it would take men with pickaxes, possibly with
+dynamite, to make a breach there wide enough for any one to reach in.
+And we are far from any such help."
+
+In the midst of the consternation caused by these words, the clock
+on the mantel behind his back rang out the hour. It was but a double
+stroke, but that meant two hours after midnight and had the effect of a
+knell in the hearts of those most interested.
+
+"But I am expected to give that formula into the hands of our manager
+before six o'clock in the morning. The steamer sails at a quarter
+after."
+
+"Can't you reproduce a copy of it from memory?" some one asked; "and
+insert it in its proper place among the pages you hold there?"
+
+"The paper would not be the same. That would lead to questions and the
+truth would come out. As the chief value of the process contained in
+that formula lies in its secrecy, no explanation I could give would
+relieve me from the suspicions which an acknowledgment of the existence
+of a third copy, however well hidden, would entail. I should lose my
+great opportunity."
+
+Mr. Cornell's state of mind can be imagined. In an access of mingled
+regret and despair, he cast a glance at Violet, who, with a nod of
+understanding, left the little room in which they still stood, and
+approached Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+
+Lifting up her head,--for he was very tall,--and instinctively rising on
+her toes the nearer to reach his ear, she asked in a cautious whisper:
+
+"Is there no other way of reaching that place?"
+
+She acknowledged afterwards, that for one moment her heart stood still
+from fear, such a change took place in his face, though she says he did
+not move a muscle. Then, just when she was expecting from him some harsh
+or forbidding word, he wheeled abruptly away from her and crossing to a
+window at his side, lifted the shade and looked out. When he returned,
+he was his usual self so far as she could see.
+
+"There is a way," he now confided to her in a tone as low as her own,
+"but it can only be taken by a child."
+
+"Not by me?" she asked, smiling down at her own childish proportions.
+
+For an instant he seemed taken aback, then she saw his hand begin to
+tremble and his lips twitch. Somehow--she knew not why--she began to
+pity him, and asked herself as she felt rather than saw the struggle in
+his mind, that here was a trouble which if once understood would greatly
+dwarf that of the two men in the room behind them.
+
+"I am discreet," she whisperingly declared. "I have heard the history
+of that door--how it was against the tradition of the family to have
+it opened. There must have been some very dreadful reason. But old
+superstitions do not affect me, and if you will allow me to take the way
+you mention, I will follow your bidding exactly, and will not trouble
+myself about anything but the recovery of this paper, which must lie
+only a little way inside that blocked-up door."
+
+Was his look one of rebuke at her presumption, or just the constrained
+expression of a perturbed mind? Probably, the latter, for while she
+watched him for some understanding of his mood, he reached out his hand
+and touched one of the satin folds crossing her shoulder.
+
+"You would soil this irretrievably," said he.
+
+"There is stuff in the stores for another," she smiled. Slowly his touch
+deepened into pressure. Watching him she saw the crust of some old fear
+or dominant superstition melt under her eyes, and was quite prepared,
+when he remarked, with what for him was a lightsome air:
+
+"I will buy the stuff, if you will dare the darkness and intricacies of
+our old cellar. I can give you no light. You will have to feel your way
+according to my direction."
+
+"I am ready to dare anything."
+
+He left her abruptly.
+
+"I will warn Miss Digby," he called back. "She shall go with you as far
+as the cellar."
+
+V
+
+Violet in her short career as an investigator of mysteries had been in
+many a situation calling for more than womanly nerve and courage. But
+never--or so it seemed to her at the time--had she experienced a greater
+depression of spirit than when she stood with Miss Digby before a small
+door at the extreme end of the cellar, and understood that here was her
+road--a road which once entered, she must take alone.
+
+First, it was such a small door! No child older than eleven could
+possibly squeeze through it. But she was of the size of a child of
+eleven and might possibly manage that difficulty.
+
+Secondly: there are always some unforeseen possibilities in every
+situation, and though she had listened carefully to Mr. Van Broecklyn's
+directions and was sure that she knew them by heart, she wished she had
+kissed her father more tenderly in leaving him that night for the ball,
+and that she had not pouted so undutifully at some harsh stricture he
+had made. Did this mean fear? She despised the feeling if it did.
+
+Thirdly: She hated darkness. She knew this when she offered herself for
+this undertaking; but she was in a bright room at the moment and only
+imagined what she must now face as a reality. But one jet had been lit
+in the cellar and that near the entrance. Mr. Van Broecklyn seemed not
+to need light, even in his unfastening of the small door which Violet
+was sure had been protected by more than one lock.
+
+Doubt, shadow, and a solitary climb between unknown walls, with only
+a streak of light for her goal, and the clinging pressure of Florence
+Digby's hand on her own for solace--surely the prospect was one to tax
+the courage of her young heart to its limit. But she had promised, and
+she would fulfill. So with a brave smile she stooped to the little door,
+and in another moment had started her journey.
+
+For journey the shortest distance may seem when every inch means a
+heart-throb and one grows old in traversing a foot. At first the way
+was easy; she had but to crawl up a slight incline with the comforting
+consciousness that two people were within reach of her voice, almost
+within sound of her beating heart. But presently she came to a turn,
+beyond which her fingers failed to reach any wall on her left. Then came
+a step up which she stumbled, and farther on a short flight, each tread
+of which she had been told to test before she ventured to climb it, lest
+the decay of innumerable years should have weakened the wood too much to
+bear her weight. One, two, three, four, five steps! Then a landing with
+an open space beyond. Half of her journey was done. Here she felt
+she could give a minute to drawing her breath naturally, if the air,
+unchanged in years, would allow her to do so. Besides, here she had been
+enjoined to do a certain thing and to do it according to instructions.
+Three matches had been given her and a little night candle. Denied all
+light up to now, it was at this point she was to light her candle and
+place it on the floor, so that in returning she should not miss the
+staircase and get a fall. She had promised to do this, and was only too
+happy to see a spark of light scintillate into life in the immeasurable
+darkness.
+
+She was now in a great room long closed to the world, where once
+officers in Colonial wars had feasted, and more than one council had
+been held. A room, too, which had seen more than one tragic happening,
+as its almost unparalleled isolation proclaimed. So much Mr. Van
+Broecklyn had told her; but she was warned to be careful in traversing
+it and not upon any pretext to swerve aside from the right-hand wall
+till she came to a huge mantelpiece. This passed, and a sharp corner
+turned, she ought to see somewhere in the dim spaces before her a streak
+of vivid light shining through the crack at the bottom of the blocked-up
+door. The paper should be somewhere near this streak.
+
+All simple, all easy of accomplishment, if only that streak of light
+were all she was likely to see or think of. If the horror which was
+gripping her throat should not take shape! If things would remain
+shrouded in impenetrable darkness, and not force themselves in shadowy
+suggestion upon her excited fancy! But the blackness of the passage-way
+through which she had just struggled was not to be found here. Whether
+it was the effect of that small flame flickering at the top of the
+staircase behind her, or of some change in her own powers of seeing,
+surely there was a difference in her present outlook. Tall shapes were
+becoming visible--the air was no longer blank--she could see--Then
+suddenly she saw why. In the wall high up on her right was a window.
+It was small and all but invisible, being covered on the outside with
+vines, and on the inside with the cobwebs of a century. But some small
+gleams from the star-light night came through, making phantasms out of
+ordinary things, which unseen were horrible enough, and half seen choked
+her heart with terror.
+
+"I cannot bear it," she whispered to herself even while creeping
+forward, her hand upon the wall. "I will close my eyes" was her next
+thought. "I will make my own darkness," and with a spasmodic forcing of
+her lids together, she continued to creep on, passing the mantelpiece,
+where she knocked against something which fell with an awful clatter.
+
+This sound, followed as it was by that of smothered voices from the
+excited group awaiting the result of her experiment from behind the
+impenetrable wall she should be nearing now if she had followed her
+instructions aright, freed her instantly from her fancies; and opening
+her eyes once more, she cast a look ahead, and to her delight, saw but a
+few steps away, the thin streak of bright light which marked the end of
+her journey.
+
+It took her but a moment after that to find the missing page, and
+picking it up in haste from the dusty floor, she turned herself quickly
+about and joyfully began to retrace her steps. Why then, was it that in
+the course of a few minutes more her voice suddenly broke into a wild,
+unearthly shriek, which ringing with terror burst the bounds of that
+dungeon-like room, and sank, a barbed shaft, into the breasts of those
+awaiting the result of her doubtful adventure, at either end of this
+dread no-thoroughfare.
+
+What had happened?
+
+If they had thought to look out, they would have seen that the
+moon--held in check by a bank of cloud occupying half the heavens--had
+suddenly burst its bounds and was sending long bars of revealing light
+into every uncurtained window.
+
+VI
+
+Florence Digby, in her short and sheltered life, had possibly never
+known any very great or deep emotion. But she touched the bottom of
+extreme terror at that moment, as with her ears still thrilling with
+Violet's piercing cry, she turned to look at Mr. Van Broecklyn, and
+beheld the instantaneous wreck it had made of this seemingly strong
+man. Not till he came to lie in his coffin would he show a more ghastly
+countenance; and trembling herself almost to the point of falling,
+caught him by the arm and sought to read his face what had happened.
+Something disastrous she was sure; something which he had feared and was
+partially prepared for, yet which in happening had crushed him. Was it
+a pitfall into which the poor little lady had fallen? If so--But he is
+speaking--mumbling low words to himself. Some of them she can hear. He
+is reproaching himself--repeating over and over that he should never
+have taken such a chance; that he should have remembered her youth--the
+weakness of a young girl's nerve. He had been mad, and now--and now--
+
+With the repetition of this word his murmuring ceased. All his energies
+were now absorbed in listening at the low door separating him from what
+he was agonizing to know--a door impossible to enter, impossible to
+enlarge--a barrier to all help--an opening whereby sound might pass but
+nothing else, save her own small body, now lying--where?
+
+"Is she hurt?" faltered Florence, stooping, herself, to listen. "Can you
+hear anything--anything?"
+
+For an instant he did not answer; every faculty was absorbed in the one
+sense; then slowly and in gasps he began to mutter:
+
+"I think--I hear--something. Her step--no, no, no step. All is as quiet
+as death; not a sound, not a breath--she has fainted. O God! O God! Why
+this calamity on top of all!"
+
+He had sprung to his feet at the utterance this invocation, but next
+moment was down on knees again, listening--listening.
+
+Never was silence more profound; they were hearkening for murmurs from a
+tomb. Florence began to sense the full horror of it all, and was swaying
+helplessly when Mr. Van Broecklyn impulsively lifted his hand in an
+admonitory Hush! and through the daze of her faculties a small far sound
+began to make itself heard, growing louder as she waited, then becoming
+faint again, then altogether ceasing only to renew itself once more,
+till it resolved into an approaching step, faltering in its course, but
+coming ever nearer and nearer.
+
+"She's safe! She's not hurt!" sprang from Florence's lips in
+inexpressible relief; and expecting Mr. Van Broecklyn to show an equal
+joy, she turned towards him, with the cheerful cry,
+
+"Now if she has been so fortunate as to that missing page, we shall all
+be repaid for our fright."
+
+A movement on his part, a shifting of position which brought him finally
+to his feet, but he gave no other proof of having heard her, nor did
+his countenance mirror her relief. "It is as if he dreaded, instead of
+hailed, her return," was Florence's inward comment as she watched him
+involuntarily recoil at each fresh token of Violet's advance.
+
+Yet because this seemed so very unnatural, she persisted in her efforts
+to lighten the situation, and when he made no attempt to encourage
+Violet in her approach, she herself stooped and called out a cheerful
+welcome which must have rung sweetly in the poor little detective's
+ears.
+
+A sorry sight was Violet, when, helped by Florence, she finally crawled
+into view through the narrow opening and stood once again on the cellar
+floor. Pale, trembling, and soiled with the dust of years, she presented
+a helpless figure enough, till the joy in Florence's face recalled some
+of her spirit, and, glancing down at her hand in which a sheet of paper
+was visible, she asked for Mr. Spielhagen.
+
+"I've got the formula," she said. "If you will bring him, I will hand it
+over to him here."
+
+Not a word of her adventure; nor so much as one glance at Mr. Van
+Broecklyn, standing far back in the shadows.
+
+Nor was she more communicative, when, the formula restored and
+everything made right with Mr. Spielhagen, they all came together again
+in the library for a final word. "I was frightened by the silence
+and the darkness, and so cried out," she explained in answer to their
+questions. "Any one would have done so who found himself alone in
+so musty a place," she added, with an attempt at lightsomeness which
+deepened the pallor on Mr. Van Broecklyn's cheek, already sufficiently
+noticeable to have been remarked upon by more than one.
+
+"No ghosts?" laughed Mr. Cornell, too happy in the return of his hopes
+to be fully sensible of the feelings of those about him. "No whispers
+from impalpable lips or touches from spectre hands? Nothing to explain
+the mystery of that room long shut up that even Mr. Van Broecklyn
+declares himself ignorant of its secret?"
+
+"Nothing," returned Violet, showing her dimples in full force now.
+
+"If Miss Strange had any such experiences--if she has anything to tell
+worthy of so marked a curiosity, she will tell it now," came from the
+gentleman just alluded to, in tones so stern and strange that all show
+of frivolity ceased on the instant. "Have you anything to tell, Miss
+Strange?"
+
+Greatly startled, she regarded him with widening eyes for a moment, then
+with a move towards the door, remarked, with a general look about her:
+
+"Mr. Van Broecklyn knows his own house, and doubtless can relate its
+histories if he will. I am a busy little body who having finished my
+work am now ready to return home, there to wait for the next problem
+which an indulgent fate may offer me."
+
+She was near the threshold--she was about to take her leave, when
+suddenly she felt two hands fall on her shoulder, and turning, met the
+eyes of Mr. Van Broecklyn burning into her own.
+
+"You saw!" dropped in an almost inaudible whisper from his lips.
+
+The shiver which shook her answered him better than any word.
+
+With an exclamation of despair, he withdrew his hands, and facing the
+others now standing together in a startled group, he said, as soon as he
+could recover some of his self-possession:
+
+"I must ask for another hour of your company. I can no longer keep my
+sorrow to myself. A dividing line has just been drawn across my life,
+and I must have the sympathy of someone who knows my past, or I shall
+go mad in my self-imposed solitude. Come back, Miss Strange. You of all
+others have the prior right to hear."
+
+VII
+
+"I shall have to begin," said he, when they were all seated and ready to
+listen, "by giving you some idea, not so much of the family tradition,
+as of the effect of this tradition upon all who bore the name of Van
+Broecklyn. This is not the only house, even in America, which contains
+a room shut away from intrusion. In England there are many. But there is
+this difference between most of them and ours. No bars or locks forcibly
+held shut the door we were forbidden to open. The command was enough;
+that and the superstitious fear which such a command, attended by a long
+and unquestioning obedience, was likely to engender.
+
+"I know no more than you do why some early ancestor laid his ban upon
+this room. But from my earliest years I was given to understand that
+there was one latch in the house which was never to be lifted; that any
+fault would be forgiven sooner than that; that the honour of the whole
+family stood in the way of disobedience, and that I was to preserve that
+honour to my dying day. You will say that all this is fantastic, and
+wonder that sane people in these modern times should subject themselves
+to such a ridiculous restriction, especially when no good reason was
+alleged, and the very source of the tradition from which it sprung
+forgotten. You are right; but if you look long into human nature,
+you will see that the bonds which hold the firmest are not material
+ones--that an idea will make a man and mould a character--that it lies
+at the source of all heroisms and is to be courted or feared as the case
+may be.
+
+"For me it possessed a power proportionate to my loneliness. I don't
+think there was ever a more lonely child. My father and mother were
+so unhappy in each other's companionship that one or other of them was
+almost always away. But I saw little of either even when they were at
+home. The constraint in their attitude towards each other affected their
+conduct towards me. I have asked myself more than once if either of them
+had any real affection for me. To my father I spoke of her; to her
+of him; and never pleasurably. This I am forced to say, or you cannot
+understand my story. Would to God I could tell another tale! Would
+to God I had such memories as other men have of a father's clasp, a
+mother's kiss--but no! my grief, already profound, might have become
+abysmal. Perhaps it is best as it is; only, I might have been a
+different child, and made for myself a different fate--who knows.
+
+"As it was, I was thrown almost entirely upon my own resources for any
+amusement. This led me to a discovery I made one day. In a far part of
+the cellar behind some heavy casks, I found a little door. It was so
+low--so exactly fitted to my small body, that I had the greatest desire
+to enter it. But I could not get around the casks. At last an expedient
+occurred to me. We had an old servant who came nearer loving me than any
+one else. One day when I chanced to be alone in the cellar, I took out
+my ball and began throwing it about. Finally it landed behind the casks,
+and I ran with a beseeching cry to Michael, to move them.
+
+"It was a task requiring no little strength and address, but he managed,
+after a few herculean efforts, to shift them aside and I saw with
+delight, my way opened to that mysterious little door. But I did not
+approach it then; some instinct deterred me. But when the opportunity
+came for me to venture there alone, I did so, in the most adventurous
+spirit, and began my operations by sliding behind the casks and testing
+the handle of the little door. It turned, and after a pull or two the
+door yielded. With my heart in my mouth, I stooped and peered in. I
+could see nothing--a black hole and nothing more. This caused me a
+moment's hesitation. I was afraid of the dark--had always been. But
+curiosity and the spirit of adventure triumphed. Saying to myself that I
+was Robinson Crusoe exploring the cave, I crawled in, only to find that
+I had gained nothing. It was as dark inside as it had looked to be from
+without.
+
+"There was no fun in this, so I crawled back, and when I tried the
+experiment again, it was with a bit of candle in my hand, and a
+surreptitious match or two. What I saw, when with a very trembling
+little hand I had lighted one of the matches, would have been
+disappointing to most boys, but not to me. The litter and old boards
+I saw in odd corners about me were full of possibilities, while in the
+dimness beyond I seemed to perceive a sort of staircase which might
+lead--I do not think I made any attempt to answer that question even
+in my own mind, but when, after some hesitation and a sense of great
+daring, I finally crept up those steps, I remember very well my
+sensation at finding myself in front of a narrow closed door. It
+suggested too vividly the one in Grandfather's little room--the door in
+the wainscot which we were never to open. I had my first real trembling
+fit here, and at once fascinated and repelled by this obstruction I
+stumbled and lost my candle, which, going out in the fall, left me in
+total darkness and a very frightened state of mind. For my imagination
+which had been greatly stirred by my own vague thoughts of the forbidden
+room, immediately began to people the space about me with ghoulish
+figures. How should I escape them, how ever reach my own little room
+again undetected and in safety?
+
+"But these terrors, deep as they were, were nothing to the real fright
+which seized me when, the darkness finally braved, and the way found
+back into the bright, wide-open halls of the house, I became conscious
+of having dropped something besides the candle. My match-box was
+gone--not my match-box, but my grandfather's which I had found lying on
+his table and carried off on this adventure, in all the confidence of
+irresponsible youth. To make use of it for a little while, trusting to
+his not missing it in the confusion I had noticed about the house that
+morning, was one thing; to lose it was another. It was no common
+box. Made of gold and cherished for some special reason well known to
+himself, I had often hear him say that some day I would appreciate its
+value, and be glad to own it. And I had left it in that hole and at
+any minute he might miss it--possibly ask for it! The day was one of
+torment. My mother was away or shut up in her room. My father--I don't
+know just what thoughts I had about him. He was not to be seen either,
+and the servants cast strange looks at me when I spoke his name. But
+I little realized the blow which had just fallen upon the house in his
+definite departure, and only thought of my own trouble, and of how I
+should meet my grandfather's eye when the hour came for him to draw me
+to his knee for his usual good-night.
+
+"That I was spared this ordeal for the first time this very night first
+comforted me, then added to my distress. He had discovered his loss and
+was angry. On the morrow he would ask me for the box and I would have
+to lie, for never could I find the courage to tell him where I had been.
+Such an act of presumption he would never forgive, or so I thought as
+I lay and shivered in my little bed. That his coldness, his neglect,
+sprang from the discovery just made that my mother as well as my father
+had just fled the house forever was as little known to me as the morning
+calamity. I had been given my usual tendance and was tucked safely into
+bed; but the gloom, the silence which presently settled upon the house
+had a very different explanation in my mind from the real one. My sin
+(for such it loomed large in my mind by this time) coloured the whole
+situation and accounted for every event.
+
+"At what hour I slipped from my bed on to the cold floor, I shall never
+know. To me it seemed to be in the dead of night; but I doubt if it were
+more than ten. So slowly creep away the moments to a wakeful child.
+I had made a great resolve. Awful as the prospect seemed to
+me,--frightened as I was by the very thought,--I had determined in
+my small mind to go down into the cellar, and into that midnight hole
+again, in search of the lost box. I would take a candle and matches,
+this time from my own mantel-shelf, and if everyone was asleep, as
+appeared from the deathly quiet of the house, I would be able to go and
+come without anybody ever being the wiser.
+
+"Dressing in the dark, I found my matches and my candle and, putting
+them in one of my pockets, softly opened my door and looked out. Nobody
+was stirring; every light was out except a solitary one in the lower
+hall. That this still burned conveyed no meaning to my mind. How could I
+know that the house was so still and the rooms dark because everyone was
+out searching for some clue to my mother's flight? If I had looked at
+the clock--but I did not; I was too intent upon my errand, too filled
+with the fever of my desperate undertaking, to be affected by anything
+not bearing directly upon it.
+
+"Of the terror caused by my own shadow on the wall as I made the turn
+in the hall below, I have as keen a recollection today as though it
+happened yesterday. But that did not deter me; nothing deterred me, till
+safe in the cellar I crouched down behind the casks to get my breath
+again before entering the hole beyond.
+
+"I had made some noise in feeling my way around these casks, and I
+trembled lest these sounds had been heard upstairs! But this fear soon
+gave place to one far greater. Other sounds were making themselves
+heard. A din of small skurrying feet above, below, on every side of me!
+Rats! rats in the wall! rats on the cellar bottom! How I ever stirred
+from the spot I do not know, but when I did stir, it was to go forward,
+and enter the uncanny hole.
+
+"I had intended to light my candle when I got inside; but for some
+reason I went stumbling along in the dark, following the wall till I got
+to the steps where I had dropped the box. Here a light was necessary,
+but my hand did not go to my pocket. I thought it better to climb the
+steps first, and softly one foot found the tread and then another. I
+had only three more to climb and then my right hand, now feeling its
+way along the wall, would be free to strike a match. I climbed the three
+steps and was steadying myself against the door for a final plunge,
+when something happened--something so strange, so unexpected, and so
+incredible that I wonder I did not shriek aloud in my terror. The door
+was moving under my hand. It was slowly opening inward. I could feel the
+chill made by the widening crack. Moment by moment this chill increased;
+the gap was growing--a presence was there--a presence before which I sank
+in a small heap upon the landing. Would it advance? Had it feet--hands?
+Was it a presence which could be felt?
+
+"Whatever it was, it made no attempt to pass, and presently I lifted
+my head only to quake anew at the sound of a voice--a human voice--my
+mother's voice--so near me that by putting out my arms I might have
+touched her.
+
+"She was speaking to my father. I knew from the tone. She was saying
+words which, little understood as they were, made such a havoc in my
+youthful mind that I have never forgotten the effect.
+
+"'I have come!' she said. 'They think I have fled the house and are
+looking far and wide for me. We shall not be disturbed. Who would think
+looking of here for either you or me.'
+
+"Here! The word sank like a plummet in my breast. I had known for some
+few minutes that I was on the threshold of the forbidden room; but they
+were in it. I can scarcely make you understand the tumult which this
+awoke in my brain. Somehow, I had never thought that any such braving of
+the house's law would be possible.
+
+"I heard my father's answer, but it conveyed no meaning to me. I also
+realized that he spoke from a distance,--that he was at one end of
+the room while we were at the other. I was presently to have this idea
+confirmed, for while I was striving with all my might and main to
+subdue my very heart-throbs so that she would not hear me or suspect my
+presence, the darkness--I should rather say the blackness of the place
+yielded to a flash of lightning--heat lightning, all glare and no
+sound--and I caught an instantaneous vision of my father's figure
+standing with gleaming things about him, which affected me at the moment
+as supernatural, but which, in later years, I decided to have been
+weapons hanging on a wall.
+
+"She saw him too, for she gave a quick laugh and said they would not
+need any candles; and then, there was another flash and I saw something
+in his hand and something in hers, and though I did not yet understand,
+I felt myself turning deathly sick and gave a choking gasp which was
+lost in the rush she made into the centre of the room, and the keenness
+of her swift low cry.
+
+"'Garde-toi! for only one of us will ever leave this room alive!'
+
+"A duel! a duel to the death between this husband and wife--this father
+and mother--in this hole of dead tragedies and within the sight and
+hearing of their child! Has Satan ever devised a scheme more hideous for
+ruining the life of an eleven-year-old boy!
+
+"Not that I took it all in at once. I was too innocent and much too
+dazed to comprehend such hatred, much less the passions which engender
+it. I only knew that something horrible--something beyond the conception
+of my childish mind--was going to take place in the darkness before me;
+and the terror of it made me speechless; would to God it had made me
+deaf and blind and dead!
+
+"She had dashed from her corner and he had slid away from his, as the
+next fantastic glare which lit up the room showed me. It also showed
+the weapons in their hands, and for a moment I felt reassured when I saw
+that these were swords, for I had seen them before with foils in their
+hands practising for exercise, as they said, in the great garret. But
+the swords had buttons on them, and this time the tips were sharp and
+shone in the keen light.
+
+"An exclamation from her and a growl of rage from him were followed by
+movements I could scarcely hear, but which were terrifying from their
+very quiet. Then the sound of a clash. The swords had crossed.
+
+"Had the lightning flashed forth then, the end of one of them might
+have occurred. But the darkness remained undisturbed, and when the glare
+relit the great room again, they were already far apart. This called out
+a word from him; the one sentence he spoke--I can never forget it:
+
+"'Rhoda, there is blood on your sleeve; I have wounded you. Shall we
+call it off and fly, as the poor creatures in there think we have, to
+the opposite ends of the earth?'
+
+"I almost spoke; I almost added my childish plea to his for them to
+stop--to remember me and stop. But not a muscle in my throat responded
+to my agonized effort. Her cold, clear 'No!' fell before my tongue was
+loosed or my heart freed from the ponderous weight crushing it.
+
+"'I have vowed and I keep my promises,' she went on in a tone quite
+strange to me. 'What would either's life be worth with the other alive
+and happy in this world.'
+
+"He made no answer; and those subtle movements--shadows of movements
+I might almost call them--recommenced. Then there came a sudden cry,
+shrill and poignant--had Grandfather been in his room he would surely
+have heard it--and the flash coming almost simultaneously with its
+utterance, I saw what has haunted my sleep from that day to this, my
+father pinned against the wall, sword still in hand, and before him my
+mother, fiercely triumphant, her staring eyes fixed on his and--
+
+"Nature could bear no more; the band loosened from my throat; the
+oppression lifted from my breast long enough for me to give one wild
+wail and she turned, saw (heaven sent its flashes quickly at this
+moment) and recognizing my childish form, all the horror of her deed (or
+so I have fondly hoped) rose within her, and she gave a start and fell
+full upon the point upturned to receive her.
+
+"A groan; then a gasping sigh from him, and silence settled upon the
+room and upon my heart, and so far as I knew upon the whole created
+world.
+
+"That is my story, friends. Do you wonder that I have never been or
+lived like other men?"
+
+After a few moments of sympathetic silence, Mr. Van Broecklyn went on,
+to say:
+
+"I don't think I ever had a moment's doubt that my parents both lay dead
+on the floor of that great room. When I came to myself--which may have
+been soon, and may not have been for a long while--the lightning had
+ceased to flash, leaving the darkness stretching like a blank pall
+between me and that spot in which were concentrated all the terrors of
+which my imagination was capable. I dared not enter it. I dared not take
+one step that way. My instinct was to fly and hide my trembling body
+again in my own bed; and associated with this, in fact dominating it and
+making me old before my time, was another--never to tell; never to let
+any one, least of all my grandfather--know what that forbidden room now
+contained. I felt in an irresistible sort of way that my father's and
+mother's honour was at stake. Besides, terror held me back; I felt that
+I should die if I spoke. Childhood has such terrors and such heroisms.
+Silence often covers in such, abysses of thought and feeling which
+astonish us in later years. There is no suffering like a child's,
+terrified by a secret which it dare not for some reason disclose.
+
+"Events aided me. When, in desperation to see once more the light and
+all the things which linked me to life--my little bed, the toys on the
+window-sill, my squirrel in its cage--I forced myself to retraverse the
+empty house, expecting at every turn to hear my father's voice or come
+upon the image of my mother--yes, such was the confusion of my mind,
+though I knew well enough even then that they were dead and that I
+should never hear the one or see the other. I was so benumbed with the
+cold in my half-dressed condition, that I woke in a fever next morning
+after a terrible dream which forced from my lips the cry of 'Mother!
+Mother!'--only that.
+
+"I was cautious even in delirium. This delirium and my flushed cheeks
+and shining eyes led them to be very careful of me. I was told that my
+mother was away from home; and when after two days of search they were
+quite sure that all effort to find either her or my father were likely
+to prove fruitless, that she had gone to Europe where we would follow
+her as soon as I was well. This promise, offering as it did, a prospect
+of immediate release from the terrors which were consuming me, had an
+extraordinary effect upon me. I got up out of my bed saying that I was
+well now and ready to start on the instant. The doctor, finding my pulse
+equable, and my whole condition wonder fully improved, and attributing
+it, as was natural, to my hope of soon joining my mother, advised
+my whim to be humoured and this hope kept active till travel and
+intercourse with children should give me strength and prepare me for
+the bitter truth ultimately awaiting me. They listened to him and
+in twenty-four hours our preparations were made. We saw the house
+closed--with what emotions surging in one small breast, I leave you to
+imagine--and then started on our long tour. For five years we wandered
+over the continent of Europe, my grandfather finding distraction, as
+well as myself, in foreign scenes and associations.
+
+"But return was inevitable. What I suffered on reentering this house,
+God and my sleepless pillow alone know. Had any discovery been made in
+our absence; or would it be made now that renovation and repairs of all
+kinds were necessary? Time finally answered me. My secret was safe
+and likely to continue so, and this fact once settled, life became
+endurable, if not cheerful. Since then I have spent only two nights out
+of this house, and they were unavoidable. When my grandfather died I had
+the wainscot door cemented in. It was done from this side and the
+cement painted to match the wood. No one opened the door nor have I
+ever crossed its threshold. Sometimes I think I have been foolish; and
+sometimes I know that I have been very wise. My reason has stood firm;
+how do I know that it would have done so if I had subjected myself to
+the possible discovery that one or both of them might have been saved if
+I had disclosed instead of concealed my adventure."
+
+A pause during which white horror had shone on every face; then with a
+final glance at Violet, he said:
+
+"What sequel do you see to this story, Miss Strange? I can tell the
+past, I leave you to picture the future."
+
+Rising, she let her eye travel from face to face till it rested on the
+one awaiting it, when she answered dreamily:
+
+"If some morning in the news column there should appear an account of
+the ancient and historic home of the Van Broecklyns having burned to the
+ground in the night, the whole country would mourn, and the city feel
+defrauded of one of its treasures. But there are five persons who would
+see in it the sequel which you ask for."
+
+When this happened, as it did happen, some few weeks later, the
+astonishing discovery was made that no insurance had been put upon this
+house. Why was it that after such a loss Mr. Van Broecklyn seemed to
+renew his youth? It was a constant source of comment among his friends.
+
+END OF PROBLEM VIII
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM IX. VIOLET'S OWN
+
+"It has been too much for you?"
+
+"I am afraid so."
+
+It was Roger Upjohn who had asked the question; it was Violet who
+answered. They had withdrawn from a crowd of dancers to a balcony,
+half-shaded, half open to the moon,--a balcony made, it would seem, for
+just such stolen interviews between waltzes.
+
+Now, as it happened, Roger's face was in the shadow, but Violet's in the
+full light. Very sweet it looked, very ethereal, but also a little wan.
+He noticed this and impetuously cried:
+
+"You are pale; and your hand! see, how it trembles!"
+
+Slowly withdrawing it from the rail where it had rested, she sent one
+quick glance his way and, in a low voice, said:
+
+"I have not slept since that night."
+
+"Four days!" he murmured. Then, after a moment of silence, "You bore
+yourself so bravely at the time, I thought, or rather, I hoped, that
+success had made you forget the horror. I could not have slept myself,
+if I had known--"
+
+"It is part of the price I pay," she broke in gently. "All good things
+have to be paid for. But I see--I realize that you do not consider
+what I am doing good. Though it helps other people--has helped you--you
+wonder why, with all the advantages I possess, I should meddle with
+matters so repugnant to a woman's natural instincts."
+
+Yes, he wondered. That was evident from his silence. Seeing her as she
+stood there, so quaintly pretty, so feminine in look and manner--in
+short, such a flower--it was but natural that he should marvel at the
+incongruity she had mentioned.
+
+"It has a strange, odd look," she admitted, after a moment of troubled
+hesitation. "The most considerate person cannot but regard it as a
+display of egotism or of a most mercenary spirit. The cheque you sent
+me for what I was enabled to do for you in Massachusetts (the only one
+I have ever received which I have been tempted to refuse) shows to what
+extent you rated my help and my--my expectations. Had I been a poor girl
+struggling for subsistence, this generosity would have warmed my heart
+as a token of your desire to cut that struggle short. But taken with
+your knowledge of my home and its luxuries, it has often made me wonder
+what you thought."
+
+"Shall I tell you?"
+
+He had stepped forward at this question and his countenance, hitherto
+concealed, became visible in the moonlight. She no longer recognized it.
+Transformed by feeling, it shone down upon her, instinct with all
+that is finest and best in masculine nature. Was she ready for this
+revelation of what she had nevertheless dreamed of for many more nights
+than four? She did not know, and instinctively drew herself back till it
+was she who now stood in the semi-obscurity made by the drooping vines.
+From this retreat, she faltered forth a very tremulous No, which in
+another moment was disavowed by a Yes so faint it was little more than a
+murmur, followed by a still fainter, Tell me.
+
+But he did not seem in any haste to obey, sweetly as her low-toned
+injunction must have sounded in his ears. On the contrary, he hesitated
+to speak, growing paler every minute as he sought to catch a glimpse of
+her downcast face so tantalizingly hidden from him. Did she recognize
+the nature of the feelings which held him back, or was she simply
+gathering up sufficient courage to plead her own cause? Whatever her
+reason, it was she, not he, who presently spoke saying as if no time had
+elapsed:
+
+"But first, I feel obliged to admit that it was money I wanted, that
+I had to have. Not for myself. I lack nothing and could have more if I
+wished. Father has never limited his generosity in any matter affecting
+myself, but--" She drew a deep breath and, coming out of the shadow,
+lifted a face to him so changed from its usual expression as to make him
+start. "I have a cause at heart--one which should appeal to my father
+and does not; and for that purpose I have sacrificed myself, in many
+ways, though--though I have not disliked my work up to this last
+attempt. Not really. I want to be honest and so must admit that much.
+I have even gloried (quietly and all by myself, of course) over the
+solution of a mystery which no one else seemed able to penetrate. I am
+made that way. I have known it ever since--but that is a story all by
+itself. Some day I may tell it to you, but not now."
+
+"No, not now." The emphasis sent the colour into her cheek but did not
+relieve his pallor. "Miss Strange, I have always felt, even in my worst
+days, that the man who for selfish ends brought a woman under the shadow
+of his own unhappy reputation was a man to be despised. And I think so
+still, and yet--and yet--nothing in the world but your own word or
+look can hold me back now from telling you that I love you--love you
+notwithstanding my unworthy past, my scarring memories, my all but
+blasted hopes. I do not expect any response; you are young; you are
+beautiful; you are gifted with every grace; but to speak,--to say over
+and over again, 'I love you, I love you!' eases my heart and makes my
+future more endurable. Oh, do not look at me like that unless--unless--"
+
+But the bright head did not fall, nor the tender gaze falter; and driven
+out of himself, Roger Upjohn was about to step passionately forward,
+when, seized by fresh compunction, he hoarsely cried:
+
+"It is not right. The balance dips too much my way. You bring me
+everything. I can give you nothing but what you already possess
+abundance--love, and money. Besides, your father--"
+
+She interrupted him with a glance at once arch and earnest.
+
+"I had a talk with Father this morning. He came to my room, and--and it
+was very near being serious. Someone had told him I was doing things on
+the sly which he had better look into; and of course he asked questions
+and--and I answered them. He wasn't pleased--in fact he was very
+displeased,--I don't think we can blame him for that--but we had no open
+break for I love him dearly, for all my opposing ways, and he saw that,
+and it helped, though he did say after I had given my promise to stop
+where I was and never to take up such work again, that--" here she stole
+a shy look at the face bent so eagerly towards her--"that I had lost my
+social status and need never hope now for the attentions of--of--well,
+of such men as he admires and puts faith in. So you see," her dimples
+all showing, "that I am not such a very good match for an Upjohn of
+Massachusetts, even if he has a reputation to recover and an honourable
+name to achieve. The scale hangs more evenly than you think."
+
+"Violet!"
+
+A mutual look, a moment of perfect silence, then a low whisper, airy as
+the breath of flowers rising from the garden below: "I have never known
+what happiness was till this moment. If you will take me with my story
+untold--"
+
+"Take you! take you!" The man's whole yearning heart, the loss and
+bitterness of years, the hope and promise of the future, all spoke in
+that low, half-smothered exclamation. Violet's blushes faded under its
+fervency, and only her spirit spoke, as leaning towards him, she laid
+her two hands in his, and said with all a woman's earnestness:
+
+"I do not forget little Roger, or the father who I hope may have many
+more days before him in which to bid good-night to the sea. Such union
+as ours must be hallowed, because we have so many persons to make happy
+besides ourselves."
+
+
+The evening before their marriage, Violet put a dozen folded sheets of
+closely written paper in his hand. They contained her story; let us read
+it with him.
+
+DEAR ROGER,--
+
+I could not have been more than seven years old, when one night I woke
+up shivering, at the sound of angry voices. A conversation which no
+child should ever have heard, was going on in the room where I lay. My
+father was talking to my sister--perhaps, you do not know that I have
+a sister; few of my personal friends do,--and the terror she evinced
+I could well understand but not his words nor the real cause of his
+displeasure.
+
+There are times even yet when the picture, forced upon my infantile
+consciousness at that moment of first awakening, comes back to me with
+all its original vividness. There was no light in the room save such as
+the moon made; but that was enough to reveal the passion burningly alive
+in either face, as, bending towards each other, she in supplication
+and he in a tempest of wrath which knew no bounds, he uttered and she
+listened to what I now know to have been a terrible arraignment.
+
+I may have an interesting countenance; you have told me so sometimes;
+but she--she was beautiful. My elder by ten years, she had stood in my
+mother's stead to me for almost as long as I could remember, and as I
+saw her lovely features contorted with pain and her hands extended in
+a desperate plea to one who had never shown me anything but love, my
+throat closed sharply and I could not cry out though I wanted to, nor
+move head or foot though I longed with all my heart to bury myself in
+the pillows.
+
+For the words I heard were terrifying, little as I comprehended their
+full purport. He had surprised her talking from her window to someone
+down below, and after saying cruel things about that, he shouted out:
+"You have disgraced me, you have disgraced yourself, you have disgraced
+your brother and your little sister. Was it not enough that you should
+refuse to marry the good man I had picked out for you, that you should
+stoop to this low-down scoundrel--this--" I did not hear what else he
+called him, I was wondering so to whom she had been stooping; I had
+never seen her stoop except to tie my little shoes.
+
+But when she cried out as she did after an interval, "I love him! I
+love him!" then I listened again, for she spoke as though she were in
+dreadful pain, and I did not know that loving made one ill and unhappy.
+"And I am going to marry him," I heard her add, standing up, as she said
+it, very straight and tall.
+
+Marry! I knew what that meant. A long aisle in a church; women in white
+and big music in the air behind. I had been flower-girl at a wedding
+once and had not forgotten. We had had ice cream and cake and--
+
+But my childish thoughts stopped short at the answer she received and
+all the words which followed--words which burned their way into my
+infantile brain and left scorched places in my memory which will never
+be eradicated. He spoke them--spoke them all; she never answered again
+after that once, and when he was gone did not move for a long time and
+when she did it was to lie down, stiff and straight, just as she had
+stood, on her bed alongside mine.
+
+I was frightened; so frightened, my little brass bed rattled under me. I
+wonder she did not hear it. But she heard nothing; and after awhile she
+was so still I fell asleep. But I woke again. Something hot had fallen
+on my cheek. I put up my hand to brush it away and did not know even
+when I felt my fingers wet that it was a tear from my sister-mother's
+eye.
+
+For she was kneeling then; kneeling close beside me and her arm was over
+my small body; and the bed was shaking again but not this time with my
+tremors only. And I was sorry and cried too until I dropped off to sleep
+again with her arm still passionately embracing me.
+
+In the morning, she was gone.
+
+It must have been that very afternoon that Father came in where Arthur
+and I were trying to play,--trying, but not quite succeeding, for I had
+been telling Arthur, for whom I had a great respect in those days, what
+had happened the night before, and we had been wondering in our childish
+way if there would be a wedding after all, and a church full of people,
+and flowers, and kissing, and lots of good things to eat, and Arthur had
+said No, it was too expensive; that that was why Father was so angry;
+and comforted by the assertion, I was taking up my doll again, when the
+door opened and Father stepped in.
+
+It was a great event--any visit from him to the nursery--and we both
+dropped our toys and stood staring, not knowing whether he was going
+to be nice and kind as he sometimes was, or scold us as I had heard him
+scold our beautiful sister.
+
+Arthur showed at once what he thought, for without the least hesitation
+he took the one step which placed him in front of me, where he stood
+waiting with his two little fists hanging straight at his sides but
+manfully clenched in full readiness for attack. That this display of
+pigmy chivalry was not quite without its warrant is evident to me now,
+for Father did not look like himself or act like himself any more than
+he had the night before.
+
+However, we had no cause for fear. Having no suspicion of my having been
+awake during his terrible interview with Theresa, he saw only two lonely
+and forsaken children, interrupted in their play.
+
+Can I remember what he said to us? Not exactly, though Arthur and I
+often went over it choked whispers in some secret nook of the dreary old
+house; but his meaning--that we took in well enough. Theresa had left
+us. She would never come back. We were not to look out of the window for
+her, or run to the door when the bell rang. Our mother had left us too,
+a long time ago, and she lay in the cemetery where we sometimes carried
+flowers. Theresa was not in the cemetery, but we must think of her as
+there; though not as if she had any need of flowers. Having said this,
+he looked at us quietly for a minute. Arthur was trying very hard not to
+cry, but I was sobbing like the lost child I was, with my cheek against
+the floor where I had thrown myself when he said that awful thing about
+the cemetery. She there! my sister-mother there! I think he felt a
+little sorry for me; for he half stooped as if to lift me up. But he
+straightened again and said very sternly:
+
+"Now, children, listen to me. When God takes people to heaven and leaves
+us only their cold, dead bodies we carry flowers to their graves and
+talk about them some if not very much. But when people die because they
+love dark ways better than light, then we do not remember them with
+gifts and we do not talk about them. Your sister's name has been spoken
+for the last time in this house. You, Arthur, are old enough to know
+what I mean when I say that I will never listen to another word about
+her from either you or Violet as long as you and I live. She is gone and
+nothing that is mine shall she ever touch again.
+
+"You hear me, Arthur; you hear me, Violet. Heed me, or you go too."
+
+His aspect was terrible, so was his purpose; much more terrible than
+we realized at the time with our limited understanding and experience.
+Later, we came to know the full meaning of this black drop which had
+been infused into our lives. When we saw every picture of her destroyed
+which had been in the house; her name cut out from the leaves of books;
+the little tokens she had given us surreptitiously taken away, till not
+a vestige of her once beloved presence remained, we began to realize
+that we had indeed lost her.
+
+But children as young as we were then do not long retain the poignancy
+of their first griefs. Gradually my memories of that awful night ceased
+to disturb my dreams and I was sixteen before they were again recalled
+to me with any vividness, and then it was by accident. I had been
+strolling through a picture gallery and had stopped short to study more
+particularly one which had especially taken my fancy. There were two
+ladies sitting on a bench behind me and one of them was evidently very
+deaf, for their talk was loud, though I am sure they did not mean for
+me to hear, for they were discussing my family. That is, one of them had
+said:
+
+"That's Violet Strange. She will never be the beauty her sister was; but
+perhaps that's not to be deplored. Theresa made a great mess of it."
+
+"That's true. I hear that she and the Signor have been seen lately here
+in town. In poverty, of course. He hadn't even as much go in him as the
+ordinary singing-master."
+
+I suppose I should have hurried away, and left this barbed arrow to
+rankle where it fell. But I could not. I had never learned a word of
+Theresa's fate and that word poverty, proving that she was alive and
+suffering, held me to my place to hear what more they might say of
+her who for years had been for me an indistinct figure bathed in cruel
+moonlight.
+
+"I have never approved of Peter Strange's conduct at that time," one of
+the voices now went on. "He didn't handle her right. She had a lovely
+disposition and would have listened to him had he been more gentle with
+her. But it isn't in him. I hope this one--"
+
+I didn't hear the end of that. I had no interest in anything they might
+say about myself. It was of her I wanted to hear, of her. Weren't they
+going to say anything more about my poor sister? Yes; it was a topic
+which interested both and presently I heard:
+
+"He'll never do anything for her, no matter what happens; I've heard him
+say so. And Laura has vowed the same." (Laura is our aunt.) "Besides,
+Theresa has a pride of her own quite equal to her father's. She wouldn't
+take anything from him now. She'd rather struggle on. I'm told--I don't
+know how true it is--that she's working in a department store; one of
+the Sixth Avenue ones. Oh, there's Mrs. Vandegraff! Don't you want to
+speak to her?"
+
+They moved off, leaving me still gazing with unseeing eyes at the
+picture before which I stood planted, and saying over and over in
+monotonous iteration, "One of the department stores in Sixth Avenue! One
+of the department stores in Sixth Avenue!"
+
+Which department store?
+
+I meant to find out.
+
+I do not know whether up till then I had had the least consciousness of
+possessing what is called the detective instinct. But, at the prospect
+of this quest, so much like that of the proverbial needle in a haystack,
+as I did not even know my sister's married name and something within me
+forbade my asking it, I experienced an odd sense of elation followed
+by a certainty of success which in five minutes changed me from an
+irresponsible girl to a woman with a deliberate purpose in life.
+
+I am not going to write down here all the details of that search.
+Some day I may relate them to you, but not now. I looked first for
+a beautiful woman, for the straight, slim, and exquisite creature I
+remembered. I did not find her. Then I tried another course. Her figure
+might have changed in the ten years which had elapsed; so might her
+expression. I would look for a woman with beautiful dark eyes; time
+could not have altered them. I had forgotten the effect of constant
+weeping. And I saw many eyes, but not hers; not the ones I had seen
+smiling upon me as I lay in my crib before the days I was lifted to the
+dignity of the little brass bed. So I gave that up too and listened to
+the inner voice which said, "You must wait for her to recognize you. You
+can never hope to recognize her." And it was by following this plan
+that I found her. I had arranged to have my name spoken aloud at every
+counter where I bargained; and oh, the bargains I sought, and the
+garments I had tried on! But I made little progress until one day, after
+my name had been uttered a little louder than usual I saw a woman turn
+from rearranging gowns on a hanger, and give me one look.
+
+I uttered a low cry and sprang impetuously, forward. Instantly she
+turned her back and went on hanging, or trying to hang up, gowns on
+the rack before her. Had I been mistaken? She was not the sister of
+my dreams, but there was something fine in her outline; something
+distinguished in the way she carried her head which--
+
+Next minute my last doubt fled! She had fallen her length on the floor
+and lay with her face buried in her hands in a dead faint.
+
+Oh, Roger, Roger, Roger! I had that dear head on my breast in a moment.
+I talked to her, I whispered prayers in her unconscious ear. I did
+everything I should not have done till they all thought me demented.
+When she came to, as she did under other ministrations than mine, I
+was for carrying her off in my limousine. But she shook her head with
+a gesture of such disapproval, that I realized I could not do that. The
+limousine was my father's, and nothing of his was ever to be used for
+her again. I would call a cab; but she told me that she had not the
+money to pay for it and she would not take mine. Carfare she had; five
+cents would take her home. I need not worry.
+
+She smiled as she said this and for an instant I saw my dream-sister
+again in this weary half-disheartened woman. But the smile was a
+fleeting one, for this was to be her last day in the store; she had no
+talent as a saleswoman and was merely working out her week.
+
+I felt my heart sink heavily at this, for the evidences of poverty
+were plainly to be seen in her clothes and the thinness of her face and
+figure. How could I help? What could I do? I took her to a restaurant
+for food and talk, and before she would order, she looked into her
+purse, with the result that we had only a little toast and tea. It was
+all she could afford and I, with a hundred dollars in bills at that
+moment in my bag, could not offer her anything more though she was
+needing nourishment and dishes piled with savoury meats were going by us
+every moment.
+
+I think, if she had let me, I would have dared my father's displeasure
+and been disobedient to his wishes by giving her one wholesome meal.
+But she was as resolute of mind as he, and, as she said afterwards,
+had chosen her course in life and must abide by it. My love she would
+accept. It took nothing from Father and gave her what her heart was
+pining for--had pined for for years. But nothing more--not another thing
+more. She would not even let me go home with her; and I knew why when
+her eyes fell at the searching look I gave her. Something would turn
+up, and when her husband's health was better and she had found another
+position she would send me her address and then I could come and see
+her. As we walked out of the restaurant we ran against a gentleman
+I knew. He stopped me for a passing word and in that minute she
+disappeared. I did not try to follow her. I could get her street and
+number from the store where she had worked.
+
+But when I had done this and embraced the first opportunity which
+offered to visit her, I found that she had moved away in the interim,
+leaving everything behind in payment of her rent, except such small
+things as she and her husband could carry. This was discouraging as it
+left me without any clue by which to follow them. But I was determined
+not to yield to her desire for concealment in the difficult and
+disheartening task I now saw before me.
+
+Seeking advice from the man who has since become my employer, I entered
+upon this second search with a quiet resolution which admitted of no
+defeat. It took me six months, but I finally found her, and satisfied
+with knowing where she was, desisted from rushing in upon her, till I
+had caught one glimpse of her husband whom, in the last six months,
+I had heard described but had never seen. To understand her, it was
+perhaps necessary to understand him, and if I could not hope to do this
+offhand, I could not fail to get some idea of the man from even the most
+casual look.
+
+He was, as I soon learned, the fetcher and carrier of the small m�nage;
+and the day came when I met him face to face in the street where they
+lived. Did he disappoint me; or did I see something in his appearance
+to justify her desertion of her father's home and her present life of
+poverty? If I say Yes to the first question, I must also say it to the
+last. If handsome once, he was not handsome now; but with a personality
+such as his, this did not matter. He had that better thing--that
+greatest gift of the gods--charm. It was in his bearing, his movement,
+the regard of his weary eye; more than that it was in his very nature or
+it would have vanished long ago under disappointment and privation.
+
+But that was all there was to the man,--a golden net in which my
+sister's youthful fancy had been caught and no doubt held meshed to
+this very day. I felt less like blaming her for her folly, after that
+instant's view of him as we passed each other in the street. But, as I
+took time to think, I found myself growing sorrier and sorrier for her
+and yet, in a way, gladder and gladder, for the man was a physical wreck
+and would soon pass out of her life leaving her to my love and possibly
+to our father's forgiveness.
+
+But I did not know Theresa. After her husband's death, which occurred
+very soon, she let me come to her and we had a long talk. Shall I ever
+forget it or the sight of her beauty in that sordid room? For, account
+for it as you will, the loveliness which had fled under her sense of
+complete isolation had slowly regained its own with the recognition that
+she still had a place in the heart of her little sister. Not even the
+sorrow she felt for the loss of her suffering husband--and she did mourn
+him; this I am glad to say--could more than temporarily stay this. Six
+months of ease and wholesome food would make her--I hardly dared to
+think what. For I knew, without asking her, or she telling me, that
+she would accept neither; that she was as determined now, as ever that
+nothing which came directly or indirectly from Father should go to the
+rebuilding of her life. That she intended to start anew and work her way
+up to a place where I should be glad to see her she did say. But
+nothing more. She was still the sister-mother, loving, but sufficient to
+herself, though she had but ten dollars left in the world, as she showed
+me with a smile that made her beautiful as an angel.
+
+I can see that shabby little purse yet with its one poor greasy bill;--a
+sum to her but to me the price of a luncheon or a gift of flowers. How
+I longed, as I looked at it to tear every jewel from my poor, bedecked
+body and fling them one and all into her lap. I had worn them in
+profusion, though carefully hidden under my coat, in the hope that she
+would accept one of them at least, But she refused all, even such as had
+been gifts of friends and schoolmates, only humouring me this far, that
+she let me hang them for a few minutes about her neck and in her hair
+and then pull them all off again. But this one vision of her in the
+splendour she was born to comforted me. Henceforth in wearing them it
+would be of her and not of myself I should think.
+
+Well, I had to leave her and go home to my French and Italian lessons,
+my music-masters and all the luxuries of our father's house. Should I
+ever see her again? I did not know; she had not promised. I could not go
+often into the quarter where she lived, without rousing suspicion;
+and she had bidden me not to come again for a month. So I waited, half
+fearing she would flit again before the month was up. But she did not.
+She was still there when--
+
+But I am going too fast. The meeting I was about to mention was a very
+memorable one to me, and I must describe it from the beginning. I had
+ridden in my own car as near as I dared to the street where she lived;
+the rest of the way I went on foot with one of the servants--a new
+one--following close behind me. I was not exactly afraid, but the
+actions of some of the people I had encountered at my former visit
+warned me to be a little careful for my father's sake if not for my own.
+Her room--she had but one--was high up in a triangular court it was
+no pleasure to enter. But love and loyalty heed nothing but the object
+sought, and I was hunting about for the dark doorway which opened upon
+the staircase leading to her room when--and this was the great moment of
+my life--a sudden stream of melody floated down into that noisome court,
+which from its clearness, its accuracy, its richness, and its feeling
+startled me as I had never before been startled even by the first notes
+of the world's greatest singers. What a voice for a place like this!
+What a voice for any place! Whose could it be? With a start, I stopped
+short, in the middle of that court, heedless of the crowd of pushing,
+shouting children who at once gathered about me. I had been struck by an
+old recollection. My sister used to sing. I remembered where her piano
+had stood in the great drawing-room. It had been carted away during
+those dreadful weeks and her music all burned; but the vision of her
+graceful figure bending over the keyboard was one not to be forgotten
+even by a thoughtless child. Could it be--oh, heaven! if this voice were
+hers! Her future was certain; she had but to sing.
+
+In a transport of hope I rushed for the dim entrance the children had
+pointed out and flew up to her room. As I reached it, I heard a trill as
+perfect as Tetrazzini's. The singer was Theresa; there could be no more
+doubt. Theresa! exercising a grand voice as only a great artist would or
+could.
+
+The joy of it made me almost faint. I leaned against her door and
+sobbed. Then when I thought I could speak quite calmly, I went in.
+
+Roger, you must understand me now,--my desire for money and the means I
+have taken to obtain it. My sister had the makings of a prima-donna. Her
+husband, of whose ability I had formed so low an estimate, had trained
+her with consummate skill and judgment. All she needed was a year with
+some great maestro in the foreign atmosphere of art. But this meant
+money--not hundreds but thousands, and the one sure source to which we
+might rightfully look for any such amount was effectually closed to
+us. It is true we had relatives--an aunt on our mother's side, and I
+mentioned her to Theresa. But she would not listen to the suggestion.
+She would take nothing from any one whom she would find it hard to face
+in case of failure. Love must go with an advance involving so much
+risk; love deep enough and strong enough to feel no loss save that of a
+defeated hope. In short, to be acceptable, the money must come from me,
+and as this was manifestly impossible, she considered the matter closed
+and began to talk of a position she had been offered in some choir. I
+let her talk, listening and not listening; for the idea had come to me
+that if in some way I could earn money, she might be induced to take it.
+Finally, I asked her. She laughed, letting her kisses answer me. But
+I did not laugh. If she had capabilities in one way, I had them in
+another.
+
+I went home to think.
+
+Two weeks later, I began, in a very quiet way to do certain work for the
+man who had helped me in my second search for Theresa. The money I have
+earned has been immense; since it was troubles of the rich I was given
+to settle, and I was almost always successful. Every cent has gone to
+her. She has been in Europe for a year and last week she made her debut.
+You read about it in the papers, but neither you nor any one else in
+this country but myself knew that under the name she chosen to assume,
+Theresa Strange, the long forgotten beauty, has recovered that place in
+the world, to which her love and genius entitle her.
+
+This is my story and hers. From now on, you are the third in the secret.
+Some day, my father will be the fourth. I think then, a new dawn of
+love will arise for us all, which will stay the whitening of his dear
+head--for I believe in him after all. Yesterday when he passed the wall
+where her picture once hung--no other has ever hung there--I saw him
+stop and look up, and, Roger, when he passed me a minute later, there
+was a tear in his hard eye.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Golden Slipper, by Anna Katharine Green
+
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
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+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Golden Slipper, by Anna Katharine Green
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Slipper, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Golden Slipper
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green
+
+Release Date: February 1, 2009 [EBook #3071]
+Last Updated: October 3, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN SLIPPER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lynn and Chris Hill, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      And Other Problems for Violet Strange
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Anna Katharine Green <br /> (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>THE GOLDEN SLIPPER</b> <br />AND OTHER
+      PROBLEMS FOR VIOLET STRANGE </a>
+    </p>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> PROBLEM I. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> PROBLEM II. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE SECOND BULLET
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> PROBLEM III. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          AN INTANGIBLE CLUE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> PROBLEM IV. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE GROTTO SPECTRE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> PROBLEM V. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE DREAMING LADY
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> PROBLEM VI. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> PROBLEM VII. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE DOCTOR, HIS WIFE, AND THE CLOCK
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> PROBLEM VIII. &nbsp;&nbsp;</a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> PROBLEM IX. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          VIOLET&rsquo;S OWN
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE GOLDEN SLIPPER <br /> AND OTHER PROBLEMS FOR VIOLET STRANGE
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM I THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s here! I thought she would be. She&rsquo;s one of the three young ladies
+      you see in the right-hand box near the proscenium.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentleman thus addressed&mdash;a man of middle age and a member of the
+      most exclusive clubs&mdash;turned his opera glass toward the spot
+      designated, and in some astonishment retorted:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She? Why those are the Misses Pratt and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Violet Strange; no other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you mean to say&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That yon silly little chit, whose father I know, whose fortune I know,
+      who is seen everywhere, and who is called one of the season&rsquo;s belles is an
+      agent of yours; a&mdash;a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No names here, please. You want a mystery solved. It is not a matter for
+      the police&mdash;that is, as yet,&mdash;and so you come to me, and when I
+      ask for the facts, I find that women and only women are involved, and that
+      these women are not only young but one and all of the highest society. Is
+      it a man&rsquo;s work to go to the bottom of a combination like this? No. Sex
+      against sex, and, if possible, youth against youth. Happily, I know such a
+      person&mdash;a girl of gifts and extraordinarily well placed for the
+      purpose. Why she uses her talents in this direction&mdash;why, with means
+      enough to play the part natural to her as a successful debutante, she
+      consents to occupy herself with social and other mysteries, you must ask
+      her, not me. Enough that I promise you her aid if you want it. That is, if
+      you can interest her. She will not work otherwise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Driscoll again raised his opera glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s a comedy face,&rdquo; he commented. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s hard to associate
+      intellectuality with such quaintness of expression. Are you sure of her
+      discretion?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom is she with?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abner Pratt, his wife, and daughters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he a man to entrust his affairs unadvisedly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abner Pratt! Do you mean to say that she is anything more to him than his
+      daughters&rsquo; guest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judge. You see how merry they are. They were in deep trouble yesterday.
+      You are witness to a celebration.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you observe how they are loading her with attentions? She&rsquo;s too
+      young to rouse such interest in a family of notably unsympathetic
+      temperament for any other reason than that of gratitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s hard to believe. But if what you hint is true, secure me an
+      opportunity at once of talking to this youthful marvel. My affair is
+      serious. The dinner I have mentioned comes off in three days and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. I recognize your need; but I think you had better enter Mr.
+      Pratt&rsquo;s box without my intervention. Miss Strange&rsquo;s value to us will be
+      impaired the moment her connection with us is discovered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, there&rsquo;s Ruthven! He will take me to Mr. Pratt&rsquo;s box,&rdquo; remarked
+      Driscoll as the curtain fell on the second act. &ldquo;Any suggestions before I
+      go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and an important one. When you make your bow, touch your left
+      shoulder with your right hand. It is a signal. She may respond to it; but
+      if she does not, do not be discouraged. One of her idiosyncrasies is a
+      theoretical dislike of her work. But once she gets interested, nothing
+      will hold her back. That&rsquo;s all, except this. In no event give away her
+      secret. That&rsquo;s part of the compact, you remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Driscoll nodded and left his seat for Ruthven&rsquo;s box. When the curtain rose
+      for the third time he could be seen sitting with the Misses Pratt and
+      their vivacious young friend. A widower and still on the right side of
+      fifty, his presence there did not pass unnoted, and curiosity was rife
+      among certain onlookers as to which of the twin belles was responsible for
+      this change in his well-known habits. Unfortunately, no opportunity was
+      given him for showing. Other and younger men had followed his lead into
+      the box, and they saw him forced upon the good graces of the fascinating
+      but inconsequent Miss Strange whose rapid fire of talk he was hardly of a
+      temperament to appreciate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did he appear dissatisfied? Yes; but only one person in the opera house
+      knew why. Miss Strange had shown no comprehension of or sympathy with his
+      errand. Though she chatted amiably enough between duets and trios, she
+      gave him no opportunity to express his wishes though she knew them well
+      enough, owing to the signal he had given her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This might be in character but it hardly suited his views; and, being a
+      man of resolution, he took advantage of an absorbing minute on the stage
+      to lean forward and whisper in her ear:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s my daughter for whom I request your services; as fine a girl as any
+      in this house. Give me a hearing. You certainly can manage it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a small, slight woman whose naturally quaint appearance was
+      accentuated by the extreme simplicity of her attire. In the tier upon tier
+      of boxes rising before his eyes, no other personality could vie with hers
+      in strangeness, or in the illusive quality of her ever-changing
+      expression. She was vivacity incarnate and, to the ordinary observer,
+      light as thistledown in fibre and in feeling. But not to all. To those who
+      watched her long, there came moments&mdash;say when the music rose to
+      heights of greatness&mdash;when the mouth so given over to laughter took
+      on curves of the rarest sensibility, and a woman&rsquo;s lofty soul shone
+      through her odd, bewildering features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Driscoll had noted this, and consequently awaited her reply in secret
+      hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came in the form of a question and only after an instant&rsquo;s display of
+      displeasure or possibly of pure nervous irritability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has she done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. But slander is in the air, and any day it may ripen into public
+      accusation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Accusation of what?&rdquo; Her tone was almost pettish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of&mdash;of theft,&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;On a great scale,&rdquo; he emphasized, as
+      the music rose to a crash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jewels?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Inestimable ones. They are always returned by somebody. People say, by
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; The little lady&rsquo;s hands grew steady,&mdash;they had been fluttering
+      all over her lap. &ldquo;I will see you to-morrow morning at my father&rsquo;s house,&rdquo;
+       she presently observed; and turned her full attention to the stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some three days after this Mr. Driscoll opened his house on the Hudson to
+      notable guests. He had not desired the publicity of such an event, nor the
+      opportunity it gave for an increase of the scandal secretly in circulation
+      against his daughter. But the Ambassador and his wife were foreign and any
+      evasion of the promised hospitality would be sure to be misunderstood; so
+      the scheme was carried forward though with less eclat than possibly was
+      expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the lesser guests, who were mostly young and well acquainted with
+      the house and its hospitality, there was one unique figure,&mdash;that of
+      the lively Miss Strange, who, if personally unknown to Miss Driscoll, was
+      so gifted with the qualities which tell on an occasion of this kind, that
+      the stately young hostess hailed her presence with very obvious gratitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The manner of their first meeting was singular, and of great interest to
+      one of them at least. Miss Strange had come in an automobile and had been
+      shown her room; but there was nobody to accompany her down-stairs
+      afterward, and, finding herself alone in the great hall, she naturally
+      moved toward the library, the door of which stood ajar. She had pushed
+      this door half open before she noticed that the room was already occupied.
+      As a consequence, she was made the unexpected observer of a beautiful
+      picture of youth and love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A young man and a young woman were standing together in the glow of a
+      blazing wood-fire. No word was to be heard, but in their faces, eloquent
+      with passion, there shone something so deep and true that the chance
+      intruder hesitated on the threshold, eager to lay this picture away in her
+      mind with the other lovely and tragic memories now fast accumulating
+      there. Then she drew back, and readvancing with a less noiseless foot,
+      came into the full presence of Captain Holliday drawn up in all the pride
+      of his military rank beside Alicia, the accomplished daughter of the
+      house, who, if under a shadow as many whispered, wore that shadow as some
+      women wear a crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange was struck with admiration, and turned upon them the
+      brightest facet of her vivacious nature all the time she was saying to
+      herself: &ldquo;Does she know why I am here? Or does she look upon me only as an
+      additional guest foisted upon her by a thoughtless parent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing in the manner of her cordial but composed young hostess
+      to show, and Miss Strange, with but one thought in mind since she had
+      caught the light of feeling on the two faces confronting her, took the
+      first opportunity that offered of running over the facts given her by Mr.
+      Driscoll, to see if any reconcilement were possible between them and an
+      innocence in which she must henceforth believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were certainly of a most damaging nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Driscoll and four other young ladies of her own station in life had
+      formed themselves, some two years before, into a coterie of five, called
+      The Inseparables. They lunched together, rode together, visited together.
+      So close was the bond and their mutual dependence so evident, that it came
+      to be the custom to invite the whole five whenever the size of the
+      function warranted it. In fact, it was far from an uncommon occurrence to
+      see them grouped at receptions or following one another down the aisles of
+      churches or through the mazes of the dance at balls or assemblies. And no
+      one demurred at this, for they were all handsome and attractive girls,
+      till it began to be noticed that, coincident with their presence, some
+      article of value was found missing from the dressing-room or from the
+      tables where wedding gifts were displayed. Nothing was safe where they
+      went, and though, in the course of time, each article found its way back
+      to its owner in a manner as mysterious as its previous abstraction, the
+      scandal grew and, whether with good reason or bad, finally settled about
+      the person of Miss Driscoll, who was the showiest, least pecuniarily
+      tempted, and most dignified in manner and speech of them all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some instances had been given by way of further enlightenment. This is
+      one: A theatre party was in progress. There were twelve in the party, five
+      of whom were the Inseparables. In the course of the last act, another lady&mdash;in
+      fact, their chaperon&mdash;missed her handkerchief, an almost priceless
+      bit of lace. Positive that she had brought it with her into the box, she
+      caused a careful search, but without the least success. Recalling certain
+      whispers she had heard, she noted which of the five girls were with her in
+      the box. They were Miss Driscoll, Miss Hughson, Miss Yates, and Miss
+      Benedict. Miss West sat in the box adjoining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fortnight later this handkerchief reappeared&mdash;and where? Among the
+      cushions of a yellow satin couch in her own drawing-room. The Inseparables
+      had just made their call and the three who had sat on the couch were Miss
+      Driscoll, Miss Hughson, and Miss Benedict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next instance seemed to point still more insistently toward the lady
+      already named. Miss Yates had an expensive present to buy, and the whole
+      five Inseparables went in an imposing group to Tiffany&rsquo;s. A tray of rings
+      was set before them. All examined and eagerly fingered the stock out of
+      which Miss Yates presently chose a finely set emerald. She was leading her
+      friends away when the clerk suddenly whispered in her ear, &ldquo;I miss one of
+      the rings.&rdquo; Dismayed beyond speech, she turned and consulted the faces of
+      her four companions who stared back at her with immovable serenity. But
+      one of them was paler than usual, and this lady (it was Miss Driscoll)
+      held her hands in her muff and did not offer to take them out. Miss Yates,
+      whose father had completed a big &ldquo;deal&rdquo; the week before, wheeled round
+      upon the clerk. &ldquo;Charge it! charge it at its full value,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;I buy
+      both the rings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in three weeks the purloined ring came back to her, in a box of
+      violets with no name attached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third instance was a recent one, and had come to Mr. Driscoll&rsquo;s ears
+      directly from the lady suffering the loss. She was a woman of
+      uncompromising integrity, who felt it her duty to make known to this
+      gentleman the following facts: She had just left a studio reception, and
+      was standing at the curb waiting for a taxicab to draw up, when a small
+      boy&mdash;a street arab&mdash;darted toward her from the other side of the
+      street, and thrusting into her hand something small and hard, cried
+      breathlessly as he slipped away, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s yours, ma&rsquo;am; you dropped it.&rdquo;
+       Astonished, for she had not been conscious of any loss, she looked down at
+      her treasure trove and found it to be a small medallion which she
+      sometimes wore on a chain at her belt. But she had not worn it that day,
+      nor any day for weeks. Then she remembered. She had worn it a month before
+      to a similar reception at this same studio. A number of young girls had
+      stood about her admiring it&mdash;she remembered well who they were; the
+      Inseparables, of course, and to please them she had slipped it from its
+      chain. Then something had happened,&mdash;something which diverted her
+      attention entirely,&mdash;and she had gone home without the medallion;
+      had, in fact, forgotten it, only to recall its loss now. Placing it in her
+      bag, she looked hastily about her. A crowd was at her back; nothing to be
+      distinguished there. But in front, on the opposite side of the street,
+      stood a club-house, and in one of its windows she perceived a solitary
+      figure looking out. It was that of Miss Driscoll&rsquo;s father. He could
+      imagine her conclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain he denied all knowledge of the matter. She told him other stories
+      which had come to her ears of thefts as mysterious, followed by
+      restorations as peculiar as this one, finishing with, &ldquo;It is your
+      daughter, and people are beginning to say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Miss Strange, brooding over these instances, would have said the same,
+      but for Miss Driscoll&rsquo;s absolute serenity of demeanour and complete
+      abandonment to love. These seemed incompatible with guilt; these, whatever
+      the appearances, proclaimed innocence&mdash;an innocence she was here to
+      prove if fortune favoured and the really guilty person&rsquo;s madness should
+      again break forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For madness it would be and nothing less, for any hand, even the most
+      experienced, to draw attention to itself by a repetition of old tricks on
+      an occasion so marked. Yet because it would take madness, and madness
+      knows no law, she prepared herself for the contingency under a mask of
+      girlish smiles which made her at once the delight and astonishment of her
+      watchful and uneasy host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the exception of the diamonds worn by the Ambassadress, there was but
+      one jewel of consequence to be seen at the dinner that night; but how
+      great was that consequence and with what splendour it invested the snowy
+      neck it adorned!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange, in compliment to the noble foreigners, had put on one of her
+      family heirlooms&mdash;a filigree pendant of extraordinary sapphires which
+      had once belonged to Marie Antoinette. As its beauty flashed upon the
+      women, and its value struck the host, the latter could not restrain
+      himself from casting an anxious eye about the board in search of some
+      token of the cupidity with which one person there must welcome this
+      unexpected sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally his first glance fell upon Alicia, seated opposite to him at the
+      other end of the table. But her eyes were elsewhere, and her smile for
+      Captain Holliday, and the father&rsquo;s gaze travelled on, taking up each young
+      girl&rsquo;s face in turn. All were contemplating Miss Strange and her jewels,
+      and the cheeks of one were flushed and those of the others pale, but
+      whether with dread or longing who could tell. Struck with foreboding, but
+      alive to his duty as host, he forced his glances away, and did not even
+      allow himself to question the motive or the wisdom of the temptation thus
+      offered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two hours later and the girls were all in one room. It was a custom of the
+      Inseparables to meet for a chat before retiring, but always alone and in
+      the room of one of their number. But this was a night of innovations;
+      Violet was not only included, but the meeting was held in her room. Her
+      way with girls was even more fruitful of result than her way with men.
+      They might laugh at her, criticize her or even call her names significant
+      of disdain, but they never left her long to herself or missed an
+      opportunity to make the most of her irrepressible chatter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her satisfaction at entering this charmed circle did not take from her
+      piquancy, and story after story fell from her lips, as she fluttered
+      about, now here now there, in her endless preparations for retirement. She
+      had taken off her historic pendant after it had been duly admired and
+      handled by all present, and, with the careless confidence of an assured
+      ownership, thrown it down upon the end of her dresser, which, by the way,
+      projected very close to the open window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going to leave your jewel there?&rdquo; whispered a voice in her ear as
+      a burst of laughter rang out in response to one of her sallies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning, with a simulation of round-eyed wonder, she met Miss Hughson&rsquo;s
+      earnest gaze with the careless rejoinder, &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the harm?&rdquo; and went on
+      with her story with all the reckless ease of a perfectly thoughtless
+      nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Hughson abandoned her protest. How could she explain her reasons for
+      it to one apparently uninitiated in the scandal associated with their
+      especial clique.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, she left the jewel there; but she locked her door and quickly, so
+      that they must all have heard her before reaching their rooms. Then she
+      crossed to the window, which, like all on this side, opened on a balcony
+      running the length of the house. She was aware of this balcony, also of
+      the fact that only young ladies slept in the corridor communicating with
+      it. But she was not quite sure that this one corridor accommodated them
+      all. If one of them should room elsewhere! (Miss Driscoll, for instance).
+      But no! the anxiety displayed for the safety of her jewel precluded that
+      supposition. Their hostess, if none of the others, was within access of
+      this room and its open window. But how about the rest? Perhaps the lights
+      would tell. Eagerly the little schemer looked forth, and let her glances
+      travel down the full length of the balcony. Two separate beams of light
+      shot across it as she looked, and presently another, and, after some
+      waiting, a fourth. But the fifth failed to appear. This troubled her, but
+      not seriously. Two of the girls might be sleeping in one bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drawing her shade, she finished her preparations for the night; then with
+      her kimono on, lifted the pendant and thrust it into a small box she had
+      taken from her trunk. A curious smile, very unlike any she had shown to
+      man or woman that day, gave a sarcastic lift to her lips, as with a slow
+      and thoughtful manipulation of her dainty fingers she moved the jewel
+      about in this small receptacle and then returned it, after one quick
+      examining glance, to the very spot on the dresser from which she had taken
+      it. &ldquo;If only the madness is great enough!&rdquo; that smile seemed to say.
+      Truly, it was much to hope for, but a chance is a chance; and comforting
+      herself with the thought, Miss Strange put out her light, and, with a
+      hasty raising of the shade she had previously pulled down, took a final
+      look at the prospect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its aspect made her shudder. A low fog was rising from the meadows in the
+      far distance, and its ghostliness under the moon woke all sorts of uncanny
+      images in her excited mind. To escape them she crept into bed where she
+      lay with her eyes on the end of her dresser. She had closed that half of
+      the French window over which she had drawn the shade; but she had left
+      ajar the one giving free access to the jewels; and when she was not
+      watching the scintillation of her sapphires in the moonlight, she was
+      dwelling in fixed attention on this narrow opening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But nothing happened, and two o&rsquo;clock, then three o&rsquo;clock struck, without
+      a dimming of the blue scintillations on the end of her dresser. Then she
+      suddenly sat up. Not that she heard anything new, but that a thought had
+      come to her. &ldquo;If an attempt is made,&rdquo; so she murmured softly to herself,
+      &ldquo;it will be by&mdash;&rdquo; She did not finish. Something&mdash;she could not
+      call it sound&mdash;set her heart beating tumultuously, and listening&mdash;listening&mdash;watching&mdash;watching&mdash;she
+      followed in her imagination the approach down the balcony of an almost
+      inaudible step, not daring to move herself, it seemed so near, but waiting
+      with eyes fixed, for the shadow which must fall across the shade she had
+      failed to raise over that half of the swinging window she had so carefully
+      left shut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length she saw it projecting slowly across the slightly illuminated
+      surface. Formless, save for the outreaching hand, it passed the casement&rsquo;s
+      edge, nearing with pauses and hesitations the open gap beyond through
+      which the neglected sapphires beamed with steady lustre. Would she ever
+      see the hand itself appear between the dresser and the window frame? Yes,
+      there it comes,&mdash;small, delicate, and startlingly white, threading
+      that gap&mdash;darting with the suddenness of a serpent&rsquo;s tongue toward
+      the dresser and disappearing again with the pendant in its clutch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she realizes this,&mdash;she is but young, you know,&mdash;as she sees
+      her bait taken and the hardly expected event fulfilled, her pent-up breath
+      sped forth in a sigh which sent the intruder flying, and so startled
+      herself that she sank back in terror on her pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The breakfast-call had sounded its musical chimes through the halls. The
+      Ambassador and his wife had responded, so had most of the young gentlemen
+      and ladies, but the daughter of the house was not amongst them, nor Miss
+      Strange, whom one would naturally expect to see down first of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These two absences puzzled Mr. Driscoll. What might they not portend? But
+      his suspense, at least in one regard, was short. Before his guests were
+      well seated, Miss Driscoll entered from the terrace in company with
+      Captain Holliday. In her arms she carried a huge bunch of roses and was
+      looking very beautiful. Her father&rsquo;s heart warmed at the sight. No shadow
+      from the night rested upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miss Strange!&mdash;where was she? He could not feel quite easy till
+      he knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have any of you seen Miss Strange?&rdquo; he asked, as they sat down at table.
+      And his eyes sought the Inseparables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five lovely heads were shaken, some carelessly, some wonderingly, and one,
+      with a quick, forced smile. But he was in no mood to discriminate, and he
+      had beckoned one of the servants to him, when a step was heard at the door
+      and the delinquent slid in and took her place, in a shamefaced manner
+      suggestive of a cause deeper than mere tardiness. In fact, she had what
+      might be called a frightened air, and stared into her plate, avoiding
+      every eye, which was certainly not natural to her. What did it mean? and
+      why, as she made a poor attempt at eating, did four of the Inseparables
+      exchange glances of doubt and dismay and then concentrate their looks upon
+      his daughter? That Alicia failed to notice this, but sat abloom above her
+      roses now fastened in a great bunch upon her breast, offered him some
+      comfort, yet, for all the volubility of his chief guests, the meal was a
+      great trial to his patience, as well as a poor preparation for the hour
+      when, the noble pair gone, he stepped into the library to find Miss
+      Strange awaiting him with one hand behind her back and a piteous look on
+      her infantile features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, Mr. Driscoll,&rdquo; she began,&mdash;and then he saw that a group of
+      anxious girls hovered in her rear&mdash;&ldquo;my pendant! my beautiful pendant!
+      It is gone! Somebody reached in from the balcony and took it from my
+      dresser in the night. Of course, it was to frighten me; all of the girls
+      told me not to leave it there. But I&mdash;I cannot make them give it
+      back, and papa is so particular about this jewel that I&rsquo;m afraid to go
+      home. Won&rsquo;t you tell them it&rsquo;s no joke, and see that I get it again. I
+      won&rsquo;t be so careless another time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardly believing his eyes, hardly believing his ears,&mdash;she was so
+      perfectly the spoiled child detected in a fault&mdash;he looked sternly
+      about upon the girls and bade them end the jest and produce the gems at
+      once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not one of them spoke, and not one of them moved; only his daughter
+      grew pale until the roses seemed a mockery, and the steady stare of her
+      large eyes was almost too much for him to bear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The anguish of this gave asperity to his manner, and in a strange, hoarse
+      tone he loudly cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of you did this. Which? If it was you, Alicia, speak. I am in no mood
+      for nonsense. I want to know whose foot traversed the balcony and whose
+      hand abstracted these jewels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A continued silence, deepening into painful embarrassment for all. Mr.
+      Driscoll eyed them in ill-concealed anguish, then turning to Miss Strange
+      was still further thrown off his balance by seeing her pretty head droop
+      and her gaze fall in confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! it&rsquo;s easy enough to tell whose foot traversed the balcony,&rdquo; she
+      murmured. &ldquo;It left this behind.&rdquo; And drawing forward her hand, she held
+      out to view a small gold-coloured slipper. &ldquo;I found it outside my window,&rdquo;
+       she explained. &ldquo;I hoped I should not have to show it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A gasp of uncontrollable feeling from the surrounding group of girls, then
+      absolute stillness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fail to recognize it,&rdquo; observed Mr. Driscoll, taking it in his hand.
+      &ldquo;Whose slipper is this?&rdquo; he asked in a manner not to be gainsaid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still no reply, then as he continued to eye the girls one after another a
+      voice&mdash;the last he expected to hear&mdash;spoke and his daughter
+      cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is mine. But it was not I who walked in it down the balcony.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alicia!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A month&rsquo;s apprehension was in that cry. The silence, the pent-up emotion
+      brooding in the air was intolerable. A fresh young laugh broke it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; exclaimed a roguish voice, &ldquo;I knew that you were all in it! But the
+      especial one who wore the slipper and grabbed the pendant cannot hope to
+      hide herself. Her finger-tips will give her away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Amazement on every face and a convulsive movement in one half-hidden hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; the airy little being went on, in her light way, &ldquo;I have some
+      awfully funny tricks. I am always being scolded for them, but somehow I
+      don&rsquo;t improve. One is to keep my jewelry bright with a strange foreign
+      paste an old Frenchwoman once gave me in Paris. It&rsquo;s of a vivid red, and
+      stains the fingers dreadfully if you don&rsquo;t take care. Not even water will
+      take it off, see mine. I used that paste on my pendant last night just
+      after you left me, and being awfully sleepy I didn&rsquo;t stop to rub it off.
+      If your finger-tips are not red, you never touched the pendant, Miss
+      Driscoll. Oh, see! They are as white as milk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But some one took the sapphires, and I owe that person a scolding, as
+      well as myself. Was it you, Miss Hughson? You, Miss Yates? or&mdash;&rdquo; and
+      here she paused before Miss West, &ldquo;Oh, you have your gloves on! You are
+      the guilty one!&rdquo; and her laugh rang out like a peal of bells, robbing her
+      next sentence of even a suggestion of sarcasm. &ldquo;Oh, what a sly-boots!&rdquo; she
+      cried. &ldquo;How you have deceived me! Whoever would have thought you to be the
+      one to play the mischief!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Who indeed! Of all the five, she was the one who was considered absolutely
+      immune from suspicion ever since the night Mrs. Barnum&rsquo;s handkerchief had
+      been taken, and she not in the box. Eyes which had surveyed Miss Driscoll
+      askance now rose in wonder toward hers, and failed to fall again because
+      of the stoniness into which her delicately-carved features had settled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss West, I know you will be glad to remove your gloves; Miss Strange
+      certainly has a right to know her special tormentor,&rdquo; spoke up her host in
+      as natural a voice as his great relief would allow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the cold, half-frozen woman remained without a movement. She was not
+      deceived by the banter of the moment. She knew that to all of the others,
+      if not to Peter Strange&rsquo;s odd little daughter, it was the thief who was
+      being spotted and brought thus hilariously to light. And her eyes grew
+      hard, and her lips grey, and she failed to unglove the hands upon which
+      all glances were concentrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not need to see my hands; I confess to taking the pendant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Caroline!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A heart overcome by shock had thrown up this cry. Miss West eyed her
+      bosom-friend disdainfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Strange has called it a jest,&rdquo; she coldly commented. &ldquo;Why should you
+      suggest anything of a graver character?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Alicia brought thus to bay, and by one she had trusted most, stepped
+      quickly forward, and quivering with vague doubts, aghast before unheard-of
+      possibilities, she tremulously remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We did not sleep together last night. You had to come into my room to get
+      my slippers. Why did you do this? What was in your mind, Caroline?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A steady look, a low laugh choked with many emotions answered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want me to reply, Alicia? Or shall we let it pass?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Answer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mr. Driscoll who spoke. Alicia had shrunk back, almost to where a
+      little figure was cowering with wide eyes fixed in something like terror
+      on the aroused father&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then hear me,&rdquo; murmured the girl, entrapped and suddenly desperate. &ldquo;I
+      wore Alicia&rsquo;s slippers and I took the jewels, because it was time that an
+      end should come to your mutual dissimulation. The love I once felt for her
+      she has herself deliberately killed. I had a lover&mdash;she took him. I
+      had faith in life, in honour, and in friendship. She destroyed all. A
+      thief&mdash;she has dared to aspire to him! And you condoned her fault.
+      You, with your craven restoration of her booty, thought the matter cleared
+      and her a fit mate for a man of highest honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss West,&rdquo;&mdash;no one had ever heard that tone in Mr. Driscoll&rsquo;s voice
+      before, &ldquo;before you say another word calculated to mislead these ladies,
+      let me say that this hand never returned any one&rsquo;s booty or had anything
+      to do with the restoration of any abstracted article. You have been caught
+      in a net, Miss West, from which you cannot escape by slandering my
+      innocent daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Innocent!&rdquo; All the tragedy latent in this peculiar girl&rsquo;s nature blazed
+      forth in the word. &ldquo;Alicia, face me. Are you innocent? Who took the
+      Dempsey corals, and that diamond from the Tiffany tray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not necessary for Alicia to answer,&rdquo; the father interposed with not
+      unnatural heat. &ldquo;Miss West stands self-convicted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How about Lady Paget&rsquo;s scarf? I was not there that night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a woman of wiles. That could be managed by one bent on an
+      elaborate scheme of revenge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so could the abstraction of Mrs. Barnum&rsquo;s five-hundred-dollar
+      handkerchief by one who sat in the next box,&rdquo; chimed in Miss Hughson,
+      edging away from the friend to whose honour she would have pinned her
+      faith an hour before. &ldquo;I remember now seeing her lean over the railing to
+      adjust the old lady&rsquo;s shawl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a start, Caroline West turned a tragic gaze upon the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think me guilty of all because of what I did last night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you, Anna?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alicia has my sympathy,&rdquo; murmured Miss Benedict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet the wild girl persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have told you my provocation. You cannot believe that I am guilty
+      of her sin; not if you look at her as I am looking now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But their glances hardly followed her pointing finger. Her friends&mdash;the
+      comrades of her youth, the Inseparables with their secret oath&mdash;one
+      and all held themselves aloof, struck by the perfidy they were only just
+      beginning to take in. Smitten with despair, for these girls were her life,
+      she gave one wild leap and sank on her knees before Alicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O speak!&rdquo; she began. &ldquo;Forgive me, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A tremble seized her throat; she ceased to speak and let fall her
+      partially uplifted hands. The cheery sound of men&rsquo;s voices had drifted in
+      from the terrace, and the figure of Captain Holliday could be seen passing
+      by. The shudder which shook Caroline West communicated itself to Alicia
+      Driscoll, and the former rising quickly, the two women surveyed each
+      other, possibly for the first time, with open soul and a complete
+      understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Caroline!&rdquo; murmured the one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alicia!&rdquo; pleaded the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Caroline, trust me,&rdquo; said Alicia Driscoll in that moving voice of hers,
+      which more than her beauty caught and retained all hearts. &ldquo;You have
+      served me ill, but it was not all undeserved. Girls,&rdquo; she went on, eyeing
+      both them and her father with the wistfulness of a breaking heart,
+      &ldquo;neither Caroline nor myself are worthy of Captain Holliday&rsquo;s love.
+      Caroline has told you her fault, but mine is perhaps a worse one. The ring&mdash;the
+      scarf&mdash;the diamond pins&mdash;I took them all&mdash;took them if I
+      did not retain them. A curse has been over my life&mdash;the curse of a
+      longing I could not combat. But love was working a change in me. Since I
+      have known Captain Holliday&mdash;but that&rsquo;s all over. I was mad to think
+      I could be happy with such memories in my life. I shall never marry now&mdash;or
+      touch jewels again&mdash;my own or another&rsquo;s. Father, father, you won&rsquo;t go
+      back on your girl! I couldn&rsquo;t see Caroline suffer for what I have done.
+      You will pardon me and help&mdash;help&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice choked. She flung herself into her father&rsquo;s arms; his head bent
+      over hers, and for an instant not a soul in the room moved. Then Miss
+      Hughson gave a spring and caught her by the hand. &ldquo;We are inseparable,&rdquo;
+       said she, and kissed the hand, murmuring, &ldquo;Now is our time to show it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then other lips fell upon those cold and trembling fingers, which seemed
+      to warm under these embraces. And then a tear. It came from the hard eye
+      of Caroline, and remained a sacred secret between the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have your pendant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Driscoll&rsquo;s suffering eye shone down on Violet Strange&rsquo;s uplifted face
+      as she advanced to say good-bye preparatory to departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she acknowledged, &ldquo;but hardly, I fear, your gratitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the answer astonished her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not sure that the real Alicia will not make her father happier than
+      the unreal one has ever done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Captain Holliday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He may come to feel the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I do not quit in disgrace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You depart with my thanks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When a certain personage was told of the success of Miss Strange&rsquo;s latest
+      manoeuvre, he remarked: &ldquo;The little one progresses. We shall have to give
+      her a case of prime importance next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM I <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM II. THE SECOND BULLET
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;You must see her.&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a most unhappy woman. Husband and child both taken from her in a
+      moment; and now, all means of living as well, unless some happy thought of
+      yours&mdash;some inspiration of your genius&mdash;shows us a way of
+      re-establishing her claims to the policy voided by this cry of suicide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the small wise head of Violet Strange continued its slow shake of
+      decided refusal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; she protested, &ldquo;but it&rsquo;s quite out of my province. I&rsquo;m too
+      young to meddle with so serious a matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not when you can save a bereaved woman the only possible compensation
+      left her by untoward fate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the police try their hand at that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have had no success with the case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you expect&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Miss Strange. I expect you to find the missing bullet which will
+      settle the fact that murder and not suicide ended George Hammond&rsquo;s life.
+      If you cannot, then a long litigation awaits this poor widow, ending, as
+      such litigation usually does, in favour of the stronger party. There&rsquo;s the
+      alternative. If you once saw her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m not willing to do. If I once saw her I should yield
+      to her importunities and attempt the seemingly impossible. My instincts
+      bid me say no. Give me something easier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easier things are not so remunerative. There&rsquo;s money in this affair, if
+      the insurance company is forced to pay up. I can offer you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was eagerness in the tone despite her effort at nonchalance. The
+      other smiled imperceptibly, and briefly named the sum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was larger than she had expected. This her visitor saw by the way her
+      eyelids fell and the peculiar stillness which, for an instant, held her
+      vivacity in check.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think I can earn that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes were fixed on his in an eagerness as honest as it was
+      unrestrained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could hardly conceal his amazement, her desire was so evident and the
+      cause of it so difficult to understand. He knew she wanted money&mdash;that
+      was her avowed reason for entering into this uncongenial work. But to want
+      it so much! He glanced at her person; it was simply clad but very
+      expensively&mdash;how expensively it was his business to know. Then he
+      took in the room in which they sat. Simplicity again, but the simplicity
+      of high art&mdash;the drawing-room of one rich enough to indulge in the
+      final luxury of a highly cultivated taste, viz.: unostentatious elegance
+      and the subjection of each carefully chosen ornament to the general
+      effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What did this favoured child of fortune lack that she could be reached by
+      such a plea, when her whole being revolted from the nature of the task he
+      offered her? It was a question not new to him; but one he had never heard
+      answered and was not likely to hear answered now. But the fact remained
+      that the consent he had thought dependent upon sympathetic interest could
+      be reached much more readily by the promise of large emolument,&mdash;and
+      he owned to a feeling of secret disappointment even while he recognized
+      the value of the discovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his satisfaction in the latter, if satisfaction it were, was of very
+      short duration. Almost immediately he observed a change in her. The
+      sparkle which had shone in the eye whose depths he had never been able to
+      penetrate, had dissipated itself in something like a tear and she spoke up
+      in that vigorous tone no one but himself had ever heard, as she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. The sum is a good one and I could use it; but I will not waste my
+      energy on a case I do not believe in. The man shot himself. He was a
+      speculator, and probably had good reason for his act. Even his wife
+      acknowledges that he has lately had more losses than gains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See her. She has something to tell you which never got into the papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that? You know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On my honour, Miss Strange.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet pondered; then suddenly succumbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her come, then. Prompt to the hour. I will receive her at three.
+      Later I have a tea and two party calls to make.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her visitor rose to leave. He had been able to subdue all evidence of his
+      extreme gratification, and now took on a formal air. In dismissing a
+      guest, Miss Strange was invariably the society belle and that only. This
+      he had come to recognize.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The case (well known at the time) was, in the fewest possible words, as
+      follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a sultry night in September, a young couple living in one of the large
+      apartment houses in the extreme upper portion of Manhattan were so annoyed
+      by the incessant crying of a child in the adjoining suite, that they got
+      up, he to smoke, and she to sit in the window for a possible breath of
+      cool air. They were congratulating themselves upon the wisdom they had
+      shown in thus giving up all thought of sleep&mdash;for the child&rsquo;s crying
+      had not ceased&mdash;when (it may have been two o&rsquo;clock and it may have
+      been a little later) there came from somewhere near, the sharp and
+      somewhat peculiar detonation of a pistol-shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought it came from above; she, from the rear, and they were staring
+      at each other in the helpless wonder of the moment, when they were struck
+      by the silence. The baby had ceased to cry. All was as still in the
+      adjoining apartment as in their own&mdash;too still&mdash;much too still.
+      Their mutual stare turned to one of horror. &ldquo;It came from there!&rdquo;
+       whispered the wife. &ldquo;Some accident has occurred to Mr. or Mrs. Hammond&mdash;we
+      ought to go&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her words&mdash;very tremulous ones&mdash;were broken by a shout from
+      below. They were standing in their window and had evidently been seen by a
+      passing policeman. &ldquo;Anything wrong up there?&rdquo; they heard him cry. Mr.
+      Saunders immediately looked out. &ldquo;Nothing wrong here,&rdquo; he called down.
+      (They were but two stories from the pavement.) &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m not so sure about
+      the rear apartment. We thought we heard a shot. Hadn&rsquo;t you better come up,
+      officer? My wife is nervous about it. I&rsquo;ll meet you at the stair-head and
+      show you the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer nodded and stepped in. The young couple hastily donned some
+      wraps, and, by the time he appeared on their floor, they were ready to
+      accompany him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, no disturbance was apparent anywhere else in the house, until
+      the policeman rang the bell of the Hammond apartment. Then, voices began
+      to be heard, and doors to open above and below, but not the one before
+      which the policeman stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another ring, and this time an insistent one;&mdash;and still no response.
+      The officer&rsquo;s hand was rising for the third time when there came a sound
+      of fluttering from behind the panels against which he had laid his ear,
+      and finally a choked voice uttering unintelligible words. Then a hand
+      began to struggle with the lock, and the door, slowly opening, disclosed a
+      woman clad in a hastily donned wrapper and giving every evidence of
+      extreme fright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she exclaimed, seeing only the compassionate faces of her
+      neighbours. &ldquo;You heard it, too! a pistol-shot from there&mdash;there&mdash;my
+      husband&rsquo;s room. I have not dared to go&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;O, have mercy
+      and see if anything is wrong! It is so still&mdash;so still, and only a
+      moment ago the baby was crying. Mrs. Saunders, Mrs. Saunders, why is it so
+      still?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had fallen into her neighbour&rsquo;s arms. The hand with which she had
+      pointed out a certain door had sunk to her side and she appeared to be on
+      the verge of collapse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer eyed her sternly, while noting her appearance, which was that
+      of a woman hastily risen from bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where were you?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Not with your husband and child, or you would
+      know what had happened there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was sleeping down the hall,&rdquo; she managed to gasp out. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not well&mdash;I&mdash;Oh,
+      why do you all stand still and do nothing? My baby&rsquo;s in there. Go! go!&rdquo;
+       and, with sudden energy, she sprang upright, her eyes wide open and
+      burning, her small well featured face white as the linen she sought to
+      hide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer demurred no longer. In another instant he was trying the door
+      at which she was again pointing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was locked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glancing back at the woman, now cowering almost to the floor, he pounded
+      at the door and asked the man inside to open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No answer came back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sharp turn he glanced again at the wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that your husband is in this room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded, gasping faintly, &ldquo;And the child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned back, listened, then beckoned to Mr. Saunders. &ldquo;We shall have to
+      break our way in,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Put your shoulder well to the door. Now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hinges of the door creaked; the lock gave way (this special officer
+      weighed two hundred and seventy-five, as he found out, next day), and a
+      prolonged and sweeping crash told the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hammond gave a low cry; and, straining forward from where she
+      crouched in terror on the floor, searched the faces of the two men for
+      some hint of what they saw in the dimly-lighted space beyond. Something
+      dreadful, something which made Mr. Saunders come rushing back with a
+      shout:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take her away! Take her to our apartment, Jennie. She must not see&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not see! He realized the futility of his words as his gaze fell on the
+      young woman who had risen up at his approach and now stood gazing at him
+      without speech, without movement, but with a glare of terror in her eyes,
+      which gave him his first realization of human misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His own glance fell before it. If he had followed his instinct he would
+      have fled the house rather than answer the question of her look and the
+      attitude of her whole frozen body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps in mercy to his speechless terror, perhaps in mercy to herself,
+      she was the one who at last found the word which voiced their mutual
+      anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No answer. None was needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my baby?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      O, that cry! It curdled the hearts of all who heard it. It shook the souls
+      of men and women both inside and outside the apartment; then all was
+      forgotten in the wild rush she made. The wife and mother had flung herself
+      upon the scene, and, side by side with the not unmoved policeman, stood
+      looking down upon the desolation made in one fatal instant in her home and
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They lay there together, both past help, both quite dead. The child had
+      simply been strangled by the weight of his father&rsquo;s arm which lay directly
+      across the upturned little throat. But the father was a victim of the shot
+      they had heard. There was blood on his breast, and a pistol in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suicide! The horrible truth was patent. No wonder they wanted to hold the
+      young widow back. Her neighbour, Mrs. Saunders, crept in on tiptoe and put
+      her arms about the swaying, fainting woman; but there was nothing to say&mdash;absolutely
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At least, they thought not. But when they saw her throw herself down, not
+      by her husband, but by the child, and drag it out from under that
+      strangling arm and hug and kiss it and call out wildly for a doctor, the
+      officer endeavoured to interfere and yet could not find the heart to do
+      so, though he knew the child was dead and should not, according to all the
+      rules of the coroner&rsquo;s office, be moved before that official arrived. Yet
+      because no mother could be convinced of a fact like this, he let her sit
+      with it on the floor and try all her little arts to revive it, while he
+      gave orders to the janitor and waited himself for the arrival of doctor
+      and coroner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still sitting there in wide-eyed misery, alternately fondling the
+      little body and drawing back to consult its small set features for some
+      sign of life, when the doctor came, and, after one look at the child, drew
+      it softly from her arms and laid it quietly in the crib from which its
+      father had evidently lifted it but a short time before. Then he turned
+      back to her, and found her on her feet, upheld by her two friends. She had
+      understood his action, and without a groan had accepted her fate. Indeed,
+      she seemed incapable of any further speech or action. She was staring down
+      at her husband&rsquo;s body, which she, for the first time, seemed fully to see.
+      Was her look one of grief or of resentment for the part he had played so
+      unintentionally in her child&rsquo;s death? It was hard to tell; and when, with
+      slowly rising finger, she pointed to the pistol so tightly clutched in the
+      other outstretched hand, no one there&mdash;and by this time the room was
+      full&mdash;could foretell what her words would be when her tongue regained
+      its usage and she could speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What she did say was this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there a bullet gone? Did he fire off that pistol?&rdquo; A question so
+      manifestly one of delirium that no one answered it, which seemed to
+      surprise her, though she said nothing till her glance had passed all
+      around the walls of the room to where a window stood open to the night,&mdash;its
+      lower sash being entirely raised. &ldquo;There! look there!&rdquo; she cried, with a
+      commanding accent, and, throwing up her hands, sank a dead weight into the
+      arms of those supporting her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one understood; but naturally more than one rushed to the window. An
+      open space was before them. Here lay the fields not yet parcelled out into
+      lots and built upon; but it was not upon these they looked, but upon the
+      strong trellis which they found there, which, if it supported no vine,
+      formed a veritable ladder between this window and the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could she have meant to call attention to this fact; and were her words
+      expressive of another idea than the obvious one of suicide?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If so, to what lengths a woman&rsquo;s imagination can go! Or so their combined
+      looks seemed to proclaim, when to their utter astonishment they saw the
+      officer, who had presented a calm appearance up till now, shift his
+      position and with a surprised grunt direct their eyes to a portion of the
+      wall just visible beyond the half-drawn curtains of the bed. The mirror
+      hanging there showed a star-shaped breakage, such as follows the sharp
+      impact of a bullet or a fiercely projected stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He fired two shots. One went wild; the other straight home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the officer delivering his opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Saunders, returning from the distant room where he had assisted in
+      carrying Mrs. Hammond, cast a look at the shattered glass, and remarked
+      forcibly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard but one; and I was sitting up, disturbed by that poor infant.
+      Jennie, did you hear more than one shot?&rdquo; he asked, turning toward his
+      wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered, but not with the readiness he had evidently expected.
+      &ldquo;I heard only one, but that was not quite usual in its tone. I&rsquo;m used to
+      guns,&rdquo; she explained, turning to the officer. &ldquo;My father was an army man,
+      and he taught me very early to load and fire a pistol. There was a
+      prolonged sound to this shot; something like an echo of itself, following
+      close upon the first ping. Didn&rsquo;t you notice that, Warren?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember something of the kind,&rdquo; her husband allowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He shot twice and quickly,&rdquo; interposed the policeman, sententiously. &ldquo;We
+      shall find a spent bullet back of that mirror.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when, upon the arrival of the coroner, an investigation was made of
+      the mirror and the wall behind, no bullet was found either there or any
+      where else in the room, save in the dead man&rsquo;s breast. Nor had more than
+      one been shot from his pistol, as five full chambers testified. The case
+      which seemed so simple had its mysteries, but the assertion made by Mrs.
+      Saunders no longer carried weight, nor was the evidence offered by the
+      broken mirror considered as indubitably establishing the fact that a
+      second shot had been fired in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet it was equally evident that the charge which had entered the dead
+      speculator&rsquo;s breast had not been delivered at the close range of the
+      pistol found clutched in his hand. There were no powder-marks to be
+      discerned on his pajama-jacket, or on the flesh beneath. Thus anomaly
+      confronted anomaly, leaving open but one other theory: that the bullet
+      found in Mr. Hammond&rsquo;s breast came from the window and the one he shot
+      went out of it. But this would necessitate his having shot his pistol from
+      a point far removed from where he was found; and his wound was such as
+      made it difficult to believe that he would stagger far, if at all, after
+      its infliction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, because the coroner was both conscientious and alert, he caused a
+      most rigorous search to be made of the ground overlooked by the above
+      mentioned window; a search in which the police joined, but which was
+      without any result save that of rousing the attention of people in the
+      neighbourhood and leading to a story being circulated of a man seen some
+      time the night before crossing the fields in a great hurry. But as no
+      further particulars were forthcoming, and not even a description of the
+      man to be had, no emphasis would have been laid upon this story had it not
+      transpired that the moment a report of it had come to Mrs. Hammond&rsquo;s ears
+      (why is there always some one to carry these reports?) she roused from the
+      torpor into which she had fallen, and in wild fashion exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew it! I expected it! He was shot through the window and by that
+      wretch. He never shot himself.&rdquo; Violent declarations which trailed off
+      into the one continuous wail, &ldquo;O, my baby! my poor baby!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such words, even though the fruit of delirium, merited some sort of
+      attention, or so this good coroner thought, and as soon as opportunity
+      offered and she was sufficiently sane and quiet to respond to his
+      questions, he asked her whom she had meant by that wretch, and what reason
+      she had, or thought she had, of attributing her husband&rsquo;s death to any
+      other agency than his own disgust with life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then it was that his sympathies, although greatly roused in her favour
+      began to wane. She met the question with a cold stare followed by a few
+      ambiguous words out of which he could make nothing. Had she said wretch?
+      She did not remember. They must not be influenced by anything she might
+      have uttered in her first grief. She was well-nigh insane at the time. But
+      of one thing they might be sure: her husband had not shot himself; he was
+      too much afraid of death for such an act. Besides, he was too happy.
+      Whatever folks might say he was too fond of his family to wish to leave
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor did the coroner or any other official succeed in eliciting anything
+      further from her. Even when she was asked, with cruel insistence, how she
+      explained the fact that the baby was found lying on the floor instead of
+      in its crib, her only answer was: &ldquo;His father was trying to soothe it. The
+      child was crying dreadfully, as you have heard from those who were kept
+      awake by him that night, and my husband was carrying him about when the
+      shot came which caused George to fall and overlay the baby in his
+      struggles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Carrying a baby about with a loaded pistol in his hand?&rdquo; came back in
+      stern retort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no answer for this. She admitted when informed that the bullet
+      extracted from her husband&rsquo;s body had been found to correspond exactly
+      with those remaining in the five chambers of the pistol taken from his
+      hand, that he was not only the owner of this pistol but was in the habit
+      of sleeping with it under his pillow; but, beyond that, nothing; and this
+      reticence, as well as her manner which was cold and repellent, told
+      against her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A verdict of suicide was rendered by the coroner&rsquo;s jury, and the
+      life-insurance company, in which Mr. Hammond had but lately insured
+      himself for a large sum, taking advantage of the suicide clause embodied
+      in the policy, announced its determination of not paying the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the situation, as known to Violet Strange and the general public,
+      on the day she was asked to see Mrs. Hammond and learn what might alter
+      her opinion as to the justice of this verdict and the stand taken by the
+      Shuler Life Insurance Company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock on the mantel in Miss Strange&rsquo;s rose-coloured boudoir had struck
+      three, and Violet was gazing in some impatience at the door, when there
+      came a gentle knock upon it, and the maid (one of the elderly, not
+      youthful, kind) ushered in her expected visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are Mrs. Hammond?&rdquo; she asked, in natural awe of the too black figure
+      outlined so sharply against the deep pink of the sea-shell room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer was a slow lifting of the veil which shadowed the features she
+      knew only from the cuts she had seen in newspapers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are&mdash;Miss Strange?&rdquo; stammered her visitor; &ldquo;the young lady who&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am,&rdquo; chimed in a voice as ringing as it was sweet. &ldquo;I am the person you
+      have come here to see. And this is my home. But that does not make me less
+      interested in the unhappy, or less desirous of serving them. Certainly you
+      have met with the two greatest losses which can come to a woman&mdash;I
+      know your story well enough to say that&mdash;; but what have you to tell
+      me in proof that you should not lose your anticipated income as well?
+      Something vital, I hope, else I cannot help you; something which you
+      should have told the coroner&rsquo;s jury&mdash;and did not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The flush which was the sole answer these words called forth did not take
+      from the refinement of the young widow&rsquo;s expression, but rather added to
+      it; Violet watched it in its ebb and flow and, seriously affected by it
+      (why, she did not know, for Mrs. Hammond had made no other appeal either
+      by look or gesture), pushed forward a chair and begged her visitor to be
+      seated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can converse in perfect safety here,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;When you feel quite
+      equal to it, let me hear what you have to communicate. It will never go
+      any further. I could not do the work I do if I felt it necessary to have a
+      confidant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you are so young and so&mdash;so&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So inexperienced you would say and so evidently a member of what New
+      Yorkers call &lsquo;society.&rsquo; Do not let that trouble you. My inexperience is
+      not likely to last long and my social pleasures are more apt to add to my
+      efficiency than to detract from it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this Violet&rsquo;s face broke into a smile. It was not the brilliant one
+      so often seen upon her lips, but there was something in its quality which
+      carried encouragement to the widow and led her to say with obvious
+      eagerness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know the facts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have read all the papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not believed on the stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was your manner&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not help my manner. I was keeping something back, and, being
+      unused to deceit, I could not act quite naturally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you keep something back? When you saw the unfavourable impression
+      made by your reticence, why did you not speak up and frankly tell your
+      story?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I was ashamed. Because I thought it would hurt me more to speak
+      than to keep silent. I do not think so now; but I did then&mdash;and so
+      made my great mistake. You must remember not only the awful shock of my
+      double loss, but the sense of guilt accompanying it; for my husband and I
+      had quarreled that night, quarreled bitterly&mdash;that was why I had run
+      away into another room and not because I was feeling ill and impatient of
+      the baby&rsquo;s fretful cries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So people have thought.&rdquo; In saying this, Miss Strange was perhaps cruelly
+      emphatic. &ldquo;You wish to explain that quarrel? You think it will be doing
+      any good to your cause to go into that matter with me now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot say; but I must first clear my conscience and then try to
+      convince you that quarrel or no quarrel, he never took his own life. He
+      was not that kind. He had an abnormal fear of death. I do not like to say
+      it but he was a physical coward. I have seen him turn pale at the least
+      hint of danger. He could no more have turned that muzzle upon his own
+      breast than he could have turned it upon his baby. Some other hand shot
+      him, Miss Strange. Remember the open window, the shattered mirror; and I
+      think I know that hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head had fallen forward on her breast. The emotion she showed was not
+      so eloquent of grief as of deep personal shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think you know the man?&rdquo; In saying this, Violet&rsquo;s voice sunk to a
+      whisper. It was an accusation of murder she had just heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To my great distress, yes. When Mr. Hammond and I were married,&rdquo; the
+      widow now proceeded in a more determined tone, &ldquo;there was another man&mdash;a
+      very violent one&mdash;who vowed even at the church door that George and I
+      should never live out two full years together. We have not. Our second
+      anniversary would have been in November.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me say this: the quarrel of which I speak was not serious enough to
+      occasion any such act of despair on his part. A man would be mad to end
+      his life on account of so slight a disagreement. It was not even on
+      account of the person of whom I&rsquo;ve just spoken, though that person had
+      been mentioned between us earlier in the evening, Mr. Hammond having come
+      across him face to face that very afternoon in the subway. Up to this time
+      neither of us had seen or heard of him since our wedding-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think this person whom you barely mentioned, so mindful of his
+      old grudge that he sought out your domicile, and, with the intention of
+      murder, climbed the trellis leading to your room and turned his pistol
+      upon the shadowy figure which was all he could see in the semi-obscurity
+      of a much lowered gas-jet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man in the dark does not need a bright light to see his enemy when he
+      is intent upon revenge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange altered her tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your husband? You must acknowledge that he shot off his pistol
+      whether the other did or not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was in self-defence. He would shoot to save his own life&mdash;or the
+      baby&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he must have heard or seen&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man at the window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And would have shot there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or tried to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tried to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; the other shot first&mdash;oh, I&rsquo;ve thought it all out&mdash;causing
+      my husband&rsquo;s bullet to go wild. It was his which broke the mirror.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet&rsquo;s eyes, bright as stars, suddenly narrowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what happened then?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Why cannot they find the bullet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it went out of the window;&mdash;glanced off and went out of the
+      window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hammond&rsquo;s tone was triumphant; her look spirited and intense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet eyed her compassionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would a bullet glancing off from a mirror, however hung, be apt to reach
+      a window so far on the opposite side?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know; I only know that it did,&rdquo; was the contradictory, almost
+      absurd, reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was the cause of the quarrel you speak of between your husband and
+      yourself? You see, I must know the exact truth and all the truth to be of
+      any assistance to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was&mdash;it was about the care I gave, or didn&rsquo;t give, the baby. I
+      feel awfully to have to say it, but George did not think I did my full
+      duty by the child. He said there was no need of its crying so; that if I
+      gave it the proper attention it would not keep the neighbours and himself
+      awake half the night. And I&mdash;I got angry and insisted that I did the
+      best I could; that the child was naturally fretful and that if he wasn&rsquo;t
+      satisfied with my way of looking after it, he might try his. All of which
+      was very wrong and unreasonable on my part, as witness the awful
+      punishment which followed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what made you get up and leave him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The growl he gave me in reply. When I heard that, I bounded out of bed
+      and said I was going to the spare room to sleep; and if the baby cried he
+      might just try what he could do himself to stop it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he answered?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This, just this&mdash;I shall never forget his words as long as I live&mdash;&lsquo;If
+      you go, you need not expect me to let you in again no matter what
+      happens.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And locked the door after me. You see I could not tell all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might have been better if you had. It was such a natural quarrel and
+      so unprovocative of actual tragedy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hammond was silent. It was not difficult to see that she had no very
+      keen regrets for her husband personally. But then he was not a very
+      estimable man nor in any respect her equal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were not happy with him,&rdquo; Violet ventured to remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not a fully contented woman. But for all that he had no cause to
+      complain of me except for the reason I have mentioned. I was not a very
+      intelligent mother. But if the baby were living now&mdash;O, if he were
+      living now&mdash;with what devotion I should care for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was on her feet, her arms were raised, her face impassioned with
+      feeling. Violet, gazing at her, heaved a little sigh. It was perhaps in
+      keeping with the situation, perhaps extraneous to it, but whatever its
+      source, it marked a change in her manner. With no further check upon her
+      sympathy, she said very softly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is well with the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother stiffened, swayed, and then burst into wild weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not with me,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;not with me. I am desolate and bereft. I
+      have not even a home in which to hide my grief and no prospect of one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; interposed Violet, &ldquo;surely your husband left you something? You
+      cannot be quite penniless?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband left nothing,&rdquo; was the answer, uttered without bitterness, but
+      with all the hardness of fact. &ldquo;He had debts. I shall pay those debts.
+      When these and other necessary expenses are liquidated, there will be but
+      little left. He made no secret of the fact that he lived close up to his
+      means. That is why he was induced to take on a life insurance. Not a
+      friend of his but knows his improvidence. I&mdash;I have not even jewels.
+      I have only my determination and an absolute conviction as to the real
+      nature of my husband&rsquo;s death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the name of the man you secretly believe to have shot your
+      husband from the trellis?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hammond told her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a new one to Violet. She said so and then asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What else can you tell me about him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, but that he is a very dark man and has a club-foot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what a mistake you&rsquo;ve made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mistake? Yes, I acknowledge that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean in not giving this last bit of information at once to the police.
+      A man can be identified by such a defect. Even his footsteps can be
+      traced. He might have been found that very day. Now, what have we to go
+      upon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, but not expecting to have any difficulty about the
+      insurance money I thought it would be generous in me to keep still.
+      Besides, this is only surmise on my part. I feel certain that my husband
+      was shot by another hand than his own, but I know of no way of proving it.
+      Do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Violet talked seriously with her, explaining how their only hope lay
+      in the discovery of a second bullet in the room which had already been
+      ransacked for this very purpose and without the shadow of a result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A tea, a musicale, and an evening dance kept Violet Strange in a whirl for
+      the remainder of the day. No brighter eye nor more contagious wit lent
+      brilliance to these occasions, but with the passing of the midnight hour
+      no one who had seen her in the blaze of electric lights would have
+      recognized this favoured child of fortune in the earnest figure sitting in
+      the obscurity of an up-town apartment, studying the walls, the ceilings,
+      and the floors by the dim light of a lowered gas-jet. Violet Strange in
+      society was a very different person from Violet Strange under the tension
+      of her secret and peculiar work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had told them at home that she was going to spend the night with a
+      friend; but only her old coachman knew who that friend was. Therefore a
+      very natural sense of guilt mingled with her emotions at finding herself
+      alone on a scene whose gruesome mystery she could solve only by
+      identifying herself with the place and the man who had perished there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dismissing from her mind all thought of self, she strove to think as he
+      thought, and act as he acted on the night when he found himself (a man of
+      but little courage) left in this room with an ailing child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At odds with himself, his wife, and possibly with the child screaming away
+      in its crib, what would he be apt to do in his present emergency? Nothing
+      at first, but as the screaming continued he would remember the old tales
+      of fathers walking the floor at night with crying babies, and hasten to
+      follow suit. Violet, in her anxiety to reach his inmost thought, crossed
+      to where the crib had stood, and, taking that as a start, began pacing the
+      room in search of the spot from which a bullet, if shot, would glance
+      aside from the mirror in the direction of the window. (Not that she was
+      ready to accept this theory of Mrs. Hammond, but that she did not wish to
+      entirely dismiss it without putting it to the test.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She found it in an unexpected quarter of the room and much nearer the
+      bed-head than where his body was found. This, which might seem to confuse
+      matters, served, on the contrary to remove from the case one of its most
+      serious difficulties. Standing here, he was within reach of the pillow
+      under which his pistol lay hidden, and if startled, as his wife believed
+      him to have been by a noise at the other end of the room, had but to
+      crouch and reach behind him in order to find himself armed and ready for a
+      possible intruder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Imitating his action in this as in other things, she had herself crouched
+      low at the bedside and was on the point of withdrawing her hand from under
+      the pillow, when a new surprise checked her movement and held her fixed in
+      her position, with eyes staring straight at the adjoining wall. She had
+      seen there what he must have seen in making this same turn&mdash;the dark
+      bars of the opposite window-frame outlined in the mirror&mdash;and
+      understood at once what had happened. In the nervousness and terror of the
+      moment, George Hammond had mistaken this reflection of the window for the
+      window itself, and shot impulsively at the man he undoubtedly saw covering
+      him from the trellis without. But while this explained the shattering of
+      the mirror, how about the other and still more vital question, of where
+      the bullet went afterward? Was the angle at which it had been fired acute
+      enough to send it out of a window diagonally opposed? No; even if the
+      pistol had been held closer to the man firing it than she had reason to
+      believe, the angle still would be oblique enough to carry it on to the
+      further wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no sign of any such impact had been discovered on this wall.
+      Consequently, the force of the bullet had been expended before reaching
+      it, and when it fell&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, her glance, slowly traveling along the floor, impetuously paused. It
+      had reached the spot where the two bodies had been found, and
+      unconsciously her eyes rested there, conjuring up the picture of the
+      bleeding father and the strangled child. How piteous and how dreadful it
+      all was. If she could only understand&mdash;Suddenly she rose straight up,
+      staring and immovable in the dim light. Had the idea&mdash;the explanation&mdash;the
+      only possible explanation covering the whole phenomena come to her at
+      last?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would seem so, for as she so stood, a look of conviction settled over
+      her features, and with this look, evidences of a horror which for all her
+      fast accumulating knowledge of life and its possibilities made her appear
+      very small and very helpless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A half-hour later, when Mrs. Hammond, in her anxiety at hearing nothing
+      more from Miss Strange, opened the door of her room, it was to find, lying
+      on the edge of the sill, the little detective&rsquo;s card with these words
+      hastily written across it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not feel as well as I could wish, and so have telephoned to my own
+      coachman to come and take me home. I will either see or write you within a
+      few days. But do not allow yourself to hope. I pray you do not allow
+      yourself the least hope; the outcome is still very problematical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Violet&rsquo;s employer entered his office the next morning it was to find
+      a veiled figure awaiting him which he at once recognized as that of his
+      little deputy. She was slow in lifting her veil and when it finally came
+      free he felt a momentary doubt as to his wisdom in giving her just such a
+      matter as this to investigate. He was quite sure of his mistake when he
+      saw her face, it was so drawn and pitiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have failed,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of that you must judge,&rdquo; she answered; and drawing near she whispered in
+      his ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; he cried in his amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think,&rdquo; she murmured, &ldquo;think. Only so can all the facts be accounted
+      for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will look into it; I will certainly look into it,&rdquo; was his earnest
+      reply. &ldquo;If you are right&mdash;But never mind that. Go home and take a
+      horseback ride in the Park. When I have news in regard to this I will let
+      you know. Till then forget it all. Hear me, I charge you to forget
+      everything but your balls and your parties.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Violet obeyed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some few days after this, the following statement appeared in all the
+      papers:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Owing to some remarkable work done by the firm of &mdash;&mdash; &amp;
+      &mdash;&mdash;, the well-known private detective agency, the claim made by
+      Mrs. George Hammond against the Shuler Life Insurance Company is likely to
+      be allowed without further litigation. As our readers will remember, the
+      contestant has insisted from the first that the bullet causing her
+      husband&rsquo;s death came from another pistol than the one found clutched in
+      his own hand. But while reasons were not lacking to substantiate this
+      assertion, the failure to discover more than the disputed track of a
+      second bullet led to a verdict of suicide, and a refusal of the company to
+      pay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But now that bullet has been found. And where? In the most startling
+      place in the world, viz.: in the larynx of the child found lying dead upon
+      the floor beside his father, strangled as was supposed by the weight of
+      that father&rsquo;s arm. The theory is, and there seems to be none other, that
+      the father, hearing a suspicious noise at the window, set down the child
+      he was endeavouring to soothe and made for the bed and his own pistol,
+      and, mistaking a reflection of the assassin for the assassin himself, sent
+      his shot sidewise at a mirror just as the other let go the trigger which
+      drove a similar bullet into his breast. The course of the one was straight
+      and fatal and that of the other deflected. Striking the mirror at an
+      oblique angle, the bullet fell to the floor where it was picked up by the
+      crawling child, and, as was most natural, thrust at once into his mouth.
+      Perhaps it felt hot to the little tongue; perhaps the child was simply
+      frightened by some convulsive movement of the father who evidently spent
+      his last moment in an endeavour to reach the child, but, whatever the
+      cause, in the quick gasp it gave, the bullet was drawn into the larynx,
+      strangling him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That the father&rsquo;s arm, in his last struggle, should have fallen directly
+      across the little throat is one of those anomalies which confounds reason
+      and misleads justice by stopping investigation at the very point where
+      truth lies and mystery disappears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Hammond is to be congratulated that there are detectives who do not
+      give too much credence to outward appearances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We expect soon to hear of the capture of the man who sped home the
+      death-dealing bullet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM II <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM III. AN INTANGIBLE CLUE
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;Have you studied the case?&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not studied the case which for the last few days has provided the papers
+      with such conspicuous headlines?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not read the papers. I have not looked at one in a whole week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Strange, your social engagements must be of a very pressing nature
+      just now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your business sense in abeyance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would not ask if you had read the papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this she made no reply save by a slight toss of her pretty head. If her
+      employer felt nettled by this show of indifference, he did not betray it
+      save by the rapidity of his tones as, without further preamble and
+      possibly without real excuse, he proceeded to lay before her the case in
+      question. &ldquo;Last Tuesday night a woman was murdered in this city; an old
+      woman, in a lonely house where she has lived for years. Perhaps you
+      remember this house? It occupies a not inconspicuous site in Seventeenth
+      Street&mdash;a house of the olden time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I do not remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The extreme carelessness of Miss Strange&rsquo;s tone would have been fatal to
+      her socially; but then, she would never have used it socially. This they
+      both knew, yet he smiled with his customary indulgence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will describe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked around for a chair and sank into it. He did the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has a fanlight over the front door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She remained impassive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And two old-fashioned strips of parti-coloured glass on either side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And a knocker between its panels which may bring money some day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you do remember! I thought you would, Miss Strange.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Fanlights over doors are becoming very rare in New York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then. That house was the scene of Tuesday&rsquo;s tragedy. The woman
+      who has lived there in solitude for years was foully murdered. I have
+      since heard that the people who knew her best have always anticipated some
+      such violent end for her. She never allowed maid or friend to remain with
+      her after five in the afternoon; yet she had money&mdash;some think a
+      great deal&mdash;always in the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am interested in the house, not in her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet, she was a character&mdash;as full of whims and crotchets as a nut is
+      of meat. Her death was horrible. She fought&mdash;her dress was torn from
+      her body in rags. This happened, you see, before her hour for retiring;
+      some think as early as six in the afternoon. And&rdquo;&mdash;here he made a
+      rapid gesture to catch Violet&rsquo;s wandering attention&mdash;&ldquo;in spite of
+      this struggle; in spite of the fact that she was dragged from room to room&mdash;that
+      her person was searched&mdash;and everything in the house searched&mdash;that
+      drawers were pulled out of bureaus&mdash;doors wrenched off of cupboards&mdash;china
+      smashed upon the floor&mdash;whole shelves denuded and not a spot from
+      cellar to garret left unransacked, no direct clue to the perpetrator has
+      been found&mdash;nothing that gives any idea of his personality save his
+      display of strength and great cupidity. The police have even deigned to
+      consult me,&mdash;an unusual procedure&mdash;but I could find nothing,
+      either. Evidences of fiendish purpose abound&mdash;of relentless search&mdash;but
+      no clue to the man himself. It&rsquo;s uncommon, isn&rsquo;t it, not to have any
+      clue?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so.&rdquo; Miss Strange hated murders and it was with difficulty she
+      could be brought to discuss them. But she was not going to be let off; not
+      this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; he proceeded insistently, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s not only mortifying to the
+      police but disappointing to the press, especially as few reporters believe
+      in the No-thoroughfare business. They say, and we cannot but agree with
+      them, that no such struggle could take place and no such repeated goings
+      to and fro through the house without some vestige being left by which to
+      connect this crime with its daring perpetrator.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still she stared down at her hands&mdash;those little hands so white and
+      fluttering, so seemingly helpless under the weight of their many rings,
+      and yet so slyly capable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She must have queer neighbours,&rdquo; came at last, from Miss Strange&rsquo;s
+      reluctant lips. &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t they hear or see anything of all this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has no neighbours&mdash;that is, after half-past five o&rsquo;clock.
+      There&rsquo;s a printing establishment on one side of her, a deserted mansion on
+      the other side, and nothing but warehouses back and front. There was no
+      one to notice what took place in her small dwelling after the printing
+      house was closed. She was the most courageous or the most foolish of women
+      to remain there as she did. But nothing except death could budge her. She
+      was born in the room where she died; was married in the one where she
+      worked; saw husband, father, mother, and five sisters carried out in turn
+      to their graves through the door with the fanlight over the top&mdash;and
+      these memories held her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are trying to interest me in the woman. Don&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not trying to interest you in her, only trying to explain her.
+      There was another reason for her remaining where she did so long after all
+      residents had left the block. She had a business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She embroidered monograms for fine ladies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did? But you needn&rsquo;t look at me like that. She never embroidered any
+      for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No? She did first-class work. I saw some of it. Miss Strange, if I could
+      get you into that house for ten minutes&mdash;not to see her but to pick
+      up the loose intangible thread which I am sure is floating around in it
+      somewhere&mdash;wouldn&rsquo;t you go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet slowly rose&mdash;a movement which he followed to the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must I express in words the limit I have set for myself in our affair?&rdquo;
+       she asked. &ldquo;When, for reasons I have never thought myself called upon to
+      explain, I consented to help you a little now and then with some matter
+      where a woman&rsquo;s tact and knowledge of the social world might tell without
+      offence to herself or others, I never thought it would be necessary for me
+      to state that temptation must stop with such cases, or that I should not
+      be asked to touch the sordid or the bloody. But it seems I was mistaken,
+      and that I must stoop to be explicit. The woman who was killed on Tuesday
+      might have interested me greatly as an embroiderer, but as a victim, not
+      at all. What do you see in me, or miss in me, that you should drag me into
+      an atmosphere of low-down crime?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, Miss Strange. You are by nature, as well as by breeding, very
+      far removed from everything of the kind. But you will allow me to suggest
+      that no crime is low-down which makes imperative demand upon the intellect
+      and intuitive sense of its investigator. Only the most delicate touch can
+      feel and hold the thread I&rsquo;ve just spoken of, and you have the most
+      delicate touch I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not attempt to flatter me. I have no fancy for handling befouled
+      spider webs. Besides, if I had&mdash;if such elusive filaments fascinated
+      me&mdash;how could I, well-known in person and name, enter upon such a
+      scene without prejudice to our mutual compact?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Strange&rdquo;&mdash;she had reseated herself, but so far he had failed to
+      follow her example (an ignoring of the subtle hint that her interest might
+      yet be caught, which seemed to annoy her a trifle), &ldquo;I should not even
+      have suggested such a possibility had I not seen a way of introducing you
+      there without risk to your position or mine. Among the boxes piled upon
+      Mrs. Doolittle&rsquo;s table&mdash;boxes of finished work, most of them
+      addressed and ready for delivery&mdash;was one on which could be seen the
+      name of&mdash;shall I mention it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not mine? You don&rsquo;t mean mine? That would be too odd&mdash;too
+      ridiculously odd. I should not understand a coincidence of that kind; no,
+      I should not, notwithstanding the fact that I have lately sent out such
+      work to be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet it was your name, very clearly and precisely written&mdash;your whole
+      name, Miss Strange. I saw and read it myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I gave the order to Madame Pirot on Fifth Avenue. How came my things
+      to be found in the house of this woman of whose horrible death we have
+      been talking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you suppose that Madame Pirot did such work with her own hands?&mdash;or
+      even had it done in her own establishment? Mrs. Doolittle was universally
+      employed. She worked for a dozen firms. You will find the biggest names on
+      most of her packages. But on this one&mdash;I allude to the one addressed
+      to you&mdash;there was more to be seen than the name. These words were
+      written on it in another hand. Send without opening. This struck the
+      police as suspicious; sufficiently so, at least, for them to desire your
+      presence at the house as soon as you can make it convenient.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To open the box?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The curl of Miss Strange&rsquo;s disdainful lip was a sight to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wrote those words yourself,&rdquo; she coolly observed. &ldquo;While someone&rsquo;s
+      back was turned, you whipped out your pencil and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Resorted to a very pardonable subterfuge highly conducive to the public&rsquo;s
+      good. But never mind that. Will you go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange became suddenly demure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I must,&rdquo; she grudgingly conceded. &ldquo;However obtained, a summons
+      from the police cannot be ignored even by Peter Strange&rsquo;s daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another man might have displayed his triumph by smile or gesture; but this
+      one had learned his role too well. He simply said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good. Shall it be at once? I have a taxi at the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she failed to see the necessity of any such hurry. With sudden dignity
+      she replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That won&rsquo;t do. If I go to this house it must be under suitable
+      conditions. I shall have to ask my brother to accompany me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your brother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;s safe. He&mdash;he knows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your brother knows?&rdquo; Her visitor, with less control than usual, betrayed
+      very openly his uneasiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He does and&mdash;approves. But that&rsquo;s not what interests us now, only so
+      far as it makes it possible for me to go with propriety to that dreadful
+      house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A formal bow from the other and the words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They may expect you, then. Can you say when?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Within the next hour. But it will be a useless concession on my part,&rdquo;
+       she pettishly complained. &ldquo;A place that has been gone over by a dozen
+      detectives is apt to be brushed clean of its cobwebs, even if such ever
+      existed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the difficulty,&rdquo; he acknowledged; and did not dare to add another
+      word; she was at that particular moment so very much the great lady, and
+      so little his confidential agent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He might have been less impressed, however, by this sudden assumption of
+      manner, had he been so fortunate as to have seen how she employed the
+      three quarters of an hour&rsquo;s delay for which she had asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She read those neglected newspapers, especially the one containing the
+      following highly coloured narration of this ghastly crime:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A door ajar&mdash;an empty hall&mdash;a line of sinister looking blotches
+      marking a guilty step diagonally across the flagging&mdash;silence&mdash;and
+      an unmistakable odour repugnant to all humanity,&mdash;such were the
+      indications which met the eyes of Officer O&rsquo;Leary on his first round last
+      night, and led to the discovery of a murder which will long thrill the
+      city by its mystery and horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Both the house and the victim are well known.&rdquo; Here followed a
+      description of the same and of Mrs. Doolittle&rsquo;s manner of life in her
+      ancient home, which Violet hurriedly passed over to come to the following:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as one can judge from appearances, the crime happened in this
+      wise: Mrs. Doolittle had been in her kitchen, as the tea-kettle found
+      singing on the stove goes to prove, and was coming back through her
+      bedroom, when the wretch, who had stolen in by the front door which, to
+      save steps, she was unfortunately in the habit of leaving on the latch
+      till all possibility of customers for the day was over, sprang upon her
+      from behind and dealt her a swinging blow with the poker he had caught up
+      from the hearthstone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whether the struggle which ensued followed immediately upon this first
+      attack or came later, it will take medical experts to determine. But,
+      whenever it did occur, the fierceness of its character is shown by the
+      grip taken upon her throat and the traces of blood which are to be seen
+      all over the house. If the wretch had lugged her into her workroom and
+      thence to the kitchen, and thence back to the spot of first assault, the
+      evidences could not have been more ghastly. Bits of her clothing torn off
+      by a ruthless hand, lay scattered over all these floors. In her bedroom,
+      where she finally breathed her last, there could be seen mingled with
+      these a number of large but worthless glass beads; and close against one
+      of the base-boards, the string which had held them, as shown by the few
+      remaining beads still clinging to it. If in pulling the string from her
+      neck he had hoped to light upon some valuable booty, his fury at his
+      disappointment is evident. You can almost see the frenzy with which he
+      flung the would-be necklace at the wall, and kicked about and stamped upon
+      its rapidly rolling beads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Booty! That was what he was after; to find and carry away the poor
+      needlewoman&rsquo;s supposed hoardings. If the scene baffles description&mdash;if,
+      as some believe, he dragged her yet living from spot to spot, demanding
+      information as to her places of concealment under threat of repeated
+      blows, and, finally baffled, dealt the finishing stroke and proceeded on
+      the search alone, no greater devastation could have taken place in this
+      poor woman&rsquo;s house or effects. Yet such was his precaution and care for
+      himself that he left no finger-print behind him nor any other token which
+      could lead to personal identification. Even though his footsteps could be
+      traced in much the order I have mentioned, they were of so indeterminate
+      and shapeless a character as to convey little to the intelligence of the
+      investigator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That these smears (they could not be called footprints) not only crossed
+      the hall but appeared in more than one place on the staircase proves that
+      he did not confine his search to the lower storey; and perhaps one of the
+      most interesting features of the case lies in the indications given by
+      these marks of the raging course he took through these upper rooms. As the
+      accompanying diagram will show [we omit the diagram] he went first into
+      the large front chamber, thence to the rear where we find two rooms, one
+      unfinished and filled with accumulated stuff most of which he left lying
+      loose upon the floor, and the other plastered, and containing a window
+      opening upon an alley-way at the side, but empty of all furniture and
+      without even a carpet on the bare boards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why he should have entered the latter place, and why, having entered he
+      should have crossed to the window, will be plain to those who have studied
+      the conditions. The front chamber windows were tightly shuttered, the
+      attic ones cumbered with boxes and shielded from approach by old bureaus
+      and discarded chairs. This one only was free and, although darkened by the
+      proximity of the house neighbouring it across the alley, was the only spot
+      on the storey where sufficient light could be had at this late hour for
+      the examination of any object of whose value he was doubtful. That he had
+      come across such an object and had brought it to this window for some such
+      purpose is very satisfactorily demonstrated by the discovery of a worn out
+      wallet of ancient make lying on the floor directly in front of this window&mdash;a
+      proof of his cupidity but also proof of his ill-luck. For this wallet,
+      when lifted and opened, was found to contain two hundred or more dollars
+      in old bills, which, if not the full hoard of their industrious owner, was
+      certainly worth the taking by one who had risked his neck for the sole
+      purpose of theft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This wallet, and the flight of the murderer without it, give to this
+      affair, otherwise simply brutal, a dramatic interest which will be
+      appreciated not only by the very able detectives already hot upon the
+      chase, but by all other inquiring minds anxious to solve a mystery of
+      which so estimable a woman has been the unfortunate victim. A problem is
+      presented to the police&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There Violet stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, not long after, the superb limousine of Peter Strange stopped before
+      the little house in Seventeenth Street, it caused a veritable sensation,
+      not only in the curiosity-mongers lingering on the sidewalk, but to the
+      two persons within&mdash;the officer on guard and a belated reporter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though dressed in her plainest suit, Violet Strange looked much too
+      fashionable and far too young and thoughtless to be observed, without
+      emotion, entering a scene of hideous and brutal crime. Even the young man
+      who accompanied her promised to bring a most incongruous element into this
+      atmosphere of guilt and horror, and, as the detective on guard whispered
+      to the man beside him, might much better have been left behind in the car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Violet was great for the proprieties and young Arthur followed her in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her entrance was a coup du theatre. She had lifted her veil in crossing
+      the sidewalk and her interesting features and general air of timidity were
+      very fetching. As the man holding open the door noted the impression made
+      upon his companion, he muttered with sly facetiousness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think you&rsquo;ll show her nothing; but I&rsquo;m ready to bet a fiver that
+      she&rsquo;ll want to see it all and that you&rsquo;ll show it to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The detective&rsquo;s grin was expressive, notwithstanding the shrug with which
+      he tried to carry it off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Violet? The hall into which she now stepped from the most vivid
+      sunlight had never been considered even in its palmiest days as possessing
+      cheer even of the stately kind. The ghastly green light infused through it
+      by the coloured glass on either side of the doorway seemed to promise yet
+      more dismal things beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must I go in there?&rdquo; she asked, pointing, with an admirable simulation of
+      nervous excitement, to a half-shut door at her left. &ldquo;Is there where it
+      happened? Arthur, do you suppose that there is where it happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, Miss,&rdquo; the officer made haste to assure her. &ldquo;If you are Miss
+      Strange&rdquo; (Violet bowed), &ldquo;I need hardly say that the woman was struck in
+      her bedroom. The door beside you leads into the parlour, or as she would
+      have called it, her work-room. You needn&rsquo;t be afraid of going in there.
+      You will see nothing but the disorder of her boxes. They were pretty well
+      pulled about. Not all of them though,&rdquo; he added, watching her as closely
+      as the dim light permitted. &ldquo;There is one which gives no sign of having
+      been tampered with. It was done up in wrapping paper and is addressed to
+      you, which in itself would not have seemed worthy of our attention had not
+      these lines been scribbled on it in a man&rsquo;s handwriting: &lsquo;Send without
+      opening.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How odd!&rdquo; exclaimed the little minx with widely opened eyes and an air of
+      guileless innocence. &ldquo;Whatever can it mean? Nothing serious I am sure, for
+      the woman did not even know me. She was employed to do this work by Madame
+      Pirot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you know that it was to be done here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I thought Madame Pirot&rsquo;s own girls did her embroidery for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that you were surprised&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wasn&rsquo;t I!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To get our message.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know what to make of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The earnest, half-injured look with which she uttered this disclaimer, did
+      its appointed work. The detective accepted her for what she seemed and,
+      oblivious to the reporter&rsquo;s satirical gesture, crossed to the work-room
+      door, which he threw wide open with the remark:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be glad to have you open that box in our presence. It is
+      undoubtedly all right, but we wish to be sure. You know what the box
+      should contain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, indeed; pillow-cases and sheets, with a big S embroidered on
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well. Shall I undo the string for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be much obliged,&rdquo; said she, her eye flashing quickly about the
+      room before settling down upon the knot he was deftly loosening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her brother, gazing indifferently in from the doorway, hardly noticed this
+      look; but the reporter at his back did, though he failed to detect its
+      penetrating quality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name is on the other side,&rdquo; observed the detective as he drew away
+      the string and turned the package over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smile which just lifted the corner of her lips was not in answer to
+      this remark, but to her recognition of her employer&rsquo;s handwriting in the
+      words under her name: Send without opening. She had not misjudged him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cover you may like to take off yourself,&rdquo; suggested the officer, as
+      he lifted the box out of its wrapper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t mind. There&rsquo;s nothing to be ashamed of in embroidered linen.
+      Or perhaps that is not what you are looking for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No one answered. All were busy watching her whip off the lid and lift out
+      the pile of sheets and pillow-cases with which the box was closely packed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I unfold them?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The detective nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Taking out the topmost sheet, she shook it open. Then the next and the
+      next till she reached the bottom of the box. Nothing of a criminating
+      nature came to light. The box as well as its contents was without mystery
+      of any kind. This was not an unexpected result of course, but the smile
+      with which she began to refold the pieces and throw them back into the
+      box, revealed one of her dimples which was almost as dangerous to the
+      casual observer as when it revealed both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;you see! Household linen exactly as I said. Now
+      may I go home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, Miss Strange.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The detective stole a sly glance at the reporter. She was not going in for
+      the horrors then after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the reporter abated nothing of his knowing air, for while she spoke of
+      going, she made no move towards doing so, but continued to look about the
+      room till her glances finally settled on a long dark curtain shutting off
+      an adjoining room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s where she lies, I suppose,&rdquo; she feelingly exclaimed. &ldquo;And not one
+      of you knows who killed her. Somehow, I cannot understand that. Why don&rsquo;t
+      you know when that&rsquo;s what you&rsquo;re hired for?&rdquo; The innocence with which she
+      uttered this was astonishing. The detective began to look sheepish and the
+      reporter turned aside to hide his smile. Whether in another moment either
+      would have spoken no one can say, for, with a mock consciousness of having
+      said something foolish, she caught up her parasol from the table and made
+      a start for the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But of course she looked back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was wondering,&rdquo; she recommenced, with a half wistful, half speculative
+      air, &ldquo;whether I should ask to have a peep at the place where it all
+      happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reporter chuckled behind the pencil-end he was chewing, but the
+      officer maintained his solemn air, for which act of self-restraint he was
+      undoubtedly grateful when in another minute she gave a quick impulsive
+      shudder not altogether assumed, and vehemently added: &ldquo;But I couldn&rsquo;t
+      stand the sight; no, I couldn&rsquo;t! I&rsquo;m an awful coward when it comes to
+      things like that. Nothing in all the world would induce me to look at the
+      woman or her room. But I should like&mdash;&rdquo; here both her dimples came
+      into play though she could not be said exactly to smile&mdash;&ldquo;just one
+      little look upstairs, where he went poking about so long without any fear
+      it seems of being interrupted. Ever since I&rsquo;ve read about it I have seen,
+      in my mind, a picture of his wicked figure sneaking from room to room,
+      tearing open drawers and flinging out the contents of closets just to find
+      a little money&mdash;a little, little money! I shall not sleep to-night
+      just for wondering how those high up attic rooms really look.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Who could dream that back of this display of mingled childishness and
+      audacity there lay hidden purpose, intellect, and a keen knowledge of
+      human nature. Not the two men who listened to this seemingly irresponsible
+      chatter. To them she was a child to be humoured and humour her they did.
+      The dainty feet which had already found their way to that gloomy staircase
+      were allowed to ascend, followed it is true by those of the officer who
+      did not dare to smile back at the reporter because of the brother&rsquo;s
+      watchful and none too conciliatory eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the stair head she paused to look back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see those horrible marks which the papers describe as running all
+      along the lower hall and up these stairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Miss Strange; they have gradually been rubbed out, but you will find
+      some still showing on these upper floors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! oh! where? You frighten me&mdash;frighten me horribly! But&mdash;but&mdash;if
+      you don&rsquo;t mind, I should like to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Why should not a man on a tedious job amuse himself? Piloting her over to
+      the small room in the rear, he pointed down at the boards. She gave one
+      look and then stepped gingerly in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just look!&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;a whole string of marks going straight from door
+      to window. They have no shape, have they,&mdash;just blotches? I wonder
+      why one of them is so much larger than the rest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was no new question. It was one which everybody who went into the
+      room was sure to ask, there was such a difference in the size and
+      appearance of the mark nearest the window. The reason&mdash;well, minds
+      were divided about that, and no one had a satisfactory theory. The
+      detective therefore kept discreetly silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This did not seem to offend Miss Strange. On the contrary it gave her an
+      opportunity to babble away to her heart&rsquo;s content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One, two, three, four, five, six,&rdquo; she counted, with a shudder at every
+      count. &ldquo;And one of them bigger than the others.&rdquo; She might have added, &ldquo;It
+      is the trail of one foot, and strangely, intermingled at that,&rdquo; but she
+      did not, though we may be quite sure that she noted the fact. &ldquo;And where,
+      just where did the old wallet fall? Here? or here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had moved as she spoke, so that in uttering the last &ldquo;here,&rdquo; she stood
+      directly before the window. The surprise she received there nearly made
+      her forget the part she was playing. From the character of the light in
+      the room, she had expected, on looking out, to confront a near-by wall,
+      but not a window in that wall. Yet that was what she saw directly facing
+      her from across the old-fashioned alley separating this house from its
+      neighbour; twelve unshuttered and uncurtained panes through which she
+      caught a darkened view of a room almost as forlorn and devoid of furniture
+      as the one in which she then stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When quite sure of herself, she let a certain portion of her surprise
+      appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, look!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;if you can&rsquo;t see right in next door! What a
+      lonesome-looking place! From its desolate appearance I should think the
+      house quite empty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it is. That&rsquo;s the old Shaffer homestead. It&rsquo;s been empty for a year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, empty!&rdquo; And she turned away, with the most inconsequent air in the
+      world, crying out as her name rang up the stair, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s Arthur calling.
+      I suppose he thinks I&rsquo;ve been here long enough. I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;m very much
+      obliged to you, officer. I really shouldn&rsquo;t have slept a wink to-night, if
+      I hadn&rsquo;t been given a peep at these rooms, which I had imagined so
+      different.&rdquo; And with one additional glance over her shoulder, that seemed
+      to penetrate both windows and the desolate space beyond, she ran quickly
+      out and down in response to her brother&rsquo;s reiterated call.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drive quickly!&mdash;as quickly as the law allows, to Hiram Brown&rsquo;s
+      office in Duane Street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arrived at the address named, she went in alone to see Mr. Brown. He was
+      her father&rsquo;s lawyer and a family friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardly waiting for his affectionate greeting, she cried out quickly. &ldquo;Tell
+      me how I can learn anything about the old Shaffer house in Seventeenth
+      Street. Now, don&rsquo;t look so surprised. I have very good reasons for my
+      request and&mdash;and&mdash;I&rsquo;m in an awful hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I know; there&rsquo;s been a dreadful tragedy next door to it; but it&rsquo;s
+      about the Shaffer house itself I want some information. Has it an agent, a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it has an agent, and here is his name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Brown presented her with a card on which he had hastily written both
+      name and address.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thanked him, dropped him a mocking curtsey full of charm, whispered
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell father,&rdquo; and was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her manner to the man she next interviewed was very different. As soon as
+      she saw him she subsided into her usual society manner. With just a touch
+      of the conceit of the successful debutante, she announced herself as Miss
+      Strange of Seventy-second Street. Her business with him was in regard to
+      the possible renting of the Shaffer house. She had an old lady friend who
+      was desirous of living downtown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In passing through Seventeenth Street, she had noticed that the old
+      Shaffer house was standing empty and had been immediately struck with the
+      advantages it possessed for her elderly friend&rsquo;s occupancy. Could it be
+      that the house was for rent? There was no sign on it to that effect, but&mdash;etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His answer left her nothing to hope for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is going to be torn down,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what a pity!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Real colonial, isn&rsquo;t it! I wish I could
+      see the rooms inside before it is disturbed. Such doors and such dear
+      old-fashioned mantelpieces as it must have! I just dote on the Colonial.
+      It brings up such pictures of the old days; weddings, you know, and
+      parties;&mdash;all so different from ours and so much more interesting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Is it the chance shot that tells? Sometimes. Violet had no especial
+      intention in what she said save as a prelude to a pending request, but
+      nothing could have served her purpose better than that one word, wedding.
+      The agent laughed and giving her his first indulgent look, remarked
+      genially:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Romance is not confined to those ancient times. If you were to enter that
+      house to-day you would come across evidences of a wedding as romantic as
+      any which ever took place in all the seventy odd years of its existence. A
+      man and a woman were married there day before yesterday who did their
+      first courting under its roof forty years ago. He has been married twice
+      and she once in the interval; but the old love held firm and now at the
+      age of sixty and over they have come together to finish their days in
+      peace and happiness. Or so we will hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Married! married in that house and on the day that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught herself up in time. He did not notice the break.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, in memory of those old days of courtship, I suppose. They came here
+      about five, got the keys, drove off, went through the ceremony in that
+      empty house, returned the keys to me in my own apartment, took the steamer
+      for Naples, and were on the sea before midnight. Do you not call that
+      quick work as well as highly romantic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very.&rdquo; Miss Strange&rsquo;s cheek had paled. It was apt to when she was greatly
+      excited. &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; she added, the moment after. &ldquo;How could
+      they do this and nobody know about it? I should have thought it would have
+      got into the papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are quiet people. I don&rsquo;t think they told their best friends. A
+      simple announcement in the next day&rsquo;s journals testified to the fact of
+      their marriage, but that was all. I would not have felt at liberty to
+      mention the circumstances myself, if the parties were not well on their
+      way to Europe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how glad I am that you did tell me! Such a story of constancy and the
+      hold which old associations have upon sensitive minds! But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Miss? What&rsquo;s the matter? You look very much disturbed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you remember? Haven&rsquo;t you thought? Something else happened that
+      very day and almost at the same time on that block. Something very
+      dreadful&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Doolittle&rsquo;s murder?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. It was as near as next door, wasn&rsquo;t it? Oh, if this happy couple had
+      known&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But fortunately they didn&rsquo;t. Nor are they likely to, till they reach the
+      other side. You needn&rsquo;t fear that their honeymoon will be spoiled that
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they may have heard something or seen something before leaving the
+      street. Did you notice how the gentleman looked when he returned you the
+      keys?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did, and there was no cloud on his satisfaction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how you relieve me!&rdquo; One&mdash;two dimples made their appearance in
+      Miss Strange&rsquo;s fresh, young cheeks. &ldquo;Well! I wish them joy. Do you mind
+      telling me their names? I cannot think of them as actual persons without
+      knowing their names.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The gentleman was Constantin Amidon; the lady, Marian Shaffer. You will
+      have to think of them now as Mr. and Mrs. Amidon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I will. Thank you, Mr. Hutton, thank you very much. Next to the
+      pleasure of getting the house for my friend, is that of hearing this
+      charming bit of news its connection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out her hand and, as he took it, remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must have had a clergyman and witnesses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Undoubtedly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I had been one of the witnesses,&rdquo; she sighed sentimentally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were two old men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! Don&rsquo;t tell me that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fogies; nothing less.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the clergyman? He must have been young. Surely there was some one
+      there capable of appreciating the situation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say about that; I did not see the clergyman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well! it doesn&rsquo;t matter.&rdquo; Miss Strange&rsquo;s manner was as nonchalant as
+      it was charming. &ldquo;We will think of him as being very young.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with a merry toss of her head she flitted away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she sobered very rapidly upon entering her limousine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, is that you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I want a Marconi sent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Marconi?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, to the Cretic, which left dock the very night in which we are so
+      deeply interested.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good. Whom to? The Captain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, to a Mrs. Constantin Amidon. But first be sure there is such a
+      passenger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs.! What idea have you there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse my not stating over the telephone. The message is to be to this
+      effect. Did she at any time immediately before or after her marriage to
+      Mr. Amidon get a glimpse of any one in the adjoining house? No remarks,
+      please. I use the telephone because I am not ready to explain myself. If
+      she did, let her send a written description to you of that person as soon
+      as she reaches the Azores.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You surprise me. May I not call or hope for a line from you early
+      to-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be busy till you get your answer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hung up the receiver. He recognized the resolute tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the time came when the pending explanation was fully given to him. An
+      answer had been returned from the steamer, favourable to Violet&rsquo;s hopes.
+      Mrs. Amidon had seen such a person and would send a full description of
+      the same at the first opportunity. It was news to fill Violet&rsquo;s heart with
+      pride; the filament of a clue which had led to this great result had been
+      so nearly invisible and had felt so like nothing in her grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To her employer she described it as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I hear or read of a case which contains any baffling features, I am
+      apt to feel some hidden chord in my nature thrill to one fact in it and
+      not to any of the others. In this case the single fact which appealed to
+      my imagination was the dropping of the stolen wallet in that upstairs
+      room. Why did the guilty man drop it? and why, having dropped it, did he
+      not pick it up again? but one answer seemed possible. He had heard or seen
+      something at the spot where it fell which not only alarmed him but sent
+      him in flight from the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good; and did you settle to your own mind the nature of that sound
+      or that sight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did.&rdquo; Her manner was strangely businesslike. No show of dimples now.
+      &ldquo;Satisfied that if any possibility remained of my ever doing this, it
+      would have to be on the exact place of this occurrence or not at all, I
+      embraced your suggestion and visited the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that room no doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that room. Women, somehow, seem to manage such things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I&rsquo;ve noticed, Miss Strange. And what was the result of your visit?
+      What did you discover there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This: that one of the blood spots marking the criminal&rsquo;s steps through
+      the room was decidedly more pronounced than the rest; and, what was even
+      more important, that the window out of which I was looking had its
+      counterpart in the house on the opposite side of the alley. In gazing
+      through the one I was gazing through the other; and not only that, but
+      into the darkened area of the room beyond. Instantly I saw how the latter
+      fact might be made to explain the former one. But before I say how, let me
+      ask if it is quite settled among you that the smears on the floor and
+      stairs mark the passage of the criminal&rsquo;s footsteps!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; and very bloody feet they must have been too. His shoes&mdash;or
+      rather his one shoe&mdash;for the proof is plain that only the right one
+      left its mark&mdash;must have become thoroughly saturated to carry its
+      traces so far.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think that any amount of saturation would have done this? Or, if
+      you are not ready to agree to that, that a shoe so covered with blood
+      could have failed to leave behind it some hint of its shape, some imprint,
+      however faint, of heel or toe? But nowhere did it do this. We see a smear&mdash;and
+      that is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, Miss Strange; you are always right. And what do you gather
+      from this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked to see how much he expected from her, and, meeting an eye not
+      quite as free from ironic suggestion as his words had led her to expect,
+      faltered a little as she proceeded to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My opinion is a girl&rsquo;s opinion, but such as it is you have the right to
+      have it. From the indications mentioned I could draw but this conclusion:
+      that the blood which accompanied the criminal&rsquo;s footsteps was not carried
+      through the house by his shoes;&mdash;he wore no shoes; he did not even
+      wear stockings; probably he had none. For reasons which appealed to his
+      judgment, he went about his wicked work barefoot; and it was the blood
+      from his own veins and not from those of his victim which made the trail
+      we have followed with so much interest. Do you forget those broken beads;&mdash;how
+      he kicked them about and stamped upon them in his fury? One of them
+      pierced the ball of his foot, and that so sharply that it not only spurted
+      blood but kept on bleeding with every step he took. Otherwise, the trail
+      would have been lost after his passage up the stairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine!&rdquo; There was no irony in the bureau-chief&rsquo;s eye now. &ldquo;You are
+      progressing, Miss Strange. Allow me, I pray, to kiss your hand. It is a
+      liberty I have never taken, but one which would greatly relieve my present
+      stress of feeling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her hand toward him, but it was in gesture, not in recognition
+      of his homage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;but I claim no monopoly on deductions so simple as
+      these. I have not the least doubt that not only yourself but every member
+      of the force has made the same. But there is a little matter which may
+      have escaped the police, may even have escaped you. To that I would now
+      call your attention since through it I have been enabled, after a little
+      necessary groping, to reach the open. You remember the one large blotch on
+      the upper floor where the man dropped the wallet? That blotch, more or
+      less commingled with a fainter one, possessed great significance for me
+      from the first moment I saw it. How came his foot to bleed so much more
+      profusely at that one spot than at any other? There could be but one
+      answer: because here a surprise met him&mdash;a surprise so startling to
+      him in his present state of mind, that he gave a quick spring backward,
+      with the result that his wounded foot came down suddenly and forcibly
+      instead of easily as in his previous wary tread. And what was the
+      surprise? I made it my business to find out, and now I can tell you that
+      it was the sight of a woman&rsquo;s face staring upon him from the neighbouring
+      house which he had probably been told was empty. The shock disturbed his
+      judgment. He saw his crime discovered&mdash;his guilty secret read, and
+      fled in unreasoning panic. He might better have held on to his wits. It
+      was this display of fear which led me to search after its cause, and
+      consequently to discover that at this especial hour more than one person
+      had been in the Shaffer house; that, in fact, a marriage had been
+      celebrated there under circumstances as romantic as any we read of in
+      books, and that this marriage, privately carried out, had been followed by
+      an immediate voyage of the happy couple on one of the White Star steamers.
+      With the rest you are conversant. I do not need to say anything about what
+      has followed the sending of that Marconi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am going to say something about your work in this matter, Miss
+      Strange. The big detectives about here will have to look sharp if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t, please! Not yet.&rdquo; A smile softened the asperity of this
+      interruption. &ldquo;The man has yet to be caught and identified. Till that is
+      done I cannot enjoy any one&rsquo;s congratulations. And you will see that all
+      this may not be so easy. If no one happened to meet the desperate wretch
+      before he had an opportunity to retie his shoe-laces, there will be little
+      for you or even for the police to go upon but his wounded foot, his
+      undoubtedly carefully prepared alibi, and later, a woman&rsquo;s confused
+      description of a face seen but for a moment only and that under a personal
+      excitement precluding minute attention. I should not be surprised if the
+      whole thing came to nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it did not. As soon as the description was received from Mrs. Amidon
+      (a description, by the way, which was unusually clear and precise, owing
+      to the peculiar and contradictory features of the man), the police were
+      able to recognize him among the many suspects always under their eye.
+      Arrested, he pleaded, just as Miss Strange had foretold, an alibi of a
+      seemingly unimpeachable character; but neither it, nor the plausible
+      explanation with which he endeavoured to account for a freshly healed scar
+      amid the callouses of his right foot, could stand before Mrs. Amidon&rsquo;s
+      unequivocal testimony that he was the same man she had seen in Mrs.
+      Doolittle&rsquo;s upper room on the afternoon of her own happiness and of that
+      poor woman&rsquo;s murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment when, at his trial, the two faces again confronted each other
+      across a space no wider than that which had separated them on the dread
+      occasion in Seventeenth Street, is said to have been one of the most
+      dramatic in the annals of that ancient court room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM III <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM IV. THE GROTTO SPECTRE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange was not often pensive&mdash;at least not at large functions
+      or when under the public eye. But she certainly forgot herself at Mrs.
+      Provost&rsquo;s musicale and that, too, without apparent reason. Had the music
+      been of a high order one might have understood her abstraction; but it was
+      of a decidedly mediocre quality, and Violet&rsquo;s ear was much too fine and
+      her musical sense too cultivated for her to be beguiled by anything less
+      than the very best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor had she the excuse of a dull companion. Her escort for the evening was
+      a man of unusual conversational powers; but she seemed to be almost
+      oblivious of his presence; and when, through some passing courteous
+      impulse, she did turn her ear his way, it was with just that tinge of
+      preoccupation which betrays the divided mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Were her thoughts with some secret problem yet unsolved? It would scarcely
+      seem so from the gay remark with which she had left home. She was speaking
+      to her brother and her words were: &ldquo;I am going out to enjoy myself. I&rsquo;ve
+      not a care in the world. The slate is quite clean.&rdquo; Yet she had never
+      seemed more out of tune with her surroundings nor shown a mood further
+      removed from trivial entertainment. What had happened to becloud her
+      gaiety in the short time which had since elapsed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can answer in a sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had seen, among a group of young men in a distant doorway, one with a
+      face so individual and of an expression so extraordinary that all interest
+      in the people about her had stopped as a clock stops when the pendulum is
+      held back. She could see nothing else, think of nothing else. Not that it
+      was so very handsome&mdash;though no other had ever approached it in its
+      power over her imagination&mdash;but because of its expression of haunting
+      melancholy,&mdash;a melancholy so settled and so evidently the result of
+      long-continued sorrow that her interest had been reached and her
+      heartstrings shaken as never before in her whole life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would never be the same Violet again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet moved as she undoubtedly was, she was not conscious of the least
+      desire to know who the young man was, or even to be made acquainted with
+      his story. She simply wanted to dream her dream undisturbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was therefore with a sense of unwelcome shock that, in the course of
+      the reception following the programme, she perceived this fine young man
+      approaching herself, with his right hand touching his left shoulder in the
+      peculiar way which committed her to an interview with or without a formal
+      introduction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should she fly the ordeal? Be blind and deaf to whatever was significant
+      in his action, and go her way before he reached her; thus keeping her
+      dream intact? Impossible. His eye prevented that. His glance had caught
+      hers and she felt forced to await his advance and give him her first spare
+      moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came soon, and when it came she greeted him with a smile. It was the
+      first she had ever bestowed in welcome of a confidence of whose tenor she
+      was entirely ignorant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To her relief he showed his appreciation of the dazzling gift though he
+      made no effort to return it. Scorning all preliminaries in his eagerness
+      to discharge himself of a burden which was fast becoming intolerable, he
+      addressed her at once in these words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very good, Miss Strange, to receive me in this unconventional
+      fashion. I am in that desperate state of mind which precludes etiquette.
+      Will you listen to my petition? I am told&mdash;you know by whom&mdash;&ldquo;(and
+      he again touched his shoulder) &ldquo;that you have resources of intelligence
+      which especially fit you to meet the extraordinary difficulties of my
+      position. May I beg you to exercise them in my behalf? No man would be
+      more grateful if&mdash;But I see that you do not recognize me. I am Roger
+      Upjohn. That I am admitted to this gathering is owing to the fact that our
+      hostess knew and loved my mother. In my anxiety to meet you and proffer my
+      plea, I was willing to brave the cold looks you have probably noticed on
+      the faces of the people about us. But I have no right to subject you to
+      criticism. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remain.&rdquo; Violet&rsquo;s voice was troubled, her self-possession disturbed; but
+      there was a command in her tone which he was only too glad to obey. &ldquo;I
+      know the name&rdquo; (who did not!) &ldquo;and possibly my duty to myself should make
+      me shun a confidence which may burden me without relieving you. But you
+      have been sent to me by one whose behests I feel bound to respect and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mistrusting her voice, she stopped. The suffering which made itself
+      apparent in the face before her appealed to her heart in a way to rob her
+      of her judgment. She did not wish this to be seen, and so fell silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was quick to take advantage of her obvious embarrassment. &ldquo;Should I
+      have been sent to you if I had not first secured the confidence of the
+      sender? You know the scandal attached to my name, some of it just, some of
+      it very unjust. If you will grant me an interview to-morrow, I will make
+      an endeavour to refute certain charges which I have hitherto let go
+      unchallenged. Will you do me this favour? Will you listen in your own
+      house to what I have to say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instinct cried out against any such concession on her part, bidding her
+      beware of one who charmed without excellence and convinced without reason.
+      But compassion urged compliance and compassion won the day. Though
+      conscious of weakness,&mdash;she, Violet Strange on whom strong men had
+      come to rely in critical hours calling for well-balanced judgment,&mdash;she
+      did not let this concern her, or allow herself to indulge in useless
+      regrets even after the first effect of his presence had passed and she had
+      succeeded in recalling the facts which had cast a cloud about his name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roger Upjohn was a widower, and the scandal affecting him was connected
+      with his wife&rsquo;s death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though a degenerate in some respects, lacking the domineering presence,
+      the strong mental qualities, and inflexible character of his progenitors,
+      the wealthy Massachusetts Upjohns whose great place on the coast had a
+      history as old as the State itself, he yet had gifts and attractions of
+      his own which would have made him a worthy representative of his race, if
+      only he had not fixed his affections on a woman so cold and heedless that
+      she would have inspired universal aversion instead of love, had she not
+      been dowered with the beauty and physical fascination which sometimes
+      accompany a hard heart and a scheming brain. It was this beauty which had
+      caught the lad; and one day, just as the careful father had mapped out a
+      course of study calculated to make a man of his son, that son drove up to
+      the gates with this lady whom he introduced as his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shock, not of her beauty, though that was of the dazzling quality
+      which catches a man in the throat and makes a slave of him while the first
+      surprise lasts, but of the overthrow of all his hopes and plans, nearly
+      prostrated Homer Upjohn. He saw, as most men did the moment judgment
+      returned, that for all her satin skin and rosy flush, the wonder of her
+      hair and the smile which pierced like arrows and warmed like wine, she was
+      more likely to bring a curse into the house than a blessing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it proved. In less than a year the young husband had lost all his
+      ambitions and many of his best impulses. No longer inclined to study, he
+      spent his days in satisfying his wife&rsquo;s whims and his evenings in
+      carousing with the friends with which she had provided him. This in Boston
+      whither they had fled from the old gentleman&rsquo;s displeasure; but after
+      their little son came the father insisted upon their returning home, which
+      led to great deceptions, and precipitated a tragedy no one ever
+      understood. They were natural gamblers&mdash;this couple&mdash;as all
+      Boston society knew; and as Homer Upjohn loathed cards, they found life
+      slow in the great house and grew correspondingly restless till they made a
+      discovery&mdash;or shall I say a rediscovery&mdash;of the once famous
+      grotto hidden in the rocks lining their portion of the coast. Here they
+      found a retreat where they could hide themselves (often when they were
+      thought to be abed and asleep) and play together for money or for a supper
+      in the city or for anything else that foolish fancy suggested. This was
+      while their little son remained an infant; later, they were less easily
+      satisfied. Both craved company, excitement, and gambling on a large scale;
+      so they took to inviting friends to meet them in this grotto which,
+      through the agency of one old servant devoted to Roger to the point of
+      folly, had been fitted up and lighted in a manner not only comfortable but
+      luxurious. A small but sheltered haven hidden in the curve of the rocks
+      made an approach by boat feasible at high tide; and at low the connection
+      could be made by means of a path over the promontory in which this grotto
+      lay concealed. The fortune which Roger had inherited from his mother made
+      these excesses possible, but many thousands, let alone the few he could
+      call his, soon disappeared under the witchery of an irresponsible woman,
+      and the half-dozen friends who knew his secret had to stand by and see his
+      ruin, without daring to utter a word to the one who alone could stay it.
+      For Homer Upjohn was not a man to be approached lightly, nor was he one to
+      listen to charges without ocular proof to support them; and this called
+      for courage, more courage than was possessed by any one who knew them
+      both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a hard man was Homer Upjohn, but with a heart of gold for those he
+      loved. This, even his wary daughter-in-law was wise enough to detect, and
+      for a long while after the birth of her child she besieged him with her
+      coaxing ways and bewitching graces. But he never changed his first opinion
+      of her, and once she became fully convinced of the folly of her efforts,
+      she gave up all attempt to please him and showed an open indifference.
+      This in time gradually extended till it embraced not only her child but
+      her husband as well. Yes, it had come to that. His love no longer
+      contented her. Her vanity had grown by what it daily fed on, and now
+      called for the admiration of the fast men who sometimes came up from
+      Boston to play with them in their unholy retreat. To win this, she dressed
+      like some demon queen or witch, though it drove her husband into deeper
+      play and threatened an exposure which would mean disaster not only to
+      herself but to the whole family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all this, as any one could see, Roger had been her slave and the
+      willing victim of all her caprices. What was it, then, which so completely
+      changed him that a separation began to be talked of and even its terms
+      discussed? One rumour had it that the father had discovered the secret of
+      the grotto and exacted this as a penalty from the son who had dishonoured
+      him. Another, that Roger himself was the one to take the initiative in
+      this matter: That, on returning unexpectedly from New York one evening and
+      finding her missing from the house, he had traced her to the grotto where
+      he came upon her playing a desperate game with the one man he had the
+      greatest reason to distrust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But whatever the explanation of this sudden change in their relations,
+      there is but little doubt that a legal separation between this
+      ill-assorted couple was pending, when one bleak autumn morning she was
+      discovered dead in her bed under circumstances peculiarly open to comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The physicians who made out the certificate ascribed her death to
+      heart-disease, symptoms of which had lately much alarmed the family
+      doctor; but that a personal struggle of some kind had preceded the fatal
+      attack was evident from the bruises which blackened her wrists. Had there
+      been the like upon her throat it might have gone hard with the young
+      husband who was known to be contemplating her dismissal from the house.
+      But the discoloration of her wrists was all, and as bruised wrists do not
+      kill and there was besides no evidence forthcoming of the two having spent
+      one moment together for at least ten hours preceding the tragedy but
+      rather full and satisfactory testimony to the contrary, the matter lapsed
+      and all criminal proceedings were avoided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not the scandal which always follows the unexplained. As time passed
+      and the peculiar look which betrays the haunted soul gradually became
+      visible in the young widower&rsquo;s eyes, doubts arose and reports circulated
+      which cast strange reflections upon the tragic end of his mistaken
+      marriage. Stories of the disreputable use to which the old grotto had been
+      put were mingled with vague hints of conjugal violence never properly
+      investigated. The result was his general avoidance not only by the social
+      set dominated by his high-minded father, but by his own less reputable
+      coterie, which, however lax in its moral code, had very little use for a
+      coward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the gossip which had reached Violet&rsquo;s ears in connection with
+      this new client, prejudicing her altogether against him till she caught
+      that beam of deep and concentrated suffering in his eye and recognized an
+      innocence which ensured her sympathy and led her to grant him the
+      interview for which he so earnestly entreated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came prompt to the hour, and when she saw him again with the marks of a
+      sleepless night upon him and all the signs of suffering intensified in his
+      unusual countenance, she felt her heart sink within her in a way she
+      failed to understand. A dread of what she was about to hear robbed her of
+      all semblance of self-possession, and she stood like one in a dream as he
+      uttered his first greetings and then paused to gather up his own moral
+      strength before he began his story. When he did speak it was to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I find myself obliged to break a vow I have made to myself. You cannot
+      understand my need unless I show you my heart. My trouble is not the one
+      with which men have credited me. It has another source and is infinitely
+      harder to bear. Personal dishonour I have deserved in a greater or less
+      degree, but the trial which has come to me now involves a person more dear
+      to me than myself, and is totally without alleviation unless you&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He paused, choked, then recommenced abruptly: &ldquo;My wife&rdquo;&mdash;Violet held
+      her breath&mdash;&ldquo;was supposed to have died from heart-disease or&mdash;or
+      some strange species of suicide. There were reasons for this conclusion&mdash;reasons
+      which I accepted without serious question till some five weeks ago when I
+      made a discovery which led me to fear&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The broken sentence hung suspended. Violet, notwithstanding his hurried
+      gesture, could not restrain herself from stealing a look at his face. It
+      was set in horror and, though partially turned aside, made an appeal to
+      her compassion to fill the void made by his silence, without further
+      suggestion from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did this by saying tentatively and with as little show of emotion as
+      possible:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You feared that the event called for vengeance and that vengeance would
+      mean increased suffering to yourself as well as to another?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; great suffering. But I may be under a most lamentable mistake. I am
+      not sure of my conclusions. If my doubts have no real foundation&mdash;if
+      they are simply the offspring of my own diseased imagination, what an
+      insult to one I revere! What a horror of ingratitude and misunderstanding&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Relate the facts,&rdquo; came in startled tones from Violet. &ldquo;They may
+      enlighten us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave one quick shudder, buried his face for one moment in his hands,
+      then lifted it and spoke up quickly and with unexpected firmness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came here to do so and do so I will. But where begin? Miss Strange, you
+      cannot be ignorant of the circumstances, open and avowed, which attended
+      my wife&rsquo;s death. But there were other and secret events in its connection
+      which happily have been kept from the world, but which I must now disclose
+      to you at any cost to my pride and so-called honour. This is the first
+      one: On the morning preceding the day of Mrs. Upjohn&rsquo;s death, an interview
+      took place between us at which my father was present. You do not know my
+      father, Miss Strange. A strong man and a stern one, with a hold upon old
+      traditions which nothing can shake. If he has a weakness it is for my
+      little boy Roger in whose promising traits he sees the one hope which has
+      survived the shipwreck of all for which our name has stood. Knowing this,
+      and realizing what the child&rsquo;s presence in the house meant to his old age,
+      I felt my heart turn sick with apprehension, when in the midst of the
+      discussion as to the terms on which my wife would consent to a permanent
+      separation, the little fellow came dancing into the room, his curls atoss
+      and his whole face beaming with life and joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had not mentioned the child, but I knew her well enough to be sure
+      that at the first show of preference on his part for either his
+      grandfather or myself, she would raise a claim to him which she would
+      never relinquish. I dared not speak, but I met his eager looks with my
+      most forbidding frown and hoped by this show of severity to hold him back.
+      But his little heart was full and, ignoring her outstretched arms, he
+      bounded towards mine with his most affectionate cry. She saw and uttered
+      her ultimatum. The child should go with her or she would not consent to a
+      separation. It was useless for us to talk; she had said her last word. The
+      blow struck me hard, or so I thought, till I looked at my father. Never
+      had I beheld such a change as that one moment had made in him. He stood as
+      before; he faced us with the same silent reprobation; but his heart had
+      run from him like water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a sight to call up all my resources. To allow her to remain now,
+      with my feelings towards her all changed and my father&rsquo;s eyes fully opened
+      to her stony nature, was impossible. Nor could I appeal to law. An open
+      scandal was my father&rsquo;s greatest dread and divorce proceedings his horror.
+      The child would have to go unless I could find a way to influence her
+      through her own nature. I knew of but one&mdash;do not look at me, Miss
+      Strange. It was dishonouring to us both, and I&rsquo;m horrified now when I
+      think of it. But to me at that time it was natural enough as a last
+      resort. There was but one debt which my wife ever paid, but one promise
+      she ever kept. It was that made at the gaming-table. I offered, as soon as
+      my father, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, had gone tottering
+      from the room, to gamble with her for the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she accepted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shame and humiliation expressed in this final whisper; the sudden
+      darkness&mdash;for a storm was coming up&mdash;shook Violet to the soul.
+      With strained gaze fixed on the man before her, now little more than a
+      shadow in the prevailing gloom, she waited for him to resume, and waited
+      in vain. The minutes passed, the darkness became intolerable, and
+      instinctively her hand crept towards the electric button beneath which she
+      was sitting. But she failed to press it. A tale so dark called for an
+      atmosphere of its own kind. She would cast no light upon it. Yet she
+      shivered as the silence continued, and started in uncontrollable dismay
+      when at length her strange visitor rose, and still, without speaking,
+      walked away from her to the other end of the room. Only so could he go on
+      with the shameful tale; and presently she heard his voice once more in
+      these words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our house is large and its rooms many; but for such work as we two
+      contemplated there was but one spot where we could command absolute
+      seclusion. You may have heard of it, a famous natural grotto hidden in our
+      own portion of the coast and so fitted up as to form a retreat for our
+      miserable selves when escape from my father&rsquo;s eye seemed desirable. It was
+      not easy of access, and no one, so far as we knew, had ever followed us
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But to ensure ourselves against any possible interruption, we waited till
+      the whole house was abed before we left it for the grotto. We went by boat
+      and oh! the dip of those oars! I hear them yet. And the witchery of her
+      face in the moonlight; and the mockery of her low fitful laugh! As I
+      caught the sinister note in its silvery rise and fall, I knew what was
+      before me if I failed to retain my composure. And I strove to hold it and
+      to meet her calmness with stoicism and the taunt of her expression with a
+      mask of immobility. But the effort was hopeless, and when the time came
+      for dealing out the cards, my eyes were burning in their sockets and my
+      hands shivering like leaves in a rising gale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We played one game&mdash;and my wife lost. We played another&mdash;and my
+      wife won. We played the third&mdash;and the fate I had foreseen from the
+      first became mine. The luck was with her, and I had lost my boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A gasp&mdash;a pause, during which the thunder spoke and the lightning
+      flashed,&mdash;then a hurried catching of his breath and the tale went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A burst of laughter, rising gaily above the boom of the sea, announced
+      her victory&mdash;her laugh and the taunting words: &lsquo;You play badly,
+      Roger. The child is mine. Never fear that I shall fail to teach him to
+      revere his father.&rsquo; Had I a word to throw back? No. When I realized
+      anything but my dishonoured manhood, I found myself in the grotto&rsquo;s mouth
+      staring helplessly out upon the sea. The boat which had floated us in at
+      high tide lay stranded but a few feet away, but I did not reach for it.
+      Escape was quicker over the rocks, and I made for the rocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That it was a cowardly act to leave her there to find her way back alone
+      at midnight by the same rough road I was taking, did not strike my mind
+      for an instant. I was in flight from my own past; in flight from myself
+      and the haunting dread of madness. When I awoke to reality again it was to
+      find the small door, by which we had left the house, standing slightly
+      ajar. I was troubled by this, for I was sure of having closed it. But the
+      impression was brief, and entering, I went stumbling up to my room,
+      leaving the way open behind me more from sheer inability to exercise my
+      will than from any thought of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Strange&rdquo; (he had come out of the shadows and was standing now
+      directly before her), &ldquo;I must ask you to trust implicitly in what I tell
+      you of my further experiences that fatal night. It was not necessary for
+      me to pass my little son&rsquo;s door in order to reach the room I was making
+      for; but anguish took me there and held me glued to the panels for what
+      seemed a long, long time. When I finally crept away it was to go to the
+      room I had chosen in the top of the house, where I had my hour of hell and
+      faced my desolated future. Did I hear anything meantime in the halls
+      below? No. Did I even listen for the sound of her return? No. I was
+      callous to everything, dead to everything but my own misery. I did not
+      even heed the approach of morning, till suddenly, with a shrillness no ear
+      could ignore, there rose, tearing through the silence of the house, that
+      great scream from my wife&rsquo;s room which announced the discovery of her body
+      lying stark and cold in her bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They said I showed little feeling.&rdquo; He had moved off again and spoke from
+      somewhere in the shadows. &ldquo;Do you wonder at this after such a manifest
+      stroke by a benevolent Providence? My wife being dead, Roger was saved to
+      us! It was the one song of my still undisciplined soul, and I had to
+      assume coldness lest they should see the greatness of my joy. A wicked and
+      guilty rejoicing you will say, and you are right. But I had no memory then
+      of the part I had played in this fatality. I had forgotten my reckless
+      flight from the grotto, which left her with no aid but that of her own
+      triumphant spirit to help her over those treacherous rocks. The necessity
+      for keeping secret this part of our disgraceful story led me to exert
+      myself to keep it out of my own mind. It has only come back to me in all
+      its force since a new horror, a new suspicion, has driven me to review
+      carefully every incident of that awful night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was never a man of much logic, and when they came to me on that morning
+      of which I have just spoken and took me in where she lay and pointed to
+      her beautiful cold body stretched out in seeming peace under the satin
+      coverlet, and then to the pile of dainty clothes lying neatly folded on a
+      chair with just one fairy slipper on top, I shuddered at her fate but
+      asked no questions, not even when one of the women of the house mentioned
+      the circumstance of the single slipper and said that a search should be
+      made for its mate. Nor was I as much impressed as one would naturally
+      expect by the whisper dropped in my ear that something was the matter with
+      her wrists. It is true that I lifted the lace they had carefully spread
+      over them and examined the discoloration which extended like a ring about
+      each pearly arm; but having no memories of any violence offered her (I had
+      not so much as laid hand upon her in the grotto), these marks failed to
+      rouse my interest. But&mdash;and now I must leap a year in my story&mdash;there
+      came a time when both of these facts recurred to my mind with startling
+      distinctness and clamoured for explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had risen above the shock which such a death following such events
+      would naturally occasion even in one of my blunted sensibilities, and was
+      striving to live a new life under the encouragement of my now fully
+      reconciled father, when accident forced me to re-enter the grotto where I
+      had never stepped foot since that night. A favourite dog in chase of some
+      innocent prey had escaped the leash and run into its dim recesses and
+      would not come out at my call. As I needed him immediately for the hunt, I
+      followed him over the promontory and, swallowing my repugnance, slid into
+      the grotto to get him. Better a plunge to my death from the height of the
+      rocks towering above it. For there in a remote corner, lighted up by a
+      reflection from the sea, I beheld my setter crouched above an object which
+      in another moment I recognized as my dead wife&rsquo;s missing slipper. Here!
+      Not in the waters of the sea or in the interstices of the rocks outside,
+      but here! Proof that she had never walked back to the house where she was
+      found lying quietly in her bed; proof positive; for I knew the path too
+      well and the more than usual tenderness of her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How then, did she get there; and by whose agency? Was she living when she
+      went, or was she already dead? A year had passed since that delicate shoe
+      had borne her from the boat into these dim recesses; but it might have
+      been only a day, so vividly did I live over in this moment of awful
+      enlightenment all the events of the hour in which we sat there playing for
+      the possession of our child. Again I saw her gleaming eyes, her rosy,
+      working mouth, her slim, white hand, loaded with diamonds, clutching the
+      cards. Again I heard the lap of the sea on the pebbles outside and smelt
+      the odour of the wine she had poured out for us both. The bottle which had
+      held it; the glass from which she had drunk lay now in pieces on the rocky
+      floor. The whole scene was mine again and as I followed the event to its
+      despairing close, I seemed to see my own wild figure springing away from
+      her to the grotto&rsquo;s mouth and so over the rocks. But here fancy faltered,
+      caught by a quick recollection to which I had never given a thought till
+      now. As I made my way along those rocks, a sound had struck my ear from
+      where some stunted bushes made a shadow in the moonlight. The wind might
+      have caused it or some small night creature hustling away at my approach;
+      and to some such cause I must at the time have attributed it. But now,
+      with brain fired by suspicion, it seemed more like the quick intake of a
+      human breath. Some one had been lying there in wait, listening at the one
+      loophole in the rocks where it was possible to hear what was said and done
+      in the heart of the grotto. But who? who? and for what purpose this
+      listening; and to what end did it lead?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though I no longer loved even the memory of my wife, I felt my hair lift,
+      as I asked myself these questions. There seemed to be but one logical
+      answer to the last, and it was this: A struggle followed by death. The
+      shoe fallen from her foot, the clothes found folded in her room (my wife
+      was never orderly), and the dimly blackened wrists which were snow-white
+      when she dealt the cards&mdash;all seemed to point to such a conclusion.
+      She may have died from heart-failure, but a struggle had preceded her
+      death, during which some man&rsquo;s strong fingers had been locked about her
+      wrists. And again the question rose, Whose?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If any place was ever hated by mortal man that grotto was hated by me. I
+      loathed its walls, its floor, its every visible and invisible corner. To
+      linger there&mdash;to look&mdash;almost tore my soul from my body; yet I
+      did linger and did look and this is what I found by way of reward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Behind a projecting ledge of stone from which a tattered rug still hung,
+      I came upon two nails driven a few feet apart into a fissure of the rock.
+      I had driven those nails myself long before for a certain gymnastic
+      attachment much in vogue at the time, and on looking closer, I discovered
+      hanging from them the rope-ends by which I was wont to pull myself about.
+      So far there was nothing to rouse any but innocent reminiscences. But when
+      I heard the dog&rsquo;s low moan and saw him leap at the curled-up ends, and
+      nose them with an eager look my way, I remembered the dark marks circling
+      the wrists about which I had so often clasped my mother&rsquo;s bracelets, and
+      the world went black before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When consciousness returned&mdash;when I could once more move and see and
+      think, I noted another fact. Cards were strewn about the floor, face up
+      and in a fixed order as if laid in a mocking mood to be looked upon by
+      reluctant eyes; and near the ominous half-circle they made, a cushion from
+      the lounge, stained horribly with what I then thought to be blood, but
+      which I afterwards found to be wine. Vengeance spoke in those ropes and in
+      the carefully spread-out cards, and murder in the smothering pillow. The
+      vengeance of one who had watched her corroding influence eat the life out
+      of my honour and whose love for our little Roger was such that any deed
+      which ensured his continued presence in the home appeared not only
+      warrantable but obligatory. Alas! I knew of but one person in the whole
+      world who could cherish feeling to this extent or possess sufficient will
+      power to carry her lifeless body back to the house and lay it in her bed
+      and give no sign of the abominable act from that day on to this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Strange, there are men who have a peculiar conception of duty. My
+      father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You need not go on.&rdquo; How gently, how tenderly our Violet spoke. &ldquo;I
+      understand your trouble&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Did she? She paused to ask herself if this were so, and he, deaf perhaps
+      to her words, caught up his broken sentence and went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father was in the hall the day I came staggering in from my visit to
+      the grotto. No words passed, but our eyes met and from that hour I have
+      seen death in his countenance and he has seen it in mine, like two
+      opponents, each struck to the heart, who stand facing each other with
+      simulated smiles till they fall. My father will drop first. He is old&mdash;very
+      old since that day five weeks ago; and to see him die and not be sure&mdash;to
+      see the grave close over a possible innocence, and I left here in
+      ignorance of the blissful fact till my own eyes close forever, is more
+      than I can hold up under; more than any son could. Cannot you help me then
+      to a positive knowledge? Think! think! A woman&rsquo;s mind is strangely
+      penetrating, and yours, I am told, has an intuitive faculty more to be
+      relied upon than the reasoning of men. It must suggest some means of
+      confirming my doubts or of definitely ending them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Violet stirred and looked about at him and finally found voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me something about your father&rsquo;s ways. What are his habits? Does he
+      sleep well or is he wakeful at night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has poor nights. I do not know how poor because I am not often with
+      him. His valet, who has always been in our family, shares his room and
+      acts as his constant nurse. He can watch over him better than I can; he
+      has no distracting trouble on his mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And little Roger? Does your father see much of little Roger? Does he
+      fondle him and seem happy in his presence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; yes. I have often wondered at it, but he does. They are great chums.
+      It is a pleasure to see them together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the child clings to him&mdash;shows no fear&mdash;sits on his lap or
+      on the bed and plays as children do play with his beard or with his
+      watch-chain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Only once have I seen my little chap shrink, and that was when my
+      father gave him a look of unusual intensity,&mdash;looking for his mother
+      in him perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Upjohn, forgive me the question; it seems necessary. Does your father&mdash;or
+      rather did your father before he fell ill&mdash;ever walk in the direction
+      of the grotto or haunt in any way the rocks which surround it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot say. The sea is there; he naturally loves the sea. But I have
+      never seen him standing on the promontory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which way do his windows look?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Towards the sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Therefore towards the promontory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can he see it from his bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Perhaps that is the cause of a peculiar habit he has.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What habit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every night before he retires (he is not yet confined to his bed) he
+      stands for a few minutes in his front window looking out. He says it&rsquo;s his
+      good-night to the ocean. When he no longer does this, we shall know that
+      his end is very near.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The face of Violet began to clear. Rising, she turned on the electric
+      light, and then, reseating herself, remarked with an aspect of quiet
+      cheer:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have two ideas; but they necessitate my presence at your place. You
+      will not mind a visit? My brother will accompany me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roger Upjohn did not need to speak, hardly to make a gesture; his
+      expression was so eloquent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thanked him as if he had answered in words, adding with an air of
+      gentle reserve: &ldquo;Providence assists us in this matter. I am invited to
+      Beverly next week to attend a wedding. I was intending to stay two days,
+      but I will make it three and spend the extra one with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are your requirements, Miss Strange? I presume you have some.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet turned from the imposing portrait of Mr. Upjohn which she had been
+      gravely contemplating, and met the troubled eye of her young host with an
+      enigmatical flash of her own. But she made no answer in words. Instead,
+      she lifted her right hand and ran one slender finger thoughtfully up the
+      casing of the door near which they stood till it struck a nick in the old
+      mahogany almost on a level with her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is your son Roger old enough to reach so far?&rdquo; she asked with another
+      short look at him as she let her finger rest where it had struck the
+      roughened wood. &ldquo;I thought he was a little fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is. That cut was made by&mdash;by my wife; a sample of her capricious
+      willfulness. She wished to leave a record of herself in the substance of
+      our house as well as in our lives. That nick marks her height. She laughed
+      when she made it. &lsquo;Till the walls cave in or burn,&rsquo; is what she said. And
+      I thought her laugh and smile captivating.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cutting short his own laugh which was much too sardonic for a lady&rsquo;s ears,
+      he made a move as if to lead the way into another portion of the room. But
+      Violet failed to notice this, and lingering in quiet contemplation of this
+      suggestive little nick,&mdash;the only blemish in a room of ancient
+      colonial magnificence,&mdash;she thoughtfully remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she was a small woman?&rdquo; adding with seeming irrelevance&mdash;&ldquo;like
+      myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roger winced. Something in the suggestion hurt him, and in the nod he gave
+      there was an air of coldness which under ordinary circumstances would have
+      deterred her from pursuing this subject further. But the circumstances
+      were not ordinary, and she allowed herself to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was she so very different from me,&mdash;in figure, I mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Why do you ask? Shall we not join your brother on the terrace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not till I have answered the question you put me a moment ago. You wished
+      to know my requirements. One of the most important you have already
+      fulfilled. You have given your servants a half-holiday and by so doing
+      ensured to us full liberty of action. What else I need in the attempt I
+      propose to make, you will find listed in this memorandum.&rdquo; And taking a
+      slip of paper from her bag, she offered it to him with a hand, the
+      trembling of which he would have noted had he been freer in mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he read, she watched him, her fingers nervously clutching her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you supply what I ask?&rdquo; she faltered, as he failed to raise his eyes
+      or make any move or even to utter the groan she saw surging up to his
+      lips. &ldquo;Will you?&rdquo; she impetuously urged, as his fingers closed
+      spasmodically on the paper, in evidence that he understood at last the
+      trend of her daring purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer came slowly, but it came. &ldquo;I will. But what&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hand rose in a pleading gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not ask me, but take Arthur and myself into the garden and show us the
+      flowers. Afterwards, I should like a glimpse of the sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed and they joined Arthur who had already begun to stroll through
+      the grounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet was seldom at a loss for talk even at the most critical moments.
+      But she was strangely tongue-tied on this occasion, as was Roger himself.
+      Save for a few observations casually thrown out by Arthur, the three
+      passed in a disquieting silence through pergola after pergola, and around
+      beds gorgeous with every variety of fall flowers, till they turned a sharp
+      corner and came in full view of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; fell in an admiring murmur from Violet&rsquo;s lips as her eyes swept the
+      horizon. Then as they settled on a mass of rock jutting out from the shore
+      in a great curve, she leaned towards her host and softly whispered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The promontory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded, and Violet ventured no farther, but stood for a little while
+      gazing at the tumbled rocks. Then, with a quick look back at the house,
+      she asked him to point out his father&rsquo;s window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did so, and as she noted how openly it faced the sea, her expression
+      relaxed and her manner lost some of its constraint. As they turned to
+      re-enter the house, she noticed an old man picking flowers from a vine
+      clambering over one end of the piazza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is that?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our oldest servant, and my father&rsquo;s own man,&rdquo; was Roger&rsquo;s reply. &ldquo;He is
+      picking my father&rsquo;s favourite flowers, a few late honeysuckles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How fortunate! Speak to him, Mr. Upjohn. Ask him how your father is this
+      evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Accompany me and I will; and do not be afraid to enter into conversation
+      with him. He is the mildest of creatures and devoted to his patient. He
+      likes nothing better than to talk about him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet, with a meaning look at her brother, ran up the steps at Roger&rsquo;s
+      side. As she did so, the old man turned and Violet was astonished at the
+      wistfulness with which he viewed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a dear old creature!&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;See how he stares this way. You
+      would think he knew me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is glad to see a woman about the place. He has felt our isolation&mdash;Good
+      evening, Abram. Let this young lady have a spray of your sweetest
+      honeysuckle. And, Abram, before you go, how is Father to-night? Still
+      sitting up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir. He is very regular in his ways. Nine is his hour; not a minute
+      before and not a minute later. I don&rsquo;t have to look at the clock when he
+      says: &lsquo;There, Abram, I&rsquo;ve sat up long enough.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When my father retires before his time or goes to bed without a final
+      look at the sea, he will be a very sick man, Abram.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That he will, Mr. Roger; that he will. But he&rsquo;s very feeble to-night,
+      very feeble. I noticed that he gave the boy fewer kisses than usual.
+      Perhaps he was put out because the child was brought in a half-hour
+      earlier than the stated time. He don&rsquo;t like changes; you know that, Mr.
+      Roger; he don&rsquo;t like changes. I hardly dared to tell him that the servants
+      were all going out in a bunch to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; muttered Roger. &ldquo;But he&rsquo;ll forget it by to-morrow. I couldn&rsquo;t
+      bear to keep a single one from the concert. They&rsquo;ll be back in good season
+      and meantime we have you. Abram is worth half a dozen of them, Miss
+      Strange. We shall miss nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Mr. Roger, thank you,&rdquo; faltered the old man. &ldquo;I try to do my
+      duty.&rdquo; And with another wistful glance at Violet, who looked very sweet
+      and youthful in the half-light, he pottered away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The silence which followed his departure was as painful to her as to Roger
+      Upjohn. When she broke it it was with this decisive remark:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That man must not speak of me to your father. He must not even mention
+      that you have a guest to-night. Run after him and tell him so. It is
+      necessary that your father&rsquo;s mind should not be taken up with present
+      happenings. Run.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roger made haste to obey her. When he came back she was on the point of
+      joining her brother but stopped to utter a final injunction:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall leave the library, or wherever we may be sitting, just as the
+      clock strikes half-past eight. Arthur will do the same, as by that time he
+      will feel like smoking on the terrace. Do not follow either him or myself,
+      but take your stand here on the piazza where you can get a full view of
+      the right-hand wing without attracting any attention to yourself. When you
+      hear the big clock in the hall strike nine, look up quickly at your
+      father&rsquo;s window. What you see may determine&mdash;oh, Arthur! still
+      admiring the prospect? I do not wonder. But I find it chilly. Let us go
+      in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roger Upjohn, sitting by himself in the library, was watching the hands of
+      the mantel clock slowly approaching the hour of nine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had silence seemed more oppressive nor his sense of loneliness
+      greater. Yet the boom of the ocean was distinct to the ear, and human
+      presence no farther away than the terrace where Arthur Strange could be
+      seen smoking out his cigar in solitude. The silence and the loneliness
+      were in Roger&rsquo;s own soul; and, in face of the expected revelation which
+      would make or unmake his future, the desolation they wrought was
+      measureless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To cut his suspense short, he rose at length and hurried out to the spot
+      designated by Miss Strange as the best point from which to keep watch upon
+      his father&rsquo;s window. It was at the end of the piazza where the honeysuckle
+      hung, and the odour of the blossoms, so pleasing to his father, well-nigh
+      overpowered him not only by its sweetness but by the many memories it
+      called up. Visions of that father as he looked at all stages of their
+      relationship passed in a bewildering maze before him. He saw him as he
+      appeared to his childish eyes in those early days of confidence when the
+      loss of the mother cast them in mutual dependence upon each other. Then a
+      sterner picture of the relentless parent who sees but one straight course
+      to success in this world and the next. Then the teacher and the matured
+      adviser; and then&mdash;oh, bitter change! the man whose hopes he had
+      crossed&mdash;whose life he had undone, and all for her who now came
+      stealing upon the scene with her slim, white, jewelled hand forever lifted
+      up between them. And she! Had he ever seen her more clearly? Once more the
+      dainty figure stepped from fairy-land, beauteous with every grace that can
+      allure and finally destroy a man. And as he saw, he trembled and wished
+      that these moments of awful waiting might pass and the test be over which
+      would lay bare his father&rsquo;s heart and justify his fears or dispel them
+      forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the crisis, if crisis it was, was one of his own making and not to be
+      hastened or evaded. With one quick glance at his father&rsquo;s window, he
+      turned in his impatience towards the sea whose restless and continuous
+      moaning had at length struck his ear. What was in its call to-night that
+      he should thus sway towards it as though drawn by some dread magnetic
+      force? He had been born to the dashing of its waves and knew its every
+      mood and all the passion of its song from frolicsome ripple to melancholy
+      dirge. But there was something odd and inexplicable in its effect upon his
+      spirit as he faced it at this hour. Grim and implacable&mdash;a sound
+      rather than a sight&mdash;it seemed to hold within its invisible distances
+      the image of his future fate. What this image was and why he should seek
+      for it in this impenetrable void, he did not know. He felt himself held
+      and was struggling with this influence as with an unknown enemy when there
+      rang out, from the hall within, the preparatory chimes for which his ear
+      was waiting, and then the nine slow strokes which signalized the moment
+      when he was to look for his father&rsquo;s presence at the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had he wished, he could not have forborne that look. Had his eyes been
+      closing in death, or so he felt, the trembling lids would have burst apart
+      at this call and the revelations it promised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what did he see? What did that window hold for him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing that he might not have seen there any night at this hour. His
+      father&rsquo;s figure drawn up behind the panes in wistful contemplation of the
+      night. No visible change in his attitude, nothing forced or unusual in his
+      manner. Even the hand, lifted to pull down the shade, moves with its
+      familiar hesitation. In a moment more that shade will be down and&mdash;But
+      no! the lifted hand falls back; the easy attitude becomes strained, fixed.
+      He is staring now&mdash;not merely gazing out upon the wastes of sky and
+      sea; and Roger, following the direction of his glance, stares also in
+      breathless emotion at what those distances, but now so impenetrable, are
+      giving to the eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A spectre floating in the air above the promontory! The spectre of a woman&mdash;of
+      his wife, clad, as she had been clad that fatal night! Outlined in
+      supernatural light, it faces them with lifted arms showing the ends of
+      rope dangling from either wrist. A sight awful to any eye, but to the man
+      of guilty heart&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! it comes&mdash;the cry for which the agonized son had been listening!
+      An old man&rsquo;s shriek, hoarse with the remorse of sleepless nights and days
+      of unimaginable regret and foreboding! It cuts the night. It cuts its way
+      into his heart. He feels his senses failing him, yet he must glance once
+      more at the window and see with his last conscious look&mdash;But what is
+      this! a change has taken place in the picture and he beholds, not the
+      distorted form of his father sinking back in shame and terror before this
+      visible image of his secret sin, but that of another weak, old man falling
+      to the floor behind his back! Abram! the attentive, seemingly harmless,
+      guardian of the household! Abram! who had never spoken a word or given a
+      look in any way suggestive of his having played any other part in the
+      hideous drama of their lives than that of the humble and sympathetic
+      servant!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shock was too great, the relief too absolute for credence. He, the
+      listener at the grotto? He, the avenger of the family&rsquo;s honour? He, the
+      insurer of little Roger&rsquo;s continuance with the family at a cost the one
+      who loved him best would rather have died himself than pay? Yes! there is
+      no misdoubting this old servitor&rsquo;s attitude of abject appeal, or the
+      meaning of Homer Upjohn&rsquo;s joyfully uplifted countenance and outspreading
+      arms. The servant begs for mercy from man, and the master is giving thanks
+      to Heaven. Why giving thanks? Has he been the prey of cankering doubts
+      also? Has the father dreaded to discover that in the son which the son has
+      dreaded to discover in the father?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It might easily be; and as Roger recognizes this truth and the full
+      tragedy of their mutual lives, he drops to his knees amid the
+      honeysuckles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Violet, you are a wonder. But how did you dare?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This from Arthur as the two rode to the train in the early morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer came a bit waveringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know. I am astonished yet, at my own daring. Look at my hands.
+      They have not ceased trembling since the moment you threw the light upon
+      me on the rocks. The figure of old Mr. Upjohn in the window looked so
+      august.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur, with a short glance at the little hands she held out, shrugged his
+      shoulders imperceptibly. It struck him that the tremulousness she
+      complained of was due more to some parting word from their young host,
+      than from prolonged awe at her own daring. But he made no remark to this
+      effect, only observed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abram has confessed his guilt, I hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and will die of it. The master will bury the man, and not the man
+      the master.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Roger? Not the little fellow, but the father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will not talk of him,&rdquo; said she, her eyes seeking the sea where the
+      sun in its rising was battling with a troop of lowering clouds and slowly
+      gaining the victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM IV <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM V. THE DREAMING LADY
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;And this is all you mean to tell me?&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you will find it quite enough, Miss Strange.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the address&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this advice: that your call be speedy. Distracted nerves cannot
+      wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet, across whose wonted piquancy there lay an indefinable shadow, eyed
+      her employer with a doubtful air before turning away toward the door. She
+      had asked him for a case to investigate (something she had never done
+      before), and she had even gone so far as to particularize the sort of case
+      she desired: &ldquo;It must be an interesting one,&rdquo; she had stipulated, &ldquo;but
+      different, quite different from the last one. It must not involve death or
+      any kind of horror. If you have a case of subtlety without crime, one to
+      engage my powers without depressing my spirits, I beg you to let me have
+      it. I&mdash;I have not felt quite like myself since I came from
+      Massachusetts.&rdquo; Whereupon, without further comment, but with a smile she
+      did not understand, he had handed her a small slip of paper on which he
+      had scribbled an address. She should have felt satisfied, but for some
+      reason she did not. She regarded him as capable of plunging her into an
+      affair quite the reverse of what she felt herself in a condition to
+      undertake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to know a little more,&rdquo; she pursued, making a move to
+      unfold the slip he had given her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he stopped her with a gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read it in your limousine,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;If you are disappointed then, let
+      me know. But I think you will find yourself quite ready for your task.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would approve if he could be got to approve the business at all. You do
+      not even need to take your brother with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, then, it&rsquo;s with women only I have to deal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read the address after you are headed up Fifth Avenue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when, with her doubts not yet entirely removed, she opened the small
+      slip he had given her, the number inside suggested nothing but the fact
+      that her destination lay somewhere near Eightieth Street. It was therefore
+      with the keenest surprise she beheld her motor stop before the conspicuous
+      house of the great financier whose late death had so affected the
+      money-market. She had not had any acquaintance with this man herself, but
+      she knew his house. Everyone knew that. It was one of the most princely in
+      the whole city. C. Dudley Brooks had known how to spend his millions.
+      Indeed, he had known how to do this so well that it was of him her father,
+      also a financier of some note, had once said he was the only successful
+      American he envied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was expected; that she saw the instant the door was opened. This made
+      her entrance easy&mdash;an entrance further brightened by the delightful
+      glimpse of a child&rsquo;s cherubic face looking at her from a distant doorway.
+      It was an instantaneous vision, gone as soon as seen; but its effect was
+      to rob the pillared spaces of the wonderful hallway of some of their
+      chill, and to modify in some slight degree the formality of a service
+      which demanded three men to usher her into a small reception-room not
+      twenty feet from the door of entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left in this secluded spot, she had time to ask herself what member of the
+      household she would be called upon to meet, and was surprised to find that
+      she did not even know of whom the household consisted. She was sure of the
+      fact that Mr. Brooks had been a widower for many years before his death,
+      but beyond that she knew nothing of his domestic life. His son&mdash;but
+      was there a son? She had never heard any mention made of a younger Mr.
+      Brooks, yet there was certainly some one of his connection who enjoyed the
+      rights of an heir. Him she must be prepared to meet with a due composure,
+      whatever astonishment he might show at the sight of a slip of a girl
+      instead of the experienced detective he had every right to expect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the door opened to admit the person she was awaiting, the
+      surprise was hers. It was a woman who stood before her, a woman and an
+      oddity. Yet, in just what her oddity lay, Violet found it difficult to
+      decide. Was it in the smoothness of her white locks drawn carefully down
+      over her ears, or in the contrast afforded by her eager eyes and her weak
+      and tremulous mouth? She was dressed in the heaviest of mourning and very
+      expensively, but there was that in her bearing and expression which made
+      it impossible to believe that she took any interest in her garments or
+      even knew in which of her dresses she had been attired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the person you have come here to see,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Your name is not
+      unfamiliar to me, but you may not know mine. It is Quintard; Mrs.
+      Quintard. I am in difficulty. I need assistance&mdash;secret assistance. I
+      did not know where to go for it except to a detective agency; so I
+      telephoned to the first one I saw advertised; and&mdash;and I was told to
+      expect Miss Strange. But I didn&rsquo;t think it would be you though I suppose
+      it&rsquo;s all right. You have come here for this purpose, haven&rsquo;t you, though
+      it does seem a little queer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, Mrs. Quintard; and if you will tell me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, it&rsquo;s just this&mdash;yes, I will sit down. Last week my brother
+      died. You have heard of him no doubt, C. Dudley Brooks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes; my father knew him&mdash;we all knew him by reputation. Do not
+      hurry, Mrs. Quintard. I have sent my car away. You can take all the time
+      you wish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, I cannot. I&rsquo;m in desperate haste. He&mdash;but let me go on with
+      my story. My brother was a widower, with no children to inherit. That
+      everybody knows. But his wife left behind her a son by a former husband,
+      and this son of hers my brother had in a measure adopted, and even made
+      his sole heir in a will he drew up during the lifetime of his wife. But
+      when he found, as he very soon did, that this young man was not developing
+      in a way to meet such great responsibilities, he made a new will&mdash;though
+      unhappily without the knowledge of the family, or even of his most
+      intimate friends&mdash;in which he gave the bulk of his great estate to
+      his nephew Clement, who has bettered the promise of his youth and who
+      besides has children of great beauty whom my brother had learned to love.
+      And this will&mdash;this hoarded scrap of paper which means so much to us
+      all, is lost! lost! and I&mdash;&rdquo; here her voice which had risen almost to
+      a scream, sank to a horrified whisper, &ldquo;am the one who lost it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s a copy of it somewhere&mdash;there is always a copy&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but you haven&rsquo;t heard all. My nephew is an invalid; has been an
+      invalid for years&mdash;that&rsquo;s why so little is known about him. He&rsquo;s
+      dying of consumption. The doctors hold out no hope for him, and now, with
+      the fear preying upon him of leaving his wife and children penniless, he
+      is wearing away so fast that any hour may see his end. And I have to meet
+      his eyes&mdash;such pitiful eyes&mdash;and the look in them is killing me.
+      Yet, I was not to blame. I could not help&mdash;Oh, Miss Strange,&rdquo; she
+      suddenly broke in with the inconsequence of extreme feeling, &ldquo;the will is
+      in the house! I never carried it off the floor where I sleep. Find it;
+      find it, I pray, or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment had come for Violet&rsquo;s soft touch, for Violet&rsquo;s encouraging
+      word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try,&rdquo; she answered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Quintard grew calmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, first,&rdquo; the young girl continued, &ldquo;I must know more about the
+      conditions. Where is this nephew of yours&mdash;the man who is ill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In this house, where he has been for the last eight months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was the child his of whom I caught a glimpse in the hall as I came in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will fight for that child!&rdquo; Violet cried out impulsively. &ldquo;I am sure
+      his father&rsquo;s cause is good. Where is the other claimant&mdash;the one you
+      designate as Carlos?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there&rsquo;s where the trouble is! Carlos is on the Mauretania, and she is
+      due here in a couple of days. He comes from the East where he has been
+      touring with his wife. Miss Strange, the lost will must be found before
+      then, or the other will be opened and read and Carlos made master of this
+      house, which would mean our quick departure and Clement&rsquo;s certain death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Move a sick man?&mdash;a relative as low as you say he is? Oh no, Mrs.
+      Quintard; no one would do that, were the house a cabin and its owners
+      paupers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not know Carlos; you do not know his wife. We should not be given
+      a week in which to pack. They have no children and they envy Clement who
+      has. Our only hope lies in discovering the paper which gives us the right
+      to remain here in face of all opposition. That or penury. Now you know my
+      trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it is trouble; one from which I shall make every effort to relieve
+      you. But first let me ask if you are not worrying unnecessarily about this
+      missing document? If it was drawn up by Mr. Brooks&rsquo;s lawyer&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it was not,&rdquo; that lady impetuously interrupted. &ldquo;His lawyer is
+      Carlos&rsquo;s near relative, and has never been told of the change in my
+      brother&rsquo;s intentions. Clement (I am speaking now of my brother and not of
+      my nephew) was a great money-getter, but when it came to standing up for
+      his rights in domestic matters, he was more timid than a child. He was
+      subject to his wife while she lived, and when she was gone, to her
+      relatives, who are all of a dominating character. When he finally made up
+      his mind to do us justice and eliminate Carlos, he went out of town&mdash;I
+      wish I could remember where&mdash;and had this will drawn up by a
+      stranger, whose name I cannot recall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her shaking tones, her nervous manner betrayed a weakness equalling, if
+      not surpassing, that of the brother who dared in secret what he had not
+      strength to acknowledge openly, and it was with some hesitation Violet
+      prepared to ask those definite questions which would elucidate the cause
+      and manner of a loss seemingly so important. She dreaded to hear some
+      commonplace tale of inexcusable carelessness. Something subtler than this&mdash;the
+      presence of some unsuspected agency opposed to young Clement&rsquo;s interest;
+      some partisan of Carlos; some secret undermining force in a house full of
+      servants and dependants, seemed necessary for the development of so
+      ordinary a situation into a drama justifying the exercise of her special
+      powers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I understand now your exact position in the house, as well as the
+      value of the paper which you say you have lost. The next thing for me to
+      hear is how you came to have charge of this paper, and under what
+      circumstances you were led to mislay it. Do you not feel quite ready to
+      tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is&mdash;is that necessary?&rdquo; Mrs. Quintard faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very,&rdquo; replied Violet, watching her curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t expect&mdash;that is, I hoped you would be able to point out, by
+      some power we cannot of course explain, just the spot where the paper
+      lies, without having to tell all that. Some people can, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I understand. You regarded me as unfit for practical work, and so
+      credited me with occult powers. But that is where you made a mistake, Mrs.
+      Quintard; I&rsquo;m nothing if not practical. And let me add, that I&rsquo;m as secret
+      as the grave concerning what my clients tell me. If I am to be of any help
+      to you, I must be made acquainted with every fact involved in the loss of
+      this valuable paper. Relate the whole circumstance or dismiss me from the
+      case. You can have done nothing more foolish or wrong than many&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t say things like that!&rdquo; broke in the poor woman in a tone of
+      great indignation. &ldquo;I have done nothing anyone could call either foolish
+      or wicked. I am simply very unfortunate, and being sensitive&mdash;But
+      this isn&rsquo;t telling the story. I&rsquo;ll try to make it all clear; but if I do
+      not, and show any confusion, stop me and help me out with questions. I&mdash;I&mdash;oh,
+      where shall I begin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With your first knowledge of this second will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, thank you; now I can go on. One night, shortly after my
+      brother had been given up by the physicians, I was called to his bedside
+      for a confidential talk. As he had received that day a very large amount
+      of money from the bank, I thought he was going to hand it over to me for
+      Clement, but it was for something much more serious than this he had
+      summoned me. When he was quite sure that we were alone and nobody anywhere
+      within hearing, he told me that he had changed his mind as to the disposal
+      of his property and that it was to Clement and his children, and not to
+      Carlos, he was going to leave this house and the bulk of his money. That
+      he had had a new will drawn up which he showed me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Showed you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he made me bring it to him from the safe where he kept it; and,
+      feeble as he was, he was so interested in pointing out certain portions of
+      it that he lifted himself in bed and was so strong and animated that I
+      thought he was getting better. But it was a false strength due to the
+      excitement of the moment, as I saw next day when he suddenly died.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were saying that you brought the will to him from his safe. Where was
+      the safe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the wall over his head. He gave me the key to open it. This key he
+      took from under his pillow. I had no trouble in fitting it or in turning
+      the lock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what happened after you looked at the will?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I put it back. He told me to. But the key I kept. He said I was not to
+      part with it again till the time came for me to produce the will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when was that to be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Immediately after the funeral, if it so happened that Carlos had arrived
+      in time to attend it. But if for any reason he failed to be here, I was to
+      let it lie till within three days of his return, when I was to take it out
+      in the presence of a Mr. Delahunt who was to have full charge of it from
+      that time. Oh, I remember all that well enough! and I meant most earnestly
+      to carry out his wishes, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on, Mrs. Quintard, pray go on. What happened? Why couldn&rsquo;t you do what
+      he asked?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because the will was gone when I went to take it out. There was nothing
+      to show Mr. Delahunt but the empty shelf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, a theft! just a common theft! Someone overheard the talk you had with
+      your brother. But how about the key? You had that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I had that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it was taken from you and returned? You must have been careless as
+      to where you kept it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I wore it on a chain about my neck. Though I had no reason to
+      mistrust any one in the house, I felt that I could not guard this key too
+      carefully. I even kept it on at night. In fact it never left me. It was
+      still on my person when I went into the room with Mr. Delahunt. But the
+      safe had been opened for all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There were two keys to it, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; in giving me the key, my brother had strictly warned me not to lose
+      it, as it had no duplicate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Quintard, have you a special confidant or maid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my Hetty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much did she know about this key?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, but that it didn&rsquo;t help the fit of my dress. Hetty has cared for
+      me for years. There&rsquo;s no more devoted woman in all New York, nor one who
+      can be more relied upon to tell the truth. She is so honest with her
+      tongue that I am bound to believe her even when she says&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That it was I and nobody else who took the will out of the safe last
+      night. That she saw me come from my brother&rsquo;s room with a folded paper in
+      my hand, pass with it into the library, and come out again without it. If
+      this is so, then that will is somewhere in that great room. But we&rsquo;ve
+      looked in every conceivable place except the shelves, where it is useless
+      to search. It would take days to go through them all, and meanwhile Carlos&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will not wait for Carlos. We will begin work at once. But just one
+      other question. How came Hetty to see you in your walk through the rooms?
+      Did she follow you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. It&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s not the first time I have walked in my sleep. Last
+      night&mdash;but she will tell you. It&rsquo;s a painful subject to me. I will
+      send for her to meet us in the library.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where you believe this document to lie hidden?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am anxious to see the room. It is upstairs, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had risen and was moving rapidly toward the door. Violet eagerly
+      followed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us accompany her in her passage up the palatial stairway, and realize
+      the effect upon her of a splendour whose future ownership possibly
+      depended entirely upon herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cold splendour. The merry voices of children were lacking in
+      these great halls. Death past and to come infused the air with solemnity
+      and mocked the pomp which yet appeared so much a part of the life here
+      that one could hardly imagine the huge pillared spaces without it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Violet, more or less accustomed to fine interiors, the chief interest
+      of this one lay in its connection with the mystery then occupying her.
+      Stopping for a moment on the stair, she inquired of Mrs. Quintard if the
+      loss she so deplored had been made known to the servants, and was much
+      relieved to find that, with the exception of Mr. Delahunt, she had not
+      spoken of it to any one but Clement. &ldquo;And he will never mention it,&rdquo; she
+      declared, &ldquo;not even to his wife. She has troubles enough to bear without
+      knowing how near she stood to a fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she will have her fortune!&rdquo; Violet confidently replied. &ldquo;In time, the
+      lawyer who drew up the will will appear. But what you want is an immediate
+      triumph over the cold Carlos, and I hope you may have it. Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This expletive was a sigh of sheer surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Quintard had unlocked the library door and Violet had been given her
+      first glimpse of this, the finest room in New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She remembered now that she had often heard it so characterized, and,
+      indeed, had it been taken bodily from some historic abbey of the old
+      world, it could not have expressed more fully, in structure and
+      ornamentation, the Gothic idea at its best. All that it lacked were the
+      associations of vanished centuries, and these, in a measure, were supplied
+      to the imagination by the studied mellowness of its tints and the
+      suggestion of age in its carvings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much for the room itself, which was but a shell for holding the great
+      treasure of valuable books ranged along every shelf. As Violet&rsquo;s eyes sped
+      over their ranks and thence to the five windows of deeply stained glass
+      which faced her from the southern end, Mrs. Quintard indignantly
+      exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Carlos would turn this into a billiard room!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not like Carlos,&rdquo; Violet returned hotly; then remembering herself,
+      hastened to ask whether Mrs. Quintard was quite positive as to this room
+      being the one in which she had hidden the precious document.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better talk to Hetty,&rdquo; said that lady, as a stout woman of most
+      prepossessing appearance entered their presence and paused respectfully
+      just inside the doorway. &ldquo;Hetty, you will answer any questions this young
+      lady may put. If anyone can help us, she can. But first, what news from
+      the sick-room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing good. The doctor has just come for the third time today. Mrs.
+      Brooks is crying and even the children are dumb with fear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go. I must see the doctor. I must tell him to keep Clement alive
+      by any means till&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not wait to say what; but Violet understood and felt her heart
+      grow heavy. Could it be that her employer considered this the gay and easy
+      task she had asked for?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next minute she was putting her first question:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hetty, what did you see in Mrs. Quintard&rsquo;s action last night, to make you
+      infer that she left the missing document in this room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman&rsquo;s eyes, which had been respectfully studying her face,
+      brightened with a relief which made her communicative. With the
+      self-possession of a perfectly candid nature, she inquiringly remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mistress has spoken of her infirmity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and very frankly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She walks in her sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So she said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And sometimes when others are asleep, and she is not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did not tell me that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a very nervous woman and cannot always keep still when she rouses
+      up at night. When I hear her rise, I get up too; but, never being quite
+      sure whether she is sleeping or not, I am careful to follow her at a
+      certain distance. Last night I was so far behind her that she had been to
+      her brother&rsquo;s room and left it before I saw her face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is his room and where is hers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hers is in front on this same floor. Mr. Brooks&rsquo;s is in the rear, and can
+      be reached either by the hall or by passing through this room into a small
+      one beyond, which we called his den.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Describe your encounter. Where were you standing when you saw her first?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the den I have just mentioned. There was a bright light in the hall
+      behind me and I could see her figure quite plainly. She was holding a
+      folded paper clenched against her breast, and her movement was so
+      mechanical that I was sure she was asleep. She was coming this way, and in
+      another moment she entered this room. The door, which had been open,
+      remained so, and in my anxiety I crept to it and looked in after her.
+      There was no light burning here at that hour, but the moon was shining in
+      in long rays of variously coloured light. If I had followed her&mdash;but
+      I did not. I just stood and watched her long enough to see her pass
+      through a blue ray, then through a green one, and then into, if not
+      through, a red one. Expecting her to walk straight on, and having some
+      fears of the staircase once she got into the hall, I hurried around to the
+      door behind you there to head her off. But she had not yet left this room.
+      I waited and waited and still she did not come. Fearing some accident, I
+      finally ventured to approach the door and try it. It was locked. This
+      alarmed me. She had never locked herself in anywhere before and I did not
+      know what to make of it. Some persons would have shouted her name, but I
+      had been warned against doing that, so I simply stood where I was, and
+      eventually I heard the key turn in the lock and saw her come out. She was
+      still walking stiffly, but her hands were empty and hanging at her side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She went straight to her room and I after her. I was sure she was dead
+      asleep by this time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she was?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Miss; but still full of what was on her mind. I know this because
+      she stopped when she reached the bedside and began fumbling with the waist
+      of her wrapper. It was for the key she was searching, and when her fingers
+      encountered it hanging on the outside, she opened her wrapper and thrust
+      it in on her bare skin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You saw her do all that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As plainly as I see you now. The light in her room was burning brightly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And after that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She got into bed. It was I who turned off the light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has that wrapper of hers a pocket?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Miss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor her gown?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Miss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So she could not have brought the paper into her room concealed about her
+      person?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Miss; she left it here. It never passed beyond this doorway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But might she not have carried it back to some place of concealment in
+      the rooms she had left?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman&rsquo;s face changed and a slight flush showed through the natural
+      brown of her cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she disclaimed; &ldquo;she could not have done that. I was careful to lock
+      the library door behind her before I ran out into the hall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; concluded Violet, with all the emphasis of conviction, &ldquo;it is
+      here, and nowhere else we must look for that document till we find it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus assured of the first step in the task she had before her, Miss
+      Strange settled down to business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room, which towered to the height of two stories, was in the shape of
+      a huge oval. This oval, separated into narrow divisions for the purpose of
+      accommodating the shelves with which it was lined, narrowed as it rose
+      above the great Gothic chimney-piece and the five gorgeous windows looking
+      towards the south, till it met and was lost in the tracery of the ceiling,
+      which was of that exquisite and soul-satisfying order which we see in the
+      Henry VII chapel in Westminster Abbey. What break otherwise occurred in
+      the circling round of books reaching thus thirty feet or more above the
+      head was made by the two doors already spoken of and a narrow strip of
+      wall at either end of the space occupied by the windows. No furniture was
+      to be seen there except a couple of stalls taken from some old cathedral,
+      which stood in the two bare places just mentioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But within, on the extensive floor-space, several articles were grouped,
+      and Violet, recognizing the possibilities which any one of them afforded
+      for the concealment of so small an object as a folded document, decided to
+      use method in her search, and to that end, mentally divided the space
+      before her into four segments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first took in the door, communicating with the suite ending in Mr.
+      Brooks&rsquo;s bedroom. A diagram of this segment will show that the only
+      article of furniture in it was a cabinet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this cabinet Miss Strange made her first stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have looked this well through?&rdquo; she asked as she bent over the glass
+      case on top to examine the row of mediaeval missals displayed within in a
+      manner to show their wonderful illuminations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the case,&rdquo; explained Hetty. &ldquo;It is locked you see and no one has as
+      yet succeeded in finding the key. But we searched the drawers underneath
+      with the greatest care. Had we sifted the whole contents through our
+      fingers, I could not be more certain that the paper is not there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet stepped into the next segment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the one dominated by the huge fire-place. A rug lay before the
+      hearth. To this Violet pointed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quickly the woman answered: &ldquo;We not only lifted it, but turned it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that box at the right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is full of wood and wood only.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you take out this wood?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every stick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And those ashes in the fire-place? Something has been burned there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but not lately. Besides, those ashes are all wood ashes. If the
+      least bit of charred paper had been mixed with them, we should have
+      considered the matter settled. But you can see for yourself that no such
+      particle can be found.&rdquo; While saying this, she had put the poker into
+      Violet&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;Rake them about, Miss, and make sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet did so, with the result that the poker was soon put back into
+      place, and she herself down on her knees looking up the chimney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had she thrust it up there,&rdquo; Hetty made haste to remark, &ldquo;there would
+      have been some signs of soot on her sleeves. They are white and very long
+      and are always getting in her way when she tries to do anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet left the fire-place after a glance at the mantel-shelf on which
+      nothing stood but a casket of open fretwork, and two coloured photographs
+      mounted on small easels. The casket was too open to conceal anything and
+      the photographs lifted too high above the shelf for even the smallest
+      paper, let alone a document of any size, to hide behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chairs, of which there were several in this part of the room, she
+      passed with just an inquiring look. They were all of solid oak, without
+      any attempt at upholstery, and although carved to match the stalls on the
+      other side of the room, offered no place for search.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her delay in the third segment was brief. Here there was absolutely
+      nothing but the door by which she had entered, and the books. As she
+      flitted on, following the oval of the wall, a small frown appeared on her
+      usually smooth forehead. She felt the oppression of the books&mdash;the
+      countless books. If indeed, she should find herself obliged to go through
+      them. What a hopeless outlook!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she had still a segment to consider, and after that the immense table
+      occupying the centre of the room, a table which in its double capacity
+      (for it was as much desk as table) gave more promise of holding the
+      solution of the mystery than anything to which she had hitherto given her
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quarter in which she now stood was the most beautiful, and, possibly,
+      the most precious of them all. In it blazed the five great windows which
+      were the glory of the room; but there are no hiding-places in windows, and
+      much as she revelled in colour, she dared not waste a moment on them.
+      There was more hope for her in the towering stalls, with their possible
+      drawers for books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Hetty was before her in the attempt she made to lift the lids of the
+      two great seats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing in either,&rdquo; said she; and Violet, with a sigh, turned towards the
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was an immense affair, made to accommodate itself to the shape of the
+      room, but with a hollowed-out space on the window-side large enough to
+      hold a chair for the sitter who would use its top as a desk. On it were
+      various articles suitable to its double use. Without being crowded, it
+      displayed a pile of magazines and pamphlets, boxes for stationery, a
+      writing pad with its accompaniments, a lamp, and some few ornaments, among
+      which was a large box, richly inlaid with pearl and ivory, the lid of
+      which stood wide open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t touch,&rdquo; admonished Violet, as Hetty stretched out her hand to move
+      some little object aside. &ldquo;You have already worked here busily in the
+      search you made this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We handled everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you go through these pamphlets?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shook open each one. We were especially particular here, since it was
+      at this table I saw Mrs. Quintard stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With head level or drooped?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drooped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like one looking down, rather than up, or around?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. A ray of red light shone on her sleeve. It seemed to me the sleeve
+      moved as though she were reaching out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you try to stand as she did and as nearly in the same place as
+      possible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hetty glanced down at the table edge, marked where the gules dominated the
+      blue and green, and moved to that spot, and paused with her head sinking
+      slowly towards her breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; exclaimed Violet. &ldquo;But the moon was probably in a very
+      different position from what the sun is now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right; it was higher up; I chanced to notice it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me come,&rdquo; said Violet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hetty moved, and Violet took her place but in a spot a step or two farther
+      front. This brought her very near to the centre of the table. Hanging her
+      head, just as Hetty had done, she reached out her right hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you looked under this blotter?&rdquo; she asked, pointing towards the pad
+      she touched. &ldquo;I mean, between the blotter and the frame which holds it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly did,&rdquo; answered Hetty, with some pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet remained staring down. &ldquo;Then you took off everything that was lying
+      on it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet continued to stare down at the blotter. Then impetuously:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put them back in their accustomed places.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hetty obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet continued to look at them, then slowly stretched out her hand, but
+      soon let it fall again with an air of discouragement. Certainly the
+      missing document was not in the ink-pot or the mucilage bottle. Yet
+      something made her stoop again over the pad and subject it to the closest
+      scrutiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If only nothing had been touched!&rdquo; she inwardly sighed. But she let no
+      sign of her discontent escape her lips, simply exclaiming as she glanced
+      up at the towering spaces overhead: &ldquo;The books! the books! Nothing remains
+      but for you to call up all the servants, or get men from the outside and,
+      beginning at one end&mdash;I should say the upper one&mdash;take down
+      every book standing within reach of a woman of Mrs. Quintard&rsquo;s height.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear first what Mrs. Quintard has to say about that,&rdquo; interrupted the
+      woman as that lady entered in a flutter of emotion springing from more
+      than one cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The young lady thinks that we should remove the books,&rdquo; Hetty observed,
+      as her mistress&rsquo;s eye wandered to hers from Violet&rsquo;s abstracted
+      countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Useless. If we were to undertake to do that, Carlos would be here before
+      half the job was finished. Besides, Hetty must have told you my extreme
+      aversion to nicely bound books. I will not say that when awake I never
+      place my hand on one, but once in a state of somnambulism, when every
+      natural whim has full control, I am sure that I never would. There is a
+      reason for my prejudice. I was not always rich. I once was very poor. It
+      was when I was first married and long before Clement had begun to make his
+      fortune. I was so poor then that frequently I went hungry, and what was
+      worse saw my little daughter cry for food. And why? Because my husband was
+      a bibliomaniac. He would spend on fine editions what would have kept the
+      family comfortable. It is hard to believe, isn&rsquo;t it? I have seen him bring
+      home a Grolier when the larder was as empty as that box; and it made me
+      hate books so, especially those of extra fine binding, that I have to tear
+      the covers off before I can find courage to read them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      O life! life! how fast Violet was learning it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can understand your idea, Mrs. Quintard, but as everything else has
+      failed, I should make a mistake not to examine these shelves. It is just
+      possible that we may be able to shorten the task very materially; that we
+      may not have to call in help, even. To what extent have they been
+      approached, or the books handled, since you discovered the loss of the
+      paper we are looking for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all. Neither of us went near them.&rdquo; This from Hetty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor any one else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one else has been admitted to the room. We locked both doors the
+      moment we felt satisfied that the will had been left here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a relief. Now I may be able to do something. Hetty, you look like
+      a very strong woman, and I, as you see, am very little. Would you mind
+      lifting me up to these shelves? I want to look at them. Not at the books,
+      but at the shelves themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wondering woman stooped and raised her to the level of the shelf she
+      had pointed out. Violet peered closely at it and then at the ones just
+      beneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I heavy?&rdquo; she asked; &ldquo;if not, let me see those on the other side of
+      the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hetty carried her over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet inspected each shelf as high as a woman of Mrs. Quintard&rsquo;s stature
+      could reach, and when on her feet again, knelt to inspect the ones below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one has touched or drawn anything from these shelves in twenty-four
+      hours,&rdquo; she declared. &ldquo;The small accumulation of dust along their edges
+      has not been disturbed at any point. It was very different with the
+      table-top. That shows very plainly where you had moved things and where
+      you had not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that what you were looking for? Well, I never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet paid no heed; she was thinking and thinking very deeply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hetty turned towards her mistress, then quickly back to Violet, whom she
+      seized by the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with Mrs. Quintard?&rdquo; she hurriedly asked. &ldquo;If it were
+      night, I should think that she was in one of her spells.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet started and glanced where Hetty pointed. Mrs. Quintard was within a
+      few feet of them, but as oblivious of their presence as though she stood
+      alone in the room. Possibly, she thought she did. With fixed eyes and
+      mechanical step she began to move straight towards the table, her whole
+      appearance of a nature to make Hetty&rsquo;s blood run cold, but to cause that
+      of Violet&rsquo;s to bound through her veins with renewed hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The one thing I could have wished!&rdquo; she murmured under her breath. &ldquo;She
+      has fallen into a trance. She is again under the dominion of her idea. If
+      we watch and do not disturb her she may repeat her action of last night,
+      and herself show where she has put this precious document.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile Mrs. Quintard continued to advance. A moment more, and her
+      smooth white locks caught the ruddy glow centred upon the chair standing
+      in the hollow of the table. Words were leaving her lips, and her hand,
+      reaching out over the blotter, groped among the articles scattered there
+      till it settled on a large pair of shears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; muttered Violet to the woman pressing close to her side. &ldquo;You
+      are acquainted with her voice; catch what she says if you can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hetty could not; an undistinguishable murmur was all that came to her
+      ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet took a step nearer. Mrs. Quintard&rsquo;s hand had left the shears and
+      was hovering uncertainly in the air. Her distress was evident. Her head,
+      no longer steady on her shoulders, was turning this way and that, and her
+      tones becoming inarticulate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Paper! I want paper&rdquo; burst from her lips in a shrill unnatural cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when they listened for more and watched to see the uncertain hand
+      settle somewhere, she suddenly came to herself and turned upon them a
+      startled glance, which speedily changed into one of the utmost perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What am I doing here?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;I have a feeling as if I had almost
+      seen&mdash;almost touched&mdash;oh, it&rsquo;s gone! and all is blank again. Why
+      couldn&rsquo;t I keep it till I knew&mdash;&rdquo; Then she came wholly to herself
+      and, forgetting even the doubts of a moment since, remarked to Violet in
+      her old tremulous fashion:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You asked us to pull down the books? But you&rsquo;ve evidently thought better
+      of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have thought better of it.&rdquo; Then, with a last desperate hope of
+      re-arousing the visions lying somewhere back in Mrs. Quintard&rsquo;s troubled
+      brain, Violet ventured to observe: &ldquo;This is likely to resolve itself into
+      a psychological problem, Mrs. Quintard. Do you suppose that if you fell
+      again into the condition of last night, you would repeat your action and
+      so lead us yourself to where the will lies hidden?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly; but it may be weeks before I walk again in my sleep, and
+      meanwhile Carlos will have arrived, and Clement, possibly, died. My nephew
+      is so low that the doctor is coming back at midnight. Miss Strange,
+      Clement is a man in a thousand. He says he wants to see you. Would you be
+      willing to accompany me to his room for a moment? He will not make many
+      more requests and I will take care that the interview is not prolonged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go willingly. But would it not be better to wait&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you may never see him at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well; but I wish I had some better news to give.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will come later. This house was never meant for Carlos. Hetty, you
+      will stay here. Miss Strange, let us go now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You need not speak; just let him see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet nodded and followed Mrs. Quintard into the sick-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sight which met her eyes tried her young emotions deeply. Staring at
+      her from the bed, she saw two piercing eyes over whose brilliance death as
+      yet had gained no control. Clements&rsquo;s soul was in that gaze; Clement
+      halting at the brink of dissolution to sound the depths behind him for the
+      hope which would make departure easy. Would he see in her, a mere slip of
+      a girl dressed in fashionable clothes and bearing about her all the marks
+      of social distinction, the sort of person needed for the task upon the
+      success of which depended his darlings&rsquo; future? She could hardly expect
+      it. Yet as she continued to meet his gaze with all the seriousness the
+      moment demanded, she beheld those burning orbs lose some of their demand
+      and the fingers, which had lain inert upon the bedspread, flutter gently
+      and move as if to draw attention to his wife and the three beautiful
+      children clustered at the foot-board.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not spoken nor could she speak, but the solemnity with which she
+      raised her right hand as to a listening Heaven called forth upon his lips
+      what was possibly his last smile, and with the memory of this faint
+      expression of confidence on his part, she left the room, to make her final
+      attempt to solve the mystery of the missing document.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Facing the elderly lady in the hall, she addressed her with the force and
+      soberness of one leading a forlorn hope:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to concentrate your mind upon what I have to say to you. Do
+      you think you can do this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try,&rdquo; replied the poor woman with a backward glance at the door
+      which had just been closed upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What we want,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;is, as I stated before, an insight into the
+      workings of your brain at the time you took the will from the safe. Try
+      and follow what I have to say, Mrs. Quintard. Dreams are no longer
+      regarded by scientists as prophecies of the future or even as spontaneous
+      and irrelevant conditions of thought, but as reflections of a near past,
+      which can almost without exception be traced back to the occurrences which
+      caused them. Your action with the will had its birth in some previous line
+      of thought afterwards forgotten. Let us try and find that thought. Recall,
+      if you can, just what you did or read yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Quintard looked frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, I have no memory,&rdquo; she objected. &ldquo;I forget quickly, so quickly that
+      in order to fulfill my engagements I have to keep a memorandum of every
+      day&rsquo;s events. Yesterday? yesterday? What did I do yesterday? I went
+      downtown for one thing, but I hardly know where.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps your memorandum of yesterday&rsquo;s doings will help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will get it. But it won&rsquo;t give you the least help. I keep it only for
+      my own eye, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind; let me see it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she waited impatiently for it to be put in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when she came to read the record of the last two days, this was all
+      she found:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Saturday: Mauretania nearly due. I must let Mr. Delahunt know today that
+      he&rsquo;s wanted here to-morrow. Hetty will try on my dresses. Says she has to
+      alter them. Mrs. Peabody came to lunch, and we in such trouble! Had to go
+      down street. Errand for Clement. The will, the will! I think of nothing
+      else. Is it safe where it is? No peace of mind till to-morrow. Clement
+      better this afternoon. Says he must live till Carlos gets back; not to
+      triumph over him, but to do what he can to lessen his disappointment. My
+      good Clement!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So nervous, I went to pasting photographs, and was forgetting all my
+      troubles when Hetty brought in another dress to try on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quiet in the great house, during which the clock on the staircase sent
+      forth seven musical peals. To Violet waiting alone in the library, they
+      acted as a summons. She was just leaving the room, when the sound of
+      hubbub in the hall below held her motionless in the doorway. An automobile
+      had stopped in front, and several persons were entering the house, in a
+      gay and unseemly fashion. As she stood listening, uncertain of her duty,
+      she perceived the frenzied figure of Mrs. Quintard approaching. As she
+      passed by, she dropped one word: &ldquo;Carlos!&rdquo; Then she went staggering on, to
+      disappear a moment later down the stairway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This vision lost, another came. This time it was that of Clements&rsquo;s wife
+      leaning from the marble balustrade above, the shadow of approaching grief
+      battling with the present terror in her perfect features. Then she too
+      withdrew from view and Violet, left for the moment alone in the great
+      hall, stepped back into the library and began to put on her hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lights had been turned up in the grand salon and it was in this scene
+      of gorgeous colour that Mrs. Quintard came face to face with Carlos
+      Pelacios. Those who were witness to her entrance say that she presented a
+      noble appearance, as with the resolution of extreme desperation she stood
+      waiting for his first angry attack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He, a short, thick-set, dark man, showing both in features and expression
+      the Spanish blood of his paternal ancestors, started to address her in
+      tones of violence, but changed his note, as he met her eye, to one simply
+      sardonic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You here!&rdquo; he began. &ldquo;I assure you, madame, that it is a pleasure which
+      is not without its inconveniences. Did you not receive my cablegram
+      requesting this house to be made ready for my occupancy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why do I find guests here? They do not usually precede the arrival
+      of their host.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clement is very ill&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much the greater reason that he should have been removed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were not expected for two days yet. You cabled that you were coming
+      on the Mauretania.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I cabled that. Elisabetta,&rdquo;&mdash;this to his wife standing silently
+      in the background&mdash;&ldquo;we will go to the Plaza for tonight. At three
+      o&rsquo;clock tomorrow we shall expect to find this house in readiness for our
+      return. Later, if Mrs. Quintard desires to visit us we shall be pleased to
+      receive her. But&rdquo;&mdash;this to Mrs. Quintard herself&mdash;&ldquo;you must come
+      without Clement and the kids.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Quintard&rsquo;s rigid hand stole up to her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clement is dying. He is failing hourly,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;He may not live
+      till morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Carlos was taken aback by this. &ldquo;Oh, well!&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;we will give
+      you two days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Quintard gasped, then she walked straight up to him.
+</p>
+    <p>
+&ldquo;You will give
+      us all the time his condition requires and more, much more. He is the real
+      owner of this house, not you. My brother left a will bequeathing it to
+      him. You are my nephew&rsquo;s guests, and not he yours. As his representative I
+      entreat you and your wife to remain here until you can find a home to your
+      mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The silence seethed. Carlos had a temper of fire and so had his wife. But
+      neither spoke, till he had gained sufficient control over himself to
+      remark without undue rancour:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not think you had the wit to influence your brother to this extent;
+      otherwise, I should have cut my travels short.&rdquo; Then harshly: &ldquo;Where is
+      this will?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be produced.&rdquo; But the words faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carlos glanced at the man standing behind his wife; then back at Mrs.
+      Quintard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wills are not scribbled off on deathbeds; or if they are, it needs
+      something more than a signature to legalize them. I don&rsquo;t believe in this
+      trick of a later will. Mr. Cavanagh&rdquo;&mdash;here he indicated the gentleman
+      accompanying them&mdash;&ldquo;has done my father&rsquo;s business for years, and he
+      assured me that the paper he holds in his pocket is the first, last, and
+      only expression of your brother&rsquo;s wishes. If you are in a position to deny
+      this, show us the document you mention; show us it at once, or inform us
+      where and in whose hands it can be found.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That, for&mdash;for reasons I cannot give, I must refuse to do at
+      present. But I am ready to swear&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A mocking laugh cut her short. Did it issue from his lips or from those of
+      his highstrung and unfeeling wife? It might have come from either; there
+      was cause enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she faltered, &ldquo;may God have mercy!&rdquo; and was sinking before their
+      eyes, when she heard her name, called from the threshold, and, looking
+      that way, saw Hetty beaming upon her, backed by a little figure with a
+      face so radiant that instinctively her hand went out to grasp the folded
+      sheet of paper Hetty was seeking to thrust upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she cried, in a great voice, &ldquo;you will not have to wait, nor Clement
+      either. Here is the will! The children have come into their own.&rdquo; And she
+      fell at their feet in a dead faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did you find it? Oh! where did you find it? I have waited a week to
+      know. When, after Carlos&rsquo;s sudden departure, I stood beside Clement&rsquo;s
+      death-bed and saw from the look he gave me that he could still feel and
+      understand, I told him that you had succeeded in your task and that all
+      was well with us. But I was not able to tell him how you had succeeded or
+      in what place the will had been found; and he died, unknowing. But we may
+      know, may we not, now that he is laid away and there is no more talk of
+      our leaving this house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet smiled, but very tenderly, and in a way not to offend the mourner.
+      They were sitting in the library&mdash;the great library which was to
+      remain in Clement&rsquo;s family after all&mdash;and it amused her to follow the
+      dreaming lady&rsquo;s glances as they ran in irrepressible curiosity over the
+      walls. Had Violet wished, she could have kept her secret forever. These
+      eyes would never have discovered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was of a sympathetic temperament, our Violet, so after a moment&rsquo;s
+      delay, during which she satisfied herself that little, if anything, had
+      been touched in the room since her departure from it a week before, she
+      quietly observed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were right in persisting that you hid it in this room. It was here I
+      found it. Do you notice that photograph on the mantel which does not stand
+      exactly straight on its easel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Supposing you take it down. You can reach it, can you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes. But what&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lift it down, dear Mrs. Quintard; and then turn it round and look at its
+      back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agitated and questioning, the lady did as she was bid, and at the first
+      glance gave a cry of surprise, if not of understanding. The square of
+      brown paper, acting as a backing to the picture, was slit across,
+      disclosing a similar one behind it which was still intact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! was it hidden in here?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very completely,&rdquo; assented Violet. &ldquo;Pasted in out of sight by a lady who
+      amuses herself with mounting and framing photographs. Usually, she is
+      conscious of her work, but this time she performed her task in a dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Quintard was all amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t remember touching these pictures,&rdquo; she declared. &ldquo;I never should
+      have remembered. You are a wonderful person, Miss Strange. How came you to
+      think these photographs might have two backings? There was nothing to show
+      that this was so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you, Mrs. Quintard. You helped me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I helped you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You remember the memorandum you gave me? In it you mentioned pasting
+      photographs. But this was not enough in itself to lead me to examine those
+      on the mantel, if you had not given me another suggestion a little while
+      before. We did not tell you this, Mrs. Quintard, at the time, but during
+      the search we were making here that day, you had a lapse into that
+      peculiar state which induces you to walk in your sleep. It was a short
+      one, lasting but a moment, but in a moment one can speak, and, this you
+      did&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spoke? I spoke?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you uttered the word &lsquo;paper!&rsquo; not the paper, but &lsquo;paper!&rsquo; and
+      reached out towards the shears. Though I had not much time to think of it
+      then, afterwards upon reading your memorandum I recalled your words, and
+      asked myself if it was not paper to cut, rather than to hide, you wanted.
+      If it was to cut, and you were but repeating the experience of the night
+      before, then the room should contain some remnants of cut paper. Had we
+      seen any? Yes, in the basket, under the desk we had taken out and thrown
+      back again a strip or so of wrapping paper, which, if my memory did not
+      fail me, showed a clean-cut edge. To pull this strip out again and spread
+      it flat upon the desk was the work of a minute, and what I saw led me to
+      look all over the room, not now for the folded document, but for a square
+      of brown paper, such as had been taken out of this larger sheet. Was I
+      successful? Not for a long while, but when I came to the photographs on
+      the mantel and saw how nearly they corresponded in shape and size to what
+      I was looking for, I recalled again your fancy for mounting photographs
+      and felt that the mystery was solved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A glance at the back of one of them brought disappointment, but when I
+      turned about its mate&mdash;You know what I found underneath the outer
+      paper. You had laid the will against the original backing and simply
+      pasted another one over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That the discovery came in time to cut short a very painful interview has
+      made me joyful for a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now may I see the children?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM V <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM VI. THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange was not in a responsive mood. This her employer had observed
+      on first entering; yet he showed no hesitation in laying on the table
+      behind which she had ensconced herself in the attitude of one besieged, an
+      envelope thick with enclosed papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Telephone me when you have read them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not read them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No?&rdquo; he smiled; and, repossessing himself of the envelope, he tore off
+      one end, extracted the sheets with which it was filled, and laid them down
+      still unfolded, in their former place on the table-top.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suggestiveness of the action caused the corners of Miss Srange&rsquo;s
+      delicate lips to twitch wistfully, before settling into an ironic smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Calmly the other watched her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am on a vacation,&rdquo; she loftily explained, as she finally met his
+      studiously non-quizzical glance. &ldquo;Oh, I know that I am in my own home!&rdquo;
+       she petulantly acknowledged, as his gaze took in the room; &ldquo;and that the
+      automobile is at the door; and that I&rsquo;m dressed for shopping. But for all
+      that I&rsquo;m on a vacation&mdash;a mental one,&rdquo; she emphasized; &ldquo;and business
+      must wait. I haven&rsquo;t got over the last affair,&rdquo; she protested, as he
+      maintained a discreet silence, &ldquo;and the season is so gay just now&mdash;so
+      many balls, so many&mdash;But that isn&rsquo;t the worst. Father is beginning to
+      wake up&mdash;and if he ever suspects&mdash;&rdquo; A significant gesture ended
+      this appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The personage knew her father&mdash;everyone did&mdash;and the wonder had
+      always been that she dared run the risk of displeasing one so implacable.
+      Though she was his favourite child, Peter Strange was known to be quite
+      capable of cutting her off with a shilling, once his close, prejudiced
+      mind conceived it to be his duty. And that he would so interpret the
+      situation, if he ever came to learn the secret of his daughter&rsquo;s fits of
+      abstraction and the sly bank account she was slowly accumulating, the
+      personage holding out this dangerous lure had no doubt at all. Yet he only
+      smiled at her words and remarked in casual suggestion:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s out of town this time&mdash;&lsquo;way out. Your health certainly demands
+      a change of air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My health is good. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as one may choose to
+      look at it, it furnishes me with no excuse for an outing,&rdquo; she steadily
+      retorted, turning her back on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, excuse me!&rdquo; the insidious voice apologized, &ldquo;your paleness misled me.
+      Surely a night or two&rsquo;s change might be beneficial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave him a quick side look, and began to adjust her boa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this hint he paid no attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The affair is quite out of the ordinary,&rdquo; he pursued in the tone of one
+      rehearsing a part. But there he stopped. For some reason, not altogether
+      apparent to the masculine mind, the pin of flashing stones (real stones)
+      which held her hat in place had to be taken out and thrust back again, not
+      once, but twice. It was to watch this performance he had paused. When he
+      was ready to proceed, he took the musing tone of one marshalling facts for
+      another&rsquo;s enlightenment:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman of unknown instincts&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw!&rdquo; The end of the pin would strike against the comb holding Violet&rsquo;s
+      chestnut-coloured locks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Living in a house as mysterious as the secret it contains. But&mdash;&rdquo;
+       here he allowed his patience apparently to forsake him, &ldquo;I will bore you
+      no longer. Go to your teas and balls; I will struggle with my dark affairs
+      alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hand went to the packet of papers she affected so ostentatiously to
+      despise. He could be as nonchalant as she. But he did not lift them; he
+      let them lie. Yet the young heiress had not made a movement or even turned
+      the slightest glance his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman difficult to understand! A mysterious house&mdash;possibly a
+      mysterious crime!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Violet kept repeating in silent self-communion, as flushed with
+      dancing she sat that evening in a highly-scented conservatory, dividing
+      her attention between the compliments of her partner and the splash of a
+      fountain bubbling in the heart of this mass of tropical foliage; and when
+      some hours later she sat down in her chintz-furnished bedroom for a few
+      minutes&rsquo; thought before retiring, it was to draw from a little oak box at
+      her elbow the half-dozen or so folded sheets of closely written paper
+      which had been left for her perusal by her persistent employer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glancing first at the signature and finding it to be one already
+      favourably known at the bar, she read with avidity the statement of events
+      thus vouched for, finding them curious enough in all conscience to keep
+      her awake for another full hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We here subscribe it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am a lawyer with an office in the Times Square Building. My business is
+      mainly local, but sometimes I am called out of town, as witness the
+      following summons received by me on the fifth of last October.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR SIR,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wish to make my will. I am an invalid and cannot leave my room. Will you
+      come to me? The enclosed reference will answer for my respectability. If
+      it satisfies you and you decide to accommodate me, please hasten your
+      visit; I have not many days to live. A carriage will meet you at Highland
+      Station at any hour you designate. Telegraph reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Postlethwaite, Gloom Cottage, &mdash;&mdash;, N. J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reference given was a Mr. Weed of Eighty-sixth Street&mdash;a
+      well-known man of unimpeachable reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Calling him up at his business office, I asked him what he could tell me
+      about Mr. Postlethwaite of Gloom Cottage, &mdash;&mdash;, N. J. The answer
+      astonished me:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no Mr. Postlethwaite to be found at that address. He died years
+      ago. There is a Mrs. Postlethwaite&mdash;a confirmed paralytic. Do you
+      mean her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I glanced at the letter still lying open at the side of the telephone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The signature reads A. Postlethwaite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s she. Her name is Arabella. She hates the name, being a woman of
+      no sentiment. Uses her initials even on her cheques. What does she want of
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To draw her will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oblige her. It&rsquo;ll be experience for you.&rdquo; And he slammed home the
+      receiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I decided to follow the suggestion so forcibly emphasized; and the next
+      day saw me at Highland Station. A superannuated horse and a still more
+      superannuated carriage awaited me&mdash;both too old to serve a busy man
+      in these days of swift conveyance. Could this be a sample of the
+      establishment I was about to enter? Then I remembered that the woman who
+      had sent for me was a helpless invalid, and probably had no use for any
+      sort of turnout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The driver was in keeping with the vehicle, and as noncommittal as the
+      plodding beast he drove. If I ventured upon a remark, he gave me a long
+      and curious look; if I went so far as to attack him with a direct
+      question, he responded with a hitch of the shoulder or a dubious smile
+      which conveyed nothing. Was he deaf or just unpleasant? I soon learned
+      that he was not deaf; for suddenly, after a jog-trot of a mile or so
+      through a wooded road which we had entered from the main highway, he drew
+      in his horse, and, without glancing my way, spoke his first word:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is where you get out. The house is back there in the bushes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As no house was visible and the bushes rose in an unbroken barrier along
+      the road, I stared at him in some doubt of his sanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo; I began; a protest into which he at once broke, with the
+      sharp direction:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take the path. It&rsquo;ll lead you straight to the front door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see any path.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For this he had no answer; and confident from his expression that it would
+      be useless to expect anything further from him, I dropped a coin into his
+      hand, and jumped to the ground. He was off before I could turn myself
+      about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Something is rotten in the State of Denmark,&rsquo;&rdquo; I quoted in startled
+      comment to myself; and not knowing what else to do, stared down at the
+      turf at my feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A bit of flagging met my eye, protruding from a layer of thick moss.
+      Farther on I espied another&mdash;the second, probably, of many. This, no
+      doubt, was the path I had been bidden to follow, and without further
+      thought on the subject, I plunged into the bushes which with difficulty I
+      made give way before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment all further advance looked hopeless. A more tangled,
+      uninviting approach to a so-called home, I had never seen outside of the
+      tropics; and the complete neglect thus displayed should have prepared me
+      for the appearance of the house I unexpectedly came upon, just as, the way
+      seemed on the point of closing up before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But nothing could well prepare one for a first view of Gloom Cottage. Its
+      location in a hollow which had gradually filled itself up with trees and
+      some kind of prickly brush, its deeply stained walls, once picturesque
+      enough in their grouping but too deeply hidden now amid rotting boughs to
+      produce any other effect than that of shrouded desolation, the sough of
+      these same boughs as they rapped a devil&rsquo;s tattoo against each other, and
+      the absence of even the rising column of smoke which bespeaks domestic
+      life wherever seen&mdash;all gave to one who remembered the cognomen
+      Cottage and forgot the pre-cognomen of Gloom, a sense of buried life as
+      sepulchral as that which emanates from the mouth of some freshly opened
+      tomb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these impressions, natural enough to my youth, were necessarily
+      transient, and soon gave way to others more business-like. Perceiving the
+      curve of an arch rising above the undergrowth still blocking my approach,
+      I pushed my way resolutely through, and presently found myself stumbling
+      upon the steps of an unexpectedly spacious domicile, built not of wood, as
+      its name of Cottage had led me to expect, but of carefully cut stone
+      which, while showing every mark of time, proclaimed itself one of those
+      early, carefully erected Colonial residences which it takes more than a
+      century to destroy, or even to wear to the point of dilapidation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhat encouraged, though failing to detect any signs of active life in
+      the heavily shuttered windows frowning upon me from either side, I ran up
+      the steps and rang the bell which pulled as hard as if no hand had touched
+      it in years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not to ring again; for just as my hand was approaching the bell a
+      second time, the door fell back and I beheld in the black gap before me
+      the oldest man I had ever come upon in my whole life. He was so old I was
+      astonished when his drawn lips opened and he asked if I was the lawyer
+      from New York. I would as soon have expected a mummy to wag its tongue and
+      utter English, he looked so thin and dried and removed from this life and
+      all worldly concerns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when I had answered his question and he had turned to marshal me down
+      the hall towards a door I could dimly see standing open in the twilight of
+      an absolutely sunless interior, I noticed that his step was not without
+      some vigour, despite the feeble bend of his withered body and the
+      incessant swaying of his head, which seemed to be continually saying No!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will prepare madam,&rdquo; he admonished me, after drawing a ponderous
+      curtain two inches or less aside from one of the windows. &ldquo;She is very
+      ill, but she will see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone was senile, but it was the senility of an educated man, and as
+      the cultivated accents wavered forth, my mind changed in, regard to the
+      position he held in the house. Interested anew, I sought to give him
+      another look, but he had already vanished through the doorway, and so
+      noiselessly, it was more like a shadow&rsquo;s flitting than a man&rsquo;s withdrawal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The darkness in which I sat was absolute; but gradually, as I continued to
+      look about me, the spaces lightened and certain details came out, which to
+      my astonishment were of a character to show that the plain if substantial
+      exterior of this house with its choked-up approaches and weedy gardens was
+      no sample of what was to be found inside. Though the walls surrounding me
+      were dismal because unlighted, they betrayed a splendour unusual in any
+      country house. The frescoes and paintings were of an ancient order, dating
+      from days when life and not death reigned in this isolated dwelling; but
+      in them high art reigned supreme, an art so high and so finished that only
+      great wealth, combined with the most cultivated taste, could have produced
+      such effects. I was still absorbed in the wonder of it all, when the quiet
+      voice of the old gentleman who had let me in reached me again from the
+      doorway, and I heard:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madam is ready for you. May I trouble you to accompany me to her room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose with alacrity. I was anxious to see madam, if only to satisfy
+      myself that she was as interesting as the house in which she was
+      self-immured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found her a great deal more so. But before I enter upon our interview,
+      let me mention a fact which had attracted my attention in my passage to
+      her room. During his absence my guide evidently had pulled aside other
+      curtains than those of the room in which he had left me. The hall, no
+      longer a tunnel of darkness, gave me a glimpse as we went by, of various
+      secluded corners, and it seemed as if everywhere I looked I saw&mdash;a
+      clock. I counted four before I reached the staircase, all standing on the
+      floor and all of ancient make, though differing much in appearance and
+      value. A fifth one rose grim and tall at the stair foot, and under an
+      impulse I have never understood I stopped, when I reached it, to note the
+      time. But it had paused in its task, and faced me with motionless hands
+      and silent works&mdash;a fact which somehow startled me; perhaps, because
+      just then I encountered the old man&rsquo;s eye watching me with an expression
+      as challenging as it was unintelligible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had expected to see a woman in bed. I saw instead, a woman sitting up.
+      You felt her influence the moment you entered her presence. She was not
+      young; she was not beautiful;&mdash;never had been I should judge,&mdash;she
+      had not even the usual marks about her of an ultra strong personality; but
+      that her will was law, had always been, and would continue to be law so
+      long as she lived, was patent to any eye at the first glance. She exacted
+      obedience consciously and unconsciously, and she exacted it with charm.
+      Some few people in the world possess this power. They frown, and the
+      opposing will weakens; they smile, and all hearts succumb. I was hers from
+      the moment I crossed the threshold till&mdash;But I will relate the
+      happenings of that instant when it comes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was alone, or so I thought, when I made my first bow to her stern but
+      not unpleasing presence. Seated in a great chair, with a silver tray
+      before her containing such little matters as she stood in hourly need of,
+      she confronted me with a piercing gaze startling to behold in eyes so
+      colourless. Then she smiled, and in obedience to that smile I seated
+      myself in a chair placed very near her own. Was she too paralysed to
+      express herself clearly? I waited in some anxiety till she spoke, when
+      this fear vanished. Her voice betrayed the character her features failed
+      to express. It was firm, resonant, and instinct with command. Not loud,
+      but penetrating, and of a quality which made one listen with his heart as
+      well as with his ears. What she said is immaterial. I was there for a
+      certain purpose and we entered immediately upon the business of that
+      purpose. She talked and I listened, mostly without comment. Only once did
+      I interrupt her with a suggestion; and as this led to definite results, I
+      will proceed to relate the occurrence in full.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the few hours remaining to me before leaving New York, I had learned
+      (no matter how) some additional particulars concerning herself and family;
+      and when after some minor bequests, she proceeded to name the parties to
+      whom she desired to leave the bulk of her fortune, I ventured, with some
+      astonishment at my own temerity, to remark:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have a young relative! Is she not to be included in this
+      partition of your property?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A hush. Then a smile came to life on her stiff lips, such as is seldom
+      seen, thank God, on the face of any woman, and I heard:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The young relative of whom you speak, is in the room. She has known for
+      some time that I have no intention of leaving anything to her. There is,
+      in fact, small chance of her ever needing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter sentence was a muttered one, but that it was loud enough to be
+      heard in all parts of the room I was soon assured. For a quick sigh, which
+      was almost a gasp, followed from a corner I had hitherto ignored, and upon
+      glancing that way, I perceived, peering upon us from the shadows, the
+      white face of a young girl in whose drawn features and wide, staring eyes
+      I beheld such evidences of terror, that in an instant, whatever
+      predilection I had hitherto felt for my client, vanished in distrust, if
+      not positive aversion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was still under the sway of this new impression, when Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s voice rose again, this time addressing the young girl:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may go,&rdquo; she said, with such force in the command for all its honeyed
+      modulation, that I expected to see its object fly the room in frightened
+      obedience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though the startled girl had lost none of the terror which had made
+      her face like a mask, no power of movement remained to her. A picture of
+      hopeless misery, she stood for one breathless moment, with her eyes fixed
+      in unmistakable appeal on mine; then she began to sway so helplessly that
+      I leaped with bounding heart to catch her. As she fell into my arms I
+      heard her sigh as before. No common anguish spoke in that sigh. I had
+      stumbled unwittingly upon a tragedy, to the meaning of which I held but a
+      doubtful key.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She seems very ill,&rdquo; I observed with some emphasis, as I turned to lay my
+      helpless burden on a near-by sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s doomed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were spoken with gloom and with an attempt at commiseration
+      which no longer rang true in my ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is as sick a woman as I am myself,&rdquo; continued Mrs. Postlethwaite.
+      &ldquo;That is why I made the remark I did, never imagining she would hear me at
+      that distance. Do not put her down. My nurse will be here in a moment to
+      relieve you of your burden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A tinkle accompanied these words. The resolute woman had stretched out a
+      finger, of whose use she was not quite deprived, and touched a little bell
+      standing on the tray before her, an inch or two from her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pleased to obey her command, I paused at the sofa&rsquo;s edge, and taking
+      advantage of the momentary delay, studied the youthful countenance pressed
+      unconsciously to my breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was one whose appeal lay less in its beauty, though that was of a
+      touching quality, than in the story it told,&mdash;a story, which for some
+      unaccountable reason&mdash;I did not pause to determine what one&mdash;I
+      felt it to be my immediate duty to know. But I asked no questions then; I
+      did not even venture a comment; and yielded her up with seeming readiness
+      when a strong but none too intelligent woman came running in with arms
+      outstretched to carry her off. When the door had closed upon these two,
+      the silence of my client drew my attention back to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am waiting,&rdquo; was her quiet observation, and without any further
+      reference to what had just taken place under our eyes, she went on with
+      the business previously occupying us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was able to do my part without any too great display of my own
+      disturbance. The clearness of my remarkable client&rsquo;s instructions, the
+      definiteness with which her mind was made up as to the disposal of every
+      dollar of her vast property, made it easy for me to master each detail and
+      make careful note of every wish. But this did not prevent the ebb and flow
+      within me of an undercurrent of thought full of question and uneasiness.
+      What had been the real purport of the scene to which I had just been made
+      a surprised witness? The few, but certainly unusual, facts which had been
+      given me in regard to the extraordinary relations existing between these
+      two closely connected women will explain the intensity of my interest.
+      Those facts shall be yours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arabella Merwin, when young, was gifted with a peculiar fascination which,
+      as we have seen, had not altogether vanished with age. Consequently she
+      had many lovers, among them two brothers, Frank and Andrew Postlethwaite.
+      The latter was the older, the handsomer, and the most prosperous (his name
+      is remembered yet in connection with South American schemes of large
+      importance), but it was Frank she married.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That real love, ardent if unreasonable, lay at the bottom of her choice,
+      is evident enough to those who followed the career of the young couple.
+      But it was a jealous love which brooked no rival, and as Frank
+      Postlethwaite was of an impulsive and erratic nature, scenes soon occurred
+      between them which, while revealing the extraordinary force of the young
+      wife&rsquo;s character, led to no serious break till after her son was born, and
+      this, notwithstanding the fact that Frank had long given up making a
+      living, and that they were openly dependent on their wealthy brother, now
+      fast approaching the millionaire status.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This brother&mdash;the Peruvian King, as some called him&mdash;must have
+      been an extraordinary man. Though cherishing his affection for the
+      spirited Arabella to the point of remaining a bachelor for her sake, he
+      betrayed none of the usual signs of disappointed love; but on the contrary
+      made every effort to advance her happiness, not only by assuring to
+      herself and husband an adequate income, but by doing all he could in other
+      and less open ways to lessen any sense she might entertain of her mistake
+      in preferring for her lifemate his self-centred and unstable brother. She
+      should have adored him; but though she evinced gratitude enough, there is
+      nothing to prove that she ever gave Frank Postlethwaite the least cause to
+      cherish any other sentiment towards his brother than that of honest love
+      and unqualified respect. Perhaps he never did cherish any other. Perhaps
+      the change which everyone saw in the young couple immediately after the
+      birth of their only child was due to another cause. Gossip is silent on
+      this point. All that it insists upon is that from this time evidences of a
+      growing estrangement between them became so obvious that even the
+      indulgent Andrew could not blind himself to it; showing his sense of
+      trouble, not by lessening their income, for that he doubled, but by
+      spending more time in Peru and less in New York where the two were living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However,&mdash;and here we enter upon those details which I have ventured
+      to characterize as uncommon, he was in this country and in the actual
+      company of his brother when the accident occurred which terminated both
+      their lives. It was the old story of a skidding motor, and Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite, having been sent for in great haste to the small inn into
+      which the two injured men had been carried, arrived only in time to
+      witness their last moments. Frank died first and Andrew some few minutes
+      later&mdash;an important fact, as was afterwards shown when the latter&rsquo;s
+      will came to be read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This will was a peculiar one. By its provisions the bulk of the King&rsquo;s
+      great property was left to his brother Frank, but with this especial
+      stipulation that in case his brother failed to survive him, the full
+      legacy as bequeathed to him should be given unconditionally to his widow.
+      Frank&rsquo;s demise, as I have already stated, preceded his brother&rsquo;s by
+      several minutes and consequently Arabella became the chief legatee; and
+      that is how she obtained her millions. But&mdash;and here a startling
+      feature comes in&mdash;when the will came to be administered, the secret
+      underlying the break between Frank and his wife was brought to light by a
+      revelation of the fact that he had practised a great deception upon her at
+      the time of his marriage. Instead of being a bachelor as was currently
+      believed, he was in reality a widower, and the father of a child. This
+      fact, so long held secret, had become hers when her own child was born;
+      and constituted as she was, she not only never forgave the father, but
+      conceived such a hatred for the innocent object of their quarrel that she
+      refused to admit its claims or even to acknowledge its existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But later&mdash;after his death, in fact&mdash;she showed some sense of
+      obligation towards one who under ordinary conditions would have shared her
+      wealth. When the whole story became heard, and she discovered that this
+      secret had been kept from his brother as well as from herself, and that
+      consequently no provision had been made in any way for the child thus
+      thrown directly upon her mercy, she did the generous thing and took the
+      forsaken girl into her own home. But she never betrayed the least love for
+      her, her whole heart being bound up in her boy, who was, as all agree, a
+      prodigy of talent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this boy, for all his promise and seeming strength of constitution,
+      died when barely seven years old, and the desolate mother was left with
+      nothing to fill her heart but the uncongenial daughter of her husband&rsquo;s
+      first wife. The fact that this child, slighted as it had hitherto been,
+      would, in the event of her uncle having passed away before her father,
+      have been the undisputed heiress of a large portion of the wealth now at
+      the disposal of her arrogant step-mother, led many to expect, now that the
+      boy was no more, that Mrs. Postlethwaite would proceed to acknowledge the
+      little Helena as her heir, and give her that place in the household to
+      which her natural claims entitled her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no such result followed. The passion of grief into which the mother
+      was thrown by the shipwreck of all her hopes left her hard and implacable,
+      and when, as very soon happened, she fell a victim to the disease which
+      tied her to her chair and made the wealth which had come to her by such a
+      peculiar ordering of circumstances little else than a mockery even in her
+      own eyes, it was upon this child she expended the full fund of her secret
+      bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the child? What of her? How did she bear her unhappy fate when she
+      grew old enough to realize it? With a resignation which was the wonder of
+      all who knew her. No murmurs escaped her lips, nor was the devotion she
+      invariably displayed to the exacting invalid who ruled her as well as all
+      the rest of her household with a rod of iron ever disturbed by the least
+      sign of reproach. Though the riches, which in those early days poured into
+      the home in a measure far beyond the needs of its mistress, were expended
+      in making the house beautiful rather than in making the one young life
+      within it happy, she never was heard to utter so much as a wish to leave
+      the walls within which fate had immured her. Content, or seemingly
+      content, with the only home she knew, she never asked for change or
+      demanded friends or amusements. Visitors ceased coming; desolation
+      followed neglect. The garden, once a glory, succumbed to a riot of weeds
+      and undesirable brush, till a towering wall seemed to be drawn about the
+      house cutting it off from the activities of the world as it cut it off
+      from the approach of sunshine by day, and the comfort of a star-lit heaven
+      by night. And yet the young girl continued to smile, though with a
+      pitifulness of late, which some thought betokened secret terror and others
+      the wasting of a body too sensitive for such unwholesome seclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These were the facts, known if not consciously specialized, which gave to
+      the latter part of my interview with Mrs. Postlethwaite a poignancy of
+      interest which had never attended any of my former experiences. The
+      peculiar attitude of Miss Postlethwaite towards her indurate tormentor
+      awakened in my agitated mind something much deeper than curiosity, but
+      when I strove to speak her name with the intent of inquiring more
+      particularly into her condition, such a look confronted me from the steady
+      eye immovably fixed upon my own, that my courage&mdash;or was it my
+      natural precaution&mdash;bade me subdue the impulse and risk no attempt
+      which might betray the depth of my interest in one so completely outside
+      the scope of the present moment&rsquo;s business. Perhaps Mrs. Postlethwaite
+      appreciated my struggle; perhaps she was wholly blind to it. There was no
+      reading the mind of this woman of sentimental name but inflexible nature,
+      and realizing the fact more fully with every word she uttered I left her
+      at last with no further betrayal of my feelings than might be evinced by
+      the earnestness with which I promised to return for her signature at the
+      earliest possible moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This she had herself requested, saying as I rose:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can still write my name if the paper is pushed carefully along under my
+      hand. See to it that you come while the power remains to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had hoped that in my passage downstairs I might run upon someone who
+      would give me news of Miss Postlethwaite, but the woman who approached to
+      conduct me downstairs was not of an appearance to invite confidence, and I
+      felt forced to leave the house with my doubts unsatisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two memories, equally distinct, followed me. One was a picture of Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s fingers groping among her belongings on the little tray
+      perched upon her lap, and another of the intent and strangely bent figure
+      of the old man who had acted as my usher, listening to the ticking of one
+      of the great clocks. So absorbed was he in this occupation that he not
+      only failed to notice me when I went by, but he did not even lift his head
+      at my cheery greeting. Such mysteries were too much for me, and led me to
+      postpone my departure from town till I had sought out Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s
+      doctor and propounded to him one or two leading questions. First, would
+      Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s present condition be likely to hold good till Monday;
+      and secondly, was the young lady living with her as ill as her step-mother
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a mild old man of the easy-going type, and the answers I got from
+      him were far from satisfactory. Yet he showed some surprise when I
+      mentioned the extent of Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s anxiety about her
+      step-daughter, and paused, in the dubious shaking of his head, to give me
+      a short stare in which I read as much determination as perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will look into Miss Postlethwaite&rsquo;s case more particularly,&rdquo; were his
+      parting words. And with this one gleam of comfort I had to be content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monday&rsquo;s interview was a brief one and contained nothing worth repeating.
+      Mrs. Postlethwaite listened with stoical satisfaction to the reading of
+      the will I had drawn up, and upon its completion rang her bell for the two
+      witnesses awaiting her summons, in an adjoining room. They were not of her
+      household, but to all appearance honest villagers with but one noticeable
+      characteristic, an overweening idea of Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s importance.
+      Perhaps the spell she had so liberally woven for others in other and
+      happier days was felt by them at this hour. It would not be strange; I had
+      almost fallen under it myself, so great was the fascination of her manner
+      even in this wreck of her bodily powers, when triumph assured, she faced
+      us all in a state of complete satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But before I was again quit of the place, all my doubts returned and in
+      fuller force than ever. I had lingered in my going as much as decency
+      would permit, hoping to hear a step on the stair or see a face in some
+      doorway which would contradict Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s cold assurance that
+      Miss Postlethwaite was no better. But no such step did I hear, and no face
+      did I see save the old, old one of the ancient friend or relative, whose
+      bent frame seemed continually to haunt the halls. As before, he stood
+      listening to the monotonous ticking of one of the clocks, muttering to
+      himself and quite oblivious of my presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, this time I decided not to pass him without a more persistent
+      attempt to gain his notice. Pausing at his side, I asked him in the
+      friendly tone I thought best calculated to attract his attention, how Miss
+      Postlethwaite was to-day. He was so intent upon his task, whatever that
+      was, that while he turned my way, it was with a glance as blank as that of
+      a stone image.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; he admonished me. &ldquo;It still says No! No! I don&rsquo;t think it will
+      ever say anything else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I stared at him in some consternation, then at the clock itself which was
+      the tall one I had found run down at my first visit. There was nothing
+      unusual in its quiet tick, so far as I could hear, and with a
+      compassionate glance at the old man who had turned breathlessly again to
+      listen, proceeded on my way without another word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old fellow was daft. A century old, and daft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had worked my way out through the vines which still encumbered the
+      porch, and was taking my first steps down the walk, when some impulse made
+      me turn and glance up at one of the windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did I bless the impulse? I thought I had every reason for doing so, when
+      through a network of interlacing branches I beheld the young girl with
+      whom my mind was wholly occupied, standing with her head thrust forward,
+      watching the descent of something small and white which she had just
+      released from her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A note! A note written by her and meant for me! With a grateful look in
+      her direction (which was probably lost upon her as she had already drawn
+      back out of sight), I sprang for it only to meet with disappointment. For
+      it was no billet-doux I received from amid the clustering brush where it
+      had fallen; but a small square of white cloth showing a line of fantastic
+      embroidery. Annoyed beyond measure, I was about to fling it down again,
+      when the thought that it had come from her hand deterred me, and I thrust
+      it into my vest pocket. When I took it out again&mdash;which was soon
+      after I had taken my seat in the car&mdash;I discovered what a mistake I
+      should have made if I had followed my first impulse. For, upon examining
+      the stitches more carefully, I perceived that what I had considered a mere
+      decorative pattern was in fact a string of letters, and that these letters
+      made words, and that these words were:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IDONOTWANTTODIEBUTISURELYWILLIF
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or, in plain writing:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not want to die, but I surely will if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Finish the sentence for me. That is the problem I offer you. It is not a
+      case for the police but one well worth your attention, if you succeed in
+      reaching the heart of this mystery and saving this young girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only, let no delay occur. The doom, if doom it is, is immanent. Remember
+      that the will is signed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is too small; I did not ask you to send me a midget.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus spoke Mrs. Postlethwaite to her doctor, as he introduced into her
+      presence a little figure in nurse&rsquo;s cap and apron. &ldquo;You said I needed
+      care,&mdash;more care than I was receiving. I answered that my old nurse
+      could give it, and you objected that she or someone else must look after
+      Miss Postlethwaite. I did not see the necessity, but I never contradict a
+      doctor. So I yielded to your wishes, but not without the proviso (you
+      remember that I made a proviso) that whatever sort of young woman you
+      chose to introduce into this room, she should not be fresh from the
+      training schools, and that she should be strong, silent, and capable. And
+      you bring me this mite of a woman&mdash;is she a woman? she looks more
+      like a child, of pleasing countenance enough, but who can no more lift me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me!&rdquo; Little Miss Strange had advanced. &ldquo;I think, if you will allow
+      me the privilege, madam, that I can shift you into a much more comfortable
+      position.&rdquo; And with a deftness and ease certainly not to be expected from
+      one of her slight physique, Violet raised the helpless invalid a trifle
+      more upon her pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The act, its manner, and the smile accompanying it, could not fail to
+      please, and undoubtedly did, though no word rewarded her from lips not
+      much given to speech save when the occasion was imperative. But Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite made no further objection to her presence, and, seeing this,
+      the doctor&rsquo;s countenance relaxed and he left the room with a much lighter
+      step than that with which he had entered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And thus it was that Violet Strange&mdash;an adept in more ways than one&mdash;became
+      installed at the bedside of this mysterious woman, whose days, if
+      numbered, still held possibilities of action which those interested in
+      young Helena Postlethwaite&rsquo;s fate would do well to recognize.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange had been at her post for two days, and had gathered up the
+      following:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That Mrs. Postlethwaite must be obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That her step-daughter (who did not wish to die) would die if she knew it
+      to be the wish of this domineering but apparently idolized woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the old man of the clocks, while senile in some regards, was very
+      alert and quite youthful in others. If a century old&mdash;which she began
+      greatly to doubt&mdash;he had the language and manner of one in his prime,
+      when unaffected by the neighbourhood of the clocks, which seemed in some
+      non-understandable way to exercise an occult influence over him. At table
+      he was an entertaining host; but neither there nor elsewhere would he
+      discuss the family, or dilate in any way upon the peculiarities of a
+      household of which he manifestly regarded himself as the least important
+      member. Yet no one knew them better, and when Violet became quite assured
+      of this, as well as of the futility of looking for explanation of any kind
+      from either of her two patients, she resolved upon an effort to surprise
+      one from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went about it in this way. Noting his custom of making a complete
+      round of the clocks each night after dinner, she took advantage of Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s inclination to sleep at this hour, to follow him from
+      clock to clock in the hope of overhearing some portion of the monologue
+      with which he bent his head to the swinging pendulum, or put his ear to
+      the hidden works. Soft-footed and discreet, she tripped along at his back,
+      and at each pause he made, paused herself and turned her ear his way. The
+      extreme darkness of the halls, which were more sombre by night than by
+      day, favoured this attempt, and she was able, after a failure or two, to
+      catch the No! no! no! no! which fell from his lips in seeming repetition
+      of what he heard the most of them say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The satisfaction in his tone proved that the denial to which he listened,
+      chimed in with his hopes and gave ease to his mind. But he looked his
+      oldest when, after pausing at another of the many time-pieces, he echoed
+      in answer to its special refrain, Yes! yes! yes! yes! and fled the spot
+      with shaking body and a distracted air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same fear and the same shrinking were observable in him as he returned
+      from listening to the least conspicuous one, standing in a short corridor,
+      where Violet could not follow him. But when, after a hesitation which
+      enabled her to slip behind the curtain hiding the drawing-room door, he
+      approached and laid his ear against the great one standing, as if on
+      guard, at the foot of the stairs, she saw by the renewed vigour he
+      displayed that there was comfort for him in its message, even before she
+      caught the whisper with which he left it and proceeded to mount the
+      stairs:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It says No! It always says No! I will heed it as the voice of Heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But one conclusion could be the result of such an experiment to a mind
+      like Violet&rsquo;s. This partly touched old man not only held the key to the
+      secret of this house, but was in a mood to divulge it if once he could be
+      induced to hear command instead of dissuasion in the tick of this one
+      large clock. But how could he be induced? Violet returned to Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s bedside in a mood of extreme thoughtfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another day passed, and she had not yet seen Miss Postlethwaite. She was
+      hoping each hour to be sent on some errand to that young lady&rsquo;s room, but
+      no such opportunity was granted her. Once she ventured to ask the doctor,
+      whose visits were now very frequent, what he thought of the young lady&rsquo;s
+      condition. But as this question was necessarily put in Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s presence, the answer was naturally guarded, and possibly
+      not altogether frank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our young lady is weaker,&rdquo; he acknowledged. &ldquo;Much weaker,&rdquo; he added with
+      marked emphasis and his most professional air, &ldquo;or she would be here
+      instead of in her own room. It grieves her not to be able to wait upon her
+      generous benefactress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The word fell heavily. Had it been used as a test? Violet gave him a look,
+      though she had much rather have turned her discriminating eye upon the
+      face staring up at them from the pillow. Had the alarm expressed by others
+      communicated itself at last to the physician? Was the charm which had held
+      him subservient to the mother, dissolving under the pitiable state of the
+      child, and was he trying to aid the little detective-nurse in her effort
+      to sound the mystery of her condition?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His look expressed benevolence, but he took care not to meet the gaze of
+      the woman he had just lauded, possibly because that gaze was fixed upon
+      him in a way to tax his moral courage. The silence which ensued was broken
+      by Mrs. Postlethwaite:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will live&mdash;this poor Helena&mdash;how long?&rdquo; she asked, with no
+      break in her voice&rsquo;s wonted music.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor hesitated, then with a candour hardly to be expected from him,
+      answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not understand Miss Postlethwaite&rsquo;s case. I should like, with your
+      permission, to consult some New York physician.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A single word, but as it left this woman&rsquo;s thin lips Violet recoiled, and,
+      perhaps, the doctor did. Rage can speak in one word as well as in a dozen,
+      and the rage which spoke in this one was of no common order, though it was
+      quickly suppressed, as was all other show of feeling when she added, with
+      a touch of her old charm:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you will do what you think best, as you know I never interfere
+      with a doctor&rsquo;s decisions. But&rdquo; and here her natural ascendancy of tone
+      and manner returned in all its potency, &ldquo;it would kill me to know that a
+      stranger was approaching Helena&rsquo;s bedside. It would kill her. She&rsquo;s too
+      sensitive to survive such a shock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet recalled the words worked with so much care by this young girl on a
+      minute piece of linen, I do not want to die, and watched the doctor&rsquo;s face
+      for some sign of resolution. But embarrassment was all she saw there, and
+      all she heard him say was the conventional reply:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am doing all I can for her. We will wait another day and note the
+      effect of my latest prescription.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another day!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deathly calm which overspread Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s features as this
+      word left the physician&rsquo;s lips warned Violet not to let another day go by
+      without some action. But she made no remark, and, indeed, betrayed but
+      little interest in anything beyond her own patient&rsquo;s condition. That
+      seemed to occupy her wholly. With consummate art she gave the appearance
+      of being under Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s complete thrall, and watched with
+      fascinated eyes every movement of the one unstricken finger which could do
+      so much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This little detective of ours could be an excellent actor when she chose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To make the old man speak! To force this conscience-stricken but
+      rebellious soul to reveal what the clock forbade! How could it be done?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This continued to be Violet&rsquo;s great problem. She pondered it so deeply
+      during all the remainder of the day that a little pucker settled on her
+      brow, which someone (I will not mention who) would have been pained to
+      see. Mrs. Postlethwaite, if she noticed it at all, probably ascribed it to
+      her anxieties as nurse, for never had Violet been more assiduous in her
+      attentions. But Mrs. Postlethwaite was no longer the woman she had been,
+      and possibly never noted it at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At five o&rsquo;clock Violet suddenly left the room. Slipping down into the
+      lower hall, she went the round of the clocks herself, listening to every
+      one. There was no perceptible difference in their tick. Satisfied of this
+      and that it was simply the old man&rsquo;s imagination which had supplied them
+      each with separate speech, she paused before the huge one at the foot of
+      the stairs,&mdash;the one whose dictate he had promised himself to follow,&mdash;and
+      with an eye upon its broad, staring dial, muttered wistfully:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! for an idea! For an idea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Did this cumbrous relic of old-time precision turn traitor at this
+      ingenuous plea? The dial continued to stare, the works to sing, but
+      Violet&rsquo;s face suddenly lost its perplexity. With a wary look about her and
+      a listening ear turned towards the stair top, she stretched out her hand
+      and pulled open the door guarding the pendulum, and peered in at the
+      works, smiling slyly to herself as she pushed it back into place and
+      retreated upstairs to the sick room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the doctor came that night she had a quiet word with him outside Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s door. Was that why he was on hand when old Mr. Dunbar
+      stole from his room to make his nightly circuit of the halls below?
+      Something quite beyond the ordinary was in the good physician&rsquo;s mind, for
+      the look he cast at the old man was quite unlike any he had ever bestowed
+      upon him before, and when he spoke it was to say with marked urgency:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our beautiful young lady will not live a week unless I get at the seat of
+      her malady. Pray that I may be enabled to do so, Mr. Dunbar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A blow to the aged man&rsquo;s heart which called forth a feeble &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo;
+       followed by a wild stare which imprinted itself upon the doctor&rsquo;s memory
+      as the look of one hopelessly old, who hears for the first time a distinct
+      call from the grave which has long been awaiting him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A solitary lamp stood in the lower hall. As the old man picked his slow
+      way down, its small, hesitating flame flared up as in a sudden gust, then
+      sank down flickering and faint as if it, too, had heard a call which
+      summoned it to extinction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No other sign of life was visible anywhere. Sunk in twilight shadows, the
+      corridors branched away on either side to no place in particular and
+      serving, to all appearance (as many must have thought in days gone by), as
+      a mere hiding-place for clocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To listen to their united hum, the old man paused, looking at first a
+      little distraught, but settling at last into his usual self as he started
+      forward upon his course. Did some whisper, hitherto unheard, warn him that
+      it was the last time he would tread that weary round? Who can tell? He was
+      trembling very much when with his task nearly completed, he stepped out
+      again into the main hall and crept rather than walked back to the one
+      great clock to whose dictum he made it a practice to listen last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chattering the accustomed words, &ldquo;They say Yes! They are all saying Yes!
+      now; but this one will say No!&rdquo; he bent his stiff old back and laid his
+      ear to the unresponsive wood. But the time for no had passed. It was Yes!
+      yes! yes! yes! now, and as his straining ears took in the word, he
+      appeared to shrink where he stood and after a moment of anguished silence,
+      broke forth into a low wail, amid whose lamentations one could hear:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The time has come! Even the clock she loves best bids me speak. Oh!
+      Arabella, Arabella!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his despair he had not noticed that the pendulum hung motionless, or
+      that the hands stood at rest on the dial. If he had, he might have waited
+      long enough to have seen the careful opening of the great clock&rsquo;s tall
+      door and the stepping forth of the little lady who had played so deftly
+      upon his superstition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was wandering the corridors like a helpless child, when a gentle hand
+      fell on his arm and a soft voice whispered in his ear:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a story to tell. Will you tell it to me? It may save Miss
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Did he understand? Would he respond if he did; or would the shock of her
+      appeal restore him to a sense of the danger attending disloyalty? For a
+      moment she doubted the wisdom of this startling measure, then she saw that
+      he had passed the point of surprise and that, stranger as she was, she had
+      but to lead the way for him to follow, tell his story, and die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no light in the drawing-room when they entered. But old Mr.
+      Dunbar did not seem to mind that. Indeed, he seemed to have lost all
+      consciousness of present surroundings; he was even oblivious of her. This
+      became quite evident when the lamp, in flaring up again in the hall, gave
+      a momentary glimpse, of his crouching, half-kneeling figure. In the
+      pleading gesture of his trembling, outreaching arms, Violet beheld an
+      appeal, not to herself, but to some phantom of his imagination; and when
+      he spoke, as he presently did, it was with the freedom of one to whom
+      speech is life&rsquo;s last boon, and the ear of the listener quite forgotten in
+      the passion of confession long suppressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has never loved me,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;but I have always loved her. For me
+      no other woman has ever existed, though I was sixty-five years of age when
+      I first saw her, and had long given up the idea that there lived a woman
+      who could sway me from my even life and fixed lines of duty. Sixty-five!
+      and she a youthful bride! Was there ever such folly! Happily I realized it
+      from the first, and piled ashes on my hidden flame. Perhaps that is why I
+      adore her to this day and only give her over to reprobation because Fate
+      is stronger than my age&mdash;stronger even than my love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not a good woman, but I might have been a good man if I had never
+      known the sin which drew a line of isolation about her, and within which
+      I, and only I, have stood with her in silent companionship. What was this
+      sin, and in what did it have its beginning? I think its beginning was in
+      the passion she had for her husband. It was not the every-day passion of
+      her sex in this land of equable affections, but one of foreign fierceness,
+      jealousy, and insatiable demand. Yet he was a very ordinary man. I was
+      once his tutor and I know. She came to know it too, when&mdash;but I am
+      rushing on too fast, I have much to tell before I reach that point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the first, I was in their confidence. Not that either he or she put
+      me there, but that I lived with them and was always around, and could not
+      help seeing and hearing what went on between them. Why he continued to
+      want me in the house and at his table, when I could no longer be of
+      service to him, I have never known. Possibly habit explains all. He was
+      accustomed to my presence and so was she; so accustomed they hardly
+      noticed it, as happened one night, when after a little attempt at
+      conversation, he threw down the book he had caught up and, addressing her
+      by name, said without a glance my way, and quite as if he were alone with
+      her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Arabella, there is something I ought to tell you. I have tried to find
+      the courage to do so many times before now but have always failed. Tonight
+      I must.&rsquo; And then he made his great disclosure,&mdash;how, unknown to, his
+      friends and the world, he was a widower when he married her, and the
+      father of a living child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With some women this might have passed with a measure of regret, and some
+      possible contempt for his silence, but not so with her. She rose to her
+      feet&mdash;I can see her yet&mdash;and for a moment stood facing him in
+      the still, overpowering manner of one who feels the icy pang of hate enter
+      where love has been. Never was moment more charged. I could not breathe
+      while it lasted; and when at last she spoke, it was with an impetuosity of
+      concentrated passion, hardly less dreadful than her silence had been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;You a father! A father already!&rsquo; she cried, all her sweetness swallowed
+      up in ungovernable wrath. &lsquo;You whom I expected to make so happy with a
+      child? I curse you and your brat. I&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He strove to placate her, to explain. But rage has no ears, and before I
+      realized my own position, the scene became openly tempestuous. That her
+      child should be second to another woman&rsquo;s seemed to awaken demon instincts
+      within her. When he ventured to hint that his little girl needed a
+      mother&rsquo;s care, her irony bit like corroding acid. He became speechless
+      before it and had not a protest to raise when she declared that the secret
+      he had kept so long and so successfully he must continue to keep to his
+      dying day. That the child he had failed to own in his first wife&rsquo;s
+      lifetime should remain disowned in hers, and if possible be forgotten. She
+      should never give the girl a thought nor acknowledge her in any way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was Fury embodied; but the fury was of that grand order which allures
+      rather than repels. As I felt myself succumbing to its fascination and
+      beheld how he was weakening under it even more perceptibly than myself, I
+      started from my chair, and sought to glide away before I should hear him
+      utter a fatal acquiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the movement I made unfortunately drew their attention to me, and
+      after an instant of silent contemplation of my distracted countenance,
+      Frank said, as though he were the elder by the forty years which separated
+      us:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;You have listened to Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s wishes. You will respect them
+      of course.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all. He knew and she knew that I was to be trusted; but neither
+      of them has ever known why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A month later her child came, and was welcomed as though it were the first
+      to bear his name. It was a boy, and their satisfaction was so great that I
+      looked to see their old affection revive. But it had been cleft at the
+      root, and nothing could restore it to life. They loved the child; I have
+      never seen evidence of greater parental passion than they both displayed,
+      but there their feelings stopped. Towards each other they were cold. They
+      did not even unite in worship of their treasure. They gloated over him and
+      planned for him, but always apart. He was a child in a thousand, and as he
+      developed, the mother especially, nursed all her energies for the purpose
+      of ensuring for him a future commensurate with his talents. Never a very
+      conscientious woman, and alive to the advantages of wealth as demonstrated
+      by the power wielded by her rich brother-in-law, she associated all the
+      boy&rsquo;s prospects with money, great money, such money as Andrew had
+      accumulated, and now had at his disposal for his natural heirs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hence came her great temptation,&mdash;a temptation to which she yielded,
+      to the lasting trouble of us all. Of this I must now make confession
+      though it kills me to do so, and will soon kill her. The deeds of the past
+      do not remain buried, however deep we dig their graves, but rise in an
+      awful resurrection when we are old&mdash;old&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence. Then a tremulous renewal of his painful speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet held her breath to listen. Possibly the doctor, hidden in the
+      darkest corner of the room, did so also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never knew how she became acquainted with the terms of her
+      brother-in-law&rsquo;s will. He certainly never confided them to her, and as
+      certainly the lawyer who drew up the document never did. But that she was
+      well aware of its tenor is as positive a fact as that I am the most
+      wretched man alive tonight. Otherwise, why the darksome deed into which
+      she was betrayed when both the brothers lay dying among strangers, of a
+      dreadful accident?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was witness to that deed. I had accompanied her on her hurried ride and
+      was at her side when she entered the inn where the two Postlethwaites lay.
+      I was always at her side in great joy or in great trouble, though she
+      professed no affection for me and gave me but scanty thanks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;During our ride she had been silent and I had not disturbed that silence.
+      I had much to think of. Should we find him living, or should we find him
+      dead? If dead, would it sever the relations between us two? Would I ever
+      ride with her again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was not dwelling on this theme, I was thinking of the parting look
+      she gave her boy; a look which had some strange promise in it. What had
+      that look meant and why did my flesh creep and my mind hover between dread
+      and a fearsome curiosity when I recalled it? Alas! There was reason for
+      all these sensations as I was soon to learn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We found the inn seething with terror and the facts worse than had been
+      represented in the telegram. Her husband was dying. She had come just in
+      time to witness the end. This they told her before she had taken off her
+      veil. If they had waited&mdash;if I had been given a full glimpse of her
+      face&mdash;But it was hidden, and I could only judge of the nature of her
+      emotions by the stern way in which she held herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Take me to him,&rsquo; was the quiet command, with which she met this
+      disclosure. Then, before any of them could move:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;And his brother, Mr. Andrew Postlethwaite? Is he fatally injured too?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The reply was unequivocal. The doctors were uncertain which of the two
+      would pass away first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must remember that at this time I was ignorant of the rich man&rsquo;s
+      will, and consequently of how the fate of a poor child of whom I had heard
+      only one mention, hung in the balance at that awful moment. But in the
+      breathlessness which seized Mrs. Postlethwaite at this sentence of double
+      death, I realized from my knowledge of her that something more than grief
+      was at prey upon her impenetrable heart, and shuddered to the core of my
+      being when she repeated in that voice which was so terrible because so
+      expressionless:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Take me to them.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were lying in one room, her husband nearest the door, the other in a
+      small alcove some ten feet away. Both were unconscious; both were
+      surrounded by groups of frightened attendants who fell back as she
+      approached. A doctor stood at the bed-head of her husband, but as her eye
+      met his he stepped aside with a shake of the head and left the place empty
+      for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The action was significant. I saw that she understood what it meant, and
+      with constricted heart watched her as she bent over the dying man and
+      gazed into his wide-open eyes, already sightless and staring. Calculation
+      was in her look and calculation only; and calculation, or something
+      equally unintelligible, sent her next glance in the direction of his
+      brother. What was in her mind? I could understand her indifference to
+      Frank even at the crisis of his fate, but not the interest she showed in
+      Andrew. It was an absorbing one, altering her whole expression. I no
+      longer knew her for my dear young madam, and the jealousy I had never felt
+      towards Frank rose to frantic resentment in my breast as I beheld what
+      very likely might be a tardy recognition of the other&rsquo;s well-known
+      passion, forced into disclosure by the exigencies of the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alarmed by the strength of my feelings, and fearing an equal disclosure
+      on my own part, I sought for a refuge from all eyes and found it in a
+      little balcony opening out at my right. On to this balcony I stepped and
+      found myself face to face with a star-lit heaven. Had I only been content
+      with my isolation and the splendour of the spectacle spread out before me!
+      But no, I must look back upon that bed and the solitary woman standing
+      beside it! I must watch the settling of her body into rigidity as a voice
+      rose from beside the other Postlethwaite saying, &lsquo;It is a matter of
+      minutes now,&rsquo; and then&mdash;and then&mdash;the slow creeping of her hand
+      to her husband&rsquo;s mouth, the outspreading of her palm across the livid lips&mdash;its
+      steady clinging there, smothering the feeble gasps of one already
+      moribund, till the quivering form grew still, and Frank Postlethwaite lay
+      dead before my eyes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw, and made no outcry, but she did, bringing the doctor back to her
+      side with the startled exclamation:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Dead? I thought he had an hour&rsquo;s life left in him, and he has passed
+      before his brother.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it hate&mdash;the murderous impulse of a woman who sees her
+      enemy at her mercy and can no longer restrain the passion of her
+      long-cherished antagonism; and while something within me rebelled at the
+      act, I could not betray her, though silence made a murderer of me too. I
+      could not. Her spell was upon me as in another instant it was upon
+      everyone else in the room. No suspicion of one so self-repressed in her
+      sadness disturbed the universal sympathy; and encouraged by this blindness
+      of the crowd, I vowed within myself never to reveal her secret. The man
+      was dead, or as good as dead, when she touched him; and now that her hate
+      was expended she would grow gentle and good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I knew the worthlessness of this hope as well as my misconception of
+      her motive, when Frank&rsquo;s child by another wife returned to my memory, and
+      Bella&rsquo;s sin stood exposed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But only to myself. I alone knew that the fortune now wholly hers, and in
+      consequence her boy&rsquo;s, had been won by a crime. That if her hand had
+      fallen in comfort on her husband&rsquo;s forehead instead of in pressure on his
+      mouth, he would have outlived his brother long enough to have become owner
+      of his millions; in which case a rightful portion would have been insured
+      to his daughter, now left a penniless waif. The thought made my hair rise,
+      as the proceedings over, I faced her and made my first and last effort to
+      rid my conscience of its new and intolerable burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the woman I had known and loved was no longer before me. The crown
+      had touched her brows, and her charm which had been mainly sexual up to
+      this hour had merged into an intellectual force, with which few men&rsquo;s
+      mentality could cope. Mine yielded at once to it. From the first instant,
+      I knew that a slavery of spirit, as well as of heart, was henceforth to be
+      mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did not wait for me to speak; she had assumed the dictator&rsquo;s attitude
+      at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I know of what you are thinking,&rsquo;&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;&lsquo;and it is a subject you
+      may dismiss at once from your mind. Mr. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s child by his first
+      wife is coming to live with us. I have expressed my wishes in this regard
+      to my lawyer, and there is nothing left to be said. You, with your close
+      mouth and dependable nature, are to remain here as before, and occupy the
+      same position towards my boy that you did towards his father. We shall
+      move soon into a larger house, and the nature of our duties will be
+      changed and their scope greatly increased; but I know that you can be
+      trusted to enlarge with them and meet every requirement I shall see fit to
+      make. Do not try to express your thanks. I see them in your face.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did she, or just the last feeble struggle my conscience was making to
+      break the bonds in which she held me, and win back my own respect? I shall
+      never know, for she left me on completion of this speech, not to resume
+      the subject, then or ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But though I succumbed outwardly to her demands, I had not passed the
+      point where inner conflict ends and peace begins. Her recognition of
+      Helena and her reception into the family calmed me for a while, and gave
+      me hope that all would yet be well. But I had never sounded the full
+      bitterness of madam&rsquo;s morbid heart, well as I thought I knew it. The
+      hatred she had felt from the first for her husband&rsquo;s child ripened into
+      frenzied dislike when she found her a living image of the mother whose
+      picture she had come across among Frank&rsquo;s personal effects. To win a tear
+      from those meek eyes instead of a smile to the sensitive lips was her
+      daily play. She seemed to exult in the joy of impressing upon the girl by
+      how little she had missed a great fortune, and I have often thought, much
+      as I tried to keep my mind free from all extravagant and unnecessary
+      fancies, that half of the money she spent in beautifying this house and
+      maintaining art industries and even great charitable institutions was
+      spent with the base purpose of demonstrating to this child the power of
+      immense wealth, and in what ways she might expect to see her little
+      brother expend the millions in which she had been denied all share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was so sure of this that one night while I was winding up the clocks
+      with which Mrs. Postlethwaite in her fondness for old timepieces has
+      filled the house, I stopped to look at the little figure toiling so
+      wearily upstairs, to bed, without a mother&rsquo;s kiss. There was an appeal in
+      the small wistful face which smote my hard old heart, and possibly a tear
+      welled up in my own eye when I turned back to my duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that why I felt the hand of Providence upon me, when in my halt
+      before the one clock to which any superstitious interest was attached&mdash;the
+      great one at the foot of the stairs&mdash;I saw that it had stopped and at
+      the one minute of all minutes in our wretched lives: Four minutes past
+      two? The hour, the minute in which Frank Postlethwaite had gasped his last
+      under the pressure of his wife&rsquo;s hand! I knew it&mdash;the exact minute I
+      mean&mdash;because Providence meant that I should know it. There had been
+      a clock on the mantelpiece of the hotel room where he and his brother had
+      died and I had seen her glance steal towards it at the instant she
+      withdrew her palm from her husband&rsquo;s lips. The stare of that dial and the
+      position of its hands had lived still in my mind as I believed it did in
+      hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four minutes past two! How came our old timepiece here to stop at that
+      exact moment on a day when Duty was making its last demand upon me to
+      remember Frank&rsquo;s unhappy child? There was no one to answer; but as I
+      looked and looked, I felt the impulse of the moment strengthen into
+      purpose to leave those hands undisturbed in their silent accusation. She
+      might see, and, moved by the coincidence, tremble at her treatment of
+      Helena.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if this happened&mdash;if she saw and trembled&mdash;she gave no
+      sign. The works were started up by some other hand, and the incident
+      passed. But it left me with an idea. That clock soon had a way of stopping
+      and always at that one instant of time. She was forced at length to notice
+      it, and I remember, an occasion when she stood stock-still with her eyes
+      on those hands, and failed to find the banister with her hand, though she
+      groped for it in her frantic need for support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But no command came from her to remove the worn-out piece, and soon its
+      tricks, and every lesser thing, were forgotten in the crushing calamity
+      which befell us in the sickness and death of little Richard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, those days and nights! And oh, the face of the mother when the
+      doctors told her that the case was hopeless! I asked myself then, and I
+      have asked myself a hundred times since, which of all the emotions I saw
+      pictured there bit the deepest, and made the most lasting impression on
+      her guilty heart? Was it remorse? If so, she showed no change in her
+      attitude towards Helena, unless it was by an added bitterness. The sweet
+      looks and gentle ways of Frank&rsquo;s young daughter could not win against a
+      hate sharpened by disappointment. Useless for me to hope for it. Release
+      from the remorse of years was not to come in that way. As I realized this,
+      I grew desperate and resorted again to the old trick of stopping the clock
+      at the fatal hour. This time her guilty heart responded. She acknowledged
+      the stab and let all her miseries appear. But how? In a way to wring my
+      heart almost to madness, and not benefit the child at all. She had her
+      first stroke that night. I had made her a helpless invalid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was eight years ago, and since then what? Stagnation. She lived with
+      her memories, and I with mine. Helena only had a right to hope, and hope
+      perhaps she did, till&mdash;Is that the great clock talking? Listen! They
+      all talk, but I heed only the one. What does it say? Tell! tell! tell!
+      Does it think I will be silent now when I come to my own guilt? That I
+      will seek to hide my weakness when I could not hide her sin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Explain!&rdquo; It was Violet speaking, and her tone was stern in its command.
+      &ldquo;Of what guilt do you speak? Not of guilt towards Helena; you pitied her
+      too much&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I pitied my dear madam more. It was that which affected me and drew
+      me into crime against my will. Besides, I did not know&mdash;not at first&mdash;what
+      was in the little bowl of curds and cream I carried to the girl each day.
+      She had eaten them in her step-mother&rsquo;s room, and under her step-mother&rsquo;s
+      eye as long as she had strength to pass from room to room, and how was I
+      to guess that it was not wholesome? Because she failed in health from day
+      to day? Was not my dear madam failing in health also; and was there poison
+      in her cup? Innocent at that time, why am I not innocent now? Because&mdash;Oh,
+      I will tell it all; as though at the bar of God. I will tell all the
+      secrets of that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was sitting with her hand trembling on the tray from which I had just
+      lifted the bowl she had bid me carry to Helena. I had seen her so a
+      hundred times before, but not with just that look in her eyes, or just
+      that air of desolation in her stony figure. Something made me speak;
+      something made me ask if she were not quite so well as usual, and
+      something made her reply with the dreadful truth that the doctor had given
+      her just two months more to live. My fright and mad anguish stupefied me;
+      for I was not prepared for this, no, not at all;&mdash;and unconsciously I
+      stared down at the bowl I held, unable to breathe or move or even to meet
+      her look.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As usual she misinterpreted my emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Why do you stand like that?&rsquo; I heard her say in a tone of great
+      irritation. &lsquo;And why do you stare into that bowl? Do you think I mean to
+      leave that child to walk these halls after I am carried out of them
+      forever? Do you measure my hate by such a petty yard-stick as that? I tell
+      you that I would rot above ground rather than enter it before she did?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had believed I knew this woman; but what soul ever knows another&rsquo;s?
+      What soul ever knows itself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Bella!&rsquo; I cried; the first time I had ever presumed to address her so
+      intimately. &lsquo;Would you poison the girl?&rsquo; And from sheer weakness my
+      fingers lost their clutch, and the bowl fell to the floor, breaking into a
+      dozen pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a minute she stared down at these from over her tray, and then she
+      remarked very low and very quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Another bowl, Humphrey, and fresh curds from the kitchen. I will do the
+      seasoning. The doses are too small to be skipped. You won&rsquo;t?&rsquo;&mdash;I had
+      shaken my head&mdash;&lsquo;But you will! It will not be the first time you have
+      gone down the hall with this mixture.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;But that was before I knew&mdash;&rsquo; I began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;And now that you do, you will go just the same.&rsquo; Then as I stood
+      hesitating, a thousand memories overwhelming me in an instant, she added
+      in a voice to tear the heart, &lsquo;Do not make me hate the only being left in
+      this world who understands and loves me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was a helpless invalid, and I a broken man, but when that word &lsquo;love&rsquo; 
+      fell from her lips, I felt the blood start burning in my veins, and all
+      the crust of habit and years of self-control loosen about my heart, and
+      make me young again. What if her thoughts were dark and her wishes
+      murderous! She was born to rule and sway men to her will even to their own
+      undoing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I wish I might kiss your hand,&rsquo; was what I murmured, gazing at her white
+      fingers groping over her tray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;You may,&rsquo; she answered, and hell became heaven to me for a brief
+      instant. Then I lifted myself and went obediently about my task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But puppet though I was, I was not utterly without sympathy. When I
+      entered Helena&rsquo;s room and saw how her startled eyes fell shrinkingly on
+      the bowl I set down before her, my conscience leaped to life and I could
+      not help saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Don&rsquo;t you like the curds, Helena? Your brother used to love them very
+      much.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;His were&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;What, Helena?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;What these are not,&rsquo; she murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I stared at her, terror-stricken. So she knew, and yet did not seize the
+      bowl and empty it out of the window! Instead, her hand moved slowly
+      towards it and drew it into place before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Yet I must eat,&rsquo; she said, lifting her eyes to mine in a sort of patient
+      despair, which yet was without accusation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my hand had instinctively gone to hers and grasped it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Why must you eat it?&rsquo; I asked. &lsquo;If&mdash;if you do not find it
+      wholesome, why do you touch it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Because my step-mother expects me to,&rsquo; she cried, &lsquo;and I have no other
+      will than hers. When I was a little, little child, my father made me
+      promise that if I ever came to live with her I would obey her simplest
+      wish. And I always have. I will not disappoint the trust he put in me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Even if you die of it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know whether I whispered these words or only thought them. She
+      answered as though I had spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I am not afraid to die. I am more afraid to live. She may ask me some
+      day to do something I feel to be wrong.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I fled down the hall that night, I heard one of the small clocks
+      speak to me. Tell! it cried, tell! tell! tell! tell! I rushed away from it
+      with beaded forehead and rising hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then another&rsquo;s note piped up. No it droned. No! no! no! no! I stopped and
+      took heart. Disgrace the woman I loved, on the brink of the grave? I&mdash;,
+      who asked no other boon from heaven than to see her happy, gracious, and
+      good? Impossible. I would obey the great clock&rsquo;s voice; the others were
+      mere chatterboxes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it has at last changed its tune, for some reason, quite changed its
+      tune. Now, it is Yes! Yes! instead of No! and in obeying it I save Helena.
+      But what of Bella? and O God, what of myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sigh, a groan, then a long and heavy silence, into which there finally
+      broke the pealing of the various clocks striking the hour. When all were
+      still again and Violet had drawn aside the portiere, it was to see the old
+      man on his knees, and between her and the thin streak of light entering
+      from the hall, the figure of the doctor hastening to Helena&rsquo;s bedside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When with inducements needless to name, they finally persuaded the young
+      girl to leave her unholy habitation, it was in the arms which had upheld
+      her once before, and to a life which promised to compensate her for her
+      twenty years of loneliness and unsatisfied longing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a black shadow yet remained which she must cross before reaching the
+      sunshine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It lay at her step-mother&rsquo;s door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the plans made for Helena&rsquo;s release, Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s consent had
+      not been obtained nor was she supposed to be acquainted with the doctor&rsquo;s
+      intentions towards the child whose death she was hourly awaiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was therefore with an astonishment, bordering on awe, that on their way
+      downstairs, they saw the door of her room open and herself standing alone
+      and upright on the threshold&mdash;she who had not been seen to take a
+      step in years. In the wonder of this miracle of suddenly restored power,
+      the little procession stopped,&mdash;the doctor with his hand upon the
+      rail, the lover with his burden clasped yet more protectingly to his
+      breast. That a little speech awaited them could be seen from the force and
+      fury of the gaze which the indomitable woman bent upon the lax and
+      half-unconscious figure she beheld thus sheltered and conveyed. Having but
+      one arrow left in her exhausted quiver, she launched it straight at the
+      innocent breast which had never harboured against her a defiant thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ingrate!&rdquo; was the word she hurled in a voice from which all its seductive
+      music had gone forever. &ldquo;Where are you going? Are they carrying you alive
+      to your grave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A moan from Helena&rsquo;s pale lips, then silence. She had fainted at that
+      barbed attack. But there was one there who dared to answer for her and he
+      spoke relentlessly. It was the man who loved her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, madam. We are carrying her to safety. You must know what I mean by
+      that. Let her go quietly and you may die in peace. Otherwise&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She interrupted him with a loud call, startling into life the echoes of
+      that haunted hall:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humphrey! Come to me, Humphrey!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But no Humphrey appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another call, louder and more peremptory than before:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humphrey! I say, Humphrey!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the answer was the same&mdash;silence, and only silence. As the horror
+      of this grew, the doctor spoke:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Humphrey Dunbar&rsquo;s ears are closed to all earthly summons. He died
+      last night at the very hour he said he would&mdash;four minutes after
+      two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four minutes after two!&rdquo; It came from her lips in a whisper, but with a
+      revelation of her broken heart and life. &ldquo;Four minutes after two!&rdquo; And
+      defiant to the last, her head rose, and for an instant, for a mere breath
+      of time, they saw her as she had looked in her prime, regal in form,
+      attitude, and expression; then the will which had sustained her through so
+      much, faltered and succumbed, and with a final reiteration of the words
+      &ldquo;Four minutes after two!&rdquo; she broke into a rattling laugh, and fell back
+      into the arms of her old nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And below, one clock struck the hour and then another. But not the big one
+      at the foot of the stairs. That still stood silent, with its hands
+      pointing to the hour and minute of Frank Postlethwaite&rsquo;s hastened death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM VI <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM VII. THE DOCTOR, HIS WIFE, AND THE CLOCK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Violet had gone to her room. She had a task before her. That afternoon, a
+      packet had been left at the door, which, from a certain letter scribbled
+      in one corner, she knew to be from her employer. The contents of that
+      packet must be read, and she had made herself comfortable with the
+      intention of setting to work at once. But ten o&rsquo;clock struck and then
+      eleven before she could bring herself to give any attention to the
+      manuscript awaiting her perusal. In her present mood, a quiet sitting by
+      the fire, with her eyes upon the changeful flame, was preferable to the
+      study of any affair her employer might send her. Yet, because she was
+      conscious of the duty she thus openly neglected, she sat crouched over her
+      desk with her hand on the mysterious packet, the string of which, however,
+      she made no effort to loosen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was she thinking of?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are not alone in our curiosity on this subject. Her brother Arthur,
+      coming unperceived into the room, gives tokens of a similar interest.
+      Never before had he seen her oblivious to an approaching step; and after a
+      momentary contemplation of her absorbed figure, so girlishly sweet and yet
+      so deeply intent, he advances to her side, and peering earnestly into her
+      face, observes with a seriousness quite unusual to him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Puss, you are looking worried,&mdash;not like yourself at all. I&rsquo;ve
+      noticed it for some time. What&rsquo;s up. Getting tired of the business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not altogether&mdash;that is, it&rsquo;s not that, if it&rsquo;s anything.
+      I&rsquo;m not sure that it&rsquo;s anything. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had turned back to her desk and was pushing about the various articles
+      with which it was plentifully bespread; but this did not hide the flush
+      which had crept into her cheeks and even dyed the snowy whiteness of her
+      neck. Arthur&rsquo;s astonishment at this evidence of emotion was very great;
+      but he said nothing, only watched her still more closely, as with a light
+      laugh she regained her self-possession, and with the practical air of a
+      philosopher uttered this trite remark:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everyone has his sober moments. I was only thinking&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of some new case?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not exactly.&rdquo; The words came softly but with a touch of mingled humour
+      and gravity which made Arthur stare again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here, Puss!&rdquo; he cried. His tone had changed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just come up from
+      the den. Father and I have had a row&mdash;a beastly row.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A row? You and father? Oh, Arthur, I don&rsquo;t like that. Don&rsquo;t quarrel with
+      father. Don&rsquo;t, don&rsquo;t. Some day he and I may have a serious difference
+      about what I am doing. Don&rsquo;t let him feel that he has lost us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right, Puss; but I&rsquo;ve got to think of you a bit. I can&rsquo;t see
+      you spoil all your good times with these police horrors and not do
+      something to help. To-morrow I begin life as a salesman in Clarke &amp;
+      Stebbin&rsquo;s. The salary is not great, but every little helps and I don&rsquo;t
+      dislike the business. But father does. He had rather see me loafing about
+      town setting the fashions for fellows as idle as myself than soil my hands
+      with handling merchandise. That&rsquo;s why we quarreled. But don&rsquo;t worry. Your
+      name didn&rsquo;t come up, or&mdash;or&mdash;you know whose. He hasn&rsquo;t an idea
+      of why I want to work&mdash;There, Violet there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two soft arms were around his neck and Violet was letting her heart out in
+      a succession of sisterly kisses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, Arthur, you good, good boy! Together we&rsquo;ll soon make up the amount,
+      and then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sweet soft look robbed her face of its piquancy, but gave it an aspect
+      of indescribable beauty quite new to Arthur&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tapping his lips with a thoughtful forefinger, he asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was that sombre-looking chap I saw bowing to you as we came out of
+      church last Sunday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She awoke from her dreamy state with an astonishing quickness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He? Surely you remember him. Have you forgotten that evening in
+      Massachusetts&mdash;the grotto&mdash;and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s Upjohn, is it? Yes, I remember him. He&rsquo;s fond of church, isn&rsquo;t
+      he? That is, when he&rsquo;s in New York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her lips took a roguish curve then a very serious one; but she made no
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have noticed that he&rsquo;s always in his seat and always looking your way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s very odd of him,&rdquo; she declared, her dimples coming and going in a
+      most bewildering fashion. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t imagine why he should do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I,&mdash;&rdquo; retorted Arthur with a smile. &ldquo;But he&rsquo;s human, I suppose.
+      Only do be careful, Violet. A man so melancholy will need a deal of
+      cheering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was gone before he had fully finished this daring remark, and Violet,
+      left again with her thoughts, lost her glowing colour but not her
+      preoccupation. The hand which lay upon the packet already alluded to did
+      not move for many minutes, and when she roused at last to the demands of
+      her employer, it was with a start and a guilty look at the small gold
+      clock ticking out its inexorable reminder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will want an answer the first thing in the morning,&rdquo; she complained to
+      herself. And opening the packet, she took out first a letter, and then a
+      mass of typewritten manuscript.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She began with the letter which was as characteristic of the writer as all
+      the others she had had from his hand; as witness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You probably remember the Hasbrouck murder,&mdash;or, perhaps, you don&rsquo;t;
+      it being one of a time previous to your interest in such matters. But
+      whether you remember it or not, I beg you to read the accompanying summary
+      with due care and attention to business. When you have well mastered it
+      with all its details, please communicate with me in any manner most
+      convenient to yourself, for I shall have a word to say to you then, which
+      you may be glad to hear, if as you have lately intimated you need to earn
+      but one or two more substantial rewards in order to cry halt to the
+      pursuit for which you have proved yourself so well qualified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story, in deference to yourself as a young and much preoccupied woman,
+      has been written in a way to interest. Though the work of an everyday
+      police detective, you will find in it no lack of mystery or romance; and
+      if at the end you perceive that it runs, as such cases frequently do, up
+      against a perfectly blank wall, you must remember that openings can be
+      made in walls, and that the loosening of one weak stone from its appointed
+      place, sometimes leads to the downfall of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much for the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Laying it aside, with a shrug of her expressive shoulders, Violet took up
+      the manuscript.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us take it up too. It runs thus:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 17th of July, 19&mdash;, a tragedy of no little interest occurred
+      in one of the residences of the Colonnade in Lafayette Place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hasbrouck, a well known and highly respected citizen, was attacked in
+      his room by an unknown assailant, and shot dead before assistance could
+      reach him. His murderer escaped, and the problem offered to the police was
+      how to identify this person who, by some happy chance or by the exercise
+      of the most remarkable forethought, had left no traces behind him, or any
+      clue by which he could be followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The details of the investigation which ended so unsatisfactorily are here
+      given by the man sent from headquarters at the first alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, some time after midnight on the date above mentioned, I reached
+      Lafayette Place, I found the block lighted from end to end. Groups of
+      excited men and women peered from the open doorways, and mingled their
+      shadows with those of the huge pillars which adorn the front of this
+      picturesque block of dwellings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house in which the crime had been committed was near the centre of the
+      row, and, long before I reached it, I had learned from more than one
+      source that the alarm was first given to the street by a woman&rsquo;s shriek,
+      and secondly by the shouts of an old man-servant who had appeared, in a
+      half-dressed condition, at the window of Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s room, crying
+      &ldquo;Murder! murder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when I had crossed the threshold, I was astonished at the paucity of
+      facts to be gleaned from the inmates themselves. The old servant, who was
+      the first to talk, had only this account of the crime to give:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The family, which consisted of Mr. Hasbrouck, his wife, and three
+      servants, had retired for the night at the usual hour and under the usual
+      auspices. At eleven o&rsquo;clock the lights were all extinguished, and the
+      whole household asleep, with the possible exception of Mr. Hasbrouck
+      himself, who, being a man of large business responsibilities, was
+      frequently troubled with insomnia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Mrs. Hasbrouck woke with a start. Had she dreamed the words that
+      were ringing in her ears, or had they been actually uttered in her
+      hearing? They were short, sharp words, full of terror and menace, and she
+      had nearly satisfied herself that she had imagined them, when there came,
+      from somewhere near the door, a sound she neither understood nor could
+      interpret, but which filled her with inexplicable terror, and made her
+      afraid to breathe, or even to stretch forth her hand towards her husband,
+      whom she supposed to be sleeping at her side. At length another strange
+      sound, which she was sure was not due to her imagination, drove her to
+      make an attempt to rouse him, when she was horrified to find that she was
+      alone in bed, and her husband nowhere within reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Filled now with something more than nervous apprehension, she flung
+      herself to the floor, and tried to penetrate with frenzied glances, the
+      surrounding darkness. But the blinds and shutters both having been
+      carefully closed by Mr. Hasbrouck before retiring, she found this
+      impossible, and she was about to sink in terror to the floor, when she
+      heard a low gasp on the other side of the room followed by a suppressed
+      cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God! what have I done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice was a strange one, but before the fear aroused by this fact
+      could culminate in a shriek of dismay, she caught the sound of retreating
+      footsteps, and, eagerly listening, she heard them descend the stairs and
+      depart by the front door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had she known what had occurred&mdash;had there been no doubt in her mind
+      as to what lay in the darkness on the other side of the room&mdash;it is
+      likely that, at the noise caused by the closing front door, she would have
+      made at once for the balcony that opened out from the window before which
+      she was standing, and taken one look at the flying figure below. But her
+      uncertainty as to what lay hidden from her by the darkness chained her
+      feet to the floor, and there is no knowing when she would have moved, if a
+      carriage had not at that moment passed down Astor Place, bringing with it
+      a sense of companionship which broke the spell holding her, and gave her
+      strength to light the gas which was in ready reach of her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the sudden blaze illuminated the room, revealing in a burst the old
+      familiar walls and well-known pieces of furniture, she felt for a moment
+      as if released from some heavy nightmare and restored to the common
+      experiences of life. But in another instant her former dread returned, and
+      she found herself quaking at the prospect of passing around the foot of
+      the bed into that part of the room which was as yet hidden from her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the desperation which comes with great crises finally drove her from
+      her retreat; and, creeping slowly forward, she cast one glance at the
+      floor before her, when she found her worst fears realized by the sight of
+      the dead body of her husband lying prone before the open doorway, with a
+      bullet-hole in his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her first impulse was to shriek, but, by a powerful exercise of will, she
+      checked herself, and ringing frantically for the servants who slept on the
+      top floor of the house, flew to the nearest window and endeavoured to open
+      it. But the shutters had been bolted so securely by Mr. Hasbrouck, in his
+      endeavour to shut out all light and sound, that by the time she had
+      succeeded in unfastening them, all trace of the flying murderer had
+      vanished from the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sick with grief and terror, she stepped back into the room just as the
+      three frightened servants descended the stairs. As they appeared in the
+      open doorway, she pointed at her husband&rsquo;s inanimate form, and then, as if
+      suddenly realizing in its full force the calamity which had befallen her,
+      she threw up her arms, and sank forward to the floor in a dead faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two women rushed to her assistance, but the old butler, bounding over
+      the bed, sprang to the window, and shrieked his alarm to the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the interim that followed, Mrs. Hasbrouck was revived, and the master&rsquo;s
+      body laid decently on the bed; but no pursuit was made, nor any inquiries
+      started likely to assist me in establishing the identity of the assailant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, everyone both in the house and out, seemed dazed by the unexpected
+      catastrophe, and as no one had any suspicions to offer as to the probable
+      murderer, I had a difficult task before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I began in the usual way, by inspecting the scene of the murder. I found
+      nothing in the room, or in the condition of the body itself, which added
+      an iota to the knowledge already obtained. That Mr. Hasbrouck had been in
+      bed; that he had risen upon hearing a noise; and that he had been shot
+      before reaching the door, were self-evident facts. But there was nothing
+      to guide me further. The very simplicity of the circumstances caused a
+      dearth of clues, which made the difficulty of procedure as great as any I
+      had ever encountered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My search through the hall and down the stairs elicited nothing; and an
+      investigation of the bolts and bars by which the house was secured,
+      assured me that the assassin had either entered by the front door, or had
+      already been secreted in the house when it was locked up for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall have to trouble Mrs. Hasbrouck for a short interview,&rdquo; I hereupon
+      announced to the trembling old servant, who had followed me like a dog
+      about the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no demur, and in a few minutes I was ushered into the presence of
+      the newly made widow, who sat quite alone, in a large chamber in the rear.
+      As I crossed the threshold she looked up, and I encountered a good, plain
+      face, without the shadow of guile in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madam,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I have not come to disturb you. I will ask two or three
+      questions only, and then leave you to your grief. I am told that some
+      words came from the assassin before he delivered his fatal shot. Did you
+      hear these distinctly enough to tell me what they were?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was sound asleep,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;and dreamt, as I thought, that a fierce,
+      strange voice cried somewhere to some one: &lsquo;Ah! you did not expect me!&rsquo; 
+      But I dare not say that these words were really uttered to my husband, for
+      he was not the man to call forth hate, and only a man in the extremity of
+      passion could address such an exclamation in such a tone as rings in my
+      memory in connection with the fatal shot which woke me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that shot was not the work of a friend,&rdquo; I argued. &ldquo;If, as these
+      words seem to prove, the assassin had some other motive than plunder in
+      his assault, then your husband had an enemy, though you never suspected
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo; was her steady reply, uttered in the most convincing tone.
+      &ldquo;The man who shot him was a common burglar, and frightened at having been
+      betrayed into murder, fled without looking for booty. I am sure I heard
+      him cry out in terror and remorse: &lsquo;God! what have I done!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that before you left the side of the bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I did not move from my place till I heard the front door close. I
+      was paralysed by fear and dread.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you in the habit of trusting to the security of a latch-lock only in
+      the fastening of your front door at night? I am told that the big key was
+      not in the lock, and that the bolt at the bottom of the door was not
+      drawn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bolt at the bottom of the door is never drawn. Mr. Hasbrouck was so
+      good a man that he never mistrusted any one. That is why the big lock was
+      not fastened. The key, not working well, he took it some days ago to the
+      locksmith, and when the latter failed to return it, he laughed, and said
+      he thought no one would ever think of meddling with his front door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there more than one night-key to your house?&rdquo; I now asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when did Mr. Hasbrouck last use his?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night, when he came home from prayer meeting,&rdquo; she answered, and burst
+      into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her grief was so real and her loss so recent that I hesitated to afflict
+      her by further questions. So returning to the scene of the tragedy, I
+      stepped out upon the balcony which ran in front. Soft voices instantly
+      struck my ears. The neighbours on either side were grouped in front of
+      their own windows, and were exchanging the remarks natural under the
+      circumstances. I paused, as in duty bound, and listened. But I heard
+      nothing worth recording, and would have instantly reentered the house, if
+      I had not been impressed by the appearance of a very graceful woman who
+      stood at my right. She was clinging to her husband, who was gazing at one
+      of the pillars before him in a strange fixed way which astonished me till
+      he attempted to move, and then I saw that he was blind. I remembered that
+      there lived in this row a blind doctor, equally celebrated for his skill
+      and for his uncommon personal attractions, and greatly interested not only
+      by his affliction, but in the sympathy evinced by his young and
+      affectionate wife, I stood still, till I heard her say in the soft and
+      appealing tones of love:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, Constant; you have heavy duties for to-morrow, and you should
+      get a few hours&rsquo; rest if possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He came from the shadow of the pillar, and for one minute I saw his face
+      with the lamplight shining full upon it. It was as regular of feature as a
+      sculptured Adonis, and it was as white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleep!&rdquo; he repeated, in the measured tones of deep but suppressed
+      feeling. &ldquo;Sleep! with murder on the other side of the wall!&rdquo; And he
+      stretched out his arms in a dazed way that insensibly accentuated the
+      horror I myself felt of the crime which had so lately taken place in the
+      room behind me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She, noting the movement, took one of the groping hands in her own and
+      drew him gently towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This way,&rdquo; she urged; and, guiding him into the house, she closed the
+      window and drew down the shades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have no excuse to offer for my curiosity, but the interest excited in me
+      by this totally irrelevant episode was so great that I did not leave the
+      neighbourhood till I had learned something of this remarkable couple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story told me was very simple. Dr. Zabriskie had not been born blind,
+      but had become so after a grievous illness which had stricken him down
+      soon after he received his diploma. Instead of succumbing to an affliction
+      which would have daunted most men, he expressed his intention of
+      practising his profession, and soon became so successful in it that he
+      found no difficulty in establishing himself in one of the best paying
+      quarters of the city. Indeed, his intuition seemed to have developed in a
+      remarkable degree after the loss of his sight, and he seldom, if ever,
+      made a mistake in diagnosis. Considering this fact, and the personal
+      attractions which gave him distinction, it was no wonder that he soon
+      became a popular physician whose presence was a benefaction and whose word
+      law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been engaged to be married at the time of his illness, and when he
+      learned what was likely to be its result, had offered to release the young
+      lady from all obligation to him. But she would not be released, and they
+      were married. This had taken place some five years previous to Mr.
+      Hasbrouck&rsquo;s death, three of which had been spent by them in Lafayette
+      Place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much for the beautiful woman next door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There being absolutely no clue to the assailant of Mr. Hasbrouck, I
+      naturally looked forward to the inquest for some evidence upon which to
+      work. But there seemed to be no underlying facts to this tragedy. The most
+      careful study into the habits and conduct of the deceased brought nothing
+      to light save his general beneficence and rectitude, nor was there in his
+      history or in that of his wife, any secret or hidden obligation calculated
+      to provoke any such act of revenge as murder. Mrs. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s surmise
+      that the intruder was simply a burglar, and that she had rather imagined
+      than heard the words which pointed to the shooting as a deed of vengeance,
+      soon gained general credence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though the police worked long and arduously in this new direction
+      their efforts were without fruit and the case bids fair to remain an
+      unsolvable mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all. As Violet dropped the last page from her hand, she recalled
+      a certain phrase in her employer&rsquo;s letter. &ldquo;If at the end you come upon a
+      perfectly blank wall&mdash;&rdquo; Well, she had come upon this wall. Did he
+      expect her to make an opening in it? Or had he already done so himself,
+      and was merely testing her much vaunted discernment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Piqued by the thought, she carefully reread the manuscript, and when she
+      had again reached its uncompromising end, she gave herself up to a few
+      minutes of concentrated thought, then, taking a sheet of paper from the
+      rack before her, she wrote upon it a single sentence, and folding the
+      sheet, put it in an envelope which she left unaddressed. This done, she
+      went to bed and slept like the child she really was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At an early hour the next morning she entered her employer&rsquo;s office.
+      Acknowledging with a nod his somewhat ceremonious bow, she handed him the
+      envelope in which she had enclosed that one mysterious sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took it with a smile, opened it offhand, glanced at what she had
+      written, and flushed a vivid red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a&mdash;brick,&rdquo; he was going to say, but changed the last word to
+      one more in keeping with her character and appearance. &ldquo;Look here. I
+      expected this from you and so prepared myself.&rdquo; Taking out a similar piece
+      of paper from his own pocket-book, he laid it down beside hers on the desk
+      before him. It also held a single sentence and, barring a slight
+      difference of expression, the one was the counterpart of the other. &ldquo;The
+      one loose stone,&rdquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seen and noted by both.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; he asked. Then as she glanced expectantly his way, he earnestly
+      added: &ldquo;Together we may be able to do something. The reward offered by
+      Mrs. Hasbrouck for the detection of the murderer was a very large one. She
+      is a woman of means. I have never heard of its being withdrawn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it never has been,&rdquo; was Violet&rsquo;s emphatic conclusion, her dimples
+      enforcing the statement as only such dimples can. &ldquo;But&mdash;what do you
+      want of me in an affair of this kind? Something more than to help you
+      locate the one possible clue to further enlightenment. You would not have
+      mentioned the big reward just for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not. There is a sequel to the story I sent you. I have written it
+      out, with my own hand. Take it home and read it at your leisure. When you
+      see into what an unhappy maze my own inquiries have led me, possibly you
+      will be glad to assist me in clearing up a situation which is inflicting
+      great suffering on one whom you will be the first to pity. If so, a line
+      mentioning the fact will be much appreciated by me.&rdquo; And disregarding her
+      startled look and the impetuous shaking of her head, he bowed her out with
+      something more than his accustomed suavity but also with a seriousness
+      which affected her in spite of herself and effectually held back the
+      protest it was in her heart to make. She was glad of this when she read
+      his story; but later on&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, it is not for me to intrude Violet, or Violet&rsquo;s feelings into an
+      affair which she is so anxious to forget. I shall therefore from this
+      moment on, leave her as completely out of this tale of crime and
+      retribution as is possible and keep a full record of her work. When she is
+      necessary to the story, you will see her again. Meanwhile, read with her,
+      this relation of her employer&rsquo;s unhappy attempt to pursue an investigation
+      so openly dropped by the police. You will perceive, from its general style
+      and the accentuation put upon the human side of this sombre story, a
+      likeness to the former manuscript which may prove to you, as it certainly
+      did to Violet, to whose consideration she was indebted for the
+      readableness of the policeman&rsquo;s report, which in all probability had been
+      a simple statement of facts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there, I am speaking of Violet again. To prevent a further mischance
+      of this nature, I will introduce at once the above mentioned account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man in all New York was ever more interested than myself in the
+      Hasbrouck affair, when it was the one and only topic of interest at a
+      period when news was unusually scarce. But, together with many such
+      inexplicable mysteries, it had passed almost completely from my mind, when
+      it was forcibly brought back, one day, by a walk I took through Lafayette
+      Place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sight of the long row of uniform buildings, with their pillared fronts
+      and connecting balconies every detail of the crime which had filled the
+      papers at the time with innumerable conjectures returned to me with
+      extraordinary clearness, and, before I knew it, I found myself standing
+      stockstill in the middle of the block with my eye raised to the Hasbrouck
+      house and my ears&mdash;or rather my inner consciousness, for no one spoke
+      I am sure&mdash;ringing with a question which, whether the echo of some
+      old thought or the expression of a new one, so affected me by the promise
+      it held of some hitherto unsuspected clue, that I hesitated whether to
+      push this new inquiry then or there by an attempted interview with Mrs.
+      Hasbrouck, or to wait till I had given it the thought which such a
+      stirring of dead bones rightfully demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You know what that question was. I shall have communicated it to you, if
+      you have not already guessed it, before perusing these lines:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who uttered the scream which gave the first alarm of Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s
+      violent death?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was in a state of such excitement as I walked away&mdash;for I listened
+      to my better judgment as to the inadvisability of my disturbing Mrs.
+      Hasbrouck with these new inquiries&mdash;that the perspiration stood out
+      on my forehead. The testimony she had given at the inquest recurred to me,
+      and I remembered as distinctly as if she were then speaking, that she had
+      expressly stated that she did not scream when confronted by the sight of
+      her husband&rsquo;s dead body. But someone had screamed and that very loudly.
+      Who was it, then? One of the maids, startled by the sudden summons from
+      below, or someone else&mdash;some involuntary witness of the crime, whose
+      testimony had been suppressed at the inquest, by fear or influence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The possibility of having come upon a clue even at this late day so fired
+      my ambition that I took the first opportunity of revisiting Lafayette
+      Place. Choosing such persons as I thought most open to my questions, I
+      learned that there were many who could testify to having heard a woman&rsquo;s
+      shrill scream on that memorable night, just prior to the alarm given by
+      old Cyrus, but no one who could tell from whose lips it had come. One
+      fact, however, was immediately settled. It had not been the result of the
+      servant-women&rsquo;s fears. Both of the girls were positive that they had
+      uttered no sound, nor had they themselves heard any till Cyrus rushed to
+      the window with his wild cries. As the scream, by whomever given, was
+      uttered before they descended the stairs, I was convinced by these
+      assurances that it had issued from one of the front windows, and not from
+      the rear of the house, where their own rooms lay. Could it be that it had
+      sprung from the adjoining dwelling, and that&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remembered who had lived there and was for ringing the bell at once.
+      But, missing the doctor&rsquo;s sign, I made inquiries and found that he had
+      moved from the block. However, a doctor is soon found, and in less than
+      fifteen, minutes I was at the door of his new home, where I asked, not for
+      him, but for Mrs. Zabriskie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It required some courage to do this, for I had taken particular notice of
+      the doctor&rsquo;s wife at the inquest, and her beauty, at that time, had worn
+      such an aspect of mingled sweetness and dignity that I hesitated to
+      encounter it under any circumstances likely to disturb its pure serenity.
+      But a clue once grasped cannot be lightly set aside by a true detective,
+      and it would have taken more than a woman&rsquo;s frowns to stop me at this
+      point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, it was not with frowns she received me, but with a display of
+      emotion for which I was even less prepared. I had sent up my card and I
+      saw it trembling in her hand as she entered the room. As she neared me,
+      she glanced at it, and with a show of gentle indifference which did not in
+      the least disguise her extreme anxiety, she courteously remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name is an unfamiliar one to me. But you told my maid that your
+      business was one of extreme importance, and so I have consented to see
+      you. What can an agent from a private detective office have to say to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Startled by this evidence of the existence of some hidden skeleton in her
+      own closet, I made an immediate attempt to reassure her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing which concerns you personally,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;I simply wish to ask you
+      a question in regard to a small matter connected with Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s
+      violent death in Lafayette Place, a couple of years ago. You were living
+      in the adjoining house at the time I believe, and it has occurred to me
+      that you might on that account be able to settle a point which has never
+      been fully cleared up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of showing the relief I expected, her pallor increased and her
+      fine eyes, which had been fixed curiously upon me, sank in confusion to
+      the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great heaven!&rdquo; thought I. &ldquo;She looks as if at one more word from me, she
+      would fall at my feet in a faint. What is this I have stumbled upon!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not see how you can have any question to ask me on that subject,&rdquo;
+       she began with an effort at composure which for some reason disturbed me
+      more than her previous open display of fear. &ldquo;Yet if you have,&rdquo; she
+      continued, with a rapid change of manner that touched my heart in spite of
+      myself, &ldquo;I shall, of course, do my best to answer you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There are women whose sweetest tones and most charming smiles only serve
+      to awaken distrust in men of my calling; but Mrs. Zabriskie was not of
+      this number. Her face was beautiful, but it was also candid in its
+      expression, and beneath the agitation which palpably disturbed her, I was
+      sure there lurked nothing either wicked or false. Yet I held fast by the
+      clue which I had grasped as it were in the dark, and without knowing
+      whither I was tending, much less whither I was leading her, I proceeded to
+      say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The question which I presume to put to you as the next door neighbour of
+      Mr. Hasbrouck is this: Who was the woman who on the night of that
+      gentleman&rsquo;s assassination screamed out so loudly that the whole
+      neighbourhood heard her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gasp she gave answered my question in a way she little realized, and
+      struck as I was by the impalpable links that had led me to the threshold
+      of this hitherto unsolvable mystery, I was about to press my advantage and
+      ask another question, when she quickly started forward and laid her hand
+      on my lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Astonished, I looked at her inquiringly, but her head was turned aside,
+      and her eyes, fixed upon the door, showed the greatest anxiety. Instantly
+      I realized what she feared. Her husband was entering the house, and she
+      dreaded lest his ears should catch a word of our conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not knowing what was in her mind, and unable to realize the importance of
+      the moment to her, I yet listened to the advance of her blind husband with
+      an almost painful interest. Would he enter the room where we were, or
+      would he pass immediately to his office in the rear? She seemed to wonder
+      too, and almost held her breath as he neared the door, paused, and stood
+      in the open doorway, with his ear turned towards us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for myself, I remained perfectly still, gazing at his face in mingled
+      surprise and apprehension. For besides its beauty, which was of a marked
+      order, as I have already observed, it had a touching expression which
+      irresistibly aroused both pity and interest in the spectator. This may
+      have been the result of his affliction, or it may have sprung from some
+      deeper cause; but, whatever its source, this look in his face produced a
+      strong impression upon me and interested me at once in his personality.
+      Would he enter; or would he pass on? Her look of silent appeal showed me
+      in which direction her wishes lay, but while I answered her glance by
+      complete silence, I was conscious in some indistinct way that the business
+      I had undertaken would be better furthered by his entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blind have often been said to possess a sixth sense in place of the
+      one they have lost. Though I am sure we made no noise, I soon perceived
+      that he was aware of our presence. Stepping hastily forward he said, in
+      the high and vibrating tone of restrained passion:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zulma, are you there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment I thought she did not mean to answer, but knowing doubtless
+      from experience the impossibility of deceiving him, she answered with a
+      cheerful assent, dropping her hand as she did so from before my lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He heard the slight rustle which accompanied the movement, and a look I
+      found it hard to comprehend flashed over his features, altering his
+      expression so completely that he seemed another man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have someone with you,&rdquo; he declared, advancing another step, but with
+      none of the uncertainty which usually accompanies the movements of the
+      blind. &ldquo;Some dear friend,&rdquo; he went on, with an almost sarcastic emphasis
+      and a forced smile that had little of gaiety in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The agitated and distressed blush which answered him could have but one
+      interpretation. He suspected that her hand had been clasped in mine, and
+      she perceived his thought and knew that I perceived it also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drawing herself up, she moved towards him, saying in a sweet womanly tone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is no friend, Constant, not even an acquaintance. The person whom I
+      now present to you is a representative from some detective agency. He is
+      here upon a trivial errand which will soon be finished, when I will join
+      you in the office.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew she was but taking a choice between two evils, that she would have
+      saved her husband the knowledge of my calling as well as of my presence in
+      the house, if her self-respect would have allowed it; but neither she nor
+      I anticipated the effect which this introduction of myself in my business
+      capacity would produce upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A detective,&rdquo; he repeated, staring with his sightless eyes, as if, in his
+      eagerness to see, he half hoped his lost sense would return. &ldquo;He can have
+      no trivial errand here; he has been sent by God Himself to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me speak for you,&rdquo; hastily interposed his wife, springing to his side
+      and clasping his arm with a fervour that was equally expressive of appeal
+      and command. Then turning to me, she explained: &ldquo;Since Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s
+      unaccountable death, my husband has been labouring under an hallucination
+      which I have only to mention, for you to recognize its perfect absurdity.
+      He thinks&mdash;oh! do not look like that, Constant; you know it is an
+      hallucination which must vanish the moment we drag it into broad daylight&mdash;that
+      he&mdash;he, the best man in all the world, was himself the assailant of
+      Mr. Hasbrouck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say nothing of the impossibility of this being so,&rdquo; she went on in a
+      fever of expostulation. &ldquo;He is blind, and could not have delivered such a
+      shot even if he had desired to; besides, he had no weapon. But the
+      inconsistency of the thing speaks for itself, and should assure him that
+      his mind is unbalanced and that he is merely suffering from a shock that
+      was greater than we realized. He is a physician and has had many such
+      instances in his own practice. Why, he was very much attached to Mr.
+      Hasbrouck! They were the best of friends, and though he insists that he
+      killed him, he cannot give any reason for the deed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At these words the doctor&rsquo;s face grew stern, and he spoke like an
+      automaton repeating some fearful lesson:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I killed him. I went to his room and deliberately shot him. I had nothing
+      against him, and my remorse is extreme. Arrest me and let me pay the
+      penalty of my crime. It is the only way in which I can obtain peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Shocked beyond all power of self-control by this repetition of what she
+      evidently considered the unhappy ravings of a madman, she let go his arm
+      and turned upon me in frenzy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Convince him!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Convince him by your questions that he never
+      could have done this fearful thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was labouring under great excitement myself, for as a private agent with
+      no official authority such as he evidently attributed to me in the
+      blindness of his passion, I felt the incongruity of my position in the
+      face of a matter of such tragic consequence. Besides, I agreed with her
+      that he was in a distempered state of mind, and I hardly knew how to deal
+      with one so fixed in his hallucination and with so much intelligence to
+      support it. But the emergency was great, for he was holding out his wrists
+      in the evident expectation of my taking him into instant custody; and the
+      sight was killing his wife, who had sunk on the floor between us, in
+      terror and anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say you killed Mr. Hasbrouck,&rdquo; I began. &ldquo;Where did you get your
+      pistol, and what did you do with it after you left his house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband had no pistol; never had any pistol,&rdquo; put in Mrs. Zabriskie,
+      with vehement assertion. &ldquo;If I had seen him with such a weapon&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I threw it away. When I left the house, I cast it as far from me as
+      possible, for I was frightened at what I had done, horribly frightened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No pistol was ever found,&rdquo; I answered with a smile, forgetting for the
+      moment that he could not see. &ldquo;If such an instrument had been found in the
+      street after a murder of such consequence, it certainly would have been
+      brought to the police.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget that a good pistol is valuable property,&rdquo; he went on stolidly.
+      &ldquo;Someone came along before the general alarm was given; and seeing such a
+      treasure lying on the sidewalk, picked it up and carried it off. Not being
+      an honest man, he preferred to keep it to drawing the attention of the
+      police upon himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hum, perhaps,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;but where did you get it. Surely you can tell
+      where you procured such a weapon, if, as your wife intimates, you did not
+      own one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bought it that selfsame night of a friend; a friend whom I will not
+      name, since he resides no longer in this country. I&mdash;&rdquo; He paused;
+      intense passion was in his face; he turned towards his wife, and a low cry
+      escaped him, which made her look up in fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not wish to go into any particulars,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;God forsook me and I
+      committed a horrible crime. When I am punished, perhaps peace will return
+      to me and happiness to her. I would not wish her to suffer too long or too
+      bitterly for my sin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Constant!&rdquo; What love was in the cry! It seemed to move him and turn his
+      thoughts for a moment into a different channel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor child!&rdquo; he murmured, stretching out his hands by an irresistible
+      impulse towards her. But the change was but momentary, and he was soon
+      again the stern and determined self-accuser. &ldquo;Are you going to take me
+      before a magistrate?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;If so, I have a few duties to perform
+      which you are welcome to witness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was too much; I felt that the time had come for me to disabuse his
+      mind of the impression he had unwittingly formed of me. I therefore said
+      as considerately as I could:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mistake my position, Dr. Zabriskie. Though a detective of some
+      experience, I have no connection with the police and no right to intrude
+      myself in a matter of such tragic importance. If, however, you are as
+      anxious as you say to subject yourself to police examination, I will
+      mention the same to the proper authorities, and leave them to take such
+      action as they think best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will be still more satisfactory to me,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;for though I have
+      many times contemplated giving myself up, I have still much to do before I
+      can leave my home and practice without injury to others. Good-day; when
+      you want me you will find me here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was gone, and the poor young wife was left crouching on the floor
+      alone. Pitying her shame and terror, I ventured to remark that it was not
+      an uncommon thing for a man to confess to a crime he had never committed,
+      and assured her that the matter would be inquired into very carefully
+      before any attempt was made upon his liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thanked me, and slowly rising, tried to regain her equanimity; but the
+      manner as well as the matter of her husband&rsquo;s self-condemnation was too
+      overwhelming in its nature for her to recover readily from her emotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have long dreaded this,&rdquo; she acknowledged. &ldquo;For months I have foreseen
+      that he would make some rash communication or insane avowal. If I had
+      dared, I would have consulted some physician about this hallucination of
+      his; but he was so sane on other points that I hesitated to give my
+      dreadful secret to the world. I kept hoping that time and his daily
+      pursuits would have their effect and restore him to himself. But his
+      illusion grows, and now I fear that nothing will ever convince him that he
+      did not commit the deed of which he accuses himself. If he were not blind
+      I would have more hope, but the blind have so much time for brooding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think he had better be indulged in his fancies for the present,&rdquo; I
+      ventured. &ldquo;If he is labouring under an illusion it might be dangerous to
+      cross him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If?&rdquo; she echoed in an indescribable tone of amazement and dread. &ldquo;Can you
+      for a moment harbour the idea that he has spoken the truth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madam,&rdquo; I returned, with something of the cynicism of my calling, &ldquo;what
+      caused you to give such an unearthly scream just before this murder was
+      made known to the neighbourhood?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared, paled, and finally began to tremble, not, as I now believe, at
+      the insinuation latent in my words, but at the doubts which my question
+      aroused in her own breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I?&rdquo; she asked; then with a burst of candour which seemed inseparable
+      from her nature, she continued: &ldquo;Why do I try to mislead you or deceive
+      myself? I did give a shriek just before the alarm was raised next door;
+      but it was not from any knowledge I had of a crime having been committed,
+      but because I unexpectedly saw before me my husband whom I supposed to be
+      on his way to Poughkeepsie. He was looking very pale and strange, and for
+      a moment I thought I stood face to face with his ghost. But he soon
+      explained his appearance by saying that he had fallen from the train and
+      had only been saved by a miracle from being dismembered; and I was just
+      bemoaning his mishap and trying to calm him and myself, when that terrible
+      shout was heard next door of &lsquo;Murder! murder!&rsquo; Coming so soon after the
+      shock he had himself experienced, it quite unnerved him, and I think we
+      can date his mental disturbance from that moment. For he began immediately
+      to take a morbid interest in the affair next door, though it was weeks, if
+      not months, before he let a word fall of the nature of those you have just
+      heard. Indeed it was not till I repeated to him some of the expressions he
+      was continually letting fall in his sleep, that he commenced to accuse
+      himself of crime and talk of retribution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that your husband frightened you on that night by appearing
+      suddenly at the door when you thought him on his way to Poughkeepsie. Is
+      Dr. Zabriskie in the habit of thus going and coming alone at an hour so
+      late as this must have been?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget that to the blind, night is less full of perils than the day.
+      Often and often has my husband found his way to his patients&rsquo; houses alone
+      after midnight; but on this especial evening he had Leonard with him.
+      Leonard was his chauffeur, and always accompanied him when he went any
+      distance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;all we have to do is to summon Leonard and hear
+      what he has to say concerning this affair. He will surely know whether or
+      not his master went into the house next door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leonard has left us,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Dr. Zabriskie has another chauffeur now.
+      Besides (I have nothing to conceal from you), Leonard was not with him
+      when he returned to the house that evening or the doctor would not have
+      been without his portmanteau till the next day. Something&mdash;I have
+      never known what&mdash;caused them to separate, and that is why I have no
+      answer to give the doctor when he accuses himself of committing a deed
+      that night so wholly out of keeping with every other act of his life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And have you never asked Leonard why they separated and why he allowed
+      his master to come home alone after the shock he had received at the
+      station?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not know there was any reason for my doing so till long after he
+      had left us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when did he leave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I do not remember. A few weeks or possibly a few days after that
+      dreadful night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where is he now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that I have not the least means of knowing. But,&rdquo; she objected, in
+      sudden distrust, &ldquo;what do you want of Leonard? If he did not follow Dr.
+      Zabriskie to his own door, he could tell us nothing that would convince my
+      husband that he is labouring under an illusion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he might tell us something which would convince us that Dr. Zabriskie
+      was not himself after the accident; that he&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; came from her lips in imperious tones. &ldquo;I will not believe that he
+      shot Mr. Hasbrouck even if you prove him to have been insane at the time.
+      How could he? My husband is blind. It would take a man of very keen sight
+      to force himself into a house closed for the night, and kill a man in the
+      dark at one shot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, it is only a blind man who could do this,&rdquo; cried a voice
+      from the doorway. &ldquo;Those who trust to eyesight must be able to catch a
+      glimpse of the mark they aim at, and this room, as I have been told, was
+      without a glimmer of light. But the blind trust to sound, and as Mr.
+      Hasbrouck spoke&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; burst from the horrified wife, &ldquo;is there no one to stop him when he
+      speaks like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As you will see, this matter, so recklessly entered into, had proved to be
+      of too serious a nature for me to pursue it farther without the cognizance
+      of the police. Having a friend on the force in whose discretion I could
+      rely, I took him into my confidence and asked for his advice. He
+      pooh-poohed the doctor&rsquo;s statements, but said that he would bring the
+      matter to the attention of the superintendent and let me know the result.
+      I agreed to this, and we parted with the mutual understanding that mum was
+      the word till some official decision had been arrived at. I had not long
+      to wait. At an early day he came in with the information that there had
+      been, as might be expected, a division of opinion among his superiors as
+      to the importance of Dr. Zabriskie&rsquo;s so-called confession, but in one
+      point they had been unanimous and that was the desirability of his
+      appearing before them at Headquarters for a personal examination. As,
+      however, in the mind of two out of three of them his condition was
+      attributed entirely to acute mania, it had been thought best to employ as
+      their emissary one in whom he had already confided and submitted his case
+      to,&mdash;in other words, myself. The time was set for the next afternoon
+      at the close of his usual office hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went without reluctance, his wife accompanying him. In the short time
+      which elapsed between their leaving home and entering Headquarters, I
+      embraced the opportunity of observing them, and I found the study equally
+      exciting and interesting. His face was calm but hopeless, and his eye,
+      dark and unfathomable, but neither frenzied nor uncertain. He spoke but
+      once and listened to nothing, though now and then his wife moved as if to
+      attract his attention, and once even stole her hand towards his, in the
+      tender hope that he would feel its approach and accept her sympathy. But
+      he was deaf as well as blind; and sat wrapped up in thoughts which she, I
+      know, would have given worlds to penetrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her countenance was not without its mystery also. She showed in every
+      lineament passionate concern and misery, and a deep tenderness from which
+      the element of fear was not absent. But she, as well as he, betrayed that
+      some misunderstanding deeper than any I had previously suspected drew its
+      intangible veil between them and made the near proximity in which they sat
+      at once a heart-piercing delight and an unspeakable pain. What was the
+      misunderstanding; and what was the character of the fear that modified her
+      every look of love in his direction? Her perfect indifference to my
+      presence proved that it was not connected with the position in which he
+      had placed himself towards the police by his voluntary confession of
+      crime, nor could I thus interpret the expression, of frantic question
+      which now and then contracted her features, as she raised her eyes towards
+      his sightless orbs, and strove to read in his firm set lips the meaning of
+      those assertions she could only ascribe to loss of reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stopping of the carriage seemed to awaken both from thoughts that
+      separated rather than united them. He turned his face in her direction,
+      and she stretching forth her hand, prepared to lead him from the carriage,
+      without any of that display of timidity which had previously been evident
+      in her manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As his guide she seemed to fear nothing; as his lover, everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is another and a deeper tragedy underlying the outward and obvious
+      one,&rdquo; was my inward conclusion, as I followed them into the presence of
+      the gentlemen awaiting them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Zabriskie&rsquo;s quiet appearance was in itself a shock to those who had
+      anticipated the feverish unrest of a madman; so was his speech, which was
+      calm, straightforward, and quietly determined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shot Mr. Hasbrouck,&rdquo; was his steady affirmation, given without any show
+      of frenzy or desperation. &ldquo;If you ask me why I did it, I cannot answer; if
+      you ask me how, I am ready to state all that I know concerning the
+      matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Dr. Zabriskie,&rdquo; interposed one of the inspectors, &ldquo;the why is the
+      most important thing for us to consider just now. If you really desire to
+      convince us that you committed this dreadful crime of killing a totally
+      inoffensive man, you should give us some reason for an act so opposed to
+      all your instincts and general conduct.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the doctor continued unmoved:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had no reason for murdering Mr. Hasbrouck. A hundred questions can
+      elicit no other reply; you had better keep to the how.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A deep-drawn breath from the wife answered the looks of the three
+      gentlemen to whom this suggestion was offered. &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; that breath
+      seemed to protest, &ldquo;that he is not in his right mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I began to waver in my own opinion, and yet the intuition which has served
+      me in cases seemingly as impenetrable as this bade me beware of following
+      the general judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask him to inform you how he got into the house,&rdquo; I whispered to
+      Inspector D&mdash;, who sat nearest me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately the inspector put the question which I had suggested:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By what means did you enter Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s house at so late an hour as
+      this murder occurred?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blind doctor&rsquo;s head fell forward on his breast, and he hesitated for
+      the first and only time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not believe me,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;but the door was ajar when I came to
+      it. Such things make crime easy; it is the only excuse I have to offer for
+      this dreadful deed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The front door of a respectable citizen&rsquo;s house ajar at half-past eleven
+      at night! It was a statement that fixed in all minds the conviction of the
+      speaker&rsquo;s irresponsibility. Mrs. Zabriskie&rsquo;s brow cleared, and her beauty
+      became for a moment dazzling as she held out her hands in irrepressible
+      relief towards those who were interrogating her husband. I alone kept my
+      impassibility. A possible explanation of this crime had flashed like
+      lightning across my mind; an explanation from which I inwardly recoiled,
+      even while I felt forced to consider it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Zabriskie,&rdquo; remarked the inspector formerly mentioned as friendly to
+      him, &ldquo;such old servants as those kept by Mr. Hasbrouck do not leave the
+      front door ajar at twelve o&rsquo;clock at night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet ajar it was,&rdquo; repeated the blind doctor, with quiet emphasis; &ldquo;and
+      finding it so, I went in. When I came out again, I closed it. Do you wish
+      me to swear to what I say? If so, I am ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What reply could they give? To see this splendid-looking man, hallowed by
+      an affliction so great that in itself it called forth the compassion of
+      the most indifferent, accusing himself of a cold-blooded crime, in tones
+      which sounded dispassionate because of the will forcing their utterance,
+      was too painful in itself for any one to indulge in unnecessary words.
+      Compassion took the place of curiosity, and each and all of us turned
+      involuntary looks of pity upon the young wife pressing so eagerly to his
+      side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a blind man,&rdquo; ventured one, &ldquo;the assault was both deft and certain.
+      Are you accustomed to Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s house, that you found your way with
+      so little difficulty to his bedroom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am accustomed&mdash;&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But here his wife broke in with irrepressible passion:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not accustomed to that house. He has never been beyond the first
+      floor. Why, why do you question him? Do you not see&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hand was on her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;You know my skill in moving about a house; how I
+      sometimes deceive those who do not know me into believing that I can see,
+      by the readiness with which I avoid obstacles and find my way even in
+      strange and untried scenes. Do not try to make them think I am not in my
+      right mind, or you will drive me into the very condition you attribute to
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face, rigid, cold, and set, looked like that of a mask. Hers, drawn
+      with horror and filled with question that was fast taking the form of
+      doubt, bespoke an awful tragedy from which more than one of us recoiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you shoot a man dead without seeing him?&rdquo; asked the Superintendent,
+      with painful effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me a pistol and I will show you,&rdquo; was the quick reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A low cry came from the wife. In a drawer near to every one of us there
+      lay a pistol, but no one moved to take it out. There was a look in the
+      doctor&rsquo;s eye which made us fear to trust him with a pistol just then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will accept your assurance that you possess a skill beyond that of
+      most men,&rdquo; returned the Superintendent. And beckoning me forward, he
+      whispered: &ldquo;This is a case for the doctors and not for the police. Remove
+      him quietly, and notify Dr. Southyard of what I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Dr. Zabriskie, who seemed to have an almost supernatural acuteness of
+      hearing, gave a violent start at this, and spoke up for the first time
+      with real passion in his voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, I pray you. I can bear anything but that. Remember, gentlemen,
+      that I am blind; that I cannot see who is about me; that my life would be
+      a torture if I felt myself surrounded by spies watching to catch some
+      evidence of madness in me. Rather conviction at once, death, dishonour,
+      and obloquy. These I have incurred. These I have brought upon myself by
+      crime, but not this worse fate&mdash;oh! not this worse fate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His passion was so intense and yet so confined within the bounds of
+      decorum, that we felt strangely impressed by it. Only the wife stood
+      transfixed, with the dread growing in her heart, till her white, waxen
+      visage seemed even more terrible to contemplate than his passion-distorted
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not strange that my wife thinks me demented,&rdquo; the doctor continued,
+      as if afraid of the silence that answered him. &ldquo;But it is your business to
+      discriminate, and you should know a sane man when you see him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Inspector D&mdash;&mdash; no longer hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;give me the least proof that your assertions are
+      true, and we will lay your case before the prosecuting attorney.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Proof? Is not a man&rsquo;s word&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No man&rsquo;s confession is worth much without some evidence to support it. In
+      your case there is none. You cannot even produce the pistol with which you
+      assert yourself to have committed the deed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True, true. I was frightened by what I had done, and the instinct of
+      self-preservation led me to rid myself of the weapon in any way I could.
+      But someone found this pistol; someone picked it up from the sidewalk of
+      Lafayette Place on that fatal night. Advertise for it. Offer a reward. I
+      will give you the money.&rdquo; Suddenly he appeared to realize how all this
+      sounded. &ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;I know the story seems improbable; but it is
+      not the probable things that happen in this life, as, you should know, who
+      every day dig deep into the heart of human affairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Were these the ravings of insanity? I began to understand the wife&rsquo;s
+      terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bought the pistol,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;of&mdash;alas! I cannot tell you his
+      name. Everything is against me. I cannot adduce one proof; yet even she is
+      beginning to fear that my story is true. I know it by her silence, a
+      silence that yawns between us like a deep and unfathomable gulf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But at these words her voice rang out with passionate vehemence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, it is false! I will never believe that your hands have been
+      plunged in blood. You are my own pure-hearted Constant, cold, perhaps, and
+      stern, but with no guilt upon your conscience save in your own wild
+      imagination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zulma, you are no friend to me,&rdquo; he declared, pushing her gently aside.
+      &ldquo;Believe me innocent, but say nothing to lead these others to doubt my
+      word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she said no more, but her looks spoke volumes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The result was that he was not detained, though he prayed for instant
+      commitment. He seemed to dread his own home, and the surveillance to which
+      he instinctively knew he would henceforth be subjected. To see him shrink
+      from his wife&rsquo;s hand as she strove to lead him from the room was
+      sufficiently painful; but the feeling thus aroused was nothing to that
+      with which we observed the keen and agonized expectancy of his look as he
+      turned and listened for the steps of the officer who followed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From this time on I shall never know whether or not I am alone,&rdquo; was his
+      final observation as he left the building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is where the matter rests and here, Miss Strange, is where you come
+      in. The police were for sending an expert alienist into the house; but
+      agreeing with me, and, in fact, with the doctor himself, that if he were
+      not already out of his mind, this would certainly make them so, they, at
+      my earnest intercession, have left the next move to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That move as you must by this time understand involves you. You have
+      advantages for making Mrs. Zabriskie&rsquo;s acquaintance of which I beg you to
+      avail yourself. As friend or patient, you must win your way into that
+      home? You must sound to its depths one or both of these two wretched
+      hearts. Not so much now for any possible reward which may follow the
+      elucidation of this mystery which has come so near being shelved, but for
+      pity&rsquo;s sake and the possible settlement of a question which is fast
+      driving a lovely member of your sex distracted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      May I rely on you? If so&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Various instructions followed, over which Violet mused with a deprecatory
+      shaking of her head till the little clock struck two. Why should she,
+      already in a state of secret despondency, intrude herself into an affair
+      at once so painful and so hopeless?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But by morning her mood changed. The pathos of the situation had seized
+      upon her in her dreams, and before the day was over, she was to be seen,
+      as a prospective patient, in Dr. Zabriskie&rsquo;s office. She had a slight
+      complaint as her excuse, and she made the most of it. That is, at first,
+      but as the personality of this extraordinary man began to make its usual
+      impression, she found herself forgetting her own condition in the
+      intensity of interest she felt in his. Indeed, she had to pull herself
+      together more than once lest he should suspect the double nature of her
+      errand, and she actually caught herself at times rejoicing in his
+      affliction since it left her with only her voice to think of, in her hated
+      but necessary task of deception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That she succeeded in this effort, even with one of his nice ear, was
+      evident from the interested way in which he dilated upon her malady, and
+      the minute instructions he was careful to give her&mdash;the physician
+      being always uppermost in his strange dual nature, when he was in his
+      office or at the bedside of the sick;&mdash;and had she not been a deep
+      reader of the human soul she would have left his presence in simple wonder
+      at his skill and entire absorption in an exacting profession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as it was, she carried with her an image of subdued suffering, which
+      drove her, from that moment on, to ask herself what she could do to aid
+      him in his fight against his own illusion; for to associate such a man
+      with a senseless and cruel murder was preposterous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What this wish, helped by no common determination, led her into, it was
+      not in her mind to conceive. She was making her one great mistake, but as
+      yet she was in happy ignorance of it, and pursued the course laid out for
+      her without a doubt of the ultimate result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having seen and made up her mind about the husband, she next sought to see
+      and gauge the wife. That she succeeded in doing this by means of one of
+      her sly little tricks is not to the point; but what followed in natural
+      consequence is very much so. A mutual interest sprang up between them
+      which led very speedily to actual friendship. Mrs. Zabriskie&rsquo;s hungry
+      heart opened to the sympathetic little being who clung to her in such
+      evident admiration; while Violet, brought face to face with a real woman,
+      succumbed to feelings which made it no imposition on her part to spend
+      much of her leisure in Zulma Zabriskie&rsquo;s company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The result were the following naive reports which drifted into her
+      employer&rsquo;s office from day to day, as this intimacy deepened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor is settling into a deep melancholy, from which he tries to rise
+      at times, but with only indifferent success. Yesterday he rode around to
+      all his patients for the purpose of withdrawing his services on the plea
+      of illness. But he still keeps his office open, and today I had the
+      opportunity of witnessing his reception and treatment of the many
+      sufferers who came to him for aid. I think he was conscious of my
+      presence, though an attempt had been made to conceal it. For the listening
+      look never left his face from the moment he entered the room, and once he
+      rose and passed quickly from wall to wall, groping with out-stretched
+      hands into every nook and corner, and barely escaping contact with the
+      curtain behind which I was hidden. But if he suspected my presence, he
+      showed no displeasure at it, wishing perhaps for a witness to his skill in
+      the treatment of disease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And truly I never beheld a finer manifestation of practical insight in
+      cases of a more or less baffling nature. He is certainly a most wonderful
+      physician, and I feel bound to record that his mind is as clear for
+      business as if no shadow had fallen upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Zabriskie loves his wife, but in a way torturing to himself and to
+      her. If she is gone from the house he is wretched, and yet when she
+      returns he often forbears to speak to her, or if he does speak it is with
+      a constraint that hurts her more than his silence. I was present when she
+      came in today. Her step, which had been eager on the stairway, flagged as
+      she approached the room, and he naturally noted the change and gave his
+      own interpretation to it. His face, which had been very pale, flushed
+      suddenly, and a nervous trembling seized him which he sought in vain to
+      hide. But by the time her tall and beautiful figure stood in the doorway,
+      he was his usual self again in all but the expression of his eyes, which
+      stared straight before him in an agony of longing only to be observed in
+      those who have once seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where have you been, Zulma?&rdquo; he asked, as contrary to his wont, he moved
+      to meet her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To my mother&rsquo;s, to Arnold &amp; Constable&rsquo;s, and to the hospital, as you
+      requested,&rdquo; was her quick answer, made without faltering or embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped still nearer and took her hand, and as he did so my eye fell on
+      his and I noted that his finger lay over her pulse in seeming
+      unconsciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nowhere else?&rdquo; he queried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled the saddest kind of smile and shook her head; then, remembering
+      that he could not see this movement, she cried in a wistful tone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nowhere else, Constant; I was too anxious to get back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I expected him to drop her hand at this, but he did not; and his finger
+      still rested on her pulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And whom did you see while you were gone?&rdquo; he continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She told him, naming over several names.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have enjoyed yourself,&rdquo; was his cold comment, as he let go her
+      hand and turned away. But his manner showed relief, and I could not but
+      sympathize with the pitiable situation of a man who found himself forced
+      into means like this for probing the heart of his young wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet when I turned towards her, I realized that her position was but little
+      happier than his. Tears are no strangers to her eyes, but those which
+      welled up at this moment seemed to possess a bitterness that promised but
+      little peace for her future. Yet she quickly dried them and busied herself
+      with ministrations for his comfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I am any judge of woman, Zulma Zabriskie is superior to most of her
+      sex. That her husband mistrusts her is evident, but whether this is the
+      result of the stand she has taken in his regard, or only a manifestation
+      of dementia, I have as yet been unable to determine. I dread to leave them
+      alone together, and yet when I presume to suggest that she should be on
+      her guard in her interviews with him, she smiles very placidly and tells
+      me that nothing would give her greater joy than to see him lift his hand
+      against her, for that would argue that he is not accountable for his deeds
+      or assertions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet it would be a grief to see her injured by this passionate and unhappy
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You have said that you wanted all the details I could give; so I feel
+      bound to say that Dr. Zabriskie tries to be considerate of his wife,
+      though he often fails in the attempt. When she offers herself as his
+      guide, or assists him with his mail or performs any of the many acts of
+      kindness by which she continually manifests her sense of his affliction,
+      he thanks her with courtesy and often with kindness, yet I know she would
+      willingly exchange all his set phrases for one fond embrace or impulsive
+      smile of affection. It would be too much to say that he is not in the full
+      possession of his faculties, and yet upon what other hypothesis can we
+      account for the inconsistencies of his conduct?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have before me two visions of mental suffering. At noon I passed the
+      office door, and looking within, saw the figure of Dr. Zabriskie seated in
+      his great chair, lost in thought or deep in those memories which make an
+      abyss in one&rsquo;s consciousness. His hands, which were clenched, rested upon
+      the arms of his chair, and in one of them I detected a woman&rsquo;s glove,
+      which I had no difficulty in recognizing as one of the pair worn by his
+      wife this morning. He held it as a tiger might hold his prey or a miser
+      his gold, but his set features and sightless eyes betrayed that a conflict
+      of emotions was being waged within him, among which tenderness had but
+      little share.
+</p>
+    <p>
+Though alive as he usually is to every sound, he was too
+      absorbed at this moment to notice my presence, though I had taken no pains
+      to approach quietly. I therefore stood for a full minute watching him,
+      till an irresistible sense of the shame at thus spying upon a blind man in
+      his moments of secret anguish compelled me to withdraw. But not before I
+      saw his features relax in a storm of passionate feeling, as he rained
+      kisses after kisses on the senseless kid he had so long held in his
+      motionless grasp. Yet when an hour later he entered the dining-room on his
+      wife&rsquo;s arm, there was nothing in his manner to show that he had in any way
+      changed in his attitude towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other picture was more tragic still. I was seeking Mrs. Zabriskie in
+      her own room, when I caught a fleeting vision of her tall form, with her
+      arms thrown up over her head in a paroxysm of feeling which made her as
+      oblivious to my presence as her husband had been several hours before.
+      Were the words that escaped her lips &ldquo;Thank God we have no children!&rdquo; or
+      was this exclamation suggested to me by the passion and unrestrained
+      impulse of her action?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much up to date. Interesting enough, or so her employer seemed to
+      think, as he went hurriedly through the whole story, one special afternoon
+      in his office, tapping each sheet as he laid it aside with his sagacious
+      forefinger, as though he would say, &ldquo;Enough! My theory still holds good;
+      nothing contradictory here; on the contrary complete and undisputable
+      confirmation of the one and only explanation of this astounding crime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What was that theory; and in what way and through whose efforts had he
+      been enabled to form one? The following notes may enlighten us. Though
+      written in his own hand, and undoubtedly a memorandum of his own
+      activities, he evidently thinks it worth while to reperuse them in
+      connection with those he had just laid aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can do no better than read them also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We omit dates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Watched the Zabriskie mansion for five hours this morning, from the second
+      story window of an adjoining hotel. Saw the doctor when he drove away on
+      his round of visits, and saw him when he returned. A coloured man
+      accompanied him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Today I followed Mrs. Zabriskie. She went first to a house in Washington
+      Place where I am told her mother lives. Here she stayed some time, after
+      which she drove down to Canal Street, where she did some shopping, and
+      later stopped at the hospital, into which I took the liberty of following
+      her. She seemed to know many there, and passed from cot to cot with a
+      smile in which I alone discerned the sadness of a broken heart. When she
+      left, I left also, without having learned anything beyond the fact that
+      Mrs. Zabriskie is one who does her duty in sorrow as in joy. A rare, and
+      trustworthy woman I should say, and yet her husband does not trust her.
+      Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have spent this day in accumulating details in regard to Dr. and Mrs.
+      Zabriskie&rsquo;s life previous to the death of Mr. Hasbrouck. I learned from
+      sources it would be unwise to quote just here, that Mrs. Zabriskie had not
+      lacked enemies to charge her with coquetry; that while she had never
+      sacrificed her dignity in public, more than one person had been heard to
+      declare that Dr. Zabriskie was fortunate in being blind, since the sight
+      of his wife&rsquo;s beauty would have but poorly compensated him for the pain he
+      would have suffered in seeing how that beauty was admired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That all gossip is more or less tinged with exaggeration I have no doubt,
+      yet when a name is mentioned in connection with such stories, there is
+      usually some truth at the bottom of them. And a name is mentioned in this
+      case, though I do not think it worth my while to repeat it here; and loth
+      as I am to recognize the fact, it is a name that carries with it doubts
+      that might easily account for the husband&rsquo;s jealousy. True, I have found
+      no one who dares hint that she still continues to attract attention or to
+      bestow smiles in any direction save where they legally belong. For since a
+      certain memorable night which we all know, neither Dr. Zabriskie nor his
+      wife have been seen save in their own domestic circle, and it is not into
+      such scenes that this serpent, to whom I have just alluded, ever intrudes,
+      nor is it in places of sorrow or suffering that his smile shines, or his
+      fascinations flourish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so one portion of my theory is proved to be sound. Dr. Zabriskie is
+      jealous of his wife; whether with good cause or bad I am not prepared to
+      decide; since her present attitude, clouded as it is by the tragedy in
+      which she and her husband are both involved, must differ very much from
+      that which she held when her life was unshadowed by doubt, and her
+      admirers could be counted by the score.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have just found out where Leonard is. As he is in service some miles up
+      the river, I shall have to be absent from my post for several hours, but I
+      consider the game well worth the candle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Light at last. I have not only seen Leonard, but succeeded in making him
+      talk. His story is substantially this: That on the night so often
+      mentioned, he packed his master&rsquo;s portmanteau at eight o&rsquo;clock and at ten
+      called a taxi and rode with the doctor to the Central station. He was told
+      to buy tickets to Poughkeepsie where his master had been called in
+      consultation, and having done this, hurried back to join Dr. Zabriskie on
+      the platform. They had walked together as far as the cars, and Dr.
+      Zabriskie was just stepping on to the train, when a man pushed himself
+      hurriedly between them and whispered something into his master&rsquo;s ear,
+      which caused him to fall back and lose his footing. Dr. Zabriskie&rsquo;s body
+      slid half under the car, but he was withdrawn before any harm was done,
+      though the cars gave a lurch at that moment which must have frightened him
+      exceedingly, for his face was white when he rose to his feet, and when
+      Leonard offered to assist him again on the train, he refused to go and
+      said he would return home and not attempt to ride to Poughkeepsie that
+      night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentleman, whom Leonard now saw to be Mr. Stanton, an intimate friend
+      of Dr. Zabriskie, smiled very queerly at this, and taking the doctor&rsquo;s arm
+      led him back to his own auto. Leonard naturally followed them, but the
+      doctor, hearing his steps, turned and bade him, in a very peremptory tone,
+      to take the cars home, and then, as if on second thought, told him to go
+      to Poughkeepsie in his stead and explain to the people there that he was
+      too shaken up by his misstep to do his duty, and that he would be with
+      them next morning. This seemed strange to Leonard, but he had no reasons
+      for disobeying his master&rsquo;s orders, and so rode to Poughkeepsie. But the
+      doctor did not follow him the next day; on the contrary he telegraphed for
+      him to return, and when he got back dismissed him with a month&rsquo;s wages.
+      This ended Leonard&rsquo;s connection with the Zabriskie family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A simple story bearing out what the wife has already told us; but it
+      furnishes a link which may prove invaluable. Mr. Stanton, whose first name
+      is Theodore, knows the real reason why Dr. Zabriskie returned home on the
+      night of the seventeenth of July, 19&mdash;. Mr. Stanton, consequently, is
+      the man to see, and this shall be my business tomorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Checkmate! Theodore Stanton is not in this country. Though this points him
+      out as the man from whom Dr. Zabriskie bought the pistol, it does not
+      facilitate my work, which is becoming more and more difficult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Stanton&rsquo;s whereabouts are not even known to his most intimate friends.
+      He sailed from this country most unexpectedly on the eighteenth of July a
+      year ago, which was the day after the murder of Mr. Hasbrouck. It looks
+      like a flight, especially as he has failed to maintain open communication
+      even with his relatives. Was he the man who shot Mr. Hasbrouck? No; but he
+      was the man who put the pistol in Dr. Zabriskie&rsquo;s hand that night, and
+      whether he did this with purpose or not, was evidently so alarmed at the
+      catastrophe which followed that he took the first outgoing steamer to
+      Europe. So far, all is clear, but there are mysteries yet to be solved,
+      which will require my utmost tact. What if I should seek out the gentleman
+      with whose name that of Mrs. Zabriskie has been linked, and see if I can
+      in any way connect him with Mr. Stanton or the events of that night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eureka! I have discovered that Mr. Stanton cherished a mortal hatred for
+      the gentleman above mentioned. It was a covert feeling, but no less deadly
+      on that account; and while it never led him into any extravagances, it was
+      of force sufficient to account for many a secret misfortune occurring to
+      that gentleman. Now if I can prove that he is the Mephistopheles who
+      whispered insinuations into the ear of our blind Faust, I may strike a
+      fact that will lead me out of this maze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But how can I approach secrets so delicate without compromising the woman
+      I feel bound to respect if only for the devoted love she manifests for her
+      unhappy husband!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall have to appeal to Joe Smithers. This is something which I always
+      hate to do, but as long as he will take money, and as long as he is
+      fertile in resources for obtaining the truth from people I am myself
+      unable to reach, I must make use of his cupidity and his genius. He is an
+      honourable fellow in one way, and never retails as gossip what he acquires
+      for our use. How will he proceed in this case, and by what tactics will he
+      gain the very delicate information which we need? I own that I am curious
+      to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall really have to put down at length the incidents of this night. I
+      always knew that Joe Smithers was invaluable not only to myself but to the
+      police, but I really did not know he possessed talents of so high an
+      order. He wrote me this morning that he had succeeded in getting Mr. T&mdash;&lsquo;s
+      promise to spend the evening with him, and advised me that if I desired to
+      be present as well, his own servant would not be at home, and that an
+      opener of bottles would be required.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I was very anxious to see Mr. T&mdash;&mdash; with my own eyes, I
+      accepted this invitation to play the spy, and went at the proper hour to
+      Mr. Smithers&rsquo;s rooms. I found them picturesque in the extreme. Piles of
+      books stacked here and there to the ceiling made nooks and corners which
+      could be quite shut off by a couple of old pictures set into movable
+      frames capable of swinging out or in at the whim or convenience of the
+      owner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I had use for the dark shadows cast by these pictures, I pulled them
+      both out, and made such other arrangements as appeared likely to
+      facilitate the purpose I had in view; then I sat down and waited for the
+      two gentlemen who were expected to come in together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They arrived almost immediately, whereupon I rose and played my part with
+      all necessary discretion. While ridding Mr. T&mdash;&mdash; of his
+      overcoat, I stole a look at his face. It is not a handsome one, but it
+      boasts of a gay, devil-may-care expression which doubtless makes it
+      dangerous to many women, while his manners are especially attractive, and
+      his voice the richest and most persuasive that I ever heard. I contrasted
+      him, almost against my will, with Dr. Zabriskie, and decided that with
+      most women the former&rsquo;s undoubted fascinations of speech and bearing would
+      outweigh the latter&rsquo;s great beauty and mental endowments; but I doubted if
+      they would with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conversation which immediately began was brilliant but desultory, for
+      Mr. Smithers, with an airy lightness for which he is remarkable,
+      introduced topic after topic, perhaps for the purpose of showing off Mr.
+      T-&rsquo;s versatility, and perhaps for the deeper and more sinister purpose of
+      shaking the kaleidoscope of talk so thoroughly, that the real topic which
+      we were met to discuss should not make an undue impression on the mind of
+      his guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile one, two, three bottles passed, and I had the pleasure of seeing
+      Joe Smithers&rsquo;s eye grow calmer and that of Mr. T&mdash;&mdash; more
+      brilliant and more uncertain. As the last bottle was being passed, Joe
+      cast me a meaning glance, and the real business of the evening began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall not attempt to relate the half dozen failures which Joe made in
+      endeavouring to elicit the facts we were in search of, without arousing
+      the suspicion of his visitor. I am only going to relate the successful
+      attempt. They had been talking now for some hours, and I, who had long
+      before been waved aside from their immediate presence, was hiding my
+      curiosity and growing excitement behind one of the pictures, when I
+      suddenly heard Joe say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has the most remarkable memory I ever met. He can tell to a day when
+      any notable event occurred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw!&rdquo; answered his companion, who, by the way, was known to pride
+      himself upon his own memory for dates, &ldquo;I can state where I went and what
+      I did on every day in the year. That may not embrace what you call
+      &lsquo;notable events,&rsquo; but the memory required is all the more remarkable, is
+      it not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh!&rdquo; was his friend&rsquo;s provoking reply, &ldquo;you are bluffing, Ben; I will
+      never believe that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. T-, who had passed by this time into that stage of intoxication which
+      makes persistence in an assertion a duty as well as a pleasure, threw back
+      his head, and as the wreaths of smoke rose in airy spirals from his lips,
+      reiterated his statement, and offered to submit to any test of his vaunted
+      powers which the other might dictate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You keep a diary&mdash;&rdquo; began Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which at the present moment is at home,&rdquo; completed the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you allow me to refer to it tomorrow, if I am suspicious of the
+      accuracy of your recollections?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Undoubtedly,&rdquo; returned the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then, I will wager you a cool fifty that you cannot tell where
+      you were between the hours of ten and eleven on a certain night which I
+      will name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Done!&rdquo; cried the other, bringing out his pocket-book and laying it on the
+      table before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe followed his example and then summoned me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Write a date down here,&rdquo; he commanded, pushing a piece of paper towards
+      me, with a look keen as the flash of a blade. &ldquo;Any date, man,&rdquo; he added,
+      as I appeared to hesitate in the embarrassment I thought natural under the
+      circumstances. &ldquo;Put down day, month, and year, only don&rsquo;t go too far back;
+      not farther than two years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Smiling with the air of a flunkey admitted to the sports of his superiors,
+      I wrote a line and laid it before Mr. Smithers, who at once pushed it with
+      a careless gesture towards his companion. You can of course guess the date
+      I made use of: July 17, 19&mdash;. Mr. T&mdash;, who had evidently looked
+      upon this matter as mere play, flushed scarlet as he read these words, and
+      for one instant looked as if he had rather fly the house than answer Joe
+      Smithers&rsquo;s nonchalant glance of inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have given my word and will keep it,&rdquo; he said at last, but with a look
+      in my direction that sent me reluctantly back to my retreat. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      suppose you want names,&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;that is, if anything I have to tell
+      is of a delicate nature?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; answered the other, &ldquo;only facts and places.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think places are necessary either,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;I will tell you
+      what I did and that must serve you. I did not promise to give number and
+      street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; Joe exclaimed; &ldquo;earn your fifty, that is all. Show that you
+      remember where you were on the night of&rdquo;&mdash;and with an admirable show
+      of indifference he pretended to consult the paper between them&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      seventeenth of July, two years ago, and I shall be satisfied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was at the club for one thing,&rdquo; said Mr. T-; &ldquo;then I went to see a lady
+      friend, where I stayed until eleven. She wore a blue muslin&mdash;What is
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had betrayed myself by a quick movement which sent a glass tumbler
+      crashing to the floor. Zulma Zabriskie had worn a blue muslin on that same
+      night. You will find it noted in the report given me by the policeman who
+      saw her on their balcony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That noise?&rdquo; It was Joe who was speaking. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know Reuben as well
+      as I do or you wouldn&rsquo;t ask. It is his practice, I am sorry to say, to
+      accentuate his pleasure in draining my bottles by dropping a glass at
+      every third one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. T&mdash;&mdash; went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was a married woman and I thought she loved me; but&mdash;and this is
+      the greatest proof I can offer you that I am giving you a true account of
+      that night&mdash;she had not the slightest idea of the extent of my
+      passion, and only consented to see me at all because she thought, poor
+      thing, that a word from her would set me straight, and rid her of
+      attentions she evidently failed to appreciate. A sorry figure for a fellow
+      like me to cut; but you caught me on the most detestable date in my
+      calendar and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There he ceased being interesting and I anxious. The secret of a crime for
+      which there seemed to be no reasonable explanation is no longer a mystery
+      to me. I have but to warn Miss Strange&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had got thus far when a sound in the room behind him led him to look
+      up. A lady had entered; a lady heavily veiled and trembling with what
+      appeared to be an intense excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought he knew the figure, but the person, whoever it was, stood so
+      still and remained so silent, he hesitated to address her; which seeing,
+      she pushed up her veil and all doubt vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Violet herself. In disregard of her usual practice she had come
+      alone to the office. This meant urgency of some kind. Had she too sounded
+      this mystery? No, or her aspect would not have worn this look of triumph.
+      What had happened then? He made an instant endeavour to find out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have news,&rdquo; he quietly remarked. &ldquo;Good news, I should judge, by your
+      very cheery smile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I think I have found the way of bringing Dr. Zabriskie to himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Astonished beyond measure, so little did these words harmonize with the
+      impressions and conclusions at which he had just arrived, something very
+      like doubt spoke in his voice as he answered with the simple exclamation:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. He is obsessed by a fixed idea, and must be given an opportunity to
+      test the truth of that idea. The shock of finding it a false one may
+      restore him to his normal condition. He believes that he shot Mr.
+      Hasbrouck with no other guidance than his sense of hearing. Now if it can
+      be proved that his hearing is an insufficient guide for such an act (as of
+      course it is) the shock of the discovery may clear his brain of its
+      cobwebs. Mrs. Zabriskie thinks so, and the police&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s that? The police?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Dr. Zabriskie would be taken before them again this morning. No
+      entreaties on the part of his wife would prevail; he insisted upon his
+      guilt and asked her to accompany him there; and the poor woman found
+      herself forced to go. Of course he encountered again the same division of
+      opinion among the men he talked with. Three out of the four judged him
+      insane, which observing, he betrayed great agitation and reiterated his
+      former wish to be allowed an opportunity to prove his sanity by showing
+      his skill in shooting. This made an impression; and a disposition was
+      shown to grant his request then and there. But Mrs. Zabriskie would not
+      listen to this. She approved of the experiment but begged that it might be
+      deferred till another day and then take place in some spot remote from the
+      city. For some reason they heeded her, and she has just telephoned me that
+      this attempt of his is to take place tomorrow in the New Jersey woods. I
+      am sorry that this should have been put through without you; and when I
+      tell you that the idea originated with me&mdash;that from some word I
+      purposely let fall one day, they both conceived this plan of ending the
+      uncertainty that was devouring their lives, you will understand my
+      excitement and the need I have of your support. Tell me that I have done
+      well. Do not show me such a face&mdash;you frighten me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not wish to frighten you. I merely wish to know just who are going
+      on this expedition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some members of the police, Dr. Zabriskie, his wife, and&mdash;and
+      myself. She begged&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why? The affair is to be kept secret. The doctor will shoot, fail&mdash;Oh!&rdquo;
+       she suddenly broke in, alarmed by his expression, &ldquo;you think he will not
+      fail&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that you had better heed my advice and stay out of it. The affair
+      is now in the hands of the police, and your place is anywhere but where
+      they are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I go as her particular friend. They have given her the privilege of
+      taking with her one of her own sex and she has chosen me. I shall not fail
+      her. Father is away, and if the awful disappointment you suggest awaits
+      her, there is all the more reason why she should have some sympathetic
+      support?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was so true, that the fresh protest he was about to utter died on his
+      lips. Instead, he simply remarked as he bowed her out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I foresee that we shall not work much longer together. You are nearing
+      the end of your endurance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He never forgot the smile she threw back at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are some events which impress the human mind so deeply that their
+      memory mingles with all after-experiences. Though Violet had made it a
+      rule to forget as soon as possible the tragic episodes incident to the
+      strange career upon which she had so mysteriously embarked, there was
+      destined to be one scene, if not more, which she has never been able to
+      dismiss at will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the sight which met her eyes from the bow of the small boat in
+      which Dr. Zabriskie and his wife were rowed over to Jersey on the
+      afternoon which saw the end of this most sombre drama.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though it was by no means late in the day, the sun was already sinking,
+      and the bright red glare which filled the west and shone full upon the
+      faces of the half dozen people before her added much to the tragic nature
+      of the scene, though she was far from comprehending its full significance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor sat with his wife in the stern and it was upon their faces
+      Violet&rsquo;s glance was fixed. The glare shone luridly on his sightless
+      eyeballs, and as she noticed his unwinking lids, she realized as never
+      before what it was to be blind in the midst of sunshine. His wife&rsquo;s eyes,
+      on the contrary, were lowered, but there was a look of hopeless misery in
+      her colourless face which made her appearance infinitely pathetic, and
+      Violet felt confident that if he could only have seen her, he would not
+      have maintained the cold and unresponsive manner which chilled the words
+      on his poor wife&rsquo;s lips and made all advance on her part impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the seat in front of them sat an inspector and from some quarter,
+      possibly from under the inspector&rsquo;s coat, there came the monotonous
+      ticking of the small clock, which was to serve as a target for the blind
+      man&rsquo;s aim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This ticking was all Violet heard, though the river was alive with traffic
+      and large and small boats were steaming by them on every side. And I am
+      sure it was all that Mrs. Zabriskie heard also, as with hand pressed to
+      her heart, and eyes fixed on the opposite shore, she waited for the event
+      which was to determine whether the man she loved was a criminal or only a
+      being afflicted of God and worthy of her unceasing care and devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the sun cast its last scarlet gleam over the water, the boat grounded,
+      and Violet was enabled to have one passing word with Mrs. Zabriskie. She
+      hardly knew what she said but the look she received in return was like
+      that of a frightened child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was always to be seen in Mrs. Zabriskie&rsquo;s countenance this
+      characteristic blending of the severe and the childlike, and beyond an
+      added pang of pity for this beautiful but afflicted woman, Violet let the
+      moment pass without giving it the weight it perhaps demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The doctor and his wife had a long talk last night,&rdquo; was whispered in her
+      ear as she wound her way with the rest into the heart of the woods. With a
+      start she turned and perceived her employer following close behind her. He
+      had come by another boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it did not seem to heal whatever breach lies between them,&rdquo; he
+      proceeded. Then, in a quick, anxious tone, he whispered: &ldquo;Whatever
+      happens, do not lift your veil. I thought I saw a reporter skulking in the
+      rear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will be careful,&rdquo; Violet assured him, and could say no more, as they
+      had already reached the ground which had been selected for this trial at
+      arms, and the various members of the party were being placed in their
+      several positions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor, to whom light and darkness were alike, stood with his face
+      towards the western glow, and at his side were grouped the inspector and
+      the two physicians. On the arm of one of the latter hung Dr. Zabriskie&rsquo;s
+      overcoat, which he had taken off as soon as he reached the field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Zabriskie stood at the other end of the opening near a tall stump,
+      upon which it had been decided that the clock should be placed when the
+      moment came for the doctor to show his skill. She had been accorded the
+      privilege of setting the clock on this stump, and Violet saw it shining in
+      her hand as she paused for a moment to glance back at the circle of
+      gentlemen who were awaiting her movements. The hands of the clock stood at
+      five minutes to five, though Violet scarcely noted it at the time, for
+      Mrs. Zabriskie was passing her and had stopped to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he is not himself, he cannot be trusted. Watch him carefully and see
+      that he does no mischief to himself or others. Ask one of the inspectors
+      to stand at his right hand, and stop him if he does not handle his pistol
+      properly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet promised, and she passed on, setting the clock upon the stump and
+      immediately drawing back to a suitable distance at the right, where she
+      stood, wrapped in her long dark cloak. Her face shone ghastly white, even
+      in its environment of snow-covered boughs, and noting this, Violet wished
+      the minutes fewer between the present moment and the hour of five, at
+      which time he was to draw the trigger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Zabriskie,&rdquo; quoth the inspector, &ldquo;we have endeavoured to make this
+      trial a perfectly fair one. You are to have a shot at a small clock which
+      has been placed within a suitable distance, and which you are expected to
+      hit, guided only by the sound which it will make in striking the hour of
+      five. Are you satisfied with the arrangement?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly. Where is my wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the other side of the field some ten paces from the stump upon which
+      the clock is fixed.&rdquo; He bowed, and his face showed satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I expect the clock to strike soon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In less than five minutes,&rdquo; was the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let me have the pistol; I wish to become acquainted with its size
+      and weight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We glanced at each other, then across at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a gesture; it was one of acquiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately the inspector placed the weapon in the blind man&rsquo;s hand. It
+      was at once apparent that he understood the instrument, and Violet&rsquo;s hopes
+      which had been strong up to this moment, sank at his air of confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God I am blind this hour and cannot see her,&rdquo; fell from his lips,
+      then, before the echo of these words had died away, he raised his voice
+      and observed calmly enough, considering that he was about to prove himself
+      a criminal in order to save himself from being thought a madman:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let no one move. I must have my ears free for catching the first stroke
+      of the clock.&rdquo; And he raised the pistol before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moment of torturing suspense and deep, unbroken silence.
+      Violet&rsquo;s eyes were on him so she did not watch the clock, but she was
+      suddenly moved by some irresistible impulse to note how Mrs. Zabriskie was
+      bearing herself at this critical moment, and casting a hurried glance in
+      her direction she perceived her tall figure swaying from side to side, as
+      if under an intolerable strain of feeling. Her eyes were on the clock, the
+      hands of which seemed to creep with snail-like pace along the dial, when
+      unexpectedly, and a full minute before the minute hand had reached the
+      stroke of five, Violet caught a movement on her part, saw the flash of
+      something round and white show for an instant against the darkness of her
+      cloak, and was about to shriek warning to the doctor, when the shrill,
+      quick stroke of a clock rang out on the frosty air, followed by the ping
+      and flash of a pistol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sound of shattered glass, followed by a suppressed cry, told the
+      bystanders that the bullet had struck the mark, but before any one could
+      move, or they could rid their eyes of the smoke which the wind had blown
+      into their faces, there came another sound which made their hair stand on
+      end and sent the blood back in terror to their hearts. Another clock was
+      striking, which they now perceived was still standing upright on the stump
+      where Mrs. Zabriskie had placed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whence came the clock, then, which had struck before the time and been
+      shattered for its pains? One quick look told them. On the ground, ten
+      paces to the right, lay Zulma Zabriskie, a broken clock at her side, and
+      in her breast a bullet which was fast sapping the life from her sweet
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had to tell him, there was such pleading in her looks; and never will
+      any of the hearers forget the scream which rang from his lips as he
+      realized the truth. Breaking from their midst, he rushed forward, and fell
+      at her feet as if guided by some supernatural instinct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zulma,&rdquo; he shrieked, &ldquo;what is this? Were not my hands dyed deep enough in
+      blood that you should make me answerable for your life also?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes were closed but she opened them. Looking long and steadily at his
+      agonized face, she faltered forth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not you who have killed me; it is your crime. Had you been innocent
+      of Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s death your bullet would never have found my heart. Did
+      you think I could survive the proof that you had killed that good man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did it unwittingly. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; she commanded, with an awful look, which happily he could not see.
+      &ldquo;I had another motive. I wished to prove to you, even at the cost of my
+      life, that I loved you, had always loved you, and not&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now his turn to silence her. His hand crept to her lips, and his
+      despairing face turned itself blindly towards those about them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;leave us! Let me take a last farewell of my dying wife,
+      without listeners or spectators.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Consulting the eye of her employer who stood close beside her, and seeing
+      no hope in it, Violet fell slowly back. The others, followed, and the
+      doctor was left alone with his wife. From the distant position they took,
+      they saw her arms creep round his neck, saw her head fall confidingly on
+      his breast, then silence settled upon them, and upon all nature, the
+      gathering twilight deepening, till the last glow disappeared from the
+      heavens above and from the circle of leafless trees which enclosed this
+      tragedy from the outside world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at last there came a stir, and Dr. Zabriskie, rising up before them
+      with the dead body of his wife held closely to his breast, confronted them
+      with a countenance so rapturous that he looked like a man transfigured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will carry her to the boat,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Not another hand shall touch
+      her. She was my true wife, my true wife!&rdquo; And he towered into an attitude
+      of such dignity and passion that for a moment he took on heroic
+      proportions and they forgot that he had just proved himself to have
+      committed a cold-blooded and ghastly crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stars were shining when the party again took their seats in the boat;
+      and if the scene of their crossing to Jersey was impressive, what shall be
+      said of the return?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor, as before, sat in the stern, an awesome figure, upon which the
+      moon shone with a white radiance that seemed to lift his face out of the
+      surrounding darkness and set it like an image of frozen horror before
+      their eyes. Against his breast he held the form of his dead wife, and now
+      and then Violet saw him stoop as if he were listening for some token of
+      life from her set lips. Then he would lift himself again with hopelessness
+      stamped upon his features, only to lean forward in renewed hope that was
+      again destined to disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet had been so overcome by this tragic end to all her hopes, that her
+      employer had been allowed to enter the boat with her. Seated at her side
+      in the seat directly in front of the doctor, he watched with her these
+      simple tokens of a breaking heart, saying nothing till they reached
+      midstream, when true to his instincts for all his awe and compassion, he
+      suddenly bent towards him and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Zabriskie, the mystery of your crime is no longer a mystery to me.
+      Listen and see if I do not understand your temptation, and how you, a
+      conscientious and God-fearing man, came to slay your innocent neighbour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A friend of yours, or so he called himself, had for a long time filled
+      your ears with tales tending to make you suspicious of your wife and
+      jealous of a certain man whom I will not name. You knew that your friend
+      had a grudge against this man, and so for many months turned a deaf ear to
+      his insinuations. But finally some change which you detected in your
+      wife&rsquo;s bearing or conversation roused your own suspicions, and you began
+      to doubt her truth and to curse your blindness, which in a measure
+      rendered you helpless. The jealous fever grew and had risen to a high
+      point when one night&mdash;a memorable night&mdash;this friend met you
+      just as you were leaving town, and with cruel craft whispered in your ear
+      that the man you hated was even then with your wife and that if you would
+      return at once to your home you would find him in her company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The demon that lurks at the heart of all men, good or bad, thereupon took
+      complete possession of you, and you answered this false friend by saying
+      that you would not return without a pistol. Whereupon he offered to take
+      you to his house and give you his. You consented, and getting rid of your
+      servant by sending him to Poughkeepsie with your excuses, you entered your
+      friend&rsquo;s automobile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say you bought the pistol, and perhaps you did, but, however that may
+      be, you left his house with it in your pocket, and declining
+      companionship, walked home, arriving at the Colonnade a little before
+      midnight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ordinarily you have no difficulty in recognizing your own doorstep. But,
+      being in a heated frame of mind, you walked faster than usual and so
+      passed your own house and stopped at that of Mr. Hasbrouck, one door
+      beyond. As the entrances of these houses are all alike, there was but one
+      way by which you could have made yourself sure that you had reached your
+      own dwelling, and that was by feeling for the doctor&rsquo;s sign at the side of
+      the door. But you never thought of that. Absorbed in dreams of vengeance,
+      your sole impulse was to enter by the quickest means possible. Taking out
+      your night key, you thrust it into the lock. It fitted, but it took
+      strength to turn it, so much strength that the key was twisted and bent by
+      the effort. But this incident, which would have attracted your attention
+      at another time, was lost upon you at this moment. An entrance had been
+      effected, and you were in too excited a frame of mind to notice at what
+      cost, or to detect the small differences apparent in the atmosphere and
+      furnishings of the two houses, trifles which would have arrested your
+      attention under other circumstances, and made you pause before the upper
+      floor had been reached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was while going up the stairs that you took out your pistol, so that
+      by the time you arrived at the front room door you held it already drawn
+      and cocked in your hand. For, being blind, you feared escape on the part
+      of your victim, and so waited for nothing but the sound of a man&rsquo;s voice
+      before firing. When, therefore, the unfortunate Mr. Hasbrouck, roused by
+      this sudden intrusion, advanced with an exclamation of astonishment, you
+      pulled the trigger, and killed him on the spot. It must have been
+      immediately upon his fall that you recognized from some word he uttered,
+      or from some contact you may have had with your surroundings, that you
+      were in the wrong house and had killed the wrong man; for you cried out,
+      in evident remorse, &lsquo;God! what have I done!&rsquo; and fled without approaching
+      your victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Descending the stairs, you rushed from the house, closing the front door
+      behind you and regaining your own without being seen. But here you found
+      yourself baffled in your attempted escape, by two things. First, by the
+      pistol you still held in your hand, and secondly, by the fact that the key
+      upon which you depended for entering your own door was so twisted out of
+      shape that you knew it would be useless for you to attempt to use it. What
+      did you do in this emergency? You have already told us, though the story
+      seemed so improbable at the time, you found nobody to believe it but
+      myself. The pistol you flung far away from you down the pavement, from
+      which, by one of those rare chances which sometimes happen in this world,
+      it was presently picked up by some late passer-by of more or less doubtful
+      character. The door offered less of an obstacle than you had anticipated;
+      for when you turned again you found it, if I am not greatly mistaken,
+      ajar, left so, as we have reason to believe, by one who had gone out of it
+      but a few minutes before in a state which left him but little master of
+      his actions. It was this fact which provided you with an answer when you
+      were asked how you succeeded in getting into Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s house after
+      the family had retired for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Astonished at the coincidence, but hailing with gladness the deliverance
+      which it offered, you went in and ascended at once into your wife&rsquo;s
+      presence; and it was from her lips, and not from those of Mrs. Hasbrouck,
+      that the cry arose which startled the neighbourhood and prepared men&rsquo;s
+      minds for the tragic words which were shouted a moment later from the next
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she who uttered the scream knew of no tragedy save that which was
+      taking place in her own breast. She had just repulsed a dastardly suitor,
+      and seeing you enter so unexpectedly in a state of unaccountable horror
+      and agitation, was naturally stricken with dismay, and thought she saw
+      your ghost, or what was worse, a possible avenger; while you, having
+      failed to kill the man you sought, and having killed a man you esteemed,
+      let no surprise on her part lure you into any dangerous self-betrayal. You
+      strove instead to soothe her, and even attempted to explain the excitement
+      under which you laboured, by an account of your narrow escape at the
+      station, till the sudden alarm from next door distracted her attention,
+      and sent both your thoughts and hers in a different direction. Not till
+      conscience had fully awakened and the horror of your act had had time to
+      tell upon your sensitive nature, did you breathe forth those vague
+      confessions, which, not being supported by the only explanations which
+      would have made them credible, led her, as well as the police, to consider
+      you affected in your mind. Your pride as a man and your consideration for
+      her as a woman kept you silent, but did not keep the worm from preying
+      upon your heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I not correct in my surmises, Dr. Zabriskie, and is not this the true
+      explanation of your crime?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a strange look, he lifted up his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;you will waken her. See how peacefully she sleeps! I
+      should not like to have her wakened now, she is so tired, and I&mdash;I
+      have not watched over her as I should.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Appalled at his gesture, his look, his tone, Violet drew back, and for a
+      few minutes no sound was to be heard but the steady dip-dip of the oars
+      and the lap-lap of the waters against the boat. Then there came a quick
+      uprising, the swaying before her of something dark and tall and
+      threatening, and before she could speak or move, or even stretch forth her
+      hands to stay him, the seat before her was empty and darkness had filled
+      the place where but an instant previous he had sat, a fearsome figure,
+      erect and rigid as a sphinx.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What little moonlight there was, only served to show a few rising bubbles,
+      marking the spot where the unfortunate man had sunk with his much-loved
+      burden. As the widening circles fled farther and farther out, the tide
+      drifted the boat away, and the spot was lost which had seen the
+      termination of one of earth&rsquo;s saddest tragedies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM VII <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM VIII. MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One more! just one more well paying affair, and I promise to stop; really
+      and truly to stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Puss, why one more? You have earned the amount you set for yourself,&mdash;or
+      very nearly,&mdash;and though my help is not great, in three months I can
+      add enough&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you cannot, Arthur. You are doing well; I appreciate it; in fact, I
+      am just delighted to have you work for me in the way you do, but you
+      cannot, in your present position, make enough in three months, or in six,
+      to meet the situation as I see it. Enough does not satisfy me. The measure
+      must be full, heaped up, and running over. Possible failure following
+      promise must be provided for. Never must I feel myself called upon to do
+      this kind of thing again. Besides, I have never got over the Zabriskie
+      tragedy. It haunts me continually. Something new may help to put it out of
+      my head. I feel guilty. I was responsible&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Puss. I will not have it that you were responsible. Some such end was
+      bound to follow a complication like that. Sooner or later he would have
+      been driven to shoot himself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not her. But do you think she would have given those few minutes of
+      perfect understanding with her blind husband for a few years more of
+      miserable life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet made no answer; she was too absorbed in her surprise. Was this
+      Arthur? Had a few weeks&rsquo; work and a close connection with the really
+      serious things of life made this change in him? Her face beamed at the
+      thought, which seeing, but not understanding what underlay this evidence
+      of joy, he bent and kissed her, saying with some of his old nonchalance:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forget it, Violet; only don&rsquo;t let any one or anything lead you to
+      interest yourself in another affair of the kind. If you do, I shall have
+      to consult a certain friend of yours as to the best way of stopping this
+      folly. I mention no names. Oh! you need not look so frightened. Only
+      behave; that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s right,&rdquo; she acknowledged to herself, as he sauntered away;
+      &ldquo;altogether right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet because she wanted the extra money&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scene invited alarm,&mdash;that is, for so young a girl as Violet,
+      surveying it from an automobile some time after the stroke of midnight. An
+      unknown house at the end of a heavily shaded walk, in the open doorway of
+      which could be seen the silhouette of a woman&rsquo;s form leaning eagerly
+      forward with arms outstretched in an appeal for help! It vanished while
+      she looked, but the effect remained, holding her to her seat for one
+      startled moment. This seemed strange, for she had anticipated adventure.
+      One is not summoned from a private ball to ride a dozen miles into the
+      country on an errand of investigation, without some expectation of
+      encountering the mysterious and the tragic. But Violet Strange, for all
+      her many experiences, was of a most susceptible nature, and for the
+      instant in which that door stood open, with only the memory of that
+      expectant figure to disturb the faintly lit vista of the hall beyond, she
+      felt that grip upon the throat which comes from an indefinable fear which
+      no words can explain and no plummet sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this soon passed. With the setting of her foot to ground, conditions
+      changed and her emotions took on a more normal character. The figure of a
+      man now stood in the place held by the vanished woman; and it was not only
+      that of one she knew but that of one whom she trusted&mdash;a friend whose
+      very presence gave her courage. With this recognition came a better
+      understanding of the situation, and it was with a beaming eye and
+      unclouded features that she tripped up the walk to meet the expectant
+      figure and outstretched hand of Roger Upjohn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You here!&rdquo; she exclaimed, amid smiles and blushes, as he drew her into
+      the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He at once launched forth into explanations mingled with apologies for the
+      presumption he had shown in putting her to this inconvenience. There was
+      trouble in the house&mdash;great trouble. Something had occurred for which
+      an explanation must be found before morning, or the happiness and honour
+      of more than one person now under this unhappy roof would be wrecked. He
+      knew it was late&mdash;that she had been obliged to take a long and dreary
+      ride alone, but her success with the problem which had once come near
+      wrecking his own life had emboldened him to telephone to the office and&mdash;&ldquo;But
+      you are in ball-dress,&rdquo; he cried in amazement. &ldquo;Did you think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came from a ball. Word reached me between the dances. I did not go
+      home. I had been bidden to hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked his appreciation, but when he spoke it was to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the situation. Miss Digby&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The lady who is to be married tomorrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who hopes to be married tomorrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How, hopes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who will be married tomorrow, if a certain article lost in this house
+      tonight can be found before any of the persons who have been dining here
+      leave for their homes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet uttered an exclamation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, Mr. Cornell,&rdquo; she began&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cornell has our utmost confidence,&rdquo; Roger hastened to interpose. &ldquo;But
+      the article missing is one which he might reasonably desire to possess and
+      which he alone of all present had the opportunity of securing. You can
+      therefore see why he, with his pride&mdash;the pride off a man not rich,
+      engaged to marry a woman who is&mdash;should declare that unless his
+      innocence is established before daybreak, the doors of St. Bartholomew
+      will remain shut to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the article lost&mdash;what is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Digby will give you the particulars. She is waiting to receive you,&rdquo;
+       he added with a gesture towards a half-open door at their right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet glanced that way, then cast her looks up and down the hall in which
+      they stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know that you have not told me in whose house I am? Not hers, I
+      know. She lives in the city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you are twelve miles from Harlem. Miss Strange, you are in the Van
+      Broecklyn mansion, famous enough you will acknowledge. Have you never been
+      here before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been by here, but I recognized nothing in the dark. What an
+      exciting place for an investigation!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mr. Van Broecklyn? Have you never met him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Once, when a child. He frightened me then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And may frighten you now; though I doubt it. Time has mellowed him.
+      Besides, I have prepared him for what might otherwise occasion him some
+      astonishment. Naturally he would not look for just the sort of lady
+      investigator I am about to introduce to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled. Violet Strange was a very charming young woman, as well as a
+      keen prober of odd mysteries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The meeting between herself and Miss Digby was a sympathetic one. After
+      the first inevitable shock which the latter felt at sight of the beauty
+      and fashionable appearance of the mysterious little being who was to solve
+      her difficulties, her glance, which, under other circumstances, might have
+      lingered unduly upon the piquant features and exquisite dressing of the
+      fairy-like figure before her, passed at once to Violet&rsquo;s eyes, in whose
+      steady depths beamed an intelligence quite at odds with the coquettish
+      dimples which so often misled the casual observer in his estimation of a
+      character singularly subtle and well-poised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the impression she herself made upon Violet, it was the same she
+      made upon everyone. No one could look long at Florence Digby and not
+      recognize the loftiness of her spirit and the generous nature of her
+      impulses. In person she was tall and as she leaned to take Violet&rsquo;s hand,
+      the difference between them brought out the salient points in each, to the
+      great admiration of the one onlooker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, for all her interest in the case in hand, Violet could not help
+      casting a hurried look about her, in gratification of the curiosity
+      incited by her entrance into a house signalized from its foundation by
+      such a series of tragic events. The result was disappointing. The walls
+      were plain, the furniture simple. Nothing suggestive in either, unless it
+      was the fact that nothing was new, nothing modern. As it looked in the
+      days of Burr and Hamilton so it looked to-day, even to the rather
+      startling detail of candles which did duty on every side in place of gas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Violet recalled the reason for this, the fascination of the past seized
+      upon her imagination. There was no knowing where this might have carried
+      her, had not the feverish gleam in Miss Digby&rsquo;s eyes warned her that the
+      present held its own excitement. Instantly, she was all attention and
+      listening with undivided mind to that lady&rsquo;s disclosures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were brief and to the following effect:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner which had brought some half-dozen people together in this house
+      had been given in celebration of her impending marriage. But it was also
+      in a way meant as a compliment to one of the other guests, a Mr.
+      Spielhagen, who, during the week, had succeeded in demonstrating to a few
+      experts the value of a discovery he had made which would transform a great
+      industry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In speaking of this discovery, Miss Digby did not go into particulars, the
+      whole matter being far beyond her understanding; but in stating its value
+      she openly acknowledged that it was in the line of Mr. Cornell&rsquo;s own work,
+      and one which involved calculations and a formula which, if prematurely
+      disclosed, would invalidate the contract Mr. Spielhagen hoped to make, and
+      thus destroy his present hopes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of this formula but two copies existed. One was locked up in a safe
+      deposit vault in Boston, the other he had brought into the house on his
+      person, and it was the latter which was now missing, having been
+      abstracted during the evening from a manuscript of sixteen or more sheets,
+      under circumstances which she would now endeavour to relate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Van Broecklyn, their host, had in his melancholy life but one interest
+      which could be at all absorbing. This was for explosives. As consequence,
+      much of the talk at the dinner-table had been on Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s
+      discovery, and possible changes it might introduce into this especial
+      industry. As these, worked out from a formula kept secret from the trade,
+      could not but affect greatly Mr. Cornell&rsquo;s interests, she found herself
+      listening intently, when Mr. Van Broecklyn, with an apology for his
+      interference, ventured to remark that if Mr. Spielhagen had made a
+      valuable discovery in this line, so had he, and one which he had
+      substantiated by many experiments. It was not a marketable one, such as
+      Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s was, but in his work upon the same, and in the tests
+      which he had been led to make, he had discovered certain instances he
+      would gladly name, which demanded exceptional procedure to be successful.
+      If Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s method did not allow for these exceptions, nor make
+      suitable provision for them, then Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s method would fail more
+      times than it would succeed. Did it so allow and so provide? It would
+      relieve him greatly to learn that it did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer came quickly. Yes, it did. But later and after some further
+      conversation, Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s confidence seemed to wane, and before they
+      left the dinner-table, he openly declared his intention of looking over
+      his manuscript again that very night, in order to be sure that the formula
+      therein contained duly covered all the exceptions mentioned by Mr. Van
+      Broecklyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Mr. Cornell&rsquo;s countenance showed any change at this moment, she for one
+      had not noticed it; but the bitterness with which he remarked upon the
+      other&rsquo;s good fortune in having discovered this formula of whose entire
+      success he had no doubt, was apparent to everybody, and naturally gave
+      point to the circumstances which a short time afterward associated him
+      with the disappearance of the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ladies (there were two others besides herself) having withdrawn in a
+      body to the music-room, the gentlemen all proceeded to the library to
+      smoke. Here, conversation loosed from the one topic which had hitherto
+      engrossed it, was proceeding briskly, when Mr. Spielhagen, with nervous
+      gesture, impulsively looked about him and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot rest till I have run through my thesis again. Where can I find a
+      quiet spot? I won&rsquo;t be long; I read very rapidly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was for Mr. Van Broecklyn to answer, but no word coming from him, every
+      eye turned his way, only to find him sunk in one of those fits of
+      abstraction so well known to his friends, and from which no one who has
+      this strange man&rsquo;s peace of mind at heart ever presumes to rouse him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was to be done? These moods of their singular host sometimes lasted
+      half an hour, and Mr. Spielhagen had not the appearance of a man of
+      patience. Indeed he presently gave proof of the great uneasiness he was
+      labouring under, for noticing a door standing ajar on the other side of
+      the room, he remarked to those around him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A den! and lighted! Do you see any objection to my shutting myself in
+      there for a few minutes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No one venturing to reply, he rose, and giving a slight push to the door,
+      disclosed a small room exquisitely panelled and brightly lighted, but
+      without one article of furniture in it, not even a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The very place,&rdquo; quoth Mr. Spielhagen, and lifting a light cane-bottomed
+      chair from the many standing about, he carried it inside and shut the door
+      behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several minutes passed during which the man who had served at table
+      entered with a tray on which were several small glasses evidently
+      containing some choice liqueur. Finding his master fixed in one of his
+      strange moods, he set the tray down and, pointing to one of the glasses,
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is for Mr. Van Broecklyn. It contains his usual quieting powder.&rdquo;
+       And urging the gentlemen to help themselves, he quietly left the room. Mr.
+      Upjohn lifted the glass nearest him, and Mr. Cornell seemed about to do
+      the same when he suddenly reached forward and catching up one farther off
+      started for the room in which Mr. Spielhagen had so deliberately secluded
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why he did all this&mdash;why, above all things, he should reach across
+      the tray for a glass instead of taking the one under his hand, he can no
+      more explain than why he has followed many another unhappy impulse. Nor
+      did he understand the nervous start given by Mr. Spielhagen at his
+      entrance, or the stare with which that gentleman took the glass from his
+      hand and mechanically drank its contents, till he saw how his hand had
+      stretched itself across the sheet of paper he was reading, in an open
+      attempt to hide the lines visible between his fingers. Then indeed the
+      intruder flushed and withdrew in great embarrassment, fully conscious of
+      his indiscretion but not deeply disturbed till Mr. Van Broecklyn, suddenly
+      arousing and glancing down at the tray placed very near his hand remarked
+      in some surprise: &ldquo;Dobbs seems to have forgotten me.&rdquo; Then indeed, the
+      unfortunate Mr. Cornell realized what he had done. It was the glass
+      intended for his host which he had caught up and carried into the other
+      room&mdash;the glass which he had been told contained a drug. Of what
+      folly he had been guilty, and how tame would be any effort at excuse!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Attempting none, he rose and with a hurried glance at Mr. Upjohn who
+      flushed in sympathy at his distress, he crossed to the door he had lately
+      closed upon Mr. Spielhagen. But feeling his shoulder touched as his hand
+      pressed the knob, he turned to meet the eye of Mr. Van Broecklyn fixed
+      upon him with an expression which utterly confounded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo; that gentleman asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The questioning tone, the severe look, expressive at once of displeasure
+      and astonishment, were most disconcerting, but Mr. Cornell managed to
+      stammer forth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Spielhagen is in here consulting his thesis. When your man brought in
+      the cordial, I was awkward enough to catch up your glass and carry it in
+      to. Mr. Spielhagen. He drank it and I&mdash;I am anxious to see if it did
+      him any harm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he uttered the last word he felt Mr. Van Broecklyn&rsquo;s hand slip from his
+      shoulder, but no word accompanied the action, nor did his host make the
+      least move to follow him into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a matter of great regret to him later, as it left him for a
+      moment out of the range of every eye, during which he says he simply stood
+      in a state of shock at seeing Mr. Spielhagen still sitting there,
+      manuscript in hand, but with head fallen forward and eyes closed; dead,
+      asleep or&mdash;he hardly knew what; the sight so paralysed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether or not this was the exact truth and the whole truth, Mr. Cornell
+      certainly looked very unlike himself as he stepped back into Mr. Van
+      Broecklyn&rsquo;s presence; and he was only partially reassured when that
+      gentleman protested that there was no real harm in the drug, and that Mr.
+      Spielhagen would be all right if left to wake naturally and without shock.
+      However, as his present attitude was one of great discomfort, they decided
+      to carry him back and lay him on the library lounge. But before doing
+      this, Mr. Upjohn drew from his flaccid grasp, the precious manuscript, and
+      carrying it into the larger room placed it on a remote table, where it
+      remained undisturbed till Mr. Spielhagen, suddenly coming to himself at
+      the end of some fifteen minutes, missed the sheets from his hand, and
+      bounding up, crossed the room to repossess himself of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His face, as he lifted them up and rapidly ran through them with
+      ever-accumulating anxiety, told them what they had to expect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The page containing the formula was gone!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet now saw her problem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no doubt about the loss I have mentioned; all could see that
+      page 13 was not there. In vain a second handling of every sheet, the one
+      so numbered was not to be found. Page 14 met the eye on the top of the
+      pile, and page 12 finished it off at the bottom, but no page 13 in
+      between, or anywhere else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where had it vanished, and through whose agency had this misadventure
+      occurred? No one could say, or, at least, no one there made any attempt to
+      do so, though everybody started to look for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But where look? The adjoining small room offered no facilities for hiding
+      a cigar-end, much less a square of shining white paper. Bare walls, a bare
+      floor, and a single chair for furniture, comprised all that was to be seen
+      in this direction. Nor could the room in which they then stood be thought
+      to hold it, unless it was on the person of some one of them. Could this be
+      the explanation of the mystery? No man looked his doubts; but Mr. Cornell,
+      possibly divining the general feeling, stepped up to Mr. Van Broecklyn and
+      in a cool voice, but with the red burning hotly on either cheek, said, so
+      as to be heard by everyone present:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I demand to be searched&mdash;at once and thoroughly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment&rsquo;s silence, then the common cry:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will all be searched.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Mr. Spielhagen sure that the missing page was with the others when he
+      sat down in the adjoining room to read his thesis?&rdquo; asked their perturbed
+      host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very sure,&rdquo; came the emphatic reply. &ldquo;Indeed, I was just going through
+      the formula itself when I fell asleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are ready to assert this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am ready to swear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cornell repeated his request.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I demand that you make a thorough search of my person. I must be cleared,
+      and instantly, of every suspicion,&rdquo; he gravely asserted, &ldquo;or how can I
+      marry Miss Digby to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that there was no further hesitation. One and all subjected
+      themselves to the ordeal suggested; even Mr. Spielhagen. But this effort
+      was as futile as the rest. The lost page was not found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What were they to think? What were they to do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There seemed to be nothing left to do, and yet some further attempt must
+      be made towards the recovery of this important formula. Mr. Cornell&rsquo;s
+      marriage and Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s business success both depended upon its
+      being in the latter&rsquo;s hands before six in the morning, when he was engaged
+      to hand it over to a certain manufacturer sailing for Europe on an early
+      steamer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five hours!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had Mr. Van Broecklyn a suggestion to offer? No, he was as much at sea as
+      the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simultaneously look crossed look. Blankness was on every face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us call the ladies,&rdquo; suggested one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was done, and however great the tension had been before, it was even
+      greater when Miss Digby stepped upon the scene. But she was not a woman to
+      be shaken from her poise even by a crisis of this importance. When the
+      dilemma had been presented to her and the full situation grasped, she
+      looked first at Mr. Cornell and then at Mr. Spielhagen, and quietly said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is but one explanation possible of this matter. Mr. Spielhagen will
+      excuse me, but he is evidently mistaken in thinking that he saw the lost
+      page among the rest. The condition into which he was thrown by the
+      unaccustomed drug he had drank, made him liable to hallucinations. I have
+      not the least doubt he thought he had been studying the formula at the
+      time he dropped off to sleep. I have every confidence in the gentleman&rsquo;s
+      candour. But so have I in that of Mr. Cornell,&rdquo; she supplemented, with a
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An exclamation from Mr. Van Broecklyn and a subdued murmur from all but
+      Mr. Spielhagen testified to the effect of this suggestion, and there is no
+      saying what might have been the result if Mr. Cornell had not hurriedly
+      put in this extraordinary and most unexpected protest:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Digby has my gratitude,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;for a confidence which I hope to
+      prove to be deserved. But I must say this for Mr. Spielhagen. He was
+      correct in stating that he was engaged in looking over his formula when I
+      stepped into his presence with the glass of cordial. If you were not in a
+      position to see the hurried way in which his hand instinctively spread
+      itself over the page he was reading, I was; and if that does not seem
+      conclusive to you, then I feel bound to state that in unconsciously
+      following this movement of his, I plainly saw the number written on the
+      top of the page, and that number was&mdash;13.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A loud exclamation, this time from Spielhagen himself, announced his
+      gratitude and corresponding change of attitude toward the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wherever that damned page has gone,&rdquo; he protested, advancing towards
+      Cornell with outstretched hand, &ldquo;you have nothing to do with its
+      disappearance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly all constraint fled, and every countenance took on a relieved
+      expression. But the problem remained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly those very words passed some one&rsquo;s lips, and with their utterance
+      Mr. Upjohn remembered how at an extraordinary crisis in his own life he
+      had been helped and an equally difficult problem settled, by a little lady
+      secretly attached to a private detective agency. If she could only be
+      found and hurried here before morning, all might yet be well. He would
+      make the effort. Such wild schemes sometimes work. He telephoned to the
+      office and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was there anything else Miss Strange would like to know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange, thus appealed to, asked where the gentlemen were now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was told that they were still all together in the library; the ladies
+      had been sent home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let us go to them,&rdquo; said Violet, hiding under a smile her great fear
+      that here was an affair which might very easily spell for her that dismal
+      word, failure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So great was that fear that under all ordinary circumstances she would
+      have had no thought for anything else in the short interim between this
+      stating of the problem and her speedy entrance among the persons involved.
+      But the circumstances of this case were so far from ordinary, or rather
+      let me put it in this way, the setting of the case was so very
+      extraordinary, that she scarcely thought of the problem before her, in her
+      great interest in the house through whose rambling halls she was being so
+      carefully guided. So much that was tragic and heartrending had occurred
+      here. The Van Broecklyn name, the Van Broecklyn history, above all the Van
+      Broecklyn tradition, which made the house unique in the country&rsquo;s annals
+      (of which more hereafter), all made an appeal to her imagination, and
+      centred her thoughts on what she saw about her. There was door which no
+      man ever opened&mdash;had never opened since Revolutionary times&mdash;should
+      she see it? Should she know it if she did see it? Then Mr. Van Broecklyn
+      himself! just to meet him, under any conditions and in any place, was an
+      event. But to meet him here, under the pall of his own mystery! No wonder
+      she had no words for her companions, or that her thoughts clung to this
+      anticipation in wonder and almost fearsome delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His story was a well-known one. A bachelor and a misanthrope, he lived
+      absolutely alone save for a large entourage of servants, all men and
+      elderly ones at that. He never visited. Though he now and then, as on this
+      occasion, entertained certain persons under his roof, he declined every
+      invitation for himself, avoiding even, with equal strictness, all evening
+      amusements of whatever kind, which would detain him in the city after ten
+      at night. Perhaps this was to ensure no break in his rule of life never to
+      sleep out of his own bed. Though he was a man well over fifty he had not
+      spent, according to his own statement, but two nights out of his own bed
+      since his return from Europe in early boyhood, and those were in obedience
+      to a judicial summons which took him to Boston.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was his main eccentricity, but he had another which is apparent
+      enough from what has already been said. He avoided women. If thrown in
+      with them during his short visits into town, he was invariably polite and
+      at times companionable, but he never sought them out, nor had gossip,
+      contrary to its usual habit, ever linked his name with one of the sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet he was a man of more than ordinary attraction. His features were fine
+      and his figure impressive. He might have been the cynosure of all eyes had
+      he chosen to enter crowded drawing-rooms, or even to frequent public
+      assemblages, but having turned his back upon everything of the kind in his
+      youth, he had found it impossible to alter his habits with advancing
+      years; nor was he now expected to. The position he had taken was
+      respected. Leonard Van Broecklyn was no longer criticized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was there any explanation for this strangely self-centred life? Those who
+      knew him best seemed to think so. In the first place he had sprung from an
+      unfortunate stock. Events of unusual and tragic nature had marked the
+      family of both parents. Nor had his parents themselves been exempt from
+      this seeming fatality. Antagonistic in tastes and temperament, they had
+      dragged on an unhappy existence in the old home, till both natures
+      rebelled, and a separation ensued which not only disunited their lives but
+      sent them to opposite sides of the globe never to return again. At least,
+      that was the inference drawn from the peculiar circumstances attending the
+      event. On the morning of one never-to-be-forgotten day, John Van
+      Broecklyn, the grandfather of the present representative of the family,
+      found the following note from his son lying on the library table:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;FATHER:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Life in this house, or any house, with her is no longer endurable. One of
+      us must go. The mother should not be separated from her child. Therefore
+      it is I whom you will never see again. Forget me, but be considerate of
+      her and the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WILLIAM.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Six hours later another note was found, this time from the wife:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;FATHER:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tied to a rotting corpse what does one do? Lop off one&rsquo;s arm if necessary
+      to rid one of the contact. As all love between your son and myself is
+      dead, I can no longer live within the sound of his voice. As this is his
+      home, he is the one to remain in it. May our child reap the benefit of his
+      mother&rsquo;s loss and his father&rsquo;s affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;RHODA.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Both were gone, and gone forever. Simultaneous in their departure, they
+      preserved each his own silence and sent no word back. If the one went east
+      and the other west, they may have met on the other side of the globe, but
+      never again in the home which sheltered their boy. For him and for his
+      grandfather they had sunk from sight in the great sea of humanity, leaving
+      them stranded on an isolated and mournful shore. The grand-father steeled
+      himself to the double loss, for the child&rsquo;s sake; but the boy of eleven
+      succumbed. Few of the world&rsquo;s great sufferers, of whatever age or
+      condition, have mourned as this child mourned, or shown the effects of his
+      grief so deeply or so long. Not till he had passed his majority did the
+      line, carved in one day in his baby forehead, lose any of its intensity;
+      and there are those who declare that even later than that, the midnight
+      stillness of the house was disturbed from time to time by his muffled
+      shriek of &ldquo;Mother! Mother!&rdquo;, sending the servants from the house, and
+      adding one more horror to the many which clung about this accursed
+      mansion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of this cry Violet had heard, and it was that and the door&mdash;But I
+      have already told you about the door which she was still looking for, when
+      her two companions suddenly halted, and she found herself on the threshold
+      of the library, in full view of Mr. Van Broecklyn and his two guests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slight and fairy-like in figure, with an air of modest reserve more in
+      keeping with her youth and dainty dimpling beauty than with her errand,
+      her appearance produced an astonishment none of which the gentlemen were
+      able to disguise. This the clever detective, with a genius for social
+      problems and odd elusive cases! This darling of the ball-room in satin and
+      pearls! Mr. Spielhagen glanced at Mr. Cornell, and Mr. Cornell at Mr.
+      Spielhagen, and both at Mr. Upjohn, in very evident distrust. As for
+      Violet, she had eyes only for Mr. Van Broecklyn who stood before her in a
+      surprise equal to that of the others but with more restraint in its
+      expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not disappointed in him. She had expected to see a man, reserved
+      almost to the point of austerity. And she found his first look even more
+      awe-compelling than her imagination had pictured; so much so indeed, that
+      her resolution faltered, and she took a quick step backward; which seeing,
+      he smiled and her heart and hopes grew warm again. That he could smile,
+      and smile with absolute sweetness, was her great comfort when later&mdash;But
+      I am introducing you too hurriedly to the catastrophe. There is much to be
+      told first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I pass over the preliminaries, and come at once to the moment when Violet,
+      having listened to a repetition of the full facts, stood with downcast
+      eyes before these gentlemen, complaining in some alarm to herself: &ldquo;They
+      expect me to tell them now and without further search or parley just where
+      this missing page is. I shall have to balk that expectation without losing
+      their confidence. But how?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Summoning up her courage and meeting each inquiring eye with a look which
+      seemed to carry a different message to each, she remarked very quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is not a matter to guess at. I must have time and I must look a
+      little deeper into the facts just given me. I presume that the table I see
+      over there is the one upon which Mr. Upjohn laid the manuscript during Mr.
+      Spielhagen&rsquo;s unconsciousness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it&mdash;I mean the table&mdash;in the same condition it was then? Has
+      nothing been taken from it except the manuscript?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the missing page is not there,&rdquo; she smiled, pointing to its bare
+      top. A pause, during which she stood with her gaze fixed on the floor
+      before her. She was thinking and thinking hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she came to a decision. Addressing Mr. Upjohn she asked if he
+      were quite sure that in taking the manuscript from Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s hand
+      he had neither disarranged nor dropped one of its pages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer was unequivocal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; she declared, with quiet assurance and a steady meeting with her
+      own of every eye, &ldquo;as the thirteenth page was not found among the others
+      when they were taken from this table, nor on the persons of either Mr.
+      Cornell or Mr. Spielhagen, it is still in that inner room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo; came from every lip, each in a different tone. &ldquo;That room is
+      absolutely empty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I have a look at its emptiness?&rdquo; she asked, with a naive glance at
+      Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is positively nothing in the room but the chair Mr. Spielhagen sat
+      on,&rdquo; objected that gentleman with a noticeable air of reluctance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, may I not have a look at it?&rdquo; she persisted, with that disarming
+      smile she kept for great occasions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Van Broecklyn bowed. He could not refuse a request so urged, but his
+      step was slow and his manner next to ungracious as he led the way to the
+      door of the adjoining room and threw it open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just what she had been told to expect! Bare walls and floors and an empty
+      chair! Yet she did not instantly withdraw, but stood silently
+      contemplating the panelled wainscoting surrounding her, as though she
+      suspected it of containing some secret hiding-place not apparent to the
+      eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Van Broecklyn, noting this, hastened to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The walls are sound, Miss Strange. They contain no hidden cupboards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that door?&rdquo; she asked, pointing to a portion of the wainscoting so
+      exactly like the rest that only the most experienced eye could detect the
+      line of deeper colour which marked an opening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant Mr. Van Broecklyn stood rigid, then the immovable pallor,
+      which was one of his chief characteristics, gave way to a deep flush as he
+      explained:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a door there once; but it has been permanently closed. With
+      cement,&rdquo; he forced himself to add, his countenance losing its evanescent
+      colour till it shone ghastly again in the strong light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With difficulty Violet preserved her show of composure. &ldquo;The door!&rdquo; she
+      murmured to herself. &ldquo;I have found it. The great historic door!&rdquo; But her
+      tone was light as she ventured to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it can no longer be opened by your hand or any other?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It could not be opened with an axe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet sighed in the midst of her triumph. Her curiosity had been
+      satisfied, but the problem she had been set to solve looked inexplicable.
+      But she was not one to yield easily to discouragement. Marking the
+      disappointment approaching to disdain in every eye but Mr. Upjohn&rsquo;s, she
+      drew herself up&mdash;(she had not far to draw) and made this final
+      proposal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A sheet of paper,&rdquo; she remarked, &ldquo;of the size of this one cannot be
+      spirited away, or dissolved into thin air. It exists; it is here; and all
+      we want is some happy thought in order to find it. I acknowledge that that
+      happy thought has not come to me yet, but sometimes I get it in what may
+      seem to you a very odd way. Forgetting myself, I try to assume the
+      individuality of the person who has worked the mystery. If I can think
+      with his thoughts, I possibly may follow him in his actions. In this case
+      I should like to make believe for a few moments that I am Mr. Spielhagen&rdquo;
+       (with what a delicious smile she said this) &ldquo;I should like to hold his
+      thesis in my hand and be interrupted in my reading by Mr. Cornell offering
+      his glass of cordial; then I should like to nod and slip off mentally into
+      a deep sleep. Possibly in that sleep the dream may come which will clarify
+      the whole situation. Will you humour me so far?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A ridiculous concession, but finally she had her way; the farce was
+      enacted and they left her as she had requested them to do, alone with her
+      dreams in the small room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly they heard her cry out, and in another moment she appeared before
+      them, the picture of excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this chair standing exactly as it did when Mr. Spielhagen occupied
+      it?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mr. Upjohn, &ldquo;it faced the other way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stepped back and twirled the chair about with her disengaged hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Upjohn and Mr. Spielhagen both nodded, so did the others when she
+      glanced at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sign of ill-concealed satisfaction, she drew their attention to
+      herself; then eagerly cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen, look here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seating herself, she allowed her whole body to relax till she presented
+      the picture of one calmly asleep. Then, as they continued to gaze at with
+      fascinated eyes, not knowing what to expect, they saw something white
+      escape from her lap and slide across the floor till it touched and was
+      stayed by the wainscot. It was the top page of the manuscript she held,
+      and as some inkling of the truth reached their astonished minds, she
+      sprang impetuously to her feet and, pointing to the fallen sheet, cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you understand now? Look where it lies and then look here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had bounded towards the wall and was now on her knees pointing to the
+      bottom of the wainscot, just a few inches to the left of the fallen page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A crack!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;under what was once the door. It&rsquo;s a very thin one,
+      hardly perceptible to the eye. But see!&rdquo; Here she laid her finger on the
+      fallen paper and drawing it towards her, pushed it carefully against the
+      lower edge of the wainscot. Half of it at once disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could easily slip it all through,&rdquo; she assured them, withdrawing the
+      sheet and leaping to her feet in triumph. &ldquo;You know now where the missing
+      page lies, Mr. Spielhagen. All that remains is for Mr. Van Broecklyn to
+      get it for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      IV
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cries of mingled astonishment and relief which greeted this simple
+      elucidation of the mystery were broken by a curiously choked, almost
+      unintelligible, cry. It came from the man thus appealed to, who, unnoticed
+      by them all, had started at her first word and gradually, as action
+      followed action, withdrawn himself till he now stood alone and in an
+      attitude almost of defiance behind the large table in the centre of the
+      library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; he began, with a brusqueness which gradually toned down into
+      a forced urbanity as he beheld every eye fixed upon him in amazement,
+      &ldquo;that circumstances forbid my being of assistance to you in this
+      unfortunate matter. If the paper lies where you say, and I see no other
+      explanation of its loss, I am afraid it will have to remain there for this
+      night at least. The cement in which that door is embedded is thick as any
+      wall; it would take men with pickaxes, possibly with dynamite, to make a
+      breach there wide enough for any one to reach in. And we are far from any
+      such help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of the consternation caused by these words, the clock on the
+      mantel behind his back rang out the hour. It was but a double stroke, but
+      that meant two hours after midnight and had the effect of a knell in the
+      hearts of those most interested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am expected to give that formula into the hands of our manager
+      before six o&rsquo;clock in the morning. The steamer sails at a quarter after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you reproduce a copy of it from memory?&rdquo; some one asked; &ldquo;and
+      insert it in its proper place among the pages you hold there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The paper would not be the same. That would lead to questions and the
+      truth would come out. As the chief value of the process contained in that
+      formula lies in its secrecy, no explanation I could give would relieve me
+      from the suspicions which an acknowledgment of the existence of a third
+      copy, however well hidden, would entail. I should lose my great
+      opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cornell&rsquo;s state of mind can be imagined. In an access of mingled
+      regret and despair, he cast a glance at Violet, who, with a nod of
+      understanding, left the little room in which they still stood, and
+      approached Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lifting up her head,&mdash;for he was very tall,&mdash;and instinctively
+      rising on her toes the nearer to reach his ear, she asked in a cautious
+      whisper:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there no other way of reaching that place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She acknowledged afterwards, that for one moment her heart stood still
+      from fear, such a change took place in his face, though she says he did
+      not move a muscle. Then, just when she was expecting from him some harsh
+      or forbidding word, he wheeled abruptly away from her and crossing to a
+      window at his side, lifted the shade and looked out. When he returned, he
+      was his usual self so far as she could see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a way,&rdquo; he now confided to her in a tone as low as her own, &ldquo;but
+      it can only be taken by a child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by me?&rdquo; she asked, smiling down at her own childish proportions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant he seemed taken aback, then she saw his hand begin to
+      tremble and his lips twitch. Somehow&mdash;she knew not why&mdash;she
+      began to pity him, and asked herself as she felt rather than saw the
+      struggle in his mind, that here was a trouble which if once understood
+      would greatly dwarf that of the two men in the room behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am discreet,&rdquo; she whisperingly declared. &ldquo;I have heard the history of
+      that door&mdash;how it was against the tradition of the family to have it
+      opened. There must have been some very dreadful reason. But old
+      superstitions do not affect me, and if you will allow me to take the way
+      you mention, I will follow your bidding exactly, and will not trouble
+      myself about anything but the recovery of this paper, which must lie only
+      a little way inside that blocked-up door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Was his look one of rebuke at her presumption, or just the constrained
+      expression of a perturbed mind? Probably, the latter, for while she
+      watched him for some understanding of his mood, he reached out his hand
+      and touched one of the satin folds crossing her shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would soil this irretrievably,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is stuff in the stores for another,&rdquo; she smiled. Slowly his touch
+      deepened into pressure. Watching him she saw the crust of some old fear or
+      dominant superstition melt under her eyes, and was quite prepared, when he
+      remarked, with what for him was a lightsome air:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will buy the stuff, if you will dare the darkness and intricacies of
+      our old cellar. I can give you no light. You will have to feel your way
+      according to my direction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am ready to dare anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He left her abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will warn Miss Digby,&rdquo; he called back. &ldquo;She shall go with you as far as
+      the cellar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      V
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet in her short career as an investigator of mysteries had been in
+      many a situation calling for more than womanly nerve and courage. But
+      never&mdash;or so it seemed to her at the time&mdash;had she experienced a
+      greater depression of spirit than when she stood with Miss Digby before a
+      small door at the extreme end of the cellar, and understood that here was
+      her road&mdash;a road which once entered, she must take alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First, it was such a small door! No child older than eleven could possibly
+      squeeze through it. But she was of the size of a child of eleven and might
+      possibly manage that difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Secondly: there are always some unforeseen possibilities in every
+      situation, and though she had listened carefully to Mr. Van Broecklyn&rsquo;s
+      directions and was sure that she knew them by heart, she wished she had
+      kissed her father more tenderly in leaving him that night for the ball,
+      and that she had not pouted so undutifully at some harsh stricture he had
+      made. Did this mean fear? She despised the feeling if it did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirdly: She hated darkness. She knew this when she offered herself for
+      this undertaking; but she was in a bright room at the moment and only
+      imagined what she must now face as a reality. But one jet had been lit in
+      the cellar and that near the entrance. Mr. Van Broecklyn seemed not to
+      need light, even in his unfastening of the small door which Violet was
+      sure had been protected by more than one lock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doubt, shadow, and a solitary climb between unknown walls, with only a
+      streak of light for her goal, and the clinging pressure of Florence
+      Digby&rsquo;s hand on her own for solace&mdash;surely the prospect was one to
+      tax the courage of her young heart to its limit. But she had promised, and
+      she would fulfill. So with a brave smile she stooped to the little door,
+      and in another moment had started her journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For journey the shortest distance may seem when every inch means a
+      heart-throb and one grows old in traversing a foot. At first the way was
+      easy; she had but to crawl up a slight incline with the comforting
+      consciousness that two people were within reach of her voice, almost
+      within sound of her beating heart. But presently she came to a turn,
+      beyond which her fingers failed to reach any wall on her left. Then came a
+      step up which she stumbled, and farther on a short flight, each tread of
+      which she had been told to test before she ventured to climb it, lest the
+      decay of innumerable years should have weakened the wood too much to bear
+      her weight. One, two, three, four, five steps! Then a landing with an open
+      space beyond. Half of her journey was done. Here she felt she could give a
+      minute to drawing her breath naturally, if the air, unchanged in years,
+      would allow her to do so. Besides, here she had been enjoined to do a
+      certain thing and to do it according to instructions. Three matches had
+      been given her and a little night candle. Denied all light up to now, it
+      was at this point she was to light her candle and place it on the floor,
+      so that in returning she should not miss the staircase and get a fall. She
+      had promised to do this, and was only too happy to see a spark of light
+      scintillate into life in the immeasurable darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was now in a great room long closed to the world, where once officers
+      in Colonial wars had feasted, and more than one council had been held. A
+      room, too, which had seen more than one tragic happening, as its almost
+      unparalleled isolation proclaimed. So much Mr. Van Broecklyn had told her;
+      but she was warned to be careful in traversing it and not upon any pretext
+      to swerve aside from the right-hand wall till she came to a huge
+      mantelpiece. This passed, and a sharp corner turned, she ought to see
+      somewhere in the dim spaces before her a streak of vivid light shining
+      through the crack at the bottom of the blocked-up door. The paper should
+      be somewhere near this streak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All simple, all easy of accomplishment, if only that streak of light were
+      all she was likely to see or think of. If the horror which was gripping
+      her throat should not take shape! If things would remain shrouded in
+      impenetrable darkness, and not force themselves in shadowy suggestion upon
+      her excited fancy! But the blackness of the passage-way through which she
+      had just struggled was not to be found here. Whether it was the effect of
+      that small flame flickering at the top of the staircase behind her, or of
+      some change in her own powers of seeing, surely there was a difference in
+      her present outlook. Tall shapes were becoming visible&mdash;the air was
+      no longer blank&mdash;she could see&mdash;Then suddenly she saw why. In
+      the wall high up on her right was a window. It was small and all but
+      invisible, being covered on the outside with vines, and on the inside with
+      the cobwebs of a century. But some small gleams from the star-light night
+      came through, making phantasms out of ordinary things, which unseen were
+      horrible enough, and half seen choked her heart with terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot bear it,&rdquo; she whispered to herself even while creeping forward,
+      her hand upon the wall. &ldquo;I will close my eyes&rdquo; was her next thought. &ldquo;I
+      will make my own darkness,&rdquo; and with a spasmodic forcing of her lids
+      together, she continued to creep on, passing the mantelpiece, where she
+      knocked against something which fell with an awful clatter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This sound, followed as it was by that of smothered voices from the
+      excited group awaiting the result of her experiment from behind the
+      impenetrable wall she should be nearing now if she had followed her
+      instructions aright, freed her instantly from her fancies; and opening her
+      eyes once more, she cast a look ahead, and to her delight, saw but a few
+      steps away, the thin streak of bright light which marked the end of her
+      journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It took her but a moment after that to find the missing page, and picking
+      it up in haste from the dusty floor, she turned herself quickly about and
+      joyfully began to retrace her steps. Why then, was it that in the course
+      of a few minutes more her voice suddenly broke into a wild, unearthly
+      shriek, which ringing with terror burst the bounds of that dungeon-like
+      room, and sank, a barbed shaft, into the breasts of those awaiting the
+      result of her doubtful adventure, at either end of this dread
+      no-thoroughfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What had happened?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If they had thought to look out, they would have seen that the moon&mdash;held
+      in check by a bank of cloud occupying half the heavens&mdash;had suddenly
+      burst its bounds and was sending long bars of revealing light into every
+      uncurtained window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Florence Digby, in her short and sheltered life, had possibly never known
+      any very great or deep emotion. But she touched the bottom of extreme
+      terror at that moment, as with her ears still thrilling with Violet&rsquo;s
+      piercing cry, she turned to look at Mr. Van Broecklyn, and beheld the
+      instantaneous wreck it had made of this seemingly strong man. Not till he
+      came to lie in his coffin would he show a more ghastly countenance; and
+      trembling herself almost to the point of falling, caught him by the arm
+      and sought to read his face what had happened. Something disastrous she
+      was sure; something which he had feared and was partially prepared for,
+      yet which in happening had crushed him. Was it a pitfall into which the
+      poor little lady had fallen? If so&mdash;But he is speaking&mdash;mumbling
+      low words to himself. Some of them she can hear. He is reproaching himself&mdash;repeating
+      over and over that he should never have taken such a chance; that he
+      should have remembered her youth&mdash;the weakness of a young girl&rsquo;s
+      nerve. He had been mad, and now&mdash;and now&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the repetition of this word his murmuring ceased. All his energies
+      were now absorbed in listening at the low door separating him from what he
+      was agonizing to know&mdash;a door impossible to enter, impossible to
+      enlarge&mdash;a barrier to all help&mdash;an opening whereby sound might
+      pass but nothing else, save her own small body, now lying&mdash;where?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she hurt?&rdquo; faltered Florence, stooping, herself, to listen. &ldquo;Can you
+      hear anything&mdash;anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant he did not answer; every faculty was absorbed in the one
+      sense; then slowly and in gasps he began to mutter:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think&mdash;I hear&mdash;something. Her step&mdash;no, no, no step. All
+      is as quiet as death; not a sound, not a breath&mdash;she has fainted. O
+      God! O God! Why this calamity on top of all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had sprung to his feet at the utterance this invocation, but next
+      moment was down on knees again, listening&mdash;listening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never was silence more profound; they were hearkening for murmurs from a
+      tomb. Florence began to sense the full horror of it all, and was swaying
+      helplessly when Mr. Van Broecklyn impulsively lifted his hand in an
+      admonitory Hush! and through the daze of her faculties a small far sound
+      began to make itself heard, growing louder as she waited, then becoming
+      faint again, then altogether ceasing only to renew itself once more, till
+      it resolved into an approaching step, faltering in its course, but coming
+      ever nearer and nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s safe! She&rsquo;s not hurt!&rdquo; sprang from Florence&rsquo;s lips in inexpressible
+      relief; and expecting Mr. Van Broecklyn to show an equal joy, she turned
+      towards him, with the cheerful cry,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now if she has been so fortunate as to that missing page, we shall all be
+      repaid for our fright.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A movement on his part, a shifting of position which brought him finally
+      to his feet, but he gave no other proof of having heard her, nor did his
+      countenance mirror her relief. &ldquo;It is as if he dreaded, instead of hailed,
+      her return,&rdquo; was Florence&rsquo;s inward comment as she watched him
+      involuntarily recoil at each fresh token of Violet&rsquo;s advance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet because this seemed so very unnatural, she persisted in her efforts to
+      lighten the situation, and when he made no attempt to encourage Violet in
+      her approach, she herself stooped and called out a cheerful welcome which
+      must have rung sweetly in the poor little detective&rsquo;s ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sorry sight was Violet, when, helped by Florence, she finally crawled
+      into view through the narrow opening and stood once again on the cellar
+      floor. Pale, trembling, and soiled with the dust of years, she presented a
+      helpless figure enough, till the joy in Florence&rsquo;s face recalled some of
+      her spirit, and, glancing down at her hand in which a sheet of paper was
+      visible, she asked for Mr. Spielhagen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got the formula,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If you will bring him, I will hand it
+      over to him here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a word of her adventure; nor so much as one glance at Mr. Van
+      Broecklyn, standing far back in the shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was she more communicative, when, the formula restored and everything
+      made right with Mr. Spielhagen, they all came together again in the
+      library for a final word. &ldquo;I was frightened by the silence and the
+      darkness, and so cried out,&rdquo; she explained in answer to their questions.
+      &ldquo;Any one would have done so who found himself alone in so musty a place,&rdquo;
+       she added, with an attempt at lightsomeness which deepened the pallor on
+      Mr. Van Broecklyn&rsquo;s cheek, already sufficiently noticeable to have been
+      remarked upon by more than one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No ghosts?&rdquo; laughed Mr. Cornell, too happy in the return of his hopes to
+      be fully sensible of the feelings of those about him. &ldquo;No whispers from
+      impalpable lips or touches from spectre hands? Nothing to explain the
+      mystery of that room long shut up that even Mr. Van Broecklyn declares
+      himself ignorant of its secret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; returned Violet, showing her dimples in full force now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Miss Strange had any such experiences&mdash;if she has anything to
+      tell worthy of so marked a curiosity, she will tell it now,&rdquo; came from the
+      gentleman just alluded to, in tones so stern and strange that all show of
+      frivolity ceased on the instant. &ldquo;Have you anything to tell, Miss
+      Strange?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Greatly startled, she regarded him with widening eyes for a moment, then
+      with a move towards the door, remarked, with a general look about her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Van Broecklyn knows his own house, and doubtless can relate its
+      histories if he will. I am a busy little body who having finished my work
+      am now ready to return home, there to wait for the next problem which an
+      indulgent fate may offer me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was near the threshold&mdash;she was about to take her leave, when
+      suddenly she felt two hands fall on her shoulder, and turning, met the
+      eyes of Mr. Van Broecklyn burning into her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You saw!&rdquo; dropped in an almost inaudible whisper from his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shiver which shook her answered him better than any word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an exclamation of despair, he withdrew his hands, and facing the
+      others now standing together in a startled group, he said, as soon as he
+      could recover some of his self-possession:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must ask for another hour of your company. I can no longer keep my
+      sorrow to myself. A dividing line has just been drawn across my life, and
+      I must have the sympathy of someone who knows my past, or I shall go mad
+      in my self-imposed solitude. Come back, Miss Strange. You of all others
+      have the prior right to hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      VII
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall have to begin,&rdquo; said he, when they were all seated and ready to
+      listen, &ldquo;by giving you some idea, not so much of the family tradition, as
+      of the effect of this tradition upon all who bore the name of Van
+      Broecklyn. This is not the only house, even in America, which contains a
+      room shut away from intrusion. In England there are many. But there is
+      this difference between most of them and ours. No bars or locks forcibly
+      held shut the door we were forbidden to open. The command was enough; that
+      and the superstitious fear which such a command, attended by a long and
+      unquestioning obedience, was likely to engender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know no more than you do why some early ancestor laid his ban upon this
+      room. But from my earliest years I was given to understand that there was
+      one latch in the house which was never to be lifted; that any fault would
+      be forgiven sooner than that; that the honour of the whole family stood in
+      the way of disobedience, and that I was to preserve that honour to my
+      dying day. You will say that all this is fantastic, and wonder that sane
+      people in these modern times should subject themselves to such a
+      ridiculous restriction, especially when no good reason was alleged, and
+      the very source of the tradition from which it sprung forgotten. You are
+      right; but if you look long into human nature, you will see that the bonds
+      which hold the firmest are not material ones&mdash;that an idea will make
+      a man and mould a character&mdash;that it lies at the source of all
+      heroisms and is to be courted or feared as the case may be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For me it possessed a power proportionate to my loneliness. I don&rsquo;t think
+      there was ever a more lonely child. My father and mother were so unhappy
+      in each other&rsquo;s companionship that one or other of them was almost always
+      away. But I saw little of either even when they were at home. The
+      constraint in their attitude towards each other affected their conduct
+      towards me. I have asked myself more than once if either of them had any
+      real affection for me. To my father I spoke of her; to her of him; and
+      never pleasurably. This I am forced to say, or you cannot understand my
+      story. Would to God I could tell another tale! Would to God I had such
+      memories as other men have of a father&rsquo;s clasp, a mother&rsquo;s kiss&mdash;but
+      no! my grief, already profound, might have become abysmal. Perhaps it is
+      best as it is; only, I might have been a different child, and made for
+      myself a different fate&mdash;who knows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As it was, I was thrown almost entirely upon my own resources for any
+      amusement. This led me to a discovery I made one day. In a far part of the
+      cellar behind some heavy casks, I found a little door. It was so low&mdash;so
+      exactly fitted to my small body, that I had the greatest desire to enter
+      it. But I could not get around the casks. At last an expedient occurred to
+      me. We had an old servant who came nearer loving me than any one else. One
+      day when I chanced to be alone in the cellar, I took out my ball and began
+      throwing it about. Finally it landed behind the casks, and I ran with a
+      beseeching cry to Michael, to move them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a task requiring no little strength and address, but he managed,
+      after a few herculean efforts, to shift them aside and I saw with delight,
+      my way opened to that mysterious little door. But I did not approach it
+      then; some instinct deterred me. But when the opportunity came for me to
+      venture there alone, I did so, in the most adventurous spirit, and began
+      my operations by sliding behind the casks and testing the handle of the
+      little door. It turned, and after a pull or two the door yielded. With my
+      heart in my mouth, I stooped and peered in. I could see nothing&mdash;a
+      black hole and nothing more. This caused me a moment&rsquo;s hesitation. I was
+      afraid of the dark&mdash;had always been. But curiosity and the spirit of
+      adventure triumphed. Saying to myself that I was Robinson Crusoe exploring
+      the cave, I crawled in, only to find that I had gained nothing. It was as
+      dark inside as it had looked to be from without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was no fun in this, so I crawled back, and when I tried the
+      experiment again, it was with a bit of candle in my hand, and a
+      surreptitious match or two. What I saw, when with a very trembling little
+      hand I had lighted one of the matches, would have been disappointing to
+      most boys, but not to me. The litter and old boards I saw in odd corners
+      about me were full of possibilities, while in the dimness beyond I seemed
+      to perceive a sort of staircase which might lead&mdash;I do not think I
+      made any attempt to answer that question even in my own mind, but when,
+      after some hesitation and a sense of great daring, I finally crept up
+      those steps, I remember very well my sensation at finding myself in front
+      of a narrow closed door. It suggested too vividly the one in Grandfather&rsquo;s
+      little room&mdash;the door in the wainscot which we were never to open. I
+      had my first real trembling fit here, and at once fascinated and repelled
+      by this obstruction I stumbled and lost my candle, which, going out in the
+      fall, left me in total darkness and a very frightened state of mind. For
+      my imagination which had been greatly stirred by my own vague thoughts of
+      the forbidden room, immediately began to people the space about me with
+      ghoulish figures. How should I escape them, how ever reach my own little
+      room again undetected and in safety?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But these terrors, deep as they were, were nothing to the real fright
+      which seized me when, the darkness finally braved, and the way found back
+      into the bright, wide-open halls of the house, I became conscious of
+      having dropped something besides the candle. My match-box was gone&mdash;not
+      my match-box, but my grandfather&rsquo;s which I had found lying on his table
+      and carried off on this adventure, in all the confidence of irresponsible
+      youth. To make use of it for a little while, trusting to his not missing
+      it in the confusion I had noticed about the house that morning, was one
+      thing; to lose it was another. It was no common box. Made of gold and
+      cherished for some special reason well known to himself, I had often hear
+      him say that some day I would appreciate its value, and be glad to own it.
+      And I had left it in that hole and at any minute he might miss it&mdash;possibly
+      ask for it! The day was one of torment. My mother was away or shut up in
+      her room. My father&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know just what thoughts I had about him.
+      He was not to be seen either, and the servants cast strange looks at me
+      when I spoke his name. But I little realized the blow which had just
+      fallen upon the house in his definite departure, and only thought of my
+      own trouble, and of how I should meet my grandfather&rsquo;s eye when the hour
+      came for him to draw me to his knee for his usual good-night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I was spared this ordeal for the first time this very night first
+      comforted me, then added to my distress. He had discovered his loss and
+      was angry. On the morrow he would ask me for the box and I would have to
+      lie, for never could I find the courage to tell him where I had been. Such
+      an act of presumption he would never forgive, or so I thought as I lay and
+      shivered in my little bed. That his coldness, his neglect, sprang from the
+      discovery just made that my mother as well as my father had just fled the
+      house forever was as little known to me as the morning calamity. I had
+      been given my usual tendance and was tucked safely into bed; but the
+      gloom, the silence which presently settled upon the house had a very
+      different explanation in my mind from the real one. My sin (for such it
+      loomed large in my mind by this time) coloured the whole situation and
+      accounted for every event.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At what hour I slipped from my bed on to the cold floor, I shall never
+      know. To me it seemed to be in the dead of night; but I doubt if it were
+      more than ten. So slowly creep away the moments to a wakeful child. I had
+      made a great resolve. Awful as the prospect seemed to me,&mdash;frightened
+      as I was by the very thought,&mdash;I had determined in my small mind to
+      go down into the cellar, and into that midnight hole again, in search of
+      the lost box. I would take a candle and matches, this time from my own
+      mantel-shelf, and if everyone was asleep, as appeared from the deathly
+      quiet of the house, I would be able to go and come without anybody ever
+      being the wiser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dressing in the dark, I found my matches and my candle and, putting them
+      in one of my pockets, softly opened my door and looked out. Nobody was
+      stirring; every light was out except a solitary one in the lower hall.
+      That this still burned conveyed no meaning to my mind. How could I know
+      that the house was so still and the rooms dark because everyone was out
+      searching for some clue to my mother&rsquo;s flight? If I had looked at the
+      clock&mdash;but I did not; I was too intent upon my errand, too filled
+      with the fever of my desperate undertaking, to be affected by anything not
+      bearing directly upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of the terror caused by my own shadow on the wall as I made the turn in
+      the hall below, I have as keen a recollection today as though it happened
+      yesterday. But that did not deter me; nothing deterred me, till safe in
+      the cellar I crouched down behind the casks to get my breath again before
+      entering the hole beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had made some noise in feeling my way around these casks, and I
+      trembled lest these sounds had been heard upstairs! But this fear soon
+      gave place to one far greater. Other sounds were making themselves heard.
+      A din of small skurrying feet above, below, on every side of me! Rats!
+      rats in the wall! rats on the cellar bottom! How I ever stirred from the
+      spot I do not know, but when I did stir, it was to go forward, and enter
+      the uncanny hole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had intended to light my candle when I got inside; but for some reason
+      I went stumbling along in the dark, following the wall till I got to the
+      steps where I had dropped the box. Here a light was necessary, but my hand
+      did not go to my pocket. I thought it better to climb the steps first, and
+      softly one foot found the tread and then another. I had only three more to
+      climb and then my right hand, now feeling its way along the wall, would be
+      free to strike a match. I climbed the three steps and was steadying myself
+      against the door for a final plunge, when something happened&mdash;something
+      so strange, so unexpected, and so incredible that I wonder I did not
+      shriek aloud in my terror. The door was moving under my hand. It was
+      slowly opening inward. I could feel the chill made by the widening crack.
+      Moment by moment this chill increased; the gap was growing&mdash;a
+      presence was there&mdash;a presence before which I sank in a small heap upon the
+      landing. Would it advance? Had it feet&mdash;hands? Was it a presence
+      which could be felt?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever it was, it made no attempt to pass, and presently I lifted my
+      head only to quake anew at the sound of a voice&mdash;a human voice&mdash;my
+      mother&rsquo;s voice&mdash;so near me that by putting out my arms I might have
+      touched her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was speaking to my father. I knew from the tone. She was saying words
+      which, little understood as they were, made such a havoc in my youthful
+      mind that I have never forgotten the effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I have come!&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;They think I have fled the house and are
+      looking far and wide for me. We shall not be disturbed. Who would think
+      looking of here for either you or me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here! The word sank like a plummet in my breast. I had known for some few
+      minutes that I was on the threshold of the forbidden room; but they were
+      in it. I can scarcely make you understand the tumult which this awoke in
+      my brain. Somehow, I had never thought that any such braving of the
+      house&rsquo;s law would be possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard my father&rsquo;s answer, but it conveyed no meaning to me. I also
+      realized that he spoke from a distance,&mdash;that he was at one end of
+      the room while we were at the other. I was presently to have this idea
+      confirmed, for while I was striving with all my might and main to subdue
+      my very heart-throbs so that she would not hear me or suspect my presence,
+      the darkness&mdash;I should rather say the blackness of the place yielded
+      to a flash of lightning&mdash;heat lightning, all glare and no sound&mdash;and
+      I caught an instantaneous vision of my father&rsquo;s figure standing with
+      gleaming things about him, which affected me at the moment as
+      supernatural, but which, in later years, I decided to have been weapons
+      hanging on a wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She saw him too, for she gave a quick laugh and said they would not need
+      any candles; and then, there was another flash and I saw something in his
+      hand and something in hers, and though I did not yet understand, I felt
+      myself turning deathly sick and gave a choking gasp which was lost in the
+      rush she made into the centre of the room, and the keenness of her swift
+      low cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Garde-toi! for only one of us will ever leave this room alive!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A duel! a duel to the death between this husband and wife&mdash;this
+      father and mother&mdash;in this hole of dead tragedies and within the
+      sight and hearing of their child! Has Satan ever devised a scheme more
+      hideous for ruining the life of an eleven-year-old boy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that I took it all in at once. I was too innocent and much too dazed
+      to comprehend such hatred, much less the passions which engender it. I
+      only knew that something horrible&mdash;something beyond the conception of
+      my childish mind&mdash;was going to take place in the darkness before me;
+      and the terror of it made me speechless; would to God it had made me deaf
+      and blind and dead!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had dashed from her corner and he had slid away from his, as the next
+      fantastic glare which lit up the room showed me. It also showed the
+      weapons in their hands, and for a moment I felt reassured when I saw that
+      these were swords, for I had seen them before with foils in their hands
+      practising for exercise, as they said, in the great garret. But the swords
+      had buttons on them, and this time the tips were sharp and shone in the
+      keen light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An exclamation from her and a growl of rage from him were followed by
+      movements I could scarcely hear, but which were terrifying from their very
+      quiet. Then the sound of a clash. The swords had crossed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had the lightning flashed forth then, the end of one of them might have
+      occurred. But the darkness remained undisturbed, and when the glare relit
+      the great room again, they were already far apart. This called out a word
+      from him; the one sentence he spoke&mdash;I can never forget it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Rhoda, there is blood on your sleeve; I have wounded you. Shall we call
+      it off and fly, as the poor creatures in there think we have, to the
+      opposite ends of the earth?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I almost spoke; I almost added my childish plea to his for them to stop&mdash;to
+      remember me and stop. But not a muscle in my throat responded to my
+      agonized effort. Her cold, clear &lsquo;No!&rsquo; fell before my tongue was loosed or
+      my heart freed from the ponderous weight crushing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I have vowed and I keep my promises,&rsquo; she went on in a tone quite
+      strange to me. &lsquo;What would either&rsquo;s life be worth with the other alive and
+      happy in this world.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He made no answer; and those subtle movements&mdash;shadows of movements
+      I might almost call them&mdash;recommenced. Then there came a sudden cry,
+      shrill and poignant&mdash;had Grandfather been in his room he would surely
+      have heard it&mdash;and the flash coming almost simultaneously with its
+      utterance, I saw what has haunted my sleep from that day to this, my
+      father pinned against the wall, sword still in hand, and before him my
+      mother, fiercely triumphant, her staring eyes fixed on his and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nature could bear no more; the band loosened from my throat; the
+      oppression lifted from my breast long enough for me to give one wild wail
+      and she turned, saw (heaven sent its flashes quickly at this moment) and
+      recognizing my childish form, all the horror of her deed (or so I have
+      fondly hoped) rose within her, and she gave a start and fell full upon the
+      point upturned to receive her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A groan; then a gasping sigh from him, and silence settled upon the room
+      and upon my heart, and so far as I knew upon the whole created world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is my story, friends. Do you wonder that I have never been or lived
+      like other men?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few moments of sympathetic silence, Mr. Van Broecklyn went on, to
+      say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I ever had a moment&rsquo;s doubt that my parents both lay dead
+      on the floor of that great room. When I came to myself&mdash;which may
+      have been soon, and may not have been for a long while&mdash;the lightning
+      had ceased to flash, leaving the darkness stretching like a blank pall
+      between me and that spot in which were concentrated all the terrors of
+      which my imagination was capable. I dared not enter it. I dared not take
+      one step that way. My instinct was to fly and hide my trembling body again
+      in my own bed; and associated with this, in fact dominating it and making
+      me old before my time, was another&mdash;never to tell; never to let any
+      one, least of all my grandfather&mdash;know what that forbidden room now
+      contained. I felt in an irresistible sort of way that my father&rsquo;s and
+      mother&rsquo;s honour was at stake. Besides, terror held me back; I felt that I
+      should die if I spoke. Childhood has such terrors and such heroisms.
+      Silence often covers in such, abysses of thought and feeling which
+      astonish us in later years. There is no suffering like a child&rsquo;s,
+      terrified by a secret which it dare not for some reason disclose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Events aided me. When, in desperation to see once more the light and all
+      the things which linked me to life&mdash;my little bed, the toys on the
+      window-sill, my squirrel in its cage&mdash;I forced myself to retraverse
+      the empty house, expecting at every turn to hear my father&rsquo;s voice or come
+      upon the image of my mother&mdash;yes, such was the confusion of my mind,
+      though I knew well enough even then that they were dead and that I should
+      never hear the one or see the other. I was so benumbed with the cold in my
+      half-dressed condition, that I woke in a fever next morning after a
+      terrible dream which forced from my lips the cry of &lsquo;Mother! Mother!&rsquo;&mdash;only
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was cautious even in delirium. This delirium and my flushed cheeks and
+      shining eyes led them to be very careful of me. I was told that my mother
+      was away from home; and when after two days of search they were quite sure
+      that all effort to find either her or my father were likely to prove
+      fruitless, that she had gone to Europe where we would follow her as soon
+      as I was well. This promise, offering as it did, a prospect of immediate
+      release from the terrors which were consuming me, had an extraordinary
+      effect upon me. I got up out of my bed saying that I was well now and
+      ready to start on the instant. The doctor, finding my pulse equable, and
+      my whole condition wonder fully improved, and attributing it, as was
+      natural, to my hope of soon joining my mother, advised my whim to be
+      humoured and this hope kept active till travel and intercourse with
+      children should give me strength and prepare me for the bitter truth
+      ultimately awaiting me. They listened to him and in twenty-four hours our
+      preparations were made. We saw the house closed&mdash;with what emotions
+      surging in one small breast, I leave you to imagine&mdash;and then started
+      on our long tour. For five years we wandered over the continent of Europe,
+      my grandfather finding distraction, as well as myself, in foreign scenes
+      and associations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But return was inevitable. What I suffered on reentering this house, God
+      and my sleepless pillow alone know. Had any discovery been made in our
+      absence; or would it be made now that renovation and repairs of all kinds
+      were necessary? Time finally answered me. My secret was safe and likely to
+      continue so, and this fact once settled, life became endurable, if not
+      cheerful. Since then I have spent only two nights out of this house, and
+      they were unavoidable. When my grandfather died I had the wainscot door
+      cemented in. It was done from this side and the cement painted to match
+      the wood. No one opened the door nor have I ever crossed its threshold.
+      Sometimes I think I have been foolish; and sometimes I know that I have
+      been very wise. My reason has stood firm; how do I know that it would have
+      done so if I had subjected myself to the possible discovery that one or
+      both of them might have been saved if I had disclosed instead of concealed
+      my adventure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A pause during which white horror had shone on every face; then with a
+      final glance at Violet, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sequel do you see to this story, Miss Strange? I can tell the past,
+      I leave you to picture the future.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rising, she let her eye travel from face to face till it rested on the one
+      awaiting it, when she answered dreamily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If some morning in the news column there should appear an account of the
+      ancient and historic home of the Van Broecklyns having burned to the
+      ground in the night, the whole country would mourn, and the city feel
+      defrauded of one of its treasures. But there are five persons who would
+      see in it the sequel which you ask for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When this happened, as it did happen, some few weeks later, the
+      astonishing discovery was made that no insurance had been put upon this
+      house. Why was it that after such a loss Mr. Van Broecklyn seemed to renew
+      his youth? It was a constant source of comment among his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM VIII <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM IX. VIOLET&rsquo;S OWN
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;It has been too much for you?&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Roger Upjohn who had asked the question; it was Violet who
+      answered. They had withdrawn from a crowd of dancers to a balcony,
+      half-shaded, half open to the moon,&mdash;a balcony made, it would seem,
+      for just such stolen interviews between waltzes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, as it happened, Roger&rsquo;s face was in the shadow, but Violet&rsquo;s in the
+      full light. Very sweet it looked, very ethereal, but also a little wan. He
+      noticed this and impetuously cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are pale; and your hand! see, how it trembles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly withdrawing it from the rail where it had rested, she sent one
+      quick glance his way and, in a low voice, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not slept since that night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four days!&rdquo; he murmured. Then, after a moment of silence, &ldquo;You bore
+      yourself so bravely at the time, I thought, or rather, I hoped, that
+      success had made you forget the horror. I could not have slept myself, if
+      I had known&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is part of the price I pay,&rdquo; she broke in gently. &ldquo;All good things
+      have to be paid for. But I see&mdash;I realize that you do not consider
+      what I am doing good. Though it helps other people&mdash;has helped you&mdash;you
+      wonder why, with all the advantages I possess, I should meddle with
+      matters so repugnant to a woman&rsquo;s natural instincts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, he wondered. That was evident from his silence. Seeing her as she
+      stood there, so quaintly pretty, so feminine in look and manner&mdash;in
+      short, such a flower&mdash;it was but natural that he should marvel at the
+      incongruity she had mentioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has a strange, odd look,&rdquo; she admitted, after a moment of troubled
+      hesitation. &ldquo;The most considerate person cannot but regard it as a display
+      of egotism or of a most mercenary spirit. The cheque you sent me for what
+      I was enabled to do for you in Massachusetts (the only one I have ever
+      received which I have been tempted to refuse) shows to what extent you
+      rated my help and my&mdash;my expectations. Had I been a poor girl
+      struggling for subsistence, this generosity would have warmed my heart as
+      a token of your desire to cut that struggle short. But taken with your
+      knowledge of my home and its luxuries, it has often made me wonder what
+      you thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I tell you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had stepped forward at this question and his countenance, hitherto
+      concealed, became visible in the moonlight. She no longer recognized it.
+      Transformed by feeling, it shone down upon her, instinct with all that is
+      finest and best in masculine nature. Was she ready for this revelation of
+      what she had nevertheless dreamed of for many more nights than four? She
+      did not know, and instinctively drew herself back till it was she who now
+      stood in the semi-obscurity made by the drooping vines. From this retreat,
+      she faltered forth a very tremulous No, which in another moment was
+      disavowed by a Yes so faint it was little more than a murmur, followed by
+      a still fainter, Tell me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not seem in any haste to obey, sweetly as her low-toned
+      injunction must have sounded in his ears. On the contrary, he hesitated to
+      speak, growing paler every minute as he sought to catch a glimpse of her
+      downcast face so tantalizingly hidden from him. Did she recognize the
+      nature of the feelings which held him back, or was she simply gathering up
+      sufficient courage to plead her own cause? Whatever her reason, it was
+      she, not he, who presently spoke saying as if no time had elapsed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But first, I feel obliged to admit that it was money I wanted, that I had
+      to have. Not for myself. I lack nothing and could have more if I wished.
+      Father has never limited his generosity in any matter affecting myself,
+      but&mdash;&rdquo; She drew a deep breath and, coming out of the shadow, lifted a
+      face to him so changed from its usual expression as to make him start. &ldquo;I
+      have a cause at heart&mdash;one which should appeal to my father and does
+      not; and for that purpose I have sacrificed myself, in many ways, though&mdash;though
+      I have not disliked my work up to this last attempt. Not really. I want to
+      be honest and so must admit that much. I have even gloried (quietly and
+      all by myself, of course) over the solution of a mystery which no one else
+      seemed able to penetrate. I am made that way. I have known it ever since&mdash;but
+      that is a story all by itself. Some day I may tell it to you, but not
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not now.&rdquo; The emphasis sent the colour into her cheek but did not
+      relieve his pallor. &ldquo;Miss Strange, I have always felt, even in my worst
+      days, that the man who for selfish ends brought a woman under the shadow
+      of his own unhappy reputation was a man to be despised. And I think so
+      still, and yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;nothing in the world but your own word
+      or look can hold me back now from telling you that I love you&mdash;love
+      you notwithstanding my unworthy past, my scarring memories, my all but
+      blasted hopes. I do not expect any response; you are young; you are
+      beautiful; you are gifted with every grace; but to speak,&mdash;to say
+      over and over again, &lsquo;I love you, I love you!&rsquo; eases my heart and makes my
+      future more endurable. Oh, do not look at me like that unless&mdash;unless&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the bright head did not fall, nor the tender gaze falter; and driven
+      out of himself, Roger Upjohn was about to step passionately forward, when,
+      seized by fresh compunction, he hoarsely cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not right. The balance dips too much my way. You bring me
+      everything. I can give you nothing but what you already possess abundance&mdash;love,
+      and money. Besides, your father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She interrupted him with a glance at once arch and earnest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had a talk with Father this morning. He came to my room, and&mdash;and
+      it was very near being serious. Someone had told him I was doing things on
+      the sly which he had better look into; and of course he asked questions
+      and&mdash;and I answered them. He wasn&rsquo;t pleased&mdash;in fact he was very
+      displeased,&mdash;I don&rsquo;t think we can blame him for that&mdash;but we had
+      no open break for I love him dearly, for all my opposing ways, and he saw
+      that, and it helped, though he did say after I had given my promise to
+      stop where I was and never to take up such work again, that&mdash;&rdquo; here
+      she stole a shy look at the face bent so eagerly towards her&mdash;&ldquo;that I
+      had lost my social status and need never hope now for the attentions of&mdash;of&mdash;well,
+      of such men as he admires and puts faith in. So you see,&rdquo; her dimples all
+      showing, &ldquo;that I am not such a very good match for an Upjohn of
+      Massachusetts, even if he has a reputation to recover and an honourable
+      name to achieve. The scale hangs more evenly than you think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Violet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A mutual look, a moment of perfect silence, then a low whisper, airy as
+      the breath of flowers rising from the garden below: &ldquo;I have never known
+      what happiness was till this moment. If you will take me with my story
+      untold&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take you! take you!&rdquo; The man&rsquo;s whole yearning heart, the loss and
+      bitterness of years, the hope and promise of the future, all spoke in that
+      low, half-smothered exclamation. Violet&rsquo;s blushes faded under its
+      fervency, and only her spirit spoke, as leaning towards him, she laid her
+      two hands in his, and said with all a woman&rsquo;s earnestness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not forget little Roger, or the father who I hope may have many more
+      days before him in which to bid good-night to the sea. Such union as ours
+      must be hallowed, because we have so many persons to make happy besides
+      ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening before their marriage, Violet put a dozen folded sheets of
+      closely written paper in his hand. They contained her story; let us read
+      it with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR ROGER,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could not have been more than seven years old, when one night I woke up
+      shivering, at the sound of angry voices. A conversation which no child
+      should ever have heard, was going on in the room where I lay. My father
+      was talking to my sister&mdash;perhaps, you do not know that I have a
+      sister; few of my personal friends do,&mdash;and the terror she evinced I
+      could well understand but not his words nor the real cause of his
+      displeasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are times even yet when the picture, forced upon my infantile
+      consciousness at that moment of first awakening, comes back to me with all
+      its original vividness. There was no light in the room save such as the
+      moon made; but that was enough to reveal the passion burningly alive in
+      either face, as, bending towards each other, she in supplication and he in
+      a tempest of wrath which knew no bounds, he uttered and she listened to
+      what I now know to have been a terrible arraignment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I may have an interesting countenance; you have told me so sometimes; but
+      she&mdash;she was beautiful. My elder by ten years, she had stood in my
+      mother&rsquo;s stead to me for almost as long as I could remember, and as I saw
+      her lovely features contorted with pain and her hands extended in a
+      desperate plea to one who had never shown me anything but love, my throat
+      closed sharply and I could not cry out though I wanted to, nor move head
+      or foot though I longed with all my heart to bury myself in the pillows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the words I heard were terrifying, little as I comprehended their full
+      purport. He had surprised her talking from her window to someone down
+      below, and after saying cruel things about that, he shouted out: &ldquo;You have
+      disgraced me, you have disgraced yourself, you have disgraced your brother
+      and your little sister. Was it not enough that you should refuse to marry
+      the good man I had picked out for you, that you should stoop to this
+      low-down scoundrel&mdash;this&mdash;&rdquo; I did not hear what else he called
+      him, I was wondering so to whom she had been stooping; I had never seen
+      her stoop except to tie my little shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when she cried out as she did after an interval, &ldquo;I love him! I love
+      him!&rdquo; then I listened again, for she spoke as though she were in dreadful
+      pain, and I did not know that loving made one ill and unhappy. &ldquo;And I am
+      going to marry him,&rdquo; I heard her add, standing up, as she said it, very
+      straight and tall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marry! I knew what that meant. A long aisle in a church; women in white
+      and big music in the air behind. I had been flower-girl at a wedding once
+      and had not forgotten. We had had ice cream and cake and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But my childish thoughts stopped short at the answer she received and all
+      the words which followed&mdash;words which burned their way into my
+      infantile brain and left scorched places in my memory which will never be
+      eradicated. He spoke them&mdash;spoke them all; she never answered again
+      after that once, and when he was gone did not move for a long time and
+      when she did it was to lie down, stiff and straight, just as she had
+      stood, on her bed alongside mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was frightened; so frightened, my little brass bed rattled under me. I
+      wonder she did not hear it. But she heard nothing; and after awhile she
+      was so still I fell asleep. But I woke again. Something hot had fallen on
+      my cheek. I put up my hand to brush it away and did not know even when I
+      felt my fingers wet that it was a tear from my sister-mother&rsquo;s eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For she was kneeling then; kneeling close beside me and her arm was over
+      my small body; and the bed was shaking again but not this time with my
+      tremors only. And I was sorry and cried too until I dropped off to sleep
+      again with her arm still passionately embracing me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning, she was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must have been that very afternoon that Father came in where Arthur and
+      I were trying to play,&mdash;trying, but not quite succeeding, for I had
+      been telling Arthur, for whom I had a great respect in those days, what
+      had happened the night before, and we had been wondering in our childish
+      way if there would be a wedding after all, and a church full of people,
+      and flowers, and kissing, and lots of good things to eat, and Arthur had
+      said No, it was too expensive; that that was why Father was so angry; and
+      comforted by the assertion, I was taking up my doll again, when the door
+      opened and Father stepped in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a great event&mdash;any visit from him to the nursery&mdash;and we
+      both dropped our toys and stood staring, not knowing whether he was going
+      to be nice and kind as he sometimes was, or scold us as I had heard him
+      scold our beautiful sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur showed at once what he thought, for without the least hesitation he
+      took the one step which placed him in front of me, where he stood waiting
+      with his two little fists hanging straight at his sides but manfully
+      clenched in full readiness for attack. That this display of pigmy chivalry
+      was not quite without its warrant is evident to me now, for Father did not
+      look like himself or act like himself any more than he had the night
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, we had no cause for fear. Having no suspicion of my having been
+      awake during his terrible interview with Theresa, he saw only two lonely
+      and forsaken children, interrupted in their play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Can I remember what he said to us? Not exactly, though Arthur and I often
+      went over it choked whispers in some secret nook of the dreary old house;
+      but his meaning&mdash;that we took in well enough. Theresa had left us.
+      She would never come back. We were not to look out of the window for her,
+      or run to the door when the bell rang. Our mother had left us too, a long
+      time ago, and she lay in the cemetery where we sometimes carried flowers.
+      Theresa was not in the cemetery, but we must think of her as there; though
+      not as if she had any need of flowers. Having said this, he looked at us
+      quietly for a minute. Arthur was trying very hard not to cry, but I was
+      sobbing like the lost child I was, with my cheek against the floor where I
+      had thrown myself when he said that awful thing about the cemetery. She
+      there! my sister-mother there! I think he felt a little sorry for me; for
+      he half stooped as if to lift me up. But he straightened again and said
+      very sternly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, children, listen to me. When God takes people to heaven and leaves
+      us only their cold, dead bodies we carry flowers to their graves and talk
+      about them some if not very much. But when people die because they love
+      dark ways better than light, then we do not remember them with gifts and
+      we do not talk about them. Your sister&rsquo;s name has been spoken for the last
+      time in this house. You, Arthur, are old enough to know what I mean when I
+      say that I will never listen to another word about her from either you or
+      Violet as long as you and I live. She is gone and nothing that is mine
+      shall she ever touch again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hear me, Arthur; you hear me, Violet. Heed me, or you go too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His aspect was terrible, so was his purpose; much more terrible than we
+      realized at the time with our limited understanding and experience. Later,
+      we came to know the full meaning of this black drop which had been infused
+      into our lives. When we saw every picture of her destroyed which had been
+      in the house; her name cut out from the leaves of books; the little tokens
+      she had given us surreptitiously taken away, till not a vestige of her
+      once beloved presence remained, we began to realize that we had indeed
+      lost her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But children as young as we were then do not long retain the poignancy of
+      their first griefs. Gradually my memories of that awful night ceased to
+      disturb my dreams and I was sixteen before they were again recalled to me
+      with any vividness, and then it was by accident. I had been strolling
+      through a picture gallery and had stopped short to study more particularly
+      one which had especially taken my fancy. There were two ladies sitting on
+      a bench behind me and one of them was evidently very deaf, for their talk
+      was loud, though I am sure they did not mean for me to hear, for they were
+      discussing my family. That is, one of them had said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s Violet Strange. She will never be the beauty her sister was; but
+      perhaps that&rsquo;s not to be deplored. Theresa made a great mess of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s true. I hear that she and the Signor have been seen lately here in
+      town. In poverty, of course. He hadn&rsquo;t even as much go in him as the
+      ordinary singing-master.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose I should have hurried away, and left this barbed arrow to rankle
+      where it fell. But I could not. I had never learned a word of Theresa&rsquo;s
+      fate and that word poverty, proving that she was alive and suffering, held
+      me to my place to hear what more they might say of her who for years had
+      been for me an indistinct figure bathed in cruel moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never approved of Peter Strange&rsquo;s conduct at that time,&rdquo; one of
+      the voices now went on. &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t handle her right. She had a lovely
+      disposition and would have listened to him had he been more gentle with
+      her. But it isn&rsquo;t in him. I hope this one&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn&rsquo;t hear the end of that. I had no interest in anything they might
+      say about myself. It was of her I wanted to hear, of her. Weren&rsquo;t they
+      going to say anything more about my poor sister? Yes; it was a topic which
+      interested both and presently I heard:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll never do anything for her, no matter what happens; I&rsquo;ve heard him
+      say so. And Laura has vowed the same.&rdquo; (Laura is our aunt.) &ldquo;Besides,
+      Theresa has a pride of her own quite equal to her father&rsquo;s. She wouldn&rsquo;t
+      take anything from him now. She&rsquo;d rather struggle on. I&rsquo;m told&mdash;I
+      don&rsquo;t know how true it is&mdash;that she&rsquo;s working in a department store;
+      one of the Sixth Avenue ones. Oh, there&rsquo;s Mrs. Vandegraff! Don&rsquo;t you want
+      to speak to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They moved off, leaving me still gazing with unseeing eyes at the picture
+      before which I stood planted, and saying over and over in monotonous
+      iteration, &ldquo;One of the department stores in Sixth Avenue! One of the
+      department stores in Sixth Avenue!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which department store?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I meant to find out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know whether up till then I had had the least consciousness of
+      possessing what is called the detective instinct. But, at the prospect of
+      this quest, so much like that of the proverbial needle in a haystack, as I
+      did not even know my sister&rsquo;s married name and something within me forbade
+      my asking it, I experienced an odd sense of elation followed by a
+      certainty of success which in five minutes changed me from an
+      irresponsible girl to a woman with a deliberate purpose in life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am not going to write down here all the details of that search. Some day
+      I may relate them to you, but not now. I looked first for a beautiful
+      woman, for the straight, slim, and exquisite creature I remembered. I did
+      not find her. Then I tried another course. Her figure might have changed
+      in the ten years which had elapsed; so might her expression. I would look
+      for a woman with beautiful dark eyes; time could not have altered them. I
+      had forgotten the effect of constant weeping. And I saw many eyes, but not
+      hers; not the ones I had seen smiling upon me as I lay in my crib before
+      the days I was lifted to the dignity of the little brass bed. So I gave
+      that up too and listened to the inner voice which said, &ldquo;You must wait for
+      her to recognize you. You can never hope to recognize her.&rdquo; And it was by
+      following this plan that I found her. I had arranged to have my name
+      spoken aloud at every counter where I bargained; and oh, the bargains I
+      sought, and the garments I had tried on! But I made little progress until
+      one day, after my name had been uttered a little louder than usual I saw a
+      woman turn from rearranging gowns on a hanger, and give me one look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I uttered a low cry and sprang impetuously, forward. Instantly she turned
+      her back and went on hanging, or trying to hang up, gowns on the rack
+      before her. Had I been mistaken? She was not the sister of my dreams, but
+      there was something fine in her outline; something distinguished in the
+      way she carried her head which&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next minute my last doubt fled! She had fallen her length on the floor and
+      lay with her face buried in her hands in a dead faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, Roger, Roger, Roger! I had that dear head on my breast in a moment. I
+      talked to her, I whispered prayers in her unconscious ear. I did
+      everything I should not have done till they all thought me demented. When
+      she came to, as she did under other ministrations than mine, I was for
+      carrying her off in my limousine. But she shook her head with a gesture of
+      such disapproval, that I realized I could not do that. The limousine was
+      my father&rsquo;s, and nothing of his was ever to be used for her again. I would
+      call a cab; but she told me that she had not the money to pay for it and
+      she would not take mine. Carfare she had; five cents would take her home.
+      I need not worry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled as she said this and for an instant I saw my dream-sister again
+      in this weary half-disheartened woman. But the smile was a fleeting one,
+      for this was to be her last day in the store; she had no talent as a
+      saleswoman and was merely working out her week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt my heart sink heavily at this, for the evidences of poverty were
+      plainly to be seen in her clothes and the thinness of her face and figure.
+      How could I help? What could I do? I took her to a restaurant for food and
+      talk, and before she would order, she looked into her purse, with the
+      result that we had only a little toast and tea. It was all she could
+      afford and I, with a hundred dollars in bills at that moment in my bag,
+      could not offer her anything more though she was needing nourishment and
+      dishes piled with savoury meats were going by us every moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think, if she had let me, I would have dared my father&rsquo;s displeasure and
+      been disobedient to his wishes by giving her one wholesome meal. But she
+      was as resolute of mind as he, and, as she said afterwards, had chosen her
+      course in life and must abide by it. My love she would accept. It took
+      nothing from Father and gave her what her heart was pining for&mdash;had
+      pined for for years. But nothing more&mdash;not another thing more. She
+      would not even let me go home with her; and I knew why when her eyes fell
+      at the searching look I gave her. Something would turn up, and when her
+      husband&rsquo;s health was better and she had found another position she would
+      send me her address and then I could come and see her. As we walked out of
+      the restaurant we ran against a gentleman I knew. He stopped me for a
+      passing word and in that minute she disappeared. I did not try to follow
+      her. I could get her street and number from the store where she had
+      worked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when I had done this and embraced the first opportunity which offered
+      to visit her, I found that she had moved away in the interim, leaving
+      everything behind in payment of her rent, except such small things as she
+      and her husband could carry. This was discouraging as it left me without
+      any clue by which to follow them. But I was determined not to yield to her
+      desire for concealment in the difficult and disheartening task I now saw
+      before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeking advice from the man who has since become my employer, I entered
+      upon this second search with a quiet resolution which admitted of no
+      defeat. It took me six months, but I finally found her, and satisfied with
+      knowing where she was, desisted from rushing in upon her, till I had
+      caught one glimpse of her husband whom, in the last six months, I had
+      heard described but had never seen. To understand her, it was perhaps
+      necessary to understand him, and if I could not hope to do this offhand, I
+      could not fail to get some idea of the man from even the most casual look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, as I soon learned, the fetcher and carrier of the small ménage;
+      and the day came when I met him face to face in the street where they
+      lived. Did he disappoint me; or did I see something in his appearance to
+      justify her desertion of her father&rsquo;s home and her present life of
+      poverty? If I say Yes to the first question, I must also say it to the
+      last. If handsome once, he was not handsome now; but with a personality
+      such as his, this did not matter. He had that better thing&mdash;that
+      greatest gift of the gods&mdash;charm. It was in his bearing, his
+      movement, the regard of his weary eye; more than that it was in his very
+      nature or it would have vanished long ago under disappointment and
+      privation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that was all there was to the man,&mdash;a golden net in which my
+      sister&rsquo;s youthful fancy had been caught and no doubt held meshed to this
+      very day. I felt less like blaming her for her folly, after that instant&rsquo;s
+      view of him as we passed each other in the street. But, as I took time to
+      think, I found myself growing sorrier and sorrier for her and yet, in a
+      way, gladder and gladder, for the man was a physical wreck and would soon
+      pass out of her life leaving her to my love and possibly to our father&rsquo;s
+      forgiveness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I did not know Theresa. After her husband&rsquo;s death, which occurred very
+      soon, she let me come to her and we had a long talk. Shall I ever
+      forget it or the sight of her beauty in that sordid room? For, account for
+      it as you will, the loveliness which had fled under her sense of complete
+      isolation had slowly regained its own with the recognition that she still
+      had a place in the heart of her little sister. Not even the sorrow she
+      felt for the loss of her suffering husband&mdash;and she did mourn him;
+      this I am glad to say&mdash;could more than temporarily stay this. Six
+      months of ease and wholesome food would make her&mdash;I hardly dared to
+      think what. For I knew, without asking her, or she telling me, that she
+      would accept neither; that she was as determined now, as ever that nothing
+      which came directly or indirectly from Father should go to the rebuilding
+      of her life. That she intended to start anew and work her way up to a
+      place where I should be glad to see her she did say. But nothing more. She
+      was still the sister-mother, loving, but sufficient to herself, though she
+      had but ten dollars left in the world, as she showed me with a smile that
+      made her beautiful as an angel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I can see that shabby little purse yet with its one poor greasy bill;&mdash;a
+      sum to her but to me the price of a luncheon or a gift of flowers. How I
+      longed, as I looked at it to tear every jewel from my poor, bedecked body
+      and fling them one and all into her lap. I had worn them in profusion,
+      though carefully hidden under my coat, in the hope that she would accept
+      one of them at least, But she refused all, even such as had been gifts of
+      friends and schoolmates, only humouring me this far, that she let me hang
+      them for a few minutes about her neck and in her hair and then pull them
+      all off again. But this one vision of her in the splendour she was born to
+      comforted me. Henceforth in wearing them it would be of her and not of
+      myself I should think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I had to leave her and go home to my French and Italian lessons, my
+      music-masters and all the luxuries of our father&rsquo;s house. Should I ever
+      see her again? I did not know; she had not promised. I could not go often
+      into the quarter where she lived, without rousing suspicion; and she had
+      bidden me not to come again for a month. So I waited, half fearing she
+      would flit again before the month was up. But she did not. She was still
+      there when&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I am going too fast. The meeting I was about to mention was a very
+      memorable one to me, and I must describe it from the beginning. I had
+      ridden in my own car as near as I dared to the street where she lived; the
+      rest of the way I went on foot with one of the servants&mdash;a new one&mdash;following
+      close behind me. I was not exactly afraid, but the actions of some of the
+      people I had encountered at my former visit warned me to be a little
+      careful for my father&rsquo;s sake if not for my own. Her room&mdash;she had but
+      one&mdash;was high up in a triangular court it was no pleasure to enter.
+      But love and loyalty heed nothing but the object sought, and I was hunting
+      about for the dark doorway which opened upon the staircase leading to her
+      room when&mdash;and this was the great moment of my life&mdash;a sudden
+      stream of melody floated down into that noisome court, which from its
+      clearness, its accuracy, its richness, and its feeling startled me as I
+      had never before been startled even by the first notes of the world&rsquo;s
+      greatest singers. What a voice for a place like this! What a voice for any
+      place! Whose could it be? With a start, I stopped short, in the middle of
+      that court, heedless of the crowd of pushing, shouting children who at
+      once gathered about me. I had been struck by an old recollection. My
+      sister used to sing. I remembered where her piano had stood in the great
+      drawing-room. It had been carted away during those dreadful weeks and her
+      music all burned; but the vision of her graceful figure bending over the
+      keyboard was one not to be forgotten even by a thoughtless child. Could it
+      be&mdash;oh, heaven! if this voice were hers! Her future was certain; she
+      had but to sing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a transport of hope I rushed for the dim entrance the children had
+      pointed out and flew up to her room. As I reached it, I heard a trill as
+      perfect as Tetrazzini&rsquo;s. The singer was Theresa; there could be no more
+      doubt. Theresa! exercising a grand voice as only a great artist would or
+      could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The joy of it made me almost faint. I leaned against her door and sobbed.
+      Then when I thought I could speak quite calmly, I went in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roger, you must understand me now,&mdash;my desire for money and the means
+      I have taken to obtain it. My sister had the makings of a prima-donna. Her
+      husband, of whose ability I had formed so low an estimate, had trained her
+      with consummate skill and judgment. All she needed was a year with some
+      great maestro in the foreign atmosphere of art. But this meant money&mdash;not
+      hundreds but thousands, and the one sure source to which we might
+      rightfully look for any such amount was effectually closed to us. It is
+      true we had relatives&mdash;an aunt on our mother&rsquo;s side, and I mentioned
+      her to Theresa. But she would not listen to the suggestion. She would take
+      nothing from any one whom she would find it hard to face in case of
+      failure. Love must go with an advance involving so much risk; love deep
+      enough and strong enough to feel no loss save that of a defeated hope. In
+      short, to be acceptable, the money must come from me, and as this was
+      manifestly impossible, she considered the matter closed and began to talk
+      of a position she had been offered in some choir. I let her talk,
+      listening and not listening; for the idea had come to me that if in some
+      way I could earn money, she might be induced to take it. Finally, I asked
+      her. She laughed, letting her kisses answer me. But I did not laugh. If
+      she had capabilities in one way, I had them in another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went home to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two weeks later, I began, in a very quiet way to do certain work for the
+      man who had helped me in my second search for Theresa. The money I have
+      earned has been immense; since it was troubles of the rich I was given to
+      settle, and I was almost always successful. Every cent has gone to her.
+      She has been in Europe for a year and last week she made her debut. You
+      read about it in the papers, but neither you nor any one else in this
+      country but myself knew that under the name she chosen to assume, Theresa
+      Strange, the long forgotten beauty, has recovered that place in the world,
+      to which her love and genius entitle her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is my story and hers. From now on, you are the third in the secret.
+      Some day, my father will be the fourth. I think then, a new dawn of love
+      will arise for us all, which will stay the whitening of his dear head&mdash;for
+      I believe in him after all. Yesterday when he passed the wall where her
+      picture once hung&mdash;no other has ever hung there&mdash;I saw him stop
+      and look up, and, Roger, when he passed me a minute later, there was a
+      tear in his hard eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/3071.txt b/3071.txt
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+++ b/3071.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Slipper, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Golden Slipper
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green
+
+Posting Date: February 1, 2009 [EBook #3071]
+Release Date: February, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN SLIPPER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lynn and Chris Hill
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+
+And Other Problems for Violet Strange
+
+By Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+
+     II THE SECOND BULLET
+
+     III THE INTANGIBLE CLEW
+
+     IV THE GROTTO SPECTRE
+
+     V THE DREAMING LADY
+
+     VI THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS
+
+     VII THE DOCTOR, HIS WIFE, AND THE CLOCK
+
+     VIII MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN
+
+     IX VIOLET'S OWN
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN SLIPPER AND OTHER PROBLEMS FOR VIOLET STRANGE
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM I THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+
+"She's here! I thought she would be. She's one of the three young ladies
+you see in the right-hand box near the proscenium."
+
+The gentleman thus addressed--a man of middle age and a member of the
+most exclusive clubs--turned his opera glass toward the spot designated,
+and in some astonishment retorted:
+
+"She? Why those are the Misses Pratt and--"
+
+"Miss Violet Strange; no other."
+
+"And do you mean to say--"
+
+"I do--"
+
+"That yon silly little chit, whose father I know, whose fortune I know,
+who is seen everywhere, and who is called one of the season's belles is
+an agent of yours; a--a--"
+
+"No names here, please. You want a mystery solved. It is not a matter
+for the police--that is, as yet,--and so you come to me, and when I ask
+for the facts, I find that women and only women are involved, and that
+these women are not only young but one and all of the highest society.
+Is it a man's work to go to the bottom of a combination like this? No.
+Sex against sex, and, if possible, youth against youth. Happily, I know
+such a person--a girl of gifts and extraordinarily well placed for the
+purpose. Why she uses her talents in this direction--why, with means
+enough to play the part natural to her as a successful debutante, she
+consents to occupy herself with social and other mysteries, you must ask
+her, not me. Enough that I promise you her aid if you want it. That is,
+if you can interest her. She will not work otherwise."
+
+Mr. Driscoll again raised his opera glass.
+
+"But it's a comedy face," he commented. "It's hard to associate
+intellectuality with such quaintness of expression. Are you sure of her
+discretion?"
+
+"Whom is she with?"
+
+"Abner Pratt, his wife, and daughters."
+
+"Is he a man to entrust his affairs unadvisedly?"
+
+"Abner Pratt! Do you mean to say that she is anything more to him than
+his daughters' guest?"
+
+"Judge. You see how merry they are. They were in deep trouble yesterday.
+You are witness to a celebration."
+
+"And she?"
+
+"Don't you observe how they are loading her with attentions? She's
+too young to rouse such interest in a family of notably unsympathetic
+temperament for any other reason than that of gratitude."
+
+"It's hard to believe. But if what you hint is true, secure me an
+opportunity at once of talking to this youthful marvel. My affair is
+serious. The dinner I have mentioned comes off in three days and--"
+
+"I know. I recognize your need; but I think you had better enter Mr.
+Pratt's box without my intervention. Miss Strange's value to us will be
+impaired the moment her connection with us is discovered."
+
+"Ah, there's Ruthven! He will take me to Mr. Pratt's box," remarked
+Driscoll as the curtain fell on the second act. "Any suggestions before
+I go?"
+
+"Yes, and an important one. When you make your bow, touch your left
+shoulder with your right hand. It is a signal. She may respond to it;
+but if she does not, do not be discouraged. One of her idiosyncrasies is
+a theoretical dislike of her work. But once she gets interested, nothing
+will hold her back. That's all, except this. In no event give away her
+secret. That's part of the compact, you remember."
+
+Driscoll nodded and left his seat for Ruthven's box. When the curtain
+rose for the third time he could be seen sitting with the Misses Pratt
+and their vivacious young friend. A widower and still on the right side
+of fifty, his presence there did not pass unnoted, and curiosity
+was rife among certain onlookers as to which of the twin belles was
+responsible for this change in his well-known habits. Unfortunately,
+no opportunity was given him for showing. Other and younger men had
+followed his lead into the box, and they saw him forced upon the good
+graces of the fascinating but inconsequent Miss Strange whose rapid fire
+of talk he was hardly of a temperament to appreciate.
+
+Did he appear dissatisfied? Yes; but only one person in the opera house
+knew why. Miss Strange had shown no comprehension of or sympathy with
+his errand. Though she chatted amiably enough between duets and trios,
+she gave him no opportunity to express his wishes though she knew them
+well enough, owing to the signal he had given her.
+
+This might be in character but it hardly suited his views; and, being a
+man of resolution, he took advantage of an absorbing minute on the stage
+to lean forward and whisper in her ear:
+
+"It's my daughter for whom I request your services; as fine a girl as
+any in this house. Give me a hearing. You certainly can manage it."
+
+She was a small, slight woman whose naturally quaint appearance was
+accentuated by the extreme simplicity of her attire. In the tier upon
+tier of boxes rising before his eyes, no other personality could
+vie with hers in strangeness, or in the illusive quality of her
+ever-changing expression. She was vivacity incarnate and, to the
+ordinary observer, light as thistledown in fibre and in feeling. But not
+to all. To those who watched her long, there came moments--say when
+the music rose to heights of greatness--when the mouth so given over to
+laughter took on curves of the rarest sensibility, and a woman's lofty
+soul shone through her odd, bewildering features.
+
+Driscoll had noted this, and consequently awaited her reply in secret
+hope.
+
+It came in the form of a question and only after an instant's display of
+displeasure or possibly of pure nervous irritability.
+
+"What has she done?"
+
+"Nothing. But slander is in the air, and any day it may ripen into
+public accusation."
+
+"Accusation of what?" Her tone was almost pettish.
+
+"Of--of theft," he murmured. "On a great scale," he emphasized, as the
+music rose to a crash.
+
+"Jewels?"
+
+"Inestimable ones. They are always returned by somebody. People say, by
+me."
+
+"Ah!" The little lady's hands grew steady,--they had been fluttering all
+over her lap. "I will see you to-morrow morning at my father's house,"
+she presently observed; and turned her full attention to the stage.
+
+Some three days after this Mr. Driscoll opened his house on the Hudson
+to notable guests. He had not desired the publicity of such an event,
+nor the opportunity it gave for an increase of the scandal secretly in
+circulation against his daughter. But the Ambassador and his wife were
+foreign and any evasion of the promised hospitality would be sure to be
+misunderstood; so the scheme was carried forward though with less eclat
+than possibly was expected.
+
+Among the lesser guests, who were mostly young and well acquainted with
+the house and its hospitality, there was one unique figure,--that of the
+lively Miss Strange, who, if personally unknown to Miss Driscoll, was so
+gifted with the qualities which tell on an occasion of this kind,
+that the stately young hostess hailed her presence with very obvious
+gratitude.
+
+The manner of their first meeting was singular, and of great interest
+to one of them at least. Miss Strange had come in an automobile and had
+been shown her room; but there was nobody to accompany her down-stairs
+afterward, and, finding herself alone in the great hall, she naturally
+moved toward the library, the door of which stood ajar. She had pushed
+this door half open before she noticed that the room was already
+occupied. As a consequence, she was made the unexpected observer of a
+beautiful picture of youth and love.
+
+A young man and a young woman were standing together in the glow of a
+blazing wood-fire. No word was to be heard, but in their faces, eloquent
+with passion, there shone something so deep and true that the chance
+intruder hesitated on the threshold, eager to lay this picture away in
+her mind with the other lovely and tragic memories now fast accumulating
+there. Then she drew back, and readvancing with a less noiseless foot,
+came into the full presence of Captain Holliday drawn up in all the
+pride of his military rank beside Alicia, the accomplished daughter of
+the house, who, if under a shadow as many whispered, wore that shadow as
+some women wear a crown.
+
+Miss Strange was struck with admiration, and turned upon them the
+brightest facet of her vivacious nature all the time she was saying to
+herself: "Does she know why I am here? Or does she look upon me only as
+an additional guest foisted upon her by a thoughtless parent?"
+
+There was nothing in the manner of her cordial but composed young
+hostess to show, and Miss Strange, with but one thought in mind since
+she had caught the light of feeling on the two faces confronting her,
+took the first opportunity that offered of running over the facts given
+her by Mr. Driscoll, to see if any reconcilement were possible between
+them and an innocence in which she must henceforth believe.
+
+They were certainly of a most damaging nature.
+
+Miss Driscoll and four other young ladies of her own station in life had
+formed themselves, some two years before, into a coterie of five,
+called The Inseparables. They lunched together, rode together, visited
+together. So close was the bond and their mutual dependence so evident,
+that it came to be the custom to invite the whole five whenever the
+size of the function warranted it. In fact, it was far from an uncommon
+occurrence to see them grouped at receptions or following one another
+down the aisles of churches or through the mazes of the dance at balls
+or assemblies. And no one demurred at this, for they were all handsome
+and attractive girls, till it began to be noticed that, coincident
+with their presence, some article of value was found missing from the
+dressing-room or from the tables where wedding gifts were displayed.
+Nothing was safe where they went, and though, in the course of time,
+each article found its way back to its owner in a manner as mysterious
+as its previous abstraction, the scandal grew and, whether with good
+reason or bad, finally settled about the person of Miss Driscoll, who
+was the showiest, least pecuniarily tempted, and most dignified in
+manner and speech of them all.
+
+Some instances had been given by way of further enlightenment. This is
+one: A theatre party was in progress. There were twelve in the party,
+five of whom were the Inseparables. In the course of the last act,
+another lady--in fact, their chaperon--missed her handkerchief, an
+almost priceless bit of lace. Positive that she had brought it with
+her into the box, she caused a careful search, but without the least
+success. Recalling certain whispers she had heard, she noted which of
+the five girls were with her in the box. They were Miss Driscoll,
+Miss Hughson, Miss Yates, and Miss Benedict. Miss West sat in the box
+adjoining.
+
+A fortnight later this handkerchief reappeared--and where? Among
+the cushions of a yellow satin couch in her own drawing-room. The
+Inseparables had just made their call and the three who had sat on the
+couch were Miss Driscoll, Miss Hughson, and Miss Benedict.
+
+The next instance seemed to point still more insistently toward the lady
+already named. Miss Yates had an expensive present to buy, and the whole
+five Inseparables went in an imposing group to Tiffany's. A tray of
+rings was set before them. All examined and eagerly fingered the stock
+out of which Miss Yates presently chose a finely set emerald. She was
+leading her friends away when the clerk suddenly whispered in her
+ear, "I miss one of the rings." Dismayed beyond speech, she turned and
+consulted the faces of her four companions who stared back at her with
+immovable serenity. But one of them was paler than usual, and this lady
+(it was Miss Driscoll) held her hands in her muff and did not offer to
+take them out. Miss Yates, whose father had completed a big "deal" the
+week before, wheeled round upon the clerk. "Charge it! charge it at its
+full value," said she. "I buy both the rings."
+
+And in three weeks the purloined ring came back to her, in a box of
+violets with no name attached.
+
+The third instance was a recent one, and had come to Mr. Driscoll's
+ears directly from the lady suffering the loss. She was a woman of
+uncompromising integrity, who felt it her duty to make known to this
+gentleman the following facts: She had just left a studio reception, and
+was standing at the curb waiting for a taxicab to draw up, when a small
+boy--a street arab--darted toward her from the other side of the street,
+and thrusting into her hand something small and hard, cried breathlessly
+as he slipped away, "It's yours, ma'am; you dropped it." Astonished, for
+she had not been conscious of any loss, she looked down at her treasure
+trove and found it to be a small medallion which she sometimes wore on
+a chain at her belt. But she had not worn it that day, nor any day for
+weeks. Then she remembered. She had worn it a month before to a similar
+reception at this same studio. A number of young girls had stood about
+her admiring it--she remembered well who they were; the Inseparables,
+of course, and to please them she had slipped it from its chain.
+Then something had happened,--something which diverted her attention
+entirely,--and she had gone home without the medallion; had, in fact,
+forgotten it, only to recall its loss now. Placing it in her bag,
+she looked hastily about her. A crowd was at her back; nothing to be
+distinguished there. But in front, on the opposite side of the street,
+stood a club-house, and in one of its windows she perceived a solitary
+figure looking out. It was that of Miss Driscoll's father. He could
+imagine her conclusion.
+
+In vain he denied all knowledge of the matter. She told him other
+stories which had come to her ears of thefts as mysterious, followed
+by restorations as peculiar as this one, finishing with, "It is your
+daughter, and people are beginning to say so."
+
+And Miss Strange, brooding over these instances, would have said
+the same, but for Miss Driscoll's absolute serenity of demeanour and
+complete abandonment to love. These seemed incompatible with guilt;
+these, whatever the appearances, proclaimed innocence--an innocence she
+was here to prove if fortune favoured and the really guilty person's
+madness should again break forth.
+
+For madness it would be and nothing less, for any hand, even the most
+experienced, to draw attention to itself by a repetition of old tricks
+on an occasion so marked. Yet because it would take madness, and madness
+knows no law, she prepared herself for the contingency under a mask of
+girlish smiles which made her at once the delight and astonishment of
+her watchful and uneasy host.
+
+With the exception of the diamonds worn by the Ambassadress, there was
+but one jewel of consequence to be seen at the dinner that night; but
+how great was that consequence and with what splendour it invested the
+snowy neck it adorned!
+
+Miss Strange, in compliment to the noble foreigners, had put on one
+of her family heirlooms--a filigree pendant of extraordinary sapphires
+which had once belonged to Marie Antoinette. As its beauty flashed upon
+the women, and its value struck the host, the latter could not restrain
+himself from casting an anxious eye about the board in search of some
+token of the cupidity with which one person there must welcome this
+unexpected sight.
+
+Naturally his first glance fell upon Alicia, seated opposite to him at
+the other end of the table. But her eyes were elsewhere, and her smile
+for Captain Holliday, and the father's gaze travelled on, taking up each
+young girl's face in turn. All were contemplating Miss Strange and her
+jewels, and the cheeks of one were flushed and those of the others
+pale, but whether with dread or longing who could tell. Struck with
+foreboding, but alive to his duty as host, he forced his glances away,
+and did not even allow himself to question the motive or the wisdom of
+the temptation thus offered.
+
+Two hours later and the girls were all in one room. It was a custom of
+the Inseparables to meet for a chat before retiring, but always
+alone and in the room of one of their number. But this was a night of
+innovations; Violet was not only included, but the meeting was held in
+her room. Her way with girls was even more fruitful of result than her
+way with men. They might laugh at her, criticize her or even call her
+names significant of disdain, but they never left her long to herself or
+missed an opportunity to make the most of her irrepressible chatter.
+
+Her satisfaction at entering this charmed circle did not take from her
+piquancy, and story after story fell from her lips, as she fluttered
+about, now here now there, in her endless preparations for retirement.
+She had taken off her historic pendant after it had been duly admired
+and handled by all present, and, with the careless confidence of an
+assured ownership, thrown it down upon the end of her dresser, which, by
+the way, projected very close to the open window.
+
+"Are you going to leave your jewel there?" whispered a voice in her ear
+as a burst of laughter rang out in response to one of her sallies.
+
+Turning, with a simulation of round-eyed wonder, she met Miss Hughson's
+earnest gaze with the careless rejoinder, "What's the harm?" and went
+on with her story with all the reckless ease of a perfectly thoughtless
+nature.
+
+Miss Hughson abandoned her protest. How could she explain her reasons
+for it to one apparently uninitiated in the scandal associated with
+their especial clique.
+
+Yes, she left the jewel there; but she locked her door and quickly, so
+that they must all have heard her before reaching their rooms. Then she
+crossed to the window, which, like all on this side, opened on a balcony
+running the length of the house. She was aware of this balcony, also of
+the fact that only young ladies slept in the corridor communicating with
+it. But she was not quite sure that this one corridor accommodated
+them all. If one of them should room elsewhere! (Miss Driscoll, for
+instance). But no! the anxiety displayed for the safety of her jewel
+precluded that supposition. Their hostess, if none of the others, was
+within access of this room and its open window. But how about the rest?
+Perhaps the lights would tell. Eagerly the little schemer looked forth,
+and let her glances travel down the full length of the balcony. Two
+separate beams of light shot across it as she looked, and presently
+another, and, after some waiting, a fourth. But the fifth failed to
+appear. This troubled her, but not seriously. Two of the girls might be
+sleeping in one bed.
+
+Drawing her shade, she finished her preparations for the night; then
+with her kimono on, lifted the pendant and thrust it into a small box
+she had taken from her trunk. A curious smile, very unlike any she had
+shown to man or woman that day, gave a sarcastic lift to her lips, as
+with a slow and thoughtful manipulation of her dainty fingers she moved
+the jewel about in this small receptacle and then returned it, after one
+quick examining glance, to the very spot on the dresser from which she
+had taken it. "If only the madness is great enough!" that smile seemed
+to say. Truly, it was much to hope for, but a chance is a chance; and
+comforting herself with the thought, Miss Strange put out her light,
+and, with a hasty raising of the shade she had previously pulled down,
+took a final look at the prospect.
+
+Its aspect made her shudder. A low fog was rising from the meadows in
+the far distance, and its ghostliness under the moon woke all sorts of
+uncanny images in her excited mind. To escape them she crept into bed
+where she lay with her eyes on the end of her dresser. She had closed
+that half of the French window over which she had drawn the shade; but
+she had left ajar the one giving free access to the jewels; and when she
+was not watching the scintillation of her sapphires in the moonlight,
+she was dwelling in fixed attention on this narrow opening.
+
+But nothing happened, and two o'clock, then three o'clock struck,
+without a dimming of the blue scintillations on the end of her dresser.
+Then she suddenly sat up. Not that she heard anything new, but that a
+thought had come to her. "If an attempt is made," so she murmured softly
+to herself, "it will be by--" She did not finish. Something--she
+could not call it sound--set her heart beating tumultuously, and
+listening--listening--watching--watching--she followed in her
+imagination the approach down the balcony of an almost inaudible step,
+not daring to move herself, it seemed so near, but waiting with eyes
+fixed, for the shadow which must fall across the shade she had failed
+to raise over that half of the swinging window she had so carefully left
+shut.
+
+At length she saw it projecting slowly across the slightly illuminated
+surface. Formless, save for the outreaching hand, it passed the
+casement's edge, nearing with pauses and hesitations the open gap beyond
+through which the neglected sapphires beamed with steady lustre. Would
+she ever see the hand itself appear between the dresser and the window
+frame? Yes, there it comes,--small, delicate, and startlingly white,
+threading that gap--darting with the suddenness of a serpent's tongue
+toward the dresser and disappearing again with the pendant in its
+clutch.
+
+As she realizes this,--she is but young, you know,--as she sees her bait
+taken and the hardly expected event fulfilled, her pent-up breath sped
+forth in a sigh which sent the intruder flying, and so startled herself
+that she sank back in terror on her pillow.
+
+The breakfast-call had sounded its musical chimes through the halls.
+The Ambassador and his wife had responded, so had most of the young
+gentlemen and ladies, but the daughter of the house was not amongst
+them, nor Miss Strange, whom one would naturally expect to see down
+first of all.
+
+These two absences puzzled Mr. Driscoll. What might they not portend?
+But his suspense, at least in one regard, was short. Before his guests
+were well seated, Miss Driscoll entered from the terrace in company with
+Captain Holliday. In her arms she carried a huge bunch of roses and
+was looking very beautiful. Her father's heart warmed at the sight. No
+shadow from the night rested upon her.
+
+But Miss Strange!--where was she? He could not feel quite easy till he
+knew.
+
+"Have any of you seen Miss Strange?" he asked, as they sat down at
+table. And his eyes sought the Inseparables.
+
+Five lovely heads were shaken, some carelessly, some wonderingly, and
+one, with a quick, forced smile. But he was in no mood to discriminate,
+and he had beckoned one of the servants to him, when a step was heard at
+the door and the delinquent slid in and took her place, in a shamefaced
+manner suggestive of a cause deeper than mere tardiness. In fact, she
+had what might be called a frightened air, and stared into her plate,
+avoiding every eye, which was certainly not natural to her. What did
+it mean? and why, as she made a poor attempt at eating, did four of the
+Inseparables exchange glances of doubt and dismay and then concentrate
+their looks upon his daughter? That Alicia failed to notice this,
+but sat abloom above her roses now fastened in a great bunch upon her
+breast, offered him some comfort, yet, for all the volubility of his
+chief guests, the meal was a great trial to his patience, as well as a
+poor preparation for the hour when, the noble pair gone, he stepped into
+the library to find Miss Strange awaiting him with one hand behind her
+back and a piteous look on her infantile features.
+
+"O, Mr. Driscoll," she began,--and then he saw that a group of anxious
+girls hovered in her rear--"my pendant! my beautiful pendant! It is
+gone! Somebody reached in from the balcony and took it from my dresser
+in the night. Of course, it was to frighten me; all of the girls told me
+not to leave it there. But I--I cannot make them give it back, and papa
+is so particular about this jewel that I'm afraid to go home. Won't
+you tell them it's no joke, and see that I get it again. I won't be so
+careless another time."
+
+Hardly believing his eyes, hardly believing his ears,--she was so
+perfectly the spoiled child detected in a fault--he looked sternly about
+upon the girls and bade them end the jest and produce the gems at once.
+
+But not one of them spoke, and not one of them moved; only his daughter
+grew pale until the roses seemed a mockery, and the steady stare of her
+large eyes was almost too much for him to bear.
+
+The anguish of this gave asperity to his manner, and in a strange,
+hoarse tone he loudly cried:
+
+"One of you did this. Which? If it was you, Alicia, speak. I am in no
+mood for nonsense. I want to know whose foot traversed the balcony and
+whose hand abstracted these jewels."
+
+A continued silence, deepening into painful embarrassment for all.
+Mr. Driscoll eyed them in ill-concealed anguish, then turning to Miss
+Strange was still further thrown off his balance by seeing her pretty
+head droop and her gaze fall in confusion.
+
+"Oh! it's easy enough to tell whose foot traversed the balcony," she
+murmured. "It left this behind." And drawing forward her hand, she
+held out to view a small gold-coloured slipper. "I found it outside my
+window," she explained. "I hoped I should not have to show it."
+
+A gasp of uncontrollable feeling from the surrounding group of girls,
+then absolute stillness.
+
+"I fail to recognize it," observed Mr. Driscoll, taking it in his hand.
+"Whose slipper is this?" he asked in a manner not to be gainsaid.
+
+Still no reply, then as he continued to eye the girls one after another
+a voice--the last he expected to hear--spoke and his daughter cried:
+
+"It is mine. But it was not I who walked in it down the balcony."
+
+"Alicia!"
+
+A month's apprehension was in that cry. The silence, the pent-up emotion
+brooding in the air was intolerable. A fresh young laugh broke it.
+
+"Oh," exclaimed a roguish voice, "I knew that you were all in it! But
+the especial one who wore the slipper and grabbed the pendant cannot
+hope to hide herself. Her finger-tips will give her away."
+
+Amazement on every face and a convulsive movement in one half-hidden
+hand.
+
+"You see," the airy little being went on, in her light way, "I have some
+awfully funny tricks. I am always being scolded for them, but somehow I
+don't improve. One is to keep my jewelry bright with a strange foreign
+paste an old Frenchwoman once gave me in Paris. It's of a vivid red,
+and stains the fingers dreadfully if you don't take care. Not even water
+will take it off, see mine. I used that paste on my pendant last night
+just after you left me, and being awfully sleepy I didn't stop to rub
+it off. If your finger-tips are not red, you never touched the pendant,
+Miss Driscoll. Oh, see! They are as white as milk.
+
+"But some one took the sapphires, and I owe that person a scolding, as
+well as myself. Was it you, Miss Hughson? You, Miss Yates? or--" and
+here she paused before Miss West, "Oh, you have your gloves on! You are
+the guilty one!" and her laugh rang out like a peal of bells, robbing
+her next sentence of even a suggestion of sarcasm. "Oh, what a
+sly-boots!" she cried. "How you have deceived me! Whoever would have
+thought you to be the one to play the mischief!"
+
+Who indeed! Of all the five, she was the one who was considered
+absolutely immune from suspicion ever since the night Mrs. Barnum's
+handkerchief had been taken, and she not in the box. Eyes which had
+surveyed Miss Driscoll askance now rose in wonder toward hers,
+and failed to fall again because of the stoniness into which her
+delicately-carved features had settled.
+
+"Miss West, I know you will be glad to remove your gloves; Miss Strange
+certainly has a right to know her special tormentor," spoke up her host
+in as natural a voice as his great relief would allow.
+
+But the cold, half-frozen woman remained without a movement. She was
+not deceived by the banter of the moment. She knew that to all of the
+others, if not to Peter Strange's odd little daughter, it was the thief
+who was being spotted and brought thus hilariously to light. And her
+eyes grew hard, and her lips grey, and she failed to unglove the hands
+upon which all glances were concentrated.
+
+"You do not need to see my hands; I confess to taking the pendant."
+
+"Caroline!"
+
+A heart overcome by shock had thrown up this cry. Miss West eyed her
+bosom-friend disdainfully.
+
+"Miss Strange has called it a jest," she coldly commented. "Why should
+you suggest anything of a graver character?"
+
+Alicia brought thus to bay, and by one she had trusted most, stepped
+quickly forward, and quivering with vague doubts, aghast before
+unheard-of possibilities, she tremulously remarked:
+
+"We did not sleep together last night. You had to come into my room to
+get my slippers. Why did you do this? What was in your mind, Caroline?"
+
+A steady look, a low laugh choked with many emotions answered her.
+
+"Do you want me to reply, Alicia? Or shall we let it pass?"
+
+"Answer!"
+
+It was Mr. Driscoll who spoke. Alicia had shrunk back, almost to where a
+little figure was cowering with wide eyes fixed in something like terror
+on the aroused father's face.
+
+"Then hear me," murmured the girl, entrapped and suddenly desperate. "I
+wore Alicia's slippers and I took the jewels, because it was time that
+an end should come to your mutual dissimulation. The love I once felt
+for her she has herself deliberately killed. I had a lover--she took
+him. I had faith in life, in honour, and in friendship. She destroyed
+all. A thief--she has dared to aspire to him! And you condoned her
+fault. You, with your craven restoration of her booty, thought the
+matter cleared and her a fit mate for a man of highest honour."
+
+"Miss West,"--no one had ever heard that tone in Mr. Driscoll's voice
+before, "before you say another word calculated to mislead these ladies,
+let me say that this hand never returned any one's booty or had anything
+to do with the restoration of any abstracted article. You have been
+caught in a net, Miss West, from which you cannot escape by slandering
+my innocent daughter."
+
+"Innocent!" All the tragedy latent in this peculiar girl's nature blazed
+forth in the word. "Alicia, face me. Are you innocent? Who took the
+Dempsey corals, and that diamond from the Tiffany tray?"
+
+"It is not necessary for Alicia to answer," the father interposed with
+not unnatural heat. "Miss West stands self-convicted."
+
+"How about Lady Paget's scarf? I was not there that night."
+
+"You are a woman of wiles. That could be managed by one bent on an
+elaborate scheme of revenge."
+
+"And so could the abstraction of Mrs. Barnum's five-hundred-dollar
+handkerchief by one who sat in the next box," chimed in Miss Hughson,
+edging away from the friend to whose honour she would have pinned her
+faith an hour before. "I remember now seeing her lean over the railing
+to adjust the old lady's shawl."
+
+With a start, Caroline West turned a tragic gaze upon the speaker.
+
+"You think me guilty of all because of what I did last night?"
+
+"Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"And you, Anna?"
+
+"Alicia has my sympathy," murmured Miss Benedict.
+
+Yet the wild girl persisted.
+
+"But I have told you my provocation. You cannot believe that I am guilty
+of her sin; not if you look at her as I am looking now."
+
+But their glances hardly followed her pointing finger. Her friends--the
+comrades of her youth, the Inseparables with their secret oath--one and
+all held themselves aloof, struck by the perfidy they were only just
+beginning to take in. Smitten with despair, for these girls were her
+life, she gave one wild leap and sank on her knees before Alicia.
+
+"O speak!" she began. "Forgive me, and--"
+
+A tremble seized her throat; she ceased to speak and let fall her
+partially uplifted hands. The cheery sound of men's voices had drifted
+in from the terrace, and the figure of Captain Holliday could be seen
+passing by. The shudder which shook Caroline West communicated itself to
+Alicia Driscoll, and the former rising quickly, the two women surveyed
+each other, possibly for the first time, with open soul and a complete
+understanding.
+
+"Caroline!" murmured the one.
+
+"Alicia!" pleaded the other.
+
+"Caroline, trust me," said Alicia Driscoll in that moving voice of hers,
+which more than her beauty caught and retained all hearts. "You have
+served me ill, but it was not all undeserved. Girls," she went on,
+eyeing both them and her father with the wistfulness of a breaking
+heart, "neither Caroline nor myself are worthy of Captain Holliday's
+love. Caroline has told you her fault, but mine is perhaps a worse one.
+The ring--the scarf--the diamond pins--I took them all--took them if
+I did not retain them. A curse has been over my life--the curse of a
+longing I could not combat. But love was working a change in me. Since
+I have known Captain Holliday--but that's all over. I was mad to think
+I could be happy with such memories in my life. I shall never marry
+now--or touch jewels again--my own or another's. Father, father, you
+won't go back on your girl! I couldn't see Caroline suffer for what I
+have done. You will pardon me and help--help--"
+
+Her voice choked. She flung herself into her father's arms; his head
+bent over hers, and for an instant not a soul in the room moved.
+Then Miss Hughson gave a spring and caught her by the hand. "We are
+inseparable," said she, and kissed the hand, murmuring, "Now is our time
+to show it."
+
+Then other lips fell upon those cold and trembling fingers, which seemed
+to warm under these embraces. And then a tear. It came from the hard eye
+of Caroline, and remained a sacred secret between the two.
+
+"You have your pendant?"
+
+Mr. Driscoll's suffering eye shone down on Violet Strange's uplifted
+face as she advanced to say good-bye preparatory to departure.
+
+"Yes," she acknowledged, "but hardly, I fear, your gratitude."
+
+And the answer astonished her.
+
+"I am not sure that the real Alicia will not make her father happier
+than the unreal one has ever done."
+
+"And Captain Holliday?"
+
+"He may come to feel the same."
+
+"Then I do not quit in disgrace?"
+
+"You depart with my thanks."
+
+When a certain personage was told of the success of Miss Strange's
+latest manoeuvre, he remarked: "The little one progresses. We shall have
+to give her a case of prime importance next."
+
+END OF PROBLEM I
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM II. THE SECOND BULLET
+
+"You must see her."
+
+"No. No."
+
+"She's a most unhappy woman. Husband and child both taken from her in a
+moment; and now, all means of living as well, unless some happy
+thought of yours--some inspiration of your genius--shows us a way of
+re-establishing her claims to the policy voided by this cry of suicide."
+
+But the small wise head of Violet Strange continued its slow shake of
+decided refusal.
+
+"I'm sorry," she protested, "but it's quite out of my province. I'm too
+young to meddle with so serious a matter."
+
+"Not when you can save a bereaved woman the only possible compensation
+left her by untoward fate?"
+
+"Let the police try their hand at that."
+
+"They have had no success with the case."
+
+"Or you?"
+
+"Nor I either."
+
+"And you expect--"
+
+"Yes, Miss Strange. I expect you to find the missing bullet which will
+settle the fact that murder and not suicide ended George Hammond's life.
+If you cannot, then a long litigation awaits this poor widow, ending, as
+such litigation usually does, in favour of the stronger party. There's
+the alternative. If you once saw her--"
+
+"But that's what I'm not willing to do. If I once saw her I should yield
+to her importunities and attempt the seemingly impossible. My instincts
+bid me say no. Give me something easier."
+
+"Easier things are not so remunerative. There's money in this affair, if
+the insurance company is forced to pay up. I can offer you--"
+
+"What?"
+
+There was eagerness in the tone despite her effort at nonchalance. The
+other smiled imperceptibly, and briefly named the sum.
+
+It was larger than she had expected. This her visitor saw by the way her
+eyelids fell and the peculiar stillness which, for an instant, held her
+vivacity in check.
+
+"And you think I can earn that?"
+
+Her eyes were fixed on his in an eagerness as honest as it was
+unrestrained.
+
+He could hardly conceal his amazement, her desire was so evident and the
+cause of it so difficult to understand. He knew she wanted money--that
+was her avowed reason for entering into this uncongenial work. But to
+want it so much! He glanced at her person; it was simply clad but very
+expensively--how expensively it was his business to know. Then he took
+in the room in which they sat. Simplicity again, but the simplicity of
+high art--the drawing-room of one rich enough to indulge in the final
+luxury of a highly cultivated taste, viz.: unostentatious elegance and
+the subjection of each carefully chosen ornament to the general effect.
+
+What did this favoured child of fortune lack that she could be reached
+by such a plea, when her whole being revolted from the nature of the
+task he offered her? It was a question not new to him; but one he had
+never heard answered and was not likely to hear answered now. But the
+fact remained that the consent he had thought dependent upon sympathetic
+interest could be reached much more readily by the promise of large
+emolument,--and he owned to a feeling of secret disappointment even
+while he recognized the value of the discovery.
+
+But his satisfaction in the latter, if satisfaction it were, was of
+very short duration. Almost immediately he observed a change in her. The
+sparkle which had shone in the eye whose depths he had never been able
+to penetrate, had dissipated itself in something like a tear and she
+spoke up in that vigorous tone no one but himself had ever heard, as she
+said:
+
+"No. The sum is a good one and I could use it; but I will not waste my
+energy on a case I do not believe in. The man shot himself. He was a
+speculator, and probably had good reason for his act. Even his wife
+acknowledges that he has lately had more losses than gains."
+
+"See her. She has something to tell you which never got into the
+papers."
+
+"You say that? You know that?"
+
+"On my honour, Miss Strange."
+
+Violet pondered; then suddenly succumbed.
+
+"Let her come, then. Prompt to the hour. I will receive her at three.
+Later I have a tea and two party calls to make."
+
+Her visitor rose to leave. He had been able to subdue all evidence of
+his extreme gratification, and now took on a formal air. In dismissing a
+guest, Miss Strange was invariably the society belle and that only. This
+he had come to recognize.
+
+The case (well known at the time) was, in the fewest possible words, as
+follows:
+
+On a sultry night in September, a young couple living in one of the
+large apartment houses in the extreme upper portion of Manhattan were so
+annoyed by the incessant crying of a child in the adjoining suite, that
+they got up, he to smoke, and she to sit in the window for a possible
+breath of cool air. They were congratulating themselves upon the wisdom
+they had shown in thus giving up all thought of sleep--for the child's
+crying had not ceased--when (it may have been two o'clock and it may
+have been a little later) there came from somewhere near, the sharp and
+somewhat peculiar detonation of a pistol-shot.
+
+He thought it came from above; she, from the rear, and they were staring
+at each other in the helpless wonder of the moment, when they were
+struck by the silence. The baby had ceased to cry. All was as still
+in the adjoining apartment as in their own--too still--much too still.
+Their mutual stare turned to one of horror. "It came from there!"
+whispered the wife. "Some accident has occurred to Mr. or Mrs.
+Hammond--we ought to go--"
+
+Her words--very tremulous ones--were broken by a shout from below. They
+were standing in their window and had evidently been seen by a passing
+policeman. "Anything wrong up there?" they heard him cry. Mr. Saunders
+immediately looked out. "Nothing wrong here," he called down. (They were
+but two stories from the pavement.) "But I'm not so sure about the
+rear apartment. We thought we heard a shot. Hadn't you better come up,
+officer? My wife is nervous about it. I'll meet you at the stair-head
+and show you the way."
+
+The officer nodded and stepped in. The young couple hastily donned some
+wraps, and, by the time he appeared on their floor, they were ready to
+accompany him.
+
+Meanwhile, no disturbance was apparent anywhere else in the house, until
+the policeman rang the bell of the Hammond apartment. Then, voices began
+to be heard, and doors to open above and below, but not the one before
+which the policeman stood.
+
+Another ring, and this time an insistent one;--and still no response.
+The officer's hand was rising for the third time when there came a sound
+of fluttering from behind the panels against which he had laid his ear,
+and finally a choked voice uttering unintelligible words. Then a hand
+began to struggle with the lock, and the door, slowly opening, disclosed
+a woman clad in a hastily donned wrapper and giving every evidence of
+extreme fright.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, seeing only the compassionate faces of her
+neighbours. "You heard it, too! a pistol-shot from there--there--my
+husband's room. I have not dared to go--I--I--O, have mercy and see if
+anything is wrong! It is so still--so still, and only a moment ago the
+baby was crying. Mrs. Saunders, Mrs. Saunders, why is it so still?"
+
+She had fallen into her neighbour's arms. The hand with which she had
+pointed out a certain door had sunk to her side and she appeared to be
+on the verge of collapse.
+
+The officer eyed her sternly, while noting her appearance, which was
+that of a woman hastily risen from bed.
+
+"Where were you?" he asked. "Not with your husband and child, or you
+would know what had happened there."
+
+"I was sleeping down the hall," she managed to gasp out. "I'm not
+well--I--Oh, why do you all stand still and do nothing? My baby's in
+there. Go! go!" and, with sudden energy, she sprang upright, her eyes
+wide open and burning, her small well featured face white as the linen
+she sought to hide.
+
+The officer demurred no longer. In another instant he was trying the
+door at which she was again pointing.
+
+It was locked.
+
+Glancing back at the woman, now cowering almost to the floor, he pounded
+at the door and asked the man inside to open.
+
+No answer came back.
+
+With a sharp turn he glanced again at the wife.
+
+"You say that your husband is in this room?"
+
+She nodded, gasping faintly, "And the child!"
+
+He turned back, listened, then beckoned to Mr. Saunders. "We shall have
+to break our way in," said he. "Put your shoulder well to the door.
+Now!"
+
+The hinges of the door creaked; the lock gave way (this special officer
+weighed two hundred and seventy-five, as he found out, next day), and a
+prolonged and sweeping crash told the rest.
+
+Mrs. Hammond gave a low cry; and, straining forward from where she
+crouched in terror on the floor, searched the faces of the two men for
+some hint of what they saw in the dimly-lighted space beyond. Something
+dreadful, something which made Mr. Saunders come rushing back with a
+shout:
+
+"Take her away! Take her to our apartment, Jennie. She must not see--"
+
+Not see! He realized the futility of his words as his gaze fell on the
+young woman who had risen up at his approach and now stood gazing at
+him without speech, without movement, but with a glare of terror in her
+eyes, which gave him his first realization of human misery.
+
+His own glance fell before it. If he had followed his instinct he would
+have fled the house rather than answer the question of her look and the
+attitude of her whole frozen body.
+
+Perhaps in mercy to his speechless terror, perhaps in mercy to herself,
+she was the one who at last found the word which voiced their mutual
+anguish.
+
+"Dead?"
+
+No answer. None was needed.
+
+"And my baby?"
+
+O, that cry! It curdled the hearts of all who heard it. It shook the
+souls of men and women both inside and outside the apartment; then all
+was forgotten in the wild rush she made. The wife and mother had
+flung herself upon the scene, and, side by side with the not unmoved
+policeman, stood looking down upon the desolation made in one fatal
+instant in her home and heart.
+
+They lay there together, both past help, both quite dead. The child
+had simply been strangled by the weight of his father's arm which lay
+directly across the upturned little throat. But the father was a victim
+of the shot they had heard. There was blood on his breast, and a pistol
+in his hand.
+
+Suicide! The horrible truth was patent. No wonder they wanted to hold
+the young widow back. Her neighbour, Mrs. Saunders, crept in on tiptoe
+and put her arms about the swaying, fainting woman; but there was
+nothing to say--absolutely nothing.
+
+At least, they thought not. But when they saw her throw herself down,
+not by her husband, but by the child, and drag it out from under that
+strangling arm and hug and kiss it and call out wildly for a doctor, the
+officer endeavoured to interfere and yet could not find the heart to do
+so, though he knew the child was dead and should not, according to
+all the rules of the coroner's office, be moved before that official
+arrived. Yet because no mother could be convinced of a fact like this,
+he let her sit with it on the floor and try all her little arts to
+revive it, while he gave orders to the janitor and waited himself for
+the arrival of doctor and coroner.
+
+She was still sitting there in wide-eyed misery, alternately fondling
+the little body and drawing back to consult its small set features for
+some sign of life, when the doctor came, and, after one look at the
+child, drew it softly from her arms and laid it quietly in the crib from
+which its father had evidently lifted it but a short time before. Then
+he turned back to her, and found her on her feet, upheld by her two
+friends. She had understood his action, and without a groan had accepted
+her fate. Indeed, she seemed incapable of any further speech or action.
+She was staring down at her husband's body, which she, for the first
+time, seemed fully to see. Was her look one of grief or of resentment
+for the part he had played so unintentionally in her child's death? It
+was hard to tell; and when, with slowly rising finger, she pointed to
+the pistol so tightly clutched in the other outstretched hand, no one
+there--and by this time the room was full--could foretell what her words
+would be when her tongue regained its usage and she could speak.
+
+What she did say was this:
+
+"Is there a bullet gone? Did he fire off that pistol?" A question so
+manifestly one of delirium that no one answered it, which seemed to
+surprise her, though she said nothing till her glance had passed
+all around the walls of the room to where a window stood open to the
+night,--its lower sash being entirely raised. "There! look there!" she
+cried, with a commanding accent, and, throwing up her hands, sank a dead
+weight into the arms of those supporting her.
+
+No one understood; but naturally more than one rushed to the window. An
+open space was before them. Here lay the fields not yet parcelled out
+into lots and built upon; but it was not upon these they looked, but
+upon the strong trellis which they found there, which, if it supported
+no vine, formed a veritable ladder between this window and the ground.
+
+Could she have meant to call attention to this fact; and were her words
+expressive of another idea than the obvious one of suicide?
+
+If so, to what lengths a woman's imagination can go! Or so their
+combined looks seemed to proclaim, when to their utter astonishment they
+saw the officer, who had presented a calm appearance up till now, shift
+his position and with a surprised grunt direct their eyes to a portion
+of the wall just visible beyond the half-drawn curtains of the bed. The
+mirror hanging there showed a star-shaped breakage, such as follows the
+sharp impact of a bullet or a fiercely projected stone.
+
+"He fired two shots. One went wild; the other straight home."
+
+It was the officer delivering his opinion.
+
+Mr. Saunders, returning from the distant room where he had assisted in
+carrying Mrs. Hammond, cast a look at the shattered glass, and remarked
+forcibly:
+
+"I heard but one; and I was sitting up, disturbed by that poor infant.
+Jennie, did you hear more than one shot?" he asked, turning toward his
+wife.
+
+"No," she answered, but not with the readiness he had evidently
+expected. "I heard only one, but that was not quite usual in its tone.
+I'm used to guns," she explained, turning to the officer. "My father
+was an army man, and he taught me very early to load and fire a pistol.
+There was a prolonged sound to this shot; something like an echo of
+itself, following close upon the first ping. Didn't you notice that,
+Warren?"
+
+"I remember something of the kind," her husband allowed.
+
+"He shot twice and quickly," interposed the policeman, sententiously.
+"We shall find a spent bullet back of that mirror."
+
+But when, upon the arrival of the coroner, an investigation was made of
+the mirror and the wall behind, no bullet was found either there or any
+where else in the room, save in the dead man's breast. Nor had more than
+one been shot from his pistol, as five full chambers testified. The case
+which seemed so simple had its mysteries, but the assertion made by Mrs.
+Saunders no longer carried weight, nor was the evidence offered by the
+broken mirror considered as indubitably establishing the fact that a
+second shot had been fired in the room.
+
+Yet it was equally evident that the charge which had entered the dead
+speculator's breast had not been delivered at the close range of the
+pistol found clutched in his hand. There were no powder-marks to be
+discerned on his pajama-jacket, or on the flesh beneath. Thus anomaly
+confronted anomaly, leaving open but one other theory: that the bullet
+found in Mr. Hammond's breast came from the window and the one he shot
+went out of it. But this would necessitate his having shot his pistol
+from a point far removed from where he was found; and his wound was such
+as made it difficult to believe that he would stagger far, if at all,
+after its infliction.
+
+Yet, because the coroner was both conscientious and alert, he caused a
+most rigorous search to be made of the ground overlooked by the above
+mentioned window; a search in which the police joined, but which was
+without any result save that of rousing the attention of people in the
+neighbourhood and leading to a story being circulated of a man seen some
+time the night before crossing the fields in a great hurry. But as no
+further particulars were forthcoming, and not even a description of the
+man to be had, no emphasis would have been laid upon this story had it
+not transpired that the moment a report of it had come to Mrs. Hammond's
+ears (why is there always some one to carry these reports?) she
+roused from the torpor into which she had fallen, and in wild fashion
+exclaimed:
+
+"I knew it! I expected it! He was shot through the window and by that
+wretch. He never shot himself." Violent declarations which trailed off
+into the one continuous wail, "O, my baby! my poor baby!"
+
+Such words, even though the fruit of delirium, merited some sort of
+attention, or so this good coroner thought, and as soon as opportunity
+offered and she was sufficiently sane and quiet to respond to his
+questions, he asked her whom she had meant by that wretch, and what
+reason she had, or thought she had, of attributing her husband's death
+to any other agency than his own disgust with life.
+
+And then it was that his sympathies, although greatly roused in her
+favour began to wane. She met the question with a cold stare followed by
+a few ambiguous words out of which he could make nothing. Had she said
+wretch? She did not remember. They must not be influenced by anything
+she might have uttered in her first grief. She was well-nigh insane at
+the time. But of one thing they might be sure: her husband had not shot
+himself; he was too much afraid of death for such an act. Besides, he
+was too happy. Whatever folks might say he was too fond of his family to
+wish to leave it.
+
+Nor did the coroner or any other official succeed in eliciting anything
+further from her. Even when she was asked, with cruel insistence,
+how she explained the fact that the baby was found lying on the floor
+instead of in its crib, her only answer was: "His father was trying to
+soothe it. The child was crying dreadfully, as you have heard from those
+who were kept awake by him that night, and my husband was carrying him
+about when the shot came which caused George to fall and overlay the
+baby in his struggles."
+
+"Carrying a baby about with a loaded pistol in his hand?" came back in
+stern retort.
+
+She had no answer for this. She admitted when informed that the bullet
+extracted from her husband's body had been found to correspond exactly
+with those remaining in the five chambers of the pistol taken from his
+hand, that he was not only the owner of this pistol but was in the habit
+of sleeping with it under his pillow; but, beyond that, nothing; and
+this reticence, as well as her manner which was cold and repellent, told
+against her.
+
+A verdict of suicide was rendered by the coroner's jury, and the
+life-insurance company, in which Mr. Hammond had but lately insured
+himself for a large sum, taking advantage of the suicide clause embodied
+in the policy, announced its determination of not paying the same.
+
+Such was the situation, as known to Violet Strange and the general
+public, on the day she was asked to see Mrs. Hammond and learn what
+might alter her opinion as to the justice of this verdict and the stand
+taken by the Shuler Life Insurance Company.
+
+The clock on the mantel in Miss Strange's rose-coloured boudoir had
+struck three, and Violet was gazing in some impatience at the door, when
+there came a gentle knock upon it, and the maid (one of the elderly, not
+youthful, kind) ushered in her expected visitor.
+
+"You are Mrs. Hammond?" she asked, in natural awe of the too black
+figure outlined so sharply against the deep pink of the sea-shell room.
+
+The answer was a slow lifting of the veil which shadowed the features
+she knew only from the cuts she had seen in newspapers.
+
+"You are--Miss Strange?" stammered her visitor; "the young lady who--"
+
+"I am," chimed in a voice as ringing as it was sweet. "I am the person
+you have come here to see. And this is my home. But that does not make
+me less interested in the unhappy, or less desirous of serving them.
+Certainly you have met with the two greatest losses which can come to a
+woman--I know your story well enough to say that--; but what have you
+to tell me in proof that you should not lose your anticipated income as
+well? Something vital, I hope, else I cannot help you; something which
+you should have told the coroner's jury--and did not."
+
+The flush which was the sole answer these words called forth did not
+take from the refinement of the young widow's expression, but rather
+added to it; Violet watched it in its ebb and flow and, seriously
+affected by it (why, she did not know, for Mrs. Hammond had made no
+other appeal either by look or gesture), pushed forward a chair and
+begged her visitor to be seated.
+
+"We can converse in perfect safety here," she said. "When you feel quite
+equal to it, let me hear what you have to communicate. It will never go
+any further. I could not do the work I do if I felt it necessary to have
+a confidant."
+
+"But you are so young and so--so--"
+
+"So inexperienced you would say and so evidently a member of what New
+Yorkers call 'society.' Do not let that trouble you. My inexperience is
+not likely to last long and my social pleasures are more apt to add to
+my efficiency than to detract from it."
+
+With this Violet's face broke into a smile. It was not the brilliant
+one so often seen upon her lips, but there was something in its quality
+which carried encouragement to the widow and led her to say with obvious
+eagerness:
+
+"You know the facts?"
+
+"I have read all the papers."
+
+"I was not believed on the stand."
+
+"It was your manner--"
+
+"I could not help my manner. I was keeping something back, and, being
+unused to deceit, I could not act quite naturally."
+
+"Why did you keep something back? When you saw the unfavourable
+impression made by your reticence, why did you not speak up and frankly
+tell your story?"
+
+"Because I was ashamed. Because I thought it would hurt me more to speak
+than to keep silent. I do not think so now; but I did then--and so
+made my great mistake. You must remember not only the awful shock of my
+double loss, but the sense of guilt accompanying it; for my husband and
+I had quarreled that night, quarreled bitterly--that was why I had run
+away into another room and not because I was feeling ill and impatient
+of the baby's fretful cries."
+
+"So people have thought." In saying this, Miss Strange was perhaps
+cruelly emphatic. "You wish to explain that quarrel? You think it will
+be doing any good to your cause to go into that matter with me now?"
+
+"I cannot say; but I must first clear my conscience and then try to
+convince you that quarrel or no quarrel, he never took his own life. He
+was not that kind. He had an abnormal fear of death. I do not like to
+say it but he was a physical coward. I have seen him turn pale at the
+least hint of danger. He could no more have turned that muzzle upon his
+own breast than he could have turned it upon his baby. Some other hand
+shot him, Miss Strange. Remember the open window, the shattered mirror;
+and I think I know that hand."
+
+Her head had fallen forward on her breast. The emotion she showed was
+not so eloquent of grief as of deep personal shame.
+
+"You think you know the man?" In saying this, Violet's voice sunk to a
+whisper. It was an accusation of murder she had just heard.
+
+"To my great distress, yes. When Mr. Hammond and I were married," the
+widow now proceeded in a more determined tone, "there was another man--a
+very violent one--who vowed even at the church door that George and I
+should never live out two full years together. We have not. Our second
+anniversary would have been in November."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Let me say this: the quarrel of which I speak was not serious enough to
+occasion any such act of despair on his part. A man would be mad to
+end his life on account of so slight a disagreement. It was not even on
+account of the person of whom I've just spoken, though that person had
+been mentioned between us earlier in the evening, Mr. Hammond having
+come across him face to face that very afternoon in the subway. Up to
+this time neither of us had seen or heard of him since our wedding-day."
+
+"And you think this person whom you barely mentioned, so mindful of his
+old grudge that he sought out your domicile, and, with the intention of
+murder, climbed the trellis leading to your room and turned his pistol
+upon the shadowy figure which was all he could see in the semi-obscurity
+of a much lowered gas-jet?"
+
+"A man in the dark does not need a bright light to see his enemy when he
+is intent upon revenge."
+
+Miss Strange altered her tone.
+
+"And your husband? You must acknowledge that he shot off his pistol
+whether the other did or not."
+
+"It was in self-defence. He would shoot to save his own life--or the
+baby's."
+
+"Then he must have heard or seen--"
+
+"A man at the window."
+
+"And would have shot there?"
+
+"Or tried to."
+
+"Tried to?"
+
+"Yes; the other shot first--oh, I've thought it all out--causing my
+husband's bullet to go wild. It was his which broke the mirror."
+
+Violet's eyes, bright as stars, suddenly narrowed.
+
+"And what happened then?" she asked. "Why cannot they find the bullet?"
+
+"Because it went out of the window;--glanced off and went out of the
+window."
+
+Mrs. Hammond's tone was triumphant; her look spirited and intense.
+
+Violet eyed her compassionately.
+
+"Would a bullet glancing off from a mirror, however hung, be apt to
+reach a window so far on the opposite side?"
+
+"I don't know; I only know that it did," was the contradictory, almost
+absurd, reply.
+
+"What was the cause of the quarrel you speak of between your husband and
+yourself? You see, I must know the exact truth and all the truth to be
+of any assistance to you."
+
+"It was--it was about the care I gave, or didn't give, the baby. I feel
+awfully to have to say it, but George did not think I did my full duty
+by the child. He said there was no need of its crying so; that if I gave
+it the proper attention it would not keep the neighbours and himself
+awake half the night. And I--I got angry and insisted that I did the
+best I could; that the child was naturally fretful and that if he wasn't
+satisfied with my way of looking after it, he might try his. All of
+which was very wrong and unreasonable on my part, as witness the awful
+punishment which followed."
+
+"And what made you get up and leave him?"
+
+"The growl he gave me in reply. When I heard that, I bounded out of bed
+and said I was going to the spare room to sleep; and if the baby cried
+he might just try what he could do himself to stop it."
+
+"And he answered?"
+
+"This, just this--I shall never forget his words as long as I live--'If
+you go, you need not expect me to let you in again no matter what
+happens.'"
+
+"He said that?"
+
+"And locked the door after me. You see I could not tell all that."
+
+"It might have been better if you had. It was such a natural quarrel and
+so unprovocative of actual tragedy."
+
+Mrs. Hammond was silent. It was not difficult to see that she had no
+very keen regrets for her husband personally. But then he was not a very
+estimable man nor in any respect her equal.
+
+"You were not happy with him," Violet ventured to remark.
+
+"I was not a fully contented woman. But for all that he had no cause to
+complain of me except for the reason I have mentioned. I was not a
+very intelligent mother. But if the baby were living now--O, if he were
+living now--with what devotion I should care for him."
+
+She was on her feet, her arms were raised, her face impassioned with
+feeling. Violet, gazing at her, heaved a little sigh. It was perhaps in
+keeping with the situation, perhaps extraneous to it, but whatever its
+source, it marked a change in her manner. With no further check upon her
+sympathy, she said very softly:
+
+"It is well with the child."
+
+The mother stiffened, swayed, and then burst into wild weeping.
+
+"But not with me," she cried, "not with me. I am desolate and bereft. I
+have not even a home in which to hide my grief and no prospect of one."
+
+"But," interposed Violet, "surely your husband left you something? You
+cannot be quite penniless?"
+
+"My husband left nothing," was the answer, uttered without bitterness,
+but with all the hardness of fact. "He had debts. I shall pay those
+debts. When these and other necessary expenses are liquidated, there
+will be but little left. He made no secret of the fact that he lived
+close up to his means. That is why he was induced to take on a life
+insurance. Not a friend of his but knows his improvidence. I--I have not
+even jewels. I have only my determination and an absolute conviction as
+to the real nature of my husband's death."
+
+"What is the name of the man you secretly believe to have shot your
+husband from the trellis?"
+
+Mrs. Hammond told her.
+
+It was a new one to Violet. She said so and then asked:
+
+"What else can you tell me about him?"
+
+"Nothing, but that he is a very dark man and has a club-foot."
+
+"Oh, what a mistake you've made."
+
+"Mistake? Yes, I acknowledge that."
+
+"I mean in not giving this last bit of information at once to the
+police. A man can be identified by such a defect. Even his footsteps can
+be traced. He might have been found that very day. Now, what have we to
+go upon?"
+
+"You are right, but not expecting to have any difficulty about the
+insurance money I thought it would be generous in me to keep still.
+Besides, this is only surmise on my part. I feel certain that my husband
+was shot by another hand than his own, but I know of no way of proving
+it. Do you?"
+
+Then Violet talked seriously with her, explaining how their only hope
+lay in the discovery of a second bullet in the room which had already
+been ransacked for this very purpose and without the shadow of a result.
+
+A tea, a musicale, and an evening dance kept Violet Strange in a whirl
+for the remainder of the day. No brighter eye nor more contagious wit
+lent brilliance to these occasions, but with the passing of the midnight
+hour no one who had seen her in the blaze of electric lights would have
+recognized this favoured child of fortune in the earnest figure sitting
+in the obscurity of an up-town apartment, studying the walls, the
+ceilings, and the floors by the dim light of a lowered gas-jet. Violet
+Strange in society was a very different person from Violet Strange under
+the tension of her secret and peculiar work.
+
+She had told them at home that she was going to spend the night with a
+friend; but only her old coachman knew who that friend was. Therefore a
+very natural sense of guilt mingled with her emotions at finding
+herself alone on a scene whose gruesome mystery she could solve only by
+identifying herself with the place and the man who had perished there.
+
+Dismissing from her mind all thought of self, she strove to think as he
+thought, and act as he acted on the night when he found himself (a man
+of but little courage) left in this room with an ailing child.
+
+At odds with himself, his wife, and possibly with the child screaming
+away in its crib, what would he be apt to do in his present emergency?
+Nothing at first, but as the screaming continued he would remember the
+old tales of fathers walking the floor at night with crying babies,
+and hasten to follow suit. Violet, in her anxiety to reach his inmost
+thought, crossed to where the crib had stood, and, taking that as a
+start, began pacing the room in search of the spot from which a bullet,
+if shot, would glance aside from the mirror in the direction of the
+window. (Not that she was ready to accept this theory of Mrs. Hammond,
+but that she did not wish to entirely dismiss it without putting it to
+the test.)
+
+She found it in an unexpected quarter of the room and much nearer
+the bed-head than where his body was found. This, which might seem to
+confuse matters, served, on the contrary to remove from the case one of
+its most serious difficulties. Standing here, he was within reach of the
+pillow under which his pistol lay hidden, and if startled, as his wife
+believed him to have been by a noise at the other end of the room, had
+but to crouch and reach behind him in order to find himself armed and
+ready for a possible intruder.
+
+Imitating his action in this as in other things, she had herself
+crouched low at the bedside and was on the point of withdrawing her hand
+from under the pillow, when a new surprise checked her movement and held
+her fixed in her position, with eyes staring straight at the adjoining
+wall. She had seen there what he must have seen in making this same
+turn--the dark bars of the opposite window-frame outlined in the
+mirror--and understood at once what had happened. In the nervousness and
+terror of the moment, George Hammond had mistaken this reflection of
+the window for the window itself, and shot impulsively at the man he
+undoubtedly saw covering him from the trellis without. But while this
+explained the shattering of the mirror, how about the other and still
+more vital question, of where the bullet went afterward? Was the angle
+at which it had been fired acute enough to send it out of a window
+diagonally opposed? No; even if the pistol had been held closer to the
+man firing it than she had reason to believe, the angle still would be
+oblique enough to carry it on to the further wall.
+
+But no sign of any such impact had been discovered on this wall.
+Consequently, the force of the bullet had been expended before reaching
+it, and when it fell--
+
+Here, her glance, slowly traveling along the floor, impetuously paused.
+It had reached the spot where the two bodies had been found, and
+unconsciously her eyes rested there, conjuring up the picture of the
+bleeding father and the strangled child. How piteous and how dreadful
+it all was. If she could only understand--Suddenly she rose straight
+up, staring and immovable in the dim light. Had the idea--the
+explanation--the only possible explanation covering the whole phenomena
+come to her at last?
+
+It would seem so, for as she so stood, a look of conviction settled over
+her features, and with this look, evidences of a horror which for all
+her fast accumulating knowledge of life and its possibilities made her
+appear very small and very helpless.
+
+A half-hour later, when Mrs. Hammond, in her anxiety at hearing nothing
+more from Miss Strange, opened the door of her room, it was to find,
+lying on the edge of the sill, the little detective's card with these
+words hastily written across it:
+
+I do not feel as well as I could wish, and so have telephoned to my own
+coachman to come and take me home. I will either see or write you within
+a few days. But do not allow yourself to hope. I pray you do not allow
+yourself the least hope; the outcome is still very problematical.
+
+When Violet's employer entered his office the next morning it was to
+find a veiled figure awaiting him which he at once recognized as that of
+his little deputy. She was slow in lifting her veil and when it finally
+came free he felt a momentary doubt as to his wisdom in giving her just
+such a matter as this to investigate. He was quite sure of his mistake
+when he saw her face, it was so drawn and pitiful.
+
+"You have failed," said he.
+
+"Of that you must judge," she answered; and drawing near she whispered
+in his ear.
+
+"No!" he cried in his amazement.
+
+"Think," she murmured, "think. Only so can all the facts be accounted
+for."
+
+"I will look into it; I will certainly look into it," was his earnest
+reply. "If you are right--But never mind that. Go home and take a
+horseback ride in the Park. When I have news in regard to this I will
+let you know. Till then forget it all. Hear me, I charge you to forget
+everything but your balls and your parties."
+
+And Violet obeyed him.
+
+Some few days after this, the following statement appeared in all the
+papers:
+
+"Owing to some remarkable work done by the firm of ---- & ----, the
+well-known private detective agency, the claim made by Mrs. George
+Hammond against the Shuler Life Insurance Company is likely to be
+allowed without further litigation. As our readers will remember, the
+contestant has insisted from the first that the bullet causing her
+husband's death came from another pistol than the one found clutched in
+his own hand. But while reasons were not lacking to substantiate this
+assertion, the failure to discover more than the disputed track of a
+second bullet led to a verdict of suicide, and a refusal of the company
+to pay.
+
+"But now that bullet has been found. And where? In the most startling
+place in the world, viz.: in the larynx of the child found lying dead
+upon the floor beside his father, strangled as was supposed by the
+weight of that father's arm. The theory is, and there seems to be none
+other, that the father, hearing a suspicious noise at the window, set
+down the child he was endeavouring to soothe and made for the bed and
+his own pistol, and, mistaking a reflection of the assassin for the
+assassin himself, sent his shot sidewise at a mirror just as the other
+let go the trigger which drove a similar bullet into his breast.
+The course of the one was straight and fatal and that of the other
+deflected. Striking the mirror at an oblique angle, the bullet fell to
+the floor where it was picked up by the crawling child, and, as was
+most natural, thrust at once into his mouth. Perhaps it felt hot to
+the little tongue; perhaps the child was simply frightened by some
+convulsive movement of the father who evidently spent his last moment in
+an endeavour to reach the child, but, whatever the cause, in the quick
+gasp it gave, the bullet was drawn into the larynx, strangling him.
+
+"That the father's arm, in his last struggle, should have fallen
+directly across the little throat is one of those anomalies which
+confounds reason and misleads justice by stopping investigation at the
+very point where truth lies and mystery disappears.
+
+"Mrs. Hammond is to be congratulated that there are detectives who do
+not give too much credence to outward appearances."
+
+We expect soon to hear of the capture of the man who sped home the
+death-dealing bullet.
+
+END OF PROBLEM II
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM III. AN INTANGIBLE CLUE
+
+"Have you studied the case?"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"Not studied the case which for the last few days has provided the
+papers with such conspicuous headlines?"
+
+"I do not read the papers. I have not looked at one in a whole week."
+
+"Miss Strange, your social engagements must be of a very pressing nature
+just now?"
+
+"They are."
+
+"And your business sense in abeyance?"
+
+"How so?"
+
+"You would not ask if you had read the papers."
+
+To this she made no reply save by a slight toss of her pretty head.
+If her employer felt nettled by this show of indifference, he did not
+betray it save by the rapidity of his tones as, without further preamble
+and possibly without real excuse, he proceeded to lay before her the
+case in question. "Last Tuesday night a woman was murdered in this city;
+an old woman, in a lonely house where she has lived for years. Perhaps
+you remember this house? It occupies a not inconspicuous site in
+Seventeenth Street--a house of the olden time?"
+
+"No, I do not remember."
+
+The extreme carelessness of Miss Strange's tone would have been fatal to
+her socially; but then, she would never have used it socially. This they
+both knew, yet he smiled with his customary indulgence.
+
+"Then I will describe it."
+
+She looked around for a chair and sank into it. He did the same.
+
+"It has a fanlight over the front door."
+
+She remained impassive.
+
+"And two old-fashioned strips of parti-coloured glass on either side."
+
+"And a knocker between its panels which may bring money some day."
+
+"Oh, you do remember! I thought you would, Miss Strange."
+
+"Yes. Fanlights over doors are becoming very rare in New York."
+
+"Very well, then. That house was the scene of Tuesday's tragedy. The
+woman who has lived there in solitude for years was foully murdered.
+I have since heard that the people who knew her best have always
+anticipated some such violent end for her. She never allowed maid or
+friend to remain with her after five in the afternoon; yet she had
+money--some think a great deal--always in the house."
+
+"I am interested in the house, not in her."
+
+"Yet, she was a character--as full of whims and crotchets as a nut is
+of meat. Her death was horrible. She fought--her dress was torn from her
+body in rags. This happened, you see, before her hour for retiring;
+some think as early as six in the afternoon. And"--here he made a
+rapid gesture to catch Violet's wandering attention--"in spite of
+this struggle; in spite of the fact that she was dragged from room
+to room--that her person was searched--and everything in the house
+searched--that drawers were pulled out of bureaus--doors wrenched off of
+cupboards--china smashed upon the floor--whole shelves denuded and not
+a spot from cellar to garret left unransacked, no direct clue to
+the perpetrator has been found--nothing that gives any idea of his
+personality save his display of strength and great cupidity. The police
+have even deigned to consult me,--an unusual procedure--but I could find
+nothing, either. Evidences of fiendish purpose abound--of relentless
+search--but no clue to the man himself. It's uncommon, isn't it, not to
+have any clue?"
+
+"I suppose so." Miss Strange hated murders and it was with difficulty
+she could be brought to discuss them. But she was not going to be let
+off; not this time.
+
+"You see," he proceeded insistently, "it's not only mortifying to the
+police but disappointing to the press, especially as few reporters
+believe in the No-thoroughfare business. They say, and we cannot but
+agree with them, that no such struggle could take place and no such
+repeated goings to and fro through the house without some vestige being
+left by which to connect this crime with its daring perpetrator."
+
+Still she stared down at her hands--those little hands so white and
+fluttering, so seemingly helpless under the weight of their many rings,
+and yet so slyly capable.
+
+"She must have queer neighbours," came at last, from Miss Strange's
+reluctant lips. "Didn't they hear or see anything of all this?"
+
+"She has no neighbours--that is, after half-past five o'clock. There's
+a printing establishment on one side of her, a deserted mansion on the
+other side, and nothing but warehouses back and front. There was no one
+to notice what took place in her small dwelling after the printing house
+was closed. She was the most courageous or the most foolish of women to
+remain there as she did. But nothing except death could budge her. She
+was born in the room where she died; was married in the one where she
+worked; saw husband, father, mother, and five sisters carried out
+in turn to their graves through the door with the fanlight over the
+top--and these memories held her."
+
+"You are trying to interest me in the woman. Don't."
+
+"No, I'm not trying to interest you in her, only trying to explain her.
+There was another reason for her remaining where she did so long after
+all residents had left the block. She had a business."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"She embroidered monograms for fine ladies."
+
+"She did? But you needn't look at me like that. She never embroidered
+any for me."
+
+"No? She did first-class work. I saw some of it. Miss Strange, if I
+could get you into that house for ten minutes--not to see her but to
+pick up the loose intangible thread which I am sure is floating around
+in it somewhere--wouldn't you go?"
+
+Violet slowly rose--a movement which he followed to the letter.
+
+"Must I express in words the limit I have set for myself in our affair?"
+she asked. "When, for reasons I have never thought myself called upon to
+explain, I consented to help you a little now and then with some matter
+where a woman's tact and knowledge of the social world might tell
+without offence to herself or others, I never thought it would be
+necessary for me to state that temptation must stop with such cases,
+or that I should not be asked to touch the sordid or the bloody. But it
+seems I was mistaken, and that I must stoop to be explicit. The woman
+who was killed on Tuesday might have interested me greatly as an
+embroiderer, but as a victim, not at all. What do you see in me, or miss
+in me, that you should drag me into an atmosphere of low-down crime?"
+
+"Nothing, Miss Strange. You are by nature, as well as by breeding,
+very far removed from everything of the kind. But you will allow me to
+suggest that no crime is low-down which makes imperative demand upon
+the intellect and intuitive sense of its investigator. Only the most
+delicate touch can feel and hold the thread I've just spoken of, and you
+have the most delicate touch I know."
+
+"Do not attempt to flatter me. I have no fancy for handling befouled
+spider webs. Besides, if I had--if such elusive filaments fascinated
+me--how could I, well-known in person and name, enter upon such a scene
+without prejudice to our mutual compact?"
+
+"Miss Strange"--she had reseated herself, but so far he had failed to
+follow her example (an ignoring of the subtle hint that her interest
+might yet be caught, which seemed to annoy her a trifle), "I should
+not even have suggested such a possibility had I not seen a way of
+introducing you there without risk to your position or mine. Among the
+boxes piled upon Mrs. Doolittle's table--boxes of finished work, most
+of them addressed and ready for delivery--was one on which could be seen
+the name of--shall I mention it?"
+
+"Not mine? You don't mean mine? That would be too odd--too ridiculously
+odd. I should not understand a coincidence of that kind; no, I should
+not, notwithstanding the fact that I have lately sent out such work to
+be done."
+
+"Yet it was your name, very clearly and precisely written--your whole
+name, Miss Strange. I saw and read it myself."
+
+"But I gave the order to Madame Pirot on Fifth Avenue. How came my
+things to be found in the house of this woman of whose horrible death we
+have been talking?"
+
+"Did you suppose that Madame Pirot did such work with her own
+hands?--or even had it done in her own establishment? Mrs. Doolittle was
+universally employed. She worked for a dozen firms. You will find the
+biggest names on most of her packages. But on this one--I allude to the
+one addressed to you--there was more to be seen than the name. These
+words were written on it in another hand. Send without opening. This
+struck the police as suspicious; sufficiently so, at least, for them
+to desire your presence at the house as soon as you can make it
+convenient."
+
+"To open the box?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+The curl of Miss Strange's disdainful lip was a sight to see.
+
+"You wrote those words yourself," she coolly observed. "While someone's
+back was turned, you whipped out your pencil and--"
+
+"Resorted to a very pardonable subterfuge highly conducive to the
+public's good. But never mind that. Will you go?"
+
+Miss Strange became suddenly demure.
+
+"I suppose I must," she grudgingly conceded. "However obtained, a
+summons from the police cannot be ignored even by Peter Strange's
+daughter."
+
+Another man might have displayed his triumph by smile or gesture; but
+this one had learned his role too well. He simply said:
+
+"Very good. Shall it be at once? I have a taxi at the door."
+
+But she failed to see the necessity of any such hurry. With sudden
+dignity she replied:
+
+"That won't do. If I go to this house it must be under suitable
+conditions. I shall have to ask my brother to accompany me."
+
+"Your brother!"
+
+"Oh, he's safe. He--he knows."
+
+"Your brother knows?" Her visitor, with less control than usual,
+betrayed very openly his uneasiness.
+
+"He does and--approves. But that's not what interests us now, only so
+far as it makes it possible for me to go with propriety to that dreadful
+house."
+
+A formal bow from the other and the words:
+
+"They may expect you, then. Can you say when?"
+
+"Within the next hour. But it will be a useless concession on my part,"
+she pettishly complained. "A place that has been gone over by a dozen
+detectives is apt to be brushed clean of its cobwebs, even if such ever
+existed."
+
+"That's the difficulty," he acknowledged; and did not dare to add
+another word; she was at that particular moment so very much the great
+lady, and so little his confidential agent.
+
+He might have been less impressed, however, by this sudden assumption
+of manner, had he been so fortunate as to have seen how she employed the
+three quarters of an hour's delay for which she had asked.
+
+She read those neglected newspapers, especially the one containing the
+following highly coloured narration of this ghastly crime:
+
+"A door ajar--an empty hall--a line of sinister looking blotches
+marking a guilty step diagonally across the flagging--silence--and an
+unmistakable odour repugnant to all humanity,--such were the indications
+which met the eyes of Officer O'Leary on his first round last night, and
+led to the discovery of a murder which will long thrill the city by its
+mystery and horror.
+
+"Both the house and the victim are well known." Here followed a
+description of the same and of Mrs. Doolittle's manner of life in
+her ancient home, which Violet hurriedly passed over to come to the
+following:
+
+"As far as one can judge from appearances, the crime happened in this
+wise: Mrs. Doolittle had been in her kitchen, as the tea-kettle found
+singing on the stove goes to prove, and was coming back through her
+bedroom, when the wretch, who had stolen in by the front door which, to
+save steps, she was unfortunately in the habit of leaving on the latch
+till all possibility of customers for the day was over, sprang upon her
+from behind and dealt her a swinging blow with the poker he had caught
+up from the hearthstone.
+
+"Whether the struggle which ensued followed immediately upon this first
+attack or came later, it will take medical experts to determine. But,
+whenever it did occur, the fierceness of its character is shown by the
+grip taken upon her throat and the traces of blood which are to be seen
+all over the house. If the wretch had lugged her into her workroom and
+thence to the kitchen, and thence back to the spot of first assault, the
+evidences could not have been more ghastly. Bits of her clothing torn
+off by a ruthless hand, lay scattered over all these floors. In her
+bedroom, where she finally breathed her last, there could be seen
+mingled with these a number of large but worthless glass beads; and
+close against one of the base-boards, the string which had held them, as
+shown by the few remaining beads still clinging to it. If in pulling the
+string from her neck he had hoped to light upon some valuable booty,
+his fury at his disappointment is evident. You can almost see the frenzy
+with which he flung the would-be necklace at the wall, and kicked about
+and stamped upon its rapidly rolling beads.
+
+"Booty! That was what he was after; to find and carry away the poor
+needlewoman's supposed hoardings. If the scene baffles description--if,
+as some believe, he dragged her yet living from spot to spot, demanding
+information as to her places of concealment under threat of repeated
+blows, and, finally baffled, dealt the finishing stroke and proceeded on
+the search alone, no greater devastation could have taken place in this
+poor woman's house or effects. Yet such was his precaution and care
+for himself that he left no finger-print behind him nor any other token
+which could lead to personal identification. Even though his footsteps
+could be traced in much the order I have mentioned, they were of so
+indeterminate and shapeless a character as to convey little to the
+intelligence of the investigator.
+
+"That these smears (they could not be called footprints) not only
+crossed the hall but appeared in more than one place on the staircase
+proves that he did not confine his search to the lower storey; and
+perhaps one of the most interesting features of the case lies in the
+indications given by these marks of the raging course he took through
+these upper rooms. As the accompanying diagram will show [we omit the
+diagram] he went first into the large front chamber, thence to the rear
+where we find two rooms, one unfinished and filled with accumulated
+stuff most of which he left lying loose upon the floor, and the other
+plastered, and containing a window opening upon an alley-way at the
+side, but empty of all furniture and without even a carpet on the bare
+boards.
+
+"Why he should have entered the latter place, and why, having entered
+he should have crossed to the window, will be plain to those who
+have studied the conditions. The front chamber windows were tightly
+shuttered, the attic ones cumbered with boxes and shielded from approach
+by old bureaus and discarded chairs. This one only was free and,
+although darkened by the proximity of the house neighbouring it across
+the alley, was the only spot on the storey where sufficient light could
+be had at this late hour for the examination of any object of whose
+value he was doubtful. That he had come across such an object and had
+brought it to this window for some such purpose is very satisfactorily
+demonstrated by the discovery of a worn out wallet of ancient make lying
+on the floor directly in front of this window--a proof of his cupidity
+but also proof of his ill-luck. For this wallet, when lifted and opened,
+was found to contain two hundred or more dollars in old bills, which, if
+not the full hoard of their industrious owner, was certainly worth the
+taking by one who had risked his neck for the sole purpose of theft.
+
+"This wallet, and the flight of the murderer without it, give to this
+affair, otherwise simply brutal, a dramatic interest which will be
+appreciated not only by the very able detectives already hot upon the
+chase, but by all other inquiring minds anxious to solve a mystery of
+which so estimable a woman has been the unfortunate victim. A problem is
+presented to the police--"
+
+There Violet stopped.
+
+When, not long after, the superb limousine of Peter Strange stopped
+before the little house in Seventeenth Street, it caused a veritable
+sensation, not only in the curiosity-mongers lingering on the sidewalk,
+but to the two persons within--the officer on guard and a belated
+reporter.
+
+Though dressed in her plainest suit, Violet Strange looked much too
+fashionable and far too young and thoughtless to be observed, without
+emotion, entering a scene of hideous and brutal crime. Even the young
+man who accompanied her promised to bring a most incongruous element
+into this atmosphere of guilt and horror, and, as the detective on guard
+whispered to the man beside him, might much better have been left behind
+in the car.
+
+But Violet was great for the proprieties and young Arthur followed her
+in.
+
+Her entrance was a coup du theatre. She had lifted her veil in crossing
+the sidewalk and her interesting features and general air of timidity
+were very fetching. As the man holding open the door noted the
+impression made upon his companion, he muttered with sly facetiousness:
+
+"You think you'll show her nothing; but I'm ready to bet a fiver that
+she'll want to see it all and that you'll show it to her."
+
+The detective's grin was expressive, notwithstanding the shrug with
+which he tried to carry it off.
+
+And Violet? The hall into which she now stepped from the most vivid
+sunlight had never been considered even in its palmiest days as
+possessing cheer even of the stately kind. The ghastly green light
+infused through it by the coloured glass on either side of the doorway
+seemed to promise yet more dismal things beyond.
+
+"Must I go in there?" she asked, pointing, with an admirable simulation
+of nervous excitement, to a half-shut door at her left. "Is there where
+it happened? Arthur, do you suppose that there is where it happened?"
+
+"No, no, Miss," the officer made haste to assure her. "If you are Miss
+Strange" (Violet bowed), "I need hardly say that the woman was struck in
+her bedroom. The door beside you leads into the parlour, or as she would
+have called it, her work-room. You needn't be afraid of going in there.
+You will see nothing but the disorder of her boxes. They were pretty
+well pulled about. Not all of them though," he added, watching her as
+closely as the dim light permitted. "There is one which gives no sign
+of having been tampered with. It was done up in wrapping paper and is
+addressed to you, which in itself would not have seemed worthy of
+our attention had not these lines been scribbled on it in a man's
+handwriting: 'Send without opening.'"
+
+"How odd!" exclaimed the little minx with widely opened eyes and an
+air of guileless innocence. "Whatever can it mean? Nothing serious I am
+sure, for the woman did not even know me. She was employed to do this
+work by Madame Pirot."
+
+"Didn't you know that it was to be done here?"
+
+"No. I thought Madame Pirot's own girls did her embroidery for her."
+
+"So that you were surprised--"
+
+"Wasn't I!"
+
+"To get our message."
+
+"I didn't know what to make of it."
+
+The earnest, half-injured look with which she uttered this disclaimer,
+did its appointed work. The detective accepted her for what she seemed
+and, oblivious to the reporter's satirical gesture, crossed to the
+work-room door, which he threw wide open with the remark:
+
+"I should be glad to have you open that box in our presence. It is
+undoubtedly all right, but we wish to be sure. You know what the box
+should contain?"
+
+"Oh, yes, indeed; pillow-cases and sheets, with a big S embroidered on
+them."
+
+"Very well. Shall I undo the string for you?"
+
+"I shall be much obliged," said she, her eye flashing quickly about the
+room before settling down upon the knot he was deftly loosening.
+
+Her brother, gazing indifferently in from the doorway, hardly noticed
+this look; but the reporter at his back did, though he failed to detect
+its penetrating quality.
+
+"Your name is on the other side," observed the detective as he drew away
+the string and turned the package over.
+
+The smile which just lifted the corner of her lips was not in answer to
+this remark, but to her recognition of her employer's handwriting in the
+words under her name: Send without opening. She had not misjudged him.
+
+"The cover you may like to take off yourself," suggested the officer, as
+he lifted the box out of its wrapper.
+
+"Oh, I don't mind. There's nothing to be ashamed of in embroidered
+linen. Or perhaps that is not what you are looking for?"
+
+No one answered. All were busy watching her whip off the lid and lift
+out the pile of sheets and pillow-cases with which the box was closely
+packed.
+
+"Shall I unfold them?" she asked.
+
+The detective nodded.
+
+Taking out the topmost sheet, she shook it open. Then the next and the
+next till she reached the bottom of the box. Nothing of a criminating
+nature came to light. The box as well as its contents was without
+mystery of any kind. This was not an unexpected result of course, but
+the smile with which she began to refold the pieces and throw them back
+into the box, revealed one of her dimples which was almost as dangerous
+to the casual observer as when it revealed both.
+
+"There," she exclaimed, "you see! Household linen exactly as I said. Now
+may I go home?"
+
+"Certainly, Miss Strange."
+
+The detective stole a sly glance at the reporter. She was not going in
+for the horrors then after all.
+
+But the reporter abated nothing of his knowing air, for while she spoke
+of going, she made no move towards doing so, but continued to look
+about the room till her glances finally settled on a long dark curtain
+shutting off an adjoining room.
+
+"There's where she lies, I suppose," she feelingly exclaimed. "And not
+one of you knows who killed her. Somehow, I cannot understand that. Why
+don't you know when that's what you're hired for?" The innocence with
+which she uttered this was astonishing. The detective began to look
+sheepish and the reporter turned aside to hide his smile. Whether in
+another moment either would have spoken no one can say, for, with a
+mock consciousness of having said something foolish, she caught up her
+parasol from the table and made a start for the door.
+
+But of course she looked back.
+
+"I was wondering," she recommenced, with a half wistful, half
+speculative air, "whether I should ask to have a peep at the place where
+it all happened."
+
+The reporter chuckled behind the pencil-end he was chewing, but the
+officer maintained his solemn air, for which act of self-restraint
+he was undoubtedly grateful when in another minute she gave a quick
+impulsive shudder not altogether assumed, and vehemently added: "But I
+couldn't stand the sight; no, I couldn't! I'm an awful coward when it
+comes to things like that. Nothing in all the world would induce me
+to look at the woman or her room. But I should like--" here both
+her dimples came into play though she could not be said exactly to
+smile--"just one little look upstairs, where he went poking about so
+long without any fear it seems of being interrupted. Ever since I've
+read about it I have seen, in my mind, a picture of his wicked figure
+sneaking from room to room, tearing open drawers and flinging out the
+contents of closets just to find a little money--a little, little money!
+I shall not sleep to-night just for wondering how those high up attic
+rooms really look."
+
+Who could dream that back of this display of mingled childishness and
+audacity there lay hidden purpose, intellect, and a keen knowledge
+of human nature. Not the two men who listened to this seemingly
+irresponsible chatter. To them she was a child to be humoured and humour
+her they did. The dainty feet which had already found their way to that
+gloomy staircase were allowed to ascend, followed it is true by those
+of the officer who did not dare to smile back at the reporter because of
+the brother's watchful and none too conciliatory eye.
+
+At the stair head she paused to look back.
+
+"I don't see those horrible marks which the papers describe as running
+all along the lower hall and up these stairs."
+
+"No, Miss Strange; they have gradually been rubbed out, but you will
+find some still showing on these upper floors."
+
+"Oh! oh! where? You frighten me--frighten me horribly! But--but--if you
+don't mind, I should like to see."
+
+Why should not a man on a tedious job amuse himself? Piloting her over
+to the small room in the rear, he pointed down at the boards. She gave
+one look and then stepped gingerly in.
+
+"Just look!" she cried; "a whole string of marks going straight from
+door to window. They have no shape, have they,--just blotches? I wonder
+why one of them is so much larger than the rest?"
+
+This was no new question. It was one which everybody who went into
+the room was sure to ask, there was such a difference in the size and
+appearance of the mark nearest the window. The reason--well, minds were
+divided about that, and no one had a satisfactory theory. The detective
+therefore kept discreetly silent.
+
+This did not seem to offend Miss Strange. On the contrary it gave her an
+opportunity to babble away to her heart's content.
+
+"One, two, three, four, five, six," she counted, with a shudder at every
+count. "And one of them bigger than the others." She might have added,
+"It is the trail of one foot, and strangely, intermingled at that," but
+she did not, though we may be quite sure that she noted the fact. "And
+where, just where did the old wallet fall? Here? or here?"
+
+She had moved as she spoke, so that in uttering the last "here," she
+stood directly before the window. The surprise she received there nearly
+made her forget the part she was playing. From the character of the
+light in the room, she had expected, on looking out, to confront a
+near-by wall, but not a window in that wall. Yet that was what she saw
+directly facing her from across the old-fashioned alley separating
+this house from its neighbour; twelve unshuttered and uncurtained panes
+through which she caught a darkened view of a room almost as forlorn and
+devoid of furniture as the one in which she then stood.
+
+When quite sure of herself, she let a certain portion of her surprise
+appear.
+
+"Why, look!" she cried, "if you can't see right in next door! What a
+lonesome-looking place! From its desolate appearance I should think the
+house quite empty."
+
+"And it is. That's the old Shaffer homestead. It's been empty for a
+year."
+
+"Oh, empty!" And she turned away, with the most inconsequent air in
+the world, crying out as her name rang up the stair, "There's Arthur
+calling. I suppose he thinks I've been here long enough. I'm sure I'm
+very much obliged to you, officer. I really shouldn't have slept a wink
+to-night, if I hadn't been given a peep at these rooms, which I
+had imagined so different." And with one additional glance over her
+shoulder, that seemed to penetrate both windows and the desolate space
+beyond, she ran quickly out and down in response to her brother's
+reiterated call.
+
+"Drive quickly!--as quickly as the law allows, to Hiram Brown's office
+in Duane Street."
+
+Arrived at the address named, she went in alone to see Mr. Brown. He was
+her father's lawyer and a family friend.
+
+Hardly waiting for his affectionate greeting, she cried out quickly.
+"Tell me how I can learn anything about the old Shaffer house in
+Seventeenth Street. Now, don't look so surprised. I have very good
+reasons for my request and--and--I'm in an awful hurry."
+
+"But--"
+
+"I know, I know; there's been a dreadful tragedy next door to it; but
+it's about the Shaffer house itself I want some information. Has it an
+agent, a--"
+
+"Of course it has an agent, and here is his name."
+
+Mr. Brown presented her with a card on which he had hastily written both
+name and address.
+
+She thanked him, dropped him a mocking curtsey full of charm, whispered
+"Don't tell father," and was gone.
+
+Her manner to the man she next interviewed was very different. As soon
+as she saw him she subsided into her usual society manner. With just a
+touch of the conceit of the successful debutante, she announced herself
+as Miss Strange of Seventy-second Street. Her business with him was in
+regard to the possible renting of the Shaffer house. She had an old lady
+friend who was desirous of living downtown.
+
+In passing through Seventeenth Street, she had noticed that the old
+Shaffer house was standing empty and had been immediately struck with
+the advantages it possessed for her elderly friend's occupancy. Could it
+be that the house was for rent? There was no sign on it to that effect,
+but--etc.
+
+His answer left her nothing to hope for.
+
+"It is going to be torn down," he said.
+
+"Oh, what a pity!" she exclaimed. "Real colonial, isn't it! I wish I
+could see the rooms inside before it is disturbed. Such doors and such
+dear old-fashioned mantelpieces as it must have! I just dote on the
+Colonial. It brings up such pictures of the old days; weddings,
+you know, and parties;--all so different from ours and so much more
+interesting."
+
+Is it the chance shot that tells? Sometimes. Violet had no especial
+intention in what she said save as a prelude to a pending request,
+but nothing could have served her purpose better than that one word,
+wedding. The agent laughed and giving her his first indulgent look,
+remarked genially:
+
+"Romance is not confined to those ancient times. If you were to enter
+that house to-day you would come across evidences of a wedding as
+romantic as any which ever took place in all the seventy odd years of
+its existence. A man and a woman were married there day before yesterday
+who did their first courting under its roof forty years ago. He has been
+married twice and she once in the interval; but the old love held firm
+and now at the age of sixty and over they have come together to finish
+their days in peace and happiness. Or so we will hope."
+
+"Married! married in that house and on the day that--"
+
+She caught herself up in time. He did not notice the break.
+
+"Yes, in memory of those old days of courtship, I suppose. They came
+here about five, got the keys, drove off, went through the ceremony in
+that empty house, returned the keys to me in my own apartment, took the
+steamer for Naples, and were on the sea before midnight. Do you not call
+that quick work as well as highly romantic?"
+
+"Very." Miss Strange's cheek had paled. It was apt to when she was
+greatly excited. "But I don't understand," she added, the moment after.
+"How could they do this and nobody know about it? I should have thought
+it would have got into the papers."
+
+"They are quiet people. I don't think they told their best friends. A
+simple announcement in the next day's journals testified to the fact of
+their marriage, but that was all. I would not have felt at liberty to
+mention the circumstances myself, if the parties were not well on their
+way to Europe."
+
+"Oh, how glad I am that you did tell me! Such a story of constancy and
+the hold which old associations have upon sensitive minds! But--"
+
+"Why, Miss? What's the matter? You look very much disturbed."
+
+"Don't you remember? Haven't you thought? Something else happened that
+very day and almost at the same time on that block. Something very
+dreadful--"
+
+"Mrs. Doolittle's murder?"
+
+"Yes. It was as near as next door, wasn't it? Oh, if this happy couple
+had known--"
+
+"But fortunately they didn't. Nor are they likely to, till they reach
+the other side. You needn't fear that their honeymoon will be spoiled
+that way."
+
+"But they may have heard something or seen something before leaving the
+street. Did you notice how the gentleman looked when he returned you the
+keys?"
+
+"I did, and there was no cloud on his satisfaction."
+
+"Oh, how you relieve me!" One--two dimples made their appearance in
+Miss Strange's fresh, young cheeks. "Well! I wish them joy. Do you mind
+telling me their names? I cannot think of them as actual persons without
+knowing their names."
+
+"The gentleman was Constantin Amidon; the lady, Marian Shaffer. You will
+have to think of them now as Mr. and Mrs. Amidon."
+
+"And I will. Thank you, Mr. Hutton, thank you very much. Next to the
+pleasure of getting the house for my friend, is that of hearing this
+charming bit of news its connection."
+
+She held out her hand and, as he took it, remarked:
+
+"They must have had a clergyman and witnesses."
+
+"Undoubtedly."
+
+"I wish I had been one of the witnesses," she sighed sentimentally.
+
+"They were two old men."
+
+"Oh, no! Don't tell me that."
+
+"Fogies; nothing less."
+
+"But the clergyman? He must have been young. Surely there was some one
+there capable of appreciating the situation?"
+
+"I can't say about that; I did not see the clergyman."
+
+"Oh, well! it doesn't matter." Miss Strange's manner was as nonchalant
+as it was charming. "We will think of him as being very young."
+
+And with a merry toss of her head she flitted away.
+
+But she sobered very rapidly upon entering her limousine.
+
+"Hello!"
+
+"Ah, is that you?"
+
+"Yes, I want a Marconi sent."
+
+"A Marconi?"
+
+"Yes, to the Cretic, which left dock the very night in which we are so
+deeply interested."
+
+"Good. Whom to? The Captain?"
+
+"No, to a Mrs. Constantin Amidon. But first be sure there is such a
+passenger."
+
+"Mrs.! What idea have you there?"
+
+"Excuse my not stating over the telephone. The message is to be to this
+effect. Did she at any time immediately before or after her marriage to
+Mr. Amidon get a glimpse of any one in the adjoining house? No remarks,
+please. I use the telephone because I am not ready to explain myself.
+If she did, let her send a written description to you of that person as
+soon as she reaches the Azores."
+
+"You surprise me. May I not call or hope for a line from you early
+to-morrow?"
+
+"I shall be busy till you get your answer."
+
+He hung up the receiver. He recognized the resolute tone.
+
+But the time came when the pending explanation was fully given to him.
+An answer had been returned from the steamer, favourable to Violet's
+hopes. Mrs. Amidon had seen such a person and would send a full
+description of the same at the first opportunity. It was news to fill
+Violet's heart with pride; the filament of a clue which had led to this
+great result had been so nearly invisible and had felt so like nothing
+in her grasp.
+
+To her employer she described it as follows:
+
+"When I hear or read of a case which contains any baffling features, I
+am apt to feel some hidden chord in my nature thrill to one fact in
+it and not to any of the others. In this case the single fact which
+appealed to my imagination was the dropping of the stolen wallet in that
+upstairs room. Why did the guilty man drop it? and why, having dropped
+it, did he not pick it up again? but one answer seemed possible. He had
+heard or seen something at the spot where it fell which not only alarmed
+him but sent him in flight from the house."
+
+"Very good; and did you settle to your own mind the nature of that sound
+or that sight?"
+
+"I did." Her manner was strangely businesslike. No show of dimples now.
+"Satisfied that if any possibility remained of my ever doing this, it
+would have to be on the exact place of this occurrence or not at all, I
+embraced your suggestion and visited the house."
+
+"And that room no doubt."
+
+"And that room. Women, somehow, seem to manage such things."
+
+"So I've noticed, Miss Strange. And what was the result of your visit?
+What did you discover there?"
+
+"This: that one of the blood spots marking the criminal's steps through
+the room was decidedly more pronounced than the rest; and, what was
+even more important, that the window out of which I was looking had its
+counterpart in the house on the opposite side of the alley. In gazing
+through the one I was gazing through the other; and not only that,
+but into the darkened area of the room beyond. Instantly I saw how the
+latter fact might be made to explain the former one. But before I say
+how, let me ask if it is quite settled among you that the smears on the
+floor and stairs mark the passage of the criminal's footsteps!"
+
+"Certainly; and very bloody feet they must have been too. His shoes--or
+rather his one shoe--for the proof is plain that only the right one left
+its mark--must have become thoroughly saturated to carry its traces so
+far."
+
+"Do you think that any amount of saturation would have done this? Or,
+if you are not ready to agree to that, that a shoe so covered with
+blood could have failed to leave behind it some hint of its shape, some
+imprint, however faint, of heel or toe? But nowhere did it do this. We
+see a smear--and that is all."
+
+"You are right, Miss Strange; you are always right. And what do you
+gather from this?"
+
+She looked to see how much he expected from her, and, meeting an eye not
+quite as free from ironic suggestion as his words had led her to expect,
+faltered a little as she proceeded to say:
+
+"My opinion is a girl's opinion, but such as it is you have the right
+to have it. From the indications mentioned I could draw but this
+conclusion: that the blood which accompanied the criminal's footsteps
+was not carried through the house by his shoes;--he wore no shoes; he
+did not even wear stockings; probably he had none. For reasons which
+appealed to his judgment, he went about his wicked work barefoot; and it
+was the blood from his own veins and not from those of his victim which
+made the trail we have followed with so much interest. Do you forget
+those broken beads;--how he kicked them about and stamped upon them in
+his fury? One of them pierced the ball of his foot, and that so sharply
+that it not only spurted blood but kept on bleeding with every step he
+took. Otherwise, the trail would have been lost after his passage up the
+stairs."
+
+"Fine!" There was no irony in the bureau-chief's eye now. "You are
+progressing, Miss Strange. Allow me, I pray, to kiss your hand. It is
+a liberty I have never taken, but one which would greatly relieve my
+present stress of feeling."
+
+She lifted her hand toward him, but it was in gesture, not in
+recognition of his homage.
+
+"Thank you," said she, "but I claim no monopoly on deductions so simple
+as these. I have not the least doubt that not only yourself but every
+member of the force has made the same. But there is a little matter
+which may have escaped the police, may even have escaped you. To that
+I would now call your attention since through it I have been enabled,
+after a little necessary groping, to reach the open. You remember the
+one large blotch on the upper floor where the man dropped the wallet?
+That blotch, more or less commingled with a fainter one, possessed great
+significance for me from the first moment I saw it. How came his foot to
+bleed so much more profusely at that one spot than at any other? There
+could be but one answer: because here a surprise met him--a surprise
+so startling to him in his present state of mind, that he gave a
+quick spring backward, with the result that his wounded foot came down
+suddenly and forcibly instead of easily as in his previous wary tread.
+And what was the surprise? I made it my business to find out, and now
+I can tell you that it was the sight of a woman's face staring upon him
+from the neighbouring house which he had probably been told was empty.
+The shock disturbed his judgment. He saw his crime discovered--his
+guilty secret read, and fled in unreasoning panic. He might better have
+held on to his wits. It was this display of fear which led me to search
+after its cause, and consequently to discover that at this especial hour
+more than one person had been in the Shaffer house; that, in fact, a
+marriage had been celebrated there under circumstances as romantic as
+any we read of in books, and that this marriage, privately carried out,
+had been followed by an immediate voyage of the happy couple on one of
+the White Star steamers. With the rest you are conversant. I do not need
+to say anything about what has followed the sending of that Marconi."
+
+"But I am going to say something about your work in this matter, Miss
+Strange. The big detectives about here will have to look sharp if--"
+
+"Don't, please! Not yet." A smile softened the asperity of this
+interruption. "The man has yet to be caught and identified. Till that is
+done I cannot enjoy any one's congratulations. And you will see that all
+this may not be so easy. If no one happened to meet the desperate wretch
+before he had an opportunity to retie his shoe-laces, there will be
+little for you or even for the police to go upon but his wounded foot,
+his undoubtedly carefully prepared alibi, and later, a woman's confused
+description of a face seen but for a moment only and that under a
+personal excitement precluding minute attention. I should not be
+surprised if the whole thing came to nothing."
+
+But it did not. As soon as the description was received from Mrs. Amidon
+(a description, by the way, which was unusually clear and precise, owing
+to the peculiar and contradictory features of the man), the police were
+able to recognize him among the many suspects always under their eye.
+Arrested, he pleaded, just as Miss Strange had foretold, an alibi of
+a seemingly unimpeachable character; but neither it, nor the plausible
+explanation with which he endeavoured to account for a freshly healed
+scar amid the callouses of his right foot, could stand before Mrs.
+Amidon's unequivocal testimony that he was the same man she had seen in
+Mrs. Doolittle's upper room on the afternoon of her own happiness and of
+that poor woman's murder.
+
+The moment when, at his trial, the two faces again confronted each other
+across a space no wider than that which had separated them on the dread
+occasion in Seventeenth Street, is said to have been one of the most
+dramatic in the annals of that ancient court room.
+
+END OF PROBLEM III
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM IV. THE GROTTO SPECTRE
+
+Miss Strange was not often pensive--at least not at large functions
+or when under the public eye. But she certainly forgot herself at Mrs.
+Provost's musicale and that, too, without apparent reason. Had the music
+been of a high order one might have understood her abstraction; but it
+was of a decidedly mediocre quality, and Violet's ear was much too fine
+and her musical sense too cultivated for her to be beguiled by anything
+less than the very best.
+
+Nor had she the excuse of a dull companion. Her escort for the evening
+was a man of unusual conversational powers; but she seemed to be almost
+oblivious of his presence; and when, through some passing courteous
+impulse, she did turn her ear his way, it was with just that tinge of
+preoccupation which betrays the divided mind.
+
+Were her thoughts with some secret problem yet unsolved? It would
+scarcely seem so from the gay remark with which she had left home. She
+was speaking to her brother and her words were: "I am going out to enjoy
+myself. I've not a care in the world. The slate is quite clean." Yet she
+had never seemed more out of tune with her surroundings nor shown a mood
+further removed from trivial entertainment. What had happened to becloud
+her gaiety in the short time which had since elapsed?
+
+We can answer in a sentence.
+
+She had seen, among a group of young men in a distant doorway, one with
+a face so individual and of an expression so extraordinary that all
+interest in the people about her had stopped as a clock stops when the
+pendulum is held back. She could see nothing else, think of nothing
+else. Not that it was so very handsome--though no other had ever
+approached it in its power over her imagination--but because of its
+expression of haunting melancholy,--a melancholy so settled and so
+evidently the result of long-continued sorrow that her interest had been
+reached and her heartstrings shaken as never before in her whole life.
+
+She would never be the same Violet again.
+
+Yet moved as she undoubtedly was, she was not conscious of the least
+desire to know who the young man was, or even to be made acquainted with
+his story. She simply wanted to dream her dream undisturbed.
+
+It was therefore with a sense of unwelcome shock that, in the course of
+the reception following the programme, she perceived this fine young man
+approaching herself, with his right hand touching his left shoulder in
+the peculiar way which committed her to an interview with or without a
+formal introduction.
+
+Should she fly the ordeal? Be blind and deaf to whatever was significant
+in his action, and go her way before he reached her; thus keeping her
+dream intact? Impossible. His eye prevented that. His glance had caught
+hers and she felt forced to await his advance and give him her first
+spare moment.
+
+It came soon, and when it came she greeted him with a smile. It was the
+first she had ever bestowed in welcome of a confidence of whose tenor
+she was entirely ignorant.
+
+To her relief he showed his appreciation of the dazzling gift though he
+made no effort to return it. Scorning all preliminaries in his eagerness
+to discharge himself of a burden which was fast becoming intolerable, he
+addressed her at once in these words:
+
+"You are very good, Miss Strange, to receive me in this unconventional
+fashion. I am in that desperate state of mind which precludes etiquette.
+Will you listen to my petition? I am told--you know by whom--"(and he
+again touched his shoulder) "that you have resources of intelligence
+which especially fit you to meet the extraordinary difficulties of my
+position. May I beg you to exercise them in my behalf? No man would be
+more grateful if--But I see that you do not recognize me. I am Roger
+Upjohn. That I am admitted to this gathering is owing to the fact that
+our hostess knew and loved my mother. In my anxiety to meet you and
+proffer my plea, I was willing to brave the cold looks you have probably
+noticed on the faces of the people about us. But I have no right to
+subject you to criticism. I--"
+
+"Remain." Violet's voice was troubled, her self-possession disturbed;
+but there was a command in her tone which he was only too glad to obey.
+"I know the name" (who did not!) "and possibly my duty to myself should
+make me shun a confidence which may burden me without relieving you. But
+you have been sent to me by one whose behests I feel bound to respect
+and--"
+
+Mistrusting her voice, she stopped. The suffering which made itself
+apparent in the face before her appealed to her heart in a way to rob
+her of her judgment. She did not wish this to be seen, and so fell
+silent.
+
+He was quick to take advantage of her obvious embarrassment. "Should I
+have been sent to you if I had not first secured the confidence of the
+sender? You know the scandal attached to my name, some of it just, some
+of it very unjust. If you will grant me an interview to-morrow, I will
+make an endeavour to refute certain charges which I have hitherto let
+go unchallenged. Will you do me this favour? Will you listen in your own
+house to what I have to say?"
+
+Instinct cried out against any such concession on her part, bidding
+her beware of one who charmed without excellence and convinced without
+reason. But compassion urged compliance and compassion won the day.
+Though conscious of weakness,--she, Violet Strange on whom strong
+men had come to rely in critical hours calling for well-balanced
+judgment,--she did not let this concern her, or allow herself to indulge
+in useless regrets even after the first effect of his presence had
+passed and she had succeeded in recalling the facts which had cast a
+cloud about his name.
+
+Roger Upjohn was a widower, and the scandal affecting him was connected
+with his wife's death.
+
+Though a degenerate in some respects, lacking the domineering
+presence, the strong mental qualities, and inflexible character of his
+progenitors, the wealthy Massachusetts Upjohns whose great place on the
+coast had a history as old as the State itself, he yet had gifts and
+attractions of his own which would have made him a worthy representative
+of his race, if only he had not fixed his affections on a woman so cold
+and heedless that she would have inspired universal aversion instead of
+love, had she not been dowered with the beauty and physical fascination
+which sometimes accompany a hard heart and a scheming brain. It was this
+beauty which had caught the lad; and one day, just as the careful father
+had mapped out a course of study calculated to make a man of his son,
+that son drove up to the gates with this lady whom he introduced as his
+wife.
+
+The shock, not of her beauty, though that was of the dazzling quality
+which catches a man in the throat and makes a slave of him while the
+first surprise lasts, but of the overthrow of all his hopes and plans,
+nearly prostrated Homer Upjohn. He saw, as most men did the moment
+judgment returned, that for all her satin skin and rosy flush, the
+wonder of her hair and the smile which pierced like arrows and warmed
+like wine, she was more likely to bring a curse into the house than a
+blessing.
+
+And so it proved. In less than a year the young husband had lost all his
+ambitions and many of his best impulses. No longer inclined to study,
+he spent his days in satisfying his wife's whims and his evenings in
+carousing with the friends with which she had provided him. This in
+Boston whither they had fled from the old gentleman's displeasure; but
+after their little son came the father insisted upon their returning
+home, which led to great deceptions, and precipitated a tragedy no one
+ever understood. They were natural gamblers--this couple--as all Boston
+society knew; and as Homer Upjohn loathed cards, they found life slow
+in the great house and grew correspondingly restless till they made
+a discovery--or shall I say a rediscovery--of the once famous grotto
+hidden in the rocks lining their portion of the coast. Here they found
+a retreat where they could hide themselves (often when they were thought
+to be abed and asleep) and play together for money or for a supper in
+the city or for anything else that foolish fancy suggested. This was
+while their little son remained an infant; later, they were less easily
+satisfied. Both craved company, excitement, and gambling on a large
+scale; so they took to inviting friends to meet them in this grotto
+which, through the agency of one old servant devoted to Roger to the
+point of folly, had been fitted up and lighted in a manner not only
+comfortable but luxurious. A small but sheltered haven hidden in the
+curve of the rocks made an approach by boat feasible at high tide;
+and at low the connection could be made by means of a path over the
+promontory in which this grotto lay concealed. The fortune which Roger
+had inherited from his mother made these excesses possible, but many
+thousands, let alone the few he could call his, soon disappeared under
+the witchery of an irresponsible woman, and the half-dozen friends who
+knew his secret had to stand by and see his ruin, without daring to
+utter a word to the one who alone could stay it. For Homer Upjohn was
+not a man to be approached lightly, nor was he one to listen to charges
+without ocular proof to support them; and this called for courage, more
+courage than was possessed by any one who knew them both.
+
+He was a hard man was Homer Upjohn, but with a heart of gold for those
+he loved. This, even his wary daughter-in-law was wise enough to detect,
+and for a long while after the birth of her child she besieged him with
+her coaxing ways and bewitching graces. But he never changed his first
+opinion of her, and once she became fully convinced of the folly of
+her efforts, she gave up all attempt to please him and showed an open
+indifference. This in time gradually extended till it embraced not only
+her child but her husband as well. Yes, it had come to that. His love no
+longer contented her. Her vanity had grown by what it daily fed on, and
+now called for the admiration of the fast men who sometimes came up
+from Boston to play with them in their unholy retreat. To win this, she
+dressed like some demon queen or witch, though it drove her husband into
+deeper play and threatened an exposure which would mean disaster not
+only to herself but to the whole family.
+
+In all this, as any one could see, Roger had been her slave and
+the willing victim of all her caprices. What was it, then, which so
+completely changed him that a separation began to be talked of and even
+its terms discussed? One rumour had it that the father had discovered
+the secret of the grotto and exacted this as a penalty from the son who
+had dishonoured him. Another, that Roger himself was the one to take the
+initiative in this matter: That, on returning unexpectedly from New York
+one evening and finding her missing from the house, he had traced her to
+the grotto where he came upon her playing a desperate game with the one
+man he had the greatest reason to distrust.
+
+But whatever the explanation of this sudden change in their relations,
+there is but little doubt that a legal separation between this
+ill-assorted couple was pending, when one bleak autumn morning she
+was discovered dead in her bed under circumstances peculiarly open to
+comment.
+
+The physicians who made out the certificate ascribed her death to
+heart-disease, symptoms of which had lately much alarmed the family
+doctor; but that a personal struggle of some kind had preceded the fatal
+attack was evident from the bruises which blackened her wrists. Had
+there been the like upon her throat it might have gone hard with the
+young husband who was known to be contemplating her dismissal from
+the house. But the discoloration of her wrists was all, and as bruised
+wrists do not kill and there was besides no evidence forthcoming of the
+two having spent one moment together for at least ten hours preceding
+the tragedy but rather full and satisfactory testimony to the contrary,
+the matter lapsed and all criminal proceedings were avoided.
+
+But not the scandal which always follows the unexplained. As time passed
+and the peculiar look which betrays the haunted soul gradually became
+visible in the young widower's eyes, doubts arose and reports circulated
+which cast strange reflections upon the tragic end of his mistaken
+marriage. Stories of the disreputable use to which the old grotto
+had been put were mingled with vague hints of conjugal violence never
+properly investigated. The result was his general avoidance not only by
+the social set dominated by his high-minded father, but by his own less
+reputable coterie, which, however lax in its moral code, had very little
+use for a coward.
+
+Such was the gossip which had reached Violet's ears in connection with
+this new client, prejudicing her altogether against him till she caught
+that beam of deep and concentrated suffering in his eye and recognized
+an innocence which ensured her sympathy and led her to grant him the
+interview for which he so earnestly entreated.
+
+He came prompt to the hour, and when she saw him again with the marks of
+a sleepless night upon him and all the signs of suffering intensified in
+his unusual countenance, she felt her heart sink within her in a way she
+failed to understand. A dread of what she was about to hear robbed her
+of all semblance of self-possession, and she stood like one in a dream
+as he uttered his first greetings and then paused to gather up his own
+moral strength before he began his story. When he did speak it was to
+say:
+
+"I find myself obliged to break a vow I have made to myself. You cannot
+understand my need unless I show you my heart. My trouble is not the one
+with which men have credited me. It has another source and is infinitely
+harder to bear. Personal dishonour I have deserved in a greater or less
+degree, but the trial which has come to me now involves a person more
+dear to me than myself, and is totally without alleviation unless you--"
+He paused, choked, then recommenced abruptly: "My wife"--Violet held
+her breath--"was supposed to have died from heart-disease or--or
+some strange species of suicide. There were reasons for this
+conclusion--reasons which I accepted without serious question till some
+five weeks ago when I made a discovery which led me to fear--"
+
+The broken sentence hung suspended. Violet, notwithstanding his hurried
+gesture, could not restrain herself from stealing a look at his face. It
+was set in horror and, though partially turned aside, made an appeal
+to her compassion to fill the void made by his silence, without further
+suggestion from him.
+
+She did this by saying tentatively and with as little show of emotion as
+possible:
+
+"You feared that the event called for vengeance and that vengeance would
+mean increased suffering to yourself as well as to another?"
+
+"Yes; great suffering. But I may be under a most lamentable mistake. I
+am not sure of my conclusions. If my doubts have no real foundation--if
+they are simply the offspring of my own diseased imagination, what
+an insult to one I revere! What a horror of ingratitude and
+misunderstanding--"
+
+"Relate the facts," came in startled tones from Violet. "They may
+enlighten us."
+
+He gave one quick shudder, buried his face for one moment in his hands,
+then lifted it and spoke up quickly and with unexpected firmness:
+
+"I came here to do so and do so I will. But where begin? Miss Strange,
+you cannot be ignorant of the circumstances, open and avowed, which
+attended my wife's death. But there were other and secret events in its
+connection which happily have been kept from the world, but which I must
+now disclose to you at any cost to my pride and so-called honour. This
+is the first one: On the morning preceding the day of Mrs. Upjohn's
+death, an interview took place between us at which my father was
+present. You do not know my father, Miss Strange. A strong man and a
+stern one, with a hold upon old traditions which nothing can shake.
+If he has a weakness it is for my little boy Roger in whose promising
+traits he sees the one hope which has survived the shipwreck of all for
+which our name has stood. Knowing this, and realizing what the child's
+presence in the house meant to his old age, I felt my heart turn sick
+with apprehension, when in the midst of the discussion as to the terms
+on which my wife would consent to a permanent separation, the little
+fellow came dancing into the room, his curls atoss and his whole face
+beaming with life and joy.
+
+"She had not mentioned the child, but I knew her well enough to be
+sure that at the first show of preference on his part for either his
+grandfather or myself, she would raise a claim to him which she would
+never relinquish. I dared not speak, but I met his eager looks with my
+most forbidding frown and hoped by this show of severity to hold him
+back. But his little heart was full and, ignoring her outstretched arms,
+he bounded towards mine with his most affectionate cry. She saw and
+uttered her ultimatum. The child should go with her or she would not
+consent to a separation. It was useless for us to talk; she had said her
+last word. The blow struck me hard, or so I thought, till I looked at my
+father. Never had I beheld such a change as that one moment had made in
+him. He stood as before; he faced us with the same silent reprobation;
+but his heart had run from him like water.
+
+"It was a sight to call up all my resources. To allow her to remain
+now, with my feelings towards her all changed and my father's eyes fully
+opened to her stony nature, was impossible. Nor could I appeal to law.
+An open scandal was my father's greatest dread and divorce proceedings
+his horror. The child would have to go unless I could find a way to
+influence her through her own nature. I knew of but one--do not look at
+me, Miss Strange. It was dishonouring to us both, and I'm horrified now
+when I think of it. But to me at that time it was natural enough as a
+last resort. There was but one debt which my wife ever paid, but one
+promise she ever kept. It was that made at the gaming-table. I offered,
+as soon as my father, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, had
+gone tottering from the room, to gamble with her for the child.
+
+"And she accepted."
+
+The shame and humiliation expressed in this final whisper; the sudden
+darkness--for a storm was coming up--shook Violet to the soul. With
+strained gaze fixed on the man before her, now little more than a shadow
+in the prevailing gloom, she waited for him to resume, and waited
+in vain. The minutes passed, the darkness became intolerable, and
+instinctively her hand crept towards the electric button beneath which
+she was sitting. But she failed to press it. A tale so dark called for
+an atmosphere of its own kind. She would cast no light upon it. Yet she
+shivered as the silence continued, and started in uncontrollable dismay
+when at length her strange visitor rose, and still, without speaking,
+walked away from her to the other end of the room. Only so could he go
+on with the shameful tale; and presently she heard his voice once more
+in these words:
+
+"Our house is large and its rooms many; but for such work as we two
+contemplated there was but one spot where we could command absolute
+seclusion. You may have heard of it, a famous natural grotto hidden in
+our own portion of the coast and so fitted up as to form a retreat for
+our miserable selves when escape from my father's eye seemed desirable.
+It was not easy of access, and no one, so far as we knew, had ever
+followed us there.
+
+"But to ensure ourselves against any possible interruption, we waited
+till the whole house was abed before we left it for the grotto. We went
+by boat and oh! the dip of those oars! I hear them yet. And the witchery
+of her face in the moonlight; and the mockery of her low fitful laugh!
+As I caught the sinister note in its silvery rise and fall, I knew what
+was before me if I failed to retain my composure. And I strove to
+hold it and to meet her calmness with stoicism and the taunt of her
+expression with a mask of immobility. But the effort was hopeless, and
+when the time came for dealing out the cards, my eyes were burning in
+their sockets and my hands shivering like leaves in a rising gale.
+
+"We played one game--and my wife lost. We played another--and my wife
+won. We played the third--and the fate I had foreseen from the first
+became mine. The luck was with her, and I had lost my boy!"
+
+A gasp--a pause, during which the thunder spoke and the lightning
+flashed,--then a hurried catching of his breath and the tale went on.
+
+"A burst of laughter, rising gaily above the boom of the sea, announced
+her victory--her laugh and the taunting words: 'You play badly, Roger.
+The child is mine. Never fear that I shall fail to teach him to revere
+his father.' Had I a word to throw back? No. When I realized anything
+but my dishonoured manhood, I found myself in the grotto's mouth staring
+helplessly out upon the sea. The boat which had floated us in at high
+tide lay stranded but a few feet away, but I did not reach for it.
+Escape was quicker over the rocks, and I made for the rocks.
+
+"That it was a cowardly act to leave her there to find her way back
+alone at midnight by the same rough road I was taking, did not strike
+my mind for an instant. I was in flight from my own past; in flight from
+myself and the haunting dread of madness. When I awoke to reality again
+it was to find the small door, by which we had left the house, standing
+slightly ajar. I was troubled by this, for I was sure of having closed
+it. But the impression was brief, and entering, I went stumbling up to
+my room, leaving the way open behind me more from sheer inability to
+exercise my will than from any thought of her.
+
+"Miss Strange" (he had come out of the shadows and was standing now
+directly before her), "I must ask you to trust implicitly in what I tell
+you of my further experiences that fatal night. It was not necessary for
+me to pass my little son's door in order to reach the room I was making
+for; but anguish took me there and held me glued to the panels for what
+seemed a long, long time. When I finally crept away it was to go to the
+room I had chosen in the top of the house, where I had my hour of hell
+and faced my desolated future. Did I hear anything meantime in the halls
+below? No. Did I even listen for the sound of her return? No. I was
+callous to everything, dead to everything but my own misery. I did not
+even heed the approach of morning, till suddenly, with a shrillness no
+ear could ignore, there rose, tearing through the silence of the house,
+that great scream from my wife's room which announced the discovery of
+her body lying stark and cold in her bed.
+
+"They said I showed little feeling." He had moved off again and spoke
+from somewhere in the shadows. "Do you wonder at this after such a
+manifest stroke by a benevolent Providence? My wife being dead, Roger
+was saved to us! It was the one song of my still undisciplined soul, and
+I had to assume coldness lest they should see the greatness of my joy.
+A wicked and guilty rejoicing you will say, and you are right. But I
+had no memory then of the part I had played in this fatality. I had
+forgotten my reckless flight from the grotto, which left her with no aid
+but that of her own triumphant spirit to help her over those treacherous
+rocks. The necessity for keeping secret this part of our disgraceful
+story led me to exert myself to keep it out of my own mind. It has only
+come back to me in all its force since a new horror, a new suspicion,
+has driven me to review carefully every incident of that awful night.
+
+"I was never a man of much logic, and when they came to me on that
+morning of which I have just spoken and took me in where she lay and
+pointed to her beautiful cold body stretched out in seeming peace under
+the satin coverlet, and then to the pile of dainty clothes lying neatly
+folded on a chair with just one fairy slipper on top, I shuddered at her
+fate but asked no questions, not even when one of the women of the house
+mentioned the circumstance of the single slipper and said that a search
+should be made for its mate. Nor was I as much impressed as one would
+naturally expect by the whisper dropped in my ear that something was
+the matter with her wrists. It is true that I lifted the lace they had
+carefully spread over them and examined the discoloration which extended
+like a ring about each pearly arm; but having no memories of any
+violence offered her (I had not so much as laid hand upon her in the
+grotto), these marks failed to rouse my interest. But--and now I must
+leap a year in my story--there came a time when both of these facts
+recurred to my mind with startling distinctness and clamoured for
+explanation.
+
+"I had risen above the shock which such a death following such events
+would naturally occasion even in one of my blunted sensibilities, and
+was striving to live a new life under the encouragement of my now fully
+reconciled father, when accident forced me to re-enter the grotto where
+I had never stepped foot since that night. A favourite dog in chase of
+some innocent prey had escaped the leash and run into its dim recesses
+and would not come out at my call. As I needed him immediately for the
+hunt, I followed him over the promontory and, swallowing my repugnance,
+slid into the grotto to get him. Better a plunge to my death from the
+height of the rocks towering above it. For there in a remote corner,
+lighted up by a reflection from the sea, I beheld my setter crouched
+above an object which in another moment I recognized as my dead
+wife's missing slipper. Here! Not in the waters of the sea or in the
+interstices of the rocks outside, but here! Proof that she had never
+walked back to the house where she was found lying quietly in her bed;
+proof positive; for I knew the path too well and the more than usual
+tenderness of her feet.
+
+"How then, did she get there; and by whose agency? Was she living when
+she went, or was she already dead? A year had passed since that delicate
+shoe had borne her from the boat into these dim recesses; but it might
+have been only a day, so vividly did I live over in this moment of awful
+enlightenment all the events of the hour in which we sat there playing
+for the possession of our child. Again I saw her gleaming eyes, her
+rosy, working mouth, her slim, white hand, loaded with diamonds,
+clutching the cards. Again I heard the lap of the sea on the pebbles
+outside and smelt the odour of the wine she had poured out for us both.
+The bottle which had held it; the glass from which she had drunk lay now
+in pieces on the rocky floor. The whole scene was mine again and as I
+followed the event to its despairing close, I seemed to see my own wild
+figure springing away from her to the grotto's mouth and so over the
+rocks. But here fancy faltered, caught by a quick recollection to which
+I had never given a thought till now. As I made my way along those
+rocks, a sound had struck my ear from where some stunted bushes made
+a shadow in the moonlight. The wind might have caused it or some small
+night creature hustling away at my approach; and to some such cause
+I must at the time have attributed it. But now, with brain fired by
+suspicion, it seemed more like the quick intake of a human breath. Some
+one had been lying there in wait, listening at the one loophole in the
+rocks where it was possible to hear what was said and done in the heart
+of the grotto. But who? who? and for what purpose this listening; and to
+what end did it lead?
+
+"Though I no longer loved even the memory of my wife, I felt my hair
+lift, as I asked myself these questions. There seemed to be but one
+logical answer to the last, and it was this: A struggle followed by
+death. The shoe fallen from her foot, the clothes found folded in her
+room (my wife was never orderly), and the dimly blackened wrists which
+were snow-white when she dealt the cards--all seemed to point to such
+a conclusion. She may have died from heart-failure, but a struggle had
+preceded her death, during which some man's strong fingers had been
+locked about her wrists. And again the question rose, Whose?
+
+"If any place was ever hated by mortal man that grotto was hated by me.
+I loathed its walls, its floor, its every visible and invisible corner.
+To linger there--to look--almost tore my soul from my body; yet I did
+linger and did look and this is what I found by way of reward.
+
+"Behind a projecting ledge of stone from which a tattered rug still
+hung, I came upon two nails driven a few feet apart into a fissure of
+the rock. I had driven those nails myself long before for a certain
+gymnastic attachment much in vogue at the time, and on looking closer,
+I discovered hanging from them the rope-ends by which I was wont to
+pull myself about. So far there was nothing to rouse any but innocent
+reminiscences. But when I heard the dog's low moan and saw him leap
+at the curled-up ends, and nose them with an eager look my way, I
+remembered the dark marks circling the wrists about which I had so often
+clasped my mother's bracelets, and the world went black before me.
+
+"When consciousness returned--when I could once more move and see and
+think, I noted another fact. Cards were strewn about the floor, face up
+and in a fixed order as if laid in a mocking mood to be looked upon by
+reluctant eyes; and near the ominous half-circle they made, a cushion
+from the lounge, stained horribly with what I then thought to be blood,
+but which I afterwards found to be wine. Vengeance spoke in those ropes
+and in the carefully spread-out cards, and murder in the smothering
+pillow. The vengeance of one who had watched her corroding influence eat
+the life out of my honour and whose love for our little Roger was such
+that any deed which ensured his continued presence in the home appeared
+not only warrantable but obligatory. Alas! I knew of but one person
+in the whole world who could cherish feeling to this extent or possess
+sufficient will power to carry her lifeless body back to the house and
+lay it in her bed and give no sign of the abominable act from that day
+on to this.
+
+"Miss Strange, there are men who have a peculiar conception of duty. My
+father--"
+
+"You need not go on." How gently, how tenderly our Violet spoke. "I
+understand your trouble--"
+
+Did she? She paused to ask herself if this were so, and he, deaf perhaps
+to her words, caught up his broken sentence and went on:
+
+"My father was in the hall the day I came staggering in from my visit to
+the grotto. No words passed, but our eyes met and from that hour I
+have seen death in his countenance and he has seen it in mine, like two
+opponents, each struck to the heart, who stand facing each other with
+simulated smiles till they fall. My father will drop first. He is
+old--very old since that day five weeks ago; and to see him die and not
+be sure--to see the grave close over a possible innocence, and I left
+here in ignorance of the blissful fact till my own eyes close forever,
+is more than I can hold up under; more than any son could. Cannot you
+help me then to a positive knowledge? Think! think! A woman's mind is
+strangely penetrating, and yours, I am told, has an intuitive faculty
+more to be relied upon than the reasoning of men. It must suggest some
+means of confirming my doubts or of definitely ending them."
+
+Then Violet stirred and looked about at him and finally found voice.
+
+"Tell me something about your father's ways. What are his habits? Does
+he sleep well or is he wakeful at night?"
+
+"He has poor nights. I do not know how poor because I am not often with
+him. His valet, who has always been in our family, shares his room and
+acts as his constant nurse. He can watch over him better than I can; he
+has no distracting trouble on his mind."
+
+"And little Roger? Does your father see much of little Roger? Does he
+fondle him and seem happy in his presence?"
+
+"Yes; yes. I have often wondered at it, but he does. They are great
+chums. It is a pleasure to see them together."
+
+"And the child clings to him--shows no fear--sits on his lap or on
+the bed and plays as children do play with his beard or with his
+watch-chain?"
+
+"Yes. Only once have I seen my little chap shrink, and that was when my
+father gave him a look of unusual intensity,--looking for his mother in
+him perhaps."
+
+"Mr. Upjohn, forgive me the question; it seems necessary. Does your
+father--or rather did your father before he fell ill--ever walk in the
+direction of the grotto or haunt in any way the rocks which surround
+it?"
+
+"I cannot say. The sea is there; he naturally loves the sea. But I have
+never seen him standing on the promontory."
+
+"Which way do his windows look?"
+
+"Towards the sea."
+
+"Therefore towards the promontory?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Can he see it from his bed?"
+
+"No. Perhaps that is the cause of a peculiar habit he has."
+
+"What habit?"
+
+"Every night before he retires (he is not yet confined to his bed) he
+stands for a few minutes in his front window looking out. He says it's
+his good-night to the ocean. When he no longer does this, we shall know
+that his end is very near."
+
+The face of Violet began to clear. Rising, she turned on the electric
+light, and then, reseating herself, remarked with an aspect of quiet
+cheer:
+
+"I have two ideas; but they necessitate my presence at your place. You
+will not mind a visit? My brother will accompany me."
+
+Roger Upjohn did not need to speak, hardly to make a gesture; his
+expression was so eloquent.
+
+She thanked him as if he had answered in words, adding with an air of
+gentle reserve: "Providence assists us in this matter. I am invited to
+Beverly next week to attend a wedding. I was intending to stay two days,
+but I will make it three and spend the extra one with you."
+
+"What are your requirements, Miss Strange? I presume you have some."
+
+Violet turned from the imposing portrait of Mr. Upjohn which she had
+been gravely contemplating, and met the troubled eye of her young host
+with an enigmatical flash of her own. But she made no answer in
+words. Instead, she lifted her right hand and ran one slender finger
+thoughtfully up the casing of the door near which they stood till it
+struck a nick in the old mahogany almost on a level with her head.
+
+"Is your son Roger old enough to reach so far?" she asked with another
+short look at him as she let her finger rest where it had struck the
+roughened wood. "I thought he was a little fellow."
+
+"He is. That cut was made by--by my wife; a sample of her capricious
+willfulness. She wished to leave a record of herself in the substance
+of our house as well as in our lives. That nick marks her height. She
+laughed when she made it. 'Till the walls cave in or burn,' is what she
+said. And I thought her laugh and smile captivating."
+
+Cutting short his own laugh which was much too sardonic for a lady's
+ears, he made a move as if to lead the way into another portion of
+the room. But Violet failed to notice this, and lingering in quiet
+contemplation of this suggestive little nick,--the only blemish in a
+room of ancient colonial magnificence,--she thoughtfully remarked:
+
+"Then she was a small woman?" adding with seeming irrelevance--"like
+myself."
+
+Roger winced. Something in the suggestion hurt him, and in the nod he
+gave there was an air of coldness which under ordinary circumstances
+would have deterred her from pursuing this subject further. But the
+circumstances were not ordinary, and she allowed herself to say:
+
+"Was she so very different from me,--in figure, I mean?"
+
+"No. Why do you ask? Shall we not join your brother on the terrace?"
+
+"Not till I have answered the question you put me a moment ago. You
+wished to know my requirements. One of the most important you have
+already fulfilled. You have given your servants a half-holiday and by
+so doing ensured to us full liberty of action. What else I need in the
+attempt I propose to make, you will find listed in this memorandum." And
+taking a slip of paper from her bag, she offered it to him with a hand,
+the trembling of which he would have noted had he been freer in mind.
+
+As he read, she watched him, her fingers nervously clutching her throat.
+
+"Can you supply what I ask?" she faltered, as he failed to raise his
+eyes or make any move or even to utter the groan she saw surging up
+to his lips. "Will you?" she impetuously urged, as his fingers closed
+spasmodically on the paper, in evidence that he understood at last the
+trend of her daring purpose.
+
+The answer came slowly, but it came. "I will. But what--"
+
+Her hand rose in a pleading gesture.
+
+"Do not ask me, but take Arthur and myself into the garden and show us
+the flowers. Afterwards, I should like a glimpse of the sea."
+
+He bowed and they joined Arthur who had already begun to stroll through
+the grounds.
+
+Violet was seldom at a loss for talk even at the most critical moments.
+But she was strangely tongue-tied on this occasion, as was Roger
+himself. Save for a few observations casually thrown out by Arthur, the
+three passed in a disquieting silence through pergola after pergola,
+and around beds gorgeous with every variety of fall flowers, till they
+turned a sharp corner and came in full view of the sea.
+
+"Ah!" fell in an admiring murmur from Violet's lips as her eyes swept
+the horizon. Then as they settled on a mass of rock jutting out from
+the shore in a great curve, she leaned towards her host and softly
+whispered:
+
+"The promontory?"
+
+He nodded, and Violet ventured no farther, but stood for a little while
+gazing at the tumbled rocks. Then, with a quick look back at the house,
+she asked him to point out his father's window.
+
+He did so, and as she noted how openly it faced the sea, her expression
+relaxed and her manner lost some of its constraint. As they turned to
+re-enter the house, she noticed an old man picking flowers from a vine
+clambering over one end of the piazza.
+
+"Who is that?" she asked.
+
+"Our oldest servant, and my father's own man," was Roger's reply. "He is
+picking my father's favourite flowers, a few late honeysuckles."
+
+"How fortunate! Speak to him, Mr. Upjohn. Ask him how your father is
+this evening."
+
+"Accompany me and I will; and do not be afraid to enter into
+conversation with him. He is the mildest of creatures and devoted to his
+patient. He likes nothing better than to talk about him."
+
+Violet, with a meaning look at her brother, ran up the steps at Roger's
+side. As she did so, the old man turned and Violet was astonished at the
+wistfulness with which he viewed her.
+
+"What a dear old creature!" she murmured. "See how he stares this way.
+You would think he knew me."
+
+"He is glad to see a woman about the place. He has felt our
+isolation--Good evening, Abram. Let this young lady have a spray of your
+sweetest honeysuckle. And, Abram, before you go, how is Father to-night?
+Still sitting up?"
+
+"Yes, sir. He is very regular in his ways. Nine is his hour; not a
+minute before and not a minute later. I don't have to look at the clock
+when he says: 'There, Abram, I've sat up long enough.'"
+
+"When my father retires before his time or goes to bed without a final
+look at the sea, he will be a very sick man, Abram."
+
+"That he will, Mr. Roger; that he will. But he's very feeble to-night,
+very feeble. I noticed that he gave the boy fewer kisses than usual.
+Perhaps he was put out because the child was brought in a half-hour
+earlier than the stated time. He don't like changes; you know that,
+Mr. Roger; he don't like changes. I hardly dared to tell him that the
+servants were all going out in a bunch to-night."
+
+"I'm sorry," muttered Roger. "But he'll forget it by to-morrow. I
+couldn't bear to keep a single one from the concert. They'll be back
+in good season and meantime we have you. Abram is worth half a dozen of
+them, Miss Strange. We shall miss nothing."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Roger, thank you," faltered the old man. "I try to do my
+duty." And with another wistful glance at Violet, who looked very sweet
+and youthful in the half-light, he pottered away.
+
+The silence which followed his departure was as painful to her as to
+Roger Upjohn. When she broke it it was with this decisive remark:
+
+"That man must not speak of me to your father. He must not even mention
+that you have a guest to-night. Run after him and tell him so. It is
+necessary that your father's mind should not be taken up with present
+happenings. Run."
+
+Roger made haste to obey her. When he came back she was on the point of
+joining her brother but stopped to utter a final injunction:
+
+"I shall leave the library, or wherever we may be sitting, just as the
+clock strikes half-past eight. Arthur will do the same, as by that time
+he will feel like smoking on the terrace. Do not follow either him or
+myself, but take your stand here on the piazza where you can get a
+full view of the right-hand wing without attracting any attention to
+yourself. When you hear the big clock in the hall strike nine, look up
+quickly at your father's window. What you see may determine--oh, Arthur!
+still admiring the prospect? I do not wonder. But I find it chilly. Let
+us go in."
+
+Roger Upjohn, sitting by himself in the library, was watching the hands
+of the mantel clock slowly approaching the hour of nine.
+
+Never had silence seemed more oppressive nor his sense of loneliness
+greater. Yet the boom of the ocean was distinct to the ear, and human
+presence no farther away than the terrace where Arthur Strange could be
+seen smoking out his cigar in solitude. The silence and the loneliness
+were in Roger's own soul; and, in face of the expected revelation
+which would make or unmake his future, the desolation they wrought was
+measureless.
+
+To cut his suspense short, he rose at length and hurried out to the spot
+designated by Miss Strange as the best point from which to keep watch
+upon his father's window. It was at the end of the piazza where the
+honeysuckle hung, and the odour of the blossoms, so pleasing to his
+father, well-nigh overpowered him not only by its sweetness but by the
+many memories it called up. Visions of that father as he looked at all
+stages of their relationship passed in a bewildering maze before him.
+He saw him as he appeared to his childish eyes in those early days of
+confidence when the loss of the mother cast them in mutual dependence
+upon each other. Then a sterner picture of the relentless parent who
+sees but one straight course to success in this world and the next. Then
+the teacher and the matured adviser; and then--oh, bitter change! the
+man whose hopes he had crossed--whose life he had undone, and all for
+her who now came stealing upon the scene with her slim, white, jewelled
+hand forever lifted up between them. And she! Had he ever seen her more
+clearly? Once more the dainty figure stepped from fairy-land, beauteous
+with every grace that can allure and finally destroy a man. And as he
+saw, he trembled and wished that these moments of awful waiting might
+pass and the test be over which would lay bare his father's heart and
+justify his fears or dispel them forever.
+
+But the crisis, if crisis it was, was one of his own making and not to
+be hastened or evaded. With one quick glance at his father's window, he
+turned in his impatience towards the sea whose restless and continuous
+moaning had at length struck his ear. What was in its call to-night that
+he should thus sway towards it as though drawn by some dread magnetic
+force? He had been born to the dashing of its waves and knew its
+every mood and all the passion of its song from frolicsome ripple to
+melancholy dirge. But there was something odd and inexplicable in
+its effect upon his spirit as he faced it at this hour. Grim and
+implacable--a sound rather than a sight--it seemed to hold within its
+invisible distances the image of his future fate. What this image was
+and why he should seek for it in this impenetrable void, he did not
+know. He felt himself held and was struggling with this influence as
+with an unknown enemy when there rang out, from the hall within, the
+preparatory chimes for which his ear was waiting, and then the nine slow
+strokes which signalized the moment when he was to look for his father's
+presence at the window.
+
+Had he wished, he could not have forborne that look. Had his eyes been
+closing in death, or so he felt, the trembling lids would have burst
+apart at this call and the revelations it promised.
+
+And what did he see? What did that window hold for him?
+
+Nothing that he might not have seen there any night at this hour. His
+father's figure drawn up behind the panes in wistful contemplation of
+the night. No visible change in his attitude, nothing forced or unusual
+in his manner. Even the hand, lifted to pull down the shade, moves
+with its familiar hesitation. In a moment more that shade will be down
+and--But no! the lifted hand falls back; the easy attitude becomes
+strained, fixed. He is staring now--not merely gazing out upon the
+wastes of sky and sea; and Roger, following the direction of his glance,
+stares also in breathless emotion at what those distances, but now so
+impenetrable, are giving to the eye.
+
+A spectre floating in the air above the promontory! The spectre of
+a woman--of his wife, clad, as she had been clad that fatal night!
+Outlined in supernatural light, it faces them with lifted arms showing
+the ends of rope dangling from either wrist. A sight awful to any eye,
+but to the man of guilty heart--
+
+Ah! it comes--the cry for which the agonized son had been listening! An
+old man's shriek, hoarse with the remorse of sleepless nights and days
+of unimaginable regret and foreboding! It cuts the night. It cuts its
+way into his heart. He feels his senses failing him, yet he must glance
+once more at the window and see with his last conscious look--But what
+is this! a change has taken place in the picture and he beholds, not
+the distorted form of his father sinking back in shame and terror before
+this visible image of his secret sin, but that of another weak, old man
+falling to the floor behind his back! Abram! the attentive, seemingly
+harmless, guardian of the household! Abram! who had never spoken a word
+or given a look in any way suggestive of his having played any other
+part in the hideous drama of their lives than that of the humble and
+sympathetic servant!
+
+The shock was too great, the relief too absolute for credence. He, the
+listener at the grotto? He, the avenger of the family's honour? He, the
+insurer of little Roger's continuance with the family at a cost the one
+who loved him best would rather have died himself than pay? Yes! there
+is no misdoubting this old servitor's attitude of abject appeal, or the
+meaning of Homer Upjohn's joyfully uplifted countenance and outspreading
+arms. The servant begs for mercy from man, and the master is giving
+thanks to Heaven. Why giving thanks? Has he been the prey of cankering
+doubts also? Has the father dreaded to discover that in the son which
+the son has dreaded to discover in the father?
+
+It might easily be; and as Roger recognizes this truth and the
+full tragedy of their mutual lives, he drops to his knees amid the
+honeysuckles.
+
+"Violet, you are a wonder. But how did you dare?"
+
+This from Arthur as the two rode to the train in the early morning.
+
+The answer came a bit waveringly.
+
+"I do not know. I am astonished yet, at my own daring. Look at my hands.
+They have not ceased trembling since the moment you threw the light upon
+me on the rocks. The figure of old Mr. Upjohn in the window looked so
+august."
+
+Arthur, with a short glance at the little hands she held out, shrugged
+his shoulders imperceptibly. It struck him that the tremulousness she
+complained of was due more to some parting word from their young host,
+than from prolonged awe at her own daring. But he made no remark to this
+effect, only observed:
+
+"Abram has confessed his guilt, I hear."
+
+"Yes, and will die of it. The master will bury the man, and not the man
+the master."
+
+"And Roger? Not the little fellow, but the father?"
+
+"We will not talk of him," said she, her eyes seeking the sea where
+the sun in its rising was battling with a troop of lowering clouds and
+slowly gaining the victory.
+
+END OF PROBLEM IV
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM V. THE DREAMING LADY
+
+"And this is all you mean to tell me?"
+
+"I think you will find it quite enough, Miss Strange."
+
+"Just the address--"
+
+"And this advice: that your call be speedy. Distracted nerves cannot
+wait."
+
+Violet, across whose wonted piquancy there lay an indefinable shadow,
+eyed her employer with a doubtful air before turning away toward the
+door. She had asked him for a case to investigate (something she had
+never done before), and she had even gone so far as to particularize
+the sort of case she desired: "It must be an interesting one," she had
+stipulated, "but different, quite different from the last one. It must
+not involve death or any kind of horror. If you have a case of subtlety
+without crime, one to engage my powers without depressing my spirits, I
+beg you to let me have it. I--I have not felt quite like myself since I
+came from Massachusetts." Whereupon, without further comment, but with a
+smile she did not understand, he had handed her a small slip of paper on
+which he had scribbled an address. She should have felt satisfied, but
+for some reason she did not. She regarded him as capable of plunging her
+into an affair quite the reverse of what she felt herself in a condition
+to undertake.
+
+"I should like to know a little more," she pursued, making a move to
+unfold the slip he had given her.
+
+But he stopped her with a gesture.
+
+"Read it in your limousine," said he. "If you are disappointed then, let
+me know. But I think you will find yourself quite ready for your task."
+
+"And my father?"
+
+"Would approve if he could be got to approve the business at all. You do
+not even need to take your brother with you."
+
+"Oh, then, it's with women only I have to deal?"
+
+"Read the address after you are headed up Fifth Avenue."
+
+But when, with her doubts not yet entirely removed, she opened the small
+slip he had given her, the number inside suggested nothing but the
+fact that her destination lay somewhere near Eightieth Street. It was
+therefore with the keenest surprise she beheld her motor stop before
+the conspicuous house of the great financier whose late death had so
+affected the money-market. She had not had any acquaintance with this
+man herself, but she knew his house. Everyone knew that. It was one of
+the most princely in the whole city. C. Dudley Brooks had known how to
+spend his millions. Indeed, he had known how to do this so well that it
+was of him her father, also a financier of some note, had once said he
+was the only successful American he envied.
+
+She was expected; that she saw the instant the door was opened. This
+made her entrance easy--an entrance further brightened by the delightful
+glimpse of a child's cherubic face looking at her from a distant
+doorway. It was an instantaneous vision, gone as soon as seen; but its
+effect was to rob the pillared spaces of the wonderful hallway of some
+of their chill, and to modify in some slight degree the formality of
+a service which demanded three men to usher her into a small
+reception-room not twenty feet from the door of entrance.
+
+Left in this secluded spot, she had time to ask herself what member of
+the household she would be called upon to meet, and was surprised to
+find that she did not even know of whom the household consisted. She
+was sure of the fact that Mr. Brooks had been a widower for many years
+before his death, but beyond that she knew nothing of his domestic life.
+His son--but was there a son? She had never heard any mention made of a
+younger Mr. Brooks, yet there was certainly some one of his connection
+who enjoyed the rights of an heir. Him she must be prepared to meet with
+a due composure, whatever astonishment he might show at the sight of a
+slip of a girl instead of the experienced detective he had every right
+to expect.
+
+But when the door opened to admit the person she was awaiting, the
+surprise was hers. It was a woman who stood before her, a woman and an
+oddity. Yet, in just what her oddity lay, Violet found it difficult to
+decide. Was it in the smoothness of her white locks drawn carefully down
+over her ears, or in the contrast afforded by her eager eyes and her
+weak and tremulous mouth? She was dressed in the heaviest of mourning
+and very expensively, but there was that in her bearing and expression
+which made it impossible to believe that she took any interest in her
+garments or even knew in which of her dresses she had been attired.
+
+"I am the person you have come here to see," she said. "Your name is
+not unfamiliar to me, but you may not know mine. It is Quintard; Mrs.
+Quintard. I am in difficulty. I need assistance--secret assistance.
+I did not know where to go for it except to a detective agency; so I
+telephoned to the first one I saw advertised; and--and I was told to
+expect Miss Strange. But I didn't think it would be you though I suppose
+it's all right. You have come here for this purpose, haven't you, though
+it does seem a little queer?"
+
+"Certainly, Mrs. Quintard; and if you will tell me--"
+
+"My dear, it's just this--yes, I will sit down. Last week my brother
+died. You have heard of him no doubt, C. Dudley Brooks?"
+
+"Oh, yes; my father knew him--we all knew him by reputation. Do not
+hurry, Mrs. Quintard. I have sent my car away. You can take all the time
+you wish."
+
+"No, no, I cannot. I'm in desperate haste. He--but let me go on with
+my story. My brother was a widower, with no children to inherit. That
+everybody knows. But his wife left behind her a son by a former husband,
+and this son of hers my brother had in a measure adopted, and even made
+his sole heir in a will he drew up during the lifetime of his wife.
+But when he found, as he very soon did, that this young man was not
+developing in a way to meet such great responsibilities, he made a new
+will--though unhappily without the knowledge of the family, or even of
+his most intimate friends--in which he gave the bulk of his great estate
+to his nephew Clement, who has bettered the promise of his youth and
+who besides has children of great beauty whom my brother had learned to
+love. And this will--this hoarded scrap of paper which means so much to
+us all, is lost! lost! and I--" here her voice which had risen almost to
+a scream, sank to a horrified whisper, "am the one who lost it."
+
+"But there's a copy of it somewhere--there is always a copy--"
+
+"Oh, but you haven't heard all. My nephew is an invalid; has been an
+invalid for years--that's why so little is known about him. He's dying
+of consumption. The doctors hold out no hope for him, and now, with the
+fear preying upon him of leaving his wife and children penniless, he is
+wearing away so fast that any hour may see his end. And I have to meet
+his eyes--such pitiful eyes--and the look in them is killing me. Yet,
+I was not to blame. I could not help--Oh, Miss Strange," she suddenly
+broke in with the inconsequence of extreme feeling, "the will is in the
+house! I never carried it off the floor where I sleep. Find it; find it,
+I pray, or--"
+
+The moment had come for Violet's soft touch, for Violet's encouraging
+word.
+
+"I will try," she answered her.
+
+Mrs. Quintard grew calmer.
+
+"But, first," the young girl continued, "I must know more about the
+conditions. Where is this nephew of yours--the man who is ill?"
+
+"In this house, where he has been for the last eight months."
+
+"Was the child his of whom I caught a glimpse in the hall as I came in?"
+
+"Yes, and--"
+
+"I will fight for that child!" Violet cried out impulsively. "I am sure
+his father's cause is good. Where is the other claimant--the one you
+designate as Carlos?"
+
+"Oh, there's where the trouble is! Carlos is on the Mauretania, and she
+is due here in a couple of days. He comes from the East where he has
+been touring with his wife. Miss Strange, the lost will must be found
+before then, or the other will be opened and read and Carlos made
+master of this house, which would mean our quick departure and Clement's
+certain death."
+
+"Move a sick man?--a relative as low as you say he is? Oh no, Mrs.
+Quintard; no one would do that, were the house a cabin and its owners
+paupers."
+
+"You do not know Carlos; you do not know his wife. We should not be
+given a week in which to pack. They have no children and they envy
+Clement who has. Our only hope lies in discovering the paper which gives
+us the right to remain here in face of all opposition. That or penury.
+Now you know my trouble."
+
+"And it is trouble; one from which I shall make every effort to relieve
+you. But first let me ask if you are not worrying unnecessarily about
+this missing document? If it was drawn up by Mr. Brooks's lawyer--"
+
+"But it was not," that lady impetuously interrupted. "His lawyer is
+Carlos's near relative, and has never been told of the change in my
+brother's intentions. Clement (I am speaking now of my brother and not
+of my nephew) was a great money-getter, but when it came to standing up
+for his rights in domestic matters, he was more timid than a child. He
+was subject to his wife while she lived, and when she was gone, to her
+relatives, who are all of a dominating character. When he finally
+made up his mind to do us justice and eliminate Carlos, he went out of
+town--I wish I could remember where--and had this will drawn up by a
+stranger, whose name I cannot recall."
+
+Her shaking tones, her nervous manner betrayed a weakness equalling, if
+not surpassing, that of the brother who dared in secret what he had not
+strength to acknowledge openly, and it was with some hesitation Violet
+prepared to ask those definite questions which would elucidate the cause
+and manner of a loss seemingly so important. She dreaded to hear some
+commonplace tale of inexcusable carelessness. Something subtler than
+this--the presence of some unsuspected agency opposed to young Clement's
+interest; some partisan of Carlos; some secret undermining force in
+a house full of servants and dependants, seemed necessary for the
+development of so ordinary a situation into a drama justifying the
+exercise of her special powers.
+
+"I think I understand now your exact position in the house, as well as
+the value of the paper which you say you have lost. The next thing for
+me to hear is how you came to have charge of this paper, and under what
+circumstances you were led to mislay it. Do you not feel quite ready to
+tell me?"
+
+"Is--is that necessary?" Mrs. Quintard faltered.
+
+"Very," replied Violet, watching her curiously.
+
+"I didn't expect--that is, I hoped you would be able to point out, by
+some power we cannot of course explain, just the spot where the paper
+lies, without having to tell all that. Some people can, you know."
+
+"Ah, I understand. You regarded me as unfit for practical work, and so
+credited me with occult powers. But that is where you made a mistake,
+Mrs. Quintard; I'm nothing if not practical. And let me add, that I'm as
+secret as the grave concerning what my clients tell me. If I am to be of
+any help to you, I must be made acquainted with every fact involved
+in the loss of this valuable paper. Relate the whole circumstance or
+dismiss me from the case. You can have done nothing more foolish or
+wrong than many--"
+
+"Oh, don't say things like that!" broke in the poor woman in a tone of
+great indignation. "I have done nothing anyone could call either foolish
+or wicked. I am simply very unfortunate, and being sensitive--But this
+isn't telling the story. I'll try to make it all clear; but if I do
+not, and show any confusion, stop me and help me out with questions.
+I--I--oh, where shall I begin?"
+
+"With your first knowledge of this second will."
+
+"Thank you, thank you; now I can go on. One night, shortly after my
+brother had been given up by the physicians, I was called to his bedside
+for a confidential talk. As he had received that day a very large amount
+of money from the bank, I thought he was going to hand it over to me
+for Clement, but it was for something much more serious than this he
+had summoned me. When he was quite sure that we were alone and nobody
+anywhere within hearing, he told me that he had changed his mind as
+to the disposal of his property and that it was to Clement and his
+children, and not to Carlos, he was going to leave this house and the
+bulk of his money. That he had had a new will drawn up which he showed
+me--"
+
+"Showed you?"
+
+"Yes; he made me bring it to him from the safe where he kept it; and,
+feeble as he was, he was so interested in pointing out certain portions
+of it that he lifted himself in bed and was so strong and animated that
+I thought he was getting better. But it was a false strength due to the
+excitement of the moment, as I saw next day when he suddenly died."
+
+"You were saying that you brought the will to him from his safe. Where
+was the safe?"
+
+"In the wall over his head. He gave me the key to open it. This key he
+took from under his pillow. I had no trouble in fitting it or in turning
+the lock."
+
+"And what happened after you looked at the will?"
+
+"I put it back. He told me to. But the key I kept. He said I was not to
+part with it again till the time came for me to produce the will."
+
+"And when was that to be?"
+
+"Immediately after the funeral, if it so happened that Carlos had
+arrived in time to attend it. But if for any reason he failed to be
+here, I was to let it lie till within three days of his return, when
+I was to take it out in the presence of a Mr. Delahunt who was to have
+full charge of it from that time. Oh, I remember all that well enough!
+and I meant most earnestly to carry out his wishes, but--"
+
+"Go on, Mrs. Quintard, pray go on. What happened? Why couldn't you do
+what he asked?"
+
+"Because the will was gone when I went to take it out. There was nothing
+to show Mr. Delahunt but the empty shelf."
+
+"Oh, a theft! just a common theft! Someone overheard the talk you had
+with your brother. But how about the key? You had that?"
+
+"Yes, I had that."
+
+"Then it was taken from you and returned? You must have been careless as
+to where you kept it--"
+
+"No, I wore it on a chain about my neck. Though I had no reason to
+mistrust any one in the house, I felt that I could not guard this key
+too carefully. I even kept it on at night. In fact it never left me. It
+was still on my person when I went into the room with Mr. Delahunt. But
+the safe had been opened for all that."
+
+"There were two keys to it, then?"
+
+"No; in giving me the key, my brother had strictly warned me not to lose
+it, as it had no duplicate."
+
+"Mrs. Quintard, have you a special confidant or maid?"
+
+"Yes, my Hetty."
+
+"How much did she know about this key?"
+
+"Nothing, but that it didn't help the fit of my dress. Hetty has cared
+for me for years. There's no more devoted woman in all New York, nor one
+who can be more relied upon to tell the truth. She is so honest with her
+tongue that I am bound to believe her even when she says--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"That it was I and nobody else who took the will out of the safe last
+night. That she saw me come from my brother's room with a folded paper
+in my hand, pass with it into the library, and come out again without
+it. If this is so, then that will is somewhere in that great room. But
+we've looked in every conceivable place except the shelves, where it
+is useless to search. It would take days to go through them all, and
+meanwhile Carlos--"
+
+"We will not wait for Carlos. We will begin work at once. But just
+one other question. How came Hetty to see you in your walk through the
+rooms? Did she follow you?"
+
+"Yes. It's--it's not the first time I have walked in my sleep. Last
+night--but she will tell you. It's a painful subject to me. I will send
+for her to meet us in the library."
+
+"Where you believe this document to lie hidden?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am anxious to see the room. It is upstairs, I believe."
+
+"Yes."
+
+She had risen and was moving rapidly toward the door. Violet eagerly
+followed her.
+
+Let us accompany her in her passage up the palatial stairway, and
+realize the effect upon her of a splendour whose future ownership
+possibly depended entirely upon herself.
+
+It was a cold splendour. The merry voices of children were lacking in
+these great halls. Death past and to come infused the air with solemnity
+and mocked the pomp which yet appeared so much a part of the life here
+that one could hardly imagine the huge pillared spaces without it.
+
+To Violet, more or less accustomed to fine interiors, the chief interest
+of this one lay in its connection with the mystery then occupying her.
+Stopping for a moment on the stair, she inquired of Mrs. Quintard if the
+loss she so deplored had been made known to the servants, and was much
+relieved to find that, with the exception of Mr. Delahunt, she had not
+spoken of it to any one but Clement. "And he will never mention it," she
+declared, "not even to his wife. She has troubles enough to bear without
+knowing how near she stood to a fortune."
+
+"Oh, she will have her fortune!" Violet confidently replied. "In time,
+the lawyer who drew up the will will appear. But what you want is an
+immediate triumph over the cold Carlos, and I hope you may have it. Ah!"
+
+This expletive was a sigh of sheer surprise.
+
+Mrs. Quintard had unlocked the library door and Violet had been given
+her first glimpse of this, the finest room in New York.
+
+She remembered now that she had often heard it so characterized, and,
+indeed, had it been taken bodily from some historic abbey of the
+old world, it could not have expressed more fully, in structure and
+ornamentation, the Gothic idea at its best. All that it lacked were
+the associations of vanished centuries, and these, in a measure, were
+supplied to the imagination by the studied mellowness of its tints and
+the suggestion of age in its carvings.
+
+So much for the room itself, which was but a shell for holding the great
+treasure of valuable books ranged along every shelf. As Violet's eyes
+sped over their ranks and thence to the five windows of deeply stained
+glass which faced her from the southern end, Mrs. Quintard indignantly
+exclaimed:
+
+"And Carlos would turn this into a billiard room!"
+
+"I do not like Carlos," Violet returned hotly; then remembering herself,
+hastened to ask whether Mrs. Quintard was quite positive as to this room
+being the one in which she had hidden the precious document.
+
+"You had better talk to Hetty," said that lady, as a stout woman of most
+prepossessing appearance entered their presence and paused respectfully
+just inside the doorway. "Hetty, you will answer any questions this
+young lady may put. If anyone can help us, she can. But first, what news
+from the sick-room?"
+
+"Nothing good. The doctor has just come for the third time today. Mrs.
+Brooks is crying and even the children are dumb with fear."
+
+"I will go. I must see the doctor. I must tell him to keep Clement alive
+by any means till--"
+
+She did not wait to say what; but Violet understood and felt her heart
+grow heavy. Could it be that her employer considered this the gay and
+easy task she had asked for?
+
+The next minute she was putting her first question:
+
+"Hetty, what did you see in Mrs. Quintard's action last night, to make
+you infer that she left the missing document in this room?"
+
+The woman's eyes, which had been respectfully studying her face,
+brightened with a relief which made her communicative. With the
+self-possession of a perfectly candid nature, she inquiringly remarked:
+
+"My mistress has spoken of her infirmity?"
+
+"Yes, and very frankly."
+
+"She walks in her sleep."
+
+"So she said."
+
+"And sometimes when others are asleep, and she is not."
+
+"She did not tell me that."
+
+"She is a very nervous woman and cannot always keep still when she
+rouses up at night. When I hear her rise, I get up too; but, never being
+quite sure whether she is sleeping or not, I am careful to follow her at
+a certain distance. Last night I was so far behind her that she had been
+to her brother's room and left it before I saw her face."
+
+"Where is his room and where is hers?"
+
+"Hers is in front on this same floor. Mr. Brooks's is in the rear, and
+can be reached either by the hall or by passing through this room into a
+small one beyond, which we called his den."
+
+"Describe your encounter. Where were you standing when you saw her
+first?"
+
+"In the den I have just mentioned. There was a bright light in the hall
+behind me and I could see her figure quite plainly. She was holding
+a folded paper clenched against her breast, and her movement was so
+mechanical that I was sure she was asleep. She was coming this way, and
+in another moment she entered this room. The door, which had been open,
+remained so, and in my anxiety I crept to it and looked in after her.
+There was no light burning here at that hour, but the moon was shining
+in in long rays of variously coloured light. If I had followed her--but
+I did not. I just stood and watched her long enough to see her pass
+through a blue ray, then through a green one, and then into, if not
+through, a red one. Expecting her to walk straight on, and having some
+fears of the staircase once she got into the hall, I hurried around to
+the door behind you there to head her off. But she had not yet left
+this room. I waited and waited and still she did not come. Fearing some
+accident, I finally ventured to approach the door and try it. It was
+locked. This alarmed me. She had never locked herself in anywhere before
+and I did not know what to make of it. Some persons would have shouted
+her name, but I had been warned against doing that, so I simply stood
+where I was, and eventually I heard the key turn in the lock and saw her
+come out. She was still walking stiffly, but her hands were empty and
+hanging at her side."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"She went straight to her room and I after her. I was sure she was dead
+asleep by this time."
+
+"And she was?"
+
+"Yes, Miss; but still full of what was on her mind. I know this because
+she stopped when she reached the bedside and began fumbling with the
+waist of her wrapper. It was for the key she was searching, and when her
+fingers encountered it hanging on the outside, she opened her wrapper
+and thrust it in on her bare skin."
+
+"You saw her do all that?"
+
+"As plainly as I see you now. The light in her room was burning
+brightly."
+
+"And after that?"
+
+"She got into bed. It was I who turned off the light."
+
+"Has that wrapper of hers a pocket?"
+
+"No, Miss."
+
+"Nor her gown?"
+
+"No, Miss."
+
+"So she could not have brought the paper into her room concealed about
+her person?"
+
+"No, Miss; she left it here. It never passed beyond this doorway."
+
+"But might she not have carried it back to some place of concealment in
+the rooms she had left?"
+
+The woman's face changed and a slight flush showed through the natural
+brown of her cheeks.
+
+"No," she disclaimed; "she could not have done that. I was careful to
+lock the library door behind her before I ran out into the hall."
+
+"Then," concluded Violet, with all the emphasis of conviction, "it is
+here, and nowhere else we must look for that document till we find it."
+
+Thus assured of the first step in the task she had before her, Miss
+Strange settled down to business.
+
+The room, which towered to the height of two stories, was in the shape
+of a huge oval. This oval, separated into narrow divisions for the
+purpose of accommodating the shelves with which it was lined, narrowed
+as it rose above the great Gothic chimney-piece and the five gorgeous
+windows looking towards the south, till it met and was lost in the
+tracery of the ceiling, which was of that exquisite and soul-satisfying
+order which we see in the Henry VII chapel in Westminster Abbey. What
+break otherwise occurred in the circling round of books reaching thus
+thirty feet or more above the head was made by the two doors already
+spoken of and a narrow strip of wall at either end of the space occupied
+by the windows. No furniture was to be seen there except a couple of
+stalls taken from some old cathedral, which stood in the two bare places
+just mentioned.
+
+But within, on the extensive floor-space, several articles were grouped,
+and Violet, recognizing the possibilities which any one of them afforded
+for the concealment of so small an object as a folded document, decided
+to use method in her search, and to that end, mentally divided the space
+before her into four segments.
+
+The first took in the door, communicating with the suite ending in Mr.
+Brooks's bedroom. A diagram of this segment will show that the only
+article of furniture in it was a cabinet.
+
+It was at this cabinet Miss Strange made her first stop.
+
+"You have looked this well through?" she asked as she bent over the
+glass case on top to examine the row of mediaeval missals displayed
+within in a manner to show their wonderful illuminations.
+
+"Not the case," explained Hetty. "It is locked you see and no one has as
+yet succeeded in finding the key. But we searched the drawers underneath
+with the greatest care. Had we sifted the whole contents through our
+fingers, I could not be more certain that the paper is not there."
+
+Violet stepped into the next segment.
+
+This was the one dominated by the huge fire-place. A rug lay before the
+hearth. To this Violet pointed.
+
+Quickly the woman answered: "We not only lifted it, but turned it over."
+
+"And that box at the right?"
+
+"Is full of wood and wood only."
+
+"Did you take out this wood?"
+
+"Every stick."
+
+"And those ashes in the fire-place? Something has been burned there."
+
+"Yes; but not lately. Besides, those ashes are all wood ashes. If the
+least bit of charred paper had been mixed with them, we should have
+considered the matter settled. But you can see for yourself that no such
+particle can be found." While saying this, she had put the poker into
+Violet's hand. "Rake them about, Miss, and make sure."
+
+Violet did so, with the result that the poker was soon put back into
+place, and she herself down on her knees looking up the chimney.
+
+"Had she thrust it up there," Hetty made haste to remark, "there would
+have been some signs of soot on her sleeves. They are white and very
+long and are always getting in her way when she tries to do anything."
+
+Violet left the fire-place after a glance at the mantel-shelf on
+which nothing stood but a casket of open fretwork, and two coloured
+photographs mounted on small easels. The casket was too open to conceal
+anything and the photographs lifted too high above the shelf for even
+the smallest paper, let alone a document of any size, to hide behind
+them.
+
+The chairs, of which there were several in this part of the room, she
+passed with just an inquiring look. They were all of solid oak, without
+any attempt at upholstery, and although carved to match the stalls on
+the other side of the room, offered no place for search.
+
+Her delay in the third segment was brief. Here there was absolutely
+nothing but the door by which she had entered, and the books. As she
+flitted on, following the oval of the wall, a small frown appeared on
+her usually smooth forehead. She felt the oppression of the books--the
+countless books. If indeed, she should find herself obliged to go
+through them. What a hopeless outlook!
+
+But she had still a segment to consider, and after that the immense
+table occupying the centre of the room, a table which in its double
+capacity (for it was as much desk as table) gave more promise of holding
+the solution of the mystery than anything to which she had hitherto
+given her attention.
+
+The quarter in which she now stood was the most beautiful, and,
+possibly, the most precious of them all. In it blazed the five great
+windows which were the glory of the room; but there are no hiding-places
+in windows, and much as she revelled in colour, she dared not waste a
+moment on them. There was more hope for her in the towering stalls, with
+their possible drawers for books.
+
+But Hetty was before her in the attempt she made to lift the lids of the
+two great seats.
+
+"Nothing in either," said she; and Violet, with a sigh, turned towards
+the table.
+
+This was an immense affair, made to accommodate itself to the shape of
+the room, but with a hollowed-out space on the window-side large enough
+to hold a chair for the sitter who would use its top as a desk. On it
+were various articles suitable to its double use. Without being crowded,
+it displayed a pile of magazines and pamphlets, boxes for stationery,
+a writing pad with its accompaniments, a lamp, and some few ornaments,
+among which was a large box, richly inlaid with pearl and ivory, the lid
+of which stood wide open.
+
+"Don't touch," admonished Violet, as Hetty stretched out her hand to
+move some little object aside. "You have already worked here busily in
+the search you made this morning."
+
+"We handled everything."
+
+"Did you go through these pamphlets?"
+
+"We shook open each one. We were especially particular here, since it
+was at this table I saw Mrs. Quintard stop."
+
+"With head level or drooped?"
+
+"Drooped."
+
+"Like one looking down, rather than up, or around?"
+
+"Yes. A ray of red light shone on her sleeve. It seemed to me the sleeve
+moved as though she were reaching out."
+
+"Will you try to stand as she did and as nearly in the same place as
+possible?"
+
+Hetty glanced down at the table edge, marked where the gules dominated
+the blue and green, and moved to that spot, and paused with her head
+sinking slowly towards her breast.
+
+"Very good," exclaimed Violet. "But the moon was probably in a very
+different position from what the sun is now."
+
+"You are right; it was higher up; I chanced to notice it."
+
+"Let me come," said Violet.
+
+Hetty moved, and Violet took her place but in a spot a step or two
+farther front. This brought her very near to the centre of the table.
+Hanging her head, just as Hetty had done, she reached out her right
+hand.
+
+"Have you looked under this blotter?" she asked, pointing towards the
+pad she touched. "I mean, between the blotter and the frame which holds
+it?"
+
+"I certainly did," answered Hetty, with some pride.
+
+Violet remained staring down. "Then you took off everything that was
+lying on it?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+Violet continued to stare down at the blotter. Then impetuously:
+
+"Put them back in their accustomed places."
+
+Hetty obeyed.
+
+Violet continued to look at them, then slowly stretched out her hand,
+but soon let it fall again with an air of discouragement. Certainly
+the missing document was not in the ink-pot or the mucilage bottle.
+Yet something made her stoop again over the pad and subject it to the
+closest scrutiny.
+
+"If only nothing had been touched!" she inwardly sighed. But she let no
+sign of her discontent escape her lips, simply exclaiming as she glanced
+up at the towering spaces overhead: "The books! the books! Nothing
+remains but for you to call up all the servants, or get men from the
+outside and, beginning at one end--I should say the upper one--take down
+every book standing within reach of a woman of Mrs. Quintard's height."
+
+"Hear first what Mrs. Quintard has to say about that," interrupted the
+woman as that lady entered in a flutter of emotion springing from more
+than one cause.
+
+"The young lady thinks that we should remove the books," Hetty observed,
+as her mistress's eye wandered to hers from Violet's abstracted
+countenance.
+
+"Useless. If we were to undertake to do that, Carlos would be here
+before half the job was finished. Besides, Hetty must have told you my
+extreme aversion to nicely bound books. I will not say that when awake
+I never place my hand on one, but once in a state of somnambulism, when
+every natural whim has full control, I am sure that I never would. There
+is a reason for my prejudice. I was not always rich. I once was very
+poor. It was when I was first married and long before Clement had begun
+to make his fortune. I was so poor then that frequently I went hungry,
+and what was worse saw my little daughter cry for food. And why? Because
+my husband was a bibliomaniac. He would spend on fine editions what
+would have kept the family comfortable. It is hard to believe, isn't
+it? I have seen him bring home a Grolier when the larder was as empty as
+that box; and it made me hate books so, especially those of extra fine
+binding, that I have to tear the covers off before I can find courage to
+read them."
+
+O life! life! how fast Violet was learning it!
+
+"I can understand your idea, Mrs. Quintard, but as everything else has
+failed, I should make a mistake not to examine these shelves. It is just
+possible that we may be able to shorten the task very materially; that
+we may not have to call in help, even. To what extent have they been
+approached, or the books handled, since you discovered the loss of the
+paper we are looking for?"
+
+"Not at all. Neither of us went near them." This from Hetty.
+
+"Nor any one else?"
+
+"No one else has been admitted to the room. We locked both doors the
+moment we felt satisfied that the will had been left here."
+
+"That's a relief. Now I may be able to do something. Hetty, you look
+like a very strong woman, and I, as you see, am very little. Would you
+mind lifting me up to these shelves? I want to look at them. Not at the
+books, but at the shelves themselves."
+
+The wondering woman stooped and raised her to the level of the shelf she
+had pointed out. Violet peered closely at it and then at the ones just
+beneath.
+
+"Am I heavy?" she asked; "if not, let me see those on the other side of
+the door."
+
+Hetty carried her over.
+
+Violet inspected each shelf as high as a woman of Mrs. Quintard's
+stature could reach, and when on her feet again, knelt to inspect the
+ones below.
+
+"No one has touched or drawn anything from these shelves in twenty-four
+hours," she declared. "The small accumulation of dust along their edges
+has not been disturbed at any point. It was very different with the
+table-top. That shows very plainly where you had moved things and where
+you had not."
+
+"Was that what you were looking for? Well, I never!"
+
+Violet paid no heed; she was thinking and thinking very deeply.
+
+Hetty turned towards her mistress, then quickly back to Violet, whom she
+seized by the arm.
+
+"What's the matter with Mrs. Quintard?" she hurriedly asked. "If it were
+night, I should think that she was in one of her spells."
+
+Violet started and glanced where Hetty pointed. Mrs. Quintard was within
+a few feet of them, but as oblivious of their presence as though she
+stood alone in the room. Possibly, she thought she did. With fixed eyes
+and mechanical step she began to move straight towards the table, her
+whole appearance of a nature to make Hetty's blood run cold, but to
+cause that of Violet's to bound through her veins with renewed hope.
+
+"The one thing I could have wished!" she murmured under her breath. "She
+has fallen into a trance. She is again under the dominion of her idea.
+If we watch and do not disturb her she may repeat her action of last
+night, and herself show where she has put this precious document."
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Quintard continued to advance. A moment more, and her
+smooth white locks caught the ruddy glow centred upon the chair standing
+in the hollow of the table. Words were leaving her lips, and her hand,
+reaching out over the blotter, groped among the articles scattered there
+till it settled on a large pair of shears.
+
+"Listen," muttered Violet to the woman pressing close to her side. "You
+are acquainted with her voice; catch what she says if you can."
+
+Hetty could not; an undistinguishable murmur was all that came to her
+ears.
+
+Violet took a step nearer. Mrs. Quintard's hand had left the shears and
+was hovering uncertainly in the air. Her distress was evident. Her head,
+no longer steady on her shoulders, was turning this way and that, and
+her tones becoming inarticulate.
+
+"Paper! I want paper" burst from her lips in a shrill unnatural cry.
+
+But when they listened for more and watched to see the uncertain hand
+settle somewhere, she suddenly came to herself and turned upon them
+a startled glance, which speedily changed into one of the utmost
+perplexity.
+
+"What am I doing here?" she asked. "I have a feeling as if I had
+almost seen--almost touched--oh, it's gone! and all is blank again. Why
+couldn't I keep it till I knew--" Then she came wholly to herself and,
+forgetting even the doubts of a moment since, remarked to Violet in her
+old tremulous fashion:
+
+"You asked us to pull down the books? But you've evidently thought
+better of it."
+
+"Yes, I have thought better of it." Then, with a last desperate hope of
+re-arousing the visions lying somewhere back in Mrs. Quintard's troubled
+brain, Violet ventured to observe: "This is likely to resolve itself
+into a psychological problem, Mrs. Quintard. Do you suppose that if
+you fell again into the condition of last night, you would repeat your
+action and so lead us yourself to where the will lies hidden?"
+
+"Possibly; but it may be weeks before I walk again in my sleep, and
+meanwhile Carlos will have arrived, and Clement, possibly, died. My
+nephew is so low that the doctor is coming back at midnight. Miss
+Strange, Clement is a man in a thousand. He says he wants to see you.
+Would you be willing to accompany me to his room for a moment? He will
+not make many more requests and I will take care that the interview is
+not prolonged."
+
+"I will go willingly. But would it not be better to wait--"
+
+"Then you may never see him at all."
+
+"Very well; but I wish I had some better news to give."
+
+"That will come later. This house was never meant for Carlos. Hetty, you
+will stay here. Miss Strange, let us go now."
+
+"You need not speak; just let him see you."
+
+Violet nodded and followed Mrs. Quintard into the sick-room.
+
+The sight which met her eyes tried her young emotions deeply. Staring at
+her from the bed, she saw two piercing eyes over whose brilliance death
+as yet had gained no control. Clements's soul was in that gaze; Clement
+halting at the brink of dissolution to sound the depths behind him for
+the hope which would make departure easy. Would he see in her, a mere
+slip of a girl dressed in fashionable clothes and bearing about her all
+the marks of social distinction, the sort of person needed for the
+task upon the success of which depended his darlings' future? She could
+hardly expect it. Yet as she continued to meet his gaze with all the
+seriousness the moment demanded, she beheld those burning orbs lose
+some of their demand and the fingers, which had lain inert upon the
+bedspread, flutter gently and move as if to draw attention to his wife
+and the three beautiful children clustered at the foot-board.
+
+He had not spoken nor could she speak, but the solemnity with which she
+raised her right hand as to a listening Heaven called forth upon his
+lips what was possibly his last smile, and with the memory of this faint
+expression of confidence on his part, she left the room, to make her
+final attempt to solve the mystery of the missing document.
+
+Facing the elderly lady in the hall, she addressed her with the force
+and soberness of one leading a forlorn hope:
+
+"I want you to concentrate your mind upon what I have to say to you. Do
+you think you can do this?"
+
+"I will try," replied the poor woman with a backward glance at the door
+which had just been closed upon her.
+
+"What we want," said she, "is, as I stated before, an insight into the
+workings of your brain at the time you took the will from the safe.
+Try and follow what I have to say, Mrs. Quintard. Dreams are no
+longer regarded by scientists as prophecies of the future or even as
+spontaneous and irrelevant conditions of thought, but as reflections of
+a near past, which can almost without exception be traced back to the
+occurrences which caused them. Your action with the will had its birth
+in some previous line of thought afterwards forgotten. Let us try
+and find that thought. Recall, if you can, just what you did or read
+yesterday."
+
+Mrs. Quintard looked frightened.
+
+"But, I have no memory," she objected. "I forget quickly, so quickly
+that in order to fulfill my engagements I have to keep a memorandum of
+every day's events. Yesterday? yesterday? What did I do yesterday? I
+went downtown for one thing, but I hardly know where."
+
+"Perhaps your memorandum of yesterday's doings will help you."
+
+"I will get it. But it won't give you the least help. I keep it only for
+my own eye, and--"
+
+"Never mind; let me see it."
+
+And she waited impatiently for it to be put in her hands.
+
+But when she came to read the record of the last two days, this was all
+she found:
+
+Saturday: Mauretania nearly due. I must let Mr. Delahunt know today that
+he's wanted here to-morrow. Hetty will try on my dresses. Says she has
+to alter them. Mrs. Peabody came to lunch, and we in such trouble! Had
+to go down street. Errand for Clement. The will, the will! I think of
+nothing else. Is it safe where it is? No peace of mind till to-morrow.
+Clement better this afternoon. Says he must live till Carlos gets
+back; not to triumph over him, but to do what he can to lessen his
+disappointment. My good Clement!
+
+So nervous, I went to pasting photographs, and was forgetting all my
+troubles when Hetty brought in another dress to try on.
+
+Quiet in the great house, during which the clock on the staircase sent
+forth seven musical peals. To Violet waiting alone in the library, they
+acted as a summons. She was just leaving the room, when the sound
+of hubbub in the hall below held her motionless in the doorway. An
+automobile had stopped in front, and several persons were entering the
+house, in a gay and unseemly fashion. As she stood listening, uncertain
+of her duty, she perceived the frenzied figure of Mrs. Quintard
+approaching. As she passed by, she dropped one word: "Carlos!" Then she
+went staggering on, to disappear a moment later down the stairway.
+
+This vision lost, another came. This time it was that of Clements's
+wife leaning from the marble balustrade above, the shadow of approaching
+grief battling with the present terror in her perfect features. Then
+she too withdrew from view and Violet, left for the moment alone in the
+great hall, stepped back into the library and began to put on her hat.
+
+The lights had been turned up in the grand salon and it was in this
+scene of gorgeous colour that Mrs. Quintard came face to face with
+Carlos Pelacios. Those who were witness to her entrance say that
+she presented a noble appearance, as with the resolution of extreme
+desperation she stood waiting for his first angry attack.
+
+He, a short, thick-set, dark man, showing both in features and
+expression the Spanish blood of his paternal ancestors, started to
+address her in tones of violence, but changed his note, as he met her
+eye, to one simply sardonic.
+
+"You here!" he began. "I assure you, madame, that it is a pleasure which
+is not without its inconveniences. Did you not receive my cablegram
+requesting this house to be made ready for my occupancy?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Then why do I find guests here? They do not usually precede the arrival
+of their host."
+
+"Clement is very ill--"
+
+"So much the greater reason that he should have been removed--"
+
+"You were not expected for two days yet. You cabled that you were coming
+on the Mauretania."
+
+"Yes, I cabled that. Elisabetta,"--this to his wife standing silently in
+the background--"we will go to the Plaza for tonight. At three o'clock
+tomorrow we shall expect to find this house in readiness for our return.
+Later, if Mrs. Quintard desires to visit us we shall be pleased to
+receive her. But"--this to Mrs. Quintard herself--"you must come without
+Clement and the kids."
+
+Mrs. Quintard's rigid hand stole up to her throat.
+
+"Clement is dying. He is failing hourly," she murmured. "He may not live
+till morning."
+
+Even Carlos was taken aback by this. "Oh, well!" said he, "we will give
+you two days."
+
+Mrs. Quintard gasped, then she walked straight up to him.
+
+"You will give us all the time his condition requires and more, much
+more. He is the real owner of this house, not you. My brother left a
+will bequeathing it to him. You are my nephew's guests, and not he
+yours. As his representative I entreat you and your wife to remain here
+until you can find a home to your mind."
+
+The silence seethed. Carlos had a temper of fire and so had his wife.
+But neither spoke, till he had gained sufficient control over himself to
+remark without undue rancour:
+
+"I did not think you had the wit to influence your brother to this
+extent; otherwise, I should have cut my travels short." Then harshly:
+"Where is this will?"
+
+"It will be produced." But the words faltered.
+
+Carlos glanced at the man standing behind his wife; then back at Mrs.
+Quintard.
+
+"Wills are not scribbled off on deathbeds; or if they are, it needs
+something more than a signature to legalize them. I don't believe
+in this trick of a later will. Mr. Cavanagh"--here he indicated the
+gentleman accompanying them--"has done my father's business for years,
+and he assured me that the paper he holds in his pocket is the first,
+last, and only expression of your brother's wishes. If you are in a
+position to deny this, show us the document you mention; show us it at
+once, or inform us where and in whose hands it can be found."
+
+"That, for--for reasons I cannot give, I must refuse to do at present.
+But I am ready to swear--"
+
+A mocking laugh cut her short. Did it issue from his lips or from those
+of his highstrung and unfeeling wife? It might have come from either;
+there was cause enough.
+
+"Oh!" she faltered, "may God have mercy!" and was sinking before their
+eyes, when she heard her name, called from the threshold, and, looking
+that way, saw Hetty beaming upon her, backed by a little figure with a
+face so radiant that instinctively her hand went out to grasp the folded
+sheet of paper Hetty was seeking to thrust upon her.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, in a great voice, "you will not have to wait, nor
+Clement either. Here is the will! The children have come into their
+own." And she fell at their feet in a dead faint.
+
+"Where did you find it? Oh! where did you find it? I have waited a week
+to know. When, after Carlos's sudden departure, I stood beside Clement's
+death-bed and saw from the look he gave me that he could still feel and
+understand, I told him that you had succeeded in your task and that all
+was well with us. But I was not able to tell him how you had succeeded
+or in what place the will had been found; and he died, unknowing. But we
+may know, may we not, now that he is laid away and there is no more talk
+of our leaving this house?"
+
+Violet smiled, but very tenderly, and in a way not to offend the
+mourner. They were sitting in the library--the great library which was
+to remain in Clement's family after all--and it amused her to follow the
+dreaming lady's glances as they ran in irrepressible curiosity over the
+walls. Had Violet wished, she could have kept her secret forever. These
+eyes would never have discovered it.
+
+But she was of a sympathetic temperament, our Violet, so after a
+moment's delay, during which she satisfied herself that little, if
+anything, had been touched in the room since her departure from it a
+week before, she quietly observed:
+
+"You were right in persisting that you hid it in this room. It was here
+I found it. Do you notice that photograph on the mantel which does not
+stand exactly straight on its easel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Supposing you take it down. You can reach it, can you not?"
+
+"Oh, yes. But what--"
+
+"Lift it down, dear Mrs. Quintard; and then turn it round and look at
+its back."
+
+Agitated and questioning, the lady did as she was bid, and at the first
+glance gave a cry of surprise, if not of understanding. The square
+of brown paper, acting as a backing to the picture, was slit across,
+disclosing a similar one behind it which was still intact.
+
+"Oh! was it hidden in here?" she asked.
+
+"Very completely," assented Violet. "Pasted in out of sight by a lady
+who amuses herself with mounting and framing photographs. Usually, she
+is conscious of her work, but this time she performed her task in a
+dream."
+
+Mrs. Quintard was all amazement.
+
+"I don't remember touching these pictures," she declared. "I never
+should have remembered. You are a wonderful person, Miss Strange. How
+came you to think these photographs might have two backings? There was
+nothing to show that this was so."
+
+"I will tell you, Mrs. Quintard. You helped me."
+
+"I helped you?"
+
+"Yes. You remember the memorandum you gave me? In it you mentioned
+pasting photographs. But this was not enough in itself to lead me to
+examine those on the mantel, if you had not given me another suggestion
+a little while before. We did not tell you this, Mrs. Quintard, at the
+time, but during the search we were making here that day, you had a
+lapse into that peculiar state which induces you to walk in your sleep.
+It was a short one, lasting but a moment, but in a moment one can speak,
+and, this you did--"
+
+"Spoke? I spoke?"
+
+"Yes, you uttered the word 'paper!' not the paper, but 'paper!' and
+reached out towards the shears. Though I had not much time to think of
+it then, afterwards upon reading your memorandum I recalled your words,
+and asked myself if it was not paper to cut, rather than to hide, you
+wanted. If it was to cut, and you were but repeating the experience
+of the night before, then the room should contain some remnants of cut
+paper. Had we seen any? Yes, in the basket, under the desk we had taken
+out and thrown back again a strip or so of wrapping paper, which, if my
+memory did not fail me, showed a clean-cut edge. To pull this strip out
+again and spread it flat upon the desk was the work of a minute, and
+what I saw led me to look all over the room, not now for the folded
+document, but for a square of brown paper, such as had been taken out
+of this larger sheet. Was I successful? Not for a long while, but when
+I came to the photographs on the mantel and saw how nearly they
+corresponded in shape and size to what I was looking for, I recalled
+again your fancy for mounting photographs and felt that the mystery was
+solved.
+
+"A glance at the back of one of them brought disappointment, but when I
+turned about its mate--You know what I found underneath the outer paper.
+You had laid the will against the original backing and simply pasted
+another one over it.
+
+"That the discovery came in time to cut short a very painful interview
+has made me joyful for a week.
+
+"And now may I see the children?"
+
+END OF PROBLEM V
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM VI. THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS
+
+Miss Strange was not in a responsive mood. This her employer had
+observed on first entering; yet he showed no hesitation in laying on
+the table behind which she had ensconced herself in the attitude of one
+besieged, an envelope thick with enclosed papers.
+
+"There," said he. "Telephone me when you have read them."
+
+"I shall not read them."
+
+"No?" he smiled; and, repossessing himself of the envelope, he tore off
+one end, extracted the sheets with which it was filled, and laid them
+down still unfolded, in their former place on the table-top.
+
+The suggestiveness of the action caused the corners of Miss Srange's
+delicate lips to twitch wistfully, before settling into an ironic smile.
+
+Calmly the other watched her.
+
+"I am on a vacation," she loftily explained, as she finally met his
+studiously non-quizzical glance. "Oh, I know that I am in my own home!"
+she petulantly acknowledged, as his gaze took in the room; "and that the
+automobile is at the door; and that I'm dressed for shopping. But for
+all that I'm on a vacation--a mental one," she emphasized; "and business
+must wait. I haven't got over the last affair," she protested, as he
+maintained a discreet silence, "and the season is so gay just now--so
+many balls, so many--But that isn't the worst. Father is beginning to
+wake up--and if he ever suspects--" A significant gesture ended this
+appeal.
+
+The personage knew her father--everyone did--and the wonder had always
+been that she dared run the risk of displeasing one so implacable.
+Though she was his favourite child, Peter Strange was known to be quite
+capable of cutting her off with a shilling, once his close, prejudiced
+mind conceived it to be his duty. And that he would so interpret the
+situation, if he ever came to learn the secret of his daughter's fits
+of abstraction and the sly bank account she was slowly accumulating, the
+personage holding out this dangerous lure had no doubt at all. Yet he
+only smiled at her words and remarked in casual suggestion:
+
+"It's out of town this time--'way out. Your health certainly demands a
+change of air."
+
+"My health is good. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as one may choose to
+look at it, it furnishes me with no excuse for an outing," she steadily
+retorted, turning her back on the table.
+
+"Ah, excuse me!" the insidious voice apologized, "your paleness misled
+me. Surely a night or two's change might be beneficial."
+
+She gave him a quick side look, and began to adjust her boa.
+
+To this hint he paid no attention.
+
+"The affair is quite out of the ordinary," he pursued in the tone of one
+rehearsing a part. But there he stopped. For some reason, not altogether
+apparent to the masculine mind, the pin of flashing stones (real stones)
+which held her hat in place had to be taken out and thrust back again,
+not once, but twice. It was to watch this performance he had paused.
+When he was ready to proceed, he took the musing tone of one marshalling
+facts for another's enlightenment:
+
+"A woman of unknown instincts--"
+
+"Pshaw!" The end of the pin would strike against the comb holding
+Violet's chestnut-coloured locks.
+
+"Living in a house as mysterious as the secret it contains. But--" here
+he allowed his patience apparently to forsake him, "I will bore you no
+longer. Go to your teas and balls; I will struggle with my dark affairs
+alone."
+
+His hand went to the packet of papers she affected so ostentatiously to
+despise. He could be as nonchalant as she. But he did not lift them;
+he let them lie. Yet the young heiress had not made a movement or even
+turned the slightest glance his way.
+
+"A woman difficult to understand! A mysterious house--possibly a
+mysterious crime!"
+
+Thus Violet kept repeating in silent self-communion, as flushed with
+dancing she sat that evening in a highly-scented conservatory, dividing
+her attention between the compliments of her partner and the splash of
+a fountain bubbling in the heart of this mass of tropical foliage; and
+when some hours later she sat down in her chintz-furnished bedroom for
+a few minutes' thought before retiring, it was to draw from a little oak
+box at her elbow the half-dozen or so folded sheets of closely written
+paper which had been left for her perusal by her persistent employer.
+
+Glancing first at the signature and finding it to be one already
+favourably known at the bar, she read with avidity the statement of
+events thus vouched for, finding them curious enough in all conscience
+to keep her awake for another full hour.
+
+We here subscribe it:
+
+I am a lawyer with an office in the Times Square Building. My business
+is mainly local, but sometimes I am called out of town, as witness the
+following summons received by me on the fifth of last October.
+
+DEAR SIR,--
+
+I wish to make my will. I am an invalid and cannot leave my room.
+Will you come to me? The enclosed reference will answer for my
+respectability. If it satisfies you and you decide to accommodate me,
+please hasten your visit; I have not many days to live. A carriage will
+meet you at Highland Station at any hour you designate. Telegraph reply.
+
+A. Postlethwaite, Gloom Cottage, ----, N. J.
+
+The reference given was a Mr. Weed of Eighty-sixth Street--a well-known
+man of unimpeachable reputation.
+
+Calling him up at his business office, I asked him what he could tell
+me about Mr. Postlethwaite of Gloom Cottage, ----, N. J. The answer
+astonished me:
+
+"There is no Mr. Postlethwaite to be found at that address. He died
+years ago. There is a Mrs. Postlethwaite--a confirmed paralytic. Do you
+mean her?"
+
+I glanced at the letter still lying open at the side of the telephone:
+
+"The signature reads A. Postlethwaite."
+
+"Then it's she. Her name is Arabella. She hates the name, being a woman
+of no sentiment. Uses her initials even on her cheques. What does she
+want of you?"
+
+"To draw her will."
+
+"Oblige her. It'll be experience for you." And he slammed home the
+receiver.
+
+I decided to follow the suggestion so forcibly emphasized; and the next
+day saw me at Highland Station. A superannuated horse and a still more
+superannuated carriage awaited me--both too old to serve a busy man
+in these days of swift conveyance. Could this be a sample of the
+establishment I was about to enter? Then I remembered that the woman who
+had sent for me was a helpless invalid, and probably had no use for any
+sort of turnout.
+
+The driver was in keeping with the vehicle, and as noncommittal as the
+plodding beast he drove. If I ventured upon a remark, he gave me a
+long and curious look; if I went so far as to attack him with a direct
+question, he responded with a hitch of the shoulder or a dubious smile
+which conveyed nothing. Was he deaf or just unpleasant? I soon learned
+that he was not deaf; for suddenly, after a jog-trot of a mile or so
+through a wooded road which we had entered from the main highway, he
+drew in his horse, and, without glancing my way, spoke his first word:
+
+"This is where you get out. The house is back there in the bushes."
+
+As no house was visible and the bushes rose in an unbroken barrier along
+the road, I stared at him in some doubt of his sanity.
+
+"But--" I began; a protest into which he at once broke, with the sharp
+direction:
+
+"Take the path. It'll lead you straight to the front door."
+
+"I don't see any path."
+
+For this he had no answer; and confident from his expression that it
+would be useless to expect anything further from him, I dropped a coin
+into his hand, and jumped to the ground. He was off before I could turn
+myself about.
+
+"'Something is rotten in the State of Denmark,'" I quoted in startled
+comment to myself; and not knowing what else to do, stared down at the
+turf at my feet.
+
+A bit of flagging met my eye, protruding from a layer of thick moss.
+Farther on I espied another--the second, probably, of many. This, no
+doubt, was the path I had been bidden to follow, and without further
+thought on the subject, I plunged into the bushes which with difficulty
+I made give way before me.
+
+For a moment all further advance looked hopeless. A more tangled,
+uninviting approach to a so-called home, I had never seen outside of the
+tropics; and the complete neglect thus displayed should have prepared me
+for the appearance of the house I unexpectedly came upon, just as, the
+way seemed on the point of closing up before me.
+
+But nothing could well prepare one for a first view of Gloom Cottage.
+Its location in a hollow which had gradually filled itself up with
+trees and some kind of prickly brush, its deeply stained walls, once
+picturesque enough in their grouping but too deeply hidden now amid
+rotting boughs to produce any other effect than that of shrouded
+desolation, the sough of these same boughs as they rapped a devil's
+tattoo against each other, and the absence of even the rising column of
+smoke which bespeaks domestic life wherever seen--all gave to one who
+remembered the cognomen Cottage and forgot the pre-cognomen of Gloom, a
+sense of buried life as sepulchral as that which emanates from the mouth
+of some freshly opened tomb.
+
+But these impressions, natural enough to my youth, were necessarily
+transient, and soon gave way to others more business-like. Perceiving
+the curve of an arch rising above the undergrowth still blocking my
+approach, I pushed my way resolutely through, and presently found myself
+stumbling upon the steps of an unexpectedly spacious domicile, built not
+of wood, as its name of Cottage had led me to expect, but of carefully
+cut stone which, while showing every mark of time, proclaimed itself
+one of those early, carefully erected Colonial residences which it
+takes more than a century to destroy, or even to wear to the point of
+dilapidation.
+
+Somewhat encouraged, though failing to detect any signs of active life
+in the heavily shuttered windows frowning upon me from either side, I
+ran up the steps and rang the bell which pulled as hard as if no hand
+had touched it in years.
+
+Then I waited.
+
+But not to ring again; for just as my hand was approaching the bell a
+second time, the door fell back and I beheld in the black gap before me
+the oldest man I had ever come upon in my whole life. He was so old
+I was astonished when his drawn lips opened and he asked if I was the
+lawyer from New York. I would as soon have expected a mummy to wag its
+tongue and utter English, he looked so thin and dried and removed from
+this life and all worldly concerns.
+
+But when I had answered his question and he had turned to marshal me
+down the hall towards a door I could dimly see standing open in the
+twilight of an absolutely sunless interior, I noticed that his step was
+not without some vigour, despite the feeble bend of his withered body
+and the incessant swaying of his head, which seemed to be continually
+saying No!
+
+"I will prepare madam," he admonished me, after drawing a ponderous
+curtain two inches or less aside from one of the windows. "She is very
+ill, but she will see you."
+
+The tone was senile, but it was the senility of an educated man, and as
+the cultivated accents wavered forth, my mind changed in, regard to the
+position he held in the house. Interested anew, I sought to give him
+another look, but he had already vanished through the doorway, and
+so noiselessly, it was more like a shadow's flitting than a man's
+withdrawal.
+
+The darkness in which I sat was absolute; but gradually, as I continued
+to look about me, the spaces lightened and certain details came out,
+which to my astonishment were of a character to show that the plain if
+substantial exterior of this house with its choked-up approaches and
+weedy gardens was no sample of what was to be found inside. Though the
+walls surrounding me were dismal because unlighted, they betrayed a
+splendour unusual in any country house. The frescoes and paintings were
+of an ancient order, dating from days when life and not death reigned in
+this isolated dwelling; but in them high art reigned supreme, an art
+so high and so finished that only great wealth, combined with the most
+cultivated taste, could have produced such effects. I was still absorbed
+in the wonder of it all, when the quiet voice of the old gentleman who
+had let me in reached me again from the doorway, and I heard:
+
+"Madam is ready for you. May I trouble you to accompany me to her room."
+
+I rose with alacrity. I was anxious to see madam, if only to satisfy
+myself that she was as interesting as the house in which she was
+self-immured.
+
+I found her a great deal more so. But before I enter upon our interview,
+let me mention a fact which had attracted my attention in my passage to
+her room. During his absence my guide evidently had pulled aside other
+curtains than those of the room in which he had left me. The hall, no
+longer a tunnel of darkness, gave me a glimpse as we went by, of various
+secluded corners, and it seemed as if everywhere I looked I saw--a
+clock. I counted four before I reached the staircase, all standing on
+the floor and all of ancient make, though differing much in appearance
+and value. A fifth one rose grim and tall at the stair foot, and under
+an impulse I have never understood I stopped, when I reached it, to note
+the time. But it had paused in its task, and faced me with motionless
+hands and silent works--a fact which somehow startled me; perhaps,
+because just then I encountered the old man's eye watching me with an
+expression as challenging as it was unintelligible.
+
+I had expected to see a woman in bed. I saw instead, a woman sitting up.
+You felt her influence the moment you entered her presence. She was not
+young; she was not beautiful;--never had been I should judge,--she had
+not even the usual marks about her of an ultra strong personality; but
+that her will was law, had always been, and would continue to be law
+so long as she lived, was patent to any eye at the first glance. She
+exacted obedience consciously and unconsciously, and she exacted it with
+charm. Some few people in the world possess this power. They frown, and
+the opposing will weakens; they smile, and all hearts succumb. I was
+hers from the moment I crossed the threshold till--But I will relate the
+happenings of that instant when it comes.
+
+She was alone, or so I thought, when I made my first bow to her stern
+but not unpleasing presence. Seated in a great chair, with a silver tray
+before her containing such little matters as she stood in hourly need
+of, she confronted me with a piercing gaze startling to behold in eyes
+so colourless. Then she smiled, and in obedience to that smile I seated
+myself in a chair placed very near her own. Was she too paralysed to
+express herself clearly? I waited in some anxiety till she spoke, when
+this fear vanished. Her voice betrayed the character her features failed
+to express. It was firm, resonant, and instinct with command. Not loud,
+but penetrating, and of a quality which made one listen with his heart
+as well as with his ears. What she said is immaterial. I was there for
+a certain purpose and we entered immediately upon the business of that
+purpose. She talked and I listened, mostly without comment. Only once
+did I interrupt her with a suggestion; and as this led to definite
+results, I will proceed to relate the occurrence in full.
+
+In the few hours remaining to me before leaving New York, I had learned
+(no matter how) some additional particulars concerning herself and
+family; and when after some minor bequests, she proceeded to name
+the parties to whom she desired to leave the bulk of her fortune, I
+ventured, with some astonishment at my own temerity, to remark:
+
+"But you have a young relative! Is she not to be included in this
+partition of your property?"
+
+A hush. Then a smile came to life on her stiff lips, such as is seldom
+seen, thank God, on the face of any woman, and I heard:
+
+"The young relative of whom you speak, is in the room. She has known for
+some time that I have no intention of leaving anything to her. There is,
+in fact, small chance of her ever needing it."
+
+The latter sentence was a muttered one, but that it was loud enough to
+be heard in all parts of the room I was soon assured. For a quick sigh,
+which was almost a gasp, followed from a corner I had hitherto ignored,
+and upon glancing that way, I perceived, peering upon us from the
+shadows, the white face of a young girl in whose drawn features and
+wide, staring eyes I beheld such evidences of terror, that in an
+instant, whatever predilection I had hitherto felt for my client,
+vanished in distrust, if not positive aversion.
+
+I was still under the sway of this new impression, when Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's voice rose again, this time addressing the young girl:
+
+"You may go," she said, with such force in the command for all its
+honeyed modulation, that I expected to see its object fly the room in
+frightened obedience.
+
+But though the startled girl had lost none of the terror which had made
+her face like a mask, no power of movement remained to her. A picture
+of hopeless misery, she stood for one breathless moment, with her
+eyes fixed in unmistakable appeal on mine; then she began to sway so
+helplessly that I leaped with bounding heart to catch her. As she fell
+into my arms I heard her sigh as before. No common anguish spoke in that
+sigh. I had stumbled unwittingly upon a tragedy, to the meaning of which
+I held but a doubtful key.
+
+"She seems very ill," I observed with some emphasis, as I turned to lay
+my helpless burden on a near-by sofa.
+
+"She's doomed."
+
+The words were spoken with gloom and with an attempt at commiseration
+which no longer rang true in my ears.
+
+"She is as sick a woman as I am myself," continued Mrs. Postlethwaite.
+"That is why I made the remark I did, never imagining she would hear me
+at that distance. Do not put her down. My nurse will be here in a moment
+to relieve you of your burden."
+
+A tinkle accompanied these words. The resolute woman had stretched out
+a finger, of whose use she was not quite deprived, and touched a little
+bell standing on the tray before her, an inch or two from her hand.
+
+Pleased to obey her command, I paused at the sofa's edge, and taking
+advantage of the momentary delay, studied the youthful countenance
+pressed unconsciously to my breast.
+
+It was one whose appeal lay less in its beauty, though that was of a
+touching quality, than in the story it told,--a story, which for some
+unaccountable reason--I did not pause to determine what one--I felt it
+to be my immediate duty to know. But I asked no questions then; I did
+not even venture a comment; and yielded her up with seeming readiness
+when a strong but none too intelligent woman came running in with arms
+outstretched to carry her off. When the door had closed upon these two,
+the silence of my client drew my attention back to herself.
+
+"I am waiting," was her quiet observation, and without any further
+reference to what had just taken place under our eyes, she went on with
+the business previously occupying us.
+
+I was able to do my part without any too great display of my own
+disturbance. The clearness of my remarkable client's instructions, the
+definiteness with which her mind was made up as to the disposal of every
+dollar of her vast property, made it easy for me to master each detail
+and make careful note of every wish. But this did not prevent the ebb
+and flow within me of an undercurrent of thought full of question and
+uneasiness. What had been the real purport of the scene to which I had
+just been made a surprised witness? The few, but certainly unusual,
+facts which had been given me in regard to the extraordinary relations
+existing between these two closely connected women will explain the
+intensity of my interest. Those facts shall be yours.
+
+Arabella Merwin, when young, was gifted with a peculiar fascination
+which, as we have seen, had not altogether vanished with age.
+Consequently she had many lovers, among them two brothers, Frank and
+Andrew Postlethwaite. The latter was the older, the handsomer, and the
+most prosperous (his name is remembered yet in connection with South
+American schemes of large importance), but it was Frank she married.
+
+That real love, ardent if unreasonable, lay at the bottom of her choice,
+is evident enough to those who followed the career of the young
+couple. But it was a jealous love which brooked no rival, and as Frank
+Postlethwaite was of an impulsive and erratic nature, scenes soon
+occurred between them which, while revealing the extraordinary force of
+the young wife's character, led to no serious break till after her son
+was born, and this, notwithstanding the fact that Frank had long given
+up making a living, and that they were openly dependent on their wealthy
+brother, now fast approaching the millionaire status.
+
+This brother--the Peruvian King, as some called him--must have been
+an extraordinary man. Though cherishing his affection for the spirited
+Arabella to the point of remaining a bachelor for her sake, he betrayed
+none of the usual signs of disappointed love; but on the contrary made
+every effort to advance her happiness, not only by assuring to herself
+and husband an adequate income, but by doing all he could in other and
+less open ways to lessen any sense she might entertain of her mistake in
+preferring for her lifemate his self-centred and unstable brother. She
+should have adored him; but though she evinced gratitude enough, there
+is nothing to prove that she ever gave Frank Postlethwaite the least
+cause to cherish any other sentiment towards his brother than that of
+honest love and unqualified respect. Perhaps he never did cherish
+any other. Perhaps the change which everyone saw in the young couple
+immediately after the birth of their only child was due to another
+cause. Gossip is silent on this point. All that it insists upon is that
+from this time evidences of a growing estrangement between them became
+so obvious that even the indulgent Andrew could not blind himself to it;
+showing his sense of trouble, not by lessening their income, for that
+he doubled, but by spending more time in Peru and less in New York where
+the two were living.
+
+However,--and here we enter upon those details which I have ventured
+to characterize as uncommon, he was in this country and in the actual
+company of his brother when the accident occurred which terminated
+both their lives. It was the old story of a skidding motor, and Mrs.
+Postlethwaite, having been sent for in great haste to the small inn
+into which the two injured men had been carried, arrived only in time to
+witness their last moments. Frank died first and Andrew some few minutes
+later--an important fact, as was afterwards shown when the latter's will
+came to be read.
+
+This will was a peculiar one. By its provisions the bulk of the King's
+great property was left to his brother Frank, but with this especial
+stipulation that in case his brother failed to survive him, the full
+legacy as bequeathed to him should be given unconditionally to his
+widow. Frank's demise, as I have already stated, preceded his brother's
+by several minutes and consequently Arabella became the chief legatee;
+and that is how she obtained her millions. But--and here a startling
+feature comes in--when the will came to be administered, the secret
+underlying the break between Frank and his wife was brought to light by
+a revelation of the fact that he had practised a great deception upon
+her at the time of his marriage. Instead of being a bachelor as was
+currently believed, he was in reality a widower, and the father of a
+child. This fact, so long held secret, had become hers when her own
+child was born; and constituted as she was, she not only never forgave
+the father, but conceived such a hatred for the innocent object of their
+quarrel that she refused to admit its claims or even to acknowledge its
+existence.
+
+But later--after his death, in fact--she showed some sense of obligation
+towards one who under ordinary conditions would have shared her wealth.
+When the whole story became heard, and she discovered that this secret
+had been kept from his brother as well as from herself, and that
+consequently no provision had been made in any way for the child thus
+thrown directly upon her mercy, she did the generous thing and took the
+forsaken girl into her own home. But she never betrayed the least love
+for her, her whole heart being bound up in her boy, who was, as all
+agree, a prodigy of talent.
+
+But this boy, for all his promise and seeming strength of constitution,
+died when barely seven years old, and the desolate mother was left with
+nothing to fill her heart but the uncongenial daughter of her husband's
+first wife. The fact that this child, slighted as it had hitherto been,
+would, in the event of her uncle having passed away before her father,
+have been the undisputed heiress of a large portion of the wealth now at
+the disposal of her arrogant step-mother, led many to expect, now
+that the boy was no more, that Mrs. Postlethwaite would proceed to
+acknowledge the little Helena as her heir, and give her that place in
+the household to which her natural claims entitled her.
+
+But no such result followed. The passion of grief into which the
+mother was thrown by the shipwreck of all her hopes left her hard and
+implacable, and when, as very soon happened, she fell a victim to the
+disease which tied her to her chair and made the wealth which had come
+to her by such a peculiar ordering of circumstances little else than a
+mockery even in her own eyes, it was upon this child she expended the
+full fund of her secret bitterness.
+
+And the child? What of her? How did she bear her unhappy fate when she
+grew old enough to realize it? With a resignation which was the wonder
+of all who knew her. No murmurs escaped her lips, nor was the devotion
+she invariably displayed to the exacting invalid who ruled her as well
+as all the rest of her household with a rod of iron ever disturbed by
+the least sign of reproach. Though the riches, which in those early days
+poured into the home in a measure far beyond the needs of its mistress,
+were expended in making the house beautiful rather than in making the
+one young life within it happy, she never was heard to utter so much as
+a wish to leave the walls within which fate had immured her. Content,
+or seemingly content, with the only home she knew, she never asked
+for change or demanded friends or amusements. Visitors ceased coming;
+desolation followed neglect. The garden, once a glory, succumbed to a
+riot of weeds and undesirable brush, till a towering wall seemed to be
+drawn about the house cutting it off from the activities of the world as
+it cut it off from the approach of sunshine by day, and the comfort of
+a star-lit heaven by night. And yet the young girl continued to smile,
+though with a pitifulness of late, which some thought betokened
+secret terror and others the wasting of a body too sensitive for such
+unwholesome seclusion.
+
+These were the facts, known if not consciously specialized, which gave
+to the latter part of my interview with Mrs. Postlethwaite a poignancy
+of interest which had never attended any of my former experiences. The
+peculiar attitude of Miss Postlethwaite towards her indurate tormentor
+awakened in my agitated mind something much deeper than curiosity,
+but when I strove to speak her name with the intent of inquiring more
+particularly into her condition, such a look confronted me from the
+steady eye immovably fixed upon my own, that my courage--or was it my
+natural precaution--bade me subdue the impulse and risk no attempt which
+might betray the depth of my interest in one so completely outside
+the scope of the present moment's business. Perhaps Mrs. Postlethwaite
+appreciated my struggle; perhaps she was wholly blind to it. There was
+no reading the mind of this woman of sentimental name but inflexible
+nature, and realizing the fact more fully with every word she uttered I
+left her at last with no further betrayal of my feelings than might
+be evinced by the earnestness with which I promised to return for her
+signature at the earliest possible moment.
+
+This she had herself requested, saying as I rose:
+
+"I can still write my name if the paper is pushed carefully along under
+my hand. See to it that you come while the power remains to me."
+
+I had hoped that in my passage downstairs I might run upon someone who
+would give me news of Miss Postlethwaite, but the woman who approached
+to conduct me downstairs was not of an appearance to invite confidence,
+and I felt forced to leave the house with my doubts unsatisfied.
+
+Two memories, equally distinct, followed me. One was a picture of Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's fingers groping among her belongings on the little
+tray perched upon her lap, and another of the intent and strangely
+bent figure of the old man who had acted as my usher, listening to
+the ticking of one of the great clocks. So absorbed was he in this
+occupation that he not only failed to notice me when I went by, but he
+did not even lift his head at my cheery greeting. Such mysteries were
+too much for me, and led me to postpone my departure from town till I
+had sought out Mrs. Postlethwaite's doctor and propounded to him one
+or two leading questions. First, would Mrs. Postlethwaite's present
+condition be likely to hold good till Monday; and secondly, was the
+young lady living with her as ill as her step-mother said.
+
+He was a mild old man of the easy-going type, and the answers I got
+from him were far from satisfactory. Yet he showed some surprise when
+I mentioned the extent of Mrs. Postlethwaite's anxiety about her
+step-daughter, and paused, in the dubious shaking of his head, to give
+me a short stare in which I read as much determination as perplexity.
+
+"I will look into Miss Postlethwaite's case more particularly," were his
+parting words. And with this one gleam of comfort I had to be content.
+
+Monday's interview was a brief one and contained nothing worth
+repeating. Mrs. Postlethwaite listened with stoical satisfaction to the
+reading of the will I had drawn up, and upon its completion rang her
+bell for the two witnesses awaiting her summons, in an adjoining room.
+They were not of her household, but to all appearance honest villagers
+with but one noticeable characteristic, an overweening idea of Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's importance. Perhaps the spell she had so liberally woven
+for others in other and happier days was felt by them at this hour. It
+would not be strange; I had almost fallen under it myself, so great was
+the fascination of her manner even in this wreck of her bodily
+powers, when triumph assured, she faced us all in a state of complete
+satisfaction.
+
+But before I was again quit of the place, all my doubts returned and in
+fuller force than ever. I had lingered in my going as much as decency
+would permit, hoping to hear a step on the stair or see a face in some
+doorway which would contradict Mrs. Postlethwaite's cold assurance that
+Miss Postlethwaite was no better. But no such step did I hear, and no
+face did I see save the old, old one of the ancient friend or relative,
+whose bent frame seemed continually to haunt the halls. As before,
+he stood listening to the monotonous ticking of one of the clocks,
+muttering to himself and quite oblivious of my presence.
+
+However, this time I decided not to pass him without a more persistent
+attempt to gain his notice. Pausing at his side, I asked him in the
+friendly tone I thought best calculated to attract his attention, how
+Miss Postlethwaite was to-day. He was so intent upon his task, whatever
+that was, that while he turned my way, it was with a glance as blank as
+that of a stone image.
+
+"Listen!" he admonished me. "It still says No! No! I don't think it will
+ever say anything else."
+
+I stared at him in some consternation, then at the clock itself which
+was the tall one I had found run down at my first visit. There was
+nothing unusual in its quiet tick, so far as I could hear, and with a
+compassionate glance at the old man who had turned breathlessly again to
+listen, proceeded on my way without another word.
+
+The old fellow was daft. A century old, and daft.
+
+I had worked my way out through the vines which still encumbered the
+porch, and was taking my first steps down the walk, when some impulse
+made me turn and glance up at one of the windows.
+
+Did I bless the impulse? I thought I had every reason for doing so, when
+through a network of interlacing branches I beheld the young girl with
+whom my mind was wholly occupied, standing with her head thrust forward,
+watching the descent of something small and white which she had just
+released from her hand.
+
+A note! A note written by her and meant for me! With a grateful look in
+her direction (which was probably lost upon her as she had already drawn
+back out of sight), I sprang for it only to meet with disappointment.
+For it was no billet-doux I received from amid the clustering brush
+where it had fallen; but a small square of white cloth showing a line
+of fantastic embroidery. Annoyed beyond measure, I was about to fling it
+down again, when the thought that it had come from her hand deterred me,
+and I thrust it into my vest pocket. When I took it out again--which was
+soon after I had taken my seat in the car--I discovered what a mistake I
+should have made if I had followed my first impulse. For, upon examining
+the stitches more carefully, I perceived that what I had considered a
+mere decorative pattern was in fact a string of letters, and that these
+letters made words, and that these words were:
+
+IDONOTWANTTODIEBUTISURELYWILLIF
+
+Or, in plain writing:
+
+"I do not want to die, but I surely will if--"
+
+Finish the sentence for me. That is the problem I offer you. It is not a
+case for the police but one well worth your attention, if you succeed in
+reaching the heart of this mystery and saving this young girl.
+
+Only, let no delay occur. The doom, if doom it is, is immanent. Remember
+that the will is signed.
+
+"She is too small; I did not ask you to send me a midget."
+
+Thus spoke Mrs. Postlethwaite to her doctor, as he introduced into her
+presence a little figure in nurse's cap and apron. "You said I needed
+care,--more care than I was receiving. I answered that my old nurse
+could give it, and you objected that she or someone else must look after
+Miss Postlethwaite. I did not see the necessity, but I never contradict
+a doctor. So I yielded to your wishes, but not without the proviso (you
+remember that I made a proviso) that whatever sort of young woman you
+chose to introduce into this room, she should not be fresh from the
+training schools, and that she should be strong, silent, and capable.
+And you bring me this mite of a woman--is she a woman? she looks more
+like a child, of pleasing countenance enough, but who can no more lift
+me--"
+
+"Pardon me!" Little Miss Strange had advanced. "I think, if you will
+allow me the privilege, madam, that I can shift you into a much more
+comfortable position." And with a deftness and ease certainly not to
+be expected from one of her slight physique, Violet raised the helpless
+invalid a trifle more upon her pillow.
+
+The act, its manner, and the smile accompanying it, could not fail to
+please, and undoubtedly did, though no word rewarded her from lips not
+much given to speech save when the occasion was imperative. But Mrs.
+Postlethwaite made no further objection to her presence, and, seeing
+this, the doctor's countenance relaxed and he left the room with a much
+lighter step than that with which he had entered it.
+
+And thus it was that Violet Strange--an adept in more ways than
+one--became installed at the bedside of this mysterious woman, whose
+days, if numbered, still held possibilities of action which those
+interested in young Helena Postlethwaite's fate would do well to
+recognize.
+
+Miss Strange had been at her post for two days, and had gathered up the
+following:
+
+That Mrs. Postlethwaite must be obeyed.
+
+That her step-daughter (who did not wish to die) would die if she knew
+it to be the wish of this domineering but apparently idolized woman.
+
+That the old man of the clocks, while senile in some regards, was very
+alert and quite youthful in others. If a century old--which she began
+greatly to doubt--he had the language and manner of one in his prime,
+when unaffected by the neighbourhood of the clocks, which seemed in
+some non-understandable way to exercise an occult influence over him. At
+table he was an entertaining host; but neither there nor elsewhere would
+he discuss the family, or dilate in any way upon the peculiarities of a
+household of which he manifestly regarded himself as the least important
+member. Yet no one knew them better, and when Violet became quite
+assured of this, as well as of the futility of looking for explanation
+of any kind from either of her two patients, she resolved upon an effort
+to surprise one from him.
+
+She went about it in this way. Noting his custom of making a complete
+round of the clocks each night after dinner, she took advantage of Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's inclination to sleep at this hour, to follow him from
+clock to clock in the hope of overhearing some portion of the monologue
+with which he bent his head to the swinging pendulum, or put his ear
+to the hidden works. Soft-footed and discreet, she tripped along at his
+back, and at each pause he made, paused herself and turned her ear his
+way. The extreme darkness of the halls, which were more sombre by night
+than by day, favoured this attempt, and she was able, after a failure
+or two, to catch the No! no! no! no! which fell from his lips in seeming
+repetition of what he heard the most of them say.
+
+The satisfaction in his tone proved that the denial to which he
+listened, chimed in with his hopes and gave ease to his mind. But
+he looked his oldest when, after pausing at another of the many
+time-pieces, he echoed in answer to its special refrain, Yes! yes! yes!
+yes! and fled the spot with shaking body and a distracted air.
+
+The same fear and the same shrinking were observable in him as he
+returned from listening to the least conspicuous one, standing in a
+short corridor, where Violet could not follow him. But when, after
+a hesitation which enabled her to slip behind the curtain hiding the
+drawing-room door, he approached and laid his ear against the great
+one standing, as if on guard, at the foot of the stairs, she saw by
+the renewed vigour he displayed that there was comfort for him in its
+message, even before she caught the whisper with which he left it and
+proceeded to mount the stairs:
+
+"It says No! It always says No! I will heed it as the voice of Heaven."
+
+But one conclusion could be the result of such an experiment to a mind
+like Violet's. This partly touched old man not only held the key to the
+secret of this house, but was in a mood to divulge it if once he could
+be induced to hear command instead of dissuasion in the tick of this
+one large clock. But how could he be induced? Violet returned to Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's bedside in a mood of extreme thoughtfulness.
+
+Another day passed, and she had not yet seen Miss Postlethwaite. She was
+hoping each hour to be sent on some errand to that young lady's room,
+but no such opportunity was granted her. Once she ventured to ask the
+doctor, whose visits were now very frequent, what he thought of the
+young lady's condition. But as this question was necessarily put in Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's presence, the answer was naturally guarded, and possibly
+not altogether frank.
+
+"Our young lady is weaker," he acknowledged. "Much weaker," he added
+with marked emphasis and his most professional air, "or she would be
+here instead of in her own room. It grieves her not to be able to wait
+upon her generous benefactress."
+
+The word fell heavily. Had it been used as a test? Violet gave him a
+look, though she had much rather have turned her discriminating eye upon
+the face staring up at them from the pillow. Had the alarm expressed by
+others communicated itself at last to the physician? Was the charm which
+had held him subservient to the mother, dissolving under the pitiable
+state of the child, and was he trying to aid the little detective-nurse
+in her effort to sound the mystery of her condition?
+
+His look expressed benevolence, but he took care not to meet the gaze of
+the woman he had just lauded, possibly because that gaze was fixed upon
+him in a way to tax his moral courage. The silence which ensued was
+broken by Mrs. Postlethwaite:
+
+"She will live--this poor Helena--how long?" she asked, with no break in
+her voice's wonted music.
+
+The doctor hesitated, then with a candour hardly to be expected from
+him, answered:
+
+"I do not understand Miss Postlethwaite's case. I should like, with your
+permission, to consult some New York physician."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+A single word, but as it left this woman's thin lips Violet recoiled,
+and, perhaps, the doctor did. Rage can speak in one word as well as in
+a dozen, and the rage which spoke in this one was of no common order,
+though it was quickly suppressed, as was all other show of feeling when
+she added, with a touch of her old charm:
+
+"Of course you will do what you think best, as you know I never
+interfere with a doctor's decisions. But" and here her natural
+ascendancy of tone and manner returned in all its potency, "it would
+kill me to know that a stranger was approaching Helena's bedside. It
+would kill her. She's too sensitive to survive such a shock."
+
+Violet recalled the words worked with so much care by this young girl on
+a minute piece of linen, I do not want to die, and watched the doctor's
+face for some sign of resolution. But embarrassment was all she saw
+there, and all she heard him say was the conventional reply:
+
+"I am doing all I can for her. We will wait another day and note the
+effect of my latest prescription."
+
+Another day!
+
+The deathly calm which overspread Mrs. Postlethwaite's features as this
+word left the physician's lips warned Violet not to let another day go
+by without some action. But she made no remark, and, indeed, betrayed
+but little interest in anything beyond her own patient's condition. That
+seemed to occupy her wholly. With consummate art she gave the appearance
+of being under Mrs. Postlethwaite's complete thrall, and watched with
+fascinated eyes every movement of the one unstricken finger which could
+do so much.
+
+This little detective of ours could be an excellent actor when she
+chose.
+
+III
+
+To make the old man speak! To force this conscience-stricken but
+rebellious soul to reveal what the clock forbade! How could it be done?
+
+This continued to be Violet's great problem. She pondered it so deeply
+during all the remainder of the day that a little pucker settled on her
+brow, which someone (I will not mention who) would have been pained to
+see. Mrs. Postlethwaite, if she noticed it at all, probably ascribed it
+to her anxieties as nurse, for never had Violet been more assiduous in
+her attentions. But Mrs. Postlethwaite was no longer the woman she had
+been, and possibly never noted it at all.
+
+At five o'clock Violet suddenly left the room. Slipping down into the
+lower hall, she went the round of the clocks herself, listening to every
+one. There was no perceptible difference in their tick. Satisfied of
+this and that it was simply the old man's imagination which had supplied
+them each with separate speech, she paused before the huge one at the
+foot of the stairs,--the one whose dictate he had promised himself
+to follow,--and with an eye upon its broad, staring dial, muttered
+wistfully:
+
+"Oh! for an idea! For an idea!"
+
+Did this cumbrous relic of old-time precision turn traitor at this
+ingenuous plea? The dial continued to stare, the works to sing, but
+Violet's face suddenly lost its perplexity. With a wary look about her
+and a listening ear turned towards the stair top, she stretched out her
+hand and pulled open the door guarding the pendulum, and peered in at
+the works, smiling slyly to herself as she pushed it back into place and
+retreated upstairs to the sick room.
+
+When the doctor came that night she had a quiet word with him outside
+Mrs. Postlethwaite's door. Was that why he was on hand when old Mr.
+Dunbar stole from his room to make his nightly circuit of the halls
+below? Something quite beyond the ordinary was in the good physician's
+mind, for the look he cast at the old man was quite unlike any he had
+ever bestowed upon him before, and when he spoke it was to say with
+marked urgency:
+
+"Our beautiful young lady will not live a week unless I get at the seat
+of her malady. Pray that I may be enabled to do so, Mr. Dunbar."
+
+A blow to the aged man's heart which called forth a feeble "Yes, yes,"
+followed by a wild stare which imprinted itself upon the doctor's
+memory as the look of one hopelessly old, who hears for the first time a
+distinct call from the grave which has long been awaiting him!
+
+A solitary lamp stood in the lower hall. As the old man picked his slow
+way down, its small, hesitating flame flared up as in a sudden gust,
+then sank down flickering and faint as if it, too, had heard a call
+which summoned it to extinction.
+
+No other sign of life was visible anywhere. Sunk in twilight shadows,
+the corridors branched away on either side to no place in particular and
+serving, to all appearance (as many must have thought in days gone by),
+as a mere hiding-place for clocks.
+
+To listen to their united hum, the old man paused, looking at first
+a little distraught, but settling at last into his usual self as he
+started forward upon his course. Did some whisper, hitherto unheard,
+warn him that it was the last time he would tread that weary round?
+Who can tell? He was trembling very much when with his task nearly
+completed, he stepped out again into the main hall and crept rather than
+walked back to the one great clock to whose dictum he made it a practice
+to listen last.
+
+Chattering the accustomed words, "They say Yes! They are all saying Yes!
+now; but this one will say No!" he bent his stiff old back and laid his
+ear to the unresponsive wood. But the time for no had passed. It was
+Yes! yes! yes! yes! now, and as his straining ears took in the word,
+he appeared to shrink where he stood and after a moment of anguished
+silence, broke forth into a low wail, amid whose lamentations one could
+hear:
+
+"The time has come! Even the clock she loves best bids me speak. Oh!
+Arabella, Arabella!"
+
+In his despair he had not noticed that the pendulum hung motionless,
+or that the hands stood at rest on the dial. If he had, he might have
+waited long enough to have seen the careful opening of the great clock's
+tall door and the stepping forth of the little lady who had played so
+deftly upon his superstition.
+
+He was wandering the corridors like a helpless child, when a gentle hand
+fell on his arm and a soft voice whispered in his ear:
+
+"You have a story to tell. Will you tell it to me? It may save Miss
+Postlethwaite's life."
+
+Did he understand? Would he respond if he did; or would the shock of her
+appeal restore him to a sense of the danger attending disloyalty? For
+a moment she doubted the wisdom of this startling measure, then she saw
+that he had passed the point of surprise and that, stranger as she was,
+she had but to lead the way for him to follow, tell his story, and die.
+
+There was no light in the drawing-room when they entered. But old Mr.
+Dunbar did not seem to mind that. Indeed, he seemed to have lost all
+consciousness of present surroundings; he was even oblivious of her.
+This became quite evident when the lamp, in flaring up again in the
+hall, gave a momentary glimpse, of his crouching, half-kneeling figure.
+In the pleading gesture of his trembling, outreaching arms, Violet
+beheld an appeal, not to herself, but to some phantom of his
+imagination; and when he spoke, as he presently did, it was with the
+freedom of one to whom speech is life's last boon, and the ear of the
+listener quite forgotten in the passion of confession long suppressed.
+
+"She has never loved me," he began, "but I have always loved her. For
+me no other woman has ever existed, though I was sixty-five years of age
+when I first saw her, and had long given up the idea that there lived
+a woman who could sway me from my even life and fixed lines of duty.
+Sixty-five! and she a youthful bride! Was there ever such folly! Happily
+I realized it from the first, and piled ashes on my hidden flame.
+Perhaps that is why I adore her to this day and only give her over to
+reprobation because Fate is stronger than my age--stronger even than my
+love.
+
+"She is not a good woman, but I might have been a good man if I had
+never known the sin which drew a line of isolation about her, and within
+which I, and only I, have stood with her in silent companionship.
+What was this sin, and in what did it have its beginning? I think its
+beginning was in the passion she had for her husband. It was not the
+every-day passion of her sex in this land of equable affections, but
+one of foreign fierceness, jealousy, and insatiable demand. Yet he was a
+very ordinary man. I was once his tutor and I know. She came to know it
+too, when--but I am rushing on too fast, I have much to tell before I
+reach that point.
+
+"From the first, I was in their confidence. Not that either he or she
+put me there, but that I lived with them and was always around, and
+could not help seeing and hearing what went on between them. Why he
+continued to want me in the house and at his table, when I could no
+longer be of service to him, I have never known. Possibly habit explains
+all. He was accustomed to my presence and so was she; so accustomed they
+hardly noticed it, as happened one night, when after a little attempt
+at conversation, he threw down the book he had caught up and, addressing
+her by name, said without a glance my way, and quite as if he were alone
+with her:
+
+"'Arabella, there is something I ought to tell you. I have tried to
+find the courage to do so many times before now but have always failed.
+Tonight I must.' And then he made his great disclosure,--how, unknown
+to, his friends and the world, he was a widower when he married her, and
+the father of a living child.
+
+"With some women this might have passed with a measure of regret, and
+some possible contempt for his silence, but not so with her. She rose
+to her feet--I can see her yet--and for a moment stood facing him in the
+still, overpowering manner of one who feels the icy pang of hate enter
+where love has been. Never was moment more charged. I could not breathe
+while it lasted; and when at last she spoke, it was with an impetuosity
+of concentrated passion, hardly less dreadful than her silence had been.
+
+"'You a father! A father already!' she cried, all her sweetness
+swallowed up in ungovernable wrath. 'You whom I expected to make so
+happy with a child? I curse you and your brat. I--'
+
+"He strove to placate her, to explain. But rage has no ears, and before
+I realized my own position, the scene became openly tempestuous. That
+her child should be second to another woman's seemed to awaken demon
+instincts within her. When he ventured to hint that his little girl
+needed a mother's care, her irony bit like corroding acid. He became
+speechless before it and had not a protest to raise when she declared
+that the secret he had kept so long and so successfully he must continue
+to keep to his dying day. That the child he had failed to own in his
+first wife's lifetime should remain disowned in hers, and if possible be
+forgotten. She should never give the girl a thought nor acknowledge her
+in any way.
+
+"She was Fury embodied; but the fury was of that grand order which
+allures rather than repels. As I felt myself succumbing to its
+fascination and beheld how he was weakening under it even more
+perceptibly than myself, I started from my chair, and sought to glide
+away before I should hear him utter a fatal acquiescence.
+
+"But the movement I made unfortunately drew their attention to me, and
+after an instant of silent contemplation of my distracted countenance,
+Frank said, as though he were the elder by the forty years which
+separated us:
+
+"'You have listened to Mrs. Postlethwaite's wishes. You will respect
+them of course.'"
+
+That was all. He knew and she knew that I was to be trusted; but neither
+of them has ever known why.
+
+A month later her child came, and was welcomed as though it were the
+first to bear his name. It was a boy, and their satisfaction was so
+great that I looked to see their old affection revive. But it had been
+cleft at the root, and nothing could restore it to life. They loved the
+child; I have never seen evidence of greater parental passion than they
+both displayed, but there their feelings stopped. Towards each other
+they were cold. They did not even unite in worship of their treasure.
+They gloated over him and planned for him, but always apart. He was a
+child in a thousand, and as he developed, the mother especially,
+nursed all her energies for the purpose of ensuring for him a future
+commensurate with his talents. Never a very conscientious woman, and
+alive to the advantages of wealth as demonstrated by the power wielded
+by her rich brother-in-law, she associated all the boy's prospects with
+money, great money, such money as Andrew had accumulated, and now had at
+his disposal for his natural heirs.
+
+"Hence came her great temptation,--a temptation to which she yielded, to
+the lasting trouble of us all. Of this I must now make confession though
+it kills me to do so, and will soon kill her. The deeds of the past
+do not remain buried, however deep we dig their graves, but rise in an
+awful resurrection when we are old--old--"
+
+Silence. Then a tremulous renewal of his painful speech.
+
+Violet held her breath to listen. Possibly the doctor, hidden in the
+darkest corner of the room, did so also.
+
+"I never knew how she became acquainted with the terms of her
+brother-in-law's will. He certainly never confided them to her, and as
+certainly the lawyer who drew up the document never did. But that she
+was well aware of its tenor is as positive a fact as that I am the most
+wretched man alive tonight. Otherwise, why the darksome deed into which
+she was betrayed when both the brothers lay dying among strangers, of a
+dreadful accident?"
+
+"I was witness to that deed. I had accompanied her on her hurried
+ride and was at her side when she entered the inn where the two
+Postlethwaites lay. I was always at her side in great joy or in great
+trouble, though she professed no affection for me and gave me but scanty
+thanks."
+
+"During our ride she had been silent and I had not disturbed that
+silence. I had much to think of. Should we find him living, or should
+we find him dead? If dead, would it sever the relations between us two?
+Would I ever ride with her again?"
+
+"When I was not dwelling on this theme, I was thinking of the parting
+look she gave her boy; a look which had some strange promise in it. What
+had that look meant and why did my flesh creep and my mind hover between
+dread and a fearsome curiosity when I recalled it? Alas! There was
+reason for all these sensations as I was soon to learn.
+
+"We found the inn seething with terror and the facts worse than had been
+represented in the telegram. Her husband was dying. She had come just in
+time to witness the end. This they told her before she had taken off
+her veil. If they had waited--if I had been given a full glimpse of her
+face--But it was hidden, and I could only judge of the nature of her
+emotions by the stern way in which she held herself.
+
+"'Take me to him,' was the quiet command, with which she met this
+disclosure. Then, before any of them could move:
+
+"'And his brother, Mr. Andrew Postlethwaite? Is he fatally injured too?'
+
+"The reply was unequivocal. The doctors were uncertain which of the two
+would pass away first.
+
+"You must remember that at this time I was ignorant of the rich man's
+will, and consequently of how the fate of a poor child of whom I had
+heard only one mention, hung in the balance at that awful moment. But in
+the breathlessness which seized Mrs. Postlethwaite at this sentence of
+double death, I realized from my knowledge of her that something more
+than grief was at prey upon her impenetrable heart, and shuddered to the
+core of my being when she repeated in that voice which was so terrible
+because so expressionless:
+
+"'Take me to them.'"
+
+They were lying in one room, her husband nearest the door, the other
+in a small alcove some ten feet away. Both were unconscious; both were
+surrounded by groups of frightened attendants who fell back as she
+approached. A doctor stood at the bed-head of her husband, but as her
+eye met his he stepped aside with a shake of the head and left the place
+empty for her.
+
+"The action was significant. I saw that she understood what it meant,
+and with constricted heart watched her as she bent over the dying
+man and gazed into his wide-open eyes, already sightless and staring.
+Calculation was in her look and calculation only; and calculation, or
+something equally unintelligible, sent her next glance in the
+direction of his brother. What was in her mind? I could understand
+her indifference to Frank even at the crisis of his fate, but not the
+interest she showed in Andrew. It was an absorbing one, altering her
+whole expression. I no longer knew her for my dear young madam, and the
+jealousy I had never felt towards Frank rose to frantic resentment in my
+breast as I beheld what very likely might be a tardy recognition of the
+other's well-known passion, forced into disclosure by the exigencies of
+the moment.
+
+"Alarmed by the strength of my feelings, and fearing an equal disclosure
+on my own part, I sought for a refuge from all eyes and found it in a
+little balcony opening out at my right. On to this balcony I stepped
+and found myself face to face with a star-lit heaven. Had I only been
+content with my isolation and the splendour of the spectacle spread out
+before me! But no, I must look back upon that bed and the solitary woman
+standing beside it! I must watch the settling of her body into rigidity
+as a voice rose from beside the other Postlethwaite saying, 'It is a
+matter of minutes now,' and then--and then--the slow creeping of her
+hand to her husband's mouth, the outspreading of her palm across the
+livid lips--its steady clinging there, smothering the feeble gasps of
+one already moribund, till the quivering form grew still, and Frank
+Postlethwaite lay dead before my eyes!
+
+"I saw, and made no outcry, but she did, bringing the doctor back to her
+side with the startled exclamation:
+
+"'Dead? I thought he had an hour's life left in him, and he has passed
+before his brother.'
+
+"I thought it hate--the murderous impulse of a woman who sees her
+enemy at her mercy and can no longer restrain the passion of her
+long-cherished antagonism; and while something within me rebelled at the
+act, I could not betray her, though silence made a murderer of me too.
+I could not. Her spell was upon me as in another instant it was upon
+everyone else in the room. No suspicion of one so self-repressed in
+her sadness disturbed the universal sympathy; and encouraged by this
+blindness of the crowd, I vowed within myself never to reveal her
+secret. The man was dead, or as good as dead, when she touched him; and
+now that her hate was expended she would grow gentle and good.
+
+"But I knew the worthlessness of this hope as well as my misconception
+of her motive, when Frank's child by another wife returned to my memory,
+and Bella's sin stood exposed."
+
+"But only to myself. I alone knew that the fortune now wholly hers, and
+in consequence her boy's, had been won by a crime. That if her hand had
+fallen in comfort on her husband's forehead instead of in pressure on
+his mouth, he would have outlived his brother long enough to have become
+owner of his millions; in which case a rightful portion would have been
+insured to his daughter, now left a penniless waif. The thought made my
+hair rise, as the proceedings over, I faced her and made my first and
+last effort to rid my conscience of its new and intolerable burden.
+
+"But the woman I had known and loved was no longer before me. The crown
+had touched her brows, and her charm which had been mainly sexual up to
+this hour had merged into an intellectual force, with which few men's
+mentality could cope. Mine yielded at once to it. From the first
+instant, I knew that a slavery of spirit, as well as of heart, was
+henceforth to be mine.
+
+"She did not wait for me to speak; she had assumed the dictator's
+attitude at once.
+
+"'I know of what you are thinking,'" said she, "'and it is a subject you
+may dismiss at once from your mind. Mr. Postlethwaite's child by his
+first wife is coming to live with us. I have expressed my wishes in this
+regard to my lawyer, and there is nothing left to be said. You, with
+your close mouth and dependable nature, are to remain here as before,
+and occupy the same position towards my boy that you did towards his
+father. We shall move soon into a larger house, and the nature of our
+duties will be changed and their scope greatly increased; but I know
+that you can be trusted to enlarge with them and meet every requirement
+I shall see fit to make. Do not try to express your thanks. I see them
+in your face.'
+
+"Did she, or just the last feeble struggle my conscience was making to
+break the bonds in which she held me, and win back my own respect? I
+shall never know, for she left me on completion of this speech, not to
+resume the subject, then or ever.
+
+"But though I succumbed outwardly to her demands, I had not passed the
+point where inner conflict ends and peace begins. Her recognition of
+Helena and her reception into the family calmed me for a while, and gave
+me hope that all would yet be well. But I had never sounded the full
+bitterness of madam's morbid heart, well as I thought I knew it. The
+hatred she had felt from the first for her husband's child ripened into
+frenzied dislike when she found her a living image of the mother whose
+picture she had come across among Frank's personal effects. To win a
+tear from those meek eyes instead of a smile to the sensitive lips was
+her daily play. She seemed to exult in the joy of impressing upon the
+girl by how little she had missed a great fortune, and I have often
+thought, much as I tried to keep my mind free from all extravagant and
+unnecessary fancies, that half of the money she spent in beautifying
+this house and maintaining art industries and even great charitable
+institutions was spent with the base purpose of demonstrating to this
+child the power of immense wealth, and in what ways she might expect to
+see her little brother expend the millions in which she had been denied
+all share.
+
+"I was so sure of this that one night while I was winding up the clocks
+with which Mrs. Postlethwaite in her fondness for old timepieces has
+filled the house, I stopped to look at the little figure toiling so
+wearily upstairs, to bed, without a mother's kiss. There was an appeal
+in the small wistful face which smote my hard old heart, and possibly a
+tear welled up in my own eye when I turned back to my duty."
+
+"Was that why I felt the hand of Providence upon me, when in my
+halt before the one clock to which any superstitious interest was
+attached--the great one at the foot of the stairs--I saw that it had
+stopped and at the one minute of all minutes in our wretched lives: Four
+minutes past two? The hour, the minute in which Frank Postlethwaite had
+gasped his last under the pressure of his wife's hand! I knew it--the
+exact minute I mean--because Providence meant that I should know it.
+There had been a clock on the mantelpiece of the hotel room where he and
+his brother had died and I had seen her glance steal towards it at the
+instant she withdrew her palm from her husband's lips. The stare of
+that dial and the position of its hands had lived still in my mind as I
+believed it did in hers.
+
+"Four minutes past two! How came our old timepiece here to stop at that
+exact moment on a day when Duty was making its last demand upon me to
+remember Frank's unhappy child? There was no one to answer; but as I
+looked and looked, I felt the impulse of the moment strengthen into
+purpose to leave those hands undisturbed in their silent accusation. She
+might see, and, moved by the coincidence, tremble at her treatment of
+Helena.
+
+"But if this happened--if she saw and trembled--she gave no sign. The
+works were started up by some other hand, and the incident passed.
+But it left me with an idea. That clock soon had a way of stopping and
+always at that one instant of time. She was forced at length to notice
+it, and I remember, an occasion when she stood stock-still with her eyes
+on those hands, and failed to find the banister with her hand, though
+she groped for it in her frantic need for support.
+
+"But no command came from her to remove the worn-out piece, and soon its
+tricks, and every lesser thing, were forgotten in the crushing calamity
+which befell us in the sickness and death of little Richard.
+
+"Oh, those days and nights! And oh, the face of the mother when the
+doctors told her that the case was hopeless! I asked myself then, and I
+have asked myself a hundred times since, which of all the emotions I saw
+pictured there bit the deepest, and made the most lasting impression
+on her guilty heart? Was it remorse? If so, she showed no change in her
+attitude towards Helena, unless it was by an added bitterness. The sweet
+looks and gentle ways of Frank's young daughter could not win against a
+hate sharpened by disappointment. Useless for me to hope for it. Release
+from the remorse of years was not to come in that way. As I realized
+this, I grew desperate and resorted again to the old trick of stopping
+the clock at the fatal hour. This time her guilty heart responded. She
+acknowledged the stab and let all her miseries appear. But how? In a way
+to wring my heart almost to madness, and not benefit the child at all.
+She had her first stroke that night. I had made her a helpless invalid.
+
+"That was eight years ago, and since then what? Stagnation. She lived
+with her memories, and I with mine. Helena only had a right to hope,
+and hope perhaps she did, till--Is that the great clock talking? Listen!
+They all talk, but I heed only the one. What does it say? Tell! tell!
+tell! Does it think I will be silent now when I come to my own guilt?
+That I will seek to hide my weakness when I could not hide her sin?"
+
+"Explain!" It was Violet speaking, and her tone was stern in its
+command. "Of what guilt do you speak? Not of guilt towards Helena; you
+pitied her too much--"
+
+"But I pitied my dear madam more. It was that which affected me and
+drew me into crime against my will. Besides, I did not know--not at
+first--what was in the little bowl of curds and cream I carried to the
+girl each day. She had eaten them in her step-mother's room, and under
+her step-mother's eye as long as she had strength to pass from room
+to room, and how was I to guess that it was not wholesome? Because
+she failed in health from day to day? Was not my dear madam failing in
+health also; and was there poison in her cup? Innocent at that time, why
+am I not innocent now? Because--Oh, I will tell it all; as though at the
+bar of God. I will tell all the secrets of that day.
+
+"She was sitting with her hand trembling on the tray from which I had
+just lifted the bowl she had bid me carry to Helena. I had seen her so
+a hundred times before, but not with just that look in her eyes, or just
+that air of desolation in her stony figure. Something made me speak;
+something made me ask if she were not quite so well as usual, and
+something made her reply with the dreadful truth that the doctor had
+given her just two months more to live. My fright and mad anguish
+stupefied me; for I was not prepared for this, no, not at all;--and
+unconsciously I stared down at the bowl I held, unable to breathe or
+move or even to meet her look."
+
+As usual she misinterpreted my emotion.
+
+"'Why do you stand like that?' I heard her say in a tone of great
+irritation. 'And why do you stare into that bowl? Do you think I mean
+to leave that child to walk these halls after I am carried out of them
+forever? Do you measure my hate by such a petty yard-stick as that? I
+tell you that I would rot above ground rather than enter it before she
+did?'
+
+"I had believed I knew this woman; but what soul ever knows another's?
+What soul ever knows itself?
+
+"'Bella!' I cried; the first time I had ever presumed to address her
+so intimately. 'Would you poison the girl?' And from sheer weakness my
+fingers lost their clutch, and the bowl fell to the floor, breaking into
+a dozen pieces.
+
+"For a minute she stared down at these from over her tray, and then she
+remarked very low and very quietly:
+
+"'Another bowl, Humphrey, and fresh curds from the kitchen. I will do
+the seasoning. The doses are too small to be skipped. You won't?'--I had
+shaken my head--'But you will! It will not be the first time you have
+gone down the hall with this mixture.'
+
+"'But that was before I knew--' I began.
+
+"'And now that you do, you will go just the same.' Then as I stood
+hesitating, a thousand memories overwhelming me in an instant, she added
+in a voice to tear the heart, 'Do not make me hate the only being left
+in this world who understands and loves me.'
+
+"She was a helpless invalid, and I a broken man, but when that word
+'love' fell from her lips, I felt the blood start burning in my veins,
+and all the crust of habit and years of self-control loosen about my
+heart, and make me young again. What if her thoughts were dark and her
+wishes murderous! She was born to rule and sway men to her will even to
+their own undoing."
+
+"'I wish I might kiss your hand,' was what I murmured, gazing at her
+white fingers groping over her tray.
+
+"'You may,' she answered, and hell became heaven to me for a brief
+instant. Then I lifted myself and went obediently about my task.
+
+"But puppet though I was, I was not utterly without sympathy. When I
+entered Helena's room and saw how her startled eyes fell shrinkingly on
+the bowl I set down before her, my conscience leaped to life and I could
+not help saying:
+
+"'Don't you like the curds, Helena? Your brother used to love them very
+much.'
+
+"'His were--'
+
+"'What, Helena?'
+
+"'What these are not,' she murmured.
+
+"I stared at her, terror-stricken. So she knew, and yet did not seize
+the bowl and empty it out of the window! Instead, her hand moved slowly
+towards it and drew it into place before her.
+
+"'Yet I must eat,' she said, lifting her eyes to mine in a sort of
+patient despair, which yet was without accusation.
+
+"But my hand had instinctively gone to hers and grasped it.
+
+"'Why must you eat it?' I asked. 'If--if you do not find it wholesome,
+why do you touch it?'
+
+"'Because my step-mother expects me to,' she cried, 'and I have no other
+will than hers. When I was a little, little child, my father made me
+promise that if I ever came to live with her I would obey her simplest
+wish. And I always have. I will not disappoint the trust he put in me.'
+
+"'Even if you die of it?'
+
+"I do not know whether I whispered these words or only thought them. She
+answered as though I had spoken.
+
+"'I am not afraid to die. I am more afraid to live. She may ask me some
+day to do something I feel to be wrong.'
+
+"When I fled down the hall that night, I heard one of the small clocks
+speak to me. Tell! it cried, tell! tell! tell! tell! I rushed away from
+it with beaded forehead and rising hair.
+
+"Then another's note piped up. No it droned. No! no! no! no! I stopped
+and took heart. Disgrace the woman I loved, on the brink of the
+grave? I--, who asked no other boon from heaven than to see her happy,
+gracious, and good? Impossible. I would obey the great clock's voice;
+the others were mere chatterboxes.
+
+"But it has at last changed its tune, for some reason, quite changed
+its tune. Now, it is Yes! Yes! instead of No! and in obeying it I save
+Helena. But what of Bella? and O God, what of myself?"
+
+A sigh, a groan, then a long and heavy silence, into which there finally
+broke the pealing of the various clocks striking the hour. When all were
+still again and Violet had drawn aside the portiere, it was to see
+the old man on his knees, and between her and the thin streak of light
+entering from the hall, the figure of the doctor hastening to Helena's
+bedside.
+
+When with inducements needless to name, they finally persuaded the young
+girl to leave her unholy habitation, it was in the arms which had upheld
+her once before, and to a life which promised to compensate her for her
+twenty years of loneliness and unsatisfied longing.
+
+But a black shadow yet remained which she must cross before reaching the
+sunshine!
+
+It lay at her step-mother's door.
+
+In the plans made for Helena's release, Mrs. Postlethwaite's consent
+had not been obtained nor was she supposed to be acquainted with
+the doctor's intentions towards the child whose death she was hourly
+awaiting.
+
+It was therefore with an astonishment, bordering on awe, that on their
+way downstairs, they saw the door of her room open and herself standing
+alone and upright on the threshold--she who had not been seen to take a
+step in years. In the wonder of this miracle of suddenly restored power,
+the little procession stopped,--the doctor with his hand upon the rail,
+the lover with his burden clasped yet more protectingly to his breast.
+That a little speech awaited them could be seen from the force and
+fury of the gaze which the indomitable woman bent upon the lax and
+half-unconscious figure she beheld thus sheltered and conveyed. Having
+but one arrow left in her exhausted quiver, she launched it straight
+at the innocent breast which had never harboured against her a defiant
+thought.
+
+"Ingrate!" was the word she hurled in a voice from which all its
+seductive music had gone forever. "Where are you going? Are they
+carrying you alive to your grave?"
+
+A moan from Helena's pale lips, then silence. She had fainted at that
+barbed attack. But there was one there who dared to answer for her and
+he spoke relentlessly. It was the man who loved her.
+
+"No, madam. We are carrying her to safety. You must know what I mean by
+that. Let her go quietly and you may die in peace. Otherwise--"
+
+She interrupted him with a loud call, startling into life the echoes of
+that haunted hall:
+
+"Humphrey! Come to me, Humphrey!"
+
+But no Humphrey appeared.
+
+Another call, louder and more peremptory than before:
+
+"Humphrey! I say, Humphrey!"
+
+But the answer was the same--silence, and only silence. As the horror of
+this grew, the doctor spoke:
+
+"Mr. Humphrey Dunbar's ears are closed to all earthly summons. He died
+last night at the very hour he said he would--four minutes after two."
+
+"Four minutes after two!" It came from her lips in a whisper, but with
+a revelation of her broken heart and life. "Four minutes after two!"
+And defiant to the last, her head rose, and for an instant, for a mere
+breath of time, they saw her as she had looked in her prime, regal in
+form, attitude, and expression; then the will which had sustained her
+through so much, faltered and succumbed, and with a final reiteration of
+the words "Four minutes after two!" she broke into a rattling laugh, and
+fell back into the arms of her old nurse.
+
+And below, one clock struck the hour and then another. But not the big
+one at the foot of the stairs. That still stood silent, with its hands
+pointing to the hour and minute of Frank Postlethwaite's hastened death.
+
+END OF PROBLEM VI
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM VII. THE DOCTOR, HIS WIFE, AND THE CLOCK
+
+Violet had gone to her room. She had a task before her. That afternoon,
+a packet had been left at the door, which, from a certain letter
+scribbled in one corner, she knew to be from her employer. The contents
+of that packet must be read, and she had made herself comfortable with
+the intention of setting to work at once. But ten o'clock struck and
+then eleven before she could bring herself to give any attention to the
+manuscript awaiting her perusal. In her present mood, a quiet sitting by
+the fire, with her eyes upon the changeful flame, was preferable to the
+study of any affair her employer might send her. Yet, because she was
+conscious of the duty she thus openly neglected, she sat crouched over
+her desk with her hand on the mysterious packet, the string of which,
+however, she made no effort to loosen.
+
+What was she thinking of?
+
+We are not alone in our curiosity on this subject. Her brother Arthur,
+coming unperceived into the room, gives tokens of a similar interest.
+Never before had he seen her oblivious to an approaching step; and after
+a momentary contemplation of her absorbed figure, so girlishly sweet
+and yet so deeply intent, he advances to her side, and peering earnestly
+into her face, observes with a seriousness quite unusual to him:
+
+"Puss, you are looking worried,--not like yourself at all. I've noticed
+it for some time. What's up. Getting tired of the business?"
+
+"No--not altogether--that is, it's not that, if it's anything. I'm not
+sure that it's anything. I--"
+
+She had turned back to her desk and was pushing about the various
+articles with which it was plentifully bespread; but this did not
+hide the flush which had crept into her cheeks and even dyed the snowy
+whiteness of her neck. Arthur's astonishment at this evidence of
+emotion was very great; but he said nothing, only watched her still more
+closely, as with a light laugh she regained her self-possession, and
+with the practical air of a philosopher uttered this trite remark:
+
+"Everyone has his sober moments. I was only thinking--"
+
+"Of some new case?"
+
+"Not exactly." The words came softly but with a touch of mingled humour
+and gravity which made Arthur stare again.
+
+"See here, Puss!" he cried. His tone had changed. "I've just come up
+from the den. Father and I have had a row--a beastly row."
+
+"A row? You and father? Oh, Arthur, I don't like that. Don't quarrel
+with father. Don't, don't. Some day he and I may have a serious
+difference about what I am doing. Don't let him feel that he has lost us
+all."
+
+"That's all right, Puss; but I've got to think of you a bit. I can't
+see you spoil all your good times with these police horrors and not
+do something to help. To-morrow I begin life as a salesman in Clarke &
+Stebbin's. The salary is not great, but every little helps and I don't
+dislike the business. But father does. He had rather see me loafing
+about town setting the fashions for fellows as idle as myself than soil
+my hands with handling merchandise. That's why we quarreled. But don't
+worry. Your name didn't come up, or--or--you know whose. He hasn't an
+idea of why I want to work--There, Violet there!"
+
+Two soft arms were around his neck and Violet was letting her heart out
+in a succession of sisterly kisses.
+
+"O, Arthur, you good, good boy! Together we'll soon make up the amount,
+and then--"
+
+"Then what?"
+
+A sweet soft look robbed her face of its piquancy, but gave it an aspect
+of indescribable beauty quite new to Arthur's eyes.
+
+Tapping his lips with a thoughtful forefinger, he asked:
+
+"Who was that sombre-looking chap I saw bowing to you as we came out of
+church last Sunday?"
+
+She awoke from her dreamy state with an astonishing quickness.
+
+"He? Surely you remember him. Have you forgotten that evening in
+Massachusetts--the grotto--and--"
+
+"Oh, it's Upjohn, is it? Yes, I remember him. He's fond of church, isn't
+he? That is, when he's in New York."
+
+Her lips took a roguish curve then a very serious one; but she made no
+answer.
+
+"I have noticed that he's always in his seat and always looking your
+way."
+
+"That's very odd of him," she declared, her dimples coming and going in
+a most bewildering fashion. "I can't imagine why he should do that."
+
+"Nor I,--" retorted Arthur with a smile. "But he's human, I suppose.
+Only do be careful, Violet. A man so melancholy will need a deal of
+cheering."
+
+He was gone before he had fully finished this daring remark, and Violet,
+left again with her thoughts, lost her glowing colour but not her
+preoccupation. The hand which lay upon the packet already alluded to did
+not move for many minutes, and when she roused at last to the demands
+of her employer, it was with a start and a guilty look at the small gold
+clock ticking out its inexorable reminder.
+
+"He will want an answer the first thing in the morning," she complained
+to herself. And opening the packet, she took out first a letter, and
+then a mass of typewritten manuscript.
+
+She began with the letter which was as characteristic of the writer as
+all the others she had had from his hand; as witness:
+
+You probably remember the Hasbrouck murder,--or, perhaps, you don't;
+it being one of a time previous to your interest in such matters. But
+whether you remember it or not, I beg you to read the accompanying
+summary with due care and attention to business. When you have well
+mastered it with all its details, please communicate with me in any
+manner most convenient to yourself, for I shall have a word to say to
+you then, which you may be glad to hear, if as you have lately intimated
+you need to earn but one or two more substantial rewards in order to
+cry halt to the pursuit for which you have proved yourself so well
+qualified.
+
+The story, in deference to yourself as a young and much preoccupied
+woman, has been written in a way to interest. Though the work of an
+everyday police detective, you will find in it no lack of mystery or
+romance; and if at the end you perceive that it runs, as such cases
+frequently do, up against a perfectly blank wall, you must remember that
+openings can be made in walls, and that the loosening of one weak stone
+from its appointed place, sometimes leads to the downfall of all.
+
+So much for the letter.
+
+Laying it aside, with a shrug of her expressive shoulders, Violet took
+up the manuscript.
+
+Let us take it up too. It runs thus:
+
+On the 17th of July, 19--, a tragedy of no little interest occurred in
+one of the residences of the Colonnade in Lafayette Place.
+
+Mr. Hasbrouck, a well known and highly respected citizen, was attacked
+in his room by an unknown assailant, and shot dead before assistance
+could reach him. His murderer escaped, and the problem offered to the
+police was how to identify this person who, by some happy chance or
+by the exercise of the most remarkable forethought, had left no traces
+behind him, or any clue by which he could be followed.
+
+The details of the investigation which ended so unsatisfactorily are
+here given by the man sent from headquarters at the first alarm.
+
+When, some time after midnight on the date above mentioned, I reached
+Lafayette Place, I found the block lighted from end to end. Groups of
+excited men and women peered from the open doorways, and mingled their
+shadows with those of the huge pillars which adorn the front of this
+picturesque block of dwellings.
+
+The house in which the crime had been committed was near the centre of
+the row, and, long before I reached it, I had learned from more than one
+source that the alarm was first given to the street by a woman's shriek,
+and secondly by the shouts of an old man-servant who had appeared, in
+a half-dressed condition, at the window of Mr. Hasbrouck's room, crying
+"Murder! murder!"
+
+But when I had crossed the threshold, I was astonished at the paucity
+of facts to be gleaned from the inmates themselves. The old servant, who
+was the first to talk, had only this account of the crime to give:
+
+The family, which consisted of Mr. Hasbrouck, his wife, and three
+servants, had retired for the night at the usual hour and under the
+usual auspices. At eleven o'clock the lights were all extinguished, and
+the whole household asleep, with the possible exception of Mr. Hasbrouck
+himself, who, being a man of large business responsibilities, was
+frequently troubled with insomnia.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Hasbrouck woke with a start. Had she dreamed the words
+that were ringing in her ears, or had they been actually uttered in her
+hearing? They were short, sharp words, full of terror and menace, and
+she had nearly satisfied herself that she had imagined them, when there
+came, from somewhere near the door, a sound she neither understood nor
+could interpret, but which filled her with inexplicable terror, and made
+her afraid to breathe, or even to stretch forth her hand towards her
+husband, whom she supposed to be sleeping at her side. At length another
+strange sound, which she was sure was not due to her imagination, drove
+her to make an attempt to rouse him, when she was horrified to find that
+she was alone in bed, and her husband nowhere within reach.
+
+Filled now with something more than nervous apprehension, she flung
+herself to the floor, and tried to penetrate with frenzied glances,
+the surrounding darkness. But the blinds and shutters both having
+been carefully closed by Mr. Hasbrouck before retiring, she found this
+impossible, and she was about to sink in terror to the floor, when she
+heard a low gasp on the other side of the room followed by a suppressed
+cry.
+
+"God! what have I done!"
+
+The voice was a strange one, but before the fear aroused by this
+fact could culminate in a shriek of dismay, she caught the sound of
+retreating footsteps, and, eagerly listening, she heard them descend the
+stairs and depart by the front door.
+
+Had she known what had occurred--had there been no doubt in her mind as
+to what lay in the darkness on the other side of the room--it is likely
+that, at the noise caused by the closing front door, she would have made
+at once for the balcony that opened out from the window before which
+she was standing, and taken one look at the flying figure below. But her
+uncertainty as to what lay hidden from her by the darkness chained her
+feet to the floor, and there is no knowing when she would have moved, if
+a carriage had not at that moment passed down Astor Place, bringing with
+it a sense of companionship which broke the spell holding her, and gave
+her strength to light the gas which was in ready reach of her hand.
+
+As the sudden blaze illuminated the room, revealing in a burst the old
+familiar walls and well-known pieces of furniture, she felt for a moment
+as if released from some heavy nightmare and restored to the common
+experiences of life. But in another instant her former dread returned,
+and she found herself quaking at the prospect of passing around the foot
+of the bed into that part of the room which was as yet hidden from her
+eyes.
+
+But the desperation which comes with great crises finally drove her from
+her retreat; and, creeping slowly forward, she cast one glance at the
+floor before her, when she found her worst fears realized by the sight
+of the dead body of her husband lying prone before the open doorway,
+with a bullet-hole in his forehead.
+
+Her first impulse was to shriek, but, by a powerful exercise of will,
+she checked herself, and ringing frantically for the servants who
+slept on the top floor of the house, flew to the nearest window and
+endeavoured to open it. But the shutters had been bolted so securely by
+Mr. Hasbrouck, in his endeavour to shut out all light and sound, that by
+the time she had succeeded in unfastening them, all trace of the flying
+murderer had vanished from the street.
+
+Sick with grief and terror, she stepped back into the room just as the
+three frightened servants descended the stairs. As they appeared in the
+open doorway, she pointed at her husband's inanimate form, and then, as
+if suddenly realizing in its full force the calamity which had befallen
+her, she threw up her arms, and sank forward to the floor in a dead
+faint.
+
+The two women rushed to her assistance, but the old butler, bounding
+over the bed, sprang to the window, and shrieked his alarm to the
+street.
+
+In the interim that followed, Mrs. Hasbrouck was revived, and the
+master's body laid decently on the bed; but no pursuit was made, nor any
+inquiries started likely to assist me in establishing the identity of
+the assailant.
+
+Indeed, everyone both in the house and out, seemed dazed by the
+unexpected catastrophe, and as no one had any suspicions to offer as to
+the probable murderer, I had a difficult task before me.
+
+I began in the usual way, by inspecting the scene of the murder. I found
+nothing in the room, or in the condition of the body itself, which added
+an iota to the knowledge already obtained. That Mr. Hasbrouck had been
+in bed; that he had risen upon hearing a noise; and that he had been
+shot before reaching the door, were self-evident facts. But there was
+nothing to guide me further. The very simplicity of the circumstances
+caused a dearth of clues, which made the difficulty of procedure as
+great as any I had ever encountered.
+
+My search through the hall and down the stairs elicited nothing; and
+an investigation of the bolts and bars by which the house was secured,
+assured me that the assassin had either entered by the front door, or
+had already been secreted in the house when it was locked up for the
+night.
+
+"I shall have to trouble Mrs. Hasbrouck for a short interview," I
+hereupon announced to the trembling old servant, who had followed me
+like a dog about the house.
+
+He made no demur, and in a few minutes I was ushered into the presence
+of the newly made widow, who sat quite alone, in a large chamber in
+the rear. As I crossed the threshold she looked up, and I encountered a
+good, plain face, without the shadow of guile in it.
+
+"Madam," said I, "I have not come to disturb you. I will ask two or
+three questions only, and then leave you to your grief. I am told that
+some words came from the assassin before he delivered his fatal shot.
+Did you hear these distinctly enough to tell me what they were?"
+
+"I was sound asleep," said she, "and dreamt, as I thought, that a
+fierce, strange voice cried somewhere to some one: 'Ah! you did not
+expect me!' But I dare not say that these words were really uttered to
+my husband, for he was not the man to call forth hate, and only a man
+in the extremity of passion could address such an exclamation in such a
+tone as rings in my memory in connection with the fatal shot which woke
+me."
+
+"But that shot was not the work of a friend," I argued. "If, as these
+words seem to prove, the assassin had some other motive than plunder in
+his assault, then your husband had an enemy, though you never suspected
+it."
+
+"Impossible!" was her steady reply, uttered in the most convincing tone.
+"The man who shot him was a common burglar, and frightened at having
+been betrayed into murder, fled without looking for booty. I am sure I
+heard him cry out in terror and remorse: 'God! what have I done!'"
+
+"Was that before you left the side of the bed?"
+
+"Yes; I did not move from my place till I heard the front door close. I
+was paralysed by fear and dread."
+
+"Are you in the habit of trusting to the security of a latch-lock only
+in the fastening of your front door at night? I am told that the big key
+was not in the lock, and that the bolt at the bottom of the door was not
+drawn."
+
+"The bolt at the bottom of the door is never drawn. Mr. Hasbrouck was
+so good a man that he never mistrusted any one. That is why the big lock
+was not fastened. The key, not working well, he took it some days ago to
+the locksmith, and when the latter failed to return it, he laughed,
+and said he thought no one would ever think of meddling with his front
+door."
+
+"Is there more than one night-key to your house?" I now asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"And when did Mr. Hasbrouck last use his?"
+
+"To-night, when he came home from prayer meeting," she answered, and
+burst into tears.
+
+Her grief was so real and her loss so recent that I hesitated to afflict
+her by further questions. So returning to the scene of the tragedy, I
+stepped out upon the balcony which ran in front. Soft voices instantly
+struck my ears. The neighbours on either side were grouped in front of
+their own windows, and were exchanging the remarks natural under the
+circumstances. I paused, as in duty bound, and listened. But I heard
+nothing worth recording, and would have instantly reentered the house,
+if I had not been impressed by the appearance of a very graceful woman
+who stood at my right. She was clinging to her husband, who was gazing
+at one of the pillars before him in a strange fixed way which astonished
+me till he attempted to move, and then I saw that he was blind.
+I remembered that there lived in this row a blind doctor, equally
+celebrated for his skill and for his uncommon personal attractions,
+and greatly interested not only by his affliction, but in the sympathy
+evinced by his young and affectionate wife, I stood still, till I heard
+her say in the soft and appealing tones of love:
+
+"Come in, Constant; you have heavy duties for to-morrow, and you should
+get a few hours' rest if possible."
+
+He came from the shadow of the pillar, and for one minute I saw his face
+with the lamplight shining full upon it. It was as regular of feature as
+a sculptured Adonis, and it was as white.
+
+"Sleep!" he repeated, in the measured tones of deep but suppressed
+feeling. "Sleep! with murder on the other side of the wall!" And he
+stretched out his arms in a dazed way that insensibly accentuated the
+horror I myself felt of the crime which had so lately taken place in the
+room behind me.
+
+She, noting the movement, took one of the groping hands in her own and
+drew him gently towards her.
+
+"This way," she urged; and, guiding him into the house, she closed the
+window and drew down the shades.
+
+I have no excuse to offer for my curiosity, but the interest excited in
+me by this totally irrelevant episode was so great that I did not
+leave the neighbourhood till I had learned something of this remarkable
+couple.
+
+The story told me was very simple. Dr. Zabriskie had not been born
+blind, but had become so after a grievous illness which had stricken
+him down soon after he received his diploma. Instead of succumbing to an
+affliction which would have daunted most men, he expressed his intention
+of practising his profession, and soon became so successful in it that
+he found no difficulty in establishing himself in one of the best paying
+quarters of the city. Indeed, his intuition seemed to have developed in
+a remarkable degree after the loss of his sight, and he seldom, if ever,
+made a mistake in diagnosis. Considering this fact, and the personal
+attractions which gave him distinction, it was no wonder that he soon
+became a popular physician whose presence was a benefaction and whose
+word law.
+
+He had been engaged to be married at the time of his illness, and when
+he learned what was likely to be its result, had offered to release the
+young lady from all obligation to him. But she would not be released,
+and they were married. This had taken place some five years previous
+to Mr. Hasbrouck's death, three of which had been spent by them in
+Lafayette Place.
+
+So much for the beautiful woman next door.
+
+There being absolutely no clue to the assailant of Mr. Hasbrouck, I
+naturally looked forward to the inquest for some evidence upon which to
+work. But there seemed to be no underlying facts to this tragedy. The
+most careful study into the habits and conduct of the deceased brought
+nothing to light save his general beneficence and rectitude, nor was
+there in his history or in that of his wife, any secret or hidden
+obligation calculated to provoke any such act of revenge as murder. Mrs.
+Hasbrouck's surmise that the intruder was simply a burglar, and that she
+had rather imagined than heard the words which pointed to the shooting
+as a deed of vengeance, soon gained general credence.
+
+But though the police worked long and arduously in this new direction
+their efforts were without fruit and the case bids fair to remain an
+unsolvable mystery.
+
+That was all. As Violet dropped the last page from her hand, she
+recalled a certain phrase in her employer's letter. "If at the end you
+come upon a perfectly blank wall--" Well, she had come upon this wall.
+Did he expect her to make an opening in it? Or had he already done so
+himself, and was merely testing her much vaunted discernment.
+
+Piqued by the thought, she carefully reread the manuscript, and when she
+had again reached its uncompromising end, she gave herself up to a few
+minutes of concentrated thought, then, taking a sheet of paper from the
+rack before her, she wrote upon it a single sentence, and folding the
+sheet, put it in an envelope which she left unaddressed. This done, she
+went to bed and slept like the child she really was.
+
+At an early hour the next morning she entered her employer's office.
+Acknowledging with a nod his somewhat ceremonious bow, she handed him
+the envelope in which she had enclosed that one mysterious sentence.
+
+He took it with a smile, opened it offhand, glanced at what she had
+written, and flushed a vivid red.
+
+"You are a--brick," he was going to say, but changed the last word to
+one more in keeping with her character and appearance. "Look here. I
+expected this from you and so prepared myself." Taking out a similar
+piece of paper from his own pocket-book, he laid it down beside hers
+on the desk before him. It also held a single sentence and, barring
+a slight difference of expression, the one was the counterpart of the
+other. "The one loose stone," he murmured.
+
+"Seen and noted by both."
+
+"Why not?" he asked. Then as she glanced expectantly his way, he
+earnestly added: "Together we may be able to do something. The reward
+offered by Mrs. Hasbrouck for the detection of the murderer was a very
+large one. She is a woman of means. I have never heard of its being
+withdrawn."
+
+"Then it never has been," was Violet's emphatic conclusion, her dimples
+enforcing the statement as only such dimples can. "But--what do you want
+of me in an affair of this kind? Something more than to help you locate
+the one possible clue to further enlightenment. You would not have
+mentioned the big reward just for that."
+
+"Perhaps not. There is a sequel to the story I sent you. I have written
+it out, with my own hand. Take it home and read it at your leisure. When
+you see into what an unhappy maze my own inquiries have led me, possibly
+you will be glad to assist me in clearing up a situation which is
+inflicting great suffering on one whom you will be the first to pity.
+If so, a line mentioning the fact will be much appreciated by me." And
+disregarding her startled look and the impetuous shaking of her head, he
+bowed her out with something more than his accustomed suavity but
+also with a seriousness which affected her in spite of herself and
+effectually held back the protest it was in her heart to make. She was
+glad of this when she read his story; but later on--
+
+However, it is not for me to intrude Violet, or Violet's feelings into
+an affair which she is so anxious to forget. I shall therefore from
+this moment on, leave her as completely out of this tale of crime and
+retribution as is possible and keep a full record of her work. When she
+is necessary to the story, you will see her again. Meanwhile, read
+with her, this relation of her employer's unhappy attempt to pursue an
+investigation so openly dropped by the police. You will perceive, from
+its general style and the accentuation put upon the human side of this
+sombre story, a likeness to the former manuscript which may prove to
+you, as it certainly did to Violet, to whose consideration she was
+indebted for the readableness of the policeman's report, which in all
+probability had been a simple statement of facts.
+
+But there, I am speaking of Violet again. To prevent a further mischance
+of this nature, I will introduce at once the above mentioned account.
+
+II
+
+No man in all New York was ever more interested than myself in the
+Hasbrouck affair, when it was the one and only topic of interest at
+a period when news was unusually scarce. But, together with many such
+inexplicable mysteries, it had passed almost completely from my mind,
+when it was forcibly brought back, one day, by a walk I took through
+Lafayette Place.
+
+At sight of the long row of uniform buildings, with their pillared
+fronts and connecting balconies every detail of the crime which had
+filled the papers at the time with innumerable conjectures returned to
+me with extraordinary clearness, and, before I knew it, I found myself
+standing stockstill in the middle of the block with my eye raised to the
+Hasbrouck house and my ears--or rather my inner consciousness, for no
+one spoke I am sure--ringing with a question which, whether the echo of
+some old thought or the expression of a new one, so affected me by the
+promise it held of some hitherto unsuspected clue, that I hesitated
+whether to push this new inquiry then or there by an attempted interview
+with Mrs. Hasbrouck, or to wait till I had given it the thought which
+such a stirring of dead bones rightfully demanded.
+
+You know what that question was. I shall have communicated it to you, if
+you have not already guessed it, before perusing these lines:
+
+"Who uttered the scream which gave the first alarm of Mr. Hasbrouck's
+violent death?"
+
+I was in a state of such excitement as I walked away--for I listened
+to my better judgment as to the inadvisability of my disturbing Mrs.
+Hasbrouck with these new inquiries--that the perspiration stood out on
+my forehead. The testimony she had given at the inquest recurred to me,
+and I remembered as distinctly as if she were then speaking, that she
+had expressly stated that she did not scream when confronted by the
+sight of her husband's dead body. But someone had screamed and that
+very loudly. Who was it, then? One of the maids, startled by the sudden
+summons from below, or someone else--some involuntary witness of the
+crime, whose testimony had been suppressed at the inquest, by fear or
+influence?
+
+The possibility of having come upon a clue even at this late day so
+fired my ambition that I took the first opportunity of revisiting
+Lafayette Place. Choosing such persons as I thought most open to my
+questions, I learned that there were many who could testify to having
+heard a woman's shrill scream on that memorable night, just prior to the
+alarm given by old Cyrus, but no one who could tell from whose lips it
+had come. One fact, however, was immediately settled. It had not been
+the result of the servant-women's fears. Both of the girls were positive
+that they had uttered no sound, nor had they themselves heard any
+till Cyrus rushed to the window with his wild cries. As the scream,
+by whomever given, was uttered before they descended the stairs, I was
+convinced by these assurances that it had issued from one of the front
+windows, and not from the rear of the house, where their own rooms lay.
+Could it be that it had sprung from the adjoining dwelling, and that--
+
+I remembered who had lived there and was for ringing the bell at once.
+But, missing the doctor's sign, I made inquiries and found that he had
+moved from the block. However, a doctor is soon found, and in less than
+fifteen, minutes I was at the door of his new home, where I asked, not
+for him, but for Mrs. Zabriskie.
+
+It required some courage to do this, for I had taken particular notice
+of the doctor's wife at the inquest, and her beauty, at that time, had
+worn such an aspect of mingled sweetness and dignity that I hesitated
+to encounter it under any circumstances likely to disturb its pure
+serenity. But a clue once grasped cannot be lightly set aside by a true
+detective, and it would have taken more than a woman's frowns to stop me
+at this point.
+
+However, it was not with frowns she received me, but with a display of
+emotion for which I was even less prepared. I had sent up my card and I
+saw it trembling in her hand as she entered the room. As she neared me,
+she glanced at it, and with a show of gentle indifference which did not
+in the least disguise her extreme anxiety, she courteously remarked:
+
+"Your name is an unfamiliar one to me. But you told my maid that your
+business was one of extreme importance, and so I have consented to see
+you. What can an agent from a private detective office have to say to
+me?"
+
+Startled by this evidence of the existence of some hidden skeleton in
+her own closet, I made an immediate attempt to reassure her.
+
+"Nothing which concerns you personally," said I. "I simply wish to
+ask you a question in regard to a small matter connected with Mr.
+Hasbrouck's violent death in Lafayette Place, a couple of years ago.
+You were living in the adjoining house at the time I believe, and it has
+occurred to me that you might on that account be able to settle a point
+which has never been fully cleared up."
+
+Instead of showing the relief I expected, her pallor increased and her
+fine eyes, which had been fixed curiously upon me, sank in confusion to
+the floor.
+
+"Great heaven!" thought I. "She looks as if at one more word from me,
+she would fall at my feet in a faint. What is this I have stumbled
+upon!"
+
+"I do not see how you can have any question to ask me on that subject,"
+she began with an effort at composure which for some reason disturbed
+me more than her previous open display of fear. "Yet if you have," she
+continued, with a rapid change of manner that touched my heart in spite
+of myself, "I shall, of course, do my best to answer you."
+
+There are women whose sweetest tones and most charming smiles only serve
+to awaken distrust in men of my calling; but Mrs. Zabriskie was not
+of this number. Her face was beautiful, but it was also candid in its
+expression, and beneath the agitation which palpably disturbed her, I
+was sure there lurked nothing either wicked or false. Yet I held fast by
+the clue which I had grasped as it were in the dark, and without knowing
+whither I was tending, much less whither I was leading her, I proceeded
+to say:
+
+"The question which I presume to put to you as the next door neighbour
+of Mr. Hasbrouck is this: Who was the woman who on the night of
+that gentleman's assassination screamed out so loudly that the whole
+neighbourhood heard her?"
+
+The gasp she gave answered my question in a way she little realized, and
+struck as I was by the impalpable links that had led me to the threshold
+of this hitherto unsolvable mystery, I was about to press my advantage
+and ask another question, when she quickly started forward and laid her
+hand on my lips.
+
+Astonished, I looked at her inquiringly, but her head was turned
+aside, and her eyes, fixed upon the door, showed the greatest anxiety.
+Instantly I realized what she feared. Her husband was entering the
+house, and she dreaded lest his ears should catch a word of our
+conversation.
+
+Not knowing what was in her mind, and unable to realize the importance
+of the moment to her, I yet listened to the advance of her blind husband
+with an almost painful interest. Would he enter the room where we were,
+or would he pass immediately to his office in the rear? She seemed to
+wonder too, and almost held her breath as he neared the door, paused,
+and stood in the open doorway, with his ear turned towards us.
+
+As for myself, I remained perfectly still, gazing at his face in mingled
+surprise and apprehension. For besides its beauty, which was of a marked
+order, as I have already observed, it had a touching expression which
+irresistibly aroused both pity and interest in the spectator. This may
+have been the result of his affliction, or it may have sprung from some
+deeper cause; but, whatever its source, this look in his face produced a
+strong impression upon me and interested me at once in his personality.
+Would he enter; or would he pass on? Her look of silent appeal showed
+me in which direction her wishes lay, but while I answered her glance
+by complete silence, I was conscious in some indistinct way that the
+business I had undertaken would be better furthered by his entrance.
+
+The blind have often been said to possess a sixth sense in place of the
+one they have lost. Though I am sure we made no noise, I soon perceived
+that he was aware of our presence. Stepping hastily forward he said, in
+the high and vibrating tone of restrained passion:
+
+"Zulma, are you there?"
+
+For a moment I thought she did not mean to answer, but knowing doubtless
+from experience the impossibility of deceiving him, she answered with a
+cheerful assent, dropping her hand as she did so from before my lips.
+
+He heard the slight rustle which accompanied the movement, and a look
+I found it hard to comprehend flashed over his features, altering his
+expression so completely that he seemed another man.
+
+"You have someone with you," he declared, advancing another step, but
+with none of the uncertainty which usually accompanies the movements
+of the blind. "Some dear friend," he went on, with an almost sarcastic
+emphasis and a forced smile that had little of gaiety in it.
+
+The agitated and distressed blush which answered him could have but one
+interpretation. He suspected that her hand had been clasped in mine, and
+she perceived his thought and knew that I perceived it also.
+
+Drawing herself up, she moved towards him, saying in a sweet womanly
+tone:
+
+"It is no friend, Constant, not even an acquaintance. The person whom I
+now present to you is a representative from some detective agency. He is
+here upon a trivial errand which will soon be finished, when I will join
+you in the office."
+
+I knew she was but taking a choice between two evils, that she would
+have saved her husband the knowledge of my calling as well as of my
+presence in the house, if her self-respect would have allowed it; but
+neither she nor I anticipated the effect which this introduction of
+myself in my business capacity would produce upon him.
+
+"A detective," he repeated, staring with his sightless eyes, as if, in
+his eagerness to see, he half hoped his lost sense would return. "He can
+have no trivial errand here; he has been sent by God Himself to--"
+
+"Let me speak for you," hastily interposed his wife, springing to his
+side and clasping his arm with a fervour that was equally expressive
+of appeal and command. Then turning to me, she explained: "Since Mr.
+Hasbrouck's unaccountable death, my husband has been labouring under
+an hallucination which I have only to mention, for you to recognize its
+perfect absurdity. He thinks--oh! do not look like that, Constant; you
+know it is an hallucination which must vanish the moment we drag it into
+broad daylight--that he--he, the best man in all the world, was himself
+the assailant of Mr. Hasbrouck."
+
+"Good God!"
+
+"I say nothing of the impossibility of this being so," she went on in a
+fever of expostulation. "He is blind, and could not have delivered such
+a shot even if he had desired to; besides, he had no weapon. But the
+inconsistency of the thing speaks for itself, and should assure him that
+his mind is unbalanced and that he is merely suffering from a shock that
+was greater than we realized. He is a physician and has had many such
+instances in his own practice. Why, he was very much attached to Mr.
+Hasbrouck! They were the best of friends, and though he insists that he
+killed him, he cannot give any reason for the deed."
+
+At these words the doctor's face grew stern, and he spoke like an
+automaton repeating some fearful lesson:
+
+"I killed him. I went to his room and deliberately shot him. I had
+nothing against him, and my remorse is extreme. Arrest me and let me
+pay the penalty of my crime. It is the only way in which I can obtain
+peace."
+
+Shocked beyond all power of self-control by this repetition of what she
+evidently considered the unhappy ravings of a madman, she let go his arm
+and turned upon me in frenzy.
+
+"Convince him!" she cried. "Convince him by your questions that he never
+could have done this fearful thing."
+
+I was labouring under great excitement myself, for as a private agent
+with no official authority such as he evidently attributed to me in the
+blindness of his passion, I felt the incongruity of my position in the
+face of a matter of such tragic consequence. Besides, I agreed with her
+that he was in a distempered state of mind, and I hardly knew how
+to deal with one so fixed in his hallucination and with so much
+intelligence to support it. But the emergency was great, for he was
+holding out his wrists in the evident expectation of my taking him into
+instant custody; and the sight was killing his wife, who had sunk on the
+floor between us, in terror and anguish.
+
+"You say you killed Mr. Hasbrouck," I began. "Where did you get your
+pistol, and what did you do with it after you left his house?"
+
+"My husband had no pistol; never had any pistol," put in Mrs. Zabriskie,
+with vehement assertion. "If I had seen him with such a weapon--"
+
+"I threw it away. When I left the house, I cast it as far from me as
+possible, for I was frightened at what I had done, horribly frightened."
+
+"No pistol was ever found," I answered with a smile, forgetting for the
+moment that he could not see. "If such an instrument had been found in
+the street after a murder of such consequence, it certainly would have
+been brought to the police."
+
+"You forget that a good pistol is valuable property," he went on
+stolidly. "Someone came along before the general alarm was given; and
+seeing such a treasure lying on the sidewalk, picked it up and carried
+it off. Not being an honest man, he preferred to keep it to drawing the
+attention of the police upon himself."
+
+"Hum, perhaps," said I; "but where did you get it. Surely you can tell
+where you procured such a weapon, if, as your wife intimates, you did
+not own one."
+
+"I bought it that selfsame night of a friend; a friend whom I will
+not name, since he resides no longer in this country. I--" He paused;
+intense passion was in his face; he turned towards his wife, and a low
+cry escaped him, which made her look up in fear.
+
+"I do not wish to go into any particulars," said he. "God forsook me
+and I committed a horrible crime. When I am punished, perhaps peace will
+return to me and happiness to her. I would not wish her to suffer too
+long or too bitterly for my sin."
+
+"Constant!" What love was in the cry! It seemed to move him and turn his
+thoughts for a moment into a different channel.
+
+"Poor child!" he murmured, stretching out his hands by an irresistible
+impulse towards her. But the change was but momentary, and he was soon
+again the stern and determined self-accuser. "Are you going to take me
+before a magistrate?" he asked. "If so, I have a few duties to perform
+which you are welcome to witness."
+
+This was too much; I felt that the time had come for me to disabuse his
+mind of the impression he had unwittingly formed of me. I therefore said
+as considerately as I could:
+
+"You mistake my position, Dr. Zabriskie. Though a detective of some
+experience, I have no connection with the police and no right to intrude
+myself in a matter of such tragic importance. If, however, you are as
+anxious as you say to subject yourself to police examination, I will
+mention the same to the proper authorities, and leave them to take such
+action as they think best."
+
+"That will be still more satisfactory to me," said he; "for though I
+have many times contemplated giving myself up, I have still much to
+do before I can leave my home and practice without injury to others.
+Good-day; when you want me you will find me here."
+
+He was gone, and the poor young wife was left crouching on the floor
+alone. Pitying her shame and terror, I ventured to remark that it was
+not an uncommon thing for a man to confess to a crime he had never
+committed, and assured her that the matter would be inquired into very
+carefully before any attempt was made upon his liberty.
+
+She thanked me, and slowly rising, tried to regain her equanimity; but
+the manner as well as the matter of her husband's self-condemnation
+was too overwhelming in its nature for her to recover readily from her
+emotions.
+
+"I have long dreaded this," she acknowledged. "For months I have
+foreseen that he would make some rash communication or insane avowal.
+If I had dared, I would have consulted some physician about this
+hallucination of his; but he was so sane on other points that I
+hesitated to give my dreadful secret to the world. I kept hoping that
+time and his daily pursuits would have their effect and restore him to
+himself. But his illusion grows, and now I fear that nothing will
+ever convince him that he did not commit the deed of which he accuses
+himself. If he were not blind I would have more hope, but the blind have
+so much time for brooding."
+
+"I think he had better be indulged in his fancies for the present," I
+ventured. "If he is labouring under an illusion it might be dangerous to
+cross him."
+
+"If?" she echoed in an indescribable tone of amazement and dread. "Can
+you for a moment harbour the idea that he has spoken the truth?"
+
+"Madam," I returned, with something of the cynicism of my calling, "what
+caused you to give such an unearthly scream just before this murder was
+made known to the neighbourhood?"
+
+She stared, paled, and finally began to tremble, not, as I now believe,
+at the insinuation latent in my words, but at the doubts which my
+question aroused in her own breast.
+
+"Did I?" she asked; then with a burst of candour which seemed
+inseparable from her nature, she continued: "Why do I try to mislead you
+or deceive myself? I did give a shriek just before the alarm was raised
+next door; but it was not from any knowledge I had of a crime having
+been committed, but because I unexpectedly saw before me my husband whom
+I supposed to be on his way to Poughkeepsie. He was looking very pale
+and strange, and for a moment I thought I stood face to face with his
+ghost. But he soon explained his appearance by saying that he had
+fallen from the train and had only been saved by a miracle from being
+dismembered; and I was just bemoaning his mishap and trying to calm him
+and myself, when that terrible shout was heard next door of 'Murder!
+murder!' Coming so soon after the shock he had himself experienced, it
+quite unnerved him, and I think we can date his mental disturbance from
+that moment. For he began immediately to take a morbid interest in the
+affair next door, though it was weeks, if not months, before he let a
+word fall of the nature of those you have just heard. Indeed it was
+not till I repeated to him some of the expressions he was continually
+letting fall in his sleep, that he commenced to accuse himself of crime
+and talk of retribution."
+
+"You say that your husband frightened you on that night by appearing
+suddenly at the door when you thought him on his way to Poughkeepsie. Is
+Dr. Zabriskie in the habit of thus going and coming alone at an hour so
+late as this must have been?"
+
+"You forget that to the blind, night is less full of perils than the
+day. Often and often has my husband found his way to his patients'
+houses alone after midnight; but on this especial evening he had Leonard
+with him. Leonard was his chauffeur, and always accompanied him when he
+went any distance."
+
+"Well, then," said I, "all we have to do is to summon Leonard and hear
+what he has to say concerning this affair. He will surely know whether
+or not his master went into the house next door."
+
+"Leonard has left us," she said. "Dr. Zabriskie has another chauffeur
+now. Besides (I have nothing to conceal from you), Leonard was not with
+him when he returned to the house that evening or the doctor would not
+have been without his portmanteau till the next day. Something--I have
+never known what--caused them to separate, and that is why I have no
+answer to give the doctor when he accuses himself of committing a deed
+that night so wholly out of keeping with every other act of his life."
+
+"And have you never asked Leonard why they separated and why he allowed
+his master to come home alone after the shock he had received at the
+station?"
+
+"I did not know there was any reason for my doing so till long after he
+had left us."
+
+"And when did he leave?"
+
+"That I do not remember. A few weeks or possibly a few days after that
+dreadful night."
+
+"And where is he now?"
+
+"Ah, that I have not the least means of knowing. But," she objected, in
+sudden distrust, "what do you want of Leonard? If he did not follow Dr.
+Zabriskie to his own door, he could tell us nothing that would convince
+my husband that he is labouring under an illusion."
+
+"But he might tell us something which would convince us that Dr.
+Zabriskie was not himself after the accident; that he--"
+
+"Hush!" came from her lips in imperious tones. "I will not believe that
+he shot Mr. Hasbrouck even if you prove him to have been insane at the
+time. How could he? My husband is blind. It would take a man of very
+keen sight to force himself into a house closed for the night, and kill
+a man in the dark at one shot."
+
+"On the contrary, it is only a blind man who could do this," cried a
+voice from the doorway. "Those who trust to eyesight must be able to
+catch a glimpse of the mark they aim at, and this room, as I have been
+told, was without a glimmer of light. But the blind trust to sound, and
+as Mr. Hasbrouck spoke--"
+
+"Oh!" burst from the horrified wife, "is there no one to stop him when
+he speaks like that?"
+
+III
+
+As you will see, this matter, so recklessly entered into, had proved
+to be of too serious a nature for me to pursue it farther without
+the cognizance of the police. Having a friend on the force in whose
+discretion I could rely, I took him into my confidence and asked for his
+advice. He pooh-poohed the doctor's statements, but said that he would
+bring the matter to the attention of the superintendent and let me
+know the result. I agreed to this, and we parted with the mutual
+understanding that mum was the word till some official decision had been
+arrived at. I had not long to wait. At an early day he came in with the
+information that there had been, as might be expected, a division of
+opinion among his superiors as to the importance of Dr. Zabriskie's
+so-called confession, but in one point they had been unanimous and that
+was the desirability of his appearing before them at Headquarters for
+a personal examination. As, however, in the mind of two out of three of
+them his condition was attributed entirely to acute mania, it had been
+thought best to employ as their emissary one in whom he had already
+confided and submitted his case to,--in other words, myself. The time
+was set for the next afternoon at the close of his usual office hours.
+
+He went without reluctance, his wife accompanying him. In the short time
+which elapsed between their leaving home and entering Headquarters,
+I embraced the opportunity of observing them, and I found the study
+equally exciting and interesting. His face was calm but hopeless, and
+his eye, dark and unfathomable, but neither frenzied nor uncertain. He
+spoke but once and listened to nothing, though now and then his wife
+moved as if to attract his attention, and once even stole her hand
+towards his, in the tender hope that he would feel its approach and
+accept her sympathy. But he was deaf as well as blind; and sat wrapped
+up in thoughts which she, I know, would have given worlds to penetrate.
+
+Her countenance was not without its mystery also. She showed in every
+lineament passionate concern and misery, and a deep tenderness from
+which the element of fear was not absent. But she, as well as he,
+betrayed that some misunderstanding deeper than any I had previously
+suspected drew its intangible veil between them and made the near
+proximity in which they sat at once a heart-piercing delight and an
+unspeakable pain. What was the misunderstanding; and what was the
+character of the fear that modified her every look of love in his
+direction? Her perfect indifference to my presence proved that it was
+not connected with the position in which he had placed himself towards
+the police by his voluntary confession of crime, nor could I thus
+interpret the expression, of frantic question which now and then
+contracted her features, as she raised her eyes towards his sightless
+orbs, and strove to read in his firm set lips the meaning of those
+assertions she could only ascribe to loss of reason.
+
+The stopping of the carriage seemed to awaken both from thoughts that
+separated rather than united them. He turned his face in her direction,
+and she stretching forth her hand, prepared to lead him from the
+carriage, without any of that display of timidity which had previously
+been evident in her manner.
+
+As his guide she seemed to fear nothing; as his lover, everything.
+
+"There is another and a deeper tragedy underlying the outward and
+obvious one," was my inward conclusion, as I followed them into the
+presence of the gentlemen awaiting them.
+
+Dr. Zabriskie's quiet appearance was in itself a shock to those who had
+anticipated the feverish unrest of a madman; so was his speech, which
+was calm, straightforward, and quietly determined.
+
+"I shot Mr. Hasbrouck," was his steady affirmation, given without any
+show of frenzy or desperation. "If you ask me why I did it, I cannot
+answer; if you ask me how, I am ready to state all that I know
+concerning the matter."
+
+"But, Dr. Zabriskie," interposed one of the inspectors, "the why is the
+most important thing for us to consider just now. If you really desire
+to convince us that you committed this dreadful crime of killing a
+totally inoffensive man, you should give us some reason for an act so
+opposed to all your instincts and general conduct."
+
+But the doctor continued unmoved:
+
+"I had no reason for murdering Mr. Hasbrouck. A hundred questions can
+elicit no other reply; you had better keep to the how."
+
+A deep-drawn breath from the wife answered the looks of the three
+gentlemen to whom this suggestion was offered. "You see," that breath
+seemed to protest, "that he is not in his right mind."
+
+I began to waver in my own opinion, and yet the intuition which has
+served me in cases seemingly as impenetrable as this bade me beware of
+following the general judgment.
+
+"Ask him to inform you how he got into the house," I whispered to
+Inspector D--, who sat nearest me.
+
+Immediately the inspector put the question which I had suggested:
+
+"By what means did you enter Mr. Hasbrouck's house at so late an hour as
+this murder occurred?"
+
+The blind doctor's head fell forward on his breast, and he hesitated for
+the first and only time.
+
+"You will not believe me," said he; "but the door was ajar when I came
+to it. Such things make crime easy; it is the only excuse I have to
+offer for this dreadful deed."
+
+The front door of a respectable citizen's house ajar at half-past eleven
+at night! It was a statement that fixed in all minds the conviction of
+the speaker's irresponsibility. Mrs. Zabriskie's brow cleared, and
+her beauty became for a moment dazzling as she held out her hands in
+irrepressible relief towards those who were interrogating her husband.
+I alone kept my impassibility. A possible explanation of this crime
+had flashed like lightning across my mind; an explanation from which I
+inwardly recoiled, even while I felt forced to consider it.
+
+"Dr. Zabriskie," remarked the inspector formerly mentioned as friendly
+to him, "such old servants as those kept by Mr. Hasbrouck do not leave
+the front door ajar at twelve o'clock at night."
+
+"Yet ajar it was," repeated the blind doctor, with quiet emphasis; "and
+finding it so, I went in. When I came out again, I closed it. Do you
+wish me to swear to what I say? If so, I am ready."
+
+What reply could they give? To see this splendid-looking man, hallowed
+by an affliction so great that in itself it called forth the compassion
+of the most indifferent, accusing himself of a cold-blooded crime, in
+tones which sounded dispassionate because of the will forcing their
+utterance, was too painful in itself for any one to indulge in
+unnecessary words. Compassion took the place of curiosity, and each and
+all of us turned involuntary looks of pity upon the young wife pressing
+so eagerly to his side.
+
+"For a blind man," ventured one, "the assault was both deft and certain.
+Are you accustomed to Mr. Hasbrouck's house, that you found your way
+with so little difficulty to his bedroom?"
+
+"I am accustomed--" he began.
+
+But here his wife broke in with irrepressible passion:
+
+"He is not accustomed to that house. He has never been beyond the first
+floor. Why, why do you question him? Do you not see--"
+
+His hand was on her lips.
+
+"Hush!" he commanded. "You know my skill in moving about a house; how
+I sometimes deceive those who do not know me into believing that I can
+see, by the readiness with which I avoid obstacles and find my way even
+in strange and untried scenes. Do not try to make them think I am not
+in my right mind, or you will drive me into the very condition you
+attribute to me."
+
+His face, rigid, cold, and set, looked like that of a mask. Hers, drawn
+with horror and filled with question that was fast taking the form of
+doubt, bespoke an awful tragedy from which more than one of us recoiled.
+
+"Can you shoot a man dead without seeing him?" asked the Superintendent,
+with painful effort.
+
+"Give me a pistol and I will show you," was the quick reply.
+
+A low cry came from the wife. In a drawer near to every one of us there
+lay a pistol, but no one moved to take it out. There was a look in the
+doctor's eye which made us fear to trust him with a pistol just then.
+
+"We will accept your assurance that you possess a skill beyond that of
+most men," returned the Superintendent. And beckoning me forward, he
+whispered: "This is a case for the doctors and not for the police.
+Remove him quietly, and notify Dr. Southyard of what I say."
+
+But Dr. Zabriskie, who seemed to have an almost supernatural acuteness
+of hearing, gave a violent start at this, and spoke up for the first
+time with real passion in his voice:
+
+"No, no, I pray you. I can bear anything but that. Remember, gentlemen,
+that I am blind; that I cannot see who is about me; that my life would
+be a torture if I felt myself surrounded by spies watching to catch some
+evidence of madness in me. Rather conviction at once, death, dishonour,
+and obloquy. These I have incurred. These I have brought upon myself by
+crime, but not this worse fate--oh! not this worse fate."
+
+His passion was so intense and yet so confined within the bounds of
+decorum, that we felt strangely impressed by it. Only the wife stood
+transfixed, with the dread growing in her heart, till her white,
+waxen visage seemed even more terrible to contemplate than his
+passion-distorted one.
+
+"It is not strange that my wife thinks me demented," the doctor
+continued, as if afraid of the silence that answered him. "But it is
+your business to discriminate, and you should know a sane man when you
+see him."
+
+Inspector D---- no longer hesitated.
+
+"Very well," said he, "give me the least proof that your assertions are
+true, and we will lay your case before the prosecuting attorney."
+
+"Proof? Is not a man's word--"
+
+"No man's confession is worth much without some evidence to support
+it. In your case there is none. You cannot even produce the pistol with
+which you assert yourself to have committed the deed."
+
+"True, true. I was frightened by what I had done, and the instinct of
+self-preservation led me to rid myself of the weapon in any way I could.
+But someone found this pistol; someone picked it up from the sidewalk of
+Lafayette Place on that fatal night. Advertise for it. Offer a reward.
+I will give you the money." Suddenly he appeared to realize how all this
+sounded. "Alas!" cried he, "I know the story seems improbable; but it is
+not the probable things that happen in this life, as, you should know,
+who every day dig deep into the heart of human affairs."
+
+Were these the ravings of insanity? I began to understand the wife's
+terror.
+
+"I bought the pistol," he went on, "of--alas! I cannot tell you his
+name. Everything is against me. I cannot adduce one proof; yet even she
+is beginning to fear that my story is true. I know it by her silence, a
+silence that yawns between us like a deep and unfathomable gulf."
+
+But at these words her voice rang out with passionate vehemence.
+
+"No, no, it is false! I will never believe that your hands have been
+plunged in blood. You are my own pure-hearted Constant, cold, perhaps,
+and stern, but with no guilt upon your conscience save in your own wild
+imagination."
+
+"Zulma, you are no friend to me," he declared, pushing her gently aside.
+"Believe me innocent, but say nothing to lead these others to doubt my
+word."
+
+And she said no more, but her looks spoke volumes.
+
+The result was that he was not detained, though he prayed for instant
+commitment. He seemed to dread his own home, and the surveillance to
+which he instinctively knew he would henceforth be subjected. To see him
+shrink from his wife's hand as she strove to lead him from the room was
+sufficiently painful; but the feeling thus aroused was nothing to that
+with which we observed the keen and agonized expectancy of his look as
+he turned and listened for the steps of the officer who followed him.
+
+"From this time on I shall never know whether or not I am alone," was
+his final observation as he left the building.
+
+Here is where the matter rests and here, Miss Strange, is where you come
+in. The police were for sending an expert alienist into the house; but
+agreeing with me, and, in fact, with the doctor himself, that if he were
+not already out of his mind, this would certainly make them so, they, at
+my earnest intercession, have left the next move to me.
+
+That move as you must by this time understand involves you. You have
+advantages for making Mrs. Zabriskie's acquaintance of which I beg you
+to avail yourself. As friend or patient, you must win your way into that
+home? You must sound to its depths one or both of these two wretched
+hearts. Not so much now for any possible reward which may follow the
+elucidation of this mystery which has come so near being shelved, but
+for pity's sake and the possible settlement of a question which is fast
+driving a lovely member of your sex distracted.
+
+May I rely on you? If so--
+
+Various instructions followed, over which Violet mused with a
+deprecatory shaking of her head till the little clock struck two. Why
+should she, already in a state of secret despondency, intrude herself
+into an affair at once so painful and so hopeless?
+
+IV
+
+But by morning her mood changed. The pathos of the situation had seized
+upon her in her dreams, and before the day was over, she was to be seen,
+as a prospective patient, in Dr. Zabriskie's office. She had a slight
+complaint as her excuse, and she made the most of it. That is, at first,
+but as the personality of this extraordinary man began to make its
+usual impression, she found herself forgetting her own condition in the
+intensity of interest she felt in his. Indeed, she had to pull herself
+together more than once lest he should suspect the double nature of
+her errand, and she actually caught herself at times rejoicing in his
+affliction since it left her with only her voice to think of, in her
+hated but necessary task of deception.
+
+That she succeeded in this effort, even with one of his nice ear, was
+evident from the interested way in which he dilated upon her malady, and
+the minute instructions he was careful to give her--the physician being
+always uppermost in his strange dual nature, when he was in his office
+or at the bedside of the sick;--and had she not been a deep reader of
+the human soul she would have left his presence in simple wonder at his
+skill and entire absorption in an exacting profession.
+
+But as it was, she carried with her an image of subdued suffering, which
+drove her, from that moment on, to ask herself what she could do to aid
+him in his fight against his own illusion; for to associate such a man
+with a senseless and cruel murder was preposterous.
+
+What this wish, helped by no common determination, led her into, it was
+not in her mind to conceive. She was making her one great mistake, but
+as yet she was in happy ignorance of it, and pursued the course laid out
+for her without a doubt of the ultimate result.
+
+Having seen and made up her mind about the husband, she next sought to
+see and gauge the wife. That she succeeded in doing this by means of
+one of her sly little tricks is not to the point; but what followed in
+natural consequence is very much so. A mutual interest sprang up between
+them which led very speedily to actual friendship. Mrs. Zabriskie's
+hungry heart opened to the sympathetic little being who clung to her in
+such evident admiration; while Violet, brought face to face with a real
+woman, succumbed to feelings which made it no imposition on her part to
+spend much of her leisure in Zulma Zabriskie's company.
+
+The result were the following naive reports which drifted into her
+employer's office from day to day, as this intimacy deepened.
+
+The doctor is settling into a deep melancholy, from which he tries to
+rise at times, but with only indifferent success. Yesterday he rode
+around to all his patients for the purpose of withdrawing his services
+on the plea of illness. But he still keeps his office open, and today
+I had the opportunity of witnessing his reception and treatment of the
+many sufferers who came to him for aid. I think he was conscious of
+my presence, though an attempt had been made to conceal it. For the
+listening look never left his face from the moment he entered the room,
+and once he rose and passed quickly from wall to wall, groping with
+out-stretched hands into every nook and corner, and barely escaping
+contact with the curtain behind which I was hidden. But if he suspected
+my presence, he showed no displeasure at it, wishing perhaps for a
+witness to his skill in the treatment of disease.
+
+And truly I never beheld a finer manifestation of practical insight
+in cases of a more or less baffling nature. He is certainly a most
+wonderful physician, and I feel bound to record that his mind is as
+clear for business as if no shadow had fallen upon it.
+
+Dr. Zabriskie loves his wife, but in a way torturing to himself and
+to her. If she is gone from the house he is wretched, and yet when she
+returns he often forbears to speak to her, or if he does speak it is
+with a constraint that hurts her more than his silence. I was present
+when she came in today. Her step, which had been eager on the stairway,
+flagged as she approached the room, and he naturally noted the change
+and gave his own interpretation to it. His face, which had been very
+pale, flushed suddenly, and a nervous trembling seized him which he
+sought in vain to hide. But by the time her tall and beautiful figure
+stood in the doorway, he was his usual self again in all but the
+expression of his eyes, which stared straight before him in an agony of
+longing only to be observed in those who have once seen.
+
+"Where have you been, Zulma?" he asked, as contrary to his wont, he
+moved to meet her.
+
+"To my mother's, to Arnold & Constable's, and to the hospital, as
+you requested," was her quick answer, made without faltering or
+embarrassment.
+
+He stepped still nearer and took her hand, and as he did so my eye
+fell on his and I noted that his finger lay over her pulse in seeming
+unconsciousness.
+
+"Nowhere else?" he queried.
+
+She smiled the saddest kind of smile and shook her head; then,
+remembering that he could not see this movement, she cried in a wistful
+tone:
+
+"Nowhere else, Constant; I was too anxious to get back."
+
+I expected him to drop her hand at this, but he did not; and his finger
+still rested on her pulse.
+
+"And whom did you see while you were gone?" he continued.
+
+She told him, naming over several names.
+
+"You must have enjoyed yourself," was his cold comment, as he let go her
+hand and turned away. But his manner showed relief, and I could not but
+sympathize with the pitiable situation of a man who found himself forced
+into means like this for probing the heart of his young wife.
+
+Yet when I turned towards her, I realized that her position was but
+little happier than his. Tears are no strangers to her eyes, but those
+which welled up at this moment seemed to possess a bitterness that
+promised but little peace for her future. Yet she quickly dried them and
+busied herself with ministrations for his comfort.
+
+If I am any judge of woman, Zulma Zabriskie is superior to most of her
+sex. That her husband mistrusts her is evident, but whether this is the
+result of the stand she has taken in his regard, or only a manifestation
+of dementia, I have as yet been unable to determine. I dread to leave
+them alone together, and yet when I presume to suggest that she should
+be on her guard in her interviews with him, she smiles very placidly and
+tells me that nothing would give her greater joy than to see him lift
+his hand against her, for that would argue that he is not accountable
+for his deeds or assertions.
+
+Yet it would be a grief to see her injured by this passionate and
+unhappy man.
+
+You have said that you wanted all the details I could give; so I feel
+bound to say that Dr. Zabriskie tries to be considerate of his wife,
+though he often fails in the attempt. When she offers herself as his
+guide, or assists him with his mail or performs any of the many acts of
+kindness by which she continually manifests her sense of his affliction,
+he thanks her with courtesy and often with kindness, yet I know she
+would willingly exchange all his set phrases for one fond embrace or
+impulsive smile of affection. It would be too much to say that he is
+not in the full possession of his faculties, and yet upon what other
+hypothesis can we account for the inconsistencies of his conduct?
+
+I have before me two visions of mental suffering. At noon I passed the
+office door, and looking within, saw the figure of Dr. Zabriskie seated
+in his great chair, lost in thought or deep in those memories which make
+an abyss in one's consciousness. His hands, which were clenched, rested
+upon the arms of his chair, and in one of them I detected a woman's
+glove, which I had no difficulty in recognizing as one of the pair worn
+by his wife this morning. He held it as a tiger might hold his prey or a
+miser his gold, but his set features and sightless eyes betrayed that a
+conflict of emotions was being waged within him, among which tenderness
+had but little share.
+
+Though alive as he usually is to every sound, he was too absorbed at
+this moment to notice my presence, though I had taken no pains to
+approach quietly. I therefore stood for a full minute watching him, till
+an irresistible sense of the shame at thus spying upon a blind man in
+his moments of secret anguish compelled me to withdraw. But not before I
+saw his features relax in a storm of passionate feeling, as he rained
+kisses after kisses on the senseless kid he had so long held in his
+motionless grasp. Yet when an hour later he entered the dining-room on
+his wife's arm, there was nothing in his manner to show that he had in
+any way changed in his attitude towards her.
+
+The other picture was more tragic still. I was seeking Mrs. Zabriskie in
+her own room, when I caught a fleeting vision of her tall form, with her
+arms thrown up over her head in a paroxysm of feeling which made her as
+oblivious to my presence as her husband had been several hours before.
+Were the words that escaped her lips "Thank God we have no children!"
+or was this exclamation suggested to me by the passion and unrestrained
+impulse of her action?
+
+So much up to date. Interesting enough, or so her employer seemed
+to think, as he went hurriedly through the whole story, one special
+afternoon in his office, tapping each sheet as he laid it aside with his
+sagacious forefinger, as though he would say, "Enough! My theory still
+holds good; nothing contradictory here; on the contrary complete and
+undisputable confirmation of the one and only explanation of this
+astounding crime."
+
+What was that theory; and in what way and through whose efforts had he
+been enabled to form one? The following notes may enlighten us. Though
+written in his own hand, and undoubtedly a memorandum of his own
+activities, he evidently thinks it worth while to reperuse them in
+connection with those he had just laid aside.
+
+We can do no better than read them also.
+
+We omit dates.
+
+Watched the Zabriskie mansion for five hours this morning, from the
+second story window of an adjoining hotel. Saw the doctor when he drove
+away on his round of visits, and saw him when he returned. A coloured
+man accompanied him.
+
+Today I followed Mrs. Zabriskie. She went first to a house in Washington
+Place where I am told her mother lives. Here she stayed some time, after
+which she drove down to Canal Street, where she did some shopping,
+and later stopped at the hospital, into which I took the liberty of
+following her. She seemed to know many there, and passed from cot to cot
+with a smile in which I alone discerned the sadness of a broken heart.
+When she left, I left also, without having learned anything beyond the
+fact that Mrs. Zabriskie is one who does her duty in sorrow as in joy.
+A rare, and trustworthy woman I should say, and yet her husband does not
+trust her. Why?
+
+I have spent this day in accumulating details in regard to Dr. and Mrs.
+Zabriskie's life previous to the death of Mr. Hasbrouck. I learned from
+sources it would be unwise to quote just here, that Mrs. Zabriskie had
+not lacked enemies to charge her with coquetry; that while she had never
+sacrificed her dignity in public, more than one person had been heard to
+declare that Dr. Zabriskie was fortunate in being blind, since the sight
+of his wife's beauty would have but poorly compensated him for the pain
+he would have suffered in seeing how that beauty was admired.
+
+That all gossip is more or less tinged with exaggeration I have no
+doubt, yet when a name is mentioned in connection with such stories,
+there is usually some truth at the bottom of them. And a name is
+mentioned in this case, though I do not think it worth my while to
+repeat it here; and loth as I am to recognize the fact, it is a name
+that carries with it doubts that might easily account for the husband's
+jealousy. True, I have found no one who dares hint that she still
+continues to attract attention or to bestow smiles in any direction save
+where they legally belong. For since a certain memorable night which
+we all know, neither Dr. Zabriskie nor his wife have been seen save
+in their own domestic circle, and it is not into such scenes that this
+serpent, to whom I have just alluded, ever intrudes, nor is it in
+places of sorrow or suffering that his smile shines, or his fascinations
+flourish.
+
+And so one portion of my theory is proved to be sound. Dr. Zabriskie is
+jealous of his wife; whether with good cause or bad I am not prepared to
+decide; since her present attitude, clouded as it is by the tragedy in
+which she and her husband are both involved, must differ very much
+from that which she held when her life was unshadowed by doubt, and her
+admirers could be counted by the score.
+
+I have just found out where Leonard is. As he is in service some miles
+up the river, I shall have to be absent from my post for several hours,
+but I consider the game well worth the candle.
+
+Light at last. I have not only seen Leonard, but succeeded in making
+him talk. His story is substantially this: That on the night so often
+mentioned, he packed his master's portmanteau at eight o'clock and at
+ten called a taxi and rode with the doctor to the Central station. He
+was told to buy tickets to Poughkeepsie where his master had been
+called in consultation, and having done this, hurried back to join Dr.
+Zabriskie on the platform. They had walked together as far as the cars,
+and Dr. Zabriskie was just stepping on to the train, when a man pushed
+himself hurriedly between them and whispered something into his master's
+ear, which caused him to fall back and lose his footing. Dr. Zabriskie's
+body slid half under the car, but he was withdrawn before any harm
+was done, though the cars gave a lurch at that moment which must have
+frightened him exceedingly, for his face was white when he rose to his
+feet, and when Leonard offered to assist him again on the train, he
+refused to go and said he would return home and not attempt to ride to
+Poughkeepsie that night.
+
+The gentleman, whom Leonard now saw to be Mr. Stanton, an intimate
+friend of Dr. Zabriskie, smiled very queerly at this, and taking the
+doctor's arm led him back to his own auto. Leonard naturally followed
+them, but the doctor, hearing his steps, turned and bade him, in a
+very peremptory tone, to take the cars home, and then, as if on second
+thought, told him to go to Poughkeepsie in his stead and explain to the
+people there that he was too shaken up by his misstep to do his duty,
+and that he would be with them next morning. This seemed strange to
+Leonard, but he had no reasons for disobeying his master's orders, and
+so rode to Poughkeepsie. But the doctor did not follow him the next day;
+on the contrary he telegraphed for him to return, and when he got back
+dismissed him with a month's wages. This ended Leonard's connection with
+the Zabriskie family.
+
+A simple story bearing out what the wife has already told us; but it
+furnishes a link which may prove invaluable. Mr. Stanton, whose first
+name is Theodore, knows the real reason why Dr. Zabriskie returned
+home on the night of the seventeenth of July, 19--. Mr. Stanton,
+consequently, is the man to see, and this shall be my business tomorrow.
+
+Checkmate! Theodore Stanton is not in this country. Though this points
+him out as the man from whom Dr. Zabriskie bought the pistol, it does
+not facilitate my work, which is becoming more and more difficult.
+
+Mr. Stanton's whereabouts are not even known to his most intimate
+friends. He sailed from this country most unexpectedly on the eighteenth
+of July a year ago, which was the day after the murder of Mr. Hasbrouck.
+It looks like a flight, especially as he has failed to maintain open
+communication even with his relatives. Was he the man who shot Mr.
+Hasbrouck? No; but he was the man who put the pistol in Dr. Zabriskie's
+hand that night, and whether he did this with purpose or not, was
+evidently so alarmed at the catastrophe which followed that he took the
+first outgoing steamer to Europe. So far, all is clear, but there are
+mysteries yet to be solved, which will require my utmost tact. What if I
+should seek out the gentleman with whose name that of Mrs. Zabriskie has
+been linked, and see if I can in any way connect him with Mr. Stanton or
+the events of that night.
+
+Eureka! I have discovered that Mr. Stanton cherished a mortal hatred
+for the gentleman above mentioned. It was a covert feeling, but no
+less deadly on that account; and while it never led him into any
+extravagances, it was of force sufficient to account for many a secret
+misfortune occurring to that gentleman. Now if I can prove that he is
+the Mephistopheles who whispered insinuations into the ear of our blind
+Faust, I may strike a fact that will lead me out of this maze.
+
+But how can I approach secrets so delicate without compromising the
+woman I feel bound to respect if only for the devoted love she manifests
+for her unhappy husband!
+
+I shall have to appeal to Joe Smithers. This is something which I always
+hate to do, but as long as he will take money, and as long as he is
+fertile in resources for obtaining the truth from people I am myself
+unable to reach, I must make use of his cupidity and his genius. He is
+an honourable fellow in one way, and never retails as gossip what he
+acquires for our use. How will he proceed in this case, and by what
+tactics will he gain the very delicate information which we need? I own
+that I am curious to see.
+
+I shall really have to put down at length the incidents of this night.
+I always knew that Joe Smithers was invaluable not only to myself but to
+the police, but I really did not know he possessed talents of so high
+an order. He wrote me this morning that he had succeeded in getting Mr.
+T--'s promise to spend the evening with him, and advised me that if I
+desired to be present as well, his own servant would not be at home, and
+that an opener of bottles would be required.
+
+As I was very anxious to see Mr. T---- with my own eyes, I accepted
+this invitation to play the spy, and went at the proper hour to Mr.
+Smithers's rooms. I found them picturesque in the extreme. Piles of
+books stacked here and there to the ceiling made nooks and corners which
+could be quite shut off by a couple of old pictures set into movable
+frames capable of swinging out or in at the whim or convenience of the
+owner.
+
+As I had use for the dark shadows cast by these pictures, I pulled
+them both out, and made such other arrangements as appeared likely to
+facilitate the purpose I had in view; then I sat down and waited for the
+two gentlemen who were expected to come in together.
+
+They arrived almost immediately, whereupon I rose and played my part
+with all necessary discretion. While ridding Mr. T---- of his overcoat,
+I stole a look at his face. It is not a handsome one, but it boasts of
+a gay, devil-may-care expression which doubtless makes it dangerous to
+many women, while his manners are especially attractive, and his voice
+the richest and most persuasive that I ever heard. I contrasted him,
+almost against my will, with Dr. Zabriskie, and decided that with most
+women the former's undoubted fascinations of speech and bearing would
+outweigh the latter's great beauty and mental endowments; but I doubted
+if they would with her.
+
+The conversation which immediately began was brilliant but desultory,
+for Mr. Smithers, with an airy lightness for which he is remarkable,
+introduced topic after topic, perhaps for the purpose of showing off Mr.
+T-'s versatility, and perhaps for the deeper and more sinister purpose
+of shaking the kaleidoscope of talk so thoroughly, that the real topic
+which we were met to discuss should not make an undue impression on the
+mind of his guest.
+
+Meanwhile one, two, three bottles passed, and I had the pleasure
+of seeing Joe Smithers's eye grow calmer and that of Mr. T---- more
+brilliant and more uncertain. As the last bottle was being passed, Joe
+cast me a meaning glance, and the real business of the evening began.
+
+I shall not attempt to relate the half dozen failures which Joe made in
+endeavouring to elicit the facts we were in search of, without arousing
+the suspicion of his visitor. I am only going to relate the successful
+attempt. They had been talking now for some hours, and I, who had long
+before been waved aside from their immediate presence, was hiding my
+curiosity and growing excitement behind one of the pictures, when I
+suddenly heard Joe say:
+
+"He has the most remarkable memory I ever met. He can tell to a day when
+any notable event occurred."
+
+"Pshaw!" answered his companion, who, by the way, was known to pride
+himself upon his own memory for dates, "I can state where I went and
+what I did on every day in the year. That may not embrace what you call
+'notable events,' but the memory required is all the more remarkable, is
+it not?"
+
+"Pooh!" was his friend's provoking reply, "you are bluffing, Ben; I will
+never believe that."
+
+Mr. T-, who had passed by this time into that stage of intoxication
+which makes persistence in an assertion a duty as well as a pleasure,
+threw back his head, and as the wreaths of smoke rose in airy spirals
+from his lips, reiterated his statement, and offered to submit to any
+test of his vaunted powers which the other might dictate.
+
+"You keep a diary--" began Joe.
+
+"Which at the present moment is at home," completed the other.
+
+"Will you allow me to refer to it tomorrow, if I am suspicious of the
+accuracy of your recollections?"
+
+"Undoubtedly," returned the other.
+
+"Very well, then, I will wager you a cool fifty that you cannot tell
+where you were between the hours of ten and eleven on a certain night
+which I will name."
+
+"Done!" cried the other, bringing out his pocket-book and laying it on
+the table before him.
+
+Joe followed his example and then summoned me.
+
+"Write a date down here," he commanded, pushing a piece of paper towards
+me, with a look keen as the flash of a blade. "Any date, man," he added,
+as I appeared to hesitate in the embarrassment I thought natural under
+the circumstances. "Put down day, month, and year, only don't go too far
+back; not farther than two years."
+
+Smiling with the air of a flunkey admitted to the sports of his
+superiors, I wrote a line and laid it before Mr. Smithers, who at once
+pushed it with a careless gesture towards his companion. You can of
+course guess the date I made use of: July 17, 19--. Mr. T--, who had
+evidently looked upon this matter as mere play, flushed scarlet as he
+read these words, and for one instant looked as if he had rather fly the
+house than answer Joe Smithers's nonchalant glance of inquiry.
+
+"I have given my word and will keep it," he said at last, but with a
+look in my direction that sent me reluctantly back to my retreat. "I
+don't suppose you want names," he went on; "that is, if anything I have
+to tell is of a delicate nature?"
+
+"Oh, no," answered the other, "only facts and places."
+
+"I don't think places are necessary either," he returned. "I will tell
+you what I did and that must serve you. I did not promise to give number
+and street."
+
+"Well, well," Joe exclaimed; "earn your fifty, that is all. Show that
+you remember where you were on the night of"--and with an admirable show
+of indifference he pretended to consult the paper between them--"the
+seventeenth of July, two years ago, and I shall be satisfied."
+
+"I was at the club for one thing," said Mr. T-; "then I went to see a
+lady friend, where I stayed until eleven. She wore a blue muslin--What
+is that?"
+
+I had betrayed myself by a quick movement which sent a glass tumbler
+crashing to the floor. Zulma Zabriskie had worn a blue muslin on
+that same night. You will find it noted in the report given me by the
+policeman who saw her on their balcony.
+
+"That noise?" It was Joe who was speaking. "You don't know Reuben as
+well as I do or you wouldn't ask. It is his practice, I am sorry to say,
+to accentuate his pleasure in draining my bottles by dropping a glass at
+every third one."
+
+Mr. T---- went on.
+
+"She was a married woman and I thought she loved me; but--and this is
+the greatest proof I can offer you that I am giving you a true account
+of that night--she had not the slightest idea of the extent of my
+passion, and only consented to see me at all because she thought,
+poor thing, that a word from her would set me straight, and rid her
+of attentions she evidently failed to appreciate. A sorry figure for a
+fellow like me to cut; but you caught me on the most detestable date in
+my calendar and--"
+
+There he ceased being interesting and I anxious. The secret of a crime
+for which there seemed to be no reasonable explanation is no longer a
+mystery to me. I have but to warn Miss Strange--
+
+He had got thus far when a sound in the room behind him led him to look
+up. A lady had entered; a lady heavily veiled and trembling with what
+appeared to be an intense excitement.
+
+He thought he knew the figure, but the person, whoever it was, stood so
+still and remained so silent, he hesitated to address her; which seeing,
+she pushed up her veil and all doubt vanished.
+
+It was Violet herself. In disregard of her usual practice she had
+come alone to the office. This meant urgency of some kind. Had she too
+sounded this mystery? No, or her aspect would not have worn this look
+of triumph. What had happened then? He made an instant endeavour to find
+out.
+
+"You have news," he quietly remarked. "Good news, I should judge, by
+your very cheery smile."
+
+"Yes; I think I have found the way of bringing Dr. Zabriskie to
+himself."
+
+Astonished beyond measure, so little did these words harmonize with the
+impressions and conclusions at which he had just arrived, something
+very like doubt spoke in his voice as he answered with the simple
+exclamation:
+
+"You do!"
+
+"Yes. He is obsessed by a fixed idea, and must be given an opportunity
+to test the truth of that idea. The shock of finding it a false one
+may restore him to his normal condition. He believes that he shot Mr.
+Hasbrouck with no other guidance than his sense of hearing. Now if it
+can be proved that his hearing is an insufficient guide for such an act
+(as of course it is) the shock of the discovery may clear his brain of
+its cobwebs. Mrs. Zabriskie thinks so, and the police--"
+
+"What's that? The police?"
+
+"Yes, Dr. Zabriskie would be taken before them again this morning. No
+entreaties on the part of his wife would prevail; he insisted upon his
+guilt and asked her to accompany him there; and the poor woman found
+herself forced to go. Of course he encountered again the same division
+of opinion among the men he talked with. Three out of the four judged
+him insane, which observing, he betrayed great agitation and reiterated
+his former wish to be allowed an opportunity to prove his sanity
+by showing his skill in shooting. This made an impression; and a
+disposition was shown to grant his request then and there. But Mrs.
+Zabriskie would not listen to this. She approved of the experiment but
+begged that it might be deferred till another day and then take place in
+some spot remote from the city. For some reason they heeded her, and
+she has just telephoned me that this attempt of his is to take place
+tomorrow in the New Jersey woods. I am sorry that this should have been
+put through without you; and when I tell you that the idea originated
+with me--that from some word I purposely let fall one day, they both
+conceived this plan of ending the uncertainty that was devouring their
+lives, you will understand my excitement and the need I have of your
+support. Tell me that I have done well. Do not show me such a face--you
+frighten me--"
+
+"I do not wish to frighten you. I merely wish to know just who are going
+on this expedition."
+
+"Some members of the police, Dr. Zabriskie, his wife, and--and myself.
+She begged--"
+
+"You must not go."
+
+"Why? The affair is to be kept secret. The doctor will shoot, fail--Oh!"
+she suddenly broke in, alarmed by his expression, "you think he will not
+fail--"
+
+"I think that you had better heed my advice and stay out of it. The
+affair is now in the hands of the police, and your place is anywhere but
+where they are."
+
+"But I go as her particular friend. They have given her the privilege
+of taking with her one of her own sex and she has chosen me. I shall not
+fail her. Father is away, and if the awful disappointment you suggest
+awaits her, there is all the more reason why she should have some
+sympathetic support?"
+
+This was so true, that the fresh protest he was about to utter died on
+his lips. Instead, he simply remarked as he bowed her out:
+
+"I foresee that we shall not work much longer together. You are nearing
+the end of your endurance."
+
+He never forgot the smile she threw back at him.
+
+V
+
+There are some events which impress the human mind so deeply that their
+memory mingles with all after-experiences. Though Violet had made it a
+rule to forget as soon as possible the tragic episodes incident to the
+strange career upon which she had so mysteriously embarked, there was
+destined to be one scene, if not more, which she has never been able to
+dismiss at will.
+
+This was the sight which met her eyes from the bow of the small boat
+in which Dr. Zabriskie and his wife were rowed over to Jersey on the
+afternoon which saw the end of this most sombre drama.
+
+Though it was by no means late in the day, the sun was already sinking,
+and the bright red glare which filled the west and shone full upon
+the faces of the half dozen people before her added much to the tragic
+nature of the scene, though she was far from comprehending its full
+significance.
+
+The doctor sat with his wife in the stern and it was upon their faces
+Violet's glance was fixed. The glare shone luridly on his sightless
+eyeballs, and as she noticed his unwinking lids, she realized as never
+before what it was to be blind in the midst of sunshine. His wife's
+eyes, on the contrary, were lowered, but there was a look of hopeless
+misery in her colourless face which made her appearance infinitely
+pathetic, and Violet felt confident that if he could only have seen
+her, he would not have maintained the cold and unresponsive manner which
+chilled the words on his poor wife's lips and made all advance on her
+part impossible.
+
+On the seat in front of them sat an inspector and from some quarter,
+possibly from under the inspector's coat, there came the monotonous
+ticking of the small clock, which was to serve as a target for the blind
+man's aim.
+
+This ticking was all Violet heard, though the river was alive with
+traffic and large and small boats were steaming by them on every side.
+And I am sure it was all that Mrs. Zabriskie heard also, as with hand
+pressed to her heart, and eyes fixed on the opposite shore, she waited
+for the event which was to determine whether the man she loved was a
+criminal or only a being afflicted of God and worthy of her unceasing
+care and devotion.
+
+As the sun cast its last scarlet gleam over the water, the boat
+grounded, and Violet was enabled to have one passing word with Mrs.
+Zabriskie. She hardly knew what she said but the look she received in
+return was like that of a frightened child.
+
+But there was always to be seen in Mrs. Zabriskie's countenance this
+characteristic blending of the severe and the childlike, and beyond an
+added pang of pity for this beautiful but afflicted woman, Violet let
+the moment pass without giving it the weight it perhaps demanded.
+
+"The doctor and his wife had a long talk last night," was whispered in
+her ear as she wound her way with the rest into the heart of the woods.
+With a start she turned and perceived her employer following close
+behind her. He had come by another boat.
+
+"But it did not seem to heal whatever breach lies between them," he
+proceeded. Then, in a quick, anxious tone, he whispered: "Whatever
+happens, do not lift your veil. I thought I saw a reporter skulking in
+the rear."
+
+"I will be careful," Violet assured him, and could say no more, as they
+had already reached the ground which had been selected for this trial
+at arms, and the various members of the party were being placed in their
+several positions.
+
+The doctor, to whom light and darkness were alike, stood with his face
+towards the western glow, and at his side were grouped the inspector and
+the two physicians. On the arm of one of the latter hung Dr. Zabriskie's
+overcoat, which he had taken off as soon as he reached the field.
+
+Mrs. Zabriskie stood at the other end of the opening near a tall stump,
+upon which it had been decided that the clock should be placed when the
+moment came for the doctor to show his skill. She had been accorded the
+privilege of setting the clock on this stump, and Violet saw it shining
+in her hand as she paused for a moment to glance back at the circle of
+gentlemen who were awaiting her movements. The hands of the clock stood
+at five minutes to five, though Violet scarcely noted it at the time,
+for Mrs. Zabriskie was passing her and had stopped to say:
+
+"If he is not himself, he cannot be trusted. Watch him carefully and see
+that he does no mischief to himself or others. Ask one of the inspectors
+to stand at his right hand, and stop him if he does not handle his
+pistol properly."
+
+Violet promised, and she passed on, setting the clock upon the stump and
+immediately drawing back to a suitable distance at the right, where she
+stood, wrapped in her long dark cloak. Her face shone ghastly white,
+even in its environment of snow-covered boughs, and noting this, Violet
+wished the minutes fewer between the present moment and the hour of
+five, at which time he was to draw the trigger.
+
+"Dr. Zabriskie," quoth the inspector, "we have endeavoured to make this
+trial a perfectly fair one. You are to have a shot at a small clock
+which has been placed within a suitable distance, and which you are
+expected to hit, guided only by the sound which it will make in striking
+the hour of five. Are you satisfied with the arrangement?"
+
+"Perfectly. Where is my wife?"
+
+"On the other side of the field some ten paces from the stump upon which
+the clock is fixed." He bowed, and his face showed satisfaction.
+
+"May I expect the clock to strike soon?"
+
+"In less than five minutes," was the answer.
+
+"Then let me have the pistol; I wish to become acquainted with its size
+and weight."
+
+We glanced at each other, then across at her.
+
+She made a gesture; it was one of acquiescence.
+
+Immediately the inspector placed the weapon in the blind man's hand.
+It was at once apparent that he understood the instrument, and Violet's
+hopes which had been strong up to this moment, sank at his air of
+confidence.
+
+"Thank God I am blind this hour and cannot see her," fell from his lips,
+then, before the echo of these words had died away, he raised his voice
+and observed calmly enough, considering that he was about to prove
+himself a criminal in order to save himself from being thought a madman:
+
+"Let no one move. I must have my ears free for catching the first stroke
+of the clock." And he raised the pistol before him.
+
+There was a moment of torturing suspense and deep, unbroken silence.
+Violet's eyes were on him so she did not watch the clock, but she was
+suddenly moved by some irresistible impulse to note how Mrs. Zabriskie
+was bearing herself at this critical moment, and casting a hurried
+glance in her direction she perceived her tall figure swaying from side
+to side, as if under an intolerable strain of feeling. Her eyes were on
+the clock, the hands of which seemed to creep with snail-like pace along
+the dial, when unexpectedly, and a full minute before the minute hand
+had reached the stroke of five, Violet caught a movement on her part,
+saw the flash of something round and white show for an instant against
+the darkness of her cloak, and was about to shriek warning to the
+doctor, when the shrill, quick stroke of a clock rang out on the frosty
+air, followed by the ping and flash of a pistol.
+
+A sound of shattered glass, followed by a suppressed cry, told the
+bystanders that the bullet had struck the mark, but before any one could
+move, or they could rid their eyes of the smoke which the wind had blown
+into their faces, there came another sound which made their hair stand
+on end and sent the blood back in terror to their hearts. Another clock
+was striking, which they now perceived was still standing upright on the
+stump where Mrs. Zabriskie had placed it.
+
+Whence came the clock, then, which had struck before the time and been
+shattered for its pains? One quick look told them. On the ground, ten
+paces to the right, lay Zulma Zabriskie, a broken clock at her side, and
+in her breast a bullet which was fast sapping the life from her sweet
+eyes.
+
+They had to tell him, there was such pleading in her looks; and never
+will any of the hearers forget the scream which rang from his lips as
+he realized the truth. Breaking from their midst, he rushed forward, and
+fell at her feet as if guided by some supernatural instinct.
+
+"Zulma," he shrieked, "what is this? Were not my hands dyed deep enough
+in blood that you should make me answerable for your life also?"
+
+Her eyes were closed but she opened them. Looking long and steadily at
+his agonized face, she faltered forth:
+
+"It is not you who have killed me; it is your crime. Had you been
+innocent of Mr. Hasbrouck's death your bullet would never have found my
+heart. Did you think I could survive the proof that you had killed that
+good man?"
+
+"I did it unwittingly. I--"
+
+"Hush!" she commanded, with an awful look, which happily he could not
+see. "I had another motive. I wished to prove to you, even at the cost
+of my life, that I loved you, had always loved you, and not--"
+
+It was now his turn to silence her. His hand crept to her lips, and his
+despairing face turned itself blindly towards those about them.
+
+"Go!" he cried; "leave us! Let me take a last farewell of my dying wife,
+without listeners or spectators."
+
+Consulting the eye of her employer who stood close beside her, and
+seeing no hope in it, Violet fell slowly back. The others, followed, and
+the doctor was left alone with his wife. From the distant position
+they took, they saw her arms creep round his neck, saw her head fall
+confidingly on his breast, then silence settled upon them, and upon all
+nature, the gathering twilight deepening, till the last glow disappeared
+from the heavens above and from the circle of leafless trees which
+enclosed this tragedy from the outside world.
+
+But at last there came a stir, and Dr. Zabriskie, rising up before them
+with the dead body of his wife held closely to his breast, confronted
+them with a countenance so rapturous that he looked like a man
+transfigured.
+
+"I will carry her to the boat," said he. "Not another hand shall
+touch her. She was my true wife, my true wife!" And he towered into an
+attitude of such dignity and passion that for a moment he took on heroic
+proportions and they forgot that he had just proved himself to have
+committed a cold-blooded and ghastly crime.
+
+The stars were shining when the party again took their seats in the
+boat; and if the scene of their crossing to Jersey was impressive, what
+shall be said of the return?
+
+The doctor, as before, sat in the stern, an awesome figure, upon which
+the moon shone with a white radiance that seemed to lift his face out
+of the surrounding darkness and set it like an image of frozen horror
+before their eyes. Against his breast he held the form of his dead wife,
+and now and then Violet saw him stoop as if he were listening for some
+token of life from her set lips. Then he would lift himself again with
+hopelessness stamped upon his features, only to lean forward in renewed
+hope that was again destined to disappointment.
+
+Violet had been so overcome by this tragic end to all her hopes, that
+her employer had been allowed to enter the boat with her. Seated at her
+side in the seat directly in front of the doctor, he watched with
+her these simple tokens of a breaking heart, saying nothing till they
+reached midstream, when true to his instincts for all his awe and
+compassion, he suddenly bent towards him and said:
+
+"Dr. Zabriskie, the mystery of your crime is no longer a mystery to me.
+Listen and see if I do not understand your temptation, and how you, a
+conscientious and God-fearing man, came to slay your innocent neighbour.
+
+"A friend of yours, or so he called himself, had for a long time filled
+your ears with tales tending to make you suspicious of your wife and
+jealous of a certain man whom I will not name. You knew that your friend
+had a grudge against this man, and so for many months turned a deaf ear
+to his insinuations. But finally some change which you detected in your
+wife's bearing or conversation roused your own suspicions, and you
+began to doubt her truth and to curse your blindness, which in a measure
+rendered you helpless. The jealous fever grew and had risen to a high
+point when one night--a memorable night--this friend met you just as you
+were leaving town, and with cruel craft whispered in your ear that the
+man you hated was even then with your wife and that if you would return
+at once to your home you would find him in her company.
+
+"The demon that lurks at the heart of all men, good or bad, thereupon
+took complete possession of you, and you answered this false friend by
+saying that you would not return without a pistol. Whereupon he offered
+to take you to his house and give you his. You consented, and getting
+rid of your servant by sending him to Poughkeepsie with your excuses,
+you entered your friend's automobile.
+
+"You say you bought the pistol, and perhaps you did, but, however
+that may be, you left his house with it in your pocket, and declining
+companionship, walked home, arriving at the Colonnade a little before
+midnight.
+
+"Ordinarily you have no difficulty in recognizing your own doorstep.
+But, being in a heated frame of mind, you walked faster than usual and
+so passed your own house and stopped at that of Mr. Hasbrouck, one door
+beyond. As the entrances of these houses are all alike, there was but
+one way by which you could have made yourself sure that you had reached
+your own dwelling, and that was by feeling for the doctor's sign at the
+side of the door. But you never thought of that. Absorbed in dreams
+of vengeance, your sole impulse was to enter by the quickest means
+possible. Taking out your night key, you thrust it into the lock. It
+fitted, but it took strength to turn it, so much strength that the key
+was twisted and bent by the effort. But this incident, which would have
+attracted your attention at another time, was lost upon you at this
+moment. An entrance had been effected, and you were in too excited a
+frame of mind to notice at what cost, or to detect the small differences
+apparent in the atmosphere and furnishings of the two houses, trifles
+which would have arrested your attention under other circumstances, and
+made you pause before the upper floor had been reached.
+
+"It was while going up the stairs that you took out your pistol, so that
+by the time you arrived at the front room door you held it already drawn
+and cocked in your hand. For, being blind, you feared escape on the part
+of your victim, and so waited for nothing but the sound of a man's voice
+before firing. When, therefore, the unfortunate Mr. Hasbrouck, roused by
+this sudden intrusion, advanced with an exclamation of astonishment,
+you pulled the trigger, and killed him on the spot. It must have been
+immediately upon his fall that you recognized from some word he uttered,
+or from some contact you may have had with your surroundings, that you
+were in the wrong house and had killed the wrong man; for you cried
+out, in evident remorse, 'God! what have I done!' and fled without
+approaching your victim.
+
+"Descending the stairs, you rushed from the house, closing the front
+door behind you and regaining your own without being seen. But here you
+found yourself baffled in your attempted escape, by two things. First,
+by the pistol you still held in your hand, and secondly, by the fact
+that the key upon which you depended for entering your own door was
+so twisted out of shape that you knew it would be useless for you to
+attempt to use it. What did you do in this emergency? You have already
+told us, though the story seemed so improbable at the time, you found
+nobody to believe it but myself. The pistol you flung far away from
+you down the pavement, from which, by one of those rare chances which
+sometimes happen in this world, it was presently picked up by some late
+passer-by of more or less doubtful character. The door offered less
+of an obstacle than you had anticipated; for when you turned again you
+found it, if I am not greatly mistaken, ajar, left so, as we have reason
+to believe, by one who had gone out of it but a few minutes before in a
+state which left him but little master of his actions. It was this fact
+which provided you with an answer when you were asked how you succeeded
+in getting into Mr. Hasbrouck's house after the family had retired for
+the night.
+
+"Astonished at the coincidence, but hailing with gladness the
+deliverance which it offered, you went in and ascended at once into your
+wife's presence; and it was from her lips, and not from those of Mrs.
+Hasbrouck, that the cry arose which startled the neighbourhood and
+prepared men's minds for the tragic words which were shouted a moment
+later from the next house.
+
+"But she who uttered the scream knew of no tragedy save that which
+was taking place in her own breast. She had just repulsed a dastardly
+suitor, and seeing you enter so unexpectedly in a state of unaccountable
+horror and agitation, was naturally stricken with dismay, and thought
+she saw your ghost, or what was worse, a possible avenger; while you,
+having failed to kill the man you sought, and having killed a man
+you esteemed, let no surprise on her part lure you into any dangerous
+self-betrayal. You strove instead to soothe her, and even attempted to
+explain the excitement under which you laboured, by an account of your
+narrow escape at the station, till the sudden alarm from next door
+distracted her attention, and sent both your thoughts and hers in a
+different direction. Not till conscience had fully awakened and the
+horror of your act had had time to tell upon your sensitive nature, did
+you breathe forth those vague confessions, which, not being supported by
+the only explanations which would have made them credible, led her, as
+well as the police, to consider you affected in your mind. Your pride as
+a man and your consideration for her as a woman kept you silent, but did
+not keep the worm from preying upon your heart.
+
+"Am I not correct in my surmises, Dr. Zabriskie, and is not this the
+true explanation of your crime?"
+
+With a strange look, he lifted up his face.
+
+"Hush!" said he; "you will waken her. See how peacefully she sleeps! I
+should not like to have her wakened now, she is so tired, and I--I have
+not watched over her as I should."
+
+Appalled at his gesture, his look, his tone, Violet drew back, and for a
+few minutes no sound was to be heard but the steady dip-dip of the oars
+and the lap-lap of the waters against the boat. Then there came a
+quick uprising, the swaying before her of something dark and tall and
+threatening, and before she could speak or move, or even stretch forth
+her hands to stay him, the seat before her was empty and darkness had
+filled the place where but an instant previous he had sat, a fearsome
+figure, erect and rigid as a sphinx.
+
+What little moonlight there was, only served to show a few rising
+bubbles, marking the spot where the unfortunate man had sunk with his
+much-loved burden. As the widening circles fled farther and farther out,
+the tide drifted the boat away, and the spot was lost which had seen the
+termination of one of earth's saddest tragedies.
+
+END OF PROBLEM VII
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM VIII. MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN
+
+"One more! just one more well paying affair, and I promise to stop;
+really and truly to stop."
+
+"But, Puss, why one more? You have earned the amount you set for
+yourself,--or very nearly,--and though my help is not great, in three
+months I can add enough--"
+
+"No, you cannot, Arthur. You are doing well; I appreciate it; in fact,
+I am just delighted to have you work for me in the way you do, but you
+cannot, in your present position, make enough in three months, or in
+six, to meet the situation as I see it. Enough does not satisfy me.
+The measure must be full, heaped up, and running over. Possible failure
+following promise must be provided for. Never must I feel myself called
+upon to do this kind of thing again. Besides, I have never got over the
+Zabriskie tragedy. It haunts me continually. Something new may help to
+put it out of my head. I feel guilty. I was responsible--"
+
+"No, Puss. I will not have it that you were responsible. Some such end
+was bound to follow a complication like that. Sooner or later he would
+have been driven to shoot himself--"
+
+"But not her."
+
+"No, not her. But do you think she would have given those few minutes
+of perfect understanding with her blind husband for a few years more of
+miserable life?"
+
+Violet made no answer; she was too absorbed in her surprise. Was this
+Arthur? Had a few weeks' work and a close connection with the really
+serious things of life made this change in him? Her face beamed at the
+thought, which seeing, but not understanding what underlay this evidence
+of joy, he bent and kissed her, saying with some of his old nonchalance:
+
+"Forget it, Violet; only don't let any one or anything lead you to
+interest yourself in another affair of the kind. If you do, I shall have
+to consult a certain friend of yours as to the best way of stopping this
+folly. I mention no names. Oh! you need not look so frightened. Only
+behave; that's all."
+
+"He's right," she acknowledged to herself, as he sauntered away;
+"altogether right."
+
+Yet because she wanted the extra money--
+
+The scene invited alarm,--that is, for so young a girl as Violet,
+surveying it from an automobile some time after the stroke of midnight.
+An unknown house at the end of a heavily shaded walk, in the open
+doorway of which could be seen the silhouette of a woman's form leaning
+eagerly forward with arms outstretched in an appeal for help! It
+vanished while she looked, but the effect remained, holding her to
+her seat for one startled moment. This seemed strange, for she had
+anticipated adventure. One is not summoned from a private ball to ride a
+dozen miles into the country on an errand of investigation, without some
+expectation of encountering the mysterious and the tragic. But Violet
+Strange, for all her many experiences, was of a most susceptible nature,
+and for the instant in which that door stood open, with only the memory
+of that expectant figure to disturb the faintly lit vista of the
+hall beyond, she felt that grip upon the throat which comes from an
+indefinable fear which no words can explain and no plummet sound.
+
+But this soon passed. With the setting of her foot to ground, conditions
+changed and her emotions took on a more normal character. The figure of
+a man now stood in the place held by the vanished woman; and it was not
+only that of one she knew but that of one whom she trusted--a friend
+whose very presence gave her courage. With this recognition came a
+better understanding of the situation, and it was with a beaming eye and
+unclouded features that she tripped up the walk to meet the expectant
+figure and outstretched hand of Roger Upjohn.
+
+"You here!" she exclaimed, amid smiles and blushes, as he drew her into
+the hall.
+
+He at once launched forth into explanations mingled with apologies for
+the presumption he had shown in putting her to this inconvenience. There
+was trouble in the house--great trouble. Something had occurred for
+which an explanation must be found before morning, or the happiness
+and honour of more than one person now under this unhappy roof would be
+wrecked. He knew it was late--that she had been obliged to take a long
+and dreary ride alone, but her success with the problem which had once
+come near wrecking his own life had emboldened him to telephone to the
+office and--"But you are in ball-dress," he cried in amazement. "Did you
+think--"
+
+"I came from a ball. Word reached me between the dances. I did not go
+home. I had been bidden to hurry."
+
+He looked his appreciation, but when he spoke it was to say:
+
+"This is the situation. Miss Digby--"
+
+"The lady who is to be married tomorrow?"
+
+"Who hopes to be married tomorrow."
+
+"How, hopes?"
+
+"Who will be married tomorrow, if a certain article lost in this house
+tonight can be found before any of the persons who have been dining here
+leave for their homes."
+
+Violet uttered an exclamation.
+
+"Then, Mr. Cornell," she began--
+
+"Mr. Cornell has our utmost confidence," Roger hastened to interpose.
+"But the article missing is one which he might reasonably desire
+to possess and which he alone of all present had the opportunity of
+securing. You can therefore see why he, with his pride--the pride off
+a man not rich, engaged to marry a woman who is--should declare that
+unless his innocence is established before daybreak, the doors of St.
+Bartholomew will remain shut to-morrow."
+
+"But the article lost--what is it?"
+
+"Miss Digby will give you the particulars. She is waiting to receive
+you," he added with a gesture towards a half-open door at their right.
+
+Violet glanced that way, then cast her looks up and down the hall in
+which they stood.
+
+"Do you know that you have not told me in whose house I am? Not hers, I
+know. She lives in the city."
+
+"And you are twelve miles from Harlem. Miss Strange, you are in the Van
+Broecklyn mansion, famous enough you will acknowledge. Have you never
+been here before?"
+
+"I have been by here, but I recognized nothing in the dark. What an
+exciting place for an investigation!"
+
+"And Mr. Van Broecklyn? Have you never met him?"
+
+"Once, when a child. He frightened me then."
+
+"And may frighten you now; though I doubt it. Time has mellowed him.
+Besides, I have prepared him for what might otherwise occasion him some
+astonishment. Naturally he would not look for just the sort of lady
+investigator I am about to introduce to him."
+
+She smiled. Violet Strange was a very charming young woman, as well as a
+keen prober of odd mysteries.
+
+The meeting between herself and Miss Digby was a sympathetic one. After
+the first inevitable shock which the latter felt at sight of the beauty
+and fashionable appearance of the mysterious little being who was to
+solve her difficulties, her glance, which, under other circumstances,
+might have lingered unduly upon the piquant features and exquisite
+dressing of the fairy-like figure before her, passed at once to Violet's
+eyes, in whose steady depths beamed an intelligence quite at odds with
+the coquettish dimples which so often misled the casual observer in his
+estimation of a character singularly subtle and well-poised.
+
+As for the impression she herself made upon Violet, it was the same she
+made upon everyone. No one could look long at Florence Digby and not
+recognize the loftiness of her spirit and the generous nature of her
+impulses. In person she was tall and as she leaned to take Violet's
+hand, the difference between them brought out the salient points in
+each, to the great admiration of the one onlooker.
+
+Meantime, for all her interest in the case in hand, Violet could not
+help casting a hurried look about her, in gratification of the curiosity
+incited by her entrance into a house signalized from its foundation by
+such a series of tragic events. The result was disappointing. The walls
+were plain, the furniture simple. Nothing suggestive in either, unless
+it was the fact that nothing was new, nothing modern. As it looked in
+the days of Burr and Hamilton so it looked to-day, even to the rather
+startling detail of candles which did duty on every side in place of
+gas.
+
+As Violet recalled the reason for this, the fascination of the past
+seized upon her imagination. There was no knowing where this might have
+carried her, had not the feverish gleam in Miss Digby's eyes warned
+her that the present held its own excitement. Instantly, she was all
+attention and listening with undivided mind to that lady's disclosures.
+
+They were brief and to the following effect:
+
+The dinner which had brought some half-dozen people together in this
+house had been given in celebration of her impending marriage. But it
+was also in a way meant as a compliment to one of the other guests, a
+Mr. Spielhagen, who, during the week, had succeeded in demonstrating to
+a few experts the value of a discovery he had made which would transform
+a great industry.
+
+In speaking of this discovery, Miss Digby did not go into particulars,
+the whole matter being far beyond her understanding; but in stating its
+value she openly acknowledged that it was in the line of Mr. Cornell's
+own work, and one which involved calculations and a formula which, if
+prematurely disclosed, would invalidate the contract Mr. Spielhagen
+hoped to make, and thus destroy his present hopes.
+
+Of this formula but two copies existed. One was locked up in a safe
+deposit vault in Boston, the other he had brought into the house on
+his person, and it was the latter which was now missing, having been
+abstracted during the evening from a manuscript of sixteen or more
+sheets, under circumstances which she would now endeavour to relate.
+
+Mr. Van Broecklyn, their host, had in his melancholy life but one
+interest which could be at all absorbing. This was for explosives.
+As consequence, much of the talk at the dinner-table had been on Mr.
+Spielhagen's discovery, and possible changes it might introduce into
+this especial industry. As these, worked out from a formula kept secret
+from the trade, could not but affect greatly Mr. Cornell's interests,
+she found herself listening intently, when Mr. Van Broecklyn, with an
+apology for his interference, ventured to remark that if Mr. Spielhagen
+had made a valuable discovery in this line, so had he, and one which he
+had substantiated by many experiments. It was not a marketable one, such
+as Mr. Spielhagen's was, but in his work upon the same, and in the tests
+which he had been led to make, he had discovered certain instances
+he would gladly name, which demanded exceptional procedure to be
+successful. If Mr. Spielhagen's method did not allow for these
+exceptions, nor make suitable provision for them, then Mr. Spielhagen's
+method would fail more times than it would succeed. Did it so allow and
+so provide? It would relieve him greatly to learn that it did.
+
+The answer came quickly. Yes, it did. But later and after some further
+conversation, Mr. Spielhagen's confidence seemed to wane, and before
+they left the dinner-table, he openly declared his intention of looking
+over his manuscript again that very night, in order to be sure that the
+formula therein contained duly covered all the exceptions mentioned by
+Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+
+If Mr. Cornell's countenance showed any change at this moment, she for
+one had not noticed it; but the bitterness with which he remarked upon
+the other's good fortune in having discovered this formula of whose
+entire success he had no doubt, was apparent to everybody, and naturally
+gave point to the circumstances which a short time afterward associated
+him with the disappearance of the same.
+
+The ladies (there were two others besides herself) having withdrawn in
+a body to the music-room, the gentlemen all proceeded to the library to
+smoke. Here, conversation loosed from the one topic which had hitherto
+engrossed it, was proceeding briskly, when Mr. Spielhagen, with nervous
+gesture, impulsively looked about him and said:
+
+"I cannot rest till I have run through my thesis again. Where can I find
+a quiet spot? I won't be long; I read very rapidly."
+
+It was for Mr. Van Broecklyn to answer, but no word coming from him,
+every eye turned his way, only to find him sunk in one of those fits of
+abstraction so well known to his friends, and from which no one who has
+this strange man's peace of mind at heart ever presumes to rouse him.
+
+What was to be done? These moods of their singular host sometimes lasted
+half an hour, and Mr. Spielhagen had not the appearance of a man of
+patience. Indeed he presently gave proof of the great uneasiness he was
+labouring under, for noticing a door standing ajar on the other side of
+the room, he remarked to those around him:
+
+"A den! and lighted! Do you see any objection to my shutting myself in
+there for a few minutes?"
+
+No one venturing to reply, he rose, and giving a slight push to the
+door, disclosed a small room exquisitely panelled and brightly lighted,
+but without one article of furniture in it, not even a chair.
+
+"The very place," quoth Mr. Spielhagen, and lifting a light
+cane-bottomed chair from the many standing about, he carried it inside
+and shut the door behind him.
+
+Several minutes passed during which the man who had served at table
+entered with a tray on which were several small glasses evidently
+containing some choice liqueur. Finding his master fixed in one of his
+strange moods, he set the tray down and, pointing to one of the glasses,
+said:
+
+"That is for Mr. Van Broecklyn. It contains his usual quieting powder."
+And urging the gentlemen to help themselves, he quietly left the room.
+Mr. Upjohn lifted the glass nearest him, and Mr. Cornell seemed about to
+do the same when he suddenly reached forward and catching up one farther
+off started for the room in which Mr. Spielhagen had so deliberately
+secluded himself.
+
+Why he did all this--why, above all things, he should reach across the
+tray for a glass instead of taking the one under his hand, he can no
+more explain than why he has followed many another unhappy impulse.
+Nor did he understand the nervous start given by Mr. Spielhagen at his
+entrance, or the stare with which that gentleman took the glass from his
+hand and mechanically drank its contents, till he saw how his hand had
+stretched itself across the sheet of paper he was reading, in an open
+attempt to hide the lines visible between his fingers. Then indeed the
+intruder flushed and withdrew in great embarrassment, fully conscious
+of his indiscretion but not deeply disturbed till Mr. Van Broecklyn,
+suddenly arousing and glancing down at the tray placed very near his
+hand remarked in some surprise: "Dobbs seems to have forgotten me." Then
+indeed, the unfortunate Mr. Cornell realized what he had done. It was
+the glass intended for his host which he had caught up and carried into
+the other room--the glass which he had been told contained a drug.
+Of what folly he had been guilty, and how tame would be any effort at
+excuse!
+
+Attempting none, he rose and with a hurried glance at Mr. Upjohn who
+flushed in sympathy at his distress, he crossed to the door he had
+lately closed upon Mr. Spielhagen. But feeling his shoulder touched
+as his hand pressed the knob, he turned to meet the eye of Mr. Van
+Broecklyn fixed upon him with an expression which utterly confounded
+him.
+
+"Where are you going?" that gentleman asked.
+
+The questioning tone, the severe look, expressive at once of displeasure
+and astonishment, were most disconcerting, but Mr. Cornell managed to
+stammer forth:
+
+"Mr. Spielhagen is in here consulting his thesis. When your man brought
+in the cordial, I was awkward enough to catch up your glass and carry it
+in to. Mr. Spielhagen. He drank it and I--I am anxious to see if it did
+him any harm."
+
+As he uttered the last word he felt Mr. Van Broecklyn's hand slip from
+his shoulder, but no word accompanied the action, nor did his host make
+the least move to follow him into the room.
+
+This was a matter of great regret to him later, as it left him for a
+moment out of the range of every eye, during which he says he simply
+stood in a state of shock at seeing Mr. Spielhagen still sitting there,
+manuscript in hand, but with head fallen forward and eyes closed; dead,
+asleep or--he hardly knew what; the sight so paralysed him.
+
+Whether or not this was the exact truth and the whole truth, Mr. Cornell
+certainly looked very unlike himself as he stepped back into Mr. Van
+Broecklyn's presence; and he was only partially reassured when that
+gentleman protested that there was no real harm in the drug, and that
+Mr. Spielhagen would be all right if left to wake naturally and without
+shock. However, as his present attitude was one of great discomfort,
+they decided to carry him back and lay him on the library lounge. But
+before doing this, Mr. Upjohn drew from his flaccid grasp, the precious
+manuscript, and carrying it into the larger room placed it on a remote
+table, where it remained undisturbed till Mr. Spielhagen, suddenly
+coming to himself at the end of some fifteen minutes, missed the sheets
+from his hand, and bounding up, crossed the room to repossess himself of
+them.
+
+His face, as he lifted them up and rapidly ran through them with
+ever-accumulating anxiety, told them what they had to expect.
+
+The page containing the formula was gone!
+
+Violet now saw her problem.
+
+II
+
+There was no doubt about the loss I have mentioned; all could see that
+page 13 was not there. In vain a second handling of every sheet, the one
+so numbered was not to be found. Page 14 met the eye on the top of
+the pile, and page 12 finished it off at the bottom, but no page 13 in
+between, or anywhere else.
+
+Where had it vanished, and through whose agency had this misadventure
+occurred? No one could say, or, at least, no one there made any attempt
+to do so, though everybody started to look for it.
+
+But where look? The adjoining small room offered no facilities for
+hiding a cigar-end, much less a square of shining white paper. Bare
+walls, a bare floor, and a single chair for furniture, comprised all
+that was to be seen in this direction. Nor could the room in which they
+then stood be thought to hold it, unless it was on the person of some
+one of them. Could this be the explanation of the mystery? No man looked
+his doubts; but Mr. Cornell, possibly divining the general feeling,
+stepped up to Mr. Van Broecklyn and in a cool voice, but with the red
+burning hotly on either cheek, said, so as to be heard by everyone
+present:
+
+"I demand to be searched--at once and thoroughly."
+
+A moment's silence, then the common cry:
+
+"We will all be searched."
+
+"Is Mr. Spielhagen sure that the missing page was with the others when
+he sat down in the adjoining room to read his thesis?" asked their
+perturbed host.
+
+"Very sure," came the emphatic reply. "Indeed, I was just going through
+the formula itself when I fell asleep."
+
+"You are ready to assert this?"
+
+"I am ready to swear it."
+
+Mr. Cornell repeated his request.
+
+"I demand that you make a thorough search of my person. I must be
+cleared, and instantly, of every suspicion," he gravely asserted, "or
+how can I marry Miss Digby to-morrow."
+
+After that there was no further hesitation. One and all subjected
+themselves to the ordeal suggested; even Mr. Spielhagen. But this effort
+was as futile as the rest. The lost page was not found.
+
+What were they to think? What were they to do?
+
+There seemed to be nothing left to do, and yet some further attempt must
+be made towards the recovery of this important formula. Mr. Cornell's
+marriage and Mr. Spielhagen's business success both depended upon its
+being in the latter's hands before six in the morning, when he was
+engaged to hand it over to a certain manufacturer sailing for Europe on
+an early steamer.
+
+Five hours!
+
+Had Mr. Van Broecklyn a suggestion to offer? No, he was as much at sea
+as the rest.
+
+Simultaneously look crossed look. Blankness was on every face.
+
+"Let us call the ladies," suggested one.
+
+It was done, and however great the tension had been before, it was even
+greater when Miss Digby stepped upon the scene. But she was not a woman
+to be shaken from her poise even by a crisis of this importance. When
+the dilemma had been presented to her and the full situation grasped,
+she looked first at Mr. Cornell and then at Mr. Spielhagen, and quietly
+said:
+
+"There is but one explanation possible of this matter. Mr. Spielhagen
+will excuse me, but he is evidently mistaken in thinking that he saw the
+lost page among the rest. The condition into which he was thrown by the
+unaccustomed drug he had drank, made him liable to hallucinations. I
+have not the least doubt he thought he had been studying the formula
+at the time he dropped off to sleep. I have every confidence in
+the gentleman's candour. But so have I in that of Mr. Cornell," she
+supplemented, with a smile.
+
+An exclamation from Mr. Van Broecklyn and a subdued murmur from all but
+Mr. Spielhagen testified to the effect of this suggestion, and there
+is no saying what might have been the result if Mr. Cornell had not
+hurriedly put in this extraordinary and most unexpected protest:
+
+"Miss Digby has my gratitude," said he, "for a confidence which I hope
+to prove to be deserved. But I must say this for Mr. Spielhagen. He was
+correct in stating that he was engaged in looking over his formula when
+I stepped into his presence with the glass of cordial. If you were not
+in a position to see the hurried way in which his hand instinctively
+spread itself over the page he was reading, I was; and if that does not
+seem conclusive to you, then I feel bound to state that in unconsciously
+following this movement of his, I plainly saw the number written on the
+top of the page, and that number was--13."
+
+A loud exclamation, this time from Spielhagen himself, announced his
+gratitude and corresponding change of attitude toward the speaker.
+
+"Wherever that damned page has gone," he protested, advancing towards
+Cornell with outstretched hand, "you have nothing to do with its
+disappearance."
+
+Instantly all constraint fled, and every countenance took on a relieved
+expression. But the problem remained.
+
+Suddenly those very words passed some one's lips, and with their
+utterance Mr. Upjohn remembered how at an extraordinary crisis in his
+own life he had been helped and an equally difficult problem settled,
+by a little lady secretly attached to a private detective agency. If she
+could only be found and hurried here before morning, all might yet be
+well. He would make the effort. Such wild schemes sometimes work. He
+telephoned to the office and--
+
+Was there anything else Miss Strange would like to know?
+
+III
+
+Miss Strange, thus appealed to, asked where the gentlemen were now.
+
+She was told that they were still all together in the library; the
+ladies had been sent home.
+
+"Then let us go to them," said Violet, hiding under a smile her great
+fear that here was an affair which might very easily spell for her that
+dismal word, failure.
+
+So great was that fear that under all ordinary circumstances she would
+have had no thought for anything else in the short interim between
+this stating of the problem and her speedy entrance among the persons
+involved. But the circumstances of this case were so far from ordinary,
+or rather let me put it in this way, the setting of the case was so very
+extraordinary, that she scarcely thought of the problem before her, in
+her great interest in the house through whose rambling halls she was
+being so carefully guided. So much that was tragic and heartrending had
+occurred here. The Van Broecklyn name, the Van Broecklyn history, above
+all the Van Broecklyn tradition, which made the house unique in the
+country's annals (of which more hereafter), all made an appeal to her
+imagination, and centred her thoughts on what she saw about her. There
+was door which no man ever opened--had never opened since Revolutionary
+times--should she see it? Should she know it if she did see it? Then Mr.
+Van Broecklyn himself! just to meet him, under any conditions and in
+any place, was an event. But to meet him here, under the pall of his
+own mystery! No wonder she had no words for her companions, or that
+her thoughts clung to this anticipation in wonder and almost fearsome
+delight.
+
+His story was a well-known one. A bachelor and a misanthrope, he lived
+absolutely alone save for a large entourage of servants, all men and
+elderly ones at that. He never visited. Though he now and then, as on
+this occasion, entertained certain persons under his roof, he declined
+every invitation for himself, avoiding even, with equal strictness, all
+evening amusements of whatever kind, which would detain him in the city
+after ten at night. Perhaps this was to ensure no break in his rule of
+life never to sleep out of his own bed. Though he was a man well over
+fifty he had not spent, according to his own statement, but two nights
+out of his own bed since his return from Europe in early boyhood, and
+those were in obedience to a judicial summons which took him to Boston.
+
+This was his main eccentricity, but he had another which is apparent
+enough from what has already been said. He avoided women. If thrown in
+with them during his short visits into town, he was invariably polite
+and at times companionable, but he never sought them out, nor had
+gossip, contrary to its usual habit, ever linked his name with one of
+the sex.
+
+Yet he was a man of more than ordinary attraction. His features were
+fine and his figure impressive. He might have been the cynosure of all
+eyes had he chosen to enter crowded drawing-rooms, or even to frequent
+public assemblages, but having turned his back upon everything of the
+kind in his youth, he had found it impossible to alter his habits with
+advancing years; nor was he now expected to. The position he had taken
+was respected. Leonard Van Broecklyn was no longer criticized.
+
+Was there any explanation for this strangely self-centred life? Those
+who knew him best seemed to think so. In the first place he had sprung
+from an unfortunate stock. Events of unusual and tragic nature had
+marked the family of both parents. Nor had his parents themselves
+been exempt from this seeming fatality. Antagonistic in tastes and
+temperament, they had dragged on an unhappy existence in the old home,
+till both natures rebelled, and a separation ensued which not only
+disunited their lives but sent them to opposite sides of the globe
+never to return again. At least, that was the inference drawn from
+the peculiar circumstances attending the event. On the morning of one
+never-to-be-forgotten day, John Van Broecklyn, the grandfather of the
+present representative of the family, found the following note from his
+son lying on the library table:
+
+"FATHER:
+
+"Life in this house, or any house, with her is no longer endurable.
+One of us must go. The mother should not be separated from her child.
+Therefore it is I whom you will never see again. Forget me, but be
+considerate of her and the boy.
+
+"WILLIAM."
+
+Six hours later another note was found, this time from the wife:
+
+"FATHER:
+
+"Tied to a rotting corpse what does one do? Lop off one's arm if
+necessary to rid one of the contact. As all love between your son and
+myself is dead, I can no longer live within the sound of his voice. As
+this is his home, he is the one to remain in it. May our child reap the
+benefit of his mother's loss and his father's affection.
+
+"RHODA."
+
+Both were gone, and gone forever. Simultaneous in their departure, they
+preserved each his own silence and sent no word back. If the one went
+east and the other west, they may have met on the other side of the
+globe, but never again in the home which sheltered their boy. For him
+and for his grandfather they had sunk from sight in the great sea of
+humanity, leaving them stranded on an isolated and mournful shore. The
+grand-father steeled himself to the double loss, for the child's sake;
+but the boy of eleven succumbed. Few of the world's great sufferers, of
+whatever age or condition, have mourned as this child mourned, or shown
+the effects of his grief so deeply or so long. Not till he had passed
+his majority did the line, carved in one day in his baby forehead, lose
+any of its intensity; and there are those who declare that even later
+than that, the midnight stillness of the house was disturbed from time
+to time by his muffled shriek of "Mother! Mother!", sending the servants
+from the house, and adding one more horror to the many which clung about
+this accursed mansion.
+
+Of this cry Violet had heard, and it was that and the door--But I have
+already told you about the door which she was still looking for,
+when her two companions suddenly halted, and she found herself on the
+threshold of the library, in full view of Mr. Van Broecklyn and his two
+guests.
+
+Slight and fairy-like in figure, with an air of modest reserve more in
+keeping with her youth and dainty dimpling beauty than with her errand,
+her appearance produced an astonishment none of which the gentlemen were
+able to disguise. This the clever detective, with a genius for social
+problems and odd elusive cases! This darling of the ball-room in satin
+and pearls! Mr. Spielhagen glanced at Mr. Cornell, and Mr. Cornell at
+Mr. Spielhagen, and both at Mr. Upjohn, in very evident distrust. As for
+Violet, she had eyes only for Mr. Van Broecklyn who stood before her in
+a surprise equal to that of the others but with more restraint in its
+expression.
+
+She was not disappointed in him. She had expected to see a man, reserved
+almost to the point of austerity. And she found his first look even more
+awe-compelling than her imagination had pictured; so much so indeed,
+that her resolution faltered, and she took a quick step backward; which
+seeing, he smiled and her heart and hopes grew warm again. That he could
+smile, and smile with absolute sweetness, was her great comfort when
+later--But I am introducing you too hurriedly to the catastrophe. There
+is much to be told first.
+
+I pass over the preliminaries, and come at once to the moment when
+Violet, having listened to a repetition of the full facts, stood with
+downcast eyes before these gentlemen, complaining in some alarm to
+herself: "They expect me to tell them now and without further search
+or parley just where this missing page is. I shall have to balk that
+expectation without losing their confidence. But how?"
+
+Summoning up her courage and meeting each inquiring eye with a look
+which seemed to carry a different message to each, she remarked very
+quietly:
+
+"This is not a matter to guess at. I must have time and I must look a
+little deeper into the facts just given me. I presume that the table
+I see over there is the one upon which Mr. Upjohn laid the manuscript
+during Mr. Spielhagen's unconsciousness."
+
+All nodded.
+
+"Is it--I mean the table--in the same condition it was then? Has nothing
+been taken from it except the manuscript?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Then the missing page is not there," she smiled, pointing to its bare
+top. A pause, during which she stood with her gaze fixed on the floor
+before her. She was thinking and thinking hard.
+
+Suddenly she came to a decision. Addressing Mr. Upjohn she asked if he
+were quite sure that in taking the manuscript from Mr. Spielhagen's hand
+he had neither disarranged nor dropped one of its pages.
+
+The answer was unequivocal.
+
+"Then," she declared, with quiet assurance and a steady meeting with her
+own of every eye, "as the thirteenth page was not found among the others
+when they were taken from this table, nor on the persons of either Mr.
+Cornell or Mr. Spielhagen, it is still in that inner room."
+
+"Impossible!" came from every lip, each in a different tone. "That room
+is absolutely empty."
+
+"May I have a look at its emptiness?" she asked, with a naive glance at
+Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+
+"There is positively nothing in the room but the chair Mr. Spielhagen
+sat on," objected that gentleman with a noticeable air of reluctance.
+
+"Still, may I not have a look at it?" she persisted, with that disarming
+smile she kept for great occasions.
+
+Mr. Van Broecklyn bowed. He could not refuse a request so urged, but his
+step was slow and his manner next to ungracious as he led the way to the
+door of the adjoining room and threw it open.
+
+Just what she had been told to expect! Bare walls and floors and an
+empty chair! Yet she did not instantly withdraw, but stood silently
+contemplating the panelled wainscoting surrounding her, as though she
+suspected it of containing some secret hiding-place not apparent to the
+eye.
+
+Mr. Van Broecklyn, noting this, hastened to say:
+
+"The walls are sound, Miss Strange. They contain no hidden cupboards."
+
+"And that door?" she asked, pointing to a portion of the wainscoting so
+exactly like the rest that only the most experienced eye could detect
+the line of deeper colour which marked an opening.
+
+For an instant Mr. Van Broecklyn stood rigid, then the immovable pallor,
+which was one of his chief characteristics, gave way to a deep flush as
+he explained:
+
+"There was a door there once; but it has been permanently closed. With
+cement," he forced himself to add, his countenance losing its evanescent
+colour till it shone ghastly again in the strong light.
+
+With difficulty Violet preserved her show of composure. "The door!" she
+murmured to herself. "I have found it. The great historic door!" But her
+tone was light as she ventured to say:
+
+"Then it can no longer be opened by your hand or any other?"
+
+"It could not be opened with an axe."
+
+Violet sighed in the midst of her triumph. Her curiosity had
+been satisfied, but the problem she had been set to solve looked
+inexplicable. But she was not one to yield easily to discouragement.
+Marking the disappointment approaching to disdain in every eye but Mr.
+Upjohn's, she drew herself up--(she had not far to draw) and made this
+final proposal.
+
+"A sheet of paper," she remarked, "of the size of this one cannot be
+spirited away, or dissolved into thin air. It exists; it is here; and
+all we want is some happy thought in order to find it. I acknowledge
+that that happy thought has not come to me yet, but sometimes I get
+it in what may seem to you a very odd way. Forgetting myself, I try to
+assume the individuality of the person who has worked the mystery. If I
+can think with his thoughts, I possibly may follow him in his actions.
+In this case I should like to make believe for a few moments that I am
+Mr. Spielhagen" (with what a delicious smile she said this) "I should
+like to hold his thesis in my hand and be interrupted in my reading by
+Mr. Cornell offering his glass of cordial; then I should like to nod and
+slip off mentally into a deep sleep. Possibly in that sleep the dream
+may come which will clarify the whole situation. Will you humour me so
+far?"
+
+A ridiculous concession, but finally she had her way; the farce was
+enacted and they left her as she had requested them to do, alone with
+her dreams in the small room.
+
+Suddenly they heard her cry out, and in another moment she appeared
+before them, the picture of excitement.
+
+"Is this chair standing exactly as it did when Mr. Spielhagen occupied
+it?" she asked.
+
+"No," said Mr. Upjohn, "it faced the other way."
+
+She stepped back and twirled the chair about with her disengaged hand.
+
+"So?"
+
+Mr. Upjohn and Mr. Spielhagen both nodded, so did the others when she
+glanced at them.
+
+With a sign of ill-concealed satisfaction, she drew their attention to
+herself; then eagerly cried:
+
+"Gentlemen, look here!"
+
+Seating herself, she allowed her whole body to relax till she presented
+the picture of one calmly asleep. Then, as they continued to gaze at
+with fascinated eyes, not knowing what to expect, they saw something
+white escape from her lap and slide across the floor till it touched and
+was stayed by the wainscot. It was the top page of the manuscript she
+held, and as some inkling of the truth reached their astonished minds,
+she sprang impetuously to her feet and, pointing to the fallen sheet,
+cried:
+
+"Do you understand now? Look where it lies and then look here!"
+
+She had bounded towards the wall and was now on her knees pointing to
+the bottom of the wainscot, just a few inches to the left of the fallen
+page.
+
+"A crack!" she cried, "under what was once the door. It's a very thin
+one, hardly perceptible to the eye. But see!" Here she laid her finger
+on the fallen paper and drawing it towards her, pushed it carefully
+against the lower edge of the wainscot. Half of it at once disappeared.
+
+"I could easily slip it all through," she assured them, withdrawing
+the sheet and leaping to her feet in triumph. "You know now where the
+missing page lies, Mr. Spielhagen. All that remains is for Mr. Van
+Broecklyn to get it for you."
+
+IV
+
+The cries of mingled astonishment and relief which greeted this simple
+elucidation of the mystery were broken by a curiously choked, almost
+unintelligible, cry. It came from the man thus appealed to, who,
+unnoticed by them all, had started at her first word and gradually, as
+action followed action, withdrawn himself till he now stood alone and in
+an attitude almost of defiance behind the large table in the centre of
+the library.
+
+"I am sorry," he began, with a brusqueness which gradually toned
+down into a forced urbanity as he beheld every eye fixed upon him in
+amazement, "that circumstances forbid my being of assistance to you in
+this unfortunate matter. If the paper lies where you say, and I see no
+other explanation of its loss, I am afraid it will have to remain there
+for this night at least. The cement in which that door is embedded
+is thick as any wall; it would take men with pickaxes, possibly with
+dynamite, to make a breach there wide enough for any one to reach in.
+And we are far from any such help."
+
+In the midst of the consternation caused by these words, the clock
+on the mantel behind his back rang out the hour. It was but a double
+stroke, but that meant two hours after midnight and had the effect of a
+knell in the hearts of those most interested.
+
+"But I am expected to give that formula into the hands of our manager
+before six o'clock in the morning. The steamer sails at a quarter
+after."
+
+"Can't you reproduce a copy of it from memory?" some one asked; "and
+insert it in its proper place among the pages you hold there?"
+
+"The paper would not be the same. That would lead to questions and the
+truth would come out. As the chief value of the process contained in
+that formula lies in its secrecy, no explanation I could give would
+relieve me from the suspicions which an acknowledgment of the existence
+of a third copy, however well hidden, would entail. I should lose my
+great opportunity."
+
+Mr. Cornell's state of mind can be imagined. In an access of mingled
+regret and despair, he cast a glance at Violet, who, with a nod of
+understanding, left the little room in which they still stood, and
+approached Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+
+Lifting up her head,--for he was very tall,--and instinctively rising on
+her toes the nearer to reach his ear, she asked in a cautious whisper:
+
+"Is there no other way of reaching that place?"
+
+She acknowledged afterwards, that for one moment her heart stood still
+from fear, such a change took place in his face, though she says he did
+not move a muscle. Then, just when she was expecting from him some harsh
+or forbidding word, he wheeled abruptly away from her and crossing to a
+window at his side, lifted the shade and looked out. When he returned,
+he was his usual self so far as she could see.
+
+"There is a way," he now confided to her in a tone as low as her own,
+"but it can only be taken by a child."
+
+"Not by me?" she asked, smiling down at her own childish proportions.
+
+For an instant he seemed taken aback, then she saw his hand begin to
+tremble and his lips twitch. Somehow--she knew not why--she began to
+pity him, and asked herself as she felt rather than saw the struggle in
+his mind, that here was a trouble which if once understood would greatly
+dwarf that of the two men in the room behind them.
+
+"I am discreet," she whisperingly declared. "I have heard the history
+of that door--how it was against the tradition of the family to have
+it opened. There must have been some very dreadful reason. But old
+superstitions do not affect me, and if you will allow me to take the way
+you mention, I will follow your bidding exactly, and will not trouble
+myself about anything but the recovery of this paper, which must lie
+only a little way inside that blocked-up door."
+
+Was his look one of rebuke at her presumption, or just the constrained
+expression of a perturbed mind? Probably, the latter, for while she
+watched him for some understanding of his mood, he reached out his hand
+and touched one of the satin folds crossing her shoulder.
+
+"You would soil this irretrievably," said he.
+
+"There is stuff in the stores for another," she smiled. Slowly his touch
+deepened into pressure. Watching him she saw the crust of some old fear
+or dominant superstition melt under her eyes, and was quite prepared,
+when he remarked, with what for him was a lightsome air:
+
+"I will buy the stuff, if you will dare the darkness and intricacies of
+our old cellar. I can give you no light. You will have to feel your way
+according to my direction."
+
+"I am ready to dare anything."
+
+He left her abruptly.
+
+"I will warn Miss Digby," he called back. "She shall go with you as far
+as the cellar."
+
+V
+
+Violet in her short career as an investigator of mysteries had been in
+many a situation calling for more than womanly nerve and courage. But
+never--or so it seemed to her at the time--had she experienced a greater
+depression of spirit than when she stood with Miss Digby before a small
+door at the extreme end of the cellar, and understood that here was her
+road--a road which once entered, she must take alone.
+
+First, it was such a small door! No child older than eleven could
+possibly squeeze through it. But she was of the size of a child of
+eleven and might possibly manage that difficulty.
+
+Secondly: there are always some unforeseen possibilities in every
+situation, and though she had listened carefully to Mr. Van Broecklyn's
+directions and was sure that she knew them by heart, she wished she had
+kissed her father more tenderly in leaving him that night for the ball,
+and that she had not pouted so undutifully at some harsh stricture he
+had made. Did this mean fear? She despised the feeling if it did.
+
+Thirdly: She hated darkness. She knew this when she offered herself for
+this undertaking; but she was in a bright room at the moment and only
+imagined what she must now face as a reality. But one jet had been lit
+in the cellar and that near the entrance. Mr. Van Broecklyn seemed not
+to need light, even in his unfastening of the small door which Violet
+was sure had been protected by more than one lock.
+
+Doubt, shadow, and a solitary climb between unknown walls, with only
+a streak of light for her goal, and the clinging pressure of Florence
+Digby's hand on her own for solace--surely the prospect was one to tax
+the courage of her young heart to its limit. But she had promised, and
+she would fulfill. So with a brave smile she stooped to the little door,
+and in another moment had started her journey.
+
+For journey the shortest distance may seem when every inch means a
+heart-throb and one grows old in traversing a foot. At first the way
+was easy; she had but to crawl up a slight incline with the comforting
+consciousness that two people were within reach of her voice, almost
+within sound of her beating heart. But presently she came to a turn,
+beyond which her fingers failed to reach any wall on her left. Then came
+a step up which she stumbled, and farther on a short flight, each tread
+of which she had been told to test before she ventured to climb it, lest
+the decay of innumerable years should have weakened the wood too much to
+bear her weight. One, two, three, four, five steps! Then a landing with
+an open space beyond. Half of her journey was done. Here she felt
+she could give a minute to drawing her breath naturally, if the air,
+unchanged in years, would allow her to do so. Besides, here she had been
+enjoined to do a certain thing and to do it according to instructions.
+Three matches had been given her and a little night candle. Denied all
+light up to now, it was at this point she was to light her candle and
+place it on the floor, so that in returning she should not miss the
+staircase and get a fall. She had promised to do this, and was only too
+happy to see a spark of light scintillate into life in the immeasurable
+darkness.
+
+She was now in a great room long closed to the world, where once
+officers in Colonial wars had feasted, and more than one council had
+been held. A room, too, which had seen more than one tragic happening,
+as its almost unparalleled isolation proclaimed. So much Mr. Van
+Broecklyn had told her; but she was warned to be careful in traversing
+it and not upon any pretext to swerve aside from the right-hand wall
+till she came to a huge mantelpiece. This passed, and a sharp corner
+turned, she ought to see somewhere in the dim spaces before her a streak
+of vivid light shining through the crack at the bottom of the blocked-up
+door. The paper should be somewhere near this streak.
+
+All simple, all easy of accomplishment, if only that streak of light
+were all she was likely to see or think of. If the horror which was
+gripping her throat should not take shape! If things would remain
+shrouded in impenetrable darkness, and not force themselves in shadowy
+suggestion upon her excited fancy! But the blackness of the passage-way
+through which she had just struggled was not to be found here. Whether
+it was the effect of that small flame flickering at the top of the
+staircase behind her, or of some change in her own powers of seeing,
+surely there was a difference in her present outlook. Tall shapes were
+becoming visible--the air was no longer blank--she could see--Then
+suddenly she saw why. In the wall high up on her right was a window.
+It was small and all but invisible, being covered on the outside with
+vines, and on the inside with the cobwebs of a century. But some small
+gleams from the star-light night came through, making phantasms out of
+ordinary things, which unseen were horrible enough, and half seen choked
+her heart with terror.
+
+"I cannot bear it," she whispered to herself even while creeping
+forward, her hand upon the wall. "I will close my eyes" was her next
+thought. "I will make my own darkness," and with a spasmodic forcing of
+her lids together, she continued to creep on, passing the mantelpiece,
+where she knocked against something which fell with an awful clatter.
+
+This sound, followed as it was by that of smothered voices from the
+excited group awaiting the result of her experiment from behind the
+impenetrable wall she should be nearing now if she had followed her
+instructions aright, freed her instantly from her fancies; and opening
+her eyes once more, she cast a look ahead, and to her delight, saw but a
+few steps away, the thin streak of bright light which marked the end of
+her journey.
+
+It took her but a moment after that to find the missing page, and
+picking it up in haste from the dusty floor, she turned herself quickly
+about and joyfully began to retrace her steps. Why then, was it that in
+the course of a few minutes more her voice suddenly broke into a wild,
+unearthly shriek, which ringing with terror burst the bounds of that
+dungeon-like room, and sank, a barbed shaft, into the breasts of those
+awaiting the result of her doubtful adventure, at either end of this
+dread no-thoroughfare.
+
+What had happened?
+
+If they had thought to look out, they would have seen that the
+moon--held in check by a bank of cloud occupying half the heavens--had
+suddenly burst its bounds and was sending long bars of revealing light
+into every uncurtained window.
+
+VI
+
+Florence Digby, in her short and sheltered life, had possibly never
+known any very great or deep emotion. But she touched the bottom of
+extreme terror at that moment, as with her ears still thrilling with
+Violet's piercing cry, she turned to look at Mr. Van Broecklyn, and
+beheld the instantaneous wreck it had made of this seemingly strong
+man. Not till he came to lie in his coffin would he show a more ghastly
+countenance; and trembling herself almost to the point of falling,
+caught him by the arm and sought to read his face what had happened.
+Something disastrous she was sure; something which he had feared and was
+partially prepared for, yet which in happening had crushed him. Was it
+a pitfall into which the poor little lady had fallen? If so--But he is
+speaking--mumbling low words to himself. Some of them she can hear. He
+is reproaching himself--repeating over and over that he should never
+have taken such a chance; that he should have remembered her youth--the
+weakness of a young girl's nerve. He had been mad, and now--and now--
+
+With the repetition of this word his murmuring ceased. All his energies
+were now absorbed in listening at the low door separating him from what
+he was agonizing to know--a door impossible to enter, impossible to
+enlarge--a barrier to all help--an opening whereby sound might pass but
+nothing else, save her own small body, now lying--where?
+
+"Is she hurt?" faltered Florence, stooping, herself, to listen. "Can you
+hear anything--anything?"
+
+For an instant he did not answer; every faculty was absorbed in the one
+sense; then slowly and in gasps he began to mutter:
+
+"I think--I hear--something. Her step--no, no, no step. All is as quiet
+as death; not a sound, not a breath--she has fainted. O God! O God! Why
+this calamity on top of all!"
+
+He had sprung to his feet at the utterance this invocation, but next
+moment was down on knees again, listening--listening.
+
+Never was silence more profound; they were hearkening for murmurs from a
+tomb. Florence began to sense the full horror of it all, and was swaying
+helplessly when Mr. Van Broecklyn impulsively lifted his hand in an
+admonitory Hush! and through the daze of her faculties a small far sound
+began to make itself heard, growing louder as she waited, then becoming
+faint again, then altogether ceasing only to renew itself once more,
+till it resolved into an approaching step, faltering in its course, but
+coming ever nearer and nearer.
+
+"She's safe! She's not hurt!" sprang from Florence's lips in
+inexpressible relief; and expecting Mr. Van Broecklyn to show an equal
+joy, she turned towards him, with the cheerful cry,
+
+"Now if she has been so fortunate as to that missing page, we shall all
+be repaid for our fright."
+
+A movement on his part, a shifting of position which brought him finally
+to his feet, but he gave no other proof of having heard her, nor did
+his countenance mirror her relief. "It is as if he dreaded, instead of
+hailed, her return," was Florence's inward comment as she watched him
+involuntarily recoil at each fresh token of Violet's advance.
+
+Yet because this seemed so very unnatural, she persisted in her efforts
+to lighten the situation, and when he made no attempt to encourage
+Violet in her approach, she herself stooped and called out a cheerful
+welcome which must have rung sweetly in the poor little detective's
+ears.
+
+A sorry sight was Violet, when, helped by Florence, she finally crawled
+into view through the narrow opening and stood once again on the cellar
+floor. Pale, trembling, and soiled with the dust of years, she presented
+a helpless figure enough, till the joy in Florence's face recalled some
+of her spirit, and, glancing down at her hand in which a sheet of paper
+was visible, she asked for Mr. Spielhagen.
+
+"I've got the formula," she said. "If you will bring him, I will hand it
+over to him here."
+
+Not a word of her adventure; nor so much as one glance at Mr. Van
+Broecklyn, standing far back in the shadows.
+
+Nor was she more communicative, when, the formula restored and
+everything made right with Mr. Spielhagen, they all came together again
+in the library for a final word. "I was frightened by the silence
+and the darkness, and so cried out," she explained in answer to their
+questions. "Any one would have done so who found himself alone in
+so musty a place," she added, with an attempt at lightsomeness which
+deepened the pallor on Mr. Van Broecklyn's cheek, already sufficiently
+noticeable to have been remarked upon by more than one.
+
+"No ghosts?" laughed Mr. Cornell, too happy in the return of his hopes
+to be fully sensible of the feelings of those about him. "No whispers
+from impalpable lips or touches from spectre hands? Nothing to explain
+the mystery of that room long shut up that even Mr. Van Broecklyn
+declares himself ignorant of its secret?"
+
+"Nothing," returned Violet, showing her dimples in full force now.
+
+"If Miss Strange had any such experiences--if she has anything to tell
+worthy of so marked a curiosity, she will tell it now," came from the
+gentleman just alluded to, in tones so stern and strange that all show
+of frivolity ceased on the instant. "Have you anything to tell, Miss
+Strange?"
+
+Greatly startled, she regarded him with widening eyes for a moment, then
+with a move towards the door, remarked, with a general look about her:
+
+"Mr. Van Broecklyn knows his own house, and doubtless can relate its
+histories if he will. I am a busy little body who having finished my
+work am now ready to return home, there to wait for the next problem
+which an indulgent fate may offer me."
+
+She was near the threshold--she was about to take her leave, when
+suddenly she felt two hands fall on her shoulder, and turning, met the
+eyes of Mr. Van Broecklyn burning into her own.
+
+"You saw!" dropped in an almost inaudible whisper from his lips.
+
+The shiver which shook her answered him better than any word.
+
+With an exclamation of despair, he withdrew his hands, and facing the
+others now standing together in a startled group, he said, as soon as he
+could recover some of his self-possession:
+
+"I must ask for another hour of your company. I can no longer keep my
+sorrow to myself. A dividing line has just been drawn across my life,
+and I must have the sympathy of someone who knows my past, or I shall
+go mad in my self-imposed solitude. Come back, Miss Strange. You of all
+others have the prior right to hear."
+
+VII
+
+"I shall have to begin," said he, when they were all seated and ready to
+listen, "by giving you some idea, not so much of the family tradition,
+as of the effect of this tradition upon all who bore the name of Van
+Broecklyn. This is not the only house, even in America, which contains
+a room shut away from intrusion. In England there are many. But there is
+this difference between most of them and ours. No bars or locks forcibly
+held shut the door we were forbidden to open. The command was enough;
+that and the superstitious fear which such a command, attended by a long
+and unquestioning obedience, was likely to engender.
+
+"I know no more than you do why some early ancestor laid his ban upon
+this room. But from my earliest years I was given to understand that
+there was one latch in the house which was never to be lifted; that any
+fault would be forgiven sooner than that; that the honour of the whole
+family stood in the way of disobedience, and that I was to preserve that
+honour to my dying day. You will say that all this is fantastic, and
+wonder that sane people in these modern times should subject themselves
+to such a ridiculous restriction, especially when no good reason was
+alleged, and the very source of the tradition from which it sprung
+forgotten. You are right; but if you look long into human nature,
+you will see that the bonds which hold the firmest are not material
+ones--that an idea will make a man and mould a character--that it lies
+at the source of all heroisms and is to be courted or feared as the case
+may be.
+
+"For me it possessed a power proportionate to my loneliness. I don't
+think there was ever a more lonely child. My father and mother were
+so unhappy in each other's companionship that one or other of them was
+almost always away. But I saw little of either even when they were at
+home. The constraint in their attitude towards each other affected their
+conduct towards me. I have asked myself more than once if either of them
+had any real affection for me. To my father I spoke of her; to her
+of him; and never pleasurably. This I am forced to say, or you cannot
+understand my story. Would to God I could tell another tale! Would
+to God I had such memories as other men have of a father's clasp, a
+mother's kiss--but no! my grief, already profound, might have become
+abysmal. Perhaps it is best as it is; only, I might have been a
+different child, and made for myself a different fate--who knows.
+
+"As it was, I was thrown almost entirely upon my own resources for any
+amusement. This led me to a discovery I made one day. In a far part of
+the cellar behind some heavy casks, I found a little door. It was so
+low--so exactly fitted to my small body, that I had the greatest desire
+to enter it. But I could not get around the casks. At last an expedient
+occurred to me. We had an old servant who came nearer loving me than any
+one else. One day when I chanced to be alone in the cellar, I took out
+my ball and began throwing it about. Finally it landed behind the casks,
+and I ran with a beseeching cry to Michael, to move them.
+
+"It was a task requiring no little strength and address, but he managed,
+after a few herculean efforts, to shift them aside and I saw with
+delight, my way opened to that mysterious little door. But I did not
+approach it then; some instinct deterred me. But when the opportunity
+came for me to venture there alone, I did so, in the most adventurous
+spirit, and began my operations by sliding behind the casks and testing
+the handle of the little door. It turned, and after a pull or two the
+door yielded. With my heart in my mouth, I stooped and peered in. I
+could see nothing--a black hole and nothing more. This caused me a
+moment's hesitation. I was afraid of the dark--had always been. But
+curiosity and the spirit of adventure triumphed. Saying to myself that I
+was Robinson Crusoe exploring the cave, I crawled in, only to find that
+I had gained nothing. It was as dark inside as it had looked to be from
+without.
+
+"There was no fun in this, so I crawled back, and when I tried the
+experiment again, it was with a bit of candle in my hand, and a
+surreptitious match or two. What I saw, when with a very trembling
+little hand I had lighted one of the matches, would have been
+disappointing to most boys, but not to me. The litter and old boards
+I saw in odd corners about me were full of possibilities, while in the
+dimness beyond I seemed to perceive a sort of staircase which might
+lead--I do not think I made any attempt to answer that question even
+in my own mind, but when, after some hesitation and a sense of great
+daring, I finally crept up those steps, I remember very well my
+sensation at finding myself in front of a narrow closed door. It
+suggested too vividly the one in Grandfather's little room--the door in
+the wainscot which we were never to open. I had my first real trembling
+fit here, and at once fascinated and repelled by this obstruction I
+stumbled and lost my candle, which, going out in the fall, left me in
+total darkness and a very frightened state of mind. For my imagination
+which had been greatly stirred by my own vague thoughts of the forbidden
+room, immediately began to people the space about me with ghoulish
+figures. How should I escape them, how ever reach my own little room
+again undetected and in safety?
+
+"But these terrors, deep as they were, were nothing to the real fright
+which seized me when, the darkness finally braved, and the way found
+back into the bright, wide-open halls of the house, I became conscious
+of having dropped something besides the candle. My match-box was
+gone--not my match-box, but my grandfather's which I had found lying on
+his table and carried off on this adventure, in all the confidence of
+irresponsible youth. To make use of it for a little while, trusting to
+his not missing it in the confusion I had noticed about the house that
+morning, was one thing; to lose it was another. It was no common
+box. Made of gold and cherished for some special reason well known to
+himself, I had often hear him say that some day I would appreciate its
+value, and be glad to own it. And I had left it in that hole and at
+any minute he might miss it--possibly ask for it! The day was one of
+torment. My mother was away or shut up in her room. My father--I don't
+know just what thoughts I had about him. He was not to be seen either,
+and the servants cast strange looks at me when I spoke his name. But
+I little realized the blow which had just fallen upon the house in his
+definite departure, and only thought of my own trouble, and of how I
+should meet my grandfather's eye when the hour came for him to draw me
+to his knee for his usual good-night.
+
+"That I was spared this ordeal for the first time this very night first
+comforted me, then added to my distress. He had discovered his loss and
+was angry. On the morrow he would ask me for the box and I would have
+to lie, for never could I find the courage to tell him where I had been.
+Such an act of presumption he would never forgive, or so I thought as
+I lay and shivered in my little bed. That his coldness, his neglect,
+sprang from the discovery just made that my mother as well as my father
+had just fled the house forever was as little known to me as the morning
+calamity. I had been given my usual tendance and was tucked safely into
+bed; but the gloom, the silence which presently settled upon the house
+had a very different explanation in my mind from the real one. My sin
+(for such it loomed large in my mind by this time) coloured the whole
+situation and accounted for every event.
+
+"At what hour I slipped from my bed on to the cold floor, I shall never
+know. To me it seemed to be in the dead of night; but I doubt if it were
+more than ten. So slowly creep away the moments to a wakeful child.
+I had made a great resolve. Awful as the prospect seemed to
+me,--frightened as I was by the very thought,--I had determined in
+my small mind to go down into the cellar, and into that midnight hole
+again, in search of the lost box. I would take a candle and matches,
+this time from my own mantel-shelf, and if everyone was asleep, as
+appeared from the deathly quiet of the house, I would be able to go and
+come without anybody ever being the wiser.
+
+"Dressing in the dark, I found my matches and my candle and, putting
+them in one of my pockets, softly opened my door and looked out. Nobody
+was stirring; every light was out except a solitary one in the lower
+hall. That this still burned conveyed no meaning to my mind. How could I
+know that the house was so still and the rooms dark because everyone was
+out searching for some clue to my mother's flight? If I had looked at
+the clock--but I did not; I was too intent upon my errand, too filled
+with the fever of my desperate undertaking, to be affected by anything
+not bearing directly upon it.
+
+"Of the terror caused by my own shadow on the wall as I made the turn
+in the hall below, I have as keen a recollection today as though it
+happened yesterday. But that did not deter me; nothing deterred me, till
+safe in the cellar I crouched down behind the casks to get my breath
+again before entering the hole beyond.
+
+"I had made some noise in feeling my way around these casks, and I
+trembled lest these sounds had been heard upstairs! But this fear soon
+gave place to one far greater. Other sounds were making themselves
+heard. A din of small skurrying feet above, below, on every side of me!
+Rats! rats in the wall! rats on the cellar bottom! How I ever stirred
+from the spot I do not know, but when I did stir, it was to go forward,
+and enter the uncanny hole.
+
+"I had intended to light my candle when I got inside; but for some
+reason I went stumbling along in the dark, following the wall till I got
+to the steps where I had dropped the box. Here a light was necessary,
+but my hand did not go to my pocket. I thought it better to climb the
+steps first, and softly one foot found the tread and then another. I
+had only three more to climb and then my right hand, now feeling its
+way along the wall, would be free to strike a match. I climbed the three
+steps and was steadying myself against the door for a final plunge,
+when something happened--something so strange, so unexpected, and so
+incredible that I wonder I did not shriek aloud in my terror. The door
+was moving under my hand. It was slowly opening inward. I could feel the
+chill made by the widening crack. Moment by moment this chill increased;
+the gap was growing--a presence was there--a presence before which I sank
+in a small heap upon the landing. Would it advance? Had it feet--hands?
+Was it a presence which could be felt?
+
+"Whatever it was, it made no attempt to pass, and presently I lifted
+my head only to quake anew at the sound of a voice--a human voice--my
+mother's voice--so near me that by putting out my arms I might have
+touched her.
+
+"She was speaking to my father. I knew from the tone. She was saying
+words which, little understood as they were, made such a havoc in my
+youthful mind that I have never forgotten the effect.
+
+"'I have come!' she said. 'They think I have fled the house and are
+looking far and wide for me. We shall not be disturbed. Who would think
+looking of here for either you or me.'
+
+"Here! The word sank like a plummet in my breast. I had known for some
+few minutes that I was on the threshold of the forbidden room; but they
+were in it. I can scarcely make you understand the tumult which this
+awoke in my brain. Somehow, I had never thought that any such braving of
+the house's law would be possible.
+
+"I heard my father's answer, but it conveyed no meaning to me. I also
+realized that he spoke from a distance,--that he was at one end of
+the room while we were at the other. I was presently to have this idea
+confirmed, for while I was striving with all my might and main to
+subdue my very heart-throbs so that she would not hear me or suspect my
+presence, the darkness--I should rather say the blackness of the place
+yielded to a flash of lightning--heat lightning, all glare and no
+sound--and I caught an instantaneous vision of my father's figure
+standing with gleaming things about him, which affected me at the moment
+as supernatural, but which, in later years, I decided to have been
+weapons hanging on a wall.
+
+"She saw him too, for she gave a quick laugh and said they would not
+need any candles; and then, there was another flash and I saw something
+in his hand and something in hers, and though I did not yet understand,
+I felt myself turning deathly sick and gave a choking gasp which was
+lost in the rush she made into the centre of the room, and the keenness
+of her swift low cry.
+
+"'Garde-toi! for only one of us will ever leave this room alive!'
+
+"A duel! a duel to the death between this husband and wife--this father
+and mother--in this hole of dead tragedies and within the sight and
+hearing of their child! Has Satan ever devised a scheme more hideous for
+ruining the life of an eleven-year-old boy!
+
+"Not that I took it all in at once. I was too innocent and much too
+dazed to comprehend such hatred, much less the passions which engender
+it. I only knew that something horrible--something beyond the conception
+of my childish mind--was going to take place in the darkness before me;
+and the terror of it made me speechless; would to God it had made me
+deaf and blind and dead!
+
+"She had dashed from her corner and he had slid away from his, as the
+next fantastic glare which lit up the room showed me. It also showed
+the weapons in their hands, and for a moment I felt reassured when I saw
+that these were swords, for I had seen them before with foils in their
+hands practising for exercise, as they said, in the great garret. But
+the swords had buttons on them, and this time the tips were sharp and
+shone in the keen light.
+
+"An exclamation from her and a growl of rage from him were followed by
+movements I could scarcely hear, but which were terrifying from their
+very quiet. Then the sound of a clash. The swords had crossed.
+
+"Had the lightning flashed forth then, the end of one of them might
+have occurred. But the darkness remained undisturbed, and when the glare
+relit the great room again, they were already far apart. This called out
+a word from him; the one sentence he spoke--I can never forget it:
+
+"'Rhoda, there is blood on your sleeve; I have wounded you. Shall we
+call it off and fly, as the poor creatures in there think we have, to
+the opposite ends of the earth?'
+
+"I almost spoke; I almost added my childish plea to his for them to
+stop--to remember me and stop. But not a muscle in my throat responded
+to my agonized effort. Her cold, clear 'No!' fell before my tongue was
+loosed or my heart freed from the ponderous weight crushing it.
+
+"'I have vowed and I keep my promises,' she went on in a tone quite
+strange to me. 'What would either's life be worth with the other alive
+and happy in this world.'
+
+"He made no answer; and those subtle movements--shadows of movements
+I might almost call them--recommenced. Then there came a sudden cry,
+shrill and poignant--had Grandfather been in his room he would surely
+have heard it--and the flash coming almost simultaneously with its
+utterance, I saw what has haunted my sleep from that day to this, my
+father pinned against the wall, sword still in hand, and before him my
+mother, fiercely triumphant, her staring eyes fixed on his and--
+
+"Nature could bear no more; the band loosened from my throat; the
+oppression lifted from my breast long enough for me to give one wild
+wail and she turned, saw (heaven sent its flashes quickly at this
+moment) and recognizing my childish form, all the horror of her deed (or
+so I have fondly hoped) rose within her, and she gave a start and fell
+full upon the point upturned to receive her.
+
+"A groan; then a gasping sigh from him, and silence settled upon the
+room and upon my heart, and so far as I knew upon the whole created
+world.
+
+"That is my story, friends. Do you wonder that I have never been or
+lived like other men?"
+
+After a few moments of sympathetic silence, Mr. Van Broecklyn went on,
+to say:
+
+"I don't think I ever had a moment's doubt that my parents both lay dead
+on the floor of that great room. When I came to myself--which may have
+been soon, and may not have been for a long while--the lightning had
+ceased to flash, leaving the darkness stretching like a blank pall
+between me and that spot in which were concentrated all the terrors of
+which my imagination was capable. I dared not enter it. I dared not take
+one step that way. My instinct was to fly and hide my trembling body
+again in my own bed; and associated with this, in fact dominating it and
+making me old before my time, was another--never to tell; never to let
+any one, least of all my grandfather--know what that forbidden room now
+contained. I felt in an irresistible sort of way that my father's and
+mother's honour was at stake. Besides, terror held me back; I felt that
+I should die if I spoke. Childhood has such terrors and such heroisms.
+Silence often covers in such, abysses of thought and feeling which
+astonish us in later years. There is no suffering like a child's,
+terrified by a secret which it dare not for some reason disclose.
+
+"Events aided me. When, in desperation to see once more the light and
+all the things which linked me to life--my little bed, the toys on the
+window-sill, my squirrel in its cage--I forced myself to retraverse the
+empty house, expecting at every turn to hear my father's voice or come
+upon the image of my mother--yes, such was the confusion of my mind,
+though I knew well enough even then that they were dead and that I
+should never hear the one or see the other. I was so benumbed with the
+cold in my half-dressed condition, that I woke in a fever next morning
+after a terrible dream which forced from my lips the cry of 'Mother!
+Mother!'--only that.
+
+"I was cautious even in delirium. This delirium and my flushed cheeks
+and shining eyes led them to be very careful of me. I was told that my
+mother was away from home; and when after two days of search they were
+quite sure that all effort to find either her or my father were likely
+to prove fruitless, that she had gone to Europe where we would follow
+her as soon as I was well. This promise, offering as it did, a prospect
+of immediate release from the terrors which were consuming me, had an
+extraordinary effect upon me. I got up out of my bed saying that I was
+well now and ready to start on the instant. The doctor, finding my pulse
+equable, and my whole condition wonder fully improved, and attributing
+it, as was natural, to my hope of soon joining my mother, advised
+my whim to be humoured and this hope kept active till travel and
+intercourse with children should give me strength and prepare me for
+the bitter truth ultimately awaiting me. They listened to him and
+in twenty-four hours our preparations were made. We saw the house
+closed--with what emotions surging in one small breast, I leave you to
+imagine--and then started on our long tour. For five years we wandered
+over the continent of Europe, my grandfather finding distraction, as
+well as myself, in foreign scenes and associations.
+
+"But return was inevitable. What I suffered on reentering this house,
+God and my sleepless pillow alone know. Had any discovery been made in
+our absence; or would it be made now that renovation and repairs of all
+kinds were necessary? Time finally answered me. My secret was safe
+and likely to continue so, and this fact once settled, life became
+endurable, if not cheerful. Since then I have spent only two nights out
+of this house, and they were unavoidable. When my grandfather died I had
+the wainscot door cemented in. It was done from this side and the
+cement painted to match the wood. No one opened the door nor have I
+ever crossed its threshold. Sometimes I think I have been foolish; and
+sometimes I know that I have been very wise. My reason has stood firm;
+how do I know that it would have done so if I had subjected myself to
+the possible discovery that one or both of them might have been saved if
+I had disclosed instead of concealed my adventure."
+
+A pause during which white horror had shone on every face; then with a
+final glance at Violet, he said:
+
+"What sequel do you see to this story, Miss Strange? I can tell the
+past, I leave you to picture the future."
+
+Rising, she let her eye travel from face to face till it rested on the
+one awaiting it, when she answered dreamily:
+
+"If some morning in the news column there should appear an account of
+the ancient and historic home of the Van Broecklyns having burned to the
+ground in the night, the whole country would mourn, and the city feel
+defrauded of one of its treasures. But there are five persons who would
+see in it the sequel which you ask for."
+
+When this happened, as it did happen, some few weeks later, the
+astonishing discovery was made that no insurance had been put upon this
+house. Why was it that after such a loss Mr. Van Broecklyn seemed to
+renew his youth? It was a constant source of comment among his friends.
+
+END OF PROBLEM VIII
+
+
+
+
+PROBLEM IX. VIOLET'S OWN
+
+"It has been too much for you?"
+
+"I am afraid so."
+
+It was Roger Upjohn who had asked the question; it was Violet who
+answered. They had withdrawn from a crowd of dancers to a balcony,
+half-shaded, half open to the moon,--a balcony made, it would seem, for
+just such stolen interviews between waltzes.
+
+Now, as it happened, Roger's face was in the shadow, but Violet's in the
+full light. Very sweet it looked, very ethereal, but also a little wan.
+He noticed this and impetuously cried:
+
+"You are pale; and your hand! see, how it trembles!"
+
+Slowly withdrawing it from the rail where it had rested, she sent one
+quick glance his way and, in a low voice, said:
+
+"I have not slept since that night."
+
+"Four days!" he murmured. Then, after a moment of silence, "You bore
+yourself so bravely at the time, I thought, or rather, I hoped, that
+success had made you forget the horror. I could not have slept myself,
+if I had known--"
+
+"It is part of the price I pay," she broke in gently. "All good things
+have to be paid for. But I see--I realize that you do not consider
+what I am doing good. Though it helps other people--has helped you--you
+wonder why, with all the advantages I possess, I should meddle with
+matters so repugnant to a woman's natural instincts."
+
+Yes, he wondered. That was evident from his silence. Seeing her as she
+stood there, so quaintly pretty, so feminine in look and manner--in
+short, such a flower--it was but natural that he should marvel at the
+incongruity she had mentioned.
+
+"It has a strange, odd look," she admitted, after a moment of troubled
+hesitation. "The most considerate person cannot but regard it as a
+display of egotism or of a most mercenary spirit. The cheque you sent
+me for what I was enabled to do for you in Massachusetts (the only one
+I have ever received which I have been tempted to refuse) shows to what
+extent you rated my help and my--my expectations. Had I been a poor girl
+struggling for subsistence, this generosity would have warmed my heart
+as a token of your desire to cut that struggle short. But taken with
+your knowledge of my home and its luxuries, it has often made me wonder
+what you thought."
+
+"Shall I tell you?"
+
+He had stepped forward at this question and his countenance, hitherto
+concealed, became visible in the moonlight. She no longer recognized it.
+Transformed by feeling, it shone down upon her, instinct with all
+that is finest and best in masculine nature. Was she ready for this
+revelation of what she had nevertheless dreamed of for many more nights
+than four? She did not know, and instinctively drew herself back till it
+was she who now stood in the semi-obscurity made by the drooping vines.
+From this retreat, she faltered forth a very tremulous No, which in
+another moment was disavowed by a Yes so faint it was little more than a
+murmur, followed by a still fainter, Tell me.
+
+But he did not seem in any haste to obey, sweetly as her low-toned
+injunction must have sounded in his ears. On the contrary, he hesitated
+to speak, growing paler every minute as he sought to catch a glimpse of
+her downcast face so tantalizingly hidden from him. Did she recognize
+the nature of the feelings which held him back, or was she simply
+gathering up sufficient courage to plead her own cause? Whatever her
+reason, it was she, not he, who presently spoke saying as if no time had
+elapsed:
+
+"But first, I feel obliged to admit that it was money I wanted, that
+I had to have. Not for myself. I lack nothing and could have more if I
+wished. Father has never limited his generosity in any matter affecting
+myself, but--" She drew a deep breath and, coming out of the shadow,
+lifted a face to him so changed from its usual expression as to make him
+start. "I have a cause at heart--one which should appeal to my father
+and does not; and for that purpose I have sacrificed myself, in many
+ways, though--though I have not disliked my work up to this last
+attempt. Not really. I want to be honest and so must admit that much.
+I have even gloried (quietly and all by myself, of course) over the
+solution of a mystery which no one else seemed able to penetrate. I am
+made that way. I have known it ever since--but that is a story all by
+itself. Some day I may tell it to you, but not now."
+
+"No, not now." The emphasis sent the colour into her cheek but did not
+relieve his pallor. "Miss Strange, I have always felt, even in my worst
+days, that the man who for selfish ends brought a woman under the shadow
+of his own unhappy reputation was a man to be despised. And I think so
+still, and yet--and yet--nothing in the world but your own word or
+look can hold me back now from telling you that I love you--love you
+notwithstanding my unworthy past, my scarring memories, my all but
+blasted hopes. I do not expect any response; you are young; you are
+beautiful; you are gifted with every grace; but to speak,--to say over
+and over again, 'I love you, I love you!' eases my heart and makes my
+future more endurable. Oh, do not look at me like that unless--unless--"
+
+But the bright head did not fall, nor the tender gaze falter; and driven
+out of himself, Roger Upjohn was about to step passionately forward,
+when, seized by fresh compunction, he hoarsely cried:
+
+"It is not right. The balance dips too much my way. You bring me
+everything. I can give you nothing but what you already possess
+abundance--love, and money. Besides, your father--"
+
+She interrupted him with a glance at once arch and earnest.
+
+"I had a talk with Father this morning. He came to my room, and--and it
+was very near being serious. Someone had told him I was doing things on
+the sly which he had better look into; and of course he asked questions
+and--and I answered them. He wasn't pleased--in fact he was very
+displeased,--I don't think we can blame him for that--but we had no open
+break for I love him dearly, for all my opposing ways, and he saw that,
+and it helped, though he did say after I had given my promise to stop
+where I was and never to take up such work again, that--" here she stole
+a shy look at the face bent so eagerly towards her--"that I had lost my
+social status and need never hope now for the attentions of--of--well,
+of such men as he admires and puts faith in. So you see," her dimples
+all showing, "that I am not such a very good match for an Upjohn of
+Massachusetts, even if he has a reputation to recover and an honourable
+name to achieve. The scale hangs more evenly than you think."
+
+"Violet!"
+
+A mutual look, a moment of perfect silence, then a low whisper, airy as
+the breath of flowers rising from the garden below: "I have never known
+what happiness was till this moment. If you will take me with my story
+untold--"
+
+"Take you! take you!" The man's whole yearning heart, the loss and
+bitterness of years, the hope and promise of the future, all spoke in
+that low, half-smothered exclamation. Violet's blushes faded under its
+fervency, and only her spirit spoke, as leaning towards him, she laid
+her two hands in his, and said with all a woman's earnestness:
+
+"I do not forget little Roger, or the father who I hope may have many
+more days before him in which to bid good-night to the sea. Such union
+as ours must be hallowed, because we have so many persons to make happy
+besides ourselves."
+
+
+The evening before their marriage, Violet put a dozen folded sheets of
+closely written paper in his hand. They contained her story; let us read
+it with him.
+
+DEAR ROGER,--
+
+I could not have been more than seven years old, when one night I woke
+up shivering, at the sound of angry voices. A conversation which no
+child should ever have heard, was going on in the room where I lay. My
+father was talking to my sister--perhaps, you do not know that I have
+a sister; few of my personal friends do,--and the terror she evinced
+I could well understand but not his words nor the real cause of his
+displeasure.
+
+There are times even yet when the picture, forced upon my infantile
+consciousness at that moment of first awakening, comes back to me with
+all its original vividness. There was no light in the room save such as
+the moon made; but that was enough to reveal the passion burningly alive
+in either face, as, bending towards each other, she in supplication
+and he in a tempest of wrath which knew no bounds, he uttered and she
+listened to what I now know to have been a terrible arraignment.
+
+I may have an interesting countenance; you have told me so sometimes;
+but she--she was beautiful. My elder by ten years, she had stood in my
+mother's stead to me for almost as long as I could remember, and as I
+saw her lovely features contorted with pain and her hands extended in
+a desperate plea to one who had never shown me anything but love, my
+throat closed sharply and I could not cry out though I wanted to, nor
+move head or foot though I longed with all my heart to bury myself in
+the pillows.
+
+For the words I heard were terrifying, little as I comprehended their
+full purport. He had surprised her talking from her window to someone
+down below, and after saying cruel things about that, he shouted out:
+"You have disgraced me, you have disgraced yourself, you have disgraced
+your brother and your little sister. Was it not enough that you should
+refuse to marry the good man I had picked out for you, that you should
+stoop to this low-down scoundrel--this--" I did not hear what else he
+called him, I was wondering so to whom she had been stooping; I had
+never seen her stoop except to tie my little shoes.
+
+But when she cried out as she did after an interval, "I love him! I
+love him!" then I listened again, for she spoke as though she were in
+dreadful pain, and I did not know that loving made one ill and unhappy.
+"And I am going to marry him," I heard her add, standing up, as she said
+it, very straight and tall.
+
+Marry! I knew what that meant. A long aisle in a church; women in white
+and big music in the air behind. I had been flower-girl at a wedding
+once and had not forgotten. We had had ice cream and cake and--
+
+But my childish thoughts stopped short at the answer she received and
+all the words which followed--words which burned their way into my
+infantile brain and left scorched places in my memory which will never
+be eradicated. He spoke them--spoke them all; she never answered again
+after that once, and when he was gone did not move for a long time and
+when she did it was to lie down, stiff and straight, just as she had
+stood, on her bed alongside mine.
+
+I was frightened; so frightened, my little brass bed rattled under me. I
+wonder she did not hear it. But she heard nothing; and after awhile she
+was so still I fell asleep. But I woke again. Something hot had fallen
+on my cheek. I put up my hand to brush it away and did not know even
+when I felt my fingers wet that it was a tear from my sister-mother's
+eye.
+
+For she was kneeling then; kneeling close beside me and her arm was over
+my small body; and the bed was shaking again but not this time with my
+tremors only. And I was sorry and cried too until I dropped off to sleep
+again with her arm still passionately embracing me.
+
+In the morning, she was gone.
+
+It must have been that very afternoon that Father came in where Arthur
+and I were trying to play,--trying, but not quite succeeding, for I had
+been telling Arthur, for whom I had a great respect in those days, what
+had happened the night before, and we had been wondering in our childish
+way if there would be a wedding after all, and a church full of people,
+and flowers, and kissing, and lots of good things to eat, and Arthur had
+said No, it was too expensive; that that was why Father was so angry;
+and comforted by the assertion, I was taking up my doll again, when the
+door opened and Father stepped in.
+
+It was a great event--any visit from him to the nursery--and we both
+dropped our toys and stood staring, not knowing whether he was going
+to be nice and kind as he sometimes was, or scold us as I had heard him
+scold our beautiful sister.
+
+Arthur showed at once what he thought, for without the least hesitation
+he took the one step which placed him in front of me, where he stood
+waiting with his two little fists hanging straight at his sides but
+manfully clenched in full readiness for attack. That this display of
+pigmy chivalry was not quite without its warrant is evident to me now,
+for Father did not look like himself or act like himself any more than
+he had the night before.
+
+However, we had no cause for fear. Having no suspicion of my having been
+awake during his terrible interview with Theresa, he saw only two lonely
+and forsaken children, interrupted in their play.
+
+Can I remember what he said to us? Not exactly, though Arthur and I
+often went over it choked whispers in some secret nook of the dreary old
+house; but his meaning--that we took in well enough. Theresa had left
+us. She would never come back. We were not to look out of the window for
+her, or run to the door when the bell rang. Our mother had left us too,
+a long time ago, and she lay in the cemetery where we sometimes carried
+flowers. Theresa was not in the cemetery, but we must think of her as
+there; though not as if she had any need of flowers. Having said this,
+he looked at us quietly for a minute. Arthur was trying very hard not to
+cry, but I was sobbing like the lost child I was, with my cheek against
+the floor where I had thrown myself when he said that awful thing about
+the cemetery. She there! my sister-mother there! I think he felt a
+little sorry for me; for he half stooped as if to lift me up. But he
+straightened again and said very sternly:
+
+"Now, children, listen to me. When God takes people to heaven and leaves
+us only their cold, dead bodies we carry flowers to their graves and
+talk about them some if not very much. But when people die because they
+love dark ways better than light, then we do not remember them with
+gifts and we do not talk about them. Your sister's name has been spoken
+for the last time in this house. You, Arthur, are old enough to know
+what I mean when I say that I will never listen to another word about
+her from either you or Violet as long as you and I live. She is gone and
+nothing that is mine shall she ever touch again.
+
+"You hear me, Arthur; you hear me, Violet. Heed me, or you go too."
+
+His aspect was terrible, so was his purpose; much more terrible than
+we realized at the time with our limited understanding and experience.
+Later, we came to know the full meaning of this black drop which had
+been infused into our lives. When we saw every picture of her destroyed
+which had been in the house; her name cut out from the leaves of books;
+the little tokens she had given us surreptitiously taken away, till not
+a vestige of her once beloved presence remained, we began to realize
+that we had indeed lost her.
+
+But children as young as we were then do not long retain the poignancy
+of their first griefs. Gradually my memories of that awful night ceased
+to disturb my dreams and I was sixteen before they were again recalled
+to me with any vividness, and then it was by accident. I had been
+strolling through a picture gallery and had stopped short to study more
+particularly one which had especially taken my fancy. There were two
+ladies sitting on a bench behind me and one of them was evidently very
+deaf, for their talk was loud, though I am sure they did not mean for
+me to hear, for they were discussing my family. That is, one of them had
+said:
+
+"That's Violet Strange. She will never be the beauty her sister was; but
+perhaps that's not to be deplored. Theresa made a great mess of it."
+
+"That's true. I hear that she and the Signor have been seen lately here
+in town. In poverty, of course. He hadn't even as much go in him as the
+ordinary singing-master."
+
+I suppose I should have hurried away, and left this barbed arrow to
+rankle where it fell. But I could not. I had never learned a word of
+Theresa's fate and that word poverty, proving that she was alive and
+suffering, held me to my place to hear what more they might say of
+her who for years had been for me an indistinct figure bathed in cruel
+moonlight.
+
+"I have never approved of Peter Strange's conduct at that time," one of
+the voices now went on. "He didn't handle her right. She had a lovely
+disposition and would have listened to him had he been more gentle with
+her. But it isn't in him. I hope this one--"
+
+I didn't hear the end of that. I had no interest in anything they might
+say about myself. It was of her I wanted to hear, of her. Weren't they
+going to say anything more about my poor sister? Yes; it was a topic
+which interested both and presently I heard:
+
+"He'll never do anything for her, no matter what happens; I've heard him
+say so. And Laura has vowed the same." (Laura is our aunt.) "Besides,
+Theresa has a pride of her own quite equal to her father's. She wouldn't
+take anything from him now. She'd rather struggle on. I'm told--I don't
+know how true it is--that she's working in a department store; one of
+the Sixth Avenue ones. Oh, there's Mrs. Vandegraff! Don't you want to
+speak to her?"
+
+They moved off, leaving me still gazing with unseeing eyes at the
+picture before which I stood planted, and saying over and over in
+monotonous iteration, "One of the department stores in Sixth Avenue! One
+of the department stores in Sixth Avenue!"
+
+Which department store?
+
+I meant to find out.
+
+I do not know whether up till then I had had the least consciousness of
+possessing what is called the detective instinct. But, at the prospect
+of this quest, so much like that of the proverbial needle in a haystack,
+as I did not even know my sister's married name and something within me
+forbade my asking it, I experienced an odd sense of elation followed
+by a certainty of success which in five minutes changed me from an
+irresponsible girl to a woman with a deliberate purpose in life.
+
+I am not going to write down here all the details of that search.
+Some day I may relate them to you, but not now. I looked first for
+a beautiful woman, for the straight, slim, and exquisite creature I
+remembered. I did not find her. Then I tried another course. Her figure
+might have changed in the ten years which had elapsed; so might her
+expression. I would look for a woman with beautiful dark eyes; time
+could not have altered them. I had forgotten the effect of constant
+weeping. And I saw many eyes, but not hers; not the ones I had seen
+smiling upon me as I lay in my crib before the days I was lifted to the
+dignity of the little brass bed. So I gave that up too and listened to
+the inner voice which said, "You must wait for her to recognize you. You
+can never hope to recognize her." And it was by following this plan
+that I found her. I had arranged to have my name spoken aloud at every
+counter where I bargained; and oh, the bargains I sought, and the
+garments I had tried on! But I made little progress until one day, after
+my name had been uttered a little louder than usual I saw a woman turn
+from rearranging gowns on a hanger, and give me one look.
+
+I uttered a low cry and sprang impetuously, forward. Instantly she
+turned her back and went on hanging, or trying to hang up, gowns on
+the rack before her. Had I been mistaken? She was not the sister of
+my dreams, but there was something fine in her outline; something
+distinguished in the way she carried her head which--
+
+Next minute my last doubt fled! She had fallen her length on the floor
+and lay with her face buried in her hands in a dead faint.
+
+Oh, Roger, Roger, Roger! I had that dear head on my breast in a moment.
+I talked to her, I whispered prayers in her unconscious ear. I did
+everything I should not have done till they all thought me demented.
+When she came to, as she did under other ministrations than mine, I
+was for carrying her off in my limousine. But she shook her head with
+a gesture of such disapproval, that I realized I could not do that. The
+limousine was my father's, and nothing of his was ever to be used for
+her again. I would call a cab; but she told me that she had not the
+money to pay for it and she would not take mine. Carfare she had; five
+cents would take her home. I need not worry.
+
+She smiled as she said this and for an instant I saw my dream-sister
+again in this weary half-disheartened woman. But the smile was a
+fleeting one, for this was to be her last day in the store; she had no
+talent as a saleswoman and was merely working out her week.
+
+I felt my heart sink heavily at this, for the evidences of poverty
+were plainly to be seen in her clothes and the thinness of her face and
+figure. How could I help? What could I do? I took her to a restaurant
+for food and talk, and before she would order, she looked into her
+purse, with the result that we had only a little toast and tea. It was
+all she could afford and I, with a hundred dollars in bills at that
+moment in my bag, could not offer her anything more though she was
+needing nourishment and dishes piled with savoury meats were going by us
+every moment.
+
+I think, if she had let me, I would have dared my father's displeasure
+and been disobedient to his wishes by giving her one wholesome meal.
+But she was as resolute of mind as he, and, as she said afterwards,
+had chosen her course in life and must abide by it. My love she would
+accept. It took nothing from Father and gave her what her heart was
+pining for--had pined for for years. But nothing more--not another thing
+more. She would not even let me go home with her; and I knew why when
+her eyes fell at the searching look I gave her. Something would turn
+up, and when her husband's health was better and she had found another
+position she would send me her address and then I could come and see
+her. As we walked out of the restaurant we ran against a gentleman
+I knew. He stopped me for a passing word and in that minute she
+disappeared. I did not try to follow her. I could get her street and
+number from the store where she had worked.
+
+But when I had done this and embraced the first opportunity which
+offered to visit her, I found that she had moved away in the interim,
+leaving everything behind in payment of her rent, except such small
+things as she and her husband could carry. This was discouraging as it
+left me without any clue by which to follow them. But I was determined
+not to yield to her desire for concealment in the difficult and
+disheartening task I now saw before me.
+
+Seeking advice from the man who has since become my employer, I entered
+upon this second search with a quiet resolution which admitted of no
+defeat. It took me six months, but I finally found her, and satisfied
+with knowing where she was, desisted from rushing in upon her, till I
+had caught one glimpse of her husband whom, in the last six months,
+I had heard described but had never seen. To understand her, it was
+perhaps necessary to understand him, and if I could not hope to do this
+offhand, I could not fail to get some idea of the man from even the most
+casual look.
+
+He was, as I soon learned, the fetcher and carrier of the small menage;
+and the day came when I met him face to face in the street where they
+lived. Did he disappoint me; or did I see something in his appearance
+to justify her desertion of her father's home and her present life of
+poverty? If I say Yes to the first question, I must also say it to the
+last. If handsome once, he was not handsome now; but with a personality
+such as his, this did not matter. He had that better thing--that
+greatest gift of the gods--charm. It was in his bearing, his movement,
+the regard of his weary eye; more than that it was in his very nature or
+it would have vanished long ago under disappointment and privation.
+
+But that was all there was to the man,--a golden net in which my
+sister's youthful fancy had been caught and no doubt held meshed to
+this very day. I felt less like blaming her for her folly, after that
+instant's view of him as we passed each other in the street. But, as I
+took time to think, I found myself growing sorrier and sorrier for her
+and yet, in a way, gladder and gladder, for the man was a physical wreck
+and would soon pass out of her life leaving her to my love and possibly
+to our father's forgiveness.
+
+But I did not know Theresa. After her husband's death, which occurred
+very soon, she let me come to her and we had a long talk. Shall I ever
+forget it or the sight of her beauty in that sordid room? For, account
+for it as you will, the loveliness which had fled under her sense of
+complete isolation had slowly regained its own with the recognition that
+she still had a place in the heart of her little sister. Not even the
+sorrow she felt for the loss of her suffering husband--and she did mourn
+him; this I am glad to say--could more than temporarily stay this. Six
+months of ease and wholesome food would make her--I hardly dared to
+think what. For I knew, without asking her, or she telling me, that
+she would accept neither; that she was as determined now, as ever that
+nothing which came directly or indirectly from Father should go to the
+rebuilding of her life. That she intended to start anew and work her way
+up to a place where I should be glad to see her she did say. But
+nothing more. She was still the sister-mother, loving, but sufficient to
+herself, though she had but ten dollars left in the world, as she showed
+me with a smile that made her beautiful as an angel.
+
+I can see that shabby little purse yet with its one poor greasy bill;--a
+sum to her but to me the price of a luncheon or a gift of flowers. How
+I longed, as I looked at it to tear every jewel from my poor, bedecked
+body and fling them one and all into her lap. I had worn them in
+profusion, though carefully hidden under my coat, in the hope that she
+would accept one of them at least, But she refused all, even such as had
+been gifts of friends and schoolmates, only humouring me this far, that
+she let me hang them for a few minutes about her neck and in her hair
+and then pull them all off again. But this one vision of her in the
+splendour she was born to comforted me. Henceforth in wearing them it
+would be of her and not of myself I should think.
+
+Well, I had to leave her and go home to my French and Italian lessons,
+my music-masters and all the luxuries of our father's house. Should I
+ever see her again? I did not know; she had not promised. I could not go
+often into the quarter where she lived, without rousing suspicion;
+and she had bidden me not to come again for a month. So I waited, half
+fearing she would flit again before the month was up. But she did not.
+She was still there when--
+
+But I am going too fast. The meeting I was about to mention was a very
+memorable one to me, and I must describe it from the beginning. I had
+ridden in my own car as near as I dared to the street where she lived;
+the rest of the way I went on foot with one of the servants--a new
+one--following close behind me. I was not exactly afraid, but the
+actions of some of the people I had encountered at my former visit
+warned me to be a little careful for my father's sake if not for my own.
+Her room--she had but one--was high up in a triangular court it was
+no pleasure to enter. But love and loyalty heed nothing but the object
+sought, and I was hunting about for the dark doorway which opened upon
+the staircase leading to her room when--and this was the great moment of
+my life--a sudden stream of melody floated down into that noisome court,
+which from its clearness, its accuracy, its richness, and its feeling
+startled me as I had never before been startled even by the first notes
+of the world's greatest singers. What a voice for a place like this!
+What a voice for any place! Whose could it be? With a start, I stopped
+short, in the middle of that court, heedless of the crowd of pushing,
+shouting children who at once gathered about me. I had been struck by an
+old recollection. My sister used to sing. I remembered where her piano
+had stood in the great drawing-room. It had been carted away during
+those dreadful weeks and her music all burned; but the vision of her
+graceful figure bending over the keyboard was one not to be forgotten
+even by a thoughtless child. Could it be--oh, heaven! if this voice were
+hers! Her future was certain; she had but to sing.
+
+In a transport of hope I rushed for the dim entrance the children had
+pointed out and flew up to her room. As I reached it, I heard a trill as
+perfect as Tetrazzini's. The singer was Theresa; there could be no more
+doubt. Theresa! exercising a grand voice as only a great artist would or
+could.
+
+The joy of it made me almost faint. I leaned against her door and
+sobbed. Then when I thought I could speak quite calmly, I went in.
+
+Roger, you must understand me now,--my desire for money and the means I
+have taken to obtain it. My sister had the makings of a prima-donna. Her
+husband, of whose ability I had formed so low an estimate, had trained
+her with consummate skill and judgment. All she needed was a year with
+some great maestro in the foreign atmosphere of art. But this meant
+money--not hundreds but thousands, and the one sure source to which we
+might rightfully look for any such amount was effectually closed to
+us. It is true we had relatives--an aunt on our mother's side, and I
+mentioned her to Theresa. But she would not listen to the suggestion.
+She would take nothing from any one whom she would find it hard to face
+in case of failure. Love must go with an advance involving so much
+risk; love deep enough and strong enough to feel no loss save that of a
+defeated hope. In short, to be acceptable, the money must come from me,
+and as this was manifestly impossible, she considered the matter closed
+and began to talk of a position she had been offered in some choir. I
+let her talk, listening and not listening; for the idea had come to me
+that if in some way I could earn money, she might be induced to take it.
+Finally, I asked her. She laughed, letting her kisses answer me. But
+I did not laugh. If she had capabilities in one way, I had them in
+another.
+
+I went home to think.
+
+Two weeks later, I began, in a very quiet way to do certain work for the
+man who had helped me in my second search for Theresa. The money I have
+earned has been immense; since it was troubles of the rich I was given
+to settle, and I was almost always successful. Every cent has gone to
+her. She has been in Europe for a year and last week she made her debut.
+You read about it in the papers, but neither you nor any one else in
+this country but myself knew that under the name she chosen to assume,
+Theresa Strange, the long forgotten beauty, has recovered that place in
+the world, to which her love and genius entitle her.
+
+This is my story and hers. From now on, you are the third in the secret.
+Some day, my father will be the fourth. I think then, a new dawn of
+love will arise for us all, which will stay the whitening of his dear
+head--for I believe in him after all. Yesterday when he passed the wall
+where her picture once hung--no other has ever hung there--I saw him
+stop and look up, and, Roger, when he passed me a minute later, there
+was a tear in his hard eye.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Golden Slipper, by Anna Katharine Green
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diff --git a/3071.zip b/3071.zip
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #3071 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3071)
diff --git a/old/3071-h.htm.2021-01-27 b/old/3071-h.htm.2021-01-27
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Golden Slipper, by Anna Katharine Green
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Slipper, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Golden Slipper
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green
+
+Release Date: February 1, 2009 [EBook #3071]
+Last Updated: October 3, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN SLIPPER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lynn and Chris Hill, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      And Other Problems for Violet Strange
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Anna Katharine Green <br /> (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>THE GOLDEN SLIPPER</b> <br />AND OTHER
+      PROBLEMS FOR VIOLET STRANGE </a>
+    </p>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> PROBLEM I. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> PROBLEM II. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE SECOND BULLET
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> PROBLEM III. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          AN INTANGIBLE CLUE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> PROBLEM IV. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE GROTTO SPECTRE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> PROBLEM V. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE DREAMING LADY
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> PROBLEM VI. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> PROBLEM VII. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE DOCTOR, HIS WIFE, AND THE CLOCK
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> PROBLEM VIII. &nbsp;&nbsp;</a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> PROBLEM IX. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          VIOLET&rsquo;S OWN
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE GOLDEN SLIPPER <br /> AND OTHER PROBLEMS FOR VIOLET STRANGE
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM I THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s here! I thought she would be. She&rsquo;s one of the three young ladies
+      you see in the right-hand box near the proscenium.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentleman thus addressed&mdash;a man of middle age and a member of the
+      most exclusive clubs&mdash;turned his opera glass toward the spot
+      designated, and in some astonishment retorted:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She? Why those are the Misses Pratt and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Violet Strange; no other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you mean to say&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That yon silly little chit, whose father I know, whose fortune I know,
+      who is seen everywhere, and who is called one of the season&rsquo;s belles is an
+      agent of yours; a&mdash;a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No names here, please. You want a mystery solved. It is not a matter for
+      the police&mdash;that is, as yet,&mdash;and so you come to me, and when I
+      ask for the facts, I find that women and only women are involved, and that
+      these women are not only young but one and all of the highest society. Is
+      it a man&rsquo;s work to go to the bottom of a combination like this? No. Sex
+      against sex, and, if possible, youth against youth. Happily, I know such a
+      person&mdash;a girl of gifts and extraordinarily well placed for the
+      purpose. Why she uses her talents in this direction&mdash;why, with means
+      enough to play the part natural to her as a successful debutante, she
+      consents to occupy herself with social and other mysteries, you must ask
+      her, not me. Enough that I promise you her aid if you want it. That is, if
+      you can interest her. She will not work otherwise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Driscoll again raised his opera glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s a comedy face,&rdquo; he commented. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s hard to associate
+      intellectuality with such quaintness of expression. Are you sure of her
+      discretion?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom is she with?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abner Pratt, his wife, and daughters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he a man to entrust his affairs unadvisedly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abner Pratt! Do you mean to say that she is anything more to him than his
+      daughters&rsquo; guest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judge. You see how merry they are. They were in deep trouble yesterday.
+      You are witness to a celebration.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you observe how they are loading her with attentions? She&rsquo;s too
+      young to rouse such interest in a family of notably unsympathetic
+      temperament for any other reason than that of gratitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s hard to believe. But if what you hint is true, secure me an
+      opportunity at once of talking to this youthful marvel. My affair is
+      serious. The dinner I have mentioned comes off in three days and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. I recognize your need; but I think you had better enter Mr.
+      Pratt&rsquo;s box without my intervention. Miss Strange&rsquo;s value to us will be
+      impaired the moment her connection with us is discovered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, there&rsquo;s Ruthven! He will take me to Mr. Pratt&rsquo;s box,&rdquo; remarked
+      Driscoll as the curtain fell on the second act. &ldquo;Any suggestions before I
+      go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and an important one. When you make your bow, touch your left
+      shoulder with your right hand. It is a signal. She may respond to it; but
+      if she does not, do not be discouraged. One of her idiosyncrasies is a
+      theoretical dislike of her work. But once she gets interested, nothing
+      will hold her back. That&rsquo;s all, except this. In no event give away her
+      secret. That&rsquo;s part of the compact, you remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Driscoll nodded and left his seat for Ruthven&rsquo;s box. When the curtain rose
+      for the third time he could be seen sitting with the Misses Pratt and
+      their vivacious young friend. A widower and still on the right side of
+      fifty, his presence there did not pass unnoted, and curiosity was rife
+      among certain onlookers as to which of the twin belles was responsible for
+      this change in his well-known habits. Unfortunately, no opportunity was
+      given him for showing. Other and younger men had followed his lead into
+      the box, and they saw him forced upon the good graces of the fascinating
+      but inconsequent Miss Strange whose rapid fire of talk he was hardly of a
+      temperament to appreciate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did he appear dissatisfied? Yes; but only one person in the opera house
+      knew why. Miss Strange had shown no comprehension of or sympathy with his
+      errand. Though she chatted amiably enough between duets and trios, she
+      gave him no opportunity to express his wishes though she knew them well
+      enough, owing to the signal he had given her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This might be in character but it hardly suited his views; and, being a
+      man of resolution, he took advantage of an absorbing minute on the stage
+      to lean forward and whisper in her ear:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s my daughter for whom I request your services; as fine a girl as any
+      in this house. Give me a hearing. You certainly can manage it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a small, slight woman whose naturally quaint appearance was
+      accentuated by the extreme simplicity of her attire. In the tier upon tier
+      of boxes rising before his eyes, no other personality could vie with hers
+      in strangeness, or in the illusive quality of her ever-changing
+      expression. She was vivacity incarnate and, to the ordinary observer,
+      light as thistledown in fibre and in feeling. But not to all. To those who
+      watched her long, there came moments&mdash;say when the music rose to
+      heights of greatness&mdash;when the mouth so given over to laughter took
+      on curves of the rarest sensibility, and a woman&rsquo;s lofty soul shone
+      through her odd, bewildering features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Driscoll had noted this, and consequently awaited her reply in secret
+      hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came in the form of a question and only after an instant&rsquo;s display of
+      displeasure or possibly of pure nervous irritability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has she done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. But slander is in the air, and any day it may ripen into public
+      accusation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Accusation of what?&rdquo; Her tone was almost pettish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of&mdash;of theft,&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;On a great scale,&rdquo; he emphasized, as
+      the music rose to a crash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jewels?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Inestimable ones. They are always returned by somebody. People say, by
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; The little lady&rsquo;s hands grew steady,&mdash;they had been fluttering
+      all over her lap. &ldquo;I will see you to-morrow morning at my father&rsquo;s house,&rdquo;
+       she presently observed; and turned her full attention to the stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some three days after this Mr. Driscoll opened his house on the Hudson to
+      notable guests. He had not desired the publicity of such an event, nor the
+      opportunity it gave for an increase of the scandal secretly in circulation
+      against his daughter. But the Ambassador and his wife were foreign and any
+      evasion of the promised hospitality would be sure to be misunderstood; so
+      the scheme was carried forward though with less eclat than possibly was
+      expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the lesser guests, who were mostly young and well acquainted with
+      the house and its hospitality, there was one unique figure,&mdash;that of
+      the lively Miss Strange, who, if personally unknown to Miss Driscoll, was
+      so gifted with the qualities which tell on an occasion of this kind, that
+      the stately young hostess hailed her presence with very obvious gratitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The manner of their first meeting was singular, and of great interest to
+      one of them at least. Miss Strange had come in an automobile and had been
+      shown her room; but there was nobody to accompany her down-stairs
+      afterward, and, finding herself alone in the great hall, she naturally
+      moved toward the library, the door of which stood ajar. She had pushed
+      this door half open before she noticed that the room was already occupied.
+      As a consequence, she was made the unexpected observer of a beautiful
+      picture of youth and love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A young man and a young woman were standing together in the glow of a
+      blazing wood-fire. No word was to be heard, but in their faces, eloquent
+      with passion, there shone something so deep and true that the chance
+      intruder hesitated on the threshold, eager to lay this picture away in her
+      mind with the other lovely and tragic memories now fast accumulating
+      there. Then she drew back, and readvancing with a less noiseless foot,
+      came into the full presence of Captain Holliday drawn up in all the pride
+      of his military rank beside Alicia, the accomplished daughter of the
+      house, who, if under a shadow as many whispered, wore that shadow as some
+      women wear a crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange was struck with admiration, and turned upon them the
+      brightest facet of her vivacious nature all the time she was saying to
+      herself: &ldquo;Does she know why I am here? Or does she look upon me only as an
+      additional guest foisted upon her by a thoughtless parent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing in the manner of her cordial but composed young hostess
+      to show, and Miss Strange, with but one thought in mind since she had
+      caught the light of feeling on the two faces confronting her, took the
+      first opportunity that offered of running over the facts given her by Mr.
+      Driscoll, to see if any reconcilement were possible between them and an
+      innocence in which she must henceforth believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were certainly of a most damaging nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Driscoll and four other young ladies of her own station in life had
+      formed themselves, some two years before, into a coterie of five, called
+      The Inseparables. They lunched together, rode together, visited together.
+      So close was the bond and their mutual dependence so evident, that it came
+      to be the custom to invite the whole five whenever the size of the
+      function warranted it. In fact, it was far from an uncommon occurrence to
+      see them grouped at receptions or following one another down the aisles of
+      churches or through the mazes of the dance at balls or assemblies. And no
+      one demurred at this, for they were all handsome and attractive girls,
+      till it began to be noticed that, coincident with their presence, some
+      article of value was found missing from the dressing-room or from the
+      tables where wedding gifts were displayed. Nothing was safe where they
+      went, and though, in the course of time, each article found its way back
+      to its owner in a manner as mysterious as its previous abstraction, the
+      scandal grew and, whether with good reason or bad, finally settled about
+      the person of Miss Driscoll, who was the showiest, least pecuniarily
+      tempted, and most dignified in manner and speech of them all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some instances had been given by way of further enlightenment. This is
+      one: A theatre party was in progress. There were twelve in the party, five
+      of whom were the Inseparables. In the course of the last act, another lady&mdash;in
+      fact, their chaperon&mdash;missed her handkerchief, an almost priceless
+      bit of lace. Positive that she had brought it with her into the box, she
+      caused a careful search, but without the least success. Recalling certain
+      whispers she had heard, she noted which of the five girls were with her in
+      the box. They were Miss Driscoll, Miss Hughson, Miss Yates, and Miss
+      Benedict. Miss West sat in the box adjoining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fortnight later this handkerchief reappeared&mdash;and where? Among the
+      cushions of a yellow satin couch in her own drawing-room. The Inseparables
+      had just made their call and the three who had sat on the couch were Miss
+      Driscoll, Miss Hughson, and Miss Benedict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next instance seemed to point still more insistently toward the lady
+      already named. Miss Yates had an expensive present to buy, and the whole
+      five Inseparables went in an imposing group to Tiffany&rsquo;s. A tray of rings
+      was set before them. All examined and eagerly fingered the stock out of
+      which Miss Yates presently chose a finely set emerald. She was leading her
+      friends away when the clerk suddenly whispered in her ear, &ldquo;I miss one of
+      the rings.&rdquo; Dismayed beyond speech, she turned and consulted the faces of
+      her four companions who stared back at her with immovable serenity. But
+      one of them was paler than usual, and this lady (it was Miss Driscoll)
+      held her hands in her muff and did not offer to take them out. Miss Yates,
+      whose father had completed a big &ldquo;deal&rdquo; the week before, wheeled round
+      upon the clerk. &ldquo;Charge it! charge it at its full value,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;I buy
+      both the rings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in three weeks the purloined ring came back to her, in a box of
+      violets with no name attached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third instance was a recent one, and had come to Mr. Driscoll&rsquo;s ears
+      directly from the lady suffering the loss. She was a woman of
+      uncompromising integrity, who felt it her duty to make known to this
+      gentleman the following facts: She had just left a studio reception, and
+      was standing at the curb waiting for a taxicab to draw up, when a small
+      boy&mdash;a street arab&mdash;darted toward her from the other side of the
+      street, and thrusting into her hand something small and hard, cried
+      breathlessly as he slipped away, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s yours, ma&rsquo;am; you dropped it.&rdquo;
+       Astonished, for she had not been conscious of any loss, she looked down at
+      her treasure trove and found it to be a small medallion which she
+      sometimes wore on a chain at her belt. But she had not worn it that day,
+      nor any day for weeks. Then she remembered. She had worn it a month before
+      to a similar reception at this same studio. A number of young girls had
+      stood about her admiring it&mdash;she remembered well who they were; the
+      Inseparables, of course, and to please them she had slipped it from its
+      chain. Then something had happened,&mdash;something which diverted her
+      attention entirely,&mdash;and she had gone home without the medallion;
+      had, in fact, forgotten it, only to recall its loss now. Placing it in her
+      bag, she looked hastily about her. A crowd was at her back; nothing to be
+      distinguished there. But in front, on the opposite side of the street,
+      stood a club-house, and in one of its windows she perceived a solitary
+      figure looking out. It was that of Miss Driscoll&rsquo;s father. He could
+      imagine her conclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain he denied all knowledge of the matter. She told him other stories
+      which had come to her ears of thefts as mysterious, followed by
+      restorations as peculiar as this one, finishing with, &ldquo;It is your
+      daughter, and people are beginning to say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Miss Strange, brooding over these instances, would have said the same,
+      but for Miss Driscoll&rsquo;s absolute serenity of demeanour and complete
+      abandonment to love. These seemed incompatible with guilt; these, whatever
+      the appearances, proclaimed innocence&mdash;an innocence she was here to
+      prove if fortune favoured and the really guilty person&rsquo;s madness should
+      again break forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For madness it would be and nothing less, for any hand, even the most
+      experienced, to draw attention to itself by a repetition of old tricks on
+      an occasion so marked. Yet because it would take madness, and madness
+      knows no law, she prepared herself for the contingency under a mask of
+      girlish smiles which made her at once the delight and astonishment of her
+      watchful and uneasy host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the exception of the diamonds worn by the Ambassadress, there was but
+      one jewel of consequence to be seen at the dinner that night; but how
+      great was that consequence and with what splendour it invested the snowy
+      neck it adorned!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange, in compliment to the noble foreigners, had put on one of her
+      family heirlooms&mdash;a filigree pendant of extraordinary sapphires which
+      had once belonged to Marie Antoinette. As its beauty flashed upon the
+      women, and its value struck the host, the latter could not restrain
+      himself from casting an anxious eye about the board in search of some
+      token of the cupidity with which one person there must welcome this
+      unexpected sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally his first glance fell upon Alicia, seated opposite to him at the
+      other end of the table. But her eyes were elsewhere, and her smile for
+      Captain Holliday, and the father&rsquo;s gaze travelled on, taking up each young
+      girl&rsquo;s face in turn. All were contemplating Miss Strange and her jewels,
+      and the cheeks of one were flushed and those of the others pale, but
+      whether with dread or longing who could tell. Struck with foreboding, but
+      alive to his duty as host, he forced his glances away, and did not even
+      allow himself to question the motive or the wisdom of the temptation thus
+      offered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two hours later and the girls were all in one room. It was a custom of the
+      Inseparables to meet for a chat before retiring, but always alone and in
+      the room of one of their number. But this was a night of innovations;
+      Violet was not only included, but the meeting was held in her room. Her
+      way with girls was even more fruitful of result than her way with men.
+      They might laugh at her, criticize her or even call her names significant
+      of disdain, but they never left her long to herself or missed an
+      opportunity to make the most of her irrepressible chatter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her satisfaction at entering this charmed circle did not take from her
+      piquancy, and story after story fell from her lips, as she fluttered
+      about, now here now there, in her endless preparations for retirement. She
+      had taken off her historic pendant after it had been duly admired and
+      handled by all present, and, with the careless confidence of an assured
+      ownership, thrown it down upon the end of her dresser, which, by the way,
+      projected very close to the open window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going to leave your jewel there?&rdquo; whispered a voice in her ear as
+      a burst of laughter rang out in response to one of her sallies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning, with a simulation of round-eyed wonder, she met Miss Hughson&rsquo;s
+      earnest gaze with the careless rejoinder, &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the harm?&rdquo; and went on
+      with her story with all the reckless ease of a perfectly thoughtless
+      nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Hughson abandoned her protest. How could she explain her reasons for
+      it to one apparently uninitiated in the scandal associated with their
+      especial clique.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, she left the jewel there; but she locked her door and quickly, so
+      that they must all have heard her before reaching their rooms. Then she
+      crossed to the window, which, like all on this side, opened on a balcony
+      running the length of the house. She was aware of this balcony, also of
+      the fact that only young ladies slept in the corridor communicating with
+      it. But she was not quite sure that this one corridor accommodated them
+      all. If one of them should room elsewhere! (Miss Driscoll, for instance).
+      But no! the anxiety displayed for the safety of her jewel precluded that
+      supposition. Their hostess, if none of the others, was within access of
+      this room and its open window. But how about the rest? Perhaps the lights
+      would tell. Eagerly the little schemer looked forth, and let her glances
+      travel down the full length of the balcony. Two separate beams of light
+      shot across it as she looked, and presently another, and, after some
+      waiting, a fourth. But the fifth failed to appear. This troubled her, but
+      not seriously. Two of the girls might be sleeping in one bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drawing her shade, she finished her preparations for the night; then with
+      her kimono on, lifted the pendant and thrust it into a small box she had
+      taken from her trunk. A curious smile, very unlike any she had shown to
+      man or woman that day, gave a sarcastic lift to her lips, as with a slow
+      and thoughtful manipulation of her dainty fingers she moved the jewel
+      about in this small receptacle and then returned it, after one quick
+      examining glance, to the very spot on the dresser from which she had taken
+      it. &ldquo;If only the madness is great enough!&rdquo; that smile seemed to say.
+      Truly, it was much to hope for, but a chance is a chance; and comforting
+      herself with the thought, Miss Strange put out her light, and, with a
+      hasty raising of the shade she had previously pulled down, took a final
+      look at the prospect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its aspect made her shudder. A low fog was rising from the meadows in the
+      far distance, and its ghostliness under the moon woke all sorts of uncanny
+      images in her excited mind. To escape them she crept into bed where she
+      lay with her eyes on the end of her dresser. She had closed that half of
+      the French window over which she had drawn the shade; but she had left
+      ajar the one giving free access to the jewels; and when she was not
+      watching the scintillation of her sapphires in the moonlight, she was
+      dwelling in fixed attention on this narrow opening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But nothing happened, and two o&rsquo;clock, then three o&rsquo;clock struck, without
+      a dimming of the blue scintillations on the end of her dresser. Then she
+      suddenly sat up. Not that she heard anything new, but that a thought had
+      come to her. &ldquo;If an attempt is made,&rdquo; so she murmured softly to herself,
+      &ldquo;it will be by&mdash;&rdquo; She did not finish. Something&mdash;she could not
+      call it sound&mdash;set her heart beating tumultuously, and listening&mdash;listening&mdash;watching&mdash;watching&mdash;she
+      followed in her imagination the approach down the balcony of an almost
+      inaudible step, not daring to move herself, it seemed so near, but waiting
+      with eyes fixed, for the shadow which must fall across the shade she had
+      failed to raise over that half of the swinging window she had so carefully
+      left shut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length she saw it projecting slowly across the slightly illuminated
+      surface. Formless, save for the outreaching hand, it passed the casement&rsquo;s
+      edge, nearing with pauses and hesitations the open gap beyond through
+      which the neglected sapphires beamed with steady lustre. Would she ever
+      see the hand itself appear between the dresser and the window frame? Yes,
+      there it comes,&mdash;small, delicate, and startlingly white, threading
+      that gap&mdash;darting with the suddenness of a serpent&rsquo;s tongue toward
+      the dresser and disappearing again with the pendant in its clutch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she realizes this,&mdash;she is but young, you know,&mdash;as she sees
+      her bait taken and the hardly expected event fulfilled, her pent-up breath
+      sped forth in a sigh which sent the intruder flying, and so startled
+      herself that she sank back in terror on her pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The breakfast-call had sounded its musical chimes through the halls. The
+      Ambassador and his wife had responded, so had most of the young gentlemen
+      and ladies, but the daughter of the house was not amongst them, nor Miss
+      Strange, whom one would naturally expect to see down first of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These two absences puzzled Mr. Driscoll. What might they not portend? But
+      his suspense, at least in one regard, was short. Before his guests were
+      well seated, Miss Driscoll entered from the terrace in company with
+      Captain Holliday. In her arms she carried a huge bunch of roses and was
+      looking very beautiful. Her father&rsquo;s heart warmed at the sight. No shadow
+      from the night rested upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miss Strange!&mdash;where was she? He could not feel quite easy till
+      he knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have any of you seen Miss Strange?&rdquo; he asked, as they sat down at table.
+      And his eyes sought the Inseparables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five lovely heads were shaken, some carelessly, some wonderingly, and one,
+      with a quick, forced smile. But he was in no mood to discriminate, and he
+      had beckoned one of the servants to him, when a step was heard at the door
+      and the delinquent slid in and took her place, in a shamefaced manner
+      suggestive of a cause deeper than mere tardiness. In fact, she had what
+      might be called a frightened air, and stared into her plate, avoiding
+      every eye, which was certainly not natural to her. What did it mean? and
+      why, as she made a poor attempt at eating, did four of the Inseparables
+      exchange glances of doubt and dismay and then concentrate their looks upon
+      his daughter? That Alicia failed to notice this, but sat abloom above her
+      roses now fastened in a great bunch upon her breast, offered him some
+      comfort, yet, for all the volubility of his chief guests, the meal was a
+      great trial to his patience, as well as a poor preparation for the hour
+      when, the noble pair gone, he stepped into the library to find Miss
+      Strange awaiting him with one hand behind her back and a piteous look on
+      her infantile features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, Mr. Driscoll,&rdquo; she began,&mdash;and then he saw that a group of
+      anxious girls hovered in her rear&mdash;&ldquo;my pendant! my beautiful pendant!
+      It is gone! Somebody reached in from the balcony and took it from my
+      dresser in the night. Of course, it was to frighten me; all of the girls
+      told me not to leave it there. But I&mdash;I cannot make them give it
+      back, and papa is so particular about this jewel that I&rsquo;m afraid to go
+      home. Won&rsquo;t you tell them it&rsquo;s no joke, and see that I get it again. I
+      won&rsquo;t be so careless another time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardly believing his eyes, hardly believing his ears,&mdash;she was so
+      perfectly the spoiled child detected in a fault&mdash;he looked sternly
+      about upon the girls and bade them end the jest and produce the gems at
+      once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not one of them spoke, and not one of them moved; only his daughter
+      grew pale until the roses seemed a mockery, and the steady stare of her
+      large eyes was almost too much for him to bear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The anguish of this gave asperity to his manner, and in a strange, hoarse
+      tone he loudly cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of you did this. Which? If it was you, Alicia, speak. I am in no mood
+      for nonsense. I want to know whose foot traversed the balcony and whose
+      hand abstracted these jewels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A continued silence, deepening into painful embarrassment for all. Mr.
+      Driscoll eyed them in ill-concealed anguish, then turning to Miss Strange
+      was still further thrown off his balance by seeing her pretty head droop
+      and her gaze fall in confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! it&rsquo;s easy enough to tell whose foot traversed the balcony,&rdquo; she
+      murmured. &ldquo;It left this behind.&rdquo; And drawing forward her hand, she held
+      out to view a small gold-coloured slipper. &ldquo;I found it outside my window,&rdquo;
+       she explained. &ldquo;I hoped I should not have to show it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A gasp of uncontrollable feeling from the surrounding group of girls, then
+      absolute stillness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fail to recognize it,&rdquo; observed Mr. Driscoll, taking it in his hand.
+      &ldquo;Whose slipper is this?&rdquo; he asked in a manner not to be gainsaid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still no reply, then as he continued to eye the girls one after another a
+      voice&mdash;the last he expected to hear&mdash;spoke and his daughter
+      cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is mine. But it was not I who walked in it down the balcony.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alicia!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A month&rsquo;s apprehension was in that cry. The silence, the pent-up emotion
+      brooding in the air was intolerable. A fresh young laugh broke it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; exclaimed a roguish voice, &ldquo;I knew that you were all in it! But the
+      especial one who wore the slipper and grabbed the pendant cannot hope to
+      hide herself. Her finger-tips will give her away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Amazement on every face and a convulsive movement in one half-hidden hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; the airy little being went on, in her light way, &ldquo;I have some
+      awfully funny tricks. I am always being scolded for them, but somehow I
+      don&rsquo;t improve. One is to keep my jewelry bright with a strange foreign
+      paste an old Frenchwoman once gave me in Paris. It&rsquo;s of a vivid red, and
+      stains the fingers dreadfully if you don&rsquo;t take care. Not even water will
+      take it off, see mine. I used that paste on my pendant last night just
+      after you left me, and being awfully sleepy I didn&rsquo;t stop to rub it off.
+      If your finger-tips are not red, you never touched the pendant, Miss
+      Driscoll. Oh, see! They are as white as milk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But some one took the sapphires, and I owe that person a scolding, as
+      well as myself. Was it you, Miss Hughson? You, Miss Yates? or&mdash;&rdquo; and
+      here she paused before Miss West, &ldquo;Oh, you have your gloves on! You are
+      the guilty one!&rdquo; and her laugh rang out like a peal of bells, robbing her
+      next sentence of even a suggestion of sarcasm. &ldquo;Oh, what a sly-boots!&rdquo; she
+      cried. &ldquo;How you have deceived me! Whoever would have thought you to be the
+      one to play the mischief!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Who indeed! Of all the five, she was the one who was considered absolutely
+      immune from suspicion ever since the night Mrs. Barnum&rsquo;s handkerchief had
+      been taken, and she not in the box. Eyes which had surveyed Miss Driscoll
+      askance now rose in wonder toward hers, and failed to fall again because
+      of the stoniness into which her delicately-carved features had settled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss West, I know you will be glad to remove your gloves; Miss Strange
+      certainly has a right to know her special tormentor,&rdquo; spoke up her host in
+      as natural a voice as his great relief would allow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the cold, half-frozen woman remained without a movement. She was not
+      deceived by the banter of the moment. She knew that to all of the others,
+      if not to Peter Strange&rsquo;s odd little daughter, it was the thief who was
+      being spotted and brought thus hilariously to light. And her eyes grew
+      hard, and her lips grey, and she failed to unglove the hands upon which
+      all glances were concentrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not need to see my hands; I confess to taking the pendant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Caroline!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A heart overcome by shock had thrown up this cry. Miss West eyed her
+      bosom-friend disdainfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Strange has called it a jest,&rdquo; she coldly commented. &ldquo;Why should you
+      suggest anything of a graver character?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Alicia brought thus to bay, and by one she had trusted most, stepped
+      quickly forward, and quivering with vague doubts, aghast before unheard-of
+      possibilities, she tremulously remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We did not sleep together last night. You had to come into my room to get
+      my slippers. Why did you do this? What was in your mind, Caroline?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A steady look, a low laugh choked with many emotions answered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want me to reply, Alicia? Or shall we let it pass?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Answer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mr. Driscoll who spoke. Alicia had shrunk back, almost to where a
+      little figure was cowering with wide eyes fixed in something like terror
+      on the aroused father&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then hear me,&rdquo; murmured the girl, entrapped and suddenly desperate. &ldquo;I
+      wore Alicia&rsquo;s slippers and I took the jewels, because it was time that an
+      end should come to your mutual dissimulation. The love I once felt for her
+      she has herself deliberately killed. I had a lover&mdash;she took him. I
+      had faith in life, in honour, and in friendship. She destroyed all. A
+      thief&mdash;she has dared to aspire to him! And you condoned her fault.
+      You, with your craven restoration of her booty, thought the matter cleared
+      and her a fit mate for a man of highest honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss West,&rdquo;&mdash;no one had ever heard that tone in Mr. Driscoll&rsquo;s voice
+      before, &ldquo;before you say another word calculated to mislead these ladies,
+      let me say that this hand never returned any one&rsquo;s booty or had anything
+      to do with the restoration of any abstracted article. You have been caught
+      in a net, Miss West, from which you cannot escape by slandering my
+      innocent daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Innocent!&rdquo; All the tragedy latent in this peculiar girl&rsquo;s nature blazed
+      forth in the word. &ldquo;Alicia, face me. Are you innocent? Who took the
+      Dempsey corals, and that diamond from the Tiffany tray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not necessary for Alicia to answer,&rdquo; the father interposed with not
+      unnatural heat. &ldquo;Miss West stands self-convicted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How about Lady Paget&rsquo;s scarf? I was not there that night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a woman of wiles. That could be managed by one bent on an
+      elaborate scheme of revenge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so could the abstraction of Mrs. Barnum&rsquo;s five-hundred-dollar
+      handkerchief by one who sat in the next box,&rdquo; chimed in Miss Hughson,
+      edging away from the friend to whose honour she would have pinned her
+      faith an hour before. &ldquo;I remember now seeing her lean over the railing to
+      adjust the old lady&rsquo;s shawl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a start, Caroline West turned a tragic gaze upon the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think me guilty of all because of what I did last night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you, Anna?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alicia has my sympathy,&rdquo; murmured Miss Benedict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet the wild girl persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have told you my provocation. You cannot believe that I am guilty
+      of her sin; not if you look at her as I am looking now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But their glances hardly followed her pointing finger. Her friends&mdash;the
+      comrades of her youth, the Inseparables with their secret oath&mdash;one
+      and all held themselves aloof, struck by the perfidy they were only just
+      beginning to take in. Smitten with despair, for these girls were her life,
+      she gave one wild leap and sank on her knees before Alicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O speak!&rdquo; she began. &ldquo;Forgive me, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A tremble seized her throat; she ceased to speak and let fall her
+      partially uplifted hands. The cheery sound of men&rsquo;s voices had drifted in
+      from the terrace, and the figure of Captain Holliday could be seen passing
+      by. The shudder which shook Caroline West communicated itself to Alicia
+      Driscoll, and the former rising quickly, the two women surveyed each
+      other, possibly for the first time, with open soul and a complete
+      understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Caroline!&rdquo; murmured the one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alicia!&rdquo; pleaded the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Caroline, trust me,&rdquo; said Alicia Driscoll in that moving voice of hers,
+      which more than her beauty caught and retained all hearts. &ldquo;You have
+      served me ill, but it was not all undeserved. Girls,&rdquo; she went on, eyeing
+      both them and her father with the wistfulness of a breaking heart,
+      &ldquo;neither Caroline nor myself are worthy of Captain Holliday&rsquo;s love.
+      Caroline has told you her fault, but mine is perhaps a worse one. The ring&mdash;the
+      scarf&mdash;the diamond pins&mdash;I took them all&mdash;took them if I
+      did not retain them. A curse has been over my life&mdash;the curse of a
+      longing I could not combat. But love was working a change in me. Since I
+      have known Captain Holliday&mdash;but that&rsquo;s all over. I was mad to think
+      I could be happy with such memories in my life. I shall never marry now&mdash;or
+      touch jewels again&mdash;my own or another&rsquo;s. Father, father, you won&rsquo;t go
+      back on your girl! I couldn&rsquo;t see Caroline suffer for what I have done.
+      You will pardon me and help&mdash;help&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice choked. She flung herself into her father&rsquo;s arms; his head bent
+      over hers, and for an instant not a soul in the room moved. Then Miss
+      Hughson gave a spring and caught her by the hand. &ldquo;We are inseparable,&rdquo;
+       said she, and kissed the hand, murmuring, &ldquo;Now is our time to show it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then other lips fell upon those cold and trembling fingers, which seemed
+      to warm under these embraces. And then a tear. It came from the hard eye
+      of Caroline, and remained a sacred secret between the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have your pendant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Driscoll&rsquo;s suffering eye shone down on Violet Strange&rsquo;s uplifted face
+      as she advanced to say good-bye preparatory to departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she acknowledged, &ldquo;but hardly, I fear, your gratitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the answer astonished her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not sure that the real Alicia will not make her father happier than
+      the unreal one has ever done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Captain Holliday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He may come to feel the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I do not quit in disgrace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You depart with my thanks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When a certain personage was told of the success of Miss Strange&rsquo;s latest
+      manoeuvre, he remarked: &ldquo;The little one progresses. We shall have to give
+      her a case of prime importance next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM I <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM II. THE SECOND BULLET
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;You must see her.&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a most unhappy woman. Husband and child both taken from her in a
+      moment; and now, all means of living as well, unless some happy thought of
+      yours&mdash;some inspiration of your genius&mdash;shows us a way of
+      re-establishing her claims to the policy voided by this cry of suicide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the small wise head of Violet Strange continued its slow shake of
+      decided refusal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; she protested, &ldquo;but it&rsquo;s quite out of my province. I&rsquo;m too
+      young to meddle with so serious a matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not when you can save a bereaved woman the only possible compensation
+      left her by untoward fate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the police try their hand at that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have had no success with the case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you expect&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Miss Strange. I expect you to find the missing bullet which will
+      settle the fact that murder and not suicide ended George Hammond&rsquo;s life.
+      If you cannot, then a long litigation awaits this poor widow, ending, as
+      such litigation usually does, in favour of the stronger party. There&rsquo;s the
+      alternative. If you once saw her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m not willing to do. If I once saw her I should yield
+      to her importunities and attempt the seemingly impossible. My instincts
+      bid me say no. Give me something easier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easier things are not so remunerative. There&rsquo;s money in this affair, if
+      the insurance company is forced to pay up. I can offer you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was eagerness in the tone despite her effort at nonchalance. The
+      other smiled imperceptibly, and briefly named the sum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was larger than she had expected. This her visitor saw by the way her
+      eyelids fell and the peculiar stillness which, for an instant, held her
+      vivacity in check.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think I can earn that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes were fixed on his in an eagerness as honest as it was
+      unrestrained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could hardly conceal his amazement, her desire was so evident and the
+      cause of it so difficult to understand. He knew she wanted money&mdash;that
+      was her avowed reason for entering into this uncongenial work. But to want
+      it so much! He glanced at her person; it was simply clad but very
+      expensively&mdash;how expensively it was his business to know. Then he
+      took in the room in which they sat. Simplicity again, but the simplicity
+      of high art&mdash;the drawing-room of one rich enough to indulge in the
+      final luxury of a highly cultivated taste, viz.: unostentatious elegance
+      and the subjection of each carefully chosen ornament to the general
+      effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What did this favoured child of fortune lack that she could be reached by
+      such a plea, when her whole being revolted from the nature of the task he
+      offered her? It was a question not new to him; but one he had never heard
+      answered and was not likely to hear answered now. But the fact remained
+      that the consent he had thought dependent upon sympathetic interest could
+      be reached much more readily by the promise of large emolument,&mdash;and
+      he owned to a feeling of secret disappointment even while he recognized
+      the value of the discovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his satisfaction in the latter, if satisfaction it were, was of very
+      short duration. Almost immediately he observed a change in her. The
+      sparkle which had shone in the eye whose depths he had never been able to
+      penetrate, had dissipated itself in something like a tear and she spoke up
+      in that vigorous tone no one but himself had ever heard, as she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. The sum is a good one and I could use it; but I will not waste my
+      energy on a case I do not believe in. The man shot himself. He was a
+      speculator, and probably had good reason for his act. Even his wife
+      acknowledges that he has lately had more losses than gains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See her. She has something to tell you which never got into the papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that? You know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On my honour, Miss Strange.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet pondered; then suddenly succumbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her come, then. Prompt to the hour. I will receive her at three.
+      Later I have a tea and two party calls to make.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her visitor rose to leave. He had been able to subdue all evidence of his
+      extreme gratification, and now took on a formal air. In dismissing a
+      guest, Miss Strange was invariably the society belle and that only. This
+      he had come to recognize.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The case (well known at the time) was, in the fewest possible words, as
+      follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a sultry night in September, a young couple living in one of the large
+      apartment houses in the extreme upper portion of Manhattan were so annoyed
+      by the incessant crying of a child in the adjoining suite, that they got
+      up, he to smoke, and she to sit in the window for a possible breath of
+      cool air. They were congratulating themselves upon the wisdom they had
+      shown in thus giving up all thought of sleep&mdash;for the child&rsquo;s crying
+      had not ceased&mdash;when (it may have been two o&rsquo;clock and it may have
+      been a little later) there came from somewhere near, the sharp and
+      somewhat peculiar detonation of a pistol-shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought it came from above; she, from the rear, and they were staring
+      at each other in the helpless wonder of the moment, when they were struck
+      by the silence. The baby had ceased to cry. All was as still in the
+      adjoining apartment as in their own&mdash;too still&mdash;much too still.
+      Their mutual stare turned to one of horror. &ldquo;It came from there!&rdquo;
+       whispered the wife. &ldquo;Some accident has occurred to Mr. or Mrs. Hammond&mdash;we
+      ought to go&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her words&mdash;very tremulous ones&mdash;were broken by a shout from
+      below. They were standing in their window and had evidently been seen by a
+      passing policeman. &ldquo;Anything wrong up there?&rdquo; they heard him cry. Mr.
+      Saunders immediately looked out. &ldquo;Nothing wrong here,&rdquo; he called down.
+      (They were but two stories from the pavement.) &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m not so sure about
+      the rear apartment. We thought we heard a shot. Hadn&rsquo;t you better come up,
+      officer? My wife is nervous about it. I&rsquo;ll meet you at the stair-head and
+      show you the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer nodded and stepped in. The young couple hastily donned some
+      wraps, and, by the time he appeared on their floor, they were ready to
+      accompany him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, no disturbance was apparent anywhere else in the house, until
+      the policeman rang the bell of the Hammond apartment. Then, voices began
+      to be heard, and doors to open above and below, but not the one before
+      which the policeman stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another ring, and this time an insistent one;&mdash;and still no response.
+      The officer&rsquo;s hand was rising for the third time when there came a sound
+      of fluttering from behind the panels against which he had laid his ear,
+      and finally a choked voice uttering unintelligible words. Then a hand
+      began to struggle with the lock, and the door, slowly opening, disclosed a
+      woman clad in a hastily donned wrapper and giving every evidence of
+      extreme fright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she exclaimed, seeing only the compassionate faces of her
+      neighbours. &ldquo;You heard it, too! a pistol-shot from there&mdash;there&mdash;my
+      husband&rsquo;s room. I have not dared to go&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;O, have mercy
+      and see if anything is wrong! It is so still&mdash;so still, and only a
+      moment ago the baby was crying. Mrs. Saunders, Mrs. Saunders, why is it so
+      still?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had fallen into her neighbour&rsquo;s arms. The hand with which she had
+      pointed out a certain door had sunk to her side and she appeared to be on
+      the verge of collapse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer eyed her sternly, while noting her appearance, which was that
+      of a woman hastily risen from bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where were you?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Not with your husband and child, or you would
+      know what had happened there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was sleeping down the hall,&rdquo; she managed to gasp out. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not well&mdash;I&mdash;Oh,
+      why do you all stand still and do nothing? My baby&rsquo;s in there. Go! go!&rdquo;
+       and, with sudden energy, she sprang upright, her eyes wide open and
+      burning, her small well featured face white as the linen she sought to
+      hide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer demurred no longer. In another instant he was trying the door
+      at which she was again pointing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was locked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glancing back at the woman, now cowering almost to the floor, he pounded
+      at the door and asked the man inside to open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No answer came back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sharp turn he glanced again at the wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that your husband is in this room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded, gasping faintly, &ldquo;And the child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned back, listened, then beckoned to Mr. Saunders. &ldquo;We shall have to
+      break our way in,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Put your shoulder well to the door. Now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hinges of the door creaked; the lock gave way (this special officer
+      weighed two hundred and seventy-five, as he found out, next day), and a
+      prolonged and sweeping crash told the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hammond gave a low cry; and, straining forward from where she
+      crouched in terror on the floor, searched the faces of the two men for
+      some hint of what they saw in the dimly-lighted space beyond. Something
+      dreadful, something which made Mr. Saunders come rushing back with a
+      shout:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take her away! Take her to our apartment, Jennie. She must not see&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not see! He realized the futility of his words as his gaze fell on the
+      young woman who had risen up at his approach and now stood gazing at him
+      without speech, without movement, but with a glare of terror in her eyes,
+      which gave him his first realization of human misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His own glance fell before it. If he had followed his instinct he would
+      have fled the house rather than answer the question of her look and the
+      attitude of her whole frozen body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps in mercy to his speechless terror, perhaps in mercy to herself,
+      she was the one who at last found the word which voiced their mutual
+      anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No answer. None was needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my baby?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      O, that cry! It curdled the hearts of all who heard it. It shook the souls
+      of men and women both inside and outside the apartment; then all was
+      forgotten in the wild rush she made. The wife and mother had flung herself
+      upon the scene, and, side by side with the not unmoved policeman, stood
+      looking down upon the desolation made in one fatal instant in her home and
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They lay there together, both past help, both quite dead. The child had
+      simply been strangled by the weight of his father&rsquo;s arm which lay directly
+      across the upturned little throat. But the father was a victim of the shot
+      they had heard. There was blood on his breast, and a pistol in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suicide! The horrible truth was patent. No wonder they wanted to hold the
+      young widow back. Her neighbour, Mrs. Saunders, crept in on tiptoe and put
+      her arms about the swaying, fainting woman; but there was nothing to say&mdash;absolutely
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At least, they thought not. But when they saw her throw herself down, not
+      by her husband, but by the child, and drag it out from under that
+      strangling arm and hug and kiss it and call out wildly for a doctor, the
+      officer endeavoured to interfere and yet could not find the heart to do
+      so, though he knew the child was dead and should not, according to all the
+      rules of the coroner&rsquo;s office, be moved before that official arrived. Yet
+      because no mother could be convinced of a fact like this, he let her sit
+      with it on the floor and try all her little arts to revive it, while he
+      gave orders to the janitor and waited himself for the arrival of doctor
+      and coroner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still sitting there in wide-eyed misery, alternately fondling the
+      little body and drawing back to consult its small set features for some
+      sign of life, when the doctor came, and, after one look at the child, drew
+      it softly from her arms and laid it quietly in the crib from which its
+      father had evidently lifted it but a short time before. Then he turned
+      back to her, and found her on her feet, upheld by her two friends. She had
+      understood his action, and without a groan had accepted her fate. Indeed,
+      she seemed incapable of any further speech or action. She was staring down
+      at her husband&rsquo;s body, which she, for the first time, seemed fully to see.
+      Was her look one of grief or of resentment for the part he had played so
+      unintentionally in her child&rsquo;s death? It was hard to tell; and when, with
+      slowly rising finger, she pointed to the pistol so tightly clutched in the
+      other outstretched hand, no one there&mdash;and by this time the room was
+      full&mdash;could foretell what her words would be when her tongue regained
+      its usage and she could speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What she did say was this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there a bullet gone? Did he fire off that pistol?&rdquo; A question so
+      manifestly one of delirium that no one answered it, which seemed to
+      surprise her, though she said nothing till her glance had passed all
+      around the walls of the room to where a window stood open to the night,&mdash;its
+      lower sash being entirely raised. &ldquo;There! look there!&rdquo; she cried, with a
+      commanding accent, and, throwing up her hands, sank a dead weight into the
+      arms of those supporting her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one understood; but naturally more than one rushed to the window. An
+      open space was before them. Here lay the fields not yet parcelled out into
+      lots and built upon; but it was not upon these they looked, but upon the
+      strong trellis which they found there, which, if it supported no vine,
+      formed a veritable ladder between this window and the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could she have meant to call attention to this fact; and were her words
+      expressive of another idea than the obvious one of suicide?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If so, to what lengths a woman&rsquo;s imagination can go! Or so their combined
+      looks seemed to proclaim, when to their utter astonishment they saw the
+      officer, who had presented a calm appearance up till now, shift his
+      position and with a surprised grunt direct their eyes to a portion of the
+      wall just visible beyond the half-drawn curtains of the bed. The mirror
+      hanging there showed a star-shaped breakage, such as follows the sharp
+      impact of a bullet or a fiercely projected stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He fired two shots. One went wild; the other straight home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the officer delivering his opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Saunders, returning from the distant room where he had assisted in
+      carrying Mrs. Hammond, cast a look at the shattered glass, and remarked
+      forcibly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard but one; and I was sitting up, disturbed by that poor infant.
+      Jennie, did you hear more than one shot?&rdquo; he asked, turning toward his
+      wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered, but not with the readiness he had evidently expected.
+      &ldquo;I heard only one, but that was not quite usual in its tone. I&rsquo;m used to
+      guns,&rdquo; she explained, turning to the officer. &ldquo;My father was an army man,
+      and he taught me very early to load and fire a pistol. There was a
+      prolonged sound to this shot; something like an echo of itself, following
+      close upon the first ping. Didn&rsquo;t you notice that, Warren?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember something of the kind,&rdquo; her husband allowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He shot twice and quickly,&rdquo; interposed the policeman, sententiously. &ldquo;We
+      shall find a spent bullet back of that mirror.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when, upon the arrival of the coroner, an investigation was made of
+      the mirror and the wall behind, no bullet was found either there or any
+      where else in the room, save in the dead man&rsquo;s breast. Nor had more than
+      one been shot from his pistol, as five full chambers testified. The case
+      which seemed so simple had its mysteries, but the assertion made by Mrs.
+      Saunders no longer carried weight, nor was the evidence offered by the
+      broken mirror considered as indubitably establishing the fact that a
+      second shot had been fired in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet it was equally evident that the charge which had entered the dead
+      speculator&rsquo;s breast had not been delivered at the close range of the
+      pistol found clutched in his hand. There were no powder-marks to be
+      discerned on his pajama-jacket, or on the flesh beneath. Thus anomaly
+      confronted anomaly, leaving open but one other theory: that the bullet
+      found in Mr. Hammond&rsquo;s breast came from the window and the one he shot
+      went out of it. But this would necessitate his having shot his pistol from
+      a point far removed from where he was found; and his wound was such as
+      made it difficult to believe that he would stagger far, if at all, after
+      its infliction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, because the coroner was both conscientious and alert, he caused a
+      most rigorous search to be made of the ground overlooked by the above
+      mentioned window; a search in which the police joined, but which was
+      without any result save that of rousing the attention of people in the
+      neighbourhood and leading to a story being circulated of a man seen some
+      time the night before crossing the fields in a great hurry. But as no
+      further particulars were forthcoming, and not even a description of the
+      man to be had, no emphasis would have been laid upon this story had it not
+      transpired that the moment a report of it had come to Mrs. Hammond&rsquo;s ears
+      (why is there always some one to carry these reports?) she roused from the
+      torpor into which she had fallen, and in wild fashion exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew it! I expected it! He was shot through the window and by that
+      wretch. He never shot himself.&rdquo; Violent declarations which trailed off
+      into the one continuous wail, &ldquo;O, my baby! my poor baby!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such words, even though the fruit of delirium, merited some sort of
+      attention, or so this good coroner thought, and as soon as opportunity
+      offered and she was sufficiently sane and quiet to respond to his
+      questions, he asked her whom she had meant by that wretch, and what reason
+      she had, or thought she had, of attributing her husband&rsquo;s death to any
+      other agency than his own disgust with life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then it was that his sympathies, although greatly roused in her favour
+      began to wane. She met the question with a cold stare followed by a few
+      ambiguous words out of which he could make nothing. Had she said wretch?
+      She did not remember. They must not be influenced by anything she might
+      have uttered in her first grief. She was well-nigh insane at the time. But
+      of one thing they might be sure: her husband had not shot himself; he was
+      too much afraid of death for such an act. Besides, he was too happy.
+      Whatever folks might say he was too fond of his family to wish to leave
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor did the coroner or any other official succeed in eliciting anything
+      further from her. Even when she was asked, with cruel insistence, how she
+      explained the fact that the baby was found lying on the floor instead of
+      in its crib, her only answer was: &ldquo;His father was trying to soothe it. The
+      child was crying dreadfully, as you have heard from those who were kept
+      awake by him that night, and my husband was carrying him about when the
+      shot came which caused George to fall and overlay the baby in his
+      struggles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Carrying a baby about with a loaded pistol in his hand?&rdquo; came back in
+      stern retort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no answer for this. She admitted when informed that the bullet
+      extracted from her husband&rsquo;s body had been found to correspond exactly
+      with those remaining in the five chambers of the pistol taken from his
+      hand, that he was not only the owner of this pistol but was in the habit
+      of sleeping with it under his pillow; but, beyond that, nothing; and this
+      reticence, as well as her manner which was cold and repellent, told
+      against her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A verdict of suicide was rendered by the coroner&rsquo;s jury, and the
+      life-insurance company, in which Mr. Hammond had but lately insured
+      himself for a large sum, taking advantage of the suicide clause embodied
+      in the policy, announced its determination of not paying the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the situation, as known to Violet Strange and the general public,
+      on the day she was asked to see Mrs. Hammond and learn what might alter
+      her opinion as to the justice of this verdict and the stand taken by the
+      Shuler Life Insurance Company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock on the mantel in Miss Strange&rsquo;s rose-coloured boudoir had struck
+      three, and Violet was gazing in some impatience at the door, when there
+      came a gentle knock upon it, and the maid (one of the elderly, not
+      youthful, kind) ushered in her expected visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are Mrs. Hammond?&rdquo; she asked, in natural awe of the too black figure
+      outlined so sharply against the deep pink of the sea-shell room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer was a slow lifting of the veil which shadowed the features she
+      knew only from the cuts she had seen in newspapers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are&mdash;Miss Strange?&rdquo; stammered her visitor; &ldquo;the young lady who&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am,&rdquo; chimed in a voice as ringing as it was sweet. &ldquo;I am the person you
+      have come here to see. And this is my home. But that does not make me less
+      interested in the unhappy, or less desirous of serving them. Certainly you
+      have met with the two greatest losses which can come to a woman&mdash;I
+      know your story well enough to say that&mdash;; but what have you to tell
+      me in proof that you should not lose your anticipated income as well?
+      Something vital, I hope, else I cannot help you; something which you
+      should have told the coroner&rsquo;s jury&mdash;and did not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The flush which was the sole answer these words called forth did not take
+      from the refinement of the young widow&rsquo;s expression, but rather added to
+      it; Violet watched it in its ebb and flow and, seriously affected by it
+      (why, she did not know, for Mrs. Hammond had made no other appeal either
+      by look or gesture), pushed forward a chair and begged her visitor to be
+      seated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can converse in perfect safety here,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;When you feel quite
+      equal to it, let me hear what you have to communicate. It will never go
+      any further. I could not do the work I do if I felt it necessary to have a
+      confidant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you are so young and so&mdash;so&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So inexperienced you would say and so evidently a member of what New
+      Yorkers call &lsquo;society.&rsquo; Do not let that trouble you. My inexperience is
+      not likely to last long and my social pleasures are more apt to add to my
+      efficiency than to detract from it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this Violet&rsquo;s face broke into a smile. It was not the brilliant one
+      so often seen upon her lips, but there was something in its quality which
+      carried encouragement to the widow and led her to say with obvious
+      eagerness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know the facts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have read all the papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not believed on the stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was your manner&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not help my manner. I was keeping something back, and, being
+      unused to deceit, I could not act quite naturally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you keep something back? When you saw the unfavourable impression
+      made by your reticence, why did you not speak up and frankly tell your
+      story?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I was ashamed. Because I thought it would hurt me more to speak
+      than to keep silent. I do not think so now; but I did then&mdash;and so
+      made my great mistake. You must remember not only the awful shock of my
+      double loss, but the sense of guilt accompanying it; for my husband and I
+      had quarreled that night, quarreled bitterly&mdash;that was why I had run
+      away into another room and not because I was feeling ill and impatient of
+      the baby&rsquo;s fretful cries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So people have thought.&rdquo; In saying this, Miss Strange was perhaps cruelly
+      emphatic. &ldquo;You wish to explain that quarrel? You think it will be doing
+      any good to your cause to go into that matter with me now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot say; but I must first clear my conscience and then try to
+      convince you that quarrel or no quarrel, he never took his own life. He
+      was not that kind. He had an abnormal fear of death. I do not like to say
+      it but he was a physical coward. I have seen him turn pale at the least
+      hint of danger. He could no more have turned that muzzle upon his own
+      breast than he could have turned it upon his baby. Some other hand shot
+      him, Miss Strange. Remember the open window, the shattered mirror; and I
+      think I know that hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head had fallen forward on her breast. The emotion she showed was not
+      so eloquent of grief as of deep personal shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think you know the man?&rdquo; In saying this, Violet&rsquo;s voice sunk to a
+      whisper. It was an accusation of murder she had just heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To my great distress, yes. When Mr. Hammond and I were married,&rdquo; the
+      widow now proceeded in a more determined tone, &ldquo;there was another man&mdash;a
+      very violent one&mdash;who vowed even at the church door that George and I
+      should never live out two full years together. We have not. Our second
+      anniversary would have been in November.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me say this: the quarrel of which I speak was not serious enough to
+      occasion any such act of despair on his part. A man would be mad to end
+      his life on account of so slight a disagreement. It was not even on
+      account of the person of whom I&rsquo;ve just spoken, though that person had
+      been mentioned between us earlier in the evening, Mr. Hammond having come
+      across him face to face that very afternoon in the subway. Up to this time
+      neither of us had seen or heard of him since our wedding-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think this person whom you barely mentioned, so mindful of his
+      old grudge that he sought out your domicile, and, with the intention of
+      murder, climbed the trellis leading to your room and turned his pistol
+      upon the shadowy figure which was all he could see in the semi-obscurity
+      of a much lowered gas-jet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man in the dark does not need a bright light to see his enemy when he
+      is intent upon revenge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange altered her tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your husband? You must acknowledge that he shot off his pistol
+      whether the other did or not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was in self-defence. He would shoot to save his own life&mdash;or the
+      baby&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he must have heard or seen&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man at the window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And would have shot there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or tried to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tried to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; the other shot first&mdash;oh, I&rsquo;ve thought it all out&mdash;causing
+      my husband&rsquo;s bullet to go wild. It was his which broke the mirror.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet&rsquo;s eyes, bright as stars, suddenly narrowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what happened then?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Why cannot they find the bullet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it went out of the window;&mdash;glanced off and went out of the
+      window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hammond&rsquo;s tone was triumphant; her look spirited and intense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet eyed her compassionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would a bullet glancing off from a mirror, however hung, be apt to reach
+      a window so far on the opposite side?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know; I only know that it did,&rdquo; was the contradictory, almost
+      absurd, reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was the cause of the quarrel you speak of between your husband and
+      yourself? You see, I must know the exact truth and all the truth to be of
+      any assistance to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was&mdash;it was about the care I gave, or didn&rsquo;t give, the baby. I
+      feel awfully to have to say it, but George did not think I did my full
+      duty by the child. He said there was no need of its crying so; that if I
+      gave it the proper attention it would not keep the neighbours and himself
+      awake half the night. And I&mdash;I got angry and insisted that I did the
+      best I could; that the child was naturally fretful and that if he wasn&rsquo;t
+      satisfied with my way of looking after it, he might try his. All of which
+      was very wrong and unreasonable on my part, as witness the awful
+      punishment which followed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what made you get up and leave him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The growl he gave me in reply. When I heard that, I bounded out of bed
+      and said I was going to the spare room to sleep; and if the baby cried he
+      might just try what he could do himself to stop it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he answered?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This, just this&mdash;I shall never forget his words as long as I live&mdash;&lsquo;If
+      you go, you need not expect me to let you in again no matter what
+      happens.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And locked the door after me. You see I could not tell all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might have been better if you had. It was such a natural quarrel and
+      so unprovocative of actual tragedy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hammond was silent. It was not difficult to see that she had no very
+      keen regrets for her husband personally. But then he was not a very
+      estimable man nor in any respect her equal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were not happy with him,&rdquo; Violet ventured to remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not a fully contented woman. But for all that he had no cause to
+      complain of me except for the reason I have mentioned. I was not a very
+      intelligent mother. But if the baby were living now&mdash;O, if he were
+      living now&mdash;with what devotion I should care for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was on her feet, her arms were raised, her face impassioned with
+      feeling. Violet, gazing at her, heaved a little sigh. It was perhaps in
+      keeping with the situation, perhaps extraneous to it, but whatever its
+      source, it marked a change in her manner. With no further check upon her
+      sympathy, she said very softly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is well with the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother stiffened, swayed, and then burst into wild weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not with me,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;not with me. I am desolate and bereft. I
+      have not even a home in which to hide my grief and no prospect of one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; interposed Violet, &ldquo;surely your husband left you something? You
+      cannot be quite penniless?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband left nothing,&rdquo; was the answer, uttered without bitterness, but
+      with all the hardness of fact. &ldquo;He had debts. I shall pay those debts.
+      When these and other necessary expenses are liquidated, there will be but
+      little left. He made no secret of the fact that he lived close up to his
+      means. That is why he was induced to take on a life insurance. Not a
+      friend of his but knows his improvidence. I&mdash;I have not even jewels.
+      I have only my determination and an absolute conviction as to the real
+      nature of my husband&rsquo;s death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the name of the man you secretly believe to have shot your
+      husband from the trellis?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hammond told her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a new one to Violet. She said so and then asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What else can you tell me about him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, but that he is a very dark man and has a club-foot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what a mistake you&rsquo;ve made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mistake? Yes, I acknowledge that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean in not giving this last bit of information at once to the police.
+      A man can be identified by such a defect. Even his footsteps can be
+      traced. He might have been found that very day. Now, what have we to go
+      upon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, but not expecting to have any difficulty about the
+      insurance money I thought it would be generous in me to keep still.
+      Besides, this is only surmise on my part. I feel certain that my husband
+      was shot by another hand than his own, but I know of no way of proving it.
+      Do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Violet talked seriously with her, explaining how their only hope lay
+      in the discovery of a second bullet in the room which had already been
+      ransacked for this very purpose and without the shadow of a result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A tea, a musicale, and an evening dance kept Violet Strange in a whirl for
+      the remainder of the day. No brighter eye nor more contagious wit lent
+      brilliance to these occasions, but with the passing of the midnight hour
+      no one who had seen her in the blaze of electric lights would have
+      recognized this favoured child of fortune in the earnest figure sitting in
+      the obscurity of an up-town apartment, studying the walls, the ceilings,
+      and the floors by the dim light of a lowered gas-jet. Violet Strange in
+      society was a very different person from Violet Strange under the tension
+      of her secret and peculiar work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had told them at home that she was going to spend the night with a
+      friend; but only her old coachman knew who that friend was. Therefore a
+      very natural sense of guilt mingled with her emotions at finding herself
+      alone on a scene whose gruesome mystery she could solve only by
+      identifying herself with the place and the man who had perished there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dismissing from her mind all thought of self, she strove to think as he
+      thought, and act as he acted on the night when he found himself (a man of
+      but little courage) left in this room with an ailing child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At odds with himself, his wife, and possibly with the child screaming away
+      in its crib, what would he be apt to do in his present emergency? Nothing
+      at first, but as the screaming continued he would remember the old tales
+      of fathers walking the floor at night with crying babies, and hasten to
+      follow suit. Violet, in her anxiety to reach his inmost thought, crossed
+      to where the crib had stood, and, taking that as a start, began pacing the
+      room in search of the spot from which a bullet, if shot, would glance
+      aside from the mirror in the direction of the window. (Not that she was
+      ready to accept this theory of Mrs. Hammond, but that she did not wish to
+      entirely dismiss it without putting it to the test.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She found it in an unexpected quarter of the room and much nearer the
+      bed-head than where his body was found. This, which might seem to confuse
+      matters, served, on the contrary to remove from the case one of its most
+      serious difficulties. Standing here, he was within reach of the pillow
+      under which his pistol lay hidden, and if startled, as his wife believed
+      him to have been by a noise at the other end of the room, had but to
+      crouch and reach behind him in order to find himself armed and ready for a
+      possible intruder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Imitating his action in this as in other things, she had herself crouched
+      low at the bedside and was on the point of withdrawing her hand from under
+      the pillow, when a new surprise checked her movement and held her fixed in
+      her position, with eyes staring straight at the adjoining wall. She had
+      seen there what he must have seen in making this same turn&mdash;the dark
+      bars of the opposite window-frame outlined in the mirror&mdash;and
+      understood at once what had happened. In the nervousness and terror of the
+      moment, George Hammond had mistaken this reflection of the window for the
+      window itself, and shot impulsively at the man he undoubtedly saw covering
+      him from the trellis without. But while this explained the shattering of
+      the mirror, how about the other and still more vital question, of where
+      the bullet went afterward? Was the angle at which it had been fired acute
+      enough to send it out of a window diagonally opposed? No; even if the
+      pistol had been held closer to the man firing it than she had reason to
+      believe, the angle still would be oblique enough to carry it on to the
+      further wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no sign of any such impact had been discovered on this wall.
+      Consequently, the force of the bullet had been expended before reaching
+      it, and when it fell&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, her glance, slowly traveling along the floor, impetuously paused. It
+      had reached the spot where the two bodies had been found, and
+      unconsciously her eyes rested there, conjuring up the picture of the
+      bleeding father and the strangled child. How piteous and how dreadful it
+      all was. If she could only understand&mdash;Suddenly she rose straight up,
+      staring and immovable in the dim light. Had the idea&mdash;the explanation&mdash;the
+      only possible explanation covering the whole phenomena come to her at
+      last?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would seem so, for as she so stood, a look of conviction settled over
+      her features, and with this look, evidences of a horror which for all her
+      fast accumulating knowledge of life and its possibilities made her appear
+      very small and very helpless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A half-hour later, when Mrs. Hammond, in her anxiety at hearing nothing
+      more from Miss Strange, opened the door of her room, it was to find, lying
+      on the edge of the sill, the little detective&rsquo;s card with these words
+      hastily written across it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not feel as well as I could wish, and so have telephoned to my own
+      coachman to come and take me home. I will either see or write you within a
+      few days. But do not allow yourself to hope. I pray you do not allow
+      yourself the least hope; the outcome is still very problematical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Violet&rsquo;s employer entered his office the next morning it was to find
+      a veiled figure awaiting him which he at once recognized as that of his
+      little deputy. She was slow in lifting her veil and when it finally came
+      free he felt a momentary doubt as to his wisdom in giving her just such a
+      matter as this to investigate. He was quite sure of his mistake when he
+      saw her face, it was so drawn and pitiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have failed,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of that you must judge,&rdquo; she answered; and drawing near she whispered in
+      his ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; he cried in his amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think,&rdquo; she murmured, &ldquo;think. Only so can all the facts be accounted
+      for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will look into it; I will certainly look into it,&rdquo; was his earnest
+      reply. &ldquo;If you are right&mdash;But never mind that. Go home and take a
+      horseback ride in the Park. When I have news in regard to this I will let
+      you know. Till then forget it all. Hear me, I charge you to forget
+      everything but your balls and your parties.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Violet obeyed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some few days after this, the following statement appeared in all the
+      papers:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Owing to some remarkable work done by the firm of &mdash;&mdash; &amp;
+      &mdash;&mdash;, the well-known private detective agency, the claim made by
+      Mrs. George Hammond against the Shuler Life Insurance Company is likely to
+      be allowed without further litigation. As our readers will remember, the
+      contestant has insisted from the first that the bullet causing her
+      husband&rsquo;s death came from another pistol than the one found clutched in
+      his own hand. But while reasons were not lacking to substantiate this
+      assertion, the failure to discover more than the disputed track of a
+      second bullet led to a verdict of suicide, and a refusal of the company to
+      pay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But now that bullet has been found. And where? In the most startling
+      place in the world, viz.: in the larynx of the child found lying dead upon
+      the floor beside his father, strangled as was supposed by the weight of
+      that father&rsquo;s arm. The theory is, and there seems to be none other, that
+      the father, hearing a suspicious noise at the window, set down the child
+      he was endeavouring to soothe and made for the bed and his own pistol,
+      and, mistaking a reflection of the assassin for the assassin himself, sent
+      his shot sidewise at a mirror just as the other let go the trigger which
+      drove a similar bullet into his breast. The course of the one was straight
+      and fatal and that of the other deflected. Striking the mirror at an
+      oblique angle, the bullet fell to the floor where it was picked up by the
+      crawling child, and, as was most natural, thrust at once into his mouth.
+      Perhaps it felt hot to the little tongue; perhaps the child was simply
+      frightened by some convulsive movement of the father who evidently spent
+      his last moment in an endeavour to reach the child, but, whatever the
+      cause, in the quick gasp it gave, the bullet was drawn into the larynx,
+      strangling him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That the father&rsquo;s arm, in his last struggle, should have fallen directly
+      across the little throat is one of those anomalies which confounds reason
+      and misleads justice by stopping investigation at the very point where
+      truth lies and mystery disappears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Hammond is to be congratulated that there are detectives who do not
+      give too much credence to outward appearances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We expect soon to hear of the capture of the man who sped home the
+      death-dealing bullet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM II <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM III. AN INTANGIBLE CLUE
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;Have you studied the case?&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not studied the case which for the last few days has provided the papers
+      with such conspicuous headlines?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not read the papers. I have not looked at one in a whole week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Strange, your social engagements must be of a very pressing nature
+      just now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your business sense in abeyance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would not ask if you had read the papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this she made no reply save by a slight toss of her pretty head. If her
+      employer felt nettled by this show of indifference, he did not betray it
+      save by the rapidity of his tones as, without further preamble and
+      possibly without real excuse, he proceeded to lay before her the case in
+      question. &ldquo;Last Tuesday night a woman was murdered in this city; an old
+      woman, in a lonely house where she has lived for years. Perhaps you
+      remember this house? It occupies a not inconspicuous site in Seventeenth
+      Street&mdash;a house of the olden time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I do not remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The extreme carelessness of Miss Strange&rsquo;s tone would have been fatal to
+      her socially; but then, she would never have used it socially. This they
+      both knew, yet he smiled with his customary indulgence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will describe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked around for a chair and sank into it. He did the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has a fanlight over the front door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She remained impassive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And two old-fashioned strips of parti-coloured glass on either side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And a knocker between its panels which may bring money some day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you do remember! I thought you would, Miss Strange.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Fanlights over doors are becoming very rare in New York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then. That house was the scene of Tuesday&rsquo;s tragedy. The woman
+      who has lived there in solitude for years was foully murdered. I have
+      since heard that the people who knew her best have always anticipated some
+      such violent end for her. She never allowed maid or friend to remain with
+      her after five in the afternoon; yet she had money&mdash;some think a
+      great deal&mdash;always in the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am interested in the house, not in her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet, she was a character&mdash;as full of whims and crotchets as a nut is
+      of meat. Her death was horrible. She fought&mdash;her dress was torn from
+      her body in rags. This happened, you see, before her hour for retiring;
+      some think as early as six in the afternoon. And&rdquo;&mdash;here he made a
+      rapid gesture to catch Violet&rsquo;s wandering attention&mdash;&ldquo;in spite of
+      this struggle; in spite of the fact that she was dragged from room to room&mdash;that
+      her person was searched&mdash;and everything in the house searched&mdash;that
+      drawers were pulled out of bureaus&mdash;doors wrenched off of cupboards&mdash;china
+      smashed upon the floor&mdash;whole shelves denuded and not a spot from
+      cellar to garret left unransacked, no direct clue to the perpetrator has
+      been found&mdash;nothing that gives any idea of his personality save his
+      display of strength and great cupidity. The police have even deigned to
+      consult me,&mdash;an unusual procedure&mdash;but I could find nothing,
+      either. Evidences of fiendish purpose abound&mdash;of relentless search&mdash;but
+      no clue to the man himself. It&rsquo;s uncommon, isn&rsquo;t it, not to have any
+      clue?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so.&rdquo; Miss Strange hated murders and it was with difficulty she
+      could be brought to discuss them. But she was not going to be let off; not
+      this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; he proceeded insistently, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s not only mortifying to the
+      police but disappointing to the press, especially as few reporters believe
+      in the No-thoroughfare business. They say, and we cannot but agree with
+      them, that no such struggle could take place and no such repeated goings
+      to and fro through the house without some vestige being left by which to
+      connect this crime with its daring perpetrator.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still she stared down at her hands&mdash;those little hands so white and
+      fluttering, so seemingly helpless under the weight of their many rings,
+      and yet so slyly capable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She must have queer neighbours,&rdquo; came at last, from Miss Strange&rsquo;s
+      reluctant lips. &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t they hear or see anything of all this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has no neighbours&mdash;that is, after half-past five o&rsquo;clock.
+      There&rsquo;s a printing establishment on one side of her, a deserted mansion on
+      the other side, and nothing but warehouses back and front. There was no
+      one to notice what took place in her small dwelling after the printing
+      house was closed. She was the most courageous or the most foolish of women
+      to remain there as she did. But nothing except death could budge her. She
+      was born in the room where she died; was married in the one where she
+      worked; saw husband, father, mother, and five sisters carried out in turn
+      to their graves through the door with the fanlight over the top&mdash;and
+      these memories held her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are trying to interest me in the woman. Don&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not trying to interest you in her, only trying to explain her.
+      There was another reason for her remaining where she did so long after all
+      residents had left the block. She had a business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She embroidered monograms for fine ladies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did? But you needn&rsquo;t look at me like that. She never embroidered any
+      for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No? She did first-class work. I saw some of it. Miss Strange, if I could
+      get you into that house for ten minutes&mdash;not to see her but to pick
+      up the loose intangible thread which I am sure is floating around in it
+      somewhere&mdash;wouldn&rsquo;t you go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet slowly rose&mdash;a movement which he followed to the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must I express in words the limit I have set for myself in our affair?&rdquo;
+       she asked. &ldquo;When, for reasons I have never thought myself called upon to
+      explain, I consented to help you a little now and then with some matter
+      where a woman&rsquo;s tact and knowledge of the social world might tell without
+      offence to herself or others, I never thought it would be necessary for me
+      to state that temptation must stop with such cases, or that I should not
+      be asked to touch the sordid or the bloody. But it seems I was mistaken,
+      and that I must stoop to be explicit. The woman who was killed on Tuesday
+      might have interested me greatly as an embroiderer, but as a victim, not
+      at all. What do you see in me, or miss in me, that you should drag me into
+      an atmosphere of low-down crime?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, Miss Strange. You are by nature, as well as by breeding, very
+      far removed from everything of the kind. But you will allow me to suggest
+      that no crime is low-down which makes imperative demand upon the intellect
+      and intuitive sense of its investigator. Only the most delicate touch can
+      feel and hold the thread I&rsquo;ve just spoken of, and you have the most
+      delicate touch I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not attempt to flatter me. I have no fancy for handling befouled
+      spider webs. Besides, if I had&mdash;if such elusive filaments fascinated
+      me&mdash;how could I, well-known in person and name, enter upon such a
+      scene without prejudice to our mutual compact?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Strange&rdquo;&mdash;she had reseated herself, but so far he had failed to
+      follow her example (an ignoring of the subtle hint that her interest might
+      yet be caught, which seemed to annoy her a trifle), &ldquo;I should not even
+      have suggested such a possibility had I not seen a way of introducing you
+      there without risk to your position or mine. Among the boxes piled upon
+      Mrs. Doolittle&rsquo;s table&mdash;boxes of finished work, most of them
+      addressed and ready for delivery&mdash;was one on which could be seen the
+      name of&mdash;shall I mention it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not mine? You don&rsquo;t mean mine? That would be too odd&mdash;too
+      ridiculously odd. I should not understand a coincidence of that kind; no,
+      I should not, notwithstanding the fact that I have lately sent out such
+      work to be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet it was your name, very clearly and precisely written&mdash;your whole
+      name, Miss Strange. I saw and read it myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I gave the order to Madame Pirot on Fifth Avenue. How came my things
+      to be found in the house of this woman of whose horrible death we have
+      been talking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you suppose that Madame Pirot did such work with her own hands?&mdash;or
+      even had it done in her own establishment? Mrs. Doolittle was universally
+      employed. She worked for a dozen firms. You will find the biggest names on
+      most of her packages. But on this one&mdash;I allude to the one addressed
+      to you&mdash;there was more to be seen than the name. These words were
+      written on it in another hand. Send without opening. This struck the
+      police as suspicious; sufficiently so, at least, for them to desire your
+      presence at the house as soon as you can make it convenient.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To open the box?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The curl of Miss Strange&rsquo;s disdainful lip was a sight to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wrote those words yourself,&rdquo; she coolly observed. &ldquo;While someone&rsquo;s
+      back was turned, you whipped out your pencil and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Resorted to a very pardonable subterfuge highly conducive to the public&rsquo;s
+      good. But never mind that. Will you go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange became suddenly demure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I must,&rdquo; she grudgingly conceded. &ldquo;However obtained, a summons
+      from the police cannot be ignored even by Peter Strange&rsquo;s daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another man might have displayed his triumph by smile or gesture; but this
+      one had learned his role too well. He simply said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good. Shall it be at once? I have a taxi at the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she failed to see the necessity of any such hurry. With sudden dignity
+      she replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That won&rsquo;t do. If I go to this house it must be under suitable
+      conditions. I shall have to ask my brother to accompany me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your brother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;s safe. He&mdash;he knows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your brother knows?&rdquo; Her visitor, with less control than usual, betrayed
+      very openly his uneasiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He does and&mdash;approves. But that&rsquo;s not what interests us now, only so
+      far as it makes it possible for me to go with propriety to that dreadful
+      house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A formal bow from the other and the words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They may expect you, then. Can you say when?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Within the next hour. But it will be a useless concession on my part,&rdquo;
+       she pettishly complained. &ldquo;A place that has been gone over by a dozen
+      detectives is apt to be brushed clean of its cobwebs, even if such ever
+      existed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the difficulty,&rdquo; he acknowledged; and did not dare to add another
+      word; she was at that particular moment so very much the great lady, and
+      so little his confidential agent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He might have been less impressed, however, by this sudden assumption of
+      manner, had he been so fortunate as to have seen how she employed the
+      three quarters of an hour&rsquo;s delay for which she had asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She read those neglected newspapers, especially the one containing the
+      following highly coloured narration of this ghastly crime:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A door ajar&mdash;an empty hall&mdash;a line of sinister looking blotches
+      marking a guilty step diagonally across the flagging&mdash;silence&mdash;and
+      an unmistakable odour repugnant to all humanity,&mdash;such were the
+      indications which met the eyes of Officer O&rsquo;Leary on his first round last
+      night, and led to the discovery of a murder which will long thrill the
+      city by its mystery and horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Both the house and the victim are well known.&rdquo; Here followed a
+      description of the same and of Mrs. Doolittle&rsquo;s manner of life in her
+      ancient home, which Violet hurriedly passed over to come to the following:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as one can judge from appearances, the crime happened in this
+      wise: Mrs. Doolittle had been in her kitchen, as the tea-kettle found
+      singing on the stove goes to prove, and was coming back through her
+      bedroom, when the wretch, who had stolen in by the front door which, to
+      save steps, she was unfortunately in the habit of leaving on the latch
+      till all possibility of customers for the day was over, sprang upon her
+      from behind and dealt her a swinging blow with the poker he had caught up
+      from the hearthstone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whether the struggle which ensued followed immediately upon this first
+      attack or came later, it will take medical experts to determine. But,
+      whenever it did occur, the fierceness of its character is shown by the
+      grip taken upon her throat and the traces of blood which are to be seen
+      all over the house. If the wretch had lugged her into her workroom and
+      thence to the kitchen, and thence back to the spot of first assault, the
+      evidences could not have been more ghastly. Bits of her clothing torn off
+      by a ruthless hand, lay scattered over all these floors. In her bedroom,
+      where she finally breathed her last, there could be seen mingled with
+      these a number of large but worthless glass beads; and close against one
+      of the base-boards, the string which had held them, as shown by the few
+      remaining beads still clinging to it. If in pulling the string from her
+      neck he had hoped to light upon some valuable booty, his fury at his
+      disappointment is evident. You can almost see the frenzy with which he
+      flung the would-be necklace at the wall, and kicked about and stamped upon
+      its rapidly rolling beads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Booty! That was what he was after; to find and carry away the poor
+      needlewoman&rsquo;s supposed hoardings. If the scene baffles description&mdash;if,
+      as some believe, he dragged her yet living from spot to spot, demanding
+      information as to her places of concealment under threat of repeated
+      blows, and, finally baffled, dealt the finishing stroke and proceeded on
+      the search alone, no greater devastation could have taken place in this
+      poor woman&rsquo;s house or effects. Yet such was his precaution and care for
+      himself that he left no finger-print behind him nor any other token which
+      could lead to personal identification. Even though his footsteps could be
+      traced in much the order I have mentioned, they were of so indeterminate
+      and shapeless a character as to convey little to the intelligence of the
+      investigator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That these smears (they could not be called footprints) not only crossed
+      the hall but appeared in more than one place on the staircase proves that
+      he did not confine his search to the lower storey; and perhaps one of the
+      most interesting features of the case lies in the indications given by
+      these marks of the raging course he took through these upper rooms. As the
+      accompanying diagram will show [we omit the diagram] he went first into
+      the large front chamber, thence to the rear where we find two rooms, one
+      unfinished and filled with accumulated stuff most of which he left lying
+      loose upon the floor, and the other plastered, and containing a window
+      opening upon an alley-way at the side, but empty of all furniture and
+      without even a carpet on the bare boards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why he should have entered the latter place, and why, having entered he
+      should have crossed to the window, will be plain to those who have studied
+      the conditions. The front chamber windows were tightly shuttered, the
+      attic ones cumbered with boxes and shielded from approach by old bureaus
+      and discarded chairs. This one only was free and, although darkened by the
+      proximity of the house neighbouring it across the alley, was the only spot
+      on the storey where sufficient light could be had at this late hour for
+      the examination of any object of whose value he was doubtful. That he had
+      come across such an object and had brought it to this window for some such
+      purpose is very satisfactorily demonstrated by the discovery of a worn out
+      wallet of ancient make lying on the floor directly in front of this window&mdash;a
+      proof of his cupidity but also proof of his ill-luck. For this wallet,
+      when lifted and opened, was found to contain two hundred or more dollars
+      in old bills, which, if not the full hoard of their industrious owner, was
+      certainly worth the taking by one who had risked his neck for the sole
+      purpose of theft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This wallet, and the flight of the murderer without it, give to this
+      affair, otherwise simply brutal, a dramatic interest which will be
+      appreciated not only by the very able detectives already hot upon the
+      chase, but by all other inquiring minds anxious to solve a mystery of
+      which so estimable a woman has been the unfortunate victim. A problem is
+      presented to the police&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There Violet stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, not long after, the superb limousine of Peter Strange stopped before
+      the little house in Seventeenth Street, it caused a veritable sensation,
+      not only in the curiosity-mongers lingering on the sidewalk, but to the
+      two persons within&mdash;the officer on guard and a belated reporter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though dressed in her plainest suit, Violet Strange looked much too
+      fashionable and far too young and thoughtless to be observed, without
+      emotion, entering a scene of hideous and brutal crime. Even the young man
+      who accompanied her promised to bring a most incongruous element into this
+      atmosphere of guilt and horror, and, as the detective on guard whispered
+      to the man beside him, might much better have been left behind in the car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Violet was great for the proprieties and young Arthur followed her in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her entrance was a coup du theatre. She had lifted her veil in crossing
+      the sidewalk and her interesting features and general air of timidity were
+      very fetching. As the man holding open the door noted the impression made
+      upon his companion, he muttered with sly facetiousness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think you&rsquo;ll show her nothing; but I&rsquo;m ready to bet a fiver that
+      she&rsquo;ll want to see it all and that you&rsquo;ll show it to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The detective&rsquo;s grin was expressive, notwithstanding the shrug with which
+      he tried to carry it off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Violet? The hall into which she now stepped from the most vivid
+      sunlight had never been considered even in its palmiest days as possessing
+      cheer even of the stately kind. The ghastly green light infused through it
+      by the coloured glass on either side of the doorway seemed to promise yet
+      more dismal things beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must I go in there?&rdquo; she asked, pointing, with an admirable simulation of
+      nervous excitement, to a half-shut door at her left. &ldquo;Is there where it
+      happened? Arthur, do you suppose that there is where it happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, Miss,&rdquo; the officer made haste to assure her. &ldquo;If you are Miss
+      Strange&rdquo; (Violet bowed), &ldquo;I need hardly say that the woman was struck in
+      her bedroom. The door beside you leads into the parlour, or as she would
+      have called it, her work-room. You needn&rsquo;t be afraid of going in there.
+      You will see nothing but the disorder of her boxes. They were pretty well
+      pulled about. Not all of them though,&rdquo; he added, watching her as closely
+      as the dim light permitted. &ldquo;There is one which gives no sign of having
+      been tampered with. It was done up in wrapping paper and is addressed to
+      you, which in itself would not have seemed worthy of our attention had not
+      these lines been scribbled on it in a man&rsquo;s handwriting: &lsquo;Send without
+      opening.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How odd!&rdquo; exclaimed the little minx with widely opened eyes and an air of
+      guileless innocence. &ldquo;Whatever can it mean? Nothing serious I am sure, for
+      the woman did not even know me. She was employed to do this work by Madame
+      Pirot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you know that it was to be done here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I thought Madame Pirot&rsquo;s own girls did her embroidery for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that you were surprised&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wasn&rsquo;t I!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To get our message.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know what to make of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The earnest, half-injured look with which she uttered this disclaimer, did
+      its appointed work. The detective accepted her for what she seemed and,
+      oblivious to the reporter&rsquo;s satirical gesture, crossed to the work-room
+      door, which he threw wide open with the remark:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be glad to have you open that box in our presence. It is
+      undoubtedly all right, but we wish to be sure. You know what the box
+      should contain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, indeed; pillow-cases and sheets, with a big S embroidered on
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well. Shall I undo the string for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be much obliged,&rdquo; said she, her eye flashing quickly about the
+      room before settling down upon the knot he was deftly loosening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her brother, gazing indifferently in from the doorway, hardly noticed this
+      look; but the reporter at his back did, though he failed to detect its
+      penetrating quality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name is on the other side,&rdquo; observed the detective as he drew away
+      the string and turned the package over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smile which just lifted the corner of her lips was not in answer to
+      this remark, but to her recognition of her employer&rsquo;s handwriting in the
+      words under her name: Send without opening. She had not misjudged him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cover you may like to take off yourself,&rdquo; suggested the officer, as
+      he lifted the box out of its wrapper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t mind. There&rsquo;s nothing to be ashamed of in embroidered linen.
+      Or perhaps that is not what you are looking for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No one answered. All were busy watching her whip off the lid and lift out
+      the pile of sheets and pillow-cases with which the box was closely packed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I unfold them?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The detective nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Taking out the topmost sheet, she shook it open. Then the next and the
+      next till she reached the bottom of the box. Nothing of a criminating
+      nature came to light. The box as well as its contents was without mystery
+      of any kind. This was not an unexpected result of course, but the smile
+      with which she began to refold the pieces and throw them back into the
+      box, revealed one of her dimples which was almost as dangerous to the
+      casual observer as when it revealed both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;you see! Household linen exactly as I said. Now
+      may I go home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, Miss Strange.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The detective stole a sly glance at the reporter. She was not going in for
+      the horrors then after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the reporter abated nothing of his knowing air, for while she spoke of
+      going, she made no move towards doing so, but continued to look about the
+      room till her glances finally settled on a long dark curtain shutting off
+      an adjoining room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s where she lies, I suppose,&rdquo; she feelingly exclaimed. &ldquo;And not one
+      of you knows who killed her. Somehow, I cannot understand that. Why don&rsquo;t
+      you know when that&rsquo;s what you&rsquo;re hired for?&rdquo; The innocence with which she
+      uttered this was astonishing. The detective began to look sheepish and the
+      reporter turned aside to hide his smile. Whether in another moment either
+      would have spoken no one can say, for, with a mock consciousness of having
+      said something foolish, she caught up her parasol from the table and made
+      a start for the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But of course she looked back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was wondering,&rdquo; she recommenced, with a half wistful, half speculative
+      air, &ldquo;whether I should ask to have a peep at the place where it all
+      happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reporter chuckled behind the pencil-end he was chewing, but the
+      officer maintained his solemn air, for which act of self-restraint he was
+      undoubtedly grateful when in another minute she gave a quick impulsive
+      shudder not altogether assumed, and vehemently added: &ldquo;But I couldn&rsquo;t
+      stand the sight; no, I couldn&rsquo;t! I&rsquo;m an awful coward when it comes to
+      things like that. Nothing in all the world would induce me to look at the
+      woman or her room. But I should like&mdash;&rdquo; here both her dimples came
+      into play though she could not be said exactly to smile&mdash;&ldquo;just one
+      little look upstairs, where he went poking about so long without any fear
+      it seems of being interrupted. Ever since I&rsquo;ve read about it I have seen,
+      in my mind, a picture of his wicked figure sneaking from room to room,
+      tearing open drawers and flinging out the contents of closets just to find
+      a little money&mdash;a little, little money! I shall not sleep to-night
+      just for wondering how those high up attic rooms really look.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Who could dream that back of this display of mingled childishness and
+      audacity there lay hidden purpose, intellect, and a keen knowledge of
+      human nature. Not the two men who listened to this seemingly irresponsible
+      chatter. To them she was a child to be humoured and humour her they did.
+      The dainty feet which had already found their way to that gloomy staircase
+      were allowed to ascend, followed it is true by those of the officer who
+      did not dare to smile back at the reporter because of the brother&rsquo;s
+      watchful and none too conciliatory eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the stair head she paused to look back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see those horrible marks which the papers describe as running all
+      along the lower hall and up these stairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Miss Strange; they have gradually been rubbed out, but you will find
+      some still showing on these upper floors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! oh! where? You frighten me&mdash;frighten me horribly! But&mdash;but&mdash;if
+      you don&rsquo;t mind, I should like to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Why should not a man on a tedious job amuse himself? Piloting her over to
+      the small room in the rear, he pointed down at the boards. She gave one
+      look and then stepped gingerly in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just look!&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;a whole string of marks going straight from door
+      to window. They have no shape, have they,&mdash;just blotches? I wonder
+      why one of them is so much larger than the rest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was no new question. It was one which everybody who went into the
+      room was sure to ask, there was such a difference in the size and
+      appearance of the mark nearest the window. The reason&mdash;well, minds
+      were divided about that, and no one had a satisfactory theory. The
+      detective therefore kept discreetly silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This did not seem to offend Miss Strange. On the contrary it gave her an
+      opportunity to babble away to her heart&rsquo;s content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One, two, three, four, five, six,&rdquo; she counted, with a shudder at every
+      count. &ldquo;And one of them bigger than the others.&rdquo; She might have added, &ldquo;It
+      is the trail of one foot, and strangely, intermingled at that,&rdquo; but she
+      did not, though we may be quite sure that she noted the fact. &ldquo;And where,
+      just where did the old wallet fall? Here? or here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had moved as she spoke, so that in uttering the last &ldquo;here,&rdquo; she stood
+      directly before the window. The surprise she received there nearly made
+      her forget the part she was playing. From the character of the light in
+      the room, she had expected, on looking out, to confront a near-by wall,
+      but not a window in that wall. Yet that was what she saw directly facing
+      her from across the old-fashioned alley separating this house from its
+      neighbour; twelve unshuttered and uncurtained panes through which she
+      caught a darkened view of a room almost as forlorn and devoid of furniture
+      as the one in which she then stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When quite sure of herself, she let a certain portion of her surprise
+      appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, look!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;if you can&rsquo;t see right in next door! What a
+      lonesome-looking place! From its desolate appearance I should think the
+      house quite empty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it is. That&rsquo;s the old Shaffer homestead. It&rsquo;s been empty for a year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, empty!&rdquo; And she turned away, with the most inconsequent air in the
+      world, crying out as her name rang up the stair, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s Arthur calling.
+      I suppose he thinks I&rsquo;ve been here long enough. I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;m very much
+      obliged to you, officer. I really shouldn&rsquo;t have slept a wink to-night, if
+      I hadn&rsquo;t been given a peep at these rooms, which I had imagined so
+      different.&rdquo; And with one additional glance over her shoulder, that seemed
+      to penetrate both windows and the desolate space beyond, she ran quickly
+      out and down in response to her brother&rsquo;s reiterated call.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drive quickly!&mdash;as quickly as the law allows, to Hiram Brown&rsquo;s
+      office in Duane Street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arrived at the address named, she went in alone to see Mr. Brown. He was
+      her father&rsquo;s lawyer and a family friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardly waiting for his affectionate greeting, she cried out quickly. &ldquo;Tell
+      me how I can learn anything about the old Shaffer house in Seventeenth
+      Street. Now, don&rsquo;t look so surprised. I have very good reasons for my
+      request and&mdash;and&mdash;I&rsquo;m in an awful hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I know; there&rsquo;s been a dreadful tragedy next door to it; but it&rsquo;s
+      about the Shaffer house itself I want some information. Has it an agent, a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it has an agent, and here is his name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Brown presented her with a card on which he had hastily written both
+      name and address.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thanked him, dropped him a mocking curtsey full of charm, whispered
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell father,&rdquo; and was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her manner to the man she next interviewed was very different. As soon as
+      she saw him she subsided into her usual society manner. With just a touch
+      of the conceit of the successful debutante, she announced herself as Miss
+      Strange of Seventy-second Street. Her business with him was in regard to
+      the possible renting of the Shaffer house. She had an old lady friend who
+      was desirous of living downtown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In passing through Seventeenth Street, she had noticed that the old
+      Shaffer house was standing empty and had been immediately struck with the
+      advantages it possessed for her elderly friend&rsquo;s occupancy. Could it be
+      that the house was for rent? There was no sign on it to that effect, but&mdash;etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His answer left her nothing to hope for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is going to be torn down,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what a pity!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Real colonial, isn&rsquo;t it! I wish I could
+      see the rooms inside before it is disturbed. Such doors and such dear
+      old-fashioned mantelpieces as it must have! I just dote on the Colonial.
+      It brings up such pictures of the old days; weddings, you know, and
+      parties;&mdash;all so different from ours and so much more interesting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Is it the chance shot that tells? Sometimes. Violet had no especial
+      intention in what she said save as a prelude to a pending request, but
+      nothing could have served her purpose better than that one word, wedding.
+      The agent laughed and giving her his first indulgent look, remarked
+      genially:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Romance is not confined to those ancient times. If you were to enter that
+      house to-day you would come across evidences of a wedding as romantic as
+      any which ever took place in all the seventy odd years of its existence. A
+      man and a woman were married there day before yesterday who did their
+      first courting under its roof forty years ago. He has been married twice
+      and she once in the interval; but the old love held firm and now at the
+      age of sixty and over they have come together to finish their days in
+      peace and happiness. Or so we will hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Married! married in that house and on the day that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught herself up in time. He did not notice the break.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, in memory of those old days of courtship, I suppose. They came here
+      about five, got the keys, drove off, went through the ceremony in that
+      empty house, returned the keys to me in my own apartment, took the steamer
+      for Naples, and were on the sea before midnight. Do you not call that
+      quick work as well as highly romantic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very.&rdquo; Miss Strange&rsquo;s cheek had paled. It was apt to when she was greatly
+      excited. &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; she added, the moment after. &ldquo;How could
+      they do this and nobody know about it? I should have thought it would have
+      got into the papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are quiet people. I don&rsquo;t think they told their best friends. A
+      simple announcement in the next day&rsquo;s journals testified to the fact of
+      their marriage, but that was all. I would not have felt at liberty to
+      mention the circumstances myself, if the parties were not well on their
+      way to Europe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how glad I am that you did tell me! Such a story of constancy and the
+      hold which old associations have upon sensitive minds! But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Miss? What&rsquo;s the matter? You look very much disturbed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you remember? Haven&rsquo;t you thought? Something else happened that
+      very day and almost at the same time on that block. Something very
+      dreadful&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Doolittle&rsquo;s murder?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. It was as near as next door, wasn&rsquo;t it? Oh, if this happy couple had
+      known&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But fortunately they didn&rsquo;t. Nor are they likely to, till they reach the
+      other side. You needn&rsquo;t fear that their honeymoon will be spoiled that
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they may have heard something or seen something before leaving the
+      street. Did you notice how the gentleman looked when he returned you the
+      keys?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did, and there was no cloud on his satisfaction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how you relieve me!&rdquo; One&mdash;two dimples made their appearance in
+      Miss Strange&rsquo;s fresh, young cheeks. &ldquo;Well! I wish them joy. Do you mind
+      telling me their names? I cannot think of them as actual persons without
+      knowing their names.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The gentleman was Constantin Amidon; the lady, Marian Shaffer. You will
+      have to think of them now as Mr. and Mrs. Amidon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I will. Thank you, Mr. Hutton, thank you very much. Next to the
+      pleasure of getting the house for my friend, is that of hearing this
+      charming bit of news its connection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out her hand and, as he took it, remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must have had a clergyman and witnesses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Undoubtedly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I had been one of the witnesses,&rdquo; she sighed sentimentally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were two old men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! Don&rsquo;t tell me that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fogies; nothing less.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the clergyman? He must have been young. Surely there was some one
+      there capable of appreciating the situation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say about that; I did not see the clergyman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well! it doesn&rsquo;t matter.&rdquo; Miss Strange&rsquo;s manner was as nonchalant as
+      it was charming. &ldquo;We will think of him as being very young.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with a merry toss of her head she flitted away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she sobered very rapidly upon entering her limousine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, is that you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I want a Marconi sent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Marconi?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, to the Cretic, which left dock the very night in which we are so
+      deeply interested.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good. Whom to? The Captain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, to a Mrs. Constantin Amidon. But first be sure there is such a
+      passenger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs.! What idea have you there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse my not stating over the telephone. The message is to be to this
+      effect. Did she at any time immediately before or after her marriage to
+      Mr. Amidon get a glimpse of any one in the adjoining house? No remarks,
+      please. I use the telephone because I am not ready to explain myself. If
+      she did, let her send a written description to you of that person as soon
+      as she reaches the Azores.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You surprise me. May I not call or hope for a line from you early
+      to-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be busy till you get your answer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hung up the receiver. He recognized the resolute tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the time came when the pending explanation was fully given to him. An
+      answer had been returned from the steamer, favourable to Violet&rsquo;s hopes.
+      Mrs. Amidon had seen such a person and would send a full description of
+      the same at the first opportunity. It was news to fill Violet&rsquo;s heart with
+      pride; the filament of a clue which had led to this great result had been
+      so nearly invisible and had felt so like nothing in her grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To her employer she described it as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I hear or read of a case which contains any baffling features, I am
+      apt to feel some hidden chord in my nature thrill to one fact in it and
+      not to any of the others. In this case the single fact which appealed to
+      my imagination was the dropping of the stolen wallet in that upstairs
+      room. Why did the guilty man drop it? and why, having dropped it, did he
+      not pick it up again? but one answer seemed possible. He had heard or seen
+      something at the spot where it fell which not only alarmed him but sent
+      him in flight from the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good; and did you settle to your own mind the nature of that sound
+      or that sight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did.&rdquo; Her manner was strangely businesslike. No show of dimples now.
+      &ldquo;Satisfied that if any possibility remained of my ever doing this, it
+      would have to be on the exact place of this occurrence or not at all, I
+      embraced your suggestion and visited the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that room no doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that room. Women, somehow, seem to manage such things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I&rsquo;ve noticed, Miss Strange. And what was the result of your visit?
+      What did you discover there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This: that one of the blood spots marking the criminal&rsquo;s steps through
+      the room was decidedly more pronounced than the rest; and, what was even
+      more important, that the window out of which I was looking had its
+      counterpart in the house on the opposite side of the alley. In gazing
+      through the one I was gazing through the other; and not only that, but
+      into the darkened area of the room beyond. Instantly I saw how the latter
+      fact might be made to explain the former one. But before I say how, let me
+      ask if it is quite settled among you that the smears on the floor and
+      stairs mark the passage of the criminal&rsquo;s footsteps!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; and very bloody feet they must have been too. His shoes&mdash;or
+      rather his one shoe&mdash;for the proof is plain that only the right one
+      left its mark&mdash;must have become thoroughly saturated to carry its
+      traces so far.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think that any amount of saturation would have done this? Or, if
+      you are not ready to agree to that, that a shoe so covered with blood
+      could have failed to leave behind it some hint of its shape, some imprint,
+      however faint, of heel or toe? But nowhere did it do this. We see a smear&mdash;and
+      that is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, Miss Strange; you are always right. And what do you gather
+      from this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked to see how much he expected from her, and, meeting an eye not
+      quite as free from ironic suggestion as his words had led her to expect,
+      faltered a little as she proceeded to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My opinion is a girl&rsquo;s opinion, but such as it is you have the right to
+      have it. From the indications mentioned I could draw but this conclusion:
+      that the blood which accompanied the criminal&rsquo;s footsteps was not carried
+      through the house by his shoes;&mdash;he wore no shoes; he did not even
+      wear stockings; probably he had none. For reasons which appealed to his
+      judgment, he went about his wicked work barefoot; and it was the blood
+      from his own veins and not from those of his victim which made the trail
+      we have followed with so much interest. Do you forget those broken beads;&mdash;how
+      he kicked them about and stamped upon them in his fury? One of them
+      pierced the ball of his foot, and that so sharply that it not only spurted
+      blood but kept on bleeding with every step he took. Otherwise, the trail
+      would have been lost after his passage up the stairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine!&rdquo; There was no irony in the bureau-chief&rsquo;s eye now. &ldquo;You are
+      progressing, Miss Strange. Allow me, I pray, to kiss your hand. It is a
+      liberty I have never taken, but one which would greatly relieve my present
+      stress of feeling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her hand toward him, but it was in gesture, not in recognition
+      of his homage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;but I claim no monopoly on deductions so simple as
+      these. I have not the least doubt that not only yourself but every member
+      of the force has made the same. But there is a little matter which may
+      have escaped the police, may even have escaped you. To that I would now
+      call your attention since through it I have been enabled, after a little
+      necessary groping, to reach the open. You remember the one large blotch on
+      the upper floor where the man dropped the wallet? That blotch, more or
+      less commingled with a fainter one, possessed great significance for me
+      from the first moment I saw it. How came his foot to bleed so much more
+      profusely at that one spot than at any other? There could be but one
+      answer: because here a surprise met him&mdash;a surprise so startling to
+      him in his present state of mind, that he gave a quick spring backward,
+      with the result that his wounded foot came down suddenly and forcibly
+      instead of easily as in his previous wary tread. And what was the
+      surprise? I made it my business to find out, and now I can tell you that
+      it was the sight of a woman&rsquo;s face staring upon him from the neighbouring
+      house which he had probably been told was empty. The shock disturbed his
+      judgment. He saw his crime discovered&mdash;his guilty secret read, and
+      fled in unreasoning panic. He might better have held on to his wits. It
+      was this display of fear which led me to search after its cause, and
+      consequently to discover that at this especial hour more than one person
+      had been in the Shaffer house; that, in fact, a marriage had been
+      celebrated there under circumstances as romantic as any we read of in
+      books, and that this marriage, privately carried out, had been followed by
+      an immediate voyage of the happy couple on one of the White Star steamers.
+      With the rest you are conversant. I do not need to say anything about what
+      has followed the sending of that Marconi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am going to say something about your work in this matter, Miss
+      Strange. The big detectives about here will have to look sharp if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t, please! Not yet.&rdquo; A smile softened the asperity of this
+      interruption. &ldquo;The man has yet to be caught and identified. Till that is
+      done I cannot enjoy any one&rsquo;s congratulations. And you will see that all
+      this may not be so easy. If no one happened to meet the desperate wretch
+      before he had an opportunity to retie his shoe-laces, there will be little
+      for you or even for the police to go upon but his wounded foot, his
+      undoubtedly carefully prepared alibi, and later, a woman&rsquo;s confused
+      description of a face seen but for a moment only and that under a personal
+      excitement precluding minute attention. I should not be surprised if the
+      whole thing came to nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it did not. As soon as the description was received from Mrs. Amidon
+      (a description, by the way, which was unusually clear and precise, owing
+      to the peculiar and contradictory features of the man), the police were
+      able to recognize him among the many suspects always under their eye.
+      Arrested, he pleaded, just as Miss Strange had foretold, an alibi of a
+      seemingly unimpeachable character; but neither it, nor the plausible
+      explanation with which he endeavoured to account for a freshly healed scar
+      amid the callouses of his right foot, could stand before Mrs. Amidon&rsquo;s
+      unequivocal testimony that he was the same man she had seen in Mrs.
+      Doolittle&rsquo;s upper room on the afternoon of her own happiness and of that
+      poor woman&rsquo;s murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment when, at his trial, the two faces again confronted each other
+      across a space no wider than that which had separated them on the dread
+      occasion in Seventeenth Street, is said to have been one of the most
+      dramatic in the annals of that ancient court room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM III <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM IV. THE GROTTO SPECTRE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange was not often pensive&mdash;at least not at large functions
+      or when under the public eye. But she certainly forgot herself at Mrs.
+      Provost&rsquo;s musicale and that, too, without apparent reason. Had the music
+      been of a high order one might have understood her abstraction; but it was
+      of a decidedly mediocre quality, and Violet&rsquo;s ear was much too fine and
+      her musical sense too cultivated for her to be beguiled by anything less
+      than the very best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor had she the excuse of a dull companion. Her escort for the evening was
+      a man of unusual conversational powers; but she seemed to be almost
+      oblivious of his presence; and when, through some passing courteous
+      impulse, she did turn her ear his way, it was with just that tinge of
+      preoccupation which betrays the divided mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Were her thoughts with some secret problem yet unsolved? It would scarcely
+      seem so from the gay remark with which she had left home. She was speaking
+      to her brother and her words were: &ldquo;I am going out to enjoy myself. I&rsquo;ve
+      not a care in the world. The slate is quite clean.&rdquo; Yet she had never
+      seemed more out of tune with her surroundings nor shown a mood further
+      removed from trivial entertainment. What had happened to becloud her
+      gaiety in the short time which had since elapsed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can answer in a sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had seen, among a group of young men in a distant doorway, one with a
+      face so individual and of an expression so extraordinary that all interest
+      in the people about her had stopped as a clock stops when the pendulum is
+      held back. She could see nothing else, think of nothing else. Not that it
+      was so very handsome&mdash;though no other had ever approached it in its
+      power over her imagination&mdash;but because of its expression of haunting
+      melancholy,&mdash;a melancholy so settled and so evidently the result of
+      long-continued sorrow that her interest had been reached and her
+      heartstrings shaken as never before in her whole life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would never be the same Violet again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet moved as she undoubtedly was, she was not conscious of the least
+      desire to know who the young man was, or even to be made acquainted with
+      his story. She simply wanted to dream her dream undisturbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was therefore with a sense of unwelcome shock that, in the course of
+      the reception following the programme, she perceived this fine young man
+      approaching herself, with his right hand touching his left shoulder in the
+      peculiar way which committed her to an interview with or without a formal
+      introduction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should she fly the ordeal? Be blind and deaf to whatever was significant
+      in his action, and go her way before he reached her; thus keeping her
+      dream intact? Impossible. His eye prevented that. His glance had caught
+      hers and she felt forced to await his advance and give him her first spare
+      moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came soon, and when it came she greeted him with a smile. It was the
+      first she had ever bestowed in welcome of a confidence of whose tenor she
+      was entirely ignorant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To her relief he showed his appreciation of the dazzling gift though he
+      made no effort to return it. Scorning all preliminaries in his eagerness
+      to discharge himself of a burden which was fast becoming intolerable, he
+      addressed her at once in these words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very good, Miss Strange, to receive me in this unconventional
+      fashion. I am in that desperate state of mind which precludes etiquette.
+      Will you listen to my petition? I am told&mdash;you know by whom&mdash;&ldquo;(and
+      he again touched his shoulder) &ldquo;that you have resources of intelligence
+      which especially fit you to meet the extraordinary difficulties of my
+      position. May I beg you to exercise them in my behalf? No man would be
+      more grateful if&mdash;But I see that you do not recognize me. I am Roger
+      Upjohn. That I am admitted to this gathering is owing to the fact that our
+      hostess knew and loved my mother. In my anxiety to meet you and proffer my
+      plea, I was willing to brave the cold looks you have probably noticed on
+      the faces of the people about us. But I have no right to subject you to
+      criticism. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remain.&rdquo; Violet&rsquo;s voice was troubled, her self-possession disturbed; but
+      there was a command in her tone which he was only too glad to obey. &ldquo;I
+      know the name&rdquo; (who did not!) &ldquo;and possibly my duty to myself should make
+      me shun a confidence which may burden me without relieving you. But you
+      have been sent to me by one whose behests I feel bound to respect and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mistrusting her voice, she stopped. The suffering which made itself
+      apparent in the face before her appealed to her heart in a way to rob her
+      of her judgment. She did not wish this to be seen, and so fell silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was quick to take advantage of her obvious embarrassment. &ldquo;Should I
+      have been sent to you if I had not first secured the confidence of the
+      sender? You know the scandal attached to my name, some of it just, some of
+      it very unjust. If you will grant me an interview to-morrow, I will make
+      an endeavour to refute certain charges which I have hitherto let go
+      unchallenged. Will you do me this favour? Will you listen in your own
+      house to what I have to say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instinct cried out against any such concession on her part, bidding her
+      beware of one who charmed without excellence and convinced without reason.
+      But compassion urged compliance and compassion won the day. Though
+      conscious of weakness,&mdash;she, Violet Strange on whom strong men had
+      come to rely in critical hours calling for well-balanced judgment,&mdash;she
+      did not let this concern her, or allow herself to indulge in useless
+      regrets even after the first effect of his presence had passed and she had
+      succeeded in recalling the facts which had cast a cloud about his name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roger Upjohn was a widower, and the scandal affecting him was connected
+      with his wife&rsquo;s death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though a degenerate in some respects, lacking the domineering presence,
+      the strong mental qualities, and inflexible character of his progenitors,
+      the wealthy Massachusetts Upjohns whose great place on the coast had a
+      history as old as the State itself, he yet had gifts and attractions of
+      his own which would have made him a worthy representative of his race, if
+      only he had not fixed his affections on a woman so cold and heedless that
+      she would have inspired universal aversion instead of love, had she not
+      been dowered with the beauty and physical fascination which sometimes
+      accompany a hard heart and a scheming brain. It was this beauty which had
+      caught the lad; and one day, just as the careful father had mapped out a
+      course of study calculated to make a man of his son, that son drove up to
+      the gates with this lady whom he introduced as his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shock, not of her beauty, though that was of the dazzling quality
+      which catches a man in the throat and makes a slave of him while the first
+      surprise lasts, but of the overthrow of all his hopes and plans, nearly
+      prostrated Homer Upjohn. He saw, as most men did the moment judgment
+      returned, that for all her satin skin and rosy flush, the wonder of her
+      hair and the smile which pierced like arrows and warmed like wine, she was
+      more likely to bring a curse into the house than a blessing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it proved. In less than a year the young husband had lost all his
+      ambitions and many of his best impulses. No longer inclined to study, he
+      spent his days in satisfying his wife&rsquo;s whims and his evenings in
+      carousing with the friends with which she had provided him. This in Boston
+      whither they had fled from the old gentleman&rsquo;s displeasure; but after
+      their little son came the father insisted upon their returning home, which
+      led to great deceptions, and precipitated a tragedy no one ever
+      understood. They were natural gamblers&mdash;this couple&mdash;as all
+      Boston society knew; and as Homer Upjohn loathed cards, they found life
+      slow in the great house and grew correspondingly restless till they made a
+      discovery&mdash;or shall I say a rediscovery&mdash;of the once famous
+      grotto hidden in the rocks lining their portion of the coast. Here they
+      found a retreat where they could hide themselves (often when they were
+      thought to be abed and asleep) and play together for money or for a supper
+      in the city or for anything else that foolish fancy suggested. This was
+      while their little son remained an infant; later, they were less easily
+      satisfied. Both craved company, excitement, and gambling on a large scale;
+      so they took to inviting friends to meet them in this grotto which,
+      through the agency of one old servant devoted to Roger to the point of
+      folly, had been fitted up and lighted in a manner not only comfortable but
+      luxurious. A small but sheltered haven hidden in the curve of the rocks
+      made an approach by boat feasible at high tide; and at low the connection
+      could be made by means of a path over the promontory in which this grotto
+      lay concealed. The fortune which Roger had inherited from his mother made
+      these excesses possible, but many thousands, let alone the few he could
+      call his, soon disappeared under the witchery of an irresponsible woman,
+      and the half-dozen friends who knew his secret had to stand by and see his
+      ruin, without daring to utter a word to the one who alone could stay it.
+      For Homer Upjohn was not a man to be approached lightly, nor was he one to
+      listen to charges without ocular proof to support them; and this called
+      for courage, more courage than was possessed by any one who knew them
+      both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a hard man was Homer Upjohn, but with a heart of gold for those he
+      loved. This, even his wary daughter-in-law was wise enough to detect, and
+      for a long while after the birth of her child she besieged him with her
+      coaxing ways and bewitching graces. But he never changed his first opinion
+      of her, and once she became fully convinced of the folly of her efforts,
+      she gave up all attempt to please him and showed an open indifference.
+      This in time gradually extended till it embraced not only her child but
+      her husband as well. Yes, it had come to that. His love no longer
+      contented her. Her vanity had grown by what it daily fed on, and now
+      called for the admiration of the fast men who sometimes came up from
+      Boston to play with them in their unholy retreat. To win this, she dressed
+      like some demon queen or witch, though it drove her husband into deeper
+      play and threatened an exposure which would mean disaster not only to
+      herself but to the whole family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all this, as any one could see, Roger had been her slave and the
+      willing victim of all her caprices. What was it, then, which so completely
+      changed him that a separation began to be talked of and even its terms
+      discussed? One rumour had it that the father had discovered the secret of
+      the grotto and exacted this as a penalty from the son who had dishonoured
+      him. Another, that Roger himself was the one to take the initiative in
+      this matter: That, on returning unexpectedly from New York one evening and
+      finding her missing from the house, he had traced her to the grotto where
+      he came upon her playing a desperate game with the one man he had the
+      greatest reason to distrust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But whatever the explanation of this sudden change in their relations,
+      there is but little doubt that a legal separation between this
+      ill-assorted couple was pending, when one bleak autumn morning she was
+      discovered dead in her bed under circumstances peculiarly open to comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The physicians who made out the certificate ascribed her death to
+      heart-disease, symptoms of which had lately much alarmed the family
+      doctor; but that a personal struggle of some kind had preceded the fatal
+      attack was evident from the bruises which blackened her wrists. Had there
+      been the like upon her throat it might have gone hard with the young
+      husband who was known to be contemplating her dismissal from the house.
+      But the discoloration of her wrists was all, and as bruised wrists do not
+      kill and there was besides no evidence forthcoming of the two having spent
+      one moment together for at least ten hours preceding the tragedy but
+      rather full and satisfactory testimony to the contrary, the matter lapsed
+      and all criminal proceedings were avoided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not the scandal which always follows the unexplained. As time passed
+      and the peculiar look which betrays the haunted soul gradually became
+      visible in the young widower&rsquo;s eyes, doubts arose and reports circulated
+      which cast strange reflections upon the tragic end of his mistaken
+      marriage. Stories of the disreputable use to which the old grotto had been
+      put were mingled with vague hints of conjugal violence never properly
+      investigated. The result was his general avoidance not only by the social
+      set dominated by his high-minded father, but by his own less reputable
+      coterie, which, however lax in its moral code, had very little use for a
+      coward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the gossip which had reached Violet&rsquo;s ears in connection with
+      this new client, prejudicing her altogether against him till she caught
+      that beam of deep and concentrated suffering in his eye and recognized an
+      innocence which ensured her sympathy and led her to grant him the
+      interview for which he so earnestly entreated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came prompt to the hour, and when she saw him again with the marks of a
+      sleepless night upon him and all the signs of suffering intensified in his
+      unusual countenance, she felt her heart sink within her in a way she
+      failed to understand. A dread of what she was about to hear robbed her of
+      all semblance of self-possession, and she stood like one in a dream as he
+      uttered his first greetings and then paused to gather up his own moral
+      strength before he began his story. When he did speak it was to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I find myself obliged to break a vow I have made to myself. You cannot
+      understand my need unless I show you my heart. My trouble is not the one
+      with which men have credited me. It has another source and is infinitely
+      harder to bear. Personal dishonour I have deserved in a greater or less
+      degree, but the trial which has come to me now involves a person more dear
+      to me than myself, and is totally without alleviation unless you&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He paused, choked, then recommenced abruptly: &ldquo;My wife&rdquo;&mdash;Violet held
+      her breath&mdash;&ldquo;was supposed to have died from heart-disease or&mdash;or
+      some strange species of suicide. There were reasons for this conclusion&mdash;reasons
+      which I accepted without serious question till some five weeks ago when I
+      made a discovery which led me to fear&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The broken sentence hung suspended. Violet, notwithstanding his hurried
+      gesture, could not restrain herself from stealing a look at his face. It
+      was set in horror and, though partially turned aside, made an appeal to
+      her compassion to fill the void made by his silence, without further
+      suggestion from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did this by saying tentatively and with as little show of emotion as
+      possible:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You feared that the event called for vengeance and that vengeance would
+      mean increased suffering to yourself as well as to another?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; great suffering. But I may be under a most lamentable mistake. I am
+      not sure of my conclusions. If my doubts have no real foundation&mdash;if
+      they are simply the offspring of my own diseased imagination, what an
+      insult to one I revere! What a horror of ingratitude and misunderstanding&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Relate the facts,&rdquo; came in startled tones from Violet. &ldquo;They may
+      enlighten us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave one quick shudder, buried his face for one moment in his hands,
+      then lifted it and spoke up quickly and with unexpected firmness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came here to do so and do so I will. But where begin? Miss Strange, you
+      cannot be ignorant of the circumstances, open and avowed, which attended
+      my wife&rsquo;s death. But there were other and secret events in its connection
+      which happily have been kept from the world, but which I must now disclose
+      to you at any cost to my pride and so-called honour. This is the first
+      one: On the morning preceding the day of Mrs. Upjohn&rsquo;s death, an interview
+      took place between us at which my father was present. You do not know my
+      father, Miss Strange. A strong man and a stern one, with a hold upon old
+      traditions which nothing can shake. If he has a weakness it is for my
+      little boy Roger in whose promising traits he sees the one hope which has
+      survived the shipwreck of all for which our name has stood. Knowing this,
+      and realizing what the child&rsquo;s presence in the house meant to his old age,
+      I felt my heart turn sick with apprehension, when in the midst of the
+      discussion as to the terms on which my wife would consent to a permanent
+      separation, the little fellow came dancing into the room, his curls atoss
+      and his whole face beaming with life and joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had not mentioned the child, but I knew her well enough to be sure
+      that at the first show of preference on his part for either his
+      grandfather or myself, she would raise a claim to him which she would
+      never relinquish. I dared not speak, but I met his eager looks with my
+      most forbidding frown and hoped by this show of severity to hold him back.
+      But his little heart was full and, ignoring her outstretched arms, he
+      bounded towards mine with his most affectionate cry. She saw and uttered
+      her ultimatum. The child should go with her or she would not consent to a
+      separation. It was useless for us to talk; she had said her last word. The
+      blow struck me hard, or so I thought, till I looked at my father. Never
+      had I beheld such a change as that one moment had made in him. He stood as
+      before; he faced us with the same silent reprobation; but his heart had
+      run from him like water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a sight to call up all my resources. To allow her to remain now,
+      with my feelings towards her all changed and my father&rsquo;s eyes fully opened
+      to her stony nature, was impossible. Nor could I appeal to law. An open
+      scandal was my father&rsquo;s greatest dread and divorce proceedings his horror.
+      The child would have to go unless I could find a way to influence her
+      through her own nature. I knew of but one&mdash;do not look at me, Miss
+      Strange. It was dishonouring to us both, and I&rsquo;m horrified now when I
+      think of it. But to me at that time it was natural enough as a last
+      resort. There was but one debt which my wife ever paid, but one promise
+      she ever kept. It was that made at the gaming-table. I offered, as soon as
+      my father, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, had gone tottering
+      from the room, to gamble with her for the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she accepted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shame and humiliation expressed in this final whisper; the sudden
+      darkness&mdash;for a storm was coming up&mdash;shook Violet to the soul.
+      With strained gaze fixed on the man before her, now little more than a
+      shadow in the prevailing gloom, she waited for him to resume, and waited
+      in vain. The minutes passed, the darkness became intolerable, and
+      instinctively her hand crept towards the electric button beneath which she
+      was sitting. But she failed to press it. A tale so dark called for an
+      atmosphere of its own kind. She would cast no light upon it. Yet she
+      shivered as the silence continued, and started in uncontrollable dismay
+      when at length her strange visitor rose, and still, without speaking,
+      walked away from her to the other end of the room. Only so could he go on
+      with the shameful tale; and presently she heard his voice once more in
+      these words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our house is large and its rooms many; but for such work as we two
+      contemplated there was but one spot where we could command absolute
+      seclusion. You may have heard of it, a famous natural grotto hidden in our
+      own portion of the coast and so fitted up as to form a retreat for our
+      miserable selves when escape from my father&rsquo;s eye seemed desirable. It was
+      not easy of access, and no one, so far as we knew, had ever followed us
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But to ensure ourselves against any possible interruption, we waited till
+      the whole house was abed before we left it for the grotto. We went by boat
+      and oh! the dip of those oars! I hear them yet. And the witchery of her
+      face in the moonlight; and the mockery of her low fitful laugh! As I
+      caught the sinister note in its silvery rise and fall, I knew what was
+      before me if I failed to retain my composure. And I strove to hold it and
+      to meet her calmness with stoicism and the taunt of her expression with a
+      mask of immobility. But the effort was hopeless, and when the time came
+      for dealing out the cards, my eyes were burning in their sockets and my
+      hands shivering like leaves in a rising gale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We played one game&mdash;and my wife lost. We played another&mdash;and my
+      wife won. We played the third&mdash;and the fate I had foreseen from the
+      first became mine. The luck was with her, and I had lost my boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A gasp&mdash;a pause, during which the thunder spoke and the lightning
+      flashed,&mdash;then a hurried catching of his breath and the tale went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A burst of laughter, rising gaily above the boom of the sea, announced
+      her victory&mdash;her laugh and the taunting words: &lsquo;You play badly,
+      Roger. The child is mine. Never fear that I shall fail to teach him to
+      revere his father.&rsquo; Had I a word to throw back? No. When I realized
+      anything but my dishonoured manhood, I found myself in the grotto&rsquo;s mouth
+      staring helplessly out upon the sea. The boat which had floated us in at
+      high tide lay stranded but a few feet away, but I did not reach for it.
+      Escape was quicker over the rocks, and I made for the rocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That it was a cowardly act to leave her there to find her way back alone
+      at midnight by the same rough road I was taking, did not strike my mind
+      for an instant. I was in flight from my own past; in flight from myself
+      and the haunting dread of madness. When I awoke to reality again it was to
+      find the small door, by which we had left the house, standing slightly
+      ajar. I was troubled by this, for I was sure of having closed it. But the
+      impression was brief, and entering, I went stumbling up to my room,
+      leaving the way open behind me more from sheer inability to exercise my
+      will than from any thought of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Strange&rdquo; (he had come out of the shadows and was standing now
+      directly before her), &ldquo;I must ask you to trust implicitly in what I tell
+      you of my further experiences that fatal night. It was not necessary for
+      me to pass my little son&rsquo;s door in order to reach the room I was making
+      for; but anguish took me there and held me glued to the panels for what
+      seemed a long, long time. When I finally crept away it was to go to the
+      room I had chosen in the top of the house, where I had my hour of hell and
+      faced my desolated future. Did I hear anything meantime in the halls
+      below? No. Did I even listen for the sound of her return? No. I was
+      callous to everything, dead to everything but my own misery. I did not
+      even heed the approach of morning, till suddenly, with a shrillness no ear
+      could ignore, there rose, tearing through the silence of the house, that
+      great scream from my wife&rsquo;s room which announced the discovery of her body
+      lying stark and cold in her bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They said I showed little feeling.&rdquo; He had moved off again and spoke from
+      somewhere in the shadows. &ldquo;Do you wonder at this after such a manifest
+      stroke by a benevolent Providence? My wife being dead, Roger was saved to
+      us! It was the one song of my still undisciplined soul, and I had to
+      assume coldness lest they should see the greatness of my joy. A wicked and
+      guilty rejoicing you will say, and you are right. But I had no memory then
+      of the part I had played in this fatality. I had forgotten my reckless
+      flight from the grotto, which left her with no aid but that of her own
+      triumphant spirit to help her over those treacherous rocks. The necessity
+      for keeping secret this part of our disgraceful story led me to exert
+      myself to keep it out of my own mind. It has only come back to me in all
+      its force since a new horror, a new suspicion, has driven me to review
+      carefully every incident of that awful night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was never a man of much logic, and when they came to me on that morning
+      of which I have just spoken and took me in where she lay and pointed to
+      her beautiful cold body stretched out in seeming peace under the satin
+      coverlet, and then to the pile of dainty clothes lying neatly folded on a
+      chair with just one fairy slipper on top, I shuddered at her fate but
+      asked no questions, not even when one of the women of the house mentioned
+      the circumstance of the single slipper and said that a search should be
+      made for its mate. Nor was I as much impressed as one would naturally
+      expect by the whisper dropped in my ear that something was the matter with
+      her wrists. It is true that I lifted the lace they had carefully spread
+      over them and examined the discoloration which extended like a ring about
+      each pearly arm; but having no memories of any violence offered her (I had
+      not so much as laid hand upon her in the grotto), these marks failed to
+      rouse my interest. But&mdash;and now I must leap a year in my story&mdash;there
+      came a time when both of these facts recurred to my mind with startling
+      distinctness and clamoured for explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had risen above the shock which such a death following such events
+      would naturally occasion even in one of my blunted sensibilities, and was
+      striving to live a new life under the encouragement of my now fully
+      reconciled father, when accident forced me to re-enter the grotto where I
+      had never stepped foot since that night. A favourite dog in chase of some
+      innocent prey had escaped the leash and run into its dim recesses and
+      would not come out at my call. As I needed him immediately for the hunt, I
+      followed him over the promontory and, swallowing my repugnance, slid into
+      the grotto to get him. Better a plunge to my death from the height of the
+      rocks towering above it. For there in a remote corner, lighted up by a
+      reflection from the sea, I beheld my setter crouched above an object which
+      in another moment I recognized as my dead wife&rsquo;s missing slipper. Here!
+      Not in the waters of the sea or in the interstices of the rocks outside,
+      but here! Proof that she had never walked back to the house where she was
+      found lying quietly in her bed; proof positive; for I knew the path too
+      well and the more than usual tenderness of her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How then, did she get there; and by whose agency? Was she living when she
+      went, or was she already dead? A year had passed since that delicate shoe
+      had borne her from the boat into these dim recesses; but it might have
+      been only a day, so vividly did I live over in this moment of awful
+      enlightenment all the events of the hour in which we sat there playing for
+      the possession of our child. Again I saw her gleaming eyes, her rosy,
+      working mouth, her slim, white hand, loaded with diamonds, clutching the
+      cards. Again I heard the lap of the sea on the pebbles outside and smelt
+      the odour of the wine she had poured out for us both. The bottle which had
+      held it; the glass from which she had drunk lay now in pieces on the rocky
+      floor. The whole scene was mine again and as I followed the event to its
+      despairing close, I seemed to see my own wild figure springing away from
+      her to the grotto&rsquo;s mouth and so over the rocks. But here fancy faltered,
+      caught by a quick recollection to which I had never given a thought till
+      now. As I made my way along those rocks, a sound had struck my ear from
+      where some stunted bushes made a shadow in the moonlight. The wind might
+      have caused it or some small night creature hustling away at my approach;
+      and to some such cause I must at the time have attributed it. But now,
+      with brain fired by suspicion, it seemed more like the quick intake of a
+      human breath. Some one had been lying there in wait, listening at the one
+      loophole in the rocks where it was possible to hear what was said and done
+      in the heart of the grotto. But who? who? and for what purpose this
+      listening; and to what end did it lead?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though I no longer loved even the memory of my wife, I felt my hair lift,
+      as I asked myself these questions. There seemed to be but one logical
+      answer to the last, and it was this: A struggle followed by death. The
+      shoe fallen from her foot, the clothes found folded in her room (my wife
+      was never orderly), and the dimly blackened wrists which were snow-white
+      when she dealt the cards&mdash;all seemed to point to such a conclusion.
+      She may have died from heart-failure, but a struggle had preceded her
+      death, during which some man&rsquo;s strong fingers had been locked about her
+      wrists. And again the question rose, Whose?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If any place was ever hated by mortal man that grotto was hated by me. I
+      loathed its walls, its floor, its every visible and invisible corner. To
+      linger there&mdash;to look&mdash;almost tore my soul from my body; yet I
+      did linger and did look and this is what I found by way of reward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Behind a projecting ledge of stone from which a tattered rug still hung,
+      I came upon two nails driven a few feet apart into a fissure of the rock.
+      I had driven those nails myself long before for a certain gymnastic
+      attachment much in vogue at the time, and on looking closer, I discovered
+      hanging from them the rope-ends by which I was wont to pull myself about.
+      So far there was nothing to rouse any but innocent reminiscences. But when
+      I heard the dog&rsquo;s low moan and saw him leap at the curled-up ends, and
+      nose them with an eager look my way, I remembered the dark marks circling
+      the wrists about which I had so often clasped my mother&rsquo;s bracelets, and
+      the world went black before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When consciousness returned&mdash;when I could once more move and see and
+      think, I noted another fact. Cards were strewn about the floor, face up
+      and in a fixed order as if laid in a mocking mood to be looked upon by
+      reluctant eyes; and near the ominous half-circle they made, a cushion from
+      the lounge, stained horribly with what I then thought to be blood, but
+      which I afterwards found to be wine. Vengeance spoke in those ropes and in
+      the carefully spread-out cards, and murder in the smothering pillow. The
+      vengeance of one who had watched her corroding influence eat the life out
+      of my honour and whose love for our little Roger was such that any deed
+      which ensured his continued presence in the home appeared not only
+      warrantable but obligatory. Alas! I knew of but one person in the whole
+      world who could cherish feeling to this extent or possess sufficient will
+      power to carry her lifeless body back to the house and lay it in her bed
+      and give no sign of the abominable act from that day on to this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Strange, there are men who have a peculiar conception of duty. My
+      father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You need not go on.&rdquo; How gently, how tenderly our Violet spoke. &ldquo;I
+      understand your trouble&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Did she? She paused to ask herself if this were so, and he, deaf perhaps
+      to her words, caught up his broken sentence and went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father was in the hall the day I came staggering in from my visit to
+      the grotto. No words passed, but our eyes met and from that hour I have
+      seen death in his countenance and he has seen it in mine, like two
+      opponents, each struck to the heart, who stand facing each other with
+      simulated smiles till they fall. My father will drop first. He is old&mdash;very
+      old since that day five weeks ago; and to see him die and not be sure&mdash;to
+      see the grave close over a possible innocence, and I left here in
+      ignorance of the blissful fact till my own eyes close forever, is more
+      than I can hold up under; more than any son could. Cannot you help me then
+      to a positive knowledge? Think! think! A woman&rsquo;s mind is strangely
+      penetrating, and yours, I am told, has an intuitive faculty more to be
+      relied upon than the reasoning of men. It must suggest some means of
+      confirming my doubts or of definitely ending them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Violet stirred and looked about at him and finally found voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me something about your father&rsquo;s ways. What are his habits? Does he
+      sleep well or is he wakeful at night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has poor nights. I do not know how poor because I am not often with
+      him. His valet, who has always been in our family, shares his room and
+      acts as his constant nurse. He can watch over him better than I can; he
+      has no distracting trouble on his mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And little Roger? Does your father see much of little Roger? Does he
+      fondle him and seem happy in his presence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; yes. I have often wondered at it, but he does. They are great chums.
+      It is a pleasure to see them together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the child clings to him&mdash;shows no fear&mdash;sits on his lap or
+      on the bed and plays as children do play with his beard or with his
+      watch-chain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Only once have I seen my little chap shrink, and that was when my
+      father gave him a look of unusual intensity,&mdash;looking for his mother
+      in him perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Upjohn, forgive me the question; it seems necessary. Does your father&mdash;or
+      rather did your father before he fell ill&mdash;ever walk in the direction
+      of the grotto or haunt in any way the rocks which surround it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot say. The sea is there; he naturally loves the sea. But I have
+      never seen him standing on the promontory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which way do his windows look?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Towards the sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Therefore towards the promontory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can he see it from his bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Perhaps that is the cause of a peculiar habit he has.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What habit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every night before he retires (he is not yet confined to his bed) he
+      stands for a few minutes in his front window looking out. He says it&rsquo;s his
+      good-night to the ocean. When he no longer does this, we shall know that
+      his end is very near.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The face of Violet began to clear. Rising, she turned on the electric
+      light, and then, reseating herself, remarked with an aspect of quiet
+      cheer:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have two ideas; but they necessitate my presence at your place. You
+      will not mind a visit? My brother will accompany me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roger Upjohn did not need to speak, hardly to make a gesture; his
+      expression was so eloquent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thanked him as if he had answered in words, adding with an air of
+      gentle reserve: &ldquo;Providence assists us in this matter. I am invited to
+      Beverly next week to attend a wedding. I was intending to stay two days,
+      but I will make it three and spend the extra one with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are your requirements, Miss Strange? I presume you have some.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet turned from the imposing portrait of Mr. Upjohn which she had been
+      gravely contemplating, and met the troubled eye of her young host with an
+      enigmatical flash of her own. But she made no answer in words. Instead,
+      she lifted her right hand and ran one slender finger thoughtfully up the
+      casing of the door near which they stood till it struck a nick in the old
+      mahogany almost on a level with her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is your son Roger old enough to reach so far?&rdquo; she asked with another
+      short look at him as she let her finger rest where it had struck the
+      roughened wood. &ldquo;I thought he was a little fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is. That cut was made by&mdash;by my wife; a sample of her capricious
+      willfulness. She wished to leave a record of herself in the substance of
+      our house as well as in our lives. That nick marks her height. She laughed
+      when she made it. &lsquo;Till the walls cave in or burn,&rsquo; is what she said. And
+      I thought her laugh and smile captivating.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cutting short his own laugh which was much too sardonic for a lady&rsquo;s ears,
+      he made a move as if to lead the way into another portion of the room. But
+      Violet failed to notice this, and lingering in quiet contemplation of this
+      suggestive little nick,&mdash;the only blemish in a room of ancient
+      colonial magnificence,&mdash;she thoughtfully remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she was a small woman?&rdquo; adding with seeming irrelevance&mdash;&ldquo;like
+      myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roger winced. Something in the suggestion hurt him, and in the nod he gave
+      there was an air of coldness which under ordinary circumstances would have
+      deterred her from pursuing this subject further. But the circumstances
+      were not ordinary, and she allowed herself to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was she so very different from me,&mdash;in figure, I mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Why do you ask? Shall we not join your brother on the terrace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not till I have answered the question you put me a moment ago. You wished
+      to know my requirements. One of the most important you have already
+      fulfilled. You have given your servants a half-holiday and by so doing
+      ensured to us full liberty of action. What else I need in the attempt I
+      propose to make, you will find listed in this memorandum.&rdquo; And taking a
+      slip of paper from her bag, she offered it to him with a hand, the
+      trembling of which he would have noted had he been freer in mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he read, she watched him, her fingers nervously clutching her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you supply what I ask?&rdquo; she faltered, as he failed to raise his eyes
+      or make any move or even to utter the groan she saw surging up to his
+      lips. &ldquo;Will you?&rdquo; she impetuously urged, as his fingers closed
+      spasmodically on the paper, in evidence that he understood at last the
+      trend of her daring purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer came slowly, but it came. &ldquo;I will. But what&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hand rose in a pleading gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not ask me, but take Arthur and myself into the garden and show us the
+      flowers. Afterwards, I should like a glimpse of the sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed and they joined Arthur who had already begun to stroll through
+      the grounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet was seldom at a loss for talk even at the most critical moments.
+      But she was strangely tongue-tied on this occasion, as was Roger himself.
+      Save for a few observations casually thrown out by Arthur, the three
+      passed in a disquieting silence through pergola after pergola, and around
+      beds gorgeous with every variety of fall flowers, till they turned a sharp
+      corner and came in full view of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; fell in an admiring murmur from Violet&rsquo;s lips as her eyes swept the
+      horizon. Then as they settled on a mass of rock jutting out from the shore
+      in a great curve, she leaned towards her host and softly whispered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The promontory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded, and Violet ventured no farther, but stood for a little while
+      gazing at the tumbled rocks. Then, with a quick look back at the house,
+      she asked him to point out his father&rsquo;s window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did so, and as she noted how openly it faced the sea, her expression
+      relaxed and her manner lost some of its constraint. As they turned to
+      re-enter the house, she noticed an old man picking flowers from a vine
+      clambering over one end of the piazza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is that?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our oldest servant, and my father&rsquo;s own man,&rdquo; was Roger&rsquo;s reply. &ldquo;He is
+      picking my father&rsquo;s favourite flowers, a few late honeysuckles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How fortunate! Speak to him, Mr. Upjohn. Ask him how your father is this
+      evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Accompany me and I will; and do not be afraid to enter into conversation
+      with him. He is the mildest of creatures and devoted to his patient. He
+      likes nothing better than to talk about him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet, with a meaning look at her brother, ran up the steps at Roger&rsquo;s
+      side. As she did so, the old man turned and Violet was astonished at the
+      wistfulness with which he viewed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a dear old creature!&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;See how he stares this way. You
+      would think he knew me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is glad to see a woman about the place. He has felt our isolation&mdash;Good
+      evening, Abram. Let this young lady have a spray of your sweetest
+      honeysuckle. And, Abram, before you go, how is Father to-night? Still
+      sitting up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir. He is very regular in his ways. Nine is his hour; not a minute
+      before and not a minute later. I don&rsquo;t have to look at the clock when he
+      says: &lsquo;There, Abram, I&rsquo;ve sat up long enough.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When my father retires before his time or goes to bed without a final
+      look at the sea, he will be a very sick man, Abram.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That he will, Mr. Roger; that he will. But he&rsquo;s very feeble to-night,
+      very feeble. I noticed that he gave the boy fewer kisses than usual.
+      Perhaps he was put out because the child was brought in a half-hour
+      earlier than the stated time. He don&rsquo;t like changes; you know that, Mr.
+      Roger; he don&rsquo;t like changes. I hardly dared to tell him that the servants
+      were all going out in a bunch to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; muttered Roger. &ldquo;But he&rsquo;ll forget it by to-morrow. I couldn&rsquo;t
+      bear to keep a single one from the concert. They&rsquo;ll be back in good season
+      and meantime we have you. Abram is worth half a dozen of them, Miss
+      Strange. We shall miss nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Mr. Roger, thank you,&rdquo; faltered the old man. &ldquo;I try to do my
+      duty.&rdquo; And with another wistful glance at Violet, who looked very sweet
+      and youthful in the half-light, he pottered away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The silence which followed his departure was as painful to her as to Roger
+      Upjohn. When she broke it it was with this decisive remark:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That man must not speak of me to your father. He must not even mention
+      that you have a guest to-night. Run after him and tell him so. It is
+      necessary that your father&rsquo;s mind should not be taken up with present
+      happenings. Run.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roger made haste to obey her. When he came back she was on the point of
+      joining her brother but stopped to utter a final injunction:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall leave the library, or wherever we may be sitting, just as the
+      clock strikes half-past eight. Arthur will do the same, as by that time he
+      will feel like smoking on the terrace. Do not follow either him or myself,
+      but take your stand here on the piazza where you can get a full view of
+      the right-hand wing without attracting any attention to yourself. When you
+      hear the big clock in the hall strike nine, look up quickly at your
+      father&rsquo;s window. What you see may determine&mdash;oh, Arthur! still
+      admiring the prospect? I do not wonder. But I find it chilly. Let us go
+      in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Roger Upjohn, sitting by himself in the library, was watching the hands of
+      the mantel clock slowly approaching the hour of nine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had silence seemed more oppressive nor his sense of loneliness
+      greater. Yet the boom of the ocean was distinct to the ear, and human
+      presence no farther away than the terrace where Arthur Strange could be
+      seen smoking out his cigar in solitude. The silence and the loneliness
+      were in Roger&rsquo;s own soul; and, in face of the expected revelation which
+      would make or unmake his future, the desolation they wrought was
+      measureless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To cut his suspense short, he rose at length and hurried out to the spot
+      designated by Miss Strange as the best point from which to keep watch upon
+      his father&rsquo;s window. It was at the end of the piazza where the honeysuckle
+      hung, and the odour of the blossoms, so pleasing to his father, well-nigh
+      overpowered him not only by its sweetness but by the many memories it
+      called up. Visions of that father as he looked at all stages of their
+      relationship passed in a bewildering maze before him. He saw him as he
+      appeared to his childish eyes in those early days of confidence when the
+      loss of the mother cast them in mutual dependence upon each other. Then a
+      sterner picture of the relentless parent who sees but one straight course
+      to success in this world and the next. Then the teacher and the matured
+      adviser; and then&mdash;oh, bitter change! the man whose hopes he had
+      crossed&mdash;whose life he had undone, and all for her who now came
+      stealing upon the scene with her slim, white, jewelled hand forever lifted
+      up between them. And she! Had he ever seen her more clearly? Once more the
+      dainty figure stepped from fairy-land, beauteous with every grace that can
+      allure and finally destroy a man. And as he saw, he trembled and wished
+      that these moments of awful waiting might pass and the test be over which
+      would lay bare his father&rsquo;s heart and justify his fears or dispel them
+      forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the crisis, if crisis it was, was one of his own making and not to be
+      hastened or evaded. With one quick glance at his father&rsquo;s window, he
+      turned in his impatience towards the sea whose restless and continuous
+      moaning had at length struck his ear. What was in its call to-night that
+      he should thus sway towards it as though drawn by some dread magnetic
+      force? He had been born to the dashing of its waves and knew its every
+      mood and all the passion of its song from frolicsome ripple to melancholy
+      dirge. But there was something odd and inexplicable in its effect upon his
+      spirit as he faced it at this hour. Grim and implacable&mdash;a sound
+      rather than a sight&mdash;it seemed to hold within its invisible distances
+      the image of his future fate. What this image was and why he should seek
+      for it in this impenetrable void, he did not know. He felt himself held
+      and was struggling with this influence as with an unknown enemy when there
+      rang out, from the hall within, the preparatory chimes for which his ear
+      was waiting, and then the nine slow strokes which signalized the moment
+      when he was to look for his father&rsquo;s presence at the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had he wished, he could not have forborne that look. Had his eyes been
+      closing in death, or so he felt, the trembling lids would have burst apart
+      at this call and the revelations it promised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what did he see? What did that window hold for him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing that he might not have seen there any night at this hour. His
+      father&rsquo;s figure drawn up behind the panes in wistful contemplation of the
+      night. No visible change in his attitude, nothing forced or unusual in his
+      manner. Even the hand, lifted to pull down the shade, moves with its
+      familiar hesitation. In a moment more that shade will be down and&mdash;But
+      no! the lifted hand falls back; the easy attitude becomes strained, fixed.
+      He is staring now&mdash;not merely gazing out upon the wastes of sky and
+      sea; and Roger, following the direction of his glance, stares also in
+      breathless emotion at what those distances, but now so impenetrable, are
+      giving to the eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A spectre floating in the air above the promontory! The spectre of a woman&mdash;of
+      his wife, clad, as she had been clad that fatal night! Outlined in
+      supernatural light, it faces them with lifted arms showing the ends of
+      rope dangling from either wrist. A sight awful to any eye, but to the man
+      of guilty heart&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah! it comes&mdash;the cry for which the agonized son had been listening!
+      An old man&rsquo;s shriek, hoarse with the remorse of sleepless nights and days
+      of unimaginable regret and foreboding! It cuts the night. It cuts its way
+      into his heart. He feels his senses failing him, yet he must glance once
+      more at the window and see with his last conscious look&mdash;But what is
+      this! a change has taken place in the picture and he beholds, not the
+      distorted form of his father sinking back in shame and terror before this
+      visible image of his secret sin, but that of another weak, old man falling
+      to the floor behind his back! Abram! the attentive, seemingly harmless,
+      guardian of the household! Abram! who had never spoken a word or given a
+      look in any way suggestive of his having played any other part in the
+      hideous drama of their lives than that of the humble and sympathetic
+      servant!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shock was too great, the relief too absolute for credence. He, the
+      listener at the grotto? He, the avenger of the family&rsquo;s honour? He, the
+      insurer of little Roger&rsquo;s continuance with the family at a cost the one
+      who loved him best would rather have died himself than pay? Yes! there is
+      no misdoubting this old servitor&rsquo;s attitude of abject appeal, or the
+      meaning of Homer Upjohn&rsquo;s joyfully uplifted countenance and outspreading
+      arms. The servant begs for mercy from man, and the master is giving thanks
+      to Heaven. Why giving thanks? Has he been the prey of cankering doubts
+      also? Has the father dreaded to discover that in the son which the son has
+      dreaded to discover in the father?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It might easily be; and as Roger recognizes this truth and the full
+      tragedy of their mutual lives, he drops to his knees amid the
+      honeysuckles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Violet, you are a wonder. But how did you dare?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This from Arthur as the two rode to the train in the early morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer came a bit waveringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know. I am astonished yet, at my own daring. Look at my hands.
+      They have not ceased trembling since the moment you threw the light upon
+      me on the rocks. The figure of old Mr. Upjohn in the window looked so
+      august.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur, with a short glance at the little hands she held out, shrugged his
+      shoulders imperceptibly. It struck him that the tremulousness she
+      complained of was due more to some parting word from their young host,
+      than from prolonged awe at her own daring. But he made no remark to this
+      effect, only observed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abram has confessed his guilt, I hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and will die of it. The master will bury the man, and not the man
+      the master.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Roger? Not the little fellow, but the father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will not talk of him,&rdquo; said she, her eyes seeking the sea where the
+      sun in its rising was battling with a troop of lowering clouds and slowly
+      gaining the victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM IV <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM V. THE DREAMING LADY
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;And this is all you mean to tell me?&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you will find it quite enough, Miss Strange.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the address&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this advice: that your call be speedy. Distracted nerves cannot
+      wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet, across whose wonted piquancy there lay an indefinable shadow, eyed
+      her employer with a doubtful air before turning away toward the door. She
+      had asked him for a case to investigate (something she had never done
+      before), and she had even gone so far as to particularize the sort of case
+      she desired: &ldquo;It must be an interesting one,&rdquo; she had stipulated, &ldquo;but
+      different, quite different from the last one. It must not involve death or
+      any kind of horror. If you have a case of subtlety without crime, one to
+      engage my powers without depressing my spirits, I beg you to let me have
+      it. I&mdash;I have not felt quite like myself since I came from
+      Massachusetts.&rdquo; Whereupon, without further comment, but with a smile she
+      did not understand, he had handed her a small slip of paper on which he
+      had scribbled an address. She should have felt satisfied, but for some
+      reason she did not. She regarded him as capable of plunging her into an
+      affair quite the reverse of what she felt herself in a condition to
+      undertake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to know a little more,&rdquo; she pursued, making a move to
+      unfold the slip he had given her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he stopped her with a gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read it in your limousine,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;If you are disappointed then, let
+      me know. But I think you will find yourself quite ready for your task.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would approve if he could be got to approve the business at all. You do
+      not even need to take your brother with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, then, it&rsquo;s with women only I have to deal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read the address after you are headed up Fifth Avenue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when, with her doubts not yet entirely removed, she opened the small
+      slip he had given her, the number inside suggested nothing but the fact
+      that her destination lay somewhere near Eightieth Street. It was therefore
+      with the keenest surprise she beheld her motor stop before the conspicuous
+      house of the great financier whose late death had so affected the
+      money-market. She had not had any acquaintance with this man herself, but
+      she knew his house. Everyone knew that. It was one of the most princely in
+      the whole city. C. Dudley Brooks had known how to spend his millions.
+      Indeed, he had known how to do this so well that it was of him her father,
+      also a financier of some note, had once said he was the only successful
+      American he envied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was expected; that she saw the instant the door was opened. This made
+      her entrance easy&mdash;an entrance further brightened by the delightful
+      glimpse of a child&rsquo;s cherubic face looking at her from a distant doorway.
+      It was an instantaneous vision, gone as soon as seen; but its effect was
+      to rob the pillared spaces of the wonderful hallway of some of their
+      chill, and to modify in some slight degree the formality of a service
+      which demanded three men to usher her into a small reception-room not
+      twenty feet from the door of entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left in this secluded spot, she had time to ask herself what member of the
+      household she would be called upon to meet, and was surprised to find that
+      she did not even know of whom the household consisted. She was sure of the
+      fact that Mr. Brooks had been a widower for many years before his death,
+      but beyond that she knew nothing of his domestic life. His son&mdash;but
+      was there a son? She had never heard any mention made of a younger Mr.
+      Brooks, yet there was certainly some one of his connection who enjoyed the
+      rights of an heir. Him she must be prepared to meet with a due composure,
+      whatever astonishment he might show at the sight of a slip of a girl
+      instead of the experienced detective he had every right to expect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the door opened to admit the person she was awaiting, the
+      surprise was hers. It was a woman who stood before her, a woman and an
+      oddity. Yet, in just what her oddity lay, Violet found it difficult to
+      decide. Was it in the smoothness of her white locks drawn carefully down
+      over her ears, or in the contrast afforded by her eager eyes and her weak
+      and tremulous mouth? She was dressed in the heaviest of mourning and very
+      expensively, but there was that in her bearing and expression which made
+      it impossible to believe that she took any interest in her garments or
+      even knew in which of her dresses she had been attired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the person you have come here to see,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Your name is not
+      unfamiliar to me, but you may not know mine. It is Quintard; Mrs.
+      Quintard. I am in difficulty. I need assistance&mdash;secret assistance. I
+      did not know where to go for it except to a detective agency; so I
+      telephoned to the first one I saw advertised; and&mdash;and I was told to
+      expect Miss Strange. But I didn&rsquo;t think it would be you though I suppose
+      it&rsquo;s all right. You have come here for this purpose, haven&rsquo;t you, though
+      it does seem a little queer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, Mrs. Quintard; and if you will tell me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, it&rsquo;s just this&mdash;yes, I will sit down. Last week my brother
+      died. You have heard of him no doubt, C. Dudley Brooks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes; my father knew him&mdash;we all knew him by reputation. Do not
+      hurry, Mrs. Quintard. I have sent my car away. You can take all the time
+      you wish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, I cannot. I&rsquo;m in desperate haste. He&mdash;but let me go on with
+      my story. My brother was a widower, with no children to inherit. That
+      everybody knows. But his wife left behind her a son by a former husband,
+      and this son of hers my brother had in a measure adopted, and even made
+      his sole heir in a will he drew up during the lifetime of his wife. But
+      when he found, as he very soon did, that this young man was not developing
+      in a way to meet such great responsibilities, he made a new will&mdash;though
+      unhappily without the knowledge of the family, or even of his most
+      intimate friends&mdash;in which he gave the bulk of his great estate to
+      his nephew Clement, who has bettered the promise of his youth and who
+      besides has children of great beauty whom my brother had learned to love.
+      And this will&mdash;this hoarded scrap of paper which means so much to us
+      all, is lost! lost! and I&mdash;&rdquo; here her voice which had risen almost to
+      a scream, sank to a horrified whisper, &ldquo;am the one who lost it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s a copy of it somewhere&mdash;there is always a copy&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but you haven&rsquo;t heard all. My nephew is an invalid; has been an
+      invalid for years&mdash;that&rsquo;s why so little is known about him. He&rsquo;s
+      dying of consumption. The doctors hold out no hope for him, and now, with
+      the fear preying upon him of leaving his wife and children penniless, he
+      is wearing away so fast that any hour may see his end. And I have to meet
+      his eyes&mdash;such pitiful eyes&mdash;and the look in them is killing me.
+      Yet, I was not to blame. I could not help&mdash;Oh, Miss Strange,&rdquo; she
+      suddenly broke in with the inconsequence of extreme feeling, &ldquo;the will is
+      in the house! I never carried it off the floor where I sleep. Find it;
+      find it, I pray, or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment had come for Violet&rsquo;s soft touch, for Violet&rsquo;s encouraging
+      word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try,&rdquo; she answered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Quintard grew calmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, first,&rdquo; the young girl continued, &ldquo;I must know more about the
+      conditions. Where is this nephew of yours&mdash;the man who is ill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In this house, where he has been for the last eight months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was the child his of whom I caught a glimpse in the hall as I came in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will fight for that child!&rdquo; Violet cried out impulsively. &ldquo;I am sure
+      his father&rsquo;s cause is good. Where is the other claimant&mdash;the one you
+      designate as Carlos?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there&rsquo;s where the trouble is! Carlos is on the Mauretania, and she is
+      due here in a couple of days. He comes from the East where he has been
+      touring with his wife. Miss Strange, the lost will must be found before
+      then, or the other will be opened and read and Carlos made master of this
+      house, which would mean our quick departure and Clement&rsquo;s certain death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Move a sick man?&mdash;a relative as low as you say he is? Oh no, Mrs.
+      Quintard; no one would do that, were the house a cabin and its owners
+      paupers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not know Carlos; you do not know his wife. We should not be given
+      a week in which to pack. They have no children and they envy Clement who
+      has. Our only hope lies in discovering the paper which gives us the right
+      to remain here in face of all opposition. That or penury. Now you know my
+      trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it is trouble; one from which I shall make every effort to relieve
+      you. But first let me ask if you are not worrying unnecessarily about this
+      missing document? If it was drawn up by Mr. Brooks&rsquo;s lawyer&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it was not,&rdquo; that lady impetuously interrupted. &ldquo;His lawyer is
+      Carlos&rsquo;s near relative, and has never been told of the change in my
+      brother&rsquo;s intentions. Clement (I am speaking now of my brother and not of
+      my nephew) was a great money-getter, but when it came to standing up for
+      his rights in domestic matters, he was more timid than a child. He was
+      subject to his wife while she lived, and when she was gone, to her
+      relatives, who are all of a dominating character. When he finally made up
+      his mind to do us justice and eliminate Carlos, he went out of town&mdash;I
+      wish I could remember where&mdash;and had this will drawn up by a
+      stranger, whose name I cannot recall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her shaking tones, her nervous manner betrayed a weakness equalling, if
+      not surpassing, that of the brother who dared in secret what he had not
+      strength to acknowledge openly, and it was with some hesitation Violet
+      prepared to ask those definite questions which would elucidate the cause
+      and manner of a loss seemingly so important. She dreaded to hear some
+      commonplace tale of inexcusable carelessness. Something subtler than this&mdash;the
+      presence of some unsuspected agency opposed to young Clement&rsquo;s interest;
+      some partisan of Carlos; some secret undermining force in a house full of
+      servants and dependants, seemed necessary for the development of so
+      ordinary a situation into a drama justifying the exercise of her special
+      powers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I understand now your exact position in the house, as well as the
+      value of the paper which you say you have lost. The next thing for me to
+      hear is how you came to have charge of this paper, and under what
+      circumstances you were led to mislay it. Do you not feel quite ready to
+      tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is&mdash;is that necessary?&rdquo; Mrs. Quintard faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very,&rdquo; replied Violet, watching her curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t expect&mdash;that is, I hoped you would be able to point out, by
+      some power we cannot of course explain, just the spot where the paper
+      lies, without having to tell all that. Some people can, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I understand. You regarded me as unfit for practical work, and so
+      credited me with occult powers. But that is where you made a mistake, Mrs.
+      Quintard; I&rsquo;m nothing if not practical. And let me add, that I&rsquo;m as secret
+      as the grave concerning what my clients tell me. If I am to be of any help
+      to you, I must be made acquainted with every fact involved in the loss of
+      this valuable paper. Relate the whole circumstance or dismiss me from the
+      case. You can have done nothing more foolish or wrong than many&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t say things like that!&rdquo; broke in the poor woman in a tone of
+      great indignation. &ldquo;I have done nothing anyone could call either foolish
+      or wicked. I am simply very unfortunate, and being sensitive&mdash;But
+      this isn&rsquo;t telling the story. I&rsquo;ll try to make it all clear; but if I do
+      not, and show any confusion, stop me and help me out with questions. I&mdash;I&mdash;oh,
+      where shall I begin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With your first knowledge of this second will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, thank you; now I can go on. One night, shortly after my
+      brother had been given up by the physicians, I was called to his bedside
+      for a confidential talk. As he had received that day a very large amount
+      of money from the bank, I thought he was going to hand it over to me for
+      Clement, but it was for something much more serious than this he had
+      summoned me. When he was quite sure that we were alone and nobody anywhere
+      within hearing, he told me that he had changed his mind as to the disposal
+      of his property and that it was to Clement and his children, and not to
+      Carlos, he was going to leave this house and the bulk of his money. That
+      he had had a new will drawn up which he showed me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Showed you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he made me bring it to him from the safe where he kept it; and,
+      feeble as he was, he was so interested in pointing out certain portions of
+      it that he lifted himself in bed and was so strong and animated that I
+      thought he was getting better. But it was a false strength due to the
+      excitement of the moment, as I saw next day when he suddenly died.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were saying that you brought the will to him from his safe. Where was
+      the safe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the wall over his head. He gave me the key to open it. This key he
+      took from under his pillow. I had no trouble in fitting it or in turning
+      the lock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what happened after you looked at the will?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I put it back. He told me to. But the key I kept. He said I was not to
+      part with it again till the time came for me to produce the will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when was that to be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Immediately after the funeral, if it so happened that Carlos had arrived
+      in time to attend it. But if for any reason he failed to be here, I was to
+      let it lie till within three days of his return, when I was to take it out
+      in the presence of a Mr. Delahunt who was to have full charge of it from
+      that time. Oh, I remember all that well enough! and I meant most earnestly
+      to carry out his wishes, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on, Mrs. Quintard, pray go on. What happened? Why couldn&rsquo;t you do what
+      he asked?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because the will was gone when I went to take it out. There was nothing
+      to show Mr. Delahunt but the empty shelf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, a theft! just a common theft! Someone overheard the talk you had with
+      your brother. But how about the key? You had that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I had that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it was taken from you and returned? You must have been careless as
+      to where you kept it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I wore it on a chain about my neck. Though I had no reason to
+      mistrust any one in the house, I felt that I could not guard this key too
+      carefully. I even kept it on at night. In fact it never left me. It was
+      still on my person when I went into the room with Mr. Delahunt. But the
+      safe had been opened for all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There were two keys to it, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; in giving me the key, my brother had strictly warned me not to lose
+      it, as it had no duplicate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Quintard, have you a special confidant or maid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my Hetty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much did she know about this key?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, but that it didn&rsquo;t help the fit of my dress. Hetty has cared for
+      me for years. There&rsquo;s no more devoted woman in all New York, nor one who
+      can be more relied upon to tell the truth. She is so honest with her
+      tongue that I am bound to believe her even when she says&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That it was I and nobody else who took the will out of the safe last
+      night. That she saw me come from my brother&rsquo;s room with a folded paper in
+      my hand, pass with it into the library, and come out again without it. If
+      this is so, then that will is somewhere in that great room. But we&rsquo;ve
+      looked in every conceivable place except the shelves, where it is useless
+      to search. It would take days to go through them all, and meanwhile Carlos&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will not wait for Carlos. We will begin work at once. But just one
+      other question. How came Hetty to see you in your walk through the rooms?
+      Did she follow you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. It&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s not the first time I have walked in my sleep. Last
+      night&mdash;but she will tell you. It&rsquo;s a painful subject to me. I will
+      send for her to meet us in the library.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where you believe this document to lie hidden?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am anxious to see the room. It is upstairs, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had risen and was moving rapidly toward the door. Violet eagerly
+      followed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us accompany her in her passage up the palatial stairway, and realize
+      the effect upon her of a splendour whose future ownership possibly
+      depended entirely upon herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cold splendour. The merry voices of children were lacking in
+      these great halls. Death past and to come infused the air with solemnity
+      and mocked the pomp which yet appeared so much a part of the life here
+      that one could hardly imagine the huge pillared spaces without it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Violet, more or less accustomed to fine interiors, the chief interest
+      of this one lay in its connection with the mystery then occupying her.
+      Stopping for a moment on the stair, she inquired of Mrs. Quintard if the
+      loss she so deplored had been made known to the servants, and was much
+      relieved to find that, with the exception of Mr. Delahunt, she had not
+      spoken of it to any one but Clement. &ldquo;And he will never mention it,&rdquo; she
+      declared, &ldquo;not even to his wife. She has troubles enough to bear without
+      knowing how near she stood to a fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she will have her fortune!&rdquo; Violet confidently replied. &ldquo;In time, the
+      lawyer who drew up the will will appear. But what you want is an immediate
+      triumph over the cold Carlos, and I hope you may have it. Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This expletive was a sigh of sheer surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Quintard had unlocked the library door and Violet had been given her
+      first glimpse of this, the finest room in New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She remembered now that she had often heard it so characterized, and,
+      indeed, had it been taken bodily from some historic abbey of the old
+      world, it could not have expressed more fully, in structure and
+      ornamentation, the Gothic idea at its best. All that it lacked were the
+      associations of vanished centuries, and these, in a measure, were supplied
+      to the imagination by the studied mellowness of its tints and the
+      suggestion of age in its carvings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much for the room itself, which was but a shell for holding the great
+      treasure of valuable books ranged along every shelf. As Violet&rsquo;s eyes sped
+      over their ranks and thence to the five windows of deeply stained glass
+      which faced her from the southern end, Mrs. Quintard indignantly
+      exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Carlos would turn this into a billiard room!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not like Carlos,&rdquo; Violet returned hotly; then remembering herself,
+      hastened to ask whether Mrs. Quintard was quite positive as to this room
+      being the one in which she had hidden the precious document.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better talk to Hetty,&rdquo; said that lady, as a stout woman of most
+      prepossessing appearance entered their presence and paused respectfully
+      just inside the doorway. &ldquo;Hetty, you will answer any questions this young
+      lady may put. If anyone can help us, she can. But first, what news from
+      the sick-room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing good. The doctor has just come for the third time today. Mrs.
+      Brooks is crying and even the children are dumb with fear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go. I must see the doctor. I must tell him to keep Clement alive
+      by any means till&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not wait to say what; but Violet understood and felt her heart
+      grow heavy. Could it be that her employer considered this the gay and easy
+      task she had asked for?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next minute she was putting her first question:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hetty, what did you see in Mrs. Quintard&rsquo;s action last night, to make you
+      infer that she left the missing document in this room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman&rsquo;s eyes, which had been respectfully studying her face,
+      brightened with a relief which made her communicative. With the
+      self-possession of a perfectly candid nature, she inquiringly remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mistress has spoken of her infirmity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and very frankly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She walks in her sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So she said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And sometimes when others are asleep, and she is not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did not tell me that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a very nervous woman and cannot always keep still when she rouses
+      up at night. When I hear her rise, I get up too; but, never being quite
+      sure whether she is sleeping or not, I am careful to follow her at a
+      certain distance. Last night I was so far behind her that she had been to
+      her brother&rsquo;s room and left it before I saw her face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is his room and where is hers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hers is in front on this same floor. Mr. Brooks&rsquo;s is in the rear, and can
+      be reached either by the hall or by passing through this room into a small
+      one beyond, which we called his den.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Describe your encounter. Where were you standing when you saw her first?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the den I have just mentioned. There was a bright light in the hall
+      behind me and I could see her figure quite plainly. She was holding a
+      folded paper clenched against her breast, and her movement was so
+      mechanical that I was sure she was asleep. She was coming this way, and in
+      another moment she entered this room. The door, which had been open,
+      remained so, and in my anxiety I crept to it and looked in after her.
+      There was no light burning here at that hour, but the moon was shining in
+      in long rays of variously coloured light. If I had followed her&mdash;but
+      I did not. I just stood and watched her long enough to see her pass
+      through a blue ray, then through a green one, and then into, if not
+      through, a red one. Expecting her to walk straight on, and having some
+      fears of the staircase once she got into the hall, I hurried around to the
+      door behind you there to head her off. But she had not yet left this room.
+      I waited and waited and still she did not come. Fearing some accident, I
+      finally ventured to approach the door and try it. It was locked. This
+      alarmed me. She had never locked herself in anywhere before and I did not
+      know what to make of it. Some persons would have shouted her name, but I
+      had been warned against doing that, so I simply stood where I was, and
+      eventually I heard the key turn in the lock and saw her come out. She was
+      still walking stiffly, but her hands were empty and hanging at her side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She went straight to her room and I after her. I was sure she was dead
+      asleep by this time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she was?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Miss; but still full of what was on her mind. I know this because
+      she stopped when she reached the bedside and began fumbling with the waist
+      of her wrapper. It was for the key she was searching, and when her fingers
+      encountered it hanging on the outside, she opened her wrapper and thrust
+      it in on her bare skin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You saw her do all that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As plainly as I see you now. The light in her room was burning brightly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And after that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She got into bed. It was I who turned off the light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has that wrapper of hers a pocket?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Miss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor her gown?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Miss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So she could not have brought the paper into her room concealed about her
+      person?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Miss; she left it here. It never passed beyond this doorway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But might she not have carried it back to some place of concealment in
+      the rooms she had left?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman&rsquo;s face changed and a slight flush showed through the natural
+      brown of her cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she disclaimed; &ldquo;she could not have done that. I was careful to lock
+      the library door behind her before I ran out into the hall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; concluded Violet, with all the emphasis of conviction, &ldquo;it is
+      here, and nowhere else we must look for that document till we find it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus assured of the first step in the task she had before her, Miss
+      Strange settled down to business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room, which towered to the height of two stories, was in the shape of
+      a huge oval. This oval, separated into narrow divisions for the purpose of
+      accommodating the shelves with which it was lined, narrowed as it rose
+      above the great Gothic chimney-piece and the five gorgeous windows looking
+      towards the south, till it met and was lost in the tracery of the ceiling,
+      which was of that exquisite and soul-satisfying order which we see in the
+      Henry VII chapel in Westminster Abbey. What break otherwise occurred in
+      the circling round of books reaching thus thirty feet or more above the
+      head was made by the two doors already spoken of and a narrow strip of
+      wall at either end of the space occupied by the windows. No furniture was
+      to be seen there except a couple of stalls taken from some old cathedral,
+      which stood in the two bare places just mentioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But within, on the extensive floor-space, several articles were grouped,
+      and Violet, recognizing the possibilities which any one of them afforded
+      for the concealment of so small an object as a folded document, decided to
+      use method in her search, and to that end, mentally divided the space
+      before her into four segments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first took in the door, communicating with the suite ending in Mr.
+      Brooks&rsquo;s bedroom. A diagram of this segment will show that the only
+      article of furniture in it was a cabinet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this cabinet Miss Strange made her first stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have looked this well through?&rdquo; she asked as she bent over the glass
+      case on top to examine the row of mediaeval missals displayed within in a
+      manner to show their wonderful illuminations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the case,&rdquo; explained Hetty. &ldquo;It is locked you see and no one has as
+      yet succeeded in finding the key. But we searched the drawers underneath
+      with the greatest care. Had we sifted the whole contents through our
+      fingers, I could not be more certain that the paper is not there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet stepped into the next segment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the one dominated by the huge fire-place. A rug lay before the
+      hearth. To this Violet pointed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quickly the woman answered: &ldquo;We not only lifted it, but turned it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that box at the right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is full of wood and wood only.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you take out this wood?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every stick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And those ashes in the fire-place? Something has been burned there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but not lately. Besides, those ashes are all wood ashes. If the
+      least bit of charred paper had been mixed with them, we should have
+      considered the matter settled. But you can see for yourself that no such
+      particle can be found.&rdquo; While saying this, she had put the poker into
+      Violet&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;Rake them about, Miss, and make sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet did so, with the result that the poker was soon put back into
+      place, and she herself down on her knees looking up the chimney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had she thrust it up there,&rdquo; Hetty made haste to remark, &ldquo;there would
+      have been some signs of soot on her sleeves. They are white and very long
+      and are always getting in her way when she tries to do anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet left the fire-place after a glance at the mantel-shelf on which
+      nothing stood but a casket of open fretwork, and two coloured photographs
+      mounted on small easels. The casket was too open to conceal anything and
+      the photographs lifted too high above the shelf for even the smallest
+      paper, let alone a document of any size, to hide behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chairs, of which there were several in this part of the room, she
+      passed with just an inquiring look. They were all of solid oak, without
+      any attempt at upholstery, and although carved to match the stalls on the
+      other side of the room, offered no place for search.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her delay in the third segment was brief. Here there was absolutely
+      nothing but the door by which she had entered, and the books. As she
+      flitted on, following the oval of the wall, a small frown appeared on her
+      usually smooth forehead. She felt the oppression of the books&mdash;the
+      countless books. If indeed, she should find herself obliged to go through
+      them. What a hopeless outlook!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she had still a segment to consider, and after that the immense table
+      occupying the centre of the room, a table which in its double capacity
+      (for it was as much desk as table) gave more promise of holding the
+      solution of the mystery than anything to which she had hitherto given her
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quarter in which she now stood was the most beautiful, and, possibly,
+      the most precious of them all. In it blazed the five great windows which
+      were the glory of the room; but there are no hiding-places in windows, and
+      much as she revelled in colour, she dared not waste a moment on them.
+      There was more hope for her in the towering stalls, with their possible
+      drawers for books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Hetty was before her in the attempt she made to lift the lids of the
+      two great seats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing in either,&rdquo; said she; and Violet, with a sigh, turned towards the
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was an immense affair, made to accommodate itself to the shape of the
+      room, but with a hollowed-out space on the window-side large enough to
+      hold a chair for the sitter who would use its top as a desk. On it were
+      various articles suitable to its double use. Without being crowded, it
+      displayed a pile of magazines and pamphlets, boxes for stationery, a
+      writing pad with its accompaniments, a lamp, and some few ornaments, among
+      which was a large box, richly inlaid with pearl and ivory, the lid of
+      which stood wide open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t touch,&rdquo; admonished Violet, as Hetty stretched out her hand to move
+      some little object aside. &ldquo;You have already worked here busily in the
+      search you made this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We handled everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you go through these pamphlets?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shook open each one. We were especially particular here, since it was
+      at this table I saw Mrs. Quintard stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With head level or drooped?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drooped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like one looking down, rather than up, or around?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. A ray of red light shone on her sleeve. It seemed to me the sleeve
+      moved as though she were reaching out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you try to stand as she did and as nearly in the same place as
+      possible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hetty glanced down at the table edge, marked where the gules dominated the
+      blue and green, and moved to that spot, and paused with her head sinking
+      slowly towards her breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; exclaimed Violet. &ldquo;But the moon was probably in a very
+      different position from what the sun is now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right; it was higher up; I chanced to notice it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me come,&rdquo; said Violet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hetty moved, and Violet took her place but in a spot a step or two farther
+      front. This brought her very near to the centre of the table. Hanging her
+      head, just as Hetty had done, she reached out her right hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you looked under this blotter?&rdquo; she asked, pointing towards the pad
+      she touched. &ldquo;I mean, between the blotter and the frame which holds it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly did,&rdquo; answered Hetty, with some pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet remained staring down. &ldquo;Then you took off everything that was lying
+      on it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet continued to stare down at the blotter. Then impetuously:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put them back in their accustomed places.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hetty obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet continued to look at them, then slowly stretched out her hand, but
+      soon let it fall again with an air of discouragement. Certainly the
+      missing document was not in the ink-pot or the mucilage bottle. Yet
+      something made her stoop again over the pad and subject it to the closest
+      scrutiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If only nothing had been touched!&rdquo; she inwardly sighed. But she let no
+      sign of her discontent escape her lips, simply exclaiming as she glanced
+      up at the towering spaces overhead: &ldquo;The books! the books! Nothing remains
+      but for you to call up all the servants, or get men from the outside and,
+      beginning at one end&mdash;I should say the upper one&mdash;take down
+      every book standing within reach of a woman of Mrs. Quintard&rsquo;s height.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear first what Mrs. Quintard has to say about that,&rdquo; interrupted the
+      woman as that lady entered in a flutter of emotion springing from more
+      than one cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The young lady thinks that we should remove the books,&rdquo; Hetty observed,
+      as her mistress&rsquo;s eye wandered to hers from Violet&rsquo;s abstracted
+      countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Useless. If we were to undertake to do that, Carlos would be here before
+      half the job was finished. Besides, Hetty must have told you my extreme
+      aversion to nicely bound books. I will not say that when awake I never
+      place my hand on one, but once in a state of somnambulism, when every
+      natural whim has full control, I am sure that I never would. There is a
+      reason for my prejudice. I was not always rich. I once was very poor. It
+      was when I was first married and long before Clement had begun to make his
+      fortune. I was so poor then that frequently I went hungry, and what was
+      worse saw my little daughter cry for food. And why? Because my husband was
+      a bibliomaniac. He would spend on fine editions what would have kept the
+      family comfortable. It is hard to believe, isn&rsquo;t it? I have seen him bring
+      home a Grolier when the larder was as empty as that box; and it made me
+      hate books so, especially those of extra fine binding, that I have to tear
+      the covers off before I can find courage to read them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      O life! life! how fast Violet was learning it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can understand your idea, Mrs. Quintard, but as everything else has
+      failed, I should make a mistake not to examine these shelves. It is just
+      possible that we may be able to shorten the task very materially; that we
+      may not have to call in help, even. To what extent have they been
+      approached, or the books handled, since you discovered the loss of the
+      paper we are looking for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all. Neither of us went near them.&rdquo; This from Hetty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor any one else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one else has been admitted to the room. We locked both doors the
+      moment we felt satisfied that the will had been left here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a relief. Now I may be able to do something. Hetty, you look like
+      a very strong woman, and I, as you see, am very little. Would you mind
+      lifting me up to these shelves? I want to look at them. Not at the books,
+      but at the shelves themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wondering woman stooped and raised her to the level of the shelf she
+      had pointed out. Violet peered closely at it and then at the ones just
+      beneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I heavy?&rdquo; she asked; &ldquo;if not, let me see those on the other side of
+      the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hetty carried her over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet inspected each shelf as high as a woman of Mrs. Quintard&rsquo;s stature
+      could reach, and when on her feet again, knelt to inspect the ones below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one has touched or drawn anything from these shelves in twenty-four
+      hours,&rdquo; she declared. &ldquo;The small accumulation of dust along their edges
+      has not been disturbed at any point. It was very different with the
+      table-top. That shows very plainly where you had moved things and where
+      you had not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that what you were looking for? Well, I never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet paid no heed; she was thinking and thinking very deeply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hetty turned towards her mistress, then quickly back to Violet, whom she
+      seized by the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with Mrs. Quintard?&rdquo; she hurriedly asked. &ldquo;If it were
+      night, I should think that she was in one of her spells.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet started and glanced where Hetty pointed. Mrs. Quintard was within a
+      few feet of them, but as oblivious of their presence as though she stood
+      alone in the room. Possibly, she thought she did. With fixed eyes and
+      mechanical step she began to move straight towards the table, her whole
+      appearance of a nature to make Hetty&rsquo;s blood run cold, but to cause that
+      of Violet&rsquo;s to bound through her veins with renewed hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The one thing I could have wished!&rdquo; she murmured under her breath. &ldquo;She
+      has fallen into a trance. She is again under the dominion of her idea. If
+      we watch and do not disturb her she may repeat her action of last night,
+      and herself show where she has put this precious document.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile Mrs. Quintard continued to advance. A moment more, and her
+      smooth white locks caught the ruddy glow centred upon the chair standing
+      in the hollow of the table. Words were leaving her lips, and her hand,
+      reaching out over the blotter, groped among the articles scattered there
+      till it settled on a large pair of shears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; muttered Violet to the woman pressing close to her side. &ldquo;You
+      are acquainted with her voice; catch what she says if you can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hetty could not; an undistinguishable murmur was all that came to her
+      ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet took a step nearer. Mrs. Quintard&rsquo;s hand had left the shears and
+      was hovering uncertainly in the air. Her distress was evident. Her head,
+      no longer steady on her shoulders, was turning this way and that, and her
+      tones becoming inarticulate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Paper! I want paper&rdquo; burst from her lips in a shrill unnatural cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when they listened for more and watched to see the uncertain hand
+      settle somewhere, she suddenly came to herself and turned upon them a
+      startled glance, which speedily changed into one of the utmost perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What am I doing here?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;I have a feeling as if I had almost
+      seen&mdash;almost touched&mdash;oh, it&rsquo;s gone! and all is blank again. Why
+      couldn&rsquo;t I keep it till I knew&mdash;&rdquo; Then she came wholly to herself
+      and, forgetting even the doubts of a moment since, remarked to Violet in
+      her old tremulous fashion:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You asked us to pull down the books? But you&rsquo;ve evidently thought better
+      of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have thought better of it.&rdquo; Then, with a last desperate hope of
+      re-arousing the visions lying somewhere back in Mrs. Quintard&rsquo;s troubled
+      brain, Violet ventured to observe: &ldquo;This is likely to resolve itself into
+      a psychological problem, Mrs. Quintard. Do you suppose that if you fell
+      again into the condition of last night, you would repeat your action and
+      so lead us yourself to where the will lies hidden?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly; but it may be weeks before I walk again in my sleep, and
+      meanwhile Carlos will have arrived, and Clement, possibly, died. My nephew
+      is so low that the doctor is coming back at midnight. Miss Strange,
+      Clement is a man in a thousand. He says he wants to see you. Would you be
+      willing to accompany me to his room for a moment? He will not make many
+      more requests and I will take care that the interview is not prolonged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go willingly. But would it not be better to wait&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you may never see him at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well; but I wish I had some better news to give.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will come later. This house was never meant for Carlos. Hetty, you
+      will stay here. Miss Strange, let us go now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You need not speak; just let him see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet nodded and followed Mrs. Quintard into the sick-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sight which met her eyes tried her young emotions deeply. Staring at
+      her from the bed, she saw two piercing eyes over whose brilliance death as
+      yet had gained no control. Clements&rsquo;s soul was in that gaze; Clement
+      halting at the brink of dissolution to sound the depths behind him for the
+      hope which would make departure easy. Would he see in her, a mere slip of
+      a girl dressed in fashionable clothes and bearing about her all the marks
+      of social distinction, the sort of person needed for the task upon the
+      success of which depended his darlings&rsquo; future? She could hardly expect
+      it. Yet as she continued to meet his gaze with all the seriousness the
+      moment demanded, she beheld those burning orbs lose some of their demand
+      and the fingers, which had lain inert upon the bedspread, flutter gently
+      and move as if to draw attention to his wife and the three beautiful
+      children clustered at the foot-board.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not spoken nor could she speak, but the solemnity with which she
+      raised her right hand as to a listening Heaven called forth upon his lips
+      what was possibly his last smile, and with the memory of this faint
+      expression of confidence on his part, she left the room, to make her final
+      attempt to solve the mystery of the missing document.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Facing the elderly lady in the hall, she addressed her with the force and
+      soberness of one leading a forlorn hope:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to concentrate your mind upon what I have to say to you. Do
+      you think you can do this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will try,&rdquo; replied the poor woman with a backward glance at the door
+      which had just been closed upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What we want,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;is, as I stated before, an insight into the
+      workings of your brain at the time you took the will from the safe. Try
+      and follow what I have to say, Mrs. Quintard. Dreams are no longer
+      regarded by scientists as prophecies of the future or even as spontaneous
+      and irrelevant conditions of thought, but as reflections of a near past,
+      which can almost without exception be traced back to the occurrences which
+      caused them. Your action with the will had its birth in some previous line
+      of thought afterwards forgotten. Let us try and find that thought. Recall,
+      if you can, just what you did or read yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Quintard looked frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, I have no memory,&rdquo; she objected. &ldquo;I forget quickly, so quickly that
+      in order to fulfill my engagements I have to keep a memorandum of every
+      day&rsquo;s events. Yesterday? yesterday? What did I do yesterday? I went
+      downtown for one thing, but I hardly know where.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps your memorandum of yesterday&rsquo;s doings will help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will get it. But it won&rsquo;t give you the least help. I keep it only for
+      my own eye, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind; let me see it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she waited impatiently for it to be put in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when she came to read the record of the last two days, this was all
+      she found:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Saturday: Mauretania nearly due. I must let Mr. Delahunt know today that
+      he&rsquo;s wanted here to-morrow. Hetty will try on my dresses. Says she has to
+      alter them. Mrs. Peabody came to lunch, and we in such trouble! Had to go
+      down street. Errand for Clement. The will, the will! I think of nothing
+      else. Is it safe where it is? No peace of mind till to-morrow. Clement
+      better this afternoon. Says he must live till Carlos gets back; not to
+      triumph over him, but to do what he can to lessen his disappointment. My
+      good Clement!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So nervous, I went to pasting photographs, and was forgetting all my
+      troubles when Hetty brought in another dress to try on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quiet in the great house, during which the clock on the staircase sent
+      forth seven musical peals. To Violet waiting alone in the library, they
+      acted as a summons. She was just leaving the room, when the sound of
+      hubbub in the hall below held her motionless in the doorway. An automobile
+      had stopped in front, and several persons were entering the house, in a
+      gay and unseemly fashion. As she stood listening, uncertain of her duty,
+      she perceived the frenzied figure of Mrs. Quintard approaching. As she
+      passed by, she dropped one word: &ldquo;Carlos!&rdquo; Then she went staggering on, to
+      disappear a moment later down the stairway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This vision lost, another came. This time it was that of Clements&rsquo;s wife
+      leaning from the marble balustrade above, the shadow of approaching grief
+      battling with the present terror in her perfect features. Then she too
+      withdrew from view and Violet, left for the moment alone in the great
+      hall, stepped back into the library and began to put on her hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lights had been turned up in the grand salon and it was in this scene
+      of gorgeous colour that Mrs. Quintard came face to face with Carlos
+      Pelacios. Those who were witness to her entrance say that she presented a
+      noble appearance, as with the resolution of extreme desperation she stood
+      waiting for his first angry attack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He, a short, thick-set, dark man, showing both in features and expression
+      the Spanish blood of his paternal ancestors, started to address her in
+      tones of violence, but changed his note, as he met her eye, to one simply
+      sardonic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You here!&rdquo; he began. &ldquo;I assure you, madame, that it is a pleasure which
+      is not without its inconveniences. Did you not receive my cablegram
+      requesting this house to be made ready for my occupancy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why do I find guests here? They do not usually precede the arrival
+      of their host.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clement is very ill&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much the greater reason that he should have been removed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were not expected for two days yet. You cabled that you were coming
+      on the Mauretania.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I cabled that. Elisabetta,&rdquo;&mdash;this to his wife standing silently
+      in the background&mdash;&ldquo;we will go to the Plaza for tonight. At three
+      o&rsquo;clock tomorrow we shall expect to find this house in readiness for our
+      return. Later, if Mrs. Quintard desires to visit us we shall be pleased to
+      receive her. But&rdquo;&mdash;this to Mrs. Quintard herself&mdash;&ldquo;you must come
+      without Clement and the kids.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Quintard&rsquo;s rigid hand stole up to her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clement is dying. He is failing hourly,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;He may not live
+      till morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Carlos was taken aback by this. &ldquo;Oh, well!&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;we will give
+      you two days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Quintard gasped, then she walked straight up to him.
+</p>
+    <p>
+&ldquo;You will give
+      us all the time his condition requires and more, much more. He is the real
+      owner of this house, not you. My brother left a will bequeathing it to
+      him. You are my nephew&rsquo;s guests, and not he yours. As his representative I
+      entreat you and your wife to remain here until you can find a home to your
+      mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The silence seethed. Carlos had a temper of fire and so had his wife. But
+      neither spoke, till he had gained sufficient control over himself to
+      remark without undue rancour:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not think you had the wit to influence your brother to this extent;
+      otherwise, I should have cut my travels short.&rdquo; Then harshly: &ldquo;Where is
+      this will?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be produced.&rdquo; But the words faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carlos glanced at the man standing behind his wife; then back at Mrs.
+      Quintard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wills are not scribbled off on deathbeds; or if they are, it needs
+      something more than a signature to legalize them. I don&rsquo;t believe in this
+      trick of a later will. Mr. Cavanagh&rdquo;&mdash;here he indicated the gentleman
+      accompanying them&mdash;&ldquo;has done my father&rsquo;s business for years, and he
+      assured me that the paper he holds in his pocket is the first, last, and
+      only expression of your brother&rsquo;s wishes. If you are in a position to deny
+      this, show us the document you mention; show us it at once, or inform us
+      where and in whose hands it can be found.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That, for&mdash;for reasons I cannot give, I must refuse to do at
+      present. But I am ready to swear&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A mocking laugh cut her short. Did it issue from his lips or from those of
+      his highstrung and unfeeling wife? It might have come from either; there
+      was cause enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she faltered, &ldquo;may God have mercy!&rdquo; and was sinking before their
+      eyes, when she heard her name, called from the threshold, and, looking
+      that way, saw Hetty beaming upon her, backed by a little figure with a
+      face so radiant that instinctively her hand went out to grasp the folded
+      sheet of paper Hetty was seeking to thrust upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she cried, in a great voice, &ldquo;you will not have to wait, nor Clement
+      either. Here is the will! The children have come into their own.&rdquo; And she
+      fell at their feet in a dead faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did you find it? Oh! where did you find it? I have waited a week to
+      know. When, after Carlos&rsquo;s sudden departure, I stood beside Clement&rsquo;s
+      death-bed and saw from the look he gave me that he could still feel and
+      understand, I told him that you had succeeded in your task and that all
+      was well with us. But I was not able to tell him how you had succeeded or
+      in what place the will had been found; and he died, unknowing. But we may
+      know, may we not, now that he is laid away and there is no more talk of
+      our leaving this house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet smiled, but very tenderly, and in a way not to offend the mourner.
+      They were sitting in the library&mdash;the great library which was to
+      remain in Clement&rsquo;s family after all&mdash;and it amused her to follow the
+      dreaming lady&rsquo;s glances as they ran in irrepressible curiosity over the
+      walls. Had Violet wished, she could have kept her secret forever. These
+      eyes would never have discovered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was of a sympathetic temperament, our Violet, so after a moment&rsquo;s
+      delay, during which she satisfied herself that little, if anything, had
+      been touched in the room since her departure from it a week before, she
+      quietly observed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were right in persisting that you hid it in this room. It was here I
+      found it. Do you notice that photograph on the mantel which does not stand
+      exactly straight on its easel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Supposing you take it down. You can reach it, can you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes. But what&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lift it down, dear Mrs. Quintard; and then turn it round and look at its
+      back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Agitated and questioning, the lady did as she was bid, and at the first
+      glance gave a cry of surprise, if not of understanding. The square of
+      brown paper, acting as a backing to the picture, was slit across,
+      disclosing a similar one behind it which was still intact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! was it hidden in here?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very completely,&rdquo; assented Violet. &ldquo;Pasted in out of sight by a lady who
+      amuses herself with mounting and framing photographs. Usually, she is
+      conscious of her work, but this time she performed her task in a dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Quintard was all amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t remember touching these pictures,&rdquo; she declared. &ldquo;I never should
+      have remembered. You are a wonderful person, Miss Strange. How came you to
+      think these photographs might have two backings? There was nothing to show
+      that this was so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you, Mrs. Quintard. You helped me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I helped you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You remember the memorandum you gave me? In it you mentioned pasting
+      photographs. But this was not enough in itself to lead me to examine those
+      on the mantel, if you had not given me another suggestion a little while
+      before. We did not tell you this, Mrs. Quintard, at the time, but during
+      the search we were making here that day, you had a lapse into that
+      peculiar state which induces you to walk in your sleep. It was a short
+      one, lasting but a moment, but in a moment one can speak, and, this you
+      did&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spoke? I spoke?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you uttered the word &lsquo;paper!&rsquo; not the paper, but &lsquo;paper!&rsquo; and
+      reached out towards the shears. Though I had not much time to think of it
+      then, afterwards upon reading your memorandum I recalled your words, and
+      asked myself if it was not paper to cut, rather than to hide, you wanted.
+      If it was to cut, and you were but repeating the experience of the night
+      before, then the room should contain some remnants of cut paper. Had we
+      seen any? Yes, in the basket, under the desk we had taken out and thrown
+      back again a strip or so of wrapping paper, which, if my memory did not
+      fail me, showed a clean-cut edge. To pull this strip out again and spread
+      it flat upon the desk was the work of a minute, and what I saw led me to
+      look all over the room, not now for the folded document, but for a square
+      of brown paper, such as had been taken out of this larger sheet. Was I
+      successful? Not for a long while, but when I came to the photographs on
+      the mantel and saw how nearly they corresponded in shape and size to what
+      I was looking for, I recalled again your fancy for mounting photographs
+      and felt that the mystery was solved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A glance at the back of one of them brought disappointment, but when I
+      turned about its mate&mdash;You know what I found underneath the outer
+      paper. You had laid the will against the original backing and simply
+      pasted another one over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That the discovery came in time to cut short a very painful interview has
+      made me joyful for a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now may I see the children?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM V <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM VI. THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange was not in a responsive mood. This her employer had observed
+      on first entering; yet he showed no hesitation in laying on the table
+      behind which she had ensconced herself in the attitude of one besieged, an
+      envelope thick with enclosed papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Telephone me when you have read them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not read them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No?&rdquo; he smiled; and, repossessing himself of the envelope, he tore off
+      one end, extracted the sheets with which it was filled, and laid them down
+      still unfolded, in their former place on the table-top.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suggestiveness of the action caused the corners of Miss Srange&rsquo;s
+      delicate lips to twitch wistfully, before settling into an ironic smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Calmly the other watched her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am on a vacation,&rdquo; she loftily explained, as she finally met his
+      studiously non-quizzical glance. &ldquo;Oh, I know that I am in my own home!&rdquo;
+       she petulantly acknowledged, as his gaze took in the room; &ldquo;and that the
+      automobile is at the door; and that I&rsquo;m dressed for shopping. But for all
+      that I&rsquo;m on a vacation&mdash;a mental one,&rdquo; she emphasized; &ldquo;and business
+      must wait. I haven&rsquo;t got over the last affair,&rdquo; she protested, as he
+      maintained a discreet silence, &ldquo;and the season is so gay just now&mdash;so
+      many balls, so many&mdash;But that isn&rsquo;t the worst. Father is beginning to
+      wake up&mdash;and if he ever suspects&mdash;&rdquo; A significant gesture ended
+      this appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The personage knew her father&mdash;everyone did&mdash;and the wonder had
+      always been that she dared run the risk of displeasing one so implacable.
+      Though she was his favourite child, Peter Strange was known to be quite
+      capable of cutting her off with a shilling, once his close, prejudiced
+      mind conceived it to be his duty. And that he would so interpret the
+      situation, if he ever came to learn the secret of his daughter&rsquo;s fits of
+      abstraction and the sly bank account she was slowly accumulating, the
+      personage holding out this dangerous lure had no doubt at all. Yet he only
+      smiled at her words and remarked in casual suggestion:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s out of town this time&mdash;&lsquo;way out. Your health certainly demands
+      a change of air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My health is good. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as one may choose to
+      look at it, it furnishes me with no excuse for an outing,&rdquo; she steadily
+      retorted, turning her back on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, excuse me!&rdquo; the insidious voice apologized, &ldquo;your paleness misled me.
+      Surely a night or two&rsquo;s change might be beneficial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave him a quick side look, and began to adjust her boa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this hint he paid no attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The affair is quite out of the ordinary,&rdquo; he pursued in the tone of one
+      rehearsing a part. But there he stopped. For some reason, not altogether
+      apparent to the masculine mind, the pin of flashing stones (real stones)
+      which held her hat in place had to be taken out and thrust back again, not
+      once, but twice. It was to watch this performance he had paused. When he
+      was ready to proceed, he took the musing tone of one marshalling facts for
+      another&rsquo;s enlightenment:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman of unknown instincts&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw!&rdquo; The end of the pin would strike against the comb holding Violet&rsquo;s
+      chestnut-coloured locks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Living in a house as mysterious as the secret it contains. But&mdash;&rdquo;
+       here he allowed his patience apparently to forsake him, &ldquo;I will bore you
+      no longer. Go to your teas and balls; I will struggle with my dark affairs
+      alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hand went to the packet of papers she affected so ostentatiously to
+      despise. He could be as nonchalant as she. But he did not lift them; he
+      let them lie. Yet the young heiress had not made a movement or even turned
+      the slightest glance his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman difficult to understand! A mysterious house&mdash;possibly a
+      mysterious crime!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Violet kept repeating in silent self-communion, as flushed with
+      dancing she sat that evening in a highly-scented conservatory, dividing
+      her attention between the compliments of her partner and the splash of a
+      fountain bubbling in the heart of this mass of tropical foliage; and when
+      some hours later she sat down in her chintz-furnished bedroom for a few
+      minutes&rsquo; thought before retiring, it was to draw from a little oak box at
+      her elbow the half-dozen or so folded sheets of closely written paper
+      which had been left for her perusal by her persistent employer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glancing first at the signature and finding it to be one already
+      favourably known at the bar, she read with avidity the statement of events
+      thus vouched for, finding them curious enough in all conscience to keep
+      her awake for another full hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We here subscribe it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am a lawyer with an office in the Times Square Building. My business is
+      mainly local, but sometimes I am called out of town, as witness the
+      following summons received by me on the fifth of last October.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR SIR,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wish to make my will. I am an invalid and cannot leave my room. Will you
+      come to me? The enclosed reference will answer for my respectability. If
+      it satisfies you and you decide to accommodate me, please hasten your
+      visit; I have not many days to live. A carriage will meet you at Highland
+      Station at any hour you designate. Telegraph reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. Postlethwaite, Gloom Cottage, &mdash;&mdash;, N. J.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reference given was a Mr. Weed of Eighty-sixth Street&mdash;a
+      well-known man of unimpeachable reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Calling him up at his business office, I asked him what he could tell me
+      about Mr. Postlethwaite of Gloom Cottage, &mdash;&mdash;, N. J. The answer
+      astonished me:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no Mr. Postlethwaite to be found at that address. He died years
+      ago. There is a Mrs. Postlethwaite&mdash;a confirmed paralytic. Do you
+      mean her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I glanced at the letter still lying open at the side of the telephone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The signature reads A. Postlethwaite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s she. Her name is Arabella. She hates the name, being a woman of
+      no sentiment. Uses her initials even on her cheques. What does she want of
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To draw her will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oblige her. It&rsquo;ll be experience for you.&rdquo; And he slammed home the
+      receiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I decided to follow the suggestion so forcibly emphasized; and the next
+      day saw me at Highland Station. A superannuated horse and a still more
+      superannuated carriage awaited me&mdash;both too old to serve a busy man
+      in these days of swift conveyance. Could this be a sample of the
+      establishment I was about to enter? Then I remembered that the woman who
+      had sent for me was a helpless invalid, and probably had no use for any
+      sort of turnout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The driver was in keeping with the vehicle, and as noncommittal as the
+      plodding beast he drove. If I ventured upon a remark, he gave me a long
+      and curious look; if I went so far as to attack him with a direct
+      question, he responded with a hitch of the shoulder or a dubious smile
+      which conveyed nothing. Was he deaf or just unpleasant? I soon learned
+      that he was not deaf; for suddenly, after a jog-trot of a mile or so
+      through a wooded road which we had entered from the main highway, he drew
+      in his horse, and, without glancing my way, spoke his first word:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is where you get out. The house is back there in the bushes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As no house was visible and the bushes rose in an unbroken barrier along
+      the road, I stared at him in some doubt of his sanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo; I began; a protest into which he at once broke, with the
+      sharp direction:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take the path. It&rsquo;ll lead you straight to the front door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see any path.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For this he had no answer; and confident from his expression that it would
+      be useless to expect anything further from him, I dropped a coin into his
+      hand, and jumped to the ground. He was off before I could turn myself
+      about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Something is rotten in the State of Denmark,&rsquo;&rdquo; I quoted in startled
+      comment to myself; and not knowing what else to do, stared down at the
+      turf at my feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A bit of flagging met my eye, protruding from a layer of thick moss.
+      Farther on I espied another&mdash;the second, probably, of many. This, no
+      doubt, was the path I had been bidden to follow, and without further
+      thought on the subject, I plunged into the bushes which with difficulty I
+      made give way before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment all further advance looked hopeless. A more tangled,
+      uninviting approach to a so-called home, I had never seen outside of the
+      tropics; and the complete neglect thus displayed should have prepared me
+      for the appearance of the house I unexpectedly came upon, just as, the way
+      seemed on the point of closing up before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But nothing could well prepare one for a first view of Gloom Cottage. Its
+      location in a hollow which had gradually filled itself up with trees and
+      some kind of prickly brush, its deeply stained walls, once picturesque
+      enough in their grouping but too deeply hidden now amid rotting boughs to
+      produce any other effect than that of shrouded desolation, the sough of
+      these same boughs as they rapped a devil&rsquo;s tattoo against each other, and
+      the absence of even the rising column of smoke which bespeaks domestic
+      life wherever seen&mdash;all gave to one who remembered the cognomen
+      Cottage and forgot the pre-cognomen of Gloom, a sense of buried life as
+      sepulchral as that which emanates from the mouth of some freshly opened
+      tomb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these impressions, natural enough to my youth, were necessarily
+      transient, and soon gave way to others more business-like. Perceiving the
+      curve of an arch rising above the undergrowth still blocking my approach,
+      I pushed my way resolutely through, and presently found myself stumbling
+      upon the steps of an unexpectedly spacious domicile, built not of wood, as
+      its name of Cottage had led me to expect, but of carefully cut stone
+      which, while showing every mark of time, proclaimed itself one of those
+      early, carefully erected Colonial residences which it takes more than a
+      century to destroy, or even to wear to the point of dilapidation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhat encouraged, though failing to detect any signs of active life in
+      the heavily shuttered windows frowning upon me from either side, I ran up
+      the steps and rang the bell which pulled as hard as if no hand had touched
+      it in years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not to ring again; for just as my hand was approaching the bell a
+      second time, the door fell back and I beheld in the black gap before me
+      the oldest man I had ever come upon in my whole life. He was so old I was
+      astonished when his drawn lips opened and he asked if I was the lawyer
+      from New York. I would as soon have expected a mummy to wag its tongue and
+      utter English, he looked so thin and dried and removed from this life and
+      all worldly concerns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when I had answered his question and he had turned to marshal me down
+      the hall towards a door I could dimly see standing open in the twilight of
+      an absolutely sunless interior, I noticed that his step was not without
+      some vigour, despite the feeble bend of his withered body and the
+      incessant swaying of his head, which seemed to be continually saying No!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will prepare madam,&rdquo; he admonished me, after drawing a ponderous
+      curtain two inches or less aside from one of the windows. &ldquo;She is very
+      ill, but she will see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone was senile, but it was the senility of an educated man, and as
+      the cultivated accents wavered forth, my mind changed in, regard to the
+      position he held in the house. Interested anew, I sought to give him
+      another look, but he had already vanished through the doorway, and so
+      noiselessly, it was more like a shadow&rsquo;s flitting than a man&rsquo;s withdrawal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The darkness in which I sat was absolute; but gradually, as I continued to
+      look about me, the spaces lightened and certain details came out, which to
+      my astonishment were of a character to show that the plain if substantial
+      exterior of this house with its choked-up approaches and weedy gardens was
+      no sample of what was to be found inside. Though the walls surrounding me
+      were dismal because unlighted, they betrayed a splendour unusual in any
+      country house. The frescoes and paintings were of an ancient order, dating
+      from days when life and not death reigned in this isolated dwelling; but
+      in them high art reigned supreme, an art so high and so finished that only
+      great wealth, combined with the most cultivated taste, could have produced
+      such effects. I was still absorbed in the wonder of it all, when the quiet
+      voice of the old gentleman who had let me in reached me again from the
+      doorway, and I heard:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madam is ready for you. May I trouble you to accompany me to her room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose with alacrity. I was anxious to see madam, if only to satisfy
+      myself that she was as interesting as the house in which she was
+      self-immured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found her a great deal more so. But before I enter upon our interview,
+      let me mention a fact which had attracted my attention in my passage to
+      her room. During his absence my guide evidently had pulled aside other
+      curtains than those of the room in which he had left me. The hall, no
+      longer a tunnel of darkness, gave me a glimpse as we went by, of various
+      secluded corners, and it seemed as if everywhere I looked I saw&mdash;a
+      clock. I counted four before I reached the staircase, all standing on the
+      floor and all of ancient make, though differing much in appearance and
+      value. A fifth one rose grim and tall at the stair foot, and under an
+      impulse I have never understood I stopped, when I reached it, to note the
+      time. But it had paused in its task, and faced me with motionless hands
+      and silent works&mdash;a fact which somehow startled me; perhaps, because
+      just then I encountered the old man&rsquo;s eye watching me with an expression
+      as challenging as it was unintelligible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had expected to see a woman in bed. I saw instead, a woman sitting up.
+      You felt her influence the moment you entered her presence. She was not
+      young; she was not beautiful;&mdash;never had been I should judge,&mdash;she
+      had not even the usual marks about her of an ultra strong personality; but
+      that her will was law, had always been, and would continue to be law so
+      long as she lived, was patent to any eye at the first glance. She exacted
+      obedience consciously and unconsciously, and she exacted it with charm.
+      Some few people in the world possess this power. They frown, and the
+      opposing will weakens; they smile, and all hearts succumb. I was hers from
+      the moment I crossed the threshold till&mdash;But I will relate the
+      happenings of that instant when it comes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was alone, or so I thought, when I made my first bow to her stern but
+      not unpleasing presence. Seated in a great chair, with a silver tray
+      before her containing such little matters as she stood in hourly need of,
+      she confronted me with a piercing gaze startling to behold in eyes so
+      colourless. Then she smiled, and in obedience to that smile I seated
+      myself in a chair placed very near her own. Was she too paralysed to
+      express herself clearly? I waited in some anxiety till she spoke, when
+      this fear vanished. Her voice betrayed the character her features failed
+      to express. It was firm, resonant, and instinct with command. Not loud,
+      but penetrating, and of a quality which made one listen with his heart as
+      well as with his ears. What she said is immaterial. I was there for a
+      certain purpose and we entered immediately upon the business of that
+      purpose. She talked and I listened, mostly without comment. Only once did
+      I interrupt her with a suggestion; and as this led to definite results, I
+      will proceed to relate the occurrence in full.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the few hours remaining to me before leaving New York, I had learned
+      (no matter how) some additional particulars concerning herself and family;
+      and when after some minor bequests, she proceeded to name the parties to
+      whom she desired to leave the bulk of her fortune, I ventured, with some
+      astonishment at my own temerity, to remark:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have a young relative! Is she not to be included in this
+      partition of your property?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A hush. Then a smile came to life on her stiff lips, such as is seldom
+      seen, thank God, on the face of any woman, and I heard:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The young relative of whom you speak, is in the room. She has known for
+      some time that I have no intention of leaving anything to her. There is,
+      in fact, small chance of her ever needing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter sentence was a muttered one, but that it was loud enough to be
+      heard in all parts of the room I was soon assured. For a quick sigh, which
+      was almost a gasp, followed from a corner I had hitherto ignored, and upon
+      glancing that way, I perceived, peering upon us from the shadows, the
+      white face of a young girl in whose drawn features and wide, staring eyes
+      I beheld such evidences of terror, that in an instant, whatever
+      predilection I had hitherto felt for my client, vanished in distrust, if
+      not positive aversion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was still under the sway of this new impression, when Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s voice rose again, this time addressing the young girl:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may go,&rdquo; she said, with such force in the command for all its honeyed
+      modulation, that I expected to see its object fly the room in frightened
+      obedience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though the startled girl had lost none of the terror which had made
+      her face like a mask, no power of movement remained to her. A picture of
+      hopeless misery, she stood for one breathless moment, with her eyes fixed
+      in unmistakable appeal on mine; then she began to sway so helplessly that
+      I leaped with bounding heart to catch her. As she fell into my arms I
+      heard her sigh as before. No common anguish spoke in that sigh. I had
+      stumbled unwittingly upon a tragedy, to the meaning of which I held but a
+      doubtful key.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She seems very ill,&rdquo; I observed with some emphasis, as I turned to lay my
+      helpless burden on a near-by sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s doomed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were spoken with gloom and with an attempt at commiseration
+      which no longer rang true in my ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is as sick a woman as I am myself,&rdquo; continued Mrs. Postlethwaite.
+      &ldquo;That is why I made the remark I did, never imagining she would hear me at
+      that distance. Do not put her down. My nurse will be here in a moment to
+      relieve you of your burden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A tinkle accompanied these words. The resolute woman had stretched out a
+      finger, of whose use she was not quite deprived, and touched a little bell
+      standing on the tray before her, an inch or two from her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pleased to obey her command, I paused at the sofa&rsquo;s edge, and taking
+      advantage of the momentary delay, studied the youthful countenance pressed
+      unconsciously to my breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was one whose appeal lay less in its beauty, though that was of a
+      touching quality, than in the story it told,&mdash;a story, which for some
+      unaccountable reason&mdash;I did not pause to determine what one&mdash;I
+      felt it to be my immediate duty to know. But I asked no questions then; I
+      did not even venture a comment; and yielded her up with seeming readiness
+      when a strong but none too intelligent woman came running in with arms
+      outstretched to carry her off. When the door had closed upon these two,
+      the silence of my client drew my attention back to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am waiting,&rdquo; was her quiet observation, and without any further
+      reference to what had just taken place under our eyes, she went on with
+      the business previously occupying us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was able to do my part without any too great display of my own
+      disturbance. The clearness of my remarkable client&rsquo;s instructions, the
+      definiteness with which her mind was made up as to the disposal of every
+      dollar of her vast property, made it easy for me to master each detail and
+      make careful note of every wish. But this did not prevent the ebb and flow
+      within me of an undercurrent of thought full of question and uneasiness.
+      What had been the real purport of the scene to which I had just been made
+      a surprised witness? The few, but certainly unusual, facts which had been
+      given me in regard to the extraordinary relations existing between these
+      two closely connected women will explain the intensity of my interest.
+      Those facts shall be yours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arabella Merwin, when young, was gifted with a peculiar fascination which,
+      as we have seen, had not altogether vanished with age. Consequently she
+      had many lovers, among them two brothers, Frank and Andrew Postlethwaite.
+      The latter was the older, the handsomer, and the most prosperous (his name
+      is remembered yet in connection with South American schemes of large
+      importance), but it was Frank she married.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That real love, ardent if unreasonable, lay at the bottom of her choice,
+      is evident enough to those who followed the career of the young couple.
+      But it was a jealous love which brooked no rival, and as Frank
+      Postlethwaite was of an impulsive and erratic nature, scenes soon occurred
+      between them which, while revealing the extraordinary force of the young
+      wife&rsquo;s character, led to no serious break till after her son was born, and
+      this, notwithstanding the fact that Frank had long given up making a
+      living, and that they were openly dependent on their wealthy brother, now
+      fast approaching the millionaire status.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This brother&mdash;the Peruvian King, as some called him&mdash;must have
+      been an extraordinary man. Though cherishing his affection for the
+      spirited Arabella to the point of remaining a bachelor for her sake, he
+      betrayed none of the usual signs of disappointed love; but on the contrary
+      made every effort to advance her happiness, not only by assuring to
+      herself and husband an adequate income, but by doing all he could in other
+      and less open ways to lessen any sense she might entertain of her mistake
+      in preferring for her lifemate his self-centred and unstable brother. She
+      should have adored him; but though she evinced gratitude enough, there is
+      nothing to prove that she ever gave Frank Postlethwaite the least cause to
+      cherish any other sentiment towards his brother than that of honest love
+      and unqualified respect. Perhaps he never did cherish any other. Perhaps
+      the change which everyone saw in the young couple immediately after the
+      birth of their only child was due to another cause. Gossip is silent on
+      this point. All that it insists upon is that from this time evidences of a
+      growing estrangement between them became so obvious that even the
+      indulgent Andrew could not blind himself to it; showing his sense of
+      trouble, not by lessening their income, for that he doubled, but by
+      spending more time in Peru and less in New York where the two were living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However,&mdash;and here we enter upon those details which I have ventured
+      to characterize as uncommon, he was in this country and in the actual
+      company of his brother when the accident occurred which terminated both
+      their lives. It was the old story of a skidding motor, and Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite, having been sent for in great haste to the small inn into
+      which the two injured men had been carried, arrived only in time to
+      witness their last moments. Frank died first and Andrew some few minutes
+      later&mdash;an important fact, as was afterwards shown when the latter&rsquo;s
+      will came to be read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This will was a peculiar one. By its provisions the bulk of the King&rsquo;s
+      great property was left to his brother Frank, but with this especial
+      stipulation that in case his brother failed to survive him, the full
+      legacy as bequeathed to him should be given unconditionally to his widow.
+      Frank&rsquo;s demise, as I have already stated, preceded his brother&rsquo;s by
+      several minutes and consequently Arabella became the chief legatee; and
+      that is how she obtained her millions. But&mdash;and here a startling
+      feature comes in&mdash;when the will came to be administered, the secret
+      underlying the break between Frank and his wife was brought to light by a
+      revelation of the fact that he had practised a great deception upon her at
+      the time of his marriage. Instead of being a bachelor as was currently
+      believed, he was in reality a widower, and the father of a child. This
+      fact, so long held secret, had become hers when her own child was born;
+      and constituted as she was, she not only never forgave the father, but
+      conceived such a hatred for the innocent object of their quarrel that she
+      refused to admit its claims or even to acknowledge its existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But later&mdash;after his death, in fact&mdash;she showed some sense of
+      obligation towards one who under ordinary conditions would have shared her
+      wealth. When the whole story became heard, and she discovered that this
+      secret had been kept from his brother as well as from herself, and that
+      consequently no provision had been made in any way for the child thus
+      thrown directly upon her mercy, she did the generous thing and took the
+      forsaken girl into her own home. But she never betrayed the least love for
+      her, her whole heart being bound up in her boy, who was, as all agree, a
+      prodigy of talent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this boy, for all his promise and seeming strength of constitution,
+      died when barely seven years old, and the desolate mother was left with
+      nothing to fill her heart but the uncongenial daughter of her husband&rsquo;s
+      first wife. The fact that this child, slighted as it had hitherto been,
+      would, in the event of her uncle having passed away before her father,
+      have been the undisputed heiress of a large portion of the wealth now at
+      the disposal of her arrogant step-mother, led many to expect, now that the
+      boy was no more, that Mrs. Postlethwaite would proceed to acknowledge the
+      little Helena as her heir, and give her that place in the household to
+      which her natural claims entitled her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no such result followed. The passion of grief into which the mother
+      was thrown by the shipwreck of all her hopes left her hard and implacable,
+      and when, as very soon happened, she fell a victim to the disease which
+      tied her to her chair and made the wealth which had come to her by such a
+      peculiar ordering of circumstances little else than a mockery even in her
+      own eyes, it was upon this child she expended the full fund of her secret
+      bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the child? What of her? How did she bear her unhappy fate when she
+      grew old enough to realize it? With a resignation which was the wonder of
+      all who knew her. No murmurs escaped her lips, nor was the devotion she
+      invariably displayed to the exacting invalid who ruled her as well as all
+      the rest of her household with a rod of iron ever disturbed by the least
+      sign of reproach. Though the riches, which in those early days poured into
+      the home in a measure far beyond the needs of its mistress, were expended
+      in making the house beautiful rather than in making the one young life
+      within it happy, she never was heard to utter so much as a wish to leave
+      the walls within which fate had immured her. Content, or seemingly
+      content, with the only home she knew, she never asked for change or
+      demanded friends or amusements. Visitors ceased coming; desolation
+      followed neglect. The garden, once a glory, succumbed to a riot of weeds
+      and undesirable brush, till a towering wall seemed to be drawn about the
+      house cutting it off from the activities of the world as it cut it off
+      from the approach of sunshine by day, and the comfort of a star-lit heaven
+      by night. And yet the young girl continued to smile, though with a
+      pitifulness of late, which some thought betokened secret terror and others
+      the wasting of a body too sensitive for such unwholesome seclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These were the facts, known if not consciously specialized, which gave to
+      the latter part of my interview with Mrs. Postlethwaite a poignancy of
+      interest which had never attended any of my former experiences. The
+      peculiar attitude of Miss Postlethwaite towards her indurate tormentor
+      awakened in my agitated mind something much deeper than curiosity, but
+      when I strove to speak her name with the intent of inquiring more
+      particularly into her condition, such a look confronted me from the steady
+      eye immovably fixed upon my own, that my courage&mdash;or was it my
+      natural precaution&mdash;bade me subdue the impulse and risk no attempt
+      which might betray the depth of my interest in one so completely outside
+      the scope of the present moment&rsquo;s business. Perhaps Mrs. Postlethwaite
+      appreciated my struggle; perhaps she was wholly blind to it. There was no
+      reading the mind of this woman of sentimental name but inflexible nature,
+      and realizing the fact more fully with every word she uttered I left her
+      at last with no further betrayal of my feelings than might be evinced by
+      the earnestness with which I promised to return for her signature at the
+      earliest possible moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This she had herself requested, saying as I rose:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can still write my name if the paper is pushed carefully along under my
+      hand. See to it that you come while the power remains to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had hoped that in my passage downstairs I might run upon someone who
+      would give me news of Miss Postlethwaite, but the woman who approached to
+      conduct me downstairs was not of an appearance to invite confidence, and I
+      felt forced to leave the house with my doubts unsatisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two memories, equally distinct, followed me. One was a picture of Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s fingers groping among her belongings on the little tray
+      perched upon her lap, and another of the intent and strangely bent figure
+      of the old man who had acted as my usher, listening to the ticking of one
+      of the great clocks. So absorbed was he in this occupation that he not
+      only failed to notice me when I went by, but he did not even lift his head
+      at my cheery greeting. Such mysteries were too much for me, and led me to
+      postpone my departure from town till I had sought out Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s
+      doctor and propounded to him one or two leading questions. First, would
+      Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s present condition be likely to hold good till Monday;
+      and secondly, was the young lady living with her as ill as her step-mother
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a mild old man of the easy-going type, and the answers I got from
+      him were far from satisfactory. Yet he showed some surprise when I
+      mentioned the extent of Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s anxiety about her
+      step-daughter, and paused, in the dubious shaking of his head, to give me
+      a short stare in which I read as much determination as perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will look into Miss Postlethwaite&rsquo;s case more particularly,&rdquo; were his
+      parting words. And with this one gleam of comfort I had to be content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monday&rsquo;s interview was a brief one and contained nothing worth repeating.
+      Mrs. Postlethwaite listened with stoical satisfaction to the reading of
+      the will I had drawn up, and upon its completion rang her bell for the two
+      witnesses awaiting her summons, in an adjoining room. They were not of her
+      household, but to all appearance honest villagers with but one noticeable
+      characteristic, an overweening idea of Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s importance.
+      Perhaps the spell she had so liberally woven for others in other and
+      happier days was felt by them at this hour. It would not be strange; I had
+      almost fallen under it myself, so great was the fascination of her manner
+      even in this wreck of her bodily powers, when triumph assured, she faced
+      us all in a state of complete satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But before I was again quit of the place, all my doubts returned and in
+      fuller force than ever. I had lingered in my going as much as decency
+      would permit, hoping to hear a step on the stair or see a face in some
+      doorway which would contradict Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s cold assurance that
+      Miss Postlethwaite was no better. But no such step did I hear, and no face
+      did I see save the old, old one of the ancient friend or relative, whose
+      bent frame seemed continually to haunt the halls. As before, he stood
+      listening to the monotonous ticking of one of the clocks, muttering to
+      himself and quite oblivious of my presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, this time I decided not to pass him without a more persistent
+      attempt to gain his notice. Pausing at his side, I asked him in the
+      friendly tone I thought best calculated to attract his attention, how Miss
+      Postlethwaite was to-day. He was so intent upon his task, whatever that
+      was, that while he turned my way, it was with a glance as blank as that of
+      a stone image.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; he admonished me. &ldquo;It still says No! No! I don&rsquo;t think it will
+      ever say anything else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I stared at him in some consternation, then at the clock itself which was
+      the tall one I had found run down at my first visit. There was nothing
+      unusual in its quiet tick, so far as I could hear, and with a
+      compassionate glance at the old man who had turned breathlessly again to
+      listen, proceeded on my way without another word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old fellow was daft. A century old, and daft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had worked my way out through the vines which still encumbered the
+      porch, and was taking my first steps down the walk, when some impulse made
+      me turn and glance up at one of the windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did I bless the impulse? I thought I had every reason for doing so, when
+      through a network of interlacing branches I beheld the young girl with
+      whom my mind was wholly occupied, standing with her head thrust forward,
+      watching the descent of something small and white which she had just
+      released from her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A note! A note written by her and meant for me! With a grateful look in
+      her direction (which was probably lost upon her as she had already drawn
+      back out of sight), I sprang for it only to meet with disappointment. For
+      it was no billet-doux I received from amid the clustering brush where it
+      had fallen; but a small square of white cloth showing a line of fantastic
+      embroidery. Annoyed beyond measure, I was about to fling it down again,
+      when the thought that it had come from her hand deterred me, and I thrust
+      it into my vest pocket. When I took it out again&mdash;which was soon
+      after I had taken my seat in the car&mdash;I discovered what a mistake I
+      should have made if I had followed my first impulse. For, upon examining
+      the stitches more carefully, I perceived that what I had considered a mere
+      decorative pattern was in fact a string of letters, and that these letters
+      made words, and that these words were:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IDONOTWANTTODIEBUTISURELYWILLIF
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or, in plain writing:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not want to die, but I surely will if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Finish the sentence for me. That is the problem I offer you. It is not a
+      case for the police but one well worth your attention, if you succeed in
+      reaching the heart of this mystery and saving this young girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only, let no delay occur. The doom, if doom it is, is immanent. Remember
+      that the will is signed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is too small; I did not ask you to send me a midget.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus spoke Mrs. Postlethwaite to her doctor, as he introduced into her
+      presence a little figure in nurse&rsquo;s cap and apron. &ldquo;You said I needed
+      care,&mdash;more care than I was receiving. I answered that my old nurse
+      could give it, and you objected that she or someone else must look after
+      Miss Postlethwaite. I did not see the necessity, but I never contradict a
+      doctor. So I yielded to your wishes, but not without the proviso (you
+      remember that I made a proviso) that whatever sort of young woman you
+      chose to introduce into this room, she should not be fresh from the
+      training schools, and that she should be strong, silent, and capable. And
+      you bring me this mite of a woman&mdash;is she a woman? she looks more
+      like a child, of pleasing countenance enough, but who can no more lift me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me!&rdquo; Little Miss Strange had advanced. &ldquo;I think, if you will allow
+      me the privilege, madam, that I can shift you into a much more comfortable
+      position.&rdquo; And with a deftness and ease certainly not to be expected from
+      one of her slight physique, Violet raised the helpless invalid a trifle
+      more upon her pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The act, its manner, and the smile accompanying it, could not fail to
+      please, and undoubtedly did, though no word rewarded her from lips not
+      much given to speech save when the occasion was imperative. But Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite made no further objection to her presence, and, seeing this,
+      the doctor&rsquo;s countenance relaxed and he left the room with a much lighter
+      step than that with which he had entered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And thus it was that Violet Strange&mdash;an adept in more ways than one&mdash;became
+      installed at the bedside of this mysterious woman, whose days, if
+      numbered, still held possibilities of action which those interested in
+      young Helena Postlethwaite&rsquo;s fate would do well to recognize.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange had been at her post for two days, and had gathered up the
+      following:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That Mrs. Postlethwaite must be obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That her step-daughter (who did not wish to die) would die if she knew it
+      to be the wish of this domineering but apparently idolized woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the old man of the clocks, while senile in some regards, was very
+      alert and quite youthful in others. If a century old&mdash;which she began
+      greatly to doubt&mdash;he had the language and manner of one in his prime,
+      when unaffected by the neighbourhood of the clocks, which seemed in some
+      non-understandable way to exercise an occult influence over him. At table
+      he was an entertaining host; but neither there nor elsewhere would he
+      discuss the family, or dilate in any way upon the peculiarities of a
+      household of which he manifestly regarded himself as the least important
+      member. Yet no one knew them better, and when Violet became quite assured
+      of this, as well as of the futility of looking for explanation of any kind
+      from either of her two patients, she resolved upon an effort to surprise
+      one from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went about it in this way. Noting his custom of making a complete
+      round of the clocks each night after dinner, she took advantage of Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s inclination to sleep at this hour, to follow him from
+      clock to clock in the hope of overhearing some portion of the monologue
+      with which he bent his head to the swinging pendulum, or put his ear to
+      the hidden works. Soft-footed and discreet, she tripped along at his back,
+      and at each pause he made, paused herself and turned her ear his way. The
+      extreme darkness of the halls, which were more sombre by night than by
+      day, favoured this attempt, and she was able, after a failure or two, to
+      catch the No! no! no! no! which fell from his lips in seeming repetition
+      of what he heard the most of them say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The satisfaction in his tone proved that the denial to which he listened,
+      chimed in with his hopes and gave ease to his mind. But he looked his
+      oldest when, after pausing at another of the many time-pieces, he echoed
+      in answer to its special refrain, Yes! yes! yes! yes! and fled the spot
+      with shaking body and a distracted air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same fear and the same shrinking were observable in him as he returned
+      from listening to the least conspicuous one, standing in a short corridor,
+      where Violet could not follow him. But when, after a hesitation which
+      enabled her to slip behind the curtain hiding the drawing-room door, he
+      approached and laid his ear against the great one standing, as if on
+      guard, at the foot of the stairs, she saw by the renewed vigour he
+      displayed that there was comfort for him in its message, even before she
+      caught the whisper with which he left it and proceeded to mount the
+      stairs:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It says No! It always says No! I will heed it as the voice of Heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But one conclusion could be the result of such an experiment to a mind
+      like Violet&rsquo;s. This partly touched old man not only held the key to the
+      secret of this house, but was in a mood to divulge it if once he could be
+      induced to hear command instead of dissuasion in the tick of this one
+      large clock. But how could he be induced? Violet returned to Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s bedside in a mood of extreme thoughtfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another day passed, and she had not yet seen Miss Postlethwaite. She was
+      hoping each hour to be sent on some errand to that young lady&rsquo;s room, but
+      no such opportunity was granted her. Once she ventured to ask the doctor,
+      whose visits were now very frequent, what he thought of the young lady&rsquo;s
+      condition. But as this question was necessarily put in Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s presence, the answer was naturally guarded, and possibly
+      not altogether frank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our young lady is weaker,&rdquo; he acknowledged. &ldquo;Much weaker,&rdquo; he added with
+      marked emphasis and his most professional air, &ldquo;or she would be here
+      instead of in her own room. It grieves her not to be able to wait upon her
+      generous benefactress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The word fell heavily. Had it been used as a test? Violet gave him a look,
+      though she had much rather have turned her discriminating eye upon the
+      face staring up at them from the pillow. Had the alarm expressed by others
+      communicated itself at last to the physician? Was the charm which had held
+      him subservient to the mother, dissolving under the pitiable state of the
+      child, and was he trying to aid the little detective-nurse in her effort
+      to sound the mystery of her condition?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His look expressed benevolence, but he took care not to meet the gaze of
+      the woman he had just lauded, possibly because that gaze was fixed upon
+      him in a way to tax his moral courage. The silence which ensued was broken
+      by Mrs. Postlethwaite:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will live&mdash;this poor Helena&mdash;how long?&rdquo; she asked, with no
+      break in her voice&rsquo;s wonted music.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor hesitated, then with a candour hardly to be expected from him,
+      answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not understand Miss Postlethwaite&rsquo;s case. I should like, with your
+      permission, to consult some New York physician.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A single word, but as it left this woman&rsquo;s thin lips Violet recoiled, and,
+      perhaps, the doctor did. Rage can speak in one word as well as in a dozen,
+      and the rage which spoke in this one was of no common order, though it was
+      quickly suppressed, as was all other show of feeling when she added, with
+      a touch of her old charm:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you will do what you think best, as you know I never interfere
+      with a doctor&rsquo;s decisions. But&rdquo; and here her natural ascendancy of tone
+      and manner returned in all its potency, &ldquo;it would kill me to know that a
+      stranger was approaching Helena&rsquo;s bedside. It would kill her. She&rsquo;s too
+      sensitive to survive such a shock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet recalled the words worked with so much care by this young girl on a
+      minute piece of linen, I do not want to die, and watched the doctor&rsquo;s face
+      for some sign of resolution. But embarrassment was all she saw there, and
+      all she heard him say was the conventional reply:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am doing all I can for her. We will wait another day and note the
+      effect of my latest prescription.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another day!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deathly calm which overspread Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s features as this
+      word left the physician&rsquo;s lips warned Violet not to let another day go by
+      without some action. But she made no remark, and, indeed, betrayed but
+      little interest in anything beyond her own patient&rsquo;s condition. That
+      seemed to occupy her wholly. With consummate art she gave the appearance
+      of being under Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s complete thrall, and watched with
+      fascinated eyes every movement of the one unstricken finger which could do
+      so much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This little detective of ours could be an excellent actor when she chose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To make the old man speak! To force this conscience-stricken but
+      rebellious soul to reveal what the clock forbade! How could it be done?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This continued to be Violet&rsquo;s great problem. She pondered it so deeply
+      during all the remainder of the day that a little pucker settled on her
+      brow, which someone (I will not mention who) would have been pained to
+      see. Mrs. Postlethwaite, if she noticed it at all, probably ascribed it to
+      her anxieties as nurse, for never had Violet been more assiduous in her
+      attentions. But Mrs. Postlethwaite was no longer the woman she had been,
+      and possibly never noted it at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At five o&rsquo;clock Violet suddenly left the room. Slipping down into the
+      lower hall, she went the round of the clocks herself, listening to every
+      one. There was no perceptible difference in their tick. Satisfied of this
+      and that it was simply the old man&rsquo;s imagination which had supplied them
+      each with separate speech, she paused before the huge one at the foot of
+      the stairs,&mdash;the one whose dictate he had promised himself to follow,&mdash;and
+      with an eye upon its broad, staring dial, muttered wistfully:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! for an idea! For an idea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Did this cumbrous relic of old-time precision turn traitor at this
+      ingenuous plea? The dial continued to stare, the works to sing, but
+      Violet&rsquo;s face suddenly lost its perplexity. With a wary look about her and
+      a listening ear turned towards the stair top, she stretched out her hand
+      and pulled open the door guarding the pendulum, and peered in at the
+      works, smiling slyly to herself as she pushed it back into place and
+      retreated upstairs to the sick room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the doctor came that night she had a quiet word with him outside Mrs.
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s door. Was that why he was on hand when old Mr. Dunbar
+      stole from his room to make his nightly circuit of the halls below?
+      Something quite beyond the ordinary was in the good physician&rsquo;s mind, for
+      the look he cast at the old man was quite unlike any he had ever bestowed
+      upon him before, and when he spoke it was to say with marked urgency:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our beautiful young lady will not live a week unless I get at the seat of
+      her malady. Pray that I may be enabled to do so, Mr. Dunbar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A blow to the aged man&rsquo;s heart which called forth a feeble &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo;
+       followed by a wild stare which imprinted itself upon the doctor&rsquo;s memory
+      as the look of one hopelessly old, who hears for the first time a distinct
+      call from the grave which has long been awaiting him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A solitary lamp stood in the lower hall. As the old man picked his slow
+      way down, its small, hesitating flame flared up as in a sudden gust, then
+      sank down flickering and faint as if it, too, had heard a call which
+      summoned it to extinction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No other sign of life was visible anywhere. Sunk in twilight shadows, the
+      corridors branched away on either side to no place in particular and
+      serving, to all appearance (as many must have thought in days gone by), as
+      a mere hiding-place for clocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To listen to their united hum, the old man paused, looking at first a
+      little distraught, but settling at last into his usual self as he started
+      forward upon his course. Did some whisper, hitherto unheard, warn him that
+      it was the last time he would tread that weary round? Who can tell? He was
+      trembling very much when with his task nearly completed, he stepped out
+      again into the main hall and crept rather than walked back to the one
+      great clock to whose dictum he made it a practice to listen last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chattering the accustomed words, &ldquo;They say Yes! They are all saying Yes!
+      now; but this one will say No!&rdquo; he bent his stiff old back and laid his
+      ear to the unresponsive wood. But the time for no had passed. It was Yes!
+      yes! yes! yes! now, and as his straining ears took in the word, he
+      appeared to shrink where he stood and after a moment of anguished silence,
+      broke forth into a low wail, amid whose lamentations one could hear:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The time has come! Even the clock she loves best bids me speak. Oh!
+      Arabella, Arabella!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his despair he had not noticed that the pendulum hung motionless, or
+      that the hands stood at rest on the dial. If he had, he might have waited
+      long enough to have seen the careful opening of the great clock&rsquo;s tall
+      door and the stepping forth of the little lady who had played so deftly
+      upon his superstition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was wandering the corridors like a helpless child, when a gentle hand
+      fell on his arm and a soft voice whispered in his ear:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a story to tell. Will you tell it to me? It may save Miss
+      Postlethwaite&rsquo;s life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Did he understand? Would he respond if he did; or would the shock of her
+      appeal restore him to a sense of the danger attending disloyalty? For a
+      moment she doubted the wisdom of this startling measure, then she saw that
+      he had passed the point of surprise and that, stranger as she was, she had
+      but to lead the way for him to follow, tell his story, and die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no light in the drawing-room when they entered. But old Mr.
+      Dunbar did not seem to mind that. Indeed, he seemed to have lost all
+      consciousness of present surroundings; he was even oblivious of her. This
+      became quite evident when the lamp, in flaring up again in the hall, gave
+      a momentary glimpse, of his crouching, half-kneeling figure. In the
+      pleading gesture of his trembling, outreaching arms, Violet beheld an
+      appeal, not to herself, but to some phantom of his imagination; and when
+      he spoke, as he presently did, it was with the freedom of one to whom
+      speech is life&rsquo;s last boon, and the ear of the listener quite forgotten in
+      the passion of confession long suppressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has never loved me,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;but I have always loved her. For me
+      no other woman has ever existed, though I was sixty-five years of age when
+      I first saw her, and had long given up the idea that there lived a woman
+      who could sway me from my even life and fixed lines of duty. Sixty-five!
+      and she a youthful bride! Was there ever such folly! Happily I realized it
+      from the first, and piled ashes on my hidden flame. Perhaps that is why I
+      adore her to this day and only give her over to reprobation because Fate
+      is stronger than my age&mdash;stronger even than my love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not a good woman, but I might have been a good man if I had never
+      known the sin which drew a line of isolation about her, and within which
+      I, and only I, have stood with her in silent companionship. What was this
+      sin, and in what did it have its beginning? I think its beginning was in
+      the passion she had for her husband. It was not the every-day passion of
+      her sex in this land of equable affections, but one of foreign fierceness,
+      jealousy, and insatiable demand. Yet he was a very ordinary man. I was
+      once his tutor and I know. She came to know it too, when&mdash;but I am
+      rushing on too fast, I have much to tell before I reach that point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the first, I was in their confidence. Not that either he or she put
+      me there, but that I lived with them and was always around, and could not
+      help seeing and hearing what went on between them. Why he continued to
+      want me in the house and at his table, when I could no longer be of
+      service to him, I have never known. Possibly habit explains all. He was
+      accustomed to my presence and so was she; so accustomed they hardly
+      noticed it, as happened one night, when after a little attempt at
+      conversation, he threw down the book he had caught up and, addressing her
+      by name, said without a glance my way, and quite as if he were alone with
+      her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Arabella, there is something I ought to tell you. I have tried to find
+      the courage to do so many times before now but have always failed. Tonight
+      I must.&rsquo; And then he made his great disclosure,&mdash;how, unknown to, his
+      friends and the world, he was a widower when he married her, and the
+      father of a living child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With some women this might have passed with a measure of regret, and some
+      possible contempt for his silence, but not so with her. She rose to her
+      feet&mdash;I can see her yet&mdash;and for a moment stood facing him in
+      the still, overpowering manner of one who feels the icy pang of hate enter
+      where love has been. Never was moment more charged. I could not breathe
+      while it lasted; and when at last she spoke, it was with an impetuosity of
+      concentrated passion, hardly less dreadful than her silence had been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;You a father! A father already!&rsquo; she cried, all her sweetness swallowed
+      up in ungovernable wrath. &lsquo;You whom I expected to make so happy with a
+      child? I curse you and your brat. I&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He strove to placate her, to explain. But rage has no ears, and before I
+      realized my own position, the scene became openly tempestuous. That her
+      child should be second to another woman&rsquo;s seemed to awaken demon instincts
+      within her. When he ventured to hint that his little girl needed a
+      mother&rsquo;s care, her irony bit like corroding acid. He became speechless
+      before it and had not a protest to raise when she declared that the secret
+      he had kept so long and so successfully he must continue to keep to his
+      dying day. That the child he had failed to own in his first wife&rsquo;s
+      lifetime should remain disowned in hers, and if possible be forgotten. She
+      should never give the girl a thought nor acknowledge her in any way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was Fury embodied; but the fury was of that grand order which allures
+      rather than repels. As I felt myself succumbing to its fascination and
+      beheld how he was weakening under it even more perceptibly than myself, I
+      started from my chair, and sought to glide away before I should hear him
+      utter a fatal acquiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the movement I made unfortunately drew their attention to me, and
+      after an instant of silent contemplation of my distracted countenance,
+      Frank said, as though he were the elder by the forty years which separated
+      us:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;You have listened to Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s wishes. You will respect them
+      of course.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all. He knew and she knew that I was to be trusted; but neither
+      of them has ever known why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A month later her child came, and was welcomed as though it were the first
+      to bear his name. It was a boy, and their satisfaction was so great that I
+      looked to see their old affection revive. But it had been cleft at the
+      root, and nothing could restore it to life. They loved the child; I have
+      never seen evidence of greater parental passion than they both displayed,
+      but there their feelings stopped. Towards each other they were cold. They
+      did not even unite in worship of their treasure. They gloated over him and
+      planned for him, but always apart. He was a child in a thousand, and as he
+      developed, the mother especially, nursed all her energies for the purpose
+      of ensuring for him a future commensurate with his talents. Never a very
+      conscientious woman, and alive to the advantages of wealth as demonstrated
+      by the power wielded by her rich brother-in-law, she associated all the
+      boy&rsquo;s prospects with money, great money, such money as Andrew had
+      accumulated, and now had at his disposal for his natural heirs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hence came her great temptation,&mdash;a temptation to which she yielded,
+      to the lasting trouble of us all. Of this I must now make confession
+      though it kills me to do so, and will soon kill her. The deeds of the past
+      do not remain buried, however deep we dig their graves, but rise in an
+      awful resurrection when we are old&mdash;old&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence. Then a tremulous renewal of his painful speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet held her breath to listen. Possibly the doctor, hidden in the
+      darkest corner of the room, did so also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never knew how she became acquainted with the terms of her
+      brother-in-law&rsquo;s will. He certainly never confided them to her, and as
+      certainly the lawyer who drew up the document never did. But that she was
+      well aware of its tenor is as positive a fact as that I am the most
+      wretched man alive tonight. Otherwise, why the darksome deed into which
+      she was betrayed when both the brothers lay dying among strangers, of a
+      dreadful accident?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was witness to that deed. I had accompanied her on her hurried ride and
+      was at her side when she entered the inn where the two Postlethwaites lay.
+      I was always at her side in great joy or in great trouble, though she
+      professed no affection for me and gave me but scanty thanks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;During our ride she had been silent and I had not disturbed that silence.
+      I had much to think of. Should we find him living, or should we find him
+      dead? If dead, would it sever the relations between us two? Would I ever
+      ride with her again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was not dwelling on this theme, I was thinking of the parting look
+      she gave her boy; a look which had some strange promise in it. What had
+      that look meant and why did my flesh creep and my mind hover between dread
+      and a fearsome curiosity when I recalled it? Alas! There was reason for
+      all these sensations as I was soon to learn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We found the inn seething with terror and the facts worse than had been
+      represented in the telegram. Her husband was dying. She had come just in
+      time to witness the end. This they told her before she had taken off her
+      veil. If they had waited&mdash;if I had been given a full glimpse of her
+      face&mdash;But it was hidden, and I could only judge of the nature of her
+      emotions by the stern way in which she held herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Take me to him,&rsquo; was the quiet command, with which she met this
+      disclosure. Then, before any of them could move:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;And his brother, Mr. Andrew Postlethwaite? Is he fatally injured too?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The reply was unequivocal. The doctors were uncertain which of the two
+      would pass away first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must remember that at this time I was ignorant of the rich man&rsquo;s
+      will, and consequently of how the fate of a poor child of whom I had heard
+      only one mention, hung in the balance at that awful moment. But in the
+      breathlessness which seized Mrs. Postlethwaite at this sentence of double
+      death, I realized from my knowledge of her that something more than grief
+      was at prey upon her impenetrable heart, and shuddered to the core of my
+      being when she repeated in that voice which was so terrible because so
+      expressionless:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Take me to them.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were lying in one room, her husband nearest the door, the other in a
+      small alcove some ten feet away. Both were unconscious; both were
+      surrounded by groups of frightened attendants who fell back as she
+      approached. A doctor stood at the bed-head of her husband, but as her eye
+      met his he stepped aside with a shake of the head and left the place empty
+      for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The action was significant. I saw that she understood what it meant, and
+      with constricted heart watched her as she bent over the dying man and
+      gazed into his wide-open eyes, already sightless and staring. Calculation
+      was in her look and calculation only; and calculation, or something
+      equally unintelligible, sent her next glance in the direction of his
+      brother. What was in her mind? I could understand her indifference to
+      Frank even at the crisis of his fate, but not the interest she showed in
+      Andrew. It was an absorbing one, altering her whole expression. I no
+      longer knew her for my dear young madam, and the jealousy I had never felt
+      towards Frank rose to frantic resentment in my breast as I beheld what
+      very likely might be a tardy recognition of the other&rsquo;s well-known
+      passion, forced into disclosure by the exigencies of the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alarmed by the strength of my feelings, and fearing an equal disclosure
+      on my own part, I sought for a refuge from all eyes and found it in a
+      little balcony opening out at my right. On to this balcony I stepped and
+      found myself face to face with a star-lit heaven. Had I only been content
+      with my isolation and the splendour of the spectacle spread out before me!
+      But no, I must look back upon that bed and the solitary woman standing
+      beside it! I must watch the settling of her body into rigidity as a voice
+      rose from beside the other Postlethwaite saying, &lsquo;It is a matter of
+      minutes now,&rsquo; and then&mdash;and then&mdash;the slow creeping of her hand
+      to her husband&rsquo;s mouth, the outspreading of her palm across the livid lips&mdash;its
+      steady clinging there, smothering the feeble gasps of one already
+      moribund, till the quivering form grew still, and Frank Postlethwaite lay
+      dead before my eyes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw, and made no outcry, but she did, bringing the doctor back to her
+      side with the startled exclamation:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Dead? I thought he had an hour&rsquo;s life left in him, and he has passed
+      before his brother.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it hate&mdash;the murderous impulse of a woman who sees her
+      enemy at her mercy and can no longer restrain the passion of her
+      long-cherished antagonism; and while something within me rebelled at the
+      act, I could not betray her, though silence made a murderer of me too. I
+      could not. Her spell was upon me as in another instant it was upon
+      everyone else in the room. No suspicion of one so self-repressed in her
+      sadness disturbed the universal sympathy; and encouraged by this blindness
+      of the crowd, I vowed within myself never to reveal her secret. The man
+      was dead, or as good as dead, when she touched him; and now that her hate
+      was expended she would grow gentle and good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I knew the worthlessness of this hope as well as my misconception of
+      her motive, when Frank&rsquo;s child by another wife returned to my memory, and
+      Bella&rsquo;s sin stood exposed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But only to myself. I alone knew that the fortune now wholly hers, and in
+      consequence her boy&rsquo;s, had been won by a crime. That if her hand had
+      fallen in comfort on her husband&rsquo;s forehead instead of in pressure on his
+      mouth, he would have outlived his brother long enough to have become owner
+      of his millions; in which case a rightful portion would have been insured
+      to his daughter, now left a penniless waif. The thought made my hair rise,
+      as the proceedings over, I faced her and made my first and last effort to
+      rid my conscience of its new and intolerable burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the woman I had known and loved was no longer before me. The crown
+      had touched her brows, and her charm which had been mainly sexual up to
+      this hour had merged into an intellectual force, with which few men&rsquo;s
+      mentality could cope. Mine yielded at once to it. From the first instant,
+      I knew that a slavery of spirit, as well as of heart, was henceforth to be
+      mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did not wait for me to speak; she had assumed the dictator&rsquo;s attitude
+      at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I know of what you are thinking,&rsquo;&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;&lsquo;and it is a subject you
+      may dismiss at once from your mind. Mr. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s child by his first
+      wife is coming to live with us. I have expressed my wishes in this regard
+      to my lawyer, and there is nothing left to be said. You, with your close
+      mouth and dependable nature, are to remain here as before, and occupy the
+      same position towards my boy that you did towards his father. We shall
+      move soon into a larger house, and the nature of our duties will be
+      changed and their scope greatly increased; but I know that you can be
+      trusted to enlarge with them and meet every requirement I shall see fit to
+      make. Do not try to express your thanks. I see them in your face.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did she, or just the last feeble struggle my conscience was making to
+      break the bonds in which she held me, and win back my own respect? I shall
+      never know, for she left me on completion of this speech, not to resume
+      the subject, then or ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But though I succumbed outwardly to her demands, I had not passed the
+      point where inner conflict ends and peace begins. Her recognition of
+      Helena and her reception into the family calmed me for a while, and gave
+      me hope that all would yet be well. But I had never sounded the full
+      bitterness of madam&rsquo;s morbid heart, well as I thought I knew it. The
+      hatred she had felt from the first for her husband&rsquo;s child ripened into
+      frenzied dislike when she found her a living image of the mother whose
+      picture she had come across among Frank&rsquo;s personal effects. To win a tear
+      from those meek eyes instead of a smile to the sensitive lips was her
+      daily play. She seemed to exult in the joy of impressing upon the girl by
+      how little she had missed a great fortune, and I have often thought, much
+      as I tried to keep my mind free from all extravagant and unnecessary
+      fancies, that half of the money she spent in beautifying this house and
+      maintaining art industries and even great charitable institutions was
+      spent with the base purpose of demonstrating to this child the power of
+      immense wealth, and in what ways she might expect to see her little
+      brother expend the millions in which she had been denied all share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was so sure of this that one night while I was winding up the clocks
+      with which Mrs. Postlethwaite in her fondness for old timepieces has
+      filled the house, I stopped to look at the little figure toiling so
+      wearily upstairs, to bed, without a mother&rsquo;s kiss. There was an appeal in
+      the small wistful face which smote my hard old heart, and possibly a tear
+      welled up in my own eye when I turned back to my duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that why I felt the hand of Providence upon me, when in my halt
+      before the one clock to which any superstitious interest was attached&mdash;the
+      great one at the foot of the stairs&mdash;I saw that it had stopped and at
+      the one minute of all minutes in our wretched lives: Four minutes past
+      two? The hour, the minute in which Frank Postlethwaite had gasped his last
+      under the pressure of his wife&rsquo;s hand! I knew it&mdash;the exact minute I
+      mean&mdash;because Providence meant that I should know it. There had been
+      a clock on the mantelpiece of the hotel room where he and his brother had
+      died and I had seen her glance steal towards it at the instant she
+      withdrew her palm from her husband&rsquo;s lips. The stare of that dial and the
+      position of its hands had lived still in my mind as I believed it did in
+      hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four minutes past two! How came our old timepiece here to stop at that
+      exact moment on a day when Duty was making its last demand upon me to
+      remember Frank&rsquo;s unhappy child? There was no one to answer; but as I
+      looked and looked, I felt the impulse of the moment strengthen into
+      purpose to leave those hands undisturbed in their silent accusation. She
+      might see, and, moved by the coincidence, tremble at her treatment of
+      Helena.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if this happened&mdash;if she saw and trembled&mdash;she gave no
+      sign. The works were started up by some other hand, and the incident
+      passed. But it left me with an idea. That clock soon had a way of stopping
+      and always at that one instant of time. She was forced at length to notice
+      it, and I remember, an occasion when she stood stock-still with her eyes
+      on those hands, and failed to find the banister with her hand, though she
+      groped for it in her frantic need for support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But no command came from her to remove the worn-out piece, and soon its
+      tricks, and every lesser thing, were forgotten in the crushing calamity
+      which befell us in the sickness and death of little Richard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, those days and nights! And oh, the face of the mother when the
+      doctors told her that the case was hopeless! I asked myself then, and I
+      have asked myself a hundred times since, which of all the emotions I saw
+      pictured there bit the deepest, and made the most lasting impression on
+      her guilty heart? Was it remorse? If so, she showed no change in her
+      attitude towards Helena, unless it was by an added bitterness. The sweet
+      looks and gentle ways of Frank&rsquo;s young daughter could not win against a
+      hate sharpened by disappointment. Useless for me to hope for it. Release
+      from the remorse of years was not to come in that way. As I realized this,
+      I grew desperate and resorted again to the old trick of stopping the clock
+      at the fatal hour. This time her guilty heart responded. She acknowledged
+      the stab and let all her miseries appear. But how? In a way to wring my
+      heart almost to madness, and not benefit the child at all. She had her
+      first stroke that night. I had made her a helpless invalid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was eight years ago, and since then what? Stagnation. She lived with
+      her memories, and I with mine. Helena only had a right to hope, and hope
+      perhaps she did, till&mdash;Is that the great clock talking? Listen! They
+      all talk, but I heed only the one. What does it say? Tell! tell! tell!
+      Does it think I will be silent now when I come to my own guilt? That I
+      will seek to hide my weakness when I could not hide her sin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Explain!&rdquo; It was Violet speaking, and her tone was stern in its command.
+      &ldquo;Of what guilt do you speak? Not of guilt towards Helena; you pitied her
+      too much&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I pitied my dear madam more. It was that which affected me and drew
+      me into crime against my will. Besides, I did not know&mdash;not at first&mdash;what
+      was in the little bowl of curds and cream I carried to the girl each day.
+      She had eaten them in her step-mother&rsquo;s room, and under her step-mother&rsquo;s
+      eye as long as she had strength to pass from room to room, and how was I
+      to guess that it was not wholesome? Because she failed in health from day
+      to day? Was not my dear madam failing in health also; and was there poison
+      in her cup? Innocent at that time, why am I not innocent now? Because&mdash;Oh,
+      I will tell it all; as though at the bar of God. I will tell all the
+      secrets of that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was sitting with her hand trembling on the tray from which I had just
+      lifted the bowl she had bid me carry to Helena. I had seen her so a
+      hundred times before, but not with just that look in her eyes, or just
+      that air of desolation in her stony figure. Something made me speak;
+      something made me ask if she were not quite so well as usual, and
+      something made her reply with the dreadful truth that the doctor had given
+      her just two months more to live. My fright and mad anguish stupefied me;
+      for I was not prepared for this, no, not at all;&mdash;and unconsciously I
+      stared down at the bowl I held, unable to breathe or move or even to meet
+      her look.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As usual she misinterpreted my emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Why do you stand like that?&rsquo; I heard her say in a tone of great
+      irritation. &lsquo;And why do you stare into that bowl? Do you think I mean to
+      leave that child to walk these halls after I am carried out of them
+      forever? Do you measure my hate by such a petty yard-stick as that? I tell
+      you that I would rot above ground rather than enter it before she did?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had believed I knew this woman; but what soul ever knows another&rsquo;s?
+      What soul ever knows itself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Bella!&rsquo; I cried; the first time I had ever presumed to address her so
+      intimately. &lsquo;Would you poison the girl?&rsquo; And from sheer weakness my
+      fingers lost their clutch, and the bowl fell to the floor, breaking into a
+      dozen pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a minute she stared down at these from over her tray, and then she
+      remarked very low and very quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Another bowl, Humphrey, and fresh curds from the kitchen. I will do the
+      seasoning. The doses are too small to be skipped. You won&rsquo;t?&rsquo;&mdash;I had
+      shaken my head&mdash;&lsquo;But you will! It will not be the first time you have
+      gone down the hall with this mixture.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;But that was before I knew&mdash;&rsquo; I began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;And now that you do, you will go just the same.&rsquo; Then as I stood
+      hesitating, a thousand memories overwhelming me in an instant, she added
+      in a voice to tear the heart, &lsquo;Do not make me hate the only being left in
+      this world who understands and loves me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was a helpless invalid, and I a broken man, but when that word &lsquo;love&rsquo; 
+      fell from her lips, I felt the blood start burning in my veins, and all
+      the crust of habit and years of self-control loosen about my heart, and
+      make me young again. What if her thoughts were dark and her wishes
+      murderous! She was born to rule and sway men to her will even to their own
+      undoing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I wish I might kiss your hand,&rsquo; was what I murmured, gazing at her white
+      fingers groping over her tray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;You may,&rsquo; she answered, and hell became heaven to me for a brief
+      instant. Then I lifted myself and went obediently about my task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But puppet though I was, I was not utterly without sympathy. When I
+      entered Helena&rsquo;s room and saw how her startled eyes fell shrinkingly on
+      the bowl I set down before her, my conscience leaped to life and I could
+      not help saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Don&rsquo;t you like the curds, Helena? Your brother used to love them very
+      much.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;His were&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;What, Helena?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;What these are not,&rsquo; she murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I stared at her, terror-stricken. So she knew, and yet did not seize the
+      bowl and empty it out of the window! Instead, her hand moved slowly
+      towards it and drew it into place before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Yet I must eat,&rsquo; she said, lifting her eyes to mine in a sort of patient
+      despair, which yet was without accusation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my hand had instinctively gone to hers and grasped it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Why must you eat it?&rsquo; I asked. &lsquo;If&mdash;if you do not find it
+      wholesome, why do you touch it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Because my step-mother expects me to,&rsquo; she cried, &lsquo;and I have no other
+      will than hers. When I was a little, little child, my father made me
+      promise that if I ever came to live with her I would obey her simplest
+      wish. And I always have. I will not disappoint the trust he put in me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Even if you die of it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know whether I whispered these words or only thought them. She
+      answered as though I had spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I am not afraid to die. I am more afraid to live. She may ask me some
+      day to do something I feel to be wrong.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I fled down the hall that night, I heard one of the small clocks
+      speak to me. Tell! it cried, tell! tell! tell! tell! I rushed away from it
+      with beaded forehead and rising hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then another&rsquo;s note piped up. No it droned. No! no! no! no! I stopped and
+      took heart. Disgrace the woman I loved, on the brink of the grave? I&mdash;,
+      who asked no other boon from heaven than to see her happy, gracious, and
+      good? Impossible. I would obey the great clock&rsquo;s voice; the others were
+      mere chatterboxes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it has at last changed its tune, for some reason, quite changed its
+      tune. Now, it is Yes! Yes! instead of No! and in obeying it I save Helena.
+      But what of Bella? and O God, what of myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sigh, a groan, then a long and heavy silence, into which there finally
+      broke the pealing of the various clocks striking the hour. When all were
+      still again and Violet had drawn aside the portiere, it was to see the old
+      man on his knees, and between her and the thin streak of light entering
+      from the hall, the figure of the doctor hastening to Helena&rsquo;s bedside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When with inducements needless to name, they finally persuaded the young
+      girl to leave her unholy habitation, it was in the arms which had upheld
+      her once before, and to a life which promised to compensate her for her
+      twenty years of loneliness and unsatisfied longing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a black shadow yet remained which she must cross before reaching the
+      sunshine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It lay at her step-mother&rsquo;s door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the plans made for Helena&rsquo;s release, Mrs. Postlethwaite&rsquo;s consent had
+      not been obtained nor was she supposed to be acquainted with the doctor&rsquo;s
+      intentions towards the child whose death she was hourly awaiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was therefore with an astonishment, bordering on awe, that on their way
+      downstairs, they saw the door of her room open and herself standing alone
+      and upright on the threshold&mdash;she who had not been seen to take a
+      step in years. In the wonder of this miracle of suddenly restored power,
+      the little procession stopped,&mdash;the doctor with his hand upon the
+      rail, the lover with his burden clasped yet more protectingly to his
+      breast. That a little speech awaited them could be seen from the force and
+      fury of the gaze which the indomitable woman bent upon the lax and
+      half-unconscious figure she beheld thus sheltered and conveyed. Having but
+      one arrow left in her exhausted quiver, she launched it straight at the
+      innocent breast which had never harboured against her a defiant thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ingrate!&rdquo; was the word she hurled in a voice from which all its seductive
+      music had gone forever. &ldquo;Where are you going? Are they carrying you alive
+      to your grave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A moan from Helena&rsquo;s pale lips, then silence. She had fainted at that
+      barbed attack. But there was one there who dared to answer for her and he
+      spoke relentlessly. It was the man who loved her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, madam. We are carrying her to safety. You must know what I mean by
+      that. Let her go quietly and you may die in peace. Otherwise&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She interrupted him with a loud call, startling into life the echoes of
+      that haunted hall:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humphrey! Come to me, Humphrey!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But no Humphrey appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another call, louder and more peremptory than before:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humphrey! I say, Humphrey!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the answer was the same&mdash;silence, and only silence. As the horror
+      of this grew, the doctor spoke:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Humphrey Dunbar&rsquo;s ears are closed to all earthly summons. He died
+      last night at the very hour he said he would&mdash;four minutes after
+      two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four minutes after two!&rdquo; It came from her lips in a whisper, but with a
+      revelation of her broken heart and life. &ldquo;Four minutes after two!&rdquo; And
+      defiant to the last, her head rose, and for an instant, for a mere breath
+      of time, they saw her as she had looked in her prime, regal in form,
+      attitude, and expression; then the will which had sustained her through so
+      much, faltered and succumbed, and with a final reiteration of the words
+      &ldquo;Four minutes after two!&rdquo; she broke into a rattling laugh, and fell back
+      into the arms of her old nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And below, one clock struck the hour and then another. But not the big one
+      at the foot of the stairs. That still stood silent, with its hands
+      pointing to the hour and minute of Frank Postlethwaite&rsquo;s hastened death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM VI <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM VII. THE DOCTOR, HIS WIFE, AND THE CLOCK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Violet had gone to her room. She had a task before her. That afternoon, a
+      packet had been left at the door, which, from a certain letter scribbled
+      in one corner, she knew to be from her employer. The contents of that
+      packet must be read, and she had made herself comfortable with the
+      intention of setting to work at once. But ten o&rsquo;clock struck and then
+      eleven before she could bring herself to give any attention to the
+      manuscript awaiting her perusal. In her present mood, a quiet sitting by
+      the fire, with her eyes upon the changeful flame, was preferable to the
+      study of any affair her employer might send her. Yet, because she was
+      conscious of the duty she thus openly neglected, she sat crouched over her
+      desk with her hand on the mysterious packet, the string of which, however,
+      she made no effort to loosen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was she thinking of?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are not alone in our curiosity on this subject. Her brother Arthur,
+      coming unperceived into the room, gives tokens of a similar interest.
+      Never before had he seen her oblivious to an approaching step; and after a
+      momentary contemplation of her absorbed figure, so girlishly sweet and yet
+      so deeply intent, he advances to her side, and peering earnestly into her
+      face, observes with a seriousness quite unusual to him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Puss, you are looking worried,&mdash;not like yourself at all. I&rsquo;ve
+      noticed it for some time. What&rsquo;s up. Getting tired of the business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not altogether&mdash;that is, it&rsquo;s not that, if it&rsquo;s anything.
+      I&rsquo;m not sure that it&rsquo;s anything. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had turned back to her desk and was pushing about the various articles
+      with which it was plentifully bespread; but this did not hide the flush
+      which had crept into her cheeks and even dyed the snowy whiteness of her
+      neck. Arthur&rsquo;s astonishment at this evidence of emotion was very great;
+      but he said nothing, only watched her still more closely, as with a light
+      laugh she regained her self-possession, and with the practical air of a
+      philosopher uttered this trite remark:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everyone has his sober moments. I was only thinking&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of some new case?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not exactly.&rdquo; The words came softly but with a touch of mingled humour
+      and gravity which made Arthur stare again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here, Puss!&rdquo; he cried. His tone had changed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just come up from
+      the den. Father and I have had a row&mdash;a beastly row.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A row? You and father? Oh, Arthur, I don&rsquo;t like that. Don&rsquo;t quarrel with
+      father. Don&rsquo;t, don&rsquo;t. Some day he and I may have a serious difference
+      about what I am doing. Don&rsquo;t let him feel that he has lost us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right, Puss; but I&rsquo;ve got to think of you a bit. I can&rsquo;t see
+      you spoil all your good times with these police horrors and not do
+      something to help. To-morrow I begin life as a salesman in Clarke &amp;
+      Stebbin&rsquo;s. The salary is not great, but every little helps and I don&rsquo;t
+      dislike the business. But father does. He had rather see me loafing about
+      town setting the fashions for fellows as idle as myself than soil my hands
+      with handling merchandise. That&rsquo;s why we quarreled. But don&rsquo;t worry. Your
+      name didn&rsquo;t come up, or&mdash;or&mdash;you know whose. He hasn&rsquo;t an idea
+      of why I want to work&mdash;There, Violet there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two soft arms were around his neck and Violet was letting her heart out in
+      a succession of sisterly kisses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O, Arthur, you good, good boy! Together we&rsquo;ll soon make up the amount,
+      and then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sweet soft look robbed her face of its piquancy, but gave it an aspect
+      of indescribable beauty quite new to Arthur&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tapping his lips with a thoughtful forefinger, he asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was that sombre-looking chap I saw bowing to you as we came out of
+      church last Sunday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She awoke from her dreamy state with an astonishing quickness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He? Surely you remember him. Have you forgotten that evening in
+      Massachusetts&mdash;the grotto&mdash;and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s Upjohn, is it? Yes, I remember him. He&rsquo;s fond of church, isn&rsquo;t
+      he? That is, when he&rsquo;s in New York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her lips took a roguish curve then a very serious one; but she made no
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have noticed that he&rsquo;s always in his seat and always looking your way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s very odd of him,&rdquo; she declared, her dimples coming and going in a
+      most bewildering fashion. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t imagine why he should do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I,&mdash;&rdquo; retorted Arthur with a smile. &ldquo;But he&rsquo;s human, I suppose.
+      Only do be careful, Violet. A man so melancholy will need a deal of
+      cheering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was gone before he had fully finished this daring remark, and Violet,
+      left again with her thoughts, lost her glowing colour but not her
+      preoccupation. The hand which lay upon the packet already alluded to did
+      not move for many minutes, and when she roused at last to the demands of
+      her employer, it was with a start and a guilty look at the small gold
+      clock ticking out its inexorable reminder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will want an answer the first thing in the morning,&rdquo; she complained to
+      herself. And opening the packet, she took out first a letter, and then a
+      mass of typewritten manuscript.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She began with the letter which was as characteristic of the writer as all
+      the others she had had from his hand; as witness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You probably remember the Hasbrouck murder,&mdash;or, perhaps, you don&rsquo;t;
+      it being one of a time previous to your interest in such matters. But
+      whether you remember it or not, I beg you to read the accompanying summary
+      with due care and attention to business. When you have well mastered it
+      with all its details, please communicate with me in any manner most
+      convenient to yourself, for I shall have a word to say to you then, which
+      you may be glad to hear, if as you have lately intimated you need to earn
+      but one or two more substantial rewards in order to cry halt to the
+      pursuit for which you have proved yourself so well qualified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story, in deference to yourself as a young and much preoccupied woman,
+      has been written in a way to interest. Though the work of an everyday
+      police detective, you will find in it no lack of mystery or romance; and
+      if at the end you perceive that it runs, as such cases frequently do, up
+      against a perfectly blank wall, you must remember that openings can be
+      made in walls, and that the loosening of one weak stone from its appointed
+      place, sometimes leads to the downfall of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much for the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Laying it aside, with a shrug of her expressive shoulders, Violet took up
+      the manuscript.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us take it up too. It runs thus:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 17th of July, 19&mdash;, a tragedy of no little interest occurred
+      in one of the residences of the Colonnade in Lafayette Place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hasbrouck, a well known and highly respected citizen, was attacked in
+      his room by an unknown assailant, and shot dead before assistance could
+      reach him. His murderer escaped, and the problem offered to the police was
+      how to identify this person who, by some happy chance or by the exercise
+      of the most remarkable forethought, had left no traces behind him, or any
+      clue by which he could be followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The details of the investigation which ended so unsatisfactorily are here
+      given by the man sent from headquarters at the first alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, some time after midnight on the date above mentioned, I reached
+      Lafayette Place, I found the block lighted from end to end. Groups of
+      excited men and women peered from the open doorways, and mingled their
+      shadows with those of the huge pillars which adorn the front of this
+      picturesque block of dwellings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house in which the crime had been committed was near the centre of the
+      row, and, long before I reached it, I had learned from more than one
+      source that the alarm was first given to the street by a woman&rsquo;s shriek,
+      and secondly by the shouts of an old man-servant who had appeared, in a
+      half-dressed condition, at the window of Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s room, crying
+      &ldquo;Murder! murder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when I had crossed the threshold, I was astonished at the paucity of
+      facts to be gleaned from the inmates themselves. The old servant, who was
+      the first to talk, had only this account of the crime to give:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The family, which consisted of Mr. Hasbrouck, his wife, and three
+      servants, had retired for the night at the usual hour and under the usual
+      auspices. At eleven o&rsquo;clock the lights were all extinguished, and the
+      whole household asleep, with the possible exception of Mr. Hasbrouck
+      himself, who, being a man of large business responsibilities, was
+      frequently troubled with insomnia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Mrs. Hasbrouck woke with a start. Had she dreamed the words that
+      were ringing in her ears, or had they been actually uttered in her
+      hearing? They were short, sharp words, full of terror and menace, and she
+      had nearly satisfied herself that she had imagined them, when there came,
+      from somewhere near the door, a sound she neither understood nor could
+      interpret, but which filled her with inexplicable terror, and made her
+      afraid to breathe, or even to stretch forth her hand towards her husband,
+      whom she supposed to be sleeping at her side. At length another strange
+      sound, which she was sure was not due to her imagination, drove her to
+      make an attempt to rouse him, when she was horrified to find that she was
+      alone in bed, and her husband nowhere within reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Filled now with something more than nervous apprehension, she flung
+      herself to the floor, and tried to penetrate with frenzied glances, the
+      surrounding darkness. But the blinds and shutters both having been
+      carefully closed by Mr. Hasbrouck before retiring, she found this
+      impossible, and she was about to sink in terror to the floor, when she
+      heard a low gasp on the other side of the room followed by a suppressed
+      cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God! what have I done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice was a strange one, but before the fear aroused by this fact
+      could culminate in a shriek of dismay, she caught the sound of retreating
+      footsteps, and, eagerly listening, she heard them descend the stairs and
+      depart by the front door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had she known what had occurred&mdash;had there been no doubt in her mind
+      as to what lay in the darkness on the other side of the room&mdash;it is
+      likely that, at the noise caused by the closing front door, she would have
+      made at once for the balcony that opened out from the window before which
+      she was standing, and taken one look at the flying figure below. But her
+      uncertainty as to what lay hidden from her by the darkness chained her
+      feet to the floor, and there is no knowing when she would have moved, if a
+      carriage had not at that moment passed down Astor Place, bringing with it
+      a sense of companionship which broke the spell holding her, and gave her
+      strength to light the gas which was in ready reach of her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the sudden blaze illuminated the room, revealing in a burst the old
+      familiar walls and well-known pieces of furniture, she felt for a moment
+      as if released from some heavy nightmare and restored to the common
+      experiences of life. But in another instant her former dread returned, and
+      she found herself quaking at the prospect of passing around the foot of
+      the bed into that part of the room which was as yet hidden from her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the desperation which comes with great crises finally drove her from
+      her retreat; and, creeping slowly forward, she cast one glance at the
+      floor before her, when she found her worst fears realized by the sight of
+      the dead body of her husband lying prone before the open doorway, with a
+      bullet-hole in his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her first impulse was to shriek, but, by a powerful exercise of will, she
+      checked herself, and ringing frantically for the servants who slept on the
+      top floor of the house, flew to the nearest window and endeavoured to open
+      it. But the shutters had been bolted so securely by Mr. Hasbrouck, in his
+      endeavour to shut out all light and sound, that by the time she had
+      succeeded in unfastening them, all trace of the flying murderer had
+      vanished from the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sick with grief and terror, she stepped back into the room just as the
+      three frightened servants descended the stairs. As they appeared in the
+      open doorway, she pointed at her husband&rsquo;s inanimate form, and then, as if
+      suddenly realizing in its full force the calamity which had befallen her,
+      she threw up her arms, and sank forward to the floor in a dead faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two women rushed to her assistance, but the old butler, bounding over
+      the bed, sprang to the window, and shrieked his alarm to the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the interim that followed, Mrs. Hasbrouck was revived, and the master&rsquo;s
+      body laid decently on the bed; but no pursuit was made, nor any inquiries
+      started likely to assist me in establishing the identity of the assailant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, everyone both in the house and out, seemed dazed by the unexpected
+      catastrophe, and as no one had any suspicions to offer as to the probable
+      murderer, I had a difficult task before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I began in the usual way, by inspecting the scene of the murder. I found
+      nothing in the room, or in the condition of the body itself, which added
+      an iota to the knowledge already obtained. That Mr. Hasbrouck had been in
+      bed; that he had risen upon hearing a noise; and that he had been shot
+      before reaching the door, were self-evident facts. But there was nothing
+      to guide me further. The very simplicity of the circumstances caused a
+      dearth of clues, which made the difficulty of procedure as great as any I
+      had ever encountered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My search through the hall and down the stairs elicited nothing; and an
+      investigation of the bolts and bars by which the house was secured,
+      assured me that the assassin had either entered by the front door, or had
+      already been secreted in the house when it was locked up for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall have to trouble Mrs. Hasbrouck for a short interview,&rdquo; I hereupon
+      announced to the trembling old servant, who had followed me like a dog
+      about the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no demur, and in a few minutes I was ushered into the presence of
+      the newly made widow, who sat quite alone, in a large chamber in the rear.
+      As I crossed the threshold she looked up, and I encountered a good, plain
+      face, without the shadow of guile in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madam,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I have not come to disturb you. I will ask two or three
+      questions only, and then leave you to your grief. I am told that some
+      words came from the assassin before he delivered his fatal shot. Did you
+      hear these distinctly enough to tell me what they were?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was sound asleep,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;and dreamt, as I thought, that a fierce,
+      strange voice cried somewhere to some one: &lsquo;Ah! you did not expect me!&rsquo; 
+      But I dare not say that these words were really uttered to my husband, for
+      he was not the man to call forth hate, and only a man in the extremity of
+      passion could address such an exclamation in such a tone as rings in my
+      memory in connection with the fatal shot which woke me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that shot was not the work of a friend,&rdquo; I argued. &ldquo;If, as these
+      words seem to prove, the assassin had some other motive than plunder in
+      his assault, then your husband had an enemy, though you never suspected
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo; was her steady reply, uttered in the most convincing tone.
+      &ldquo;The man who shot him was a common burglar, and frightened at having been
+      betrayed into murder, fled without looking for booty. I am sure I heard
+      him cry out in terror and remorse: &lsquo;God! what have I done!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that before you left the side of the bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I did not move from my place till I heard the front door close. I
+      was paralysed by fear and dread.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you in the habit of trusting to the security of a latch-lock only in
+      the fastening of your front door at night? I am told that the big key was
+      not in the lock, and that the bolt at the bottom of the door was not
+      drawn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bolt at the bottom of the door is never drawn. Mr. Hasbrouck was so
+      good a man that he never mistrusted any one. That is why the big lock was
+      not fastened. The key, not working well, he took it some days ago to the
+      locksmith, and when the latter failed to return it, he laughed, and said
+      he thought no one would ever think of meddling with his front door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there more than one night-key to your house?&rdquo; I now asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when did Mr. Hasbrouck last use his?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night, when he came home from prayer meeting,&rdquo; she answered, and burst
+      into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her grief was so real and her loss so recent that I hesitated to afflict
+      her by further questions. So returning to the scene of the tragedy, I
+      stepped out upon the balcony which ran in front. Soft voices instantly
+      struck my ears. The neighbours on either side were grouped in front of
+      their own windows, and were exchanging the remarks natural under the
+      circumstances. I paused, as in duty bound, and listened. But I heard
+      nothing worth recording, and would have instantly reentered the house, if
+      I had not been impressed by the appearance of a very graceful woman who
+      stood at my right. She was clinging to her husband, who was gazing at one
+      of the pillars before him in a strange fixed way which astonished me till
+      he attempted to move, and then I saw that he was blind. I remembered that
+      there lived in this row a blind doctor, equally celebrated for his skill
+      and for his uncommon personal attractions, and greatly interested not only
+      by his affliction, but in the sympathy evinced by his young and
+      affectionate wife, I stood still, till I heard her say in the soft and
+      appealing tones of love:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, Constant; you have heavy duties for to-morrow, and you should
+      get a few hours&rsquo; rest if possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He came from the shadow of the pillar, and for one minute I saw his face
+      with the lamplight shining full upon it. It was as regular of feature as a
+      sculptured Adonis, and it was as white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleep!&rdquo; he repeated, in the measured tones of deep but suppressed
+      feeling. &ldquo;Sleep! with murder on the other side of the wall!&rdquo; And he
+      stretched out his arms in a dazed way that insensibly accentuated the
+      horror I myself felt of the crime which had so lately taken place in the
+      room behind me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She, noting the movement, took one of the groping hands in her own and
+      drew him gently towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This way,&rdquo; she urged; and, guiding him into the house, she closed the
+      window and drew down the shades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have no excuse to offer for my curiosity, but the interest excited in me
+      by this totally irrelevant episode was so great that I did not leave the
+      neighbourhood till I had learned something of this remarkable couple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story told me was very simple. Dr. Zabriskie had not been born blind,
+      but had become so after a grievous illness which had stricken him down
+      soon after he received his diploma. Instead of succumbing to an affliction
+      which would have daunted most men, he expressed his intention of
+      practising his profession, and soon became so successful in it that he
+      found no difficulty in establishing himself in one of the best paying
+      quarters of the city. Indeed, his intuition seemed to have developed in a
+      remarkable degree after the loss of his sight, and he seldom, if ever,
+      made a mistake in diagnosis. Considering this fact, and the personal
+      attractions which gave him distinction, it was no wonder that he soon
+      became a popular physician whose presence was a benefaction and whose word
+      law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been engaged to be married at the time of his illness, and when he
+      learned what was likely to be its result, had offered to release the young
+      lady from all obligation to him. But she would not be released, and they
+      were married. This had taken place some five years previous to Mr.
+      Hasbrouck&rsquo;s death, three of which had been spent by them in Lafayette
+      Place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much for the beautiful woman next door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There being absolutely no clue to the assailant of Mr. Hasbrouck, I
+      naturally looked forward to the inquest for some evidence upon which to
+      work. But there seemed to be no underlying facts to this tragedy. The most
+      careful study into the habits and conduct of the deceased brought nothing
+      to light save his general beneficence and rectitude, nor was there in his
+      history or in that of his wife, any secret or hidden obligation calculated
+      to provoke any such act of revenge as murder. Mrs. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s surmise
+      that the intruder was simply a burglar, and that she had rather imagined
+      than heard the words which pointed to the shooting as a deed of vengeance,
+      soon gained general credence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though the police worked long and arduously in this new direction
+      their efforts were without fruit and the case bids fair to remain an
+      unsolvable mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all. As Violet dropped the last page from her hand, she recalled
+      a certain phrase in her employer&rsquo;s letter. &ldquo;If at the end you come upon a
+      perfectly blank wall&mdash;&rdquo; Well, she had come upon this wall. Did he
+      expect her to make an opening in it? Or had he already done so himself,
+      and was merely testing her much vaunted discernment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Piqued by the thought, she carefully reread the manuscript, and when she
+      had again reached its uncompromising end, she gave herself up to a few
+      minutes of concentrated thought, then, taking a sheet of paper from the
+      rack before her, she wrote upon it a single sentence, and folding the
+      sheet, put it in an envelope which she left unaddressed. This done, she
+      went to bed and slept like the child she really was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At an early hour the next morning she entered her employer&rsquo;s office.
+      Acknowledging with a nod his somewhat ceremonious bow, she handed him the
+      envelope in which she had enclosed that one mysterious sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took it with a smile, opened it offhand, glanced at what she had
+      written, and flushed a vivid red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a&mdash;brick,&rdquo; he was going to say, but changed the last word to
+      one more in keeping with her character and appearance. &ldquo;Look here. I
+      expected this from you and so prepared myself.&rdquo; Taking out a similar piece
+      of paper from his own pocket-book, he laid it down beside hers on the desk
+      before him. It also held a single sentence and, barring a slight
+      difference of expression, the one was the counterpart of the other. &ldquo;The
+      one loose stone,&rdquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seen and noted by both.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; he asked. Then as she glanced expectantly his way, he earnestly
+      added: &ldquo;Together we may be able to do something. The reward offered by
+      Mrs. Hasbrouck for the detection of the murderer was a very large one. She
+      is a woman of means. I have never heard of its being withdrawn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it never has been,&rdquo; was Violet&rsquo;s emphatic conclusion, her dimples
+      enforcing the statement as only such dimples can. &ldquo;But&mdash;what do you
+      want of me in an affair of this kind? Something more than to help you
+      locate the one possible clue to further enlightenment. You would not have
+      mentioned the big reward just for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not. There is a sequel to the story I sent you. I have written it
+      out, with my own hand. Take it home and read it at your leisure. When you
+      see into what an unhappy maze my own inquiries have led me, possibly you
+      will be glad to assist me in clearing up a situation which is inflicting
+      great suffering on one whom you will be the first to pity. If so, a line
+      mentioning the fact will be much appreciated by me.&rdquo; And disregarding her
+      startled look and the impetuous shaking of her head, he bowed her out with
+      something more than his accustomed suavity but also with a seriousness
+      which affected her in spite of herself and effectually held back the
+      protest it was in her heart to make. She was glad of this when she read
+      his story; but later on&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, it is not for me to intrude Violet, or Violet&rsquo;s feelings into an
+      affair which she is so anxious to forget. I shall therefore from this
+      moment on, leave her as completely out of this tale of crime and
+      retribution as is possible and keep a full record of her work. When she is
+      necessary to the story, you will see her again. Meanwhile, read with her,
+      this relation of her employer&rsquo;s unhappy attempt to pursue an investigation
+      so openly dropped by the police. You will perceive, from its general style
+      and the accentuation put upon the human side of this sombre story, a
+      likeness to the former manuscript which may prove to you, as it certainly
+      did to Violet, to whose consideration she was indebted for the
+      readableness of the policeman&rsquo;s report, which in all probability had been
+      a simple statement of facts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there, I am speaking of Violet again. To prevent a further mischance
+      of this nature, I will introduce at once the above mentioned account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man in all New York was ever more interested than myself in the
+      Hasbrouck affair, when it was the one and only topic of interest at a
+      period when news was unusually scarce. But, together with many such
+      inexplicable mysteries, it had passed almost completely from my mind, when
+      it was forcibly brought back, one day, by a walk I took through Lafayette
+      Place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sight of the long row of uniform buildings, with their pillared fronts
+      and connecting balconies every detail of the crime which had filled the
+      papers at the time with innumerable conjectures returned to me with
+      extraordinary clearness, and, before I knew it, I found myself standing
+      stockstill in the middle of the block with my eye raised to the Hasbrouck
+      house and my ears&mdash;or rather my inner consciousness, for no one spoke
+      I am sure&mdash;ringing with a question which, whether the echo of some
+      old thought or the expression of a new one, so affected me by the promise
+      it held of some hitherto unsuspected clue, that I hesitated whether to
+      push this new inquiry then or there by an attempted interview with Mrs.
+      Hasbrouck, or to wait till I had given it the thought which such a
+      stirring of dead bones rightfully demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You know what that question was. I shall have communicated it to you, if
+      you have not already guessed it, before perusing these lines:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who uttered the scream which gave the first alarm of Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s
+      violent death?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was in a state of such excitement as I walked away&mdash;for I listened
+      to my better judgment as to the inadvisability of my disturbing Mrs.
+      Hasbrouck with these new inquiries&mdash;that the perspiration stood out
+      on my forehead. The testimony she had given at the inquest recurred to me,
+      and I remembered as distinctly as if she were then speaking, that she had
+      expressly stated that she did not scream when confronted by the sight of
+      her husband&rsquo;s dead body. But someone had screamed and that very loudly.
+      Who was it, then? One of the maids, startled by the sudden summons from
+      below, or someone else&mdash;some involuntary witness of the crime, whose
+      testimony had been suppressed at the inquest, by fear or influence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The possibility of having come upon a clue even at this late day so fired
+      my ambition that I took the first opportunity of revisiting Lafayette
+      Place. Choosing such persons as I thought most open to my questions, I
+      learned that there were many who could testify to having heard a woman&rsquo;s
+      shrill scream on that memorable night, just prior to the alarm given by
+      old Cyrus, but no one who could tell from whose lips it had come. One
+      fact, however, was immediately settled. It had not been the result of the
+      servant-women&rsquo;s fears. Both of the girls were positive that they had
+      uttered no sound, nor had they themselves heard any till Cyrus rushed to
+      the window with his wild cries. As the scream, by whomever given, was
+      uttered before they descended the stairs, I was convinced by these
+      assurances that it had issued from one of the front windows, and not from
+      the rear of the house, where their own rooms lay. Could it be that it had
+      sprung from the adjoining dwelling, and that&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remembered who had lived there and was for ringing the bell at once.
+      But, missing the doctor&rsquo;s sign, I made inquiries and found that he had
+      moved from the block. However, a doctor is soon found, and in less than
+      fifteen, minutes I was at the door of his new home, where I asked, not for
+      him, but for Mrs. Zabriskie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It required some courage to do this, for I had taken particular notice of
+      the doctor&rsquo;s wife at the inquest, and her beauty, at that time, had worn
+      such an aspect of mingled sweetness and dignity that I hesitated to
+      encounter it under any circumstances likely to disturb its pure serenity.
+      But a clue once grasped cannot be lightly set aside by a true detective,
+      and it would have taken more than a woman&rsquo;s frowns to stop me at this
+      point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, it was not with frowns she received me, but with a display of
+      emotion for which I was even less prepared. I had sent up my card and I
+      saw it trembling in her hand as she entered the room. As she neared me,
+      she glanced at it, and with a show of gentle indifference which did not in
+      the least disguise her extreme anxiety, she courteously remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name is an unfamiliar one to me. But you told my maid that your
+      business was one of extreme importance, and so I have consented to see
+      you. What can an agent from a private detective office have to say to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Startled by this evidence of the existence of some hidden skeleton in her
+      own closet, I made an immediate attempt to reassure her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing which concerns you personally,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;I simply wish to ask you
+      a question in regard to a small matter connected with Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s
+      violent death in Lafayette Place, a couple of years ago. You were living
+      in the adjoining house at the time I believe, and it has occurred to me
+      that you might on that account be able to settle a point which has never
+      been fully cleared up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of showing the relief I expected, her pallor increased and her
+      fine eyes, which had been fixed curiously upon me, sank in confusion to
+      the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great heaven!&rdquo; thought I. &ldquo;She looks as if at one more word from me, she
+      would fall at my feet in a faint. What is this I have stumbled upon!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not see how you can have any question to ask me on that subject,&rdquo;
+       she began with an effort at composure which for some reason disturbed me
+      more than her previous open display of fear. &ldquo;Yet if you have,&rdquo; she
+      continued, with a rapid change of manner that touched my heart in spite of
+      myself, &ldquo;I shall, of course, do my best to answer you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There are women whose sweetest tones and most charming smiles only serve
+      to awaken distrust in men of my calling; but Mrs. Zabriskie was not of
+      this number. Her face was beautiful, but it was also candid in its
+      expression, and beneath the agitation which palpably disturbed her, I was
+      sure there lurked nothing either wicked or false. Yet I held fast by the
+      clue which I had grasped as it were in the dark, and without knowing
+      whither I was tending, much less whither I was leading her, I proceeded to
+      say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The question which I presume to put to you as the next door neighbour of
+      Mr. Hasbrouck is this: Who was the woman who on the night of that
+      gentleman&rsquo;s assassination screamed out so loudly that the whole
+      neighbourhood heard her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gasp she gave answered my question in a way she little realized, and
+      struck as I was by the impalpable links that had led me to the threshold
+      of this hitherto unsolvable mystery, I was about to press my advantage and
+      ask another question, when she quickly started forward and laid her hand
+      on my lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Astonished, I looked at her inquiringly, but her head was turned aside,
+      and her eyes, fixed upon the door, showed the greatest anxiety. Instantly
+      I realized what she feared. Her husband was entering the house, and she
+      dreaded lest his ears should catch a word of our conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not knowing what was in her mind, and unable to realize the importance of
+      the moment to her, I yet listened to the advance of her blind husband with
+      an almost painful interest. Would he enter the room where we were, or
+      would he pass immediately to his office in the rear? She seemed to wonder
+      too, and almost held her breath as he neared the door, paused, and stood
+      in the open doorway, with his ear turned towards us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for myself, I remained perfectly still, gazing at his face in mingled
+      surprise and apprehension. For besides its beauty, which was of a marked
+      order, as I have already observed, it had a touching expression which
+      irresistibly aroused both pity and interest in the spectator. This may
+      have been the result of his affliction, or it may have sprung from some
+      deeper cause; but, whatever its source, this look in his face produced a
+      strong impression upon me and interested me at once in his personality.
+      Would he enter; or would he pass on? Her look of silent appeal showed me
+      in which direction her wishes lay, but while I answered her glance by
+      complete silence, I was conscious in some indistinct way that the business
+      I had undertaken would be better furthered by his entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blind have often been said to possess a sixth sense in place of the
+      one they have lost. Though I am sure we made no noise, I soon perceived
+      that he was aware of our presence. Stepping hastily forward he said, in
+      the high and vibrating tone of restrained passion:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zulma, are you there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment I thought she did not mean to answer, but knowing doubtless
+      from experience the impossibility of deceiving him, she answered with a
+      cheerful assent, dropping her hand as she did so from before my lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He heard the slight rustle which accompanied the movement, and a look I
+      found it hard to comprehend flashed over his features, altering his
+      expression so completely that he seemed another man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have someone with you,&rdquo; he declared, advancing another step, but with
+      none of the uncertainty which usually accompanies the movements of the
+      blind. &ldquo;Some dear friend,&rdquo; he went on, with an almost sarcastic emphasis
+      and a forced smile that had little of gaiety in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The agitated and distressed blush which answered him could have but one
+      interpretation. He suspected that her hand had been clasped in mine, and
+      she perceived his thought and knew that I perceived it also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drawing herself up, she moved towards him, saying in a sweet womanly tone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is no friend, Constant, not even an acquaintance. The person whom I
+      now present to you is a representative from some detective agency. He is
+      here upon a trivial errand which will soon be finished, when I will join
+      you in the office.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew she was but taking a choice between two evils, that she would have
+      saved her husband the knowledge of my calling as well as of my presence in
+      the house, if her self-respect would have allowed it; but neither she nor
+      I anticipated the effect which this introduction of myself in my business
+      capacity would produce upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A detective,&rdquo; he repeated, staring with his sightless eyes, as if, in his
+      eagerness to see, he half hoped his lost sense would return. &ldquo;He can have
+      no trivial errand here; he has been sent by God Himself to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me speak for you,&rdquo; hastily interposed his wife, springing to his side
+      and clasping his arm with a fervour that was equally expressive of appeal
+      and command. Then turning to me, she explained: &ldquo;Since Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s
+      unaccountable death, my husband has been labouring under an hallucination
+      which I have only to mention, for you to recognize its perfect absurdity.
+      He thinks&mdash;oh! do not look like that, Constant; you know it is an
+      hallucination which must vanish the moment we drag it into broad daylight&mdash;that
+      he&mdash;he, the best man in all the world, was himself the assailant of
+      Mr. Hasbrouck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say nothing of the impossibility of this being so,&rdquo; she went on in a
+      fever of expostulation. &ldquo;He is blind, and could not have delivered such a
+      shot even if he had desired to; besides, he had no weapon. But the
+      inconsistency of the thing speaks for itself, and should assure him that
+      his mind is unbalanced and that he is merely suffering from a shock that
+      was greater than we realized. He is a physician and has had many such
+      instances in his own practice. Why, he was very much attached to Mr.
+      Hasbrouck! They were the best of friends, and though he insists that he
+      killed him, he cannot give any reason for the deed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At these words the doctor&rsquo;s face grew stern, and he spoke like an
+      automaton repeating some fearful lesson:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I killed him. I went to his room and deliberately shot him. I had nothing
+      against him, and my remorse is extreme. Arrest me and let me pay the
+      penalty of my crime. It is the only way in which I can obtain peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Shocked beyond all power of self-control by this repetition of what she
+      evidently considered the unhappy ravings of a madman, she let go his arm
+      and turned upon me in frenzy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Convince him!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Convince him by your questions that he never
+      could have done this fearful thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was labouring under great excitement myself, for as a private agent with
+      no official authority such as he evidently attributed to me in the
+      blindness of his passion, I felt the incongruity of my position in the
+      face of a matter of such tragic consequence. Besides, I agreed with her
+      that he was in a distempered state of mind, and I hardly knew how to deal
+      with one so fixed in his hallucination and with so much intelligence to
+      support it. But the emergency was great, for he was holding out his wrists
+      in the evident expectation of my taking him into instant custody; and the
+      sight was killing his wife, who had sunk on the floor between us, in
+      terror and anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say you killed Mr. Hasbrouck,&rdquo; I began. &ldquo;Where did you get your
+      pistol, and what did you do with it after you left his house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband had no pistol; never had any pistol,&rdquo; put in Mrs. Zabriskie,
+      with vehement assertion. &ldquo;If I had seen him with such a weapon&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I threw it away. When I left the house, I cast it as far from me as
+      possible, for I was frightened at what I had done, horribly frightened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No pistol was ever found,&rdquo; I answered with a smile, forgetting for the
+      moment that he could not see. &ldquo;If such an instrument had been found in the
+      street after a murder of such consequence, it certainly would have been
+      brought to the police.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget that a good pistol is valuable property,&rdquo; he went on stolidly.
+      &ldquo;Someone came along before the general alarm was given; and seeing such a
+      treasure lying on the sidewalk, picked it up and carried it off. Not being
+      an honest man, he preferred to keep it to drawing the attention of the
+      police upon himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hum, perhaps,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;but where did you get it. Surely you can tell
+      where you procured such a weapon, if, as your wife intimates, you did not
+      own one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bought it that selfsame night of a friend; a friend whom I will not
+      name, since he resides no longer in this country. I&mdash;&rdquo; He paused;
+      intense passion was in his face; he turned towards his wife, and a low cry
+      escaped him, which made her look up in fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not wish to go into any particulars,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;God forsook me and I
+      committed a horrible crime. When I am punished, perhaps peace will return
+      to me and happiness to her. I would not wish her to suffer too long or too
+      bitterly for my sin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Constant!&rdquo; What love was in the cry! It seemed to move him and turn his
+      thoughts for a moment into a different channel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor child!&rdquo; he murmured, stretching out his hands by an irresistible
+      impulse towards her. But the change was but momentary, and he was soon
+      again the stern and determined self-accuser. &ldquo;Are you going to take me
+      before a magistrate?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;If so, I have a few duties to perform
+      which you are welcome to witness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was too much; I felt that the time had come for me to disabuse his
+      mind of the impression he had unwittingly formed of me. I therefore said
+      as considerately as I could:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mistake my position, Dr. Zabriskie. Though a detective of some
+      experience, I have no connection with the police and no right to intrude
+      myself in a matter of such tragic importance. If, however, you are as
+      anxious as you say to subject yourself to police examination, I will
+      mention the same to the proper authorities, and leave them to take such
+      action as they think best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will be still more satisfactory to me,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;for though I have
+      many times contemplated giving myself up, I have still much to do before I
+      can leave my home and practice without injury to others. Good-day; when
+      you want me you will find me here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was gone, and the poor young wife was left crouching on the floor
+      alone. Pitying her shame and terror, I ventured to remark that it was not
+      an uncommon thing for a man to confess to a crime he had never committed,
+      and assured her that the matter would be inquired into very carefully
+      before any attempt was made upon his liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thanked me, and slowly rising, tried to regain her equanimity; but the
+      manner as well as the matter of her husband&rsquo;s self-condemnation was too
+      overwhelming in its nature for her to recover readily from her emotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have long dreaded this,&rdquo; she acknowledged. &ldquo;For months I have foreseen
+      that he would make some rash communication or insane avowal. If I had
+      dared, I would have consulted some physician about this hallucination of
+      his; but he was so sane on other points that I hesitated to give my
+      dreadful secret to the world. I kept hoping that time and his daily
+      pursuits would have their effect and restore him to himself. But his
+      illusion grows, and now I fear that nothing will ever convince him that he
+      did not commit the deed of which he accuses himself. If he were not blind
+      I would have more hope, but the blind have so much time for brooding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think he had better be indulged in his fancies for the present,&rdquo; I
+      ventured. &ldquo;If he is labouring under an illusion it might be dangerous to
+      cross him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If?&rdquo; she echoed in an indescribable tone of amazement and dread. &ldquo;Can you
+      for a moment harbour the idea that he has spoken the truth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madam,&rdquo; I returned, with something of the cynicism of my calling, &ldquo;what
+      caused you to give such an unearthly scream just before this murder was
+      made known to the neighbourhood?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared, paled, and finally began to tremble, not, as I now believe, at
+      the insinuation latent in my words, but at the doubts which my question
+      aroused in her own breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I?&rdquo; she asked; then with a burst of candour which seemed inseparable
+      from her nature, she continued: &ldquo;Why do I try to mislead you or deceive
+      myself? I did give a shriek just before the alarm was raised next door;
+      but it was not from any knowledge I had of a crime having been committed,
+      but because I unexpectedly saw before me my husband whom I supposed to be
+      on his way to Poughkeepsie. He was looking very pale and strange, and for
+      a moment I thought I stood face to face with his ghost. But he soon
+      explained his appearance by saying that he had fallen from the train and
+      had only been saved by a miracle from being dismembered; and I was just
+      bemoaning his mishap and trying to calm him and myself, when that terrible
+      shout was heard next door of &lsquo;Murder! murder!&rsquo; Coming so soon after the
+      shock he had himself experienced, it quite unnerved him, and I think we
+      can date his mental disturbance from that moment. For he began immediately
+      to take a morbid interest in the affair next door, though it was weeks, if
+      not months, before he let a word fall of the nature of those you have just
+      heard. Indeed it was not till I repeated to him some of the expressions he
+      was continually letting fall in his sleep, that he commenced to accuse
+      himself of crime and talk of retribution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that your husband frightened you on that night by appearing
+      suddenly at the door when you thought him on his way to Poughkeepsie. Is
+      Dr. Zabriskie in the habit of thus going and coming alone at an hour so
+      late as this must have been?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget that to the blind, night is less full of perils than the day.
+      Often and often has my husband found his way to his patients&rsquo; houses alone
+      after midnight; but on this especial evening he had Leonard with him.
+      Leonard was his chauffeur, and always accompanied him when he went any
+      distance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;all we have to do is to summon Leonard and hear
+      what he has to say concerning this affair. He will surely know whether or
+      not his master went into the house next door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leonard has left us,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Dr. Zabriskie has another chauffeur now.
+      Besides (I have nothing to conceal from you), Leonard was not with him
+      when he returned to the house that evening or the doctor would not have
+      been without his portmanteau till the next day. Something&mdash;I have
+      never known what&mdash;caused them to separate, and that is why I have no
+      answer to give the doctor when he accuses himself of committing a deed
+      that night so wholly out of keeping with every other act of his life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And have you never asked Leonard why they separated and why he allowed
+      his master to come home alone after the shock he had received at the
+      station?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not know there was any reason for my doing so till long after he
+      had left us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when did he leave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I do not remember. A few weeks or possibly a few days after that
+      dreadful night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where is he now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that I have not the least means of knowing. But,&rdquo; she objected, in
+      sudden distrust, &ldquo;what do you want of Leonard? If he did not follow Dr.
+      Zabriskie to his own door, he could tell us nothing that would convince my
+      husband that he is labouring under an illusion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he might tell us something which would convince us that Dr. Zabriskie
+      was not himself after the accident; that he&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; came from her lips in imperious tones. &ldquo;I will not believe that he
+      shot Mr. Hasbrouck even if you prove him to have been insane at the time.
+      How could he? My husband is blind. It would take a man of very keen sight
+      to force himself into a house closed for the night, and kill a man in the
+      dark at one shot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, it is only a blind man who could do this,&rdquo; cried a voice
+      from the doorway. &ldquo;Those who trust to eyesight must be able to catch a
+      glimpse of the mark they aim at, and this room, as I have been told, was
+      without a glimmer of light. But the blind trust to sound, and as Mr.
+      Hasbrouck spoke&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; burst from the horrified wife, &ldquo;is there no one to stop him when he
+      speaks like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As you will see, this matter, so recklessly entered into, had proved to be
+      of too serious a nature for me to pursue it farther without the cognizance
+      of the police. Having a friend on the force in whose discretion I could
+      rely, I took him into my confidence and asked for his advice. He
+      pooh-poohed the doctor&rsquo;s statements, but said that he would bring the
+      matter to the attention of the superintendent and let me know the result.
+      I agreed to this, and we parted with the mutual understanding that mum was
+      the word till some official decision had been arrived at. I had not long
+      to wait. At an early day he came in with the information that there had
+      been, as might be expected, a division of opinion among his superiors as
+      to the importance of Dr. Zabriskie&rsquo;s so-called confession, but in one
+      point they had been unanimous and that was the desirability of his
+      appearing before them at Headquarters for a personal examination. As,
+      however, in the mind of two out of three of them his condition was
+      attributed entirely to acute mania, it had been thought best to employ as
+      their emissary one in whom he had already confided and submitted his case
+      to,&mdash;in other words, myself. The time was set for the next afternoon
+      at the close of his usual office hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went without reluctance, his wife accompanying him. In the short time
+      which elapsed between their leaving home and entering Headquarters, I
+      embraced the opportunity of observing them, and I found the study equally
+      exciting and interesting. His face was calm but hopeless, and his eye,
+      dark and unfathomable, but neither frenzied nor uncertain. He spoke but
+      once and listened to nothing, though now and then his wife moved as if to
+      attract his attention, and once even stole her hand towards his, in the
+      tender hope that he would feel its approach and accept her sympathy. But
+      he was deaf as well as blind; and sat wrapped up in thoughts which she, I
+      know, would have given worlds to penetrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her countenance was not without its mystery also. She showed in every
+      lineament passionate concern and misery, and a deep tenderness from which
+      the element of fear was not absent. But she, as well as he, betrayed that
+      some misunderstanding deeper than any I had previously suspected drew its
+      intangible veil between them and made the near proximity in which they sat
+      at once a heart-piercing delight and an unspeakable pain. What was the
+      misunderstanding; and what was the character of the fear that modified her
+      every look of love in his direction? Her perfect indifference to my
+      presence proved that it was not connected with the position in which he
+      had placed himself towards the police by his voluntary confession of
+      crime, nor could I thus interpret the expression, of frantic question
+      which now and then contracted her features, as she raised her eyes towards
+      his sightless orbs, and strove to read in his firm set lips the meaning of
+      those assertions she could only ascribe to loss of reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stopping of the carriage seemed to awaken both from thoughts that
+      separated rather than united them. He turned his face in her direction,
+      and she stretching forth her hand, prepared to lead him from the carriage,
+      without any of that display of timidity which had previously been evident
+      in her manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As his guide she seemed to fear nothing; as his lover, everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is another and a deeper tragedy underlying the outward and obvious
+      one,&rdquo; was my inward conclusion, as I followed them into the presence of
+      the gentlemen awaiting them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Zabriskie&rsquo;s quiet appearance was in itself a shock to those who had
+      anticipated the feverish unrest of a madman; so was his speech, which was
+      calm, straightforward, and quietly determined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shot Mr. Hasbrouck,&rdquo; was his steady affirmation, given without any show
+      of frenzy or desperation. &ldquo;If you ask me why I did it, I cannot answer; if
+      you ask me how, I am ready to state all that I know concerning the
+      matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Dr. Zabriskie,&rdquo; interposed one of the inspectors, &ldquo;the why is the
+      most important thing for us to consider just now. If you really desire to
+      convince us that you committed this dreadful crime of killing a totally
+      inoffensive man, you should give us some reason for an act so opposed to
+      all your instincts and general conduct.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the doctor continued unmoved:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had no reason for murdering Mr. Hasbrouck. A hundred questions can
+      elicit no other reply; you had better keep to the how.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A deep-drawn breath from the wife answered the looks of the three
+      gentlemen to whom this suggestion was offered. &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; that breath
+      seemed to protest, &ldquo;that he is not in his right mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I began to waver in my own opinion, and yet the intuition which has served
+      me in cases seemingly as impenetrable as this bade me beware of following
+      the general judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask him to inform you how he got into the house,&rdquo; I whispered to
+      Inspector D&mdash;, who sat nearest me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately the inspector put the question which I had suggested:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By what means did you enter Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s house at so late an hour as
+      this murder occurred?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blind doctor&rsquo;s head fell forward on his breast, and he hesitated for
+      the first and only time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not believe me,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;but the door was ajar when I came to
+      it. Such things make crime easy; it is the only excuse I have to offer for
+      this dreadful deed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The front door of a respectable citizen&rsquo;s house ajar at half-past eleven
+      at night! It was a statement that fixed in all minds the conviction of the
+      speaker&rsquo;s irresponsibility. Mrs. Zabriskie&rsquo;s brow cleared, and her beauty
+      became for a moment dazzling as she held out her hands in irrepressible
+      relief towards those who were interrogating her husband. I alone kept my
+      impassibility. A possible explanation of this crime had flashed like
+      lightning across my mind; an explanation from which I inwardly recoiled,
+      even while I felt forced to consider it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Zabriskie,&rdquo; remarked the inspector formerly mentioned as friendly to
+      him, &ldquo;such old servants as those kept by Mr. Hasbrouck do not leave the
+      front door ajar at twelve o&rsquo;clock at night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet ajar it was,&rdquo; repeated the blind doctor, with quiet emphasis; &ldquo;and
+      finding it so, I went in. When I came out again, I closed it. Do you wish
+      me to swear to what I say? If so, I am ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What reply could they give? To see this splendid-looking man, hallowed by
+      an affliction so great that in itself it called forth the compassion of
+      the most indifferent, accusing himself of a cold-blooded crime, in tones
+      which sounded dispassionate because of the will forcing their utterance,
+      was too painful in itself for any one to indulge in unnecessary words.
+      Compassion took the place of curiosity, and each and all of us turned
+      involuntary looks of pity upon the young wife pressing so eagerly to his
+      side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a blind man,&rdquo; ventured one, &ldquo;the assault was both deft and certain.
+      Are you accustomed to Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s house, that you found your way with
+      so little difficulty to his bedroom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am accustomed&mdash;&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But here his wife broke in with irrepressible passion:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not accustomed to that house. He has never been beyond the first
+      floor. Why, why do you question him? Do you not see&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hand was on her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;You know my skill in moving about a house; how I
+      sometimes deceive those who do not know me into believing that I can see,
+      by the readiness with which I avoid obstacles and find my way even in
+      strange and untried scenes. Do not try to make them think I am not in my
+      right mind, or you will drive me into the very condition you attribute to
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face, rigid, cold, and set, looked like that of a mask. Hers, drawn
+      with horror and filled with question that was fast taking the form of
+      doubt, bespoke an awful tragedy from which more than one of us recoiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you shoot a man dead without seeing him?&rdquo; asked the Superintendent,
+      with painful effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me a pistol and I will show you,&rdquo; was the quick reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A low cry came from the wife. In a drawer near to every one of us there
+      lay a pistol, but no one moved to take it out. There was a look in the
+      doctor&rsquo;s eye which made us fear to trust him with a pistol just then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will accept your assurance that you possess a skill beyond that of
+      most men,&rdquo; returned the Superintendent. And beckoning me forward, he
+      whispered: &ldquo;This is a case for the doctors and not for the police. Remove
+      him quietly, and notify Dr. Southyard of what I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Dr. Zabriskie, who seemed to have an almost supernatural acuteness of
+      hearing, gave a violent start at this, and spoke up for the first time
+      with real passion in his voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, I pray you. I can bear anything but that. Remember, gentlemen,
+      that I am blind; that I cannot see who is about me; that my life would be
+      a torture if I felt myself surrounded by spies watching to catch some
+      evidence of madness in me. Rather conviction at once, death, dishonour,
+      and obloquy. These I have incurred. These I have brought upon myself by
+      crime, but not this worse fate&mdash;oh! not this worse fate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His passion was so intense and yet so confined within the bounds of
+      decorum, that we felt strangely impressed by it. Only the wife stood
+      transfixed, with the dread growing in her heart, till her white, waxen
+      visage seemed even more terrible to contemplate than his passion-distorted
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not strange that my wife thinks me demented,&rdquo; the doctor continued,
+      as if afraid of the silence that answered him. &ldquo;But it is your business to
+      discriminate, and you should know a sane man when you see him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Inspector D&mdash;&mdash; no longer hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;give me the least proof that your assertions are
+      true, and we will lay your case before the prosecuting attorney.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Proof? Is not a man&rsquo;s word&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No man&rsquo;s confession is worth much without some evidence to support it. In
+      your case there is none. You cannot even produce the pistol with which you
+      assert yourself to have committed the deed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True, true. I was frightened by what I had done, and the instinct of
+      self-preservation led me to rid myself of the weapon in any way I could.
+      But someone found this pistol; someone picked it up from the sidewalk of
+      Lafayette Place on that fatal night. Advertise for it. Offer a reward. I
+      will give you the money.&rdquo; Suddenly he appeared to realize how all this
+      sounded. &ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;I know the story seems improbable; but it is
+      not the probable things that happen in this life, as, you should know, who
+      every day dig deep into the heart of human affairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Were these the ravings of insanity? I began to understand the wife&rsquo;s
+      terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bought the pistol,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;of&mdash;alas! I cannot tell you his
+      name. Everything is against me. I cannot adduce one proof; yet even she is
+      beginning to fear that my story is true. I know it by her silence, a
+      silence that yawns between us like a deep and unfathomable gulf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But at these words her voice rang out with passionate vehemence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, it is false! I will never believe that your hands have been
+      plunged in blood. You are my own pure-hearted Constant, cold, perhaps, and
+      stern, but with no guilt upon your conscience save in your own wild
+      imagination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zulma, you are no friend to me,&rdquo; he declared, pushing her gently aside.
+      &ldquo;Believe me innocent, but say nothing to lead these others to doubt my
+      word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she said no more, but her looks spoke volumes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The result was that he was not detained, though he prayed for instant
+      commitment. He seemed to dread his own home, and the surveillance to which
+      he instinctively knew he would henceforth be subjected. To see him shrink
+      from his wife&rsquo;s hand as she strove to lead him from the room was
+      sufficiently painful; but the feeling thus aroused was nothing to that
+      with which we observed the keen and agonized expectancy of his look as he
+      turned and listened for the steps of the officer who followed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From this time on I shall never know whether or not I am alone,&rdquo; was his
+      final observation as he left the building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is where the matter rests and here, Miss Strange, is where you come
+      in. The police were for sending an expert alienist into the house; but
+      agreeing with me, and, in fact, with the doctor himself, that if he were
+      not already out of his mind, this would certainly make them so, they, at
+      my earnest intercession, have left the next move to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That move as you must by this time understand involves you. You have
+      advantages for making Mrs. Zabriskie&rsquo;s acquaintance of which I beg you to
+      avail yourself. As friend or patient, you must win your way into that
+      home? You must sound to its depths one or both of these two wretched
+      hearts. Not so much now for any possible reward which may follow the
+      elucidation of this mystery which has come so near being shelved, but for
+      pity&rsquo;s sake and the possible settlement of a question which is fast
+      driving a lovely member of your sex distracted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      May I rely on you? If so&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Various instructions followed, over which Violet mused with a deprecatory
+      shaking of her head till the little clock struck two. Why should she,
+      already in a state of secret despondency, intrude herself into an affair
+      at once so painful and so hopeless?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But by morning her mood changed. The pathos of the situation had seized
+      upon her in her dreams, and before the day was over, she was to be seen,
+      as a prospective patient, in Dr. Zabriskie&rsquo;s office. She had a slight
+      complaint as her excuse, and she made the most of it. That is, at first,
+      but as the personality of this extraordinary man began to make its usual
+      impression, she found herself forgetting her own condition in the
+      intensity of interest she felt in his. Indeed, she had to pull herself
+      together more than once lest he should suspect the double nature of her
+      errand, and she actually caught herself at times rejoicing in his
+      affliction since it left her with only her voice to think of, in her hated
+      but necessary task of deception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That she succeeded in this effort, even with one of his nice ear, was
+      evident from the interested way in which he dilated upon her malady, and
+      the minute instructions he was careful to give her&mdash;the physician
+      being always uppermost in his strange dual nature, when he was in his
+      office or at the bedside of the sick;&mdash;and had she not been a deep
+      reader of the human soul she would have left his presence in simple wonder
+      at his skill and entire absorption in an exacting profession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as it was, she carried with her an image of subdued suffering, which
+      drove her, from that moment on, to ask herself what she could do to aid
+      him in his fight against his own illusion; for to associate such a man
+      with a senseless and cruel murder was preposterous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What this wish, helped by no common determination, led her into, it was
+      not in her mind to conceive. She was making her one great mistake, but as
+      yet she was in happy ignorance of it, and pursued the course laid out for
+      her without a doubt of the ultimate result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having seen and made up her mind about the husband, she next sought to see
+      and gauge the wife. That she succeeded in doing this by means of one of
+      her sly little tricks is not to the point; but what followed in natural
+      consequence is very much so. A mutual interest sprang up between them
+      which led very speedily to actual friendship. Mrs. Zabriskie&rsquo;s hungry
+      heart opened to the sympathetic little being who clung to her in such
+      evident admiration; while Violet, brought face to face with a real woman,
+      succumbed to feelings which made it no imposition on her part to spend
+      much of her leisure in Zulma Zabriskie&rsquo;s company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The result were the following naive reports which drifted into her
+      employer&rsquo;s office from day to day, as this intimacy deepened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor is settling into a deep melancholy, from which he tries to rise
+      at times, but with only indifferent success. Yesterday he rode around to
+      all his patients for the purpose of withdrawing his services on the plea
+      of illness. But he still keeps his office open, and today I had the
+      opportunity of witnessing his reception and treatment of the many
+      sufferers who came to him for aid. I think he was conscious of my
+      presence, though an attempt had been made to conceal it. For the listening
+      look never left his face from the moment he entered the room, and once he
+      rose and passed quickly from wall to wall, groping with out-stretched
+      hands into every nook and corner, and barely escaping contact with the
+      curtain behind which I was hidden. But if he suspected my presence, he
+      showed no displeasure at it, wishing perhaps for a witness to his skill in
+      the treatment of disease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And truly I never beheld a finer manifestation of practical insight in
+      cases of a more or less baffling nature. He is certainly a most wonderful
+      physician, and I feel bound to record that his mind is as clear for
+      business as if no shadow had fallen upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Zabriskie loves his wife, but in a way torturing to himself and to
+      her. If she is gone from the house he is wretched, and yet when she
+      returns he often forbears to speak to her, or if he does speak it is with
+      a constraint that hurts her more than his silence. I was present when she
+      came in today. Her step, which had been eager on the stairway, flagged as
+      she approached the room, and he naturally noted the change and gave his
+      own interpretation to it. His face, which had been very pale, flushed
+      suddenly, and a nervous trembling seized him which he sought in vain to
+      hide. But by the time her tall and beautiful figure stood in the doorway,
+      he was his usual self again in all but the expression of his eyes, which
+      stared straight before him in an agony of longing only to be observed in
+      those who have once seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where have you been, Zulma?&rdquo; he asked, as contrary to his wont, he moved
+      to meet her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To my mother&rsquo;s, to Arnold &amp; Constable&rsquo;s, and to the hospital, as you
+      requested,&rdquo; was her quick answer, made without faltering or embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped still nearer and took her hand, and as he did so my eye fell on
+      his and I noted that his finger lay over her pulse in seeming
+      unconsciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nowhere else?&rdquo; he queried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled the saddest kind of smile and shook her head; then, remembering
+      that he could not see this movement, she cried in a wistful tone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nowhere else, Constant; I was too anxious to get back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I expected him to drop her hand at this, but he did not; and his finger
+      still rested on her pulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And whom did you see while you were gone?&rdquo; he continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She told him, naming over several names.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have enjoyed yourself,&rdquo; was his cold comment, as he let go her
+      hand and turned away. But his manner showed relief, and I could not but
+      sympathize with the pitiable situation of a man who found himself forced
+      into means like this for probing the heart of his young wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet when I turned towards her, I realized that her position was but little
+      happier than his. Tears are no strangers to her eyes, but those which
+      welled up at this moment seemed to possess a bitterness that promised but
+      little peace for her future. Yet she quickly dried them and busied herself
+      with ministrations for his comfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I am any judge of woman, Zulma Zabriskie is superior to most of her
+      sex. That her husband mistrusts her is evident, but whether this is the
+      result of the stand she has taken in his regard, or only a manifestation
+      of dementia, I have as yet been unable to determine. I dread to leave them
+      alone together, and yet when I presume to suggest that she should be on
+      her guard in her interviews with him, she smiles very placidly and tells
+      me that nothing would give her greater joy than to see him lift his hand
+      against her, for that would argue that he is not accountable for his deeds
+      or assertions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet it would be a grief to see her injured by this passionate and unhappy
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You have said that you wanted all the details I could give; so I feel
+      bound to say that Dr. Zabriskie tries to be considerate of his wife,
+      though he often fails in the attempt. When she offers herself as his
+      guide, or assists him with his mail or performs any of the many acts of
+      kindness by which she continually manifests her sense of his affliction,
+      he thanks her with courtesy and often with kindness, yet I know she would
+      willingly exchange all his set phrases for one fond embrace or impulsive
+      smile of affection. It would be too much to say that he is not in the full
+      possession of his faculties, and yet upon what other hypothesis can we
+      account for the inconsistencies of his conduct?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have before me two visions of mental suffering. At noon I passed the
+      office door, and looking within, saw the figure of Dr. Zabriskie seated in
+      his great chair, lost in thought or deep in those memories which make an
+      abyss in one&rsquo;s consciousness. His hands, which were clenched, rested upon
+      the arms of his chair, and in one of them I detected a woman&rsquo;s glove,
+      which I had no difficulty in recognizing as one of the pair worn by his
+      wife this morning. He held it as a tiger might hold his prey or a miser
+      his gold, but his set features and sightless eyes betrayed that a conflict
+      of emotions was being waged within him, among which tenderness had but
+      little share.
+</p>
+    <p>
+Though alive as he usually is to every sound, he was too
+      absorbed at this moment to notice my presence, though I had taken no pains
+      to approach quietly. I therefore stood for a full minute watching him,
+      till an irresistible sense of the shame at thus spying upon a blind man in
+      his moments of secret anguish compelled me to withdraw. But not before I
+      saw his features relax in a storm of passionate feeling, as he rained
+      kisses after kisses on the senseless kid he had so long held in his
+      motionless grasp. Yet when an hour later he entered the dining-room on his
+      wife&rsquo;s arm, there was nothing in his manner to show that he had in any way
+      changed in his attitude towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other picture was more tragic still. I was seeking Mrs. Zabriskie in
+      her own room, when I caught a fleeting vision of her tall form, with her
+      arms thrown up over her head in a paroxysm of feeling which made her as
+      oblivious to my presence as her husband had been several hours before.
+      Were the words that escaped her lips &ldquo;Thank God we have no children!&rdquo; or
+      was this exclamation suggested to me by the passion and unrestrained
+      impulse of her action?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much up to date. Interesting enough, or so her employer seemed to
+      think, as he went hurriedly through the whole story, one special afternoon
+      in his office, tapping each sheet as he laid it aside with his sagacious
+      forefinger, as though he would say, &ldquo;Enough! My theory still holds good;
+      nothing contradictory here; on the contrary complete and undisputable
+      confirmation of the one and only explanation of this astounding crime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What was that theory; and in what way and through whose efforts had he
+      been enabled to form one? The following notes may enlighten us. Though
+      written in his own hand, and undoubtedly a memorandum of his own
+      activities, he evidently thinks it worth while to reperuse them in
+      connection with those he had just laid aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can do no better than read them also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We omit dates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Watched the Zabriskie mansion for five hours this morning, from the second
+      story window of an adjoining hotel. Saw the doctor when he drove away on
+      his round of visits, and saw him when he returned. A coloured man
+      accompanied him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Today I followed Mrs. Zabriskie. She went first to a house in Washington
+      Place where I am told her mother lives. Here she stayed some time, after
+      which she drove down to Canal Street, where she did some shopping, and
+      later stopped at the hospital, into which I took the liberty of following
+      her. She seemed to know many there, and passed from cot to cot with a
+      smile in which I alone discerned the sadness of a broken heart. When she
+      left, I left also, without having learned anything beyond the fact that
+      Mrs. Zabriskie is one who does her duty in sorrow as in joy. A rare, and
+      trustworthy woman I should say, and yet her husband does not trust her.
+      Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have spent this day in accumulating details in regard to Dr. and Mrs.
+      Zabriskie&rsquo;s life previous to the death of Mr. Hasbrouck. I learned from
+      sources it would be unwise to quote just here, that Mrs. Zabriskie had not
+      lacked enemies to charge her with coquetry; that while she had never
+      sacrificed her dignity in public, more than one person had been heard to
+      declare that Dr. Zabriskie was fortunate in being blind, since the sight
+      of his wife&rsquo;s beauty would have but poorly compensated him for the pain he
+      would have suffered in seeing how that beauty was admired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That all gossip is more or less tinged with exaggeration I have no doubt,
+      yet when a name is mentioned in connection with such stories, there is
+      usually some truth at the bottom of them. And a name is mentioned in this
+      case, though I do not think it worth my while to repeat it here; and loth
+      as I am to recognize the fact, it is a name that carries with it doubts
+      that might easily account for the husband&rsquo;s jealousy. True, I have found
+      no one who dares hint that she still continues to attract attention or to
+      bestow smiles in any direction save where they legally belong. For since a
+      certain memorable night which we all know, neither Dr. Zabriskie nor his
+      wife have been seen save in their own domestic circle, and it is not into
+      such scenes that this serpent, to whom I have just alluded, ever intrudes,
+      nor is it in places of sorrow or suffering that his smile shines, or his
+      fascinations flourish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so one portion of my theory is proved to be sound. Dr. Zabriskie is
+      jealous of his wife; whether with good cause or bad I am not prepared to
+      decide; since her present attitude, clouded as it is by the tragedy in
+      which she and her husband are both involved, must differ very much from
+      that which she held when her life was unshadowed by doubt, and her
+      admirers could be counted by the score.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have just found out where Leonard is. As he is in service some miles up
+      the river, I shall have to be absent from my post for several hours, but I
+      consider the game well worth the candle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Light at last. I have not only seen Leonard, but succeeded in making him
+      talk. His story is substantially this: That on the night so often
+      mentioned, he packed his master&rsquo;s portmanteau at eight o&rsquo;clock and at ten
+      called a taxi and rode with the doctor to the Central station. He was told
+      to buy tickets to Poughkeepsie where his master had been called in
+      consultation, and having done this, hurried back to join Dr. Zabriskie on
+      the platform. They had walked together as far as the cars, and Dr.
+      Zabriskie was just stepping on to the train, when a man pushed himself
+      hurriedly between them and whispered something into his master&rsquo;s ear,
+      which caused him to fall back and lose his footing. Dr. Zabriskie&rsquo;s body
+      slid half under the car, but he was withdrawn before any harm was done,
+      though the cars gave a lurch at that moment which must have frightened him
+      exceedingly, for his face was white when he rose to his feet, and when
+      Leonard offered to assist him again on the train, he refused to go and
+      said he would return home and not attempt to ride to Poughkeepsie that
+      night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentleman, whom Leonard now saw to be Mr. Stanton, an intimate friend
+      of Dr. Zabriskie, smiled very queerly at this, and taking the doctor&rsquo;s arm
+      led him back to his own auto. Leonard naturally followed them, but the
+      doctor, hearing his steps, turned and bade him, in a very peremptory tone,
+      to take the cars home, and then, as if on second thought, told him to go
+      to Poughkeepsie in his stead and explain to the people there that he was
+      too shaken up by his misstep to do his duty, and that he would be with
+      them next morning. This seemed strange to Leonard, but he had no reasons
+      for disobeying his master&rsquo;s orders, and so rode to Poughkeepsie. But the
+      doctor did not follow him the next day; on the contrary he telegraphed for
+      him to return, and when he got back dismissed him with a month&rsquo;s wages.
+      This ended Leonard&rsquo;s connection with the Zabriskie family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A simple story bearing out what the wife has already told us; but it
+      furnishes a link which may prove invaluable. Mr. Stanton, whose first name
+      is Theodore, knows the real reason why Dr. Zabriskie returned home on the
+      night of the seventeenth of July, 19&mdash;. Mr. Stanton, consequently, is
+      the man to see, and this shall be my business tomorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Checkmate! Theodore Stanton is not in this country. Though this points him
+      out as the man from whom Dr. Zabriskie bought the pistol, it does not
+      facilitate my work, which is becoming more and more difficult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Stanton&rsquo;s whereabouts are not even known to his most intimate friends.
+      He sailed from this country most unexpectedly on the eighteenth of July a
+      year ago, which was the day after the murder of Mr. Hasbrouck. It looks
+      like a flight, especially as he has failed to maintain open communication
+      even with his relatives. Was he the man who shot Mr. Hasbrouck? No; but he
+      was the man who put the pistol in Dr. Zabriskie&rsquo;s hand that night, and
+      whether he did this with purpose or not, was evidently so alarmed at the
+      catastrophe which followed that he took the first outgoing steamer to
+      Europe. So far, all is clear, but there are mysteries yet to be solved,
+      which will require my utmost tact. What if I should seek out the gentleman
+      with whose name that of Mrs. Zabriskie has been linked, and see if I can
+      in any way connect him with Mr. Stanton or the events of that night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eureka! I have discovered that Mr. Stanton cherished a mortal hatred for
+      the gentleman above mentioned. It was a covert feeling, but no less deadly
+      on that account; and while it never led him into any extravagances, it was
+      of force sufficient to account for many a secret misfortune occurring to
+      that gentleman. Now if I can prove that he is the Mephistopheles who
+      whispered insinuations into the ear of our blind Faust, I may strike a
+      fact that will lead me out of this maze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But how can I approach secrets so delicate without compromising the woman
+      I feel bound to respect if only for the devoted love she manifests for her
+      unhappy husband!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall have to appeal to Joe Smithers. This is something which I always
+      hate to do, but as long as he will take money, and as long as he is
+      fertile in resources for obtaining the truth from people I am myself
+      unable to reach, I must make use of his cupidity and his genius. He is an
+      honourable fellow in one way, and never retails as gossip what he acquires
+      for our use. How will he proceed in this case, and by what tactics will he
+      gain the very delicate information which we need? I own that I am curious
+      to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall really have to put down at length the incidents of this night. I
+      always knew that Joe Smithers was invaluable not only to myself but to the
+      police, but I really did not know he possessed talents of so high an
+      order. He wrote me this morning that he had succeeded in getting Mr. T&mdash;&lsquo;s
+      promise to spend the evening with him, and advised me that if I desired to
+      be present as well, his own servant would not be at home, and that an
+      opener of bottles would be required.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I was very anxious to see Mr. T&mdash;&mdash; with my own eyes, I
+      accepted this invitation to play the spy, and went at the proper hour to
+      Mr. Smithers&rsquo;s rooms. I found them picturesque in the extreme. Piles of
+      books stacked here and there to the ceiling made nooks and corners which
+      could be quite shut off by a couple of old pictures set into movable
+      frames capable of swinging out or in at the whim or convenience of the
+      owner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I had use for the dark shadows cast by these pictures, I pulled them
+      both out, and made such other arrangements as appeared likely to
+      facilitate the purpose I had in view; then I sat down and waited for the
+      two gentlemen who were expected to come in together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They arrived almost immediately, whereupon I rose and played my part with
+      all necessary discretion. While ridding Mr. T&mdash;&mdash; of his
+      overcoat, I stole a look at his face. It is not a handsome one, but it
+      boasts of a gay, devil-may-care expression which doubtless makes it
+      dangerous to many women, while his manners are especially attractive, and
+      his voice the richest and most persuasive that I ever heard. I contrasted
+      him, almost against my will, with Dr. Zabriskie, and decided that with
+      most women the former&rsquo;s undoubted fascinations of speech and bearing would
+      outweigh the latter&rsquo;s great beauty and mental endowments; but I doubted if
+      they would with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conversation which immediately began was brilliant but desultory, for
+      Mr. Smithers, with an airy lightness for which he is remarkable,
+      introduced topic after topic, perhaps for the purpose of showing off Mr.
+      T-&rsquo;s versatility, and perhaps for the deeper and more sinister purpose of
+      shaking the kaleidoscope of talk so thoroughly, that the real topic which
+      we were met to discuss should not make an undue impression on the mind of
+      his guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile one, two, three bottles passed, and I had the pleasure of seeing
+      Joe Smithers&rsquo;s eye grow calmer and that of Mr. T&mdash;&mdash; more
+      brilliant and more uncertain. As the last bottle was being passed, Joe
+      cast me a meaning glance, and the real business of the evening began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall not attempt to relate the half dozen failures which Joe made in
+      endeavouring to elicit the facts we were in search of, without arousing
+      the suspicion of his visitor. I am only going to relate the successful
+      attempt. They had been talking now for some hours, and I, who had long
+      before been waved aside from their immediate presence, was hiding my
+      curiosity and growing excitement behind one of the pictures, when I
+      suddenly heard Joe say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has the most remarkable memory I ever met. He can tell to a day when
+      any notable event occurred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw!&rdquo; answered his companion, who, by the way, was known to pride
+      himself upon his own memory for dates, &ldquo;I can state where I went and what
+      I did on every day in the year. That may not embrace what you call
+      &lsquo;notable events,&rsquo; but the memory required is all the more remarkable, is
+      it not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh!&rdquo; was his friend&rsquo;s provoking reply, &ldquo;you are bluffing, Ben; I will
+      never believe that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. T-, who had passed by this time into that stage of intoxication which
+      makes persistence in an assertion a duty as well as a pleasure, threw back
+      his head, and as the wreaths of smoke rose in airy spirals from his lips,
+      reiterated his statement, and offered to submit to any test of his vaunted
+      powers which the other might dictate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You keep a diary&mdash;&rdquo; began Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which at the present moment is at home,&rdquo; completed the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you allow me to refer to it tomorrow, if I am suspicious of the
+      accuracy of your recollections?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Undoubtedly,&rdquo; returned the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then, I will wager you a cool fifty that you cannot tell where
+      you were between the hours of ten and eleven on a certain night which I
+      will name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Done!&rdquo; cried the other, bringing out his pocket-book and laying it on the
+      table before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe followed his example and then summoned me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Write a date down here,&rdquo; he commanded, pushing a piece of paper towards
+      me, with a look keen as the flash of a blade. &ldquo;Any date, man,&rdquo; he added,
+      as I appeared to hesitate in the embarrassment I thought natural under the
+      circumstances. &ldquo;Put down day, month, and year, only don&rsquo;t go too far back;
+      not farther than two years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Smiling with the air of a flunkey admitted to the sports of his superiors,
+      I wrote a line and laid it before Mr. Smithers, who at once pushed it with
+      a careless gesture towards his companion. You can of course guess the date
+      I made use of: July 17, 19&mdash;. Mr. T&mdash;, who had evidently looked
+      upon this matter as mere play, flushed scarlet as he read these words, and
+      for one instant looked as if he had rather fly the house than answer Joe
+      Smithers&rsquo;s nonchalant glance of inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have given my word and will keep it,&rdquo; he said at last, but with a look
+      in my direction that sent me reluctantly back to my retreat. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      suppose you want names,&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;that is, if anything I have to tell
+      is of a delicate nature?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; answered the other, &ldquo;only facts and places.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think places are necessary either,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;I will tell you
+      what I did and that must serve you. I did not promise to give number and
+      street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; Joe exclaimed; &ldquo;earn your fifty, that is all. Show that you
+      remember where you were on the night of&rdquo;&mdash;and with an admirable show
+      of indifference he pretended to consult the paper between them&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      seventeenth of July, two years ago, and I shall be satisfied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was at the club for one thing,&rdquo; said Mr. T-; &ldquo;then I went to see a lady
+      friend, where I stayed until eleven. She wore a blue muslin&mdash;What is
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had betrayed myself by a quick movement which sent a glass tumbler
+      crashing to the floor. Zulma Zabriskie had worn a blue muslin on that same
+      night. You will find it noted in the report given me by the policeman who
+      saw her on their balcony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That noise?&rdquo; It was Joe who was speaking. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know Reuben as well
+      as I do or you wouldn&rsquo;t ask. It is his practice, I am sorry to say, to
+      accentuate his pleasure in draining my bottles by dropping a glass at
+      every third one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. T&mdash;&mdash; went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was a married woman and I thought she loved me; but&mdash;and this is
+      the greatest proof I can offer you that I am giving you a true account of
+      that night&mdash;she had not the slightest idea of the extent of my
+      passion, and only consented to see me at all because she thought, poor
+      thing, that a word from her would set me straight, and rid her of
+      attentions she evidently failed to appreciate. A sorry figure for a fellow
+      like me to cut; but you caught me on the most detestable date in my
+      calendar and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There he ceased being interesting and I anxious. The secret of a crime for
+      which there seemed to be no reasonable explanation is no longer a mystery
+      to me. I have but to warn Miss Strange&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had got thus far when a sound in the room behind him led him to look
+      up. A lady had entered; a lady heavily veiled and trembling with what
+      appeared to be an intense excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought he knew the figure, but the person, whoever it was, stood so
+      still and remained so silent, he hesitated to address her; which seeing,
+      she pushed up her veil and all doubt vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Violet herself. In disregard of her usual practice she had come
+      alone to the office. This meant urgency of some kind. Had she too sounded
+      this mystery? No, or her aspect would not have worn this look of triumph.
+      What had happened then? He made an instant endeavour to find out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have news,&rdquo; he quietly remarked. &ldquo;Good news, I should judge, by your
+      very cheery smile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I think I have found the way of bringing Dr. Zabriskie to himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Astonished beyond measure, so little did these words harmonize with the
+      impressions and conclusions at which he had just arrived, something very
+      like doubt spoke in his voice as he answered with the simple exclamation:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. He is obsessed by a fixed idea, and must be given an opportunity to
+      test the truth of that idea. The shock of finding it a false one may
+      restore him to his normal condition. He believes that he shot Mr.
+      Hasbrouck with no other guidance than his sense of hearing. Now if it can
+      be proved that his hearing is an insufficient guide for such an act (as of
+      course it is) the shock of the discovery may clear his brain of its
+      cobwebs. Mrs. Zabriskie thinks so, and the police&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s that? The police?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Dr. Zabriskie would be taken before them again this morning. No
+      entreaties on the part of his wife would prevail; he insisted upon his
+      guilt and asked her to accompany him there; and the poor woman found
+      herself forced to go. Of course he encountered again the same division of
+      opinion among the men he talked with. Three out of the four judged him
+      insane, which observing, he betrayed great agitation and reiterated his
+      former wish to be allowed an opportunity to prove his sanity by showing
+      his skill in shooting. This made an impression; and a disposition was
+      shown to grant his request then and there. But Mrs. Zabriskie would not
+      listen to this. She approved of the experiment but begged that it might be
+      deferred till another day and then take place in some spot remote from the
+      city. For some reason they heeded her, and she has just telephoned me that
+      this attempt of his is to take place tomorrow in the New Jersey woods. I
+      am sorry that this should have been put through without you; and when I
+      tell you that the idea originated with me&mdash;that from some word I
+      purposely let fall one day, they both conceived this plan of ending the
+      uncertainty that was devouring their lives, you will understand my
+      excitement and the need I have of your support. Tell me that I have done
+      well. Do not show me such a face&mdash;you frighten me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not wish to frighten you. I merely wish to know just who are going
+      on this expedition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some members of the police, Dr. Zabriskie, his wife, and&mdash;and
+      myself. She begged&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why? The affair is to be kept secret. The doctor will shoot, fail&mdash;Oh!&rdquo;
+       she suddenly broke in, alarmed by his expression, &ldquo;you think he will not
+      fail&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that you had better heed my advice and stay out of it. The affair
+      is now in the hands of the police, and your place is anywhere but where
+      they are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I go as her particular friend. They have given her the privilege of
+      taking with her one of her own sex and she has chosen me. I shall not fail
+      her. Father is away, and if the awful disappointment you suggest awaits
+      her, there is all the more reason why she should have some sympathetic
+      support?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was so true, that the fresh protest he was about to utter died on his
+      lips. Instead, he simply remarked as he bowed her out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I foresee that we shall not work much longer together. You are nearing
+      the end of your endurance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He never forgot the smile she threw back at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are some events which impress the human mind so deeply that their
+      memory mingles with all after-experiences. Though Violet had made it a
+      rule to forget as soon as possible the tragic episodes incident to the
+      strange career upon which she had so mysteriously embarked, there was
+      destined to be one scene, if not more, which she has never been able to
+      dismiss at will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the sight which met her eyes from the bow of the small boat in
+      which Dr. Zabriskie and his wife were rowed over to Jersey on the
+      afternoon which saw the end of this most sombre drama.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though it was by no means late in the day, the sun was already sinking,
+      and the bright red glare which filled the west and shone full upon the
+      faces of the half dozen people before her added much to the tragic nature
+      of the scene, though she was far from comprehending its full significance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor sat with his wife in the stern and it was upon their faces
+      Violet&rsquo;s glance was fixed. The glare shone luridly on his sightless
+      eyeballs, and as she noticed his unwinking lids, she realized as never
+      before what it was to be blind in the midst of sunshine. His wife&rsquo;s eyes,
+      on the contrary, were lowered, but there was a look of hopeless misery in
+      her colourless face which made her appearance infinitely pathetic, and
+      Violet felt confident that if he could only have seen her, he would not
+      have maintained the cold and unresponsive manner which chilled the words
+      on his poor wife&rsquo;s lips and made all advance on her part impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the seat in front of them sat an inspector and from some quarter,
+      possibly from under the inspector&rsquo;s coat, there came the monotonous
+      ticking of the small clock, which was to serve as a target for the blind
+      man&rsquo;s aim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This ticking was all Violet heard, though the river was alive with traffic
+      and large and small boats were steaming by them on every side. And I am
+      sure it was all that Mrs. Zabriskie heard also, as with hand pressed to
+      her heart, and eyes fixed on the opposite shore, she waited for the event
+      which was to determine whether the man she loved was a criminal or only a
+      being afflicted of God and worthy of her unceasing care and devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the sun cast its last scarlet gleam over the water, the boat grounded,
+      and Violet was enabled to have one passing word with Mrs. Zabriskie. She
+      hardly knew what she said but the look she received in return was like
+      that of a frightened child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was always to be seen in Mrs. Zabriskie&rsquo;s countenance this
+      characteristic blending of the severe and the childlike, and beyond an
+      added pang of pity for this beautiful but afflicted woman, Violet let the
+      moment pass without giving it the weight it perhaps demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The doctor and his wife had a long talk last night,&rdquo; was whispered in her
+      ear as she wound her way with the rest into the heart of the woods. With a
+      start she turned and perceived her employer following close behind her. He
+      had come by another boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it did not seem to heal whatever breach lies between them,&rdquo; he
+      proceeded. Then, in a quick, anxious tone, he whispered: &ldquo;Whatever
+      happens, do not lift your veil. I thought I saw a reporter skulking in the
+      rear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will be careful,&rdquo; Violet assured him, and could say no more, as they
+      had already reached the ground which had been selected for this trial at
+      arms, and the various members of the party were being placed in their
+      several positions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor, to whom light and darkness were alike, stood with his face
+      towards the western glow, and at his side were grouped the inspector and
+      the two physicians. On the arm of one of the latter hung Dr. Zabriskie&rsquo;s
+      overcoat, which he had taken off as soon as he reached the field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Zabriskie stood at the other end of the opening near a tall stump,
+      upon which it had been decided that the clock should be placed when the
+      moment came for the doctor to show his skill. She had been accorded the
+      privilege of setting the clock on this stump, and Violet saw it shining in
+      her hand as she paused for a moment to glance back at the circle of
+      gentlemen who were awaiting her movements. The hands of the clock stood at
+      five minutes to five, though Violet scarcely noted it at the time, for
+      Mrs. Zabriskie was passing her and had stopped to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he is not himself, he cannot be trusted. Watch him carefully and see
+      that he does no mischief to himself or others. Ask one of the inspectors
+      to stand at his right hand, and stop him if he does not handle his pistol
+      properly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet promised, and she passed on, setting the clock upon the stump and
+      immediately drawing back to a suitable distance at the right, where she
+      stood, wrapped in her long dark cloak. Her face shone ghastly white, even
+      in its environment of snow-covered boughs, and noting this, Violet wished
+      the minutes fewer between the present moment and the hour of five, at
+      which time he was to draw the trigger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Zabriskie,&rdquo; quoth the inspector, &ldquo;we have endeavoured to make this
+      trial a perfectly fair one. You are to have a shot at a small clock which
+      has been placed within a suitable distance, and which you are expected to
+      hit, guided only by the sound which it will make in striking the hour of
+      five. Are you satisfied with the arrangement?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly. Where is my wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the other side of the field some ten paces from the stump upon which
+      the clock is fixed.&rdquo; He bowed, and his face showed satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I expect the clock to strike soon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In less than five minutes,&rdquo; was the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let me have the pistol; I wish to become acquainted with its size
+      and weight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We glanced at each other, then across at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a gesture; it was one of acquiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately the inspector placed the weapon in the blind man&rsquo;s hand. It
+      was at once apparent that he understood the instrument, and Violet&rsquo;s hopes
+      which had been strong up to this moment, sank at his air of confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God I am blind this hour and cannot see her,&rdquo; fell from his lips,
+      then, before the echo of these words had died away, he raised his voice
+      and observed calmly enough, considering that he was about to prove himself
+      a criminal in order to save himself from being thought a madman:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let no one move. I must have my ears free for catching the first stroke
+      of the clock.&rdquo; And he raised the pistol before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moment of torturing suspense and deep, unbroken silence.
+      Violet&rsquo;s eyes were on him so she did not watch the clock, but she was
+      suddenly moved by some irresistible impulse to note how Mrs. Zabriskie was
+      bearing herself at this critical moment, and casting a hurried glance in
+      her direction she perceived her tall figure swaying from side to side, as
+      if under an intolerable strain of feeling. Her eyes were on the clock, the
+      hands of which seemed to creep with snail-like pace along the dial, when
+      unexpectedly, and a full minute before the minute hand had reached the
+      stroke of five, Violet caught a movement on her part, saw the flash of
+      something round and white show for an instant against the darkness of her
+      cloak, and was about to shriek warning to the doctor, when the shrill,
+      quick stroke of a clock rang out on the frosty air, followed by the ping
+      and flash of a pistol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sound of shattered glass, followed by a suppressed cry, told the
+      bystanders that the bullet had struck the mark, but before any one could
+      move, or they could rid their eyes of the smoke which the wind had blown
+      into their faces, there came another sound which made their hair stand on
+      end and sent the blood back in terror to their hearts. Another clock was
+      striking, which they now perceived was still standing upright on the stump
+      where Mrs. Zabriskie had placed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whence came the clock, then, which had struck before the time and been
+      shattered for its pains? One quick look told them. On the ground, ten
+      paces to the right, lay Zulma Zabriskie, a broken clock at her side, and
+      in her breast a bullet which was fast sapping the life from her sweet
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had to tell him, there was such pleading in her looks; and never will
+      any of the hearers forget the scream which rang from his lips as he
+      realized the truth. Breaking from their midst, he rushed forward, and fell
+      at her feet as if guided by some supernatural instinct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zulma,&rdquo; he shrieked, &ldquo;what is this? Were not my hands dyed deep enough in
+      blood that you should make me answerable for your life also?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes were closed but she opened them. Looking long and steadily at his
+      agonized face, she faltered forth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not you who have killed me; it is your crime. Had you been innocent
+      of Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s death your bullet would never have found my heart. Did
+      you think I could survive the proof that you had killed that good man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did it unwittingly. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; she commanded, with an awful look, which happily he could not see.
+      &ldquo;I had another motive. I wished to prove to you, even at the cost of my
+      life, that I loved you, had always loved you, and not&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now his turn to silence her. His hand crept to her lips, and his
+      despairing face turned itself blindly towards those about them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;leave us! Let me take a last farewell of my dying wife,
+      without listeners or spectators.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Consulting the eye of her employer who stood close beside her, and seeing
+      no hope in it, Violet fell slowly back. The others, followed, and the
+      doctor was left alone with his wife. From the distant position they took,
+      they saw her arms creep round his neck, saw her head fall confidingly on
+      his breast, then silence settled upon them, and upon all nature, the
+      gathering twilight deepening, till the last glow disappeared from the
+      heavens above and from the circle of leafless trees which enclosed this
+      tragedy from the outside world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at last there came a stir, and Dr. Zabriskie, rising up before them
+      with the dead body of his wife held closely to his breast, confronted them
+      with a countenance so rapturous that he looked like a man transfigured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will carry her to the boat,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Not another hand shall touch
+      her. She was my true wife, my true wife!&rdquo; And he towered into an attitude
+      of such dignity and passion that for a moment he took on heroic
+      proportions and they forgot that he had just proved himself to have
+      committed a cold-blooded and ghastly crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stars were shining when the party again took their seats in the boat;
+      and if the scene of their crossing to Jersey was impressive, what shall be
+      said of the return?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor, as before, sat in the stern, an awesome figure, upon which the
+      moon shone with a white radiance that seemed to lift his face out of the
+      surrounding darkness and set it like an image of frozen horror before
+      their eyes. Against his breast he held the form of his dead wife, and now
+      and then Violet saw him stoop as if he were listening for some token of
+      life from her set lips. Then he would lift himself again with hopelessness
+      stamped upon his features, only to lean forward in renewed hope that was
+      again destined to disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet had been so overcome by this tragic end to all her hopes, that her
+      employer had been allowed to enter the boat with her. Seated at her side
+      in the seat directly in front of the doctor, he watched with her these
+      simple tokens of a breaking heart, saying nothing till they reached
+      midstream, when true to his instincts for all his awe and compassion, he
+      suddenly bent towards him and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Zabriskie, the mystery of your crime is no longer a mystery to me.
+      Listen and see if I do not understand your temptation, and how you, a
+      conscientious and God-fearing man, came to slay your innocent neighbour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A friend of yours, or so he called himself, had for a long time filled
+      your ears with tales tending to make you suspicious of your wife and
+      jealous of a certain man whom I will not name. You knew that your friend
+      had a grudge against this man, and so for many months turned a deaf ear to
+      his insinuations. But finally some change which you detected in your
+      wife&rsquo;s bearing or conversation roused your own suspicions, and you began
+      to doubt her truth and to curse your blindness, which in a measure
+      rendered you helpless. The jealous fever grew and had risen to a high
+      point when one night&mdash;a memorable night&mdash;this friend met you
+      just as you were leaving town, and with cruel craft whispered in your ear
+      that the man you hated was even then with your wife and that if you would
+      return at once to your home you would find him in her company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The demon that lurks at the heart of all men, good or bad, thereupon took
+      complete possession of you, and you answered this false friend by saying
+      that you would not return without a pistol. Whereupon he offered to take
+      you to his house and give you his. You consented, and getting rid of your
+      servant by sending him to Poughkeepsie with your excuses, you entered your
+      friend&rsquo;s automobile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say you bought the pistol, and perhaps you did, but, however that may
+      be, you left his house with it in your pocket, and declining
+      companionship, walked home, arriving at the Colonnade a little before
+      midnight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ordinarily you have no difficulty in recognizing your own doorstep. But,
+      being in a heated frame of mind, you walked faster than usual and so
+      passed your own house and stopped at that of Mr. Hasbrouck, one door
+      beyond. As the entrances of these houses are all alike, there was but one
+      way by which you could have made yourself sure that you had reached your
+      own dwelling, and that was by feeling for the doctor&rsquo;s sign at the side of
+      the door. But you never thought of that. Absorbed in dreams of vengeance,
+      your sole impulse was to enter by the quickest means possible. Taking out
+      your night key, you thrust it into the lock. It fitted, but it took
+      strength to turn it, so much strength that the key was twisted and bent by
+      the effort. But this incident, which would have attracted your attention
+      at another time, was lost upon you at this moment. An entrance had been
+      effected, and you were in too excited a frame of mind to notice at what
+      cost, or to detect the small differences apparent in the atmosphere and
+      furnishings of the two houses, trifles which would have arrested your
+      attention under other circumstances, and made you pause before the upper
+      floor had been reached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was while going up the stairs that you took out your pistol, so that
+      by the time you arrived at the front room door you held it already drawn
+      and cocked in your hand. For, being blind, you feared escape on the part
+      of your victim, and so waited for nothing but the sound of a man&rsquo;s voice
+      before firing. When, therefore, the unfortunate Mr. Hasbrouck, roused by
+      this sudden intrusion, advanced with an exclamation of astonishment, you
+      pulled the trigger, and killed him on the spot. It must have been
+      immediately upon his fall that you recognized from some word he uttered,
+      or from some contact you may have had with your surroundings, that you
+      were in the wrong house and had killed the wrong man; for you cried out,
+      in evident remorse, &lsquo;God! what have I done!&rsquo; and fled without approaching
+      your victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Descending the stairs, you rushed from the house, closing the front door
+      behind you and regaining your own without being seen. But here you found
+      yourself baffled in your attempted escape, by two things. First, by the
+      pistol you still held in your hand, and secondly, by the fact that the key
+      upon which you depended for entering your own door was so twisted out of
+      shape that you knew it would be useless for you to attempt to use it. What
+      did you do in this emergency? You have already told us, though the story
+      seemed so improbable at the time, you found nobody to believe it but
+      myself. The pistol you flung far away from you down the pavement, from
+      which, by one of those rare chances which sometimes happen in this world,
+      it was presently picked up by some late passer-by of more or less doubtful
+      character. The door offered less of an obstacle than you had anticipated;
+      for when you turned again you found it, if I am not greatly mistaken,
+      ajar, left so, as we have reason to believe, by one who had gone out of it
+      but a few minutes before in a state which left him but little master of
+      his actions. It was this fact which provided you with an answer when you
+      were asked how you succeeded in getting into Mr. Hasbrouck&rsquo;s house after
+      the family had retired for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Astonished at the coincidence, but hailing with gladness the deliverance
+      which it offered, you went in and ascended at once into your wife&rsquo;s
+      presence; and it was from her lips, and not from those of Mrs. Hasbrouck,
+      that the cry arose which startled the neighbourhood and prepared men&rsquo;s
+      minds for the tragic words which were shouted a moment later from the next
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she who uttered the scream knew of no tragedy save that which was
+      taking place in her own breast. She had just repulsed a dastardly suitor,
+      and seeing you enter so unexpectedly in a state of unaccountable horror
+      and agitation, was naturally stricken with dismay, and thought she saw
+      your ghost, or what was worse, a possible avenger; while you, having
+      failed to kill the man you sought, and having killed a man you esteemed,
+      let no surprise on her part lure you into any dangerous self-betrayal. You
+      strove instead to soothe her, and even attempted to explain the excitement
+      under which you laboured, by an account of your narrow escape at the
+      station, till the sudden alarm from next door distracted her attention,
+      and sent both your thoughts and hers in a different direction. Not till
+      conscience had fully awakened and the horror of your act had had time to
+      tell upon your sensitive nature, did you breathe forth those vague
+      confessions, which, not being supported by the only explanations which
+      would have made them credible, led her, as well as the police, to consider
+      you affected in your mind. Your pride as a man and your consideration for
+      her as a woman kept you silent, but did not keep the worm from preying
+      upon your heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I not correct in my surmises, Dr. Zabriskie, and is not this the true
+      explanation of your crime?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a strange look, he lifted up his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;you will waken her. See how peacefully she sleeps! I
+      should not like to have her wakened now, she is so tired, and I&mdash;I
+      have not watched over her as I should.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Appalled at his gesture, his look, his tone, Violet drew back, and for a
+      few minutes no sound was to be heard but the steady dip-dip of the oars
+      and the lap-lap of the waters against the boat. Then there came a quick
+      uprising, the swaying before her of something dark and tall and
+      threatening, and before she could speak or move, or even stretch forth her
+      hands to stay him, the seat before her was empty and darkness had filled
+      the place where but an instant previous he had sat, a fearsome figure,
+      erect and rigid as a sphinx.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What little moonlight there was, only served to show a few rising bubbles,
+      marking the spot where the unfortunate man had sunk with his much-loved
+      burden. As the widening circles fled farther and farther out, the tide
+      drifted the boat away, and the spot was lost which had seen the
+      termination of one of earth&rsquo;s saddest tragedies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM VII <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM VIII. MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One more! just one more well paying affair, and I promise to stop; really
+      and truly to stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Puss, why one more? You have earned the amount you set for yourself,&mdash;or
+      very nearly,&mdash;and though my help is not great, in three months I can
+      add enough&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you cannot, Arthur. You are doing well; I appreciate it; in fact, I
+      am just delighted to have you work for me in the way you do, but you
+      cannot, in your present position, make enough in three months, or in six,
+      to meet the situation as I see it. Enough does not satisfy me. The measure
+      must be full, heaped up, and running over. Possible failure following
+      promise must be provided for. Never must I feel myself called upon to do
+      this kind of thing again. Besides, I have never got over the Zabriskie
+      tragedy. It haunts me continually. Something new may help to put it out of
+      my head. I feel guilty. I was responsible&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Puss. I will not have it that you were responsible. Some such end was
+      bound to follow a complication like that. Sooner or later he would have
+      been driven to shoot himself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not her. But do you think she would have given those few minutes of
+      perfect understanding with her blind husband for a few years more of
+      miserable life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet made no answer; she was too absorbed in her surprise. Was this
+      Arthur? Had a few weeks&rsquo; work and a close connection with the really
+      serious things of life made this change in him? Her face beamed at the
+      thought, which seeing, but not understanding what underlay this evidence
+      of joy, he bent and kissed her, saying with some of his old nonchalance:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forget it, Violet; only don&rsquo;t let any one or anything lead you to
+      interest yourself in another affair of the kind. If you do, I shall have
+      to consult a certain friend of yours as to the best way of stopping this
+      folly. I mention no names. Oh! you need not look so frightened. Only
+      behave; that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s right,&rdquo; she acknowledged to herself, as he sauntered away;
+      &ldquo;altogether right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet because she wanted the extra money&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scene invited alarm,&mdash;that is, for so young a girl as Violet,
+      surveying it from an automobile some time after the stroke of midnight. An
+      unknown house at the end of a heavily shaded walk, in the open doorway of
+      which could be seen the silhouette of a woman&rsquo;s form leaning eagerly
+      forward with arms outstretched in an appeal for help! It vanished while
+      she looked, but the effect remained, holding her to her seat for one
+      startled moment. This seemed strange, for she had anticipated adventure.
+      One is not summoned from a private ball to ride a dozen miles into the
+      country on an errand of investigation, without some expectation of
+      encountering the mysterious and the tragic. But Violet Strange, for all
+      her many experiences, was of a most susceptible nature, and for the
+      instant in which that door stood open, with only the memory of that
+      expectant figure to disturb the faintly lit vista of the hall beyond, she
+      felt that grip upon the throat which comes from an indefinable fear which
+      no words can explain and no plummet sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this soon passed. With the setting of her foot to ground, conditions
+      changed and her emotions took on a more normal character. The figure of a
+      man now stood in the place held by the vanished woman; and it was not only
+      that of one she knew but that of one whom she trusted&mdash;a friend whose
+      very presence gave her courage. With this recognition came a better
+      understanding of the situation, and it was with a beaming eye and
+      unclouded features that she tripped up the walk to meet the expectant
+      figure and outstretched hand of Roger Upjohn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You here!&rdquo; she exclaimed, amid smiles and blushes, as he drew her into
+      the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He at once launched forth into explanations mingled with apologies for the
+      presumption he had shown in putting her to this inconvenience. There was
+      trouble in the house&mdash;great trouble. Something had occurred for which
+      an explanation must be found before morning, or the happiness and honour
+      of more than one person now under this unhappy roof would be wrecked. He
+      knew it was late&mdash;that she had been obliged to take a long and dreary
+      ride alone, but her success with the problem which had once come near
+      wrecking his own life had emboldened him to telephone to the office and&mdash;&ldquo;But
+      you are in ball-dress,&rdquo; he cried in amazement. &ldquo;Did you think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came from a ball. Word reached me between the dances. I did not go
+      home. I had been bidden to hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked his appreciation, but when he spoke it was to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the situation. Miss Digby&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The lady who is to be married tomorrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who hopes to be married tomorrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How, hopes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who will be married tomorrow, if a certain article lost in this house
+      tonight can be found before any of the persons who have been dining here
+      leave for their homes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet uttered an exclamation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, Mr. Cornell,&rdquo; she began&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cornell has our utmost confidence,&rdquo; Roger hastened to interpose. &ldquo;But
+      the article missing is one which he might reasonably desire to possess and
+      which he alone of all present had the opportunity of securing. You can
+      therefore see why he, with his pride&mdash;the pride off a man not rich,
+      engaged to marry a woman who is&mdash;should declare that unless his
+      innocence is established before daybreak, the doors of St. Bartholomew
+      will remain shut to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the article lost&mdash;what is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Digby will give you the particulars. She is waiting to receive you,&rdquo;
+       he added with a gesture towards a half-open door at their right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet glanced that way, then cast her looks up and down the hall in which
+      they stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know that you have not told me in whose house I am? Not hers, I
+      know. She lives in the city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you are twelve miles from Harlem. Miss Strange, you are in the Van
+      Broecklyn mansion, famous enough you will acknowledge. Have you never been
+      here before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been by here, but I recognized nothing in the dark. What an
+      exciting place for an investigation!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mr. Van Broecklyn? Have you never met him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Once, when a child. He frightened me then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And may frighten you now; though I doubt it. Time has mellowed him.
+      Besides, I have prepared him for what might otherwise occasion him some
+      astonishment. Naturally he would not look for just the sort of lady
+      investigator I am about to introduce to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled. Violet Strange was a very charming young woman, as well as a
+      keen prober of odd mysteries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The meeting between herself and Miss Digby was a sympathetic one. After
+      the first inevitable shock which the latter felt at sight of the beauty
+      and fashionable appearance of the mysterious little being who was to solve
+      her difficulties, her glance, which, under other circumstances, might have
+      lingered unduly upon the piquant features and exquisite dressing of the
+      fairy-like figure before her, passed at once to Violet&rsquo;s eyes, in whose
+      steady depths beamed an intelligence quite at odds with the coquettish
+      dimples which so often misled the casual observer in his estimation of a
+      character singularly subtle and well-poised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the impression she herself made upon Violet, it was the same she
+      made upon everyone. No one could look long at Florence Digby and not
+      recognize the loftiness of her spirit and the generous nature of her
+      impulses. In person she was tall and as she leaned to take Violet&rsquo;s hand,
+      the difference between them brought out the salient points in each, to the
+      great admiration of the one onlooker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, for all her interest in the case in hand, Violet could not help
+      casting a hurried look about her, in gratification of the curiosity
+      incited by her entrance into a house signalized from its foundation by
+      such a series of tragic events. The result was disappointing. The walls
+      were plain, the furniture simple. Nothing suggestive in either, unless it
+      was the fact that nothing was new, nothing modern. As it looked in the
+      days of Burr and Hamilton so it looked to-day, even to the rather
+      startling detail of candles which did duty on every side in place of gas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Violet recalled the reason for this, the fascination of the past seized
+      upon her imagination. There was no knowing where this might have carried
+      her, had not the feverish gleam in Miss Digby&rsquo;s eyes warned her that the
+      present held its own excitement. Instantly, she was all attention and
+      listening with undivided mind to that lady&rsquo;s disclosures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were brief and to the following effect:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner which had brought some half-dozen people together in this house
+      had been given in celebration of her impending marriage. But it was also
+      in a way meant as a compliment to one of the other guests, a Mr.
+      Spielhagen, who, during the week, had succeeded in demonstrating to a few
+      experts the value of a discovery he had made which would transform a great
+      industry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In speaking of this discovery, Miss Digby did not go into particulars, the
+      whole matter being far beyond her understanding; but in stating its value
+      she openly acknowledged that it was in the line of Mr. Cornell&rsquo;s own work,
+      and one which involved calculations and a formula which, if prematurely
+      disclosed, would invalidate the contract Mr. Spielhagen hoped to make, and
+      thus destroy his present hopes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of this formula but two copies existed. One was locked up in a safe
+      deposit vault in Boston, the other he had brought into the house on his
+      person, and it was the latter which was now missing, having been
+      abstracted during the evening from a manuscript of sixteen or more sheets,
+      under circumstances which she would now endeavour to relate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Van Broecklyn, their host, had in his melancholy life but one interest
+      which could be at all absorbing. This was for explosives. As consequence,
+      much of the talk at the dinner-table had been on Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s
+      discovery, and possible changes it might introduce into this especial
+      industry. As these, worked out from a formula kept secret from the trade,
+      could not but affect greatly Mr. Cornell&rsquo;s interests, she found herself
+      listening intently, when Mr. Van Broecklyn, with an apology for his
+      interference, ventured to remark that if Mr. Spielhagen had made a
+      valuable discovery in this line, so had he, and one which he had
+      substantiated by many experiments. It was not a marketable one, such as
+      Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s was, but in his work upon the same, and in the tests
+      which he had been led to make, he had discovered certain instances he
+      would gladly name, which demanded exceptional procedure to be successful.
+      If Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s method did not allow for these exceptions, nor make
+      suitable provision for them, then Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s method would fail more
+      times than it would succeed. Did it so allow and so provide? It would
+      relieve him greatly to learn that it did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer came quickly. Yes, it did. But later and after some further
+      conversation, Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s confidence seemed to wane, and before they
+      left the dinner-table, he openly declared his intention of looking over
+      his manuscript again that very night, in order to be sure that the formula
+      therein contained duly covered all the exceptions mentioned by Mr. Van
+      Broecklyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Mr. Cornell&rsquo;s countenance showed any change at this moment, she for one
+      had not noticed it; but the bitterness with which he remarked upon the
+      other&rsquo;s good fortune in having discovered this formula of whose entire
+      success he had no doubt, was apparent to everybody, and naturally gave
+      point to the circumstances which a short time afterward associated him
+      with the disappearance of the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ladies (there were two others besides herself) having withdrawn in a
+      body to the music-room, the gentlemen all proceeded to the library to
+      smoke. Here, conversation loosed from the one topic which had hitherto
+      engrossed it, was proceeding briskly, when Mr. Spielhagen, with nervous
+      gesture, impulsively looked about him and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot rest till I have run through my thesis again. Where can I find a
+      quiet spot? I won&rsquo;t be long; I read very rapidly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was for Mr. Van Broecklyn to answer, but no word coming from him, every
+      eye turned his way, only to find him sunk in one of those fits of
+      abstraction so well known to his friends, and from which no one who has
+      this strange man&rsquo;s peace of mind at heart ever presumes to rouse him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was to be done? These moods of their singular host sometimes lasted
+      half an hour, and Mr. Spielhagen had not the appearance of a man of
+      patience. Indeed he presently gave proof of the great uneasiness he was
+      labouring under, for noticing a door standing ajar on the other side of
+      the room, he remarked to those around him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A den! and lighted! Do you see any objection to my shutting myself in
+      there for a few minutes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No one venturing to reply, he rose, and giving a slight push to the door,
+      disclosed a small room exquisitely panelled and brightly lighted, but
+      without one article of furniture in it, not even a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The very place,&rdquo; quoth Mr. Spielhagen, and lifting a light cane-bottomed
+      chair from the many standing about, he carried it inside and shut the door
+      behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several minutes passed during which the man who had served at table
+      entered with a tray on which were several small glasses evidently
+      containing some choice liqueur. Finding his master fixed in one of his
+      strange moods, he set the tray down and, pointing to one of the glasses,
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is for Mr. Van Broecklyn. It contains his usual quieting powder.&rdquo;
+       And urging the gentlemen to help themselves, he quietly left the room. Mr.
+      Upjohn lifted the glass nearest him, and Mr. Cornell seemed about to do
+      the same when he suddenly reached forward and catching up one farther off
+      started for the room in which Mr. Spielhagen had so deliberately secluded
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why he did all this&mdash;why, above all things, he should reach across
+      the tray for a glass instead of taking the one under his hand, he can no
+      more explain than why he has followed many another unhappy impulse. Nor
+      did he understand the nervous start given by Mr. Spielhagen at his
+      entrance, or the stare with which that gentleman took the glass from his
+      hand and mechanically drank its contents, till he saw how his hand had
+      stretched itself across the sheet of paper he was reading, in an open
+      attempt to hide the lines visible between his fingers. Then indeed the
+      intruder flushed and withdrew in great embarrassment, fully conscious of
+      his indiscretion but not deeply disturbed till Mr. Van Broecklyn, suddenly
+      arousing and glancing down at the tray placed very near his hand remarked
+      in some surprise: &ldquo;Dobbs seems to have forgotten me.&rdquo; Then indeed, the
+      unfortunate Mr. Cornell realized what he had done. It was the glass
+      intended for his host which he had caught up and carried into the other
+      room&mdash;the glass which he had been told contained a drug. Of what
+      folly he had been guilty, and how tame would be any effort at excuse!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Attempting none, he rose and with a hurried glance at Mr. Upjohn who
+      flushed in sympathy at his distress, he crossed to the door he had lately
+      closed upon Mr. Spielhagen. But feeling his shoulder touched as his hand
+      pressed the knob, he turned to meet the eye of Mr. Van Broecklyn fixed
+      upon him with an expression which utterly confounded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo; that gentleman asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The questioning tone, the severe look, expressive at once of displeasure
+      and astonishment, were most disconcerting, but Mr. Cornell managed to
+      stammer forth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Spielhagen is in here consulting his thesis. When your man brought in
+      the cordial, I was awkward enough to catch up your glass and carry it in
+      to. Mr. Spielhagen. He drank it and I&mdash;I am anxious to see if it did
+      him any harm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he uttered the last word he felt Mr. Van Broecklyn&rsquo;s hand slip from his
+      shoulder, but no word accompanied the action, nor did his host make the
+      least move to follow him into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a matter of great regret to him later, as it left him for a
+      moment out of the range of every eye, during which he says he simply stood
+      in a state of shock at seeing Mr. Spielhagen still sitting there,
+      manuscript in hand, but with head fallen forward and eyes closed; dead,
+      asleep or&mdash;he hardly knew what; the sight so paralysed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether or not this was the exact truth and the whole truth, Mr. Cornell
+      certainly looked very unlike himself as he stepped back into Mr. Van
+      Broecklyn&rsquo;s presence; and he was only partially reassured when that
+      gentleman protested that there was no real harm in the drug, and that Mr.
+      Spielhagen would be all right if left to wake naturally and without shock.
+      However, as his present attitude was one of great discomfort, they decided
+      to carry him back and lay him on the library lounge. But before doing
+      this, Mr. Upjohn drew from his flaccid grasp, the precious manuscript, and
+      carrying it into the larger room placed it on a remote table, where it
+      remained undisturbed till Mr. Spielhagen, suddenly coming to himself at
+      the end of some fifteen minutes, missed the sheets from his hand, and
+      bounding up, crossed the room to repossess himself of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His face, as he lifted them up and rapidly ran through them with
+      ever-accumulating anxiety, told them what they had to expect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The page containing the formula was gone!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet now saw her problem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no doubt about the loss I have mentioned; all could see that
+      page 13 was not there. In vain a second handling of every sheet, the one
+      so numbered was not to be found. Page 14 met the eye on the top of the
+      pile, and page 12 finished it off at the bottom, but no page 13 in
+      between, or anywhere else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where had it vanished, and through whose agency had this misadventure
+      occurred? No one could say, or, at least, no one there made any attempt to
+      do so, though everybody started to look for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But where look? The adjoining small room offered no facilities for hiding
+      a cigar-end, much less a square of shining white paper. Bare walls, a bare
+      floor, and a single chair for furniture, comprised all that was to be seen
+      in this direction. Nor could the room in which they then stood be thought
+      to hold it, unless it was on the person of some one of them. Could this be
+      the explanation of the mystery? No man looked his doubts; but Mr. Cornell,
+      possibly divining the general feeling, stepped up to Mr. Van Broecklyn and
+      in a cool voice, but with the red burning hotly on either cheek, said, so
+      as to be heard by everyone present:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I demand to be searched&mdash;at once and thoroughly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment&rsquo;s silence, then the common cry:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will all be searched.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Mr. Spielhagen sure that the missing page was with the others when he
+      sat down in the adjoining room to read his thesis?&rdquo; asked their perturbed
+      host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very sure,&rdquo; came the emphatic reply. &ldquo;Indeed, I was just going through
+      the formula itself when I fell asleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are ready to assert this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am ready to swear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cornell repeated his request.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I demand that you make a thorough search of my person. I must be cleared,
+      and instantly, of every suspicion,&rdquo; he gravely asserted, &ldquo;or how can I
+      marry Miss Digby to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that there was no further hesitation. One and all subjected
+      themselves to the ordeal suggested; even Mr. Spielhagen. But this effort
+      was as futile as the rest. The lost page was not found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What were they to think? What were they to do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There seemed to be nothing left to do, and yet some further attempt must
+      be made towards the recovery of this important formula. Mr. Cornell&rsquo;s
+      marriage and Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s business success both depended upon its
+      being in the latter&rsquo;s hands before six in the morning, when he was engaged
+      to hand it over to a certain manufacturer sailing for Europe on an early
+      steamer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five hours!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had Mr. Van Broecklyn a suggestion to offer? No, he was as much at sea as
+      the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simultaneously look crossed look. Blankness was on every face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us call the ladies,&rdquo; suggested one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was done, and however great the tension had been before, it was even
+      greater when Miss Digby stepped upon the scene. But she was not a woman to
+      be shaken from her poise even by a crisis of this importance. When the
+      dilemma had been presented to her and the full situation grasped, she
+      looked first at Mr. Cornell and then at Mr. Spielhagen, and quietly said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is but one explanation possible of this matter. Mr. Spielhagen will
+      excuse me, but he is evidently mistaken in thinking that he saw the lost
+      page among the rest. The condition into which he was thrown by the
+      unaccustomed drug he had drank, made him liable to hallucinations. I have
+      not the least doubt he thought he had been studying the formula at the
+      time he dropped off to sleep. I have every confidence in the gentleman&rsquo;s
+      candour. But so have I in that of Mr. Cornell,&rdquo; she supplemented, with a
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An exclamation from Mr. Van Broecklyn and a subdued murmur from all but
+      Mr. Spielhagen testified to the effect of this suggestion, and there is no
+      saying what might have been the result if Mr. Cornell had not hurriedly
+      put in this extraordinary and most unexpected protest:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Digby has my gratitude,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;for a confidence which I hope to
+      prove to be deserved. But I must say this for Mr. Spielhagen. He was
+      correct in stating that he was engaged in looking over his formula when I
+      stepped into his presence with the glass of cordial. If you were not in a
+      position to see the hurried way in which his hand instinctively spread
+      itself over the page he was reading, I was; and if that does not seem
+      conclusive to you, then I feel bound to state that in unconsciously
+      following this movement of his, I plainly saw the number written on the
+      top of the page, and that number was&mdash;13.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A loud exclamation, this time from Spielhagen himself, announced his
+      gratitude and corresponding change of attitude toward the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wherever that damned page has gone,&rdquo; he protested, advancing towards
+      Cornell with outstretched hand, &ldquo;you have nothing to do with its
+      disappearance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly all constraint fled, and every countenance took on a relieved
+      expression. But the problem remained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly those very words passed some one&rsquo;s lips, and with their utterance
+      Mr. Upjohn remembered how at an extraordinary crisis in his own life he
+      had been helped and an equally difficult problem settled, by a little lady
+      secretly attached to a private detective agency. If she could only be
+      found and hurried here before morning, all might yet be well. He would
+      make the effort. Such wild schemes sometimes work. He telephoned to the
+      office and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was there anything else Miss Strange would like to know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Strange, thus appealed to, asked where the gentlemen were now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was told that they were still all together in the library; the ladies
+      had been sent home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let us go to them,&rdquo; said Violet, hiding under a smile her great fear
+      that here was an affair which might very easily spell for her that dismal
+      word, failure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So great was that fear that under all ordinary circumstances she would
+      have had no thought for anything else in the short interim between this
+      stating of the problem and her speedy entrance among the persons involved.
+      But the circumstances of this case were so far from ordinary, or rather
+      let me put it in this way, the setting of the case was so very
+      extraordinary, that she scarcely thought of the problem before her, in her
+      great interest in the house through whose rambling halls she was being so
+      carefully guided. So much that was tragic and heartrending had occurred
+      here. The Van Broecklyn name, the Van Broecklyn history, above all the Van
+      Broecklyn tradition, which made the house unique in the country&rsquo;s annals
+      (of which more hereafter), all made an appeal to her imagination, and
+      centred her thoughts on what she saw about her. There was door which no
+      man ever opened&mdash;had never opened since Revolutionary times&mdash;should
+      she see it? Should she know it if she did see it? Then Mr. Van Broecklyn
+      himself! just to meet him, under any conditions and in any place, was an
+      event. But to meet him here, under the pall of his own mystery! No wonder
+      she had no words for her companions, or that her thoughts clung to this
+      anticipation in wonder and almost fearsome delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His story was a well-known one. A bachelor and a misanthrope, he lived
+      absolutely alone save for a large entourage of servants, all men and
+      elderly ones at that. He never visited. Though he now and then, as on this
+      occasion, entertained certain persons under his roof, he declined every
+      invitation for himself, avoiding even, with equal strictness, all evening
+      amusements of whatever kind, which would detain him in the city after ten
+      at night. Perhaps this was to ensure no break in his rule of life never to
+      sleep out of his own bed. Though he was a man well over fifty he had not
+      spent, according to his own statement, but two nights out of his own bed
+      since his return from Europe in early boyhood, and those were in obedience
+      to a judicial summons which took him to Boston.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was his main eccentricity, but he had another which is apparent
+      enough from what has already been said. He avoided women. If thrown in
+      with them during his short visits into town, he was invariably polite and
+      at times companionable, but he never sought them out, nor had gossip,
+      contrary to its usual habit, ever linked his name with one of the sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet he was a man of more than ordinary attraction. His features were fine
+      and his figure impressive. He might have been the cynosure of all eyes had
+      he chosen to enter crowded drawing-rooms, or even to frequent public
+      assemblages, but having turned his back upon everything of the kind in his
+      youth, he had found it impossible to alter his habits with advancing
+      years; nor was he now expected to. The position he had taken was
+      respected. Leonard Van Broecklyn was no longer criticized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was there any explanation for this strangely self-centred life? Those who
+      knew him best seemed to think so. In the first place he had sprung from an
+      unfortunate stock. Events of unusual and tragic nature had marked the
+      family of both parents. Nor had his parents themselves been exempt from
+      this seeming fatality. Antagonistic in tastes and temperament, they had
+      dragged on an unhappy existence in the old home, till both natures
+      rebelled, and a separation ensued which not only disunited their lives but
+      sent them to opposite sides of the globe never to return again. At least,
+      that was the inference drawn from the peculiar circumstances attending the
+      event. On the morning of one never-to-be-forgotten day, John Van
+      Broecklyn, the grandfather of the present representative of the family,
+      found the following note from his son lying on the library table:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;FATHER:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Life in this house, or any house, with her is no longer endurable. One of
+      us must go. The mother should not be separated from her child. Therefore
+      it is I whom you will never see again. Forget me, but be considerate of
+      her and the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WILLIAM.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Six hours later another note was found, this time from the wife:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;FATHER:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tied to a rotting corpse what does one do? Lop off one&rsquo;s arm if necessary
+      to rid one of the contact. As all love between your son and myself is
+      dead, I can no longer live within the sound of his voice. As this is his
+      home, he is the one to remain in it. May our child reap the benefit of his
+      mother&rsquo;s loss and his father&rsquo;s affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;RHODA.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Both were gone, and gone forever. Simultaneous in their departure, they
+      preserved each his own silence and sent no word back. If the one went east
+      and the other west, they may have met on the other side of the globe, but
+      never again in the home which sheltered their boy. For him and for his
+      grandfather they had sunk from sight in the great sea of humanity, leaving
+      them stranded on an isolated and mournful shore. The grand-father steeled
+      himself to the double loss, for the child&rsquo;s sake; but the boy of eleven
+      succumbed. Few of the world&rsquo;s great sufferers, of whatever age or
+      condition, have mourned as this child mourned, or shown the effects of his
+      grief so deeply or so long. Not till he had passed his majority did the
+      line, carved in one day in his baby forehead, lose any of its intensity;
+      and there are those who declare that even later than that, the midnight
+      stillness of the house was disturbed from time to time by his muffled
+      shriek of &ldquo;Mother! Mother!&rdquo;, sending the servants from the house, and
+      adding one more horror to the many which clung about this accursed
+      mansion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of this cry Violet had heard, and it was that and the door&mdash;But I
+      have already told you about the door which she was still looking for, when
+      her two companions suddenly halted, and she found herself on the threshold
+      of the library, in full view of Mr. Van Broecklyn and his two guests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slight and fairy-like in figure, with an air of modest reserve more in
+      keeping with her youth and dainty dimpling beauty than with her errand,
+      her appearance produced an astonishment none of which the gentlemen were
+      able to disguise. This the clever detective, with a genius for social
+      problems and odd elusive cases! This darling of the ball-room in satin and
+      pearls! Mr. Spielhagen glanced at Mr. Cornell, and Mr. Cornell at Mr.
+      Spielhagen, and both at Mr. Upjohn, in very evident distrust. As for
+      Violet, she had eyes only for Mr. Van Broecklyn who stood before her in a
+      surprise equal to that of the others but with more restraint in its
+      expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not disappointed in him. She had expected to see a man, reserved
+      almost to the point of austerity. And she found his first look even more
+      awe-compelling than her imagination had pictured; so much so indeed, that
+      her resolution faltered, and she took a quick step backward; which seeing,
+      he smiled and her heart and hopes grew warm again. That he could smile,
+      and smile with absolute sweetness, was her great comfort when later&mdash;But
+      I am introducing you too hurriedly to the catastrophe. There is much to be
+      told first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I pass over the preliminaries, and come at once to the moment when Violet,
+      having listened to a repetition of the full facts, stood with downcast
+      eyes before these gentlemen, complaining in some alarm to herself: &ldquo;They
+      expect me to tell them now and without further search or parley just where
+      this missing page is. I shall have to balk that expectation without losing
+      their confidence. But how?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Summoning up her courage and meeting each inquiring eye with a look which
+      seemed to carry a different message to each, she remarked very quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is not a matter to guess at. I must have time and I must look a
+      little deeper into the facts just given me. I presume that the table I see
+      over there is the one upon which Mr. Upjohn laid the manuscript during Mr.
+      Spielhagen&rsquo;s unconsciousness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it&mdash;I mean the table&mdash;in the same condition it was then? Has
+      nothing been taken from it except the manuscript?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the missing page is not there,&rdquo; she smiled, pointing to its bare
+      top. A pause, during which she stood with her gaze fixed on the floor
+      before her. She was thinking and thinking hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she came to a decision. Addressing Mr. Upjohn she asked if he
+      were quite sure that in taking the manuscript from Mr. Spielhagen&rsquo;s hand
+      he had neither disarranged nor dropped one of its pages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer was unequivocal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; she declared, with quiet assurance and a steady meeting with her
+      own of every eye, &ldquo;as the thirteenth page was not found among the others
+      when they were taken from this table, nor on the persons of either Mr.
+      Cornell or Mr. Spielhagen, it is still in that inner room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo; came from every lip, each in a different tone. &ldquo;That room is
+      absolutely empty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I have a look at its emptiness?&rdquo; she asked, with a naive glance at
+      Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is positively nothing in the room but the chair Mr. Spielhagen sat
+      on,&rdquo; objected that gentleman with a noticeable air of reluctance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, may I not have a look at it?&rdquo; she persisted, with that disarming
+      smile she kept for great occasions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Van Broecklyn bowed. He could not refuse a request so urged, but his
+      step was slow and his manner next to ungracious as he led the way to the
+      door of the adjoining room and threw it open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just what she had been told to expect! Bare walls and floors and an empty
+      chair! Yet she did not instantly withdraw, but stood silently
+      contemplating the panelled wainscoting surrounding her, as though she
+      suspected it of containing some secret hiding-place not apparent to the
+      eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Van Broecklyn, noting this, hastened to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The walls are sound, Miss Strange. They contain no hidden cupboards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that door?&rdquo; she asked, pointing to a portion of the wainscoting so
+      exactly like the rest that only the most experienced eye could detect the
+      line of deeper colour which marked an opening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant Mr. Van Broecklyn stood rigid, then the immovable pallor,
+      which was one of his chief characteristics, gave way to a deep flush as he
+      explained:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a door there once; but it has been permanently closed. With
+      cement,&rdquo; he forced himself to add, his countenance losing its evanescent
+      colour till it shone ghastly again in the strong light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With difficulty Violet preserved her show of composure. &ldquo;The door!&rdquo; she
+      murmured to herself. &ldquo;I have found it. The great historic door!&rdquo; But her
+      tone was light as she ventured to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it can no longer be opened by your hand or any other?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It could not be opened with an axe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet sighed in the midst of her triumph. Her curiosity had been
+      satisfied, but the problem she had been set to solve looked inexplicable.
+      But she was not one to yield easily to discouragement. Marking the
+      disappointment approaching to disdain in every eye but Mr. Upjohn&rsquo;s, she
+      drew herself up&mdash;(she had not far to draw) and made this final
+      proposal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A sheet of paper,&rdquo; she remarked, &ldquo;of the size of this one cannot be
+      spirited away, or dissolved into thin air. It exists; it is here; and all
+      we want is some happy thought in order to find it. I acknowledge that that
+      happy thought has not come to me yet, but sometimes I get it in what may
+      seem to you a very odd way. Forgetting myself, I try to assume the
+      individuality of the person who has worked the mystery. If I can think
+      with his thoughts, I possibly may follow him in his actions. In this case
+      I should like to make believe for a few moments that I am Mr. Spielhagen&rdquo;
+       (with what a delicious smile she said this) &ldquo;I should like to hold his
+      thesis in my hand and be interrupted in my reading by Mr. Cornell offering
+      his glass of cordial; then I should like to nod and slip off mentally into
+      a deep sleep. Possibly in that sleep the dream may come which will clarify
+      the whole situation. Will you humour me so far?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A ridiculous concession, but finally she had her way; the farce was
+      enacted and they left her as she had requested them to do, alone with her
+      dreams in the small room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly they heard her cry out, and in another moment she appeared before
+      them, the picture of excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this chair standing exactly as it did when Mr. Spielhagen occupied
+      it?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mr. Upjohn, &ldquo;it faced the other way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stepped back and twirled the chair about with her disengaged hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Upjohn and Mr. Spielhagen both nodded, so did the others when she
+      glanced at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sign of ill-concealed satisfaction, she drew their attention to
+      herself; then eagerly cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen, look here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seating herself, she allowed her whole body to relax till she presented
+      the picture of one calmly asleep. Then, as they continued to gaze at with
+      fascinated eyes, not knowing what to expect, they saw something white
+      escape from her lap and slide across the floor till it touched and was
+      stayed by the wainscot. It was the top page of the manuscript she held,
+      and as some inkling of the truth reached their astonished minds, she
+      sprang impetuously to her feet and, pointing to the fallen sheet, cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you understand now? Look where it lies and then look here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had bounded towards the wall and was now on her knees pointing to the
+      bottom of the wainscot, just a few inches to the left of the fallen page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A crack!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;under what was once the door. It&rsquo;s a very thin one,
+      hardly perceptible to the eye. But see!&rdquo; Here she laid her finger on the
+      fallen paper and drawing it towards her, pushed it carefully against the
+      lower edge of the wainscot. Half of it at once disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could easily slip it all through,&rdquo; she assured them, withdrawing the
+      sheet and leaping to her feet in triumph. &ldquo;You know now where the missing
+      page lies, Mr. Spielhagen. All that remains is for Mr. Van Broecklyn to
+      get it for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      IV
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cries of mingled astonishment and relief which greeted this simple
+      elucidation of the mystery were broken by a curiously choked, almost
+      unintelligible, cry. It came from the man thus appealed to, who, unnoticed
+      by them all, had started at her first word and gradually, as action
+      followed action, withdrawn himself till he now stood alone and in an
+      attitude almost of defiance behind the large table in the centre of the
+      library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; he began, with a brusqueness which gradually toned down into
+      a forced urbanity as he beheld every eye fixed upon him in amazement,
+      &ldquo;that circumstances forbid my being of assistance to you in this
+      unfortunate matter. If the paper lies where you say, and I see no other
+      explanation of its loss, I am afraid it will have to remain there for this
+      night at least. The cement in which that door is embedded is thick as any
+      wall; it would take men with pickaxes, possibly with dynamite, to make a
+      breach there wide enough for any one to reach in. And we are far from any
+      such help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of the consternation caused by these words, the clock on the
+      mantel behind his back rang out the hour. It was but a double stroke, but
+      that meant two hours after midnight and had the effect of a knell in the
+      hearts of those most interested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am expected to give that formula into the hands of our manager
+      before six o&rsquo;clock in the morning. The steamer sails at a quarter after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you reproduce a copy of it from memory?&rdquo; some one asked; &ldquo;and
+      insert it in its proper place among the pages you hold there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The paper would not be the same. That would lead to questions and the
+      truth would come out. As the chief value of the process contained in that
+      formula lies in its secrecy, no explanation I could give would relieve me
+      from the suspicions which an acknowledgment of the existence of a third
+      copy, however well hidden, would entail. I should lose my great
+      opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cornell&rsquo;s state of mind can be imagined. In an access of mingled
+      regret and despair, he cast a glance at Violet, who, with a nod of
+      understanding, left the little room in which they still stood, and
+      approached Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lifting up her head,&mdash;for he was very tall,&mdash;and instinctively
+      rising on her toes the nearer to reach his ear, she asked in a cautious
+      whisper:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there no other way of reaching that place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She acknowledged afterwards, that for one moment her heart stood still
+      from fear, such a change took place in his face, though she says he did
+      not move a muscle. Then, just when she was expecting from him some harsh
+      or forbidding word, he wheeled abruptly away from her and crossing to a
+      window at his side, lifted the shade and looked out. When he returned, he
+      was his usual self so far as she could see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a way,&rdquo; he now confided to her in a tone as low as her own, &ldquo;but
+      it can only be taken by a child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by me?&rdquo; she asked, smiling down at her own childish proportions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant he seemed taken aback, then she saw his hand begin to
+      tremble and his lips twitch. Somehow&mdash;she knew not why&mdash;she
+      began to pity him, and asked herself as she felt rather than saw the
+      struggle in his mind, that here was a trouble which if once understood
+      would greatly dwarf that of the two men in the room behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am discreet,&rdquo; she whisperingly declared. &ldquo;I have heard the history of
+      that door&mdash;how it was against the tradition of the family to have it
+      opened. There must have been some very dreadful reason. But old
+      superstitions do not affect me, and if you will allow me to take the way
+      you mention, I will follow your bidding exactly, and will not trouble
+      myself about anything but the recovery of this paper, which must lie only
+      a little way inside that blocked-up door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Was his look one of rebuke at her presumption, or just the constrained
+      expression of a perturbed mind? Probably, the latter, for while she
+      watched him for some understanding of his mood, he reached out his hand
+      and touched one of the satin folds crossing her shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would soil this irretrievably,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is stuff in the stores for another,&rdquo; she smiled. Slowly his touch
+      deepened into pressure. Watching him she saw the crust of some old fear or
+      dominant superstition melt under her eyes, and was quite prepared, when he
+      remarked, with what for him was a lightsome air:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will buy the stuff, if you will dare the darkness and intricacies of
+      our old cellar. I can give you no light. You will have to feel your way
+      according to my direction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am ready to dare anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He left her abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will warn Miss Digby,&rdquo; he called back. &ldquo;She shall go with you as far as
+      the cellar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      V
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Violet in her short career as an investigator of mysteries had been in
+      many a situation calling for more than womanly nerve and courage. But
+      never&mdash;or so it seemed to her at the time&mdash;had she experienced a
+      greater depression of spirit than when she stood with Miss Digby before a
+      small door at the extreme end of the cellar, and understood that here was
+      her road&mdash;a road which once entered, she must take alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First, it was such a small door! No child older than eleven could possibly
+      squeeze through it. But she was of the size of a child of eleven and might
+      possibly manage that difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Secondly: there are always some unforeseen possibilities in every
+      situation, and though she had listened carefully to Mr. Van Broecklyn&rsquo;s
+      directions and was sure that she knew them by heart, she wished she had
+      kissed her father more tenderly in leaving him that night for the ball,
+      and that she had not pouted so undutifully at some harsh stricture he had
+      made. Did this mean fear? She despised the feeling if it did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirdly: She hated darkness. She knew this when she offered herself for
+      this undertaking; but she was in a bright room at the moment and only
+      imagined what she must now face as a reality. But one jet had been lit in
+      the cellar and that near the entrance. Mr. Van Broecklyn seemed not to
+      need light, even in his unfastening of the small door which Violet was
+      sure had been protected by more than one lock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doubt, shadow, and a solitary climb between unknown walls, with only a
+      streak of light for her goal, and the clinging pressure of Florence
+      Digby&rsquo;s hand on her own for solace&mdash;surely the prospect was one to
+      tax the courage of her young heart to its limit. But she had promised, and
+      she would fulfill. So with a brave smile she stooped to the little door,
+      and in another moment had started her journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For journey the shortest distance may seem when every inch means a
+      heart-throb and one grows old in traversing a foot. At first the way was
+      easy; she had but to crawl up a slight incline with the comforting
+      consciousness that two people were within reach of her voice, almost
+      within sound of her beating heart. But presently she came to a turn,
+      beyond which her fingers failed to reach any wall on her left. Then came a
+      step up which she stumbled, and farther on a short flight, each tread of
+      which she had been told to test before she ventured to climb it, lest the
+      decay of innumerable years should have weakened the wood too much to bear
+      her weight. One, two, three, four, five steps! Then a landing with an open
+      space beyond. Half of her journey was done. Here she felt she could give a
+      minute to drawing her breath naturally, if the air, unchanged in years,
+      would allow her to do so. Besides, here she had been enjoined to do a
+      certain thing and to do it according to instructions. Three matches had
+      been given her and a little night candle. Denied all light up to now, it
+      was at this point she was to light her candle and place it on the floor,
+      so that in returning she should not miss the staircase and get a fall. She
+      had promised to do this, and was only too happy to see a spark of light
+      scintillate into life in the immeasurable darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was now in a great room long closed to the world, where once officers
+      in Colonial wars had feasted, and more than one council had been held. A
+      room, too, which had seen more than one tragic happening, as its almost
+      unparalleled isolation proclaimed. So much Mr. Van Broecklyn had told her;
+      but she was warned to be careful in traversing it and not upon any pretext
+      to swerve aside from the right-hand wall till she came to a huge
+      mantelpiece. This passed, and a sharp corner turned, she ought to see
+      somewhere in the dim spaces before her a streak of vivid light shining
+      through the crack at the bottom of the blocked-up door. The paper should
+      be somewhere near this streak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All simple, all easy of accomplishment, if only that streak of light were
+      all she was likely to see or think of. If the horror which was gripping
+      her throat should not take shape! If things would remain shrouded in
+      impenetrable darkness, and not force themselves in shadowy suggestion upon
+      her excited fancy! But the blackness of the passage-way through which she
+      had just struggled was not to be found here. Whether it was the effect of
+      that small flame flickering at the top of the staircase behind her, or of
+      some change in her own powers of seeing, surely there was a difference in
+      her present outlook. Tall shapes were becoming visible&mdash;the air was
+      no longer blank&mdash;she could see&mdash;Then suddenly she saw why. In
+      the wall high up on her right was a window. It was small and all but
+      invisible, being covered on the outside with vines, and on the inside with
+      the cobwebs of a century. But some small gleams from the star-light night
+      came through, making phantasms out of ordinary things, which unseen were
+      horrible enough, and half seen choked her heart with terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot bear it,&rdquo; she whispered to herself even while creeping forward,
+      her hand upon the wall. &ldquo;I will close my eyes&rdquo; was her next thought. &ldquo;I
+      will make my own darkness,&rdquo; and with a spasmodic forcing of her lids
+      together, she continued to creep on, passing the mantelpiece, where she
+      knocked against something which fell with an awful clatter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This sound, followed as it was by that of smothered voices from the
+      excited group awaiting the result of her experiment from behind the
+      impenetrable wall she should be nearing now if she had followed her
+      instructions aright, freed her instantly from her fancies; and opening her
+      eyes once more, she cast a look ahead, and to her delight, saw but a few
+      steps away, the thin streak of bright light which marked the end of her
+      journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It took her but a moment after that to find the missing page, and picking
+      it up in haste from the dusty floor, she turned herself quickly about and
+      joyfully began to retrace her steps. Why then, was it that in the course
+      of a few minutes more her voice suddenly broke into a wild, unearthly
+      shriek, which ringing with terror burst the bounds of that dungeon-like
+      room, and sank, a barbed shaft, into the breasts of those awaiting the
+      result of her doubtful adventure, at either end of this dread
+      no-thoroughfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What had happened?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If they had thought to look out, they would have seen that the moon&mdash;held
+      in check by a bank of cloud occupying half the heavens&mdash;had suddenly
+      burst its bounds and was sending long bars of revealing light into every
+      uncurtained window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Florence Digby, in her short and sheltered life, had possibly never known
+      any very great or deep emotion. But she touched the bottom of extreme
+      terror at that moment, as with her ears still thrilling with Violet&rsquo;s
+      piercing cry, she turned to look at Mr. Van Broecklyn, and beheld the
+      instantaneous wreck it had made of this seemingly strong man. Not till he
+      came to lie in his coffin would he show a more ghastly countenance; and
+      trembling herself almost to the point of falling, caught him by the arm
+      and sought to read his face what had happened. Something disastrous she
+      was sure; something which he had feared and was partially prepared for,
+      yet which in happening had crushed him. Was it a pitfall into which the
+      poor little lady had fallen? If so&mdash;But he is speaking&mdash;mumbling
+      low words to himself. Some of them she can hear. He is reproaching himself&mdash;repeating
+      over and over that he should never have taken such a chance; that he
+      should have remembered her youth&mdash;the weakness of a young girl&rsquo;s
+      nerve. He had been mad, and now&mdash;and now&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the repetition of this word his murmuring ceased. All his energies
+      were now absorbed in listening at the low door separating him from what he
+      was agonizing to know&mdash;a door impossible to enter, impossible to
+      enlarge&mdash;a barrier to all help&mdash;an opening whereby sound might
+      pass but nothing else, save her own small body, now lying&mdash;where?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she hurt?&rdquo; faltered Florence, stooping, herself, to listen. &ldquo;Can you
+      hear anything&mdash;anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant he did not answer; every faculty was absorbed in the one
+      sense; then slowly and in gasps he began to mutter:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think&mdash;I hear&mdash;something. Her step&mdash;no, no, no step. All
+      is as quiet as death; not a sound, not a breath&mdash;she has fainted. O
+      God! O God! Why this calamity on top of all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had sprung to his feet at the utterance this invocation, but next
+      moment was down on knees again, listening&mdash;listening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never was silence more profound; they were hearkening for murmurs from a
+      tomb. Florence began to sense the full horror of it all, and was swaying
+      helplessly when Mr. Van Broecklyn impulsively lifted his hand in an
+      admonitory Hush! and through the daze of her faculties a small far sound
+      began to make itself heard, growing louder as she waited, then becoming
+      faint again, then altogether ceasing only to renew itself once more, till
+      it resolved into an approaching step, faltering in its course, but coming
+      ever nearer and nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s safe! She&rsquo;s not hurt!&rdquo; sprang from Florence&rsquo;s lips in inexpressible
+      relief; and expecting Mr. Van Broecklyn to show an equal joy, she turned
+      towards him, with the cheerful cry,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now if she has been so fortunate as to that missing page, we shall all be
+      repaid for our fright.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A movement on his part, a shifting of position which brought him finally
+      to his feet, but he gave no other proof of having heard her, nor did his
+      countenance mirror her relief. &ldquo;It is as if he dreaded, instead of hailed,
+      her return,&rdquo; was Florence&rsquo;s inward comment as she watched him
+      involuntarily recoil at each fresh token of Violet&rsquo;s advance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet because this seemed so very unnatural, she persisted in her efforts to
+      lighten the situation, and when he made no attempt to encourage Violet in
+      her approach, she herself stooped and called out a cheerful welcome which
+      must have rung sweetly in the poor little detective&rsquo;s ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sorry sight was Violet, when, helped by Florence, she finally crawled
+      into view through the narrow opening and stood once again on the cellar
+      floor. Pale, trembling, and soiled with the dust of years, she presented a
+      helpless figure enough, till the joy in Florence&rsquo;s face recalled some of
+      her spirit, and, glancing down at her hand in which a sheet of paper was
+      visible, she asked for Mr. Spielhagen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got the formula,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If you will bring him, I will hand it
+      over to him here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a word of her adventure; nor so much as one glance at Mr. Van
+      Broecklyn, standing far back in the shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was she more communicative, when, the formula restored and everything
+      made right with Mr. Spielhagen, they all came together again in the
+      library for a final word. &ldquo;I was frightened by the silence and the
+      darkness, and so cried out,&rdquo; she explained in answer to their questions.
+      &ldquo;Any one would have done so who found himself alone in so musty a place,&rdquo;
+       she added, with an attempt at lightsomeness which deepened the pallor on
+      Mr. Van Broecklyn&rsquo;s cheek, already sufficiently noticeable to have been
+      remarked upon by more than one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No ghosts?&rdquo; laughed Mr. Cornell, too happy in the return of his hopes to
+      be fully sensible of the feelings of those about him. &ldquo;No whispers from
+      impalpable lips or touches from spectre hands? Nothing to explain the
+      mystery of that room long shut up that even Mr. Van Broecklyn declares
+      himself ignorant of its secret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; returned Violet, showing her dimples in full force now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Miss Strange had any such experiences&mdash;if she has anything to
+      tell worthy of so marked a curiosity, she will tell it now,&rdquo; came from the
+      gentleman just alluded to, in tones so stern and strange that all show of
+      frivolity ceased on the instant. &ldquo;Have you anything to tell, Miss
+      Strange?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Greatly startled, she regarded him with widening eyes for a moment, then
+      with a move towards the door, remarked, with a general look about her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Van Broecklyn knows his own house, and doubtless can relate its
+      histories if he will. I am a busy little body who having finished my work
+      am now ready to return home, there to wait for the next problem which an
+      indulgent fate may offer me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was near the threshold&mdash;she was about to take her leave, when
+      suddenly she felt two hands fall on her shoulder, and turning, met the
+      eyes of Mr. Van Broecklyn burning into her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You saw!&rdquo; dropped in an almost inaudible whisper from his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shiver which shook her answered him better than any word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an exclamation of despair, he withdrew his hands, and facing the
+      others now standing together in a startled group, he said, as soon as he
+      could recover some of his self-possession:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must ask for another hour of your company. I can no longer keep my
+      sorrow to myself. A dividing line has just been drawn across my life, and
+      I must have the sympathy of someone who knows my past, or I shall go mad
+      in my self-imposed solitude. Come back, Miss Strange. You of all others
+      have the prior right to hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      VII
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall have to begin,&rdquo; said he, when they were all seated and ready to
+      listen, &ldquo;by giving you some idea, not so much of the family tradition, as
+      of the effect of this tradition upon all who bore the name of Van
+      Broecklyn. This is not the only house, even in America, which contains a
+      room shut away from intrusion. In England there are many. But there is
+      this difference between most of them and ours. No bars or locks forcibly
+      held shut the door we were forbidden to open. The command was enough; that
+      and the superstitious fear which such a command, attended by a long and
+      unquestioning obedience, was likely to engender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know no more than you do why some early ancestor laid his ban upon this
+      room. But from my earliest years I was given to understand that there was
+      one latch in the house which was never to be lifted; that any fault would
+      be forgiven sooner than that; that the honour of the whole family stood in
+      the way of disobedience, and that I was to preserve that honour to my
+      dying day. You will say that all this is fantastic, and wonder that sane
+      people in these modern times should subject themselves to such a
+      ridiculous restriction, especially when no good reason was alleged, and
+      the very source of the tradition from which it sprung forgotten. You are
+      right; but if you look long into human nature, you will see that the bonds
+      which hold the firmest are not material ones&mdash;that an idea will make
+      a man and mould a character&mdash;that it lies at the source of all
+      heroisms and is to be courted or feared as the case may be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For me it possessed a power proportionate to my loneliness. I don&rsquo;t think
+      there was ever a more lonely child. My father and mother were so unhappy
+      in each other&rsquo;s companionship that one or other of them was almost always
+      away. But I saw little of either even when they were at home. The
+      constraint in their attitude towards each other affected their conduct
+      towards me. I have asked myself more than once if either of them had any
+      real affection for me. To my father I spoke of her; to her of him; and
+      never pleasurably. This I am forced to say, or you cannot understand my
+      story. Would to God I could tell another tale! Would to God I had such
+      memories as other men have of a father&rsquo;s clasp, a mother&rsquo;s kiss&mdash;but
+      no! my grief, already profound, might have become abysmal. Perhaps it is
+      best as it is; only, I might have been a different child, and made for
+      myself a different fate&mdash;who knows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As it was, I was thrown almost entirely upon my own resources for any
+      amusement. This led me to a discovery I made one day. In a far part of the
+      cellar behind some heavy casks, I found a little door. It was so low&mdash;so
+      exactly fitted to my small body, that I had the greatest desire to enter
+      it. But I could not get around the casks. At last an expedient occurred to
+      me. We had an old servant who came nearer loving me than any one else. One
+      day when I chanced to be alone in the cellar, I took out my ball and began
+      throwing it about. Finally it landed behind the casks, and I ran with a
+      beseeching cry to Michael, to move them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a task requiring no little strength and address, but he managed,
+      after a few herculean efforts, to shift them aside and I saw with delight,
+      my way opened to that mysterious little door. But I did not approach it
+      then; some instinct deterred me. But when the opportunity came for me to
+      venture there alone, I did so, in the most adventurous spirit, and began
+      my operations by sliding behind the casks and testing the handle of the
+      little door. It turned, and after a pull or two the door yielded. With my
+      heart in my mouth, I stooped and peered in. I could see nothing&mdash;a
+      black hole and nothing more. This caused me a moment&rsquo;s hesitation. I was
+      afraid of the dark&mdash;had always been. But curiosity and the spirit of
+      adventure triumphed. Saying to myself that I was Robinson Crusoe exploring
+      the cave, I crawled in, only to find that I had gained nothing. It was as
+      dark inside as it had looked to be from without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was no fun in this, so I crawled back, and when I tried the
+      experiment again, it was with a bit of candle in my hand, and a
+      surreptitious match or two. What I saw, when with a very trembling little
+      hand I had lighted one of the matches, would have been disappointing to
+      most boys, but not to me. The litter and old boards I saw in odd corners
+      about me were full of possibilities, while in the dimness beyond I seemed
+      to perceive a sort of staircase which might lead&mdash;I do not think I
+      made any attempt to answer that question even in my own mind, but when,
+      after some hesitation and a sense of great daring, I finally crept up
+      those steps, I remember very well my sensation at finding myself in front
+      of a narrow closed door. It suggested too vividly the one in Grandfather&rsquo;s
+      little room&mdash;the door in the wainscot which we were never to open. I
+      had my first real trembling fit here, and at once fascinated and repelled
+      by this obstruction I stumbled and lost my candle, which, going out in the
+      fall, left me in total darkness and a very frightened state of mind. For
+      my imagination which had been greatly stirred by my own vague thoughts of
+      the forbidden room, immediately began to people the space about me with
+      ghoulish figures. How should I escape them, how ever reach my own little
+      room again undetected and in safety?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But these terrors, deep as they were, were nothing to the real fright
+      which seized me when, the darkness finally braved, and the way found back
+      into the bright, wide-open halls of the house, I became conscious of
+      having dropped something besides the candle. My match-box was gone&mdash;not
+      my match-box, but my grandfather&rsquo;s which I had found lying on his table
+      and carried off on this adventure, in all the confidence of irresponsible
+      youth. To make use of it for a little while, trusting to his not missing
+      it in the confusion I had noticed about the house that morning, was one
+      thing; to lose it was another. It was no common box. Made of gold and
+      cherished for some special reason well known to himself, I had often hear
+      him say that some day I would appreciate its value, and be glad to own it.
+      And I had left it in that hole and at any minute he might miss it&mdash;possibly
+      ask for it! The day was one of torment. My mother was away or shut up in
+      her room. My father&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know just what thoughts I had about him.
+      He was not to be seen either, and the servants cast strange looks at me
+      when I spoke his name. But I little realized the blow which had just
+      fallen upon the house in his definite departure, and only thought of my
+      own trouble, and of how I should meet my grandfather&rsquo;s eye when the hour
+      came for him to draw me to his knee for his usual good-night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I was spared this ordeal for the first time this very night first
+      comforted me, then added to my distress. He had discovered his loss and
+      was angry. On the morrow he would ask me for the box and I would have to
+      lie, for never could I find the courage to tell him where I had been. Such
+      an act of presumption he would never forgive, or so I thought as I lay and
+      shivered in my little bed. That his coldness, his neglect, sprang from the
+      discovery just made that my mother as well as my father had just fled the
+      house forever was as little known to me as the morning calamity. I had
+      been given my usual tendance and was tucked safely into bed; but the
+      gloom, the silence which presently settled upon the house had a very
+      different explanation in my mind from the real one. My sin (for such it
+      loomed large in my mind by this time) coloured the whole situation and
+      accounted for every event.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At what hour I slipped from my bed on to the cold floor, I shall never
+      know. To me it seemed to be in the dead of night; but I doubt if it were
+      more than ten. So slowly creep away the moments to a wakeful child. I had
+      made a great resolve. Awful as the prospect seemed to me,&mdash;frightened
+      as I was by the very thought,&mdash;I had determined in my small mind to
+      go down into the cellar, and into that midnight hole again, in search of
+      the lost box. I would take a candle and matches, this time from my own
+      mantel-shelf, and if everyone was asleep, as appeared from the deathly
+      quiet of the house, I would be able to go and come without anybody ever
+      being the wiser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dressing in the dark, I found my matches and my candle and, putting them
+      in one of my pockets, softly opened my door and looked out. Nobody was
+      stirring; every light was out except a solitary one in the lower hall.
+      That this still burned conveyed no meaning to my mind. How could I know
+      that the house was so still and the rooms dark because everyone was out
+      searching for some clue to my mother&rsquo;s flight? If I had looked at the
+      clock&mdash;but I did not; I was too intent upon my errand, too filled
+      with the fever of my desperate undertaking, to be affected by anything not
+      bearing directly upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of the terror caused by my own shadow on the wall as I made the turn in
+      the hall below, I have as keen a recollection today as though it happened
+      yesterday. But that did not deter me; nothing deterred me, till safe in
+      the cellar I crouched down behind the casks to get my breath again before
+      entering the hole beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had made some noise in feeling my way around these casks, and I
+      trembled lest these sounds had been heard upstairs! But this fear soon
+      gave place to one far greater. Other sounds were making themselves heard.
+      A din of small skurrying feet above, below, on every side of me! Rats!
+      rats in the wall! rats on the cellar bottom! How I ever stirred from the
+      spot I do not know, but when I did stir, it was to go forward, and enter
+      the uncanny hole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had intended to light my candle when I got inside; but for some reason
+      I went stumbling along in the dark, following the wall till I got to the
+      steps where I had dropped the box. Here a light was necessary, but my hand
+      did not go to my pocket. I thought it better to climb the steps first, and
+      softly one foot found the tread and then another. I had only three more to
+      climb and then my right hand, now feeling its way along the wall, would be
+      free to strike a match. I climbed the three steps and was steadying myself
+      against the door for a final plunge, when something happened&mdash;something
+      so strange, so unexpected, and so incredible that I wonder I did not
+      shriek aloud in my terror. The door was moving under my hand. It was
+      slowly opening inward. I could feel the chill made by the widening crack.
+      Moment by moment this chill increased; the gap was growing&mdash;a
+      presence was there&mdash;a presence before which I sank in a small heap upon the
+      landing. Would it advance? Had it feet&mdash;hands? Was it a presence
+      which could be felt?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever it was, it made no attempt to pass, and presently I lifted my
+      head only to quake anew at the sound of a voice&mdash;a human voice&mdash;my
+      mother&rsquo;s voice&mdash;so near me that by putting out my arms I might have
+      touched her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was speaking to my father. I knew from the tone. She was saying words
+      which, little understood as they were, made such a havoc in my youthful
+      mind that I have never forgotten the effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I have come!&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;They think I have fled the house and are
+      looking far and wide for me. We shall not be disturbed. Who would think
+      looking of here for either you or me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here! The word sank like a plummet in my breast. I had known for some few
+      minutes that I was on the threshold of the forbidden room; but they were
+      in it. I can scarcely make you understand the tumult which this awoke in
+      my brain. Somehow, I had never thought that any such braving of the
+      house&rsquo;s law would be possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard my father&rsquo;s answer, but it conveyed no meaning to me. I also
+      realized that he spoke from a distance,&mdash;that he was at one end of
+      the room while we were at the other. I was presently to have this idea
+      confirmed, for while I was striving with all my might and main to subdue
+      my very heart-throbs so that she would not hear me or suspect my presence,
+      the darkness&mdash;I should rather say the blackness of the place yielded
+      to a flash of lightning&mdash;heat lightning, all glare and no sound&mdash;and
+      I caught an instantaneous vision of my father&rsquo;s figure standing with
+      gleaming things about him, which affected me at the moment as
+      supernatural, but which, in later years, I decided to have been weapons
+      hanging on a wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She saw him too, for she gave a quick laugh and said they would not need
+      any candles; and then, there was another flash and I saw something in his
+      hand and something in hers, and though I did not yet understand, I felt
+      myself turning deathly sick and gave a choking gasp which was lost in the
+      rush she made into the centre of the room, and the keenness of her swift
+      low cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Garde-toi! for only one of us will ever leave this room alive!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A duel! a duel to the death between this husband and wife&mdash;this
+      father and mother&mdash;in this hole of dead tragedies and within the
+      sight and hearing of their child! Has Satan ever devised a scheme more
+      hideous for ruining the life of an eleven-year-old boy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that I took it all in at once. I was too innocent and much too dazed
+      to comprehend such hatred, much less the passions which engender it. I
+      only knew that something horrible&mdash;something beyond the conception of
+      my childish mind&mdash;was going to take place in the darkness before me;
+      and the terror of it made me speechless; would to God it had made me deaf
+      and blind and dead!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had dashed from her corner and he had slid away from his, as the next
+      fantastic glare which lit up the room showed me. It also showed the
+      weapons in their hands, and for a moment I felt reassured when I saw that
+      these were swords, for I had seen them before with foils in their hands
+      practising for exercise, as they said, in the great garret. But the swords
+      had buttons on them, and this time the tips were sharp and shone in the
+      keen light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An exclamation from her and a growl of rage from him were followed by
+      movements I could scarcely hear, but which were terrifying from their very
+      quiet. Then the sound of a clash. The swords had crossed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had the lightning flashed forth then, the end of one of them might have
+      occurred. But the darkness remained undisturbed, and when the glare relit
+      the great room again, they were already far apart. This called out a word
+      from him; the one sentence he spoke&mdash;I can never forget it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Rhoda, there is blood on your sleeve; I have wounded you. Shall we call
+      it off and fly, as the poor creatures in there think we have, to the
+      opposite ends of the earth?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I almost spoke; I almost added my childish plea to his for them to stop&mdash;to
+      remember me and stop. But not a muscle in my throat responded to my
+      agonized effort. Her cold, clear &lsquo;No!&rsquo; fell before my tongue was loosed or
+      my heart freed from the ponderous weight crushing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I have vowed and I keep my promises,&rsquo; she went on in a tone quite
+      strange to me. &lsquo;What would either&rsquo;s life be worth with the other alive and
+      happy in this world.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He made no answer; and those subtle movements&mdash;shadows of movements
+      I might almost call them&mdash;recommenced. Then there came a sudden cry,
+      shrill and poignant&mdash;had Grandfather been in his room he would surely
+      have heard it&mdash;and the flash coming almost simultaneously with its
+      utterance, I saw what has haunted my sleep from that day to this, my
+      father pinned against the wall, sword still in hand, and before him my
+      mother, fiercely triumphant, her staring eyes fixed on his and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nature could bear no more; the band loosened from my throat; the
+      oppression lifted from my breast long enough for me to give one wild wail
+      and she turned, saw (heaven sent its flashes quickly at this moment) and
+      recognizing my childish form, all the horror of her deed (or so I have
+      fondly hoped) rose within her, and she gave a start and fell full upon the
+      point upturned to receive her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A groan; then a gasping sigh from him, and silence settled upon the room
+      and upon my heart, and so far as I knew upon the whole created world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is my story, friends. Do you wonder that I have never been or lived
+      like other men?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few moments of sympathetic silence, Mr. Van Broecklyn went on, to
+      say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I ever had a moment&rsquo;s doubt that my parents both lay dead
+      on the floor of that great room. When I came to myself&mdash;which may
+      have been soon, and may not have been for a long while&mdash;the lightning
+      had ceased to flash, leaving the darkness stretching like a blank pall
+      between me and that spot in which were concentrated all the terrors of
+      which my imagination was capable. I dared not enter it. I dared not take
+      one step that way. My instinct was to fly and hide my trembling body again
+      in my own bed; and associated with this, in fact dominating it and making
+      me old before my time, was another&mdash;never to tell; never to let any
+      one, least of all my grandfather&mdash;know what that forbidden room now
+      contained. I felt in an irresistible sort of way that my father&rsquo;s and
+      mother&rsquo;s honour was at stake. Besides, terror held me back; I felt that I
+      should die if I spoke. Childhood has such terrors and such heroisms.
+      Silence often covers in such, abysses of thought and feeling which
+      astonish us in later years. There is no suffering like a child&rsquo;s,
+      terrified by a secret which it dare not for some reason disclose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Events aided me. When, in desperation to see once more the light and all
+      the things which linked me to life&mdash;my little bed, the toys on the
+      window-sill, my squirrel in its cage&mdash;I forced myself to retraverse
+      the empty house, expecting at every turn to hear my father&rsquo;s voice or come
+      upon the image of my mother&mdash;yes, such was the confusion of my mind,
+      though I knew well enough even then that they were dead and that I should
+      never hear the one or see the other. I was so benumbed with the cold in my
+      half-dressed condition, that I woke in a fever next morning after a
+      terrible dream which forced from my lips the cry of &lsquo;Mother! Mother!&rsquo;&mdash;only
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was cautious even in delirium. This delirium and my flushed cheeks and
+      shining eyes led them to be very careful of me. I was told that my mother
+      was away from home; and when after two days of search they were quite sure
+      that all effort to find either her or my father were likely to prove
+      fruitless, that she had gone to Europe where we would follow her as soon
+      as I was well. This promise, offering as it did, a prospect of immediate
+      release from the terrors which were consuming me, had an extraordinary
+      effect upon me. I got up out of my bed saying that I was well now and
+      ready to start on the instant. The doctor, finding my pulse equable, and
+      my whole condition wonder fully improved, and attributing it, as was
+      natural, to my hope of soon joining my mother, advised my whim to be
+      humoured and this hope kept active till travel and intercourse with
+      children should give me strength and prepare me for the bitter truth
+      ultimately awaiting me. They listened to him and in twenty-four hours our
+      preparations were made. We saw the house closed&mdash;with what emotions
+      surging in one small breast, I leave you to imagine&mdash;and then started
+      on our long tour. For five years we wandered over the continent of Europe,
+      my grandfather finding distraction, as well as myself, in foreign scenes
+      and associations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But return was inevitable. What I suffered on reentering this house, God
+      and my sleepless pillow alone know. Had any discovery been made in our
+      absence; or would it be made now that renovation and repairs of all kinds
+      were necessary? Time finally answered me. My secret was safe and likely to
+      continue so, and this fact once settled, life became endurable, if not
+      cheerful. Since then I have spent only two nights out of this house, and
+      they were unavoidable. When my grandfather died I had the wainscot door
+      cemented in. It was done from this side and the cement painted to match
+      the wood. No one opened the door nor have I ever crossed its threshold.
+      Sometimes I think I have been foolish; and sometimes I know that I have
+      been very wise. My reason has stood firm; how do I know that it would have
+      done so if I had subjected myself to the possible discovery that one or
+      both of them might have been saved if I had disclosed instead of concealed
+      my adventure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A pause during which white horror had shone on every face; then with a
+      final glance at Violet, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sequel do you see to this story, Miss Strange? I can tell the past,
+      I leave you to picture the future.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rising, she let her eye travel from face to face till it rested on the one
+      awaiting it, when she answered dreamily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If some morning in the news column there should appear an account of the
+      ancient and historic home of the Van Broecklyns having burned to the
+      ground in the night, the whole country would mourn, and the city feel
+      defrauded of one of its treasures. But there are five persons who would
+      see in it the sequel which you ask for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When this happened, as it did happen, some few weeks later, the
+      astonishing discovery was made that no insurance had been put upon this
+      house. Why was it that after such a loss Mr. Van Broecklyn seemed to renew
+      his youth? It was a constant source of comment among his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF PROBLEM VIII <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROBLEM IX. VIOLET&rsquo;S OWN
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;It has been too much for you?&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Roger Upjohn who had asked the question; it was Violet who
+      answered. They had withdrawn from a crowd of dancers to a balcony,
+      half-shaded, half open to the moon,&mdash;a balcony made, it would seem,
+      for just such stolen interviews between waltzes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, as it happened, Roger&rsquo;s face was in the shadow, but Violet&rsquo;s in the
+      full light. Very sweet it looked, very ethereal, but also a little wan. He
+      noticed this and impetuously cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are pale; and your hand! see, how it trembles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly withdrawing it from the rail where it had rested, she sent one
+      quick glance his way and, in a low voice, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not slept since that night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four days!&rdquo; he murmured. Then, after a moment of silence, &ldquo;You bore
+      yourself so bravely at the time, I thought, or rather, I hoped, that
+      success had made you forget the horror. I could not have slept myself, if
+      I had known&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is part of the price I pay,&rdquo; she broke in gently. &ldquo;All good things
+      have to be paid for. But I see&mdash;I realize that you do not consider
+      what I am doing good. Though it helps other people&mdash;has helped you&mdash;you
+      wonder why, with all the advantages I possess, I should meddle with
+      matters so repugnant to a woman&rsquo;s natural instincts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, he wondered. That was evident from his silence. Seeing her as she
+      stood there, so quaintly pretty, so feminine in look and manner&mdash;in
+      short, such a flower&mdash;it was but natural that he should marvel at the
+      incongruity she had mentioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has a strange, odd look,&rdquo; she admitted, after a moment of troubled
+      hesitation. &ldquo;The most considerate person cannot but regard it as a display
+      of egotism or of a most mercenary spirit. The cheque you sent me for what
+      I was enabled to do for you in Massachusetts (the only one I have ever
+      received which I have been tempted to refuse) shows to what extent you
+      rated my help and my&mdash;my expectations. Had I been a poor girl
+      struggling for subsistence, this generosity would have warmed my heart as
+      a token of your desire to cut that struggle short. But taken with your
+      knowledge of my home and its luxuries, it has often made me wonder what
+      you thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I tell you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had stepped forward at this question and his countenance, hitherto
+      concealed, became visible in the moonlight. She no longer recognized it.
+      Transformed by feeling, it shone down upon her, instinct with all that is
+      finest and best in masculine nature. Was she ready for this revelation of
+      what she had nevertheless dreamed of for many more nights than four? She
+      did not know, and instinctively drew herself back till it was she who now
+      stood in the semi-obscurity made by the drooping vines. From this retreat,
+      she faltered forth a very tremulous No, which in another moment was
+      disavowed by a Yes so faint it was little more than a murmur, followed by
+      a still fainter, Tell me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not seem in any haste to obey, sweetly as her low-toned
+      injunction must have sounded in his ears. On the contrary, he hesitated to
+      speak, growing paler every minute as he sought to catch a glimpse of her
+      downcast face so tantalizingly hidden from him. Did she recognize the
+      nature of the feelings which held him back, or was she simply gathering up
+      sufficient courage to plead her own cause? Whatever her reason, it was
+      she, not he, who presently spoke saying as if no time had elapsed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But first, I feel obliged to admit that it was money I wanted, that I had
+      to have. Not for myself. I lack nothing and could have more if I wished.
+      Father has never limited his generosity in any matter affecting myself,
+      but&mdash;&rdquo; She drew a deep breath and, coming out of the shadow, lifted a
+      face to him so changed from its usual expression as to make him start. &ldquo;I
+      have a cause at heart&mdash;one which should appeal to my father and does
+      not; and for that purpose I have sacrificed myself, in many ways, though&mdash;though
+      I have not disliked my work up to this last attempt. Not really. I want to
+      be honest and so must admit that much. I have even gloried (quietly and
+      all by myself, of course) over the solution of a mystery which no one else
+      seemed able to penetrate. I am made that way. I have known it ever since&mdash;but
+      that is a story all by itself. Some day I may tell it to you, but not
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not now.&rdquo; The emphasis sent the colour into her cheek but did not
+      relieve his pallor. &ldquo;Miss Strange, I have always felt, even in my worst
+      days, that the man who for selfish ends brought a woman under the shadow
+      of his own unhappy reputation was a man to be despised. And I think so
+      still, and yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;nothing in the world but your own word
+      or look can hold me back now from telling you that I love you&mdash;love
+      you notwithstanding my unworthy past, my scarring memories, my all but
+      blasted hopes. I do not expect any response; you are young; you are
+      beautiful; you are gifted with every grace; but to speak,&mdash;to say
+      over and over again, &lsquo;I love you, I love you!&rsquo; eases my heart and makes my
+      future more endurable. Oh, do not look at me like that unless&mdash;unless&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the bright head did not fall, nor the tender gaze falter; and driven
+      out of himself, Roger Upjohn was about to step passionately forward, when,
+      seized by fresh compunction, he hoarsely cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not right. The balance dips too much my way. You bring me
+      everything. I can give you nothing but what you already possess abundance&mdash;love,
+      and money. Besides, your father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She interrupted him with a glance at once arch and earnest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had a talk with Father this morning. He came to my room, and&mdash;and
+      it was very near being serious. Someone had told him I was doing things on
+      the sly which he had better look into; and of course he asked questions
+      and&mdash;and I answered them. He wasn&rsquo;t pleased&mdash;in fact he was very
+      displeased,&mdash;I don&rsquo;t think we can blame him for that&mdash;but we had
+      no open break for I love him dearly, for all my opposing ways, and he saw
+      that, and it helped, though he did say after I had given my promise to
+      stop where I was and never to take up such work again, that&mdash;&rdquo; here
+      she stole a shy look at the face bent so eagerly towards her&mdash;&ldquo;that I
+      had lost my social status and need never hope now for the attentions of&mdash;of&mdash;well,
+      of such men as he admires and puts faith in. So you see,&rdquo; her dimples all
+      showing, &ldquo;that I am not such a very good match for an Upjohn of
+      Massachusetts, even if he has a reputation to recover and an honourable
+      name to achieve. The scale hangs more evenly than you think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Violet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A mutual look, a moment of perfect silence, then a low whisper, airy as
+      the breath of flowers rising from the garden below: &ldquo;I have never known
+      what happiness was till this moment. If you will take me with my story
+      untold&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take you! take you!&rdquo; The man&rsquo;s whole yearning heart, the loss and
+      bitterness of years, the hope and promise of the future, all spoke in that
+      low, half-smothered exclamation. Violet&rsquo;s blushes faded under its
+      fervency, and only her spirit spoke, as leaning towards him, she laid her
+      two hands in his, and said with all a woman&rsquo;s earnestness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not forget little Roger, or the father who I hope may have many more
+      days before him in which to bid good-night to the sea. Such union as ours
+      must be hallowed, because we have so many persons to make happy besides
+      ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening before their marriage, Violet put a dozen folded sheets of
+      closely written paper in his hand. They contained her story; let us read
+      it with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR ROGER,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could not have been more than seven years old, when one night I woke up
+      shivering, at the sound of angry voices. A conversation which no child
+      should ever have heard, was going on in the room where I lay. My father
+      was talking to my sister&mdash;perhaps, you do not know that I have a
+      sister; few of my personal friends do,&mdash;and the terror she evinced I
+      could well understand but not his words nor the real cause of his
+      displeasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are times even yet when the picture, forced upon my infantile
+      consciousness at that moment of first awakening, comes back to me with all
+      its original vividness. There was no light in the room save such as the
+      moon made; but that was enough to reveal the passion burningly alive in
+      either face, as, bending towards each other, she in supplication and he in
+      a tempest of wrath which knew no bounds, he uttered and she listened to
+      what I now know to have been a terrible arraignment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I may have an interesting countenance; you have told me so sometimes; but
+      she&mdash;she was beautiful. My elder by ten years, she had stood in my
+      mother&rsquo;s stead to me for almost as long as I could remember, and as I saw
+      her lovely features contorted with pain and her hands extended in a
+      desperate plea to one who had never shown me anything but love, my throat
+      closed sharply and I could not cry out though I wanted to, nor move head
+      or foot though I longed with all my heart to bury myself in the pillows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the words I heard were terrifying, little as I comprehended their full
+      purport. He had surprised her talking from her window to someone down
+      below, and after saying cruel things about that, he shouted out: &ldquo;You have
+      disgraced me, you have disgraced yourself, you have disgraced your brother
+      and your little sister. Was it not enough that you should refuse to marry
+      the good man I had picked out for you, that you should stoop to this
+      low-down scoundrel&mdash;this&mdash;&rdquo; I did not hear what else he called
+      him, I was wondering so to whom she had been stooping; I had never seen
+      her stoop except to tie my little shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when she cried out as she did after an interval, &ldquo;I love him! I love
+      him!&rdquo; then I listened again, for she spoke as though she were in dreadful
+      pain, and I did not know that loving made one ill and unhappy. &ldquo;And I am
+      going to marry him,&rdquo; I heard her add, standing up, as she said it, very
+      straight and tall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marry! I knew what that meant. A long aisle in a church; women in white
+      and big music in the air behind. I had been flower-girl at a wedding once
+      and had not forgotten. We had had ice cream and cake and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But my childish thoughts stopped short at the answer she received and all
+      the words which followed&mdash;words which burned their way into my
+      infantile brain and left scorched places in my memory which will never be
+      eradicated. He spoke them&mdash;spoke them all; she never answered again
+      after that once, and when he was gone did not move for a long time and
+      when she did it was to lie down, stiff and straight, just as she had
+      stood, on her bed alongside mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was frightened; so frightened, my little brass bed rattled under me. I
+      wonder she did not hear it. But she heard nothing; and after awhile she
+      was so still I fell asleep. But I woke again. Something hot had fallen on
+      my cheek. I put up my hand to brush it away and did not know even when I
+      felt my fingers wet that it was a tear from my sister-mother&rsquo;s eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For she was kneeling then; kneeling close beside me and her arm was over
+      my small body; and the bed was shaking again but not this time with my
+      tremors only. And I was sorry and cried too until I dropped off to sleep
+      again with her arm still passionately embracing me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning, she was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must have been that very afternoon that Father came in where Arthur and
+      I were trying to play,&mdash;trying, but not quite succeeding, for I had
+      been telling Arthur, for whom I had a great respect in those days, what
+      had happened the night before, and we had been wondering in our childish
+      way if there would be a wedding after all, and a church full of people,
+      and flowers, and kissing, and lots of good things to eat, and Arthur had
+      said No, it was too expensive; that that was why Father was so angry; and
+      comforted by the assertion, I was taking up my doll again, when the door
+      opened and Father stepped in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a great event&mdash;any visit from him to the nursery&mdash;and we
+      both dropped our toys and stood staring, not knowing whether he was going
+      to be nice and kind as he sometimes was, or scold us as I had heard him
+      scold our beautiful sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur showed at once what he thought, for without the least hesitation he
+      took the one step which placed him in front of me, where he stood waiting
+      with his two little fists hanging straight at his sides but manfully
+      clenched in full readiness for attack. That this display of pigmy chivalry
+      was not quite without its warrant is evident to me now, for Father did not
+      look like himself or act like himself any more than he had the night
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, we had no cause for fear. Having no suspicion of my having been
+      awake during his terrible interview with Theresa, he saw only two lonely
+      and forsaken children, interrupted in their play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Can I remember what he said to us? Not exactly, though Arthur and I often
+      went over it choked whispers in some secret nook of the dreary old house;
+      but his meaning&mdash;that we took in well enough. Theresa had left us.
+      She would never come back. We were not to look out of the window for her,
+      or run to the door when the bell rang. Our mother had left us too, a long
+      time ago, and she lay in the cemetery where we sometimes carried flowers.
+      Theresa was not in the cemetery, but we must think of her as there; though
+      not as if she had any need of flowers. Having said this, he looked at us
+      quietly for a minute. Arthur was trying very hard not to cry, but I was
+      sobbing like the lost child I was, with my cheek against the floor where I
+      had thrown myself when he said that awful thing about the cemetery. She
+      there! my sister-mother there! I think he felt a little sorry for me; for
+      he half stooped as if to lift me up. But he straightened again and said
+      very sternly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, children, listen to me. When God takes people to heaven and leaves
+      us only their cold, dead bodies we carry flowers to their graves and talk
+      about them some if not very much. But when people die because they love
+      dark ways better than light, then we do not remember them with gifts and
+      we do not talk about them. Your sister&rsquo;s name has been spoken for the last
+      time in this house. You, Arthur, are old enough to know what I mean when I
+      say that I will never listen to another word about her from either you or
+      Violet as long as you and I live. She is gone and nothing that is mine
+      shall she ever touch again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hear me, Arthur; you hear me, Violet. Heed me, or you go too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His aspect was terrible, so was his purpose; much more terrible than we
+      realized at the time with our limited understanding and experience. Later,
+      we came to know the full meaning of this black drop which had been infused
+      into our lives. When we saw every picture of her destroyed which had been
+      in the house; her name cut out from the leaves of books; the little tokens
+      she had given us surreptitiously taken away, till not a vestige of her
+      once beloved presence remained, we began to realize that we had indeed
+      lost her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But children as young as we were then do not long retain the poignancy of
+      their first griefs. Gradually my memories of that awful night ceased to
+      disturb my dreams and I was sixteen before they were again recalled to me
+      with any vividness, and then it was by accident. I had been strolling
+      through a picture gallery and had stopped short to study more particularly
+      one which had especially taken my fancy. There were two ladies sitting on
+      a bench behind me and one of them was evidently very deaf, for their talk
+      was loud, though I am sure they did not mean for me to hear, for they were
+      discussing my family. That is, one of them had said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s Violet Strange. She will never be the beauty her sister was; but
+      perhaps that&rsquo;s not to be deplored. Theresa made a great mess of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s true. I hear that she and the Signor have been seen lately here in
+      town. In poverty, of course. He hadn&rsquo;t even as much go in him as the
+      ordinary singing-master.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose I should have hurried away, and left this barbed arrow to rankle
+      where it fell. But I could not. I had never learned a word of Theresa&rsquo;s
+      fate and that word poverty, proving that she was alive and suffering, held
+      me to my place to hear what more they might say of her who for years had
+      been for me an indistinct figure bathed in cruel moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never approved of Peter Strange&rsquo;s conduct at that time,&rdquo; one of
+      the voices now went on. &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t handle her right. She had a lovely
+      disposition and would have listened to him had he been more gentle with
+      her. But it isn&rsquo;t in him. I hope this one&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn&rsquo;t hear the end of that. I had no interest in anything they might
+      say about myself. It was of her I wanted to hear, of her. Weren&rsquo;t they
+      going to say anything more about my poor sister? Yes; it was a topic which
+      interested both and presently I heard:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll never do anything for her, no matter what happens; I&rsquo;ve heard him
+      say so. And Laura has vowed the same.&rdquo; (Laura is our aunt.) &ldquo;Besides,
+      Theresa has a pride of her own quite equal to her father&rsquo;s. She wouldn&rsquo;t
+      take anything from him now. She&rsquo;d rather struggle on. I&rsquo;m told&mdash;I
+      don&rsquo;t know how true it is&mdash;that she&rsquo;s working in a department store;
+      one of the Sixth Avenue ones. Oh, there&rsquo;s Mrs. Vandegraff! Don&rsquo;t you want
+      to speak to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They moved off, leaving me still gazing with unseeing eyes at the picture
+      before which I stood planted, and saying over and over in monotonous
+      iteration, &ldquo;One of the department stores in Sixth Avenue! One of the
+      department stores in Sixth Avenue!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which department store?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I meant to find out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know whether up till then I had had the least consciousness of
+      possessing what is called the detective instinct. But, at the prospect of
+      this quest, so much like that of the proverbial needle in a haystack, as I
+      did not even know my sister&rsquo;s married name and something within me forbade
+      my asking it, I experienced an odd sense of elation followed by a
+      certainty of success which in five minutes changed me from an
+      irresponsible girl to a woman with a deliberate purpose in life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am not going to write down here all the details of that search. Some day
+      I may relate them to you, but not now. I looked first for a beautiful
+      woman, for the straight, slim, and exquisite creature I remembered. I did
+      not find her. Then I tried another course. Her figure might have changed
+      in the ten years which had elapsed; so might her expression. I would look
+      for a woman with beautiful dark eyes; time could not have altered them. I
+      had forgotten the effect of constant weeping. And I saw many eyes, but not
+      hers; not the ones I had seen smiling upon me as I lay in my crib before
+      the days I was lifted to the dignity of the little brass bed. So I gave
+      that up too and listened to the inner voice which said, &ldquo;You must wait for
+      her to recognize you. You can never hope to recognize her.&rdquo; And it was by
+      following this plan that I found her. I had arranged to have my name
+      spoken aloud at every counter where I bargained; and oh, the bargains I
+      sought, and the garments I had tried on! But I made little progress until
+      one day, after my name had been uttered a little louder than usual I saw a
+      woman turn from rearranging gowns on a hanger, and give me one look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I uttered a low cry and sprang impetuously, forward. Instantly she turned
+      her back and went on hanging, or trying to hang up, gowns on the rack
+      before her. Had I been mistaken? She was not the sister of my dreams, but
+      there was something fine in her outline; something distinguished in the
+      way she carried her head which&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next minute my last doubt fled! She had fallen her length on the floor and
+      lay with her face buried in her hands in a dead faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, Roger, Roger, Roger! I had that dear head on my breast in a moment. I
+      talked to her, I whispered prayers in her unconscious ear. I did
+      everything I should not have done till they all thought me demented. When
+      she came to, as she did under other ministrations than mine, I was for
+      carrying her off in my limousine. But she shook her head with a gesture of
+      such disapproval, that I realized I could not do that. The limousine was
+      my father&rsquo;s, and nothing of his was ever to be used for her again. I would
+      call a cab; but she told me that she had not the money to pay for it and
+      she would not take mine. Carfare she had; five cents would take her home.
+      I need not worry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled as she said this and for an instant I saw my dream-sister again
+      in this weary half-disheartened woman. But the smile was a fleeting one,
+      for this was to be her last day in the store; she had no talent as a
+      saleswoman and was merely working out her week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt my heart sink heavily at this, for the evidences of poverty were
+      plainly to be seen in her clothes and the thinness of her face and figure.
+      How could I help? What could I do? I took her to a restaurant for food and
+      talk, and before she would order, she looked into her purse, with the
+      result that we had only a little toast and tea. It was all she could
+      afford and I, with a hundred dollars in bills at that moment in my bag,
+      could not offer her anything more though she was needing nourishment and
+      dishes piled with savoury meats were going by us every moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think, if she had let me, I would have dared my father&rsquo;s displeasure and
+      been disobedient to his wishes by giving her one wholesome meal. But she
+      was as resolute of mind as he, and, as she said afterwards, had chosen her
+      course in life and must abide by it. My love she would accept. It took
+      nothing from Father and gave her what her heart was pining for&mdash;had
+      pined for for years. But nothing more&mdash;not another thing more. She
+      would not even let me go home with her; and I knew why when her eyes fell
+      at the searching look I gave her. Something would turn up, and when her
+      husband&rsquo;s health was better and she had found another position she would
+      send me her address and then I could come and see her. As we walked out of
+      the restaurant we ran against a gentleman I knew. He stopped me for a
+      passing word and in that minute she disappeared. I did not try to follow
+      her. I could get her street and number from the store where she had
+      worked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when I had done this and embraced the first opportunity which offered
+      to visit her, I found that she had moved away in the interim, leaving
+      everything behind in payment of her rent, except such small things as she
+      and her husband could carry. This was discouraging as it left me without
+      any clue by which to follow them. But I was determined not to yield to her
+      desire for concealment in the difficult and disheartening task I now saw
+      before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeking advice from the man who has since become my employer, I entered
+      upon this second search with a quiet resolution which admitted of no
+      defeat. It took me six months, but I finally found her, and satisfied with
+      knowing where she was, desisted from rushing in upon her, till I had
+      caught one glimpse of her husband whom, in the last six months, I had
+      heard described but had never seen. To understand her, it was perhaps
+      necessary to understand him, and if I could not hope to do this offhand, I
+      could not fail to get some idea of the man from even the most casual look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, as I soon learned, the fetcher and carrier of the small ménage;
+      and the day came when I met him face to face in the street where they
+      lived. Did he disappoint me; or did I see something in his appearance to
+      justify her desertion of her father&rsquo;s home and her present life of
+      poverty? If I say Yes to the first question, I must also say it to the
+      last. If handsome once, he was not handsome now; but with a personality
+      such as his, this did not matter. He had that better thing&mdash;that
+      greatest gift of the gods&mdash;charm. It was in his bearing, his
+      movement, the regard of his weary eye; more than that it was in his very
+      nature or it would have vanished long ago under disappointment and
+      privation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that was all there was to the man,&mdash;a golden net in which my
+      sister&rsquo;s youthful fancy had been caught and no doubt held meshed to this
+      very day. I felt less like blaming her for her folly, after that instant&rsquo;s
+      view of him as we passed each other in the street. But, as I took time to
+      think, I found myself growing sorrier and sorrier for her and yet, in a
+      way, gladder and gladder, for the man was a physical wreck and would soon
+      pass out of her life leaving her to my love and possibly to our father&rsquo;s
+      forgiveness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I did not know Theresa. After her husband&rsquo;s death, which occurred very
+      soon, she let me come to her and we had a long talk. Shall I ever
+      forget it or the sight of her beauty in that sordid room? For, account for
+      it as you will, the loveliness which had fled under her sense of complete
+      isolation had slowly regained its own with the recognition that she still
+      had a place in the heart of her little sister. Not even the sorrow she
+      felt for the loss of her suffering husband&mdash;and she did mourn him;
+      this I am glad to say&mdash;could more than temporarily stay this. Six
+      months of ease and wholesome food would make her&mdash;I hardly dared to
+      think what. For I knew, without asking her, or she telling me, that she
+      would accept neither; that she was as determined now, as ever that nothing
+      which came directly or indirectly from Father should go to the rebuilding
+      of her life. That she intended to start anew and work her way up to a
+      place where I should be glad to see her she did say. But nothing more. She
+      was still the sister-mother, loving, but sufficient to herself, though she
+      had but ten dollars left in the world, as she showed me with a smile that
+      made her beautiful as an angel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I can see that shabby little purse yet with its one poor greasy bill;&mdash;a
+      sum to her but to me the price of a luncheon or a gift of flowers. How I
+      longed, as I looked at it to tear every jewel from my poor, bedecked body
+      and fling them one and all into her lap. I had worn them in profusion,
+      though carefully hidden under my coat, in the hope that she would accept
+      one of them at least, But she refused all, even such as had been gifts of
+      friends and schoolmates, only humouring me this far, that she let me hang
+      them for a few minutes about her neck and in her hair and then pull them
+      all off again. But this one vision of her in the splendour she was born to
+      comforted me. Henceforth in wearing them it would be of her and not of
+      myself I should think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I had to leave her and go home to my French and Italian lessons, my
+      music-masters and all the luxuries of our father&rsquo;s house. Should I ever
+      see her again? I did not know; she had not promised. I could not go often
+      into the quarter where she lived, without rousing suspicion; and she had
+      bidden me not to come again for a month. So I waited, half fearing she
+      would flit again before the month was up. But she did not. She was still
+      there when&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I am going too fast. The meeting I was about to mention was a very
+      memorable one to me, and I must describe it from the beginning. I had
+      ridden in my own car as near as I dared to the street where she lived; the
+      rest of the way I went on foot with one of the servants&mdash;a new one&mdash;following
+      close behind me. I was not exactly afraid, but the actions of some of the
+      people I had encountered at my former visit warned me to be a little
+      careful for my father&rsquo;s sake if not for my own. Her room&mdash;she had but
+      one&mdash;was high up in a triangular court it was no pleasure to enter.
+      But love and loyalty heed nothing but the object sought, and I was hunting
+      about for the dark doorway which opened upon the staircase leading to her
+      room when&mdash;and this was the great moment of my life&mdash;a sudden
+      stream of melody floated down into that noisome court, which from its
+      clearness, its accuracy, its richness, and its feeling startled me as I
+      had never before been startled even by the first notes of the world&rsquo;s
+      greatest singers. What a voice for a place like this! What a voice for any
+      place! Whose could it be? With a start, I stopped short, in the middle of
+      that court, heedless of the crowd of pushing, shouting children who at
+      once gathered about me. I had been struck by an old recollection. My
+      sister used to sing. I remembered where her piano had stood in the great
+      drawing-room. It had been carted away during those dreadful weeks and her
+      music all burned; but the vision of her graceful figure bending over the
+      keyboard was one not to be forgotten even by a thoughtless child. Could it
+      be&mdash;oh, heaven! if this voice were hers! Her future was certain; she
+      had but to sing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a transport of hope I rushed for the dim entrance the children had
+      pointed out and flew up to her room. As I reached it, I heard a trill as
+      perfect as Tetrazzini&rsquo;s. The singer was Theresa; there could be no more
+      doubt. Theresa! exercising a grand voice as only a great artist would or
+      could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The joy of it made me almost faint. I leaned against her door and sobbed.
+      Then when I thought I could speak quite calmly, I went in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roger, you must understand me now,&mdash;my desire for money and the means
+      I have taken to obtain it. My sister had the makings of a prima-donna. Her
+      husband, of whose ability I had formed so low an estimate, had trained her
+      with consummate skill and judgment. All she needed was a year with some
+      great maestro in the foreign atmosphere of art. But this meant money&mdash;not
+      hundreds but thousands, and the one sure source to which we might
+      rightfully look for any such amount was effectually closed to us. It is
+      true we had relatives&mdash;an aunt on our mother&rsquo;s side, and I mentioned
+      her to Theresa. But she would not listen to the suggestion. She would take
+      nothing from any one whom she would find it hard to face in case of
+      failure. Love must go with an advance involving so much risk; love deep
+      enough and strong enough to feel no loss save that of a defeated hope. In
+      short, to be acceptable, the money must come from me, and as this was
+      manifestly impossible, she considered the matter closed and began to talk
+      of a position she had been offered in some choir. I let her talk,
+      listening and not listening; for the idea had come to me that if in some
+      way I could earn money, she might be induced to take it. Finally, I asked
+      her. She laughed, letting her kisses answer me. But I did not laugh. If
+      she had capabilities in one way, I had them in another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went home to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two weeks later, I began, in a very quiet way to do certain work for the
+      man who had helped me in my second search for Theresa. The money I have
+      earned has been immense; since it was troubles of the rich I was given to
+      settle, and I was almost always successful. Every cent has gone to her.
+      She has been in Europe for a year and last week she made her debut. You
+      read about it in the papers, but neither you nor any one else in this
+      country but myself knew that under the name she chosen to assume, Theresa
+      Strange, the long forgotten beauty, has recovered that place in the world,
+      to which her love and genius entitle her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is my story and hers. From now on, you are the third in the secret.
+      Some day, my father will be the fourth. I think then, a new dawn of love
+      will arise for us all, which will stay the whitening of his dear head&mdash;for
+      I believe in him after all. Yesterday when he passed the wall where her
+      picture once hung&mdash;no other has ever hung there&mdash;I saw him stop
+      and look up, and, Roger, when he passed me a minute later, there was a
+      tear in his hard eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+
+THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+And Other Problems for Violet Strange
+
+by ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
+(Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+I THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+
+II THE SECOND BULLET
+
+III THE INTANGIBLE CLEW
+
+IV THE GROTTO SPECTRE
+
+V THE DREAMING LADY
+
+VI THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS
+
+VII THE DOCTOR, HIS WIFE, AND THE CLOCK
+
+VIII MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN
+
+IX VIOLET'S OWN
+
+The Golden Slipper And Other Problems for Violet Strange
+
+PROBLEM I THE GOLDEN SLIPPER
+
+"She's here! I thought she would be. She's one of the three
+young ladies you see in the right-hand box near the proscenium."
+
+The gentleman thus addressed--a man of middle age and a member
+of the most exclusive clubs--turned his opera glass toward the
+spot designated, and in some astonishment retorted:
+
+"She? Why those are the Misses Pratt and--"
+
+"Miss Violet Strange; no other."
+
+"And do you mean to say--"
+
+"I do--"
+
+"That yon silly little chit, whose father I know, whose fortune
+I know, who is seen everywhere, and who is called one of the
+season's belles is an agent of yours; a--a--"
+
+"No names here, please. You want a mystery solved. It is not a
+matter for the police--that is, as yet,--and so you come to me,
+and when I ask for the facts, I find that women and only women
+are involved, and that these women are not only young but one
+and all of the highest society. Is it a man's work to go to the
+bottom of a combination like this? No. Sex against sex, and, if
+possible, youth against youth. Happily, I know such a person--a
+girl of gifts and extraordinarily well placed for the purpose.
+Why she uses her talents in this direction--why, with means
+enough to play the part natural to her as a successful
+debutante, she consents to occupy herself with social and other
+mysteries, you must ask her, not me. Enough that I promise you
+her aid if you want it. That is, if you can interest her. She
+will not work otherwise."
+
+Mr. Driscoll again raised his opera glass.
+
+"But it's a comedy face," he commented. "It's hard to associate
+intellectuality with such quaintness of expression. Are you sure
+of her discretion?"
+
+"Whom is she with?"
+
+"Abner Pratt, his wife, and daughters."
+
+"Is he a man to entrust his affairs unadvisedly?"
+
+"Abner Pratt! Do you mean to say that she is anything more to
+him than his daughters' guest?"
+
+"Judge. You see how merry they are. They were in deep trouble
+yesterday. You are witness to a celebration."
+
+"And she?"
+
+"Don't you observe how they are loading her with attentions?
+She's too young to rouse such interest in a family of notably
+unsympathetic temperament for any other reason than that of
+gratitude."
+
+"It's hard to believe. But if what you hint is true, secure me
+an opportunity at once of talking to this youthful marvel. My
+affair is serious. The dinner I have mentioned comes off in
+three days and--"
+
+"I know. I recognize your need; but I think you had better enter
+Mr. Pratt's box without my intervention. Miss Strange's value to
+us will be impaired the moment her connection with us is
+discovered."
+
+"Ah, there's Ruthven! He will take me to Mr. Pratt's box,"
+remarked Driscoll as the curtain fell on the second act. "Any
+suggestions before I go?"
+
+"Yes, and an important one. When you make your bow, touch your
+left shoulder with your right hand. It is a signal. She may
+respond to it; but if she does not, do not be discouraged. One of
+her idiosyncrasies is a theoretical dislike of her work. But once
+she gets interested, nothing will hold her back. That's all,
+except this. In no event give away her secret. That's part of the
+compact, you remember."
+
+Driscoll nodded and left his seat for Ruthven's box. When the
+curtain rose for the third time he could be seen sitting with
+the Misses Pratt and their vivacious young friend. A widower and
+still on the right side of fifty, his presence there did not
+pass unnoted, and curiosity was rife among certain onlookers as
+to which of the twin belles was responsible for this change in
+his well-known habits. Unfortunately, no opportunity was given
+him for showing. Other and younger men had followed his lead
+into the box, and they saw him forced upon the good graces of
+the fascinating but inconsequent Miss Strange whose rapid fire
+of talk he was hardly of a temperament to appreciate.
+
+Did he appear dissatisfied? Yes; but only one person in the
+opera house knew why. Miss Strange had shown no comprehension of
+or sympathy with his errand. Though she chatted amiably enough
+between duets and trios, she gave him no opportunity to express
+his wishes though she knew them well enough, owing to the signal
+he had given her.
+
+This might be in character but it hardly suited his views; and,
+being a man of resolution, he took advantage of an absorbing
+minute on the stage to lean forward and whisper in her ear:
+
+"It's my daughter for whom I request your services; as fine a
+girl as any in this house. Give me a hearing. You certainly can
+manage it."
+
+She was a small, slight woman whose naturally quaint appearance
+was accentuated by the extreme simplicity of her attire. In the
+tier upon tier of boxes rising before his eyes, no other
+personality could vie with hers in strangeness, or in the
+illusive quality of her ever-changing expression. She was
+vivacity incarnate and, to the ordinary observer, light as
+thistledown in fibre and in feeling. But not to all. To those who
+watched her long, there came moments--say when the music rose to
+heights of greatness--when the mouth so given over to laughter
+took on curves of the rarest sensibility, and a woman's lofty
+soul shone through her odd, bewildering features.
+
+Driscoll had noted this, and consequently awaited her reply in
+secret hope.
+
+It came in the form of a question and only after an instant's
+display of displeasure or possibly of pure nervous irritability.
+
+"What has she done?"
+
+"Nothing. But slander is in the air, and any day it may ripen
+into public accusation."
+
+"Accusation of what?" Her tone was almost pettish.
+
+"Of--of theft," he murmured. "On a great scale," he emphasized,
+as the music rose to a crash.
+
+"Jewels?"
+
+"Inestimable ones. They are always returned by somebody. People
+say, by me."
+
+"Ah!" The little lady's hands grew steady,--they had been
+fluttering all over her lap. "I will see you to-morrow morning
+at my father's house," she presently observed; and turned her
+full attention to the stage.
+
+Some three days after this Mr. Driscoll opened his house on the
+Hudson to notable guests. He had not desired the publicity of
+such an event, nor the opportunity it gave for an increase of
+the scandal secretly in circulation against his daughter. But
+the Ambassador and his wife were foreign and any evasion of the
+promised hospitality would be sure to be misunderstood; so the
+scheme was carried forward though with less eclat than possibly
+was expected.
+
+Among the lesser guests, who were mostly young and well
+acquainted with the house and its hospitality, there was one
+unique figure,--that of the lively Miss Strange, who, if
+personally unknown to Miss Driscoll, was so gifted with the
+qualities which tell on an occasion of this kind, that the
+stately young hostess hailed her presence with very obvious
+gratitude.
+
+The manner of their first meeting was singular, and of great
+interest to one of them at least. Miss Strange had come in an
+automobile and had been shown her room; but there was nobody to
+accompany her down-stairs afterward, and, finding herself alone
+in the great hall, she naturally moved toward the library, the
+door of which stood ajar. She had pushed this door half open
+before she noticed that the room was already occupied. As a
+consequence, she was made the unexpected observer of a beautiful
+picture of youth and love.
+
+A young man and a young woman were standing together in the glow
+of a blazing wood-fire. No word was to be heard, but in their
+faces, eloquent with passion, there shone something so deep and
+true that the chance intruder hesitated on the threshold, eager
+to lay this picture away in her mind with the other lovely and
+tragic memories now fast accumulating there. Then she drew back,
+and readvancing with a less noiseless foot, came into the full
+presence of Captain Holliday drawn up in all the pride of his
+military rank beside Alicia, the accomplished daughter of the
+house, who, if under a shadow as many whispered, wore that shadow
+as some women wear a crown.
+
+Miss Strange was struck with admiration, and turned upon them
+the brightest facet of her vivacious nature all the time she was
+saying to herself: "Does she know why I am here? Or does she
+look upon me only as an additional guest foisted upon her by a
+thoughtless parent?"
+
+There was nothing in the manner of her cordial but composed
+young hostess to show, and Miss Strange, with but one thought in
+mind since she had caught the light of feeling on the two faces
+confronting her, took the first opportunity that offered of
+running over the facts given her by Mr. Driscoll, to see if any
+reconcilement were possible between them and an innocence in
+which she must henceforth believe.
+
+They were certainly of a most damaging nature.
+
+Miss Driscoll and four other young ladies of her own station in
+life had formed themselves, some two years before, into a coterie
+of five, called The Inseparables. They lunched together, rode
+together, visited together. So close was the bond and their
+mutual dependence so evident, that it came to be the custom to
+invite the whole five whenever the size of the function warranted
+it. In fact, it was far from an uncommon occurrence to see them
+grouped at receptions or following one another down the aisles of
+churches or through the mazes of the dance at balls or
+assemblies. And no one demurred at this, for they were all
+handsome and attractive girls, till it began to be noticed that,
+coincident with their presence, some article of value was found
+missing from the dressing-room or from the tables where wedding
+gifts were displayed. Nothing was safe where they went, and
+though, in the course of time, each article found its way back to
+its owner in a manner as mysterious as its previous abstraction,
+the scandal grew and, whether with good reason or bad, finally
+settled about the person of Miss Driscoll, who was the showiest,
+least pecuniarily tempted, and most dignified in manner and
+speech of them all.
+
+Some instances had been given by way of further enlightenment.
+This is one: A theatre party was in progress. There were twelve
+in the party, five of whom were the Inseparables. In the course of
+the last act, another lady--in fact, their chaperon--missed her
+handkerchief, an almost priceless bit of lace. Positive that she
+had brought it with her into the box, she caused a careful
+search, but without the least success. Recalling certain whispers
+she had heard, she noted which of the five girls were with her in
+the box. They were Miss Driscoll, Miss Hughson, Miss Yates, and
+Miss Benedict. Miss West sat in the box adjoining.
+
+A fortnight later this handkerchief reappeared--and where? Among
+the cushions of a yellow satin couch in her own drawing-room. The
+Inseparables had just made their call and the three who had sat
+on the couch were Miss Driscoll, Miss Hughson, and Miss Benedict.
+
+The next instance seemed to point still more insistently toward
+the lady already named. Miss Yates had an expensive present to
+buy, and the whole five Inseparables went in an imposing group to
+Tiffany's. A tray of rings was set before them. All examined and
+eagerly fingered the stock out of which Miss Yates presently
+chose a finely set emerald. She was leading her friends away when
+the clerk suddenly whispered in her ear, "I miss one of the
+rings." Dismayed beyond speech, she turned and consulted the
+faces of her four companions who stared back at her with
+immovable serenity. But one of them was paler than usual, and
+this lady (it was Miss Driscoll) held her hands in her muff and
+did not offer to take them out. Miss Yates, whose father had
+completed a big "deal" the week before, wheeled round upon the
+clerk. "Charge it! charge it at its full value," said she. "I buy
+both the rings."
+
+And in three weeks the purloined ring came back to her, in a box
+of violets with no name attached.
+
+The third instance was a recent one, and had come to Mr.
+Driscoll's ears directly from the lady suffering the loss. She
+was a woman of uncompromising integrity, who felt it her duty to
+make known to this gentleman the following facts: She had just
+left a studio reception, and was standing at the curb waiting for
+a taxicab to draw up, when a small boy--a street arab--darted
+toward her from the other side of the street, and thrusting into
+her hand something small and hard, cried breathlessly as he
+slipped away, "It's yours, ma'am; you dropped it." Astonished,
+for she had not been conscious of any loss, she looked down at
+her treasure trove and found it to be a small medallion which she
+sometimes wore on a chain at her belt. But she had not worn it
+that day, nor any day for weeks. Then she remembered. She had
+worn it a month before to a similar reception at this same
+studio. A number of young girls had stood about her admiring it--
+she remembered well who they were; the Inseparables, of course,
+and to please them she had slipped it from its chain. Then
+something had happened,--something which diverted her attention
+entirely,--and she had gone home without the medallion; had, in
+fact, forgotten it, only to recall its loss now. Placing it in
+her bag, she looked hastily about her. A crowd was at her back;
+nothing to be distinguished there. But in front, on the opposite
+side of the street, stood a club-house, and in one of its windows
+she perceived a solitary figure looking out. It was that of Miss
+Driscoll's father. He could imagine her conclusion.
+
+In vain he denied all knowledge of the matter. She told him other
+stories which had come to her ears of thefts as mysterious,
+followed by restorations as peculiar as this one, finishing with,
+"It is your daughter, and people are beginning to say so."
+
+And Miss Strange, brooding over these instances, would have said
+the same, but for Miss Driscoll's absolute serenity of demeanour
+and complete abandonment to love. These seemed incompatible with
+guilt; these, whatever the appearances, proclaimed innocence--an
+innocence she was here to prove if fortune favoured and the
+really guilty person's madness should again break forth.
+
+For madness it would be and nothing less, for any hand, even the
+most experienced, to draw attention to itself by a repetition of
+old tricks on an occasion so marked. Yet because it would take
+madness, and madness knows no law, she prepared herself for the
+contingency under a mask of girlish smiles which made her at once
+the delight and astonishment of her watchful and uneasy host.
+
+With the exception of the diamonds worn by the Ambassadress,
+there was but one jewel of consequence to be seen at the dinner
+that night; but how great was that consequence and with what
+splendour it invested the snowy neck it adorned!
+
+Miss Strange, in compliment to the noble foreigners, had put on
+one of her family heirlooms--a filigree pendant of extraordinary
+sapphires which had once belonged to Marie Antoinette. As its
+beauty flashed upon the women, and its value struck the host, the
+latter could not restrain himself from casting an anxious eye
+about the board in search of some token of the cupidity with
+which one person there must welcome this unexpected sight.
+
+Naturally his first glance fell upon Alicia, seated opposite to
+him at the other end of the table. But her eyes were elsewhere,
+and her smile for Captain Holliday, and the father's gaze
+travelled on, taking up each young girl's face in turn. All were
+contemplating Miss Strange and her jewels, and the cheeks of one
+were flushed and those of the others pale, but whether with dread
+or longing who could tell. Struck with foreboding, but alive to
+his duty as host, he forced his glances away, and did not even
+allow himself to question the motive or the wisdom of the
+temptation thus offered.
+
+Two hours later and the girls were all in one room. It was a
+custom of the Inseparables to meet for a chat before retiring,
+but always alone and in the room of one of their number. But this
+was a night of innovations; Violet was not only included, but the
+meeting was held in her room. Her way with girls was even more
+fruitful of result than her way with men. They might laugh at
+her, criticize her or even call her names significant of disdain,
+but they never left her long to herself or missed an opportunity
+to make the most of her irrepressible chatter.
+
+Her satisfaction at entering this charmed circle did not take
+from her piquancy, and story after story fell from her lips, as
+she fluttered about, now here now there, in her endless
+preparations for retirement. She had taken off her historic
+pendant after it had been duly admired and handled by all
+present, and, with the careless confidence of an assured
+ownership, thrown it down upon the end of her dresser, which, by
+the way, projected very close to the open window.
+
+"Are you going to leave your jewel there?" whispered a voice in
+her ear as a burst of laughter rang out in response to one of her
+sallies.
+
+Turning, with a simulation of round-eyed wonder, she met Miss
+Hughson's earnest gaze with the careless rejoinder, "What's the
+harm?" and went on with her story with all the reckless ease of a
+perfectly thoughtless nature.
+
+Miss Hughson abandoned her protest. How could she explain her
+reasons for it to one apparently uninitiated in the scandal
+associated with their especial clique.
+
+Yes, she left the jewel there; but she locked her door and
+quickly, so that they must all have heard her before reaching
+their rooms. Then she crossed to the window, which, like all on
+this side, opened on a balcony running the length of the house.
+She was aware of this balcony, also of the fact that only young
+ladies slept in the corridor communicating with it. But she was
+not quite sure that this one corridor accommodated them all. If
+one of them should room elsewhere! (Miss Driscoll, for instance).
+But no! the anxiety displayed for the safety of her jewel
+precluded that supposition. Their hostess, if none of the others,
+was within access of this room and its open window. But how about
+the rest? Perhaps the lights would tell. Eagerly the little
+schemer looked forth, and let her glances travel down the full
+length of the balcony. Two separate beams of light shot across it
+as she looked, and presently another, and, after some waiting, a
+fourth. But the fifth failed to appear. This troubled her, but
+not seriously. Two of the girls might be sleeping in one bed.
+
+Drawing her shade, she finished her preparations for the night;
+then with her kimono on, lifted the pendant and thrust it into a
+small box she had taken from her trunk. A curious smile, very
+unlike any she had shown to man or woman that day, gave a
+sarcastic lift to her lips, as with a slow and thoughtful
+manipulation of her dainty fingers she moved the jewel about in
+this small receptacle and then returned it, after one quick
+examining glance, to the very spot on the dresser from which she
+had taken it. "If only the madness is great enough!" that smile
+seemed to say. Truly, it was much to hope for, but a chance is a
+chance; and comforting herself with the thought, Miss Strange put
+out her light, and, with a hasty raising of the shade she had
+previously pulled down, took a final look at the prospect.
+
+Its aspect made her shudder. A low fog was rising from the
+meadows in the far distance, and its ghostliness under the moon
+woke all sorts of uncanny images in her excited mind. To escape
+them she crept into bed where she lay with her eyes on the end of
+her dresser. She had closed that half of the French window over
+which she had drawn the shade; but she had left ajar the one
+giving free access to the jewels; and when she was not watching
+the scintillation of her sapphires in the moonlight, she was
+dwelling in fixed attention on this narrow opening.
+
+But nothing happened, and two o'clock, then three o'clock struck,
+without a dimming of the blue scintillations on the end of her
+dresser. Then she suddenly sat up. Not that she heard anything
+new, but that a thought had come to her. "If an attempt is made,"
+so she murmured softly to herself, "it will be by--" She did not
+finish. Something--she could not call it sound--set her heart
+beating tumultuously, and listening--listening--watching--
+watching--she followed in her imagination the approach down the
+balcony of an almost inaudible step, not daring to move herself,
+it seemed so near, but waiting with eyes fixed, for the shadow
+which must fall across the shade she had failed to raise over
+that half of the swinging window she had so carefully left shut.
+
+At length she saw it projecting slowly across the slightly
+illuminated surface. Formless, save for the outreaching hand, it
+passed the casement's edge, nearing with pauses and hesitations
+the open gap beyond through which the neglected sapphires beamed
+with steady lustre. Would she ever see the hand itself appear
+between the dresser and the window frame? Yes, there it comes,--
+small, delicate, and startlingly white, threading that gap--
+darting with the suddenness of a serpent's tongue toward the
+dresser and disappearing again with the pendant in its clutch.
+
+As she realizes this,--she is but young, you know,--as she sees
+her bait taken and the hardly expected event fulfilled, her pent-
+up breath sped forth in a sigh which sent the intruder flying,
+and so startled herself that she sank back in terror on her
+pillow.
+
+The breakfast-call had sounded its musical chimes through the
+halls. The Ambassador and his wife had responded, so had most of
+the young gentlemen and ladies, but the daughter of the house was
+not amongst them, nor Miss Strange, whom one would naturally
+expect to see down first of all.
+
+These two absences puzzled Mr. Driscoll. What might they not
+portend? But his suspense, at least in one regard, was short.
+Before his guests were well seated, Miss Driscoll entered from
+the terrace in company with Captain Holliday. In her arms she
+carried a huge bunch of roses and was looking very beautiful. Her
+father's heart warmed at the sight. No shadow from the night
+rested upon her.
+
+But Miss Strange!--where was she? He could not feel quite easy
+till he knew.
+
+"Have any of you seen Miss Strange?" he asked, as they sat down
+at table. And his eyes sought the Inseparables.
+
+Five lovely heads were shaken, some carelessly, some wonderingly,
+and one, with a quick, forced smile. But he was in no mood to
+discriminate, and he had beckoned one of the servants to him,
+when a step was heard at the door and the delinquent slid in and
+took her place, in a shamefaced manner suggestive of a cause
+deeper than mere tardiness. In fact, she had what might be called
+a frightened air, and stared into her plate, avoiding every eye,
+which was certainly not natural to her. What did it mean? and
+why, as she made a poor attempt at eating, did four of the
+Inseparables exchange glances of doubt and dismay and then
+concentrate their looks upon his daughter? That Alicia failed to
+notice this, but sat abloom above her roses now fastened in a
+great bunch upon her breast, offered him some comfort, yet, for
+all the volubility of his chief guests, the meal was a great
+trial to his patience, as well as a poor preparation for the hour
+when, the noble pair gone, he stepped into the library to find
+Miss Strange awaiting him with one hand behind her back and a
+piteous look on her infantile features.
+
+"O, Mr. Driscoll," she began,--and then he saw that a group of
+anxious girls hovered in her rear--"my pendant! my beautiful
+pendant! It is gone! Somebody reached in from the balcony and
+took it from my dresser in the night. Of course, it was to
+frighten me; all of the girls told me not to leave it there. But
+I--I cannot make them give it back, and papa is so particular
+about this jewel that I'm afraid to go home. Won't you tell them
+it's no joke, and see that I get it again. I won't be so careless
+another time."
+
+Hardly believing his eyes, hardly believing his ears,--she was
+so perfectly the spoiled child detected in a fault--he looked
+sternly about upon the girls and bade them end the jest and
+produce the gems at once.
+
+But not one of them spoke, and not one of them moved; only his
+daughter grew pale until the roses seemed a mockery, and the
+steady stare of her large eyes was almost too much for him to
+bear.
+
+The anguish of this gave asperity to his manner, and in a
+strange, hoarse tone he loudly cried:
+
+"One of you did this. Which? If it was you, Alicia, speak. I am
+in no mood for nonsense. I want to know whose foot traversed the
+balcony and whose hand abstracted these jewels."
+
+A continued silence, deepening into painful embarrassment for
+all. Mr. Driscoll eyed them in ill-concealed anguish, then
+turning to Miss Strange was still further thrown off his balance
+by seeing her pretty head droop and her gaze fall in confusion.
+
+"Oh! it's easy enough to tell whose foot traversed the balcony,"
+she murmured. "It left this behind." And drawing forward her
+hand, she held out to view a small gold-coloured slipper. "I
+found it outside my window," she explained. "I hoped I should not
+have to show it."
+
+A gasp of uncontrollable feeling from the surrounding group of
+girls, then absolute stillness.
+
+"I fail to recognize it," observed Mr. Driscoll, taking it in
+his hand. "Whose slipper is this?" he asked in a manner not to
+be gainsaid.
+
+Still no reply, then as he continued to eye the girls one after
+another a voice--the last he expected to hear--spoke and his
+daughter cried:
+
+"It is mine. But it was not I who walked in it down the
+balcony."
+
+"Alicia!"
+
+A month's apprehension was in that cry. The silence, the pent-up
+emotion brooding in the air was intolerable. A fresh young laugh
+broke it.
+
+"Oh," exclaimed a roguish voice, "I knew that you were all in it!
+But the especial one who wore the slipper and grabbed the pendant
+cannot hope to hide herself. Her finger-tips will give her away."
+
+Amazement on every face and a convulsive movement in one half-
+hidden hand.
+
+"You see," the airy little being went on, in her light way, "I
+have some awfully funny tricks. I am always being scolded for
+them, but somehow I don't improve. One is to keep my jewelry
+bright with a strange foreign paste an old Frenchwoman once gave
+me in Paris. It's of a vivid red, and stains the fingers
+dreadfully if you don't take care. Not even water will take it
+off, see mine. I used that paste on my pendant last night just
+after you left me, and being awfully sleepy I didn't stop to rub
+it off. If your finger-tips are not red, you never touched the
+pendant, Miss Driscoll. Oh, see! They are as white as milk.
+
+"But some one took the sapphires, and I owe that person a
+scolding, as well as myself. Was it you, Miss Hughson? You, Miss
+Yates? or--" and here she paused before Miss West, "Oh, you have
+your gloves on! You are the guilty one!" and her laugh rang out
+like a peal of bells, robbing her next sentence of even a
+suggestion of sarcasm. "Oh, what a sly-boots!" she cried. "How
+you have deceived me! Whoever would have thought you to be the
+one to play the mischief!"
+
+Who indeed! Of all the five, she was the one who was considered
+absolutely immune from suspicion ever since the night Mrs.
+Barnum's handkerchief had been taken, and she not in the box.
+Eyes which had surveyed Miss Driscoll askance now rose in wonder
+toward hers, and failed to fall again because of the stoniness
+into which her delicately-carved features had settled.
+
+"Miss West, I know you will be glad to remove your gloves; Miss
+Strange certainly has a right to know her special tormentor,"
+spoke up her host in as natural a voice as his great relief would
+allow.
+
+But the cold, half-frozen woman remained without a movement. She
+was not deceived by the banter of the moment. She knew that to
+all of the others, if not to Peter Strange's odd little daughter,
+it was the thief who was being spotted and brought thus
+hilariously to light. And her eyes grew hard, and her lips grey,
+and she failed to unglove the hands upon which all glances were
+concentrated.
+
+"You do not need to see my hands; I confess to taking the
+pendant."
+
+"Caroline!"
+
+A heart overcome by shock had thrown up this cry. Miss West eyed
+her bosom-friend disdainfully.
+
+"Miss Strange has called it a jest," she coldly commented. "Why
+should you suggest anything of a graver character?"
+
+Alicia brought thus to bay, and by one she had trusted most,
+stepped quickly forward, and quivering with vague doubts, aghast
+before unheard-of possibilities, she tremulously remarked:
+
+"We did not sleep together last night. You had to come into my
+room to get my slippers. Why did you do this? What was in your
+mind, Caroline?"
+
+A steady look, a low laugh choked with many emotions answered
+her.
+
+"Do you want me to reply, Alicia? Or shall we let it pass?"
+
+"Answer!"
+
+It was Mr. Driscoll who spoke. Alicia had shrunk back, almost to
+where a little figure was cowering with wide eyes fixed in
+something like terror on the aroused father's face.
+
+"Then hear me," murmured the girl, entrapped and suddenly
+desperate. "I wore Alicia's slippers and I took the jewels,
+because it was time that an end should come to your mutual
+dissimulation. The love I once felt for her she has herself
+deliberately killed. I had a lover--she took him. I had faith in
+life, in honour, and in friendship. She destroyed all. A thief--
+she has dared to aspire to him! And you condoned her fault. You,
+with your craven restoration of her booty, thought the matter
+cleared and her a fit mate for a man of highest honour."
+
+"Miss West,"--no one had ever heard that tone in Mr. Driscoll's
+voice before, "before you say another word calculated to mislead
+these ladies, let me say that this hand never returned any one's
+booty or had anything to do with the restoration of any
+abstracted article. You have been caught in a net, Miss West,
+from which you cannot escape by slandering my innocent
+daughter."
+
+"Innocent!" All the tragedy latent in this peculiar girl's nature
+blazed forth in the word. "Alicia, face me. Are you innocent? Who
+took the Dempsey corals, and that diamond from the Tiffany tray?"
+
+"It is not necessary for Alicia to answer," the father interposed
+with not unnatural heat. "Miss West stands self-convicted."
+
+"How about Lady Paget's scarf? I was not there that night."
+
+"You are a woman of wiles. That could be managed by one bent on
+an elaborate scheme of revenge."
+
+"And so could the abstraction of Mrs. Barnum's five-hundred-
+dollar handkerchief by one who sat in the next box," chimed in
+Miss Hughson, edging away from the friend to whose honour she
+would have pinned her faith an hour before. "I remember now
+seeing her lean over the railing to adjust the old lady's shawl."
+
+With a start, Caroline West turned a tragic gaze upon the
+speaker.
+
+"You think me guilty of all because of what I did last night?"
+
+"Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"And you, Anna?"
+
+"Alicia has my sympathy," murmured Miss Benedict.
+
+Yet the wild girl persisted.
+
+"But I have told you my provocation. You cannot believe that I am
+guilty of her sin; not if you look at her as I am looking now."
+
+But their glances hardly followed her pointing finger. Her
+friends--the comrades of her youth, the Inseparables with their
+secret oath--one and all held themselves aloof, struck by the
+perfidy they were only just beginning to take in. Smitten with
+despair, for these girls were her life, she gave one wild leap
+and sank on her knees before Alicia.
+
+"O speak!" she began. "Forgive me, and--"
+
+A tremble seized her throat; she ceased to speak and let fall her
+partially uplifted hands. The cheery sound of men's voices had
+drifted in from the terrace, and the figure of Captain
+Holliday could be seen passing by. The shudder which shook
+Caroline West communicated itself to Alicia Driscoll, and the
+former rising quickly, the two women surveyed each other,
+possibly for the first time, with open soul and a complete
+understanding.
+
+"Caroline!" murmured the one.
+
+"Alicia!" pleaded the other.
+
+"Caroline, trust me," said Alicia Driscoll in that moving voice
+of hers, which more than her beauty caught and retained all
+hearts. "You have served me ill, but it was not all undeserved.
+Girls," she went on, eyeing both them and her father with the
+wistfulness of a breaking heart, "neither Caroline nor myself are
+worthy of Captain Holliday's love. Caroline has told you her
+fault, but mine is perhaps a worse one. The ring--the scarf--the
+diamond pins--I took them all--took them if I did not retain
+them. A curse has been over my life--the curse of a longing I
+could not combat. But love was working a change in me. Since I
+have known Captain Holliday--but that's all over. I was mad to
+think I could be happy with such memories in my life. I shall
+never marry now--or touch jewels again--my own or another's.
+Father, father, you won't go back on your girl! I couldn't see
+Caroline suffer for what I have done. You will pardon me and
+help--help--"
+
+Her voice choked. She flung herself into her father's arms; his
+head bent over hers, and for an instant not a soul in the room
+moved. Then Miss Hughson gave a spring and caught her by the
+hand. "We are inseparable," said she, and kissed the hand,
+murmuring, "Now is our time to show it."
+
+Then other lips fell upon those cold and trembling fingers, which
+seemed to warm under these embraces. And then a tear. It
+came from the hard eye of Caroline, and remained a sacred secret
+between the two.
+
+"You have your pendant?"
+
+Mr. Driscoll's suffering eye shone down on Violet Strange's
+uplifted face as she advanced to say good-bye preparatory to
+departure.
+
+"Yes," she acknowledged, "but hardly, I fear, your gratitude."
+
+And the answer astonished her.
+
+"I am not sure that the real Alicia will not make her father
+happier than the unreal one has ever done."
+
+"And Captain Holliday?"
+
+"He may come to feel the same."
+
+"Then I do not quit in disgrace?"
+
+"You depart with my thanks."
+
+When a certain personage was told of the success of Miss
+Strange's latest manoeuvre, he remarked: "The little one
+progresses. We shall have to give her a case of prime importance
+next."
+
+END OF PROBLEM I
+
+
+PROBLEM II
+
+THE SECOND BULLET
+
+"You must see her."
+
+"No. No."
+
+"She's a most unhappy woman. Husband and child both taken from
+her in a moment; and now, all means of living as well, unless
+some happy thought of yours--some inspiration of your genius--
+shows us a way of re-establishing her claims to the policy voided
+by this cry of suicide."
+
+But the small wise head of Violet Strange continued its slow
+shake of decided refusal.
+
+"I'm sorry," she protested, "but it's quite out of my province.
+I'm too young to meddle with so serious a matter."
+
+"Not when you can save a bereaved woman the only possible
+compensation left her by untoward fate?"
+
+"Let the police try their hand at that."
+
+"They have had no success with the case."
+
+"Or you?"
+
+"Nor I either."
+
+"And you expect--"
+
+"Yes, Miss Strange. I expect you to find the missing bullet which
+will settle the fact that murder and not suicide ended George
+Hammond's life. If you cannot, then a long litigation awaits this
+poor widow, ending, as such litigation usually does, in favour of
+the stronger party. There's the alternative. If you once saw her--"
+
+"But that's what I'm not willing to do. If I once saw her I
+should yield to her importunities and attempt the seemingly
+impossible. My instincts bid me say no. Give me something
+easier."
+
+"Easier things are not so remunerative. There's money in this
+affair, if the insurance company is forced to pay up. I can offer
+you--"
+
+"What?"
+
+There was eagerness in the tone despite her effort at
+nonchalance. The other smiled imperceptibly, and briefly named
+the sum.
+
+It was larger than she had expected. This her visitor saw by the
+way her eyelids fell and the peculiar stillness which, for an
+instant, held her vivacity in check.
+
+"And you think I can earn that?"
+
+Her eyes were fixed on his in an eagerness as honest as it was
+unrestrained.
+
+He could hardly conceal his amazement, her desire was so evident
+and the cause of it so difficult to understand. He knew she
+wanted money--that was her avowed reason for entering into this
+uncongenial work. But to want it so much! He glanced at her
+person; it was simply clad but very expensively--how expensively
+it was his business to know. Then he took in the room in which
+they sat. Simplicity again, but the simplicity of high art--the
+drawing-room of one rich enough to indulge in the final luxury of
+a highly cultivated taste, viz.: unostentatious elegance and the
+subjection of each carefully chosen ornament to the general
+effect.
+
+What did this favoured child of fortune lack that she could be
+reached by such a plea, when her whole being revolted from the
+nature of the task he offered her? It was a question not new to
+him; but one he had never heard answered and was not likely to
+hear answered now. But the fact remained that the consent he had
+thought dependent upon sympathetic interest could be reached
+much more readily by the promise of large emolument,--and he
+owned to a feeling of secret disappointment even while he
+recognized the value of the discovery.
+
+But his satisfaction in the latter, if satisfaction it were, was
+of very short duration. Almost immediately he observed a change
+in her. The sparkle which had shone in the eye whose depths he
+had never been able to penetrate, had dissipated itself in
+something like a tear and she spoke up in that vigorous tone no
+one but himself had ever heard, as she said:
+
+"No. The sum is a good one and I could use it; but I will not
+waste my energy on a case I do not believe in. The man shot
+himself. He was a speculator, and probably had good reason for
+his act. Even his wife acknowledges that he has lately had more
+losses than gains."
+
+"See her. She has something to tell you which never got into the
+papers."
+
+"You say that? You know that?"
+
+"On my honour, Miss Strange."
+
+Violet pondered; then suddenly succumbed.
+
+"Let her come, then. Prompt to the hour. I will receive her at
+three. Later I have a tea and two party calls to make."
+
+Her visitor rose to leave. He had been able to subdue all
+evidence of his extreme gratification, and now took on a formal
+air. In dismissing a guest, Miss Strange was invariably the
+society belle and that only. This he had come to recognize.
+
+The case (well known at the time) was, in the fewest possible
+words, as follows:
+
+On a sultry night in September, a young couple living in one of
+the large apartment houses in the extreme upper portion of
+Manhattan were so annoyed by the incessant crying of a child in
+the adjoining suite, that they got up, he to smoke, and she to
+sit in the window for a possible breath of cool air. They were
+congratulating themselves upon the wisdom they had shown in thus
+giving up all thought of sleep--for the child's crying had not
+ceased--when (it may have been two o'clock and it may have been
+a little later) there came from somewhere near, the sharp and
+somewhat peculiar detonation of a pistol-shot.
+
+He thought it came from above; she, from the rear, and they were
+staring at each other in the helpless wonder of the moment, when
+they were struck by the silence. The baby had ceased to cry. All
+was as still in the adjoining apartment as in their own--too
+still--much too still. Their mutual stare turned to one of
+horror. "It came from there!" whispered the wife. "Some accident
+has occurred to Mr. or Mrs. Hammond--we ought to go--"
+
+Her words--very tremulous ones--were broken by a shout from
+below. They were standing in their window and had evidently been
+seen by a passing policeman. "Anything wrong up there?" they
+heard him cry. Mr. Saunders immediately looked out. "Nothing
+wrong here," he called down. (They were but two stories from the
+pavement.) "But I'm not so sure about the rear apartment. We
+thought we heard a shot. Hadn't you better come up, officer? My
+wife is nervous about it. I'll meet you at the stair-head and
+show you the way."
+
+The officer nodded and stepped in. The young couple hastily
+donned some wraps, and, by the time he appeared on their floor,
+they were ready to accompany him.
+
+Meanwhile, no disturbance was apparent anywhere else in the
+house, until the policeman rang the bell of the Hammond
+apartment. Then, voices began to be heard, and doors to open
+above and below, but not the one before which the policeman
+stood.
+
+Another ring, and this time an insistent one;--and still no
+response. The officer's hand was rising for the third time when
+there came a sound of fluttering from behind the panels against
+which he had laid his ear, and finally a choked voice uttering
+unintelligible words. Then a hand began to struggle with the
+lock, and the door, slowly opening, disclosed a woman clad in a
+hastily donned wrapper and giving every evidence of extreme
+fright.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, seeing only the compassionate faces of her
+neighbours. "You heard it, too! a pistol-shot from there--there--
+my husband's room. I have not dared to go--I--I--O, have mercy
+and see if anything is wrong! It is so still--so still, and only
+a moment ago the baby was crying. Mrs. Saunders, Mrs. Saunders,
+why is it so still?"
+
+She had fallen into her neighbour's arms. The hand with which she
+had pointed out a certain door had sunk to her side and she
+appeared to be on the verge of collapse.
+
+The officer eyed her sternly, while noting her appearance, which
+was that of a woman hastily risen from bed.
+
+"Where were you?" he asked. "Not with your husband and child, or
+you would know what had happened there."
+
+"I was sleeping down the hall," she managed to gasp out. "I'm
+not well--I--Oh, why do you all stand still and do nothing? My
+baby's in there. Go! go!" and, with sudden energy, she sprang
+upright, her eyes wide open and burning, her small well featured
+face white as the linen she sought to hide.
+
+The officer demurred no longer. In another instant he was trying
+the door at which she was again pointing.
+
+It was locked.
+
+Glancing back at the woman, now cowering almost to the floor, he
+pounded at the door and asked the man inside to open.
+
+No answer came back.
+
+With a sharp turn he glanced again at the wife.
+
+"You say that your husband is in this room?"
+
+She nodded, gasping faintly, "And the child!"
+
+He turned back, listened, then beckoned to Mr. Saunders. "We
+shall have to break our way in," said he. "Put your shoulder well
+to the door. Now!"
+
+The hinges of the door creaked; the lock gave way (this special
+officer weighed two hundred and seventy-five, as he found out,
+next day), and a prolonged and sweeping crash told the rest.
+
+Mrs. Hammond gave a low cry; and, straining forward from where
+she crouched in terror on the floor, searched the faces of the
+two men for some hint of what they saw in the dimly-lighted
+space beyond. Something dreadful, something which made Mr.
+Saunders come rushing back with a shout:
+
+"Take her away! Take her to our apartment, Jennie. She must not
+see--"
+
+Not see! He realized the futility of his words as his gaze fell
+on the young woman who had risen up at his approach and now stood
+gazing at him without speech, without movement, but with a glare
+of terror in her eyes, which gave him his first realization of
+human misery.
+
+His own glance fell before it. If he had followed his instinct he
+would have fled the house rather than answer the question of her
+look and the attitude of her whole frozen body.
+
+Perhaps in mercy to his speechless terror, perhaps in mercy to
+herself, she was the one who at last found the word which voiced
+their mutual anguish.
+
+"Dead?"
+
+No answer. None was needed.
+
+"And my baby?"
+
+O, that cry! It curdled the hearts of all who heard it. It shook
+the souls of men and women both inside and outside the apartment;
+then all was forgotten in the wild rush she made. The wife and
+mother had flung herself upon the scene, and, side by
+side with the not unmoved policeman, stood looking down upon the
+desolation made in one fatal instant in her home and heart.
+
+They lay there together, both past help, both quite dead. The
+child had simply been strangled by the weight of his father's arm
+which lay directly across the upturned little throat. But the
+father was a victim of the shot they had heard. There was blood
+on his breast, and a pistol in his hand.
+
+Suicide! The horrible truth was patent. No wonder they wanted to
+hold the young widow back. Her neighbour, Mrs. Saunders, crept in
+on tiptoe and put her arms about the swaying, fainting woman; but
+there was nothing to say--absolutely nothing.
+
+At least, they thought not. But when they saw her throw herself
+down, not by her husband, but by the child, and drag it out from
+under that strangling arm and hug and kiss it and call out
+wildly for a doctor, the officer endeavoured to interfere and
+yet could not find the heart to do so, though he knew the child
+was dead and should not, according to all the rules of the
+coroner's office, be moved before that official arrived. Yet
+because no mother could be convinced of a fact like this, he let
+her sit with it on the floor and try all her little arts to
+revive it, while he gave orders to the janitor and waited
+himself for the arrival of doctor and coroner.
+
+She was still sitting there in wide-eyed misery, alternately
+fondling the little body and drawing back to consult its small
+set features for some sign of life, when the doctor came, and,
+after one look at the child, drew it softly from her arms and
+laid it quietly in the crib from which its father had evidently
+lifted it but a short time before. Then he turned back to her,
+and found her on her feet, upheld by her two friends. She had
+understood his action, and without a groan had accepted her fate.
+Indeed, she seemed incapable of any further speech or action. She
+was staring down at her husband's body, which she, for the first
+time, seemed fully to see. Was her look one of grief or of
+resentment for the part he had played so unintentionally in her
+child's death? It was hard to tell; and when, with slowly rising
+finger, she pointed to the pistol so tightly clutched in the
+other outstretched hand, no one there--and by this time the room
+was full--could foretell what her words would be when her tongue
+regained its usage and she could speak.
+
+What she did say was this:
+
+"Is there a bullet gone? Did he fire off that pistol?" A question
+so manifestly one of delirium that no one answered it, which
+seemed to surprise her, though she said nothing till her glance
+had passed all around the walls of the room to where a window
+stood open to the night,--its lower sash being entirely raised.
+"There! look there!" she cried, with a commanding accent, and,
+throwing up her hands, sank a dead weight into the arms of those
+supporting her.
+
+No one understood; but naturally more than one rushed to the
+window. An open space was before them. Here lay the fields not
+yet parcelled out into lots and built upon; but it was not upon
+these they looked, but upon the strong trellis which they found
+there, which, if it supported no vine, formed a veritable ladder
+between this window and the ground.
+
+Could she have meant to call attention to this fact; and were her
+words expressive of another idea than the obvious one of suicide?
+
+If so, to what lengths a woman's imagination can go! Or so their
+combined looks seemed to proclaim, when to their utter
+astonishment they saw the officer, who had presented a calm
+appearance up till now, shift his position and with a surprised
+grunt direct their eyes to a portion of the wall just visible
+beyond the half-drawn curtains of the bed. The mirror hanging
+there showed a star-shaped breakage, such as follows the sharp
+impact of a bullet or a fiercely projected stone.
+
+"He fired two shots. One went wild; the other straight home."
+
+It was the officer delivering his opinion.
+
+Mr. Saunders, returning from the distant room where he had
+assisted in carrying Mrs. Hammond, cast a look at the shattered
+glass, and remarked forcibly:
+
+"I heard but one; and I was sitting up, disturbed by that poor
+infant. Jennie, did you hear more than one shot?" he asked,
+turning toward his wife.
+
+"No," she answered, but not with the readiness he had evidently
+expected. "I heard only one, but that was not quite usual in its
+tone. I'm used to guns," she explained, turning to the officer.
+"My father was an army man, and he taught me very early to load
+and fire a pistol. There was a prolonged sound to this shot;
+something like an echo of itself, following close upon the first
+ping. Didn't you notice that, Warren?"
+
+"I remember something of the kind," her husband allowed.
+
+"He shot twice and quickly," interposed the policeman,
+sententiously. "We shall find a spent bullet back of that
+mirror."
+
+But when, upon the arrival of the coroner, an investigation was
+made of the mirror and the wall behind, no bullet was found
+either there or any where else in the room, save in the dead
+man's breast. Nor had more than one been shot from his pistol, as
+five full chambers testified. The case which seemed so simple had
+its mysteries, but the assertion made by Mrs. Saunders no longer
+carried weight, nor was the evidence offered by the broken mirror
+considered as indubitably establishing the fact that a second
+shot had been fired in the room.
+
+Yet it was equally evident that the charge which had entered the
+dead speculator's breast had not been delivered at the close
+range of the pistol found clutched in his hand. There were no
+powder-marks to be discerned on his pajama-jacket, or on the
+flesh beneath. Thus anomaly confronted anomaly, leaving open but
+one other theory: that the bullet found in Mr. Hammond's breast
+came from the window and the one he shot went out of it. But this
+would necessitate his having shot his pistol from a point far
+removed from where he was found; and his wound was such as made
+it difficult to believe that he would stagger far, if at all,
+after its infliction.
+
+Yet, because the coroner was both conscientious and alert, he
+caused a most rigorous search to be made of the ground overlooked
+by the above mentioned window; a search in which the police
+joined, but which was without any result save that of rousing the
+attention of people in the neighbourhood and leading to a story
+being circulated of a man seen some time the night before
+crossing the fields in a great hurry. But as no further
+particulars were forthcoming, and not even a description of the
+man to be had, no emphasis would have been laid upon this story
+had it not transpired that the moment a report of it had come to
+Mrs. Hammond's ears (why is there always some one to carry these
+reports?) she roused from the torpor into which she had fallen,
+and in wild fashion exclaimed:
+
+"I knew it! I expected it! He was shot through the window and by
+that wretch. He never shot himself." Violent declarations which
+trailed off into the one continuous wail, "O, my baby! my poor
+baby!"
+
+Such words, even though the fruit of delirium, merited some sort
+of attention, or so this good coroner thought, and as soon as
+opportunity offered and she was sufficiently sane and quiet to
+respond to his questions, he asked her whom she had meant by
+that wretch, and what reason she had, or thought she had, of
+attributing her husband's death to any other agency than his own
+disgust with life.
+
+And then it was that his sympathies, although greatly roused in
+her favour began to wane. She met the question with a cold stare
+followed by a few ambiguous words out of which he could make
+nothing. Had she said wretch? She did not remember. They must not
+be influenced by anything she might have uttered in her first
+grief. She was well-nigh insane at the time. But of one thing
+they might be sure: her husband had not shot himself; he was too
+much afraid of death for such an act. Besides, he was too happy.
+Whatever folks might say he was too fond of his family to wish to
+leave it.
+
+Nor did the coroner or any other official succeed in eliciting
+anything further from her. Even when she was asked, with cruel
+insistence, how she explained the fact that the baby was found
+lying on the floor instead of in its crib, her only answer was:
+"His father was trying to soothe it. The child was crying
+dreadfully, as you have heard from those who were kept awake by
+him that night, and my husband was carrying him about when the
+shot came which caused George to fall and overlay the baby in his
+struggles."
+
+"Carrying a baby about with a loaded pistol in his hand?" came
+back in stern retort.
+
+She had no answer for this. She admitted when informed that the
+bullet extracted from her husband's body had been found to
+correspond exactly with those remaining in the five chambers of
+the pistol taken from his hand, that he was not only the owner of
+this pistol but was in the habit of sleeping with it under his
+pillow; but, beyond that, nothing; and this reticence, as well as
+her manner which was cold and repellent, told against her.
+
+A verdict of suicide was rendered by the coroner's jury, and the
+life-insurance company, in which Mr. Hammond had but lately
+insured himself for a large sum, taking advantage of the suicide
+clause embodied in the policy, announced its determination of not
+paying the same.
+
+Such was the situation, as known to Violet Strange and the
+general public, on the day she was asked to see Mrs. Hammond and
+learn what might alter her opinion as to the justice of this
+verdict and the stand taken by the Shuler Life Insurance
+Company.
+
+The clock on the mantel in Miss Strange's rose-coloured boudoir
+had struck three, and Violet was gazing in some impatience at the
+door, when there came a gentle knock upon it, and the maid (one
+of the elderly, not youthful, kind) ushered in her expected
+visitor.
+
+"You are Mrs. Hammond?" she asked, in natural awe of the too
+black figure outlined so sharply against the deep pink of the
+sea-shell room.
+
+The answer was a slow lifting of the veil which shadowed the
+features she knew only from the cuts she had seen in newspapers.
+
+"You are--Miss Strange?" stammered her visitor; "the young lady
+who--"
+
+"I am," chimed in a voice as ringing as it was sweet. "I am the
+person you have come here to see. And this is my home. But that
+does not make me less interested in the unhappy, or less
+desirous of serving them. Certainly you have met with the two
+greatest losses which can come to a woman--I know your story
+well enough to say that--; but what have you to tell me in proof
+that you should not lose your anticipated income as well?
+Something vital, I hope, else I cannot help you; something which
+you should have told the coroner's jury--and did not."
+
+The flush which was the sole answer these words called forth did
+not take from the refinement of the young widow's expression, but
+rather added to it; Violet watched it in its ebb and flow and,
+seriously affected by it (why, she did not know, for Mrs. Hammond
+had made no other appeal either by look or gesture), pushed
+forward a chair and begged her visitor to be seated.
+
+"We can converse in perfect safety here," she said. "When you
+feel quite equal to it, let me hear what you have to
+communicate. It will never go any further. I could not do the
+work I do if I felt it necessary to have a confidant."
+
+"But you are so young and so--so--"
+
+"So inexperienced you would say and so evidently a member of
+what New Yorkers call 'society.' Do not let that trouble you. My
+inexperience is not likely to last long and my social pleasures
+are more apt to add to my efficiency than to detract from it."
+
+With this Violet's face broke into a smile. It was not the
+brilliant one so often seen upon her lips, but there was
+something in its quality which carried encouragement to the
+widow and led her to say with obvious eagerness:
+
+"You know the facts?"
+
+"I have read all the papers."
+
+"I was not believed on the stand."
+
+"It was your manner--"
+
+"I could not help my manner. I was keeping something back, and,
+being unused to deceit, I could not act quite naturally."
+
+"Why did you keep something back? When you saw the unfavourable
+impression made by your reticence, why did you not speak up and
+frankly tell your story?"
+
+"Because I was ashamed. Because I thought it would hurt me more
+to speak than to keep silent. I do not think so now; but I did
+then--and so made my great mistake. You must remember not only
+the awful shock of my double loss, but the sense of guilt
+accompanying it; for my husband and I had quarreled that night,
+quarreled bitterly--that was why I had run away into another
+room and not because I was feeling ill and impatient of the
+baby's fretful cries."
+
+"So people have thought." In saying this, Miss Strange was
+perhaps cruelly emphatic. "You wish to explain that quarrel? You
+think it will be doing any good to your cause to go into that
+matter with me now?"
+
+"I cannot say; but I must first clear my conscience and then try
+to convince you that quarrel or no quarrel, he never took his own
+life. He was not that kind. He had an abnormal fear of death. I
+do not like to say it but he was a physical coward. I have seen
+him turn pale at the least hint of danger. He could no more have
+turned that muzzle upon his own breast than he could have turned
+it upon his baby. Some other hand shot him, Miss Strange.
+Remember the open window, the shattered mirror; and I think I
+know that hand."
+
+Her head had fallen forward on her breast. The emotion she
+showed was not so eloquent of grief as of deep personal shame.
+
+"You think you know the man?" In saying this, Violet's voice
+sunk to a whisper. It was an accusation of murder she had just
+heard.
+
+"To my great distress, yes. When Mr. Hammond and I were
+married," the widow now proceeded in a more determined tone,
+"there was another man--a very violent one--who vowed even at
+the church door that George and I should never live out two full
+years together. We have not. Our second anniversary would have
+been in November."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Let me say this: the quarrel of which I speak was not serious
+enough to occasion any such act of despair on his part. A man
+would be mad to end his life on account of so slight a
+disagreement. It was not even on account of the person of whom
+I've just spoken, though that person had been mentioned between
+us earlier in the evening, Mr. Hammond having come across him
+face to face that very afternoon in the subway. Up to this time
+neither of us had seen or heard of him since our wedding-day."
+
+"And you think this person whom you barely mentioned, so mindful
+of his old grudge that he sought out your domicile, and, with
+the intention of murder, climbed the trellis leading to your
+room and turned his pistol upon the shadowy figure which was all
+he could see in the semi-obscurity of a much lowered gas-jet?"
+
+"A man in the dark does not need a bright light to see his enemy
+when he is intent upon revenge."
+
+Miss Strange altered her tone.
+
+"And your husband? You must acknowledge that he shot off his
+pistol whether the other did or not."
+
+"It was in self-defence. He would shoot to save his own life--or
+the baby's."
+
+"Then he must have heard or seen--"
+
+"A man at the window."
+
+"And would have shot there?"
+
+"Or tried to."
+
+"Tried to?"
+
+"Yes; the other shot first--oh, I've thought it all out--causing
+my husband's bullet to go wild. It was his which broke the
+mirror."
+
+Violet's eyes, bright as stars, suddenly narrowed.
+
+"And what happened then?" she asked. "Why cannot they find the
+bullet?"
+
+"Because it went out of the window;--glanced off and went out of
+the window."
+
+Mrs. Hammond's tone was triumphant; her look spirited and
+intense.
+
+Violet eyed her compassionately.
+
+"Would a bullet glancing off from a mirror, however hung, be apt
+to reach a window so far on the opposite side?"
+
+"I don't know; I only know that it did," was the contradictory,
+almost absurd, reply.
+
+"What was the cause of the quarrel you speak of between your
+husband and yourself? You see, I must know the exact truth and
+all the truth to be of any assistance to you."
+
+"It was--it was about the care I gave, or didn't give, the baby.
+I feel awfully to have to say it, but George did not think I did
+my full duty by the child. He said there was no need of its
+crying so; that if I gave it the proper attention it would not
+keep the neighbours and himself awake half the night. And I--I
+got angry and insisted that I did the best I could; that the
+child was naturally fretful and that if he wasn't satisfied with
+my way of looking after it, he might try his. All of which was
+very wrong and unreasonable on my part, as witness the awful
+punishment which followed."
+
+"And what made you get up and leave him?"
+
+"The growl he gave me in reply. When I heard that, I bounded out
+of bed and said I was going to the spare room to sleep; and if
+the baby cried he might just try what he could do himself to
+stop it."
+
+"And he answered?"
+
+"This, just this--I shall never forget his words as long as I
+live--'If you go, you need not expect me to let you in again no
+matter what happens.'"
+
+"He said that?"
+
+"And locked the door after me. You see I could not tell all
+that."
+
+"It might have been better if you had. It was such a natural
+quarrel and so unprovocative of actual tragedy."
+
+Mrs. Hammond was silent. It was not difficult to see that she
+had no very keen regrets for her husband personally. But then he
+was not a very estimable man nor in any respect her equal.
+
+"You were not happy with him," Violet ventured to remark.
+
+"I was not a fully contented woman. But for all that he had no
+cause to complain of me except for the reason I have mentioned. I
+was not a very intelligent mother. But if the baby were living
+now--O, if he were living now--with what devotion I should care
+for him."
+
+She was on her feet, her arms were raised, her face impassioned
+with feeling. Violet, gazing at her, heaved a little sigh. It
+was perhaps in keeping with the situation, perhaps extraneous to
+it, but whatever its source, it marked a change in her manner.
+With no further check upon her sympathy, she said very softly:
+
+"It is well with the child."
+
+The mother stiffened, swayed, and then burst into wild weeping.
+
+"But not with me," she cried, "not with me. I am desolate and
+bereft. I have not even a home in which to hide my grief and no
+prospect of one."
+
+"But," interposed Violet, "surely your husband left you
+something? You cannot be quite penniless?"
+
+"My husband left nothing," was the answer, uttered without
+bitterness, but with all the hardness of fact. "He had debts. I
+shall pay those debts. When these and other necessary expenses
+are liquidated, there will be but little left. He made no secret
+of the fact that he lived close up to his means. That is why he
+was induced to take on a life insurance. Not a friend of his but
+knows his improvidence. I--I have not even jewels. I have only my
+determination and an absolute conviction as to the real nature of
+my husband's death."
+
+"What is the name of the man you secretly believe to have shot
+your husband from the trellis?"
+
+Mrs. Hammond told her.
+
+It was a new one to Violet. She said so and then asked:
+
+"What else can you tell me about him?"
+
+"Nothing, but that he is a very dark man and has a club-foot."
+
+"Oh, what a mistake you've made."
+
+"Mistake? Yes, I acknowledge that."
+
+"I mean in not giving this last bit of information at once to
+the police. A man can be identified by such a defect. Even his
+footsteps can be traced. He might have been found that very day.
+Now, what have we to go upon?"
+
+"You are right, but not expecting to have any difficulty about
+the insurance money I thought it would be generous in me to keep
+still. Besides, this is only surmise on my part. I feel certain
+that my husband was shot by another hand than his own, but I know
+of no way of proving it. Do you?"
+
+Then Violet talked seriously with her, explaining how their only
+hope lay in the discovery of a second bullet in the room which
+had already been ransacked for this very purpose and without the
+shadow of a result.
+
+A tea, a musicale, and an evening dance kept Violet Strange in a
+whirl for the remainder of the day. No brighter eye nor more
+contagious wit lent brilliance to these occasions, but with the
+passing of the midnight hour no one who had seen her in the
+blaze of electric lights would have recognized this favoured
+child of fortune in the earnest figure sitting in the obscurity
+of an up-town apartment, studying the walls, the ceilings, and
+the floors by the dim light of a lowered gas-jet. Violet Strange
+in society was a very different person from Violet Strange under
+the tension of her secret and peculiar work.
+
+She had told them at home that she was going to spend the night
+with a friend; but only her old coachman knew who that friend
+was. Therefore a very natural sense of guilt mingled with her
+emotions at finding herself alone on a scene whose gruesome
+mystery she could solve only by identifying herself with the
+place and the man who had perished there.
+
+Dismissing from her mind all thought of self, she strove to
+think as he thought, and act as he acted on the night when he
+found himself (a man of but little courage) left in this room
+with an ailing child.
+
+At odds with himself, his wife, and possibly with the child
+screaming away in its crib, what would he be apt to do in his
+present emergency? Nothing at first, but as the screaming
+continued he would remember the old tales of fathers walking the
+floor at night with crying babies, and hasten to follow suit.
+Violet, in her anxiety to reach his inmost thought, crossed to
+where the crib had stood, and, taking that as a start, began
+pacing the room in search of the spot from which a bullet, if
+shot, would glance aside from the mirror in the direction of the
+window. (Not that she was ready to accept this theory of Mrs.
+Hammond, but that she did not wish to entirely dismiss it
+without putting it to the test.)
+
+She found it in an unexpected quarter of the room and much nearer
+the bed-head than where his body was found. This, which might
+seem to confuse matters, served, on the contrary to remove from
+the case one of its most serious difficulties. Standing here, he
+was within reach of the pillow under which his pistol lay hidden,
+and if startled, as his wife believed him to have been by a noise
+at the other end of the room, had but to crouch and reach behind
+him in order to find himself armed and ready for a possible
+intruder.
+
+Imitating his action in this as in other things, she had herself
+crouched low at the bedside and was on the point of withdrawing
+her hand from under the pillow, when a new surprise checked her
+movement and held her fixed in her position, with eyes staring
+straight at the adjoining wall. She had seen there what he must
+have seen in making this same turn--the dark bars of the opposite
+window-frame outlined in the mirror--and understood at once what
+had happened. In the nervousness and terror of the moment, George
+Hammond had mistaken this reflection of the window for the window
+itself, and shot impulsively at the man he undoubtedly saw
+covering him from the trellis without. But while this explained
+the shattering of the mirror, how about the other and still more
+vital question, of where the bullet went afterward? Was the angle
+at which it had been fired acute enough to send it out of a
+window diagonally opposed? No; even if the pistol had been held
+closer to the man firing it than she had reason to believe, the
+angle still would be oblique enough to carry it on to the further
+wall.
+
+But no sign of any such impact had been discovered on this wall.
+Consequently, the force of the bullet had been expended before
+reaching it, and when it fell--
+
+Here, her glance, slowly traveling along the floor, impetuously
+paused. It had reached the spot where the two bodies had been
+found, and unconsciously her eyes rested there, conjuring up the
+picture of the bleeding father and the strangled child. How
+piteous and how dreadful it all was. If she could only
+understand-- Suddenly she rose straight up, staring and
+immovable in the dim light. Had the idea--the explanation--the
+only possible explanation covering the whole phenomena come to
+her at last?
+
+It would seem so, for as she so stood, a look of conviction
+settled over her features, and with this look, evidences of a
+horror which for all her fast accumulating knowledge of life and
+its possibilities made her appear very small and very helpless.
+
+A half-hour later, when Mrs. Hammond, in her anxiety at hearing
+nothing more from Miss Strange, opened the door of her room, it
+was to find, lying on the edge of the sill, the little
+detective's card with these words hastily written across it:
+
+I do not feel as well as I could wish, and so have telephoned to
+my own coachman to come and take me home. I will either see or
+write you within a few days. But do not allow yourself to hope.
+I pray you do not allow yourself the least hope; the outcome is
+still very problematical.
+
+When Violet's employer entered his office the next morning it
+was to find a veiled figure awaiting him which he at once
+recognized as that of his little deputy. She was slow in lifting
+her veil and when it finally came free he felt a momentary doubt
+as to his wisdom in giving her just such a matter as this to
+investigate. He was quite sure of his mistake when he saw her
+face, it was so drawn and pitiful.
+
+"You have failed," said he.
+
+"Of that you must judge," she answered; and drawing near she
+whispered in his ear.
+
+"No!" he cried in his amazement.
+
+"Think," she murmured, "think. Only so can all the facts be
+accounted for."
+
+"I will look into it; I will certainly look into it," was his
+earnest reply. "If you are right-- But never mind that. Go home
+and take a horseback ride in the Park. When I have news in regard
+to this I will let you know. Till then forget it all. Hear me, I
+charge you to forget everything but your balls and your parties."
+
+And Violet obeyed him.
+
+Some few days after this, the following statement appeared in
+all the papers:
+
+"Owing to some remarkable work done by the firm of -- & --, 
+the well-known private detective agency, the claim made by Mrs.
+George Hammond against the Shuler Life Insurance Company is
+likely to be allowed without further litigation. As our readers
+will remember, the contestant has insisted from the first that
+the bullet causing her husband's death came from another pistol
+than the one found clutched in his own hand. But while reasons
+were not lacking to substantiate this assertion, the failure to
+discover more than the disputed track of a second bullet led to
+a verdict of suicide, and a refusal of the company to pay.
+
+"But now that bullet has been found. And where? In the most
+startling place in the world, viz.: in the larynx of the child
+found lying dead upon the floor beside his father, strangled as
+was supposed by the weight of that father's arm. The theory is,
+and there seems to be none other, that the father, hearing a
+suspicious noise at the window, set down the child he was
+endeavouring to soothe and made for the bed and his own pistol,
+and, mistaking a reflection of the assassin for the assassin
+himself, sent his shot sidewise at a mirror just as the other let
+go the trigger which drove a similar bullet into his breast. The
+course of the one was straight and fatal and that of the other
+deflected. Striking the mirror at an oblique angle, the bullet
+fell to the floor where it was picked up by the crawling child,
+and, as was most natural, thrust at once into his mouth. Perhaps
+it felt hot to the little tongue; perhaps the child was simply
+frightened by some convulsive movement of the father who
+evidently spent his last moment in an endeavour to reach the
+child, but, whatever the cause, in the quick gasp it gave, the
+bullet was drawn into the larynx, strangling him.
+
+"That the father's arm, in his last struggle, should have fallen
+directly across the little throat is one of those anomalies
+which confounds reason and misleads justice by stopping
+investigation at the very point where truth lies and mystery
+disappears.
+
+"Mrs. Hammond is to be congratulated that there are detectives
+who do not give too much credence to outward appearances."
+
+We expect soon to hear of the capture of the man who sped home
+the death-dealing bullet.
+
+END OF PROBLEM II
+
+
+
+PROBLEM III
+
+AN INTANGIBLE CLUE
+
+"Have you studied the case?"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"Not studied the case which for the last few days has provided
+the papers with such conspicuous headlines?"
+
+"I do not read the papers. I have not looked at one in a whole
+week."
+
+"Miss Strange, your social engagements must be of a very
+pressing nature just now?"
+
+"They are."
+
+"And your business sense in abeyance?"
+
+"How so?"
+
+"You would not ask if you had read the papers."
+
+To this she made no reply save by a slight toss of her pretty
+head. If her employer felt nettled by this show of indifference,
+he did not betray it save by the rapidity of his tones as,
+without further preamble and possibly without real excuse, he
+proceeded to lay before her the case in question. "Last Tuesday
+night a woman was murdered in this city; an old woman, in a
+lonely house where she has lived for years. Perhaps you remember
+this house? It occupies a not inconspicuous site in Seventeenth
+Street--a house of the olden time?"
+
+"No, I do not remember."
+
+The extreme carelessness of Miss Strange's tone would have been
+fatal to her socially; but then, she would never have used it
+socially. This they both knew, yet he smiled with his customary
+indulgence.
+
+"Then I will describe it."
+
+She looked around for a chair and sank into it. He did the same.
+
+"It has a fanlight over the front door."
+
+She remained impassive.
+
+"And two old-fashioned strips of parti-coloured glass on either
+side."
+
+"And a knocker between its panels which may bring money some
+day."
+
+"Oh, you do remember! I thought you would, Miss Strange."
+
+"Yes. Fanlights over doors are becoming very rare in New York."
+
+"Very well, then. That house was the scene of Tuesday's tragedy.
+The woman who has lived there in solitude for years was foully
+murdered. I have since heard that the people who knew her best
+have always anticipated some such violent end for her. She never
+allowed maid or friend to remain with her after five in the
+afternoon; yet she had money--some think a great deal--always in
+the house."
+
+"I am interested in the house, not in her."
+
+"Yet, she was a character--as full of whims and crotchets as a
+nut is of meat. Her death was horrible. She fought--her dress was
+torn from her body in rags. This happened, you see, before her
+hour for retiring; some think as early as six in the afternoon.
+And"--here he made a rapid gesture to catch Violet's wandering
+attention--"in spite of this struggle; in spite of the fact that
+she was dragged from room to room--that her person was searched--
+and everything in the house searched--that drawers were pulled
+out of bureaus--doors wrenched off of cupboards--china smashed
+upon the floor--whole shelves denuded and not a spot from cellar
+to garret left unransacked, no direct clue to the perpetrator has
+been found--nothing that gives any idea of his personality save
+his display of strength and great cupidity. The police have even
+deigned to consult me,--an unusual procedure--but I could find
+nothing, either. Evidences of fiendish purpose abound--of
+relentless search--but no clue to the man himself. It's uncommon,
+isn't it, not to have any clue?"
+
+"I suppose so." Miss Strange hated murders and it was with
+difficulty she could be brought to discuss them. But she was not
+going to be let off; not this time.
+
+"You see," he proceeded insistently, "it's not only mortifying
+to the police but disappointing to the press, especially as few
+reporters believe in the No-thoroughfare business. They say, and
+we cannot but agree with them, that no such struggle could take
+place and no such repeated goings to and fro through the house
+without some vestige being left by which to connect this crime
+with its daring perpetrator."
+
+Still she stared down at her hands--those little hands so white
+and fluttering, so seemingly helpless under the weight of their
+many rings, and yet so slyly capable.
+
+"She must have queer neighbours," came at last, from Miss
+Strange's reluctant lips. "Didn't they hear or see anything of
+all this?"
+
+"She has no neighbours--that is, after half-past five o'clock.
+There's a printing establishment on one side of her, a deserted
+mansion on the other side, and nothing but warehouses back and
+front. There was no one to notice what took place in her small
+dwelling after the printing house was closed. She was the most
+courageous or the most foolish of women to remain there as she
+did. But nothing except death could budge her. She was born in
+the room where she died; was married in the one where she worked;
+saw husband, father, mother, and five sisters carried out in turn
+to their graves through the door with the fanlight over the top--
+and these memories held her."
+
+"You are trying to interest me in the woman. Don't."
+
+"No, I'm not trying to interest you in her, only trying to
+explain her. There was another reason for her remaining where
+she did so long after all residents had left the block. She had
+a business."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"She embroidered monograms for fine ladies."
+
+"She did? But you needn't look at me like that. She never
+embroidered any for me."
+
+"No? She did first-class work. I saw some of it. Miss Strange,
+if I could get you into that house for ten minutes--not to see
+her but to pick up the loose intangible thread which I am sure
+is floating around in it somewhere--wouldn't you go?"
+
+Violet slowly rose--a movement which he followed to the letter.
+
+"Must I express in words the limit I have set for myself in our
+affair?" she asked. "When, for reasons I have never thought
+myself called upon to explain, I consented to help you a little
+now and then with some matter where a woman's tact and knowledge
+of the social world might tell without offence to herself or
+others, I never thought it would be necessary for me to state
+that temptation must stop with such cases, or that I should not
+be asked to touch the sordid or the bloody. But it seems I was
+mistaken, and that I must stoop to be explicit. The woman who was
+killed on Tuesday might have interested me greatly as an
+embroiderer, but as a victim, not at all. What do you see in me,
+or miss in me, that you should drag me into an atmosphere of low-
+down crime?"
+
+"Nothing, Miss Strange. You are by nature, as well as by
+breeding, very far removed from everything of the kind. But you
+will allow me to suggest that no crime is low-down which makes
+imperative demand upon the intellect and intuitive sense of its
+investigator. Only the most delicate touch can feel and hold the
+thread I've just spoken of, and you have the most delicate touch
+I know."
+
+"Do not attempt to flatter me. I have no fancy for handling
+befouled spider webs. Besides, if I had--if such elusive
+filaments fascinated me--how could I, well-known in person and
+name, enter upon such a scene without prejudice to our mutual
+compact?"
+
+"Miss Strange"--she had reseated herself, but so far he had
+failed to follow her example (an ignoring of the subtle hint
+that her interest might yet be caught, which seemed to annoy her
+a trifle), "I should not even have suggested such a possibility
+had I not seen a way of introducing you there without risk to
+your position or mine. Among the boxes piled upon Mrs.
+Doolittle's table--boxes of finished work, most of them
+addressed and ready for delivery--was one on which could be seen
+the name of--shall I mention it?"
+
+"Not mine? You don't mean mine? That would be too odd--too
+ridiculously odd. I should not understand a coincidence of that
+kind; no, I should not, notwithstanding the fact that I have
+lately sent out such work to be done."
+
+"Yet it was your name, very clearly and precisely written--your
+whole name, Miss Strange. I saw and read it myself."
+
+"But I gave the order to Madame Pirot on Fifth Avenue. How came
+my things to be found in the house of this woman of whose
+horrible death we have been talking?"
+
+"Did you suppose that Madame Pirot did such work with her own
+hands?--or even had it done in her own establishment? Mrs.
+Doolittle was universally employed. She worked for a dozen firms.
+You will find the biggest names on most of her packages. But on
+this one--I allude to the one addressed to you--there was more to
+be seen than the name. These words were written on it in another
+hand. Send without opening. This struck the police as suspicious;
+sufficiently so, at least, for them to desire your presence at
+the house as soon as you can make it convenient."
+
+"To open the box?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+The curl of Miss Strange's disdainful lip was a sight to see.
+
+"You wrote those words yourself," she coolly observed. "While
+someone's back was turned, you whipped out your pencil and--"
+
+"Resorted to a very pardonable subterfuge highly conducive to
+the public's good. But never mind that. Will you go?"
+
+Miss Strange became suddenly demure.
+
+"I suppose I must," she grudgingly conceded. "However obtained,
+a summons from the police cannot be ignored even by Peter
+Strange's daughter."
+
+Another man might have displayed his triumph by smile or gesture;
+but this one had learned his role too well. He simply said:
+
+"Very good. Shall it be at once? I have a taxi at the door."
+
+But she failed to see the necessity of any such hurry. With
+sudden dignity she replied:
+
+"That won't do. If I go to this house it must be under suitable
+conditions. I shall have to ask my brother to accompany me."
+
+"Your brother!"
+
+"Oh, he's safe. He--he knows."
+
+"Your brother knows?" Her visitor, with less control than usual,
+betrayed very openly his uneasiness.
+
+"He does and--approves. But that's not what interests us now,
+only so far as it makes it possible for me to go with propriety
+to that dreadful house."
+
+A formal bow from the other and the words:
+
+"They may expect you, then. Can you say when?"
+
+"Within the next hour. But it will be a useless concession on my
+part," she pettishly complained. "A place that has been gone
+over by a dozen detectives is apt to be brushed clean of its
+cobwebs, even if such ever existed."
+
+"That's the difficulty," he acknowledged; and did not dare to add
+another word; she was at that particular moment so very much the
+great lady, and so little his confidential agent.
+
+He might have been less impressed, however, by this sudden
+assumption of manner, had he been so fortunate as to have seen
+how she employed the three quarters of an hour's delay for which
+she had asked.
+
+She read those neglected newspapers, especially the one
+containing the following highly coloured narration of this
+ghastly crime:
+
+"A door ajar--an empty hall--a line of sinister looking blotches
+marking a guilty step diagonally across the flagging--silence--
+and an unmistakable odour repugnant to all humanity,--such were
+the indications which met the eyes of Officer O'Leary on his
+first round last night, and led to the discovery of a murder
+which will long thrill the city by its mystery and horror.
+
+"Both the house and the victim are well known." Here followed a
+description of the same and of Mrs. Doolittle's manner of life in
+her ancient home, which Violet hurriedly passed over to come to
+the following:
+
+"As far as one can judge from appearances, the crime happened in
+this wise: Mrs. Doolittle had been in her kitchen, as the tea-
+kettle found singing on the stove goes to prove, and was coming
+back through her bedroom, when the wretch, who had stolen in by
+the front door which, to save steps, she was unfortunately in the
+habit of leaving on the latch till all possibility of customers
+for the day was over, sprang upon her from behind and dealt her a
+swinging blow with the poker he had caught up from the
+hearthstone.
+
+"Whether the struggle which ensued followed immediately upon this
+first attack or came later, it will take medical experts to
+determine. But, whenever it did occur, the fierceness of its
+character is shown by the grip taken upon her throat and the
+traces of blood which are to be seen all over the house. If the
+wretch had lugged her into her workroom and thence to the
+kitchen, and thence back to the spot of first assault, the
+evidences could not have been more ghastly. Bits of her clothing
+torn off by a ruthless hand, lay scattered over all these floors.
+In her bedroom, where she finally breathed her last, there could
+be seen mingled with these a number of large but worthless glass
+beads; and close against one of the base-boards, the string which
+had held them, as shown by the few remaining beads still clinging
+to it. If in pulling the string from her neck he had hoped to
+light upon some valuable booty, his fury at his disappointment is
+evident. You can almost see the frenzy with which he flung the
+would-be necklace at the wall, and kicked about and stamped upon
+its rapidly rolling beads.
+
+"Booty! That was what he was after; to find and carry away the
+poor needlewoman's supposed hoardings. If the scene baffles
+description--if, as some believe, he dragged her yet living from
+spot to spot, demanding information as to her places of
+concealment under threat of repeated blows, and, finally baffled,
+dealt the finishing stroke and proceeded on the search alone, no
+greater devastation could have taken place in this poor woman's
+house or effects. Yet such was his precaution and care for
+himself that he left no finger-print behind him nor any other
+token which could lead to personal identification. Even though
+his footsteps could be traced in much the order I have mentioned,
+they were of so indeterminate and shapeless a character as to
+convey little to the intelligence of the investigator.
+
+"That these smears (they could not be called footprints) not only
+crossed the hall but appeared in more than one place on the
+staircase proves that he did not confine his search to the lower
+storey; and perhaps one of the most interesting features of the
+case lies in the indications given by these marks of the raging
+course he took through these upper rooms. As the accompanying
+diagram will show [we omit the diagram] he went first into the
+large front chamber, thence to the rear where we find two rooms,
+one unfinished and filled with accumulated stuff most of which he
+left lying loose upon the floor, and the other plastered, and
+containing a window opening upon an alley-way at the side, but
+empty of all furniture and without even a carpet on the bare
+boards.
+
+"Why he should have entered the latter place, and why, having
+entered he should have crossed to the window, will be plain to
+those who have studied the conditions. The front chamber windows
+were tightly shuttered, the attic ones cumbered with boxes and
+shielded from approach by old bureaus and discarded chairs. This
+one only was free and, although darkened by the proximity of the
+house neighbouring it across the alley, was the only spot on the
+storey where sufficient light could be had at this late hour for
+the examination of any object of whose value he was doubtful.
+That he had come across such an object and had brought it to this
+window for some such purpose is very satisfactorily demonstrated
+by the discovery of a worn out wallet of ancient make lying on
+the floor directly in front of this window--a proof of his
+cupidity but also proof of his ill-luck. For this wallet, when
+lifted and opened, was found to contain two hundred or more
+dollars in old bills, which, if not the full hoard of their
+industrious owner, was certainly worth the taking by one who had
+risked his neck for the sole purpose of theft.
+
+"This wallet, and the flight of the murderer without it, give to
+this affair, otherwise simply brutal, a dramatic interest which
+will be appreciated not only by the very able detectives already
+hot upon the chase, but by all other inquiring minds anxious to
+solve a mystery of which so estimable a woman has been the
+unfortunate victim. A problem is presented to the police--"
+
+There Violet stopped.
+
+When, not long after, the superb limousine of Peter Strange
+stopped before the little house in Seventeenth Street, it caused
+a veritable sensation, not only in the curiosity-mongers
+lingering on the sidewalk, but to the two persons within--the
+officer on guard and a belated reporter.
+
+Though dressed in her plainest suit, Violet Strange looked much
+too fashionable and far too young and thoughtless to be observed,
+without emotion, entering a scene of hideous and brutal crime.
+Even the young man who accompanied her promised to bring a most
+incongruous element into this atmosphere of guilt and horror,
+and, as the detective on guard whispered to the man beside him,
+might much better have been left behind in the car.
+
+But Violet was great for the proprieties and young Arthur
+followed her in.
+
+Her entrance was a coup du theatre. She had lifted her veil in
+crossing the sidewalk and her interesting features and general
+air of timidity were very fetching. As the man holding open the
+door noted the impression made upon his companion, he muttered
+with sly facetiousness:
+
+"You think you'll show her nothing; but I'm ready to bet a fiver
+that she'll want to see it all and that you'll show it to her."
+
+The detective's grin was expressive, notwithstanding the shrug
+with which he tried to carry it off.
+
+And Violet? The hall into which she now stepped from the most
+vivid sunlight had never been considered even in its palmiest
+days as possessing cheer even of the stately kind. The ghastly
+green light infused through it by the coloured glass on either
+side of the doorway seemed to promise yet more dismal things
+beyond.
+
+"Must I go in there?" she asked, pointing, with an admirable
+simulation of nervous excitement, to a half-shut door at her
+left. "Is there where it happened? Arthur, do you suppose that
+there is where it happened?"
+
+"No, no, Miss," the officer made haste to assure her. "If you are
+Miss Strange" (Violet bowed), "I need hardly say that the woman
+was struck in her bedroom. The door beside you leads into the
+parlour, or as she would have called it, her work-room. You
+needn't be afraid of going in there. You will see nothing but the
+disorder of her boxes. They were pretty well pulled about. Not
+all of them though," he added, watching her as closely as the dim
+light permitted. "There is one which gives no sign of having been
+tampered with. It was done up in wrapping paper and is addressed
+to you, which in itself would not have seemed worthy of our
+attention had not these lines been scribbled on it in a man's
+handwriting: 'Send without opening.'"
+
+"How odd!" exclaimed the little minx with widely opened eyes and
+an air of guileless innocence. "Whatever can it mean? Nothing
+serious I am sure, for the woman did not even know me. She was
+employed to do this work by Madame Pirot."
+
+"Didn't you know that it was to be done here?"
+
+"No. I thought Madame Pirot's own girls did her embroidery for
+her."
+
+"So that you were surprised--"
+
+"Wasn't I!"
+
+"To get our message."
+
+"I didn't know what to make of it."
+
+The earnest, half-injured look with which she uttered this
+disclaimer, did its appointed work. The detective accepted her
+for what she seemed and, oblivious to the reporter's satirical
+gesture, crossed to the work-room door, which he threw wide open
+with the remark:
+
+"I should be glad to have you open that box in our presence. It
+is undoubtedly all right, but we wish to be sure. You know what
+the box should contain?"
+
+"Oh, yes, indeed; pillow-cases and sheets, with a big S
+embroidered on them."
+
+"Very well. Shall I undo the string for you?"
+
+"I shall be much obliged," said she, her eye flashing quickly
+about the room before settling down upon the knot he was deftly
+loosening.
+
+Her brother, gazing indifferently in from the doorway, hardly
+noticed this look; but the reporter at his back did, though he
+failed to detect its penetrating quality.
+
+"Your name is on the other side," observed the detective as he
+drew away the string and turned the package over.
+
+The smile which just lifted the corner of her lips was not in
+answer to this remark, but to her recognition of her employer's
+handwriting in the words under her name: Send without opening.
+She had not misjudged him.
+
+"The cover you may like to take off yourself," suggested the
+officer, as he lifted the box out of its wrapper.
+
+"Oh, I don't mind. There's nothing to be ashamed of in
+embroidered linen. Or perhaps that is not what you are looking
+for?"
+
+No one answered. All were busy watching her whip off the lid and
+lift out the pile of sheets and pillow-cases with which the box
+was closely packed.
+
+"Shall I unfold them?" she asked.
+
+The detective nodded.
+
+Taking out the topmost sheet, she shook it open.  Then the next
+and the next till she reached the bottom of the box.  Nothing of
+a criminating nature came to light.  The box as well as its
+contents was without mystery of any kind. This was not an
+unexpected result of course, but the smile with which she began
+to refold the pieces and throw them back into the box, revealed
+one of her dimples which was almost as dangerous to the casual
+observer as when it revealed both.
+
+"There," she exclaimed, "you see! Household linen exactly as I
+said. Now may I go home?"
+
+"Certainly, Miss Strange."
+
+The detective stole a sly glance at the reporter. She was not
+going in for the horrors then after all.
+
+But the reporter abated nothing of his knowing air, for while she
+spoke of going, she made no move towards doing so, but continued
+to look about the room till her glances finally settled on a long
+dark curtain shutting off an adjoining room.
+
+"There's where she lies, I suppose," she feelingly exclaimed.
+"And not one of you knows who killed her. Somehow, I cannot
+understand that. Why don't you know when that's what you're
+hired for?" The innocence with which she uttered this was
+astonishing. The detective began to look sheepish and the
+reporter turned aside to hide his smile. Whether in another
+moment either would have spoken no one can say, for, with a mock
+consciousness of having said something foolish, she caught up her
+parasol from the table and made a start for the door.
+
+But of course she looked back.
+
+"I was wondering," she recommenced, with a half wistful, half
+speculative air, "whether I should ask to have a peep at the
+place where it all happened."
+
+The reporter chuckled behind the pencil-end he was chewing, but
+the officer maintained his solemn air, for which act of self-
+restraint he was undoubtedly grateful when in another minute she
+gave a quick impulsive shudder not altogether assumed, and
+vehemently added: "But I couldn't stand the sight; no, I
+couldn't! I'm an awful coward when it comes to things like that.
+Nothing in all the world would induce me to look at the woman or
+her room. But I should like--" here both her dimples came into
+play though she could not be said exactly to smile--"just one
+little look upstairs, where he went poking about so long without
+any fear it seems of being interrupted. Ever since I've read
+about it I have seen, in my mind, a picture of his wicked figure
+sneaking from room to room, tearing open drawers and flinging out
+the contents of closets just to find a little money--a little,
+little money! I shall not sleep to-night just for wondering how
+those high up attic rooms really look."
+
+Who could dream that back of this display of mingled childishness
+and audacity there lay hidden purpose, intellect, and a keen
+knowledge of human nature. Not the two men who listened to this
+seemingly irresponsible chatter. To them she was a child to be
+humoured and humour her they did. The dainty feet which had
+already found their way to that gloomy staircase were allowed to
+ascend, followed it is true by those of the officer who did not
+dare to smile back at the reporter because of the brother's
+watchful and none too conciliatory eye.
+
+At the stair head she paused to look back.
+
+"I don't see those horrible marks which the papers describe as
+running all along the lower hall and up these stairs."
+
+"No, Miss Strange; they have gradually been rubbed out, but you
+will find some still showing on these upper floors."
+
+"Oh! oh! where? You frighten me--frighten me horribly! But--but--
+if you don't mind, I should like to see."
+
+Why should not a man on a tedious job amuse himself? Piloting her
+over to the small room in the rear, he pointed down at the
+boards. She gave one look and then stepped gingerly in.
+
+"Just look!" she cried; "a whole string of marks going straight
+from door to window. They have no shape, have they,--just
+blotches? I wonder why one of them is so much larger than the
+rest?"
+
+This was no new question. It was one which everybody who went
+into the room was sure to ask, there was such a difference in the
+size and appearance of the mark nearest the window. The reason--
+well, minds were divided about that, and no one had a
+satisfactory theory. The detective therefore kept discreetly
+silent.
+
+This did not seem to offend Miss Strange. On the contrary it gave
+her an opportunity to babble away to her heart's content.
+
+"One, two, three, four, five, six," she counted, with a shudder
+at every count. "And one of them bigger than the others." She
+might have added, "It is the trail of one foot, and strangely,
+intermingled at that," but she did not, though we may be quite
+sure that she noted the fact. "And where, just where did the old
+wallet fall? Here? or here?"
+
+She had moved as she spoke, so that in uttering the last "here,"
+she stood directly before the window. The surprise she received
+there nearly made her forget the part she was playing. From the
+character of the light in the room, she had expected, on looking
+out, to confront a near-by wall, but not a window in that wall.
+Yet that was what she saw directly facing her from across the old-
+fashioned alley separating this house from its neighbour; twelve
+unshuttered and uncurtained panes through which she caught a
+darkened view of a room almost as forlorn and devoid of furniture
+as the one in which she then stood.
+
+When quite sure of herself, she let a certain portion of her
+surprise appear.
+
+"Why, look!" she cried, "if you can't see right in next door!
+What a lonesome-looking place! From its desolate appearance I
+should think the house quite empty."
+
+"And it is. That's the old Shaffer homestead. It's been empty for
+a year."
+
+"Oh, empty!" And she turned away, with the most inconsequent air
+in the world, crying out as her name rang up the stair, "There's
+Arthur calling. I suppose he thinks I've been here long enough.
+I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you, officer. I really
+shouldn't have slept a wink to-night, if I hadn't been given a
+peep at these rooms, which I had imagined so different." And with
+one additional glance over her shoulder, that seemed to penetrate
+both windows and the desolate space beyond, she ran quickly out
+and down in response to her brother's reiterated call.
+
+"Drive quickly!--as quickly as the law allows, to Hiram Brown's
+office in Duane Street."
+
+Arrived at the address named, she went in alone to see Mr. Brown.
+He was her father's lawyer and a family friend.
+
+Hardly waiting for his affectionate greeting, she cried out
+quickly. "Tell me how I can learn anything about the old Shaffer
+house in Seventeenth Street. Now, don't look so surprised. I
+have very good reasons for my request and--and--I'm in an awful
+hurry."
+
+"But--"
+
+"I know, I know; there's been a dreadful tragedy next door to
+it; but it's about the Shaffer house itself I want some
+information. Has it an agent, a--"
+
+"Of course it has an agent, and here is his name."
+
+Mr. Brown presented her with a card on which he had hastily
+written both name and address.
+
+She thanked him, dropped him a mocking curtsey full of charm,
+whispered "Don't tell father," and was gone.
+
+Her manner to the man she next interviewed was very different. As
+soon as she saw him she subsided into her usual society manner.
+With just a touch of the conceit of the successful debutante, she
+announced herself as Miss Strange of Seventy-second Street. Her
+business with him was in regard to the possible renting of the
+Shaffer house. She had an old lady friend who was desirous of
+living downtown.
+
+In passing through Seventeenth Street, she had noticed that the
+old Shaffer house was standing empty and had been immediately
+struck with the advantages it possessed for her elderly friend's
+occupancy. Could it be that the house was for rent? There was no
+sign on it to that effect, but--etc.
+
+His answer left her nothing to hope for.
+
+"It is going to be torn down," he said.
+
+"Oh, what a pity!" she exclaimed. "Real colonial, isn't it! I
+wish I could see the rooms inside before it is disturbed. Such
+doors and such dear old-fashioned mantelpieces as it must have!
+I just dote on the Colonial. It brings up such pictures of the
+old days; weddings, you know, and parties;--all so different
+from ours and so much more interesting."
+
+Is it the chance shot that tells? Sometimes. Violet had no
+especial intention in what she said save as a prelude to a
+pending request, but nothing could have served her purpose better
+than that one word, wedding. The agent laughed and giving her his
+first indulgent look, remarked genially:
+
+"Romance is not confined to those ancient times. If you were to
+enter that house to-day you would come across evidences of a
+wedding as romantic as any which ever took place in all the
+seventy odd years of its existence. A man and a woman were
+married there day before yesterday who did their first courting
+under its roof forty years ago. He has been married twice and she
+once in the interval; but the old love held firm and now at the
+age of sixty and over they have come together to finish their
+days in peace and happiness. Or so we will hope."
+
+"Married! married in that house and on the day that--"
+
+She caught herself up in time. He did not notice the break.
+
+"Yes, in memory of those old days of courtship, I suppose. They
+came here about five, got the keys, drove off, went through the
+ceremony in that empty house, returned the keys to me in my own
+apartment, took the steamer for Naples, and were on the sea
+before midnight. Do you not call that quick work as well as
+highly romantic?"
+
+"Very." Miss Strange's cheek had paled. It was apt to when she
+was greatly excited. "But I don't understand," she added, the
+moment after. "How could they do this and nobody know about it? I
+should have thought it would have got into the papers."
+
+"They are quiet people. I don't think they told their best
+friends. A simple announcement in the next day's journals
+testified to the fact of their marriage, but that was all. I
+would not have felt at liberty to mention the circumstances
+myself, if the parties were not well on their way to Europe."
+
+"Oh, how glad I am that you did tell me! Such a story of
+constancy and the hold which old associations have upon sensitive
+minds! But--"
+
+"Why, Miss? What's the matter? You look very much disturbed."
+
+"Don't you remember? Haven't you thought? Something else
+happened that very day and almost at the same time on that
+block. Something very dreadful--"
+
+"Mrs. Doolittle's murder?"
+
+"Yes. It was as near as next door, wasn't it? Oh, if this happy
+couple had known--"
+
+"But fortunately they didn't. Nor are they likely to, till they
+reach the other side. You needn't fear that their honeymoon will
+be spoiled that way."
+
+"But they may have heard something or seen something before
+leaving the street. Did you notice how the gentleman looked when
+he returned you the keys?"
+
+"I did, and there was no cloud on his satisfaction."
+
+"Oh, how you relieve me!" One--two dimples made their appearance
+in Miss Strange's fresh, young cheeks. "Well! I wish them joy. Do
+you mind telling me their names? I cannot think of them as actual
+persons without knowing their names."
+
+"The gentleman was Constantin Amidon; the lady, Marian Shaffer.
+You will have to think of them now as Mr. and Mrs. Amidon."
+
+"And I will. Thank you, Mr. Hutton, thank you very much. Next to
+the pleasure of getting the house for my friend, is that of
+hearing this charming bit of news its connection.
+
+She held out her hand and, as he took it, remarked:
+
+"They must have had a clergyman and witnesses."
+
+"Undoubtedly."
+
+"I wish I had been one of the witnesses," she sighed
+sentimentally.
+
+"They were two old men."
+
+"Oh, no! Don't tell me that."
+
+"Fogies; nothing less."
+
+"But the clergyman? He must have been young. Surely there was
+some one there capable of appreciating the situation?"
+
+"I can't say about that; I did not see the clergyman."
+
+"Oh, well! it doesn't matter." Miss Strange's manner was as
+nonchalant as it was charming. "We will think of him as being
+very young."
+
+And with a merry toss of her head she flitted away.
+
+But she sobered very rapidly upon entering her limousine.
+
+"Hello!"
+
+"Ah, is that you?"
+
+"Yes, I want a Marconi sent."
+
+"A Marconi?"
+
+"Yes, to the Cretic, which left dock the very night in which we
+are so deeply interested."
+
+"Good. Whom to? The Captain?"
+
+"No, to a Mrs. Constantin Amidon. But first be sure there is such
+a passenger."
+
+"Mrs.! What idea have you there?"
+
+"Excuse my not stating over the telephone. The message is to be
+to this effect. Did she at any time immediately before or after
+her marriage to Mr. Amidon get a glimpse of any one in the
+adjoining house? No remarks, please. I use the telephone because
+I am not ready to explain myself. If she did, let her send a
+written description to you of that person as soon as she reaches
+the Azores."
+
+"You surprise me. May I not call or hope for a line from you
+early to-morrow?"
+
+"I shall be busy till you get your answer."
+
+He hung up the receiver. He recognized the resolute tone.
+
+But the time came when the pending explanation was fully given to
+him. An answer had been returned from the steamer, favourable to
+Violet's hopes. Mrs. Amidon had seen such a person and would send
+a full description of the same at the first opportunity. It was
+news to fill Violet's heart with pride; the filament of a clue
+which had led to this great result had been so nearly invisible
+and had felt so like nothing in her grasp.
+
+To her employer she described it as follows:
+
+"When I hear or read of a case which contains any baffling
+features, I am apt to feel some hidden chord in my nature thrill
+to one fact in it and not to any of the others. In this case the
+single fact which appealed to my imagination was the dropping of
+the stolen wallet in that upstairs room. Why did the guilty man
+drop it? and why, having dropped it, did he not pick it up again?
+but one answer seemed possible. He had heard or seen something at
+the spot where it fell which not only alarmed him but sent him in
+flight from the house."
+
+"Very good; and did you settle to your own mind the nature of
+that sound or that sight?"
+
+"I did." Her manner was strangely businesslike. No show of
+dimples now. "Satisfied that if any possibility remained of my
+ever doing this, it would have to be on the exact place of this
+occurrence or not at all, I embraced your suggestion and visited
+the house."
+
+"And that room no doubt."
+
+"And that room. Women, somehow, seem to manage such things."
+
+"So I've noticed, Miss Strange. And what was the result of your
+visit? What did you discover there?"
+
+"This: that one of the blood spots marking the criminal's steps
+through the room was decidedly more pronounced than the rest;
+and, what was even more important, that the window out of which I
+was looking had its counterpart in the house on the opposite side
+of the alley. In gazing through the one I was gazing through the
+other; and not only that, but into the darkened area of the room
+beyond. Instantly I saw how the latter fact might be made to
+explain the former one. But before I say how, let me ask if it is
+quite settled among you that the smears on the floor and stairs
+mark the passage of the criminal's footsteps!"
+
+"Certainly; and very bloody feet they must have been too. His
+shoes--or rather his one shoe--for the proof is plain that only
+the right one left its mark--must have become thoroughly
+saturated to carry its traces so far."
+
+"Do you think that any amount of saturation would have done this?
+Or, if you are not ready to agree to that, that a shoe so covered
+with blood could have failed to leave behind it some hint of its
+shape, some imprint, however faint, of heel or toe? But nowhere
+did it do this. We see a smear--and that is all."
+
+"You are right, Miss Strange; you are always right. And what do
+you gather from this?"
+
+She looked to see how much he expected from her, and, meeting an
+eye not quite as free from ironic suggestion as his words had
+led her to expect, faltered a little as she proceeded to say:
+
+"My opinion is a girl's opinion, but such as it is you have the
+right to have it. From the indications mentioned I could draw but
+this conclusion: that the blood which accompanied the criminal's
+footsteps was not carried through the house by his shoes;--he
+wore no shoes; he did not even wear stockings; probably he had
+none. For reasons which appealed to his judgment, he went about
+his wicked work barefoot; and it was the blood from his own veins
+and not from those of his victim which made the trail we have
+followed with so much interest. Do you forget those broken beads;--
+how he kicked them about and stamped upon them in his fury? One
+of them pierced the ball of his foot, and that so sharply that it
+not only spurted blood but kept on bleeding with every step he
+took. Otherwise, the trail would have been lost after his passage
+up the stairs."
+
+"Fine!" There was no irony in the bureau-chief's eye now. "You
+are progressing, Miss Strange. Allow me, I pray, to kiss your
+hand. It is a liberty I have never taken, but one which would
+greatly relieve my present stress of feeling."
+
+She lifted her hand toward him, but it was in gesture, not in
+recognition of his homage.
+
+"Thank you," said she, "but I claim no monopoly on deductions so
+simple as these. I have not the least doubt that not only
+yourself but every member of the force has made the same. But
+there is a little matter which may have escaped the police, may
+even have escaped you. To that I would now call your attention
+since through it I have been enabled, after a little necessary
+groping, to reach the open. You remember the one large blotch on
+the upper floor where the man dropped the wallet? That blotch,
+more or less commingled with a fainter one, possessed great
+significance for me from the first moment I saw it. How came his
+foot to bleed so much more profusely at that one spot than at any
+other? There could be but one answer: because here a surprise met
+him--a surprise so startling to him in his present state of mind,
+that he gave a quick spring backward, with the result that his
+wounded foot came down suddenly and forcibly instead of easily as
+in his previous wary tread. And what was the surprise? I made it
+my business to find out, and now I can tell you that it was the
+sight of a woman's face staring upon him from the neighbouring
+house which he had probably been told was empty. The shock
+disturbed his judgment. He saw his crime discovered--his guilty
+secret read, and fled in unreasoning panic. He might better have
+held on to his wits. It was this display of fear which led me to
+search after its cause, and consequently to discover that at this
+especial hour more than one person had been in the Shaffer house;
+that, in fact, a marriage had been celebrated there under
+circumstances as romantic as any we read of in books, and that
+this marriage, privately carried out, had been followed by an
+immediate voyage of the happy couple on one of the White Star
+steamers. With the rest you are conversant. I do not need to say
+anything about what has followed the sending of that Marconi."
+
+"But I am going to say something about your work in this matter,
+Miss Strange. The big detectives about here will have to look
+sharp if--"
+
+"Don't, please! Not yet." A smile softened the asperity of this
+interruption. "The man has yet to be caught and identified. Till
+that is done I cannot enjoy any one's congratulations. And you
+will see that all this may not be so easy. If no one happened to
+meet the desperate wretch before he had an opportunity to retie
+his shoe-laces, there will be little for you or even for the
+police to go upon but his wounded foot, his undoubtedly carefully
+prepared alibi, and later, a woman's confused description of a
+face seen but for a moment only and that under a personal
+excitement precluding minute attention. I should not be surprised
+if the whole thing came to nothing."
+
+But it did not. As soon as the description was received from Mrs.
+Amidon (a description, by the way, which was unusually clear and
+precise, owing to the peculiar and contradictory features of the
+man), the police were able to recognize him among the many
+suspects always under their eye. Arrested, he pleaded, just as
+Miss Strange had foretold, an alibi of a seemingly unimpeachable
+character; but neither it, nor the plausible explanation with
+which he endeavoured to account for a freshly healed scar amid
+the callouses of his right foot, could stand before Mrs. Amidon's
+unequivocal testimony that he was the same man she had seen in
+Mrs. Doolittle's upper room on the afternoon of her own happiness
+and of that poor woman's murder.
+
+The moment when, at his trial, the two faces again confronted
+each other across a space no wider than that which had separated
+them on the dread occasion in Seventeenth Street, is said to
+have been one of the most dramatic in the annals of that ancient
+court room.
+
+END OF PROBLEM III
+
+
+PROBLEM IV
+
+THE GROTTO SPECTRE
+
+Miss Strange was not often pensive--at least not at large
+functions or when under the public eye. But she certainly forgot
+herself at Mrs. Provost's musicale and that, too, without
+apparent reason. Had the music been of a high order one might
+have understood her abstraction; but it was of a decidedly
+mediocre quality, and Violet's ear was much too fine and her
+musical sense too cultivated for her to be beguiled by anything
+less than the very best.
+
+Nor had she the excuse of a dull companion. Her escort for the
+evening was a man of unusual conversational powers; but she
+seemed to be almost oblivious of his presence; and when, through
+some passing courteous impulse, she did turn her ear his way, it
+was with just that tinge of preoccupation which betrays the
+divided mind.
+
+Were her thoughts with some secret problem yet unsolved? It would
+scarcely seem so from the gay remark with which she had left
+home. She was speaking to her brother and her words were: "I am
+going out to enjoy myself. I've not a care in the world. The
+slate is quite clean." Yet she had never seemed more out of tune
+with her surroundings nor shown a mood further removed from
+trivial entertainment. What had happened to becloud her gaiety in
+the short time which had since elapsed?
+
+We can answer in a sentence.
+
+She had seen, among a group of young men in a distant doorway,
+one with a face so individual and of an expression so
+extraordinary that all interest in the people about her had
+stopped as a clock stops when the pendulum is held back. She
+could see nothing else, think of nothing else. Not that it was so
+very handsome--though no other had ever approached it in its
+power over her imagination--but because of its expression of
+haunting melancholy,--a melancholy so settled and so evidently
+the result of long-continued sorrow that her interest had been
+reached and her heartstrings shaken as never before in her whole
+life.
+
+She would never be the same Violet again.
+
+Yet moved as she undoubtedly was, she was not conscious of the
+least desire to know who the young man was, or even to be made
+acquainted with his story. She simply wanted to dream her dream
+undisturbed.
+
+It was therefore with a sense of unwelcome shock that, in the
+course of the reception following the programme, she perceived
+this fine young man approaching herself, with his right hand
+touching his left shoulder in the peculiar way which committed
+her to an interview with or without a formal introduction.
+
+Should she fly the ordeal? Be blind and deaf to whatever was
+significant in his action, and go her way before he reached her;
+thus keeping her dream intact? Impossible. His eye prevented
+that. His glance had caught hers and she felt forced to await his
+advance and give him her first spare moment.
+
+It came soon, and when it came she greeted him with a smile. It
+was the first she had ever bestowed in welcome of a confidence of
+whose tenor she was entirely ignorant.
+
+To her relief he showed his appreciation of the dazzling gift
+though he made no effort to return it. Scorning all
+preliminaries in his eagerness to discharge himself of a burden
+which was fast becoming intolerable, he addressed her at once in
+these words:
+
+"You are very good, Miss Strange, to receive me in this
+unconventional fashion. I am in that desperate state of mind
+which precludes etiquette. Will you listen to my petition? I am
+told--you know by whom--"(and he again touched his shoulder)
+"that you have resources of intelligence which especially fit you
+to meet the extraordinary difficulties of my position. May I beg
+you to exercise them in my behalf? No man would be more grateful
+if-- But I see that you do not recognize me. I am Roger Upjohn.
+That I am admitted to this gathering is owing to the fact that
+our hostess knew and loved my mother. In my anxiety to meet you
+and proffer my plea, I was willing to brave the cold looks you
+have probably noticed on the faces of the people about us. But I
+have no right to subject you to criticism. I--"
+
+"Remain." Violet's voice was troubled, her self-possession
+disturbed; but there was a command in her tone which he was only
+too glad to obey. "I know the name" (who did not!) "and possibly
+my duty to myself should make me shun a confidence which may
+burden me without relieving you. But you have been sent to me by
+one whose behests I feel bound to respect and--"
+
+Mistrusting her voice, she stopped. The suffering which made
+itself apparent in the face before her appealed to her heart in a
+way to rob her of her judgment. She did not wish this to be seen,
+and so fell silent.
+
+He was quick to take advantage of her obvious embarrassment.
+"Should I have been sent to you if I had not first secured the
+confidence of the sender? You know the scandal attached to my
+name, some of it just, some of it very unjust. If you will grant
+me an interview to-morrow, I will make an endeavour to refute
+certain charges which I have hitherto let go unchallenged. Will
+you do me this favour? Will you listen in your own house to what
+I have to say?"
+
+Instinct cried out against any such concession on her part,
+bidding her beware of one who charmed without excellence and
+convinced without reason. But compassion urged compliance and
+compassion won the day. Though conscious of weakness,--she,
+Violet Strange on whom strong men had come to rely in critical
+hours calling for well-balanced judgment,--she did not let this
+concern her, or allow herself to indulge in useless regrets even
+after the first effect of his presence had passed and she had
+succeeded in recalling the facts which had cast a cloud about
+his name.
+
+Roger Upjohn was a widower, and the scandal affecting him was
+connected with his wife's death.
+
+Though a degenerate in some respects, lacking the domineering
+presence, the strong mental qualities, and inflexible character
+of his progenitors, the wealthy Massachusetts Upjohns whose
+great place on the coast had a history as old as the State
+itself, he yet had gifts and attractions of his own which would
+have made him a worthy representative of his race, if only he
+had not fixed his affections on a woman so cold and heedless
+that she would have inspired universal aversion instead of love,
+had she not been dowered with the beauty and physical
+fascination which sometimes accompany a hard heart and a scheming
+brain. It was this beauty which had caught the lad; and one day,
+just as the careful father had mapped out a course of study
+calculated to make a man of his son, that son drove up to the
+gates with this lady whom he introduced as his wife.
+
+The shock, not of her beauty, though that was of the dazzling
+quality which catches a man in the throat and makes a slave of
+him while the first surprise lasts, but of the overthrow of all
+his hopes and plans, nearly prostrated Homer Upjohn. He saw, as
+most men did the moment judgment returned, that for all her satin
+skin and rosy flush, the wonder of her hair and the smile which
+pierced like arrows and warmed like wine, she was more likely to
+bring a curse into the house than a blessing.
+
+And so it proved. In less than a year the young husband had lost
+all his ambitions and many of his best impulses. No longer
+inclined to study, he spent his days in satisfying his wife's
+whims and his evenings in carousing with the friends with which
+she had provided him. This in Boston whither they had fled from
+the old gentleman's displeasure; but after their little son came
+the father insisted upon their returning home, which led to great
+deceptions, and precipitated a tragedy no one ever understood.
+They were natural gamblers--this couple--as all Boston society
+knew; and as Homer Upjohn loathed cards, they found life slow in
+the great house and grew correspondingly restless till they made
+a discovery--or shall I say a rediscovery--of the once famous
+grotto hidden in the rocks lining their portion of the coast.
+Here they found a retreat where they could hide themselves (often
+when they were thought to be abed and asleep) and play together
+for money or for a supper in the city or for anything else that
+foolish fancy suggested. This was while their little son remained
+an infant; later, they were less easily satisfied. Both craved
+company, excitement, and gambling on a large scale; so they took
+to inviting friends to meet them in this grotto which, through
+the agency of one old servant devoted to Roger to the point of
+folly, had been fitted up and lighted in a manner not only
+comfortable but luxurious. A small but sheltered haven hidden in
+the curve of the rocks made an approach by boat feasible at high
+tide; and at low the connection could be made by means of a path
+over the promontory in which this grotto lay concealed. The
+fortune which Roger had inherited from his mother made these
+excesses possible, but many thousands, let alone the few he could
+call his, soon disappeared under the witchery of an irresponsible
+woman, and the half-dozen friends who knew his secret had to
+stand by and see his ruin, without daring to utter a word to the
+one who alone could stay it. For Homer Upjohn was not a man to be
+approached lightly, nor was he one to listen to charges without
+ocular proof to support them; and this called for courage, more
+courage than was possessed by any one who knew them both.
+
+He was a hard man was Homer Upjohn, but with a heart of gold for
+those he loved. This, even his wary daughter-in-law was wise
+enough to detect, and for a long while after the birth of her
+child she besieged him with her coaxing ways and bewitching
+graces. But he never changed his first opinion of her, and once
+she became fully convinced of the folly of her efforts, she gave
+up all attempt to please him and showed an open indifference.
+This in time gradually extended till it embraced not only her
+child but her husband as well. Yes, it had come to that. His love
+no longer contented her. Her vanity had grown by what it daily
+fed on, and now called for the admiration of the fast men who
+sometimes came up from Boston to play with them in their unholy
+retreat. To win this, she dressed like some demon queen or witch,
+though it drove her husband into deeper play and threatened an
+exposure which would mean disaster not only to herself but to the
+whole family.
+
+In all this, as any one could see, Roger had been her slave and
+the willing victim of all her caprices. What was it, then, which
+so completely changed him that a separation began to be talked of
+and even its terms discussed? One rumour had it that the father
+had discovered the secret of the grotto and exacted this as a
+penalty from the son who had dishonoured him. Another, that Roger
+himself was the one to take the initiative in this matter: That,
+on returning unexpectedly from New York one evening and finding
+her missing from the house, he had traced her to the grotto where
+he came upon her playing a desperate game with the one man he had
+the greatest reason to distrust.
+
+But whatever the explanation of this sudden change in their
+relations, there is but little doubt that a legal separation
+between this ill-assorted couple was pending, when one bleak
+autumn morning she was discovered dead in her bed under
+circumstances peculiarly open to comment.
+
+The physicians who made out the certificate ascribed her death to
+heart-disease, symptoms of which had lately much alarmed the
+family doctor; but that a personal struggle of some kind had
+preceded the fatal attack was evident from the bruises which
+blackened her wrists. Had there been the like upon her throat it
+might have gone hard with the young husband who was known to be
+contemplating her dismissal from the house. But the
+discoloration of her wrists was all, and as bruised wrists do
+not kill and there was besides no evidence forthcoming of the
+two having spent one moment together for at least ten hours
+preceding the tragedy but rather full and satisfactory testimony
+to the contrary, the matter lapsed and all criminal proceedings
+were avoided.
+
+But not the scandal which always follows the unexplained. As time
+passed and the peculiar look which betrays the haunted soul
+gradually became visible in the young widower's eyes, doubts
+arose and reports circulated which cast strange reflections upon
+the tragic end of his mistaken marriage. Stories of the
+disreputable use to which the old grotto had been put were
+mingled with vague hints of conjugal violence never properly
+investigated. The result was his general avoidance not only by
+the social set dominated by his high-minded father, but by his
+own less reputable coterie, which, however lax in its moral code,
+had very little use for a coward.
+
+Such was the gossip which had reached Violet's ears in connection
+with this new client, prejudicing her altogether against him till
+she caught that beam of deep and concentrated suffering in his
+eye and recognized an innocence which ensured her sympathy and
+led her to grant him the interview for which he so earnestly
+entreated.
+
+He came prompt to the hour, and when she saw him again with the
+marks of a sleepless night upon him and all the signs of
+suffering intensified in his unusual countenance, she felt her
+heart sink within her in a way she failed to understand. A dread
+of what she was about to hear robbed her of all semblance of self-
+possession, and she stood like one in a dream as he uttered his
+first greetings and then paused to gather up his own moral
+strength before he began his story. When he did speak it was to
+say:
+
+"I find myself obliged to break a vow I have made to myself. You
+cannot understand my need unless I show you my heart. My trouble
+is not the one with which men have credited me. It has another
+source and is infinitely harder to bear. Personal dishonour I
+have deserved in a greater or less degree, but the trial which
+has come to me now involves a person more dear to me than myself,
+and is totally without alleviation unless you--" He paused,
+choked, then recommenced abruptly: "My wife"--Violet held her
+breath--"was supposed to have died from heart-disease or--or some
+strange species of suicide. There were reasons for this
+conclusion--reasons which I accepted without serious question
+till some five weeks ago when I made a discovery which led me to
+fear--"
+
+The broken sentence hung suspended. Violet, notwithstanding his
+hurried gesture, could not restrain herself from stealing a look
+at his face. It was set in horror and, though partially turned
+aside, made an appeal to her compassion to fill the void made by
+his silence, without further suggestion from him.
+
+She did this by saying tentatively and with as little show of
+emotion as possible:
+
+"You feared that the event called for vengeance and that
+vengeance would mean increased suffering to yourself as well as
+to another?"
+
+"Yes; great suffering. But I may be under a most lamentable
+mistake. I am not sure of my conclusions. If my doubts have no
+real foundation--if they are simply the offspring of my own
+diseased imagination, what an insult to one I revere! What a
+horror of ingratitude and misunderstanding--"
+
+"Relate the facts," came in startled tones from Violet. "They may
+enlighten us."
+
+He gave one quick shudder, buried his face for one moment in his
+hands, then lifted it and spoke up quickly and with unexpected
+firmness:
+
+"I came here to do so and do so I will. But where begin? Miss
+Strange, you cannot be ignorant of the circumstances, open and
+avowed, which attended my wife's death. But there were other and
+secret events in its connection which happily have been kept from
+the world, but which I must now disclose to you at any cost to my
+pride and so-called honour. This is the first one: On the morning
+preceding the day of Mrs. Upjohn's death, an interview took place
+between us at which my father was present. You do not know my
+father, Miss Strange. A strong man and a stern one, with a hold
+upon old traditions which nothing can shake. If he has a weakness
+it is for my little boy Roger in whose promising traits he sees
+the one hope which has survived the shipwreck of all for which
+our name has stood. Knowing this, and realizing what the child's
+presence in the house meant to his old age, I felt my heart turn
+sick with apprehension, when in the midst of the discussion as to
+the terms on which my wife would consent to a permanent
+separation, the little fellow came dancing into the room, his
+curls atoss and his whole face beaming with life and joy.
+
+"She had not mentioned the child, but I knew her well enough to
+be sure that at the first show of preference on his part for
+either his grandfather or myself, she would raise a claim to him
+which she would never relinquish. I dared not speak, but I met
+his eager looks with my most forbidding frown and hoped by this
+show of severity to hold him back. But his little heart was full
+and, ignoring her outstretched arms, he bounded towards mine with
+his most affectionate cry. She saw and uttered her ultimatum. The
+child should go with her or she would not consent to a
+separation. It was useless for us to talk; she had said her last
+word. The blow struck me hard, or so I thought, till I looked at
+my father. Never had I beheld such a change as that one moment
+had made in him. He stood as before; he faced us with the same
+silent reprobation; but his heart had run from him like water.
+
+"It was a sight to call up all my resources. To allow her to
+remain now, with my feelings towards her all changed and my
+father's eyes fully opened to her stony nature, was impossible.
+Nor could I appeal to law. An open scandal was my father's
+greatest dread and divorce proceedings his horror. The child
+would have to go unless I could find a way to influence her
+through her own nature. I knew of but one--do not look at me,
+Miss Strange. It was dishonouring to us both, and I'm horrified
+now when I think of it. But to me at that time it was natural
+enough as a last resort. There was but one debt which my wife
+ever paid, but one promise she ever kept. It was that made at the
+gaming-table. I offered, as soon as my father, realizing the
+hopelessness of the situation, had gone tottering from the room,
+to gamble with her for the child.
+
+"And she accepted."
+
+The shame and humiliation expressed in this final whisper; the
+sudden darkness--for a storm was coming up--shook Violet to the
+soul. With strained gaze fixed on the man before her, now little
+more than a shadow in the prevailing gloom, she waited for him to
+resume, and waited in vain. The minutes passed, the darkness
+became intolerable, and instinctively her hand crept towards the
+electric button beneath which she was sitting. But she failed to
+press it. A tale so dark called for an atmosphere of its own
+kind. She would cast no light upon it. Yet she shivered as the
+silence continued, and started in uncontrollable dismay when at
+length her strange visitor rose, and still, without speaking,
+walked away from her to the other end of the room. Only so could
+he go on with the shameful tale; and presently she heard his
+voice once more in these words:
+
+"Our house is large and its rooms many; but for such work as we
+two contemplated there was but one spot where we could command
+absolute seclusion. You may have heard of it, a famous natural
+grotto hidden in our own portion of the coast and so fitted up as
+to form a retreat for our miserable selves when escape from my
+father's eye seemed desirable. It was not easy of access, and no
+one, so far as we knew, had ever followed us there.
+
+"But to ensure ourselves against any possible interruption, we
+waited till the whole house was abed before we left it for the
+grotto. We went by boat and oh! the dip of those oars! I hear
+them yet. And the witchery of her face in the moonlight; and the
+mockery of her low fitful laugh! As I caught the sinister note in
+its silvery rise and fall, I knew what was before me if I failed
+to retain my composure. And I strove to hold it and to meet her
+calmness with stoicism and the taunt of her expression with a
+mask of immobility. But the effort was hopeless, and when the
+time came for dealing out the cards, my eyes were burning in
+their sockets and my hands shivering like leaves in a rising
+gale.
+
+"We played one game--and my wife lost. We played another--and my
+wife won. We played the third--and the fate I had foreseen from
+the first became mine. The luck was with her, and I had lost my
+boy!"
+
+A gasp--a pause, during which the thunder spoke and the lightning
+flashed,--then a hurried catching of his breath and the tale went
+on.
+
+"A burst of laughter, rising gaily above the boom of the sea,
+announced her victory--her laugh and the taunting words: 'You
+play badly, Roger. The child is mine. Never fear that I shall
+fail to teach him to revere his father.' Had I a word to throw
+back? No. When I realized anything but my dishonoured manhood, I
+found myself in the grotto's mouth staring helplessly out upon
+the sea. The boat which had floated us in at high tide lay
+stranded but a few feet away, but I did not reach for it. Escape
+was quicker over the rocks, and I made for the rocks.
+
+"That it was a cowardly act to leave her there to find her way
+back alone at midnight by the same rough road I was taking, did
+not strike my mind for an instant. I was in flight from my own
+past; in flight from myself and the haunting dread of madness.
+When I awoke to reality again it was to find the small door, by
+which we had left the house, standing slightly ajar. I was
+troubled by this, for I was sure of having closed it. But the
+impression was brief, and entering, I went stumbling up to my
+room, leaving the way open behind me more from sheer inability to
+exercise my will than from any thought of her.
+
+"Miss Strange" (he had come out of the shadows and was standing
+now directly before her), "I must ask you to trust implicitly in
+what I tell you of my further experiences that fatal night. It
+was not necessary for me to pass my little son's door in order to
+reach the room I was making for; but anguish took me there and
+held me glued to the panels for what seemed a long, long time.
+When I finally crept away it was to go to the room I had chosen
+in the top of the house, where I had my hour of hell and faced my
+desolated future. Did I hear anything meantime in the halls
+below? No. Did I even listen for the sound of her return? No. I
+was callous to everything, dead to everything but my own misery.
+I did not even heed the approach of morning, till suddenly, with
+a shrillness no ear could ignore, there rose, tearing through the
+silence of the house, that great scream from my wife's room which
+announced the discovery of her body lying stark and cold in her
+bed.
+
+"They said I showed little feeling." He had moved off again and
+spoke from somewhere in the shadows. "Do you wonder at this after
+such a manifest stroke by a benevolent Providence? My wife being
+dead, Roger was saved to us! It was the one song of my still
+undisciplined soul, and I had to assume coldness lest they should
+see the greatness of my joy. A wicked and guilty rejoicing you
+will say, and you are right. But I had no memory then of the part
+I had played in this fatality. I had forgotten my reckless flight
+from the grotto, which left her with no aid but that of her own
+triumphant spirit to help her over those treacherous rocks. The
+necessity for keeping secret this part of our disgraceful story
+led me to exert myself to keep it out of my own mind. It has only
+come back to me in all its force since a new horror, a new
+suspicion, has driven me to review carefully every incident of
+that awful night.
+
+"I was never a man of much logic, and when they came to me on
+that morning of which I have just spoken and took me in where she
+lay and pointed to her beautiful cold body stretched out in
+seeming peace under the satin coverlet, and then to the pile of
+dainty clothes lying neatly folded on a chair with just one fairy
+slipper on top, I shuddered at her fate but asked no questions,
+not even when one of the women of the house mentioned the
+circumstance of the single slipper and said that a search should
+be made for its mate. Nor was I as much impressed as one would
+naturally expect by the whisper dropped in my ear that something
+was the matter with her wrists. It is true that I lifted the lace
+they had carefully spread over them and examined the
+discoloration which extended like a ring about each pearly arm;
+but having no memories of any violence offered her (I had not so
+much as laid hand upon her in the grotto), these marks failed to
+rouse my interest. But--and now I must leap a year in my story--
+there came a time when both of these facts recurred to my mind
+with startling distinctness and clamoured for explanation.
+
+"I had risen above the shock which such a death following such
+events would naturally occasion even in one of my blunted
+sensibilities, and was striving to live a new life under the
+encouragement of my now fully reconciled father, when accident
+forced me to re-enter the grotto where I had never stepped foot
+since that night. A favourite dog in chase of some innocent prey
+had escaped the leash and run into its dim recesses and would not
+come out at my call. As I needed him immediately for the hunt, I
+followed him over the promontory and, swallowing my repugnance,
+slid into the grotto to get him. Better a plunge to my death from
+the height of the rocks towering above it. For there in a remote
+corner, lighted up by a reflection from the sea, I beheld my
+setter crouched above an object which in another moment I
+recognized as my dead wife's missing slipper. Here! Not in the
+waters of the sea or in the interstices of the rocks outside, but
+here! Proof that she had never walked back to the house where she
+was found lying quietly in her bed; proof positive; for I knew
+the path too well and the more than usual
+tenderness of her feet.
+
+"How then, did she get there; and by whose agency? Was she living
+when she went, or was she already dead? A year had passed since
+that delicate shoe had borne her from the boat into these dim
+recesses; but it might have been only a day, so vividly did I
+live over in this moment of awful enlightenment all the events of
+the hour in which we sat there playing for the possession of our
+child. Again I saw her gleaming eyes, her rosy, working mouth,
+her slim, white hand, loaded with diamonds, clutching the cards.
+Again I heard the lap of the sea on the pebbles outside and smelt
+the odour of the wine she had poured out for us both. The bottle
+which had held it; the glass from which she had drunk lay now in
+pieces on the rocky floor. The whole scene was mine again and as
+I followed the event to its despairing close, I seemed to see my
+own wild figure springing away from her to the grotto's mouth and
+so over the rocks. But here fancy faltered, caught by a quick
+recollection to which I had never given a thought till now. As I
+made my way along those rocks, a sound had struck my ear from
+where some stunted bushes made a shadow in the moonlight. The
+wind might have caused it or some small night creature hustling
+away at my approach; and to some such cause I must at the time
+have attributed it. But now, with brain fired by suspicion, it
+seemed more like the quick intake of a human breath. Some one had
+been lying there in wait, listening at the one loophole in the
+rocks where it was possible to hear what was said and done in the
+heart of the grotto. But who? who? and for what purpose this
+listening; and to what end did it lead?
+
+"Though I no longer loved even the memory of my wife, I felt my
+hair lift, as I asked myself these questions. There seemed to be
+but one logical answer to the last, and it was this: A struggle
+followed by death. The shoe fallen from her foot, the clothes
+found folded in her room (my wife was never orderly), and the
+dimly blackened wrists which were snow-white when she dealt the
+cards--all seemed to point to such a conclusion. She may have
+died from heart-failure, but a struggle had preceded her death,
+during which some man's strong fingers had been locked about her
+wrists. And again the question rose, Whose?
+
+"If any place was ever hated by mortal man that grotto was hated
+by me. I loathed its walls, its floor, its every visible and
+invisible corner. To linger there--to look--almost tore my soul
+from my body; yet I did linger and did look and this is what I
+found by way of reward.
+
+"Behind a projecting ledge of stone from which a tattered rug
+still hung, I came upon two nails driven a few feet apart into a
+fissure of the rock. I had driven those nails myself long before
+for a certain gymnastic attachment much in vogue at the time, and
+on looking closer, I discovered hanging from them the rope-ends
+by which I was wont to pull myself about. So far there was
+nothing to rouse any but innocent reminiscences. But when I heard
+the dog's low moan and saw him leap at the curled-up ends, and
+nose them with an eager look my way, I remembered the dark marks
+circling the wrists about which I had so often clasped my
+mother's bracelets, and the world went black before me.
+
+"When consciousness returned--when I could once more move and see
+and think, I noted another fact. Cards were strewn about the
+floor, face up and in a fixed order as if laid in a mocking mood
+to be looked upon by reluctant eyes; and near the ominous half-
+circle they made, a cushion from the lounge, stained horribly
+with what I then thought to be blood, but which I afterwards
+found to be wine. Vengeance spoke in those ropes and in the
+carefully spread-out cards, and murder in the smothering pillow.
+The vengeance of one who had watched her corroding influence eat
+the life out of my honour and whose love for our little Roger was
+such that any deed which ensured his continued presence in the
+home appeared not only warrantable but obligatory. Alas! I knew
+of but one person in the whole world who could cherish feeling to
+this extent or possess sufficient will power to carry her
+lifeless body back to the house and lay it in her bed and give no
+sign of the abominable act from that day on to this.
+
+"Miss Strange, there are men who have a peculiar conception of
+duty. My father--"
+
+"You need not go on." How gently, how tenderly our Violet spoke.
+"I understand your trouble--"
+
+Did she? She paused to ask herself if this were so, and he, deaf
+perhaps to her words, caught up his broken sentence and went on:
+
+"My father was in the hall the day I came staggering in from my
+visit to the grotto. No words passed, but our eyes met and from
+that hour I have seen death in his countenance and he has seen it
+in mine, like two opponents, each struck to the heart, who stand
+facing each other with simulated smiles till they fall. My father
+will drop first. He is old--very old since that day five weeks
+ago; and to see him die and not be sure--to see the grave close
+over a possible innocence, and I left here in ignorance of the
+blissful fact till my own eyes close forever, is more than I can
+hold up under; more than any son could. Cannot you help me then
+to a positive knowledge? Think! think! A woman's mind is
+strangely penetrating, and yours, I am told, has an intuitive
+faculty more to be relied upon than the reasoning of men. It must
+suggest some means of confirming my doubts or of definitely
+ending them."
+
+Then Violet stirred and looked about at him and finally found
+voice.
+
+"Tell me something about your father's ways. What are his habits?
+Does he sleep well or is he wakeful at night?"
+
+"He has poor nights. I do not know how poor because I am not
+often with him. His valet, who has always been in our family,
+shares his room and acts as his constant nurse. He can watch over
+him better than I can; he has no distracting trouble on his
+mind."
+
+"And little Roger? Does your father see much of little Roger?
+Does he fondle him and seem happy in his presence?"
+
+"Yes; yes. I have often wondered at it, but he does. They are
+great chums. It is a pleasure to see them together."
+
+"And the child clings to him--shows no fear--sits on his lap or
+on the bed and plays as children do play with his beard or with
+his watch-chain?"
+
+"Yes. Only once have I seen my little chap shrink, and that was
+when my father gave him a look of unusual intensity,--looking for
+his mother in him perhaps."
+
+"Mr. Upjohn, forgive me the question; it seems necessary. Does
+your father--or rather did your father before he fell ill--ever
+walk in the direction of the grotto or haunt in any way the rocks
+which surround it?"
+
+"I cannot say. The sea is there; he naturally loves the sea. But
+I have never seen him standing on the promontory."
+
+"Which way do his windows look?"
+
+"Towards the sea."
+
+"Therefore towards the promontory?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Can he see it from his bed?"
+
+"No. Perhaps that is the cause of a peculiar habit he has."
+
+"What habit?"
+
+"Every night before he retires (he is not yet confined to his
+bed) he stands for a few minutes in his front window looking out.
+He says it's his good-night to the ocean. When he no longer
+does this, we shall know that his end is very near."
+
+The face of Violet began to clear. Rising, she turned on the
+electric light, and then, reseating herself, remarked with an
+aspect of quiet cheer:
+
+"I have two ideas; but they necessitate my presence at your
+place. You will not mind a visit? My brother will accompany me."
+
+Roger Upjohn did not need to speak, hardly to make a gesture; his
+expression was so eloquent.
+
+She thanked him as if he had answered in words, adding with an
+air of gentle reserve: "Providence assists us in this matter. I
+am invited to Beverly next week to attend a wedding. I was
+intending to stay two days, but I will make it three and spend
+the extra one with you."
+
+"What are your requirements, Miss Strange? I presume you have
+some."
+
+Violet turned from the imposing portrait of Mr. Upjohn which she
+had been gravely contemplating, and met the troubled eye of her
+young host with an enigmatical flash of her own. But she made no
+answer in words. Instead, she lifted her right hand and ran one
+slender finger thoughtfully up the casing of the door near which
+they stood till it struck a nick in the old mahogany almost on a
+level with her head.
+
+"Is your son Roger old enough to reach so far?" she asked with
+another short look at him as she let her finger rest where it had
+struck the roughened wood. "I thought
+he was a little fellow."
+
+"He is. That cut was made by--by my wife; a sample of her
+capricious willfulness. She wished to leave a record of herself
+in the substance of our house as well as in our lives. That nick
+marks her height. She laughed when she made it. 'Till the walls
+cave in or burn,' is what she said. And I thought her laugh and
+smile captivating."
+
+Cutting short his own laugh which was much too sardonic for a
+lady's ears, he made a move as if to lead the way into another
+portion of the room. But Violet failed to notice this, and
+lingering in quiet contemplation of this suggestive little nick,--
+the only blemish in a room of ancient colonial magnificence,--
+she thoughtfully remarked:
+
+"Then she was a small woman?" adding with seeming irrelevance--
+"like myself."
+
+Roger winced. Something in the suggestion hurt him, and in the
+nod he gave there was an air of coldness which under ordinary
+circumstances would have deterred her from pursuing this subject
+further. But the circumstances were not ordinary, and she allowed
+herself to say:
+
+"Was she so very different from me,--in figure, I mean?"
+
+"No. Why do you ask? Shall we not join your brother on the
+terrace?"
+
+"Not till I have answered the question you put me a moment ago.
+You wished to know my requirements. One of the most important you
+have already fulfilled. You have given your servants a half-
+holiday and by so doing ensured to us full liberty of action.
+What else I need in the attempt I propose to make, you will find
+listed in this memorandum." And taking a slip of paper from her
+bag, she offered it to him with a hand, the trembling of which he
+would have noted had he been freer in mind.
+
+As he read, she watched him, her fingers nervously clutching her
+throat.
+
+"Can you supply what I ask?" she faltered, as he failed to raise
+his eyes or make any move or even to utter the groan she saw
+surging up to his lips. "Will you?" she impetuously urged, as his
+fingers closed spasmodically on the paper, in evidence that he
+understood at last the trend of her daring purpose.
+
+The answer came slowly, but it came. "I will. But what--"
+
+Her hand rose in a pleading gesture.
+
+"Do not ask me, but take Arthur and myself into the garden and
+show us the flowers. Afterwards, I should like a glimpse of the
+sea."
+
+He bowed and they joined Arthur who had already begun to stroll
+through the grounds.
+
+Violet was seldom at a loss for talk even at the most critical
+moments. But she was strangely tongue-tied on this occasion, as
+was Roger himself. Save for a few observations casually thrown
+out by Arthur, the three passed in a disquieting silence through
+pergola after pergola, and around beds gorgeous with every
+variety of fall flowers, till they turned a sharp corner and came
+in full view of the sea.
+
+"Ah!" fell in an admiring murmur from Violet's lips as her eyes
+swept the horizon. Then as they settled on a mass of rock jutting
+out from the shore in a great curve, she leaned towards her host
+and softly whispered:
+
+"The promontory?"
+
+He nodded, and Violet ventured no farther, but stood for a little
+while gazing at the tumbled rocks. Then, with a quick look back
+at the house, she asked him to point out his father's window.
+
+He did so, and as she noted how openly it faced the sea, her
+expression relaxed and her manner lost some of its constraint. As
+they turned to re-enter the house, she noticed an old man picking
+flowers from a vine clambering over one end of the piazza.
+
+"Who is that?" she asked.
+
+"Our oldest servant, and my father's own man," was Roger's reply.
+"He is picking my father's favourite flowers, a few late
+honeysuckles."
+
+"How fortunate! Speak to him, Mr. Upjohn. Ask him how your father
+is this evening."
+
+"Accompany me and I will; and do not be afraid to enter into
+conversation with him. He is the mildest of creatures and devoted
+to his patient. He likes nothing better than to talk about him."
+
+Violet, with a meaning look at her brother, ran up the steps at
+Roger's side. As she did so, the old man turned and Violet was
+astonished at the wistfulness with which he viewed her.
+
+"What a dear old creature!" she murmured. "See how he stares this
+way. You would think he knew me."
+
+"He is glad to see a woman about the place. He has felt our
+isolation--Good evening, Abram. Let this young lady have a spray
+of your sweetest honeysuckle. And, Abram, before you go, how is
+Father to-night? Still sitting up?"
+
+"Yes, sir. He is very regular in his ways. Nine is his hour; not
+a minute before and not a minute later. I don't have to look at
+the clock when he says: 'There, Abram, I've sat up long enough.'"
+
+"When my father retires before his time or goes to bed without a
+final look at the sea, he will be a very sick man, Abram."
+
+"That he will, Mr. Roger; that he will. But he's very feeble to-
+night, very feeble. I noticed that he gave the boy fewer kisses
+than usual. Perhaps he was put out because the child was brought
+in a half-hour earlier than the stated time. He don't like
+changes; you know that, Mr. Roger; he don't like changes. I
+hardly dared to tell him that the servants were all going out in
+a bunch to-night."
+
+"I'm sorry," muttered Roger. "But he'll forget it by to-morrow. I
+couldn't bear to keep a single one from the concert. They'll be
+back in good season and meantime we have you. Abram is worth half
+a dozen of them, Miss Strange. We shall miss nothing."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Roger, thank you," faltered the old man. "I try
+to do my duty." And with another wistful glance at Violet, who
+looked very sweet and youthful in the half-light, he pottered
+away.
+
+The silence which followed his departure was as painful to her as
+to Roger Upjohn. When she broke it it was with this decisive
+remark:
+
+"That man must not speak of me to your father. He must not even
+mention that you have a guest to-night. Run after him and tell
+him so. It is necessary that your father's mind should not be
+taken up with present happenings. Run."
+
+Roger made haste to obey her. When he came back she was on the
+point of joining her brother but stopped to utter a final
+injunction:
+
+"I shall leave the library, or wherever we may be sitting, just
+as the clock strikes half-past eight. Arthur will do the same, as
+by that time he will feel like smoking on the terrace. Do not
+follow either him or myself, but take your stand here on the
+piazza where you can get a full view of the right-hand wing
+without attracting any attention to yourself. When you hear the
+big clock in the hall strike nine, look up quickly at your
+father's window. What you see may determine--oh, Arthur! still
+admiring the prospect? I do not wonder. But I find it chilly.
+Let us go in."
+
+Roger Upjohn, sitting by himself in the library, was watching
+the hands of the mantel clock slowly approaching the hour of
+nine.
+
+Never had silence seemed more oppressive nor his sense of
+loneliness greater. Yet the boom of the ocean was distinct to the
+ear, and human presence no farther away than the terrace where
+Arthur Strange could be seen smoking out his cigar in solitude.
+The silence and the loneliness were in Roger's own soul; and, in
+face of the expected revelation which would make or unmake his
+future, the desolation they wrought was measureless.
+
+To cut his suspense short, he rose at length and hurried out to
+the spot designated by Miss Strange as the best point from which
+to keep watch upon his father's window. It was at the end of the
+piazza where the honeysuckle hung, and the odour of the blossoms,
+so pleasing to his father, well-nigh overpowered him not only by
+its sweetness but by the many memories it called up. Visions of
+that father as he looked at all stages of their relationship
+passed in a bewildering maze before him. He saw him as he
+appeared to his childish eyes in those early days of confidence
+when the loss of the mother cast them in mutual dependence upon
+each other. Then a sterner picture of the relentless parent who
+sees but one straight course to success in this world and the
+next. Then the teacher and the matured adviser; and then--oh,
+bitter change! the man whose hopes he had crossed--whose life he
+had undone, and all for her who now came stealing upon the scene
+with her slim, white, jewelled hand forever lifted up between
+them. And she! Had he ever seen her more clearly? Once more the
+dainty figure stepped from fairy-land, beauteous with every
+grace that can allure and finally destroy a man. And as he saw,
+he trembled and wished that these moments of awful waiting might
+pass and the test be over which would lay bare his father's heart
+and justify his fears or dispel them forever.
+
+But the crisis, if crisis it was, was one of his own making and
+not to be hastened or evaded. With one quick glance at his
+father's window, he turned in his impatience towards the sea
+whose restless and continuous moaning had at length struck his
+ear. What was in its call to-night that he should thus sway
+towards it as though drawn by some dread magnetic force? He had
+been born to the dashing of its waves and knew its every mood and
+all the passion of its song from frolicsome ripple to melancholy
+dirge. But there was something odd and inexplicable in its effect
+upon his spirit as he faced it at this hour. Grim and implacable--
+a sound rather than a sight--it seemed to hold within its
+invisible distances the image of his future fate. What this image
+was and why he should seek for it in this impenetrable void, he
+did not know. He felt himself held and was struggling with this
+influence as with an unknown enemy when there rang out, from the
+hall within, the preparatory chimes for which his ear was
+waiting, and then the nine slow strokes which signalized the
+moment when he was to look for his father's presence at the
+window.
+
+Had he wished, he could not have forborne that look. Had his eyes
+been closing in death, or so he felt, the trembling lids would
+have burst apart at this call and the revelations it promised.
+
+And what did he see? What did that window hold for him?
+
+Nothing that he might not have seen there any night at this hour.
+His father's figure drawn up behind the panes in wistful
+contemplation of the night. No visible change in his attitude,
+nothing forced or unusual in his manner. Even the hand, lifted to
+pull down the shade, moves with its familiar hesitation. In a
+moment more that shade will be down and-- But no! the lifted hand
+falls back; the easy attitude becomes strained, fixed. He is
+staring now--not merely gazing out upon the wastes of sky and
+sea; and Roger, following the direction of his glance, stares
+also in breathless emotion at what those distances, but now so
+impenetrable, are giving to the eye.
+
+A spectre floating in the air above the promontory! The spectre
+of a woman--of his wife, clad, as she had been clad that fatal
+night! Outlined in supernatural light, it faces them with lifted
+arms showing the ends of rope dangling from either wrist. A sight
+awful to any eye, but to the man of guilty heart--
+
+Ah! it comes--the cry for which the agonized son had been
+listening! An old man's shriek, hoarse with the remorse of
+sleepless nights and days of unimaginable regret and foreboding!
+It cuts the night. It cuts its way into his heart. He feels his
+senses failing him, yet he must glance once more at the window
+and see with his last conscious look-- But what is this! a change
+has taken place in the picture and he beholds, not the distorted
+form of his father sinking back in shame and terror before this
+visible image of his secret sin, but that of another weak, old
+man falling to the floor behind his back! Abram! the attentive,
+seemingly harmless, guardian of the household! Abram! who had
+never spoken a word or given a look in any way suggestive of his
+having played any other part in the hideous drama of their lives
+than that of the humble and sympathetic servant!
+
+The shock was too great, the relief too absolute for credence.
+He, the listener at the grotto? He, the avenger of the family's
+honour? He, the insurer of little Roger's continuance with the
+family at a cost the one who loved him best would rather have
+died himself than pay? Yes! there is no misdoubting this old
+servitor's attitude of abject appeal, or the meaning of Homer
+Upjohn's joyfully uplifted countenance and outspreading arms. The
+servant begs for mercy from man, and the master is giving thanks
+to Heaven. Why giving thanks? Has he been the prey of cankering
+doubts also? Has the father dreaded to discover that in the son
+which the son has dreaded to discover in the father?
+
+It might easily be; and as Roger recognizes this truth and the
+full tragedy of their mutual lives, he drops to his knees amid
+the honeysuckles.
+
+"Violet, you are a wonder. But how did you dare?"
+
+This from Arthur as the two rode to the train in the early
+morning.
+
+The answer came a bit waveringly.
+
+"I do not know. I am astonished yet, at my own daring. Look at my
+hands. They have not ceased trembling since the moment you threw
+the light upon me on the rocks. The figure of old Mr. Upjohn in
+the window looked so august."
+
+Arthur, with a short glance at the little hands she held out,
+shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly. It struck him that the
+tremulousness she complained of was due more to some parting word
+from their young host, than from prolonged awe at her own daring.
+But he made no remark to this effect, only observed:
+
+"Abram has confessed his guilt, I hear."
+
+"Yes, and will die of it. The master will bury the man, and not
+the man the master."
+
+"And Roger? Not the little fellow, but the father?"
+
+"We will not talk of him," said she, her eyes seeking the sea
+where the sun in its rising was battling with a troop of
+lowering clouds and slowly gaining the victory.
+
+END OF PROBLEM IV
+
+
+PROBLEM V
+
+THE DREAMING LADY
+
+"And this is all you mean to tell me?"
+
+"I think you will find it quite enough, Miss Strange."
+
+"Just the address--"
+
+"And this advice: that your call be speedy. Distracted nerves
+cannot wait."
+
+Violet, across whose wonted piquancy there lay an indefinable
+shadow, eyed her employer with a doubtful air before turning away
+toward the door. She had asked him for a case to investigate
+(something she had never done before), and she had even gone so
+far as to particularize the sort of case she desired: "It must be
+an interesting one," she had stipulated, "but different, quite
+different from the last one. It must not involve death or any
+kind of horror. If you have a case of subtlety without crime, one
+to engage my powers without depressing my spirits, I beg you to
+let me have it. I--I have not felt quite like myself since I came
+from Massachusetts." Whereupon, without further comment, but with
+a smile she did not understand, he had handed her a small slip of
+paper on which he had scribbled an address. She should have felt
+satisfied, but for some reason she did not. She regarded him as
+capable of plunging her into an affair quite the reverse of what
+she felt herself in a condition to undertake.
+
+"I should like to know a little more," she pursued, making a move
+to unfold the slip he had given her.
+
+But he stopped her with a gesture.
+
+"Read it in your limousine," said he. "If you are disappointed
+then, let me know. But I think you will find yourself quite ready
+for your task."
+
+"And my father?"
+
+"Would approve if he could be got to approve the business at all.
+You do not even need to take your brother with you."
+
+"Oh, then, it's with women only I have to deal?"
+
+"Read the address after you are headed up Fifth Avenue."
+
+But when, with her doubts not yet entirely removed, she opened
+the small slip he had given her, the number inside suggested
+nothing but the fact that her destination lay somewhere near
+Eightieth Street. It was therefore with the keenest surprise she
+beheld her motor stop before the conspicuous house of the great
+financier whose late death had so affected the money-market. She
+had not had any acquaintance with this man herself, but she knew
+his house. Everyone knew that. It was one of the most princely in
+the whole city. C. Dudley Brooks had known how to spend his
+millions. Indeed, he had known how to do this so well that it was
+of him her father, also a financier of some note, had once said
+he was the only successful American he envied.
+
+She was expected; that she saw the instant the door was opened.
+This made her entrance easy--an entrance further brightened by
+the delightful glimpse of a child's cherubic face looking at her
+from a distant doorway. It was an instantaneous vision, gone as
+soon as seen; but its effect was to rob the pillared spaces of
+the wonderful hallway of some of their chill, and to modify in
+some slight degree the formality of a service which demanded
+three men to usher her into a small reception-room not twenty
+feet from the door of entrance.
+
+Left in this secluded spot, she had time to ask herself what
+member of the household she would be called upon to meet, and was
+surprised to find that she did not even know of whom the
+household consisted. She was sure of the fact that Mr. Brooks had
+been a widower for many years before his death, but beyond that
+she knew nothing of his domestic life. His son--but was there a
+son? She had never heard any mention made of a younger Mr.
+Brooks, yet there was certainly some one of his connection who
+enjoyed the rights of an heir. Him she must be prepared to meet
+with a due composure, whatever astonishment he might show at the
+sight of a slip of a girl instead of the experienced detective he
+had every right to expect.
+
+But when the door opened to admit the person she was awaiting,
+the surprise was hers. It was a woman who stood before her, a
+woman and an oddity. Yet, in just what her oddity lay, Violet
+found it difficult to decide. Was it in the smoothness of her
+white locks drawn carefully down over her ears, or in the
+contrast afforded by her eager eyes and her weak and tremulous
+mouth? She was dressed in the heaviest of mourning and very
+expensively, but there was that in her bearing and expression
+which made it impossible to believe that she took any interest in
+her garments or even knew in which of her dresses she had been
+attired.
+
+"I am the person you have come here to see," she said. "Your name
+is not unfamiliar to me, but you may not know mine. It is
+Quintard; Mrs. Quintard. I am in difficulty. I need assistance--
+secret assistance. I did not know where to go for it except to a
+detective agency; so I telephoned to the first one I saw
+advertised; and--and I was told to expect Miss Strange. But I
+didn't think it would be you though I suppose it's all right. You
+have come here for this purpose, haven't you, though it does seem
+a little queer?"
+
+"Certainly, Mrs. Quintard; and if you will tell me--"
+
+"My dear, it's just this--yes, I will sit down. Last week my
+brother died. You have heard of him no doubt, C. Dudley Brooks?"
+
+"Oh, yes; my father knew him--we all knew him by reputation. Do
+not hurry, Mrs. Quintard. I have sent my car away. You can take
+all the time you wish."
+
+"No, no, I cannot. I'm in desperate haste. He--but let me go on
+with my story. My brother was a widower, with no children to
+inherit. That everybody knows. But his wife left behind her a son
+by a former husband, and this son of hers my brother had in a
+measure adopted, and even made his sole heir in a will he drew up
+during the lifetime of his wife. But when he found, as he very
+soon did, that this young man was not developing in a way to meet
+such great responsibilities, he made a new will--though unhappily
+without the knowledge of the family, or even of his most intimate
+friends--in which he gave the bulk of his great estate to his
+nephew Clement, who has bettered the promise of his youth and who
+besides has children of great beauty whom my brother had learned
+to love. And this will--this hoarded scrap of paper which means
+so much to us all, is lost! lost! and I--" here her voice which
+had risen almost to a scream, sank to a horrified whisper, "am
+the one who lost it."
+
+"But there's a copy of it somewhere--there is always a copy--"
+
+"Oh, but you haven't heard all. My nephew is an invalid; has been
+an invalid for years--that's why so little is known about him.
+He's dying of consumption. The doctors hold out no hope for him,
+and now, with the fear preying upon him of leaving his wife and
+children penniless, he is wearing away so fast that any hour may
+see his end. And I have to meet his eyes--such pitiful eyes--and
+the look in them is killing me. Yet, I was not to blame. I could
+not help--Oh, Miss Strange," she suddenly broke in with the
+inconsequence of extreme feeling, "the will is in the house! I
+never carried it off the floor where I sleep. Find it; find it, I
+pray, or--"
+
+The moment had come for Violet's soft touch, for Violet's
+encouraging word.
+
+"I will try," she answered her.
+
+Mrs. Quintard grew calmer.
+
+"But, first," the young girl continued, "I must know more about
+the conditions. Where is this nephew of yours--the man who is
+ill?"
+
+"In this house, where he has been for the last eight months."
+
+"Was the child his of whom I caught a glimpse in the hall as I
+came in?"
+
+"Yes, and--"
+
+"I will fight for that child!" Violet cried out impulsively. "I
+am sure his father's cause is good. Where is the other claimant--
+the one you designate as Carlos?"
+
+"Oh, there's where the trouble is! Carlos is on the Mauretania,
+and she is due here in a couple of days. He comes from the East
+where he has been touring with his wife. Miss Strange, the lost
+will must be found before then, or the other will be opened and
+read and Carlos made master of this house, which would mean our
+quick departure and Clement's certain death."
+
+"Move a sick man?--a relative as low as you say he is? Oh no,
+Mrs. Quintard; no one would do that, were the house a cabin and
+its owners paupers."
+
+"You do not know Carlos; you do not know his wife. We should not
+be given a week in which to pack. They have no children and they
+envy Clement who has. Our only hope lies in discovering the paper
+which gives us the right to remain here in face of all
+opposition. That or penury. Now you know my trouble."
+
+"And it is trouble; one from which I shall make every effort to
+relieve you. But first let me ask if you are not worrying
+unnecessarily about this missing document? If it was drawn up by
+Mr. Brooks's lawyer--"
+
+"But it was not," that lady impetuously interrupted. "His lawyer
+is Carlos's near relative, and has never been told of the change
+in my brother's intentions. Clement (I am speaking now of my
+brother and not of my nephew) was a great money-getter, but when
+it came to standing up for his rights in domestic matters, he was
+more timid than a child. He was subject to his wife while she
+lived, and when she was gone, to her relatives, who are all of a
+dominating character. When he finally made up his mind to do us
+justice and eliminate Carlos, he went out of town--I wish I could
+remember where--and had this will drawn up by a stranger, whose
+name I cannot recall."
+
+Her shaking tones, her nervous manner betrayed a weakness
+equalling, if not surpassing, that of the brother who dared in
+secret what he had not strength to acknowledge openly, and it was
+with some hesitation Violet prepared to ask those definite
+questions which would elucidate the cause and manner of a loss
+seemingly so important. She dreaded to hear some commonplace tale
+of inexcusable carelessness. Something subtler than this--the
+presence of some unsuspected agency opposed to young Clement's
+interest; some partisan of Carlos; some secret undermining force
+in a house full of servants and dependants, seemed necessary for
+the development of so ordinary a situation into a drama
+justifying the exercise of her special powers.
+
+"I think I understand now your exact position in the house, as
+well as the value of the paper which you say you have lost. The
+next thing for me to hear is how you came to have charge of this
+paper, and under what circumstances you were led to mislay it. Do
+you not feel quite ready to tell me?"
+
+"Is--is that necessary?" Mrs. Quintard faltered.
+
+"Very," replied Violet, watching her curiously.
+
+"I didn't expect--that is, I hoped you would be able to point
+out, by some power we cannot of course explain, just the spot
+where the paper lies, without having to tell all that. Some
+people can, you know."
+
+"Ah, I understand. You regarded me as unfit for practical work,
+and so credited me with occult powers. But that is where you made
+a mistake, Mrs. Quintard; I'm nothing if not practical. And let
+me add, that I'm as secret as the grave concerning what my
+clients tell me. If I am to be of any help to you, I must be made
+acquainted with every fact involved in the loss of this valuable
+paper.  Relate the whole circumstance or dismiss me from the
+case. You can have done nothing more foolish or wrong than many--"
+
+"Oh, don't say things like that!" broke in the poor woman in a
+tone of great indignation. "I have done nothing anyone could call
+either foolish or wicked. I am simply very unfortunate, and being
+sensitive--But this isn't telling the story. I'll try to make it
+all clear; but if I do not, and show any confusion, stop me and
+help me out with questions. I--I--oh, where shall I begin?"
+
+"With your first knowledge of this second will."
+
+"Thank you, thank you; now I can go on. One night, shortly after
+my brother had been given up by the physicians, I was called to
+his bedside for a confidential talk. As he had received that day
+a very large amount of money from the bank, I thought he was
+going to hand it over to me for Clement, but it was for something
+much more serious than this he had summoned me. When he was quite
+sure that we were alone and nobody anywhere within hearing, he
+told me that he had changed his mind as to the disposal of his
+property and that it was to Clement and his children, and not to
+Carlos, he was going to leave this house and the bulk of his
+money. That he had had a new will drawn up which he showed me--"
+
+"Showed you?"
+
+"Yes; he made me bring it to him from the safe where he kept it;
+and, feeble as he was, he was so interested in pointing out
+certain portions of it that he lifted himself in bed and was so
+strong and animated that I thought he was getting better. But it
+was a false strength due to the excitement of the moment, as I
+saw next day when he suddenly died."
+
+"You were saying that you brought the will to him from his safe.
+Where was the safe?"
+
+"In the wall over his head. He gave me the key to open it. This
+key he took from under his pillow. I had no trouble in fitting it
+or in turning the lock."
+
+"And what happened after you looked at the will?"
+
+"I put it back. He told me to. But the key I kept. He said I was
+not to part with it again till the time came for me to produce
+the will."
+
+"And when was that to be?"
+
+"Immediately after the funeral, if it so happened that Carlos had
+arrived in time to attend it. But if for any reason he failed to
+be here, I was to let it lie till within three days of his
+return, when I was to take it out in the presence of a Mr.
+Delahunt who was to have full charge of it from that time. Oh, I
+remember all that well enough! and I meant most earnestly to
+carry out his wishes, but--"
+
+"Go on, Mrs. Quintard, pray go on. What happened? Why couldn't
+you do what he asked?"
+
+"Because the will was gone when I went to take it out. There was
+nothing to show Mr. Delahunt but the empty shelf."
+
+"Oh, a theft! just a common theft! Someone overheard the talk
+you had with your brother. But how about the key? You had that?"
+
+"Yes, I had that."
+
+"Then it was taken from you and returned? You must have been 
+careless as to where you kept it--"
+
+"No, I wore it on a chain about my neck. Though I had no reason
+to mistrust any one in the house, I felt that I could not guard
+this key too carefully. I even kept it on at night. In fact it
+never left me. It was still on my person when I went into the
+room with Mr. Delahunt. But the safe had been opened for all
+that."
+
+"There were two keys to it, then?"
+
+"No; in giving me the key, my brother had strictly warned me not
+to lose it, as it had no duplicate."
+
+"Mrs. Quintard, have you a special confidant or maid?"
+
+"Yes, my Hetty."
+
+"How much did she know about this key?"
+
+"Nothing, but that it didn't help the fit of my dress. Hetty has
+cared for me for years. There's no more devoted woman in all New
+York, nor one who can be more relied upon to tell the truth. She
+is so honest with her tongue that I am bound to believe her even
+when she says--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"That it was I and nobody else who took the will out of the safe
+last night. That she saw me come from my brother's room with a
+folded paper in my hand, pass with it into the library, and come
+out again without it. If this is so, then that will is somewhere
+in that great room. But we've looked in every conceivable place
+except the shelves, where it is useless to search. It would take
+days to go through them all, and meanwhile Carlos--"
+
+"We will not wait for Carlos. We will begin work at once. But
+just one other question. How came Hetty to see you in your walk
+through the rooms? Did she follow you?"
+
+"Yes. It's--it's not the first time I have walked in my sleep.
+Last night--but she will tell you. It's a painful subject to me.
+I will send for her to meet us in the library."
+
+"Where you believe this document to lie hidden?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am anxious to see the room. It is upstairs, I believe."
+
+"Yes."
+
+She had risen and was moving rapidly toward the door. Violet
+eagerly followed her.
+
+Let us accompany her in her passage up the palatial stairway, and
+realize the effect upon her of a splendour whose future ownership
+possibly depended entirely upon herself.
+
+It was a cold splendour. The merry voices of children were
+lacking in these great halls. Death past and to come infused the
+air with solemnity and mocked the pomp which yet appeared so much
+a part of the life here that one could hardly imagine the huge
+pillared spaces without it.
+
+To Violet, more or less accustomed to fine interiors, the chief
+interest of this one lay in its connection with the mystery then
+occupying her. Stopping for a moment on the stair, she inquired
+of Mrs. Quintard if the loss she so deplored had been made known
+to the servants, and was much relieved to find that, with the
+exception of Mr. Delahunt, she had not spoken of it to any one
+but Clement. "And he will never mention it," she declared, "not
+even to his wife. She has troubles enough to bear without knowing
+how near she stood to a fortune."
+
+"Oh, she will have her fortune!" Violet confidently replied. "In
+time, the lawyer who drew up the will will appear. But what you
+want is an immediate triumph over the cold Carlos, and I hope you
+may have it. Ah!"
+
+This expletive was a sigh of sheer surprise.
+
+Mrs. Quintard had unlocked the library door and Violet had been
+given her first glimpse of this, the finest room in New York.
+
+She remembered now that she had often heard it so characterized,
+and, indeed, had it been taken bodily from some historic abbey of
+the old world, it could not have expressed more fully, in
+structure and ornamentation, the Gothic idea at its best. All
+that it lacked were the associations of vanished centuries, and
+these, in a measure, were supplied to the imagination by the
+studied mellowness of its tints and the suggestion of age in its
+carvings.
+
+So much for the room itself, which was but a shell for holding
+the great treasure of valuable books ranged along every shelf. As
+Violet's eyes sped over their ranks and thence to the five
+windows of deeply stained glass which faced her from the southern
+end, Mrs. Quintard indignantly exclaimed:
+
+"And Carlos would turn this into a billiard room!"
+
+"I do not like Carlos," Violet returned hotly; then remembering
+herself, hastened to ask whether Mrs. Quintard was quite positive
+as to this room being the one in which she had hidden the
+precious document.
+
+"You had better talk to Hetty," said that lady, as a stout woman
+of most prepossessing appearance entered their presence and
+paused respectfully just inside the doorway. "Hetty, you will
+answer any questions this young lady may put. If anyone can help
+us, she can. But first, what news from the sick-room?"
+
+"Nothing good. The doctor has just come for the third time today.
+Mrs. Brooks is crying and even the children are dumb with fear."
+
+"I will go. I must see the doctor. I must tell him to keep
+Clement alive by any means till--"
+
+She did not wait to say what; but Violet understood and felt her
+heart grow heavy. Could it be that her employer considered this
+the gay and easy task she had asked for?
+
+The next minute she was putting her first question:
+
+"Hetty, what did you see in Mrs. Quintard's action last night, to
+make you infer that she left the missing document in this room?"
+
+The woman's eyes, which had been respectfully studying her face,
+brightened with a relief which made her communicative. With the
+self-possession of a perfectly candid nature, she inquiringly
+remarked:
+
+"My mistress has spoken of her infirmity?"
+
+"Yes, and very frankly."
+
+"She walks in her sleep."
+
+"So she said."
+
+"And sometimes when others are asleep, and she is not."
+
+"She did not tell me that."
+
+"She is a very nervous woman and cannot always keep still when
+she rouses up at night. When I hear her rise, I get up too; but,
+never being quite sure whether she is sleeping or not, I am
+careful to follow her at a certain distance. Last night I was so
+far behind her that she had been to her brother's room and left
+it before I saw her face."
+
+"Where is his room and where is hers?"
+
+"Hers is in front on this same floor. Mr. Brooks's is in the
+rear, and can be reached either by the hall or by passing through
+this room into a small one beyond, which we called his den.."
+
+"Describe your encounter. Where were you standing when you saw
+her first?"
+
+"In the den I have just mentioned. There was a bright light in
+the hall behind me and I could see her figure quite plainly. She
+was holding a folded paper clenched against her breast, and her
+movement was so mechanical that I was sure she was asleep. She
+was coming this way, and in another moment she entered this room.
+The door, which had been open, remained so, and in my anxiety I
+crept to it and looked in after her. There was no light burning
+here at that hour, but the moon was shining in in long rays of
+variously coloured light. If I had followed her--but I did not. I
+just stood and watched her long enough to see her pass through a
+blue ray, then through a green one, and then into, if not
+through, a red one. Expecting her to walk straight on, and having
+some fears of the staircase once she got into the hall, I hurried
+around to the door behind you there to head her off. But she had
+not yet left this room. I waited and waited and still she did not
+come. Fearing some accident, I finally ventured to approach the
+door and try it. It was locked. This alarmed me. She had never
+locked herself in anywhere before and I did not know what to make
+of it. Some persons would have shouted her name, but I had been
+warned against doing that, so I simply stood where I was, and
+eventually I heard the key turn in the lock and saw her come out.
+She was still walking stiffly, but her hands were empty and
+hanging at her side."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"She went straight to her room and I after her. I was sure she
+was dead asleep by this time."
+
+"And she was?"
+
+"Yes, Miss; but still full of what was on her mind. I know this
+because she stopped when she reached the bedside and began
+fumbling with the waist of her wrapper. It was for the key she
+was searching, and when her fingers encountered it hanging on the
+outside, she opened her wrapper and thrust it in on her bare
+skin."
+
+"You saw her do all that?"
+
+"As plainly as I see you now. The light in her room was burning
+brightly."
+
+"And after that?"
+
+"She got into bed. It was I who turned off the light."
+
+"Has that wrapper of hers a pocket?"
+
+"No, Miss."
+
+"Nor her gown?"
+
+"No, Miss."
+
+"So she could not have brought the paper into her room concealed
+about her person?"
+
+"No, Miss; she left it here. It never passed beyond this
+doorway."
+
+"But might she not have carried it back to some place of
+concealment in the rooms she had left?"
+
+The woman's face changed and a slight flush showed through the
+natural brown of her cheeks.
+
+"No," she disclaimed; "she could not have done that. I was
+careful to lock the library door behind her before I ran out into
+the hall."
+
+"Then," concluded Violet, with all the emphasis of conviction,
+"it is here, and nowhere else we must look for that document
+till we find it."
+
+Thus assured of the first step in the task she had before her,
+Miss Strange settled down to business.
+
+The room, which towered to the height of two stories, was in the
+shape of a huge oval. This oval, separated into narrow divisions
+for the purpose of accommodating the shelves with which it was
+lined, narrowed as it rose above the great Gothic chimney-piece
+and the five gorgeous windows looking towards the south, till it
+met and was lost in the tracery of the ceiling, which was of that
+exquisite and soul-satisfying order which we see in the Henry VII
+chapel in Westminster Abbey. What break otherwise occurred in the
+circling round of books reaching thus thirty feet or more above
+the head was made by the two doors already spoken of and a narrow
+strip of wall at either end of the space occupied by the windows.
+No furniture was to be seen there except a couple of stalls taken
+from some old cathedral, which stood in the two bare places just
+mentioned.
+
+But within, on the extensive floor-space, several articles were
+grouped, and Violet, recognizing the possibilities which any one
+of them afforded for the concealment of so small an object as a
+folded document, decided to use method in her search, and to that
+end, mentally divided the space before her into four segments.
+
+The first took in the door, communicating with the suite ending
+in Mr. Brooks's bedroom. A diagram of this segment will show that
+the only article of furniture in it was a cabinet.
+
+It was at this cabinet Miss Strange made her first stop.
+
+"You have looked this well through?" she asked as she bent over
+the glass case on top to examine the row of mediaeval missals
+displayed within in a manner to show their wonderful
+illuminations.
+
+"Not the case," explained Hetty. "It is locked you see and no one
+has as yet succeeded in finding the key. But we searched the
+drawers underneath with the greatest care. Had we sifted the
+whole contents through our fingers, I could not be more certain
+that the paper is not there."
+
+Violet stepped into the next segment.
+
+This was the one dominated by the huge fire-place. A rug lay
+before the hearth. To this Violet pointed.
+
+Quickly the woman answered: "We not only lifted it, but turned it
+over."
+
+"And that box at the right?"
+
+"Is full of wood and wood only."
+
+"Did you take out this wood?"
+
+"Every stick."
+
+"And those ashes in the fire-place? Something has been burned
+there."
+
+"Yes; but not lately. Besides, those ashes are all wood ashes. If
+the least bit of charred paper had been mixed with them, we
+should have considered the matter settled. But you can see for
+yourself that no such particle can be found." While saying this,
+she had put the poker into Violet's hand. "Rake them about, Miss,
+and make sure."
+
+Violet did so, with the result that the poker was soon put back
+into place, and she herself down on her knees looking up the
+chimney.
+
+"Had she thrust it up there," Hetty made haste to remark, "there
+would have been some signs of soot on her sleeves. They are white
+and very long and are always getting in her way when she tries to
+do anything."
+
+Violet left the fire-place after a glance at the mantel-shelf on
+which nothing stood but a casket of open fretwork, and two
+coloured photographs mounted on small easels. The casket was too
+open to conceal anything and the photographs lifted too high
+above the shelf for even the smallest paper, let alone a document
+of any size, to hide behind them.
+
+The chairs, of which there were several in this part of the room,
+she passed with just an inquiring look. They were all of solid
+oak, without any attempt at upholstery, and although carved to
+match the stalls on the other side of the room, offered no place
+for search.
+
+Her delay in the third segment was brief. Here there was
+absolutely nothing but the door by which she had entered, and the
+books. As she flitted on, following the oval of the wall, a small
+frown appeared on her usually smooth forehead. She felt the
+oppression of the books--the countless books. If indeed, she
+should find herself obliged to go through them. What a hopeless
+outlook!
+
+But she had still a segment to consider, and after that the
+immense table occupying the centre of the room, a table which in
+its double capacity (for it was as much desk as table) gave more
+promise of holding the solution of the mystery than anything to
+which she had hitherto given her attention.
+
+The quarter in which she now stood was the most beautiful, and,
+possibly, the most precious of them all. In it blazed the five
+great windows which were the glory of the room; but there are no
+hiding-places in windows, and much as she revelled in colour, she
+dared not waste a moment on them. There was more hope for her in
+the towering stalls, with their possible drawers for books.
+
+But Hetty was before her in the attempt she made to lift the lids
+of the two great seats.
+
+"Nothing in either," said she; and Violet, with a sigh, turned
+towards the table.
+
+This was an immense affair, made to accommodate itself to the
+shape of the room, but with a hollowed-out space on the window-
+side large enough to hold a chair for the sitter who would use
+its top as a desk. On it were various articles suitable to its
+double use. Without being crowded, it displayed a pile of
+magazines and pamphlets, boxes for stationery, a writing pad with
+its accompaniments, a lamp, and some few ornaments, among which
+was a large box, richly inlaid with pearl and ivory, the lid of
+which stood wide open.
+
+"Don't touch," admonished Violet, as Hetty stretched out her hand
+to move some little object aside. "You have already worked here
+busily in the search you made this morning."
+
+"We handled everything."
+
+"Did you go through these pamphlets?"
+
+"We shook open each one. We were especially particular here,
+since it was at this table I saw Mrs. Quintard stop."
+
+"With head level or drooped?"
+
+"Drooped."
+
+"Like one looking down, rather than up, or around?"
+
+"Yes. A ray of red light shone on her sleeve. It seemed to me the
+sleeve moved as though she were reaching out."
+
+"Will you try to stand as she did and as nearly in the same place
+as possible?"
+
+Hetty glanced down at the table edge, marked where the gules
+dominated the blue and green, and moved to that spot, and paused
+with her head sinking slowly towards her breast.
+
+"Very good," exclaimed Violet. "But the moon was probably in a
+very different position from what the sun is now."
+
+"You are right; it was higher up; I chanced to notice it."
+
+"Let me come," said Violet.
+
+Hetty moved, and Violet took her place but in a spot a step or
+two farther front. This brought her very near to the centre of
+the table. Hanging her head, just as Hetty had done, she reached
+out her right hand.
+
+"Have you looked under this blotter?" she asked, pointing towards
+the pad she touched. "I mean, between the blotter and the frame
+which holds it?"
+
+"I certainly did," answered Hetty, with some pride.
+
+Violet remained staring down. "Then you took off everything that
+was lying on it?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+Violet continued to stare down at the blotter. Then impetuously:
+
+"Put them back in their accustomed places."
+
+Hetty obeyed.
+
+Violet continued to look at them, then slowly stretched out her
+hand, but soon let it fall again with an air of discouragement.
+Certainly the missing document was not in the ink-pot or the
+mucilage bottle. Yet something made her stoop again over the pad
+and subject it to the closest scrutiny.
+
+"If only nothing had been touched!" she inwardly sighed. But she
+let no sign of her discontent escape her lips, simply exclaiming
+as she glanced up at the towering spaces overhead:  "The books!
+the books! Nothing remains but for you to call up all the
+servants, or get men from the outside and, beginning at one end--
+I should say the upper one--take down every book standing within
+reach of a woman of Mrs. Quintard's height."
+
+"Hear first what Mrs. Quintard has to say about that,"
+interrupted the woman as that lady entered in a flutter of
+emotion springing from more than one cause.
+
+"The young lady thinks that we should remove the books," Hetty
+observed, as her mistress's eye wandered to hers from Violet's
+abstracted countenance.
+
+"Useless. If we were to undertake to do that, Carlos would be
+here before half the job was finished. Besides, Hetty must have
+told you my extreme aversion to nicely bound books. I will not
+say that when awake I never place my hand on one, but once in a
+state of somnambulism, when every natural whim has full control,
+I am sure that I never would. There is a reason for my prejudice.
+I was not always rich. I once was very poor. It was when I was
+first married and long before Clement had begun to make his
+fortune. I was so poor then that frequently I went hungry, and
+what was worse saw my little daughter cry for food. And why?
+Because my husband was a bibliomaniac. He would spend on fine
+editions what would have kept the family comfortable. It is hard
+to believe, isn't it? I have seen him bring home a Grolier when
+the larder was as empty as that box; and it made me hate books
+so, especially those of extra fine binding, that I have to tear
+the covers off before I can find courage to read them."
+
+O life! life! how fast Violet was learning it!
+
+"I can understand your idea, Mrs. Quintard, but as everything
+else has failed, I should make a mistake not to examine these
+shelves. It is just possible that we may be able to shorten the
+task very materially; that we may not have to call in help, even.
+To what extent have they been approached, or the books handled,
+since you discovered the loss of the paper we are looking for?"
+
+"Not at all. Neither of us went near them." This from Hetty.
+
+"Nor any one else?"
+
+"No one else has been admitted to the room. We locked both doors
+the moment we felt satisfied that the will had been left here."
+
+"That's a relief. Now I may be able to do something. Hetty, you
+look like a very strong woman, and I, as you see, am very little.
+Would you mind lifting me up to these shelves? I want to look at
+them. Not at the books, but at the shelves themselves."
+
+The wondering woman stooped and raised her to the level of the
+shelf she had pointed out. Violet peered closely at it and then
+at the ones just beneath.
+
+"Am I heavy?" she asked; "if not, let me see those on the other
+side of the door."
+
+Hetty carried her over.
+
+Violet inspected each shelf as high as a woman of Mrs.
+Quintard's stature could reach, and when on her feet again,
+knelt to inspect the ones below.
+
+"No one has touched or drawn anything from these shelves in
+twenty-four hours," she declared. "The small accumulation of dust
+along their edges has not been disturbed at any point. It was
+very different with the table-top. That shows very plainly where
+you had moved things and where you had not."
+
+"Was that what you were looking for? Well, I never!"
+
+Violet paid no heed; she was thinking and thinking very deeply.
+
+Hetty turned towards her mistress, then quickly back to Violet,
+whom she seized by the arm.
+
+"What's the matter with Mrs. Quintard?" she hurriedly asked. "If
+it were night, I should think that she was in one of her spells."
+
+Violet started and glanced where Hetty pointed. Mrs. Quintard was
+within a few feet of them, but as oblivious of their
+presence as though she stood alone in the room. Possibly, she
+thought she did. With fixed eyes and mechanical step she began
+to move straight towards the table, her whole appearance of a
+nature to make Hetty's blood run cold, but to cause that of
+Violet's to bound through her veins with renewed hope.
+
+"The one thing I could have wished!" she murmured under her
+breath. "She has fallen into a trance. She is again under the
+dominion of her idea. If we watch and do not disturb her she may
+repeat her action of last night, and herself show where she has
+put this precious document."
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Quintard continued to advance. A moment more, and
+her smooth white locks caught the ruddy glow centred upon the
+chair standing in the hollow of the table. Words were leaving her
+lips, and her hand, reaching out over the blotter, groped among
+the articles scattered there till it settled on a large pair of
+shears.
+
+"Listen," muttered Violet to the woman pressing close to her
+side. "You are acquainted with her voice; catch what she says if
+you can."
+
+Hetty could not; an undistinguishable murmur was all that came to
+her ears.
+
+Violet took a step nearer. Mrs. Quintard's hand had left the
+shears and was hovering uncertainly in the air. Her distress was
+evident. Her head, no longer steady on her shoulders, was turning
+this way and that, and her tones becoming inarticulate.
+
+"Paper! I want paper" burst from her lips in a shrill unnatural
+cry.
+
+But when they listened for more and watched to see the uncertain
+hand settle somewhere, she suddenly came to herself and turned
+upon them a startled glance, which speedily changed into one of
+the utmost perplexity.
+
+"What am I doing here?" she asked. "I have a feeling as if I had
+almost seen--almost touched--oh, it's gone! and all is blank
+again. Why couldn't I keep it till I knew--" Then she came wholly
+to herself and, forgetting even the doubts of a moment since,
+remarked to Violet in her old tremulous fashion:
+
+"You asked us to pull down the books? But you've evidently
+thought better of it."
+
+"Yes, I have thought better of it." Then, with a last desperate
+hope of re-arousing the visions lying somewhere back in Mrs.
+Quintard's troubled brain, Violet ventured to observe: "This is
+likely to resolve itself into a psychological problem, Mrs.
+Quintard. Do you suppose that if you fell again into the
+condition of last night, you would repeat your action and so lead
+us yourself to where the will lies hidden?"
+
+"Possibly; but it may be weeks before I walk again in my sleep,
+and meanwhile Carlos will have arrived, and Clement, possibly,
+died. My nephew is so low that the doctor is coming back at
+midnight. Miss Strange, Clement is a man in a thousand. He says
+he wants to see you. Would you be willing to accompany me to his
+room for a moment? He will not make many more requests and I will
+take care that the interview is not prolonged."
+
+"I will go willingly. But would it not be better to wait--"
+
+"Then you may never see him at all."
+
+"Very well; but I wish I had some better news to give."
+
+"That will come later. This house was never meant for Carlos.
+Hetty, you will stay here. Miss Strange, let us go now."
+
+"You need not speak; just let him see you."
+
+Violet nodded and followed Mrs. Quintard into the sick-room.
+
+The sight which met her eyes tried her young emotions deeply.
+Staring at her from the bed, she saw two piercing eyes over whose
+brilliance death as yet had gained no control. Clements's soul
+was in that gaze; Clement halting at the brink of dissolution to
+sound the depths behind him for the hope which would make
+departure easy. Would he see in her, a mere slip of a girl
+dressed in fashionable clothes and bearing about her all the
+marks of social distinction, the sort of person needed for the
+task upon the success of which depended his darlings' future? She
+could hardly expect it. Yet as she continued to meet his gaze
+with all the seriousness the moment demanded, she beheld those
+burning orbs lose some of their demand and the fingers, which had
+lain inert upon the bedspread, flutter gently and move as if to
+draw attention to his wife and the three beautiful children
+clustered at the foot-board.
+
+He had not spoken nor could she speak, but the solemnity with
+which she raised her right hand as to a listening Heaven called
+forth upon his lips what was possibly his last smile, and with
+the memory of this faint expression of confidence on his part,
+she left the room, to make her final attempt to solve the mystery
+of the missing document.
+
+Facing the elderly lady in the hall, she addressed her with the
+force and soberness of one leading a forlorn hope:
+
+"I want you to concentrate your mind upon what I have to say to
+you. Do you think you can do this?"
+
+"I will try," replied the poor woman with a backward glance at
+the door which had just been closed upon her.
+
+"What we want," said she, "is, as I stated before, an insight
+into the workings of your brain at the time you took the will
+from the safe. Try and follow what I have to say, Mrs. Quintard.
+Dreams are no longer regarded by scientists as prophecies of the
+future or even as spontaneous and irrelevant conditions of
+thought, but as reflections of a near past, which can almost
+without exception be traced back to the occurrences which caused
+them. Your action with the will had its birth in some previous
+line of thought afterwards forgotten. Let us try and find that
+thought. Recall, if you can, just what you did or read yesterday."
+
+Mrs. Quintard looked frightened.
+
+"But, I have no memory," she objected. "I forget quickly, so
+quickly that in order to fulfill my engagements I have to keep a
+memorandum of every day's events. Yesterday? yesterday? What did
+I do yesterday? I went downtown for one thing, but I hardly know
+where."
+
+"Perhaps your memorandum of yesterday's doings will help you."
+
+"I will get it. But it won't give you the least help. I keep it
+only for my own eye, and--"
+
+"Never mind; let me see it."
+
+And she waited impatiently for it to be put in her hands.
+
+But when she came to read the record of the last two days, this
+was all she found:
+
+Saturday: Mauretania nearly due. I must let Mr. Delahunt know
+today that he's wanted here to-morrow. Hetty will try on my
+dresses. Says she has to alter them. Mrs. Peabody came to lunch,
+and we in such trouble! Had to go down street. Errand for
+Clement. The will, the will! I think of nothing else. Is it safe
+where it is? No peace of mind till to-morrow. Clement better this
+afternoon. Says he must live till Carlos gets back; not to
+triumph over him, but to do what he can to lessen his
+disappointment. My good Clement!
+
+So nervous, I went to pasting photographs, and was forgetting all
+my troubles when Hetty brought in another dress to try on.
+
+Quiet in the great house, during which the clock on the staircase
+sent forth seven musical peals. To Violet waiting alone in the
+library, they acted as a summons. She was just leaving the room,
+when the sound of hubbub in the hall below held her motionless in
+the doorway. An automobile had stopped in front, and several
+persons were entering the house, in a gay and unseemly fashion.
+As she stood listening, uncertain of her duty, she perceived the
+frenzied figure of Mrs. Quintard approaching. As she passed by,
+she dropped one word: "Carlos!" Then she went staggering on, to
+disappear a moment later down the stairway.
+
+This vision lost, another came. This time it was that of
+Clements's wife leaning from the marble balustrade above, the
+shadow of approaching grief battling with the present terror in
+her perfect features. Then she too withdrew from view and Violet,
+left for the moment alone in the great hall, stepped back into
+the library and began to put on her hat.
+
+The lights had been turned up in the grand salon and it was in
+this scene of gorgeous colour that Mrs. Quintard came face to
+face with Carlos Pelacios. Those who were witness to her entrance
+say that she presented a noble appearance, as with the resolution
+of extreme desperation she stood waiting for his first angry
+attack.
+
+He, a short, thick-set, dark man, showing both in features and
+expression the Spanish blood of his paternal ancestors, started
+to address her in tones of violence, but changed his note, as he
+met her eye, to one simply sardonic.
+
+"You here!" he began. "I assure you, madame, that it is a
+pleasure which is not without its inconveniences. Did you not
+receive my cable-gram requesting this house to be made ready for
+my occupancy?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Then why do I find guests here? They do not usually precede the
+arrival of their host."
+
+"Clement is very ill--"
+
+"So much the greater reason that he should have been removed--"
+
+"You were not expected for two days yet. You cabled that you were
+coming on the Mauretania."
+
+"Yes, I cabled that. Elisabetta,"--this to his wife standing
+silently in the background--"we will go to the Plaza for tonight.
+At three o'clock tomorrow we shall expect to find this house in
+readiness for our return. Later, if Mrs. Quintard desires to
+visit us we shall be pleased to receive her. But"--this to Mrs.
+Quintard herself--"you must come without Clement and the kids."
+
+Mrs. Quintard's rigid hand stole up to her throat.
+
+"Clement is dying. He is failing hourly," she murmured. "He may
+not live till morning."
+
+Even Carlos was taken aback by this. "Oh, well!" said he, "we
+will give you two days."
+
+Mrs. Quintard gasped, then she walked straight up to him. "You
+will give us all the time his condition requires and more, much
+more. He is the real owner of this house, not you. My brother
+left a will bequeathing it to him. You are my nephew's guests,
+and not he yours. As his representative I entreat you and your
+wife to remain here until you can find a home to your mind."
+
+The silence seethed. Carlos had a temper of fire and so had his
+wife. But neither spoke, till he had gained sufficient control
+over himself to remark without undue rancour:
+
+"I did not think you had the wit to influence your brother to
+this extent; otherwise, I should have cut my travels short." Then
+harshly: "Where is this will?"
+
+"It will be produced." But the words faltered.
+
+Carlos glanced at the man standing behind his wife; then back at
+Mrs. Quintard.
+
+"Wills are not scribbled off on deathbeds; or if they are, it
+needs something more than a signature to legalize them. I don't
+believe in this trick of a later will. Mr. Cavanagh"--here he
+indicated the gentleman accompanying them--"has done my father's
+business for years, and he assured me that the paper he holds in
+his pocket is the first, last, and only expression of your
+brother's wishes. If you are in a position to deny this, show us
+the document you mention; show us it at once, or inform us where
+and in whose hands it can be found."
+
+"That, for--for reasons I cannot give, I must refuse to do at
+present. But I am ready to swear--"
+
+A mocking laugh cut her short. Did it issue from his lips or from
+those of his highstrung and unfeeling wife? It might have come
+from either; there was cause enough.
+
+"Oh!" she faltered, "may God have mercy!" and was sinking before
+their eyes, when she heard her name, called from the threshold,
+and, looking that way, saw Hetty beaming upon her, backed by a
+little figure with a face so radiant that instinctively her hand
+went out to grasp the folded sheet of paper Hetty was seeking to
+thrust upon her.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, in a great voice, "you will not have to wait,
+nor Clement either. Here is the will! The children have come into
+their own." And she fell at their feet in a dead faint.
+
+"Where did you find it? Oh! where did you find it? I have waited
+a week to know. When, after Carlos's sudden departure, I stood
+beside Clement's death-bed and saw from the look he gave me that
+he could still feel and understand, I told him that you had
+succeeded in your task and that all was well with us. But I was
+not able to tell him how you had succeeded or in what place the
+will had been found; and he died, unknowing. But we may know, may
+we not, now that he is laid away and there is no more talk of our
+leaving this house?"
+
+Violet smiled, but very tenderly, and in a way not to offend the
+mourner. They were sitting in the library--the great library
+which was to remain in Clement's family after all--and it amused
+her to follow the dreaming lady's glances as they ran in
+irrepressible curiosity over the walls. Had Violet wished, she
+could have kept her secret forever. These eyes would never have
+discovered it.
+
+But she was of a sympathetic temperament, our Violet, so after a
+moment's delay, during which she satisfied herself that little,
+if anything, had been touched in the room since her departure
+from it a week before, she quietly observed:
+
+"You were right in persisting that you hid it in this room. It
+was here I found it. Do you notice that photograph on the mantel
+which does not stand exactly straight on its easel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Supposing you take it down. You can reach it, can you not?"
+
+"Oh, yes. But what--"
+
+"Lift it down, dear Mrs. Quintard; and then turn it round and
+look at its back."
+
+Agitated and questioning, the lady did as she was bid, and at the
+first glance gave a cry of surprise, if not of understanding. The
+square of brown paper, acting as a backing to the picture, was
+slit across, disclosing a similar one behind it which was still
+intact.
+
+"Oh! was it hidden in here?" she asked.
+
+"Very completely," assented Violet. "Pasted in out of sight by a
+lady who amuses herself with mounting and framing photographs.
+Usually, she is conscious of her work, but this time she
+performed her task in a dream."
+
+Mrs. Quintard was all amazement.
+
+"I don't remember touching these pictures," she declared. "I
+never should have remembered. You are a wonderful person, Miss
+Strange. How came you to think these photographs might have two
+backings? There was nothing to show that this was so."
+
+"I will tell you, Mrs. Quintard. You helped me."
+
+"I helped you?"
+
+"Yes. You remember the memorandum you gave me? In it you
+mentioned pasting photographs. But this was not enough in itself
+to lead me to examine those on the mantel, if you had not given
+me another suggestion a little while before. We did not tell you
+this, Mrs. Quintard, at the time, but during the search we were
+making here that day, you had a lapse into that peculiar state
+which induces you to walk in your sleep. It was a short one,
+lasting but a moment, but in a moment one can speak, and, this
+you did--"
+
+"Spoke? I spoke?"
+
+"Yes, you uttered the word 'paper!' not the paper, but 'paper!'
+and reached out towards the shears. Though I had not much time to
+think of it then, afterwards upon reading your memorandum I
+recalled your words, and asked myself if it was not paper to cut,
+rather than to hide, you wanted. If it was to cut, and you were
+but repeating the experience of the night before, then the room
+should contain some remnants of cut paper. Had we seen any? Yes,
+in the basket, under the desk we had taken out and thrown back
+again a strip or so of wrapping paper, which, if my memory did
+not fail me, showed a clean-cut edge. To pull this strip out
+again and spread it flat upon the desk was the work of a minute,
+and what I saw led me to look all over the room, not now for the
+folded document, but for a square of brown paper, such as had
+been taken out of this larger sheet. Was I successful? Not for a
+long while, but when I came to the photographs on the mantel and
+saw how nearly they corresponded in shape and size to what I was
+looking for, I recalled again your fancy for mounting photographs
+and felt that the mystery was solved.
+
+"A glance at the back of one of them brought disappointment, but
+when I turned about its mate-- You know what I found underneath
+the outer paper. You had laid the will against the original
+backing and simply pasted another one over it.
+
+"That the discovery came in time to cut short a very painful
+interview has made me joyful for a week.
+
+"And now may I see the children?"
+
+END OF PROBLEM V
+
+
+PROBLEM VI
+
+THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS
+
+Miss Strange was not in a responsive mood. This her employer had
+observed on first entering; yet he showed no hesitation in laying
+on the table behind which she had ensconced herself in the
+attitude of one besieged, an envelope thick with enclosed papers.
+
+"There," said he. "Telephone me when you have read them."
+
+"I shall not read them."
+
+"No?" he smiled; and, repossessing himself of the envelope, he
+tore off one end, extracted the sheets with which it was filled,
+and laid them down still unfolded, in their former place on the
+table-top.
+
+The suggestiveness of the action caused the corners of Miss
+Srange's delicate lips to twitch wistfully, before settling into
+an ironic smile.
+
+Calmly the other watched her.
+
+"I am on a vacation," she loftily explained, as she finally met
+his studiously non-quizzical glance. "Oh, I know that I am in my
+own home!" she petulantly acknowledged, as his gaze took in the
+room; "and that the automobile is at the door; and that I'm
+dressed for shopping. But for all that I'm on a vacation--a
+mental one," she emphasized; "and business must wait. I haven't
+got over the last affair," she protested, as he maintained a
+discreet silence, "and the season is so gay just now--so many
+balls, so many--But that isn't the worst. Father is beginning to
+wake up--and if he ever suspects--" A significant gesture ended
+this appeal.
+
+The personage knew her father--everyone did--and the wonder had
+always been that she dared run the risk of displeasing one so
+implacable. Though she was his favourite child, Peter Strange was
+known to be quite capable of cutting her off with a shilling,
+once his close, prejudiced mind conceived it to be his duty. And
+that he would so interpret the situation, if he ever came to
+learn the secret of his daughter's fits of abstraction and the
+sly bank account she was slowly accumulating, the personage
+holding out this dangerous lure had no doubt at all. Yet he only
+smiled at her words and remarked in casual suggestion:
+
+"It's out of town this time--'way out. Your health certainly
+demands a change of air."
+
+"My health is good. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as one may
+choose to look at it, it furnishes me with no excuse for an
+outing," she steadily retorted, turning her back on the table.
+
+"Ah, excuse me!" the insidious voice apologized, "your paleness
+misled me. Surely a night or two's change might be beneficial."
+
+She gave him a quick side look, and began to adjust her boa.
+
+To this hint he paid no attention.
+
+"The affair is quite out of the ordinary," he pursued in the tone
+of one rehearsing a part. But there he stopped. For some reason,
+not altogether apparent to the masculine mind, the pin of
+flashing stones (real stones) which held her hat in place had to
+be taken out and thrust back again, not once, but twice. It was
+to watch this performance he had paused. When he was ready to
+proceed, he took the musing tone of one marshalling facts for
+another's enlightenment:
+
+"A woman of unknown instincts--"
+
+"Pshaw!" The end of the pin would strike against the comb holding
+Violet's chestnut-coloured locks.
+
+"Living in a house as mysterious as the secret it contains. But--"
+here he allowed his patience apparently to forsake him, "I will
+bore you no longer. Go to your teas and balls; I will struggle
+with my dark affairs alone."
+
+His hand went to the packet of papers she affected so
+ostentatiously to despise. He could be as nonchalant as she. But
+he did not lift them; he let them lie. Yet the young heiress had
+not made a movement or even turned the slightest glance his way.
+
+"A woman difficult to understand! A mysterious house--possibly a
+mysterious crime!"
+
+Thus Violet kept repeating in silent self-communion, as flushed
+with dancing she sat that evening in a highly-scented
+conservatory, dividing her attention between the compliments of
+her partner and the splash of a fountain bubbling in the heart of
+this mass of tropical foliage; and when some hours later she sat
+down in her chintz-furnished bedroom for a few minutes' thought
+before retiring, it was to draw from a little oak box at her
+elbow the half-dozen or so folded sheets of closely written paper
+which had been left for her perusal by her persistent employer.
+
+Glancing first at the signature and finding it to be one already
+favourably known at the bar, she read with avidity the statement
+of events thus vouched for, finding them curious enough in all
+conscience to keep her awake for another full hour.
+
+We here subscribe it:
+
+I am a lawyer with an office in the Times Square Building. My
+business is mainly local, but sometimes I am called out of town,
+as witness the following summons received by me on the fifth of
+last October.
+
+DEAR SIR,--
+
+I wish to make my will. I am an invalid and cannot leave my room.
+Will you come to me? The enclosed reference will answer for my
+respectability. If it satisfies you and you decide to accommodate
+me, please hasten your visit; I have not many days to live. A
+carriage will meet you at Highland Station at any hour you
+designate. Telegraph reply.
+
+A. Postlethwaite, Gloom Cottage, -- N. J.
+
+The reference given was a Mr. Weed of Eighty-sixth Street--a well-
+known man of unimpeachable reputation.
+
+Calling him up at his business office, I asked him what he could
+tell me about Mr. Postlethwaite of Gloom Cottage, --, N. J. 
+The answer astonished me:
+
+"There is no Mr. Postlethwaite to be found at that address. He
+died years ago. There is a Mrs. Postlethwaite--a confirmed
+paralytic. Do you mean her?"
+
+I glanced at the letter still lying open at the side of the
+telephone:
+
+"The signature reads A. Postlethwaite."
+
+"Then it's she. Her name is Arabella. She hates the name, being a
+woman of no sentiment. Uses her initials even on her cheques.
+What does she want of you?"
+
+"To draw her will."
+
+"Oblige her. It'll be experience for you." And he slammed home
+the receiver.
+
+I decided to follow the suggestion so forcibly emphasized; and
+the next day saw me at Highland Station. A superannuated horse
+and a still more superannuated carriage awaited me--both too old
+to serve a busy man in these days of swift conveyance. Could this
+be a sample of the establishment I was about to enter? Then I
+remembered that the woman who had sent for me was a helpless
+invalid, and probably had no use for any sort of turnout.
+
+The driver was in keeping with the vehicle, and as noncommittal
+as the plodding beast he drove. If I ventured upon a remark, he
+gave me a long and curious look; if I went so far as to attack
+him with a direct question, he responded with a hitch of the
+shoulder or a dubious smile which conveyed nothing. Was he deaf
+or just unpleasant? I soon learned that he was not deaf; for
+suddenly, after a jog-trot of a mile or so through a wooded road
+which we had entered from the main highway, he drew in his horse,
+and, without glancing my way, spoke his first word:
+
+"This is where you get out. The house is back there in the
+bushes."
+
+As no house was visible and the bushes rose in an unbroken
+barrier along the road, I stared at him in some doubt of his
+sanity.
+
+"But--" I began; a protest into which he at once broke, with the
+sharp direction:
+
+"Take the path. It'll lead you straight to the front door."
+
+"I don't see any path."
+
+For this he had no answer; and confident from his expression that
+it would be useless to expect anything further from him, I
+dropped a coin into his hand, and jumped to the ground. He was
+off before I could turn myself about.
+
+"'Something is rotten in the State of Denmark,'" I quoted in
+startled comment to myself; and not knowing what else to do,
+stared down at the turf at my feet.
+
+A bit of flagging met my eye, protruding from a layer of thick
+moss. Farther on I espied another--the second, probably, of many.
+This, no doubt, was the path I had been bidden to follow, and
+without further thought on the subject, I plunged into the bushes
+which with difficulty I made give way before me.
+
+For a moment all further advance looked hopeless. A more tangled,
+uninviting approach to a so-called home, I had never seen outside
+of the tropics; and the complete neglect thus displayed should
+have prepared me for the appearance of the house I unexpectedly
+came upon, just as, the way seemed on the point of closing up
+before me.
+
+But nothing could well prepare one for a first view of Gloom
+Cottage. Its location in a hollow which had gradually filled
+itself up with trees and some kind of prickly brush, its deeply
+stained walls, once picturesque enough in their grouping but too
+deeply hidden now amid rotting boughs to produce any other effect
+than that of shrouded desolation, the sough of these same boughs
+as they rapped a devil's tattoo against each other, and the
+absence of even the rising column of smoke which bespeaks
+domestic life wherever seen--all gave to one who remembered the
+cognomen Cottage and forgot the pre-cognomen of Gloom, a sense of
+buried life as sepulchral as that which emanates from the mouth
+of some freshly opened tomb.
+
+But these impressions, natural enough to my youth, were
+necessarily transient, and soon gave way to others more business-
+like. Perceiving the curve of an arch rising above the
+undergrowth still blocking my approach, I pushed my way
+resolutely through, and presently found myself stumbling upon the
+steps of an unexpectedly spacious domicile, built not of wood, as
+its name of Cottage had led me to expect, but of carefully cut
+stone which, while showing every mark of time, proclaimed itself
+one of those early, carefully erected Colonial residences which
+it takes more than a century to destroy, or even to wear to the
+point of dilapidation.
+
+Somewhat encouraged, though failing to detect any signs of active
+life in the heavily shuttered windows frowning upon me from
+either side, I ran up the steps and rang the bell which pulled as
+hard as if no hand had touched it in years.
+
+Then I waited.
+
+But not to ring again; for just as my hand was approaching the
+bell a second time, the door fell back and I beheld in the black
+gap before me the oldest man I had ever come upon in my whole
+life. He was so old I was astonished when his drawn lips opened
+and he asked if I was the lawyer from New York. I would as soon
+have expected a mummy to wag its tongue and utter English, he
+looked so thin and dried and removed from this life and all
+worldly concerns.
+
+But when I had answered his question and he had turned to marshal
+me down the hall towards a door I could dimly see standing open
+in the twilight of an absolutely sunless interior, I noticed that
+his step was not without some vigour, despite the feeble bend of
+his withered body and the incessant swaying of his head, which
+seemed to be continually saying No!
+
+"I will prepare madam," he admonished me, after drawing a
+ponderous curtain two inches or less aside from one of the
+windows. "She is very ill, but she will see you."
+
+The tone was senile, but it was the senility of an educated man,
+and as the cultivated accents wavered forth, my mind changed in,
+regard to the position he held in the house. Interested anew, I
+sought to give him another look, but he had already vanished
+through the doorway, and so noiselessly, it was more like a
+shadow's flitting than a man's withdrawal.
+
+The darkness in which I sat was absolute; but gradually, as I
+continued to look about me, the spaces lightened and certain
+details came out, which to my astonishment were of a character to
+show that the plain if substantial exterior of this house with
+its choked-up approaches and weedy gardens was no sample of what
+was to be found inside. Though the walls surrounding me were
+dismal because unlighted, they betrayed a splendour unusual in
+any country house. The frescoes and paintings were of an ancient
+order, dating from days when life and not death reigned in this
+isolated dwelling; but in them high art reigned supreme, an art
+so high and so finished that only great wealth, combined with the
+most cultivated taste, could have produced such effects. I was
+still absorbed in the wonder of it all, when the quiet voice of
+the old gentleman who had let me in reached me again from the
+doorway, and I heard:
+
+"Madam is ready for you. May I trouble you to accompany me to her
+room."
+
+I rose with alacrity. I was anxious to see madam, if only to
+satisfy myself that she was as interesting as the house in which
+she was self-immured.
+
+I found her a great deal more so. But before I enter upon our
+interview, let me mention a fact which had attracted my attention
+in my passage to her room. During his absence my guide evidently
+had pulled aside other curtains than those of the room in which
+he had left me. The hall, no longer a tunnel of darkness, gave me
+a glimpse as we went by, of various secluded corners, and it
+seemed as if everywhere I looked I saw--a clock. I counted four
+before I reached the staircase, all standing on the floor and all
+of ancient make, though differing much in appearance and value. A
+fifth one rose grim and tall at the stair foot, and under an
+impulse I have never understood I stopped, when I reached it, to
+note the time. But it had paused in its task, and faced me with
+motionless hands and silent works--a fact which somehow startled
+me; perhaps, because just then I encountered the old man's eye
+watching me with an expression as challenging as it was
+unintelligible.
+
+I had expected to see a woman in bed. I saw instead, a woman
+sitting up. You felt her influence the moment you entered her
+presence. She was not young; she was not beautiful;--never had
+been I should judge,--she had not even the usual marks about her
+of an ultra strong personality; but that her will was law, had
+always been, and would continue to be law so long as she lived,
+was patent to any eye at the first glance. She exacted obedience
+consciously and unconsciously, and she exacted it with charm.
+Some few people in the world possess this power. They frown, and
+the opposing will weakens; they smile, and all hearts succumb. I
+was hers from the moment I crossed the threshold till--But I will
+relate the happenings of that instant when it comes.
+
+She was alone, or so I thought, when I made my first bow to her
+stern but not unpleasing presence. Seated in a great chair, with
+a silver tray before her containing such little matters as she
+stood in hourly need of, she confronted me with a piercing gaze
+startling to behold in eyes so colourless. Then she smiled, and
+in obedience to that smile I seated myself in a chair placed very
+near her own. Was she too paralysed to express herself clearly? I
+waited in some anxiety till she spoke, when this fear vanished.
+Her voice betrayed the character her features failed to express.
+It was firm, resonant, and instinct with command. Not loud, but
+penetrating, and of a quality which made one listen with his
+heart as well as with his ears. What she said is immaterial. I
+was there for a certain purpose and we entered immediately upon
+the business of that purpose. She talked and I listened, mostly
+without comment. Only once did I interrupt her with a suggestion;
+and as this led to definite results, I will proceed to relate the
+occurrence in full.
+
+In the few hours remaining to me before leaving New York, I had
+learned (no matter how) some additional particulars concerning
+herself and family; and when after some minor bequests, she
+proceeded to name the parties to whom she desired to leave the
+bulk of her fortune, I ventured, with some astonishment at my own
+temerity, to remark:
+
+"But you have a young relative! Is she not to be included in this
+partition of your property?"
+
+A hush. Then a smile came to life on her stiff lips, such as is
+seldom seen, thank God, on the face of any woman, and I heard:
+
+"The young relative of whom you speak, is in the room. She has
+known for some time that I have no intention of leaving anything
+to her. There is, in fact, small chance of her ever needing it."
+
+The latter sentence was a muttered one, but that it was loud
+enough to be heard in all parts of the room I was soon assured.
+For a quick sigh, which was almost a gasp, followed from a corner
+I had hitherto ignored, and upon glancing that way, I perceived,
+peering upon us from the shadows, the white face of a young girl
+in whose drawn features and wide, staring eyes I beheld such
+evidences of terror, that in an instant, whatever predilection I
+had hitherto felt for my client, vanished in distrust, if not
+positive aversion.
+
+I was still under the sway of this new impression, when Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's voice rose again, this time addressing the young
+girl:
+
+"You may go," she said, with such force in the command for all
+its honeyed modulation, that I expected to see its object fly the
+room in frightened obedience.
+
+But though the startled girl had lost none of the terror which
+had made her face like a mask, no power of movement remained to
+her. A picture of hopeless misery, she stood for one breathless
+moment, with her eyes fixed in unmistakable appeal on mine; then
+she began to sway so helplessly that I leaped with bounding heart
+to catch her. As she fell into my arms I heard her sigh as
+before. No common anguish spoke in that sigh. I had stumbled
+unwittingly upon a tragedy, to the meaning of which I held but a
+doubtful key.
+
+"She seems very ill," I observed with some emphasis, as I turned
+to lay my helpless burden on a near-by sofa.
+
+"She's doomed."
+
+The words were spoken with gloom and with an attempt at
+commiseration which no longer rang true in my ears.
+
+"She is as sick a woman as I am myself"; continued Mrs.
+Postlethwaite. "That is why I made the remark I did, never
+imagining she would hear me at that distance. Do not put her
+down. My nurse will be here in a moment to relieve you of your
+burden."
+
+A tinkle accompanied these words. The resolute woman had
+stretched out a finger, of whose use she was not quite deprived,
+and touched a little bell standing on the tray before her, an
+inch or two from her hand.
+
+Pleased to obey her command, I paused at the sofa's edge, and
+taking advantage of the momentary delay, studied the youthful
+countenance pressed unconsciously to my breast.
+
+It was one whose appeal lay less in its beauty, though that was
+of a touching quality, than in the story it told,--a story, which
+for some unaccountable reason--I did not pause to determine what
+one--I felt it to be my immediate duty to know. But I asked no
+questions then; I did not even venture a comment; and yielded her
+up with seeming readiness when a strong but none too intelligent
+woman came running in with arms outstretched to carry her off.
+When the door had closed upon these two, the silence of my client
+drew my attention back to herself.
+
+"I am waiting," was her quiet observation, and without any
+further reference to what had just taken place under our eyes,
+she went on with the business previously occupying us.
+
+I was able to do my part without any too great display of my own
+disturbance. The clearness of my remarkable client's
+instructions, the definiteness with which her mind was made up as
+to the disposal of every dollar of her vast property, made it
+easy for me to master each detail and make careful note of every
+wish. But this did not prevent the ebb and flow within me of an
+undercurrent of thought full of question and uneasiness. What had
+been the real purport of the scene to which I had just been made
+a surprised witness? The few, but certainly unusual, facts which
+had been given me in regard to the extraordinary relations
+existing between these two closely connected women will explain
+the intensity of my interest. Those facts shall be yours.
+
+Arabella Merwin, when young, was gifted with a peculiar
+fascination which, as we have seen, had not altogether vanished
+with age. Consequently she had many lovers, among them two
+brothers, Frank and Andrew Postlethwaite. The latter was the
+older, the handsomer, and the most prosperous (his name is
+remembered yet in connection with South American schemes of large
+importance), but it was Frank she married.
+
+That real love, ardent if unreasonable, lay at the bottom of her
+choice, is evident enough to those who followed the career of the
+young couple. But it was a jealous love which brooked no rival,
+and as Frank Postlethwaite was of an impulsive and erratic
+nature, scenes soon occurred between them which, while revealing
+the extraordinary force of the young wife's character, led to no
+serious break till after her son was born, and this,
+notwithstanding the fact that Frank had long given up making a
+living, and that they were openly dependent on their wealthy
+brother, now fast approaching the millionaire status.
+
+This brother--the Peruvian King, as some called him--must have
+been an extraordinary man. Though cherishing his affection for
+the spirited Arabella to the point of remaining a bachelor for
+her sake, he betrayed none of the usual signs of disappointed
+love; but on the contrary made every effort to advance her
+happiness, not only by assuring to herself and husband an
+adequate income, but by doing all he could in other and less open
+ways to lessen any sense she might entertain of her mistake in
+preferring for her lifemate his self-centred and unstable
+brother. She should have adored him; but though she evinced
+gratitude enough, there is nothing to prove that she ever gave
+Frank Postlethwaite the least cause to cherish any other
+sentiment towards his brother than that of honest love and
+unqualified respect. Perhaps he never did cherish any other.
+Perhaps the change which everyone saw in the young couple
+immediately after the birth of their only child was due to
+another cause. Gossip is silent on this point. All that it
+insists upon is that from this time evidences of a growing
+estrangement between them became so obvious that even the
+indulgent Andrew could not blind himself to it; showing his sense
+of trouble, not by lessening their income, for that he doubled,
+but by spending more time in Peru and less in New York where the
+two were living.
+
+However,--and here we enter upon those details which I have
+ventured to characterize as uncommon, he was in this country and
+in the actual company of his brother when the accident occurred
+which terminated both their lives. It was the old story of a
+skidding motor, and Mrs. Postlethwaite, having been sent for in
+great haste to the small inn into which the two injured men had
+been carried, arrived only in time to witness their last moments.
+Frank died first and Andrew some few minutes later--an important
+fact, as was afterwards shown when the latter's will came to be
+read.
+
+This will was a peculiar one. By its provisions the bulk of the
+King's great property was left to his brother Frank, but with
+this especial stipulation that in case his brother failed to
+survive him, the full legacy as bequeathed to him should be given
+unconditionally to his widow. Frank's demise, as I have already
+stated, preceded his brother's by several minutes and
+consequently Arabella became the chief legatee; and that is how
+she obtained her millions. But--and here a startling feature
+comes in--when the will came to be administered, the secret
+underlying the break between Frank and his wife was brought to
+light by a revelation of the fact that he had practised a great
+deception upon her at the time of his marriage. Instead of being
+a bachelor as was currently believed, he was in reality a
+widower, and the father of a child. This fact, so long held
+secret, had become hers when her own child was born; and
+constituted as she was, she not only never forgave the father,
+but conceived such a hatred for the innocent object of their
+quarrel that she refused to admit its claims or even to
+acknowledge its existence.
+
+But later--after his death, in fact--she showed some sense of
+obligation towards one who under ordinary conditions would have
+shared her wealth. When the whole story became heard, and she
+discovered that this secret had been kept from his brother as
+well as from herself, and that consequently no provision had been
+made in any way for the child thus thrown directly upon her
+mercy, she did the generous thing and took the forsaken girl into
+her own home. But she never betrayed the least love for her, her
+whole heart being bound up in her boy, who was, as all agree, a
+prodigy of talent.
+
+But this boy, for all his promise and seeming strength of
+constitution, died when barely seven years old, and the desolate
+mother was left with nothing to fill her heart but the
+uncongenial daughter of her husband's first wife. The fact that
+this child, slighted as it had hitherto been, would, in the event
+of her uncle having passed away before her father, have been the
+undisputed heiress of a large portion of the wealth now at the
+disposal of her arrogant step-mother, led many to expect, now
+that the boy was no more, that Mrs. Postlethwaite would proceed
+to acknowledge the little Helena as her heir, and give her that
+place in the household to which her natural claims entitled her.
+
+But no such result followed. The passion of grief into which the
+mother was thrown by the shipwreck of all her hopes left her hard
+and implacable, and when, as very soon happened, she fell a
+victim to the disease which tied her to her chair and made the
+wealth which had come to her by such a peculiar ordering of
+circumstances little else than a mockery even in her own eyes, it
+was upon this child she expended the full fund of her secret
+bitterness.
+
+And the child? What of her? How did she bear her unhappy fate
+when she grew old enough to realize it? With a resignation which
+was the wonder of all who knew her. No murmurs escaped her lips,
+nor was the devotion she invariably displayed to the exacting
+invalid who ruled her as well as all the rest of her household
+with a rod of iron ever disturbed by the least sign of reproach.
+Though the riches, which in those early days poured into the home
+in a measure far beyond the needs of its mistress, were expended
+in making the house beautiful rather than in making the one young
+life within it happy, she never was heard to utter so much as a
+wish to leave the walls within which fate had immured her.
+Content, or seemingly content, with the only home she knew, she
+never asked for change or demanded friends or amusements.
+Visitors ceased coming; desolation followed neglect. The garden,
+once a glory, succumbed to a riot of weeds and undesirable brush,
+till a towering wall seemed to be drawn about the house cutting
+it off from the activities of the world as it cut it off from the
+approach of sunshine by day, and the comfort of a star-lit heaven
+by night. And yet the young girl continued to smile, though with
+a pitifulness of late, which some thought betokened secret terror
+and others the wasting of a body too sensitive for such
+unwholesome seclusion.
+
+These were the facts, known if not consciously specialized, which
+gave to the latter part of my interview with Mrs. Postlethwaite a
+poignancy of interest which had never attended any of my former
+experiences. The peculiar attitude of Miss Postlethwaite towards
+her indurate tormentor awakened in my agitated mind something
+much deeper than curiosity, but when I strove to speak her name
+with the intent of inquiring more particularly into her
+condition, such a look confronted me from the steady eye
+immovably fixed upon my own, that my courage--or was it my
+natural precaution--bade me subdue the impulse and risk no
+attempt which might betray the depth of my interest in one so
+completely outside the scope of the present moment's business.
+Perhaps Mrs. Postlethwaite appreciated my struggle; perhaps she
+was wholly blind to it. There was no reading the mind of this
+woman of sentimental name but inflexible nature, and realizing
+the fact more fully with every word she uttered I left her at
+last with no further betrayal of my feelings than might be
+evinced by the earnestness with which I promised to return for
+her signature at the earliest possible moment.
+
+This she had herself requested, saying as I rose:
+
+"I can still write my name if the paper is pushed carefully along
+under my hand. See to it that you come while the power remains to
+me."
+
+I had hoped that in my passage downstairs I might run upon
+someone who would give me news of Miss Postlethwaite, but the
+woman who approached to conduct me downstairs was not of an
+appearance to invite confidence, and I felt forced to leave the
+house with my doubts unsatisfied.
+
+Two memories, equally distinct, followed me. One was a picture of
+Mrs. Postlethwaite's fingers groping among her belongings on the
+little tray perched upon her lap, and another of the intent and
+strangely bent figure of the old man who had acted as my usher,
+listening to the ticking of one of the great clocks. So absorbed
+was he in this occupation that he not only failed to notice me
+when I went by, but he did not even lift his head at my cheery
+greeting. Such mysteries were too much for me, and led me to
+postpone my departure from town till I had sought out Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's doctor and propounded to him one or two leading
+questions. First, would Mrs. Postlethwaite's present condition be
+likely to hold good till Monday; and secondly, was the young lady
+living with her as ill as her step-mother said.
+
+He was a mild old man of the easy-going type, and the answers I
+got from him were far from satisfactory. Yet he showed some
+surprise when I mentioned the extent of Mrs. Postlethwaite's
+anxiety about her step-daughter, and paused, in the dubious
+shaking of his head, to give me a short stare in which I read as
+much determination as perplexity.
+
+"I will look into Miss Postlethwaite's case more particularly,"
+were his parting words. And with this one gleam of comfort I had
+to be content.
+
+Monday's interview was a brief one and contained nothing worth
+repeating. Mrs. Postlethwaite listened with stoical satisfaction
+to the reading of the will I had drawn up, and upon its
+completion rang her bell for the two witnesses awaiting her
+summons, in an adjoining room. They were not of her household,
+but to all appearance honest villagers with but one noticeable
+characteristic, an overweening idea of Mrs. Postlethwaite's
+importance. Perhaps the spell she had so liberally woven for
+others in other and happier days was felt by them at this hour.
+It would not be strange; I had almost fallen under it myself, so
+great was the fascination of her manner even in this wreck of her
+bodily powers, when triumph assured, she faced us all in a state
+of complete satisfaction.
+
+But before I was again quit of the place, all my doubts returned
+and in fuller force than ever. I had lingered in my going as much
+as decency would permit, hoping to hear a step on the stair or
+see a face in some doorway which would contradict Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's cold assurance that Miss Postlethwaite was no
+better. But no such step did I hear, and no face did I see save
+the old, old one of the ancient friend or relative, whose bent
+frame seemed continually to haunt the halls. As before, he stood
+listening to the monotonous ticking of one of the clocks,
+muttering to himself and quite oblivious of my presence.
+
+However, this time I decided not to pass him without a more
+persistent attempt to gain his notice. Pausing at his side, I
+asked him in the friendly tone I thought best calculated to
+attract his attention, how Miss Postlethwaite was to-day. He was
+so intent upon his task, whatever that was, that while he turned
+my way, it was with a glance as blank as that of a stone image.
+
+"Listen!" he admonished me. "It still says No! No! I don't think
+it will ever say anything else."
+
+I stared at him in some consternation, then at the clock itself
+which was the tall one I had found run down at my first visit.
+There was nothing unusual in its quiet tick, so far as I could
+hear, and with a compassionate glance at the old man who had
+turned breathlessly again to listen, proceeded on my way without
+another word.
+
+The old fellow was daft. A century old, and daft.
+
+I had worked my way out through the vines which still encumbered
+the porch, and was taking my first steps down the walk, when some
+impulse made me turn and glance up at one of the windows.
+
+Did I bless the impulse? I thought I had every reason for doing
+so, when through a network of interlacing branches I beheld the
+young girl with whom my mind was wholly occupied, standing with
+her head thrust forward, watching the descent of something small
+and white which she had just released from her hand.
+
+A note! A note written by her and meant for me! With a grateful
+look in her direction (which was probably lost upon her as she
+had already drawn back out of sight), I sprang for it only to
+meet with disappointment. For it was no billet-doux I received
+from amid the clustering brush where it had fallen; but a small
+square of white cloth showing a line of fantastic embroidery.
+Annoyed beyond measure, I was about to fling it down again, when
+the thought that it had come from her hand deterred me, and I
+thrust it into my vest pocket. When I took it out again--which
+was soon after I had taken my seat in the car--I discovered what
+a mistake I should have made if I had followed my first impulse.
+For, upon examining the stitches more carefully, I perceived that
+what I had considered a mere decorative pattern was in fact a
+string of letters, and that these letters made words, and that
+these words were:
+
+IDONOTWANTTODIEBUTISURELYWILLIF
+
+Or, in plain writing:
+
+"I do not want to die, but I surely will if--"
+
+Finish the sentence for me. That is the problem I offer you. It
+is not a case for the police but one well worth your attention,
+if you succeed in reaching the heart of this mystery and saving
+this young girl.
+
+Only, let no delay occur. The doom, if doom it is, is immanent.
+Remember that the will is signed.
+
+"She is too small; I did not ask you to send me a midget."
+
+Thus spoke Mrs. Postlethwaite to her doctor, as he introduced
+into her presence a little figure in nurse's cap and apron. "You
+said I needed care,--more care than I was receiving. I answered
+that my old nurse could give it, and you objected that she or
+someone else must look after Miss Postlethwaite. I did not see
+the necessity, but I never contradict a doctor. So I yielded to
+your wishes, but not without the proviso (you remember that I
+made a proviso) that whatever sort of young woman you chose to
+introduce into this room, she should not be fresh from the
+training schools, and that she should be strong, silent, and
+capable. And you bring me this mite of a woman--is she a woman?
+she looks more like a child, of pleasing countenance enough, but
+who can no more lift me--"
+
+"Pardon me!" Little Miss Strange had advanced. "I think, if you
+will allow me the privilege, madam, that I can shift you into a
+much more comfortable position." And with a deftness and ease
+certainly not to be expected from one of her slight physique,
+Violet raised the helpless invalid a trifle more upon her pillow.
+
+The act, its manner, and the smile accompanying it, could not
+fail to please, and undoubtedly did, though no word rewarded her
+from lips not much given to speech save when the occasion was
+imperative. But Mrs. Postlethwaite made no further objection to
+her presence, and, seeing this, the doctor's countenance relaxed
+and he left the room with a much lighter step than that with
+which he had entered it.
+
+And thus it was that Violet Strange--an adept in more ways than
+one--became installed at the bedside of this mysterious woman,
+whose days, if numbered, still held possibilities of action which
+those interested in young Helena Postlethwaite's fate would do
+well to recognize.
+
+Miss Strange had been at her post for two days, and had gathered
+up the following:
+
+That Mrs. Postlethwaite must be obeyed.
+
+That her step-daughter (who did not wish to die) would die if she
+knew it to be the wish of this domineering but apparently
+idolized woman.
+
+That the old man of the clocks, while senile in some regards, was
+very alert and quite youthful in others. If a century old--which
+she began greatly to doubt--he had the language and manner of one
+in his prime, when unaffected by the neighbourhood of the clocks,
+which seemed in some non-understandable way to exercise an occult
+influence over him. At table he was an entertaining host; but
+neither there nor elsewhere would he discuss the family, or
+dilate in any way upon the peculiarities of a household of which
+he manifestly regarded himself as the least important member. Yet
+no one knew them better, and when Violet became quite assured of
+this, as well as of the futility of looking for explanation of
+any kind from either of her two patients, she resolved upon an
+effort to surprise one from him.
+
+She went about it in this way. Noting his custom of making a
+complete round of the clocks each night after dinner, she took
+advantage of Mrs. Postlethwaite's inclination to sleep at this
+hour, to follow him from clock to clock in the hope of
+overhearing some portion of the monologue with which he bent his
+head to the swinging pendulum, or put his ear to the hidden
+works. Soft-footed and discreet, she tripped along at his back,
+and at each pause he made, paused herself and turned her ear his
+way. The extreme darkness of the halls, which were more sombre by
+night than by day, favoured this attempt, and she was able, after
+a failure or two, to catch the No! no! no! no! which fell from
+his lips in seeming repetition of what he heard the most of them
+say.
+
+The satisfaction in his tone proved that the denial to which he
+listened, chimed in with his hopes and gave ease to his mind. But
+he looked his oldest when, after pausing at another of the many
+time-pieces, he echoed in answer to its special refrain, Yes!
+yes! yes! yes! and fled the spot with shaking body and a
+distracted air.
+
+The same fear and the same shrinking were observable in him as he
+returned from listening to the least conspicuous one, standing in
+a short corridor, where Violet could not follow him. But when,
+after a hesitation which enabled her to slip behind the curtain
+hiding the drawing-room door, he approached and laid his ear
+against the great one standing, as if on guard, at the foot of
+the stairs, she saw by the renewed vigour he displayed that there
+was comfort for him in its message, even before she caught the
+whisper with which he left it and proceeded to mount the stairs:
+
+"It says No! It always says No! I will heed it as the voice of
+Heaven."
+
+But one conclusion could be the result of such an experiment to a
+mind like Violet's. This partly touched old man not only held the
+key to the secret of this house, but was in a mood to divulge it
+if once he could be induced to hear command instead of dissuasion
+in the tick of this one large clock. But how could he be induced?
+Violet returned to Mrs. Postlethwaite's bedside in a mood of
+extreme thoughtfulness.
+
+Another day passed, and she had not yet seen Miss Postlethwaite.
+She was hoping each hour to be sent on some errand to that young
+lady's room, but no such opportunity was granted her. Once she
+ventured to ask the doctor, whose visits were now very frequent,
+what he thought of the young lady's condition. But as this
+question was necessarily put in Mrs. Postlethwaite's presence,
+the answer was naturally guarded, and possibly not altogether
+frank.
+
+"Our young lady is weaker," he acknowledged. "Much weaker," he
+added with marked emphasis and his most professional air, "or she
+would be here instead of in her own room. It grieves her not to
+be able to wait upon her generous benefactress."
+
+The word fell heavily. Had it been used as a test? Violet gave
+him a look, though she had much rather have turned her
+discriminating eye upon the face staring up at them from the
+pillow. Had the alarm expressed by others communicated itself at
+last to the physician? Was the charm which had held him
+subservient to the mother, dissolving under the pitiable state of
+the child, and was he trying to aid the little detective-nurse
+in her effort to sound the mystery of her condition?
+
+His look expressed benevolence, but he took care not to meet the
+gaze of the woman he had just lauded, possibly because that gaze
+was fixed upon him in a way to tax his moral courage. The silence
+which ensued was broken by Mrs. Postlethwaite:
+
+"She will live--this poor Helena--how long?" she asked, with no
+break in her voice's wonted music.
+
+The doctor hesitated, then with a candour hardly to be expected
+from him, answered:
+
+"I do not understand Miss Postlethwaite's case. I should like,
+with your permission, to consult some New York physician."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+A single word, but as it left this woman's thin lips Violet
+recoiled, and, perhaps, the doctor did. Rage can speak in one
+word as well as in a dozen, and the rage which spoke in this one
+was of no common order, though it was quickly suppressed, as was
+all other show of feeling when she added, with a touch of her old
+charm:
+
+"Of course you will do what you think best, as you know I never
+interfere with a doctor's decisions. But" and here her natural
+ascendancy of tone and manner returned in all its potency, "it
+would kill me to know that a stranger was approaching Helena's
+bedside. It would kill her. She's too sensitive to survive such a
+shock."
+
+Violet recalled the words worked with so much care by this young
+girl on a minute piece of linen, I do not want to die, and
+watched the doctor's face for some sign of resolution. But
+embarrassment was all she saw there, and all she heard him say
+was the conventional reply:
+
+"I am doing all I can for her. We will wait another day and note
+the effect of my latest prescription."
+
+Another day!
+
+The deathly calm which overspread Mrs. Postlethwaite's features
+as this word left the physician's lips warned Violet not to let
+another day go by without some action. But she made no remark,
+and, indeed, betrayed but little interest in anything beyond her
+own patient's condition. That seemed to occupy her wholly. With
+consummate art she gave the appearance of being under Mrs.
+Postlethwaite's complete thrall, and watched with fascinated eyes
+every movement of the one unstricken finger which could do so
+much.
+
+This little detective of ours could be an excellent actor when
+she chose.
+
+III
+
+To make the old man speak! To force this conscience-stricken but
+rebellious soul to reveal what the clock forbade! How could it be
+done?
+
+This continued to be Violet's great problem. She pondered it so
+deeply during all the remainder of the day that a little pucker
+settled on her brow, which someone (I will not mention who) would
+have been pained to see. Mrs. Postlethwaite, if she noticed it at
+all, probably ascribed it to her anxieties as nurse, for never
+had Violet been more assiduous in her attentions. But Mrs.
+Postlethwaite was no longer the woman she had been, and possibly
+never noted it at all.
+
+At five o'clock Violet suddenly left the room. Slipping down into
+the lower hall, she went the round of the clocks herself,
+listening to every one. There was no perceptible difference in
+their tick. Satisfied of this and that it was simply the old
+man's imagination which had supplied them each with separate
+speech, she paused before the huge one at the foot of the stairs,
+--the one whose dictate he had promised himself to follow,--and
+with an eye upon its broad, staring dial, muttered wistfully:
+
+"Oh! for an idea! For an idea!"
+
+Did this cumbrous relic of old-time precision turn traitor at
+this ingenuous plea? The dial continued to stare, the works to
+sing, but Violet's face suddenly lost its perplexity. With a wary
+look about her and a listening ear turned towards the stair top,
+she stretched out her hand and pulled open the door guarding the
+pendulum, and peered in at the works, smiling slyly to herself as
+she pushed it back into place and retreated upstairs to the sick
+room.
+
+When the doctor came that night she had a quiet word with him
+outside Mrs. Postlethwaite's door. Was that why he was on hand
+when old Mr. Dunbar stole from his room to make his nightly
+circuit of the halls below? Something quite beyond the ordinary
+was in the good physician's mind, for the look he cast at the old
+man was quite unlike any he had ever bestowed upon him before,
+and when he spoke it was to say with marked urgency:
+
+"Our beautiful young lady will not live a week unless I get at
+the seat of her malady. Pray that I may be enabled to do so, Mr.
+Dunbar."
+
+A blow to the aged man's heart which called forth a feeble "Yes,
+yes," followed by a wild stare which imprinted itself upon the
+doctor's memory as the look of one hopelessly old, who hears for
+the first time a distinct call from the grave which has long been
+awaiting him!
+
+A solitary lamp stood in the lower hall. As the old man picked
+his slow way down, its small, hesitating flame flared up as in a
+sudden gust, then sank down flickering and faint as if it, too,
+had heard a call which summoned it to extinction.
+
+No other sign of life was visible anywhere. Sunk in twilight
+shadows, the corridors branched away on either side to no place
+in particular and serving, to all appearance (as many must have
+thought in days gone by), as a mere hiding-place for clocks.
+
+To listen to their united hum, the old man paused, looking at
+first a little distraught, but settling at last into his usual
+self as he started forward upon his course. Did some whisper,
+hitherto unheard, warn him that it was the last time he would
+tread that weary round? Who can tell? He was trembling very much
+when with his task nearly completed, he stepped out again into
+the main hall and crept rather than walked back to the one great
+clock to whose dictum he made it a practice to listen last.
+
+Chattering the accustomed words, "They say Yes! They are all
+saying Yes! now; but this one will say No!" he bent his stiff old
+back and laid his ear to the unresponsive wood. But the time for
+no had passed. It was Yes! yes! yes! yes! now, and as his
+straining ears took in the word, he appeared to shrink where he
+stood and after a moment of anguished silence, broke forth into a
+low wail, amid whose lamentations one could hear:
+
+"The time has come! Even the clock she loves best bids me speak.
+Oh! Arabella, Arabella!"
+
+In his despair he had not noticed that the pendulum hung
+motionless, or that the hands stood at rest on the dial. If he
+had, he might have waited long enough to have seen the careful
+opening of the great clock's tall door and the stepping forth of
+the little lady who had played so deftly upon his superstition.
+
+He was wandering the corridors like a helpless child, when a
+gentle hand fell on his arm and a soft voice whispered in his
+ear:
+
+"You have a story to tell. Will you tell it to me? It may save
+Miss Postlethwaite's life."
+
+Did he understand? Would he respond if he did; or would the shock
+of her appeal restore him to a sense of the danger attending
+disloyalty? For a moment she doubted the wisdom of this startling
+measure, then she saw that he had passed the point of surprise
+and that, stranger as she was, she had but to lead the way for
+him to follow, tell his story, and die.
+
+There was no light in the drawing-room when they entered. But old
+Mr. Dunbar did not seem to mind that. Indeed, he seemed to have
+lost all consciousness of present surroundings; he was even
+oblivious of her. This became quite evident when the lamp, in
+flaring up again in the hall, gave a momentary glimpse, of his
+crouching, half-kneeling figure. In the pleading gesture of his
+trembling, outreaching arms, Violet beheld an appeal, not to
+herself, but to some phantom of his imagination; and when he
+spoke, as he presently did, it was with the freedom of one to
+whom speech is life's last boon, and the ear of the listener
+quite forgotten in the passion of confession long suppressed.
+
+"She has never loved me," he began, "but I have always loved her.
+For me no other woman has ever existed, though I was sixty-five
+years of age when I first saw her, and had long given up the idea
+that there lived a woman who could sway me from my even life and
+fixed lines of duty. Sixty-five! and she a youthful bride! Was
+there ever such folly! Happily I realized it from the first, and
+piled ashes on my hidden flame. Perhaps that is why I adore her
+to this day and only give her over to reprobation because Fate is
+stronger than my age--stronger even than my love.
+
+"She is not a good woman, but I might have been a good man if I
+had never known the sin which drew a line of isolation about her,
+and within which I, and only I, have stood with her in silent
+companionship. What was this sin, and in what did it have its
+beginning? I think its beginning was in the passion she had for
+her husband. It was not the every-day passion of her sex in this
+land of equable affections, but one of foreign fierceness,
+jealousy, and insatiable demand. Yet he was a very ordinary man.
+I was once his tutor and I know. She came to know it too, when--
+but I am rushing on too fast, I have much to tell before I reach
+that point.
+
+"From the first, I was in their confidence. Not that either he or
+she put me there, but that I lived with them and was always
+around, and could not help seeing and hearing what went on
+between them. Why he continued to want me in the house and at his
+table, when I could no longer be of service to him, I have never
+known. Possibly habit explains all. He was accustomed to my
+presence and so was she; so accustomed they hardly noticed it, as
+happened one night, when after a little attempt at conversation,
+he threw down the book he had caught up and, addressing her by
+name, said without a glance my way, and quite as if he were alone
+with her:
+
+"'Arabella, there is something I ought to tell you. I have tried
+to find the courage to do so many times before now but have
+always failed. Tonight I must.' And then he made his great
+disclosure,--how, unknown to, his friends and the world, he was a
+widower when he married her, and the father of a living child.
+
+"With some women this might have passed with a measure of regret,
+and some possible contempt for his silence, but not so with her.
+She rose to her feet--I can see her yet--and for a moment stood
+facing him in the still, overpowering manner of one who feels the
+icy pang of hate enter where love has been. Never was moment more
+charged. I could not breathe while it lasted; and when at last
+she spoke, it was with an impetuosity of concentrated passion,
+hardly less dreadful than her silence had been.
+
+"'You a father! A father already!' she cried, all her sweetness
+swallowed up in ungovernable wrath. 'You whom I expected to make
+so happy with a child? I curse you and your brat. I--'
+
+"He strove to placate her, to explain. But rage has no ears, and
+before I realized my own position, the scene became openly
+tempestuous. That her child should be second to another woman's
+seemed to awaken demon instincts within her. When he ventured to
+hint that his little girl needed a mother's care, her irony bit
+like corroding acid. He became speechless before it and had not a
+protest to raise when she declared that the secret he had kept so
+long and so successfully he must continue to keep to his dying
+day. That the child he had failed to own in his first wife's
+lifetime should remain disowned in hers, and if possible be
+forgotten. She should never give the girl a thought nor
+acknowledge her in any way.
+
+"She was Fury embodied; but the fury was of that grand order
+which allures rather than repels. As I felt myself succumbing to
+its fascination and beheld how he was weakening under it even
+more perceptibly than myself, I started from my chair, and sought
+to glide away before I should hear him utter a fatal
+acquiescence.
+
+"But the movement I made unfortunately drew their attention to
+me, and after an instant of silent contemplation of my distracted
+countenance, Frank said, as though he were the elder by the forty
+years which separated us:
+
+"'You have listened to Mrs. Postlethwaite's wishes. You will
+respect them of course.'"
+
+That was all. He knew and she knew that I was to be trusted; but
+neither of them has ever known why.
+
+A month later her child came, and was welcomed as though it were
+the first to bear his name. It was a boy, and their satisfaction
+was so great that I looked to see their old affection revive. But
+it had been cleft at the root, and nothing could restore it to
+life. They loved the child; I have never seen evidence of greater
+parental passion than they both displayed, but there their
+feelings stopped. Towards each other they were cold. They did not
+even unite in worship of their treasure. They gloated over him
+and planned for him, but always apart. He was a child in a
+thousand, and as he developed, the mother especially, nursed all
+her energies for the purpose of ensuring for him a future
+commensurate with his talents. Never a very conscientious woman,
+and alive to the advantages of wealth as demonstrated by the
+power wielded by her rich brother-in-law, she associated all the
+boy's prospects with money, great money, such money as Andrew had
+accumulated, and now had at his disposal for his natural heirs.
+
+"Hence came her great temptation,--a temptation to which she
+yielded, to the lasting trouble of us all. Of this I must now
+make confession though it kills me to do so, and will soon kill
+her. The deeds of the past do not remain buried, however deep we
+dig their graves, but rise in an awful resurrection when we are
+old--old--"
+
+Silence. Then a tremulous renewal of his painful speech.
+
+Violet held her breath to listen. Possibly the doctor, hidden in
+the darkest corner of the room, did so also.
+
+"I never knew how she became acquainted with the terms of her
+brother-in-law's will. He certainly never confided them to her,
+and as certainly the lawyer who drew up the document never did.
+But that she was well aware of its tenor is as positive a fact as
+that I am the most wretched man alive tonight. Otherwise, why the
+darksome deed into which she was betrayed when both the brothers
+lay dying among strangers, of a dreadful accident?"
+
+"I was witness to that deed. I had accompanied her on her hurried
+ride and was at her side when she entered the inn where the two
+Postlethwaites lay. I was always at her side in great joy or in
+great trouble, though she professed no affection for me and gave
+me but scanty thanks."
+
+"During our ride she had been silent and I had not disturbed that
+silence. I had much to think of. Should we find him living, or
+should we find him dead? If dead, would it sever the relations
+between us two? Would I ever ride with her again?"
+
+"When I was not dwelling on this theme, I was thinking of the
+parting look she gave her boy; a look which had some strange
+promise in it. What had that look meant and why did my flesh
+creep and my mind hover between dread and a fearsome curiosity
+when I recalled it? Alas! There was reason for all these
+sensations as I was soon to learn.
+
+"We found the inn seething with terror and the facts worse than
+had been represented in the telegram. Her husband was dying. She
+had come just in time to witness the end. This they told her
+before she had taken off her veil. If they had waited--if I had
+been given a full glimpse of her face--But it was hidden, and I
+could only judge of the nature of her emotions by the stern way
+in which she held herself.
+
+"'Take me to him,' was the quiet command, with which she met this
+disclosure. Then, before any of them could move:
+
+"'And his brother, Mr. Andrew Postlethwaite? Is he fatally
+injured too?'
+
+"The reply was unequivocal. The doctors were uncertain which of
+the two would pass away first.
+
+"You must remember that at this time I was ignorant of the rich
+man's will, and consequently of how the fate of a poor child of
+whom I had heard only one mention, hung in the balance at that
+awful moment. But in the breathlessness which seized Mrs.
+Postlethwaite at this sentence of double death, I realized from
+my knowledge of her that something more than grief was at prey
+upon her impenetrable heart, and shuddered to the core of my
+being when she repeated in that voice which was so terrible
+because so expressionless:
+
+"'Take me to them.'"
+
+They were lying in one room, her husband nearest the door, the
+other in a small alcove some ten feet away. Both were
+unconscious; both were surrounded by groups of frightened
+attendants who fell back as she approached. A doctor stood at the
+bed-head of her husband, but as her eye met his he stepped aside
+with a shake of the head and left the place empty for her.
+
+"The action was significant. I saw that she understood what it
+meant, and with constricted heart watched her as she bent over
+the dying man and gazed into his wide-open eyes, already
+sightless and staring. Calculation was in her look and
+calculation only; and calculation, or something equally
+unintelligible, sent her next glance in the direction of his
+brother. What was in her mind? I could understand her
+indifference to Frank even at the crisis of his fate, but not the
+interest she showed in Andrew. It was an absorbing one, altering
+her whole expression. I no longer knew her for my dear young
+madam, and the jealousy I had never felt towards Frank rose to
+frantic resentment in my breast as I beheld what very likely
+might be a tardy recognition of the other's well-known passion,
+forced into disclosure by the exigencies of the moment.
+
+"Alarmed by the strength of my feelings, and fearing an equal
+disclosure on my own part, I sought for a refuge from all eyes
+and found it in a little balcony opening out at my right. On to
+this balcony I stepped and found myself face to face with a star-
+lit heaven. Had I only been content with my isolation and the
+splendour of the spectacle spread out before me! But no, I must
+look back upon that bed and the solitary woman standing beside
+it! I must watch the settling of her body into rigidity as a
+voice rose from beside the other Postlethwaite saying, 'It is a
+matter of minutes now,' and then--and then--the slow creeping of
+her hand to her husband's mouth, the outspreading of her palm
+across the livid lips--its steady clinging there, smothering the
+feeble gasps of one already moribund, till the quivering form
+grew still, and Frank Postlethwaite lay dead before my eyes!
+
+"I saw, and made no outcry, but she did, bringing the doctor back
+to her side with the startled exclamation:
+
+"'Dead? I thought he had an hour's life left in him, and he has
+passed before his brother.'
+
+"I thought it hate--the murderous impulse of a woman who sees her
+enemy at her mercy and can no longer restrain the passion of her
+long-cherished antagonism; and while something within me rebelled
+at the act, I could not betray her, though silence made a
+murderer of me too. I could not. Her spell was upon me as in
+another instant it was upon everyone else in the room. No
+suspicion of one so self-repressed in her sadness disturbed the
+universal sympathy; and encouraged by this blindness of the
+crowd, I vowed within myself never to reveal her secret. The man
+was dead, or as good as dead, when she touched him; and now that
+her hate was expended she would grow gentle and good.
+
+"But I knew the worthlessness of this hope as well as my
+misconception of her motive, when Frank's child by another wife
+returned to my memory, and Bella's sin stood exposed."
+
+"But only to myself. I alone knew that the fortune now wholly
+hers, and in consequence her boy's, had been won by a crime. That
+if her hand had fallen in comfort on her husband's forehead
+instead of in pressure on his mouth, he would have outlived his
+brother long enough to have become owner of his millions; in
+which case a rightful portion would have been insured to his
+daughter, now left a penniless waif. The thought made my hair
+rise, as the proceedings over, I faced her and made my first and
+last effort to rid my conscience of its new and intolerable
+burden.
+
+"But the woman I had known and loved was no longer before me. The
+crown had touched her brows, and her charm which had been mainly
+sexual up to this hour had merged into an intellectual force,
+with which few men's mentality could cope. Mine yielded at once
+to it. From the first instant, I knew that a slavery of spirit,
+as well as of heart, was henceforth to be mine.
+
+"She did not wait for me to speak; she had assumed the dictator's
+attitude at once.
+
+"'I know of what you are thinking,"' said she, 'and it is a
+subject you may dismiss at once from your mind. Mr.
+Postlethwaite's child by his first wife is coming to live with
+us. I have expressed my wishes in this regard to my lawyer, and
+there is nothing left to be said. You, with your close mouth and
+dependable nature, are to remain here as before, and occupy the
+same position towards my boy that you did towards his father. We
+shall move soon into a larger house, and the nature of our duties
+will be changed and their scope greatly increased; but I know
+that you can be trusted to enlarge with them and meet every
+requirement I shall see fit to make. Do not try to express your
+thanks. I see them in your face.'
+
+"Did she, or just the last feeble struggle my conscience was
+making to break the bonds in which she held me, and win back my
+own respect? I shall never know, for she left me on completion of
+this speech, not to resume the subject, then or ever.
+
+"But though I succumbed outwardly to her demands, I had not
+passed the point where inner conflict ends and peace begins. Her
+recognition of Helena and her reception into the family calmed me
+for a while, and gave me hope that all would yet be well. But I
+had never sounded the full bitterness of madam's morbid heart,
+well as I thought I knew it. The hatred she had felt from the
+first for her husband's child ripened into frenzied dislike when
+she found her a living image of the mother whose picture she had
+come across among Frank's personal effects. To win a tear from
+those meek eyes instead of a smile to the sensitive lips was her
+daily play. She seemed to exult in the joy of impressing upon the
+girl by how little she had missed a great fortune, and I have
+often thought, much as I tried to keep my mind free from all
+extravagant and unnecessary fancies, that half of the money she
+spent in beautifying this house and maintaining art industries
+and even great charitable institutions was spent with the base
+purpose of demonstrating to this child the power of immense
+wealth, and in what ways she might expect to see her little
+brother expend the millions in which she had been denied all
+share.
+
+"I was so sure of this that one night while I was winding up the
+clocks with which Mrs. Postlethwaite in her fondness for old
+timepieces has filled the house, I stopped to look at the little
+figure toiling so wearily upstairs, to bed, without a mother's
+kiss. There was an appeal in the small wistful face which smote
+my hard old heart, and possibly a tear welled up in my own eye
+when I turned back to my duty."
+
+"Was that why I felt the hand of Providence upon me, when in my
+halt before the one clock to which any superstitious interest was
+attached--the great one at the foot of the stairs--I saw that it
+had stopped and at the one minute of all minutes in our wretched
+lives: Four minutes past two? The hour, the minute in which Frank
+Postlethwaite had gasped his last under the pressure of his
+wife's hand! I knew it--the exact minute I mean--because
+Providence meant that I should know it. There had been a clock on
+the mantelpiece of the hotel room where he and his brother had
+died and I had seen her glance steal towards it at the instant
+she withdrew her palm from her husband's lips. The stare of that
+dial and the position of its hands had lived still in my mind as
+I believed it did in hers.
+
+"Four minutes past two! How came our old timepiece here to stop
+at that exact moment on a day when Duty was making its last
+demand upon me to remember Frank's unhappy child? There was no
+one to answer; but as I looked and looked, I felt the impulse of
+the moment strengthen into purpose to leave those hands
+undisturbed in their silent accusation. She might see, and, moved
+by the coincidence, tremble at her treatment of Helena.
+
+"But if this happened--if she saw and trembled--she gave no sign.
+The works were started up by some other hand, and the incident
+passed. But it left me with an idea. That clock soon had a way of
+stopping and always at that one instant of time. She was forced
+at length to notice it, and I remember, an occasion when she
+stood stock-still with her eyes on those hands, and failed to
+find the banister with her hand, though she groped for it in her
+frantic need for support.
+
+"But no command came from her to remove the worn-out piece, and
+soon its tricks, and every lesser thing, were forgotten in the
+crushing calamity which befell us in the sickness and death of
+little Richard.
+
+"Oh, those days and nights! And oh, the face of the mother when
+the doctors told her that the case was hopeless! I asked myself
+then, and I have asked myself a hundred times since, which of all
+the emotions I saw pictured there bit the deepest, and made the
+most lasting impression on her guilty heart? Was it remorse? If
+so, she showed no change in her attitude towards Helena, unless
+it was by an added bitterness. The sweet looks and gentle ways of
+Frank's young daughter could not win against a hate sharpened by
+disappointment. Useless for me to hope for it. Release from the
+remorse of years was not to come in that way. As I realized this,
+I grew desperate and resorted again to the old trick of stopping
+the clock at the fatal hour. This time her guilty heart
+responded. She acknowledged the stab and let all her miseries
+appear. But how? In a way to wring my heart almost to madness,
+and not benefit the child at all. She had her first stroke that
+night. I had made her a helpless invalid.
+
+"That was eight years ago, and since then what? Stagnation. She
+lived with her memories, and I with mine. Helena only had a right
+to hope, and hope perhaps she did, till--Is that the great clock
+talking? Listen! They all talk, but I heed only the one. What
+does it say? Tell! tell! tell! Does it think I will be silent now
+when I come to my own guilt? That I will seek to hide my weakness
+when I could not hide her sin?"
+
+"Explain!" It was Violet speaking, and her tone was stern in its
+command. "Of what guilt do you speak? Not of guilt towards
+Helena; you pitied her too much--"
+
+"But I pitied my dear madam more. It was that which affected me
+and drew me into crime against my will. Besides, I did not know--
+not at first--what was in the little bowl of curds and cream I
+carried to the girl each day. She had eaten them in her step-
+mother's room, and under her step-mother's eye as long as she had
+strength to pass from room to room, and how was I to guess that
+it was not wholesome? Because she failed in health from day to
+day? Was not my dear madam failing in health also; and was there
+poison in her cup? Innocent at that time, why am I not innocent
+now? Because--Oh, I will tell it all; as though at the bar of
+God. I will tell all the secrets of that day.
+
+"She was sitting with her hand trembling on the tray from which I
+had just lifted the bowl she had bid me carry to Helena. I had
+seen her so a hundred times before, but not with just that look
+in her eyes, or just that air of desolation in her stony figure.
+Something made me speak; something made me ask if she were not
+quite so well as usual, and something made her reply with the
+dreadful truth that the doctor had given her just two months more
+to live. My fright and mad anguish stupefied me; for I was not
+prepared for this, no, not at all;--and unconsciously I stared
+down at the bowl I held, unable to breathe or move or even to
+meet her look."
+
+As usual she misinterpreted my emotion.
+
+"'Why do you stand like that?' I heard her say in a tone of great
+irritation. 'And why do you stare into that bowl? Do you think I
+mean to leave that child to walk these halls after I am carried
+out of them forever? Do you measure my hate by such a petty yard-
+stick as that? I tell you that I would rot above ground rather
+than enter it before she did?'
+
+"I had believed I knew this woman; but what soul ever knows
+another's? What soul ever knows itself?
+
+"'Bella!' I cried; the first time I had ever presumed to address
+her so intimately. 'Would you poison the girl?' And from sheer
+weakness my fingers lost their clutch, and the bowl fell to the
+floor, breaking into a dozen pieces.
+
+"For a minute she stared down at these from over her tray, and
+then she remarked very low and very quietly:
+
+"'Another bowl, Humphrey, and fresh curds from the kitchen. I
+will do the seasoning. The doses are too small to be skipped. You
+won't?'--I had shaken my head--'But you will! It will not be the
+first time you have gone down the hall with this mixture.'
+
+"'But that was before I knew--' I began.
+
+"'And now that you do, you will go just the same.' Then as I
+stood hesitating, a thousand memories overwhelming me in an
+instant, she added in a voice to tear the heart, 'Do not make me
+hate the only being left in this world who understands and loves
+me.'
+
+"She was a helpless invalid, and I a broken man, but when that
+word 'love' fell from her lips, I felt the blood start burning in
+my veins, and all the crust of habit and years of self-control
+loosen about my heart, and make me young again. What if her
+thoughts were dark and her wishes murderous! She was born to rule
+and sway men to her will even to their own undoing."
+
+"'I wish I might kiss your hand,' was what I murmured, gazing  at
+her white fingers groping over her tray.
+
+"'You may,' she answered, and hell became heaven to me for a
+brief instant. Then I lifted myself and went obediently about my
+task.
+
+"But puppet though I was, I was not utterly without sympathy.
+When I entered Helena's room and saw how her startled eyes fell
+shrinkingly on the bowl I set down before her, my conscience
+leaped to life and I could not help saying:
+
+"'Don't you like the curds, Helena? Your brother used to love them
+very much.'
+
+"'His were--'
+
+"'What, Helena?'
+
+"'What these are not,' she murmured.
+
+"I stared at her, terror-stricken. So she knew, and yet did not
+seize the bowl and empty it out of the window! Instead, her hand
+moved slowly towards it and drew it into place before her.
+
+"'Yet I must eat,' she said, lifting her eyes to mine in a sort
+of patient despair, which yet was without accusation.
+
+"But my hand had instinctively gone to hers and grasped it.
+
+"'Why must you eat it?' I asked. 'If--if you do not find it
+wholesome, why do you touch it?'
+
+"'Because my step-mother expects me to,' she cried, 'and I have
+no other will than hers. When I was a little, little child, my
+father made me promise that if I ever came to live with her I
+would obey her simplest wish. And I always have. I will not
+disappoint the trust he put in me.'
+
+"'Even if you die of it?'
+
+"I do not know whether I whispered these words or only thought
+them. She answered as though I had spoken.
+
+"'I am not afraid to die. I am more afraid to live. She may ask
+me some day to do something I feel to be wrong.'
+
+"When I fled down the hall that night, I heard one of the small
+clocks speak to me. Tell! it cried, tell! tell! tell! tell! I
+rushed away from it with beaded forehead and rising hair.
+
+"Then another's note piped up. No it droned. No! no! no! no! I
+stopped and took heart. Disgrace the woman I loved, on the brink
+of the grave? I--, who asked no other boon from heaven than to
+see her happy, gracious, and good? Impossible. I would obey the
+great clock's voice; the others were mere chatterboxes.
+
+"But it has at last changed its tune, for some reason, quite
+changed its tune. Now, it is Yes! Yes! instead of No! and in
+obeying it I save Helena. But what of Bella? and O God, what of
+myself?"
+
+A sigh, a groan, then a long and heavy silence, into which there
+finally broke the pealing of the various clocks striking the
+hour. When all were still again and Violet had drawn aside the
+portiere, it was to see the old man on his knees, and between her
+and the thin streak of light entering from the hall, the figure
+of the doctor hastening to Helena's bedside.
+
+When with inducements needless to name, they finally persuaded
+the young girl to leave her unholy habitation, it was in the arms
+which had upheld her once before, and to a life which promised to
+compensate her for her twenty years of loneliness and unsatisfied
+longing.
+
+But a black shadow yet remained which she must cross before
+reaching the sunshine!
+
+It lay at her step-mother's door.
+
+In the plans made for Helena's release, Mrs. Postlethwaite's
+consent had not been obtained nor was she supposed to be
+acquainted with the doctor's intentions towards the child whose
+death she was hourly awaiting.
+
+It was therefore with an astonishment, bordering on awe, that on
+their way downstairs, they saw the door of her room open and
+herself standing alone and upright on the threshold--she who had
+not been seen to take a step in years. In the wonder of this
+miracle of suddenly restored power, the little procession
+stopped,--the doctor with his hand upon the rail, the lover with
+his burden clasped yet more protectingly to his breast. That a
+little speech awaited them could be seen from the force and fury
+of the gaze which the indomitable woman bent upon the lax and
+half-unconscious figure she beheld thus sheltered and conveyed.
+Having but one arrow left in her exhausted quiver, she launched
+it straight at the innocent breast which had never harboured
+against her a defiant thought.
+
+"Ingrate!" was the word she hurled in a voice from which all its
+seductive music had gone forever. "Where are you going? Are they
+carrying you alive to your grave?"
+
+A moan from Helena's pale lips, then silence. She had fainted at
+that barbed attack. But there was one there who dared to answer
+for her and he spoke relentlessly. It was the man who loved her.
+
+"No, madam. We are carrying her to safety. You must know what I
+mean by that. Let her go quietly and you may die in peace.
+Otherwise--"
+
+She interrupted him with a loud call, startling into life the
+echoes of that haunted hall:
+
+"Humphrey! Come to me, Humphrey!"
+
+But no Humphrey appeared.
+
+Another call, louder and more peremptory than before:
+
+"Humphrey! I say, Humphrey!"
+
+But the answer was the same--silence, and only silence. As the
+horror of this grew, the doctor spoke:
+
+"Mr. Humphrey Dunbar's ears are closed to all earthly summons. He
+died last night at the very hour he said he would--four minutes
+after two."
+
+"Four minutes after two!" It came from her lips in a whisper, but
+with a revelation of her broken heart and life. "Four minutes
+after two!" And defiant to the last, her head rose, and for an
+instant, for a mere breath of time, they saw her as she had
+looked in her prime, regal in form, attitude, and expression;
+then the will which had sustained her through so much, faltered
+and succumbed, and with a final reiteration of the words "Four
+minutes after two!" she broke into a rattling laugh, and fell
+back into the arms of her old nurse.
+
+And below, one clock struck the hour and then another. But not
+the big one at the foot of the stairs. That still stood silent,
+with its hands pointing to the hour and minute of Frank
+Postlethwaite's hastened death.
+
+END OF PROBLEM VI
+
+
+PROBLEM VII
+
+THE DOCTOR, HIS WIFE, AND THE CLOCK
+
+Violet had gone to her room. She had a task before her. That
+afternoon, a packet had been left at the door, which, from a
+certain letter scribbled in one corner, she knew to be from her
+employer. The contents of that packet must be read, and she had
+made herself comfortable with the intention of setting to work at
+once. But ten o'clock struck and then eleven before she could
+bring herself to give any attention to the manuscript awaiting
+her perusal. In her present mood, a quiet sitting by the fire,
+with her eyes upon the changeful flame, was preferable to the
+study of any affair her employer might send her. Yet, because she
+was conscious of the duty she thus openly neglected, she sat
+crouched over her desk with her hand on the mysterious packet,
+the string of which, however, she made no effort to loosen.
+
+What was she thinking of?
+
+We are not alone in our curiosity on this subject. Her brother
+Arthur, coming unperceived into the room, gives tokens of a
+similar interest. Never before had he seen her oblivious to an
+approaching step; and after a momentary contemplation of her
+absorbed figure, so girlishly sweet and yet so deeply intent, he
+advances to her side, and peering earnestly into her face,
+observes with a seriousness quite unusual to him:
+
+"Puss, you are looking worried,--not like yourself at all. I've
+noticed it for some time. What's up. Getting tired of the
+business?"
+
+"No--not altogether--that is, it's not that, if it's anything.
+I'm not sure that it's anything. I--"
+
+She had turned back to her desk and was pushing about the various
+articles with which it was plentifully bespread; but this did not
+hide the flush which had crept into her cheeks and even dyed the
+snowy whiteness of her neck. Arthur's astonishment at this
+evidence of emotion was very great; but he said nothing, only
+watched her still more closely, as with a light laugh she
+regained her self-possession, and with the practical air of a
+philosopher uttered this trite remark:
+
+"Everyone has his sober moments. I was only thinking--"
+
+"Of some new case?"
+
+"Not exactly." The words came softly but with a touch of mingled
+humour and gravity which made Arthur stare again.
+
+"See here, Puss!" he cried. His tone had changed. "I've just come
+up from the den. Father and I have had a row--a beastly row."
+
+"A row? You and father? Oh, Arthur, I don't like that. Don't
+quarrel with father. Don't, don't. Some day he and I may have a
+serious difference about what I am doing. Don't let him feel that
+he has lost us all."
+
+"That's all right, Puss; but I've got to think of you a bit. I
+can't see you spoil all your good times with these police horrors
+and not do something to help. To-morrow I begin life as a
+salesman in Clarke & Stebbin's. The salary is not great, but
+every little helps and I don't dislike the business. But father
+does. He had rather see me loafing about town setting the
+fashions for fellows as idle as myself than soil my hands with
+handling merchandise. That's why we quarreled. But don't worry.
+Your name didn't come up, or--or--you know whose. He hasn't an
+idea of why I want to work--There, Violet there!"
+
+Two soft arms were around his neck and Violet was letting her
+heart out in a succession of sisterly kisses.
+
+"O, Arthur, you good, good boy! Together we'll soon make up the
+amount, and then--"
+
+"Then what?"
+
+A sweet soft look robbed her face of its piquancy, but gave it an
+aspect of indescribable beauty quite new to Arthur's eyes.
+
+Tapping his lips with a thoughtful forefinger, he asked:
+
+"Who was that sombre-looking chap I saw bowing to you as we came
+out of church last Sunday?"
+
+She awoke from her dreamy state with an astonishing quickness.
+
+"He? Surely you remember him. Have you forgotten that evening in
+Massachusetts--the grotto--and--"
+
+"Oh, it's Upjohn, is it? Yes, I remember him. He's fond of
+church, isn't he? That is, when he's in New York."
+
+Her lips took a roguish curve then a very serious one; but she
+made no answer.
+
+"I have noticed that he's always in his seat and always looking
+your way."
+
+"That's very odd of him," she declared, her dimples coming and
+going in a most bewildering fashion. "I can't imagine why he
+should do that."
+
+"Nor I,--" retorted Arthur with a smile. "But he's human, I
+suppose. Only do be careful, Violet. A man so melancholy will
+need a deal of cheering."
+
+He was gone before he had fully finished this daring remark, and
+Violet, left again with her thoughts, lost her glowing colour but
+not her preoccupation. The hand which lay upon the packet already
+alluded to did not move for many minutes, and when she roused at
+last to the demands of her employer, it was with a start and a
+guilty look at the small gold clock ticking out its inexorable
+reminder.
+
+"He will want an answer the first thing in the morning," she
+complained to herself. And opening the packet, she took out first
+a letter, and then a mass of typewritten manuscript.
+
+She began with the letter which was as characteristic of the
+writer as all the others she had had from his hand; as witness:
+
+You probably remember the Hasbrouck murder,--or, perhaps, you
+don't; it being one of a time previous to your interest in such
+matters. But whether you remember it or not, I beg you to read
+the accompanying summary with due care and attention to business.
+When you have well mastered it with all its details, please
+communicate with me in any manner most convenient to yourself,
+for I shall have a word to say to you then, which you may be glad
+to hear, if as you have lately intimated you need to earn but one
+or two more substantial rewards in order to cry halt to the
+pursuit for which you have proved yourself so well qualified.
+
+The story, in deference to yourself as a young and much
+preoccupied woman, has been written in a way to interest. Though
+the work of an everyday police detective, you will find in it no
+lack of mystery or romance; and if at the end you perceive that
+it runs, as such cases frequently do, up against a perfectly
+blank wall, you must remember that openings can be made in walls,
+and that the loosening of one weak stone from its appointed
+place, sometimes leads to the downfall of all.
+
+So much for the letter.
+
+Laying it aside, with a shrug of her expressive shoulders,
+Violet took up the manuscript.
+
+Let us take it up too. It runs thus:
+
+On the 17th of July, 19--, a tragedy of no little interest
+occurred in one of the residences of the Colonnade in Lafayette
+Place.
+
+Mr. Hasbrouck, a well known and highly respected citizen, was
+attacked in his room by an unknown assailant, and shot dead
+before assistance could reach him. His murderer escaped, and the
+problem offered to the police was how to identify this person
+who, by some happy chance or by the exercise of the most
+remarkable forethought, had left no traces behind him, or any
+clue by which he could be followed.
+
+The details of the investigation which ended so unsatisfactorily
+are here given by the man sent from headquarters at the first
+alarm.
+
+When, some time after midnight on the date above mentioned, I
+reached Lafayette Place, I found the block lighted from end to
+end. Groups of excited men and women peered from the open
+doorways, and mingled their shadows with those of the huge
+pillars which adorn the front of this picturesque block of
+dwellings.
+
+The house in which the crime had been committed was near the
+centre of the row, and, long before I reached it, I had learned
+from more than one source that the alarm was first given to the
+street by a woman's shriek, and secondly by the shouts of an old
+man-servant who had appeared, in a half-dressed condition, at the
+window of Mr. Hasbrouck's room, crying "Murder! murder!"
+
+But when I had crossed the threshold, I was astonished at the
+paucity of facts to be gleaned from the inmates themselves. The
+old servant, who was the first to talk, had only this account of
+the crime to give:
+
+The family, which consisted of Mr. Hasbrouck, his wife, and three
+servants, had retired for the night at the usual hour and under
+the usual auspices. At eleven o'clock the lights were all
+extinguished, and the whole household asleep, with the possible
+exception of Mr. Hasbrouck himself, who, being a man of large
+business responsibilities, was frequently troubled with insomnia.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Hasbrouck woke with a start. Had she dreamed the
+words that were ringing in her ears, or had they been actually
+uttered in her hearing? They were short, sharp words, full of
+terror and menace, and she had nearly satisfied herself that she
+had imagined them, when there came, from somewhere near the door,
+a sound she neither understood nor could interpret, but which
+filled her with inexplicable terror, and made her afraid to
+breathe, or even to stretch forth her hand towards her husband,
+whom she supposed to be sleeping at her side. At length another
+strange sound, which she was sure was not due to her imagination,
+drove her to make an attempt to rouse him, when she was horrified
+to find that she was alone in bed, and her husband nowhere within
+reach.
+
+Filled now with something more than nervous apprehension, she
+flung herself to the floor, and tried to penetrate with frenzied
+glances, the surrounding darkness. But the blinds and shutters
+both having been carefully closed by Mr. Hasbrouck before
+retiring, she found this impossible, and she was about to sink in
+terror to the floor, when she heard a low gasp on the other side
+of the room followed by a suppressed cry.
+
+"God! what have I done!"
+
+The voice was a strange one, but before the fear aroused by this
+fact could culminate in a shriek of dismay, she caught the sound
+of retreating footsteps, and, eagerly listening, she heard them
+descend the stairs and depart by the front door.
+
+Had she known what had occurred--had there been no doubt in her
+mind as to what lay in the darkness on the other side of the room
+--it is likely that, at the noise caused by the closing front
+door, she would have made at once for the balcony that opened out
+from the window before which she was standing, and taken one look
+at the flying figure below. But her uncertainty as to what lay
+hidden from her by the darkness chained her feet to the floor,
+and there is no knowing when she would have moved, if a carriage
+had not at that moment passed down Astor Place, bringing with it
+a sense of companionship which broke the spell holding her, and
+gave her strength to light the gas which was in ready reach of
+her hand.
+
+As the sudden blaze illuminated the room, revealing in a burst
+the old familiar walls and well-known pieces of furniture, she
+felt for a moment as if released from some heavy nightmare and
+restored to the common experiences of life. But in another
+instant her former dread returned, and she found herself quaking
+at the prospect of passing around the foot of the bed into that
+part of the room which was as yet hidden from her eyes.
+
+But the desperation which comes with great crises finally drove
+her from her retreat; and, creeping slowly forward, she cast one
+glance at the floor before her, when she found her worst fears
+realized by the sight of the dead body of her husband lying prone
+before the open doorway, with a bullet-hole in his forehead.
+
+Her first impulse was to shriek, but, by a powerful exercise of
+will, she checked herself, and ringing frantically for the
+servants who slept on the top floor of the house, flew to the
+nearest window and endeavoured to open it. But the shutters had
+been bolted so securely by Mr. Hasbrouck, in his endeavour to
+shut out all light and sound, that by the time she had succeeded
+in unfastening them, all trace of the flying murderer had
+vanished from the street.
+
+Sick with grief and terror, she stepped back into the room just
+as the three frightened servants descended the stairs. As they
+appeared in the open doorway, she pointed at her husband's
+inanimate form, and then, as if suddenly realizing in its full
+force the calamity which had befallen her, she threw up her arms,
+and sank forward to the floor in a dead faint.
+
+The two women rushed to her assistance, but the old butler,
+bounding over the bed, sprang to the window, and shrieked his
+alarm to the street.
+
+In the interim that followed, Mrs. Hasbrouck was revived, and the
+master's body laid decently on the bed; but no pursuit was made,
+nor any inquiries started likely to assist me in establishing the
+identity of the assailant.
+
+Indeed, everyone both in the house and out, seemed dazed by the
+unexpected catastrophe, and as no one had any suspicions to offer
+as to the probable murderer, I had a difficult task before me.
+
+I began in the usual way, by inspecting the scene of the murder.
+I found nothing in the room, or in the condition of the body
+itself, which added an iota to the knowledge already obtained.
+That Mr. Hasbrouck had been in bed; that he had risen upon
+hearing a noise; and that he had been shot before reaching the
+door, were self-evident facts. But there was nothing to guide me
+further. The very simplicity of the circumstances caused a dearth
+of clues, which made the difficulty of procedure as great as any
+I had ever encountered.
+
+My search through the hall and down the stairs elicited nothing;
+and an investigation of the bolts and bars by which the house was
+secured, assured me that the assassin had either entered by the
+front door, or had already been secreted in the house when it was
+locked up for the night.
+
+"I shall have to trouble Mrs. Hasbrouck for a short interview," I
+hereupon announced to the trembling old servant, who had followed
+me like a dog about the house.
+
+He made no demur, and in a few minutes I was ushered into the
+presence of the newly made widow, who sat quite alone, in a large
+chamber in the rear. As I crossed the threshold she looked up,
+and I encountered a good, plain face, without the shadow of guile
+in it.
+
+"Madam," said I, "I have not come to disturb you. I will ask two
+or three questions only, and then leave you to your grief. I am
+told that some words came from the assassin before he delivered
+his fatal shot. Did you hear these distinctly enough to tell me
+what they were?"
+
+"I was sound asleep," said she, "and dreamt, as I thought, that a
+fierce, strange voice cried somewhere to some one: 'Ah! you did
+not expect me!' But I dare not say that these words were really
+uttered to my husband, for he was not the man to call forth hate,
+and only a man in the extremity of passion could address such an
+exclamation in such a tone as rings in my memory in connection
+with the fatal shot which woke me."
+
+"But that shot was not the work of a friend," I argued. "If, as
+these words seem to prove, the assassin had some other motive
+than plunder in his assault, then your husband had an enemy,
+though you never suspected it."
+
+"Impossible!" was her steady reply, uttered in the most
+convincing tone. "The man who shot him was a common burglar, and
+frightened at having been betrayed into murder, fled without
+looking for booty. I am sure I heard him cry out in terror and
+remorse: 'God! what have I done!'"
+
+"Was that before you left the side of the bed?"
+
+"Yes; I did not move from my place till I heard the front door
+close. I was paralysed by fear and dread."
+
+"Are you in the habit of trusting to the security of a latch-
+lock only in the fastening of your front door at night? I am told
+that the big key was not in the lock, and that the bolt at the
+bottom of the door was not drawn."
+
+"The bolt at the bottom of the door is never drawn. Mr. Hasbrouck
+was so good a man that he never mistrusted any one. That is why
+the big lock was not fastened. The key, not working well, he took
+it some days ago to the locksmith, and when the latter failed to
+return it, he laughed, and said he thought no one would ever
+think of meddling with his front door."
+
+"Is there more than one night-key to your house?" I now asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"And when did Mr. Hasbrouck last use his?"
+
+"To-night, when he came home from prayer meeting," she answered,
+and burst into tears.
+
+Her grief was so real and her loss so recent that I hesitated to
+afflict her by further questions. So returning to the scene of
+the tragedy, I stepped out upon the balcony which ran in front.
+Soft voices instantly struck my ears. The neighbours on either
+side were grouped in front of their own windows, and were
+exchanging the remarks natural under the circumstances. I paused,
+as in duty bound, and listened. But I heard nothing worth
+recording, and would have instantly reentered the house, if I had
+not been impressed by the appearance of a very graceful woman who
+stood at my right. She was clinging to her husband, who was
+gazing at one of the pillars before him in a strange fixed way
+which astonished me till he attempted to move, and then I saw
+that he was blind. I remembered that there lived in this row a
+blind doctor, equally celebrated for his skill and for his
+uncommon personal attractions, and greatly interested not only by
+his affliction, but in the sympathy evinced by his young and
+affectionate wife, I stood still, till I heard her say in the
+soft and appealing tones of love:
+
+"Come in, Constant; you have heavy duties for to-morrow, and you
+should get a few hours' rest if possible."
+
+He came from the shadow of the pillar, and for one minute I saw
+his face with the lamplight shining full upon it. It was as
+regular of feature as a sculptured Adonis, and it was as white.
+
+"Sleep!" he repeated, in the measured tones of deep but
+suppressed feeling. "Sleep! with murder on the other side of the
+wall!" And he stretched out his arms in a dazed way that
+insensibly accentuated the horror I myself felt of the crime
+which had so lately taken place in the room behind me.
+
+She, noting the movement, took one of the groping hands in her
+own and drew him gently towards her.
+
+"This way," she urged; and, guiding him into the house, she
+closed the window and drew down the shades.
+
+I have no excuse to offer for my curiosity, but the interest
+excited in me by this totally irrelevant episode was so great
+that I did not leave the neighbourhood till I had learned
+something of this remarkable couple.
+
+The story told me was very simple. Dr. Zabriskie had not been
+born blind, but had become so after a grievous illness which had
+stricken him down soon after he received his diploma. Instead of
+succumbing to an affliction which would have daunted most men, he
+expressed his intention of practising his profession, and soon
+became so successful in it that he found no difficulty in
+establishing himself in one of the best paying quarters of the
+city. Indeed, his intuition seemed to have developed in a
+remarkable degree after the loss of his sight, and he seldom, if
+ever, made a mistake in diagnosis. Considering this fact, and the
+personal attractions which gave him distinction, it was no wonder
+that he soon became a popular physician whose presence was a
+benefaction and whose word law.
+
+He had been engaged to be married at the time of his illness, and
+when he learned what was likely to be its result, had offered to
+release the young lady from all obligation to him. But she would
+not be released, and they were married. This had taken place some
+five years previous to Mr. Hasbrouck's death, three of which had
+been spent by them in Lafayette Place.
+
+So much for the beautiful woman next door.
+
+There being absolutely no clue to the assailant of Mr. Hasbrouck,
+I naturally looked forward to the inquest for some evidence upon
+which to work. But there seemed to be no underlying facts to this
+tragedy. The most careful study into the habits and conduct of
+the deceased brought nothing to light save his general
+beneficence and rectitude, nor was there in his history or in
+that of his wife, any secret or hidden obligation calculated to
+provoke any such act of revenge as murder. Mrs. Hasbrouck's
+surmise that the intruder was simply a burglar, and that she had
+rather imagined than heard the words which pointed to the
+shooting as a deed of vengeance, soon gained general credence.
+
+But though the police worked long and arduously in this new
+direction their efforts were without fruit and the case bids fair
+to remain an unsolvable mystery.
+
+That was all. As Violet dropped the last page from her hand, she
+recalled a certain phrase in her employer's letter. "If at the
+end you come upon a perfectly blank wall--" Well, she had come
+upon this wall. Did he expect her to make an opening in it? Or
+had he already done so himself, and was merely testing her much
+vaunted discernment.
+
+Piqued by the thought, she carefully reread the manuscript, and
+when she had again reached its uncompromising end, she gave
+herself up to a few minutes of concentrated thought, then, taking
+a sheet of paper from the rack before her, she wrote upon it a
+single sentence, and folding the sheet, put it in an envelope
+which she left unaddressed. This done, she went to bed and slept
+like the child she really was.
+
+At an early hour the next morning she entered her employer's
+office. Acknowledging with a nod his somewhat ceremonious bow,
+she handed him the envelope in which she had enclosed that one
+mysterious sentence.
+
+He took it with a smile, opened it offhand, glanced at what she
+had written, and flushed a vivid red.
+
+"You are a--brick," he was going to say, but changed the last
+word to one more in keeping with her character and appearance.
+"Look here. I expected this from you and so prepared myself."
+Taking out a similar piece of paper from his own pocket-book, he
+laid it down beside hers on the desk before him. It also held a
+single sentence and, barring a slight difference of expression,
+the one was the counterpart of the other. "The one loose stone,"
+he murmured.
+
+"Seen and noted by both."
+
+"Why not?" he asked. Then as she glanced expectantly his way, he
+earnestly added: "Together we may be able to do something. The
+reward offered by Mrs. Hasbrouck for the detection of the
+murderer was a very large one. She is a woman of means. I have
+never heard of its being withdrawn."
+
+"Then it never has been," was Violet's emphatic conclusion, her
+dimples enforcing the statement as only such dimples can. "But--
+what do you want of me in an affair of this kind? Something more
+than to help you locate the one possible clue to further
+enlightenment. You would not have mentioned the big reward just
+for that."
+
+"Perhaps not. There is a sequel to the story I sent you. I have
+written it out, with my own hand. Take it home and read it at
+your leisure. When you see into what an unhappy maze my own
+inquiries have led me, possibly you will be glad to assist me in
+clearing up a situation which is inflicting great suffering on
+one whom you will be the first to pity. If so, a line mentioning
+the fact will be much appreciated by me." And disregarding her
+startled look and the impetuous shaking of her head, he bowed her
+out with something more than his accustomed suavity but also with
+a seriousness which affected her in spite of herself and
+effectually held back the protest it was in her heart to make.
+She was glad of this when she read his story; but later on--
+
+However, it is not for me to intrude Violet, or Violet's feelings
+into an affair which she is so anxious to forget. I shall
+therefore from this moment on, leave her as completely out of
+this tale of crime and retribution as is possible and keep a full
+record of her work. When she is necessary to the story, you will
+see her again. Meanwhile, read with her, this relation of her
+employer's unhappy attempt to pursue an investigation so openly
+dropped by the police. You will perceive, from its general style
+and the accentuation put upon the human side of this sombre
+story, a likeness to the former manuscript which may prove to
+you, as it certainly did to Violet, to whose consideration she
+was indebted for the readableness of the policeman's report,
+which in all probability had been a simple statement of facts.
+
+But there, I am speaking of Violet again. To prevent a further
+mischance of this nature, I will introduce at once the above
+mentioned account.
+
+II
+
+No man in all New York was ever more interested than myself in
+the Hasbrouck affair, when it was the one and only topic of
+interest at a period when news was unusually scarce. But,
+together with many such inexplicable mysteries, it had passed
+almost completely from my mind, when it was forcibly brought
+back, one day, by a walk I took through Lafayette Place.
+
+At sight of the long row of uniform buildings, with their
+pillared fronts and connecting balconies every detail of the
+crime which had filled the papers at the time with innumerable
+conjectures returned to me with extraordinary clearness, and,
+before I knew it, I found myself standing stockstill in the
+middle of the block with my eye raised to the Hasbrouck house and
+my ears--or rather my inner consciousness, for no one spoke I am
+sure--ringing with a question which, whether the echo of some old
+thought or the expression of a new one, so affected me by the
+promise it held of some hitherto unsuspected clue, that I
+hesitated whether to push this new inquiry then or there by an
+attempted interview with Mrs. Hasbrouck, or to wait till I had
+given it the thought which such a stirring of dead bones
+rightfully demanded.
+
+You know what that question was. I shall have communicated it to
+you, if you have not already guessed it, before perusing these
+lines:
+
+"Who uttered the scream which gave the first alarm of Mr.
+Hasbrouck's violent death?"
+
+I was in a state of such excitement as I walked away--for I
+listened to my better judgment as to the inadvisability of my
+disturbing Mrs. Hasbrouck with these new inquiries--that the
+perspiration stood out on my forehead. The testimony she had
+given at the inquest recurred to me, and I remembered as
+distinctly as if she were then speaking, that she had expressly
+stated that she did not scream when confronted by the sight of
+her husband's dead body. But someone had screamed and that very
+loudly. Who was it, then? One of the maids, startled by the
+sudden summons from below, or someone else--some involuntary
+witness of the crime, whose testimony had been suppressed at the
+inquest, by fear or influence?
+
+The possibility of having come upon a clue even at this late day
+so fired my ambition that I took the first opportunity of
+revisiting Lafayette Place. Choosing such persons as I thought
+most open to my questions, I learned that there were many who
+could testify to having heard a woman's shrill scream on that
+memorable night, just prior to the alarm given by old Cyrus, but
+no one who could tell from whose lips it had come. One fact,
+however, was immediately settled. It had not been the result of
+the servant-women's fears. Both of the girls were positive that
+they had uttered no sound, nor had they themselves heard any till
+Cyrus rushed to the window with his wild cries. As the scream, by
+whomever given, was uttered before they descended the stairs, I
+was convinced by these assurances that it had issued from one of
+the front windows, and not from the rear of the house, where
+their own rooms lay. Could it be that it had sprung from the
+adjoining dwelling, and that--
+
+I remembered who had lived there and was for ringing the bell at
+once. But, missing the doctor's sign, I made inquiries and found
+that he had moved from the block. However, a doctor is soon
+found, and in less than fifteen, minutes I was at the door of his
+new home, where I asked, not for him, but for Mrs. Zabriskie.
+
+It required some courage to do this, for I had taken particular
+notice of the doctor's wife at the inquest, and her beauty, at
+that time, had worn such an aspect of mingled sweetness and
+dignity that I hesitated to encounter it under any circumstances
+likely to disturb its pure serenity. But a clue once grasped
+cannot be lightly set aside by a true detective, and it would
+have taken more than a woman's frowns to stop me at this point.
+
+However, it was not with frowns she received me, but with a
+display of emotion for which I was even less prepared. I had sent
+up my card and I saw it trembling in her hand as she entered the
+room. As she neared me, she glanced at it, and with a show of
+gentle indifference which did not in the least disguise her
+extreme anxiety, she courteously remarked:
+
+"Your name is an unfamiliar one to me. But you told my maid that
+your business was one of extreme importance, and so I have
+consented to see you. What can an agent from a private detective
+office have to say to me?"
+
+Startled by this evidence of the existence of some hidden
+skeleton in her own closet, I made an immediate attempt to
+reassure her.
+
+"Nothing which concerns you personally," said I. "I simply wish
+to ask you a question in regard to a small matter connected with
+Mr. Hasbrouck's violent death in Lafayette Place, a couple of
+years ago. You were living in the adjoining house at the time I
+believe, and it has occurred to me that you might on that account
+be able to settle a point which has never been fully cleared up."
+
+Instead of showing the relief I expected, her pallor increased
+and her fine eyes, which had been fixed curiously upon me, sank
+in confusion to the floor.
+
+"Great heaven!" thought I. "She looks as if at one more word from
+me, she would fall at my feet in a faint. What is this I have
+stumbled upon!"
+
+"I do not see how you can have any question to ask me on that
+subject," she began with an effort at composure which for some
+reason disturbed me more than her previous open display of fear.
+"Yet if you have," she continued, with a rapid change of manner
+that touched my heart in spite of myself, "I shall, of course, do
+my best to answer you."
+
+There are women whose sweetest tones and most charming smiles
+only serve to awaken distrust in men of my calling; but Mrs.
+Zabriskie was not of this number. Her face was beautiful, but it
+was also candid in its expression, and beneath the agitation
+which palpably disturbed her, I was sure there lurked nothing
+either wicked or false. Yet I held fast by the clue which I had
+grasped as it were in the dark, and without knowing whither I was
+tending, much less whither I was leading her, I proceeded to say:
+
+"The question which I presume to put to you as the next door
+neighbour of Mr. Hasbrouck is this: Who was the woman who on the
+night of that gentleman's assassination screamed out so loudly
+that the whole neighbourhood heard her?"
+
+The gasp she gave answered my question in a way she little
+realized, and struck as I was by the impalpable links that had
+led me to the threshold of this hitherto unsolvable mystery, I
+was about to press my advantage and ask another question, when
+she quickly started forward and laid her hand on my lips.
+
+Astonished, I looked at her inquiringly, but her head was turned
+aside, and her eyes, fixed upon the door, showed the greatest
+anxiety. Instantly I realized what she feared. Her husband was
+entering the house, and she dreaded lest his ears should catch a
+word of our conversation.
+
+Not knowing what was in her mind, and unable to realize the
+importance of the moment to her, I yet listened to the advance of
+her blind husband with an almost painful interest. Would he enter
+the room where we were, or would he pass immediately to his
+office in the rear? She seemed to wonder too, and almost held her
+breath as he neared the door, paused, and stood in the open
+doorway, with his ear turned towards us.
+
+As for myself, I remained perfectly still, gazing at his face in
+mingled surprise and apprehension. For besides its beauty, which
+was of a marked order, as I have already observed, it had a
+touching expression which irresistibly aroused both pity and
+interest in the spectator. This may have been the result of his
+affliction, or it may have sprung from some deeper cause; but,
+whatever its source, this look in his face produced a strong
+impression upon me and interested me at once in his personality.
+Would he enter; or would he pass on? Her look of silent appeal
+showed me in which direction her wishes lay, but while I answered
+her glance by complete silence, I was conscious in some
+indistinct way that the business I had undertaken would be better
+furthered by his entrance.
+
+The blind have often been said to possess a sixth sense in place
+of the one they have lost. Though I am sure we made no noise, I
+soon perceived that he was aware of our presence. Stepping
+hastily forward he said, in the high and vibrating tone of
+restrained passion:
+
+"Zulma, are you there?"
+
+For a moment I thought she did not mean to answer, but knowing
+doubtless from experience the impossibility of deceiving him, she
+answered with a cheerful assent, dropping her hand as she did so
+from before my lips.
+
+He heard the slight rustle which accompanied the movement, and a
+look I found it hard to comprehend flashed over his features,
+altering his expression so completely that he seemed another man.
+
+"You have someone with you," he declared, advancing another step,
+but with none of the uncertainty which usually accompanies the
+movements of the blind. "Some dear friend," he went on, with an
+almost sarcastic emphasis and a forced smile that had little of
+gaiety in it.
+
+The agitated and distressed blush which answered him could have
+but one interpretation. He suspected that her hand had been
+clasped in mine, and she perceived his thought and knew that I
+perceived it also.
+
+Drawing herself up, she moved towards him, saying in a sweet
+womanly tone:
+
+"It is no friend, Constant, not even an acquaintance. The person
+whom I now present to you is a representative from some detective
+agency. He is here upon a trivial errand which will soon be
+finished, when I will join you in the office."
+
+I knew she was but taking a choice between two evils, that she
+would have saved her husband the knowledge of my calling as well
+as of my presence in the house, if her self-respect would have
+allowed it; but neither she nor I anticipated the effect which
+this introduction of myself in my business capacity would produce
+upon him.
+
+"A detective," he repeated, staring with his sightless eyes, as
+if, in his eagerness to see, he half hoped his lost sense would
+return. "He can have no trivial errand here; he has been sent by
+God Himself to--"
+
+"Let me speak for you," hastily interposed his wife, springing to
+his side and clasping his arm with a fervour that was equally
+expressive of appeal and command. Then turning to me, she
+explained: "Since Mr. Hasbrouck's unaccountable death, my husband
+has been labouring under an hallucination which I have only to
+mention, for you to recognize its perfect absurdity. He thinks--
+oh! do not look like that, Constant; you know it is an
+hallucination which must vanish the moment we drag it into broad
+daylight--that he--he, the best man in all the world, was himself
+the assailant of Mr. Hasbrouck."
+
+"Good God!"
+
+"I say nothing of the impossibility of this being so," she went
+on in a fever of expostulation. "He is blind, and could not have
+delivered such a shot even if he had desired to; besides, he had
+no weapon. But the inconsistency of the thing speaks for itself,
+and should assure him that his mind is unbalanced and that he is
+merely suffering from a shock that was greater than we realized.
+He is a physician and has had many such instances in his own
+practice. Why, he was very much attached to Mr. Hasbrouck! They
+were the best of friends, and though he insists that he killed
+him, he cannot give any reason for the deed."
+
+At these words the doctor's face grew stern, and he spoke like an
+automaton repeating some fearful lesson:
+
+"I killed him. I went to his room and deliberately shot him. I
+had nothing against him, and my remorse is extreme. Arrest me and
+let me pay the penalty of my crime. It is the only way in which I
+can obtain peace."
+
+Shocked beyond all power of self-control by this repetition of
+what she evidently considered the unhappy ravings of a madman,
+she let go his arm and turned upon me in frenzy.
+
+"Convince him!" she cried. "Convince him by your questions that
+he never could have done this fearful thing."
+
+I was labouring under great excitement myself, for as a private
+agent with no official authority such as he evidently attributed
+to me in the blindness of his passion, I felt the incongruity of
+my position in the face of a matter of such tragic consequence.
+Besides, I agreed with her that he was in a distempered state of
+mind, and I hardly knew how to deal with one so fixed in his
+hallucination and with so much intelligence to support it. But
+the emergency was great, for he was holding out his wrists in the
+evident expectation of my taking him into instant custody; and
+the sight was killing his wife, who had sunk on the floor between
+us, in terror and anguish.
+
+"You say you killed Mr. Hasbrouck," I began. "Where did you get
+your pistol, and what did you do with it after you left his
+house?"
+
+"My husband had no pistol; never had any pistol," put in Mrs.
+Zabriskie, with vehement assertion. "If I had seen him with such
+a weapon--"
+
+"I threw it away. When I left the house, I cast it as far from me
+as possible, for I was frightened at what I had done, horribly
+frightened."
+
+"No pistol was ever found," I answered with a smile, forgetting
+for the moment that he could not see. "If such an instrument had
+been found in the street after a murder of such consequence, it
+certainly would have been brought to the police."
+
+"You forget that a good pistol is valuable property," he went on
+stolidly. "Someone came along before the general alarm was given;
+and seeing such a treasure lying on the sidewalk, picked it up
+and carried it off. Not being an honest man, he preferred to keep
+it to drawing the attention of the police upon himself."
+
+"Hum, perhaps," said I; "but where did you get it. Surely you can
+tell where you procured such a weapon, if, as your wife
+intimates, you did not own one."
+
+"I bought it that selfsame night of a friend; a friend whom I
+will not name, since he resides no longer in this country. I--"
+He paused; intense passion was in his face; he turned towards his
+wife, and a low cry escaped him, which made her look up in fear.
+
+"I do not wish to go into any particulars," said he. "God forsook
+me and I committed a horrible crime. When I am punished, perhaps
+peace will return to me and happiness to her. I would not wish
+her to suffer too long or too bitterly for my sin."
+
+"Constant!" What love was in the cry! It seemed to move him and
+turn his thoughts for a moment into a different channel.
+
+"Poor child!" he murmured, stretching out his hands by an
+irresistible impulse towards her. But the change was but
+momentary, and he was soon again the stem and determined self-
+accuser. "Are you going to take me before a magistrate?" he
+asked. "If so, I have a few duties to perform which you are
+welcome to witness."
+
+This was too much; I felt that the time had come for me to
+disabuse his mind of the impression he had unwittingly formed of
+me. I therefore said as considerately as I could:
+
+"You mistake my position, Dr. Zabriskie. Though a detective of
+some experience, I have no connection with the police and no
+right to intrude myself in a matter of such tragic importance.
+If, however, you are as anxious as you say to subject yourself to
+police examination, I will mention the same to the proper
+authorities, and leave them to take such action as they think
+best."
+
+"That will be still more satisfactory to me," said he; "for
+though I have many times contemplated giving myself up, I have
+still much to do before I can leave my home and practice without
+injury to others. Good-day; when you want me you will find me
+here."
+
+He was gone, and the poor young wife was left crouching on the
+floor alone. Pitying her shame and terror, I ventured to remark
+that it was not an uncommon thing for a man to confess to a crime
+he had never committed, and assured her that the matter would be
+inquired into very carefully before any attempt was made upon his
+liberty.
+
+She thanked me, and slowly rising, tried to regain her
+equanimity; but the manner as well as the matter of her husband's
+self-condemnation was too overwhelming in its nature for her to
+recover readily from her emotions.
+
+"I have long dreaded this," she acknowledged. "For months I have
+foreseen that he would make some rash communication or insane
+avowal. If I had dared, I would have consulted some physician
+about this hallucination of his; but he was so sane on other
+points that I hesitated to give my dreadful secret to the world.
+I kept hoping that time and his daily pursuits would have their
+effect and restore him to himself. But his illusion grows, and
+now I fear that nothing will ever convince him that he did not
+commit the deed of which he accuses himself. If he were not blind
+I would have more hope, but the blind have so much time for
+brooding."
+
+"I think he had better be indulged in his fancies for the
+present," I ventured. "If he is labouring under an illusion it
+might be dangerous to cross him."
+
+"If?" she echoed in an indescribable tone of amazement and dread.
+"Can you for a moment harbour the idea that he has spoken the
+truth?"
+
+"Madam," I returned, with something of the cynicism of my
+calling, "what caused you to give such an unearthly scream just
+before this murder was made known to the neighbourhood?"
+
+She stared, paled, and finally began to tremble, not, as I now
+believe, at the insinuation latent in my words, but at the doubts
+which my question aroused in her own breast.
+
+"Did I?" she asked; then with a burst of candour which seemed
+inseparable from her nature, she continued: "Why do I try to
+mislead you or deceive myself? I did give a shriek just before
+the alarm was raised next door; but it was not from any knowledge
+I had of a crime having been committed, but because I
+unexpectedly saw before me my husband whom I supposed to be on
+his way to Poughkeepsie. He was looking very pale and strange,
+and for a moment I thought I stood face to face with his ghost.
+But he soon explained his appearance by saying that he had fallen
+from the train and had only been saved by a miracle from being
+dismembered; and I was just bemoaning his mishap and trying to
+calm him and myself, when that terrible shout was heard next door
+of 'Murder! murder!' Coming so soon after the shock he had
+himself experienced, it quite unnerved him, and I think we can
+date his mental disturbance from that moment. For he began
+immediately to take a morbid interest in the affair next door,
+though it was weeks, if not months, before he let a word fall of
+the nature of those you have just heard. Indeed it was not till I
+repeated to him some of the expressions he was continually
+letting fall in his sleep, that he commenced to accuse himself of
+crime and talk of retribution."
+
+"You say that your husband frightened you on that night by
+appearing suddenly at the door when you thought him on his way to
+Poughkeepsie. Is Dr. Zabriskie in the habit of thus going and
+coming alone at an hour so late as this must have been?"
+
+"You forget that to the blind, night is less full of perils than
+the day. Often and often has my husband found his way to his
+patients' houses alone after midnight; but on this especial
+evening he had Leonard with him. Leonard was his chauffeur, and
+always accompanied him when he went any distance."
+
+"Well, then," said I, "all we have to do is to summon Leonard and
+hear what he has to say concerning this affair. He will surely
+know whether or not his master went into the house next door."
+
+"Leonard has left us," she said. "Dr. Zabriskie has another
+chauffeur now. Besides (I have nothing to conceal from you),
+Leonard was not with him when he returned to the house that
+evening or the doctor would not have been without his portmanteau
+till the next day. Something--I have never known what--caused
+them to separate, and that is why I have no answer to give the
+doctor when he accuses himself of committing a deed that night so
+wholly out of keeping with every other act of his life."
+
+"And have you never asked Leonard why they separated and why he
+allowed his master to come home alone after the shock he had
+received at the station?"
+
+"I did not know there was any reason for my doing so till long
+after he had left us."
+
+"And when did he leave?"
+
+"That I do not remember. A few weeks or possibly a few days after
+that dreadful night."
+
+"And where is he now?"
+
+"Ah, that I have not the least means of knowing. But," she
+objected, in sudden distrust, "what do you want of Leonard? If he
+did not follow Dr. Zabriskie to his own door, he could tell us
+nothing that would convince my husband that he is labouring under
+an illusion."
+
+"But he might tell us something which would convince us that Dr.
+Zabriskie was not himself after the accident; that he--"
+
+"Hush!" came from her lips in imperious tones. "I will not
+believe that he shot Mr. Hasbrouck even if you prove him to have
+been insane at the time. How could he? My husband is blind. It
+would take a man of very keen sight to force himself into a house
+closed for the night, and kill a man in the dark at one shot."
+
+"On the contrary, it is only a blind man who could do this,"
+cried a voice from the doorway. "Those who trust to eyesight must
+be able to catch a glimpse of the mark they aim at, and this
+room, as I have been told, was without a glimmer of light. But
+the blind trust to sound, and as Mr. Hasbrouck spoke--"
+
+"Oh!" burst from the horrified wife, "is there no one to stop him
+when he speaks like that?"
+
+III
+
+As you will see, this matter, so recklessly entered into, had
+proved to be of too serious a nature for me to pursue it farther
+without the cognizance of the police. Having a friend on the
+force in whose discretion I could rely, I took him into my
+confidence and asked for his advice. He pooh-poohed the doctor's
+statements, but said that he would bring the matter to the
+attention of the superintendent and let me know the result. I
+agreed to this, and we parted with the mutual understanding that
+mum was the word till some official decision had been arrived at.
+I had not long to wait. At an early day he came in with the
+information that there had been, as might be expected, a division
+of opinion among his superiors as to the importance of Dr.
+Zabriskie's so-called confession, but in one point they had been
+unanimous and that was the desirability of his appearing before
+them at Headquarters for a personal examination. As, however, in
+the mind of two out of three of them his condition was attributed
+entirely to acute mania, it had been thought best to employ as
+their emissary one in whom he had already confided and submitted
+his case to,--in other words, myself. The time was set for the
+next afternoon at the close of his usual office hours.
+
+He went without reluctance, his wife accompanying him. In the
+short time which elapsed between their leaving home and entering
+Headquarters, I embraced the opportunity of observing them, and I
+found the study equally exciting and interesting. His face was
+calm but hopeless, and his eye, dark and unfathomable, but
+neither frenzied nor uncertain. He spoke but once and listened to
+nothing, though now and then his wife moved as if to attract his
+attention, and once even stole her hand towards his, in the
+tender hope that he would feel its approach and accept her
+sympathy. But he was deaf as well as blind; and sat wrapped up in
+thoughts which she, I know, would have given worlds to penetrate.
+
+Her countenance was not without its mystery also. She showed in
+every lineament passionate concern and misery, and a deep
+tenderness from which the element of fear was not absent. But
+she, as well as he, betrayed that some misunderstanding deeper
+than any I had previously suspected drew its intangible veil
+between them and made the near proximity in which they sat at
+once a heart-piercing delight and an unspeakable pain. What was
+the misunderstanding; and what was the character of the fear that
+modified her every look of love in his direction? Her perfect
+indifference to my presence proved that it was not connected with
+the position in which he had placed himself towards the police by
+his voluntary confession of crime, nor could I thus interpret the
+expression, of frantic question which now and then contracted her
+features, as she raised her eyes towards his sightless orbs, and
+strove to read in his firm set lips the meaning of those
+assertions she could only ascribe to loss of reason.
+
+The stopping of the carriage seemed to awaken both from thoughts
+that separated rather than united them. He turned his face in her
+direction, and she stretching forth her hand, prepared to lead
+him from the carriage, without any of that display of timidity
+which had previously been evident in her manner.
+
+As his guide she seemed to fear nothing; as his lover,
+everything.
+
+"There is another and a deeper tragedy underlying the outward and
+obvious one," was my inward conclusion, as I followed them into
+the presence of the gentlemen awaiting them.
+
+Dr. Zabriskie's quiet appearance was in itself a shock to those
+who had anticipated the feverish unrest of a madman; so was his
+speech, which was calm, straightforward, and quietly determined.
+
+"I shot Mr. Hasbrouck," was his steady affirmation, given without
+any show of frenzy or desperation. "If you ask me why I did it, I
+cannot answer; if you ask me how, I am ready to state all that I
+know concerning the matter."
+
+"But, Dr. Zabriskie," interposed one of the inspectors, "the why
+is the most important thing for us to consider just now. If you
+really desire to convince us that you committed this dreadful
+crime of killing a totally inoffensive man, you should give us
+some reason for an act so opposed to all your instincts and
+general conduct."
+
+But the doctor continued unmoved:
+
+"I had no reason for murdering Mr. Hasbrouck. A hundred questions
+can elicit no other reply; you had better keep to the how."
+
+A deep-drawn breath from the wife answered the looks of the three
+gentlemen to whom this suggestion was offered. "You see," that
+breath seemed to protest, "that he is not in his right mind."
+
+I began to waver in my own opinion, and yet the intuition which
+has served me in cases seemingly as impenetrable as this bade me
+beware of following the general judgment.
+
+"Ask him to inform you how he got into the house," I whispered to
+Inspector D--, who sat nearest me.
+
+Immediately the inspector put the question which I had suggested:
+
+"By what means did you enter Mr. Hasbrouck's house at so late an
+hour as this murder occurred?"
+
+The blind doctor's head fell forward on his breast, and he
+hesitated for the first and only time.
+
+"You will not believe me," said he; "but the door was ajar when I
+came to it. Such things make crime easy; it is the only excuse I
+have to offer for this dreadful deed."
+
+The front door of a respectable citizen's house ajar at half-
+past eleven at night! It was a statement that fixed in all minds
+the conviction of the speaker's irresponsibility. Mrs.
+Zabriskie's brow cleared, and her beauty became for a moment
+dazzling as she held out her hands in irrepressible relief
+towards those who were interrogating her husband. I alone kept my
+impassibility. A possible explanation of this crime had flashed
+like lightning across my mind; an explanation from which I
+inwardly recoiled, even while I felt forced to consider it.
+
+"Dr. Zabriskie," remarked the inspector formerly mentioned as
+friendly to him, "such old servants as those kept by Mr.
+Hasbrouck do not leave the front door ajar at twelve o'clock at
+night."
+
+"Yet ajar it was," repeated the blind doctor, with quiet
+emphasis; "and finding it so, I went in. When I came out again, I
+closed it. Do you wish me to swear to what I say? If so, I am
+ready."
+
+What reply could they give? To see this splendid-looking man,
+hallowed by an affliction so great that in itself it called forth
+the compassion of the most indifferent, accusing himself of a
+cold-blooded crime, in tones which sounded dispassionate because
+of the will forcing their utterance, was too painful in itself
+for any one to indulge in unnecessary words. Compassion took the
+place of curiosity, and each and all of us turned involuntary
+looks of pity upon the young wife pressing so eagerly to his
+side.
+
+"For a blind man," ventured one, "the assault was both deft and
+certain. Are you accustomed to Mr. Hasbrouck's house, that you
+found your way with so little difficulty to his bedroom?"
+
+"I am accustomed--" he began.
+
+But here his wife broke in with irrepressible passion:
+
+"He is not accustomed to that house. He has never been beyond the
+first floor. Why, why do you question him? Do you not see--"
+
+His hand was on her lips.
+
+"Hush!" he commanded. "You know my skill in moving about a house;
+how I sometimes deceive those who do not know me into believing
+that I can see, by the readiness with which I avoid obstacles and
+find my way even in strange and untried scenes. Do not try to
+make them think I am not in my right mind, or you will drive me
+into the very condition you attribute to me."
+
+His face, rigid, cold, and set, looked like that of a mask. Hers,
+drawn with horror and filled with question that was fast taking
+the form of doubt, bespoke an awful tragedy from which more than
+one of us recoiled.
+
+"Can you shoot a man dead without seeing him?" asked the
+Superintendent, with painful effort.
+
+"Give me a pistol and I will show you," was the quick reply.
+
+A low cry came from the wife. In a drawer near to every one of us
+there lay a pistol, but no one moved to take it out. There was a
+look in the doctor's eye which made us fear to trust him with a
+pistol just then.
+
+"We will accept your assurance that you possess a skill beyond
+that of most men," returned the Superintendent. And beckoning me
+forward, he whispered: "This is a case for the doctors and not
+for the police. Remove him quietly, and notify Dr. Southyard of
+what I say."
+
+But Dr. Zabriskie, who seemed to have an almost supernatural
+acuteness of hearing, gave a violent start at this, and spoke up
+for the first time with real passion in his voice:
+
+"No, no, I pray you. I can bear anything but that. Remember,
+gentlemen, that I am blind; that I cannot see who is about me;
+that my life would be a torture if I felt myself surrounded by
+spies watching to catch some evidence of madness in me. Rather
+conviction at once, death, dishonour, and obloquy. These I have
+incurred. These I have brought upon myself by crime, but not this
+worse fate--oh! not this worse fate."
+
+His passion was so intense and yet so confined within the bounds
+of decorum, that we felt strangely impressed by it. Only the wife
+stood transfixed, with the dread growing in her heart, till her
+white, waxen visage seemed even more terrible to contemplate than
+his passion-distorted one.
+
+"It is not strange that my wife thinks me demented," the doctor
+continued, as if afraid of the silence that answered him. "But it
+is your business to discriminate, and you should know a sane man
+when you see him."
+
+Inspector D-- no longer hesitated.
+
+"Very well," said he, "give me the least proof that your
+assertions are true, and we will lay your case before the
+prosecuting attorney."
+
+"Proof? Is not a man's word--"
+
+"No man's confession is worth much without some evidence to
+support it. In your case there is none. You cannot even produce
+the pistol with which you assert yourself to have committed the
+deed."
+
+"True, true. I was frightened by what I had done, and the
+instinct of self-preservation led me to rid myself of the weapon
+in any way I could. But someone found this pistol; someone picked
+it up from the sidewalk of Lafayette Place on that fatal night.
+Advertise for it. Offer a reward. I will give you the money."
+Suddenly he appeared to realize how all this sounded. "Alas!"
+cried he, "I know the story seems improbable; but it is not the
+probable things that happen in this life, as, you should know,
+who every day dig deep into the heart of human affairs."
+
+Were these the ravings of insanity? I began to understand the
+wife's terror.
+
+"I bought the pistol," he went on, "of--alas! I cannot tell you
+his name. Everything is against me. I cannot adduce one proof;
+yet even she is beginning to fear that my story is true. I know
+it by her silence, a silence that yawns between us like a deep
+and unfathomable gulf."
+
+But at these words her voice rang out with passionate vehemence.
+
+"No, no, it is false! I will never believe that your hands have
+been plunged in blood. You are my own pure-hearted Constant,
+cold, perhaps, and stern, but with no guilt upon your conscience
+save in your own wild imagination."
+
+"Zulma, you are no friend to me," he declared, pushing her gently
+aside. "Believe me innocent, but say nothing to lead these others
+to doubt my word."
+
+And she said no more, but her looks spoke volumes.
+
+The result was that he was not detained, though he prayed for
+instant commitment. He seemed to dread his own home, and the
+surveillance to which he instinctively knew he would henceforth
+be subjected. To see him shrink from his wife's hand as she
+strove to lead him from the room was sufficiently painful; but
+the feeling thus aroused was nothing to that with which we
+observed the keen and agonized expectancy of his look as he
+turned and listened for the steps of the officer who followed
+him.
+
+"From this time on I shall never know whether or not I am alone,"
+was his final observation as he left the building.
+
+Here is where the matter rests and here, Miss Strange, is where
+you come in. The police were for sending an expert alienist into
+the house; but agreeing with me, and, in fact, with the doctor
+himself, that if he were not already out of his mind, this would
+certainly make them so, they, at my earnest intercession, have
+left the next move to me.
+
+That move as you must by this time understand involves you. You
+have advantages for making Mrs. Zabriskie's acquaintance of which
+I beg you to avail yourself. As friend or patient, you must win
+your way into that home? You must sound to its depths one or both
+of these two wretched hearts. Not so much now for any possible
+reward which may follow the elucidation of this mystery which has
+come so near being shelved, but for pity's sake and the possible
+settlement of a question which is fast driving a lovely member of
+your sex distracted.
+
+May I rely on you? If so--
+
+Various instructions followed, over which Violet mused with a
+deprecatory shaking of her head till the little clock struck two.
+Why should she, already in a state of secret despondency, intrude
+herself into an affair at once so painful and so hopeless?
+
+IV
+
+But by morning her mood changed. The pathos of the situation had
+seized upon her in her dreams, and before the day was over, she
+was to be seen, as a prospective patient, in Dr. Zabriskie's
+office. She had a slight complaint as her excuse, and she made
+the most of it. That is, at first, but as the personality of this
+extraordinary man began to make its usual impression, she found
+herself forgetting her own condition in the intensity of interest
+she felt in his. Indeed, she had to pull herself together more
+than once lest he should suspect the double nature of her errand,
+and she actually caught herself at times rejoicing in his
+affliction since it left her with only her voice to think of, in
+her hated but necessary task of deception.
+
+That she succeeded in this effort, even with one of his nice ear,
+was evident from the interested way in which he dilated upon her
+malady, and the minute instructions he was careful to give her--
+the physician being always uppermost in his strange dual nature,
+when he was in his office or at the bedside of the sick;--and had
+she not been a deep reader of the human soul she would have left
+his presence in simple wonder at his skill and entire absorption
+in an exacting profession.
+
+But as it was, she carried with her an image of subdued
+suffering, which drove her, from that moment on, to ask herself
+what she could do to aid him in his fight against his own
+illusion; for to associate such a man with a senseless and cruel
+murder was preposterous.
+
+What this wish, helped by no common determination, led her into,
+it was not in her mind to conceive. She was making her one great
+mistake, but as yet she was in happy ignorance of it, and pursued
+the course laid out for her without a doubt of the ultimate
+result.
+
+Having seen and made up her mind about the husband, she next
+sought to see and gauge the wife. That she succeeded in doing
+this by means of one of her sly little tricks is not to the
+point; but what followed in natural consequence is very much so.
+A mutual interest sprang up between them which led very speedily
+to actual friendship. Mrs. Zabriskie's hungry heart opened to the
+sympathetic little being who clung to her in such evident
+admiration; while Violet, brought face to face with a real woman,
+succumbed to feelings which made it no imposition on her part to
+spend much of her leisure in Zulma Zabriskie's company.
+
+The result were the following naive reports which drifted into
+her employer's office from day to day, as this intimacy deepened.
+
+The doctor is settling into a deep melancholy, from which he
+tries to rise at times, but with only indifferent success.
+Yesterday he rode around to all his patients for the purpose of
+withdrawing his services on the plea of illness. But he still
+keeps his office open, and today I had the opportunity of
+witnessing his reception and treatment of the many sufferers who
+came to him for aid. I think he was conscious of my presence,
+though an attempt had been made to conceal it. For the listening
+look never left his face from the moment he entered the room, and
+once he rose and passed quickly from wall to wall, groping with
+out-stretched hands into every nook and corner, and barely
+escaping contact with the curtain behind which I was hidden. But
+if he suspected my presence, he showed no displeasure at it,
+wishing perhaps for a witness to his skill in the treatment of
+disease.
+
+And truly I never beheld a finer manifestation of practical
+insight in cases of a more or less baffling nature. He is
+certainly a most wonderful physician, and I feel bound to record
+that his mind is as clear for business as if no shadow had fallen
+upon it.
+
+Dr. Zabriskie loves his wife, but in a way torturing to himself
+and to her. If she is gone from the house he is wretched, and yet
+when she returns he often forbears to speak to her, or if he does
+speak it is with a constraint that hurts her more than his
+silence. I was present when she came in today. Her step, which
+had been eager on the stairway, flagged as she approached the
+room, and he naturally noted the change and gave his own
+interpretation to it. His face, which had been very pale, flushed
+suddenly, and a nervous trembling seized him which he sought in
+vain to hide. But by the time her tall and beautiful figure stood
+in the doorway, he was his usual self again in all but the
+expression of his eyes, which stared straight before him in an
+agony of longing only to be observed in those who have once seen.
+
+"Where have you been, Zulma?" he asked, as contrary to his wont,
+he moved to meet her.
+
+"To my mother's, to Arnold & Constable's, and to the hospital, as
+you requested," was her quick answer, made without faltering or
+embarrassment.
+
+He stepped still nearer and took her hand, and as he did so my
+eye fell on his and I noted that his finger lay over her pulse in
+seeming unconsciousness.
+
+"Nowhere else?" he queried.
+
+She smiled the saddest kind of smile and shook her head; then,
+remembering that he could not see this movement, she cried in a
+wistful tone:
+
+"Nowhere else, Constant; I was too anxious to get back."
+
+I expected him to drop her hand at this, but he did not; and his
+finger still rested on her pulse.
+
+"And whom did you see while you were gone?" he continued.
+
+She told him, naming over several names.
+
+"You must have enjoyed yourself," was his cold comment, as he let
+go her hand and turned away. But his manner showed relief, and I
+could not but sympathize with the pitiable situation of a man who
+found himself forced into means like this for probing the heart
+of his young wife.
+
+Yet when I turned towards her, I realized that her position was
+but little happier than his. Tears are no strangers to her eyes,
+but those which welled up at this moment seemed to possess a
+bitterness that promised but little peace for her future. Yet she
+quickly dried them and busied herself with ministrations for his
+comfort.
+
+If I am any judge of woman, Zulma Zabriskie is superior to most
+of her sex. That her husband mistrusts her is evident, but
+whether this is the result of the stand she has taken in his
+regard, or only a manifestation of dementia, I have as yet been
+unable to determine. I dread to leave them alone together, and
+yet when I presume to suggest that she should be on her guard in
+her interviews with him, she smiles very placidly and tells me
+that nothing would give her greater joy than to see him lift his
+hand against her, for that would argue that he is not accountable
+for his deeds or assertions.
+
+Yet it would be a grief to see her injured by this passionate and
+unhappy man.
+
+You have said that you wanted all the details I could give; so I
+feel bound to say that Dr. Zabriskie tries to be considerate of
+his wife, though he often fails in the attempt. When she offers
+herself as his guide, or assists him with his mail or performs
+any of the many acts of kindness by which she continually
+manifests her sense of his affliction, he thanks her with
+courtesy and often with kindness, yet I know she would willingly
+exchange all his set phrases for one fond embrace or impulsive
+smile of affection. It would be too much to say that he is not in
+the full possession of his faculties, and yet upon what other
+hypothesis can we account for the inconsistencies of his conduct?
+
+I have before me two visions of mental suffering. At noon I
+passed the office door, and looking within, saw the figure of Dr.
+Zabriskie seated in his great chair, lost in thought or deep in
+those memories which make an abyss in one's consciousness. His
+hands, which were clenched, rested upon the arms of his chair,
+and in one of them I detected a woman's glove, which I had no
+difficulty in recognizing as one of the pair worn by his wife
+this morning. He held it as a tiger might hold his prey or a
+miser his gold, but his set features and sightless eyes betrayed
+that a conflict of emotions was being waged within him, among
+which tenderness had but little share. Though alive as he usually
+is to every sound, he was too absorbed at this moment to notice
+my presence, though I had taken no pains to approach quietly. I
+therefore stood for a full minute watching him, till an
+irresistible sense of the shame at thus spying upon a blind man
+in his moments of secret anguish compelled me to withdraw. But
+not before I saw his features relax in a storm of passionate
+feeling, as he rained kisses after kisses on the senseless kid he
+had so long held in his motionless grasp. Yet when an hour later
+he entered the dining-room on his wife's arm, there was nothing
+in his manner to show that he had in any way changed in his
+attitude towards her.
+
+The other picture was more tragic still. I was seeking Mrs.
+Zabriskie in her own room, when I caught a fleeting vision of her
+tall form, with her arms thrown up over her head in a paroxysm of
+feeling which made her as oblivious to my presence as her husband
+had been several hours before. Were the words that escaped her
+lips "Thank God we have no children!" or was this exclamation
+suggested to me by the passion and unrestrained impulse of her
+action?
+
+So much up to date. Interesting enough, or so her employer seemed
+to think, as he went hurriedly through the whole story, one
+special afternoon in his office, tapping each sheet as he laid it
+aside with his sagacious forefinger, as though he would say,
+"Enough! My theory still holds good; nothing contradictory here;
+on the contrary complete and undisputable confirmation of the one
+and only explanation of this astounding crime."
+
+What was that theory; and in what way and through whose efforts
+had he been enabled to form one? The following notes may
+enlighten us. Though written in his own hand, and undoubtedly a
+memorandum of his own activities, he evidently thinks it worth
+while to reperuse them in connection with those he had just laid
+aside.
+
+We can do no better than read them also.
+
+We omit dates.
+
+Watched the Zabriskie mansion for five hours this morning, from
+the second story window of an adjoining hotel. Saw the doctor
+when he drove away on his round of visits, and saw him when he
+returned. A coloured man accompanied him.
+
+Today I followed Mrs. Zabriskie. She went first to a house in
+Washington Place where I am told her mother lives. Here she
+stayed some time, after which she drove down to Canal Street,
+where she did some shopping, and later stopped at the hospital,
+into which I took the liberty of following her. She seemed to
+know many there, and passed from cot to cot with a smile in which
+I alone discerned the sadness of a broken heart. When she left, I
+left also, without having learned anything beyond the fact that
+Mrs. Zabriskie is one who does her duty in sorrow as in joy. A
+rare, and trustworthy woman I should say, and yet her husband
+does not trust her. Why?
+
+I have spent this day in accumulating details in regard to Dr.
+and Mrs. Zabriskie's life previous to the death of Mr. Hasbrouck.
+I learned from sources it would be unwise to quote just here,
+that Mrs. Zabriskie had not lacked enemies to charge her with
+coquetry; that while she had never sacrificed her dignity in
+public, more than one person had been heard to declare that Dr.
+Zabriskie was fortunate in being blind, since the sight of his
+wife's beauty would have but poorly compensated him for the pain
+he would have suffered in seeing how that beauty was admired.
+
+That all gossip is more or less tinged with exaggeration I have
+no doubt, yet when a name is mentioned in connection with such
+stories, there is usually some truth at the bottom of them. And a
+name is mentioned in this case, though I do not think it worth my
+while to repeat it here; and loth as I am to recognize the fact,
+it is a name that carries with it doubts that might easily
+account for the husband's jealousy. True, I have found no one who
+dares hint that she still continues to attract attention or to
+bestow smiles in any direction save where they legally belong.
+For since a certain memorable night which we all know, neither
+Dr. Zabriskie nor his wife have been seen save in their own
+domestic circle, and it is not into such scenes that this
+serpent, to whom I have just alluded, ever intrudes, nor is it in
+places of sorrow or suffering that his smile shines, or his
+fascinations flourish.
+
+And so one portion of my theory is proved to be sound. Dr.
+Zabriskie is jealous of his wife; whether with good cause or bad
+I am not prepared to decide; since her present attitude, clouded
+as it is by the tragedy in which she and her husband are both
+involved, must differ very much from that which she held when her
+life was unshadowed by doubt, and her admirers could be counted
+by the score.
+
+I have just found out where Leonard is. As he is in service some
+miles up the river, I shall have to be absent from my post for
+several hours, but I consider the game well worth the candle.
+
+Light at last. I have not only seen Leonard, but succeeded in
+making him talk. His story is substantially this: That on the
+night so often mentioned, he packed his master's portmanteau at
+eight o'clock and at ten called a taxi and rode with the doctor
+to the Central station. He was told to buy tickets to
+Poughkeepsie where his master had been called in consultation,
+and having done this, hurried back to join Dr. Zabriskie on the
+platform. They had walked together as far as the cars, and Dr.
+Zabriskie was just stepping on to the train, when a man pushed
+himself hurriedly between them and whispered something into his
+master's ear, which caused him to fall back and lose his footing.
+Dr. Zabriskie's body slid half under the car, but he was
+withdrawn before any harm was done, though the cars gave a lurch
+at that moment which must have frightened him exceedingly, for
+his face was white when he rose to his feet, and when Leonard
+offered to assist him again on the train, he refused to go and
+said he would return home and not attempt to ride to Poughkeepsie
+that night.
+
+The gentleman, whom Leonard now saw to be Mr. Stanton, an
+intimate friend of Dr. Zabriskie, smiled very queerly at this,
+and taking the doctor's arm led him back to his own auto. Leonard
+naturally followed them, but the doctor, hearing his steps,
+turned and bade him, in a very peremptory tone, to take the cars
+home, and then, as if on second thought, told him to go to
+Poughkeepsie in his stead and explain to the people there that he
+was too shaken up by his misstep to do his duty, and that he
+would be with them next morning. This seemed strange to Leonard,
+but he had no reasons for disobeying his master's orders, and so
+rode to Poughkeepsie. But the doctor did not follow him the next
+day; on the contrary he telegraphed for him to return, and when
+he got back dismissed him with a month's wages. This ended
+Leonard's connection with the Zabriskie family.
+
+A simple story bearing out what the wife has already told us; but
+it furnishes a link which may prove invaluable. Mr. Stanton,
+whose first name is Theodore, knows the real reason why Dr.
+Zabriskie returned home on the night of the seventeenth of July,
+19--. Mr. Stanton, consequently, is the man to see, and this
+shall be my business tomorrow.
+
+Checkmate! Theodore Stanton is not in this country. Though this
+points him out as the man from whom Dr. Zabriskie bought the
+pistol, it does not facilitate my work, which is becoming more
+and more difficult.
+
+Mr. Stanton's whereabouts are not even known to his most intimate
+friends. He sailed from this country most unexpectedly on the
+eighteenth of July a year ago, which was the day after the murder
+of Mr. Hasbrouck. It looks like a flight, especially as he has
+failed to maintain open communication even with his relatives.
+Was he the man who shot Mr. Hasbrouck? No; but he was the man who
+put the pistol in Dr. Zabriskie's hand that night, and whether he
+did this with purpose or not, was evidently so alarmed at the
+catastrophe which followed that he took the first outgoing
+steamer to Europe. So far, all is clear, but there are mysteries
+yet to be solved, which will require my utmost tact. What if I
+should seek out the gentleman with whose name that of Mrs.
+Zabriskie has been linked, and see if I can in any way connect
+him with Mr. Stanton or the events of that night.
+
+Eureka! I have discovered that Mr. Stanton cherished a mortal
+hatred for the gentleman above mentioned. It was a covert
+feeling, but no less deadly on that account; and while it never
+led him into any extravagances, it was of force sufficient to
+account for many a secret misfortune occurring to that gentleman.
+Now if I can prove that he is the Mephistopheles who whispered
+insinuations into the ear of our blind Faust, I may strike a fact
+that will lead me out of this maze.
+
+But how can I approach secrets so delicate without compromising
+the woman I feel bound to respect if only for the devoted love
+she manifests for her unhappy husband!
+
+I shall have to appeal to Joe Smithers. This is something which I
+always hate to do, but as long as he will take money, and as long
+as he is fertile in resources for obtaining the truth from people
+I am myself unable to reach, I must make use of his cupidity and
+his genius. He is an honourable fellow in one way, and never
+retails as gossip what he acquires for our use. How will he
+proceed in this case, and by what tactics will he gain the very
+delicate information which we need? I own that I am curious to
+see.
+
+I shall really have to put down at length the incidents of this
+night. I always knew that Joe Smithers was invaluable not only to
+myself but to the police, but I really did not know he possessed
+talents of so high an order. He wrote me this morning that he had
+succeeded in getting Mr. T--'s promise to spend the evening with
+him, and advised me that if I desired to be present as well, his
+own servant would not be at home, and that an opener of bottles
+would be required.
+
+As I was very anxious to see Mr. T-- with my own eyes, I accepted
+this invitation to play the spy, and went at the proper hour to
+Mr. Smithers's rooms. I found them picturesque in the extreme.
+Piles of books stacked here and there to the ceiling made nooks
+and corners which could be quite shut off by a couple of old
+pictures set into movable frames capable of swinging out or in at
+the whim or convenience of the owner.
+
+As I had use for the dark shadows cast by these pictures, I
+pulled them both out, and made such other arrangements as
+appeared likely to facilitate the purpose I had in view; then I
+sat down and waited for the two gentlemen who were expected to
+come in together.
+
+They arrived almost immediately, whereupon I rose and played my
+part with all necessary discretion. While ridding Mr. T-- of his
+overcoat, I stole a look at his face. It is not a handsome one,
+but it boasts of a gay, devil-may-care expression which doubtless
+makes it dangerous to many women, while his manners are
+especially attractive, and his voice the richest and most
+persuasive that I ever heard. I contrasted him, almost against my
+will, with Dr. Zabriskie, and decided that with most women the
+former's undoubted fascinations of speech and bearing would
+outweigh the latter's great beauty and mental endowments; but I
+doubted if they would with her.
+
+The conversation which immediately began was brilliant but
+desultory, for Mr. Smithers, with an airy lightness for which he
+is remarkable, introduced topic after topic, perhaps for the
+purpose of showing off Mr. T-'s versatility, and perhaps for the
+deeper and more sinister purpose of shaking the kaleidoscope of
+talk so thoroughly, that the real topic which we were met to
+discuss should not make an undue impression on the mind of his
+guest.
+
+Meanwhile one, two, three bottles passed, and I had the pleasure
+of seeing Joe Smithers's eye grow calmer and that of Mr. T-- more
+brilliant and more uncertain. As the last bottle was being
+passed, Joe cast me a meaning glance, and the real business of
+the evening began.
+
+I shall not attempt to relate the half dozen failures which Joe
+made in endeavouring to elicit the facts we were in search of,
+without arousing the suspicion of his visitor. I am only going to
+relate the successful attempt. They had been talking now for some
+hours, and I, who had long before been waved aside from their
+immediate presence, was hiding my curiosity and growing
+excitement behind one of the pictures, when I suddenly heard Joe
+say:
+
+"He has the most remarkable memory I ever met. He can tell to a
+day when any notable event occurred."
+
+"Pshaw!" answered his companion, who, by the way, was known to
+pride himself upon his own memory for dates, "I can state where I
+went and what I did on every day in the year. That may not
+embrace what you call 'notable events,' but the memory required
+is all the more remarkable, is it not?"
+
+"Pooh!" was his friend's provoking reply, "you are bluffing, Ben;
+I will never believe that."
+
+Mr. T-, who had passed by this time into that stage of
+intoxication which makes persistence in an assertion a duty as
+well as a pleasure, threw back his head, and as the wreaths of
+smoke rose in airy spirals from his lips, reiterated his
+statement, and offered to submit to any test of his vaunted
+powers which the other might dictate.
+
+"You keep a diary--" began Joe.
+
+"Which at the present moment is at home," completed the other.
+
+"Will you allow me to refer to it tomorrow, if I am suspicious of
+the accuracy of your recollections?"
+
+"Undoubtedly," returned the other.
+
+"Very well, then, I will wager you a cool fifty that you cannot
+tell where you were between the hours of ten and eleven on a
+certain night which I will name."
+
+"Done!" cried the other, bringing out his pocket-book and laying
+it on the table before him.
+
+Joe followed his example and then summoned me.
+
+"Write a date down here," he commanded, pushing a piece of paper
+towards me, with a look keen as the flash of a blade. "Any date,
+man," he added, as I appeared to hesitate in the embarrassment I
+thought natural under the circumstances. "Put down day, month,
+and year, only don't go too far back; not farther than two
+years."
+
+Smiling with the air of a flunkey admitted to the sports of his
+superiors, I wrote a line and laid it before Mr. Smithers, who at
+once pushed it with a careless gesture towards his companion. You
+can of course guess the date I made use of: July 17, 19--. Mr. T--,
+who had evidently looked upon this matter as mere play, flushed
+scarlet as he read these words, and for one instant looked as if
+he had rather fly the house than answer Joe Smithers's nonchalant
+glance of inquiry.
+
+"I have given my word and will keep it," he said at last, but
+with a look in my direction that sent me reluctantly back to my
+retreat. "I don't suppose you want names," he went on; "that is,
+if anything I have to tell is of a delicate nature?"
+
+"Oh, no," answered the other, "only facts and places."
+
+"I don't think places are necessary either," he returned. "I will
+tell you what I did and that must serve you. I did not promise to
+give number and street."
+
+"Well, well," Joe exclaimed; "earn your fifty, that is all. Show
+that you remember where you were on the night of"--and with an
+admirable show of indifference he pretended to consult the paper
+between them--"the seventeenth of July, two years ago, and I
+shall be satisfied."
+
+"I was at the club for one thing," said Mr. T-; "then I went to
+see a lady friend, where I stayed until eleven. She wore a blue
+muslin--What is that?"
+
+I had betrayed myself by a quick movement which sent a glass
+tumbler crashing to the floor. Zulma Zabriskie had worn a blue
+muslin on that same night. You will find it noted in the report
+given me by the policeman who saw her on their balcony.
+
+"That noise?" It was Joe who was speaking. "You don't know Reuben
+as well as I do or you wouldn't ask. It is his practice, I am
+sorry to say, to accentuate his pleasure in draining my bottles
+by dropping a glass at every third one."
+
+Mr. T-- went on.
+
+"She was a married woman and I thought she loved me; but--and
+this is the greatest proof I can offer you that I am giving you a
+true account of that night--she had not the slightest idea of the
+extent of my passion, and only consented to see me at all because
+she thought, poor thing, that a word from her would set me
+straight, and rid her of attentions she evidently failed to
+appreciate. A sorry figure for a fellow like me to cut; but you
+caught me on the most detestable date in my calendar and--"
+
+There he ceased being interesting and I anxious. The secret of a
+crime for which there seemed to be no reasonable explanation is
+no longer a mystery to me. I have but to warn Miss Strange--
+
+He had got thus far when a sound in the room behind him led him
+to look up. A lady had entered; a lady heavily veiled and
+trembling with what appeared to be an intense excitement.
+
+He thought he knew the figure, but the person, whoever it was,
+stood so still and remained so silent, he hesitated to address
+her; which seeing, she pushed up her veil and all doubt vanished.
+
+It was Violet herself. In disregard of her usual practice she had
+come alone to the office. This meant urgency of some kind. Had
+she too sounded this mystery? No, or her aspect would not have
+worn this look of triumph. What had happened then? He made an
+instant endeavour to find out.
+
+"You have news," he quietly remarked. "Good news, I should judge,
+by your very cheery smile."
+
+"Yes; I think I have found the way of bringing Dr. Zabriskie to
+himself."
+
+Astonished beyond measure, so little did these words harmonize
+with the impressions and conclusions at which he had just
+arrived, something very like doubt spoke in his voice as he
+answered with the simple exclamation:
+
+"You do!"
+
+"Yes. He is obsessed by a fixed idea, and must be given an
+opportunity to test the truth of that idea. The shock of finding
+it a false one may restore him to his normal condition. He
+believes that he shot Mr. Hasbrouck with no other guidance than
+his sense of hearing. Now if it can be proved that his hearing is
+an insufficient guide for such an act (as of course it is) the
+shock of the discovery may clear his brain of its cobwebs. Mrs.
+Zabriskie thinks so, and the police--"
+
+"What's that? The police?"
+
+"Yes, Dr. Zabriskie would be taken before them again this
+morning. No entreaties on the part of his wife would prevail; he
+insisted upon his guilt and asked her to accompany him there; and
+the poor woman found herself forced to go. Of course he
+encountered again the same division of opinion among the men he
+talked with. Three out of the four judged him insane, which
+observing, he betrayed great agitation and reiterated his former
+wish to be allowed an opportunity to prove his sanity by showing
+his skill in shooting. This made an impression; and a disposition
+was shown to grant his request then and there. But Mrs. Zabriskie
+would not listen to this. She approved of the experiment but
+begged that it might be deferred till another day and then take
+place in some spot remote from the city. For some reason they
+heeded her, and she has just telephoned me that this attempt of
+his is to take place tomorrow in the New Jersey woods. I am sorry
+that this should have been put through without you; and when I
+tell you that the idea originated with me--that from some word I
+purposely let fall one day, they both conceived this plan of
+ending the uncertainty that was devouring their lives, you will
+understand my excitement and the need I have of your support.
+Tell me that I have done well. Do not show me such a face--you
+frighten me--"
+
+"I do not wish to frighten you. I merely wish to know just who
+are going on this expedition."
+
+"Some members of the police, Dr. Zabriskie, his wife, and--and
+myself. She begged--"
+
+"You must not go."
+
+"Why? The affair is to be kept secret. The doctor will shoot,
+fail--Oh!" she suddenly broke in, alarmed by his expression, "you
+think he will not fail--"
+
+"I think that you had better heed my advice and stay out of it.
+The affair is now in the hands of the police, and your place is
+anywhere but where they are."
+
+"But I go as her particular friend. They have given her the
+privilege of taking with her one of her own sex and she has
+chosen me. I shall not fail her. Father is away, and if the awful
+disappointment you suggest awaits her, there is all the more
+reason why she should have some sympathetic support?"
+
+This was so true, that the fresh protest he was about to utter
+died on his lips. Instead, he simply remarked as he bowed her
+out:
+
+"I foresee that we shall not work much longer together. You are
+nearing the end of your endurance."
+
+He never forgot the smile she threw back at him.
+
+V
+
+There are some events which impress the human mind so deeply that
+their memory mingles with all after-experiences. Though Violet
+had made it a rule to forget as soon as possible the tragic
+episodes incident to the strange career upon which she had so
+mysteriously embarked, there was destined to be one scene, if not
+more, which she has never been able to dismiss at will.
+
+This was the sight which met her eyes from the bow of the small
+boat in which Dr. Zabriskie and his wife were rowed over to
+Jersey on the afternoon which saw the end of this most sombre
+drama.
+
+Though it was by no means late in the day, the sun was already
+sinking, and the bright red glare which filled the west and shone
+full upon the faces of the half dozen people before her added
+much to the tragic nature of the scene, though she was far from
+comprehending its full significance.
+
+The doctor sat with his wife in the stern and it was upon their
+faces Violet's glance was fixed. The glare shone luridly on his
+sightless eyeballs, and as she noticed his unwinking lids, she
+realized as never before what it was to be blind in the midst of
+sunshine. His wife's eyes, on the contrary, were lowered, but
+there was a look of hopeless misery in her colourless face which
+made her appearance infinitely pathetic, and Violet felt
+confident that if he could only have seen her, he would not have
+maintained the cold and unresponsive manner which chilled the
+words on his poor wife's lips and made all advance on her part
+impossible.
+
+On the seat in front of them sat an inspector and from some
+quarter, possibly from under the inspector's coat, there came the
+monotonous ticking of the small clock, which was to serve as a
+target for the blind man's aim.
+
+This ticking was all Violet heard, though the river was alive
+with traffic and large and small boats were steaming by them on
+every side. And I am sure it was all that Mrs. Zabriskie heard
+also, as with hand pressed to her heart, and eyes fixed on the
+opposite shore, she waited for the event which was to determine
+whether the man she loved was a criminal or only a being
+afflicted of God and worthy of her unceasing care and devotion.
+
+As the sun cast its last scarlet gleam over the water, the boat
+grounded, and Violet was enabled to have one passing word with
+Mrs. Zabriskie. She hardly knew what she said but the look she
+received in return was like that of a frightened child.
+
+But there was always to be seen in Mrs. Zabriskie's countenance
+this characteristic blending of the severe and the childlike, and
+beyond an added pang of pity for this beautiful but afflicted
+woman, Violet let the moment pass without giving it the weight it
+perhaps demanded.
+
+"The doctor and his wife had a long talk last night," was
+whispered in her ear as she wound her way with the rest into the
+heart of the woods. With a start she turned and perceived her
+employer following close behind her. He had come by another boat.
+
+"But it did not seem to heal whatever breach lies between them,"
+he proceeded. Then, in a quick, anxious tone, he whispered:
+"Whatever happens, do not lift your veil. I thought I saw a
+reporter skulking in the rear."
+
+"I will be careful," Violet assured him, and could say no more,
+as they had already reached the ground which had been selected
+for this trial at arms, and the various members of the party were
+being placed in their several positions.
+
+The doctor, to whom light and darkness were alike, stood with his
+face towards the western glow, and at his side were grouped the
+inspector and the two physicians. On the arm of one of the latter
+hung Dr. Zabriskie's overcoat, which he had taken off as soon as
+he reached the field.
+
+Mrs. Zabriskie stood at the other end of the opening near a tall
+stump, upon which it had been decided that the clock should be
+placed when the moment came for the doctor to show his skill. She
+had been accorded the privilege of setting the clock on this
+stump, and Violet saw it shining in her hand as she paused for a
+moment to glance back at the circle of gentlemen who were
+awaiting her movements. The hands of the clock stood at five
+minutes to five, though Violet scarcely noted it at the time, for
+Mrs. Zabriskie was passing her and had stopped to say:
+
+"If he is not himself, he cannot be trusted. Watch him carefully
+and see that he does no mischief to himself or others. Ask one of
+the inspectors to stand at his right hand, and stop him if he
+does not handle his pistol properly."
+
+Violet promised, and she passed on, setting the clock upon the
+stump and immediately drawing back to a suitable distance at the
+right, where she stood, wrapped in her long dark cloak. Her face
+shone ghastly white, even in its environment of snow-covered
+boughs, and noting this, Violet wished the minutes fewer between
+the present moment and the hour of five, at which time he was to
+draw the trigger.
+
+"Dr. Zabriskie," quoth the inspector, "we have endeavoured to
+make this trial a perfectly fair one. You are to have a shot at a
+small clock which has been placed within a suitable distance, and
+which you are expected to hit, guided only by the sound which it
+will make in striking the hour of five. Are you satisfied with
+the arrangement?"
+
+"Perfectly. Where is my wife?"
+
+"On the other side of the field some ten paces from the stump
+upon which the clock is fixed." He bowed, and his face showed
+satisfaction.
+
+"May I expect the clock to strike soon?"
+
+"In less than five minutes," was the answer.
+
+"Then let me have the pistol; I wish to become acquainted with
+its size and weight."
+
+We glanced at each other, then across at her.
+
+She made a gesture; it was one of acquiescence.
+
+Immediately the inspector placed the weapon in the blind man's
+hand. It was at once apparent that he understood the instrument,
+and Violet's hopes which had been strong up to this moment, sank
+at his air of confidence.
+
+"Thank God I am blind this hour and cannot see her," fell from
+his lips, then, before the echo of these words had died away, he
+raised his voice and observed calmly enough, considering that he
+was about to prove himself a criminal in order to save himself
+from being thought a madman:
+
+"Let no one move. I must have my ears free for catching the first
+stroke of the clock." And he raised the pistol before him.
+
+There was a moment of torturing suspense and deep, unbroken
+silence. Violet's eyes were on him so she did not watch the
+clock, but she was suddenly moved by some irresistible impulse to
+note how Mrs. Zabriskie was bearing herself at this critical
+moment, and casting a hurried glance in her direction she
+perceived her tall figure swaying from side to side, as if under
+an intolerable strain of feeling. Her eyes were on the clock, the
+hands of which seemed to creep with snail-like pace along the
+dial, when unexpectedly, and a full minute before the minute hand
+had reached the stroke of five, Violet caught a movement on her
+part, saw the flash of something round and white show for an
+instant against the darkness of her cloak, and was about to
+shriek warning to the doctor, when the shrill, quick stroke of a
+clock rang out on the frosty air, followed by the ping and flash
+of a pistol.
+
+A sound of shattered glass, followed by a suppressed cry, told
+the bystanders that the bullet had struck the mark, but before
+any one could move, or they could rid their eyes of the smoke
+which the wind had blown into their faces, there came another
+sound which made their hair stand on end and sent the blood back
+in terror to their hearts. Another clock was striking, which they
+now perceived was still standing upright on the stump where Mrs.
+Zabriskie had placed it.
+
+Whence came the clock, then, which had struck before the time and
+been shattered for its pains? One quick look told them. On the
+ground, ten paces to the right, lay Zulma Zabriskie, a broken
+clock at her side, and in her breast a bullet which was fast
+sapping the life from her sweet eyes.
+
+They had to tell him, there was such pleading in her looks; and
+never will any of the hearers forget the scream which rang from
+his lips as he realized the truth. Breaking from their midst, he
+rushed forward, and fell at her feet as if guided by some
+supernatural instinct.
+
+"Zulma," he shrieked, "what is this? Were not my hands dyed deep
+enough in blood that you should make me answerable for your life
+also?"
+
+Her eyes were closed but she opened them. Looking long and
+steadily at his agonized face, she faltered forth:
+
+"It is not you who have killed me; it is your crime. Had you been
+innocent of Mr. Hasbrouck's death your bullet would never have
+found my heart. Did you think I could survive the proof that you
+had killed that good man?"
+
+"I did it unwittingly. I--"
+
+"Hush!" she commanded, with an awful look, which happily he could
+not see. "I had another motive. I wished to prove to you, even at
+the cost of my life, that I loved you, had always loved you, and
+not--"
+
+It was now his turn to silence her. His hand crept to her lips,
+and his despairing face turned itself blindly towards those about
+them.
+
+"Go!" he cried; "leave us! Let me take a last farewell of my
+dying wife, without listeners or spectators."
+
+Consulting the eye of her employer who stood close beside her,
+and seeing no hope in it, Violet fell slowly back. The others,
+followed, and the doctor was left alone with his wife. From the
+distant position they took, they saw her arms creep round his
+neck, saw her head fall confidingly on his breast, then silence
+settled upon them, and upon all nature, the gathering twilight
+deepening, till the last glow disappeared from the heavens above
+and from the circle of leafless trees which enclosed this tragedy
+from the outside world.
+
+But at last there came a stir, and Dr. Zabriskie, rising up
+before them with the dead body of his wife held closely to his
+breast, confronted them with a countenance so rapturous that he
+looked like a man transfigured.
+
+"I will carry her to the boat," said he. "Not another hand shall
+touch her. She was my true wife, my true wife!" And he towered
+into an attitude of such dignity and passion that for a moment he
+took on heroic proportions and they forgot that he had just
+proved himself to have committed a cold-blooded and ghastly
+crime.
+
+The stars were shining when the party again took their seats in
+the boat; and if the scene of their crossing to Jersey was
+impressive, what shall be said of the return?
+
+The doctor, as before, sat in the stern, an awesome figure, upon
+which the moon shone with a white radiance that seemed to lift
+his face out of the surrounding darkness and set it like an image
+of frozen horror before their eyes. Against his breast he held
+the form of his dead wife, and now and then Violet saw him stoop
+as if he were listening for some token of life from her set lips.
+Then he would lift himself again with hopelessness stamped upon
+his features, only to lean forward in renewed hope that was again
+destined to disappointment.
+
+Violet had been so overcome by this tragic end to all her hopes,
+that her employer had been allowed to enter the boat with her.
+Seated at her side in the seat directly in front of the doctor,
+he watched with her these simple tokens of a breaking heart,
+saying nothing till they reached midstream, when true to his
+instincts for all his awe and compassion, he suddenly bent
+towards him and said:
+
+"Dr. Zabriskie, the mystery of your crime is no longer a mystery
+to me. Listen and see if I do not understand your temptation, and
+how you, a conscientious and God-fearing man, came to slay your
+innocent neighbour.
+
+"A friend of yours, or so he called himself, had for a long time
+filled your ears with tales tending to make you suspicious of
+your wife and jealous of a certain man whom I will not name. You
+knew that your friend had a grudge against this man, and so for
+many months turned a deaf ear to his insinuations. But finally
+some change which you detected in your wife's bearing or
+conversation roused your own suspicions, and you began to doubt
+her truth and to curse your blindness, which in a measure
+rendered you helpless. The jealous fever grew and had risen to a
+high point when one night--a memorable night--this friend met you
+just as you were leaving town, and with cruel craft whispered in
+your ear that the man you hated was even then with your wife and
+that if you would return at once to your home you would find him
+in her company.
+
+"The demon that lurks at the heart of all men, good or bad,
+thereupon took complete possession, of you, and you answered
+this false friend by saying that you would not return without a
+pistol. Whereupon he offered to take you to his house and give
+you his. You consented, and getting rid of your servant by
+sending him to Poughkeepsie with your excuses, you entered your
+friend's automobile.
+
+"You say you bought the pistol, and perhaps you did, but, however
+that may be, you left his house with it in your pocket, and
+declining companionship, walked home, arriving at the Colonnade a
+little before midnight.
+
+"Ordinarily you have no difficulty in recognizing your own
+doorstep. But, being in a heated frame of mind, you walked faster
+than usual and so passed your own house and stopped at that of
+Mr. Hasbrouck, one door beyond. As the entrances of these houses
+are all alike, there was but one way by which you could have made
+yourself sure that you had reached your own dwelling, and that
+was by feeling for the doctor's sign at the side of the door. But
+you never thought of that. Absorbed in dreams of vengeance, your
+sole impulse was to enter by the quickest means possible. Taking
+out your night key, you thrust it into the lock. It fitted, but
+it took strength to turn it, so much strength that the key was
+twisted and bent by the effort. But this incident, which would
+have attracted your attention at another time, was lost upon you
+at this moment. An entrance had been effected, and you were in
+too excited a frame of mind to notice at what cost, or to detect
+the small differences apparent in the atmosphere and furnishings
+of the two houses, trifles which would have arrested your
+attention under other circumstances, and made you pause before
+the upper floor had been reached.
+
+"It was while going up the stairs that you took out your pistol,
+so that by the time you arrived at the front room door you held
+it already drawn and cocked in your hand. For, being blind, you
+feared escape on the part of your victim, and so waited for
+nothing but the sound of a man's voice before firing. When,
+therefore, the unfortunate Mr. Hasbrouck, roused by this sudden
+intrusion, advanced with an exclamation of astonishment, you
+pulled the trigger, and killed him on the spot. It must have been
+immediately upon his fall that you recognized from some word he
+uttered, or from some contact you may have had with your
+surroundings, that you were in the wrong house and had killed the
+wrong man; for you cried out, in evident remorse, 'God! what have
+I done!' and fled without approaching your victim.
+
+"Descending the stairs, you rushed from the house, closing the
+front door behind you and regaining your own without being seen.
+But here you found yourself baffled in your attempted escape, by
+two things. First, by the pistol you still held in your hand, and
+secondly, by the fact that the key upon which you depended for
+entering your own door was so twisted out of shape that you knew
+it would be useless for you to attempt to use it. What did you do
+in this emergency? You have already told us, though the story
+seemed so improbable at the time, you found nobody to believe it
+but myself. The pistol you flung far away from you down the
+pavement, from which, by one of those rare chances which
+sometimes happen in this world, it was presently picked up by
+some late passer-by of more or less doubtful character. The door
+offered less of an obstacle than you had anticipated; for when
+you turned again you found it, if I am not greatly mistaken,
+ajar, left so, as we have reason to believe, by one who had gone
+out of it but a few minutes before in a state which left him but
+little master of his actions. It was this fact which provided you
+with an answer when you were asked how you succeeded in getting
+into Mr. Hasbrouck's house after the family had retired for the
+night.
+
+"Astonished at the coincidence, but hailing with gladness the
+deliverance which it offered, you went in and ascended at once
+into your wife's presence; and it was from her lips, and not from
+those of Mrs. Hasbrouck, that the cry arose which startled the
+neighbourhood and prepared men's minds for the tragic words which
+were shouted a moment later from the next house.
+
+"But she who uttered the scream knew of no tragedy save that
+which was taking place in her own breast. She had just repulsed a
+dastardly suitor, and seeing you enter so unexpectedly in a state
+of unaccountable horror and agitation, was naturally stricken
+with dismay, and thought she saw your ghost, or what was worse, a
+possible avenger; while you, having failed to kill the man you
+sought, and having killed a man you esteemed, let no surprise on
+her part lure you into any dangerous self-betrayal. You strove
+instead to soothe her, and even attempted to explain the
+excitement under which you laboured, by an account of your narrow
+escape at the station, till the sudden alarm from next door
+distracted her attention, and sent both your thoughts and hers in
+a different direction. Not till conscience had fully awakened and
+the horror of your act had had time to tell upon your sensitive
+nature, did you breathe forth those vague confessions, which, not
+being supported by the only explanations which would have made
+them credible, led her, as well as the police, to consider you
+affected in your mind. Your pride as a man and your consideration
+for her as a woman kept you silent, but did not keep the worm
+from preying upon your heart.
+
+"Am I not correct in my surmises, Dr. Zabriskie, and is not this
+the true explanation of your crime?"
+
+With a strange look, he lifted up his face.
+
+"Hush!" said he; "you will waken her. See how peacefully she
+sleeps! I should not like to have her wakened now, she is so
+tired, and I--I have not watched over her as I should."
+
+Appalled at his gesture, his look, his tone, Violet drew back,
+and for a few minutes no sound was to be heard but the steady dip-
+dip of the oars and the lap-lap of the waters against the boat.
+Then there came a quick uprising, the swaying before her of
+something dark and tall and threatening, and before she could
+speak or move, or even stretch forth her hands to stay him, the
+seat before her was empty and darkness had filled the place where
+but an instant previous he had sat, a fearsome figure, erect and
+rigid as a sphinx.
+
+What little moonlight there was, only served to show a few rising
+bubbles, marking the spot where the unfortunate man had sunk with
+his much-loved burden. As the widening circles fled farther and
+farther out, the tide drifted the boat away, and the spot was
+lost which had seen the termination of one of earth's saddest
+tragedies.
+
+END OF PROBLEM VII
+
+
+PROBLEM VIII
+
+MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN
+
+"One more! just one more well paying affair, and I promise to
+stop; really and truly to stop."
+
+"But, Puss, why one more? You have earned the amount you set for
+yourself,--or very nearly,--and though my help is not great, in
+three months I can add enough--"
+
+"No, you cannot, Arthur. You are doing well; I appreciate it; in
+fact, I am just delighted to have you work for me in the way you
+do, but you cannot, in your present position, make enough in
+three months, or in six, to meet the situation as I see it.
+Enough does not satisfy me. The measure must be full, heaped up,
+and running over. Possible failure following promise must be
+provided for. Never must I feel myself called upon to do this
+kind of thing again. Besides, I have never got over the Zabriskie
+tragedy. It haunts me continually. Something new may help to put
+it out of my head. I feel guilty. I was responsible--"
+
+"No, Puss. I will not have it that you were responsible. Some
+such end was bound to follow a complication like that. Sooner or
+later he would have been driven to shoot himself--"
+
+"But not her."
+
+"No, not her. But do you think she would have given those few
+minutes of perfect understanding with her blind husband for a few
+years more of miserable life?"
+
+Violet made no answer; she was too absorbed in her surprise. Was
+this Arthur? Had a few weeks' work and a close connection with
+the really serious things of life made this change in him? Her
+face beamed at the thought, which seeing, but not understanding
+what underlay this evidence of joy, he bent and kissed her,
+saying with some of his old nonchalance:
+
+"Forget it, Violet; only don't let any one or anything lead you
+to interest yourself in another affair of the kind. If you do, I
+shall have to consult a certain friend of yours as to the best
+way of stopping this folly. I mention no names. Oh! you need not
+look so frightened. Only behave; that's all."
+
+"He's right," she acknowledged to herself, as he sauntered away;
+"altogether right."
+
+Yet because she wanted the extra money--
+
+The scene invited alarm,--that is, for so young a girl as Violet,
+surveying it from an automobile some time after the stroke of
+midnight. An unknown house at the end of a heavily shaded walk,
+in the open doorway of which could be seen the silhouette of a
+woman's form leaning eagerly forward with arms outstretched in an
+appeal for help! It vanished while she looked, but the effect
+remained, holding her to her seat for one startled moment. This
+seemed strange, for she had anticipated adventure. One is not
+summoned from a private ball to ride a dozen miles into the
+country on an errand of investigation, without some expectation
+of encountering the mysterious and the tragic. But Violet
+Strange, for all her many experiences, was of a most susceptible
+nature, and for the instant in which that door stood open, with
+only the memory of that expectant figure to disturb the faintly
+lit vista of the hall beyond, she felt that grip upon the throat
+which comes from an indefinable fear which no words can explain
+and no plummet sound.
+
+But this soon passed. With the setting of her foot to ground,
+conditions changed and her emotions took on a more normal
+character. The figure of a man now stood in the place held by the
+vanished woman; and it was not only that of one she knew but that
+of one whom she trusted--a friend whose very presence gave her
+courage. With this recognition came a better understanding of the
+situation, and it was with a beaming eye and unclouded features
+that she tripped up the walk to meet the expectant figure and
+outstretched hand of Roger Upjohn.
+
+"You here!" she exclaimed, amid smiles and blushes, as he drew
+her into the hall.
+
+He at once launched forth into explanations mingled with
+apologies for the presumption he had shown in putting her to this
+inconvenience. There was trouble in the house--great trouble.
+Something had occurred for which an explanation must be found
+before morning, or the happiness and honour of more than one
+person now under this unhappy roof would be wrecked. He knew it
+was late--that she had been obliged to take a long and dreary
+ride alone, but her success with the problem which had once come
+near wrecking his own life had emboldened him to telephone to the
+office and--"But you are in ball-dress," he cried in amazement.
+"Did you think--"
+
+"I came from a ball. Word reached me between the dances. I did
+not go home. I had been bidden to hurry."
+
+He looked his appreciation, but when he spoke it was to say:
+
+"This is the situation. Miss Digby--"
+
+"The lady who is to be married tomorrow?"
+
+"Who hopes to be married tomorrow."
+
+"How, hopes?"
+
+"Who will be married tomorrow, if a certain article lost in this
+house tonight can be found before any of the persons who have
+been dining here leave for their homes."
+
+Violet uttered an exclamation.
+
+"Then, Mr. Cornell," she began--
+
+"Mr. Cornell has our utmost confidence," Roger hastened to
+interpose. "But the article missing is one which he might
+reasonably desire to possess and which he alone of all present
+had the opportunity of securing. You can therefore see why he,
+with his pride--the pride off a man not rich, engaged to marry a
+woman who is--should declare that unless his innocence is
+established before daybreak, the doors of St. Bartholomew will
+remain shut to-morrow."
+
+"But the article lost--what is it?"
+
+"Miss Digby will give you the particulars. She is waiting to
+receive you," he added with a gesture towards a half-open door at
+their right.
+
+Violet glanced that way, then cast her looks up and down the hall
+in which they stood.
+
+"Do you know that you have not told me in whose house I am? Not
+hers, I know. She lives in the city."
+
+"And you are twelve miles from Harlem. Miss Strange, you are in
+the Van Broecklyn mansion, famous enough you will acknowledge.
+Have you never been here before?"
+
+"I have been by here, but I recognized nothing in the dark. What
+an exciting place for an investigation!"
+
+"And Mr. Van Broecklyn? Have you never met him?"
+
+"Once, when a child. He frightened me then."
+
+"And may frighten you now; though I doubt it. Time has mellowed
+him. Besides, I have prepared him for what might otherwise
+occasion him some astonishment. Naturally he would not look for
+just the sort of lady investigator I am about to introduce to
+him."
+
+She smiled. Violet Strange was a very charming young woman, as
+well as a keen prober of odd mysteries.
+
+The meeting between herself and Miss Digby was a sympathetic one.
+After the first inevitable shock which the latter felt at sight
+of the beauty and fashionable appearance of the mysterious little
+being who was to solve her difficulties, her glance, which, under
+other circumstances, might have lingered unduly upon the piquant
+features and exquisite dressing of the fairy-like figure before
+her, passed at once to Violet's eyes, in whose steady depths
+beamed an intelligence quite at odds with the coquettish dimples
+which so often misled the casual observer in his estimation of a
+character singularly subtle and well-poised.
+
+As for the impression she herself made upon Violet, it was the
+same she made upon everyone. No one could look long at Florence
+Digby and not recognize the loftiness of her spirit and the
+generous nature of her impulses. In person she was tall and as
+she leaned to take Violet's hand, the difference between them
+brought out the salient points in each, to the great admiration
+of the one onlooker.
+
+Meantime, for all her interest in the case in hand, Violet could
+not help casting a hurried look about her, in gratification of
+the curiosity incited by her entrance into a house signalized
+from its foundation by such a series of tragic events. The result
+was disappointing. The walls were plain, the furniture simple.
+Nothing suggestive in either, unless it was the fact that nothing
+was new, nothing modern. As it looked in the days of Burr and
+Hamilton so it looked to-day, even to the rather startling detail
+of candles which did duty on every side in place of gas.
+
+As Violet recalled the reason for this, the fascination of the
+past seized upon her imagination. There was no knowing where this
+might have carried her, had not the feverish gleam in Miss
+Digby's eyes warned her that the present held its own excitement.
+Instantly, she was all attention and listening with undivided
+mind to that lady's disclosures.
+
+They were brief and to the following effect:
+
+The dinner which had brought some half-dozen people together in
+this house had been given in celebration of her impending
+marriage. But it was also in a way meant as a compliment to one
+of the other guests, a Mr. Spielhagen, who, during the week, had
+succeeded in demonstrating to a few experts the value of a
+discovery he had made which would transform a great industry.
+
+In speaking of this discovery, Miss Digby did not go into
+particulars, the whole matter being far beyond her understanding;
+but in stating its value she openly acknowledged that it was in
+the line of Mr. Cornell's own work, and one which involved
+calculations and a formula which, if prematurely disclosed, would
+invalidate the contract Mr. Spielhagen hoped to make, and thus
+destroy his present hopes.
+
+Of this formula but two copies existed. One was locked up in a
+safe deposit vault in Boston, the other he had brought into the
+house on his person, and it was the latter which was now missing,
+having been abstracted during the evening from a manuscript of
+sixteen or more sheets, under circumstances which she would now
+endeavour to relate.
+
+Mr. Van Broecklyn, their host, had in his melancholy life but one
+interest which could be at all absorbing. This was for
+explosives. As consequence, much of the talk at the dinner-table
+had been on Mr. Spielhagen's discovery, and possible changes it
+might introduce into this especial industry. As these, worked out
+from a formula kept secret from the trade, could not but affect
+greatly Mr. Cornell's interests, she found herself listening
+intently, when Mr. Van Broecklyn, with an apology for his
+interference, ventured to remark that if Mr. Spielhagen had made
+a valuable discovery in this line, so had he, and one which he
+had substantiated by many experiments. It was not a marketable
+one, such as Mr. Spielhagen's was, but in his work upon the same,
+and in the tests which he had been led to make, he had discovered
+certain instances he would gladly name, which demanded
+exceptional procedure to be successful. If Mr. Spielhagen's
+method did not allow for these exceptions, nor make suitable
+provision for them, then Mr. Spielhagen's method would fail more
+times than it would succeed. Did it so allow and so provide? It
+would relieve him greatly to learn that it did.
+
+The answer came quickly. Yes, it did. But later and after some
+further conversation, Mr. Spielhagen's confidence seemed to wane,
+and before they left the dinner-table, he openly declared his
+intention of looking over his manuscript again that very night,
+in order to be sure that the formula therein contained duly
+covered all the exceptions mentioned by Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+
+If Mr. Cornell's countenance showed any change at this moment,
+she for one had not noticed it; but the bitterness with which he
+remarked upon the other's good fortune in having discovered this
+formula of whose entire success he had no doubt, was apparent to
+everybody, and naturally gave point to the circumstances which a
+short time afterward associated him with the disappearance of
+the same.
+
+The ladies (there were two others besides herself) having
+withdrawn in a body to the music-room, the gentlemen all
+proceeded to the library to smoke. Here, conversation loosed from
+the one topic which had hitherto engrossed it, was proceeding
+briskly, when Mr. Spielhagen, with nervous gesture, impulsively
+looked about him and said:
+
+"I cannot rest till I have run through my thesis again. Where can
+I find a quiet spot? I won't be long; I read very rapidly."
+
+It was for Mr. Van Broecklyn to answer, but no word coming from
+him, every eye turned his way, only to find him sunk in one of
+those fits of abstraction so well known to his friends, and from
+which no one who has this strange man's peace of mind at heart
+ever presumes to rouse him.
+
+What was to be done? These moods of their singular host sometimes
+lasted half an hour, and Mr. Spielhagen had not the appearance of
+a man of patience. Indeed he presently gave proof of the great
+uneasiness he was labouring under, for noticing a door standing
+ajar on the other side of the room, he remarked to those around
+him:
+
+"A den! and lighted! Do you see any objection to my shutting
+myself in there for a few minutes?"
+
+No one venturing to reply, he rose, and giving a slight push to
+the door, disclosed a small room exquisitely panelled and
+brightly lighted, but without one article of furniture in it, not
+even a chair.
+
+"The very place," quoth Mr. Spielhagen, and lifting a light cane-
+bottomed chair from the many standing about, he carried it inside
+and shut the door behind him.
+
+Several minutes passed during which the man who had served at
+table entered with a tray on which were several small glasses
+evidently containing some choice liqueur. Finding his master
+fixed in one of his strange moods, he set the tray down and,
+pointing to one of the glasses, said:
+
+"That is for Mr. Van Broecklyn. It contains his usual quieting
+powder." And urging the gentlemen to help themselves, he quietly
+left the room. Mr. Upjohn lifted the glass nearest him, and Mr.
+Cornell seemed about to do the same when he suddenly reached
+forward and catching up one farther off started for the room in
+which Mr. Spielhagen had so deliberately secluded himself.
+
+Why he did all this--why, above all things, he should reach
+across the tray for a glass instead of taking the one under his
+hand, he can no more explain than why he has followed many
+another unhappy impulse. Nor did he understand the nervous start
+given by Mr. Spielhagen at his entrance, or the stare with which
+that gentleman took the glass from his hand and mechanically
+drank its contents, till he saw how his hand had stretched itself
+across the sheet of paper he was reading, in an open attempt to
+hide the lines visible between his fingers. Then indeed the
+intruder flushed and withdrew in great embarrassment, fully
+conscious of his indiscretion but not deeply disturbed till Mr.
+Van Broecklyn, suddenly arousing and glancing down at the tray
+placed very near his hand remarked in some surprise: "Dobbs seems
+to have forgotten me." Then indeed, the unfortunate Mr. Cornell
+realized what he had done. It was the glass intended for his host
+which he had caught up and carried into the other room--the glass
+which he had been told contained a drug. Of what folly he had
+been guilty, and how tame would be any effort at excuse!
+
+Attempting none, he rose and with a hurried glance at Mr. Upjohn
+who flushed in sympathy at his distress, he crossed to the door
+he had lately closed upon Mr. Spielhagen. But feeling his
+shoulder touched as his hand pressed the knob, he turned to meet
+the eye of Mr. Van Broecklyn fixed upon him with an expression
+which utterly confounded him.
+
+"Where are you going?" that gentleman asked.
+
+The questioning tone, the severe look, expressive at once of
+displeasure and astonishment, were most disconcerting, but Mr.
+Cornell managed to stammer forth:
+
+"Mr. Spielhagen is in here consulting his thesis. When your man
+brought in the cordial, I was awkward enough to catch up your
+glass and carry it in to. Mr. Spielhagen. He drank it and I--I am
+anxious to see if it did him any harm."
+
+As he uttered the last word he felt Mr. Van Broecklyn's hand slip
+from his shoulder, but no word accompanied the action, nor did
+his host make the least move to follow him into the room.
+
+This was a matter of great regret to him later, as it left him
+for a moment out of the range of every eye, during which he says
+he simply stood in a state of shock at seeing Mr. Spielhagen
+still sitting there, manuscript in hand, but with head fallen
+forward and eyes closed; dead, asleep or--he hardly knew what;
+the sight so paralysed him.
+
+Whether or not this was the exact truth and the whole truth, Mr.
+Cornell certainly looked very unlike himself as he stepped back
+into Mr. Van Broecklyn's presence; and he was only partially
+reassured when that gentleman protested that there was no real
+harm in the drug, and that Mr. Spielhagen would be all right if
+left to wake naturally and without shock. However, as his present
+attitude was one of great discomfort, they decided to carry him
+back and lay him on the library lounge. But before doing this,
+Mr. Upjohn drew from his flaccid grasp, the precious manuscript,
+and carrying it into the larger room placed it on a remote table,
+where it remained undisturbed till Mr. Spielhagen, suddenly
+coming to himself at the end of some fifteen minutes, missed the
+sheets from his hand, and bounding up, crossed the room to
+repossess himself of them.
+
+His face, as he lifted them up and rapidly ran through them with
+ever-accumulating anxiety, told them what they had to expect.
+
+The page containing the formula was gone!
+
+Violet now saw her problem.
+
+II
+
+There was no doubt about the loss I have mentioned; all could see
+that page 13 was not there. In vain a second handling of every
+sheet, the one so numbered was not to be found. Page 14 met the
+eye on the top of the pile, and page 12 finished it off at the
+bottom, but no page 13 in between, or anywhere else.
+
+Where had it vanished, and through whose agency had this
+misadventure occurred? No one could say, or, at least, no one
+there made any attempt to do so, though everybody started to look
+for it.
+
+But where look? The adjoining small room offered no facilities
+for hiding a cigar-end, much less a square of shining white
+paper. Bare walls, a bare floor, and a single chair for
+furniture, comprised all that was to be seen in this direction.
+Nor could the room in which they then stood be thought to hold
+it, unless it was on the person of some one of them. Could this
+be the explanation of the mystery? No man looked his doubts; but
+Mr. Cornell, possibly divining the general feeling, stepped up to
+Mr. Van Broecklyn and in a cool voice, but with the red burning
+hotly on either cheek, said, so as to be heard by everyone
+present:
+
+"I demand to be searched--at once and thoroughly."
+
+A moment's silence, then the common cry:
+
+"We will all be searched."
+
+"Is Mr. Spielhagen sure that the missing page was with the others
+when he sat down in the adjoining room to read his thesis?" asked
+their perturbed host.
+
+"Very sure," came the emphatic reply. "Indeed, I was just going
+through the formula itself when I fell asleep."
+
+"You are ready to assert this?"
+
+"I am ready to swear it."
+
+Mr. Cornell repeated his request.
+
+"I demand that you make a thorough search of my person. I must be
+cleared, and instantly, of every suspicion," he gravely asserted,
+"or how can I marry Miss Digby to-morrow."
+
+After that there was no further hesitation. One and all subjected
+themselves to the ordeal suggested; even Mr. Spielhagen. But this
+effort was as futile as the rest. The lost page was not found.
+
+What were they to think? What were they to do?
+
+There seemed to be nothing left to do, and yet some further
+attempt must be made towards the recovery of this important
+formula. Mr. Cornell's marriage and Mr. Spielhagen's business
+success both depended upon its being in the latter's hands before
+six in the morning, when he was engaged to hand it over to a
+certain manufacturer sailing for Europe on an early steamer.
+
+Five hours!
+
+Had Mr. Van Broecklyn a suggestion to offer? No, he was as much
+at sea as the rest.
+
+Simultaneously look crossed look. Blankness was on every face.
+
+"Let us call the ladies," suggested one.
+
+It was done, and however great the tension had been before, it
+was even greater when Miss Digby stepped upon the scene. But she
+was not a woman to be shaken from her poise even by a crisis of
+this importance. When the dilemma had been presented to her and
+the full situation grasped, she looked first at Mr. Cornell and
+then at Mr. Spielhagen, and quietly said:
+
+"There is but one explanation possible of this matter. Mr.
+Spielhagen will excuse me, but he is evidently mistaken in
+thinking that he saw the lost page among the rest. The condition
+into which he was thrown by the unaccustomed drug he had drank,
+made him liable to hallucinations. I have not the least doubt he
+thought he had been studying the formula at the time he dropped
+off to sleep. I have every confidence in the gentleman's candour.
+But so have I in that of Mr. Cornell," she supplemented, with a
+smile.
+
+An exclamation from Mr. Van Broecklyn and a subdued murmur from
+all but Mr. Spielhagen testified to the effect of this
+suggestion, and there is no saying what might have been the
+result if Mr. Cornell had not hurriedly put in this extraordinary
+and most unexpected protest:
+
+"Miss Digby has my gratitude," said he, "for a confidence which I
+hope to prove to be deserved. But I must say this for Mr.
+Spielhagen. He was correct in stating that he was engaged in
+looking over his formula when I stepped into his presence with
+the glass of cordial. If you were not in a position to see the
+hurried way in which his hand instinctively spread itself over
+the page he was reading, I was; and if that does not seem
+conclusive to you, then I feel bound to state that in
+unconsciously following this movement of his, I plainly saw the
+number written on the top of the page, and that number was--13."
+
+A loud exclamation, this time from Spielhagen himself, announced
+his gratitude and corresponding change of attitude toward the
+speaker.
+
+"Wherever that damned page has gone," he protested, advancing
+towards Cornell with outstretched hand, "you have nothing to do
+with its disappearance."
+
+Instantly all constraint fled, and every countenance took on a
+relieved expression. But the problem remained.
+
+Suddenly those very words passed some one's lips, and with their
+utterance Mr. Upjohn remembered how at an extraordinary crisis in
+his own life he had been helped and an equally difficult problem
+settled, by a little lady secretly attached to a private
+detective agency. If she could only be found and hurried here
+before morning, all might yet be well. He would make the effort.
+Such wild schemes sometimes work. He telephoned to the office and--
+
+Was there anything else Miss Strange would like to know?
+
+III
+
+Miss Strange, thus appealed to, asked where the gentlemen were
+now.
+
+She was told that they were still all together in the library;
+the ladies had been sent home.
+
+"Then let us go to them," said Violet, hiding under a smile her
+great fear that here was an affair which might very easily spell
+for her that dismal word, failure.
+
+So great was that fear that under all ordinary circumstances she
+would have had no thought for anything else in the short interim
+between this stating of the problem and her speedy entrance among
+the persons involved. But the circumstances of this case were so
+far from ordinary, or rather let me put it in this way, the
+setting of the case was so very extraordinary, that she scarcely
+thought of the problem before her, in her great interest in the
+house through whose rambling halls she was being so carefully
+guided. So much that was tragic and heartrending had occurred
+here. The Van Broecklyn name, the Van Broecklyn history, above
+all the Van Broecklyn tradition, which made the house unique in
+the country's annals (of which more hereafter), all made an
+appeal to her imagination, and centred her thoughts on what she
+saw about her. There was door which no man ever opened--had never
+opened since Revolutionary times--should she see it? Should she
+know it if she did see it? Then Mr. Van Broecklyn himself! just
+to meet him, under any conditions and in any place, was an event.
+But to meet him here, under the pall of his own mystery! No
+wonder she had no words for her companions, or that her thoughts
+clung to this anticipation in wonder and almost fearsome delight.
+
+His story was a well-known one. A bachelor and a misanthrope, he
+lived absolutely alone save for a large entourage of servants,
+all men and elderly ones at that. He never visited. Though he now
+and then, as on this occasion, entertained certain persons under
+his roof, he declined every invitation for himself, avoiding
+even, with equal strictness, all evening amusements of whatever
+kind, which would detain him in the city after ten at night.
+Perhaps this was to ensure no break in his rule of life never to
+sleep out of his own bed. Though he was a man well over fifty he
+had not spent, according to his own statement, but two nights out
+of his own bed since his return from Europe in early boyhood, and
+those were in obedience to a judicial summons which took him to
+Boston.
+
+This was his main eccentricity, but he had another which is
+apparent enough from what has already been said. He avoided
+women. If thrown in with them during his short visits into town,
+he was invariably polite and at times companionable, but he never
+sought them out, nor had gossip, contrary to its usual habit,
+ever linked his name with one of the sex.
+
+Yet he was a man of more than ordinary attraction. His features
+were fine and his figure impressive. He might have been the
+cynosure of all eyes had he chosen to enter crowded drawing-
+rooms, or even to frequent public assemblages, but having turned
+his back upon everything of the kind in his youth, he had found
+it impossible to alter his habits with advancing years; nor was
+he now expected to. The position he had taken was respected.
+Leonard Van Broecklyn was no longer criticized.
+
+Was there any explanation for this strangely self-centred life?
+Those who knew him best seemed to think so. In the first place he
+had sprung from an unfortunate stock. Events of unusual and
+tragic nature had marked the family of both parents. Nor had his
+parents themselves been exempt from this seeming fatality.
+Antagonistic in tastes and temperament, they had dragged on an
+unhappy existence in the old home, till both natures rebelled,
+and a separation ensued which not only disunited their lives but
+sent them to opposite sides of the globe never to return again,
+At least, that was the inference drawn from the peculiar
+circumstances attending the event. On the morning of one never-
+to-be-forgotten day, John Van Broecklyn, the grandfather of the
+present representative of the family, found the following note
+from his son lying on the library table:
+
+"FATHER:
+
+"Life in this house, or any house, with her is no longer
+endurable. One of us must go. The mother should not be separated
+from her child. Therefore it is I whom you will never see again.
+Forget me, but be considerate of her and the boy.
+
+"WILLIAM."
+
+Six hours later another note was found, this time from the wife:
+
+"FATHER:
+
+"Tied to a rotting corpse what does one do? Lop off one's arm if
+necessary to rid one of the contact. As all love between your
+son and myself is dead, I can no longer live within the sound of
+his voice. As this is his home, he is the one to remain in it.
+May our child reap the benefit of his mother's loss and his
+father's affection.
+
+"RHODA."
+
+Both were gone, and gone forever. Simultaneous in their
+departure, they preserved each his own silence and sent no word
+back. If the one went east and the other west, they may have met
+on the other side of the globe, but never again in the home which
+sheltered their boy. For him and for his grandfather they had
+sunk from sight in the great sea of humanity, leaving them
+stranded on an isolated and mournful shore. The grand-father
+steeled himself to the double loss, for the child's sake; but the
+boy of eleven succumbed. Few of the world's great sufferers, of
+whatever age or condition, have mourned as this child mourned, or
+shown the effects of his grief so deeply or so long. Not till he
+had passed his majority did the line, carved in one day in his
+baby forehead, lose any of its intensity; and there are those who
+declare that even later than that, the midnight stillness of the
+house was disturbed from time to time by his muffled shriek of
+"Mother! Mother!", sending the servants from the house, and
+adding one more horror to the many which clung about this
+accursed mansion.
+
+Of this cry Violet had heard, and it was that and the door--But I
+have already told you about the door which she was still looking
+for, when her two companions suddenly halted, and she found
+herself on the threshold of the library, in full view of Mr. Van
+Broecklyn and his two guests.
+
+Slight and fairy-like in figure, with an air of modest reserve
+more in keeping with her youth and dainty dimpling beauty than
+with her errand,  her appearance produced an astonishment none of
+which  the gentlemen were able to disguise. This the clever
+detective, with a genius for social problems and odd elusive
+cases! This darling of the ball-room in satin and pearls! Mr.
+Spielhagen glanced at Mr. Cornell, and Mr. Cornell at Mr.
+Spielhagen, and both at Mr. Upjohn, in very evident distrust. As
+for Violet, she had eyes only for Mr. Van Broecklyn who stood
+before her in a surprise equal to that of the others but with
+more restraint in its expression.
+
+She was not disappointed in him. She had expected to see a man,
+reserved almost to the point of austerity. And she found his
+first look even more awe-compelling than her imagination had
+pictured; so much so indeed, that her resolution faltered, and
+she took a quick step backward; which seeing, he smiled and her
+heart and hopes grew warm again. That he could smile, and smile
+with absolute sweetness, was her great comfort when later--But I
+am introducing you too hurriedly to the catastrophe. There is
+much to be told first.
+
+I pass over the preliminaries, and come at once to the moment
+when Violet, having listened to a repetition of the full facts,
+stood with downcast eyes before these gentlemen, complaining in
+some alarm to herself: "They expect me to tell them now and
+without further search or parley just where this missing page is.
+I shall have to balk that expectation without losing their
+confidence. But how?"
+
+Summoning up her courage and meeting each inquiring eye with a
+look which seemed to carry a different message to each, she
+remarked very quietly:
+
+"This is not a matter to guess at. I must have time and I must
+look a little deeper into the facts just given me. I presume that
+the table I see over there is the one upon which Mr. Upjohn laid
+the manuscript during Mr. Spielhagen's unconsciousness."
+
+All nodded.
+
+"Is it--I mean the table--in the same condition it was then? Has
+nothing been taken from it except the manuscript?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Then the missing page is not there," she smiled, pointing to its
+bare top. A pause, during which she stood with her gaze fixed on
+the floor before her. She was thinking and thinking hard.
+
+Suddenly she came to a decision. Addressing Mr. Upjohn she asked
+if he were quite sure that in taking the manuscript from Mr.
+Spielhagen's hand he had neither disarranged nor dropped one of
+its pages.
+
+The answer was unequivocal.
+
+"Then," she declared, with quiet assurance and a steady meeting
+with her own of every eye, "as the thirteenth page was not found
+among the others when they were taken from this table, nor on the
+persons of either Mr. Cornell or Mr. Spielhagen, it is still in
+that inner room."
+
+"Impossible!" came from every lip, each in a different tone.
+"That room is absolutely empty."
+
+"May I have a look at its emptiness?" she asked, with a naive
+glance at Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+
+"There is positively nothing in the room but the chair Mr.
+Spielhagen sat on," objected that gentleman with a noticeable air
+of reluctance.
+
+"Still, may I not have a look at it?" she persisted, with that
+disarming smile she kept for great occasions.
+
+Mr. Van Broecklyn bowed. He could not refuse a request so urged,
+but his step was slow and his manner next to ungracious as he led
+the way to the door of the adjoining room and threw it open.
+
+Just what she had been told to expect! Bare walls and floors and
+an empty chair! Yet she did not instantly withdraw, but stood
+silently contemplating the panelled wainscoting surrounding her,
+as though she suspected it of containing some secret hiding-
+place not apparent to the eye.
+
+Mr. Van Broecklyn, noting this, hastened to say:
+
+"The walls are sound, Miss Strange. They contain no hidden
+cupboards."
+
+"And that door?" she asked, pointing to a portion of the
+wainscoting so exactly like the rest that only the most
+experienced eye could detect the line of deeper colour which
+marked an opening.
+
+For an instant Mr. Van Broecklyn stood rigid, then the immovable
+pallor, which was one of his chief characteristics, gave way to a
+deep flush as he explained:
+
+"There was a door there once; but it has been permanently closed.
+With cement," he forced himself to add, his countenance losing
+its evanescent colour till it shone ghastly again in the strong
+light.
+
+With difficulty Violet preserved her show of composure. "The
+door!" she murmured to herself. "I have found it. The great
+historic door!" But her tone was light as she ventured to say:
+
+"Then it can no longer be opened by your hand or any other?"
+
+"It could not be opened with an axe."
+
+Violet sighed in the midst of her triumph. Her curiosity had been
+satisfied, but the problem she had been set to solve looked
+inexplicable. But she was not one to yield easily to
+discouragement. Marking the disappointment approaching to disdain
+in every eye but Mr. Upjohn's, she drew herself up--(she had not
+far to draw) and made this final proposal.
+
+"A sheet of paper," she remarked, "of the size of this one cannot
+be spirited away, or dissolved into thin air. It exists; it is
+here; and all we want is some happy thought in order to find it.
+I acknowledge that that happy thought has not come to me yet, but
+sometimes I get it in what may seem to you a very odd way.
+Forgetting myself, I try to assume the individuality of the
+person who has worked the mystery. If I can think with his
+thoughts, I possibly may follow him in his actions. In this case
+I should like to make believe for a few moments that I am Mr.
+Spielhagen" (with what a delicious smile she said this) "I should
+like to hold his thesis in my hand and be interrupted in my
+reading by Mr. Cornell offering his glass of cordial; then I
+should like to nod and slip off mentally into a deep sleep.
+Possibly in that sleep the dream may come which will clarify the
+whole situation. Will you humour me so far?"
+
+A ridiculous concession, but finally she had her way; the farce
+was enacted and they left her as she had requested them to do,
+alone with her dreams in the small room.
+
+Suddenly they heard her cry out, and in another moment she
+appeared before them, the picture of excitement.
+
+"Is this chair standing exactly as it did when Mr. Spielhagen
+occupied it?" she asked.
+
+"No," said Mr. Upjohn, "it faced the other way."
+
+She stepped back and twirled the chair about with her disengaged
+hand.
+
+"So?"
+
+Mr. Upjohn and Mr. Spielhagen both nodded, so did the others when
+she glanced at them.
+
+With a sign of ill-concealed satisfaction, she drew their
+attention to herself; then eagerly cried:
+
+"Gentlemen, look here!"
+
+Seating herself, she allowed her whole body to relax till she
+presented the picture of one calmly asleep. Then, as they
+continued to gaze at with fascinated eyes, not knowing what to
+expect, they saw something white escape from her lap and slide
+across the floor till it touched and was stayed by the wainscot.
+It was the top page of the manuscript she held, and as some
+inkling of the truth reached their astonished minds, she sprang
+impetuously to her feet and, pointing to the fallen sheet, cried:
+
+"Do you understand now? Look where it lies and then look here!"
+
+She had bounded towards the wall and was now on her knees
+pointing to the bottom of the wainscot, just a few inches to the
+left of the fallen page.
+
+"A crack!" she cried, "under what was once the door. It's a very
+thin one, hardly perceptible to the eye. But see!" Here she laid
+her finger on the fallen paper and drawing it towards her, pushed
+it carefully against the lower edge of the wainscot. Half of it
+at once disappeared.
+
+"I could easily slip it all through," she assured them,
+withdrawing the sheet and leaping to her feet in triumph. "You
+know now where the missing page lies, Mr. Spielhagen. All that
+remains is for Mr. Van Broecklyn to get it for you."
+
+IV
+
+The cries of mingled astonishment and relief which greeted this
+simple elucidation of the mystery were broken by a curiously
+choked, almost unintelligible, cry. It came from the man thus
+appealed to, who, unnoticed by them all, had started at her first
+word and gradually, as action followed action, withdrawn himself
+till he now stood alone and in an attitude almost of defiance
+behind the large table in the centre of the library.
+
+"I am sorry," he began, with a brusqueness which gradually toned
+down into a forced urbanity as he beheld every eye fixed upon him
+in amazement, "that circumstances forbid my being of assistance
+to you in this unfortunate matter. If the paper lies where you
+say, and I see no other explanation of its loss, I am afraid it
+will have to remain there for this night at least. The cement in
+which that door is embedded is thick as any wall; it would take
+men with pickaxes, possibly with dynamite, to make a breach there
+wide enough for any one to reach in. And we are far from any such
+help."
+
+In the midst of the consternation caused by these words, the
+clock on the mantel behind his back rang out the hour. It was but
+a double stroke, but that meant two hours after midnight and had
+the effect of a knell in the hearts of those most interested.
+
+"But I am expected to give that formula into the hands of our
+manager before six o'clock in the morning. The steamer sails at a
+quarter after."
+
+"Can't you reproduce a copy of it from memory?" some one asked;
+"and insert it in its proper place among the pages you hold
+there?"
+
+"The paper would not be the same.  That would lead to questions
+and the truth would come out. As the chief value of the process
+contained in that formula lies in its secrecy, no explanation I
+could give would relieve me from the suspicions which an
+acknowledgment of the existence of a third copy, however well
+hidden, would entail. I should lose my great opportunity."
+
+Mr. Cornell's state of mind can be imagined. In an access of
+mingled regret and despair, he cast a glance at Violet, who, with
+a nod of understanding, left the little room in which they still
+stood, and approached Mr. Van Broecklyn.
+
+Lifting up her head,--for he was very tall,--and instinctively
+rising on her toes the nearer to reach his ear, she asked in a
+cautious whisper:
+
+"Is there no other way of reaching that place?"
+
+She acknowledged afterwards, that for one moment her heart stood
+still from fear, such a change took place in his face, though she
+says he did not move a muscle. Then, just when she was expecting
+from him some harsh or forbidding word, he wheeled abruptly away
+from her and crossing to a window at his side, lifted the shade
+and looked out. When he returned, he was his usual self so far as
+she could see.
+
+"There is a way," he now confided to her in a tone as low as her
+own, "but it can only be taken by a child."
+
+"Not by me?" she asked, smiling down at her own childish
+proportions.
+
+For an instant he seemed taken aback, then she saw his hand begin
+to tremble and his lips twitch. Somehow--she knew not why--she
+began to pity him, and asked herself as she felt rather than saw
+the struggle in his mind, that here was a trouble which if once
+understood would greatly dwarf that of the two men in the room
+behind them.
+
+"I am discreet," she whisperingly declared.  "I have heard the
+history of that door--how it was against the tradition of the
+family to have it opened. There must have been some very dreadful
+reason. But old superstitions do not affect me, and if you will
+allow me to take the way you mention, I will follow your bidding
+exactly, and will not trouble myself about anything but the
+recovery of this paper, which must lie only a little way inside
+that blocked-up door."
+
+Was his look one of rebuke at her presumption, or just the
+constrained expression of a perturbed mind? Probably, the latter,
+for while she watched him for some understanding of his mood, he
+reached out his hand and touched one of the satin folds crossing
+her shoulder.
+
+"You would soil this irretrievably," said he.
+
+"There is stuff in the stores for another," she smiled. Slowly
+his touch deepened into pressure. Watching him she saw the crust
+of some old fear or dominant superstition melt under her eyes,
+and was quite prepared, when he remarked, with what for him was
+a lightsome air:
+
+"I will buy the stuff, if you will dare the darkness and
+intricacies of our old cellar. I can give you no light. You will
+have to feel your way according to my direction."
+
+"I am ready to dare anything."
+
+He left her abruptly.
+
+"I will warn Miss Digby," he called back. "She shall go with you
+as far as the cellar."
+
+V
+
+Violet in her short career as an investigator of mysteries had
+been in many a situation calling for more than womanly nerve and
+courage. But never--or so it seemed to her at the time--had she
+experienced a greater depression of spirit than when she stood
+with Miss Digby before a small door at the extreme end of the
+cellar, and understood that here was her road--a road which once
+entered, she must take alone.
+
+First, it was such a small door! No child older than eleven could
+possibly squeeze through it. But she was of the size of a
+child of eleven and might possibly manage that difficulty.
+
+Secondly: there are always some unforeseen possibilities in every
+situation, and though she had listened carefully to Mr. Van
+Broecklyn's directions and was sure that she knew them by heart,
+she wished she had kissed her father more tenderly in leaving him
+that night for the ball, and that she had not pouted so
+undutifully at some harsh stricture he had made. Did this mean
+fear? She despised the feeling if it did.
+
+Thirdly: She hated darkness. She knew this when she offered
+herself for this undertaking; but she was in a bright room at the
+moment and only imagined what she must now face as a reality. But
+one jet had been lit in the cellar and that near the entrance.
+Mr. Van Broecklyn seemed not to need light, even in his
+unfastening of the small door which Violet was sure had been
+protected by more than one lock.
+
+Doubt, shadow, and a solitary climb between unknown walls, with
+only a streak of light for her goal, and the clinging pressure of
+Florence Digby's hand on her own for solace--surely the prospect
+was one to tax the courage of her young heart to its limit. But
+she had promised, and she would fulfill. So with a brave smile
+she stooped to the little door, and in another moment had started
+her journey.
+
+For journey the shortest distance may seem when every inch means
+a heart-throb and one grows old in traversing a foot. At first
+the way was easy; she had but to crawl up a slight incline with
+the comforting consciousness that two people were within reach of
+her voice, almost within sound of her beating heart. But
+presently she came to a turn, beyond which her fingers failed to
+reach any wall on her left. Then came a step up which she
+stumbled, and farther on a short flight, each tread of which she
+had been told to test before she ventured to climb it, lest the
+decay of innumerable years should have weakened the wood too much
+to bear her weight. One, two, three, four, five steps! Then a
+landing with an open space beyond. Half of her journey was done.
+Here she felt she could give a minute to drawing her breath
+naturally, if the air, unchanged in years, would allow her to do
+so. Besides, here she had been enjoined to do a certain thing and
+to do it according to instructions. Three matches had been given
+her and a little night candle. Denied all light up to now, it was
+at this point she was to light her candle and place it on the
+floor, so that in returning she should not miss the staircase and
+get a fall. She had promised to do this, and was only too happy
+to see a spark of light scintillate into life in the immeasurable
+darkness.
+
+She was now in a great room long closed to the world, where once
+officers in Colonial wars had feasted, and more than one council
+had been held. A room, too, which had seen more than one tragic
+happening, as its almost unparalleled isolation proclaimed. So
+much Mr. Van Broecklyn had told her; but she was warned to be
+careful in traversing it and not upon any pretext to swerve aside
+from the right-hand wall till she came to a huge mantelpiece.
+This passed, and a sharp corner turned, she ought to see
+somewhere in the dim spaces before her a streak of vivid light
+shining through the crack at the bottom of the blocked-up door.
+The paper should be somewhere near this streak.
+
+All simple, all easy of accomplishment, if only that streak of
+light were all she was likely to see or think of. If the horror
+which was gripping her throat should not take shape! If things
+would remain shrouded in impenetrable darkness, and not force
+themselves in shadowy suggestion upon her excited fancy! But the
+blackness of the passage-way through which she had just struggled
+was not to be found here. Whether it was the effect of that small
+flame flickering at the top of the staircase behind her, or of
+some change in her own powers of seeing, surely there was a
+difference in her present outlook. Tall shapes were becoming
+visible--the air was no longer blank--she could see--Then
+suddenly she saw why. In the wall high up on her right was a
+window. It was small  and all but invisible, being covered on the
+outside with vines, and on the inside with the cobwebs of a
+century. But some small gleams from the star-light night came
+through, making phantasms out of ordinary things, which unseen
+were horrible enough, and half seen choked her heart with terror.
+
+"I cannot bear it," she whispered to herself even while creeping
+forward, her hand upon the wall. "I will close my eyes" was her
+next thought. "I will make my own darkness," and with a spasmodic
+forcing of her lids together, she continued to creep on, passing
+the mantelpiece, where she knocked against something which fell
+with an awful clatter.
+
+This sound, followed as it was by that of smothered voices from
+the excited group awaiting the result of her experiment from
+behind the impenetrable wall she should be nearing now if she had
+followed her instructions aright, freed her instantly from her
+fancies; and opening her eyes once more, she cast a look ahead,
+and to her delight, saw but a few steps away, the thin streak of
+bright light which marked the end of her journey.
+
+It took her but a moment after that to find the missing page, and
+picking it up in haste from the dusty floor, she turned herself
+quickly about and joyfully began to retrace her steps. Why then,
+was it that in the course of a few minutes more her voice
+suddenly broke into a wild, unearthly shriek, which ringing with
+terror burst the bounds of that dungeon-like room, and sank, a
+barbed shaft, into the breasts of those awaiting the result of
+her doubtful adventure, at either end of this dread no-
+thoroughfare.
+
+What had happened?
+
+If they had thought to look out, they would have seen that the
+moon--held in check by a bank of cloud occupying half the heavens
+--had suddenly burst its bounds and was sending long bars of
+revealing light into every uncurtained window.
+
+VI
+
+Florence Digby, in her short and sheltered life, had possibly
+never known any very great or deep emotion. But she touched the
+bottom of extreme terror at that moment, as with her ears still
+thrilling with Violet's piercing cry, she turned to look at Mr.
+Van Broecklyn, and beheld the instantaneous wreck it had made of
+this seemingly strong man. Not till he came to lie in his coffin
+would he show a more ghastly countenance; and trembling herself
+almost to the point of falling, caught him by the arm and sought
+to read his face what had happened. Something disastrous she was
+sure; something which he had feared and was partially prepared
+for, yet which in happening had crushed him. Was it a pitfall
+into which the poor little lady had fallen? If so--But he is
+speaking--mumbling low words to himself. Some of them she can
+hear. He is reproaching himself--repeating over and over that he
+should never have taken such a chance; that he should have
+remembered her youth--the weakness of a young girl's nerve. He
+had been mad, and now--and now--
+
+With the repetition of this word his murmuring ceased. All his
+energies were now absorbed in listening at the low door
+separating him from what he was agonizing to know--a door
+impossible to enter, impossible to enlarge--a barrier to all help
+--an opening whereby sound might pass but nothing else, save her
+own small body, now lying--where?
+
+"Is she hurt?" faltered Florence, stooping, herself, to listen.
+"Can you hear anything--anything?"
+
+For an instant he did not answer; every faculty was absorbed in
+the one sense; then slowly and in gasps he began to mutter:
+
+"I think--I hear--something. Her step--no, no, no step. All is as
+quiet as death; not a sound, not a breath--she has fainted. O
+God! O God! Why this calamity on top of all!"
+
+He had sprung to his feet at the utterance this invocation, but
+next moment was down on knees again, listening--listening.
+
+Never was silence more profound; they were hearkening for murmurs
+from a tomb. Florence began to sense the full horror of it all,
+and was swaying helplessly when Mr. Van Broecklyn impulsively
+lifted his hand in an admonitory Hush! and through the daze of
+her faculties a small far sound began to make itself heard,
+growing louder as she waited, then becoming faint again, then
+altogether ceasing only to renew itself once more, till it
+resolved into an approaching step, faltering in its course, but
+coming ever nearer and nearer.
+
+"She's safe! She's not hurt!" sprang from Florence's lips in
+inexpressible relief; and expecting Mr. Van Broecklyn to show an
+equal joy, she turned towards him, with the cheerful cry
+
+"Now if she has been so fortunate as to that missing page, we
+shall all be repaid for our fright."
+
+A movement on his part, a shifting of position which brought him
+finally to his feet, but he gave no other proof of having heard
+her, nor did his countenance mirror her relief. "It is as if he
+dreaded, instead of hailed, her return," was Florence's inward
+comment as she watched him involuntarily recoil at each fresh
+token of Violet's advance.
+
+Yet because this seemed so very unnatural, she persisted in her
+efforts to lighten the situation, and when he made no attempt to
+encourage Violet in her approach, she herself stooped and called
+out a cheerful welcome which must have rung sweetly in the poor
+little detective's ears.
+
+A sorry sight was Violet, when, helped by Florence, she finally
+crawled into view through the narrow opening and stood once again
+on the cellar floor. Pale, trembling, and soiled with the dust of
+years, she presented a helpless figure enough, till the joy in
+Florence's face recalled some of her spirit, and, glancing down
+at her hand in which a sheet of paper was visible, she asked for
+Mr. Spielhagen.
+
+"I've got the formula," she said. "If you will bring him, I will
+hand it over to him here."
+
+Not a word of her adventure; nor so much as one glance at Mr. Van
+Broecklyn, standing far back in the shadows.
+
+Nor was she more communicative, when, the formula restored and
+everything made right with Mr. Spielhagen, they all came together
+again in the library for a final word. "I was frightened by the
+silence and the darkness, and so cried out," she explained in
+answer to their questions. "Any one would have done so who found
+himself alone in so musty a place," she added, with an attempt at
+lightsomeness which deepened the pallor on Mr. Van Broecklyn's
+cheek, already sufficiently noticeable to have been remarked upon
+by more than one.
+
+"No ghosts?" laughed Mr. Cornell, too happy in the return of his
+hopes to be fully sensible of the feelings of those about him.
+"No whispers from impalpable lips or touches from spectre hands?
+Nothing to explain the mystery of that room long shut up that
+even Mr. Van Broecklyn declares himself ignorant of its secret?"
+
+"Nothing," returned Violet, showing her dimples in full force
+now.
+
+"If Miss Strange had any such experiences--if she has anything to
+tell worthy of so marked a curiosity, she will tell it now," came
+from the gentleman just alluded to, in tones so stern and strange
+that all show of frivolity ceased on the instant. "Have you
+anything to tell, Miss Strange?"
+
+Greatly startled, she regarded him with widening eyes for a
+moment, then with a move towards the door, remarked, with a
+general look about her:
+
+"Mr. Van Broecklyn knows his own house, and doubtless can relate
+its histories if he will. I am a busy little body who having
+finished my work am now ready to return home, there to wait for
+the next problem which an indulgent fate may offer me."
+
+She was near the threshold--she was about to take her leave, when
+suddenly she felt two hands fall on her shoulder, and turning,
+met the eyes of Mr. Van Broecklyn burning into her own.
+
+"You saw!" dropped in an almost inaudible whisper from his lips.
+
+The shiver which shook her answered him better than any word.
+
+With an exclamation of despair, he withdrew his hands, and facing
+the others now standing together in a startled group, he said, as
+soon as he could recover some of his self-possession:
+
+"I must ask for another hour of your company. I can no longer
+keep my sorrow to myself. A dividing line has just been drawn
+across my life, and I must have the sympathy of someone who
+knows my past, or I shall go mad in my self-imposed solitude.
+Come back, Miss Strange. You of all others have the prior right
+to hear."
+
+VII
+
+"I shall have to begin," said he, when they were all seated and
+ready to listen, "by giving you some idea, not so much of the
+family tradition, as of the effect of this tradition upon all
+who bore the name of Van Broecklyn. This is not the only house,
+even in America, which contains a room shut away from intrusion.
+In England there are many. But there is this difference between
+most of them and ours. No bars or locks forcibly held shut the
+door we were forbidden to open. The command was enough; that and
+the superstitious fear which such a command, attended by a long
+and unquestioning obedience, was likely to engender.
+
+"I know no more than you do why some early ancestor laid his ban
+upon this room. But from my earliest years I was given to
+understand that there was one latch in the house which was never
+to be lifted; that any fault would be forgiven sooner than that;
+that the honour of the whole family stood in the way of
+disobedience, and that I was to preserve that honour to my dying
+day. You will say that all this is fantastic, and wonder that
+sane people in these modern times should subject themselves to
+such a ridiculous restriction, especially when no good reason was
+alleged, and the very source of the tradition from which it
+sprung forgotten. You are right; but if you look long into human
+nature, you will see that the bonds which hold the firmest are
+not material ones--that an idea will make a man and mould a
+character--that it lies at the source of all heroisms and is to
+be courted or feared as the case may be.
+
+"For me it possessed a power proportionate to my loneliness. I
+don't think there was ever a more lonely child. My father and
+mother were so unhappy in each other's companionship that one or
+other of them was almost always away. But I saw little of either
+even when they were at home. The constraint in their attitude
+towards each other affected their conduct towards me. I have
+asked myself more than once if either of them had any real
+affection for me. To my father I spoke of her; to her of him; and
+never pleasurably. This I am forced to say, or you cannot
+understand my story. Would to God I could tell another tale!
+Would to God I had such memories as other men have of a father's
+clasp, a mother's kiss--but no! my grief, already profound, might
+have become abysmal. Perhaps it is best as it is; only, I might
+have been a different child, and made for myself a different fate-
+-who knows.
+
+"As it was, I was thrown almost entirely upon my own resources
+for any amusement. This led me to a discovery I made one day. In
+a far part of the cellar behind some heavy casks, I found a
+little door. It was so low--so exactly fitted to my small body,
+that I had the greatest desire to enter it. But I could not get
+around the casks. At last an expedient occurred to me. We had an
+old servant who came nearer loving me than any one else. One day
+when I chanced to be alone in the cellar, I took out my ball and
+began throwing it about. Finally it landed behind the casks, and
+I ran with a beseeching cry to Michael, to move them.
+
+"It was a task requiring no little strength and address, but he
+managed, after a few herculean efforts, to shift them aside and I
+saw with delight, my way opened to that mysterious little door.
+But I did not approach it then; some instinct deterred me. But
+when the opportunity came for me to venture there alone, I did
+so, in the most adventurous spirit, and began my operations by
+sliding behind the casks and testing the handle of the little
+door. It turned, and after a pull or two the door yielded. With
+my heart in my mouth, I stooped and peered in. I could see
+nothing--a black hole and nothing more. This caused me a moment's
+hesitation. I was afraid of the dark--had always been. But
+curiosity and the spirit of adventure triumphed. Saying to myself
+that I was Robinson Crusoe exploring the cave, I crawled in, only
+to find that I had gained nothing. It was as dark inside as it
+had looked to be from without.
+
+"There was no fun in this, so I crawled back, and when I tried
+the experiment again, it was with a bit of candle in my hand, and
+a surreptitious match or two. What I saw, when with a very
+trembling little hand I had lighted one of the matches, would
+have been disappointing to most boys, but not to me. The litter
+and old boards I saw in odd corners about me were full of
+possibilities, while in the dimness beyond I seemed to perceive a
+sort of staircase which might lead--I do not think I made any
+attempt to answer that question even in my own mind, but when,
+after some hesitation and a sense of great daring, I finally
+crept up those steps, I remember very well my sensation at
+finding myself in front of a narrow closed door. It suggested too
+vividly the one in Grandfather's little room--the door in the
+wainscot which we were never to open. I had my first real
+trembling fit here, and at once fascinated and repelled by this
+obstruction I stumbled and lost my candle, which, going out in
+the fall, left me in total darkness and a very frightened state
+of mind. For my imagination which had been greatly stirred by my
+own vague thoughts of the forbidden room, immediately began to
+people the space about me with ghoulish figures. How should I
+escape them, how ever reach my own little room again undetected
+and in safety?
+
+But these terrors, deep as they were, were nothing to the real
+fright which seized me when, the darkness finally braved, and the
+way found back into the bright, wide-open halls of the house, I
+became conscious of having dropped something besides the candle.
+My match-box was gone--not my match-box, but my grandfather's
+which I had found lying on his table and carried off on this
+adventure, in all the confidence of irresponsible youth. To make
+use of it for a little while, trusting to his not missing it in
+the confusion I had noticed about the house that morning, was one
+thing; to lose it was another. It was no common box. Made of gold
+and cherished for some special reason well known to himself, I
+had often hear him say that some day I would appreciate its
+value, and be glad to own it. And I had left it in that hole and
+at any minute he might miss it--possibly ask for it! The day was
+one of torment. My mother was away or shut up in her room. My
+father--I don't know just what thoughts I had about him. He was
+not to be seen either, and the servants cast strange looks at me
+when I spoke his name. But I little realized the blow which had
+just fallen upon the house in his definite departure, and only
+thought of my own trouble, and of how I should meet my
+grandfather's eye when the hour came for him to draw me to his
+knee for his usual good-night.
+
+"That I was spared this ordeal for the first time this very night
+first comforted me, then added to my distress. He had discovered
+his loss and was angry. On the morrow he would ask me for the box
+and I would have to lie, for never could I find the courage to
+tell him where I had been. Such an act of presumption he would
+never forgive, or so I thought as I lay and shivered in my little
+bed. That his coldness, his neglect, sprang from the discovery
+just made that my mother as well as my father had just fled the
+house forever was as little known to me as the morning calamity.
+I had been given my usual tendance and was tucked safely into
+bed; but the gloom, the silence which presently settled upon the
+house had a very different explanation in my mind from the real
+one. My sin (for such it loomed large in my mind by this time)
+coloured the whole situation and accounted for every event.
+
+"At what hour I slipped from my bed on to the cold floor, I shall
+never know. To me it seemed to be in the dead of night; but I
+doubt if it were more than ten. So slowly creep away the moments
+to a wakeful child. I had made a great resolve. Awful as the
+prospect seemed to me,--frightened as I was by the very thought,--
+I had determined in my small mind to go down into the cellar, and
+into that midnight hole again, in search of the lost box. I would
+take a candle and matches, this time from my own mantel-shelf,
+and if everyone was asleep, as appeared from the deathly quiet of
+the house, I would be able to go and come without anybody ever
+being the wiser.
+
+"Dressing in the dark, I found my matches and my candle and,
+putting them in one of my pockets, softly opened my door and
+looked out. Nobody was stirring; every light was out except a
+solitary one in the lower hall. That this still burned conveyed
+no meaning to my mind. How could I know that the house was so
+still and the rooms dark because everyone was out searching for
+some clue to my mother's flight? If I had looked at the clock--
+but I did not; I was too intent upon my errand, too filled with
+the fever of my desperate undertaking, to be affected by anything
+not bearing directly upon it.
+
+"Of the terror caused by my own shadow on the wall as I made the
+turn in the hall below, I have as keen a recollection today as
+though it happened yesterday. But that did not deter me; nothing
+deterred me, till safe in the cellar I crouched down behind the
+casks to get my breath again before entering the hole beyond.
+
+"I had made some noise in feeling my way around these casks, and
+I trembled lest these sounds had been heard upstairs! But this
+fear soon gave place to one far greater. Other sounds were making
+themselves heard. A din of small skurrying feet above, below, on
+every side of me! Rats! rats in the wall! rats on the cellar
+bottom! How I ever stirred from the spot I do not know, but when
+I did stir, it was to go forward, and enter the uncanny hole.
+
+"I had intended to light my candle when I got inside; but for
+some reason I went stumbling along in the dark, following the
+wall till I got to the steps where I had dropped the box. Here a
+light was necessary, but my hand did not go to my pocket. I
+thought it better to climb the steps first, and softly one foot
+found the tread and then another. I had only three more to climb
+and then my right hand, now feeling its way along the wall, would
+be free to strike a match. I climbed the three steps and was
+steadying myself against the door for a final plunge, when
+something happened--something so strange, so unexpected, and so
+incredible that I wonder I did not shriek aloud in my terror. The
+door was moving under my hand. It was slowly opening inward. I
+could feel the chill made by the widening crack. Moment by moment
+this chill increased; the gap was growing--a presence was there-a
+presence before which I sank in a small heap upon the landing.
+Would it advance? Had it feet--hands? Was it a presence which
+could be felt?
+
+"Whatever it was, it made no attempt to pass, and presently I
+lifted my head only to quake anew at the sound of a voice--a
+human voice--my mother's voice--so near me that by putting out my
+arms I might have touched her.
+
+"She was speaking to my father. I knew from the tone. She was
+saying words which, little understood as they were, made such a
+havoc in my youthful mind that I have never forgotten the effect.
+
+"'I have come!' she said. 'They think I have fled the house and
+are looking far and wide for me. We shall not be disturbed. Who
+would think looking of here for either you or me.'
+
+"Here! The word sank like a plummet in my breast. I had known for
+some few minutes that I was on the threshold of the forbidden
+room; but they were in it. I can scarcely make you understand the
+tumult which this awoke in my brain. Somehow, I had never thought
+that any such braving of the house's law would be possible.
+
+"I heard my father's answer, but it conveyed no meaning to me. I
+also realized that he spoke from a distance,--that he was at one
+end of the room while we were at the other. I was presently to
+have this idea confirmed, for while I was striving with all my
+might and main to subdue my very heart-throbs so that she would
+not hear me or suspect my presence, the darkness--I should rather
+say the blackness of the place yielded to a flash of lightning--
+heat lightning, all glare and no sound--and I caught an
+instantaneous vision of my father's figure standing with gleaming
+things about him, which affected me at the moment as
+supernatural, but which, in later years, I decided to have been
+weapons hanging on a wall.
+
+"She saw him too, for she gave a quick laugh and said they would
+not need any candles; and then, there was another flash and I saw
+something in his hand and something in hers, and though I did not
+yet understand, I felt myself turning deathly sick and gave a
+choking gasp which was lost in the rush she made into the centre
+of the room, and the keenness of her swift low cry.
+
+"'Garde-toi! for only one of us will ever leave this room alive!'
+
+"A duel! a duel to the death between this husband and wife--this
+father and mother--in this hole of dead tragedies and within the
+sight and hearing of their child! Has Satan ever devised a scheme
+more hideous for ruining the life of an eleven-year-old boy!
+
+"Not that I took it all in at once. I was too innocent and much
+too dazed to comprehend such hatred, much less the passions which
+engender it. I only knew that something horrible--something
+beyond the conception of my childish mind--was going to take
+place in the darkness before me; and the terror of it made me
+speechless; would to God it had made me deaf and blind and dead!
+
+"She had dashed from her corner and he had slid away from his, as
+the next fantastic glare which lit up the room showed me. It also
+showed the weapons in their hands, and for a moment I felt
+reassured when I saw that these were swords, for I had seen them
+before with foils in their hands practising for exercise, as they
+said, in the great garret. But the swords had buttons on them,
+and this time the tips were sharp and shone in the keen light.
+
+"An exclamation from her and a growl of rage from him were
+followed by movements I could scarcely hear, but which were
+terrifying from their very quiet. Then the sound of a clash. The
+swords had crossed.
+
+"Had the lightning flashed forth then, the end of one of them
+might have occurred. But the darkness remained undisturbed, and
+when the glare relit the great room again, they were already far
+apart. This called out a word from him; the one sentence he spoke
+--I can never forget it:
+
+"'Rhoda, there is blood on your sleeve; I have wounded you. Shall
+we call it off and fly, as the poor creatures in there think we
+have, to the opposite ends of the earth?'
+
+"I almost spoke; I almost added my childish plea to his for them
+to stop--to remember me and stop. But not a muscle in my throat
+responded to my agonized effort. Her cold, clear 'No!' fell
+before my tongue was loosed or my heart freed from the ponderous
+weight crushing it.
+
+"'I have vowed and I keep my promises,' she went on in a tone
+quite strange to me. 'What would either's life be worth with the
+other alive and happy in this world.'
+
+"He made no answer; and those subtle movements--shadows of
+movements I might almost call them--recommenced. Then there came
+a sudden cry, shrill and poignant--had Grandfather been in his
+room he would surely have heard it--and the flash coming almost
+simultaneously with its utterance, I saw what has haunted my
+sleep from that day to this, my father pinned against the wall,
+sword still in hand, and before him my mother, fiercely
+triumphant, her staring eyes fixed on his and--
+
+Nature could bear no more; the band loosened from my throat; the
+oppression lifted from my breast long enough for me to give one
+wild wail and she turned, saw (heaven sent its flashes quickly at
+this moment) and recognizing my childish form, all the horror of
+her deed (or so I have fondly hoped) rose within her, and she
+gave a start and fell full upon the point upturned to receive
+her.
+
+"A groan; then a gasping sigh from him, and silence settled upon
+the room and upon my heart, and so far as I knew upon the whole
+created world.
+
+"That is my story, friends. Do you wonder that I have never been
+or lived like other men?"
+
+After a few moments of sympathetic silence, Mr. Van Broecklyn
+went on, to say:
+
+"I don't think I ever had a moment's doubt that my parents both
+lay dead on the floor of that great room. When I came to myself--
+which may have been soon, and may not have been for a long while--
+the lightning had ceased to flash, leaving the darkness
+stretching like a blank pall between me and that spot in which
+were concentrated all the terrors of which my imagination was
+capable. I dared not enter it. I dared not take one step that
+way. My instinct was to fly and hide my trembling body again in
+my own bed; and associated with this, in fact dominating it and
+making me old before my time, was another--never to tell; never
+to let any one, least of all my grandfather--know what that
+forbidden room now contained. I felt in an irresistible sort of
+way that my father's and mother's honour was at stake. Besides,
+terror held me back; I felt that I should die if I spoke.
+Childhood has such terrors and such heroisms. Silence often
+covers in such, abysses of thought and feeling which astonish us
+in later years. There is no suffering like a child's, terrified
+by a secret which it dare not for some reason disclose.
+
+"Events aided me. When, in desperation to see once more the light
+and all the things which linked me to life--my little bed, the
+toys on the window-sill, my squirrel in its cage--I forced myself
+to retraverse the empty house, expecting at every turn to hear my
+father's voice or come upon the image of my mother--yes, such was
+the confusion of my mind, though I knew well enough even then
+that they were dead and that I should never hear the one or see
+the other. I was so benumbed with the cold in my half-dressed
+condition, that I woke in a fever next morning after a terrible
+dream which forced from my lips the cry of 'Mother! Mother!'--
+only that.
+
+"I was cautious even in delirium. This delirium and my flushed
+cheeks and shining eyes led them to be very careful of me. I was
+told that my mother was away from home; and when after two days
+of search they were quite sure that all effort to find either her
+or my father were likely to prove fruitless, that she had gone to
+Europe where we would follow her as soon as I was well. This
+promise, offering as it did, a prospect of immediate release from
+the terrors which were consuming me, had an extraordinary effect
+upon me. I got up out of my bed saying that I was well now and
+ready to start on the instant. The doctor, finding my pulse
+equable, and my whole condition wonder fully improved, and
+attributing it, as was natural, to my hope of soon joining my
+mother, advised my whim to be humoured and this hope kept active
+till travel and intercourse with children should give me strength
+and prepare me for the bitter truth ultimately awaiting me. They
+listened to him and in twenty-four hours our preparations were
+made. We saw the house closed--with what emotions surging in one
+small breast, I leave you to imagine--and then started on our
+long tour. For five years we wandered over the continent of
+Europe, my grandfather finding distraction, as well as myself, in
+foreign scenes and associations.
+
+"But return was inevitable. What I suffered on reentering this
+house, God and my sleepless pillow alone know. Had any discovery
+been made in our absence; or would it be made now that renovation
+and repairs of all kinds were necessary? Time finally answered
+me. My secret was safe and likely to continue so, and this fact
+once settled, life became endurable, if not cheerful. Since then
+I have spent only two nights out of this house, and they were
+unavoidable. When my grandfather died I had the wainscot door
+cemented in. It was done from this side and the cement painted to
+match the wood. No one opened the door nor have I ever crossed
+its threshold. Sometimes I think I have been foolish; and
+sometimes I know that I have been very wise. My reason has stood
+firm; how do I know that it would have done so if I had subjected
+myself to the possible discovery that one of both of them might
+have been saved if I had disclosed instead of concealed my
+adventure."
+
+A pause during which white horror had shone on every face; then
+with a final glance at Violet, he said:
+
+"What sequel do you see to this story, Miss Strange? I can tell
+the past, I leave you to picture the future."
+
+Rising, she let her eye travel from face to face till it rested
+on the one awaiting it, when she answered dreamily:
+
+"If some morning in the news column there should appear an
+account of the ancient and historic home of the Van Broecklyns
+having burned to the ground in the night, the whole country would
+mourn, and the city feel defrauded of one of its treasures. But
+there are five persons who would see in it the sequel which you
+ask for."
+
+When this happened, as it did happen, some few weeks later, the
+astonishing discovery was made that no insurance had been put
+upon this house. Why was it that after such a loss Mr. Van
+Broecklyn seemed to renew his youth? It was a constant source of
+comment among his friends.
+
+END OF PROBLEM VIII
+
+PROBLEM IX  VIOLET'S OWN
+
+"It has been too much for you?"
+
+"I am afraid so."
+
+It was Roger Upjohn who had asked the question; it was Violet who
+answered. They had withdrawn from a crowd of dancers to a
+balcony, half-shaded, half open to the moon,--a balcony made, it
+would seem, for just such stolen interviews between waltzes.
+
+Now, as it happened, Roger's face was in the shadow, but Violet's
+in the full light. Very sweet it looked, very ethereal, but also
+a little wan. He noticed this and impetuously cried:
+
+"You are pale; and your hand! see, how it trembles!"
+
+Slowly withdrawing it from the rail where it had rested, she sent
+one quick glance his way and, in a low voice, said:
+
+"I have not slept since that night."
+
+"Four days!" he murmured. Then, after a moment of silence, "You
+bore yourself so bravely at the time, I thought, or rather, I
+hoped, that success had made you forget the horror. I could not
+have slept myself, if I had known--"
+
+"It is part of the price I pay," she broke in gently. "All good
+things have to be paid for. But I see--I realize that you do not
+consider what I am doing good. Though it helps other people--has
+helped you--you wonder why, with all the advantages I possess, I
+should meddle with matters so repugnant to a woman's natural
+instincts."
+
+Yes, he wondered. That was evident from his silence. Seeing her
+as she stood there, so quaintly pretty, so feminine in look and
+manner--in short, such a flower--it was but natural that he
+should marvel at the incongruity she had mentioned.
+
+"It has a strange, odd look," she admitted, after a moment of
+troubled hesitation. "The most considerate person cannot but
+regard it as a display of egotism or of a most mercenary spirit.
+The cheque you sent me for what I was enabled to do for you in
+Massachusetts (the only one I have ever received which I have
+been tempted to refuse) shows to what extent you rated my help
+and my--my expectations. Had I been a poor girl struggling for
+subsistence, this generosity would have warmed my heart as a
+token of your desire to cut that struggle short. But taken with
+your knowledge of my home and its luxuries, it has often made me
+wonder what you thought."
+
+"Shall I tell you?"
+
+He had stepped forward at this question and his countenance,
+hitherto concealed, became visible in the moonlight. She no
+longer recognized it. Transformed by feeling, it shone down upon
+her, instinct with all that is finest and best in masculine
+nature. Was she ready for this revelation of what she had
+nevertheless dreamed of for many more nights than four? She did
+not know, and instinctively drew herself back till it was she who
+now stood in the semi-obscurity made by the drooping vines. From
+this retreat, she faltered forth a very tremulous No, which in
+another moment was disavowed by a Yes so faint it was little more
+than a murmur, followed by a still fainter, Tell me.
+
+But he did not seem in any haste to obey, sweetly as her low-
+toned injunction must have sounded in his ears. On the contrary,
+he hesitated to speak, growing paler every minute as he sought to
+catch a glimpse of her downcast face so tantalizingly hidden from
+him. Did she recognize the nature of the feelings which held him
+back, or was she simply gathering up sufficient courage to plead
+her own cause? Whatever her reason, it was she, not he, who
+presently spoke saying as if no time had elapsed:
+
+"But first, I feel obliged to admit that it was money I wanted,
+that I had to have. Not for myself. I lack nothing and could have
+more if I wished. Father has never limited his generosity in any
+matter affecting myself, but--" She drew a deep breath and,
+coming out of the shadow, lifted a face to him so changed from
+its usual expression as to make him start. "I have a cause at
+heart--one which should appeal to my father and does not; and for
+that purpose I have sacrificed myself, in many ways, though--
+though I have not disliked my work up to this last attempt. Not
+really. I want to be honest and so must admit that much. I have
+even gloried (quietly and all by myself, of course) over the
+solution of a mystery which no one else seemed able to penetrate.
+I am made that way. I have known it ever since--but that is a
+story all by itself. Some day I may tell it to you, but not now."
+
+"No, not now." The emphasis sent the colour into her cheek but
+did not relieve his pallor. "Miss Strange, I have always felt,
+even in my worst days, that the man who for selfish ends brought
+a woman under the shadow of his own unhappy reputation was a man
+to be despised. And I think so still, and yet--and yet--nothing
+in the world but your own word or look can hold me back now from
+telling you that I love you--love you notwithstanding my unworthy
+past, my scarring memories, my all but blasted hopes. I do not
+expect any response; you are young; you are beautiful; you are
+gifted with every grace; but to speak,--to say over and over
+again, 'I love you, I love you!' eases my heart and makes my
+future more endurable. Oh, do not look at me like that unless--
+unless--"
+
+But the bright head did not fall, nor the tender gaze falter; and
+driven out of himself, Roger Upjohn was about to step
+passionately forward, when, seized by fresh compunction, he
+hoarsely cried:
+
+"It is not right. The balance dips too much my way. You bring me
+everything. I can give you nothing but what you already possess
+abundance--love, and money. Besides, your father--"
+
+She interrupted him with a glance at once arch and earnest.
+
+"I had a talk with Father this morning. He came to my room, and--
+and it was very near being serious. Someone had told him I was
+doing things on the sly which he had better look into; and of
+course he asked questions and--and I answered them. He wasn't
+pleased--in fact he was very displeased,--I don't think we can
+blame him for that--but we had no open break for I love him
+dearly, for all my opposing ways, and he saw that, and it helped,
+though he did say after I had given my promise to stop where I
+was and never to take up such work again, that--" here she stole
+a shy look at the face bent so eagerly towards her--"that I had
+lost my social status and need never hope now for the attentions
+of--of--well, of such men as he admires and puts faith in. So you
+see," her dimples all showing, "that I am not such a very good
+match for an Upjohn of Massachusetts, even if he has a reputation
+to recover and an honourable name to achieve. The scale hangs
+more evenly than you think."
+
+"Violet!"
+
+A mutual look, a moment of perfect silence, then a low whisper,
+airy as the breath of flowers rising from the garden below: "I
+have never known what happiness was till this moment. If you will
+take me with my story untold--"
+
+"Take you! take you!" The man's whole yearning heart, the loss
+and bitterness of years, the hope and promise of the future, all
+spoke in that low, half-smothered exclamation. Violet's blushes
+faded under its fervency, and only her spirit spoke, as leaning
+towards him, she laid her two hands in his, and said with all a
+woman's earnestness:
+
+"I do not forget little Roger, or the father who I hope may have
+many more days before him in which to bid good-night to the sea.
+Such union as ours must be hallowed, because we have so many
+persons to make happy besides ourselves."
+
+
+The evening before their marriage, Violet put a dozen folded
+sheets of closely written paper in his hand. They contained her
+story; let us read it with him.
+
+DEAR ROGER,--
+
+I could not have been more than seven years old, when one night I
+woke up shivering, at the sound of angry voices. A conversation
+which no child should ever have heard, was going on in the room
+where I lay. My father was talking to my sister--perhaps, you do
+not know that I have a sister; few of my personal friends do,--
+and the terror she evinced I could well understand but not his
+words nor the real cause of his displeasure.
+
+There are times even yet when the picture, forced upon my
+infantile consciousness at that moment of first awakening, comes
+back to me with all its original vividness. There was no light in
+the room save such as the moon made; but that was enough to
+reveal the passion burningly alive in either face, as, bending
+towards each other, she in supplication and he in a tempest of
+wrath which knew no bounds, he uttered and she listened to what I
+now know to have been a terrible arraignment.
+
+I may have an interesting countenance; you have told me so
+sometimes; but she--she was beautiful. My elder by ten years, she
+had stood in my mother's stead to me for almost as long as I
+could remember, and as I saw her lovely features contorted with
+pain and her hands extended in a desperate plea to one who had
+never shown me anything but love, my throat closed sharply and I
+could not cry out though I wanted to, nor move head or foot
+though I longed with all my heart to bury myself in the pillows.
+
+For the words I heard were terrifying, little as I comprehended
+their full purport. He had surprised her talking from her window
+to someone down below, and after saying cruel things about that,
+he shouted out: "You have disgraced me, you have disgraced
+yourself, you have disgraced your brother and your little sister.
+Was it not enough that you should refuse to marry the good man I
+had picked out for you, that you should stoop to this low-down
+scoundrel--this--" I did not hear what else he called him, I was
+wondering so to whom she had been stooping; I had never seen her
+stoop except to tie my little shoes.
+
+But when she cried out as she did after an interval, "I love him!
+I love him!" then I listened again, for she spoke as though she
+were in dreadful pain, and I did not know that loving made one
+ill and unhappy. "And I am going to marry him," I heard her add,
+standing up, as she said it, very straight and tall.
+
+Marry! I knew what that meant. A long aisle in a church; women in
+white and big music in the air behind. I had been flower-girl at
+a wedding once and had not forgotten. We had had ice cream and
+cake and--
+
+But my childish thoughts stopped short at the answer she received
+and all the words which followed--words which burned their way
+into my infantile brain and left scorched places in my memory
+which will never be eradicated. He spoke them--spoke them all;
+she never answered again after that once, and when he was gone
+did not move for a long time and when she did it was to lie down,
+stiff and straight, just as she had stood, on her bed alongside
+mine.
+
+I was frightened; so frightened, my little brass bed rattled
+under me. I wonder she did not hear it. But she heard nothing;
+and after awhile she was so still I fell asleep. But I woke
+again. Something hot had fallen on my cheek. I put up my hand to
+brush it away and did not know even when I felt my fingers wet
+that it was a tear from my sister-mother's eye.
+
+For she was kneeling then; kneeling close beside me and her arm
+was over my small body; and the bed was shaking again but not
+this time with my tremors only. And I was sorry and cried too
+until I dropped off to sleep again with her arm still
+passionately embracing me.
+
+In the morning, she was gone.
+
+It must have been that very afternoon that Father came in where
+Arthur and I were trying to play,--trying, but not quite
+succeeding, for I had been telling Arthur, for whom I had a great
+respect in those days, what had happened the night before, and we
+had been wondering in our childish way if there would be a
+wedding after all, and a church full of people, and flowers, and
+kissing, and lots of good things to eat, and Arthur had said No,
+it was too expensive; that that was why Father was so angry; and
+comforted by the assertion, I was taking up my doll again, when
+the door opened and Father stepped in.
+
+It was a great event--any visit from him to the nursery--and we
+both dropped our toys and stood staring, not knowing whether he
+was going to be nice and kind as he sometimes was, or scold us as
+I had heard him scold our beautiful sister.
+
+Arthur showed at once what he thought, for without the least
+hesitation he took the one step which placed him in front of me,
+where he stood waiting with his two little fists hanging straight
+at his sides but manfully clenched in full readiness for attack.
+That this display of pigmy chivalry was not quite without its
+warrant is evident to me now, for Father did not look like
+himself or act like himself any more than he had the night
+before.
+
+However, we had no cause for fear. Having no suspicion of my
+having been awake during his terrible interview with Theresa, he
+saw only two lonely and forsaken children, interrupted in their
+play.
+
+Can I remember what he said to us? Not exactly, though Arthur and
+I often went over it choked whispers in some secret nook of the
+dreary old house; but his meaning--that we took in well enough.
+Theresa had left us. She would never come back. We were not to
+look out of the window for her, or run to the door when the bell
+rang. Our mother had left us too, a long time ago, and she lay in
+the cemetery where we sometimes carried flowers. Theresa was not
+in the cemetery, but we must think of her as there; though not as
+if she had any need of  flowers. Having said this, he looked at
+us quietly for a minute. Arthur was trying very hard not to cry,
+but I was sobbing like the lost child I was, with my cheek
+against the floor where I had thrown myself when he said that
+awful thing about the cemetery. She there! my sister-mother
+there! I think he felt a little sorry for me; for he half stooped
+as if to lift me up. But he straightened again and said very
+sternly:
+
+"Now, children, listen to me. When God takes people to heaven and
+leaves us only their cold, dead bodies we carry flowers to their
+graves and talk about them some if not very much. But when people
+die because they love dark ways better than light, then we do not
+remember them with gifts and we do not talk about them. Your
+sister's name has been spoken for the last time in this house.
+You, Arthur, are old enough to know what I mean when I say that I
+will never listen to another word about her from either you or
+Violet as long as you and I live. She is gone and nothing that is
+mine shall she ever touch again.
+
+"You hear me, Arthur; you hear me, Violet. Heed me, or you go
+too."
+
+His aspect was terrible, so was his purpose; much more terrible
+than we realized at the time with our limited understanding and
+experience. Later, we came to know the full meaning of this black
+drop which had been infused into our lives. When we saw every
+picture of her destroyed which had been in the house; her name
+cut out from the leaves of books; the little tokens she had given
+us surreptitiously taken away, till not a vestige of her once
+beloved presence remained, we began to realize that we had indeed
+lost her.
+
+But children as young as we were then do not long retain the
+poignancy of their first griefs. Gradually my memories of that
+awful night ceased to disturb my dreams and I was sixteen before
+they were again recalled to me with any vividness, and then it
+was by accident. I had been strolling through a picture gallery
+and had stopped short to study more particularly one which had
+especially taken my fancy. There were two ladies sitting on a
+bench behind me and one of them was evidently very deaf, for
+their talk was loud, though I am sure they did not mean for me to
+hear, for they were discussing my family. That is, one of them
+had said:
+
+"That's Violet Strange. She will never be the beauty her sister
+was; but perhaps that's not to be deplored. Theresa made a great
+mess of it."
+
+"That's true. I hear that she and the Signor have been seen
+lately here in town. In poverty, of course. He hadn't even as
+much go in him as the ordinary singing-master."
+
+I suppose I should have hurried away, and left this barbed arrow
+to rankle where it fell. But I could not. I had never learned a
+word of Theresa's fate and that word poverty, proving that she
+was alive and suffering, held me to my place to hear what more
+they might say of her who for years had been for me an indistinct
+figure bathed in cruel moonlight.
+
+"I have never approved of Peter Strange's conduct at that time,"
+one of the voices now went on. "He didn't handle her right. She
+had a lovely disposition and would have listened to him had he
+been more gentle with her. But it isn't in him. I hope this one--"
+
+I didn't hear the end of that. I had no interest in anything they
+might say about myself. It was of her I wanted to hear, of her.
+Weren't they going to say anything more about my poor sister?
+Yes; it was a topic which interested both and presently I heard:
+
+"He'll never do anything for her, no matter what happens; I've
+heard him say so. And Laura has vowed the same." (Laura is our
+aunt.) "Besides, Theresa has a pride of her own quite equal to
+her father's. She wouldn't take anything from him now. She'd
+rather struggle on. I'm told--I don't know how true it is--that
+she's working in a department store; one of the Sixth Avenue
+ones. Oh, there's Mrs. Vandegraff! Don't you want to speak to
+her?"
+
+They moved off, leaving me still gazing with unseeing eyes at
+the picture before which I stood planted, and saying over and
+over in monotonous iteration, "One of the department stores in
+Sixth Avenue! One of the department stores in Sixth Avenue!"
+
+Which department store?
+
+I meant to find out.
+
+I do not know whether up till then I had had the least
+consciousness of possessing what is called the detective
+instinct. But, at the prospect of this quest, so much like that
+of the proverbial needle in a haystack, as I did not even know my
+sister's married name and something within me forbade my asking
+it, I experienced an odd sense of elation followed by a certainty
+of success which in five minutes changed me from an irresponsible
+girl to a woman with a deliberate purpose in life.
+
+I am not going to write down here all the details of that search.
+Some day I may relate them to you, but not now. I looked first
+for a beautiful woman, for the straight, slim, and exquisite
+creature I remembered. I did not find her. Then I tried another
+course. Her figure might have changed in the ten years which had
+elapsed; so might her expression. I would look for a woman with
+beautiful dark eyes; time could not have altered them. I had
+forgotten the effect of constant weeping. And I saw many eyes,
+but not hers; not the ones I had seen smiling upon me as I lay in
+my crib before the days I was lifted to the dignity of the little
+brass bed. So I gave that up too and listened to the inner voice
+which said, "You must wait for her to recognize you. You can
+never hope to recognize her." And it was by following this plan
+that I found her. I had arranged to have my name spoken aloud at
+every counter where I bargained; and oh, the bargains I sought,
+and the garments I had tried on! But I made little progress until
+one day, after my name had been uttered a little louder than
+usual I saw a woman turn from rearranging gowns on a hanger, and
+give me one look.
+
+I uttered a low cry and sprang impetuously, forward. Instantly
+she turned her back and went on hanging, or trying to hang up,
+gowns on the rack before her. Had I been mistaken? She was not
+the sister of my dreams, but there was something fine in her
+outline; something distinguished in the way she carried her head
+which--
+
+Next minute my last doubt fled! She had fallen her length on the
+floor and lay with her face buried in her hands in a dead faint.
+
+Oh, Roger, Roger, Roger! I had that dear head on my breast in a
+moment. I talked to her, I whispered prayers in her unconscious
+ear. I did everything I should not have done till they all
+thought me demented. When she came to, as she did under other
+ministrations than mine, I was for carrying her off in my
+limousine. But she shook her head with a gesture of such
+disapproval, that I realized I could not do that. The limousine
+was my father's, and nothing of his was ever to be used for her
+again. I would call a cab; but she told me that she had not the
+money to pay for it and she would not take mine. Carfare she had;
+five cents would take her home. I need not worry.
+
+She smiled as she said this and for an instant I saw my dream-
+sister again in this weary half-disheartened woman. But the smile
+was a fleeting one, for this was to be her last day in the store;
+she had no talent as a saleswoman and was merely working out her
+week.
+
+I felt my heart sink heavily at this, for the evidences of
+poverty were plainly to be seen in her clothes and the thinness
+of her face and figure. How could I help? What could I do? I took
+her to a restaurant for food and talk, and before she would
+order, she looked into her purse, with the result that we had
+only a little toast and tea. It was all she could afford and I,
+with a hundred dollars in bills at that moment in my bag, could
+not offer her anything more though she was needing nourishment
+and dishes piled with savoury meats were going by us every
+moment.
+
+I think, if she had let me, I would have dared my father's
+displeasure and been disobedient to his wishes by giving her one
+wholesome meal. But she was as resolute of mind as he, and, as
+she said afterwards, had chosen her course in life and must abide
+by it. My love she would accept. It took nothing from Father and
+gave her what her heart was pining for--had pined for for years.
+But nothing more--not another thing more. She would not even let
+me go home with her; and I knew why when her eyes fell at the
+searching look I gave her. Something would turn up, and when her
+husband's health was better and she had found another position
+she would send me her address and then I could come and see her.
+As we walked out of the restaurant we ran against a gentleman I
+knew. He stopped me for a passing word and in that minute she
+disappeared. I did not try to follow her. I could get her street
+and number from the store where she had worked.
+
+But when I had done this and embraced the first opportunity which
+offered to visit her, I found that she had moved away in the
+interim, leaving everything behind in payment of her rent, except
+such small things as she and her husband could carry. This was
+discouraging as it left me without any clue by which to follow
+them. But I was determined not to yield to her desire for
+concealment in the difficult and disheartening task I now saw
+before me.
+
+Seeking advice from the man who has since become my employer, I
+entered upon this second search with a quiet resolution which
+admitted of no defeat. It took me six months, but I finally found
+her, and satisfied with knowing where she was, desisted from
+rushing in upon her, till I had caught one glimpse of her husband
+whom, in the last six months, I had heard described but had never
+seen. To understand her, it was perhaps necessary to understand
+him, and if I could not hope to do this offhand, I could not fail
+to get some idea of the man from even the most casual look.
+
+He was, as I soon learned, the fetcher and carrier of the small
+m�nage; and the day came when I met him face to face in the
+street where they lived. Did he disappoint me; or did I see
+something in his appearance to justify her desertion of her
+father's home and her present life of poverty? If I say Yes to
+the first question, I must also say it to the last. If handsome
+once, he was not handsome now; but with a personality such as
+his, this did not matter. He had that better thing--that greatest
+gift of the gods--charm. It was in his bearing, his movement, the
+regard of his weary eye; more than that it was in his very nature
+or it would have vanished long ago under disappointment and
+privation.
+
+But that was all there was to the man,--a golden net in which my
+sister's youthful fancy had been caught and no doubt held meshed
+to this very day. I felt less like blaming her for her folly,
+after that instant's view of him as we passed each other in the
+street. But, as I took time to think, I found myself growing
+sorrier and sorrier for her and yet, in a way, gladder and
+gladder, for the man was a physical wreck and would soon pass out
+of her life leaving her to my love and possibly to our father's
+forgiveness.
+
+But I did not know Theresa. After her husband's death, which
+occurred very soon, she let me come to her and we had a long talk--
+Shall I ever forget it or the sight of her beauty in that sordid
+room? For, account for it as you will, the loveliness which had
+fled under her sense of complete isolation had slowly regained
+its own with the recognition that she still had a place in the
+heart of her little sister. Not even the sorrow she felt for the
+loss of her suffering husband--and she did mourn him; this I am
+glad to say--could more than temporarily stay this. Six months of
+ease and wholesome food would make her--I hardly dared to think
+what. For I knew, without asking her, or she telling me, that she
+would accept neither; that she was as determined now, as ever
+that nothing which came directly or indirectly from Father should
+go to the rebuilding of her life. That she intended to start anew
+and work her way up to a place where I should be glad to see her
+she did say. But nothing more. She was still the sister-mother,
+loving, but sufficient to herself, though she had but ten dollars
+left in the world, as she showed me with a smile that made her
+beautiful as an angel.
+
+I can see that shabby little purse yet with its one poor greasy
+bill;--a sum to her but to me the price of a luncheon or a gift
+of flowers. How I longed, as I looked at it to tear every jewel
+from my poor, bedecked body and fling them one and all into her
+lap. I had worn them in profusion, though carefully hidden under
+my coat, in the hope that she would accept one of them at least,
+But she refused all, even such as had been gifts of friends and
+schoolmates, only humouring me this far, that she let me hang
+them for a few minutes about her neck and in her hair and then
+pull them all off again. But this one vision of her in the
+splendour she was born to comforted me. Henceforth in wearing
+them it would be of her and not of myself I should think.
+
+Well, I had to leave her and go home to my French and Italian
+lessons, my music-masters and all the luxuries of our father's
+house. Should I ever see her again? I did not know; she had not
+promised. I could not go often into the quarter where she lived,
+without rousing suspicion; and she had bidden me not to come
+again for a month. So I waited, half fearing she would flit again
+before the month was up. But she did not. She was still there
+when--
+
+But I am going too fast. The meeting I was about to mention was a
+very memorable one to me, and I must describe it from the
+beginning. I had ridden in my own car as near as I dared to the
+street where she lived; the rest of the way I went on foot with
+one of the servants--a new one--following close behind me. I was
+not exactly afraid, but the actions of some of the people I had
+encountered at my former visit warned me to be a little careful
+for my father's sake if not for my own. Her room--she had but one
+--was high up in a triangular court it was no pleasure to enter.
+But love and loyalty heed nothing but the object sought, and I
+was hunting about for the dark doorway which opened upon the
+staircase leading to her room when--and this was the great moment
+of my life--a sudden stream of melody floated down into that
+noisome court, which from its clearness, its accuracy, its
+richness, and its feeling startled me as I had never before been
+startled even by the first notes of the world's greatest singers.
+What a voice for a place like this! What a voice for any place!
+Whose could it be? With a start, I stopped short, in the middle
+of that court, heedless of the crowd of pushing, shouting
+children who at once gathered about me. I had been struck by an
+old recollection. My sister used to sing. I remembered where her
+piano had stood in the great drawing-room. It had been carted
+away during those dreadful weeks and her music all burned; but
+the vision of her graceful figure bending over the keyboard was
+one not to be forgotten even by a thoughtless child. Could it be--
+oh, heaven! if this voice were hers! Her future was certain; she
+had but to sing.
+
+In a transport of hope I rushed for the dim entrance the children
+had pointed out and flew up to her room. As I reached it, I heard
+a trill as perfect as Tetrazzini's. The singer was Theresa; there
+could be no more doubt. Theresa! exercising a grand voice as only
+a great artist would or could.
+
+The joy of it made me almost faint. I leaned against her door and
+sobbed. Then when I thought I could speak quite calmly, I went
+in.
+
+Roger, you must understand me now,--my desire for money and the
+means I have taken to obtain it. My sister had the makings of a
+prima-donna. Her husband, of whose ability I had formed so low an
+estimate, had trained her with consummate skill and judgment. All
+she needed was a year with some great maestro in the foreign
+atmosphere of art. But this meant money--not hundreds but
+thousands, and the one sure source to which we might rightfully
+look for any such amount was effectually closed to us. It is true
+we had relatives--an aunt on our mother's side, and I mentioned
+her to Theresa. But she would not listen to the suggestion. She
+would take nothing from any one whom she would find it hard to
+face in case of failure. Love must go with an advance involving
+so much risk; love deep enough and strong enough to feel no loss
+save that of a defeated hope. In short, to be acceptable, the
+money must come from me, and as this was manifestly impossible,
+she considered the matter closed and began to talk of a position
+she had been offered in some choir. I let her talk, listening and
+not listening; for the idea had come to me that if in some way I
+could earn money, she might be induced to take it. Finally, I
+asked her. She laughed, letting her kisses answer me. But I did
+not laugh. If she had capabilities in one way, I had them in
+another.
+
+I went home to think.
+
+Two weeks later, I began, in a very quiet way to do certain work
+for the man who had helped me in my second search for Theresa.
+The money I have earned has been immense; since it was troubles
+of the rich I was given to settle, and I was almost always
+successful. Every cent has gone to her. She has been in Europe
+for a year and last week she made her debut. You read about it in
+the papers, but neither you nor any one else in this country but
+myself knew that under the name she chosen to assume, Theresa
+Strange, the long forgotten beauty, has recovered that place in
+the world, to which her love and genius entitle her.
+
+This is my story and hers. From now on, you are the third in the
+secret. Some day, my father will be the fourth. I think then, a
+new dawn of love will arise for us all, which will stay the
+whitening of his dear head--for I believe in him after all.
+Yesterday when he passed the wall where her picture once hung--
+no other has ever hung there--I saw him stop and look up, and,
+Roger, when he passed me a minute later, there was a tear in his
+hard eye.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Golden Slipper, by Anna Katharine Green
+
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